Endgame (Last Chance Series)

by Dee Davis

  Again he felt a surge of admiration. Madison Harper was a worthy opponent. Not that he wanted one.

  "Hello, you two. Having a bit of a spat, are we?" Nigel's voice broke between them like ice water, and Gabe turned to face his friend, but not before he saw Madison's hand rise to her throat, the look of relief passing across her face just this side of insulting.

  Damn the woman.

  "We were just discussing Cullen, and his involvement in the murders." Madison stepped around him, all signs of their quarrel successfully banished from her voice. "Gabriel seems convinced that Cullen's been holding out on us. And I was just trying to prove that he was wrong." She shot him a simpering smile. "But as you're no doubt aware, he's not an easy man to convince."

  "Yes. I'm afraid, he's far more the yours-is-not-to-question-why type. But then, I'm told some people seem to prefer that." He shot a knowing glance at the two of them, clearly not fooled for an instant. "Despite that, however, I do hope you'll allow me to interrupt your tete-a-tete. I come bearing gifts." He held up a manila envelope.

  "The phone records." Gabe reached for the envelope, but Nigel shifted, moving it just out of reach.

  "Now, now, surely you're not going to rob me of my triumph." His eyes sparkled with mischief, and Gabe contained a sigh of frustration.

  "Nigel, I have no idea what you're talking about." Madison was frowning at the two of them. "Care to enlighten me?"

  "With pleasure." He waved magnanimously at the table behind them, and they all moved to have a seat. "Besides discovering that Candace Patterson had an amazingly dysfunctional family, we also learned that she'd been called away from work by a telephone call the night she died." He patted the envelope.

  "And you've brought us the record of her calls." Madison nodded with a smile, clearly up to speed. "So what does it have to say?"

  "There are two incoming phone calls that fit the time frame, the first at nine forty-two and the second ten minutes later. Each lasted less than three minutes." Nigel opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper. "The first was from a number in the East Village. I'm having it traced, and the second was from here."

  "Our operations room?" Madison took the sheet of paper, scanning the contents.

  "No. The call went through the main switchboard at Dreamscape."

  "Cullen." Gabe said the name softly, almost as an afterthought, but Madison heard him, her gaze colliding with his.

  "We don't know that." She chewed the side of her lip, returning her attention to the sheet of paper. "This isn't a very good copy."

  "It's the best I could do." Nigel shrugged. "And I almost didn't get that. There was the little matter of authorization. They weren't all that impressed with my British credentials. I'm afraid I had to resort to flattery or we'd have had nothing at all."

  "All that matters is that you got it." Gabe reached for the page, taking in the two highlighted lines. "And that we've got the numbers. Based on what Lex Rymon said, I think we can be fairly certain the first call is the one he referenced. She must have gotten the second after she left."

  "So either one could be the killer," Nigel said.

  "Well, Lex said the first call made her angry, right?" Madison looked to Gabe for confirmation. "And then she ran out of the dining room. So that makes caller number one look pretty darn suspicious."

  "And since she was working with Cullen, a call from Dreamscape isn't all that unusual." Nigel said.

  "But it's certainly not conclusive. The second caller could be the one."

  "Is there a telephone log here at Dreamscape?" Madison asked, propping her elbow on the table, resting her chin against her palm.

  "No. At least not at the switchboard. The phone company has one. But unfortunately it doesn't show extensions," Nigel said.

  "So it could have been anyone." Gabe fought to control his frustration.

  "Well, that late at night there has to at least be a record of who was in the building." Madison frowned.

  "One step ahead of you," Nigel said, pulling more papers from the envelope. "There were around sixty people present that night. And over a third of them have had some contact with the accord or the consortium."

  "It might be worth running the list by Cullen." This from Madison. Gabe frowned as their gazes met and held. "He might be able to shed light on who did or didn't know Candace."

  "Maybe. Unless, of course, he's the one who made the call," Gabe said, knowing he was baiting her.

  "I'm sure he'd have told us if he'd talked to her." Her voice conveyed an assurance that wasn't reflected in her eyes. It was a solid attempt at defense, but he could see she had doubts. He ought to count it as a victory, but somehow the taste of success had turned rancid in view of her distress.

  Nigel cleared his throat. "Why don't I check on it? Under the circumstances, it might be better than one of you taking the old boy on."

  Gabe started to argue, then lifted a hand in surrender. Maybe Nigel was right. Hell, maybe Madison was right. Maybe he was still holding on to his resentment. If Cullen hadn't gotten them all involved...

  But that was stupid. What happened hadn't been Cullen's fault. No, that blame rested securely on Gabe's shoulders. Nothing would change that fact, and he'd do well to remember it.

  "Fine," he said, pulling his thoughts from the past. "You handle it. But don't let Cullen snow you with rhetoric. It's his specialty."

  "I think I can handle him." Nigel grinned. "After all I've been known to turn a pretty phrase when the moment called for it."

  "Fine. And in the meantime we'll wait to ID the first number."

  "No problem there." Harrison strode through the doors, carrying his laptop. "Ran into Nigel in Starbucks," he said by way of explanation. "And I've got an address."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE BUILDING WAS a walk-up, the kind with boxes for rooms that sometimes rented by the hour. Gabriel was leading the way, Nigel manning the alley, with Payton watching the entrance.

  Madison had Gabriel's back, much to his annoyance. And after the sixth flight of stairs, she had to admit the victory was losing its thrill. He'd hardly said a word on the way over, not an unusual state of affairs, but the tension between them had only increased with their most recent battle.

  Something about the man just brought out the worst in her. When Nigel had interrupted earlier, she'd felt as if she'd been rescued from the maw of a tiger, yet at the same time she'd resented the Brit for intruding. Hell of a conundrum, and to further complicate matters, now she was climbing stairs with the man—guns drawn.

  As they rounded the corner onto the sixth-floor landing, Gabriel motioned her against the wall. Apartment 6A was just ahead of them, the "A" hanging perpendicular to the six. According to Harrison's information the rooms were rented to a W. Smith, the same name used in Charlottesville.

  Obviously not a coincidence. Which probably meant there wouldn't be anything to find. After all, the phone call had emanated from a cell phone, and even though this was the address of record, it could easily be a fake. Still, there was no sense in charging in unprepared.

  She slid her back along the wall, trying not to think about the grime embedded there. They inched forward until Gabriel was beside the door. Quickly he knocked, and Madison held her breath, counting to ten as they waited for a response.

  Nothing.

  Gabriel knocked again, and Madison's heart pounded in rhythm against her ribs. This time there was a clatter, followed by the unmistakable scrape of a window opening. With a nod in her direction, Gabriel moved to face the door, Sig Sauer ready.

  He kicked once, the door splintering open, and stepped into the apartment, Madison following on his heels. There were two rooms, and as Gabriel rushed the living room window, she released the safety on the Glock and swung into the bedroom. The bedclothes were scattered, as if someone had left them in a hurry. And the curtains in the window swung ominously in the breeze.

  Hopping over the bed, she crossed to the window. The fire escape had been releas
ed, the ladder taunting her. With a groan of frustration, she threw a leg over the sill and was out on the grating in less than a minute. Still, that, combined with valuable time lost in the hall, meant whoever had been in the apartment had a heck of lead.

  She was halfway down the first ladder when she heard Gabriel calling from above. At first she thought he was calling to her, but then she realized Nigel was standing below her.

  "If he came this way he's a bloody ghost. He's not down here," Nigel responded, frustration evident in his tone.

  The man must have gone up. Madison started moving in that direction, only to find that Gabriel had the same idea, his big body blocking her way as he vaulted the windowsill. Swallowing her irritation, she began climbing behind him, eventually emerging on the roof of the eight-story building.

  The wind blew cold across her face as she scanned the flat open space, a soft cooing, accompanied by a flutter of wings, the only sign of life. Pigeons. If anyone had been here, they were long gone.

  "There's nobody here." Gabriel spoke from near a chimney stack, his attention on the neighboring roofs. To the north the adjacent building rose straight up, a good ten stories higher than its neighbor. No escape that way.

  Madison nodded, and made her way over to the door that led back into the building. It was locked, and from the looks of it rusted shut to boot, probably breaking all kinds of city codes in the process. "He didn't get out this way." She rattled the padlock for emphasis.

  Gabriel nodded, crossing to the opposite corner. "He could have jumped here, but I don't like his odds."

  She joined him at the edge of the roof, eyeing the twelve-foot gap separating the two apartment buildings. There were no other ladders, the fire escape and the door providing the only real exits. "Maybe he didn't come up."

  Gabriel shook his head. "Nigel would have seen him."

  "Maybe." She looked down into the alley. "But there's a door down there and a couple of windows. He could have slipped through one of those."

  Gabriel holstered his gun and blew out a breath. "Whatever he did, he's gone now."

  "Damn it, Gabriel, if you hadn't been in my way." She spit out the words, her anger not at him but the missed target.

  "What? You'd have flown up the ladder? He was already gone. Nothing either of us did would have made a difference."

  He was right, of course, and in light of his more than reasonable tone her anger deflated. "I suppose you're right. So what now? Search the room?"

  "Yeah. And we'll check the alley." He started to turn back toward the fire escape, then stopped, his dark brows drawing together. "You were good in there."

  Coming from anyone else she'd have taken it in stride. After all, she'd trained with the best, but coming from him it was different, and she couldn't find words, just stood there staring stupidly.

  For a moment they were connecting on levels that had nothing to do with chasing suspects, or following procedure. And then it was gone as if it had never existed, the cold wind blowing it away in a whisper of fall leaves.

  "We'd better get down." He started his descent, and she stood for a moment looking out over the rooftops, knowing that something had changed between them, something core-deep and unimpeachable. The thought elated her. And scared her to death.

  And so, in the way that she'd handled most everything tricky in her life, she chose to ignore it, instead concentrating on matters at hand. With a sigh, she abandoned the roof to follow him down the ladder.

  *****

  "YOU SAW NOTHING at all?" Gabe tried to contain his fury. This was quickly turning into a farce, someone leading them around by the nose with gleeful intent.

  "Not a thing. The alley was deserted the whole time." Nigel sat on the arm of what passed for a sofa.

  The apartment was furnished, although the word was more a euphemism than a reality. There was a table and a couple of chairs, along with the decrepit sofa and the mattress on the floor of the bedroom.

  "No other means of egress? What about the windows and door opening off the alley?"

  "All duly checked, I assure you. The door was locked, and two of the windows were barred. The third window only opened about six inches, which means unless the man was a contortionist he didn't get out that way."

  "He didn't come my way, either." Payton leaned, arms crossed, against the battered table. "The only way out was the front door or the alley and the only person I saw there was Nigel."

  "So that leaves the roof," Madison said with a sigh. "Except that there wasn't any sign of him up there."

  "Well, he had to have gone somewhere." Gabe ran a hand through his hair, knowing his frustration showed in every gesture. But it couldn't be helped. There were answers to be found. And, damn it, he was in charge of finding them.

  "If he was here at all." Payton put voice to the thought they'd all been avoiding.

  "Someone was here," Madison insisted, tilting her head toward the bedroom. "I definitely heard the window go up."

  "I heard it, too," Gabe confirmed.

  "But did you actually see anyone?" Payton asked.

  They shook their heads almost in tandem. "Still, the window didn't open itself. Someone was here," Madison said, walking over to the bedroom door. Tracy's techs were still in there, scouring the room for tangible evidence of the room's occupant.

  "Someone who's obviously having a bit of fun at our expense." Nigel frowned. "Anything from the bedroom?"

  As if on command, one of the techs walked into the living room. "Place is clean. No personal possessions. No hint of occupancy at all. And to top it off the room's been wiped down."

  "So no fingerprints." Gabe's comment was meant to be rhetorical, but the tech answered anyway.

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "Although they're still dusting the window ledge and the fire escape."

  "I doubt you'll find anything there but my prints," Madison said, an edge of disgust in her voice. "I wasn't exactly careful when I hopped over the sill."

  "You were just doing your job." Gabe wasn't sure why he felt the need to reassure her, but now that it was said there was no taking it back. "Besides, I was right behind you."

  Madison's eyes widened in surprise, the look on her face almost worth the price of his conciliatory action.

  "So where the hell do we go from here?" Nigel asked. "We've got a string of seven dead, all of them invested, to more or less degree, in the consortium and the accord. M.O. seems to change at random, repeating at will, and then veering off into something different, the latest out-and-out homicide. We've got a bloke hacking into our computer conceivably from Virginia, but then the man turns up on the phone records of our seventh victim—here in New York. And when we try to track him down he disappears like Casper the fucking ghost."

  "What's interesting to me," Payton said, "is the fact that there's nothing here. Nothing personal. So if the guy really rented the place, where's his stuff?"

  "He moved out." Gabe shrugged.

  "And then what?" Payton asked. "Came back to wait for us to drop by? I find it difficult enough to accept that he just vanished into thin air. When you add luggage to the picture, I'd say it's impossible."

  "There's no reason to believe he'd have had personal effects here. In fact, we don't even know that he was here at all. Maybe we scared a vagrant," Gabe said. The option had a certain merit. "People like that survive by knowing how to fade into the woodwork."

  "So you're saying our target, if he ever was here, was long gone by the time we arrived. And that all we've been doing is chasing our tails?" Payton flushed with anger, his scar white by contrast.

  "It's possible." Gabe lifted his hands in defeat.

  "It seems to me then that the pressing issue is to figure out who W. Smith is." Madison stood up. "So far he's done a pretty good job of covering his tracks. But everyone makes mistakes. We just need to find his weakness."

  "Before someone else winds up dead," Nigel agreed.

  *****

  "SO WHAT HAPPENED?" Harrison was
following her around like an eager puppy dog, and although normally she was glad of his company, at the moment she needed time to think. To try and find logic where seemingly there was none.

  "He got away," she said with a sigh, "or was never there to begin with."

  "Was the apartment registered to W. Smith?"

  "Yes. Three months, paid in cash." They were walking along the corridor to Cullen's office. Madison hadn't even known she was going there, but suddenly she liked the idea. Surely Cullen could help her make heads or tails of the whole thing.

  "Did the manager give you a description?"

  "What?" Madison pulled herself out of her thoughts, scrambling to remember what Harrison had asked. "I'm sorry, I'm a bit distracted."

  "I asked if you got a description."

  "From the manager? No. Everything was done by mail. It wasn't exactly a check-your-credentials kind of place."

  "So we really have nothing." Harrison's frustration mirrored her own.

  "That's not true." She laid a hand on his arm. "Thanks to you we have a connection between the hacker and Candace Patterson. She obviously knew him. And I think it's valid to assume that he may have killed her. That's a heck of a lot more than we knew this morning."

  "Yes, but it still doesn't get us any closer to finding the man. And if the pattern holds true, there will be more murders."

  "Any luck with the alias angle?"

  Harrison shook his head. "I'm still working on it. And Payton has feelers out with some of his colleagues. But nothing so far. Gabe's given me access to the antiterrorism database. I suspect it's got more concise information than anything I've been able to look at so far."

  "I'm surprised he agreed. The man guards his territory with the ferocity of a pit bull."

  "Maybe where you're concerned." Harrison's smile was sly. "But he's seemed happy enough to help me. Maybe it's all in the way one asks." His tone was teasing, but there was a message there, as well.

  Something about drawing flies with honey...

  She shook the thought away. "Have you started your search?" The question was brusque, but then Harrison had been baiting her.