The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3

by Nicholas Erik

  “He has Lorelei.”

  “How’d he get your sister?” Strike said. “That son of a bitch.”

  Keene just shook his head.

  After a protracted and awkward silence, Wade fussed with his baseball cap, putting it on straight for the first time. He even sounded apologetic when he said, “That sucks, dude.”

  “And Derek, too,” Keene said, diverting his gaze towards Strike. “He wants the drive. No sharing or whistle-blowing. We do that, they die.”

  “You can’t give him back the damn drive,” Strike said. “You saw it.”

  “Commander Owens has Lorelei.”

  Strike placed her hand on her chin and said, “This Owens guy, he probably has backups of the data, right? So maybe it’s not a bad trade. Not like we’re giving him back anything he doesn’t already have.”

  “Why’s he want it back, then?”

  “Peace of mind,” Strike said. “So it won’t bite him in the ass later.”

  “That’s not it, though.”

  “I don’t like where this is going,” Strike said.

  “He wants Rabbit, too.”

  “Jesus.”

  “And he’s on a tight schedule. Twenty-four hours, in Barcelona.” Keene’s eye flitted to the clock. Which reminded him. “Where the hell is Rabbit? She still upstairs?”

  There was a loud crash, like someone who had sensitive hearing was trying to escape their prey.

  Keene went to leave the kitchen, and Strike grabbed his arm.

  “You know you can’t do this.”

  He shook loose and stomped through the halls, Strike and Wade trailing a safe distance behind.

  “Rabbit? Rabbit, you there?” Keene’s voice echoed through the empty hallways and rooms.

  Keene thought about the timeline, backtracking to when he had first arrived. Rabbit had missed the drive decryption, the phone call, everything—and all for a thirty minute shower? It didn’t track.

  He raced up the stairs two at a time, following the sound of the running water. Batting away the steam, Keene’s suspicions were confirmed.

  The hot water whistled inside the empty bathroom.

  Keene rushed back down the steps, almost slipping at the bottom before he tore into the computer room.

  He glanced back at the stairs with surprised confusion, noting the descending damp footprints.

  “Uh Keeney,” Wade called from the back of the house, “you better come here.”

  When he entered the computer room, Strike and Linus stood there with similarly dumbfounded expressions.

  “It’s gone,” she said.

  “What’s gone?” Keene said, rushing over to the desk, not even knowing to look for. “What the hell is gone?”

  “The drive. She took it.”

  Keene froze, his heart struggling to beat. He stared at the water droplets glistening on the desktop. The room and its neon glow stick aesthetic narrowed in around him, the drawings adorning the walls closing in. A sense of claustrophobia, like he was being buried alive, took hold of him as he stood and shook.

  Both Rabbit and the drive were missing.

  And any chance of getting Lorelei and Derek back was fading fast.

  14 | A New Plan

  “I told you not to do it,” Strike said. “This is about the best case scenario.”

  “It’s pretty bad, dude,” Wade said. “I don’t think it could be worse.”

  “She could’ve killed all three of us and run.”

  “Yeah, that would’ve sucked.”

  Keene followed his two allies into the garage in detached silence, getting into the back of Wade’s yellow Porsche 911 Carrera convertible without any tinge of jealousy or anger about the past.

  His mind bounced between two unpleasant tracks.

  Lorelei and Derek were going to die.

  And he had been willing to sacrifice the world—and Rabbit—in exchange.

  “You weren’t thinking straight.” The voice came in like an IV drip of molasses, each syllable exaggerated to the point of being almost nonsensical. “You didn’t do it.”

  “What?” Keene blinked, the trees and suburban houses whipping by.

  “You were talking out loud, over and over again. No one was letting you give that asshole the drive.” Strike turned around, her blonde hair blowing about at all angles as Linus floored the car down an empty stretch of road. “And by no one, I meant me. The kid’s useless.”

  “I’m not a kid, babe, and I can prove—”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Strike nodded at Keene and gave him a faint smile. “Don’t worry.”

  “Worry?” The car continued to pick up speed as it rode up the on-ramp and onto the highway. Keene’s mental faculties began to return, feeling a pang of indignation that Linus would keep the roof down in the middle of a Boston winter.

  Keene wiped frost from his earlobe and shivered. Linus pulled off on the side of the road and pressed a button, the car’s top coming up at a smooth, even pace.

  “Dude, you awake? You were going catatonic on us for a second.”

  “I hate you.”

  Linus grinned in the rearview. “I think the cold brought him back, babe.”

  “One thing, Wade,” Strike said. Keene could see her teeth glinting in the rearview like a wolf readying to strike.

  “Yeah?”

  “Keep calling me babe, and I’ll put you in the trunk.”

  “You’re into that type of stuff, huh?”

  “I didn’t say you’d be alive.”

  “Right, right.” Wade gave a halting laugh and pulled the car back on to the highway at a reduced speed. “So Keeney, we got a plan.”

  “I hope Strike came up with most of it.”

  “Have a little faith in your old pal, dude. It was a team effort. You know I’m your boy.”

  “Just get to the part about the plan,” Keene said.

  “Okay, so Commander Creepy, he told you to meet him in Barcelona. Well, guess what?”

  “I don’t think he’s in the mood to guess right now,” Strike said. “If I had to bet.”

  Linus adjusted his sunglasses in the rearview and said, “Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Anyway, according to what I saw on the drive before, you know, your hot crazy friend stole it away and disappeared, Atlantis is right off the Barcelona coast. Less than a mile.”

  “That doesn’t sound exact,” Keene said.

  “Beggars, choosers, that whole thing,” Linus said. “The Rabbit chick, she told you it had to be destroyed, right?”

  “What?”

  “Atlantis, dude.”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Keene watched a green sign whip by on the interstate. “The Ruby Rattlesnake, actually.”

  “Which is in Atlantis. You know that saying, blow up the entire snake and the body dies.”

  “I don’t think that’s a saying,” Keene said.

  “Point is, Rabbit’s probably gonna try to blow up Atlantis to get rid of that red snake problem, dude.”

  “Makes sense,” Keene said, and couldn’t believe he was actually saying those words to Linus. This day had been strange indeed.

  “I thought you’d be happier, dude. We can find her.”

  “We’ll get them back,” Strike said. She gave a weak thumbs up.

  “So what’s the first step in this plan, anyway?” Keene said.

  “We visit an old friend.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “My mother,” Strike said, a grim and unamused expression creasing her lips.

  “Why her?”

  “Because I don’t know anyone else with a yacht.”

  15 | Under the Sea

  Loyalty could be a fluid thing, much like seawater at different times of day. Depending on the environment, all the variables changed.
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br />   Hawk understood this well, and had made her own decisions accordingly. After all, she could wind up like Rabbit—a celebrated part of the program one moment, a box of spare parts to be disassembled and reused the next.

  Luckily Hawk had been hedging her bets all along, playing the good soldier while preparing for contingencies.

  Hawk brushed her flowing white locks out of her eyes and took out the bag of gray colored powder, finely ground to a pure consistency. Flecks of red dotted the dust. She pressed against the wall as a municipal worker walked down a nearby hallway.

  The footsteps faded, and she glanced around the corner. Gone.

  Then she rushed by, running through the winding corridors until she reached a junction where the maze of pipes converged into a larger, single conduit.

  She pulled up the blueprint of Barcelona’s municipal water treatment facility on her phone and smiled.

  This was it.

  She sprinted down the hallway, following the thick, rounded metal into a large room. Here the pipe disappeared into a large pool, the beginning of the massive reservoir that serviced much of the city. Hawk took out the pouch, checked the powder once more, then dropped it into the crystal clear water.

  “Hey,” a man said in Spanish, “what are you doing?”

  “What I have been told,” Hawk replied. She whirled around. A pudgy man, armed with a flashlight and a baton, stood in the doorway.

  “What, are you crazy lady or something, lady? You can’t be here.”

  “Do not worry. I am leaving.” She gave a final glance at the pool. The bag had disappeared from view, the only vestige of its existence a faint cloudy trail in the middle of the water reservoir—easily missed if one did not know where to look.

  Hawk sprinted toward the man.

  She broke his neck before he could scream.

  Then she dragged the body into a corner and found her way out of the facility, emerging above ground some minutes later.

  Her phone immediately rang.

  “Where the hell are you? I called you five times.”

  “Out of range.”

  “You are to always be in range,” Commander Owens said. “I need you at the main facility.”

  “Yes sir,” Hawk said. “I will be right there.”

  “The minute we touch down, you’re off running to God knows where. Do I need to worry?”

  “Everyone needs to worry, sir.”

  There was brief pause on the other end of the line. “Just hurry back.”

  The call ended, and Hawk stepped on to her stolen motorcycle, kicking it into gear.

  Yes.

  Everyone would soon be worrying quite a bit.

  Commander Owens, gun in hand, ushered Lorelei Keene and Derek Dash out of the limousine. Lorelei had gotten used to the process—being herded between extravagant methods of transportation—although she still grumbled while she walked towards the four story structure ahead.

  “Never thought I’d win a free trip to Barcelona,” Lorelei said. She dragged her feet, walking as slow as she could without inciting the ire of the nearby guards. “I’m a lucky girl.”

  “Let’s hope your luck continues and Mr. Keene arrives with what I need,” Owens said.

  The tough, short grass scratched at her bare shins. If she’d known she was going to be dragged above the equator in mid-winter, Lorelei might have chosen to wear pants that morning. A lukewarm February breeze fluttered through her wild, shoulder-length black hair. The scent of salt clung to the air, overpowering any other aromas.

  Behind the drab building, a shimmering blue sea stretched on for miles. The structure was not quite beachside, instead enjoying a perch a few hundred yards inland and some twenty or thirty feet above the sand.

  The land below was deserted, although when she looked further down the beach, to the east, she saw a number of people on the other side of a large picket fence. She stopped walking, tracing the outline of the fence with her eyes.

  This property must’ve been three acres of sea-front land in the heart of a brilliant city. Turning around to trace the fence’s terminus, she noticed the sky-stretching spires of the Sagrada Familia church. In the fuchsia glow of the dusk, its distant towers looked ensconced by torch light.

  In fact, the entire city glowed, architecture of past and present in perfect symbiosis.

  “What is—ah, yes,” Commander Owens said. “The Spaniards are most elegant.” He poked Lorelei in the back with his pistol, and she stumbled forward over the sand dappled grass. “But if you find that impressive, my dear, what you see next might just stop your heart.”

  “Don’t call her that,” Derek said. “Don’t even speak to her.” He gritted his teeth and limped up beside her in a symbolic—but somewhat empty—protective gesture.

  “I’m afraid you don’t get much of a say in that, Mr. Dash. Although duly noted.”

  Lorelei sped up her gait so that she didn’t have to feel the cool tip of Owens’ shaky pistol between her shoulder blades. It’d crossed her mind to disarm him and make a break for it, but there were three other guys with him toting massive assault rifles.

  While Owens might miss, she wouldn’t bet on all three of them doing the same.

  And if she got Derek killed, she wouldn’t be able to deal with that.

  Stupid Kip. Always dragging the two of them into his nonsense without asking. If he had just kept in contact like a normal person—yeah, that wasn’t happening. Might as well try to teach a dog algebra. She gritted her teeth and set her gaze on the building before her. She wouldn’t accept it, or forgive him, or pray for change.

  It kind of was what it was, at this point—the good and the bad.

  Still, if he somehow managed to summon up the Captain Keene of old rather than whatever he was struggling to become now, that would make her feel a lot better about how things were going.

  She stared at the building. Nothing about its appearance suggested that it had any impressive secrets.

  Square, squat and ugly. This close, it totally blocked out the view of the sea and the pastel sunset diving beneath the Mediterranean’s horizon. Some jackass—no way an architect designed this abomination—had dropped a miniature box store, fashioned from concrete, in the middle of a prominent and highly visible seaside hill.

  It got worse the closer she got. The drab, characterless structure contained no detailing on its flat façade, and the half dozen small windows were all blacked out with heavy shades. A sloppy sign posted in the window closest to the bland steel entrance door—the kind used for emergency fire exits—read no abierto.

  “Behold,” Commander Owens announced, some manner of inflection and pride even managing to seep into his raspy monotone, “the operations center. Our primary headquarters and testing facility.” When neither Lorelei nor Derek replied, he added, “I designed it myself.”

  “Of course.” Figures that he would be responsible for this affront to the Mediterranean coastline. “Nice sign.”

  “I do confess, the language may not be my employees’ strongest suit,” Owens said. “I gather it’s wrong.”

  “That and a whole lot of other stuff.”

  “You’re not the only one who dislikes the design.”

  “Naturally.”

  “The local officials proved more…malleable when I offered them certain incentives.”

  “Money?”

  “It always speaks louder than words, my—” Owens stopped himself and cleared his throat. “Let’s head inside, shall we?”

  Lorelei listened to the rhythm of Owens’ knocks. They possessed a certain hypnotic tribal quality, a turn of artistic competence that caught her off guard.

  The door swung open.

  But instead of a hallway, foyer or reception area, all Lorelei Keene saw was a gleaming stainless steel elevator. Her reflection stared back at her with
a confused expression. She turned to Derek, and even he—borderline robotic since his pinky had been chopped off all those years ago for privateering—seemed surprised.

  “It’s the inside that counts,” Owens said. He didn’t smile, but his eyes looked like he was considering it, or maybe even trying to. “Isn’t that right?”

  He gestured towards the empty elevator, indicating they should step in.

  “Where are we going?” Lorelei said. “What is this—”

  Her inquiries were cut short by the rat-a-tat of small arms fire. She felt Derek’s arm push her to the ground. Not that she needed his help. She’d already been headed into a dive the instant her conscious mind understood the situation.

  Her eyes searched for cover on the hill. Nothing. Even hiding behind this gray monstrosity was a non-starter. Both ends of the structure jutted right up to the edges of the hill. Lorelei couldn’t see further down, but she suspected that jumping from this height, even into sand, would hurt. A lot.

  “Kill them,” Commander Owens said, his voice failing to rise in volume or register any modicum of concern, “please.”

  “It’s like he’s ordering breakfast,” Lorelei said, whispering into Derek’s ear.

  “Keep down.”

  Always serious. Given the circumstances, it was appropriate, but still. It was kind of becoming a problem. “I am down.”

  “Lower.”

  “Wait!” Owens suddenly screamed, his nasally tone cracking up a full two octaves, sending icicles crashing through Lorelei’s nerves. “Don’t shoot her! We need her alive, damn—”

  A choking gasp interrupted his yells, followed by a shower of blood. Lorelei put her hands over her head, right before Owens toppled on to her. A few stray bursts of gunfire sounded, with whoever had shown up to crash the party apparently picking off the stragglers.

  Commander Owens gasped and stopped breathing. She tried not to move underneath his body.

  Footsteps came closer, crunching through the dry grass and the sand.