Verifiable Intelligence

by Kaitlin Maitland

  When Dayne first moved into the neighborhood she had intentionally let slip that particular story. Suburban areas were infamous for their grapevines. The story had been designed to keep the single men from bothering her. She made a mental note to switch the cover story next time. She was going to be a lesbian. It had to be easier that way.

  “Look Oliver, I appreciate this. But truthfully, I’m fine the way I am. I’m just not interested in seeing anyone right now.” Dayne pasted an earnest expression on her face. “I’m enjoying the time to myself. My therapist says I need some Me-time, you know?”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners. He was obviously gearing up for another round of convincing. She seethed with irritation. She was mentally listing all the damage she’d like to do to Oliver, when movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. She just had time to slide sideways as the first bullet pierced Oliver’s body. The second sliced across her right arm. She bit her lip, the familiar pain lancing through her body. Her ears registered the sound of bullets ripping through drywall, the glass vase shattering on her coffee table, a puff of feathers as they went through the sofa, and then the muffled ping as they lodged in the chimney and fractured the brick.

  “Holy hell,” she breathed.

  Oliver’s lifeless body crumpled to the front steps. As he fell, four black clad figures trotted up the driveway and through the yard. All had rifles at their shoulder. Shoving the body away, she leapt backward and slammed the front door closed.

  Dayne barely had time to dive before the next barrage of bullets decimated her house, the sounds a cacophony in her head. Only one thing had the power to penetrate so much at once: high-powered assault rifles of the ridiculously expensive variety shooting armor piercing full metal jacket bullets. She didn’t pause to wonder who’d bankrolled a hit like this. She fled.

  With bullets flying overhead, she ducked down the stairway to the basement. Her sock feet slid on the ceramic tile at the bottom of the steps. Pulling herself together, she hit the false wall and tripped the switch just as the intruders entered the upper level. The wall slid shut behind her. There wasn’t much time.

  She shoved her Sig into her waistband and began pounding keys on her computer. She had to erase it, to make certain they didn’t know what she was up to. They couldn't find out what she knew about Ryan McKay. She didn’t know how, but she knew that these men were here because she’d been at the library earlier. Someone had been tracking her movements. Making an abrupt decision to leave her life in Missouri behind, she keyed the final sequence that would bring it all to dust.

  With the timer counting down, she ran to the far wall and punched numbers into the gun safe. A tap on the wall told her that the would-be killers knew there was more to the room than it first seemed. Yanking her bag from the gun safe, she slung it over her shoulder.

  The hatch was the only way out of the fully subterranean basement. During construction the builder had been annoyed when she’d demanded they build it. She had pretended to be paranoid about fires. The man had finally relented and built the hatch to her specifications - for the right price of course.

  She tore the mini-blinds clean off the wall to reveal a window. Hastily sliding it open, she stepped into the well. Above her head was a cluster of bushes. Peering out, she checked to make certain she was alone. Satisfied that they were all in the house or out front, she rolled over the top of the well, heaving the bag behind her.

  Her brain was screaming for her to hurry. She had only minutes until the explosion.

  It was four steps to the garage. Her truck waited inside, strategically facing the doorway. She shoved the bag into the extended cab and reached into a nearby locker to extract a bag of clothing and personal items she always kept on hand for situations just like this.

  She leapt behind the wheel and revved the powerful engine. Flooring the gas pedal, Dayne shot out the front of the garage. Pieces of the door flew in every direction. Thankfully there were no neighbors milling around the sidewalk or loitering in their front yards to get her in her way. The bullets had chased them all indoors. They were probably too shocked to begin wondering why the hell somebody had shot Oliver and then blasted her house. She wished she could warn them that the whole place was about to go up, but she couldn’t.

  The truck thundered toward the subdivision exit. Anyone in her field who didn’t know the layout as well as she did would’ve thought she was stupid to pick a place that had only one exit. But in the Silverado, there were plenty of exits. An explosion lit her rearview mirror like the Fourth of July. She felt a moment of remorse for the life she’d just been forced to destroy. Of course, in her line of work there were worse things - death, for example.

  As she’d half expected, there was a black SUV blocking the exit. A man leaned out the driver’s window, aiming a Russian assault rifle in her direction. Swerving off the road, she pointed the truck between two houses. There was barely enough room for the Silverado. She got a glimpse of a woman’s blank stare through a window before she flattened an air conditioning unit and burst onto the golf course surrounding the subdivision. Glancing at the compass in the upper corner of her rearview mirror, she headed west.

  The SUV was chasing her. She wouldn’t have expected less, but she wished she knew who the bastards were! The black vehicle roared over a low hedge, losing a headlight to a park bench. She floored the Silverado and tried to decide what would be the best way to get rid of the SUV.

  She swept past a group of befuddled golfers as they waved their clubs at her. Dayne couldn’t suppress a laugh. She’d always thought golf was a waste of time, much too slow for her taste. The country club loomed to her right. A large man-made pond stretched around the left side of the enormous glass and stone structure. Thanks to her obsession with preparing for disaster she knew it was four feet deep at its widest point. The lift kit on the Silverado gave her an advantage. The SUV wasn’t quite so fortunate, and it was going to drown.

  Dayne pressed the accelerator to the floor. Her knuckles were white on the wheel. The vibration of the powerful engine increased as the high performance transmission downshifted. Training her eyes on the point where she wanted to exit, she entered the water.

  The spray arced high around the truck. There was a brief sensation of floating as large tires skimmed the first few feet of the surface before the weight of the truck forced it down. Wheels spun in four-wheel drive before they caught, and the truck lurched through the water. Jockeying the wheel, Dayne kept her eyes on her exit. In only seconds she was ripping up the grass on the other side as she emerged in a tidal wave of greenish water.

  A glance in her rearview told her that the SUV wasn’t doing as well. They were bogged in the center of the pool. With the tailpipe submerged in the murky green water, the vehicle had stalled. She allowed herself a satisfied chuckle as she roared up the hill behind the main building. The truck shoved several golf carts unceremoniously out of her way before bumping onto the parking lot and shredding rubber out onto the main street.

  Chapter Three

  “Somebody’s been tracking me, Antonio.” Dayne pressed the muzzle of her Sig against the back of his neck. “What do you know?”

  “Easy, just calm down.”

  The thirty-something chop shop owner lifted his hands in an effort to seem non-threatening. Around them his men shifted uneasily. She guessed they were probably wondering how she’d managed to get the upper hand.

  Antonio Herrera was a hub for criminal activity in the St. Louis area. He dealt in black market weapons, stolen vehicles, military equipment, and occasional human currency. His own personal security wasn’t often breached by someone like her.

  Tall, broad, Hispanic and boyishly handsome, he didn’t seem the type for the life he led. She knew better. She put more pressure on his spinal column with her gun and slid her free hand around his neck. Pressing her thumb over the trigeminal nerve where it exited his jaw, she pressed down hard.

  “Damn it, Dayne!” he gasped through clenche
d teeth. “I’m not your enemy. After all these years you owe me a chance to tell you what I know.”

  She removed her thumb and backed up several paces. Antonio rubbed his neck as he stood. Glaring around the dimly lit garage at his men, he waved his arms at them.

  “Get the hell out of here, bendejos! If you can’t even keep one chica from putting a gun to my head what good are you?” he bellowed. His posse scattered like rats.

  Antonio’s warehouse headquarters was fashioned like a massive garage with four bays, a substantial selection of tools, and a wide variety of stolen items. Notoriously paranoid, he lived on the premises. One back corner of the garage sported a big screen television, a long sofa, matching loveseat and his favorite overstuffed chair. The living room atmosphere came complete with a knock off Persian rug and matching end tables. Less than ten feet away was a small kitchen area with a sink, a stove and microwave and most importantly, an oversized refrigerator. A few feet down the wall, a glass window provided a view of Antonio’s office with its cluttered desk and filing cabinet stacked high with what was probably bogus paperwork.

  Gesturing to the fridge, he shot her a questioning look. She shook her head no before watching him extract a bottle of beer and pop it open. After a long swig he finally spoke.

  “What do you know about Jace McKay?” Antonio asked.

  Dayne shrugged. “Enough to stay out of his way.”

  He tilted his head and gave her an appraising look. “Rumor says you and he used to run arms together.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Was he the other piece of that Ramsey Vitale mess?”

  “The Russian mafia had nothing to do with the hit on my house. Could we get back to the present day?”

  “Jace McKay is the present day.”

  “You think he’s the one who put together the hit on my house?”

  She already knew Jace had nothing to do with the attempt on her life. If Jace had wanted her dead, it would’ve been done and he would’ve done it himself. She briefly recalled the Russian assault rifles and Ross King’s involvement. The puzzle was getting deep and wide. She was right smack in the middle, but there was no way she was telling Antonio anything more than he already knew. It didn’t matter that he was the closest thing to family she had in the world. He was still a self-serving bastard.

  Antonio leaned back against the frame of something that had once been a Corvette. “Jace has some powerful enemies these days.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “You remember Yuri Dolohov?”

  Dayne hissed an oath. “What does he want with Jace?”

  “Jace accepted a contract on his brother.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “And completed the contract?”

  “Perfect kill,” Antonio confirmed. “There shouldn’t have been any trace of Jace at all except that a man remembered seeing someone fitting his description exit the building.”

  “That led Yuri to Jace?”

  Antonio nodded. “His height and build have always worked against him. It’s hard to forget a guy who's six foot four inches, 275 lbs. and looks like a professional wrestler.”

  “You still haven’t told me what this has to do with me or how you know so much about the Dolohov contract. And besides all of that, why the hell are you being so accommodating?”

  “I was the middle man on the Dolohov contract,” Antonio’s voice was gentle, “and you’re my sister.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Foster sister…and it’s never stopped you from selling me out before.”

  “Hey! A man has to look out for his own interests.”

  “And?”

  Antonio gave her a look filled with regret. “And a contract on your life just came across my radar.”

  An unfamiliar lump settled in Dayne’s belly. “Are you planning to try and collect on that contract?”

  “No, I’m going to tell you to run like hell.”

  “First tell me what this has to do with Jace’s younger brother.”

  “Ryan McKay?”

  “He was abducted from a library this morning in Ofallon,” she prodded.

  Antonio fiddled with the thick gold ring on his middle finger. “If I had to guess, I’d say that Yuri is using Ryan to draw Jace out.”

  “So I’m supposed to die, for why?”

  “Probably because you saw who took Ryan.”

  “How could they have known?”

  “They were probably watching the whole building, Dayne. A spook that just happened to be in the right place at the right time and who just happened to have a history with Jace McKay…it was too much to write off as coincidence.”

  She shoved the Sig back in its holster. She was at a loss. Her whole life was gone…again. Now began the arduous task of putting it back together…again. Hours before, she’d been happily masquerading as a single middle class woman in the suburbs. Why did she pick that day to go to the library? She never went to the library, unless she was working on something she couldn't access from her computer. In this case it had been something for Antonio.

  She immediately took that thought, wrapped it up in a tiny little ball and shoved it to the back of her brain in the “think about that later” file. This was no time to be questioning the only resource she had. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, after all.

  “Dayne?”

  “Ross King took that kid.”

  Antonio cocked an eyebrow. “King doing a kidnapping? Don’t tell me that big ole grizzly’s going soft.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” Dayne mused. “But he was the one who took the McKay kid. I’m sure of it.”

  “The most urgent ripple in the pond after the abduction was the contract on you.”

  “So?”

  “The request for proof of your death was just shy of desperate, Dayne. Someone thinks you’re a real threat.”

  “I still don’t see where this is going.”

  “They have to take that kid somewhere.”

  “He’s probably out of the state by now, Antonio. Ofallon is less than forty five minutes from two different airports.”

  “Why bother? The authorities aren’t a threat. We both know that.”

  “Yeah, but I’m sure they’ve got somewhere specific their boss wants to tangle with Jace,” Dayne pointed out.

  “Jace is in Egypt. It’s going to take him some time to get here no matter how good he is.”

  She rolled her eyes in disgust. “You never told me you knew where Jace was! He’ll come here. I’ll intercept him. He can fix this mess.”

  “Are you hearing yourself?”

  Her head was pounding. Every nerve ending screamed. She wanted to crawl into a little hole and stay there for the rest of her natural life. She dealt with scumbags and life or death situations every day. It was extremely uncomfortable to be the mark instead of the hunter. She was starting to feel empathy for her targets. Not a good thing.

  Antonio put one booted foot on a metal chair and shoved it in her direction. “Sit before you fall.”

  She sat. Her arm was still bleeding a little. A tattered piece of blue cloth hit her in the face.

  “Wipe that up before you drip on my floor.”

  She glowered at Antonio but obeyed. She’d be lucky if she didn’t get some nasty infection from this whole incident.

  “Look at the scenarios here. They’re not good.”

  “Go on.” She managed to force the words out from between her clenched teeth. Her arm burned like hellfire.

  Antonio started to pace back and forth, scratching his chin. “Jace has probably heard by now. That’s great. But we really don’t know who’s behind all of this. The whole thing with Yuri is my best guess. But it’s still just a guess.”

  “Who else would bother?”

  “Jace is in the same line of work you are. Everybody wants to wipe you guys off the face of the earth at one time or another. There’s no telling who might have enough money to pull it off.”

  “Good point.”

&nbs
p; “So you need Jace. That’s the only way to end it.”

  “You know as well as I do that once a contract has been issued a mark is screwed,” Dayne said bitterly.

  “You’ve got one break.”

  “Name it.”

  Antonio crossed to a drawer beside the kitchen sink and began rummaging inside. “Obviously you’ve got a part to play in whatever scheme they’ve cooked up, and they want you dead before you can play it.”

  “Wow, that’s real comforting, Tonio.”

  Antonio paused to offer an apologetic shrug. “Hey, I’m trying to be truthful here.”

  “Well, I wish I knew what it was I’m supposed to do.”

  He pulled a grimy tube of first aid cream from the drawer and grinned. “I know where you could start.”

  “Glad one of us has an idea.”

  “Go re-kidnap that kid.”

  She blinked in surprise. Was he insane? What did she need with a kid?

  He tossed the cream in her direction. “You need something to bargain with. I don’t care how chummy you used to be with Jace. He isn’t likely to tell you what his personal issues are unless you’ve got something he wants.”

  “And I need info,” she murmured, deftly catching the tube of first aid cream, popping the top and squeezing a generous amount onto her fingers.

  “Bingo.”

  “I’m not frigging Batman here. I don’t know where that kid is, and I don’t have a Bat Cave anymore to track him with.”

  “Use your brain,” Antonio said with a snort. “They’ve got time to wait for Jace. I don’t think they’re going to use an international airport for this. So?”

  “You think they’re going to stash the kid at the Spirit Airport in Chesterfield?” Dayne asked with skepticism. “That place is just a flat piece of land and some terminals!”

  “They’ve got everyone out looking for you. Now’s the time for you to go looking for them.”

  She sighed; the cream had already started to numb the violent sting in her arm, leaving her thoughts marginally clearer. “If you weren’t family…”