Pattinson shook his head. “The woman who works the hire desk lives in Toccoa, but she can’t get back here because of transport and childcare issues. She says she’ll be here as early as possible in the morning.”
“Get the local cops to pick her up and tell her to bring the kids with her,” Kramer said. “We’re hunting people responsible for multiple murders. Minutes matter here.”
Pattinson sighed as if he’d been given Mission: Impossible. “You Homeland Security types think you run everything, don’t you?”
“I thought we did,” Kramer said to Ben. “How about you?”
“Last time I looked, yeah.” Ben gave Pattinson a smile. “Three dead cops ought to get you moving.”
Pattinson nodded and hauled himself up out of his chair, “Okay, I’m on it.”
As Pattinson left, Ben said, “So seven people left in two vehicles?”
“I think so,” the manager said. “Marjery can confirm it when she gets here.”
“I’ll give our guys the heads up,” Ben said to Kramer.
All they had to do now, was wait for Marjery to turn up.
***
Marjery turned up, eventually, in the company of two Toccoa cops. She’d left her children with a neighbour but still complained about having to drag her ass out of bed at this time of night. Kramer gave up after the second time of trying to explain that the people they were after were suspects in a multiple murder investigation. Marjery folded her arms under her ample breasts as her computer booted up and pointedly ignored Kramer.
It took two minutes to get the details of the hire cars and the names supplied by the drivers. “Probably false,” Kramer said to Ben, as they ran back to their Suburban.
Marjery shouted something after them which sounded like her mood had soured even more when she realised that was all they wanted. The Toccoa cops had called in the vehicle descriptions to their station house. Pattinson put them into the Georgia State Patrol headquarters with the promise that the information would be passed on to the teams working out of Lavonia and neighbouring states.
As Kramer drove, Ben called the information into the DSI offices at Fort Bragg. Every available resource would be used to find the suspects. Dawson was still in his office. Ben put the call onto loudspeaker as Dawson said, “I’ve got two quick reaction teams ready to go at a minute’s notice. I’ve also increased security at the ranch where Emily and Pete are staying. If these people make another attempt on Emily’s life, they’ll regret it.”
“How are Emily and Pete?” Kramer asked.
“Wrecked.” Dawson didn’t sound too good himself. “I’ve had a doctor over there this afternoon. He prescribed sleeping tablets for Emily. Pete refused them. He said he wants to be ready if these bastards try a second time.”
“You think they will?” Ben wasn’t convinced.
“We don’t know why they tried the first time. Whatever twisted reason these people have it’s still there.”
Lights flickered by the Suburban, Kramer had the speed lingering at eighty-miles-per-hour, and the grille mounted strobe lights splashed the road ahead with an eerie glow. Ben hoped she could multi-task with the conversation and her driving.
“Any news on the aircraft?” Kramer asked.
“It came from an air service out of Mexico City. We’re liaising with the authorities down there, but it looks like the people who hired it used false papers.”
“So, it’s a dead end?” Ben asked.
“We’ve sent them down the images we have of the killers. Lavonia PD has supplied prints from the motel rooms, and we’re expediting the DNA analysis of samples from bed linen and bathrooms. We’re passing everything down to the Mexicans, and something will break down there.” Dawson paused. Ben could hear him yawning. “You two need to rest as well. If we get any leads I’ll call you.”
Dawson ended the call. Ben glanced across at Kramer. “He’s right. We’re stressed out and driving at this time of night and this speed is dangerous.”
“Are you saying I can’t cope?”
“No, I’m saying we’re doing eighty and we’ve got nowhere to go. Are you doing this because of Jane?”
A mile must have passed before Kramer answered. “We were friends. Different backgrounds but a similar age. It’s hard in an environment like the DSI so to have another female around helped sometimes.”
“Let’s find a room and get some rest,” Ben suggested.
“I feel for Emily. She’s never known her natural father, and as soon as a guy comes along who can be a dad to her, she loses her mom.”
“But we can help,” Ben said into the silence. “You lost your father. I lost both my parents. We know the coping strategies. We can talk to Emily and be there for her whenever we’re needed.”
“Will she be around?” Kramer asked. “Pete never married Jane. He wanted to adopt but nothing’s happened yet. She’s a minor. I think social services will take her in. If they can find her natural father and he’s willing to take her, then that’s where she will go ahead of anyone like Pete Walsh.”
“I never thought of that.” Ben slumped back in his seat.
Kramer eased off the speed and killed the strobe lights. “And you’re right. We need to rest.” She pointed at his phone. “Can you find the nearest motel?”
“Probably back in Toccoa,” Ben said. “I think all the beds in Lavonia will be taken up by the media invasion.”
Kramer looked at him with a sly smile. “You could always call your friend Bobby.”
“You know what they say; three’s a crowd.” Ben started scrolling through the results of his search.
“Yeah, but who will be the odd one out?” Kramer asked.
“How are you on redheads?”
“Not high on the list,” Kramer said. She reached out and patted his leg. “You, however, are.”
“Are what?” Ben looked up, distracted by his search for somewhere to stay.
“Forget it,” Kramer said and floored the accelerator again.
They found a room in a motel back in Toccoa. Kramer drove there in silence, and it took another twenty minutes in their room before she thawed enough to lie close to him in bed. He didn’t ask about her mood. It had been a shit day from the moment three men from the US Army tried to kill Emily. He could tell from the way she lay that Kramer was still awake. Ben put his lips on her bare shoulder.
“What?” she asked.
“We should speak to Dawson. See if we can get Emily a new identity and one that allows Pete to adopt her. I’m sure there must be ways.”
“Yeah.” Her hand sought his under the covers and their fingers tangled together.
More silence, but a little more comfortable this time. “You want to talk about it?” Ben asked.
Kramer took a deep breath and said, “Do you ever want kids?”
Oh. Ben hoped he hadn’t made any little movements that would have given away his surprise. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”
“I’ve not put much thought to it,” Ben said. “It’s a question that’s always in the future.”
“The future arrives at some point.” Kramer moved, so she lay on her back.
“Do you?” Ben asked.
“I asked first.” She gave him a light pat on the arm.
“Then the answer is yes.” And I hope that’s the correct answer.
“I’ve always concentrated on my career,” Kramer sighed. “And seeing Jane with Emily made me want to be a mom. But now, I don’t know. The line of work we are in, I don’t know if I could justify having a child if I might die on duty.”
“But you could say that about anything. When you drive, you might be involved in an accident. When you fly, the plane might crash. You could go for a medical next week and get a diagnosis of cancer.”
“Wow.” Kramer laughed. “You look on the bright side, don’t you?”
“Kramer,” Ben said. “You’ll make a great mom.”
“Will I?�
� He could hear a tremor of emotion in her voice.
“Yes.” Ben let the silence lengthen until he said, “This is when you tell me I’ll make a great dad.”
Her hand reached out in the dark and stroked his neck. “I was thinking more along the lines that we’d make great babies.”
***
Pete Walsh couldn’t sleep.
Pete Walsh didn’t think he would ever sleep again. The doctor who examined him at the safe house said it was best not to mix the painkillers for the gunshot wound with sleeping pills. He touched the bandaging on his hip. The wound beneath ached but not as much as his heart.
Jane. Oh, my God.
Pete pushed himself up from his bed. He still wore his day clothes because mental exhaustion is what had driven him to his bed. But he couldn’t rest. His head was a mess of noise. The memory of gunfire as Emily and Jane appeared out of the hospital room. The darkness and silence of his room emphasised the hole in his life. If he could swap places with Jane, he would do it in a heartbeat. She would be suffering his loss, but Emily would still have a mother.
Godamnit. God damn them.
Pete left his room. He paused outside Emily’s door, listening for any sign of distress. There shouldn’t be. The same medic who had held back on Pete’s sleeping pills gave Emily half-of-one, and she’d gone out like a light. Happy that Emily had at least achieved some rest, Pete moved on.
The safe-house turned out to be a ranch-style farmhouse set back from the country road that bordered one side of the property. Pete didn’t get much of a look at the whole place as they were hustled indoors by a twitchy DSI security team. He met the couple who looked after the house, a retired CIA spook and his ex-diplomat wife. The spy explained that the house and grounds were monitored by heat and motion sensitive cameras, with additional security now provided by the ten-man DSI team who were bunking down in one of the barns and operating on two shifts of five men. More would be coming in the morning. Pete’s first question was why?
“Because we think the people who attempted to kill Emily will try again,” Tom Birch said. He didn’t look much like a spy, more like a retired accountant who should be out playing golf with his buddies from the club. Nondescript was a good word, but as Pete had learned in his years with Chicago PD, the most dangerous people were often the ones you overlooked.
Two members of the security team were in the kitchen making coffee. When they saw Pete, another mug came out without a question being asked. Pete sat at the big oak table that dominated the centre of the room. Around him, the décor was modern with granite worktops, grey units, a stone-tile floor and a large range-style cooker. A coffee was placed in front of him and Pete nodded his thanks.
“Can’t sleep?” Jason Buhl asked. He sat across the table from Pete, concern in his eyes. Both he and Bob Pruitt had been on the DSI team the longest. They knew Pete well, and they knew Emily and Jane even better. Jane’s death had hit them all hard, and along with the loss of their two colleagues, left the DSI in mourning.
Pete put his head down, not wanting the former Special-Ops soldiers to see the tears in his eyes. He didn’t think it was a sign of weakness; he just didn’t want them to see the raw emotion on his face.
“Where are the others?” Pete asked, changing the subject away from Jane.
“One’s in the office, watching the cameras. The others are doing a patrol of the farm,” Buhl said.
“And you think they’ll come again?”
“I don’t know,” Buhl shrugged, “but if we’re not ready, then we’re letting you and Emily down.”
“And Jane,” Pruitt said.
Buhl shot his younger colleague a sharp look. Mentioning Jane was a dumbass thing to do, and Pruitt seemed to understand as he muttered a quick ‘sorry’ before taking a mouthful of coffee too fast that made him cough. Pete almost raised a smile and then felt guilty because he shouldn’t be laughing. He should never laugh again.
“Pete?” He looked up at Jason Buhl. The soldier seemed to be thinking before he said, “You know about the DSI team? How it came together?”
“Yeah.” Pete’s voice sounded rough, and he cleared his throat to say, “You were all connected to someone close who had died.”
“Not just died,” Buhl said. “They all died in violent ways. Street robbery, terrorism, murder. It means you’re not alone. It means that every single one of us knows in some little way what you are going through. It’ll be different, of course it will, because you were in love with Jane and going to marry her, but if you want or need to talk we will be here for you and Emily.”
Pete blinked, took a breath and said, “Thanks.”
Buhl smiled, “You staying up or going to try and sleep?”
“I’ll stay up for a while,” Pete said.
“Bob can put the television on for you. There’s a dish out back, so it’s got all the channels you’ll need.”
“I might make myself a sandwich.” Pete stood. “I don’t think I ate properly earlier.”
Pete found the items to put together a half decent chicken and mayo sandwich. He ate it watching a re-run episode of Game of Thrones Season 1. After that he channel hopped and spent twenty minutes on a sports show watching surfers compete in South Africa. At some point, and he guessed later it was two in the morning, he dozed off. When he woke, with a stiff neck and sore back, in the grey dawn light he found someone had draped a blanket over him. They had also very kindly taken his plate and cup away. Yawning and bleary-eyed Pete found the downstairs bathroom and relieved his bladder before going into the kitchen.
“You look like you could do with heading to bed properly,” Tom Birch’s wife, Monica, said as Pete appeared.
“I’ll wake myself up with a shower.” Pete sat in the same chair as the night before. The kitchen clock showed it was just gone six as he said, “You’re up early.”
“All the boys will need breakfast soon. Normally we get to lie-in if there aren’t any guests here.”
“Do you get many?” Pete asked. “I mean if you’re allowed to say.”
“Most weeks there is someone here for a few days, so we’re kept on our toes. It’s a halfway house to full retirement.”
“Sounds good.”
Monica came to the table and sat beside him. “I’ve been briefed in on what happened yesterday. Tom and I have a daughter who lives in California, so we don’t get to see her or our grandson too often. We can take Emily out to the stables later and give her a riding lesson. You don’t need to worry about her. Just try to concentrate on yourself.”
“I think looking after Emily will help keep me busy,” Pete said, looking away from Monica’s concerned gaze.
“Have you ever ridden a horse?” Monica asked.
“No,” Pete laughed. “And I’m not sure I intend to start. I’ll come over when Emily is ready. I should go and check on her now.”
“One of the guards is outside her room. He’ll let us know when she’s awake.” Monica gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. “You go get freshened up, and I’ll make a start on breakfast.”
***
A soft breeze drifted across pasture surrounding the farmhouse. It carried a chill that touched the nerves of the agents on patrol. In pairs, they stopped walking and looked out over the flat land. The safe house sat in an area where trees and bushes had been removed, giving an excellent field of vision. No vehicle or person could approach within a half-mile without being seen during the day or picked up on thermal imaging at night. The single access road ran dead straight, each side bordered by a drainage ditch just deep enough to prevent vehicles from leaving the road and cutting across the grass. The farmhouse itself, a two-storey wood construction, had been lined with steel and kevlar panels for additional security. Windows were bullet-proof glass, and each one provided overlapping cover for defensive fire.
The farm buildings were arranged in a pattern to make any attackers follow routes towards the farmhouse that formed killing zones by the placement of anti-personnel mines a
long the ground lines of the barns and workshops. They could be set to proximity detonation if attackers came to close or discharged by observers in the control room. The farmhouse windows also looked straight down these routes, and they created what the men guarding the property nicknamed ‘sniper’s alley’.
The breeze eddied and swirled, turning like a ballerina as it danced across the hard-standing of the farmyard and touched the walls of the house, exploring them with invisible fingers. On the edge of the wind, just beyond the cold, lay a scent of decay. The guards noticed it and exchanged glances. Strange smells weren’t unheard of in this part of the world. Manure, silage, dead animals, they all contributed something to the atmosphere, and the land around the farm stretched unbroken for miles so the smell could be coming from anywhere.
But the men guarding the farm had served in some of the hardest environments on Earth before joining the Department of Special Investigations. Whatever they had seen and experienced before couldn’t prepare them for the true evil they had faced since. Now every single one of them was aware of elements beyond their world. Any sight, sound or smell out of the ordinary could be a warning of approaching danger, especially at a safe-house where a 13-year-old girl mourned the death of her mother.
The breeze found gaps to gain entry into the house. Splits in the boarding, hairline cracks between window frame and wall. Now the breeze became a draught, searching through rooms, squeezing beneath doors. Kitchen and study, hallway and stairs, landing and bedrooms. The cold air touched the sleeping form of a child and made her shiver. It lingered there, observing her for a moment before it withdrew. Out of the bedroom, down the stairs, seeping through cracks and crevices until it could spin away across the farmland.
The guards felt the temperature rise and the scent of corruption fade. They remained alert. The word went around. Something is coming. Something bad.
Chapter Twelve
Darkness plays tricks on the mind. Alex saw motes of light drift across his vision. They moved with precision. Left, right, up and down. He tried to ignore them, thinking that he was being drawn into madness by the gods who came and went at regular intervals. More psychics hung near him, their spirits battered and broken. Some he knew, others were strangers. Few communicated with him. Those that did gave similar versions of events.
The Tomb (Scarrett & Kramer Book 3) Page 21
