Midnight Secrets

by Lisa Marie Rice

  “Ah. Okay. In Washington?”

  Blake closed his eyes. Kearns would be the next to go. He wasn’t smart enough to take part in phase two, let alone phases three and four. “No, where her nest is.”

  Portland.

  “Nest nest?”

  Meaning—in her home?

  “Any objections?” Blake asked coldly.

  “Well...she, um, seems to have made friends with a—a lot of people on her street. Maybe they’d report right away if something—something happens to her. Or someone might...interfere. I think we should, um, isolate her.”

  “None of that was in your reports. That she had made friends on her street.”

  “No, um. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

  A small vein throbbed in Blake’s temple. At the first opportunity, Kearns was gone. But for the moment, Kearns was on the ground and right now, Blake felt that he should be moving fast. Eliminate this small threat before it grew into a big threat.

  “Okay. I’ll call her before the meeting and say I have to meet her downtown. Say at the bar of the Hotel Monaco. In the meantime, book a room in her name at the cheapest motel you can find. Here’s her credit card information—” Blake read off Isabel’s VISA number. He kept close tabs on her. It pleased him that she had very little in her checking and savings accounts. “I’ll email you a prescription for twenty capsules of Trevilor. Little Miss Dove is going to have a sad ending. Any questions?”

  He’d better not have questions.

  “No, sir.”

  Next Blake spoke to his pilot and arranged a noon departure for Portland, a six-hour flight, arrival 3:00 p.m. local time. Plenty of time to get set up. He’d arrange for a 5:00 p.m. meeting.

  Once Isabel was eliminated he’d fly straight back to DC, where at least four people would swear in court that he’d never left.

  He paid them more than enough for a little perjury.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Comms check, again,” Joe ordered.

  Isabel didn’t complain, didn’t roll her eyes. As if she’d been an undercover agent for the past ten years, she simply ran through their systems one more time. The tenth time. Eyes focused, no wasted movements, completely serious.

  An operator.

  “Check,” Felicity said.

  Okay. It was late afternoon and they were in the back of Three Windows and Jacko’s friend had been absolutely ace. They had the placed fully wired. Nothing was going to happen that they didn’t know about. Joe had personally tested the metal detector at the front door, going through again and again with a weapon, with a knife, with knuckle-dusters. You couldn’t tell it was a metal detector and what he was carrying only showed up on Felicity’s screen at the back.

  The metal detector worked.

  If the fucker showed up with a fucking metal toothpick Joe was going to be all over him, he didn’t give a fuck if he blew the op.

  The place was positively seeded with mini-mikes, almost invisible, incredibly powerful. Several were going to be piped into Bud Morrison’s office, an ASI friend. Former marine, now head of the homicide department and slated to become police commissioner soon.

  Bud was chomping at the bit, as was Nick. Neither of them was territorial, either. Both of them just wanted to take that fucker down. They didn’t care who got the credit.

  This was a team just raring to go. Even ex-CIA guy was communicating with Felicity via computer.

  Everything depended on Isabel. He shot her a glance. The hot sexy woman he’d made love to last night was gone. In her place was a serious woman willing to risk her life to bring a criminal down.

  They’d gone over the plan again and again and she knew every step, every facet. She’d had Felicity walk her through the eyes and ears they’d have until she understood everything.

  Nick had given her an intro into interrogation techniques and she’d absorbed them quietly. They’d gone through a number of scenarios and in each one, she kept her cool.

  Jacko and Metal were the designated shooters. If Blake so much as touched Isabel they would shoot to maim and stop, not kill. That was a collective decision and Isabel had been hotly opposed to it. She had a shoot to kill policy and it had taken a lot of talking to bring her down.

  She accepted the reasoning—he needed to be alive so he could be interrogated about the conspiracy, so he could name names, so he could point fingers at the moles that had to exist in the US government for something like this to work. She accepted the reasoning but she didn’t like it.

  Isabel looked calm and ready but Joe knew she was out for blood and that scared him. The only thing he could do was be ready to jump in and protect her. That was his designated role. He’d be in the open, just another guy in the bar situated way across the room, to the left. Drinking a beer, back to the room, seemingly absorbed in his tablet just like any other guy watching a game. What he’d be watching was Isabel. There was a camera trained right on her face. They’d worked it out so he had a clear view of everything, down to her eyelashes. It was the only way he could be persuaded to not be sitting next to her.

  “Ten mikes,” Nick’s calm voice sounded in his earbud. Ten minutes to the arrival of Blake. The earbud was invisible. On Joe’s screen, Isabel blinked three times. A prearranged signal for everything’s okay. Blink twice and Joe was pulling his Glock from his shoulder holster, turning and shooting the fuck’s brains out from across the room. No, he told himself. As satisfactory as it would be to paint the walls with the inside of Blake’s head, he wouldn’t shoot to kill. Wouldn’t. No, sir.

  Nick was with Felicity in Jacko’s friend’s office, monitoring everything. He’d brought along handcuffs, just waiting for Blake to slip up.

  Joe watched Isabel’s face on his iPad. Before an op he was as focused as a human could get. Focused but with situational awareness. He realized finally that he was completely out of the game because he found it hard to tear his eyes from her face. It was the face of his future.

  He was going to grow old with this woman. He was going to have kids with her, a family, and they’d eat really, really well for all the years of their lives. He’d work for ASI because they were great but they wouldn’t have every part of him the way the navy had. Because his heart belonged to Isabel.

  He shook himself. This op was the most important one of his life because his life was sitting quietly on a chair near the window waiting to accuse a monster of mass murder and treason. A man like that would have no problems killing Isabel.

  So he had to stop thinking of her and go over lines of fire and escape routes in his head.

  “Five mikes.”

  So far everything had gone smooth as shit through a goose. Joe had been by her side when she took Blake’s call at ASI. Felicity had routed it so that it looked like her cell was being used in her house.

  When Blake had called, Isabel had been brilliant. She sounded flustered, depressed. Bathroom pipes broken, water everywhere. Let’s meet somewhere nice. It’s been a long time since I’ve been anywhere nice. Hotel Monaco? No, it’s really busy. Let’s meet at this nice restaurant I know, Three Windows. In an hour. I’ll finish up here and meet you there.

  “Contact,” Nick said quietly in his ear and sure enough, on Joe’s monitor the tall, very elegant figure of Hector Blake appeared in the doorway and walked over to Isabel. The metal detector didn’t register any weaponry.

  He was wearing a full length black overcoat and a black fedora, sunglasses. A thick scarf covered the bottom of his face.

  Joe shifted uneasily. If he didn’t take that scarf off there would be no facial recognition possible.

  He stopped by Isabel’s table, sat down, took her hand. They were talking. Isabel looked so sad, so vulnerable.

  Joe’s skin prickled.

  And then the lights went out. His tablet went dark.

  * * *

  “Hello, Isabel,” Hector Blake said as he stood next to her.

  During the planning, Isabel had promised herself she would remain
cool, not go for his throat. Not stare at him with hatred. And while promising herself that, she hoped she could do it.

  She could. She could stay in character.

  She gave a small smile, dipping her head. Sad Isabel, seeing an old family friend. “Hello, Uncle Hector. Nice to see you.”

  He sat across from her, without taking off his hat or unwinding his scarf. A prickle of alarm ran through her. If he was planning on staying only a few minutes she wouldn’t have time to get him to incriminate himself.

  “You’re not staying?” she asked, indicating hat and scarf.

  He didn’t answer. He simply reached across for her hand. Oh. So this was how they were going to play it? Dear Uncle Hector, holding her hand while saying all over again how sorry he was she’d lost her family?

  He held her hand in his gloved one, palm up, thumb over her inner wrist.

  “Your heart is racing,” he said, with a cold smile. “You know, don’t you?”

  Oh. So that was how it was going to be.

  “Yes.” She gave him the cool smile right back. “I know everything. And you’re not getting away with it.” Her smile broadened. “Guaranteed.”

  The lights went out.

  Isabel looked around briefly and felt something cold against her wrist. She looked down and saw a white ceramic knife with a very sharp blade pressed against the inside of her wrist. Held by Hector in such a way that with one swipe he could slice right through the artery. She’d bleed out in seconds.

  She looked back up into that face, not bothering to hide her hatred anymore. She could barely see him. It was dark in the restaurant, people murmuring, stirring. She blinked twice.

  “I am getting away with it. I’m not here at all. I have all sorts of people back in Washington willing to swear in court that I am there. Not that it will ever come to that, of course.”

  “People know you are here.”

  “Yes?” He looked around. “I don’t see anyone I know. If you have friends who are watching this over a video feed, too bad. Because I just killed everything with a chip in a hundred-yard radius. Nothing is being recorded, nothing will be recorded and you—” He pressed down hard on the sharp knife and she felt him slice through the skin. Blood welled up at the knife’s edge. “You are coming with me.”

  “No.” She looked up steadily at him.

  “Developed a backbone, have we?” Hector murmured, words muffled by the scarf. “Be the first one in your family. Just so you know, I have a sniper watching through night vision optics and he can see perfectly clearly. The first person who comes up to you gets one right through the head. Maybe a waiter, maybe someone you’ve recruited, maybe even a friend, but someone gets killed. So move.”

  Joe was seconds from running over to her.

  Heart thudding, Isabel stood.

  Hector was good. He managed to keep the knife at her wrist without it looking awkward. They walked to the door and Isabel kept her gaze down, at the floor. A sign she desperately hoped Joe would interpret as stay away!

  Hector had already cost her everyone she loved. Mother, father, brothers. Aunts, uncles, cousins. She wasn’t going to give him Joe, too. Not sweet, brave Joe. She’d rather die herself.

  It was dark inside the restaurant and outside, too. No lights at all. If Joe was coming out, he was coming out blind. He’d shown her night vision and she knew that whoever was out there with a sniper rifle could see just fine, and they were blind.

  Whatever Hector’s plan was, though, Joe and his guys were smarter.

  They were crossing the threshold of the restaurant, Hector pushing open the door into the cold night. Behind her, restaurant patrons were murmuring. She knew her team would be scrambling to deal with the situation.

  “Forget about anyone coming after you,” Hector said, bending toward her. An uncle out with his beloved niece. “I just set off a limited EMP. That same EMP that killed video cameras and cell phones and any tracking devices you might have on you? It also killed any vehicles with electric circuitry. But I have acquired a vehicle that doesn’t have electronic circuitry. Ah, here we are.”

  A dilapidated van screeched into the driveway, backed up. The rear doors opened and before Isabel could react, she was shoved inside and Hector climbed up next to her.

  The doors were pulled shut and she bounced against the hard steel wall as the van took a corner and sped away.

  Hector was wrapping something soft around her wrists in a figure eight. He knotted the ends and let her go. She tried to free herself but they were like handcuffs, only soft.

  The van was moving fast. Every few minutes the driver took a sharp turn. She was lost in minutes.

  Hector was looking out the back window with binoculars. “Don’t even think of trying to get away, my dear.” He put the binoculars down and spoke to the driver. “Nobody following us. We’re clear.”

  She was trapped in a van with a man who wanted to kill her. Who had killed her entire family. Nobody knew where she was and no one could find her.

  Hector was going to win this.

  * * *

  “Fuck!” Joe wanted to scream but he knew he couldn’t. Silence on an op had been beaten into him. He was blind. And deaf, he discovered as he tapped his earbud and got a whole lot of nothing. Complete silence. He couldn’t go running toward Isabel in the restaurant, that would tip Blake off.

  What was happening out there?

  Joe had to find out the old-fashioned way. By looking. Actual looking with his actual eyes because sure as fuck his electronic eyes were shot to hell.

  He peered around a corner, trying to find Isabel and Blake in the sudden gloom in the restaurant. People were standing up, having patiently waited for the lights to come on. Now that they weren’t, they were getting agitated.

  With the restaurant-goers milling around he couldn’t see the table at the front windows where Isabel sat. He moved through the diners as quickly and unobtrusively as he could, head on a swivel and as he moved toward the windows he saw Isabel and Blake outside. Who knew what he’d done to convince her to go with him but the fucker was wrong if he thought he was going to be able to kidnap Isabel.

  In a fury, Joe took off, but in the darkness, a couple stumbled in his way and by the time he’d shoved them aside, Isabel was gone. Gone. In an old van with mud on the license plate, red brake lights winking as it took a corner. It had come racing to the entrance and in a second, Blake had pushed Isabel in then climbed in after her.

  He hadn’t had a straight shot otherwise he’d have killed the fucker.

  Joe raced to the back where the crew was.

  “She’s gone!” he shouted.

  Felicity slammed her computer shut. “Damn thing is fried. All comms are down. Must have been some kind of limited EMP. If he killed my computer, he’s going to be sorry.”

  Metal and Jacko ran in, grim-faced, carrying their rifles. “Our vehicles won’t start,” Jacko growled.

  Joe punched a wall. “Contact Bud Morrison! Get a description of that van out in a BOLO!”

  Jacko’s friend Chuck, the owner of the restaurant, held up his hands. “Guys, sorry. The cells are fried and I don’t have a landline. The nearest public pay phone is a mile away. East to Stone Avenue. We’re completely cut off here. And I gotta get out there and deal with the customers.”

  Joe was clenching his jaws so hard it hurt. Even running, it would take them minutes—minutes they didn’t have—to get to the public pay phones. By then Blake would be long gone. Joe had no doubt that they’d be finding Isabel’s dead body somewhere far away, on some roadside, tumbled down a remote hillside or fished out of the river.

  He’d never felt so fucking frustrated. On any op there was always something you could do. But now? Any step could be wrong, waste precious time. It scared the hell out of him.

  For the very first time since he signed up to be a warrior, he didn’t know what to do.

  Metal and Jacko and Nick were looking at him, all three of them with their useless cells in hand
. Felicity was looking at him, too, fingers touching the closed cover of her useless laptop.

  Time was rushing by like a flood, Isabel was getting farther and farther from him with every passing second and he didn’t know what the fuck to do!

  A vehicle slewed to a stop outside the back room, in the loading area, spewing gravel. It was ancient—with more primer than paint, two dented fenders. A jalopy.

  A man got out, tall, with dirty blond dreadlocks. He was moving fast and Joe drew his weapon. The man had an athlete’s body but he looked like a homeless person, clothes rags, boots ancient. Hands and face grimy with dirt. And with a lump on his hip under the filthy long overcoat.

  Was he sent by Blake?

  “Hold it right there! Hands up!” Joe held his Glock two-handed at chest level. If this guy was sent by Blake he was going to kill him where he stood, homeless or not. The guy wasn’t raising his hands. “There are two snipers behind me. You reach for your weapon you’re a dead man.”

  The man was frowning. “Goddammit, we don’t have time for this shit! You let them take Isabel! She’s getting farther from us every damned second.”

  Joe lowered his weapon.

  The bum glared at Joe. “Name’s Jack Delvaux. I’m Isabel’s brother and you’ve been talking to me on the computer. Blake must have used a miniature, controlled-pulse EMP so whatever tags you put on Isabel are useless. But I’ve got a hardened tag on that fucker Blake, so you and your friends hop in, we’re going after the son of a bitch.”

  * * *

  “You’re never going to get away with this.” Isabel kept her voice steady as she rode in the back of the van on a bench set along the side. Hector had been leaning forward conferring with the driver. She couldn’t hear what they were saying over the loud engine noise of the ancient vehicle.

  Hector’s eyebrows rose as he looked back at her. “Oh, but I am going to get away with it. As I told you, I’m in Washington, DC, right now.” He sat back down next to her. “You’ve been rich all your life so you should know this. Money can buy a lot of things, a lot of people.”