“Understood,” said Eldamir.
13
Anna Abbott was temporarily paralyzed, unable to look away from the two bodies on the floor beneath her. She searched her intuition for answers but got nothing in return. This wasn’t something an audiobook on plant-based poisons, subconsciously remembered, was going to help her solve.
Finally, she pulled her eyes away and faced Vega. “What the hell are these things?” she whispered. And while he looked as horrified as she did, he didn’t look confused. He knew exactly what they were, she was sure of it.
“I’ll explain later,” he said, at least not trying to deny he knew. “We have even bigger problems than before. Now we have one group after you, and another after me. Perfect.”
“You think they were here to kill you?” said the detective in shock, having been sure that she had been the target.
“Initially,” he replied. “You were probably just a nice bonus for them. But since it seems like there isn’t anyone in LA who doesn’t want us dead, let’s get out of here.”
Anna picked Vega’s phone up off the carpet and quickly snapped a number of photos of the men who had attacked them, although the term men was unlikely to be accurate.
“Take my duffel bag,” she ordered him, “and follow me.”
She reloaded her gun, held it hidden between her black sweatshirt and body armor, and cracked open the door, looking both ways down the hall.
Nothing. No one was stirring.
“We’ll take the stairs,” she whispered to Vega. “I’ll watch for activity on my way there, and you watch for activity behind us.”
“Got it,” he whispered back.
They made it to the exit they were looking for without encountering any nasty surprises, and cautiously made their way down the switchback staircase, the hotel elevator’s embarrassing cousin, hidden away from view within a self-contained, vertical concrete chamber. Anna held her gun at the ready, no longer concerned about hiding it. The chance that they might encounter an innocent hotel guest taking the stairs when the elevators were in perfect working order was remote.
Anna quickly weighed a number of options. Whatever she was going to do, she needed to do it quickly. The bodies upstairs would soon be discovered, and all hell would break loose. She would call the shootings in herself once she was away from here, but not while she and Vega were vulnerable to additional attackers who might be on site.
Anna called a temporary halt when they reached the third-floor landing. “You have a car here, right?” she whispered to Vega.
“A rental,” he replied softly. “It’s in the parking garage the hotel shares with the apartment complex next door.”
The detective nodded. She hated the idea of leaving in his car, knowing that those trying to kill him might be able to track it, but it was a chance they needed to take. With any luck, they’d be under police protection before it mattered. She’d keep her antenna up, and if more inferno-eyed hostiles were following, she’d count on her intuition to alert her before it was too late.
“Do you have any objections to me driving?”
“I’d prefer it,” he replied, reaching into his pocket and handing her a small key fob. “And I spent extra for one that’s capable of self-driving.”
Anna nodded as she took the key. This guy really hated driving, even relatively short distances. “How do you get in and out of the garage?” she asked.
Vega reached into his pocket a second time and removed a credit-card-sized piece of molded plastic. “Just wave a room key in front of the reader and the arm will go up.”
She nodded and took the proffered key card.
“Do you remember where you parked?” she asked.
“Three floors below the lobby,” replied Vega. “Spot C128.”
Anna nodded and continued down the stairs, acutely aware that time was not their friend. She needed to arrive at a plan for reaching his car, immediately, knowing that additional hostiles might be watching it and lying in wait. She had a stack of hundred-dollar bills in her bag. She could pay a hotel worker to get Vega’s car for them.
She frowned deeply. There was no way she could put an innocent in danger in this way.
No. If an ambush was awaiting them in the parking garage, it was up to them to face it.
Her eyes widened as she had a sudden inspiration, obvious in retrospect.
They had to face whatever might be waiting for them in the garage, yes. But that didn’t mean they had to face it blindly.
They continued their descent down the stairs until they reached the second parking level below the ground floor, and Anna called another halt, pausing beside the door into the garage. She took the duffel from her companion and set it on the floor. She reached inside, opened the drone case, and freed the tinier of the two octocopters from its padded resting place, gently palming the nearly insect-sized vehicle while also removing the tablet computer that controlled it.
“Don’t move,” she whispered to Vega as she shoved a bar on the steel door to open it, set the drone on the floor, and allowed the door to slam shut on its own. Anna quickly bent to the tablet computer, lifting the drone into the air inside the parking garage, making sure that it was in full noise-canceling mode and hovered just below ceiling height.
Anna maneuvered the tiny craft down the ramp to the floor Vega’s car was on and expertly flew it in concentric circles. An older couple had just returned from an outing and were walking toward the elevator back to the lobby, and a Mercedes was driving up sharply angled ramps to reach the exit, but other than this the floor was quiet.
But as the drone got closer to parking spot C128, it revealed a man lying in wait with a gun drawn, twenty feet away from Vega’s car, a blue Honda sedan. He was crouching low between a pillar on one side and a large SUV on the other, and his eyes were blazing red.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered, showing Tom the feed.
The hostile was in the perfect spot for an ambush. He’d be out of their sight no matter how they approached Vega’s rental, and even the light from his gleaming eyes would be blocked from reaching them and giving away his location.
At least this man—this thing—was alone. It could have been a lot worse.
“Follow me,” she whispered to her companion, opening the door and entering the garage. She made her way to where a driving ramp led down to the third level below the lobby and concealed herself behind a wide concrete pillar. Vega crouched behind her.
“Walk to the elevator,” she whispered, “and take it down to three. Wait three minutes and then walk toward your car.”
Vega nodded his understanding.
“When you get to here,” she continued, pointing at a spot on the tablet computer where the drone’s video feed showed a sharp turn that would put him in the line of sight of the would-be assassin, “pause and look behind you. Toward the elevator. Call out for me, loudly, like you can’t imagine there’s any danger. Implore me to hurry up. You’re anxious and in a hurry, but act like a clueless sheep rushing off to the slaughter.”
Vega nodded. “Got it.”
“I’ll walk down this ramp and circle around behind him. But I’ll have to do it slowly and deliberately. So, like I said, give me three minutes to be sure I’m in place. He’ll think I’m still near the elevator, about to join you—since you’re looking that way and calling my name—so he won’t be watching his back.”
“So I’m your diversion?”
“Exactly.”
“And you’re certain he won’t just shoot me?”
Anna nodded. “Positive. He’ll think I’m about to join you, so why warn me off? Why not wait a few seconds and kill us both?”
“Good enough for me,” said Vega. “I have absolute faith in your judgment.”
Anna winced. She just hoped his faith was justified.
She flew the drone back to her and repacked the tiny aircraft and tablet computer into the duffel, which she handed to Vega. “Go!” she said.
She rushed
down the ramp and onto the third parking level and then took a hard right to get well behind her target, who was hidden thirty-five yards away. She slowly, stealthily made her way toward her destination, gauging the time so she could be in place when Vega distracted her quarry.
Anna heard the faintest whisper of sound twenty feet behind her and suddenly jerked to her right, a move made without her conscious volition, just as a silenced bullet passed through the spot where her neck had been an instant before, piercing her upper left arm instead. The shot traveled clean through her arm, leaving a wound that began to gush blood.
Ignoring the searing pain, Anna dropped to the concrete and rolled under a car and to the other side. She repeated this maneuver, rolling under a second car, adding distance and angle from the shooter while leaving a slick red trail behind her like a giant snail.
Shit! she screamed on the inside.
The shooter had to have heard the drone, had to have known she was coming. But how? The noise-canceling tech, especially in the diminutive version, was nothing short of perfect. Then again, she realized, these fire-eyed men had been able to pinpoint the exact location of speech coming from a cell phone, through a wall, without the phone being in speaker mode. They either had top-of-the-line acoustic equipment, or top-of-the-line hearing.
The gunman had also correctly guessed that she would sneak up on him, and her exact approach. She couldn’t help but be impressed. She should have left her drone deployed while she advanced, just to be sure, but hindsight was twenty-twenty.
Anna continued sliding across the ground as silenced shots zipped over her head, making their presence known when they burst through car doors or shattered nearby windows.
She was in a game of whack-a-mole, playing the part of the mole. The moment she raised her head above car level, she was dead. And she couldn’t drag herself away from the shooter forever.
“Anna!” screamed Vega in panic from forty feet away, in position but off script after hearing and seeing a number of windows exploding in the distance. “Anna, are you okay!” he bellowed, almost hysterically.
In a burst of instinct, Anna rose, spun around, and fired, squeezing the trigger before she even saw where she was aiming, her subconscious having concluded instantly that the gunman, knowing he had Anna dead to rights, wouldn’t be able to resist taking his attention away from her for the fraction of a second needed to kill Vega.
Anna’s shot tore through the hostile’s neck just as he was squeezing off a shot to take down Vega, deflecting his aim just enough to miss his target. A windshield behind Vega shattered and he dived to the ground, but the danger had passed. There would be no second attempt.
Anna rushed over to her unlikely companion, who gasped when he saw the blood leaking from her arm.
“We’re clear,” she told him as he rose from the pavement. “And I’ll be fine,” she reassured him as they headed toward his car. “The shot was through and through. Nothing vital hit. Just a lot of blood.” She winced. “And pain.”
He was somewhat relieved, but not entirely, probably unsure if she was telling the truth or telling him what he wanted to hear.
“Let’s go,” she said as they arrived at the blue Honda and she unlocked the doors. “I’m still driving.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“No, but it’s still happening.” Anna started the car and screamed backwards, adrenaline and urgency combining to turn her into a daredevil driver.
She screeched to a halt in front of the thing she had just shot and popped the car’s trunk. “We’re taking it with us,” she said to Vega. “Can’t leave it out in the open like this. And I want to take a closer look at the body when we have time.”
Vega knew better than to argue. He managed to hoist the dead body up and into the trunk on his own, refusing to allow Anna to assist in her injured condition. Less than a minute later, they were on their way again.
The detective remained in considerable pain, and was annoyed that things hadn’t gone nearly as well as she would have liked. Still, she took solace from the fact that she and Vega were now on the move, not to mention still alive.
Which was something that their three recent adversaries certainly couldn’t say.
14
Anna exited the parking garage and forced herself to limit her speed to inconspicuous levels, pulling into the first alley she came to. “There’s a first aid kit in the duffel,” she said to Vega.
He brought the bag from the floor to his lap and rummaged through it. “We’ll have to change positions so I can reach your left arm,” he said as he produced the kit.
She shook her head. “I can do this myself.”
She had never been shot, or even badly injured, but she had taken several classes on how to apply a field dressing, even to herself.
Vega opened his mouth to argue, but the expression on her face made him change his mind. He opened the kit and left her to her own devices.
She cleaned her wound, sprayed it with a mesh foam that would staunch the flow of blood until she could see a physician, and wrapped it firmly with a bandage, finishing off with a copious helping of pain killers.
“Where to?” she said, relieved that her remaining blood supply, reduced as it was, would now be staying on the inside of her body. “We need to put distance between us and the Camden International Hotel. And I need you to keep watch on the rearview mirror in case someone tries to follow. Remember, we have two groups of killers after us now.”
Vega manipulated his phone and studied a map. “Can you get on I-15 North?”
“I can,” she replied, putting the car in drive. “The 101 can get us there, and there’s an onramp about three minutes away.”
Anna exited the alleyway, leaving the Honda in manual mode. Self-driving mode was nice, but it would be useless if another car were chasing them, or if they got into a gunfight—both now possibilities. Even if an automated system could be programmed to handle these scenarios, Anna would bet on her own instincts every time.
“Why I-15 North?” she asked as she raced up the freeway onramp onto the 101, having been too preoccupied assessing her instincts for trouble to have engaged in conversation until this point. “What destination do you have in mind?”
“Before I tell you, we need to have a long conversation.”
“I’ll have to take a rain check on that,” she said. “I need to make a call, and I need to do it yesterday.”
As anxious as she was to learn who—or what—had tried to kill them at Vega’s hotel, she had even more urgent matters to attend to. She had to speak with her captain and then jettison the phone immediately afterwards.
“I’ll put it through the car’s speaker,” she said, “but I need for you to stay silent. As soon as I merge onto the I-15 I’m going to accelerate to as close to a hundred as I can get. If anyone is tailing us, this will flush them out. And I want to get far away from LA as quickly as possible. So your job is to scan the road for followers and speed traps, got it? Both would be very bad.”
“Understood,” said Vega, while she placed the call. Anna sensed he was uncomfortable in the car, almost sick, and wasn’t eager to play lookout, but she appreciated his immediate compliance.
“Anna?” said Captain Donovan Perez upon answering. “What happened? I heard loud noises and then glass shattering. My phone didn’t show your number, so I couldn’t call back. Are you all right?”
“For now,” said Anna. “But dangerous men are after me,” she added, not bothering to mention the dangerous hostiles after Tom Vega, whatever the hell these fire-eyed, black-blooded bastards turned out to be.
“Who, Anna? Who is after you?”
“Neil Marshall,” she replied immediately. “And associates.”
“The drug lord, Neil Marshall?”
“That’s the one,” confirmed Anna, gradually increasing her speed to eighty miles an hour while her partner looked for trouble. “I’ve also learned who is supplying Foria. A man named Shane Frey. They plan
ned to frame me tonight. And kill me.”
“That makes no sense,” said the captain. “If they planned to kill you, why bother to frame you?”
“Because their endgame is to make sure the Foria task force we’ve been trying to establish is never born. Killing me, alone, doesn’t do that. But killing me and destroying my reputation at the same time does the trick nicely.”
There was a long pause. “So they already tried to kill you?” said Perez. “Is that what you’re saying? Tonight?”
“Yes!” said Anna adamantly. “And I’m sure they’re still trying. One of them called me and offered to be an informant. But when I met with him, it was an ambush. I barely escaped. If you send detectives to the Salem Hills High School grounds, they’ll find evidence of a gunfight, and blood that should match several bad guys in the database. They’ve had time to scrub the scene, so look closely in the back parking lot, near the only lamp that’s giving off any light.”
“I’ll get some people over there right away,” said Captain Perez. “But in the meantime, let’s meet in person, and you can tell me more about your night. Fill in the details. And I can arrange security for you until we get to the bottom of this and we can be sure you’re safe. Where are you now?”
Anna opened her mouth to reply, but thought better of it. “Why is that important?” she asked instead.
“I want to propose a meeting location,” said the captain. “If it turns out that you’re calling from Hawaii,” he added wryly, “I’d want to factor that in.”
“Right,” said Anna, streaking past a white Tesla as if it were standing still. “Sorry. I know I’m paranoid, but it’s been a long night. I’m not too far away. Why don’t we meet at the station.”
“Perfect,” said Captain Perez. “Be there as soon as you can, so we can get to the bottom of this.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Anna. “See you soon,” she added, ending the connection.
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