Sabotage: A Reece Culver Thriller - Book 2

by Bryan Koepke

  He got to his feet and ran toward the car. He was thankful that he’d succeeded in out running them, but even more than that, he was pretty sure this was the place.

  Chapter 41

  “So, Mr. Culver, I took you through the ranks of the executives at Draecon that day we were at lunch. If you were going to guess who was trying to sabotage the company, who would you guess was behind it?” Karl said.

  “Sabotage, that seems like an awfully strong word. What makes you think that’s going on?” Reece said.

  “Well, you can use any word you’d like, but it’s obvious that someone has their eyes on Draecon, on the executives, and now on me,” Karl said.

  “It does, but we’re half a world away from London now,” Reece said as he sat beside Marie, watching the crowd of patrons coming and going in the restaurant. He thought about his private investigations office a short distance away, in a part of Denver with an entirely different feel to it than this posh setting. He was out of his element and he knew it.

  “You know, Mr. Rhodes. If anyone were able to answer that question, I’d imagine it would be you,” Reece said.

  “Oh, come on now. Let’s stop talking about company business. We’re here in Colorado now. Let’s take it easy and enjoy ourselves,” Candice said.

  Outside at the curb, a valet climbed into a black Bentley coupe. Karl got up from the table. “Excuse me.”

  Candice continued talking, and Reece was amazed to see that Marie was actually listening to the woman. She was using Karl’s absence as a perfect time to tell Marie about one of her favorite lingerie shops. Reece tried his best to ignore the women’s chatter but couldn’t help notice when Candice reached into her dress, tugging at the straps of her bra to show Marie the material. He tried not to be obvious as he watched.

  “You and I should go there tomorrow,” Candice said. Reece rose from the table, figuring now, before their food arrived, was a good time to visit the men’s room. He hadn’t taken five steps when he heard Candice’s high-pitched voice: “Your new guy Reece, he’s kind of cute.”

  He smiled, half expecting Marie to reach out and smack the other woman, but he continued toward the restroom. Once inside, he spotted the urinals and he heard Karl’s deep voice from inside one of the stalls.

  “Yeah, I figured as well, but I didn’t expect the thing with the board. Thanks for filling me in on that.”

  Reece walked up to the urinal closest to the stalls and listened.

  “Okay, then. St. Thomas sounds great. We’ll see you then,” Karl said.

  *

  The next morning, Reece stepped out of the taxicab on Denver’s Colfax Avenue after paying and walked past Chui’s Chinese. Being there brought a fondness to him. The part of Denver he called home had a flavor to it like no other. At night you had to be alert. In the daytime you were sure to be entertained by a mixture of the homeless, prostitutes, and poor souls on the verge of becoming one or the other.

  Denver was tame in comparison to other U.S. cities, but it had its good and bad just like every other place. The owner of the Chinese place had been Reece’s landlord for the past several years, and they’d developed an understanding about the ups and downs of Reece’s investigative business. Larry Chui’s daughter Noi had taken care of Reece’s dog Manchego more times than he could remember.

  He rounded the corner of the red brick building and ran up the steep stairway that led up to his third-floor apartment. Once inside, the interior felt empty without Manchego around to beg for treats, or bark at the back door. At least the canine was in good hands at the home of a friend. With a push of a button on the front of the CD player the lyrics of Willie Nelson’s “Cryin’ in the Rain” brought an instant smile to Reece’s face.

  After dumping out all of his dirty clothes into a big pile in the closet, Reece started packing what clean clothing he could find left back into his duffel. Next he went to the front room and descended the circular steel staircase that led to his second-floor office. The red light on the answering machine indicated he had no phone messages.

  Reece went back up to the apartment and pulled his gun case with his favorite Smith & Wesson .357 P handgun off the top of the refrigerator, where it rested next to the box with his Stetson cowboy hat. He thought about grabbing it and then decided to pass, since the car would be crowded with all four of them.

  With my luck that bimbo will sit on my hat and ruin it. No, I’ll leave it where it’s safe.

  Besides, these weren’t western type of people. He thought about Marie and wondered what she’d look like in a pair of tight wrangler jeans, a bright red cowgirl hat, and a pair of boots.

  Probably pretty damn good. I’ve got to get her out onto a dance floor and teach her the two-step.

  *

  With everything loaded into the back of his 1970 Pontiac GTO, Reece shifted the transmission into drive and eased out of the parking lot and made his way a couple of streets south toward Cheeseman Park. The air smelled clean with the side windows down and the sky was a bright blue. He wondered if Marie would like the mountains. He’d loved the fact that she was into trout fishing, and figured she was up for anything he could show her. My kind of woman.

  The parking lot to the west of the luxury high rise where they were staying was only half full now, and Reece found a spot close to the side entrance. The ride up in the elevator was quick, and after walking down the hallway he used the key Candice loaned him to enter the condo.

  Once inside, it was quiet and it took some searching to find Marie alone in the lower level reading a book. She was stretched out on a yellow chaise lounge with her head propped up on several pillows. Marie didn’t notice Reece standing in the doorway, so he decided to see what the others were up to.

  It didn’t take long to locate Karl via his loud voice. The man was standing in a modernistic kitchen, talking to someone on the phone about how they needed to sell several lots now before the price dropped further. Reece entered the kitchen, traded a nod with Karl, and filled one of the green ceramic coffee mugs before heading out onto the wooden deck, where Candice was sitting on the far end. In the distance he could smell fresh-cut grass. Groups of people were tossing Frisbees or throwing footballs over the large expanse of the park’s green grass. Houses and buildings dotted the perimeter on all sides.

  “Hi, Reece, was everything okay at your apartment?” Candice said.

  “Yeah it was fine. I brought my car back, the one I told you about earlier. I thought we can all go for a drive this afternoon and do some sightseeing.”

  “I’d love to see a GTO. My father used to show me pictures of the muscle cars. His favorite was the 1963 Corvette. He had two of them. One red jalopy for show that he never drove, and one in baby blue that we used to zoom around the French Rivera back when I was a young girl.”

  Reece listened and thought how nice that must have been. What a life these people have.

  Candice dug a pack of cigarettes out of her cream-colored bag and put one in her mouth. “Do you have a light?”

  “No,” Reece said, hating cigarette smoke.

  She started rummaging through her purse. At last she pulled her hand out in an exaggerated motion, exposing an expensive-looking stainless steel lighter more suited for a cigar than a cigarette. He sniffed at the smoke as she waved the torch underneath the Marlboro Ultra Light 100. Reece had never pictured Candice as the smoking type.

  “Wow, Did you see that?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “It was a flash of light. There it is again, from that high rise across the way,” she said, pointing. “Must just be the way the sun is hitting the side of that building. Do you see it?”

  She walked over to the rail of the deck, trying to see better. Reece watched with distaste as a cloud of smoke drifted across in front of him.

  “Come here and look at this, Reece. Tell me what you think it is?”

  He walked past the porch furniture and came up next to her. She was pointing toward a distant building on t
he far side of the park. Tall trees swayed in the breeze, and he searched for what she was seeing.

  “It was near the top of that building over there,” she said.

  He dropped his chin toward her extended arm and followed the tip of her finger toward a building on the far side of the park. He could hear her breathing and smelled Candice’s perfume. She took in a deep breath and the odor of the cigarette’s burning paper and tobacco wafted toward him.

  “There, there it is again,” she said.

  All of a sudden he did. “Shit, it’s a rifle scope! Duck!” Reece said, pulling down sharply on her arm. He took her down with him, landing hard on the deck.

  “Boom, boom, boom,” several shots rang out.

  The glass wall of the condo adjacent the kitchen shattered, pelting the deck with shards of glass.

  “Stay down!” Reece yelled. He was in emergency mode, and his thoughts turned instantly to Marie Rhodes. Where is she? Is she safe?

  “Holy bloody hell,” Candice yelled, resisting his grasp as she tried to stand back up. He felt her twisting and pulled sideways to keep her in place.

  “What about Karl?” she said.

  “I’ll get to him. Now stay down. Don’t move or you could be next,” Reece growled in a low voice. “Stay here, behind the sofa,” he said as he moved toward the splattered remains of the window. “Stay low and don’t move.”

  Chapter 42

  Once past the dangerous litter of shattered glass Reece shimmied to the kitchen on his belly like a worm slithering across the tile floor. His shirt rode high as he went, and the chill of the terracotta felt cold against his bare skin. Marie was sobbing and moaning. He knew it was bad, but wondered how bad.

  She was standing over Karl with both of her palms flat against the sides of her face.

  “Get down, you’re not safe,” he yelled in the kindest voice he could summon. She instantly dropped down.

  Up on his knees now he surged forward and wrapped his arms around her. Their lips met and her wet tears dampened his face. Reece was so thankful that she’d been spared. They pulled apart and he bent down examining Karl Rhodes.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Marie said in a soft voice that cracked. She sniffed, trying to gain her composure, but seeing the man she once loved there lying on the kitchen floor with a growing puddle of blood flowing from the side of the head was too much. “Oh, God, do something,” she said.

  Reece grabbed one of the fancy pale blue kitchen towels, spaced evenly on the ceramic red rail of the oven, and pressed it against Karl’s skull in an attempt to stanch the flow of blood. He reached with his left hand to the wrist of Karl’s arm and smiled when he felt the solid thump, thump, thump of the man’s beating heart.

  “He’s going to be fine. There’s a strong pulse,” Reece said. “The head is very porous and often times the amount of blood lost is far greater than the extent of the injury.”

  While serving the U.S. Air Force Security Police he’d had the initial medical training all SP’s receive, and more times than he could count since then the basics he’d learned had served him well.

  “Oh, thank god,” Marie said, breaking into a loud exhibition of sobbing.

  Reece held the towel on Karl’s wound, wondering if when the man went down he’d hit his head on the solid floor and knocked himself out.

  “How about Candice?” Marie said.

  “She’ll be fine as long as she stays put,” Reece said, knowing from what he’d experienced of the younger woman over the past several days that she wasn’t good at following directions.

  He wiped Karl’s forehead, clearing away most of the blood. Rhodes had gotten lucky. The bullet had only grazed his scalp. It left a narrow surface wound a little deeper than a scratch, but nothing a couple of butterfly Band-Aids wouldn’t cure.

  “Can you get some water?” Reece said. Marie scrambled over, soaked a towel from the handle of the oven, and began dabbing at the wound.

  “You’re right, it’s just a scrape across the top of his head,” she said, relieved.

  “Stay here behind the counter with him on the floor. Don’t stand up for any reason. It’s not safe. I’ll be right back.”

  Chapter 43

  Julian stuck his Sig Sauer into the right holster and the 9 mm Glock in the left. He looked like someone out for a jog in Denver’s Cheeseman Park, except for the military-issue jacket he wore. He needed it only to conceal his weaponry and ammo. Running felt good. He was off his exercise schedule and it was something he needed to resume.

  He sprinted across the grass in the park. Families were out playing Frisbee and grilling meat on their barbeques. The smell was incredible and he reminded himself he’d soon need food. A dog came up behind him and he heard the yell of its owner.

  “Henry, Henry! Get back here now!” the man called.

  The dog was close and then he heard it break off to the left. Julian’s instincts were sharp and if he’d wanted, he could have turned, tackled the dog, and slit its throat ear to ear before the critter knew what hit him. He’d never understood the need for a pet. The streets of his hometown Seattle were full of soccer moms with baby strollers and yellow labs trotting along at the end of long leashes. In his mind these dogs would have been better served running wild—using their senses to find and kill food.

  His feet slid in the grass as he leaped over the curb to a parking lot and onto a well-manicured lawn in front of a luxury high rise. Looking up, he figured it had to be twenty or more stories. He’d get inside on the east end and take the stairs.

  The lower level was filled with tenants exiting the building. Julian found the door to the stairwell and surging upward, he cleared four flights of stairs before encountering a man, woman, and three children. The wife stared at him as they passed and Julian felt uneasy. The coat he was wearing was out of place in a building like this, but without it she’d have screamed for sure at the sight of his guns.

  Julian lurched into a sprint, counting flights as he ascended the concrete steps. He visualized blood pouring from Karl Rhodes’ head, turning the kitchen floor red, and the image brought a smile. Sweat was coming now and he felt the sting you feel when perspiration hits your eyes.

  Someone would be crying and moaning at Karl’s side. Two shots. One, two, and they’d be dead. Julian had always preferred to cross reach when pulling out a revolver to fire. He’d reach with his right hand across to the left side of his chest, pull the gun and squeeze the trigger of the semi-automatic handgun bringing the loud “pop, pop, pop” to the condo. Blood would fly as each projectile met flesh, taking the remaining three down.

  The bodyguard would have to take the brunt of it. Julian couldn’t stand to let that bastard get in the way one more time. The women would be panicked at the sight of blood oozing from the body of the man they’d both been doing. Oh, what a sweet little love triangle, Julian thought.

  He spotted 20 painted in red above a door as he rounded the railing. Five to go. Reaching behind his back, he found the handle of the army-issue nine-inch bowie knife, the one he’d used to slit the throat of a Saudi prince.

  Twenty-five. This is it. Julian stopped, letting his breathing return to normal. He thought about what lay between him on the east side of the building and the shattered glass window on the outside of the condo a few hundred feet west. With a yank the door was open and he entered the hallway that led to the condo. Quickly, but silently he walked, knowing the authorities would arrive soon. They’d either been called by the condo’s occupants or by a neighbor who heard the shots. He looked over at the elevator and saw the numbers counting down. Was it them? If so, he could still catch up. He picked up his pace, entering the apartment with both guns drawn.

  *

  Julian’s adrenaline was up, something he hadn’t experienced in years. Not a good sign. It was the location. He was at a disadvantage. He hadn’t had time for advanced staging. On a normal job, he’d have gone in the night before. Maybe even while they slept. He’d done that sort of thi
ng before. It was best. No surprises. But this wasn’t normal. It was rushed and hurried. It wasn’t his style, and if Julian didn’t watch out he might get caught, or worse.

  The kitchen floor still bore a smear of blood. He could smell the cordite hanging in the air from his earlier rifle shots—a sign that the ventilation system was off. Julian avoided the area covered in shattered glass. Instead he stopped, listened, and only heard his own labored breathing.

  Downstairs, maybe they’re hiding.

  With both guns out he continued room-to-room and found nothing. He spotted the stairway that led to the room he’d seen the brown-haired woman in earlier when he’d panned the windows of the condo with his binoculars, searching for Karl Rhodes. She’d looked so peaceful sitting on that couch reading a book. It reminded him of what people should look like, but there’d been no time for peace in his life. Julian yearned for a time when he and his female mate had nothing but time to peacefully read in luxury.

  His journey was almost complete. He’d be done soon, especially if the markets kept cooperating and his retirement investments rebounded—working for Alex James and getting paid in diamonds made that time more certain.

  Moving slowly, Julian eased his way down the stairways, ready for action. Ready for the bodyguard to jump out at him. Two trigger pulls. One from each side would do it. That bastard would be gone. The woman would scream, giving up Karl’s hiding place and a few more trigger pulls would end this job.

  But the room was empty. They were gone.

  Damn it.

  Julian went to the window and pulled the small black case he’d brought with him out of his coat. It held a small pair of sporting binoculars he’d picked up the night before.

  There, in the parking lot down below, that green car. That had to be them— four people in one car, a green sedan. It was moving fast from the area. He watched as the car pulled out onto 8th Avenue, traveling west. He wished he’d brought his big military issue binoculars, but they’d have never fit under his coat.