Next Exit, Use Caution

by CW Browning

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The muffled sound of a TV droned in the background from the adjoining room. The connecting door was open and the man sitting at a make-shift table glanced towards it, his dark eyes flashing with impatience. The sound of the canned laughter from the sitcom was grating on his nerves.

  “I don’t know how you can watch that rubbish,” he called through the door. “It’s not even funny.”

  There was no answer from the other room and he shook his head, bending over the table again with the soldering iron. Kasim Jamal very carefully held the end of a copper wire to a device piece and touched it with the hot iron, fusing it to the device. Once it was secured, he set the iron in its holder and sat back, stretching.

  The table was covered with an array of parts that, once assembled, would combine to create one of his masterpieces. He sighed. That was what Asad used to call his customized bombs. Asad appreciated the patience and attention to detail that Kasim put into all his devices.

  Now Asad was dead, murdered by the same assassin who had killed their beloved leader and mentor.

  Kasim scowled and lifted his eyes to stare across the shabby motel room at the far wall covered in maps of South Philadelphia. Al-Jibad was gone, and so was Asad, but he could finish what they started. As long as he had breath, Kasim would continue.

  His cellphone began ringing and vibrating on the scratched side table next to the bed and Kasim looked over in surprise. Standing, he crossed the room and picked it up. The screen told him the number was private.

  “Hello?”

  “You’re still alive,” a voice said. “Congratulations.”

  “I am not so easy to kill,” Kasim replied. “Many have tried.”

  “Nasser is dead. His body washed up in the Potomac five days ago.”

  Kasim sank into a chair, his brows drawing together.

  “I am not surprised. When we had no contact from him, we assumed he had been killed. How?”

  “He was stabbed in the neck.”

  “Viper?”

  “I don’t think so,” the voice said thoughtfully. “Nasser was killed at least four days before he bobbed up. Viper wasn’t in Washington, DC.”

  “Then who?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t have much to go on.”

  Kasim shook his head and rubbed his eyes.

  “And the Viper?”

  “Is hunting you. She won’t stop until she finds you.”

  “She is welcome to try,” Kasim muttered. “I will be ready.”

  “Don’t be arrogant. She will find you, and she will kill you. It’s what she’s trained to do. Your only hope is to stay hidden until I can get you out of the country.”

  Kasim looked at the equipment and parts spread out over the table and around the room.

  “And how do you suggest we do that?” he asked.

  “It’s quite simple. I know how Viper hunts. It’s easy to avoid being found if you know what to avoid.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Find a secure location and stay put,” said the voice. “Somewhere that isn’t isolated, but isn’t in the center of the city. Somewhere no one will look twice or ask questions. Don’t travel. Avoid airports, train stations, bus stations, any transportation hub. She’ll be monitoring all of them.”

  “Cars?”

  “Travel by cab. Better yet, use Uber. Don’t rent a car. She monitors rental agencies as well.” The voice paused, then continued. “I don’t know how much she’s figured out with the Casa Reinos Cartel. To be safe, cut off all contact with them. That goes for all your associates overseas as well. Viper has ears and eyes in just about every country. I can guarantee your known associates are being watched and listened to.”

  “If they can be found,” said Kasim. “Many of them are in hiding.”

  “Don’t risk it. Trust me. In fact, just stay off the Internet and out of chat rooms altogether. She’s inordinately skilled in extracting information from the web. If you go online, she’ll find you and backtrack your location before you even know you’ve been tagged.”

  “That’s impossible,” Kasim scoffed. “No one can pinpoint one person on the Internet.”

  “You’re right. It’s impossible. What does America know?” Sarcasm dripped from the voice over the phone. “I’ll tell you what. You go online and log into one of your dark web sites. I’ll set a timer. By the time it goes off, I’ll have word of your death on my desk.”

  Kasim was silent, staring at the maps of South Philadelphia broodingly.

  “If I do all this, everything you have said, then what?” he finally demanded. “How long do I hide like a rat?”

  “Until I contact you and tell you it’s safe to travel. I’m making arrangements. I can get you out of the country. You just stay down until I contact you.”

  “How do I know you will do it?”

  “I got you over here, didn’t I? I got you across the border, across the country, and right into their backyard. I’ll get you out again. I just have to blind Viper long enough to move you.”

  Kasim sighed.

  “Very well,” he agreed. “I’ll wait for your call.”

  Kasim hung up and set the phone down. He looked up as a shadow fell across the door.

  “Well?” his companion asked, leaning against the door frame. “What’s the plan?”

  “We stay here for now. Stay offline. No contact with anyone, even the Cartel.”

  “And all this?” the man motioned to the bomb parts spread out through both rooms. “Do we continue?”

  “Yes.” Kasim stood up and walked over to the dresser to pour himself a glass of water from the tall bottle sitting next to the TV. “We continue. They think they can move us out of the country at their will. We stay. We finish what we started. We will not be manipulated.”

  The man raised an eyebrow.

  “Manipulated?”

  “Yes.” Kasim drank some water, set the glass down and turned to look at him. “I will get a call when it is safe to move. Ha! As if I will be a puppet on a string.”

  “But if we have a chance to leave and go back to plan and try again, perhaps–”

  “But we do not,” Kasim said flatly. “I do not trust the West. It will never be safe to move. That phone call will lead us out into the open, where we will be exposed.”

  The other man frowned.

  “Surely, if that was the plan, we would not have been fed all this information on Viper,” he objected. “Why give us tools to hunt her if their goal is to send her after us?”

  “I think the current plan is to use us as...what do they call it...bait?” Kasim asked. The other man nodded. “We failed in our mission, the mission we were brought here to complete. They have no need for us anymore, but they still want Viper. If Viper is hunting us, what better way to draw her out?”

  The man slowly nodded in understanding.

  “Then what do we do? If we cannot move now because Viper is hunting us, and we cannot move when we get a call to tell us to move, what can we do?”

  Kasim smiled grimly and pointed to the huge map of South Philadelphia hanging on the wall.

  “We build, and we continue. We are not pawns to be moved around at will. We are the tip of the sword, and we will strike at the heart of everything they hold close.”

  Kyle lowered his binoculars and glanced at his watch. The crowd at the funeral parlor was starting to thin out, but there were still a large amount of people milling around both inside and out. It wasn’t the ongoing stream of people coming and going through the front door that held his attention, though. It was the small group standing in the shadows at the far end of the front porch he’d been watching for the past half hour.

  He had no idea when the first one came out. It was almost as if they just materialized deep in the shadows. Kyle wouldn’t have even known they were there if it weren’t for the tall Marine from Washington. When he stepped out of the front door, Kyle watched as he looked around before heading down to the end of t
he porch. Even then, he still wouldn’t have noticed the figure deep in the shadows. It wasn’t until the Marine leaned on the railing that he realized he was talking to someone. No matter how he tried, Kyle could not get a clear look of the person so thoroughly concealed in the shadows. When the man wasn’t completely blocking his view, the darkness seemed to be protecting the figure with its own curtain. It was infuriating.

  A few minutes after the man came out, Agents Walker and Hanover joined them. Between the three Federal agents, the mysterious figure in the shadows was completely obscured and Kyle gave up trying to get a good look at them. Whoever it was, they would not be seen until they moved out of the shadows. When the Marine went back into the funeral home, Kyle thought he might get lucky and the figure in the darkness would shift, but no such luck. Agent Walker simply moved into the Marine’s spot, partially blocking the figure, and there she stayed.

  Kyle shook his head now and stretched. It was no use. If Viper was at the viewing, or had been at the viewing, he had missed her. He tilted his head thoughtfully as the Marine re-appeared in the doorway with the woman from the church. Perhaps he was following the wrong person. He firmly believed Agent Walker would lead him to Viper eventually, but perhaps his time would be better served with the Marine and the other woman. He certainly had nothing to lose. If they didn’t lead him to his quarry tonight, there was always tomorrow.

  Eventually, someone would lead him to Viper.

  Viper glanced up to the flat screen hanging above the mantel as a loud tone echoed through the house. Michael’s truck turned off the road into the trees and she dropped her gaze to her laptop. She had returned from John’s viewing over an hour ago and changed into black yoga pants and a dark tee-shirt. Feeling much more comfortable, she had settled on the couch in the living room with her laptop to begin the tedious process of trying to find a chink in the Organization’s cyber-armor. Hawk thought she was insane, and perhaps she was. Strictly speaking, he was right. She didn’t need confirmation Kyle Anthony March was an asset working for the Organization. She wanted it, especially after learning the white lab coat hailed from Singapore.

  If Viper was going to pursue one of their own assets, she damn well needed to know what she was up against.

  The black pickup pulled onto the gravel and Alina listened to the powerful engine moving past the front of the house and pulling around the side. She sighed and closed the laptop, standing to carry it to the den in the front of the house. She had been hoping to get more work done before Michael and Angela returned, but obviously it had been a quick stop for wings and beer.

  When the back door slid open and Michael and Angela stepped into the house, Alina was in the kitchen getting a bottle of water from the fridge and the flat screen above the mantle was dark.

  “Lina, you should have come to Chickie and Pete’s,” Angela announced, dropping her purse onto the black granite bar and bending down to take off her four inch stilettos. “We had a good time. It was just what we needed. Blake is absolutely hysterical. Even Stephanie was laughing, and that’s saying something.”

  “She seemed fine earlier,” Alina said, sipping her water. “What do you mean?”

  Angela shrugged.

  “Something happened to get her panties all in a bunch,” she said. “I don’t know what. She didn’t say, and I never really got the chance to ask. I’m going to get changed. Do you have any wine? I’d love a glass when I come down.”

  “Yes.”

  “Great!” Angela headed down the hallway toward the stairs. “Why don’t you pour us some?”

  She disappeared up the stairs and Alina looked at Michael. He came around the bar to join her in the kitchen.

  “We need to talk,” he said in a low voice.

  Viper raised an eyebrow and watched as he went to the fridge, reaching in for a bottle of water.

  “What does Angela do, exactly?” he asked, turning to face her as the fridge swung closed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her job. What is it these days?”

  “She still works for the bank,” Alina said slowly, studying him. “She’s a Vice President now. She moved out of anti-money laundering into sales and operations over the winter. Why?”

  “Because she’s somehow become involved with Trasker,” he told her grimly.

  Viper stared at him, a chill running through her.

  “What?”

  He nodded, opening the water and taking a long drink.

  “Someone from Trasker was there tonight. She met him in Florida, where they worked together to make some kind of deal between Trasker and the bank. Now he’s here.”

  Alina set her water down on the kitchen island, her mind working furiously.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Trent. I didn’t get a last name, but I don’t like the vibe I got from him. The whole thing feels off, but I can’t put my finger on why.”

  “You mean, aside from the fact Trasker Pharmaceuticals is the company that manufactured an Ebola virus for distribution as an antidote for Anthrax?” Viper asked dryly. “Of course it’s off. It stinks to high heaven. The question is how the hell someone found out who Angela was and, more importantly, that she knows me.”

  “It might not be about you,” Michael said after a moment of silence. “It might be about me. I’m the one who’s investigating their records. They could have found the connection to me.”

  Viper raised an eyebrow doubtfully.

  “When was the last time you spoke to Angela before this weekend?” she demanded.

  “Last fall,” he admitted.

  “Then I doubt this is about you.”

  “How could anyone from Trasker know who you are?” he argued. “And how could they connect you to her?”

  “The same way people in Syria, Greece and Italy all knew who I was,” she said shortly. “Someone told them.”

  Michael stared at her for a moment and ran a hand over his short hair in frustration.

  “This is absurd,” he muttered. “Why target Angela? Why not me? My connection to you is far from secret.”

  Viper was silent for a long moment. When she finally lifted her eyes to him, Michael felt a chill go through him.

  “She’s the weakest link,” she said flatly. “Out of everyone, she’s the only one without any kind of military or defense training. They know I’ll protect her because she can’t protect herself.”

  Michael blinked.

  “You think this is all just to draw you out?”

  “Someone broke into her house, ignored all the high ticket items, and went straight for her. They didn’t look twice at anything, except maybe the cat. If she hadn’t fought back, they would have taken her. Want to lay bets on what I would have done?”

  Michael shook his head.

  “If you didn’t know about the Trasker connection, you would have gone after her,” he agreed. “Hell, even if you did know, you still would have gone after her. So now what? She’s here with you. It worked, only instead of you going to her, she came to you.”

  “They don’t know that,” she said slowly. “Not yet, anyway. Not unless you were followed.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  Viper looked at him doubtfully, but let it go.

  “You take care of Angie. I can focus on the threat if I know you’ve got her.”

  He nodded.

  “Agreed. After the funeral, we’ll keep her locked down here and I’ll be able to dig into the Trasker files. I got the internal records, but there’s a lot of data and it’s going to take time to track down the connection between Trasker and the Cartel.”

  “And Mr. X?”

  “So far, nothing out of the ordinary. I’m waiting on a call back from an old Marine sergeant who might be able to tell me something.”

  Viper nodded and was opening her mouth to tell him to keep on it when a loud tone echoed through the house once again, sending a chill streaking down her spine. Her head snapped around and she strode to the living room, picking
up the remote from the coffee table and pointing it at the flat screen above the mantel. The TV came alive, displaying a 360-degree view of the property. The view was split into eight sections and one was flashing red.

  Something, or someone, had tripped the perimeter.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Stephanie sipped her beer and stared blindly across the living room. She’d been feeling numb since Viper uttered those words on the porch at the funeral home.

  “`It came from Cooper Hospital the day John died.’”

  The words echoed in her mind, and Stephanie shook her head. At first, she hadn’t understood the implication. She just looked at Alina blankly in shadows, wondering what she was talking about. It was Blake who sucked in his breath beside her as he realized what Alina was saying.

  John’s death wasn’t because of the accident.

  Stephanie fought back an almost overwhelming wave of frustration, taking a deep breath and trying to focus. Once Blake realized what was going on, he’d asked a few pointed questions. Alina answered them calmly and concisely. That was when Stephanie learned about the doctor wearing a white lab coat who disappeared as John went into cardiac arrest. That was also when Stephanie learned that potassium chloride was still part of an assassin’s arsenal.

  The door behind her opened and Buddy bounded in, shaking himself off inside the door as Blake followed, closing the door behind him.

  “It’s getting chilly out there,” he said, flipping the deadbolt. “I thought it was Spring.”

  “They said a cold front was coming through tonight,” said Stephanie absently. “It’ll warm up again tomorrow.”

  Blake glanced at the beer in her hand and headed to the kitchen to get one for himself.

  “You ok?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Define ok,” she muttered, raising the bottle to her lips.

  Buddy watched his owner disappear into the kitchen, and looked at Stephanie, sitting on the couch with her feet propped up on the coffee table. Deciding she was more settled, he ambled over and dropped his head onto her leg, gazing up at her with soulful brown eyes. Stephanie smiled and slid her hand over his head, scratching behind his ears.