by K R Hill
“Dalton?” She gasped and covered her mouth with a hand.
He stepped toward her, but she raised her hand with a motion that said no, just stay there.
“Oh Dalton, why would you do that? You just left without any warning. You know how much that hurt?”
He raised his hands. “I tried to protect you. We had a computer breach. Two family members of the team were executed by the cartel.”
Jax pulled her sleeves down over her hands and sobbed into the wool. “I never believed that funeral crap. I searched and searched for answers. I knew you were alive, you fucker.” She ran at him and hit him several times with wild blows about his head and chest.
He stood there dazed, not knowing what to do, wondering if he deserved all this. And then he reached out and grabbed her and pulled her tightly to him. He held on as she struggled and moaned and spit.
“I even hired someone to search for you, a career officer. I thought another army officer would be able to get the truth.”
“Tell me it wasn’t Major Thomas Trenton Gregory that you hired.”
Jax stopped struggling and stepped away. “How did you know?”
“I think he shot Ted.”
“Our Ted from high school? Why would Gregory shoot Ted?”
“Maybe he got greedy. My researcher found that Gregory was running a sideline business, a gun for hire on the dark net. The short answer is money. If he knows about the Key or the blocks of cash, that’s his motivation right there.”
“Key? Blocks of cash? This doesn’t sound good, Dalton. What are you involved in?”
“Where do you meet Gregory?”
“I asked what you were involved in.” Jax crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head to one side.
“I’m a private investigator, working on a case. Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ll tell you all about it on the drive.”
***
It wasn’t the car Dalton expected. He imagined a late-model coupe, most likely at Toyota or a Nissan that would blend in on the freeway with a million other cars just like it in LA, but oh, no. That wasn’t Jax’s style. She had to be different, and her car announced that to everyone. Dalton stopped when she put her key in the door of a 1971 MG convertible.
“You’re joking, right?”
Jax laughed and tossed her hair over a shoulder. “You can always take the bus, if you prefer. In fact, I’d really enjoy seeing that.”
“What is it with you and Ted? That’s what he told me when I didn’t want to get into that muscle car of his.”
The rear wheels spun and threw gravel as the MG shot out onto Artesia Boulevard and headed south through Cerritos and Hawaiian Gardens, where Jax drove onto the freeway.
As they drove, Dalton told her the whole story about Sophie Devonshire, the blocks of cash, and the dead body.
***
Jax pulled up behind the commercial building that Ted had shown him. She jerked the parking brake, jumped out of the car, and unlocked the gate and pushed it open. Once they were inside, Dalton climbed out and rolled the gate shut.
The building was narrow and long, with a high ceiling. They entered through the back door and had to work their way along a path between moving boxes, around half-filled drawers and three racks of shoes. Jax went about the living room turning on lights and pulling blinds.
Dalton turned to say something, but Jax covered his mouth with a hand and stepped close, staring into his eyes. “Before you say a word, you need to sit.”
Jax moved a couple of stacks of book from the sofa and they sat.
She leaned forward, hands clasped between her knees, and stared at the floor. “I waited for you. Two years, and you didn’t even send a note.”
“Jax, would you do anything to save me?”
She didn’t look at him. “You know I would.”
“I had three minutes to decide whether I’d keep you by my side and risk losing you forever, or keep you safe by dying. One note could have meant your death. I couldn’t even think about losing you. You’re all there ever was for me.”
She cried and only dared to glace toward him as she said, “Do you still want me?”
“You’re all I ever wanted.” He reached over and touched her leg with a slow, cautious movement.
She laughed through the sobs and jumped across the sofa and wrapped her arms around Dalton. “But you never leave. Whatever happens, we fight it together. Promise me now.”
He laughed. “Yes, I promise.” He tasted salty tears on her lips.
For a long time, they lay there whispering about the case, sharing bits of their lives.
When he got up and asked about the bathroom, she said, “Be careful in the back there. I have a contractor remodeling. His tools and supplies are everywhere.”
When he returned Dalton was holding a metal wire with a wooden handle at each end.
“What is that?” she asked.
“It’s a garrote. Give Gregory a call. Tell him that I sent you a note about a block of cash. You need to meet him.”
“Are you sure you want to confront him? He taught hand-to-hand on the base.”
“Good. So did I. Gregory shot Ted. All I’m going to do is turn him. We might need an ace in the hole by the time this case is cleared up.”
***
He’d have to wait, but hopefully not too long. Dalton knew Gregory’s car. He’d seen it before. He’d also seen the huge Samoan driver. If he played this right, the driver would never know that Gregory was in trouble.
Dalton sat up on the roof behind a tree where the branches provided cover. He chose a spot and sat down where he could watch the entire street. A couple hours passed, and the air felt cold on his face and hands. He stretched his legs and rubbed his face to keep from dozing off.
The black Town Car turned onto the street and drove slowly along, quiet as could be. It stopped directly across from Jax’s building, and the driver jumped out and walked around and opened the door for Major Gregory.
By the time Gregory stepped onto the sidewalk, Dalton had slid down the drain pipe on the side of the building and crept around the front.
The instant the major reached for the doorbell, Dalton slipped the garrote over his head and tightened it around his throat.
There is no mistaking that feeling of cold wire poised to cut off the breath of life. The major tried to shout, but the wire tightened. His arms shot up. He clawed at the wire, hopping about as though he could summon the force to resist strangulation. Then his brain caught up with the physical reaction, and he realized what had just happened.
“Answer my questions or I’m gunna cut your fucking head off and roll it down the street like a bowling ball. Do you understand me, Major?” Dalton gave the wire a tiny little jerk, and the man gagged.
“My right leg; that means yes. You tap my left leg; that means no. You understand?”
Gregory found Dalton’s leg and thumped it with his hand.
He leaned close to the Major’s ear and whispered: “Somebody paid you to get information about a certain artifact. Is that correct?”
He tapped Dalton’s right leg.
The car door slammed. Dalton glanced over his shoulder to the Town Car. The Samoan driver was walking quickly toward him.
The driver peeled off his suit, threw his blazer onto the trunk lid, pulled his tie out of his collar, grabbed his shirt, and tore it open. The buttons popped off and fell into the street.
Dalton could’ve finished Gregory with a quick jerk, but he wanted information. He released the wire and ran onto the sidewalk to meet the running driver.
He had one shot. He knew that. This guy was huge and was coming at him like a truck. If the Samoan got a hold of him, he’d pull Dalton apart like an angry terrier ripping apart a doll.
The driver didn’t even try to get into a fighting stance. He didn’t raise his arms to shield his face or turn sideways to make his vital organs less of a target. Everything about the guy, from his massive shoulders to his barrel chest,
to the demented smile, was saying, you got five seconds to live.
Dalton ran to meet the guy and threw all his force into a punch to the Samoan’s solar plexus. It was a perfect blow that would’ve shattered the chest bone of most adversaries. But the Samoan hardly flinched.
The driver swung twice. Dalton dodged each punch easily and danced away. Speed was his greatest weapon now, and he hit the guy three times in the face, then jumped sideways and jabbed him in the kidney. The kidney blow stunned the driver.
He barked, and staggered forward.
That was when Dalton kicked him in the knee and knocked him to the ground. The guy fell was such force that the sidewalk shook.
Normally he would’ve felt happy, and relieved that he had survived. But as soon as the driver hit this sidewalk, the Major swung a baton.
The black metal club didn’t look like much. But Dalton had seen an MP snap a man’s forearm with one. He jumped away from the first two swings and was moving with the rhythm of the Major’s swings, waiting for his chance to jump in and put the guy down, when a massive hand clamped around his ankle like the jaws of a vise. It pulled him backward.
The Samoan driver might have been on the pavement, but he had not given up the fight.
Dalton struggled to remain standing. He thrust his arm up to block the baton and expected to hear the bone shatter.
A flash of movement entered his peripheral vision, and a shovel came down on Gregory’s shoulder. The major cried out and dropped to his knees.
Jax gathered the shovel and drew it back to hit a home run on the guy’s head, but Dalton stopped her.
“That’s enough.” He grabbed the shovel and pushed it aside.
The Samoan driver crawled forward on his elbows and looked up at his boss. “Major Gregory, I’m still good. You want him taken out?”
The major laughed and grabbed his shoulder as he wrenched about on the ground. “You hit me with a fucking shovel. I think you broke my shoulder. I thought I was working for you, Jax. What is wrong with you?”
“I thought you were working for me too. And then I was surprised by two military goons trying to oversee my questioning of Dalton. I knew right there that somebody had been leaking information about his whereabouts.”
Dalton moaned and climbed to his feet. “Come on,” he said and tried to lift Major Gregory.
“Oh, not that shoulder.”
Dalton walked to the other side of the major and helped him climb to his feet. “Come on, let’s get you guys inside.”
There was a lot of groaning and complaining as the four of them stepped inside Jax’s house. The moment they came through the door, she separated herself from the others and found chairs for everyone to sit.
“I didn’t sell you out, Jax. I was ready to capture Mr. Dalton here and turn him over, so I could collect my final paycheck. I had nothing to do with those guys showing up at the interrogation.” Major Gregory stood up and sat back down as he tried to find a position that would make his shoulder feel better.
“Let me see your arm.” Dalton stepped over and lifted the major’s arm. “This is going to hurt for a second.” Before he’d even stopped speaking, he twisted the arm and popped it back into the socket.
The major shouted and dropped onto the sofa. A second later, he lifted his arm and wiggled his fingers, a perplexed look on his face. “How did you do that? It feels so much better.”
“I found a couple bugs on me a while back. Did you plant them?”
Gregory shook his head. “No, it’s not the way I work.”
Dalton told him the whole story of the case, about the Key, the Israelis, and the man from the Vatican. He also mentioned a price he was going to pay Gregory for his service.
“I have another job that I need your help with. I assume you hired the two maniacs that came into my office with the beanbag weapons.”
“That’s correct. Freelancers.”
“And you have access to those weapons?”
“I do, and many others.”
“I’m going to stand this case on its head.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“How does fifty-thousand sound?”
“That’s a good price for a short-term op.”
“Six days max, that’s all it should take. At the end of six days I’ll hand you fifty-thousand.”
“You have my full attention. John and I are working for you.”
“You don’t touch Ted again.”
“That was business.”
When negotiations were finished, Jax led everyone to the door and shut it behind Gregory and the driver. She waited a minute, listening to their footsteps departing. Then she carefully locked it, spun the latch on two deadbolts, and turned.
“You can’t trust him.”
“I know. But I need those weapons.”
Dalton lifted her off her feet and pushed her against the wall.
“Two years is a long time.”
“Yeah. Let’s go catch up.”
Chapter 20
Dalton felt the cold air the moment he stepped out the door. It was that silent time in the city, between two and four AM, when the only vehicles on the street were bakery trucks and newspaper delivery vans. A few workers were getting into their cars. He watched a guy leave his travel mug on the roof. Dalton hurried out into the street and grabbed the mug as the car pulled away. He just managed to tap the quarter panel before the driver was gone. The guy hit the brakes, gave the stranger a startled look in the side mirror, as though he was afraid Dalton was going to shoot him or something. Then he noticed the stainless-steel mug.
There was a commotion inside, and the car backed up.
“I’m thinking you might need this.” Dalton held out the mug.
“That would be the second one I’ve lost this month.” The driver took the mug and laughed as he rolled up the window and drove away.
A few shops turned on their lights as he walked past. He hurried up the marble staircase and took his keys out as he approached the front door of his office. But the door was unlocked. Dalton put the keys back in his pocket, reached under his coat, and removed his weapon.
Music was playing. At least, that was what he thought it was, some techno music that the kids were listening to these days. Across the office, the tables had been pushed together. Every lamp was either standing beside a table or up on top, adding another source of illumination. Two young men were talking gigabytes and megabytes and programs and algorithms. It was a language that Dalton did not speak. He slid in, closed the door hard behind him and the two workers stopped typing and jerked upright.
Dalton aimed his gun and walked over. “Who are you?”
The smaller of the two men, who looked as though he hadn’t entered puberty yet, stared at the weapon. “Oh, no, no no no,” said the guy. He sat his energy drink down on the table and shook his hands in the air. “We’re Nick’s friends, from the computer club.”
The other guy pushed off on the floor and rode his chair like a skateboard to the end of the table.
“Stop!” Dalton wagged the pistol. “You, move over here next to this guy.”
The guy with the wheels on his chair jumped to his feet. “Mr. Dalton, we’re working for you, sir!”
“Where’s Nick?”
“He went to the airport. He took a flight to Fort Worth. We found something in the records that might blow this whole thing out of the water.”
Dalton took a deep breath and walked to his desk as he pulled off his shoulder holster and shoved the weapon into it. “So, what is going on?”
Out on the street, they heard someone shouting. Moments later a car alarm started going through its cycle of horns and siren noises. Two other car alarms began wailing. Dalton stepped to the window and looked down in the street below.
“Ted,” he said, and waved to the computer guys. “Come with me.”
The three of them ran down the stairs and helped Ted walk up to the office. Once inside the office, Ted shouted, “Let go of
me. I don’t need little kids watching out for me.” He walked over to Dalton. “Jax gave me a call and told me what was going on. You two are back together?” He nodded with long, slow movements of his head and smiled from ear to ear. “Will wonders never cease.”
“What are you doing out of bed? They just took two bullets out of you.”
“Shit. He shot me with a .32. What little boy carries a .32?” Ted groaned and leaned forward as his elbow pushed in against his side.
“I’m taking you back to the hospital.”
“Like hell you are.”
“You need to get better.”
“I’m good. Where’s that crazy Nick and your Indian guru, Singh?”
“Nick’s in Texas, on the trail of something he thinks is gunna blow this case open.”
“And Singh?”
“I don’t know. He just wanders off.”
Ted walked up close to Dalton and whispered, “Brother, if you got a plan to close this game out, then we need to do it. It’s time to take our ball and go home, because these guys we’re playing with are killers.”
“I have a plan. But I need your help. Can you walk? Can you shoot?”
Ted stood up straight and smiled. “Just like high school, and old Ted’s gunna keep them hoodlums off your ass. I got ya, brother.”
The city had woken up by the time they got out of the building and down into the parking lot.
“I brought the Malibu. I thought it’d be faster than this Japanese rice burner you drive,” said Ted.
Dalton opened his door and climbed into the car. He reached over and opened Ted’s door. “It’s not about how fast the car will go. Driving this car is about blending in. If someone sees a late-model foreign coupe, that means five out of ten cars on the freeway could be that car.”
Ted held his side, groaned, and climbed in. “I got it. The Malibu would stick out like a sore thumb. Wherever we’re going, I ain’t going to be naked. What’d you bring for me?”
Dalton pulled out of the parking lot and pointed to the back-seat by flipping a thumb over his shoulder. “Look under that blanket there.”
