“But lovable.” Deeks peered down the tunnel. “Welcome to the Underworld.”
Kensi reached into her jacket pocket for the burner phone she’d found above them on the floor of the storage shed. Then she waited for the tacs to come off the ladder.
“Okay,” she said in a low voice. “Let’s do this. Stay alert.”
Kensi and Deeks in the lead, the group moved down the tunnel, two abreast, their automatic weapons bristling outward, rail lights beaming ahead of them.
They had to stay on their toes. It was safe to assume that the phone belonged to the Metroline conductor’s honeytrap date. It was likely that she had used the phone’s tracker as a homing beacon for the men on the forklifts. Kensi was also convinced the most recent text sent from the phone, with its apple and pear emojis, was a coded signal to those men, the train hijackers, or all of them.
Add everything together and it was impossible to know who and what they would find here in this tunnel.
Reaching a T-junction now, she swung the gun-mounted flash to her left and right.
She stopped, her flash still aimed toward the right. There was a dark shape near the middle of the passage. Something—
She angled the beam onto it.
No.
Someone.
Sprawled there on the floor.
Her flashlight beam glanced off a shiny black pool around the motionless figure.
Blood.
She exchanged a glance with Deeks.
Cutting to the right, they hurried down the passage, two of the tacs sticking with them, the other pair staying back to guard the junction.
They crouched over the figure. It was a man on his side, curled into a near-fetal position.
“Crap.” Deeks dropped to his haunches, picked up an object near his head, showed it to Kensi. “I guess we know what hit him.”
She expelled a breath. It was a chunk of brick. The blood on it left no question about how it was used.
Nodding for the tacs to keep their lights on the man, she thumbed off her pistol flash, slipped the weapon into its harness, and reached down to feel for a pulse—
“Hlppp.”
Kensi’s eyes widened. Her fingers hadn’t yet reached his neck.
“Plsss h-hllp… meee.”
“Drew?” she said. “Are you Drew Sarver?”
“Y-y-yesss…”
She moved her hand away from his neck and instead placed it gently on his shoulder.
“It’s okay, Drew. Be still,” she said. “We’re the good guys.”
EPILOGUE
Midnight. The San Gabriel Mountains.
A strong breeze played over the surface of Jag Azarian’s infinity pool, causing its reflected constellations of stars to expand and contract.
Azarian and Alysha sat at a poolside table, staring at the speckled water, his back to his living room. It was open tonight, the transparent arc of its glass wall retracted.
“We missed one moment today,” he said turning to her after a long silence. “But only one. There will be others.”
Her eyes met his. “Is that what you sincerely believe?” she asked, sounding unconvinced.
He spread his hands. “It’s what I choose to believe,” he said. “I see no other way to move forward… do you disagree?”
She shrugged.
“The past is dead, and the future is nothing. I won’t harbor the conceit that there are moments beyond this one.”
Azarian was silent again. He let a hand settle on the leather portfolio envelope in the center of the table.
“I have your fresh set of identity papers and travel documents,” he said. “Two hundred-fifty thousand dollars in multiple bank accounts.” A pause. “I’ve also made trip reservations for us. A lodge in the Salzburg Alps that doesn’t exist in the public listings.” His gaze had not left her face. “The mountains are beautiful in springtime, but we needn’t ever leave our suite to delight in our stay.”
She smiled a little and sat very still.
After a moment he leaned closer to her. “I know your history with Tomas,” he said. “Did you love him?”
“Let it go,” she said.
“I ask only because of what your love means to me…”
“And I told you how I feel about the past,” she said. “Besides, I sense your eagerness to leave the country isn’t altogether romantic.”
“There will be a massive investigation into today’s events. I doubt it can lead to me, but some distance from California can’t hurt right now. It’s good to be light on one’s feet.”
Alysha’s eyes went to his. She kept them there a long time. “The Alps sound delightful.”
He nodded, lightly touching her hand. “We can get a head start on those delights tonight,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”
She smiled and gave a slight nod back. “Let’s.”
Rising to his feet, Azarian turned to Alysha, reached out to slip an arm around her waist…
And then his eyes widened.
She was pointing her Beretta at his chest, standing at point blank range.
“What are you doing?” he said. “Are you out of your mind?”
She shook her head.
“I’m merely heeding your advice,” she said. “We need to be light on our feet, and there are too many men hunting you. That makes you a dangerous weight.”
He shook his head a little. “I love you,” he said. “You have my heart.”
Alysha just looked at him, her eyes flat.
“The heart is a useless thing,” she said. “Be grateful I’m ridding you of its pains.”
The gun jerked twice in her fist.
She took the portfolio envelope off the table, and slipped off into the darkness of the night.
* * *
“Hey,” Kensi said carrying her coffee into the bullpen. “Something’s different around here.”
Deeks looked at her.
“Whatever do you mean?” he said.
She walked over to him and sniffed.
“The air’s back to being plain old stale,” she said. “And odorless.”
Deeks smiled a little. “So,” he said. “You like the animalic-free me?”
Kensi shrugged.
“Every little bit helps,” she said.
His smile widened. His injured arm freshly dressed, Deeks was standing with Callen, Sam, and Hetty in the area between the agents’ desk cubbies, where the team had gathered for an informal morning huddle.
“If I may interrupt,” Hetty said, sipping her tea. “I want to quickly debrief everyone on what’s gone on since yesterday.”
Silence. Despite their whistling past the graveyard, Kensi, Deeks, and everyone else in the room had an identifiable soberness in their eyes. They had averted a widespread calamity, saved countless lives, but no one here was in a celebratory mood. Despite their efforts innocent people had still died, leaving far too many loved ones to grieve.
At the OSP, where it was all part of the job, humor was a coping mechanism, the only way to fend off the grimness they encountered on a routine basis.
Some days it worked better than others.
“I take it everyone’s seen the televised news feeds coming out of Piggyback Yard,” Hetty said now, looking from face to face.
Callen nodded.
“Hard to miss it,” he said. “A hidden uranium stockpile, guys from Homeland in HazMat suits emptying it out… it screams ratings.”
Sam sighed. “This could get ugly for the CIA,” he said. “Somebody there vaulted off the Deep Dive records at Holloway’s say-so.”
Hetty regarded him over the rim of her teacup. “It will be an embarrassment to them for a news cycle or two… nothing more,” she said. “The cowboys rode off into the sunset long ago.”
“And with Holloway gone, I’m not sure anyone’s left to tell us who was responsible,” Kensi said.
“The moral being that justice has a shorter half life than uranium?” Deeks said.
Hetty looked at him.
&nb
sp; “We saved many more lives that could have been lost,” she said. “Leave justice to the courts.”
There was another silence.
“How’s that poor guy we found in the tunnel?” Deeks asked after a moment. “Drew Sarver.”
“I just got off the phone to the hospital and the doctors think he’ll be okay,” Kensi said. “But there’s short term memory loss. He doesn’t have a clue how he wound up in the tunnel. Or remember the femme fatale who left him for dead.”
“The one that got away,” Sam said, shaking his head. “She’s stone cold. A professional killer.”
Hetty sighed quietly.
“Some say there are always loose ends in real life,” she said. “Others believe things eventually sort themselves out.”
Callen looked at her. “And you?” he said.
“I want your case reports filed in an hour,” she said.
The agents watched Hetty start toward her office, then suddenly turn back around to face them, her eyes flashing behind her glasses.
“The best antidote for pondering life’s grand design is aged Scotch whiskey, you know,” she said. “I’ll have a bottle in my office when you finish those reports.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jerome Preisler has written over thirty published books of fiction and narrative nonfiction, including all eight titles in the New York Times bestselling Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series, and the first two novels in the forthcoming reboot of Net Force, based on Mr. Clancy’s original series.
His narrative nonfiction includes All Hands Down: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS Scorpion, Code Name Caesar: The Secret Hunt for U-Boat 864 During World War 2, Daniel’s Music: One Family’s Journey from Tragedy to Empowerment through Faith, Medicine, and the Healing Power of Music, and First to Jump: How the Band of Brothers was Aided by the Brave Paratroopers of Pathfinders Company.
www.JeromePreisler.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JeromePreislerBooks
COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS
Jeff Mariotte
A brand-new original thriller tying in to the hit TV show, NCIS: Los Angeles. When a Navy counselor paying a home visit to a former Navy SEAL finds him inside his house, tortured and murdered, NCIS are called in to investigate. Meanwhile, a bank hold-up goes bad downtown and an LAPD officer is shot. The cop is a friend of Deeks’, but a trace on the getaway vehicle shows no connection between the crimes, that is until NCIS dig deeper.
Available November 2016
TITANBOOKS.COM
NCIS Los Angeles Page 31
