Next Exit, Quarter Mile

by CW Browning

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man hung up and went to the over-sized desk in the corner, sinking into the leather seat behind it with a sigh. He didn't like listening in on Michael O'Reilly's phone, but it couldn't be helped. O'Reilly was poking around in things above his pay grade, and it was imperative that he be kept on a short leash. He already knew too much about the antidote, and God alone knew what else the Secret Service Agent had uncovered. Michael O'Reilly had a knack for getting himself embroiled in things that didn't concern him.

  The man frowned and leaned forward to open his laptop. He didn't want to do anything to the ex-Marine gunny, but if push came to shove and it was him or Michael O'Reilly...Michael O'Reilly would go down. It was that simple. The stakes were too high to allow for emotional things like morality and human decency.

  He had come too far to have it all ruined by an over-achieving, bull-headed and patriotic son of a bitch.

  “Are you sure about this?” Blake asked.

  “Yep,” Stephanie answered.

  “And if he catches you?” he persisted. “He put a bomb on your partner’s car and killed him. You can't possibly be objective about this.”

  “Of course not,” she agreed, “but I don't have to be objective to put a GPS tracker on his car.”

  Blake glanced at her as he continued down the long road that led to Atco Raceway. She was right. She didn't need to be objective to put a tracker on his car. He was more worried about what she would do if she came face to face with Tito Morales while she was doing it.

  “I think you should let me do it,” he said.

  Stephanie looked at him.

  “You just don't trust me, do you?” she demanded. “You think I'll wig out on him.”

  “Yep,” Blake agreed shamelessly. “And just so we're clear, I wouldn't blame you.”

  “Thank you very much,” Stephanie muttered.

  “We can't risk spooking him,” he continued as if she hadn't spoken. “If he doesn't show up tomorrow at the meet in AC, the others will scrap the whole thing and we'll lose the locations of those bombs.”

  “I'm aware of that,” Stephanie retorted. “Fine! You do it. I don't care who does it, just as long as the damn tracker gets on his damn car!”

  Blake looked at her, a grin pulling at his lips.

  “Fine,” he said. “I'll do it.”

  “Fine.”

  Blake slowed as he approached the gates to the racetrack, then he frowned.

  “What's this?” he asked, watching as a black Camaro with orange flames pulled out of the side road beyond the gate. “Isn't that him?”

  Stephanie watched as the Camaro turned towards them, heading in the opposite direction. The engine roared as Tito pressed the gas and flew by them.

  “Yes, that's him!” she exclaimed, twisting in her seat to watch the car accelerate down the road. “Turn around!”

  Blake waited until the Camaro was some distance away before performing a quick U-turn in the middle of the road. He pressed the gas and accelerated, following the Camaro.

  “For God's sake, don't lose him.”

  “Are you always this bossy?” Blake demanded, glancing at her.

  Stephanie shrugged and grinned unrepentantly.

  “Just making sure we're on the same page. This is our only shot to get a tracker on him. Tomorrow's too late.”

  The trees whizzed by on both sides as the Challenger flew down the road, keeping a respectable distance between Tito and themselves.

  “Michael's on his way up,” Blake said after a few moments of silence.

  Stephanie looked at him in surprise.

  “How do you know?”

  “I called him.” He glanced at her. “I think we need to put our heads together and get everything out on the table to discuss it. I just wish we could get the Black Widow in on it.”

  “Not gonna happen. She's not a meeting type.”

  “What's she like?” Blake asked suddenly.

  “Alina?” Stephanie was surprised by the question. “I don't know how to describe her. Distant? Unapproachable. She plays everything very close to her chest. Half the time, I have no idea what she's thinking.”

  “I saw her once, last fall. She was across the street, watching me.” Blake shook his head. “I thought at the time she was making a statement. I've wondered about that a lot.”

  “I know she has a lot of respect for you,” Stephanie offered, looking at him. “I don't know why, but she seems to like you. Believe me, that's rare.”

  Blake was quiet for a few moments, digesting that.

  “Mike trusts her,” he finally spoke again. “Implicitly. Hell, even my dog trusts her. It makes me wonder what kind of woman she is, this assassin of yours. Everyone trusts her when the stakes are too high to do anything else, and as far as I can tell, she's never let them down. But, she isn't friendly by any stretch of the imagination. I can count on one hand the number of people who even know what she looks like, and you and Mike are the only two that she lets anywhere near her.”

  “You have to understand, with Lina it's very complicated,” Stephanie said slowly. “Her job, her survival, it all depends on her ability to be a phantom, to be invisible. She doesn't exist. That's how they operate. Except, here we know she does exist. We knew her before she became a weapon. So here, in Jersey, the rules that govern her are different. I'll never forget something Damon said last summer. He said that too many of us Feds knew what she looked like and her anonymity was shot. That was the first time it really hit me, and he was right. Just by knowing her, we put her at risk of exposure. So, I guess I can understand why she's so reclusive.”

  “That's one hell of a lonely life,” Blake murmured. “Refresh my memory. Who's Damon again?”

  Stephanie bit her lip.

  “He's one of them,” she said evasively.

  Blake looked at her, his eyebrows raised and a grin pulling at his lips.

  “One of them?”

  “He works for her agency.”

  “So, he works with her?”

  “I don't think they work together the way we do,” she murmured, her lips twisting humorlessly. “I get the impression they're lone wolves.”

  “Then how does he know her so well?” Blake asked.

  “I'm not sure they even know the answer to that one,” Stephanie said with a short laugh. “Why all these questions?”

  He shrugged.

  “I told you, I'm curious about what kind of person she is,” he answered readily. “She's such a mystery. For instance, if her survival depends on her being invisible, why buy a house in Jersey where people know her? It's a contradiction in an otherwise perfect portrait of a mechanical weapon.”

  Stephanie was silent for a long time.

  “Actually, I've wondered that myself,” she finally admitted. “At first, I thought perhaps she just wanted to have some kind of normal life to come back to, but now, I don't know. Lately, she's been impatient, and more distant than usual. I think she's starting to regret it.”

  “I don't envy her that life. It can't be easy.”

  Stephanie looked up as Blake began to slow down. They were on a busy highway now, with shopping centers lining either side, and the Camaro was stopped at a red light not far ahead. The light turned green and Tito went through it before turning into the parking lot of an Urgent Care facility.

  “Well, what have we here?” Blake wondered, keeping his speed down and pulling up to the light as it turned red again.

  They watched as the Camaro pulled into a parking spot near the building and Tito got out, heading toward the glass doors. A moment later, he disappeared inside. Blake and Stephanie looked at each other, speechless.

  The light turned green again and Blake turned into the parking lot, pulling into an empty spot next to the Camaro. He killed the engine and they both looked at the glass fronted building in front of them. Tito was at the front counter. They watched as he spoke briefly to the woman behind the desk and then picked up a pen, writing something o
n a clipboard.

  “He's checking in,” Stephanie said.

  “Sure seems like it,” Blake agreed, shutting off the engine. “I'll go in and see what I can find out. You get the tracker on the car.”

  “What are you going to do? It's not like they'll tell you what a patient is in there for,” she pointed out.

  Blake winked at her.

  “Leave that to me,” he said, opening the door. “You just take care of your part.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Hawk stared at Viper, his cobalt eyes boring into hers. She had just finished giving him a concise, and somewhat abbreviated, update of everything that happened over the past two days. The look on his face indicated he was having trouble grasping it all. Viper sipped her coffee calmly, waiting for him to finish digesting everything. She was seated comfortably on the couch, barefoot and dressed in black yoga pants. A black, zippered hoodie covered her tank top and the bandage still wrapped around her left arm. She was going to hide that particular injury from him as long as she could.

  “Two days,” he finally said. “I left for two days.”

  “Technically, two and a half days,” she murmured, amused. “Today is half over.”

  Hawk ran a hand through his hair and shook his head, reaching for his own coffee.

  “Let's start with the most pressing issue,” he said, sipping the hot liquid and looking at her from his seat in the recliner. “Charlie said you found the only trigger. Has he gotten any more out of Curtis since then? Do we know what their Plan B is?”

  “He hasn't contacted me again, but I know Asad. I have to assume he’ll fall back on standard detonation.”

  “Then he'll place them in high-traffic areas,” Hawk mused. “That means cities and train stations, markets, maybe even bus stations.”

  “It also means we have to be alert to both remote detonations and suicide bombers,” Alina agreed. “Although, unless he was able to recruit online in the areas he's hitting, I think suicide bombing is unlikely. My guess is remote detonation.”

  Hawk nodded slowly, his dark brows drawn together thoughtfully.

  “Do we know how many drivers yet?” he asked.

  “I just found out today,” she answered. “Four, plus Tito.”

  Damon glanced at her.

  “How did you find out?”

  Viper's lips curved into that smile that never reached her eyes.

  “Tito was very chatty, once I convinced him it was in his best physical interest to talk.”

  Hawk grinned.

  “Ah, the distraction,” he murmured. “That's who you went to see? Dressed like that?”

  She shrugged.

  “He's a man, isn't he?” she retorted. “It worked. I've never seen anyone work so fast to get me alone.”

  “Is that so?” Damon's eyes glinted and his lips turned up into a wicked smile. “I can change that.”

  “You don't need to. We're always alone.”

  “True. Did anyone see you?”

  “No. The garage was far enough away from the track.” Alina leaned forward and set her empty mug on the coffee table. “It was easy enough to get into the garage with him and have him close the door.”

  “And no one would hear anything with the cars on the track,” Damon said, nodding in approval. “Good thinking. What did you find out?”

  “Four drivers made three trips over the course of the past month. Dutch, John's friend, made four trips, but he was moving different product. As it turns out, the trigger is the only piece of bomb that Dutch moved, and that was given to him because he was the most experienced driver. Dominic gambled on the fact that it would be safest with Dutch.”

  “Obviously, he didn't know Dutch was already getting suspicious,” Hawk said. “If he wasn't moving bomb parts, what was he moving?”

  Viper shrugged, her lips pressed together in displeasure.

  “Tito has no idea,” she replied disgustedly. “I believe him. If he knew anything, he would have told me. He was incapable of holding back at that point.”

  Hawk was silent for a long moment.

  “It could have been payments,” he mused. “Or schematics.”

  “Or something completely unrelated,” Alina agreed. “Whatever it was, Dominic didn't trust Tito enough to tell him.”

  “Or didn't think it was something Tito needed to know. Is that all Tito had?”

  “No.” Viper looked up and Hawk stilled at the look in her eyes. “Dominic is being run by someone in Washington.”

  He stared at her.

  “Tell me.”

  “Tito didn't have a name, but it's a man and he saw him twice. Dominic is afraid of him,” she said, her voice even. “The entire current enterprise is being backed by the mysterious boss in DC, and that includes the use of the Cartel to move products up out of Mexico.”

  Hawk was silent, his lips pressed together grimly.

  “There seem to be a lot of question marks in Washington lately,” he muttered. “First Charlie springs a leak, now this.”

  “You know I don't believe in coincidence,” Viper agreed, her voice low.

  They were both silent for a few moments.

  “You've considered the probability that Charlie's leak is the same person who is ultimately behind Asad and Company being here,” Damon finally stated rather than asked. “I suppose we need to consider the possibility it’s the same person that's running Dominic now.”

  “Yes.” Alina stretched, her brows drawn together. “And there's something else.”

  Damon looked at her, his lips twitching.

  “Of course there is.”

  “I went through John's laptop while you were gone,” she told him, her voice devoid of any emotion. “I found a hidden partition.”

  “On John's laptop?” Damon asked, his eyebrows soaring into his forehead. “That's surprising.”

  “That's what I thought,” Alina admitted. “I wasn't even looking for it, and I definitely didn't expect to find what I did.”

  “Well?” he prompted when she paused.

  “John had emails from my brother, sent in the two weeks before he was killed.”

  Hawk stared at her, his face suddenly unreadable.

  “What did they say?”

  “Apparently, Dave saw something he wasn't supposed to see in Iraq,” Alina told him evenly. “Two crates went missing from a convoy, presumed destroyed when the truck carrying them took a direct hit from a rocket. A week later, he saw the same two crates getting loaded onto a truck by locals. He started to investigate, and ended up dead.”

  Hawk was silent and Alina knew he was going over in his head everything he knew about Dave's death, including the significant fact that the fatal shot was made by a sniper. She leaned her head back and watched him from under her lashes.

  “How long ago was this?” Damon finally asked, looking up and meeting her gaze.

  “Over twelve years ago.”

  “We don't know that's related to Charlie's leak or to Asad's master plan of destruction,” he pointed out after a moment. “Hell, none of these could be connected.”

  “True.”

  “Your brother was in Iraq twelve years ago, Sergeant Curtis walked off base in Afghanistan five years ago, Asad started out in Turkey fifteen years ago, Al-Jibad and Asad hooked up in Syria ten years ago, and the Casa Reino Cartel just started expanding in the US one year ago.” Hawk ticked off each fact on his fingers. “Hell, it wasn't even the same sects involved. Iraq was Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan was the Taliban, and Asad is ISIS. Then you have the Cartel, which are none of the above.”

  Viper nodded, her eyes never leaving his face.

  “Yes,” she agreed softly. “There shouldn't be anything at all to connect them.”

  Her words hung in the silence between them, and Hawk sighed.

  “I'm starting to see why that island is looking so good to you,” he muttered. “This is getting ridiculous. Ok. Just for fun, let's say something does connect them all. Hell, I'll even go down the rabb
it hole and say the mysterious boss in Washington is the common connector. Why? How?”

  “If I knew that, we wouldn't be having this conversation,” Viper murmured, amused.

  “What does John say? He's the one who got the original emails from your brother twelve years ago. He must have some thoughts on what Dave came across over there.”

  “I'm sure he did,” she said, her voice emotionless. “Unfortunately, John died two days ago.”

  Damon stared at her, his eyes suddenly piercing.

  “What?!”

  “After I found the emails, I went to the hospital to ask him about them,” Viper told him. “I got there just as another player was leaving, and John was in cardiac arrest.”

  Hawk scowled, his brows drawing together sharply.

  “You're sure it was another player?” he demanded sharply.

  “Positive.”

  “How?”

  “I saw him.”

  Hawk nodded and fell silent, his blue eyes watching her closely.

  “So, the two men who knew anything about what happened in Iraq twelve years ago are dead,” he finally said softly.

  Viper nodded and got up restlessly, picking up her empty mug.

  “Yes.”

  She walked over and took his empty mug, then turned to head into the kitchen. Hawk watched her go, his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together thoughtfully, before he got up and followed her.

  “The fire at John's house?”

  “Destroyed everything.”

  Alina set the empty mugs in the sink and turned to find Damon leaning on the island.

  “It wouldn't have been the Cartel,” he said slowly. “They don't have the resources to hire people like us. They could have torched his house, but it's more likely that the same person who killed John started the fire.”

  “They don't want the past unburied,” Viper agreed.

  Hawk's eyes met hers and she was suddenly uncomfortably aware that those cobalt eyes didn't miss very much.

  “And you?” he asked softly. “How are you handling all this?”

  Viper met his gaze squarely.

  “I'll address it later,” she said shortly. “Right now, Asad is still out there with four bombs.”