The car was unlocked, the driver’s side window left down. No keys were in the ignition. Zoe jumped into the rain-soaked front seat, closed the door behind her, tucked her head down and reached under the steering wheel.
The music stopped playing.
Someone had found the radio, turned it off.
She fumbled in the dark. Where were the damn wires?
Zoe froze at the sudden sound of a voice outside the vehicle. “I figured it was you.”
She raised her head.
A man stood at the door, his shotgun aimed directly at her. “Out of the car,” he said.
Zoe slowly sat up in the seat. The man was in his early twenties, tall, well built, with a hard, angular face and cold, deep-set eyes. Zoe stared at him. “Just curious,” she said. “Are you Ben, or the other dipshit brother… Basil?”
“Does it matter?”
“Does to me.”
The man set the shotgun muzzle on the window frame. “Why?”
“I want to know who’s left,” Zoe said. In one smooth motion she yanked up on the seat adjustment lever, collapsed the seatback of driver’s chair, pulled the Walther PPK out of her waistband, fired several bullets through the door panel, then threw open the door, rushed out of the car, jammed the gun into the man’s stomach as he fell, and emptied the remaining rounds into him. Dead, Zoe searched his pockets and found what she was looking for.
Shannon heard the gunshots and looked around the corner of the stable. Zoe was on the ground, straddling the man’s body.
Zoe saw her and called out: “Catch!” She threw the dead man’s cell phone to her sister. “Take Lily. Get as far away from here as you can, then call the police.”
Shannon caught the phone. “What about you?”
Zoe heard footsteps running across the back porch, coming her way. “Don’t worry about me,” she yelled. “I’ll find you. Go!”
CHAPTER 44
HARRISON TASKER considered making a move on the motorcade, cutting off the lead car, shooting it out with the agents assigned to protect the family, opening the doors to each vehicle and riddling its passengers with bullets, photographing the dead bodies of Jordan Quest and her family and emailing them to New York as proof he had completed of the first half of his contract, then pursuing Rigel, finding and killing him too, and finishing the job.
This was what he wanted to do. But in his state of waning vitality, he instead chose to follow the detail at a distance.
The same car that had pulled out of the apartment complex when he drove past Angel of Mercy Hospital was still ahead of him as they exited the interstate. Now four car lengths ahead, it followed the black SUV’s around the corner and down a long winding road flanked on either side by multimillion dollar mansions. Most of the homes were occupied. Others were still under construction.
Tasker stopped the Mustang at the corner and watched the vehicle drive down the road. Was this nondescript car part of the motorcade? He hadn’t thought so. Perhaps it was an unmarked follow vehicle, its officers assigned to trail the detail, report on any suspicious traffic activity, and warn them if they thought the motorcade had picked up a tail.
Taskers suspicions were quashed when the car turned on its signal light and pulled into the driveway of an estate home under construction. Perhaps the vehicle belonged to a contractor checking on the progress of his workers. Coincidence. He watched the motorcade continue to the end of the street, drive through a pair of open gates, climb a hill, and park under the portico at the main entrance to the grand home. He realized he would need a better vantage point if he was to observe the activity taking place at the mansion. Tasker drove ahead and turned down an adjoining street which ran parallel to the road on which the brightly lit mansion was located. This street too was lined with luxury homes in similar phases of development. He chose a home for which construction was near completion, pulled into the driveway, and turned off the car. Rain battered the roof and windshield of the Mustang. Painfully he reached over, opened the glove box and removed the night vision monocular. Summoning his strength, he forced open the car door and pulled himself out of the vehicle.
The unfinished mansion stood like a monolith against the backdrop of the bleak rain-battered night. A concrete balcony surrounded the building. Tasker struggled up the front steps, followed the landing around to the back of the house and peered through the monocular at the massive property.
Three men stood on the front steps of the estate. One of them appeared to be in charge, giving instructions, pointing to either side of the mansion. Tasker watched two of the men walk off in opposite directions; one to the west side of the estate, the other the east. The man on the front steps watched the motorcade leave, then removed his weapon and held it at his side. But why? Had something spooked him? Tasker scanned the estate for signs of movement but saw only the two men patrolling their assigned sectors. The grounds were quiet. A woman appeared in the doorway and spoke to the man in charge. He acknowledged her, then holstered his weapon and followed her into the house, but not before taking a long last look around.
Tasker surveyed the grounds once more, saw nothing.
A wooded hillside flanked the estate. Tasker slowly scanned the forested area with the monocular. A fiery heat signature blazed into view. The figure stood against a tree, arms elevated, head forward, body locked. Tasker recognized the shooting stance. The man who had been standing on the steps had reason to be concerned. He was in danger.
Tasker couldn’t hear the shots being fired. The silencer flared twice. The monocular caught the orange trail of the first bullet as it ejected from the weapon, followed by the second. The figure lowered the weapon, relaxed his stance and began to walk through the woods toward the estate.
Tasker swept the monocular back toward the mansion, following the flight path of the rounds.
Two men lay on the ground, shot by the sniper, presumably dead.
“Rigel,” he said.
He returned the monocular to his jacket pocket, shuffled back along the landing, and struggled down the steps back to the Mustang.
He needed to get to the estate as quickly as his wounded body would permit, find Rigel, and kill him.
Somehow.
CHAPTER 45
EMMETT AND Basil ran from the back porch to the front of the house at the sound of the gunfire and stopped dead in their tracks at the sight of Ben lying crumpled on the ground beside the old Chevy. Zoe stared at the men, pointed her gun at them, and fired.
Click.
Zoe felt her stomach drop. Seconds ago, in the moment of composed panic when she’d come face-to-face with Ben’s shotgun and fired through the car door panel to save her life, she had forgotten to count her shots. Every last round had been expended into Ben. The gun was empty.
Emmett yelled: “You fucking bitch!”
Zoe dove on top of Ben’s blood-soaked body for cover as the old man fired. The round whizzed past her ear. She fumbled in her pocket for the spare bullets. She could hear the old man and his son walking down the steps towards the car.
Emmett yelled above the teeming rain. “I’m gonna take my time with you, Missie.”
Zoe ejected the clip from the gun, fished several of the bullets out of her pocket, tried to reload the clip, couldn’t. Fingers slick with mud, blood and rain, she dropped both the magazine and the rounds. The men were less than twenty feet away. They would be on her any second. No time to search for the bullets.
“Y’all didn’t just kill my boy and my nephew,” Emmett continued, spitting away the rivers of rain trickling down his face and seeping into the corners of his mouth. “Ya’ll fucked up my payday.”
Fifteen feet away…
“You know what you and your sister were worth?” Emmett yelled.
A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky. Zoe felt the ground vibrate beneath her as a peel of thunder shattered the night.
Ten feet away…
“Twenty-five grand,” Emmett yelled. “That was our cut. Twenty-fiv
e-thousand dollars. For a simple snatch-and-grab.”
Nine feet away…
“Your daddy made hisself some downright nasty enemies during his time in the F-B-I. We didn’t give a shit about you. You two were just… what they call it? Payback.”
Eight feet away now. Basil had separated from his father. He was approaching Zoe from the other side of the vehicle.
Then she saw it.
Under the Chevy.
Ben’s shotgun.
Six feet away…
Zoe stretched out her arm, clawed at the gun, raked her fingers across the stock, caught the trigger guard, pulled it towards her, and grabbed hold of the weapon with both hands.
Three feet away…
Zoe heard the sucking sound of the men’s shoes as they sunk into the wet muddy ground.
“I’m gonna find out what you taste like, girl,” Emmett said. “Gonna peel you back, layer by layer…”
Zoe pulled herself out from under the car and rolled onto her back. She clutched the shotgun against her chest.
Emmett again. “… take you right down to the bone.”
Zoe leveled the shotgun and waited.
Fight or flight.
Life or death.
Live.
As the old man rounded the corner Zoe pulled the trigger. The blast lifted him off his feet and sent him traveling through the air. Emmett landed flat on his back six feet away, very dead.
Without hesitation, Zoe scampered to her knees and threw herself against the side of the car for balance. She turned the weapon on Basil but could not react fast enough. The man fired. The bullet ripped through her right shoulder. As the shotgun fell from her grasp, she managed to catch the trigger and squeeze off one last shot. The upward trajectory of the round caught Basil in the neck, decapitating him instantly. His body stood in front of Zoe momentarily, hands and fingers twitching, then fell. Zoe turned away from the ghastly sight.
She recalled hearing a ping after Basil’s bullet tore through her shoulder. She struggled to her feet and inspected the section of the door where she had been sitting and found the bullet hole.
Basil’s round had passed through her shoulder and into the car, a through-and-through. No bullet was lodged in her shoulder. Thank God for small mercies.
Zoe surveyed the corpses around her. “You two got off lucky,” she said.
Live.
She yelled, her words drowned out by the fierce rain. “Shannon… Lily… where are you?”
No response.
She had last seen them last running south, away from the stables, toward the county road.
Zoe picked Basil’s semiautomatic pistol up off the ground, wiped away the mud, and checked the clip. Full. She grabbed her waterlogged backpack, slung it over her shoulder, shoved the weapon into her waistband and started down the road in search of Shannon and Lily.
CHAPTER 46
THE AGENTS were dead. Headshots. Delivered seconds apart to opposite sides of the estate. No time to react, no opportunity to warn the targets inside the mansion of the imminent threat to their lives.
The grounds now unprotected, Rigel snaked his way through the trees and down the hillside to the concrete wall which surrounded the Farrow estate. He dropped to one knee, leveled the weapon on the wall and surveyed the interior of the home through the rifle scope.
No activity. No shadows played on the walls of the illuminated rooms. Nothing moved. The family and their protection detail were somewhere inside the massive home. Which meant Rigel could not gain a visual confirmation on any of his targets. This was a purely tactical play, a secondary line of defense should the perimeter be compromised, which it had.
Rigel eased himself over the stone perimeter, ran across the floodlit grounds and reached the wall of the estate undetected. One of the dead sentries lay several feet away. Rigel knelt down and inventoried the body. Inside the man’s jacket pocket, he found his identification: Francis Carter, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Rigel shoved the ID into the front pocket of his tactical vest. Though not as meaningful a souvenir as the trinkets he had collected from his victims, it was a valuable acquisition just the same. The official FBI credentials would come in handy in the future. And in his line of work every small advantage helped.
Rigel pulled the two-way communications earbud out of Carter’s ear, fitted it into his, and listened.
A voice said, “Carnevale, report.”
“North sector clear,” came the reply.
The voice again. “East sector, status report.”
No reply.
The voice repeated the request. “East sector. Carter. You there?”
Francis Carter, Special Agent.
Rigel replied on the dead man’s behalf. “East sector clear.”
“Copy,” the voice said. “West sector, report.”
No response.
The west sector of the estate was being covered by the second agent he had shot and killed. The mans communication device operated independently. Rigel was unable to fake the second response.
“West sector… report.”
Silence followed.
“Lehman?”
Nothing.
The voice assumed the worst: “Be advised Lehman is down. Callum, cover the west sector. Carnevale, Hanover… move the family.”
The time had come to make his move. He would take out the rest of the detail, one by one, until he found the family and killed them all.
He remembered the sweet smell of the woman as she lay in her hospital bed. He wouldn’t underestimate her this time, much less give her an opportunity to defend herself. The second he located her he would kill her. Then he would take her. Jordan Quest, daughter of deceased tech billionaire Michael Farrow and one of the world’s most gifted psychics, would herself become the ultimate prize in his collection. His body shuddered at the thought of such a conquest. He was lucky. Life was good.
Rigel dragged Carter’s corpse behind a row of shrubs in front of the mansion wall and dropped it on the ground out of sight, then circled the estate and found the body of the second sentry laying on the ground at the foot of a floor-to-ceiling picture window. Inside the mansion, the S.W.A.T. team commander came running down the stairs. Rigel raised his rifle and fired. The bullet disintegrated the glass and found its mark in Callum thirty feet away. Rigel wasted to time. As Callum tumbled down the staircase, he advanced into the room and fired a second round into the agent. Callum’s lifeless body rolled down the last few steps. Rigel stopped it with his foot.
Rigel called out. “Honey, I’m home!”
Upstairs, the children screamed.
CHAPTER 47
“I’VE GOT this!” Hanover yelled. He ran past Carnevale and Dunn toward the sound of the crashing glass and the voice of the intruder announcing his presence from the great room below.
To Carnevale, he said, “You know the layout of the house?”
“Every inch,” the agent replied.
Below, a massive wall mirror reflected the shooter’s image as he stepped over shards of broken glass and entered the home. Hanover immediately recognized him as the orderly he had chased into the bowels of the hospital just hours ago, and who would surely have killed him had it not been for the unexpected intervention of the mechanical engineer, Abe Carmichael. “I’ll deal with this sonofabitch,” he said. “Get the family out of here!”
Andrew Dunn’s cellphone rang. The unfamiliar name on the display read BEN MAYNARD. He took the call. “This is Dunn.”
“Dad?”
Dunn’s heart slammed in his chest. “Shannon?” he cried. “Is that you?”
Grant Carnevale overheard the call, saw the Director’s reaction and immediately called the Bureau. “This is Special Agent Grant Carnevale,” he said. “I need an emergency trace on the cell phone of Director Andrew Dunn. Ping the caller’s coordinates and dispatch a Hostage Rescue Team to the location ASAP.” He called out to Dunn. “Bureau’s on it. Keep her on the line.”
Dunn nodded. “Where are you, honey?” he asked his daughter.
“I don’t know.”
“Is Zoe with you?”
“She told us to run.”
“Us?”
“Lily and I. They killed her parents.”
Lily?
“Are you safe?”
“I’m not sure. I hear gunshots. Lots of them. Close by.”
Dunn was terrified at the thought that his daughter was being hunted by armed killers. “Listen to me very carefully, Shannon. HRT has been scrambled. They’re on their way to you right now. You need to find somewhere to hide. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know… maybe… yes.”
“Good. And keep this line open. Do not hang up on me. Got it?”
Shannon voice suddenly changed, became subdued, introspective. She no longer sounded frightened. “Dad?”
“Yes, honey?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, baby girl.”
The pressure of the ordeal was taking its toll on her. She broke down, began to sob.
“I know how scared you are,” Dunn told his daughter. “I promise it will be over soon. You’ll be back home before you know it. But you need to hold it together a little while longer. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Take a deep breath.”
Shannon stopped crying. She inhaled deeply, let it out. “I’m okay.”
Lily screamed. “Zoe!”
Shannon turned. Her sister was walking toward her, gun in hand, soaked to the skin, covered in blood and mud. Shannon threw her arms around her. “You’re alive!”
Zoe returned the hug. “I’m fine. Bad guys… not so much. You two okay?”
“We’re fine,” Lily answered.
Zoe pointed to the phone. “Dad?”
Shannon nodded.
Zoe held out her hand. “Gimme.” Shannon handed her the cell phone. “Hey Dad,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Zoe, honey,” Dunn asked. “Are you okay?”
Intruders (A Jordan Quest FBI Thriller Book 1) Page 18