Say Goodbye

by Karen Rose

  All of this thinking took about ten seconds, and when he glanced back at Innes, she looked wryly amused.

  “Miss Barkley is quite pretty,” she said. “I think your father was charmed.”

  “How long has she been here?” he asked, keeping his tone casual.

  He didn’t succeed, because the nurse’s eyes narrowed. “Today is her first day. Why?”

  Because you are a fucking idiot and I don’t trust you. “Introduce me,” he said smoothly. “Maybe I’d like to be charmed, too.”

  Still wary, Innes opened the door, and DJ followed her into the bright room. It was hot, all the glass intensifying what was going to be a ninety-eight-degree day.

  “Mr. Alcalde, excuse me for interrupting you,” Innes said with forced cheer. “You’ve had a long outing today. It’s time for you to return to your room. But before you do, your son came by. He says he’s going on a trip and he wanted to say goodbye.” She gave DJ a pointed look. “Say goodbye, Mr. Belmont.”

  Pastor stiffened in his wheelchair. “Why are you here?” he asked, his anger barely veiled.

  As for the nursing assistant, she froze for a moment, and then her eyes flashed with such a vicious rage that he might have been cowed had she been a man. He’d definitely be killing her soon. But Innes first. Now he turned to the nurse and said, “I’ll be going, but can I have a word with you first? Privately?”

  Miss Barkley went still, eerily so. Not frozen, like before, but as if she were preparing. For what, he wasn’t certain. Maybe to attack. Maybe to flee.

  Nurse Innes picked up on the tension and nodded slowly. “Please stay here, Miss Barkley.”

  The Fed didn’t blink. She didn’t answer, either.

  Nurse Innes led him to the door through which they’d come, into the hall and then into a supply closet. “What is wrong with Miss Barkley?”

  He didn’t answer her, just put down his duffel, drew his silenced gun and shot her in the head. When she fell, he shot her a second time.

  Grabbing the duffel, he left the closet in time to see Miss Barkley halfway down the hall. He caught up to her and pressed the barrel of his gun to her back. “If you run, I’ll kill you,” he murmured. “Then I’ll go into that solarium and kill every single patient. Not all of them are criminals. A couple of them are kids. You okay with them dying, too?”

  She was ramrod stiff. “What do you want?”

  He patted her down, finding no wires. Which made no sense. They’d have her wired somehow. Keeping the gun firmly at her back, he checked out her front. She flashed him a hate-filled glare, turning her body toward him in an awkwardly stiff way.

  Her pendant caught the light and he abruptly realized that was where she’d hidden the camera, so he yanked it from her throat. She stiffened, but made no other noise. And because her glasses reminded him of his ruined shot at Mercy, he grabbed those and broke them in two.

  DJ tossed the necklace and the glasses into a trash can, then answered her question. “I want you to come back to the solarium with me and push Pastor’s wheelchair.”

  “And then?”

  “Seconds are ticking, Miss Barkley. Or should I say Agent Barkley? Do as I say or I will kill everyone in that room and then blow up this whole building, including the little kids.”

  Her jaw tightened, but she nodded and turned back to the solarium.

  As soon as they entered the room, he saw that Pastor was glaring. “What is the meaning of this? What are you doing here?”

  DJ shoved his gun harder into Miss Barkley’s back, hiding the movement with his duffel bag. “Move,” he murmured. “And be casual. If anyone notices, everyone here is dead.”

  She obeyed, gripping the handles of the wheelchair so tightly that her knuckles whitened as she pushed Pastor into the hall.

  “DJ!” Pastor snapped. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “We’re going for a ride, Pastor,” DJ said. “The Feds have surrounded this place.”

  Pastor gasped. “Hurry.”

  Miss Barkley was a cool customer, DJ thought. She hadn’t panicked. Wasn’t crying. She was, in fact, acting like a real nurse.

  “He shouldn’t leave the facility,” she said. “He’s not ready medically.”

  “You can come with us and take care of me,” Pastor said. “It’ll be okay.”

  DJ pushed the woman to walk faster and, again, she obeyed. Pastor really was going senile. He hadn’t put together that his nurse was one of those Feds.

  DJ grabbed Barkley’s badge and buzzed them out. Perfect. The ambulance was parked by the back door under an awning that shielded it from the rest of the lot. DJ opened the passenger door, surprised to see someone in the driver’s seat.

  “What the—” was all the man had time to get out before he slumped, a bullet in his head.

  “Open the back,” DJ told Miss Barkley. “Then get the stretcher.”

  She obeyed again, her muscles flexing under the strain. Keeping the gun on her, DJ helped Pastor onto the stretcher. “In you go.”

  The nursing assistant pushed the stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

  “Sit tight, Pastor. I’m getting us out of here.” DJ put his duffel in with Pastor, reached into the bag, and retrieved a zip tie. He used it to bind the woman’s wrists together in front of her, then shoved her toward the passenger seat. “Get in. You’re my insurance.”

  She lifted her chin. “No. I won’t go.”

  He held up his phone. “You remember the explosion at the radio station yesterday? That was only a few little sticks. I planted a bomb in there with four of the big sticks.” Which was a lie, but she didn’t know that. “Filled the canister with nails and broken glass. It’ll blow a hole in the wall and kill anyone in a forty-foot radius. And if they aren’t blown to bits, they’ll be human pincushions. You want that? All I need to do to detonate is make one phone call.”

  She swallowed hard and climbed into the ambulance.

  He yanked the driver out, taking the man’s badge before tossing his body to the ground. He got behind the wheel, relieved to see the keys in the ignition. He started the vehicle and headed toward the ambulance entrance, on the opposite side from the employee and family entrance.

  Keeping his face averted from the security camera, he’d rolled down his window to slide the driver’s badge through the card reader when he heard the roar of an engine. His side mirror showed an approaching SUV with heavily tinted windows.

  Except for the driver’s window, which was open, a gun visible. “Stop! Police!”

  “Fucking hell,” DJ growled. The gate was opening slowly, but he wasn’t going to make it.

  And then the SUV was T-boned by a dark sedan. The sedan hit the SUV on the back fender, forcing it into the fence. Saltrick, the security chief, got out, his gun drawn and pointed at the driver of the SUV.

  Well, shit. Saltrick didn’t know DJ was stealing the ambulance, intent instead on stopping the cop. Things are going my way.

  The gate in front of DJ opened and he drove out. Yes.

  Barkley was staring in her side mirror in annoyed frustration.

  DJ smiled. “Not your day, huh?” She didn’t respond and that annoyed him. “Aren’t you going to say that I’m never getting away with that?”

  She turned her head to stare at him with contempt.

  No worry. He’d slap that look off her face at the first opportunity.

  They’d gotten away. For now.

  THIRTY

  SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

  TUESDAY, MAY 30, 1:40 P.M.

  It was like an episode of The Twilight Zone, Tom thought as he watched Liza and Pastor talk.

  The man had been like a kindly grandfather with Liza’s patient Brooklyn. And then again later, when Liza had been ordered back to socialize with him, he’d been kind and thoughtful. He’d asked questions about her time
in Afghanistan and she’d answered him honestly.

  If one didn’t know her, they’d believe that she was having a lovely chat.

  “Remarkable,” Raeburn murmured. “He is an utter chameleon. He can torture, order killings, enable rape, and then talk to Liza like he’s Mr. Rogers.”

  “I can see how people would follow him,” Croft agreed. “They’d just trust him.”

  It was true. Then again, Tom had grown up with a monster, a murderous dirty cop whom everyone had liked and admired. “The best sociopaths can feign empathy. My biological father was the life of the party, the cop all the other cops looked up to. One of the guys on the force even named his kid after him. That was awkward, especially after he was killed in prison.”

  Croft sighed. “And all the time he was coming home to abuse you and your mother.”

  “Yeah. So I guess I’m a little cynical about people like Pastor.”

  “A little cynicism isn’t a bad thing,” Raeburn said. “Keeps you sharp.”

  Tom agreed with that, to a point. “But too much can make you bitter.” His phone chimed and he grabbed it, hoping it was a notification of activity on Cameron Cook’s account—maybe Graham telling him that he’d clicked on the link that would allow Tom to control his computer—because they’d heard nothing out of Eden. But it wasn’t from Cameron Cook’s account.

  “Someone in the billing office finally clicked on my Trojan,” he said, relief coursing through him. He’d be able to shut the security network down. Best case, they’d order in an outside contractor and the Bureau could get another person inside. Worst case, the security team would be so busy fixing their network that they wouldn’t detect Liza’s presence.

  He had opened his laptop and begun to type when a strangled noise from Croft had him looking up at the monitor.

  Tom’s blood ran cold. “No, no, no,” he whispered.

  DJ Belmont had entered the solarium with Nurse Innes. The two left a moment later, but Tom had seen the look on Belmont’s face. He knew. Oh my God. He knew.

  Raeburn was already on the phone with the surveillance van. “Move,” he ordered.

  Federal agents, including a SWAT team that had been positioned near the surveillance van, rushed to cut off the exits.

  “Run, Liza,” he breathed. “Run.”

  Liza did, leaving Pastor where he sat and heading for the exit.

  Tom fired off a text to Rafe, who was keeping watch from the employee lot. Belmont in the facility. Liza headed to employee exit.

  Ready was Rafe’s reply.

  And then Liza stopped walking.

  Tom’s heart stopped at a man’s murmur. “If you run, I’ll kill you. Then I’ll go into that solarium and kill every single patient. Not all of them are criminals. A couple of them are kids. You okay with them dying, too?”

  “What do you want?” Liza asked, turning her body so that the pendant and her glasses caught DJ’s face. He was bald and clean shaven, and a surgical mask dangled under his chin.

  A moment later, the pendant was yanked from Liza’s throat, followed by her glasses. And then all they could see was the inside of a trash can.

  Tom stared at the monitor, trying to think of what he could do. None of the wireless cameras were picking her up, and he could only watch helplessly.

  “They’ll be searching for her soon,” Raeburn said. “She’ll be okay.”

  Croft squeezed Tom’s shoulder. “Breathe,” she ordered.

  Tom realized he hadn’t been, so he sucked in a breath that burned.

  His cell began to buzz. It was Rafe. Tom snatched it up and answered. “Where is she?”

  “In Sunnyside’s ambulance. I’m in pursuit—”

  A crash made Tom wince. “Rafe? Rafe?”

  Both Raeburn and Croft turned to him with twin expressions of confusion. Raeburn caught on first. “What have you done, Hunter?”

  Tom didn’t answer. “Rafe?”

  “Put the gun down!” a voice yelled.

  “Police! You put your gun down,” Rafe yelled back, then in a more normal voice, he recited the numbers on a license plate. “That’s the plate on the ambulance he stole. Security just wrecked my SUV. I’m pinned against a rock wall. The ambulance is gone, but Belmont’s in it, along with Liza and Pastor.”

  Tom had repeated the license plate numbers for Raeburn when a gun fired, followed quickly by a second shot. “Rafe?”

  “I’m not hit,” he said, a car door loudly groaning through the phone.

  “Our people are in pursuit of the ambulance,” Raeburn told Tom and Croft. “Are you talking to Rafe Sokolov?”

  Tom nodded once. “Yes.”

  Through the phone they heard Rafe shout, “SacPD. Drop the gun, asshole! Hands where I can see them! Do not push me, buddy. On your stomach. Do it. Now.” After a pause, Tom could hear the click of handcuffs and another groan from Rafe. “His badge says Saltrick.”

  “He’s the chief of security,” Tom said dully.

  “You hired your own muscle?” Raeburn demanded. “What the fuck, Hunter?”

  Tom couldn’t hear Raeburn, his boss’s words not sinking in. “Rafe, are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” Rafe said, breathing hard. “Your guys just busted through the fence. Saltrick’s restrained and he’s the only one I saw leave. Dammit. I almost had them.”

  “You got us the ambulance’s plate. Call if you need me.” Tom stood, feeling Raeburn’s barely restrained rage but unable to focus on anything but his own paralyzing fear.

  “Where are you going, Agent Hunter?” Raeburn demanded as Tom turned for the door.

  “To bring her back, sir.”

  Raeburn stood rigidly, shaking his head. Then gestured at Croft with a tilt of his head. “Go with him. Keep him from making this an even bigger clusterfuck.”

  “Yes, sir,” Croft said respectfully.

  SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

  TUESDAY, MAY 30, 2:00 P.M.

  “Where are we going?” Liza asked, proud that she didn’t sound afraid even though she was. But she’d faced worse and knew that Tom was searching for her. She only hoped the FBI was no longer looking for the ambulance.

  DJ had forced her from the vehicle, abandoning it behind what appeared to be a grocery store that had been closed for some time. He’d shoved her into a white Ford Explorer that had been parked, waiting for them.

  He’d stolen this SUV the night before, or so he’d bragged to Pastor. He’d left it here, knowing he’d need something sturdier to get Pastor up the mountain roads.

  He was probably telling the truth about going up into the mountains. They’d bypassed the interstates for a back road and were headed north.

  “Eden,” Pastor rasped from the back seat. DJ had moved Pastor from the ambulance to the back of the stolen Explorer with care. Whether it was genuine care or not, Liza couldn’t be sure.

  “We are,” DJ said amiably. “And since the Feds cut Pastor’s recovery short, you will be his nurse. I won’t abide by him getting poor-quality care. He’s too important to all of us.”

  In the back seat, Pastor beamed. That was, apparently, the right thing to say.

  Liza didn’t believe DJ, even if Pastor did. There was an oily quality to DJ’s words. He did not have Pastor’s charisma, for sure. It felt like he was pacifying Pastor. But why?

  For the money, she realized. It almost always came down to money. Waylon had figured out Pastor’s cipher system for the banking codes, but DJ didn’t know it. If he had, she didn’t think he’d have stuck around. He’d have stolen the money for himself.

  She also didn’t believe that DJ intended to have her care for Pastor. He’d likely kill her when he no longer needed a hostage. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him, though.

  She’d been thinking through the various scenarios and how she could best buy the time Tom needed
to find her. Mercy and Gideon believed DJ had lied to Pastor to stay in his good graces so he could get the money. If that was true, pitting the two men against each other might be the best strategy. It might get her killed, but she figured that was in DJ’s eventual playbook regardless of what she did.

  “Then, as his nurse, I recommend you take him back. From what I’ve heard about Eden, it doesn’t have a lot of conveniences. Not to mention medical resources.”

  DJ eyed her as they sped north on a rural route. “What do you know about Eden?”

  Where to start? She sifted through all the information Margo Kitson had provided. “I know that it wasn’t supposed to be permanent.”

  DJ laughed. “Who told you that?”

  “She’s right,” Pastor said. “We were only going to hide there for a while.”

  “And everyone but your father was wanted by the Feds,” she said. “So the founders stayed.”

  “And exactly how do you know that?” DJ asked silkily. Dangerously.

  Liza considered telling them about finding Pastor’s wife but decided to hold that card for later. “I have my sources,” was all she’d say. “But they were very informative.”

  “Gideon and Mercy,” DJ spat. “They know nothing.”

  “Gideon?” Pastor asked, confused. “And Mercy? They can’t have said anything. They’re dead. You know this, DJ. You took care of Mercy yourself.”

  Liza turned to look at Pastor. “Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Liza gave Pastor a pitying look. “Well, she’s very much alive. I saw her just last night.”

  DJ’s face turned so red that Liza was surprised steam wasn’t blowing out his ears.

  Pastor shook his head. “You’re mistaken.”

  “She’s lying,” DJ stated flatly.

  “She has a locket,” Liza said. “I’ve seen it. Inside is a photo of her—a baby picture really. She’s twelve and she’s with this guy named Ephraim Burton. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

  Pastor’s demeanor changed instantly from kindly grandfather to furious sociopath. “What are you talking about?”