She disconnected without waiting for acknowledgment.
Mason did as she asked. He drove around the front row until the remains of the screen towered over him, then backed right up against it. He knew exactly what she was doing, since he would have done it the same way. Only he would have made the other person strip to his boxers so he couldn’t hide a weapon anywhere he would be able to get to it in a hurry.
He killed the engine, climbed out, and tossed his keys onto the seat, as instructed. He left the door open so the light would make the interior clearly visible and show her that he had come alone. Then he walked around the front of his car, stood in the wash of the headlights, and turned so that he was staring right into them. The lights blinded him, so he wouldn’t see her coming from behind the screen until she was around the hood, and even then he wouldn’t be able to discern any details, only her silhouette against the glare.
Mason held his open palms out to his sides and waited, his breath blowing in clouds back over his shoulder.
“Hands behind your head,” she said from directly behind him.
“Very clever.” He did as she asked and laced his fingers. “You knew I wouldn’t drive straight through the lot since I couldn’t see the poles through all of the weeds.”
She reached under his jacket and took his Sigma.
“Take off your clothes,” she said.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d really rather—”
“Take off your clothes!”
The fear in her voice was palpable. She was wired and terrified, not the ideal combination for someone holding a gun on him. He’d heard something else, though—an accent that up until now she’d done an amazing job of hiding. Like the rest of her precautions, he’d imagine speaking unaccented English was another survival technique she utilized every day.
“Chiappas?” he said.
“Pants, too.”
“No, Oaxaca. Am I right?”
“You can leave those on.”
Mason stood in only his boxers and socks, hands again behind his head, shivering against the brutal wind. He’d given her every opportunity to kill him. The fact that she hadn’t told him she needed him as much as he needed her.
“What did you learn about Fairacre?” she asked.
“It’s a shelf company. A nonexistent corporate entity that owned a lone property on the eastern plains.”
“Did you go there?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
“A house that hadn’t been occupied for a long time and a burned outbuilding where…”
“Where what?”
“Where I believe people were tortured and killed.”
“What kind of people?”
“The kind who were used to smuggle a deadly virus into the country. Couriers who were sent out across the open desert to bypass Border Patrol checkpoints. Test subjects whose lives meant less than nothing to the men who infected them.”
She cried softly behind him.
He took a chance and started to turn around.
“¡Parada! ¡Cambia!”
He turned back to face his headlights. It was getting colder by the second and he was already shivering harder than he ever had in his life.
“Who owns it?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Lie to me again and I will shoot you in the back of your knee.”
“Really. I don’t know. Yet. How about you answer a question for me? How did you know my wife?”
“She was helping me. I only met her once. Martin brought her in. The week before … before they died.”
“Martin needed my wife because he couldn’t follow the money trail on his own, could he? He needed someone good, but also someone he knew could do the job without drawing a lot of attention. And it’s because of that—because of you—that she’s dead.”
The woman remained silent.
“The first time you met her,” Mason said. “It was an interview of sorts, wasn’t it? You were testing her to make sure she wasn’t involved.”
“No. Martin checked her out before he even contacted her. He needed to figure out if we could trust her. I was against bringing anyone else in from the start, but he said we needed someone who could get into places that we could not reach on our own.”
“So what is the Justice Department doing about it now? If they knew what he was investigating, then they should have just picked right up where—”
“You do not understand the kind of people who are involved. If he said a word to anyone, they would have found out. I made sure he was not going to talk to anyone else before I even approached him about it.”
It clicked into place. Mason remembered what Ralph Schaub, the owner of the Peak View Inn, had said.
I’ve seen him around, if you know what I’m saying.
“You knew who Martin was and you devised a plan to blackmail him.”
“There was no other way. If I had gone to the police, the people who are after me would have known right away.”
“You trusted Martin?”
“Trusted him? No, but I trusted him to save his own skin. As long as I had the pictures, I could count on his cooperation. And if I even sensed he was going to turn on me, I would have put them in his wife’s hands myself before I disappeared.”
“But if you were afraid of going to the police, what made you think the Justice Department would be willing to help you? They would have had to instigate a formal investigation, which would definitely have involved the police and the FBI. Without gathering enough evidence, there’s no way in hell they would ever have considered prosecuting—”
“Prosecute? None of this would have made it into a courtroom. These people have too much power. I was using Martin to help me find out exactly who was involved and where they were. And then I was going to kill them myself.”
“How did you know about Fairacre?” Mason asked, but the answer struck him before the words were all the way out of his mouth.
“How do you think?”
“Jesus. How did you—?”
“I am asking the questions!”
Her voice echoed across the field and down the hillside. He heard the buzz of tires on the wet highway and her heavy breathing as she tried to regain control of herself and the situation.
“Fairacre wasn’t the first.” Mason spoke in a voice barely louder than the sound of the settling snowflakes. “There were others before it. I’ve been hunting these people for the last year. And it’s cost me everything.”
“Do you know what they do to you there?” Her breathing accelerated and the accent crept back into her voice. She was physically behind him, but he could tell she had vanished into another place and time she rarely chose to visit. “Do you have any idea what they intend to do to all of us?”
“They took everything from me. All I have left is anger. Pain. I will find them. I will track down everyone responsible for this and I will stop them, but I need whatever you know in order to do so.”
“And what will you do to them when you find them?”
Mason thought of the bodies in the quarry, hanging from hooks and crawling with flies. The expression on Kane’s face before he was enveloped in fire. Angie’s body, incinerated on what was left of the bed. Her smile and her voice and the sensation of her touch. He thought about the man with the blue eyes and all the suffering he’d caused. And he thought of what he’d seen behind those eyes.
This man was evil.
The world would be a better place without him in it.
“Whatever it takes.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t. How do I know you’re not setting me up?”
“I have not shot you.”
“I guess that’s about the best I could hope for. And my clothes. Do you mind?”
“Not just yet.”
“You’re going to have to trust me sooner or later.”
“Trust must be earned.”
“Then now’s as good a time to start as any.” Mason was tired of letting her run the show. He deserved some answers, too. “What do you know about the man with the blue eyes?”
A sharp intake of breath behind him.
“You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?” He turned around to face her and focused immediately on the barrel of her pistol, which was steady in her grasp. It was an older-model Walther P22 semiauto, the kind you could pick up at just about any sporting goods store or pawnshop. Didn’t mean it wouldn’t turn his brain into spaghetti, though. His Sigma was a bulge in the left front pocket of her coat. “Tell me what you know.”
She wore a baggy black down jacket and a pair of jeans covered with mud from kneeling in the bushes. The hood of the sweatshirt she wore underneath the coat made it impossible to see more than her chin.
“Talk to me. At least tell me your name. You have to—”
Mason advanced a step and she shot the ground at his feet in one quick motion. An explosion of dirt and snow struck his bare thighs and chest.
“For Christ’s sake! Just tell me what you want me to do!”
He raised his hands and took another step back.
“I want you to pick up your clothes.”
He did as she asked.
“Now what?”
“Carry them across the lot to the west and throw them over the fence.”
“This isn’t necessary.”
“Start walking or I will shoot you.”
“You won’t shoot—”
A thunderous crack and Mason was on his back in the snow, clutching his clothes to his chest. The bullet passed so close to his head that had he been any slower to react, he wouldn’t have had to worry about shopping for a surround sound system for his new place.
“Okay. Okay. Damn it. I’m going.”
“I will be aiming at your back, between your shoulder blades. If you so much as think about looking back, you will spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair.”
He walked along the line of weeds, which limited the amount of accumulation directly beside them. Not that it really mattered. His feet were so cold that each step felt as if he were walking on broken glass. It was maybe fifty feet to the fence, but it felt like he’d walked a mile by the time he reached it.
The moment he heaved his clothes into the air, he heard the engine of his car roar. He whirled and sprinted back toward where his taillights glowed red against the far fence and the trees behind it. His Grand Cherokee rounded the bend and rocketed past the rows of weeds, the concession stand and the ticket booth, and blew through the front gate.
He slowed to a walk and bellowed in frustration.
37
By the time Mason found his car, it was nearly ten-thirty and he was shivering so hard he could barely walk. The woman had parked it to the west of the neighborhood, in the parking lot of what looked like it had once been a restaurant of some kind, the Cherokee’s hazards flashing to alert him to its location. He could only assume this was where she’d had her own car parked and waiting. She’d locked the doors and left the keys packed in a snowball on top of the front tire.
He just sat in the driver’s seat with the heater blowing full blast into his face and closed his eyes for several long minutes before he finally picked up the note she had left folded on the passenger seat. Another half sheet torn from the Yellow Pages. An address written right in the center of a slew of car detail shops. And beneath it, a time.
5325 WEDGEWOOD CIRCLE #9.
7:00 A.M.
His Sigma was underneath his seat. He made a resolution never to relinquish it again under any circumstances. That was when he’d lost control of the situation. The woman had planned and executed the meeting to perfection, and he’d been so eager to do whatever it took to get the information he needed that he could have easily gotten himself killed.
The roads were slick, the going was slow, and by the time he got to his new place, he was in a vile mood.
What the hell was he doing? This wasn’t his home. This was a derelict building. His home was downtown, near Washington Park, where by all rights he and Angie should have been curled up together in bed. All he wanted right now was to pull into the garage, close his eyes, and let the exhaust fumes usher him off to wherever his wife was now.
He just needed to sleep. Everything would look different after a couple hours of quality REM time. Besides, he wasn’t ready to cash in his chips quite yet. He had a 7:00 A.M. engagement that he fully intended to keep.
The place looked marginally better with a fresh application of snow, almost as though nature had decided to spruce it up a little in his absence. The roof was smooth and white, the windows frosted, and the wind had swept drifts up the front, concealing the less sightly graffiti. The snow made the trees look lush and full. Even the chain-link fence somehow seemed beautified by the sparkling application of ice. It was next to impossible to tell that the lot was really an ugly combination of dirt, gravel, and—
Something caught his eye. Nothing overt, but the kind of thing that set off alarm Klaxons in his subconscious.
He was parked facing the gate, his headlights blurred by the falling flakes, his windshield wipers flapping across his vision. He’d been just about to climb out to open the padlock, when the sensation smacked him upside the head. It took his mind several seconds to catch up with his eyes. When he left, the snow had only begun falling. Now there had to be at least three inches on the ground. Faint tire tracks, now little more than impressions, created parallel lines to the middle garage door.
Someone had driven into the garage.
Someone other than him.
38
Mason parked a mile or so up the road at a bend with easy access to the river. The last thing he wanted was to brave the cold again, but he figured it was an acceptable inconvenience if it afforded him the opportunity to finally shoot one of the bad guys.
He attuned his senses to his surroundings until he was acutely aware of every sound, every shadow, every detail. It was almost as though he’d entered a state of hyperawareness, which served to slow down the world around him. He stayed low and moved quickly along the bank of the river, his pistol in a two-handed grip, and surveilled the buildings neighboring his through the dense, snow-blanketed trees. Most of the windows had been broken and boarded up. The chain-link fences remained largely intact and enclosed lots crammed full of stacked pallets, giant cable spools, and unidentifiable objects buried beneath the snow. There were no footprints. No sign that anyone or anything had been through here before he arrived.
A faint glow emanated from behind the trees ahead of him. He crouched and crept closer, scrutinizing the light down the barrel of his Sigma. His building appeared through the branches as little more than a swatch of gray siding. As he neared, he got a clear look at the source of the glow, which was barely bright enough to outline the edges of a sheet of plywood covering one of his windows. It was subtle, but there was no mistaking that there was light radiating from inside a building where he had left no lights on.
The window was at eye level, so he had to believe it was on the main floor. He’d already established that the overhead lights didn’t work, so unless whoever was in there had brought his own bulb, the source of the glow had to be a flashlight or some other battery-powered device. He watched it for any change in intensity to suggest movement. If there was any, he couldn’t see it.
In the end, he decided that even getting shot would be preferable to kneeling out here in the snow any longer.
The rear of the building was maybe two hundred feet from the overgrown fence. He scaled the chain link, perched on the top, and then jumped.
Mason hit the ground running—right on a patch of ice—and landed squarely on his face and chest. He scrambled to his feet and was up against the back wall of his house in a matter of seconds.
Eased along the siding. Peeked around the corner. Ducked back.
Clear.
He went around in a crouch and sprinte
d through the snow until he could see the front gate. To his right, he had his pick of garage doors. He studied the tire tracks. The snow had nearly concealed them. He could barely make out the hint of footprints. It looked as though someone had tested the front door, then the first garage door, before finding the middle one unlocked. He’d then opened it and pulled his car inside.
Mason had to assume that both the vehicle and at least one person were inside. He hoped his intruder wouldn’t bleed too much. He was in no mood to clean up a mess tonight.
He flattened himself to the ground. Raised the garage door just high enough to roll under. Lowered it silently behind him. He was underneath the fender of a sedan of indeterminate make and model. The melting snow dripped from its undercarriage onto his cheek.
Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he crawled out from beneath the car and headed for the lone entrance. He took each step slowly, silently, and found the knob with his left hand. Twisted it. Barreled through. He was in a shooter’s stance when the door ricocheted from the interior wall. Took the rebound against his shoulder.
No sudden movement.
The glow was coming from the main room, just around the corner. He was already squeezing the trigger into the sweet spot as he went in fast and low, sighting down the source of the illumination. A laptop computer. Two silhouettes. Their faces unrecognizable chiaroscuros. One of them wore a smile that glowed almost blue from the display on the screen. Mason sighted his weapon just above the teeth and prepared to decorate the wall—
“Christ Almighty, Mace. Would you put that thing away?”
“Gunnar?” His old friend gave a tip of an invisible cap. His dirty-blond hair had thinned slightly since Mason had last seen him, but he still looked just like he always did: same little round glasses, same crooked smile, same face, as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Only the suit was new, and he wore it like an aura of power that somehow made him look larger. “I thought you were on the other side of the globe.”
The Extinction Agenda Page 18
