by Blake Dixon
Sheer frustration drove his fist into the dashboard hard enough to crack the plastic. Whoever was trying to warn him off this case, they’d stepped up to attempted murder.
He really didn’t need this shit right now.
Chapter Twenty
Shirtless and angry, Jude dug the last sliver of broken glass from his right forearm and dropped it into the plastic cup on the desk with the rest. “All right,” he said, handing the tweezers to Natalie. “You sure you’ve got this?”
“Mostly sure. I’ve probably had more first-aid training than you lately.”
“Great. I’m comforted.”
They were in the small office with the door closed, after Jude had stormed through the ready room bleeding and cursing to leave half a dozen startled agents in his wake. He was a lot more pissed off than hurt. But the glass fragments weren’t helping his mood.
Neither was the bullet. He hadn’t sprung that one on her yet.
“Okay, there’s a big one in your right shoulder.” A cool hand on his spine made him shiver slightly, and he leaned forward in the chair. “Hold still,” she said.
He did. The tweezers jabbed at him, a hot throb of pain that climbed to a long, sharp bolt as she worked out a piece of glass that felt the size of a Buick. He gasped a little when it came free.
“Damn.” She held the bloody fragment between the tweezers in front of him. Two inches of jagged glass, at least half an inch wide at the top. “This was really stuck in there,” she said as she dropped it in the cup with the rest. “Put your head down. I think there’s one in the back of your neck.”
He sighed and dropped his head, winced when she yanked it out fast. “Well, this is fun,” he said. “See any more glass back there?”
She paused, presumably looking him over. “Nothing visible, but you’re bleeding pretty good on the right side about halfway down.”
“Yeah. Pretty sure that’s the bullet.”
“Jesus, they shot you?”
“It’s not too bad. Seat took most of the impact.” Once the adrenaline wore off, he’d noticed more blood than there should’ve been trickling down his back and soaking into his pants. But he kept driving until he reached the field office, and then checked the seat when he got out of the car. The hole went straight through. No spent bullet lodged in there, so it had to be in him. “Go get an evidence bag and take the damned thing out. I want ballistics on it yesterday.”
Natalie’s worried face floated in the side field of his vision. “You should’ve gone to a hospital, Wyland,” she said.
“Why, so I could sit around and fill out paperwork all goddamned afternoon?” He forced himself to throttle back. She wasn’t the reason he was furious. “Look, it’ll be fine,” he said. “It’s not in deep. I could get it out myself, if that bastard hadn’t shot me in the back.”
She gave him a dubious look, and then slipped from the room.
While she was gone, he turned the chair around and straddled it backwards so she could reach the spot. She returned a few minutes later with an evidence bag, a pair of gloves, and a first-aid kit. “Just so you know, I’ve never extracted a bullet before,” she said a little angrily.
He smirked. “I guess you’re about to learn how, then.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“No. But it’s funnier than a missing little girl.”
She sighed, put the stuff down on the desk and started pulling the gloves on. “Is that how you do it?” she said. “Smile about having a bullet in your back, so you don’t break down and cry over the baby-killing monsters?”
“Yeah, something like that. You smile because you’re still alive — and that means you still have a chance to stop them.”
“Well you’re not looking so great, and you have a lousy doctor. You might not make it.”
He shrugged. “You’ll just have to carry on without me.”
“Ha. Ha.” At least she smiled this time. “Okay, here we go,” she said. “This is probably going to hurt.”
She was right. It hurt.
After she pulled the slug and handed it off to one of her people, Natalie cleaned him up and bandaged him. By then the bright pain had settled to a dull throb. “Not bad,” he said, twisting slightly to admire the patch job.
“Don’t move like that. You’ll make it bleed more.”
“Sorry, Doc.” He faced front and stood slowly, shuffling back from the chair. “Listen, I got a partial plate off this asshole when he threatened me yesterday, but I forgot to check it out.”
Her brow went up. “You forgot.”
“Yeah. Been a little busy.” He circled the desk, picked up the jacket he’d dropped on the floor and fished his phone out. “Can you write this down and run it through the DMV? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
She nodded, patted her pockets and produced a phone. “Don’t have a pen on me. I’ll just text it to myself.”
“That works.”
He went to the recording app and played the most recent file. His own voice, tight with frustration, barked from the speaker over a backdrop of traffic and crowd noise.
“Dark blue Ford Crown Vic, Virginia tags, A-W-L-6-2-fuck, didn’t get the rest. Maybe 3 or 8, then maybe 4 or 7, I don’t know. Shit.”
Natalie snorted a laugh as she tapped the sequence onto her phone. “I don’t think ‘A-W-L-6-2-fuck’ would fit on a license plate,” she said.
“Yeah, yesterday wasn’t a great day.”
“I hear that.” She smiled and pocketed the phone. “Back in a few minutes. And stop moving around so much,” she said. “You’ve been shot.”
“Uh-huh. Thanks.”
When she left the room, he made his way slowly to the chair, turned it around and lowered into the seat. The recording app was still active on his phone. He swiped back to the list of audio files, and on impulse started playing the interview with Gary Noakes.
He hadn’t gotten past the standard rank-and-file opening questions when the door to the office opened. “You forget something?” he said without really looking.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Okay. That wasn’t Natalie.
He sighed and stopped the playback. “Hello, Ray.”
“Agent Wyland.” The deputy director moved inside and closed the door behind him. He was wearing his you’re-a-dead-man face. “Care to explain why that lunatic you brought up from the Bahamas isn’t currently stapled to your side? Because if you don’t have a good answer, I’m throwing your ass in jail.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“I’m fine, Ray. How are you?” Jude reached back and put the phone on the desk behind him. “The lunatic is out trying to find Valerie Noakes. You know, like the rest of us are doing.”
“Great. So why the hell are the rest of you doing it here, while Kane is not?”
Jude didn’t answer right away. He clenched his jaw, planted his feet and rose slowly, mindful of his throbbing back. “Let’s get something straight here, Director,” he said. “You might’ve found a loophole to shove me through, but I am not going to follow procedure. Not this time.” He took a step forward. “You hired me to save this little girl because the CIA couldn’t. That means pounding me back into the Agency mold is not going to get the job done.”
Ray glowered at him another minute, and then threw a hand up. “Fine. Point taken,” he said. “But that doesn’t excuse you from explaining where Kane is. He’s—”
“My responsibility. Yeah, I get it.” Jude folded his arms. “So whose responsibility is what happened to him down there?”
“Since when do you care what happened?”
“I saw what they did to him, Ray. What they’re still going to do to him when I bring him back there.”
“At least you said ‘when’.” Ray shook his head once. “You think you know him,” he said. “But it’s been, what, eight years since you worked with him? He’s done a lot of unspeakable shit, Wyland.”
“Maybe. But not in the last three years.”
“Which is exactly
why I’ve had him on lockdown. And you’re wrong about that, too.” Ray’s stare was downright frigid. “He killed three guards during his first week in the hotbox,” he said. “One of them by ramming a funnel down his throat and pouring a gallon of bleach into it. This is the man you’re allowing to run around here unsupervised.”
“Fantastic,” he muttered. Kane hadn’t shared that story with him — not that he would have any reason to. Still, he couldn’t help considering where that funnel had probably been before Kane shoved it down the guard’s throat. He almost didn’t blame the man. “Well, it’s done now,” he said. “We’re just going to have to take the risk.”
“You still haven’t told me where he is.”
“Come on. I’m sure you can figure that out.”
“I think,” Ray said, “that you sent him to the mercs. And I think you gave him weapons and an Agency phone and leave to do whatever the hell he wants. But you see, Wyland, I don’t want to think that. I want you to tell me I’m wrong.”
He refrained from rolling his eyes. “You’re not wrong.”
“Damn it, I should just shoot you myself!” The deputy director bared his teeth briefly. “So you didn’t see a problem with any of that. You don’t think he might, say, decide the mercs’ side is a better deal for him than the Agency’s, and just never come back with the information you want. Never come back at all.”
“No. I don’t think that.” He managed to say it without hesitation, even though he was feeling a little hesitant now. “He’s on board with this.”
“Sure he is. Garrett fucking Kane wants to save a little girl’s life.”
Jude closed his eyes and saw Kane’s face when he came out of the room after watching the videos. Heard the absolute threat behind his casual remark about the director of the ‘home movies.’ The deadly cold in him posing as calm. “Yeah. I think he does,” he finally said. “In spite of it all, I really think he does.”
“I think you’re wrong. But if it’s any comfort, I’m not going to enjoy saying ‘I told you so’ to your corpse.” Ray let out a short breath. “Do what you think you have to,” he said. “In three days, he goes back. No matter what happens.”
Jude almost asked if he’d reconsider that. Before he could, the door opened again and Natalie rushed in with a handful of printouts. “Jude, I’ve got — oh.” She stopped short. “Director Rubin. I didn’t see you come in.”
“I needed a word with him.” Ray hooked a thumb in Jude’s direction. “By the way, you neglected to mention why you’re half-naked and bleeding.”
“Because you neglected to care all that much,” he said. “That asshole who tailed me yesterday morning did it again. This time he shot out my car window. And me.”
“Well, aren’t you popular.” Ray gave him a critical look. “Any idea who it was?”
“Some guy. That’s about as far as I got.”
“Better keep digging, then.” The deputy director came close to smiling, but seemed to think better of it. “Go ahead and bill your car repairs to the Agency,” he said. “And tell me when you’ve retrieved the lunatic.”
“Goodbye, Ray.”
He lifted a hand, and then nodded in Natalie’s direction. “Agent Moore.”
“Director.”
Without another word, he left the room.
Natalie waited until he closed the door, and then hurried to the desk and dropped the printouts. “What was that about?” she said.
“Kane. Mostly.” He decided not to say what he was thinking until he’d mulled it over a little more. Ray Rubin never backed down that easy when an agent disobeyed an order. The man could go on for hours — berating, threatening and shaming, all without raising his voice once.
Except he’d done it. Lost his cool when he said damn it, I should just shoot you myself. On top of that, he’d delivered a half-hearted lecture that ended with him folding his position. It was completely out of character.
But right now, he had no idea what that meant.
“Jude?”
“Sorry.” He shook the thoughts loose. “What do we have?”
“Unfortunately, it looks like nothing.” She spread the papers she’d carried in around the desk. “Four hits on the partial. This one’s registered to a Jeep Cherokee,” she said, pointing to the top left printout. “Then we have a Continental, a Tacoma, and an Elantra.” She tapped the final page. “And these plates were reported stolen.”
Jude huffed. “Well, that’s something,” he said. “Now we know he’s a coward and a thief.”
“You got a look at him this time, right?”
“Yeah. He looked like a guy with a face and a gun.” Frowning, he shuffled the printouts back together. “At least that sketch artist was worth two grand. Definitely the same asshole. Hell if I know who he is, though.”
“So basically, we’re back to square one,” Natalie said.
“Not this time. We still have a card in play.”
“Kane.” She gave him a dubious look. “You really think he’ll come through, don’t you?”
This time he hesitated. Not because of Ray’s shock-scare story, but because he did know Garrett Kane. He knew a man who regularly took insane risks that should’ve gotten him killed a long time ago, all in the name of getting the job done. And maybe this time, his number would come up.
Once again, he found himself wondering just what kind of test the mercs were putting him through right now.
“Yes. He’ll come through,” he finally said. “And while we’re waiting, I’m going to hit one of your leads I haven’t checked out yet. That golf club employee, Starkey. Don’t want to leave any stone unturned.”
Natalie raised an eyebrow. “If you’re going to the golf club, you should probably put some clothes on.”
“Damn.” He glanced down and sighed. “My place is an hour from here. I really don’t want to drive all the way back home.”
“Well, there’s a bunch of suits in storage here. Standard Agency stuff.”
He groaned. “Of course there are.” The badge, the suit, the gun — all he needed now was a complex assignment with the rules of engagement dictated by whatever political alignment the brass was currently throwing their weight behind, and a smug superior who couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
Oh, wait. He already had those.
Chapter Twenty-Two
This interview was going to be nasty.
Marvin Starkey, 38, worked in the gift shop at Green Vistas Country Club — the one that happened to border the Noakes property, where the D.A. was a member and frequent guest. That alone made Starkey only as much of a suspect in the kidnapping as every other employee and member of the place. Which was to say, highly unlikely.
But Starkey was more than a golf club employee. His life crossed lines with the Noakes family on a regular basis. He went to the same church. Had a social relationship with the housekeeper, Mrs. Harper.
And five years ago, he’d been arrested on suspicion of child molestation involving a four-year-old girl. A neighbor’s child.
He’d been cleared of the charges, but not of the impact. Charges like that tended to cast a long shadow. His wife divorced him, he lost his job at a fairly prestigious bank, and he’d moved from Newport News to a neighborhood near the country club hoping to shake loose of the stigma.
It worked, more or less. But the CIA hadn’t been able to ignore the coincidences. Starkey was on the suspect list, had already been interviewed and released when they couldn’t find a reason to hold him.
So Jude would question him a little less directly. Not with a badge and gun, but with a friendly story — and as Starkey’s incredibly brief high school acquaintance, Earl Webber.
He’d found out enough to fake it before he arrived at the country club around four that afternoon. A call to Gates High School got him a scanned PDF copy of the yearbook from Starkey’s senior year, and a Facebook search for names in his class turned up Webber. Who’d apparently created an account just long enough to stat
e in his bio that he worked as a mechanic at Charly’s Garage and lived in Virginia Beach … and to say hello, and not much else, to three former classmates. One of them had been Starkey.
Webber had never posted a picture of himself on his account. And the gangly kid he was in the yearbook photo didn’t have any memorable physical characteristics, so he could’ve aged into pretty much anyone with dark hair. Like Jude.
He parked the CIA-issue sedan, which he’d been forced to use since his Camry was literally shot to hell, in the visitor’s lot and headed straight for the main building. The badge was in a pocket in case any club employees tried to kick him out, but he’d left the gun in the glove box. Didn’t want to spook the target.
The gift shop — Green Vistas Galleria — was directly inside and to the left, where no one would miss it on the way out. Jude strolled in and panned a casual glance around the place, letting his gaze slide past Starkey when he spotted the man stacking plastic sleeves of golf balls on a shelf toward the back of the store. He moved slow, making his way back and giving every impression that he was just browsing.
Finally, he ‘saw’ the golf balls and walked with purpose in the direction of the shelf. When Starkey looked at him, he gave a don’t-mind-me smile. And then forced a double-take. “Marv?” he said. “Marv Starkey, right?”
Starkey’s brow furrowed. “Yeah?”
“Well, shit. You don’t remember me, do you?” Jude let his drawl thicken a bit. After all, he was a native Virginian. The accent might have watered itself down over the years of world travel, but it never disappeared completely. “Earl Webber. We went to high school together at Gates.”
“We did?” Starkey peered at him, and then broke into a polite half-puzzled smile. “Oh, right. Earl,” he said. “I think you were in eighth-period chem with me, senior year … maybe?”
Perfect. He could practically see Starkey trying to convince himself he knew ‘Earl.’ Still, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep his bets hedged. “Hell if I know,” he said. “I was stoned half of senior year. But that sounds about right, don’t it? Chemistry, biology, something-ology.”
