by Blake Dixon
He almost didn’t dare hope. “You think it’s her?”
“I want to think that. But I can’t yet.” He turned to look briefly out the window. “Like I said, they didn’t offer a lot of detail. But it feels almost too big for one kid, you know?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Still, this one kid’s a pretty big deal.”
“Let’s hope she’s big enough.” Kane straightened and failed to hide a wince. “I need to piss,” he said. “Bathroom?”
Natalie pointed to the door. “Take a right out there. Two doors down on your left.”
“Aren’t you going to call for an armed escort or something? We wouldn’t want me wandering around unsupervised.”
“Nah.” She offered the ghost of a smile. “I think you’re fine.”
“You and every woman in Saigon.” He looked at her like he was searching for something. Finally he said, “I should’ve threatened to kill you the first time we met. This suits you.”
Her brow furrowed. “What does?”
“Knowing I wouldn’t have done it.”
He walked past her, gave a bare nod to Jude and left the room.
“Well,” Natalie said when he was gone. “I have no idea what just happened. Do you?”
Jude shrugged and helped himself to a bottle of water. “I fucked up. You didn’t,” he said. “I shouldn’t have drawn on him.”
“So what, he’s going to take it out on you now?”
“He’ll get over it.” They’d actually threatened each other plenty of times — but that was when they were partners, working together by choice. This wasn’t a choice for either of them. Still, he knew Kane would just toss the threat onto his ever-growing pile of reminders that he was a monster and move on.
Not that Jude wanted it to happen that way. But it would.
Natalie walked to the table, pulled a chair out but didn’t sit down. “We’ve got nothing until tomorrow night, and that’s still a maybe,” she said. “I can’t just sit around until then. Guess I’ll find out how the fallback is coming along.”
“Or you could take a break.”
“And do what?”
He smiled. “Get Kane that steak dinner he keeps asking for,” he said. “Me too, while you’re at it.”
She opened her mouth, closed it and grinned. “Make it three, and you’re on.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The takeout came from Logan’s Roadhouse. Eight-ounce sirloins topped with crispy onions and garlic butter, mashed potatoes and tossed salad on the side. The booze came from Jude’s emergency stash in the trunk of his car — a bottle of cheap whiskey that’d lain unopened for a year, since he rarely touched the stuff. He preferred beer.
But tonight he’d downed a shot or two.
They were still in the conference room for dinner. Once again, Kane had barely managed a few mouthfuls of food. He did seem to appreciate the gesture, though. He limited his sarcastic remarks to a colorful suggestion about what they could do with his salad.
Jude had polished his meal off, and Natalie was nearly through hers, when he reached for the whiskey and poured himself a third shot, a quarter-inch or so in the bottom of a plastic cup. Kane’s was empty, so he held the bottle up. “Want a refill?”
“What do you think?”
He started pouring. “Say when.”
“When it’s full.”
Jude obliged, filling the cup to half an inch from the top. “Too bad I left Jack at home,” he said.
“Oh, I’ll get to him later.” Kane lifted his cup and sipped. “So what else do we know?”
“About what?”
He snorted. “About the kid, Boy Scout.”
“Oh. Not so much,” he said. “Other than Marvin Starkey didn’t take her.”
Natalie swallowed a bite and washed it down with a swig of water. “You’re sure about that?” she said. “I never got a chance to ask how it went with him. He literally wouldn’t say anything to us, except ‘I want my lawyer.’”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Even now he could see the man’s face screwed tight, the tears standing in his eyes. Hear the absolute disgust in his voice when he threatened to call the cops on ‘Earl.’ He’d felt just as sick saying what he did, doing that to a man who was probably innocent. But it had to be done. “His hands are clean,” he said. “I did run into another connection at the country club, though.”
“Who?”
“Lucas Arnell. Ex-Army guy, works with a private security firm. He’s playing bodyguard to Gary Noakes right now.”
Kane leaned forward slightly. “What firm?”
“Vault Securities.”
“Christ, those assholes,” he muttered.
He had Jude’s interest. “What about them?”
“Oh, they’re way-back dirty. Off-the-book jobs almost as bad as the shit I’ve done.” He half-smiled at that. “Well, not all of them,” he said. “Most of the operation’s legit. But with the right connections, for the right price? The bad apples in the bunch might as well be mercs.”
“Huh. Well, if they have a dark side, Arnell isn’t on it.” Jude considered when he’d first looked up the company and found the charges they’d gotten overturned. Blackmail, cybercrime, assassinations. And he remembered he’d planned to check on something. “I’m not sure if Noakes hired Vault himself, or if Rubin hired them for him. Do you know, Natalie?”
She thought for a moment. “Honestly, I’m not sure,” she said. “He told us he planned to hire outside interests. When you showed up, I thought he meant … well, you. But he could’ve brought Vault in, too. It’d keep the department from having to assign agents around the clock.”
“Yeah, it would,” he said. “But what if he hired them dirty?”
Natalie stared at him. “Wait a minute. You think Rubin…?”
“I told you he’s results-oriented.”
“Right. But what the hell kind of results would he be after here?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced at Kane — and did not like the expression on the other man’s face. It suggested he’d like to gut someone very specific with a rusty fishhook, and that someone just might be Jude. “We need to find out for sure whose payroll Vault is on,” he said, ignoring the look for now. “Can you get one of your team on that, have them keep it on the down-low?”
“This is insane,” she muttered. But she got her phone out.
Just then, the conference room door opened and Agent Wells hustled in. “Nat. You need to come now,” he said. “Senator Bromwell’s been arrested. They found Valerie’s dress in his basement.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The local cops didn’t get much time with Bromwell before he was dragged to the Norfolk field office and socked away in an interrogation room. Natalie was in there with the senator right now, and she was livid. To put it mildly.
“Nice technique,” Kane said. “I love the way she’s not ripping his guts out through his asshole. Don’t know how she does it.”
“Yeah.” Jude leaned back in the chair and watched the screen. He and Kane were in the conference room with a live feed from the interrogation room — there wasn’t enough space for them in observation. Everyone wanted to watch this bastard burn.
Except Jude wasn’t convinced they had the right bastard.
Like the black garrote conveniently left in Valerie’s bedroom, this Bromwell thing felt sloppy. Deliberate, almost cartoonish. A huge, flashing arrow that read FINISH LINE pointing straight over a cliff, and everyone was scrambling to run off the edge.
Someone had called the police with an anonymous tip. That was the first red flag. No tip was truly anonymous, unless the caller was sophisticated enough to make it that way. Any normal person called the cops, they knew who and from where within minutes.
Not this guy, though. They couldn’t trace a thing from the call.
The tipster claimed they’d heard a little girl screaming from inside Bromwell’s house, even though the senator was unmarried and lived alone. When the cops showed
up to check, Bromwell was first surprised, and then annoyed and indignant. Of course there was no little girl in his house. Of course the police could check, because he had nothing to hide.
Only he did — or at least, it looked that way. What they found in the basement was a tableau that absolutely screamed guilt. A plain wooden chair in front of a cement wall, bloody ropes on the floor in front of it. Thin, stained mattress a few feet away. Torn lacy pinafore on the mattress — the one she was wearing in the photo. Except she’d been taken from her bed, so she wouldn’t have been wearing the dress. She’d have been in pajamas. Big red flag number two.
And finally, the dress was spotted with blood and what was very obviously semen.
That last bit, the semen, was what sent Natalie into an absolute rage and had everyone calling for Bromwell’s blood. It was also the biggest reason Jude suspected this whole thing was wrong. Screaming red flag number three. The lab was testing everything right now, but the deposit on the dress was fresh enough to be identified as semen on sight. If it was really Bromwell, he would’ve almost had to be jacking off in his basement when the anonymous tip came in — to the dress, not the girl. He couldn’t possibly have moved her that fast.
Every damning bit of evidence they would’ve expected to find in this case was in Sam Bromwell’s basement, except for Valerie.
“You don’t think it’s him, do you?”
Kane’s voice dragged him from his thoughts. He glanced over, lifted one shoulder. “It all seems…”
“Pretty,” Kane said. “One gift-wrapped suspect, delivered straight to your door.”
“You too, huh?”
He nodded. “Except this gift comes with kid-not-included.”
On the monitor screen in front of them, Natalie was arriving at the same conclusion. “Where is she, Bromwell?” her image shouted. “Where is Valerie Noakes?”
The senator was in clear shock, his thoughts practically written on his face. This is not happening to me. It’s all a bad dream. His eyes watered and dripped steadily. He blinked a few times, stared at his hands cuffed to a ring bolt in the table. “I don’t know,” he said in a thick, half-strangled voice. “I just … I just don’t know.”
Natalie slammed a hand on the table in front of him, and Bromwell flinched. “Well, you’d better figure it out. Fast,” she said. “You sit here and think about it. I’ll be back.”
On the screen, Natalie walked away.
In the conference room, Jude pushed back from the table and stood. “It’s all wrong,” he said. “It’s not Bromwell, but they’re going for this anyway. They have to.” He shook his head and started pacing, fists clenched in frustration. “They’ll stop looking for her, or they’ll look in all the wrong places.”
“Yeah, they will. But isn’t that why you’re here?”
He stopped, looked at Kane. “I’m here because Ray Rubin is an asshole,” he said. “I didn’t want this.”
“Too bad. Nobody gets what they want.” Kane stared evenly at him. “It’s too late now anyway, Boy Scout. You care what happens to this kid.”
“And you don’t?”
“What I care about is none of your damned business,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, though. I’m here, you’re here. There’s a job in front of us.” His eyes were flat. “So we carry the fuck on, like always. We do the job.”
Jude forced out a breath. “Yeah,” he said, struggling to push the rage back down. “We do the goddamn job.”
The conference room door opened. Natalie came in, headed straight for Jude and handed him a thumb drive. “That’s everything we have on the Bromwell angle so far,” she said. “Audio from the anonymous call, video from the police sweep, initial reports, interrogation feed. Not that you didn’t see it already.” She cut a furious glance at the monitor screen, where Sam Bromwell sat at the table with his head down, weeping. “Maybe you’ll find something we missed.”
Jude folded his hand around the drive. “He’s the wrong guy, Natalie. You know that.”
“Yeah, I said that before. But for God’s sake, her dress—” She cut herself off with difficulty. “Look, even if he is the wrong guy, we have to hit this hard and fast,” she said. “I’ve got techs crawling all over his place, a canvass crew interviewing his neighbors, family and friends, and … dogs out searching his property.”
“For her body,” he said tightly.
“Yes. We have to consider that a strong possibility.” She closed her eyes, rubbed her forehead briefly. “For now, you two keep doing what you’re doing,” she said. “Go through the new material. Stay on the merc angle. And let me know immediately if you find anything.”
He had to resist the urge to snap off a mock salute. “All right,” he said.
“I’ll do the same. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
With that, she turned and walked from the room.
When she was gone, Kane made a sound that was almost a laugh. “If nothing else, she learned how to end a conversation from Rubin,” he said.
“Yeah. Fuck you, there’s the door I’m taking.” He stared after her a minute, and then faced the table again. “I guess we keep doing what we’re doing, then.”
“Great. What are we doing?”
“You know. The job,” he said. “Which isn’t much, except looking at this crap and waiting for tomorrow night. I say we do that from my place.”
“Good plan. Jack’s still at your place, right?” With a faint grimace, Kane grabbed the arms of the chair and pushed himself to his feet.
He took a single step. And fell to his knees.
“Shit!” Jude hurried toward him. “You’re not fine, man. Let me—”
“Fuck right off. That’s what I’ll let you do.” He drew a hard breath, grabbed the edge of the table and closed his eyes. “Just give me a second.”
A full minute passed. He didn’t move.
“Kane.”
He sighed and looked up. “Need another second.”
“What the hell did they do to you?”
“It’s not that. I mean yeah, the beating sucked and all. But…” He looked away, disgusted and furious. “It wasn’t food, but it was nutrition,” he said tightly. “It’s been two days now since the last time. I need something in me, and I can’t take solids.”
Jude shuddered inwardly. “All right. We’ll get you something,” he said. “But you’re taking it by mouth.”
“Did you think I’d ask you to shove a tube up my ass?” His expression shifted to neutral with the smallest hint of a smirk. “Maybe I’m not fine,” he said.
Without a word, Jude extended a hand.
Kane took it and levered himself to his feet. “Thanks. I can walk, though,” he said. “Try to carry me and I’ll break your goddamned arms.”
“Understood.”
They headed out of the building on the edge of another long night.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The kitchen table was as good a place as any to find absolutely nothing. Jude had been through everything on the drive twice, with Kane watching and listening in. He was still convinced Bromwell had been set up.
He just couldn’t find a damned thing to prove it.
“Oh, this is much better,” Kane drawled, setting the open plastic bottle of Muscle Milk on the table with a heavy thud after he’d taken a swig. He’d choked down two cans of Ensure before that, each with a whiskey chaser to wash the taste out. “Is there any protein drink that doesn’t taste like chalk and blood?”
“Doubt it.” Jude pushed back, stood and stretched, then headed for the fridge. “I’m grabbing a beer,” he said.
“Make it two.”
He shot Kane a surprised look. “You drink beer?”
“I drink. Period.”
“All right, then.” He fished out two cans of Coors, brought them to the table and sat down. “Think I’m out of ideas for the night,” he said.
“Roger that.” Kane cracked his beer open and drank immediately. “Better,” he said. “You can
just put this on my tab with the booze, and the clothes. Don’t know when I’ll be able to settle up, though. Last I checked, I’m not getting paid for this.”
Jude smirked in the direction of the table. “I’ll write you off as an expense,” he said. “You’re getting paid with freedom.”
“So you say.”
“I still mean it.”
“Whatever. Drink your beer.”
He did. And he thought about Sarah.
He and Special Agent Sarah Thorne had been partners going on four years. Occasionally they’d also partnered out of the field — nothing formal, or even on a regular basis, but it was good when it happened. Very good. Sarah was easy to be with, on the job and off.
They’d talked about making it permanent. Pretty much decided on a five-year plan that ended in office jobs and potential matrimonial engagement, after they’d gotten all the adventuring out of their systems. It was in both of them, the thrill of the chase. The adrenaline rush that came with taking down the bad guys.
Three years ago, they’d wrapped up a drug operation case on the coast of Florida and Jude stayed behind to clean up loose ends, while Sarah headed back to D.C. to get a head start on the next job. A political murder with a high chance of merc involvement.
That chance became a certainty faster than anyone expected. The Black Strings were not just involved — the murder was an early step in a multi-stage operation, and they weren’t about to let some federal agent step in and cut off their paycheck. They found out Sarah was investigating, and they sent an assassin to take her out.
They sent Garrett Kane.
She’d been found in a motel room, shot execution-style in the back of the head. Not Kane’s usual M.O., or the mercs’ for that matter, but Jude had always assumed he’d been ordered to do it that way. And being Kane, he’d followed through. He’d done the job.
