The Fifth Doctrine

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “You must really want me for this job.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  “I’ll give you an account number to wire the money into.”

  “Five minutes after you do, the money will be in the account. You’re going to have to give your parties a miss, though. We need to leave ASAP. And what’s with the bat?”

  The alarm beeped as he spoke, signaling the all clear. Bianca punched in the code a second time, which gave them forty-five seconds to exit before the alarm reset and the door automatically locked again.

  “It’s a Christmas gift for my partner. Evie’s planning to give it to him tonight. She must have forgotten it. If we really have to leave right away, I’ll drop it off at my place, which is a lot closer to the restaurant, and let Evie know where it is. I assume I have time to pack a few things?” If Colin knew her real name, and about Guardian Consulting, she assumed he also knew where she lived. What could be more natural than stopping by her home?

  Not that she meant to. Any place where the enemy knew you habitually went was a dangerous place to go. But if Colin thought that was her plan, it would provide a useful red herring for him to target when she slipped out of his reach.

  “You won’t need anything. It’s all taken care of,” Colin said. He was right behind her as she stepped out into the hall.

  “I’m going to need some things.” Her voice was firm.

  Her neighbor, Fred Dunn from the business she shared the floor with, was already out in the hall waiting for the elevator. He lifted a hand in greeting.

  “Hey, Bianca.”

  “Hey, Fred.” She waved back. With Fred was a man she didn’t know. Instantly, instinctively, she sized the second guy up even as the elevator dinged to announce its arrival on their floor.

  No threat was her assessment.

  “Don’t hold the elevator. I forgot something. I have to go back in,” she called as the men stepped into it.

  “See you Monday,” Fred called back in answer.

  “See you,” she echoed, and thought I wish.

  As the elevator doors closed, she and Colin turned as one toward the stairs.

  Because in times of danger elevators are potential death traps, as every operative worthy of the name knew.

  Bianca recognized that, once again, they were on the same page of the survival handbook. Also once again, she didn’t like it. The more he thought like her, the more likely he was to anticipate her moves.

  “You don’t want to go by your apartment,” Colin said as they jogged down the stairs. “If anyone should be in town looking for you, that’s one of the first places they’ll visit.”

  Snap. But she didn’t say it.

  “I presume we’re talking CIA kill team? I thought taking this job was supposed to make them back off.”

  “It will, just as soon as the word gets out.”

  “So how about you get the word out?”

  “The minute I have access to secure communications.”

  With the possibility that Colin had been followed at the forefront of her mind, Bianca was moving fast. At the same time she was busy off-loading essential items like her wallet and her car keys from her purse into the patch pockets of her coat, while trying to be subtle about it so that he wouldn’t notice. He stayed right behind her, moving as quickly and purposefully as she was herself. Fortunately, she was in excellent shape, because fifteen floors, even going down, added up to a lot of stairs. Especially given that she was wearing heels. The concrete walls, the metal steps, the closed security doors all created an echo chamber in which the clatter of their footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. The thought that someone—like, say, a gang of professional killers—might already be on the premises and able to locate them by the noise they were making gave her the willies.

  On the other hand, trying to run down the stairs in her slippery stocking feet was liable to wind up with her lying dead at the bottom of them. And since staying alive was the whole point of the exercise, she opted to keep on clattering.

  “You know, despite your warning I’m going to chance stopping by my condo. I’m going to need clothes.” She threw the remark over her shoulder.

  “No, you won’t. At least, not your own clothes. Like I said, you’re going to be impersonating someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Fill you in on the plane.”

  “Plane?”

  “Private jet waiting at Lowcountry Airport.”

  The region’s largest general aviation airport.

  Bianca’s stomach tightened. She thought of the elaborate stratagems she used to throw potential pursuers off her trail when heading into or out of Savannah. Clearly now all blown to hell. “You couldn’t have used an airport farther away?”

  “Stop worrying. The plane’s registered to the Canadian Cattleman’s Association. There’s a Beef USA convention going on in Hilton Head as we speak, and our plane is one of many that flew in for it. No reason for anyone to think anything different.”

  She reached the ground floor and exited the stairwell with him following. The emergency stairs opened into a little-used side hallway that allowed them to bypass the lobby, which, judging from the sounds that reached her ears, was busy. The side hallway had been designed to provide direct access to the rear parking lot for occupants of the building forced to evacuate by way of the stairs. A set of double push-through metal doors at the end of the hallway opened outward into a small vestibule that, in turn, opened into the rear parking lot.

  Her getaway car was parked in the rear lot.

  A couple of steps before she reached the double doors, Bianca lost her grip on her purse.

  It hit the floor with a soft plop. She strode on, apparently unaware.

  Behind her, Colin said, “Hey—”

  She pushed through the double doors.

  “—you dropped your bag.”

  To all intents and purposes, she didn’t hear a thing.

  As the doors started to swing shut behind her, she pivoted to face them. The move gave her a good look at Colin bending to scoop up her purse.

  He straightened, purse in hand, just in time to meet her eyes through the diminishing gap as she leaped after the closing doors. Awareness flashed across his face and he lunged toward the doors as well. Too late: they clanged shut in his face.

  Bianca was right behind them, shoving the bat through the D-shaped twin steel handles on her side of the doors. As far as securing outward-opening double doors went, that was about as effective an exit-blocker as it was possible to come up with on the fly.

  Thump. The door convulsed as he tried to push through. Thump. THUMP.

  By that last thump it was obvious he was putting his shoulder into it.

  “Bloody hell.”

  Even muffled by two-inch-thick solid metal doors, he sounded pissed.

  The slight smile that curved her lips as she sprinted for the parking lot was a tiny bright spot in what had been, so far, one more terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

  6

  “I’m going to be away for a while.” Bianca had her cell on speaker as she drove with controlled speed toward the nearest parking lot exit. The phone itself, a burner she carried for just such emergencies as this so that it couldn’t be tracked, was tucked into the open console between the seats, out of her way as it allowed her to talk hands-free. She’d left her usual phone behind in her purse, after pushing a button that triggered an app that wiped its memory, a precaution she’d had Doc install for her. She hoped Colin appreciated the gift. The problem with her attempted speedy exit was that, on this, a Friday so close to Christmas, lots of people seemed to be leaving work early and the rear parking lot’s two exits were backed up. On River Street, which she was aiming for, traffic grew heavier by the minute. A side glance at the rows of sweet gum trees and ornamental fencing ringing the parking lot reconfirmed what she already knew: the exits were the only way out. No off-roading it for her. “I’m heading for Europe tonight. I left Evie a mess
age that my father’s been hospitalized and I’m rushing to his side. I’ll tell Hay the same thing when I hang up with you.”

  The part about Europe was one more lie, designed to further throw Colin off the scent should he manage to weasel or coerce her supposed destination out of those she was leaving behind.

  “What’d you do to James Bond?” Doc, on the other end of the call, was referring to Colin, she knew.

  “Nothing. Ditched him.”

  “He’s not going to like that.”

  “Too bad. What’s he going to do?”

  “Uh, arrest me?”

  “For what? You haven’t committed any crimes. At least, as far as he can prove. Anyway, he can’t. He doesn’t have any legal authority to arrest anybody. And he’s not about to call in the locals. As soon as he does that, the feds will be all over this and he’ll lose any power he has.” She was in line now, three cars back from it being her turn to pull out. Once she was through the bottleneck, she would be in the wind. All too aware that by now Colin would be coming after her like a terrier after a rat, she felt like rolling down her window to scream at the people in front of her to hurry. Since that would be worse than useless, outwardly she remained calm. It helped to remind herself that, to catch up to her, Colin had to go back the way they had come and exit through the lobby. That would put him at the front of the building. He would next have to run all the way around the building and through the large front parking lot, shared with the retail shops next door, before reaching the smaller rear parking lot. He then had to beat her to the exit she’d chosen, which was at the lot’s farthest edge. And in order to do all those things, he had to first know where she was. And what car she was in, because the Jeep Cherokee she was currently driving was not the car she generally drove, not the blue Acura she’d driven to work that morning and back to the office from lunch and left in her reserved spot in the front parking lot. This was the just-in-case vehicle she’d kept in the rear lot since she’d made it back alive to Savannah, because one of the new, ongoing principles of her life was shit happens. So unless he’d planted another tracking device on her person, which she’d taken good care hadn’t happened, finding her was going to be difficult—especially if the people in front of her would just freaking move.

  She added, “Anyway, he said he was prepared to overlook the fact that you clonked him over the head in Macau.”

  “Yeah, well, he said ‘later’ to me after I showed him into your office. Since he did that finger-gun thing and pointed it at me when he said it, I don’t think we’re gonna be hugging it out anytime soon. You really going to Europe?”

  “Maybe,” she answered. “I won’t be answering my phone or any of my usual emails, so if you need to contact me use the fail-safe.” The fail-safe was a completely new false identity, complete with phone and email, that, like the Jeep, she’d put in place for just such a situation as she was now facing. It was strictly for communication with Doc in an emergency. She would use it for as long as she could, and then, if she had to disappear, she would cut that last tether to Bianca St. Ives as completely as she left behind everything else.

  She refused to allow herself to acknowledge how her heart bled at the prospect.

  “That bad, huh?” Doc sounded glum. “Maybe I should come with you.”

  “I wish you could.” She was surprised by how much she meant it. But survival meant that cutting ties, if that was what she ended up having to do, had to be final and absolute. No post-partem Christmas cards allowed. “Where are you?”

  “Still at Lifson’s. In Mr. Lifson’s private office, to be precise, sitting at his desk checking out his computer for him while he finishes up a staff meeting. Seems he’s been having trouble connecting to the internet, among other things, and who better to solve his problem than Guardian Consulting’s head computer geek? Since I was here anyway. Gives him a chance to evaluate the quality of our work before shelling out for a big contract.”

  Despite everything, she smiled at Doc’s tone. “Is that what he said?”

  “Yep. Turns out his wireless router was unplugged. I’m still checking his computer out, but I’d say that was his problem with connecting with the internet.”

  “Good job. Way to represent!”

  Doc’s reply was lost as the two cars at the front of the line exited at the same time, shooting out one after the other through a tiny gap in the traffic to the accompaniment of much indignant horn-blaring from the drivers on the street. Bianca felt like hailing that bold move with a congratulatory woo-hoo. She was now only one car back and—

  Bam.

  The sound made her jump. It was caused, she saw with a startled glance in her rearview mirror, by a large masculine fist slamming into the back of the Jeep.

  Her eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of the tall man in a suit that the angry fist belonged to.

  Colin.

  “Damn it.” Her heart jumped. Her hands clenched around the wheel. She couldn’t believe it: he was there, racing up beside the car, bending to glare at her through the front passenger window. The wind blowing in off the river ruffled his black hair. His expression was several degrees less than friendly.

  “What?” Doc demanded. She ignored him; her focus was all on Colin.

  Who, she saw, gripped what was approximately three-quarters of the now-broken bat. The barrel was intact but the cap was missing, leaving jagged shards of wood to bear witness to the atrocity that had befallen it.

  A glimmer of respect for Colin’s physical strength infused her shocked surprise as she registered the fact that he must have caught up with her so fast by smashing through the double doors, which she’d thought was all but impossible given the presence of the (very sturdy) bat. Having managed to do that, he’d clearly rushed out the same exit she’d used then spotted her in the parking lot and given chase.

  “Nice try,” he told her through the window. “Let me in.”

  She would have instantly goosed the gas to escape, but there was nowhere to go. The Jeep was hemmed in on all sides.

  “Go away,” she snapped.

  He rattled the handle, smacked the glass with his palm. “Unlock the door.”

  “No.” Once she was through the bottleneck, she could still lose him, she calculated. Unless he was prepared to jump on the hood and cling like a bug, in which case she would do her best Fast and Furious imitation until she shook him off. A glance at the street in front of her made her grimace: a solid wall of traffic blocked the exit. Much as she might wish it was otherwise, Fast and Furious wasn’t happening anytime soon.

  “What’s going on?” Doc asked in alarm.

  “Rogan,” Bianca responded, then, much louder and to Colin, “Get away from the car. I’m not letting you in.”

  His eyes narrowed. His mouth went thin. His jaw hardened.

  “Oh, yes, you are.” His sheer size, to say nothing of the steely look he fixed on her, made him appear unexpectedly formidable. Or at least, as formidable as a man in what she guessed was at least a thousand-dollar suit accessorized with a (her) very feminine-looking, fringed and beaded shoulder bag and carrying a broken baseball bat could look. The gesture with which he underlined his words made it clear that if she didn’t comply, he intended to use the remains of the bat to smash the window and let himself in.

  She gave him a derisive smile. What he didn’t know, but was about to find out, was that even slamming the bat into the window with every bit of strength culled from every one of his many manly muscles wouldn’t do diddly-squat. Among other reinforcements to her getaway car, she’d had bulletproof glass installed. Because the possibility of snipers had recently become one of the realities of her existence, and she was a big believer in the Girl Scout motto of be prepared.

  “Boss? Are you okay?” Doc sounded almost as agitated as she felt.

  “Fine,” she said.

  “Last chance. Unlock the door.” Colin drew the bat back threateningly. The rounded business end was aimed at the window. She smirked at him in an
ticipation. “I’m going to give you to the count of three. One—”

  A woman walking through the parking lot looked wide-eyed in his direction. So did a pair of teenagers two rows over who were just exiting their vehicle. Bianca could see the driver of the car in front of her checking out the action in his rearview mirror.

  “—two—”

  A glance in her rearview mirror told her that the female driver of the car behind her was watching Colin with her mouth agape. No doubt there were a number of other witnesses as well. As sure as God made little green apples, if he started beating her car window with a baseball bat one of them would call 911.

  “—th—”

  Bianca thought of the explanations the arrival of the police would entail, spit out an ugly word and unlocked the door.

  “Good call.” Colin got in, slammed the door and tossed the broken bat into the back seat. A blast of river-scented air came with him. A big guy, he seemed to fill the car as he settled in beside her. “You dropped your bag.” The sarcasm was rife. Her purse followed the bat into the back seat.

  “Jackass.”

  “I bet you say that to all the guys.”

  “Only the really shitty ones.”

  The car in front of her scooted away, leaving her first in line. Of course it did, now. Was that the way life worked, or what?

  He said, “You really think you could lose me that easily?”

  She shot him a poisonous look. “A girl can dream.”

  “Sweet bug-out car, by the way. Where were you heading in it?”

  “I told you I had to go home to get ready for tonight’s dinner party. That’s where I’m heading.”

  “And I told you that you’d have to give the party a miss because of the time-is-of-the-essence nature of your new job. So how about you head for Lowcountry Airport instead.”

  “In case you haven’t figured it out, that back there with the bat and the doors was me saying I quit.”

  A gap appeared in the traffic. She smashed her foot down on the gas with real relish, hung a left to the tune of her own squealing tires and in the teeth of the oncoming wall of honking vehicles, and then slammed on the brakes to drop back down to a snail’s pace as she joined the gridlock crawling along the river. The heavy gray sky and the muddy dreariness of the rolling water exactly matched her mood: dark. On one side, a long, low-slung warehouse partially blocked her view of a giant barge chugging toward the ocean. On her other side, Colin had been jolted forward by her maneuver and was now casting her a black look as he sat back and dragged his seat belt across himself.