Hard Justice: A Cobra Elite Novel

by Clare, Pamela

  “Who, Nicola? Who will kill you?”

  Nicola turned and walked as quickly as she could. “Please go!”

  Elizabeth followed. “What were you doing there?”

  “It’s a party. I’m fourteen now, so my da says I can come to the parties here, but he willnae let me stay late, not anymore. I have to go.”

  Quinn could see the girl was afraid. He also saw the white residue on her nose. “I’ll no’ let anyone hurt you. Who wants to kill you for talkin’ to us? Is it your da?”

  “Och, you’re an eejit. My da wouldnae touch me.” Nicola turned to face them again, her gaze once more on the villa, fear on her face. “Fuck off wi’ you!”

  This time when the girl ran, Elizabeth didn’t follow.

  “She’s terrified. Someone has her scared to death.” They turned and walked back toward the villa.

  “Aye, I saw that—and the powder on her nose.” Quinn looked up and down the street, watching for trouble. “That old bastard who was pawin’ at her—he was old enough to be her da.”

  “Or her grandfather.” Elizabeth looked up at the villa. “What the hell is going on in there?”

  Quinn thought that was obvious but before he could say so, he spotted the young guard blatantly taking a photo of their license plate number with his phone. “What the fuck are you doin’?”

  The man backed off. “You’re disturbin’ the peace. I’m goin’ to call the police.”

  “The police?” Quinn laughed. “You do that, ya rocket.”

  He opened the door for Elizabeth then climbed in on the driver’s side, watching his rearview mirror in case anyone tried to follow them. “Somethin’ about this isnae right. Lewis and I fought side by side. He would never send me away or tell me to make an appointment. I cannae believe he wouldnae see me.”

  But Elizabeth was lost in her own thoughts. “What’s the age of consent in Scotland?”

  “I think it’s sixteen.” Quinn had never had to worry about that.

  He was attracted to women, not children.

  Elizabeth did a search on her phone. “You’re right. It’s sixteen. Nicola is fourteen. The other girl I saw couldn’t be much older. The men looked like they were in their fifties and sixties. Sexual contact with those girls would be a criminal offense.”

  “Aye, so would plyin’ them wi’ drugs.” Quinn checked his rearview mirror again, half expecting to see police lights flashing or someone following them.

  “Yes, drugs, too.” Elizabeth looked at her calendar app. “Ava said Jack was hired to be part of MSP Whitehall’s personal security team a few months ago. He was here every Friday night. Four weeks ago, he came home upset and told Ava that the world was an ugly place.”

  “Maybe that’s when he discovered what was really goin’ on there. Maybe he threatened to report them, and they killed him for it.”

  “That’s the first plausible theory we’ve had so far. Then again, why would he wait three months to report them? Maybe he played some role in it—like being their drug courier.”

  Quinn still couldn’t believe Jack would do anything like that, but he’d said that so many times already that he didn’t bother to say it again.

  “Nicola said ‘they’ would kill her. Both times she said it, she looked back toward the villa. Someone there doesn’t want her talking to us, and she was afraid they were watching.”

  “Or maybe that was the cocaine talkin’. Drugs can make a person paranoid.”

  “She also said her father lets her come to the parties but no longer lets her stay late. Wouldn’t he care that she’s there with those men?”

  “No’ necessarily. He might be for it if she brought home money—or drugs. I dinnae know much about women’s clothes, but I doubt she bought that sparkly dress herself.”

  “Good point.” Elizabeth rubbed her temple.

  “Another headache?”

  “Yes.” Her brow furrowed in frustration. “It’s right here in front of me. I’m just not looking at it in the right way.”

  Quinn took her hand, his gaze on his rearview mirror again. “Dinnae be hard on yourself. You’ve had a concussion, and you’re tired. Let’s get you home.”

  * * *

  It was ten at night by the time they got back to Glasgow.

  Elizabeth went straight to the office, dropped her jacket on the desk, and picked up a marker. “Let’s go through this again but from the killer’s point of view.”

  “Not until you’ve taken something for that headache.” Quinn disappeared down the hall and returned with a glass of water and a paracetamol tablet. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” She took the pill and swallowed it. “Okay. The killer is someone Jack knows fairly well, someone who knows that Jack is wearing body armor.”

  “One of the other guards would know that.”

  “True.” Elizabeth wrote that on the board. “The older guard tonight—he lied about being friends with Jack.”

  “They werenae happy to be talkin’ wi’ us.”

  Elizabeth smiled at him. “You know, you’re pretty good at reading people.”

  “I’m no’ like you. You read people’s minds.”

  “Hardly.” She turned back to the board. “The killer lures him to an out-of-the-way location and inflicts a lethal knife wound, taking his phones, wallet, and watch. He doesn’t use the credit card. He doesn’t sell the phones. They vanish at approximately the same time he was killed, probably shoved into some kind of Faraday container. As far as we know, the watch hasn’t shown up anywhere either. So, what was his motive?”

  She studied what she’d written down.

  “Maybe Jack’s belongings have nothin’ to do wi’ this. Maybe the killer just wanted to silence him and make it look like a robbery.”

  “I agree. It wasn’t a robbery.” Elizabeth wrote that down, too. “Less than a week later, someone—probably the killer—breaks into Jack and Ava’s house and rips the place to pieces. He was looking for something but was interrupted by a certain good-looking eejit and stole Jack’s laptop. Why the laptop?”

  She paused again, rubbed the ache in her temple.

  “Maybe you should go to bed. It’s been a long day.”

  She wasn’t stopping now. She was close to putting the pieces together. She could feel it. “Then the same person breaks into our suites. He searches yours, so we can assume he searches mine, too. Then he plants drugs on us and tips off the police to get us out of the way. But why did he search our rooms? What is he trying to find?”

  It’s right in front of you, Shields. Why can’t you see it?

  She stared at the board. “What was he looking for?”

  Adrenaline—it started in a slow trickle then hit her with a rush.

  “Where are his phone records? Where did I leave them?” She hurried to the desk, tossed her coat to the floor, grabbed the pages, sorted through them.

  And there it was.

  Chills skittered down her spine.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t notice this before. Look.” She held the pages so Quinn could see, comparing the data from Jack’s calls to his GPS location, barely able to contain her excitement. “He called you from here. That’s the building with the puppy food store and the Indian restaurant—and the post office.”

  “Aye, I remember it.”

  “I’m betting he mailed the original phone to you to keep it safe. That’s what these bastards are looking for—his original cell phone.”

  There was no other way to explain it.

  “I’m callin’ Denver.” Quinn dialed Tower’s number.

  It was after three in the afternoon in Colorado, the middle of the business day.

  “Hey, it’s McManus.” Quinn brought Tower up to date, telling him about the villa and what they’d seen. “Shields believes Jack Murray mailed his original mobile phone to me in Denver. Is there any way you can go check? Thanks.”

  Quinn gave him the passcode information for his apartment in LoDo then ended the call. “He’s sendin’ s
ome guys off to check.”

  They made tea and waited for Tower to get back to them, Elizabeth’s mind sorting through the scattered pieces.

  “Jack came home upset early on a Saturday morning after being out most of the night. He bought the new phone the following Monday. He kept the old one on him at all times until he mailed it to you shortly before he was murdered.” Elizabeth could think of only one reason for that. “There has to be something on it—a call or conversation he recorded or photos or a video. Maybe he had proof of what was happening there, just like you suggested.”

  “You’re thinkin’ the killer murdered him to retrieve it.”

  Elizabeth played with that idea. “He killed Jack, took his phones, concealed them somehow. When he discovered that what he was looking for wasn’t on that phone, he put the pieces together—or hacked the phone records—and learned that the phone he had was a new one, not the one he wanted.”

  “And he’s been tryin’ to find it since.”

  Elizabeth took a sip of her tea. “That’s why he broke into Jack and Ava’s place—to find it. That’s why he searched your room. He must have the same phone records we have. He would see that Jack called you before the phone disappeared.”

  Quinn’s phone buzzed. “McManus here. Och, are you serious? The bastards! It disnae matter to me. Thank you. Right. It’s there then?”

  Elizabeth interrupted him. “If they found the package, tell them not to open it. They need to do that in an EM-proof environment.”

  Quinn conveyed the information then ended the call. “Someone broke into my condo and trashed the place. Tower has contacted the police.”

  “Oh, Quinn, I’m so sorry.” Had the killer gone after the phone there?

  “He says nothin’ is missin’ as far as he can tell. My TV, my firearms, my computer—they’re all there. He had someone check the mailroom at Cobra HQ, and there was a package to me from Jack. Jack didnae mail it to my home. He was too smart for that. He mailed the phone to Cobra.”

  They had it. They had Jack’s old phone.

  At last, they were getting somewhere.

  * * *

  Quinn and Elizabeth woke up the next day to the news that Tower had found an EM-proof room at the Denver research lab of a US military contractor. He and some members of what everyone affectionately referred to as Cobra’s “geek team” had taken the phone to the lab to open the package and crack the phone’s password, though Elizabeth insisted Jack had probably removed it.

  “Whatever was on there—he’d want you to be able to see it. I’m betting he thought getting the phone into safe hands was life insurance for him.”

  Once they had access to the phone’s contents, they would upload everything to Cobra’s cloud server. The phone would remain in the lab until Jack’s killer was arrested.

  Because Denver was seven hours behind Glasgow, Quinn and Elizabeth found themselves with time to kill. Though Tower and the rest of the staff at Cobra would no doubt be fine working around the clock, the military contractor stuck to business hours.

  “It’s three a.m. there. We’ve probably got five hours until the lab opens.” Elizabeth was clearly impatient to move forward.

  “I’ll take out my stitches, and then we can go visit another castle.”

  “Only if you really want to. I feel like I tortured you yesterday.”

  He kissed her. “I’m just teasin’. I love seein’ your face light up when you see somethin’ that excites you.”

  “We can get the doctor to remove your stitches.”

  “I can do it myself. I’ve done it afore many times.”

  When his stitches were out, they rode the lift down to the garage and set out for Dumbarton Castle, a drive of about thirty minutes from their hotel.

  Quinn looked at his gas gauge. “I need to stop at a petrol station.”

  “Are there any that have convenience stores? I need to pick up a few things.” She wrinkled her nose in dislike. “It’s almost that time of the month.”

  Quinn drove north on A82, pulling off the highway when he saw a BP with a good-sized convenience store. “Stay in the car while I fill up, and then I’ll go wi’ you.”

  He didn’t want her going anywhere by herself, not after that guard had photographed their license plate.

  He refilled the tank and then walked into the convenience store with her.

  “You’re not embarrassed to be seen with a woman buying tampons?”

  He chuckled, slid his fingers through hers. “A man would have to be a right wee prick to feel embarrassed about that.”

  He opened the door and followed her inside, his gaze searching the place. Apart from the cashier, who had his face buried in a comic book, they seemed to be alone.

  While Elizabeth went off in search of tampons, he looked for Scottish Blend. The boys from British Intelligence had stocked the kitchen, but they’d left him with English Breakfast tea. Clearly, the bastards had no taste at all.

  He found a box of Scottish Blend with eighty bags on the lower shelf and grabbed it. Then he looked over the top of the aisles to find Elizabeth. He didn’t see the top of her head, but she was probably bent over. “Are you findin’ what you need, love?”

  No answer.

  He strode the length of the store, looking down the aisles, spotted a box of tampons on the floor.

  His pulse tripped. “Lilibet?”

  Still no answer.

  Quinn turned to the cashier—and his heart gave a hard knock, a thud of pure dread. The boy lay on the floor behind the counter, still breathing but unconscious.

  “Elizabeth!” Quinn ran to the restrooms, threw open the door to the women’s room. “Elizabeth?”

  Empty.

  He checked the men’s room, too.

  Then he saw it—the door that led to the back of the store.

  He pushed through it, found the back door wide open, and saw a white van speeding away. He drew his Glock, ran after the van, but knew he couldn’t fire without risking hitting Elizabeth—if he managed to hit anything at all.

  “Fuck, no! Goddamn it!”

  They’d taken Elizabeth. She was gone.

  19

  Quinn holstered his weapon, pulled out his phone, and ran through the store and out the front door toward his car, dialing the emergency number. “There’s been an abduction and an assault at the BP off the M8 about five kilometers north of town. Elizabeth Shields, an American citizen, was taken by someone drivin’ a white Ford van, and the clerk is alive but down.”

  He gave them the license plate number. “The van was headin’ north on the M8. Get your asses up here—now. I’m goin’ after the van.”

  He opened the driver’s side door, threw himself into the seat, dialed Corbray’s home number.

  Corbray answered.

  “They’ve got her. They took her right from under my nose.”

  How the fuck had he let that happen?

  He gave Corbray the whole story as he tore out of the petrol station parking lot and drove as fast as he could toward the highway. “I’m headin’ after them.”

  Corbray swore in Spanish—a string of words Quinn didn’t understand. “I’ll get Tower’s ass out of bed, and we’ll have a team in the air within an hour. We’ll track her phone, coordinate with the British government, and see if we can’t get them involved. Keep me updated—and don’t get yourself killed charging in on your own. Got it? Shields is tough. She’ll make it through this.”

  “They killed Jack. They’ll kill her, too, if we dinnae stop them.” Quinn ended the call, speeding up the highway, looking for that white van.

  His phone buzzed.

  A message from Elizabeth.

  He tapped it—and his mouth went dry.

  She lay, unconscious, duct tape over her mouth, her wrists bound.

  Beneath the image was text.

  If you want to see her alive again, do exactly as I say. If you try to rescue here, I’ll slit her throat.

  Och, Jesus. Elizabeth.

>   Fear turned his blood to ice, scattered his thoughts.

  He forwarded the message to Cobra, swerved to miss a car, and pushed on the gas, the van nowhere in sight.

  Then his training kicked in.

  Focus, man! You cannae help her like this.

  He left the highway and pulled into a parking lot. Then he closed his eyes, leaned his head against the steering wheel, and drew three deep, slow breaths.

  It would be at least eleven hours before the Cobra team landed in Glasgow, longer before they’d be ready to go into action, especially if the British government refused to let them get involved in the search.

  A dark blue BMW pulled up beside Quinn, its tinted window sliding slowly down to reveal Leo Grant.

  Quinn was out of the car, pistol drawn and pointed straight at him. “You fuckin’ bastard! What have you done wi’ her?”

  Leo Grant got out of the car, hands raised. “I’d put that away afore someone sees it—or one of my men gets the wrong impression and shoots your damned head off.”

  The other windows lowered to reveal three men—two plus the driver—all armed.

  Quinn lowered the pistol, slipped it into his holster. “Where have you taken her?”

  “Do you think I’d go after a former CIA agent? I’m no’ that stupid. But I know who is—and I know where they’re takin’ her. How about I sit in your vehicle, and we talk?”

  Quinn didn’t trust this man, but if Grant had wanted him dead, he’d wouldn’t be standing here. If the fucker truly knew where Elizabeth was… “Aye.”

  Quinn unlocked the doors, watching as Grant got in beside him.

  “Murray and I went our separate ways after he joined the army.” Grant chuckled. “He didnae approve of my plans for makin’ my fortune. Aye, I sell drugs up and down the coast, McManus, but I didnae kill Jack. I loved him. And I’ve nothin’ to do with your piece bein’ abducted, either.”

  “You know who killed Jack?”

  “I figured it out the day after you came to see me. I’ve a source in the police station. Sometimes she says more than she realizes. I got enough information from her to know who it had to be. You and I both know Jack would never sell drugs.”