by J. B. Turner
“It means you’re a gullible idiot, that’s what.”
She blinked away more tears.
“So are these tears for real or something you can produce at will?”
“Please . . . I’m scared!”
“Gimme your cell phone.”
“What?”
“Just gimme it!”
“Why?”
“Listen. You’re going to call the cops. And you’re going to say that your ex-husband and his friend are armed and are in a black Mercedes SUV and they are following you.”
Beatrice glanced in the rearview mirror. “Shit. Who are they?”
“I believe they work for the people who hired you.”
“Bullshit. This is not happening.”
“Pull yourself together. Here’s how it’s going to work. I’ll give you the license plate number. You say they tried to fire at you on the highway.”
“What?”
“Then you hang up.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll kill you myself.”
Four
The car swerved as Beatrice handed Stone her cell phone. “Watch the road,” he barked. He dialed 911 and pressed the cell phone to her ear.
“Don’t fuck this up,” he warned.
Beatrice began to cry as she gripped the wheel. “Operator, please help me! There’s a black Mercedes on South Dixie Highway, headed south out of Miami. It’s my ex-husband and his friend. He just shot at my car!” She turned to Stone. “License?”
Stone whispered the number to her.
Beatrice shouted it into the phone. “Please hurry! They’re going to kill me!”
Stone ended the call. “You really are an actress,” he said. “You did good. And you didn’t fuck up. So you’re gonna live.”
“I appreciate that.”
“At least for now.” Stone glanced in the mirror, keeping an eye on the car behind them, knowing they would be considering their next move.
“You’re going to kill me anyway, aren’t you?”
“You’ll be fine. You just need to keep doing what you’re doing. You need to focus. And we’ll get you through this.”
“I want to get out. I want to get back to my family. This is not something I feel comfortable with.”
Stone said nothing.
“Please let me out.”
“By all means, not a problem. That can be arranged.”
Stone opened up the back of the cell phone, took out the SIM card and battery.
“What are you doing?”
“They can’t track us now via your cell phone.”
Beatrice shook her head. “I want to get out. Now!”
“Keep on driving. I’ll tell you when you can get out.”
“Please, I can’t cope with this.”
“Well, we’ll find out soon.”
“What do you mean?”
“Drive. Eyes forward.”
“Why? Are they still behind us? Where are the cops?”
“Don’t freak out. Just take a breath.”
Beatrice did as she was told.
“And again. Breathe in, breathe out.”
She seemed about to hyperventilate; she was breathing hard and way too fast. “I can’t!”
“Relax.”
“Relax? How the fuck can I relax?”
“Just keep driving on this very nice highway, and just keep doing what you’re told.”
Beatrice went quiet as the miles flew by. A few minutes later, they both heard the wail of sirens.
Stone glanced behind them and saw two cop cars with flashing lights speed into view. They pulled the Mercedes over. “What did I tell you?”
“Okay, what now?”
“We need to get off the highway.”
Beatrice took the next exit. They were in South Miami. “Where to?”
Stone saw a sign for a parking garage. “In there.”
Beatrice followed the sign and made a sharp turn into a space on the third level, which was nearly deserted. “What now?”
Stone pointed the gun at her head. “We’re going to get another car. Any bullshit and you will die. Try to alert anyone and you die. Understood?”
“I don’t want to go with you.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“You need to let me out.”
Stone pressed the gun tight to the side of her head. “I can’t do that.”
She nodded, sobbing. “I don’t know how this got so crazy. And I’m sorry I was part of it, but I had no idea!”
“Listen, they’re going to kill you anyway.”
Beatrice went quiet for a few moments, as if weighing carefully what he was saying. “Me? This has nothing to do with me.”
“It does now.”
“I won’t say a thing.”
“You still don’t get it, do you? Have you ever been tortured before?”
Beatrice’s face scrunched and she began to sob. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about the guys who hired you to set me up. Don’t you get it? They’re going to kill you. You go to the cops, you will be dead within an hour of leaving the station.”
Beatrice closed her eyes.
“You have to deal with this. You need to get yourself together. And I mean quick. This is the real world, not some make-believe shit. So you better get your ass out of this car. Now.”
Beatrice nodded.
Stone cocked his head and they exited the vehicle. He scanned the garage, then gestured to a silver Audi parked a few spots away. He pulled a custom key fob out of his pocket and pointed it at the car. The device would cycle through a series of radio frequencies until it emitted a signal on the same frequency that had locked the vehicle. A couple of seconds later, he heard a hard click. The Audi door had been unlocked, also disengaging the alarm.
“Get in,” he said, looking around.
Beatrice just stared at him.
“Beatrice, get in the car!”
She shook her head. “You’re going to have to kill me.”
Stone looked around to check that they were still alone. “I said get in the fucking car!”
She closed her eyes tight and shook her head hard, as if she were a child. “I don’t want to go with you. I don’t know you. I think you’re going to kill me when you’re through with me.”
“I will let you go . . . but only when I say so. You have my word.”
Beatrice shook her head.
“We either get in the car together or I kill you here. In cold blood. Do you want your daughter to lose her mommy? To grow up without you? There will be no more birthday parties.”
Beatrice was breathing hard. She looked terrified.
“I’m going to count to five. And when I get to five, you will be in the car. And we’ll drive out of here.”
Beatrice fought back tears and began to nod.
“You’ll get in the car?”
She nodded harder.
Stone opened the passenger door, and she slid in. She hunched in the seat, head in her hands.
Stone got in the driver’s seat and started the car via voice activation. Then he drove out of the parking garage and back onto the road.
“Buckle up, Beatrice.”
She wiped her eyes and did as she was told.
“I admire the fact you love your kid so much.”
“I’m a fuck-up of a mother. What sort of mom gets involved in bullshit like this? Stuck out in the middle of goddamn Miami in the middle of the night with a psychotic lunatic.”
“Things aren’t great, I admit. But I won’t hurt you.”
“You already pointed a gun at my head. Like you were playing Russian roulette.”
“You just need to come to your senses and realize what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in. If they find you, you’re going to wish you hadn’t been born, trust me.”
“Who are these guys? Is it the mafia?”
“Worse. Much worse.”
Bea
trice shook her head. “Much worse than the mafia? Are you kidding me?”
Stone threaded through dark roads, trying to figure out his next move. “Sadly not.”
“Great. Where are we going?”
“We’re going to disappear.”
“We? I don’t want to disappear.”
Stone saw a sign he knew, took the ramp, and was back on the highway, headed southwest. “Too bad.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means we’re going on the run for as long as we can stay alive.”
Five
Kevin de Boer seethed as he sat in the front passenger seat of the car after being pulled over by cops on a Miami highway. The operation couldn’t have gone worse. In the back were two South African operatives, with the American driver, ex–Navy SEAL Steve Travers, up front. No one said a word. They didn’t have to.
De Boer sensed their simmering anger at the sequence of events.
They were supposed to have followed Stone to a warehouse in Miami and neutralized him, but Stone had turned the tables on them.
The cop approached the vehicle, and the driver rolled down the window.
“Can I help you, Officer?” de Boer said.
The cop shone the flashlight in his face. “Need to see your IDs, gentlemen.”
De Boer handed over their false South African IDs. He ran his hands across his face, feeling the old scar on his left cheek.
The cop checked the last of the IDs before handing them back to de Boer. “So, you guys are a long way from home.”
De Boer forced a smile. “Absolutely, Officer. Still a bit jet-lagged.”
“What are you in Florida for?”
“It’s a reunion of old friends.”
The cop nodded. “Old friends, huh? Where you off to?”
“Headed down to the Keys for some fishing.”
The cop shone the flashlight on the two South African operatives, then back on de Boer. “Where’s your fishing gear? In the trunk?”
“No, sir. We’re going to hire our equipment. Is that all, Officer?”
“Not so fast. We got a call saying that this vehicle was pursuing a woman, said it was her ex-husband. What have you got to say about that?”
De Boer looked shocked. “That’s very strange, Officer. We just got off a long flight. I can only imagine she was mistaken.”
“Can I see your tickets?”
De Boer rifled in his pocket and pulled out the fake airline tickets, part of their cover story.
The cop shone his flashlight on the tickets. “She was quite specific. License plate. The car make. Very specific.”
“I’m at a loss to understand that, Officer.”
The cop stared at him dead-eyed. He handed back the tickets. “South Africa, huh? Whereabouts?”
“Little place outside Pretoria. We’re farmers. Hardworking farmers.”
“Where’s your luggage?”
“That was sent on down to our destination in Key West.”
“You mind if I look in the trunk?”
“Go right ahead, sir.”
The cop opened up the trunk, which contained a car maintenance kit. “Yeah, that’s fine.” He slammed the trunk shut and ambled back to the passenger-side window.
“Anything else, Officer?” de Boer said.
“I want to see your passports.”
De Boer handed the cop a plastic ziplock bag with the fake passports of all three men from South Africa.
“Stay in the vehicle while I see that this all checks out.”
“Very good, sir,” de Boer said.
The cop went back to his car. De Boer and the other three operatives sat in silence. He was glad that the weapons were currently stored in a secret compartment underneath the rear seats.
De Boer took out his cell phone and called Brigadier George Reynolds, who was leading the operation. He passed on news of what was happening.
Reynolds said, “Your IDs will withstand scrutiny. As far as the cops are concerned, you’re just some white South African guys on holiday in Florida. It’s a good story.”
De Boer shook his head. “It’s a mess.”
“It was the plan that made the most sense given the intel we had. Our source in the Miami police let us know that Stone was in town. We know he’s here once a month and that he always visits that bar. We put the woman in place.”
“But no one listened to my earlier concerns. You’re still not listening.”
“Kevin,” Reynolds said, “you were the only one who thought we should drug him and carry him out.”
“The actress, who by the way was fantastic, should have dosed his drink. Instead of spiking him, we spooked him. The audio from her phone indicated that he asked her about some fucking deli she had no clue about. If you’re going to go the honey trap route, you need to prep your bait better.”
“I think we’ve got to appreciate,” Reynolds said, “that Nathan Stone is no ordinary individual.”
“No kidding. We can both agree on that. The guy is a real piece of work.”
“This isn’t helping,” Reynolds said. “It’s not moving us forward.”
“Got to go, George, he’s coming back.”
De Boer ended the call. He glanced in the side mirror and saw the cop leaning against the cruiser, lights on, talking into his radio. “If we had stabbed him after he left the bar, that would have been a smart choice too. We could have just shot him. But this? It was the right move on the wrong guy.”
The driver nodded.
De Boer took a few moments to contemplate the chain of events. He began to wonder where his brother was. Time was dragging. And Stone was getting farther away. He turned to Roel Bakker in the rear seat. “Check to see if Pieter is within range.”
Bakker called de Boer’s brother, Pieter, who was the mobile operative on the mission. The backup. He was on a high-powered motorbike and had been tailing Stone from a distance. “Pieter, your brother wants to speak to you.”
De Boer took the cell phone. “Pieter, where are you?”
“I’m just . . .” The call from his brother’s voice-activated helmet was cutting out. “Repeat . . . I have a visual . . .”
“Pieter, I repeat, have you got eyes on the target?”
“I see them. I have a visual. Coming into Homestead.”
De Boer felt a surge of adrenaline. “Copy that. What else?”
“They’re driving a silver Audi.”
“Is the girl with him?”
“Affirmative!”
De Boer clenched his fist. “Good. How far from them?”
“Half a mile.”
“Do not lose them. I repeat, do not lose them.”
“Do I have authorization?”
“Affirmative. Take them both out.”
Six
The GPS indicated that the car was near Homestead, in South Florida. Rural, isolated, the edge of nowhere.
“Where the hell are you taking me?” Beatrice asked.
Stone knew the area well. He’d spent the past two nights at a motel nearby. No point going there. If the Commission knew he’d be at that bar, they’d been monitoring the rest of his movements too. He headed west out of the backwater town, headlights leading the way.
“I said, where the hell are we going?”
“Try to relax.”
“Please tell me where we’re going. You said I could get out.”
“You can. But not yet. When I say.”
She unbuckled her seat belt. “I’m going to jump out here if you don’t stop and let me out.”
Stone accelerated to seventy. “Good luck with that. You’ll be a vegetable if you jump out now. Not a surgeon in the world will be able to reconstruct your face.”
Beatrice bowed her head as if defeated.
“They played you real nice. They probably ran a credit check on you and saw they had a desperate woman who would do just about anything, even if it sounded improbable. Here’s the thing: if it sounds too good to be true, it
probably is.”
Beatrice began to sob. “What a fucking mess!”
“Tell me about it. I went out for a few beers, and now I’m being hunted by some pros no doubt hired by people you don’t want to know. Trust me. And make no mistake, they will be figuring out where we are as I speak. So you need to get yourself together.”
Beatrice stared at the dark road ahead of them, headlights picking out the palm trees. “Where are you taking me? I can’t see any lights. There’s no houses. Are you going to fucking kill me?”
Stone said nothing.
Beatrice hugged herself and bowed her head. She began to do what sounded like breathing exercises.
Stone was only interested in disappearing. Ideally by himself. But he knew that if she got out, or he let her out—at least now—the Commission would kill her.
“What do you do?” she asked him.
Stone wasn’t in the mood for discussion.
“Just tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? It does to me. At least now it does!”
“Listen, you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
“Try me.”
Stone sighed.
“So, are you going to enlighten me? What’s this all about? What do you do? Who are you?”
“I kill people.”
Beatrice took a few moments to contemplate that. “What?”
“I kill for a living. That’s what I do.”
“You’re an assassin?”
“You could call it that.”
Beatrice was quiet for a while before she spoke. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”
“You wanted to know. Well, now you know.”
Beatrice reached for the door handle, and Stone grabbed her by the arm with one hand, keeping the other on the steering wheel.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“I need to get out of here! I need to pee. You’re hurting me.”
“Don’t try and open the door. You will die.”
“But you’re going to kill me anyway. Look, I need to pee.”
Stone ignored her comments and let go of her.
Beatrice touched her arm. “What was that all about?”
“What do you think it was?”
“You grabbed me. I think you left a bruise.”
“Listen, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Promise?”
“I don’t make promises. I give you my word.”
