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

by Nicholas Erik

  They came to a halt a few feet away.

  Lorelei heard a clip drop to the ground and another one take its place with astounding efficiency.

  “No, no wait.” She scrambled out from under the corpse, which had been surprisingly light—given Owens’ square and stocky appearance—and got on her knees. “He took us.”

  “Took you?” The woman, a tall soldier with black spiked hair—one spike shorn off—gazed down at Lorelei with haunting silver eyes. In a way, this haunted, demonic-looking person with a gun pointed towards Lorelei could be her doppelganger—albeit with a little more flattering figure.

  And a whole lot more ghosts lurking in whatever closet she’d crawled out from.

  “Yes.”

  “And him?”

  She brought the gun over to Derek and pointed it at his head.

  “Him too,” Lorelei said. “I swear.”

  “I do not believe you.”

  “But—but you have to.”

  “No.” The woman glanced at the elevator, as if it was important that she get going. “I do not. Two of his mercenaries or other cowards, trying to save their lives.”

  With a smooth, natural dexterity, the woman bent over and extracted a bottle of pills from Owens’ jacket, as if she knew exactly where to look. The first hint of emotion—relief—registered in her quicksilver eyes.

  She popped the lid and took one.

  Then her eyes narrowed, back to the Lorelei, who tried to avoid the gaze. It was difficult to think under the intense glare.

  Great. She’s as unhinged as the guy she just killed and graverobbed.

  Lorelei wracked her brain for something, anything that would prove she wasn’t with Commander Owens. This strange person must have had doubts—it’d been at least thirty seconds, and she hadn’t filled them both full of holes.

  “I’m Lorelei Keene, he’s Derek Dash, if you just—I don’t know, we live in the mountains in Ecuador and…” Lorelei ran out of things to say.

  The situation was hopeless. Nothing she said proved that they weren’t helping Owens—either by choice or by force. After all, they weren’t bound up with rags stuffed in their mouths. Hell, they could even be coming to take a tour of whatever lair Owens had built here.

  Lorelei looked up at the woman. The gun had disappeared.

  “Kip Keene?” she asked.

  “Kip—why the hell are you talking about my brother?”

  The woman didn’t answer. She stepped around Lorelei on her way to the elevator. She pressed a button and the doors began to shut.

  “Tell him I am sorry.”

  “Sorry about what?”

  The woman turned to face Lorelei. For a minute, it seemed like Lorelei had pressed her luck. Stupid move, pushing the issue after being home free.

  Now I’m dead.

  But the woman only said, “For what I have to do. Alone.”

  The stainless steel doors shut and the ugly metal one swung closed, leaving Lorelei and Derek alone on the once beautiful but now blood-stained hill with their immediate problem of survival replaced with an enigmatic and somewhat more ominous threat.

  “We have to call the Captain,” Derek said after a long silence.

  “Let’s hope Kip’s more up to snuff this time around,” Lorelei said.

  But even though everything had worked out okay in the Incan ruins, she still had her doubts.

  Lots of them.

  Commander Owens’ phone rang.

  Lorelei and Derek looked at one another.

  Then Lorelei reached into the ruined suit jacket and answered the phone.

  Hawk stared down the sniper scope, her finger hovering over the rifle’s trigger. Perched atop a black van a quarter mile away, surrounded by seaside shrubbery, Hawk watched the flag on top of the Project Atlantis command center. Her subconscious mind calculated the wind speed, the adjustment necessary to make the shot.

  She could have saved him.

  Why had she decided not to?

  Wind was blowing too hard.

  No shot, anyway.

  That was a lie.

  It was about contingencies.

  Owens did not understand the full situation, its importance. That much had been clear. Thus, loyalties had been rearranged. Contingency plans executed.

  She worked for someone else, now.

  She released her taut grip on the rifle and brushed her long white hair away from her eyes and tried to focus in on Rabbit. Her mentor. The one who had taught her everything.

  Rabbit was not going to kill the two prisoners.

  Hawk watched as her old friend stepped into the headquarters building, the doors shutting behind her. A slight ripple of anxiety washed over her stomach, although it quickly dissipated. Hawk had her standing orders.

  And it looked like Rabbit was planning on interfering.

  Diagrams and new contingencies began to connect themselves within Hawk’s mind. She watched Lorelei root around in Owens’ pocket and extract the phone.

  A plan clicked into place.

  Hawk turned on her communications unit to listen in on what was happening on the other end. The piece in Owens’ ear would only give her Lorelei’s one side of the conversation. But it might be enough.

  Lorelei’s voice answered the call.

  Hawk smiled as she listened into the conversation.

  Yes, this information would do quite well.

  It would help her with her orders. Protect the command center. And Atlantis.

  At all costs.

  “Where do you want to meet?” Lorelei said, before repeating the rendezvous coordinates loud enough for Hawk to hear them. The C-31. That would be fairly miserable at this hour, jam packed with traffic.

  But in eight and a half hours, in the dead of pre-dawn, it wouldn’t be so bad.

  Plus, that gave Hawk the opportunity to track down a town car.

  16 | Knock

  Keene stood on the colonial style veranda sipping lemonade from a frosted glass. The property possessed a distinct southern flair, featuring picturesque trimmed grass, colonnades and a sprawling yard dotted with sycamore trees.

  Its owner, however, was hardly Southern.

  Instead, she had the no-nonsense makeup of a New York executive, intertwined with the wiftiness of a Colorado pot farmer. Which made Miranda Strike something of an enigma. Or perhaps just a confused jumble of incongruous, strange elements.

  “Oh, I couldn’t loan you the corporate yacht, honey,” Mrs. Strike said. “It’s against the rules. SEC. Or FCC. NBA? One of them.”

  “The NBA is a basketball league, Mom,” Samantha said in a whiny, low tone. “You know that.”

  “Do I know that, honey? Do I? I suppose you’re in this head of mine, right along with—”

  “All right, enough.” Samantha scratched her forehead, the sleeve of her jacket riding up to reveal a hint of her intricate tattoo. “You win.”

  “You still have that hideous thing? My goodness, you said you were going to get it removed.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “No wonder the CIA let you go, running around displaying trash like that.”

  “FBI.”

  “They’re all just letters, dear.” Mrs. Strike turned to Keene and flashed a smile. She looked like an older version of her daughter, if a bit plumper and with a more angular chin. Specks of gray in her hair suggested that, unlike her daughter, the elder Strike’s blonde coloring wasn’t quite natural any more. “I don’t suppose she told you how that snake on her arm got there, did she?”

  “No, ma’am,” Keene said. “She didn’t.”

  “Oh, well, I wouldn’t either. Snorting everything that came up her—”

  “Mom.”

  “Oh, the brownies. Yes, the brownies. Of course, that’s why you’re so upset. I’ll run
and get them.” She hurried off, mumbling under her breath.

  “Uh, so do I gotta be the one to ask,” Wade said.

  “Ask what?” Samantha said.

  “Seems your mom is a little, I dunno, nutso.”

  “She’s probably plotting our demise as we speak.”

  “While brownies do sound delicious,” Keene said, pointing to his wrist at an imaginary watch, “we’re running out of time, here.”

  This detour had taken some eight hours already, and had thus far brought them little closer to saving Lorelei and Derek. And although upstate New York was beautiful—rustic and covered in a hint of frost that brought the winter stillness into startling relief—Keene wasn’t in a nature-loving kind of mood.

  He twisted his foot and shivered, despite the overhead space heater on the porch.

  “Oh, I can turn that up,” Mrs. Strike said, returning with two full plates of brownies and a glass pitcher of milk somehow balanced between her two small hands, “silly me.”

  “We’ve gotta get going.” Samantha shoved her hands in her pockets as Miranda arranged the brownies on the gold-leafed china. “Mom.”

  “Samantha Eileen Strike, don’t you dare raise your voice at me.”

  “If we can’t have the yacht, then fine. But we’re on a schedule.”

  “With these two? They’re not your new—”

  “No, they’re not my new drug buddies. Kip helped me solve Dad’s murder.”

  “I do suppose that is where you got your temper. That man could be so sweet, and then an inferno.”

  Keene snaked between two wicker rocker chairs and began walking down the wide steps, towards the frozen red brick walkway. Thoughts swirled in his mind as the wind whipped around his ears, bringing crackled leaves and a few small sticks nipping at his feet.

  Sixteen hours left. The trip to Barcelona would eat over half that.

  He rustled the piece of paper in his pocket before taking it out and unfolding it.

  An address—where to bring Rabbit and the drive—and a callback number that Owens had given him. Keene reached into his pocket and extracted one of the burner phones they’d bought along the way.

  He punched the digits into the burner and held his breath as the call connected.

  He needed more time.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  “Hello?” A familiar voice, half-accusatory, half-confused. “Hello.”

  In the background, “Hang up, Lei. You don’t know who it is.”

  “Wait,” Keene said, screaming the word, “it’s me. It’s Kip. Don’t hang up.”

  A pause on the other end. “Kip? How the hell did you get this number?”

  “How the hell did you get his phone?”

  “The guy who had us is dead. Owens ate it.”

  Keene almost smiled. His heart slowed down a few paces. “You’re all right?”

  “We’re fine.” The other side of the line went silent. “But Kip?”

  Keene’s stomach turned. “What?”

  “I think we have a problem.”

  “Did he do something to you?” Possibilities raced. A tracking chip, like Rabbit’s, that could administer a remote execution. Dosed with some sort of test viral, derived from Owens’ latest studies.

  “No, we’re fine.”

  “Then what?”

  “This girl, she saved us, but…”

  “Girl?”

  “Black spiked hair, silver eyes, soldier, total badass. Talked like she was reading off cue cards.”

  “Rabbit.” Damn, she’d made good time over to Barcelona. Straight from Beantown to Spain in around eight hours flat. Must’ve been tricks of the spy-craft trade that Keene and Strike weren’t privy to.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway—”

  “Her name is Rabbit.”

  “That’s a stupid name.”

  “You were saying?”

  Lorelei took a deep breath. “Anyway, this girl—this Rabbit person—comes in, kills all this whackjob’s guards, kills him, then takes these weird pills he’s been popping like breath mints and finally, after all that, gets into an elevator that goes God knows where. And she tells us, ‘Tell him I am sorry. For what I have to do. Alone.’ And I think she meant you.”

  “Sorry about doing what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think I might have an idea.” His thoughts snapped back to the woman’s first words. Kip Keene, we must destroy the Ruby Rattlesnake. There wouldn’t be any we, because Rabbit was going to attempt to destroy it alone.

  Somehow, this didn’t strike him as a one person job. Even if that one person was one of the most incredible physical specimens on the face of the planet.

  Strike’s voice called out from the veranda, “Keene, you need to see this.”

  “I’m busy.” Keene’s voice, carried by the wind, filled up the empty yard.

  “Trust me.”

  “Strike has something,” Keene said, speaking into the phone again. “Stay on the line.”

  “What’s going—”

  Keene couldn’t hear the rest of Lorelei’s question. He broke into a jog, phone clutched to his chest, taking the steps up the front porch in two bounds. The tall, heavy door was propped open with a large stone, so he didn’t break stride as he tore through the house.

  “In here,” Strike called.

  He wound his way through the dining room, ball room and kitchen—all outfitted with cavernous ceilings and chandeliers—until he skidded to a halt in a small side room, a veritable closet by the standards of the house, where Miranda, Wade and Strike stood huddled around an ancient wood-paneled TV.

  “These people. The nerve.” Miranda Strike threw her hands in the air and sighed. “No class.”

  “We’re trying to listen, Mom.”

  “You can see what’s happening, clear as day.”

  “Mom.”

  Keene wedged his way through the wall of elbows and arms, crouching down before the set like a small child watching morning cartoons. He stared at the breaking news report, where a well-dressed man in a tailored suit explained the situation with a grave look. “Breaking news from our correspondent stationed in Barcelona. Two bizarre developments in the past hour—are they a coincidence? Let’s break down what we know. A break-in was reported at the Barcelona Municipal Water Facility at around 6:45 PM in the evening. No motive has been discovered, but one guard was found dead.”

  “Some rent-a-cop chokes on his fries and everyone melts down?”

  “Mom.”

  “Fine, fine.”

  “…and we’re now getting reports of strange behavior throughout the city. Thousands of incidents lighting up the phones of local precincts and hospitals. People have turned manic, using their cars as battering rams, throwing belongings from the roofs of apartment buildings, and committing open acts of criminality. Officials suggest that extended exposure to water could lead to symptoms, although preliminary tests have come back as negative. Residents have been urged to only drink bottled water and avoid all other sources. No similar incidents have been reported in other major cities, but we keep our viewers informed of updates.”

  Shit. Even with Owens dead and not-quite-buried, his demonic offspring—whatever he and his scientists had cooked up in their lab—had found its way into the world. No telling how fast this whole thing could spiral out of control.

  Keene picked up the phone and spoke into it. “So I hear Barcelona’s nice this time of year.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Lorelei said.

  He continued to watch the news feed. The looting and rioting had escalated and caused the station to lose contact with their reporter. “Get outside the city.”

  “Will do.”

  “I think Rabbit might’ve unleashed whatever they
’re cooking down there in Atlantis.”

  “Atlantis? Maybe you’ve gone crazy.”

  “And one more thing, Lorelei.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t drink the water.”

  “Wait.”

  “Was that unclear?” Keene said.

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  “Outside the city, I guess. But not too far. Pick us up near the highway. Right off the—wait a second.” Keene walked out of the room and used a laptop sitting in the hallway to do a quick search. He returned to the cramped TV room and said, “The C-31. A little north of Barcelona. I just sent you the coordinates.”

  Lorelei paused, then read off the coordinates. “You sure that’s right?”

  “Sure. Can you be there in eight and a half hours?”

  “Uh, sure, eight and a half hours. Kind of specific.”

  “Don’t be late. And use a black town car.”

  “Why a black town car?”

  “So I know it’s you.”

  Keene ended the call and looked up at the three other people in the room. Miranda rolled her eyes. Wade looked confused. And Strike seemed ready to bolt and never visit her mother again.

  “Miranda,” Keene said, in the calmest, most charismatic tone he could muster, “we’re going to need that yacht now.” He placed a finger on his chin, like he was thinking. But it was only for show. “And the company’s best submarine.”

  “We don’t have any submarines.”

  “You won’t if you don’t give me one,” Keene said, crossing his arms. “Because I’ll burn them all to the ground.”

  The elder Strike stared back at him, lips pursed together in a neutral expression. Then she broke into a big smile.

  “Oh, I like him, Samantha. He’s good.”

  She ran off and started yelling into a phone a few rooms over.

  “Wasn’t expecting that,” Strike said. Keene turned to check on her, and saw that she was still looking blankly at the news report.

  “Things look pretty bad over there.”

  “I meant Mom,” Strike said. “She doesn’t like anybody.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna replace you or anything.”

  “You can have her.” Strike started walking out of the television room, stopping in the doorway. “You coming?”