Maybe he could go back to calling himself Miles. Or maybe it was okay to be Miles inside his head, and Ray to everyone else.
Hell, if he was drunk enough, he’d answer to either name.
Ray ordered another drink, sloshed it down, felt the amber liquid warm his throat and his insides. The door jangled and he looked around, just like everyone else in the place did, to behold the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen glide into the room.
Chapter Sixteen
Her skin was a deep tan and she glanced around the room with onyx eyes that took in all the men in a single glance and then fixed on Hammer, sitting at the bar. She stepped through the crowd, who all gazed at her, their eyes refusing to leave hers even though every one of them wanted to look her up and down.
They avoided doing so, not for fear of what she might do or say but because her eyes were so captivating and alluring. But, the second she passed them, their gaze flickered, taking her in from stunning tip to stunning toe.
She found a perch at the bar next to Ray. “A double Scotch and dry,” she said to the barman.
He stammered, “S-s-sure!” and made himself busy.
Ray looked down at his drink and then up at her.
A large loud buzzcut who’d just been regaling his friends about his latest conquests stepped up to the bar, put one hand on her shoulder, and asked, “How you going, sweetie?”
The look she gave him would have withered a smarter man, but he wasn’t a smart man, just one filled with a sense of his own arrogance and self-importance and maybe half a liter of cheap bourbon. He didn’t take the hint. And he didn’t remove his hand.
Hammer finished his whiskey and signaled for the barman to pour another. He turned to watch the spectacle; his eyes narrowed and he considered interceding. But, she didn’t seem like the sort to need his help.
“Don’t ‘sweetie’ me,” said the woman, glaring at the buzzcut. She grasped his hand and threw it away from her body in disgust, like a rat carcass found bloated beneath the kitchen cupboard.
The buzzcut’s friends were watching. The whole bar was watching. His face turned red.
“Shit, lady, you don’t know what you’re missing out on,” he said, and grabbed at his crotch, humped it in her direction.
She ignored him, turned back to her drink.
“Hey! We’re not finished talking,” he said, and pawed at her chin. He turned her toward his face.
This time, she didn’t bother with a withering glance.
She struck out with blink-and-you-miss-it speed.
A foot connected with his balls. A fist jammed into his Adam’s apple, knocking him backwards and down to the floor.
The buzzcut clutched at his throat with one hand and his junk with the other.
But he was a persistent motherfucker, and a military man. He got to his feet.
He pulled his arm back and let loose a wild roundhouse.
She ducked under it, brought her fist up under his arm and unleashed her elbow on the back of his neck.
He crunched to the floor. This time, he didn’t get up.
Ray decided it was time to lend a hand. He grabbed the buzzcut by the scruff of his shirt and hauled him onto the bar counter. He snatched a steak knife from behind the counter and held it to the man’s eye, letting the glint of the bar lights telegraph the seriousness of his intentions.
“Don’t move,” he said. “I think you owe the lady an apology.”
The lady waved her hand, “The only apology necessary,” she said, “is for this asshole to leave.”
Ray dragged the man down off the bar and pushed him towards the door with his foot, like an over-stuffed bag of lawn cuttings. The buzzcut staggered, and then turned back defiantly.
The woman with the onyx eyes looked him up and down. The mixture of incredulity and contempt did nothing to mar her beauty.
“You really wanna go again?”
He took a menacing step forward, and Ray drove the point of the knife into the bar where it stood and quivered. The buzzcuts friends stepped forward and grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him out the door.
Everyone else pretended they hadn’t been watching and returned to their drinks.
The woman turned to Ray. “Thanks.”
“Not necessary,” he said. “That was all you.”
She smiled a pearly but slightly crooked smile. “Are you Ray Hammer, the journalist who’s been poking around?”
Ray smiled, intrigued.
“Then I have a message for you,” she said.
Chapter Seventeen
When Adam Winters woke up, he was on a cold metal bench and two rather jittery men in lab coats hovered over him. The heavy stench of body odor and nervous tension made its way into Adam’s nostrils. He coughed and then covered his mouth as both men looked down at him.
“He’s awake!” said one of them.
“It’s okay,” said the other one. “That’s what we wanted. We needed him awake. We needed him to know where to go.Sometimes good luck just falls in your lap,” he added sniffing quickly under his own arm.
“You stink, mate,” said the first man, who wore gold-rimmed glasses and a black mustache.
“It’s hot in here. Give me a break,” said the first man, the patches of sweat ballooned under his arm.
“But, who do you think he’s working for?” said the mustache.
The other man shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. His purpose here is probably the same as that journalist who was poking around.”
“Are you good with numbers, kid?” asked the sweaty man.
When Adam didn’t answer, the mustachioed man shook him. “He asked you a question.”
Adam didn’t know whether to say yes or no, but he decided to err on the side of caution, “I can barely remember my date of birth.”
“Could be the knock on the back of his head,” said the sweaty man.
“Or, the fact he’s a teenager,” said the mustache.
They looked at each other.
“This is a terrible idea,” said the sweaty man.
“It’s the best we got. There’s no other way to get this information out to our contacts.”
“We’re actually gonna do this?” said the sweaty man.
“You got an alternative?” asked the mustachioed man.
The frantic back and forth of their conversation and their clear tetchiness made them look like a pair of mad scientists in a spoof comedy. Like puppets on the Muppet Show.
“Who are you guys?” asked Adam, but neither respond. They were both so caught up in the idea of what they were about to do. Whatever it was, he was pretty damn sure he wasn’t going to like it.
Adam noticed a badge hanging from one of their belts. It was a high-level clearance, and featured a picture of the man with the mustache and a name: Max Spade. He was a nuclear physicist with Level-5 clearance. Adam waited for the other man to turn for his card to be revealed, but it wasn’t. The sweaty man’s card stayed facing his leg.
“If we get caught . . .”
“Forget about getting caught.” said Spade, “We won’t get caught. If he gets caught, then he goes down. It won’t happen to us.”
“But this whole place is rigged. There’s CCTV everywhere. They’ll know it’s us who did it!”
“They won’t know shit,” said Spade, “I took the cameras out yesterday. I didn’t know this would happen, but I knew we’d need a space where we could talk about it. This is the best luck we’ve had all year.”
“Who—” Adam started.
“Shut up!” they both said, turning on him at the same time. “We’re thinking!”
“You’re physicists, right? You worked on the nuclear warheads, the ones that went missing.”
“See? I told you he’s working for the Chinese,” said Spade.
“Bullshit,” replied the sweaty man, and his badge slipped over at that point, revealing a name partially rubbed out from years of use. Adam figured it to be John or Juan or Jesu—he wasn’t sur
e which—but the last name was Rapp.
Max tapped his knuckles on the metal bench. “When you get out of here, kid, you avoid those handlers of yours. You go straight to this address.”
He wrote it down on a piece of paper and crumpled it into Adam Winters’ hands. Rapp grabbed Adam’s hand, opened it, looked at the piece of paper. “That’s the wrong address! For Christ’s sake, Max. Damn,” he swore, “I told the kid your name.”
“Your names are on your badges,” said Adam. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it?” said Rapp, “Don’t worry about it! What do you know about worry? The second you know our names, we’re fucked!”
“Not necessarily,” said Adam. He saw an opening to better his position and he took it. “What will you give me? My handlers, the Chinese, they’ve offered to pay a hundred grand. What can you guys give me?”
If it worked, maybe he’d head back to Japan and catch the first connecting flight back to America and buy a big house. He would find a pretty wife and settle down, have a bunch of kids. But, that sounded boring. Now that he’d got into this game, he wanted to keep working as a mercenary—a mercenary hacker, at least.
“Our employers will pay twice that.”
“Yeah, and how will I get that money?” countered Adam Winters.
“We’ll wire it.”
“I’ve got my phone here. A deposit, twenty grand, and I’ll go wherever you tell me to go. And I’ll shut up about your names.”
“We can’t do that,” said Spade.
“You can,” said Adam.
“No can do,” Rapp replied.
Adam thought hard, and decided to play his hand, “I already got your names. The guys who sent me in here do, too. They figured it was you two. If I don’t come out of here alive, your names are passed onto your Commanding Officer.”
It was a bluff . . . but an educated one. It relied on the fact that they weren’t as bright as their badges implied.
“Bullshit,” said Spade.
“No lie, Max” said Adam, “They’ll spill the beans in 20 minutes if I don’t make a call and call them off.”
They were silent. Then Rapp spoke, “You don’t even know our CO.”
Adam grinned, “I do, in fact I was only just speaking with Rear Admiral Conrad the other day. His voice wavers a bit when he says hello and goodbye.”
They made a call. The money was wired. A receipt was sent to Adam Winters’ phone.
Adam dialed his handlers, “Don’t reveal Max Spade and John Rapp’s identities,” he said, and hung up. He’d just given them Spade and Rapp’s identities on a platter. A neat double-cross. He was good at this.
“You said you were shit with numbers, right, kid?” said Spade.
Rapp nodded, “He did. He said he was shit with numbers.”
“Okay,” said Max. “This might hurt a little.”
He reached down beside the bench and a buzzing sound started up. Rapp grabbed each of Adam’s hands and tethered them to the table, even as he bucked and fought. He was wrapped up tight and could barely move. Spade loomed into Adam’s view from above, upside down.
“Sorry, kid. It’s the only way to know that they’ll get there, whether you’re dead or alive, and our employers don’t really mind too much either way.”
He brought the tattoo gun down on Adam’s forehead and started writing the numbers backwards. Adam writhed and cried out for a second, before Rapp stuffed an old rag in his mouth. Winters almost choked on his own spit.
At least he had the codes.
Chapter Eighteen
“I don’t even know your name,” Hammer said to the beautiful woman who was drawing a Smith & Wesson Detective Special from her expensive-looking little purse. She spun the cylinder Russian roulette style, released it and pulled out a .38 special cartridge. She pressed it into Hammer’s hands, it was light. Her palms were cold and clammy. His were warm. At least they felt that way to him. He turned the .38 cartridge in his fingers.
“Jacinta,” she said. “The message is inside. Don’t read it. Not yet. You’ll know when the time’s right.”
“How?” ask Hammer.
Jacinta didn’t answer. Instead, she took the glass she was drinking from, raised it to her lips, drained the amber liquid, and smiled a slightly wonky smile.
“Trust yourself, Ray. There’s a reason Whitcombe chose you. There’s a reason your editor continues to work with you. There’s a reason you’re here. You might not know it yet, but you’ll work it out.”
Ray stopped listening after the first word. His eyes locked on her lips.
“Stop looking at my lips,” she said. “I’m not going to kiss you.”
“Maybe one day?” he said.
“Maybe . . . one day. . .” She considered, then added, “It’s unlikely.”
“I’ll hang onto that hope,” Ray said.
“You’d be better off hanging onto that cartridge.”
She was smooth, and Hammer learned a long time ago never to trust someone who was smooth and charming, and definitely not someone who seemed to have all the answers. “Who do you work for?”
“I can’t tell you that, Ray. You know how this game works.”
“I try not to,” he said.
“And yet it never leaves you.”
She was right, of course. Too right.
“What if I read the message at the wrong time?” he said.
“Well, then it won’t make sense to you. It will just be a jumble of words, letters, numbers, without any meaning. Isn’t that the most important thing, Ray? Meaning?”
“If it means anything to you, this is the most meaningful conversation I’ve had all week and it still makes no sense.”
“Trust yourself. Trust your gut and you’ll work this out. But, be wary. Those who seem to be friends, those who present themselves as being on your side, well, you know how the saying goes. Keep your friends close . . .”
“And your lovers closer?” finished Ray.
“Not quite, but you’ll get there.”
She turned and took long strides through the bar. All eyes followed her, and then at the door, Jacinta turned back. She waved.
Ray looked down at the .38 Special in his hand, he considered turning the casing and opening up whatever was inside. Instead, he slid it into the coin pocket in his jeans, paid his bill, and slipped out of the bar into the warm muggy night.
Jacinta was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Nineteen
Adam Winters woke up in a coffin. At least it seemed that way to him. He was swaddled in soft sheets, and the distinct lack of air or light and the pasty taste in his mouth left him with the impression he might be dead. He tried to move his right hand. It worked all right. He raised it to the stinging sensation on his forehead and wiped the back of his hand across a wet glistening liquid. The salt from his hand bit into the wounds, and Adam clamped his other hand to his mouth and muffled a whimpered cry.
Rolling over, he tried to get a better view of where he was. There was very little space. His left elbow hit one sides of a box, and he rolled the other way; the same thing happened. But, on this side, a split of light filtered in through a small gap; just a pinprick, a window to the outside world.
Adam pushed his finger into the hole, and pried it wider. The material was some sort of plastic, hard but with a little give. With enough force, he might be able to see out. Once he’d stretched the plastic a little more, he pressed his eye up against the gap.
An engine chugged to life, and then the outside world was rushing by: Wind. Trees. Tiny lights dotted the distant horizon; larger lights close by, flashed their stretching beams. Pink and red and yellow shot past, but Adam couldn’t make anything out, just the rushing wind, the roar of the engine, the bumping, shuddering under him, and the claustrophobia of his coffin.
He thought back to the childhood he’d grunted and groaned and whinged and whined through. He felt the odd looks in the playground, the bully’s hand in his hair, on his
back, pushing him down, making him lick bird shit off the balcony rail. He remembered spitting it out, crying, being kicked while he was down on the ground, and moisture filled his eyes and trickled salt into his mouth, the snotty runny mixture of fear and a lost childhood. He heard his mother’s voice shout his name, saw her fiery auburn hair as she grabbed the bully and pulled him back and slapped him hard across the face. But now, in his coffin, there was no mother to save him. Hannah was back home in Tokyo, socializing most likely. He sobbed and let the tears and the snot run down his cheeks.
Adam put his hand to his forehead again and jerked it back immediately as the pain seared his skin.
He was transported to his bedroom, that night with his father sitting beside him, disappointment etched into Seamus’s quivering voice. “How could you,” his father was saying, and Adam whimpered, “let your mom fight your battles?” and he whimpered again. Adam’s father wouldn’t allow that, he said, “You’re no son of mine.”
Adam forced his fist into his mouth, but the sobs wracked his body and the engine gurgled, and the car or whatever vehicle he was in chugged to a halt.
The coffin stopped bouncing. And Adam braced himself.
Chapter Twenty
Ray Hammer burnt the toast and set off the fire alarm. He waved a cushion from the couch near the smoking, beeping, infuriating robot until the piercing scream stopped. No one came up from reception to check what was happening, and there were no sirens in the distance. Hammer coughed in the smoke from the acrid burning toast and took the two pieces of charcoal over to the sink and scraped them with a butter knife.
There was more bread in the plastic packet, but Ray couldn’t spend all day here in his hotel room—could he? He slopped on about an inch of strawberry jelly and then crammed the sickly cardboard mixture into his mouth. He chewed and spat it into the sink.
He opened each of the tiny cupboards above the kitchenette. Then he opened the bar fridge, and all five of the little bottles of overpriced booze. There were no glasses in the first cupboard, just a couple of old cracked porcelain plates. He tried the next cupboard and found what he was looking for. He pulled out a large highball glass, then scrounged around under the sink for the bottle he’d stashed the night before. Ray thanked his lucky stars and stripes that the nightmares had left him alone and that he’d woken with just the image of staring onyx eyes, a memory from a better time, a time that seemed eons ago but was only last night.
Strike (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 3) Page 5