by Jack Mars
While she was there, Zero hurried down the block, up her walkway, and into her house. Her front door was unlocked, of course, on account of her rushing out to see what had happened. He imagined the tremendous boom of it scaring the daylights out of her, and then her stuffing her feet into slippers, rushing out to the street.
Her keys were in a basket just inside the front door and her car was in the driveway. He slid behind the driver’s seat as the sirens shrieked closer. Not fifteen seconds later a convoy of emergency vehicles arrived, parking at any odd angle available and blocking the road between his former home and Gorman’s. No one would see him leave.
So he backed her car out of the driveway and eased up the road as if nothing was wrong, as if there weren’t a hundred flashing lights in his rearview.
“Sorry, Mrs. Gorman,” he muttered. “But I need it more than you do right now.”
The old woman drove a practical sedan, good gas mileage, couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. She’d kept it clean and in good shape; it still had the new-car smell, at least a little bit, under the veneer of old-lady perfume.
He wouldn’t need it long. A half hour, tops, long enough to get to the airport and hop a plane. With any luck, Mrs. Gorman wouldn’t mention the name Reid Lawson. Maybe she’d be confused about who she thought she saw, and he could get back to Virginia before…
Before what, exactly?
Before the police tracked him down and arrested him? Before the CIA caught wind of several deaths that all pointed firmly in his direction? Before whoever was after him finally killed him, or his family, or his friends?
He rubbed his face. Everything hurt. Nothing made sense. And on top of it all, the memory lingered, the déjà vu sensation from the house, of Kate on the phone talking in code…
“It wasn’t real,” he reminded himself.
Still. Even if it wasn’t real, he didn’t know what it meant. His brain must have produced it for a reason. He didn’t feel like himself. He didn’t feel like Zero anymore. The irony was that both of those things depended on him being Zero. But he wasn’t Zero, not anymore, not really.
“Pull yourself together,” he scolded himself. He guided the car onto the highway, and then leaned over slightly to the glove box to see if Mrs. Gorman had any Tylenol stowed away there. The glove box was as neat as the rest of the car; it contained only the registration, insurance card, vehicle manual, and spare napkins.
“Think,” he told himself.
Whoever was doing this knew about the memory suppressor. Guyer, Bliss, Zero’s former home—that suggested someone from his past. Krauss checked that box, but none of the others. It had felt like him at first, but now it felt far more conspiratorial. Bigger than him. Bigger than one person.
Guyer. Bliss. His former home. Who would know those things?
Or: who could dig that deep if they wanted to? If they needed to?
Who might have reason to eliminate anyone associated with, or who had knowledge of, the memory suppressor?
There was only one answer to all of those questions, and he didn’t like it at all.
The CIA.
But that only raised more questions. The agency didn’t toy with people. They didn’t leave cryptic notes or lead people on wild goose chases. They didn’t take chances with bombs or make that big of a mess if they didn’t have to. If they wanted someone dead, they’d employ someone like John Watson to kill them without hesitation or question. Ideally from a distance.
Whoever did this was into theatrics. The CIA didn’t fit that bill. Neither did Krauss.
An idea hit him, or just the kernel of one, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket. It wouldn’t power up. He didn’t know if the explosion had killed it or if the battery was dead, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d charged it.
Mrs. Gorman may not have had Tylenol, but she came through this time. There was a USB charging cable in the center console. Zero steered with his knees as he plugged the phone in. It powered on this time. At least something was going in his favor.
But his optimism waned quickly as he tried to call Alan, then Sara, Maya, and Mischa in turn. Not one phone rang. Every one of them went to voicemail.
What the hell is the point of cell phones, anyway?
He called Penny at the lab.
“Zero!” she answered with some urgency. “You really shouldn’t be using your own phone right now…”
“Someone just tried to kill me,” he told her. “With a bomb. At my old house in the Bronx.”
“Jeez. Hang on.” He heard the keyboard in the background, clack-clack-clacking. “I see,” she said softly. “One casualty.”
“The current homeowner. Pretty sure he had nothing to do with this. The girls?”
Penny’s moment of hesitation was not lost on him. “With Alan. He has a number you can reach him at.”
“I’m driving.”
“I’ll text it.”
“Great. Safe?”
“Safe. Yeah.” Something in her voice suggested there had been some kind of trouble, but he didn’t ask her to elaborate. “Where are you now?” she asked.
“You’re not tracking me?” he mused.
“Kind of doing two things at once here. I have a… let’s just say, an ‘executive order’ on my hands. Any idea who’s behind this?”
“A notion,” he admitted. “Where’s Todd?”
“Abroad. Busy.”
“Another ‘executive order,’ I take it?”
“The same, actually,” she told him. “Don’t ask me any more than that.”
“I won’t. Listen, I have a hunch about who might be—”
The car jolted roughly. Zero pitched forward, bracing himself against the steering wheel with a forearm. The phone tumbled from his hand. The sedan swerved, almost sideswiping a car in the next lane before Zero quickly righted it.
He looked in the rearview. A broad, black sports car was directly behind him, late model, so close he couldn’t see anything but the tinted windshield.
And he didn’t think for a moment that it was just an aggressive driver.
The phone had fallen on the floor somewhere near his feet.
“Penny!” he said loudly. “If you can hear me, I’ve got company!”
The sports car behind him revved its engine and bumped him again. Mrs. Gorman’s little sedan lurched.
“Son of a…” Zero pulled the wheel to the left and the sedan jumped onto the shoulder, just as the muscle car behind him sped up for another ram. Zero took his foot off the gas, just for a moment, just long enough to pull parallel to the sports car, and then slammed the accelerator again to keep pace.
He glanced over.
The passenger side window was tinted, but rolled halfway down.
Through it, he could see the face of the driver. The man looked back at him, and their gaze locked for just a moment. He had short stubble on his chin, and his sandy hair was disheveled, but Zero recognized him all the same.
The man behind the wheel was Stefan Krauss.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A cold fury rose in Zero’s chest at the sight of the man who murdered Maria. The man who had almost killed Mischa.
Krauss did not smile, or glare, or snarl; he simply glanced, his face utterly impassive.
And then he pulled the sports car onto the shoulder.
The instant he saw the shift, Zero hit the brakes. The muscle car slid in front of him, mere inches from the guard rail, almost bouncing off of it. Zero hit the gas then in an effort to ram him, but the sports car leapt forward.
He desperately wished he had a manual transmission as the speedometer climbed to seventy, then eighty. He blew by other cars on the highway, ignoring the blaring horns as he kept right on Krauss’s tail. The shoulder was narrow, barely more than the width of the car; at this speed, a bump to the guard rail or another car could be fatal.
Without warning or even slowing, the sports car skirted left, crossing two lanes of traffic in a heartbe
at. Zero cursed and stayed on the shoulder. His speed climbed to eighty-five. He dared to take his eyes from the road for a half-second, just long enough to see that Krauss was keeping pace with him in the far left lane.
The sports car vanished for a moment as a tractor trailer passed between them. Then Krauss swerved again, in front of it, coming up right alongside Zero.
He wouldn’t…
He did. Krauss swerved again, only slightly, and the sports car sidled into the sedan. His passenger side scraped against the guard rail as he struggled to keep the car straight. The grating sound was shrill; sparks flew past the window. The sports car leaned in again. Metal groaned as Krauss pinned the sedan between the black car and the guardrail.
Zero grimaced and held the wheel tightly. By the time he saw what Krauss aimed to do, it was too late. He tried to hit the brakes but Krauss leaned in again as the guardrail ended. The sedan was too small, too light to counter the heavier car.
Zero swerved as the sedan left the road. The back end swung out, around, as it careened down an embankment. Zero took his foot off the brake and braced himself.
Mrs. Gorman’s sedan bounced at the bottom, hard enough for two tires to leave the ground. Hard enough for the hood to unlatch and fly up. Hard enough for Zero’s head to hit the ceiling, even with his seatbelt on.
The car rolled unsteadily for a few more yards and finally came to a gentle stop. Zero rubbed his head and quickly checked himself in the rearview. He wasn’t bleeding that he could see, though his face was still streaked with gray soot from the explosion.
He shoved the door open and rolled out of the car, his legs shaky. Above and behind him, the embankment was empty. He didn’t see the black car.
But then a figure stepped into view. Krauss. He held something in both hands, and brought it to his shoulder.
Zero leapt, rolling over the trunk of the car and landing on the other side as an automatic rifle rattled. Bullets pounded the car. Windows shattered and tires blew out as Zero covered his head with both hands, keenly aware that he was one penetrated gas tank away from getting caught up in another explosion.
The gunshots stopped as the magazine ran out. Zero didn’t wait around to see if Krauss was reloading; he dashed forward, keeping low. He looked left and right for cover; he didn’t know where he was, some industrial area, several blocks of long, flat-roofed buildings and warehouses. The sun was setting. Work was out for the day and the place was a ghost town.
He ran in a serpentine pattern toward a narrow alley to the right. Before ducking down it he hazarded a glance behind him. Krauss was pursuing him, sidestepping quickly down the embankment as he pushed a fresh magazine into what looked, from this distance, to be an AR-15.
Zero cut right, down the alley, and toward a two-story drab gray building with splashes of graffiti and several broken windows. He saw a set of doors, or what used to be doors, boarded up with plywood, and bee-lined for them.
He gritted his teeth. He didn’t know how secure the plywood was, or if there were doors behind it. This was probably going to hurt.
Zero threw himself forward, leading with a shoulder, forearms up to cover his face. He smashed through the plywood far easier than he would have thought, as if it was cardboard.
He was right. It hurt.
He landed on his shoulder and rolled, coughing. But there was no time for lying around. He leapt to his feet, his left leg in more pain than it had been before, and half-limped across the dusty warehouse floor. The place was filthy, everything covered in a layer of silt, the late sunlight filtering in through grimy second-floor windows and lighting dust motes he’d sent into the air when he disrupted the relative tranquility of an abandoned warehouse.
There were bits of lumber scattered here and there on the floor and he snatched up a piece, a section of two-by-four about as long as his arm. It wasn’t much against an automatic rifle but it was the best he could do.
Then he ducked behind three empty oil drums and waited. From the small space between them he had a good view of the broken entranceway. He could see Krauss coming.
But what good would it do him?
You should have kept running.
Sticking around felt like a very good way to get killed. But he needed answers. He needed to know why Krauss was here, why he had appeared suddenly just after Zero had discounted him as a suspect.
And once he had information, he needed to kill this man.
A shadow fell over the doorway. A moment later Krauss took a single wide step inside, the gun to his shoulder, quickly sweeping left to right with the barrel.
Zero held his breath, staying still as could be. His palms were sweating around the two-by-four.
Krauss stalked forward, keeping the gun up. His gaze swept over the three oil drums that Zero was hiding behind, and then past them. He turned slowly, his back to Zero, and took a few steps away from him.
He could get the drop on him. He could leave his cover now, sneak up behind him, strike with the two-by-four. A single blow could knock him out. Maybe even kill him.
But if Krauss heard him coming, it would be over in a heartbeat. Automatic gun beat hunk of wood, every time.
Zero dared to rise from his hiding place, just a bit, just enough for his head to be visible if Krauss suddenly whirled around. The round metal lid of one of the oil drums was loose, on an angle, not secured but just lying atop the empty container. Zero held the length of lumber in one hand and reached for the metal lid with the other.
He reeled back, and he hurled the lid like a Frisbee as hard as he could. It sailed over the silt-covered floor, behind Krauss’s back, and landed with a crash on the other side of the warehouse.
Krauss spun the instant he heard the clatter. The automatic rifle rattled, bullets tearing at nothing but air and concrete. The deafening blasts echoed through the empty warehouse—and muffled Zero’s rapid footfalls.
The instant Krauss pulled the trigger, Zero made his move. He half-sprinted, half-vaulted the span between them. The gun fell silent just before his third stride fell, and his shoe smacked the concrete floor loudly in the silence.
Krauss spun. But Zero was already there, and had momentum. He stopped the swinging barrel with a forearm and swung the two-by-four with one hand. It made a satisfying sound—tock—as it connected with Krauss’s skull.
The assassin fell, leaving the gun in Zero’s hands. His first instinct was to spin it, point it down, and empty the remainder of the magazine into Stefan Krauss. Make short work of it. End him.
But no. He didn’t deserve a quick death, and Zero wanted answers. He ejected the magazine, tossed it aside, and threw the rest of the AR-15 in the opposite direction.
Krauss breathed hard, bleeding from his hairline and down the side of his face as he stared up at Zero. But there was no avarice in his eyes; only confusion.
“Will you not kill me?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m going to kill you. But you don’t deserve a bullet. And I have questions first.” Zero held the two-by-four aloft, ready to deliver a quick blow if he needed to, but Krauss didn’t move from his splayed position on the floor. “Did you kill Dr. Guyer?”
Krauss frowned. “I don’t know who that is.”
Zero scoffed. “What about Howard Bliss, and his wife? In New York? Did you kill them and leave me that note?”
“I left you no note,” Krauss told him. His gaze was steely and somber, his brow knitted just slightly in curiosity. There was nothing in his expression to suggest he was lying, but he had to keep in mind that Krauss was a master manipulator.
“And the bomb? Did you deliver that? Did you set it off?”
“No. I was told only to follow you if you survived it.”
“Told? Told by who?” Zero demanded.
“The voice.”
Zero grunted in frustration. “What voice?”
“The one that calls. The one that tells me what to do next.”
Krauss was messing with him. That much was clear. He didn’t wor
k for anyone, let alone a “voice.” Zero knew all about his lone-wolf, puppet-master shtick. And his speech pattern… Krauss was a natural-born German, but had perfected many accents, could take on almost any alias. Yet his speech now was clipped, like a native German speaker attempting to do an American accent.
He was messing with him.
Zero wasn’t going to get any answers out of him.
“I know you, Krauss,” he warned, his voice low. “And you know me, so you know this isn’t an idle threat. Start talking, or I’ll start breaking things of yours.”
But Krauss only shook his head, the furrow in his brow deepening. “I don’t know you.”
That did it. A roar bubbled up inside Zero, starting deep in his belly and rising from his throat as he reared back with the two-by-four and swung with all his might. He didn’t just want to hurt him. He wanted to bash his brains in. He wanted Stefan Krauss to be identified by the teeth that lay scattered across a dirty warehouse floor.
But he telegraphed the swing. As the lumber came down, Krauss’s forearm came up, and the wood broke in half over it. Krauss grunted, but he was up in an instant and swinging at Zero’s torso.
He barely avoided the blow and leapt back before another could come. He tossed the useless hunk of wood aside as Krauss circled him, both fists up in a boxer’s stance.
The assassin closed in and threw a left hook. Zero blocked it, and then ducked the right jab that followed. He responded with a jab of his own but he went low, center-mass, striking just below the sternum. Krauss winced and swept with a leg. Zero jumped it and kicked out while in the air, barely missing.
They went blow for blow, and while they did, Zero’s head reeled. He was certain that Stefan Krauss was playing at something, but… but there was something wrong here, and not just his speech. He was fast and his blows were solid, but his movements were mechanical. They lacked the style and individuality that came from an experienced fighter. When Zero feigned a kick and instead threw an elbow, Krauss fell for it and caught the blow on the chin, his head snapping back and his body following it to the floor.
“What’s wrong with you? Get up!” Zero shouted. He wanted to kill Stefan Krauss, but he didn’t want it to be easy. He wanted it to be deserved. He’d dreamed about this a dozen times, delighting in ending this man’s life. Yet everything about this felt wrong.
