As he clutched the pistol in his pocket, he wondered how he was going to shoot a person if he couldn’t even shoot an orange. He just prayed the person was not wearing an orange shirt. He really hoped he wouldn’t have to shoot anyone. She was just supposed to go into the building, talk to someone, and get some information.
***
Kayci was here to meet a former member of her team, Mac McConnell. She was all but certain he could be trusted. Mac was a solid agent who had always played by the book. He was one of the only people she trusted right now. He was the only one who might not be in on the plot to ruin her life.
Kayci walked up to Mac tentatively. He looked strained, old. His hair had gone completely gray, and he appeared to have packed on thirty pounds since she’d last seen him two years ago. “Hey, Mac, thanks for meeting me.”
“Agent Dewitt.”
“So it’s agent now?”
“Kayci, we don’t have time to beat around the bush. I need the key, or they’re going to kill you.”
“Mac, they’re going to kill me anyway.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to be part of this, but I had no choice.”
“I’m sure.”
“Avery threatened my wife. He knew you’d trust me enough.”
“I don’t have the key with me.”
Mac nodded. “Follow me. There’s something you need to see.”
He led her into the door and showed her a picture on his phone. “I don’t want to do this, but I have no choice.” The image was Mac’s wife, Veronica, bound and gagged with Kara Bush standing behind her.
“I’m sorry, Mac.”
“I’m sorry too.”
Kayci felt movement behind her, but it was too late.
***
Jordan watched them go inside the building. He didn’t feel good about this.
The night was thick with humidity and the crusty smell of wet asphalt. There were no other people around the deserted building. A few minutes earlier, some unsavory gang bangers went by, but he’d been hiding from sight.
The traffic on Route 81, just a few hundred feet to his back, provided the constant drone of tires on pavement. The joists on the elevated road click-clacked in sporadic spurts, it was both soothing and annoying.
It was nearing ten o’clock, and Syracuse was a bustling city at this time. Especially this time of year when all the new college kids were in town checking out their new neighborhood. Where they were now was pretty far from the SU campus. This wasn’t a part of town where most people would venture at night.
The corporate offices down on Solar Street were empty for the night, and these old boarded and crumbling brick buildings drew no attention from anyone. Most of the bustle was off in the distance at the Destiny USA shopping center.
Jordan felt a bit dizzy again. There was no shaking the feeling something was wrong in his brain. He was actually starting to think he was getting sick.
He looked around inside the small utility shed. The yellow streetlamps cast an ominous glow. The entire night was taking on an indefinable eerie feeling.
An odd thumping noise rose up from the three-story brick building across the street in which Kayci decided to start her quest for freedom. At first, it sounded to Jordan like the heavy bass from a powerful car stereo system thumping in the distance. But it was definitely coming from inside the building, and it had a metallic tone.
Kayci was explicit in her instructions to stay outside. He was supposed to watch the door she went into and only act if someone else went inside. She’d given the signal all was okay when she met the man outside. Still, something was bothering Jordan. Something inside him tugged, told him to go into the building.
As if pulled by some force, he was walking across the street and into the boarded up shell of an office. Jordan crept into the open door. He stepped over some wooden moldings, kicked a few pieces of debris away, and ventured into the large room.
The thumping noise seemed no closer than it had from outside. The darkness was not black but a powdery charcoal color as streetlights spilled into the uncovered windows.
The noise thumped again, Jordan cocked his head, trying to zero in on which direction the sound originated. The thump sounded again, three times in rapid succession.
Jordan moved forward toward the sound. One hand held the gun at his side. The hand other wormed into his pocket and fished out his keychain LED light.
Snapping on the light he revealed the rest of the large office space. Broken pieces of the structure littered every corner. It looked like the local kids had torn the place apart over the years. Random graffiti tags peppered every wall. Some looked years old and faded, but a few were fresh. Cryptic messages laced out in different colored paints. Many were in true English, others in slang Jordan would never understand. The one that caught his attention was scrawled in red jagged lettering, outlined in yellow. It read Death is watching you.
The words dug right into the jellied disks of his spine. It did feel like someone or something was watching. It never occurred to him death itself could be a watcher of any kind. But it made his condition seem less like a virtual battle and more like a real life game that could somehow declare a victor.
While he had often joked with himself over his chess match with death, until this very moment he never felt like it was real. He always thought it was bad luck, an incredibly unfortunate swing, but prosaic just the same. Now it felt supernatural, as if an entity named Death were stalking him.
He pushed past the writing on the wall toward the sound that thumped again. He was sure this time it had come from upstairs on the second floor. Without remembering doing it, he raised his gun in front of him, clearing the hidden corners he illuminated with the light.
Three loud thumps echoed. A sense of urgency fell over his body in warm waves from top to bottom. He found the stairs. The light showed two sets of footprints going up. One was likely Kayci, but the other was a man, a large man wearing boots. Likely the man she met with outside.
Up the stairs one-by-one, the thumping noise radiated again and he was certain he was going the right direction now. He hurried up the last few stairs and into the large room.
What he saw didn’t register right away. There was a large white drum in the center of the floor. A man sat in a chair with a large mallet.
The man had his back to Jordan, and after a few seconds, he thumped the rubber hammer into the drum. This was strange. Jordan looked around the room. It was dark but more brightly lit than the downstairs, so he didn’t need a flashlight. None of the large windows up here had plywood on them, so the streetlamps illuminated the room.
Although one dark corner remained unseen, Jordan didn’t want to shine his light and give away his position. As it was, it appeared as if the man in the chair didn’t know he was there.
“Hey,” Jordan said, keeping the gun leveled on the back of the man.
The man didn’t respond or turn. He just swung the mallet again and thumped the drum.
What is this? Jordan took a couple steps toward the man. Finally, he said “Kayci” loud enough that the man should have heard him. He didn’t know how, but he made the connection she was inside that drum.
The man thumped the drum again, louder this time. Then he started thumping it continuously. He didn’t stop until Jordan hit him in the back of the head with the pistol.
The man fell off the chair to the floor, trying to scramble to his feet. Jordan realized the man had not heard him because of the headphones in his ears. The tinny sound of small music became obvious when the ear-buds dislodged from the impact.
The man reached for his gun, but Jordan didn’t wait for him to get it. He rushed the man and kicked him hard in the face, knocking him off his knees to flat on his back and unconscious.
Jordan turned back to the drum, looking for a door or hatch. He twisted the long lever and opened the door. He shined his light into the chamber and saw Kayci. Her frantic eyes met his.
Jordan quickly helped Ka
yci out. He unraveled the rope around her wrists. As soon as her hand was free, she pulled the duct tape from her mouth.
In a flash, Kayci tore the pistol from Jordan’s hand and pulled the trigger, just inches from his armpit. He felt the recoil touch his ribs.
When he turned, he saw the man standing, applying pressure to the blood pouring from his gut. Kayci shot him again in the chest and he went down.
“Holy shit, that was loud!” Jordan stuck his finger in his ear and wiggled it around.
“Sorry, but he was about to stick that giant knife in your back.” Kayci nodded her head to the gleaming dagger dangling at the edge of the dead man’s fingers.
“What happened?” Jordan asked. “I thought this was supposed to be the easy part.”
“Things go wrong.” She went to the dead man and started going through all his pockets.
“We have to go. The other one will be back.”
“What other one?” Jordan was suddenly more nervous.
“Don’t worry. I sent him on a goose chase to buy us some time.”
“What is going on? Why were you at the mercy of little drummer goon?”
“Sensory deprivation torture.”
“How did you lose control here?”
“There were two of them, one waiting inside and they overpowered me and got my gun. The tank is designed to torture me until I spilled the location of the hard drive.”
“What is on those drives?” Jordan was being mostly rhetorical. “Who are these guys?”
“That dead guy there is Russ McConnell. He’s an ex member of my team. I thought I could trust him.”
“Some teammate,” Jordan quipped.
“I was wrong. Things are more desperate than I thought.”
“So your entire team has gone bad?”
“Basically. Everyone wants the cash. Let’s get out of here. I’ll explain as we go.”
They headed down the steps in a rush. “So you’ve got what they want?”
“Yes, I have one of three digital keys to the account info. My brother hid it on one of those drives.”
“Account info?”
They were outside on the street, hustling toward the vehicle a few blocks away.
“SORC had a piggybank. Every good spy outfit does. But ours is quite a bit larger than the average one. It’s supposed to be a safety valve in case the unit is burned. We’re supposed to split it up and break apart.”
“And you’re in the way of someone getting all of it.”
“Something like that.”
“So you’re finally coming clean with me?”
“Something like that.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means there’s more, a lot more, but we don’t have time to go into it now. We need to get the hell out of here.”
They walked fast toward where they’d left the car off Plum Street.
As they crossed the street, three wannabe gangster thugs blocked their path. They were the same ones Jordan had watched walk past him while he was hiding.
One of them stepped in their way menacingly. “Where you skatin’, bitch?” The obvious leader of the trio moved to block Kayci.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Jordan offered.
“Shut the fuck up, wonder bread. Ain’t o one’s talking to you.” The stocky teen in the back with the crooked Yankees hat sneered.
“Yeah, I think Goldilocks here can speak for herself.” The leader pulled up his shirt to reveal a silver revolver in his waistband.
Kayci stepped back, bumping into Jordan. “Guys, you don’t want this.”
“Bitch, you ain’t gots a clue what I want.” He looked her up and down. “But you’s a tasty piece of skin.”
As the man reached out to touch her, Kayci’s fist exploded out in a flash and blasted into his face. The guy dropped to the ground with a moan. Then in a flash, she pulled her gun and put it right into the face of the stocky man. “Don’t reach. I’ll drop you,” The man raised his hands and stepped back.
The other man on the ground rolled around but didn’t get up. Kayci and Jordan moved around the trio and walked backward until the two still standing took off running.
“You’re a badass,” Jordan said.
“Sometimes you have to act before an enemy causes you to react.”
“Offense is the best defense.”
“Precisely.”
Kayci turned finally and started toward the SUV just a few hundred feet away. They reached the vehicle and got in.
“Well, that was fun,” Jordan quipped as they drove by the man now sitting on the sidewalk clutching his probably broken nose.
Chapter Nineteen
Roy Fletcher hissed smoke from the sides of his serpent lips and tapped his cigar on the ashtray. His nerves had gotten the best of him lately, and he was chain-smoking again. The box of Cuban cigars on his desk was getting scarily thin on supply.
He was more than pissed off that the buffoons from Majestic Security had failed him. They were unable to get a hold of a single isolated NSA operative. It seemed impossible to believe they were so efficient on the battlefield.
The SORC team had been dismantled. She had no backup, yet Kayci Dewitt still somehow stayed a step ahead of them. He hated to admit it, but he should’ve listened to Avery and let the SORC team go after her in the first place. However, he didn’t want any link back to him and Majestic was the best way to do that.
Fletcher was not a spy. He was an appointed official. He headed up the division that kept SORC and several other highly secretive spy units running. In recent times, things were not going the way he wanted. In order to climb out of this professional hole, he needed to exert some leverage.
He picked up his phone and dialed the number of Avery Von Strieder, his main pawn. Avery was a puppet, one of many he had at his disposal. It just so happened he was the most restless of all the puppets and the easiest to manipulate.
Fletcher was willing to play along, because he saw the opportunity to replace SORC with a real team handpicked by him, one that could further his agenda and kick a little ass for America. This government had gone weak against domestic terrorists, too much watching and not enough acting. It was all political posturing these days.
With the money available in the SORC piggybank, there was enough to start his personal concern and pay off the puppets. A team that did not have to bow or answer to any political pundit from the GAO or FBI, one that could act and not just study. SORC was a waste. They did nothing but compile reports. They did very little in the name of freedom.
Avery could have his damn money. Roy already had more than enough. However, you could never have enough power.
“Avery,” he barked into the phone, “what the hell is going on?”
***
Avery could feel his blood pressure rise with each word from Fletcher. He wished he’d never gotten involved with this man. Now Mac McConnell was dead, and the members of the Majestic Security were pissed off at him. They’d lost two good men trying to get information out of Jordan Callahan, and their man working with McConnell was pissed off about the goose chase Kayci had sent him on.
“Sometimes operations don’t go as planned,” Avery replied.
“You listen to me, Avery, either she takes the fall, or your boy Pratt does. Someone is going down. It’s your choice.”
Avery straightened his tie. It was time for him to get his own hands dirty. His plan all along was to use the team and find her, keep it in house. But Fletcher wanted to do it his way, and as usual, his way was wrong.
“Everything is under control,” Avery said, hoping Fletcher would just hang up.
“That’s not the impression I’m getting. What’s the reason Boyd from Majestic was just in here collecting his final check and telling me he was out? How can you dismiss that? Now it’s your asses on the line.”
“They made a tactical mistake.”
“A mistake, you say? How’s that?”
“She’s w
orking with someone. They didn’t account for that. It was a tactical error. Maybe they’re getting too soft.”
“Well, get it under control, Avery, because this is your ass on the line. If this goes bad, I come down on you, you and your team take the fall for everything, including the theft of about fifty million. So clean it up, get it done, and don’t fuck it up.”
The line went dead. Avery slumped back in his chair. Hopefully, Nathan would call with good news. Just a second later his phone sang again. “Nathan, tell me something good.”
“I just touched down in Syracuse.”
“Okay, sit tight. I’m on my way up there right now. We’re going to have to triangulate. She’s obviously too good. This should have been handled in house from the beginning.”
“I told you that. I knew Fletcher was going to fuck this up with his goons. You can’t trust a dog to do a cat’s job.”
“I agreed with you from the start.”
“You can’t beat one of us with direct force. There’s a reason Fletcher is out of the loop. He doesn’t know what we can do.”
“Drop it. He’s a moron. We moved on. Where are you with the key?”
“I know it’s here in Syracuse. She’s got it somewhere close. She didn’t drive it all the way up from Allentown just to throw it away. I’ll call Kara and get her up here too. You get Hamilton.”
“They can’t know what we are up to.”
“Hamilton can’t, but Kara is already on our team.”
“What?” Avery was not happy. “You told her? How long has she known?”
“Since the beginning”
“Big mistake. This was only supposed to be inner circle.”
“Yeah, well, what can I say? Kara and I have been sleeping together for over a year. I was afraid she would find out and talk, so I explained it all to her.”
“So she knows everything?”
“She hates Kayci. There’s no problem. She hates Hamilton.”
“She hates everyone.”
“Exactly, including you, but she loves me and will do anything I say. It’s all part of the game, Avery.”
“Can I assume she’s been elevated?”
“Of course, but she’s angry. She’s no threat to you.”
Savior Frequency (Frequency Series Book 1) Page 8
