The Savannah Project (Jake Pendleton series)

by Chuck Barrett

  Annie leaned over the white railing on the second-floor balcony motioning for him to come through the garage.

  She pointed to it and said, “Take the stairs in the garage up to the kitchen. Just come on in.”

  “Thanks, Annie, you’re a life saver.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Kaplan yelled into his phone, “NO. NO.”

  It was too late. He heard the click and knew Jake had hung up. He slammed his phone closed too hard, lost his grip and the phone crashed onto the concrete sidewalk, shutting down from the impact.

  “Shit.”

  He picked it up. It had shut down.

  He tried the on switch, but nothing happened. He removed the battery, then the SIMM card, reinserted both and pushed the on button again.

  “Come on—work, dammit, work.”

  The phone rebooted and went through all the steps to acquire a signal. He ran toward Annie’s house, taking a circuitous route so he could approach her house from the end of the alley behind her house.

  He hit the talk button twice to send it to last number redial. Nothing happened. The phone had shut down again.

  He swore.

  * * * Jake entered the garage, his back to the wall as he squeezed past her red Mazda MX-5 Miata. The convertible top was down. Overhead fluorescent lights reflected off the shiny black leather seats. Sunglasses perched precariously on the rear view mirror. A silver lipstick tube stuck out of the ashtray. Her FAA identification badge was on the passenger floorboard, along with the NTSB observer’s pass from Annie’s visit to the crash site.

  The garage floor, painted gray with black flecks, was spotless. Storage cabinets lined the walls and two bicycles attached to pulley systems hung from the ceiling. He wondered if Kaplan and Annie ever used them. The garage looked spacious with just the pint-sized Miata inside, but two full sized cars wouldn’t fit.

  He reached the top step, stretched out his hand searching for the doorknob when the door opened.

  Annie motioned him inside. “Come on in, Mr. Pendleton. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Thanks, Annie. Water would be great and, please, call me Jake.”

  He walked into the kitchen, noticing the bay window. An open book was placed pages down on the cushion. Smoke Screen, by Sandra Brown.

  Annie handed him a bottle of water.

  “Oh my God, you’re hurt,” she said, pointing to his side. “What happened?”

  He looked down and saw that blood had oozed through the cut in his leather jacket.

  “Annie, I need your help. Someone took Beth, my fiancée.” His voice broke up in panic. “We’ve got to call the police.”

  “Jake, come in here and sit down. Let me look at your side.” Annie walked casually to an open door. “The first thing we need to do is stop that bleeding.”

  He followed her into the living room, dark except for a sliver of sunlight coming through a three-inch opening in the curtains. He walked over to the window and squinted into the bright sunshine outside. Dozens of people, apparently holiday celebrators, sauntered along the sidewalks.

  Then he noticed an old black relic of a car on the far corner across the street and a sign nearby that read, “Police Barracks.” He saw the gate where he exited and it occurred to him that he went to the wrong corner of the cemetery.

  His eyes were drawn to the familiar Suburban parked in front of Annie’s house with lettering on the side … NTSB.

  “What the—”

  Annie interrupted, “Let me get the lights. There is someone I want you to meet. Let me introduce you to my cousin.”

  She flipped the switch on the wall.

  In the lighted living room stood Pat McGill.

  CHAPTER 47

  “Pat! What are you doing here? What’s she talking about?”

  McGill looked grim. “I told you about her in the car on the way down here. I have a cousin in Savannah, remember?”

  “The other day at the site, why didn’t you say something?” His voice trailed off.

  “You didn’t need to know,” McGill replied.

  “A man’s been chasing me … he did this.” He opened his jacket to show his blood-soaked shirt.

  “They got Beth. A woman called me on my cell phone and … she … said …”

  He turned and looked at Annie. Another wave of nausea swept over him. He leaned back against the wall to keep from falling.

  “Oh my God, you’re Jillian,” he whispered. “Pat, what’s going on here?”

  The woman looked at McGill, then at Jake.

  “Beth is fine,” she said. “She hasn’t been hurt in any way.”

  “I want to see her now,” he said.

  McGill looked toward a hallway and said, “Bring her in.”

  Beth walked slowly into view, a silenced Beretta held to her head. A huge hand gripped her elbow.

  When the man walked into view behind her, Jake saw it was the man who had been chasing him.

  His knees buckled and he slid down the wall and sat on the floor. His head was spinning. The room went blurry. Ears ringing. He could make out only shapes and silhouettes.

  He heard Beth yelling but couldn’t understand the words. More ringing. Louder. McGill said something but he didn’t understand it either. The pain in his side overwhelmed him. The loss of blood finally caught up to him and the room faded to darkness.

  When he regained consciousness, he was lying on the floor with a pillow under his head. His jacket and shirt had been removed. Beth had wiped his knife wound clean and was holding pressure to stop the bleeding.

  A wet washcloth was folded and placed on his forehead. He was weak from the loss of blood. He blinked his eyes a couple of times, then he saw Beth.

  “Welcome back. That big son of a bitch, Ian, they call him, Ian Collins. He told me that he cut you. It looks deep, I think it’ll need stitches.”

  Jake tried to raise his head and look around. He winced. “Try to be still. Here, drink some of this,” she whispered. “Jillian—or Annie—or whoever she is, gave it to me, it’s a lot like Gatorade. It will help. They say they’re trying to figure out what they’re going to do with us. Ian wants to kill us but Pat won’t let him. Ian said some man named Michael knocked him on the head and that’s how you got away from him.”

  “He was the man who was in our room the other night,” Jake mumbled. “His last name must be Sullivan. That’s what Ian called him.”

  Beth leaned close to Jake’s ear and whispered, “What are we going to do? I’m scared.”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll think of something, I promise.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Kaplan watched the back of Annie’s house for ten minutes. His first thought had been to call the police. They would no doubt come to the door, yell a few times, then break the door down. By then Jake and Beth may already be dead…and Annie too. No, he had to handle this himself. He was familiar enough with the house to know the entire floor plan and furniture layout. He planned to use that to his advantage.

  Getting inside without being spotted might be a problem. He knew she would have someone watching the windows, probably the big man. The only access from the alleyway would leave him exposed as he entered the back yard. Regardless of whether he entered through the gate or climbed over the fence, he would be visible and vulnerable. That left the Oglethorpe Street access, the only blind spot.

  The west approach to the house on Oglethorpe was too visible. The view from inside the house offered a clean view of the sidewalk. He would certainly be spotted on an approach attempt from that direction.

  The east approach from Oglethorpe was the only viable option. It offered protection from the windows’ view. The stair access and a large magnolia tree blocked the view from inside the house. Unless someone was on the front steps standing watch, he would be shielded from view. He was confident no one would be outside.

  The mid-afternoon sun was bright and warm. Kaplan had ridden his Harley into town this morning and parked it behind the courthous
e just a few blocks away. He wore jeans, his riding boots, and a black long-sleeved Harley shirt. He pushed the banded sleeves up toward his elbows in a vain attempt to cool down.

  Retreating down the alleyway back to Lincoln Street, he circled north and east to Habersham Street, then back south to Oglethorpe. The houses that lined the block on Oglethorpe were close, very close, usually standing no more than three to four feet apart. This offered access to the backyard between the houses. He knew that a narrow gate belonging to Annie’s neighbor blocked the path between the two houses.

  He crept west on Oglethorpe toward Annie’s house, keeping as close as possible to the neighboring houses to cut off the viewing angle from Annie’s windows. No sense risking the only chance he had to get in sight unseen.

  Reaching the corner of Annie’s house, Kaplan looked at the gate. It was padlocked. The gate had never been padlocked before, so the owner of the home next door must have locked it because of the St. Patrick’s Day crowd. It was an older lock but a sturdy one.

  He checked the gate’s hinges. Solid. To climb over the gate would either draw unwanted attention to him or it would make him clearly visible to the window in the living room where the curtains were slightly open. Neither of which he wanted to do.

  He checked the padlock again. A little play in the locking mechanism, maybe enough to break it loose with a hard blow. He looked around and the only thing he saw that might work was a brick. Several bricks were stacked underneath the stairwell landing of Annie’s front door. The landing was at the top of a concrete block stairwell leading up to the second level entrance.

  He picked up a brick and stood next to the gate waiting, watching for a chance to smash the lock with the brick without being seen or heard. His chance came, no cars or pedestrians approaching, so he swung and smashed the brick down hard on the padlock. Nothing happened.

  He turned and looked around, holding the brick behind his back. No one showed any interest. He waited. An elderly couple approached and he smiled at them as they walked by in front of him. They were talking about the weather and the parade and paid him no attention. As they moved out of range, a teenage boy walked toward Kaplan. The boy’s head was bobbing up and down and he was singing. He had earpieces in each ear with white wires leading down to his iPod. The volume was loud enough for Kaplan to hear the beat.

  After the boy passed, Kaplan turned and smashed the brick against the padlock a second time. The brick crumbled into pieces and fell onto the sidewalk. Then he heard Annie’s deadbolt click.

  He ducked under the landing. Standing only two feet beneath Annie’s door, he heard someone step out onto the landing. He pressed his body as close to the concrete block as possible, ducking slightly under the steps. Then he heard a voice call back into the house.

  “No one out here but some kid with an iPod.”

  The assassin.

  The door closed and the deadbolt clicked back into place. He didn’t move. After two minutes he moved toward the gate looking for something else to use to break the padlock. Then he saw it. A pile of crumbled brick at the foot of the gate and the padlock hanging open in the latch.

  He removed the lock, opened the gate, went inside and closed the gate behind him. The soil beneath his feet was wet. Just wet dirt, no weeds, no grass, no vegetation of any kind.

  Damp. Musty. Cold. The narrow strip of dirt between the houses never saw any direct sunlight.

  As soon as he closed the gate, he realized he was in the wrong back yard. He scaled the eight-foot privacy fence into Annie’s yard, and crept along the back of her house to the garage. He ducked into her garage out of sight.

  Just like when he was in Special Forces, reaching his target objective proved to be the easy part, gaining access and entry would be the hard part.

  CHAPTER 49

  The drapes were drawn closed. The only light in the living room emanated from three lamps and the afternoon glow coming down the hallway from the kitchen windows. Jake saw Jillian walking down the hall from the kitchen with something in her hands. Bright light from the window revealed only her silhouette until she walked into the light from the lamps. She carried four beer bottles, set them on a table and then walked back into the kitchen.

  Ian Collins stepped into view from behind her with two beer bottles and a gun.

  Jake and Beth were sitting next to each other on the leather sofa. The bleeding had stopped. Jake’s blood-soaked shirt had been removed.

  Jillian walked in with one of Kaplan’s shirt draped over her arm and something in her hand. She asked, “Has the bleeding stopped?”

  Beth answered, “Yes, for now.”

  “Good, let’s glue it closed.”

  “What do you mean?” Jake asked.

  “I’ll show you. This might sting a little.” Jillian took a tube of Super Glue and applied a bead down the length of the cut. Then she applied a piece of white medical tape on top of the wound to cover it, gluing it down as she went.

  “There you go. That should hold and keep it from pulling open again.”

  “Where’d you learn that?” Beth asked.

  “Actually, believe it or not, it was Ian’s idea. He said he’s done it to himself many times and I’m sure he probably has.”

  Jillian stood, walked over to the table and then walked back and stood in front of Jake and Beth and held out two bottles of Guinness Draught.

  “Take these and drink up,” Jillian commanded.

  “Go to hell.” Jake crossed his arms.

  “No,” Beth knocked both bottles from Jillian’s hands sending them crashing to the floor.

  Jillian slapped Beth. “Bitch.”

  McGill stepped forward. “What the hell is this all about?”

  “Come on, Pat, we’ve been over this already. We can’t let them live, they know too much,” Jillian said.

  “That’s enough. I’ll handle this.” Collins stepped into the light and placed the silencer next to Beth’s right temple.

  His hard eyes looked down at Jake. “Drink up, both of you. If you don’t, I’ll start with her. I’ll make you watch. I’ll do things to her, things you won’t like. Then I’ll kill her, right in front of your eyes. Can you live with that, Mister Pendleton?”

  ”Jake, do something.” Beth started crying.

  McGill protested, “Ian, put the gun down. This has gone too far. Only O’Rourke was supposed to die, not everyone on my team. Where does it stop? You already killed the mechanic in Dallas, then Dave. Now you want to kill Jake and Beth too?”

  “We agreed. You agreed. From the beginning—that we couldn’t leave any witnesses,” Collins said. “Have you forgotten our objective is not to be discovered? Think about what this would do to our cause. No witnesses.”

  Jake stood, wavered unsteadily, and interrupted, “Dave? What about Dave? I thought it was an accident.”

  Beth stood next to him, holding him steady.

  McGill turned to Jake. “No, it wasn’t. Ian killed him. You know how Dave was always talking to himself out loud. Ian heard him, he heard him call you, and then he shot him. He dropped the wreckage on top of him to conceal the gunshot wound temporarily. The coroner called this morning and told me what he had found, a bullet in the heart.”

  Jake lowered his chin and shook his head. “You son of a bitch.” He could hear Beth sobbing. “Why the beer?” he finally said.

  McGill’s eyes looked puzzled as he faced Jillian. “Yes, why the beer?”

  Jillian brought two new bottles of beer. “Tell him. Tell them your great plan.”

  “Sit down, both of you.” The hammer clicked in place when Collins cocked it.

  After Jake and Beth sat, Collins walked to the middle of the room, still pointing the gun at Jake and Beth. “Well, it’s like this. There’s going to be an accident. A terrible automobile accident. Alcohol related, I’m afraid. It seems that a young NTSB investigator and his fiancée will have a little too much to drink on this St. Patrick’s Day, then they’ll go for a joy ride up in South Ca
rolina in his sporty black GTO. The car his girlfriend drove down from Atlanta. He will drive a little too fast and lose control and crash. You Americans and your obsession with cars.

  Collins pulled the hammer of the Beretta back. It made a click. “Now drink up.”

  * * * Kaplan stood underneath the second-floor balcony. He grabbed a five-gallon fishing bucket from the garage and placed it upside down under the ledge to give him the extra height he needed to reach the balcony. He stood on the bucket and jumped up, catching the bottom of the balcony with his fingertips. He hung there for a few seconds while he scanned the alley and the other back yards, then he pulled himself up to the balcony.