Coit Tower (Abby Kane FBI Thriller - Chasing Chinatown Trilogy Book 3)

by Ty Hutchinson

  The tong was quiet, and he wasn’t sure whether that was good news or bad news. He hoped it wasn’t the latter. Where are Knox and Copeland? Maybe they’re with Abby? Thinking that there might not have been an opportunity yet for the team to strike was a positive thought that Kang steadily clung to.

  He stopped short of the last step to the second floor. The stairs led to an open space—the recreation room. Kang knew Kane had been using one of the offices to conduct her interviews. He peeked around the corner, his gun leading the way. The rec room was empty. After a few steps to the right, he could see that the kitchen was empty too. The larger of the two offices was to the left. The door was open, but the smaller one, farther past the kitchen, had its door closed.

  Kang knew it was tight quarters in there. Busting down the door wasn’t a smart move. Think, dammit! Think! He thought about rallying the other agents, but his gut told him if he didn’t act now, it would be too late. Plus, he didn’t know where they were. A slew of options entered his brain, each no better than the other. Pick one, Kyle. You don’t have all day. He did and hoped he had chosen wisely.

  “Abby,” he called out. He stood about fifteen feet from the door. “There’s another news team that wants to conduct an interview. Shall I bring them up?” Maybe if the team knew someone was outside the door but not a threat, they would answer, or better yet, she would answer.

  Silence.

  “Abby?” He tried once more. The seal of the door cracked, and Kang quickly holstered his weapon and put a smile on his face. The shorter of the two males slipped out through a narrow opening, but Kang wasn’t able to see inside the room from where he stood before the door was closed.

  The man wore gray slacks and a blue sweater and walked toward Kang with his right hand extended. A smile lit up his round face. “I’m Marko, the producer,” he said, his voice lowered. His ice-blue eyes bore into Kang, never straying. “Abby is on camera now. We should finish in ten minutes. I’ll notify you when we’re done, okay?”

  Kang played along and shook Marko’s hand graciously. His hands were rough. Odd for an office worker type of job, he thought. He had a good foot of height on the barrel-chested man. As Marko’s grip loosened, Kang made his move.

  He latched onto the producer’s hand and yanked. At the same instant, Kang’s left hand shot up and connected with the man’s thick neck. Instantly, Marko gasped and choked. He struggled to regain his breath, but Kang didn’t let up. He followed with a head butt so forceful that surely the others in the office had heard the thump.

  Marko lost consciousness, and blood trickled from both nostrils. Kang caught him and lowered him quietly to the floor before slapping a pair of handcuffs on him. You live. Lucky you.

  Kang drew his weapon again. Two more to go. He called out once more, hoping to further his ploy. “All right. Thanks, Marko.” He then walked toward the office, allowing his footsteps to be heard. He needed the others to believe that Marko had gotten rid of him and was returning to the room. He stopped an arm’s reach away from the door and grabbed hold of the knob.

  He pulled the door open as quickly as possible and brought his gun up. Standing in front of him was the taller of the two men with his back turned. He was operating the camera. He couldn’t see the woman, but that didn’t matter. Kang pulled the trigger, and the man’s head jerked forward a bit. A poof of pink sprayed the air just before he dropped to the floor, revealing Kane.

  She was seated in a chair on the other side of the table with her mascara smeared under her left eye. Silver duct tape covered her mouth. Standing next to her was the last of them, the woman, and she held a large hunting knife against Kane’s neck.

  Kang didn’t think. He didn’t wait to confirm. He pulled the trigger again. The round struck the woman in the right cheek, and she fell back against the wall, losing her grip on the knife. She cried out in pain, and Kang fired again, striking her forehead. The woman went silent and crumpled to the floor.

  Kang rushed over to Abby and peeled the tape off her mouth.

  She gasped twice for air before saying, “What the hell took you so long?”

  Chapter 47

  Kang untied my hands, and I brought them around front and rubbed life back into my wrists.

  “You okay?” he asked, brushing a few strands of hair out of my eyes.

  “Yeah, as soon as I entered the room, the producer—Marko was his name? Anyway, he grabbed me from behind, and the other two helped to subdue me. They had me tied up and gagged within seconds.” I stopped rubbing. I could see the guilt pouring from Kang’s eyes. “Hey, now, I didn’t see it coming either.”

  “We could have prevented this.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  I heard the sound of footsteps clomping down the stairs.

  “Abby!” Knox called out.

  “We’re in here.”

  “Damn! What the hell happened?”

  I still had my butt planted in the chair, but I could see Knox and Copeland standing near Marko with their weapons drawn.

  “Another team is what happened.” I looked up at Kang. “Is he dead?”

  He shook his head. “Careful,” Kang called out. “That one’s alive, but I can’t say the same for the two in here.”

  Copeland bent down and searched the man. “No identification and no media pass.”

  Knox and Copeland approached the room but stopped at the doorway.

  “I’ll call this in,” Copeland said after a quick glance at the bodies on the floor.

  “Hold up,” I said. “Let’s not do that just yet. An army of agents and crime scene investigators will take the spotlight off the B&B. I want a few minutes of quiet time with the producer.”

  “Copeland, secure the front door. Nobody in. Nobody out,” Knox said.

  “Come on, Abby; let’s get you out of here.” Kang grabbed my hand and helped me step over the woman.

  Once outside of the room, I felt as though I could finally breathe again. I walked toward a window that overlooked the street below and collected my thoughts. A lot had just happened, and somehow I had survived again. I was staring outside absentmindedly, still trying to comprehend what had just happened, when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Abby?”

  I turned around and found Kang standing there with a glass of water for me. “Here, drink this.”

  His eyes had a soft look, and his shoulders were a little droopy. I gave him a playful punch to the arm. “It’s not your fault. We all missed it. I’m just glad you figured it out.”

  “How did you figure it out?” Knox asked as he joined us by the window. He removed his jacket and placed it over the back of a nearby chair.

  Kang went on to tell us about the phone call he’d had with Suzi.

  Knox had both hands resting on his waist. He shook his head. “If you hadn’t taken that phone call… I mean, we got frickin’ lucky here. I’m embarrassed that this even happened.” His eyes caught mine. “I’m really sorry, Abby.” Knox slapped Kang on the back. “You did a great job. Thank God you were here.”

  “I second that.” I wrapped both arms around Kang’s torso and gave him a long hug.

  “That’s three,” he said.

  “Huh?” I pulled my head away from his chest and looked up. He had that crooked smile on his face.

  “Three times I saved your butt. It’s becoming annoying.”

  “Puhhhlease.” I snorted as I pushed away from him. My eyes rolled as if there were no tomorrow. “Methinks your math is wrong.”

  “What are you talking about? Okay, hold on.” He held up a finger and began a count. “Just now—that’s one. The tunnels underneath Chinatown—that’s two. At your home with Team Favela—that’s three.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, Masked Marvel. You can’t count Team Favela. Technically, you just showed up after the fact.”

  Kang bounced his head from side to side. “Okay, so two. Still, I just wanted it on the record. So no more telling your trumped-up story of how you sa
ved me.”

  Whenever someone asked how Kang and I had met, and a lot of people have, I would tell the story of how I caught a gang member he had been chasing, all while off duty, with a full belly and with my family in tow. Sure, I exaggerated the story to sound as though catching the guy saved Kang, but it got so many laughs, I couldn’t help it. It was good material.

  “I can’t believe the two of you are arguing over something like this.” Knox turned and walked back toward Marko, who appeared to be regaining consciousness. He rolled him over with his foot. “Hey, I got a story for you. You’re in deep shit.”

  Marko’s awaking refocused our attention. He was the first player from the game that we had apprehended alive.

  Kang helped Knox lift Marko into a chair. His nose had stopped bleeding, and he breathed heavily through his mouth. “You broke my nose.”

  “You’re lucky that’s all that happened to you,” Knox countered quickly. “Your friends over there got it worse.”

  Marko looked back toward the office and strained his neck for a better look before turning back toward us. “Where’s Adrijana? Where is she?”

  Nobody said a word, and Marko got his answer. What happened next wasn’t something I had expected to see. The tough-looking Serbian broke down in tears. “You killed her?” He asked. “Why? She didn’t do anything. She was a good girl.”

  “Who’s the other guy, Marko?” Kang asked.

  He didn’t answer and continued to silently weep. His mouth hung open, and a strand of saliva stretched from his lower lip.

  “Hey!” Knox said sharply. “We asked you a question.”

  Marko looked up. The whites of his eyes were red, and his eyelids were showing signs of puffiness. He then told us to fuck ourselves. That didn’t go over well with Knox, who responded by slapping his face. “We can do this the hard way. I like the hard way.”

  As much as I wasn’t a fan of this degenerate, I didn’t think antagonizing him would get him to talk, and we needed him to talk.

  I tapped Knox’s arm and motioned to him with my eyes to let me try. I kneeled down next to the producer. “Marko, I’m sorry about Adrijana.” Earlier, she’d told me her name was Ana. “That’s a pretty name. Was she your girlfriend?”

  He nodded. His gaze returned to the floor.

  “It’s unfortunate,” I continued. “She’s not here with us because of the game. The game is the culprit here. Help us put an end to it.”

  Marko raised his head. His eyes were glassy but focused.

  “If it weren’t for the game, Adrijana would still be alive. Tell us what you know.”

  “What do you want to know?” Marko said, his voice froggy.

  “How about your real name for starters?” I asked, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  In the next several minutes, he spilled all the details about Team Balkan.

  “How do you communicate with the people behind the game, Drago?”

  “We send them messages, but the game isn’t working like it used to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everything just stopped working. I don’t know.”

  I looked over at Kang. “I guess we weren’t the only ones who were cut off.”

  “So the team tracking, live updates, the map: all of it went dead?”

  Zoric nodded.

  “And you never met anybody from the game aside from the contacts that gave you the clues?”

  He nodded again. Further questioning told us that neither the address to the B&B nor that of my home was supplied to them.

  “Where’s Gary, the driver of the van?” Kang asked.

  When Zoric told us about Petrovic killing the driver, Kang was obviously taken by surprise.

  “Did they give you my name and address?” Kang prodded.

  “We got your name from the news, and Adrijana used Google to find out where you live. She was smart with the online stuff.”

  “The media: a double-edged sword,” Kang hissed. “I’ll be back. I’m going to make a few calls, get a search started for the body.”

  Further questioning ran us into a dead end with Zoric. It seemed the other teams didn’t know any more than we did. When I asked him about Sei, he responded by saying, “Who?”

  I was ready to close the door on this chapter when I had an idea. It was a rehash, but it had helped the first time around.

  Chapter 48

  Knox and I moved quickly, knowing an army of agents and forensic specialists would eventually show up. I wasn’t sure if we could pull it off, but we were willing to try. Before we could start, I had two questions for Zoric: What was the idea for my themed kill, and where was the phone they’d used to communicate with the game?

  Zoric thought the first question was out of morbid curiosity and proudly told me their idea. Knox went to work and extracted the whereabouts of the phone along with the password. I think at that point, Zoric didn’t care anymore. He resented being a part of the game. We handcuffed him to an old radiator that was bolted to the wall and got to work.

  “I don’t intend to disturb the crime scene.” I walked back into the media room and reapplied the duct tape Kang had peeled off my mouth earlier. Next, I grabbed the KTVU microphone, flopped down on the table, and did my best to look as if I had died giving an interview. Knox snapped a picture with the phone we found on Petrovic.

  “You sure this will work?” Knox asked as I logged on to the game.

  “Well, the first time we posed as a team, we were successful in playing for quite some time. But before we could upload our fake crime scene photos, we were discovered. The mastermind has no idea Team Balkan has been compromised. We have another opportunity here.”

  “Sounds like it’s too good to pass up,” Knox said.

  “We have an advantage, though; I’m the Attraction. I mean, how on Earth would one of them be able to snap a photo of me like this if they hadn’t been successful?”

  I selected the photograph and hit the send button. A message appeared and told us the upload was complete.

  “Now what?”

  “We wait.”

  “Wait for what?” Kang asked as he approached us.

  “Knox snapped a picture of me looking pretty dead, and I just sent it in to the game. We’re officially playing as Team Balkan.”

  “We’re back in the game!” Kang gave me a spirited high five. “It worked once. Why not a second time, right?”

  “Say they buy it. That means Team Balkan wins. Game over, right? No more teams coming after you?” Knox asked.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “Had they gotten to me, they would have done exactly what we have done and then waited to see what happens next.”

  “I guess in a perfect world, the mastermind gives the submission a thumbs up, declares Team Balkan the winner, and pays out the prize money.” Kang pocketed his hands. “Might be an opportunity to grab the mastermind then, though I doubt he’ll be the one delivering the goods.”

  “A wire transfer seems more likely,” Knox suggested. “We can set up a dummy account and follow the money.”

  “There’s just one thing.”

  Knox and I both looked at Kang. “What’s that?”

  “You have to stay out of sight until this plays out. You’re dead, remember?”

  “He’s right, Abby,” Knox said. “And it has to start now. Nobody can have access to you, even agents at the bureau. We can’t afford any leaks to the media. They can help us sell this.”

  I clucked my tongue as I thought about what they had said. “The only person who needs to be convinced of my death is the mastermind.” I looked at Zoric, who was still sitting on the floor next to the radiator. “What we need to keep under wraps is Team Balkan. What happened here can’t get out.”

  “But you still agree you need to stay out of sight should we get the thumbs up, right?” Kang tilted his head a bit and scrunched his brow.

  “Yeah, but I don’t think we need to sell it to the world.”

&
nbsp; “All right then. I’ll head downstairs and help Copeland at the door,” Knox said. “We’ll need to keep the number of investigators in this building to a bare minimum. Abby, you should probably get on the phone with Reilly and bring him up to speed. He’ll be instrumental in containing the scene.”

  I nodded. “What about him?” I asked, motioning to Zoric.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Kang volunteered. “Where do you think he’ll be detained?”

  “Knowing Reilly, he’ll want supermax, most likely at ADX Florence in Colorado.”

  “Ah, the Alcatraz of the Rockies.” Kang turned to Zoric. “It’ll be like you never existed.”

  I headed upstairs, not especially overjoyed with having to tell Reilly that there were two more bodies. He’d already had to deal with the fallout, both internally and externally, that came with having two dead agents show up on his watch, not to mention one of them being a traitor.

  The first few minutes of the call had me holding my phone a good distance from my ear. Fortunately, there was sanity in my plan. We had done this once before, and it had helped us shut the game down in San Francisco and take out Jing Woo, the Triad Dragonhead in charge of Chinatown. I think that was the only reason Reilly agreed to help keep a lid on what had happened at the tong that morning.

  I called Po Po next. I think I dreaded that conversation more.

  “What you mean you dead?” she asked.

  “I’m not really dead. I’m pretending. It’s just an elaborate trick.”

  She grunted. “When you come home?”

  “Well, that’s the tricky part. In order to make the bad guys believe that I’m dead, I can’t be seen. I’ll have to stay in hiding but only for a few days.”

  She let out a long breath. “You explain to Lucy and Ryan.”

  “Of course I’ll tell them, but I wanted you to know first.”

  Sometimes I think Po Po assumes I never think things through, but I couldn’t really blame her. She and the children had gone through a lot, and she was the one stuck on the front lines when Ryan and Lucy had questions.

  Also, these types of circumstances did nothing to improve my standing amongst her friends. I can only imagine the gossip sessions. I mean, not everyone gets a call from their daughter-in-law telling them to go along with her fake death. Never-ending fodder is what I provided. I’m sure I didn’t come across as a saint.