Obsession

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  Lucky me.

  At first she didn’t notice the car in front of her particularly. What she did notice is that when she stopped behind it, waiting for whoever was driving it to look both ways at the stop sign and then proceed, it stayed put.

  Besides that car and the Mercedes behind her, there was not another vehicle in sight. The intersection was clear, and yet the car—it was black or navy blue, some kind of large, dark sedan—didn’t move. It was full night now, and the warm lights of the subdivision had been left behind. Except for three sets of headlights stabbing through the darkness, illuminating grassy berms and a tangle of scrub trees and one another, the area was dark as pitch.

  There was not, Katharine registered idly as she glanced around, trying to see what the holdup was, a moon tonight.

  Bam.

  The explosion was so sudden, so shocking, so unexpected that Katharine screamed and jumped. Her heart leaped, and her head swiveled instinctively toward the source of the sound. She was just in time to watch round pellets of glass rain like a downpour of diamonds into her backseat.

  Her back passenger-side window had just shattered. Katharine was still registering the seemingly impossible truth of that when a hand—a man’s hand, wide across the knuckles and tanned—and dark-suited arm thrust through the opening and pressed the button to unlock the front passenger-side door. Just as quick as that.

  Get out of here.

  Her instincts screamed it, but it was too late. Even as she looked frantically forward, even as her leg muscles tightened in preparation for shifting from the brake to the gas and stomping that thing through the floor, she realized that the car in front of her had her blocked in.

  In the same instant, the front passenger door opened and a man slid into the seat beside her, closing the door behind himself.

  Starkey.

  Her heart was just starting to ease off on its frantic thudding, and she was just getting ready to heave a sigh of relief when she saw that he had drawn his gun.

  It was pointing at her.

  Her jaw dropped. Her eyes rounded. She stared at him in disbelief.

  “Mr. Barnes wants to see you,” he said.

  20

  "What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Katharine yelled. She slapped her palms against the steering wheel for emphasis. “You just broke my window!”

  Starkey’s expression never changed. It was pure stone face from the moment he slipped in beside her. “I said, Mr. Barnes wants to see you.”

  “Well, good for Mr. Barnes.” The car up ahead still wasn’t moving. Its taillights glowed at her through the darkness like a pair of evil red eyes. Not that it mattered: For the time being, they were going nowhere. “You can go ahead and get out now. You’re not riding with me. And I’m sending you a bill for the window.”

  “I don’t think you understand the situation. Mr. Barnes told me to bring you to him. Any way I have to.” He made a small threatening gesture with the gun, which was black and business-like-looking and pointed straight at her in a very menacing way.

  “Oh, you’re scaring me now.” She glared at him. “Get out of my car.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of light, and even as she frowned at Starkey she realized that a man had gotten out of the passenger side of the dark sedan that was blocking her in and, in fact, was at that moment crossing in front of her car.

  “You don’t want to drive, you can ride in the back with him.” Starkey nodded at the man who was by then looming up outside her window. She went cold all over as she realized that the car in front of them was there specifically to assist Starkey and Bennett in escorting her to Ed. Apparently, he was no longer prepared to take a chance on her giving them the slip. A single glance through the glass at the newcomer told Katharine that he was one more short-haired guy in a suit. She was really starting to hate the type. “And believe me, you don’t want to ride with him.”

  The guy pecked on her window. Using the passenger-door controls, Starkey rolled it down. This guy was older than either Starkey or Bennett, in his late forties maybe, with a blunt-featured, heavy-jowled face that made her think of a bulldog.

  “Everything under control?” he asked Starkey.

  “Who are you?” Katharine demanded, determined not to lose control of the situation even though adrenaline was starting to race through her system and her pulse was starting to pound. This, she was beginning to feel, had the potential to be bad.

  The man smiled at her, his eyes, which were small and brown, crinkling at the corners. Something about that smile made her skin crawl.

  “Name’s Hendricks, Miss Lawrence. Carl Hendricks. Pleased to meet you.”

  Katharine couldn’t say the same, but she did manage a curt nod.

  “Drive or ride?” Starkey asked.

  Okay, getting away from them didn’t seem to be a possibility at the moment. At least driving would give her some options.

  “I’ll drive.”

  Starkey nodded at Hendricks, who opened the back door, flooding the interior with light.

  “What’s this?” He was talking about the cat carrier, which was in the seat behind Katharine.

  “My cat,” she said, at the same time as Starkey said, “Cat.”

  “I like cats. Oh, he’s a big one. Pretty, too.” Hendricks moved the carrier over to the adjoining seat. There was a crunch as it came to rest, and Katharine realized that it was now sitting on pebbles of glass. Hendricks got in and closed the door. The interior light went off again. “Hey, kitty. Nice kitty.”

  Through the rearview mirror, Katharine saw him stick his fingers through the grate at the front of the carrier, presumably with the intention of petting the nice kitty. The response he got was a virulent hiss, and with a muttered curse, Hendricks quickly snatched back his hand.

  Despite everything, Katharine almost smiled.

  The car in front of them got under way at last, turning left toward Alexandria. Starkey nodded to Katharine, and she followed suit. Behind them, the Mercedes, with Bennett driving, brought up the rear. By her count, it was four case officers—if Hendricks and whoever was driving the other car were, indeed, case officers—to one personal assistant—namely, her. The odds of getting away anytime soon weren’t looking good.

  “Where are we going?” Katharine asked, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

  Starkey shrugged. “You’ll see.”

  Not a reassuring answer.

  “Just for the record, I don’t appreciate this.”

  “So take it up with the boss.”

  Therein, Katharine feared, lay the problem. Clearly Ed had okayed the use of force to bring her to him, or this wouldn’t be happening. Despite Starkey’s gun, she didn’t really fear him or Bennett. But Hendricks—Hendricks was new, and not in a good kind of way. Something about Hendricks worried her. Then it hit her: He didn’t look like a CIA case officer. He wasn’t fit enough. And there was an undefinable something about him. . . . For a moment, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Then she realized: He wasn’t professional enough.

  So who and what was he?

  Her hands were tight around the wheel and the pit of her stomach felt like it was in free fall as she drove through the dark Virginia countryside, considering that question. A breeze had come up, blowing into the car, ruffling her hair, and carrying the scent of crops and the occasional bug with it. The sound of it rushing past the broken window filled the silence as no one spoke. She was virtually blind to the fields of corn and tobacco undulating like rustling black oceans on either side of the road, to the occasional lighted crossroads, to the slash of headlights as oncoming traffic appeared and then passed them by, leaving them alone in the darkness once again.

  It occurred to her that, in general, Ed was not averse to operating outside the box.

  Maybe Hendricks was part of what was outside the box.

  The thought gave her cold chills.

  And she realized that, all the happy talk in her head notwithsta
nding, she was afraid of Ed.

  Just as the bright lights of Alexandria appeared tantalizingly on the horizon, the sedan in front of her turned left at a crossroad, heading away from the city. When Katharine looked longingly in the opposite direction, Starkey told her to follow the sedan. They were not, it seemed, going home—or any place where she might be able to crash the car into a lamppost, say, and reasonably expect people to gather around to help.

  For another twenty minutes or so they drove north on back roads while Katharine’s tension increased like steam building inside a kettle. In the back, Hendricks was murmuring, presumably to Muffy, who made no audible response. They passed a sign reading McLean, 2 miles that got her hopes up. The vast complex that was CIA headquarters was located there, and she guessed that must be their destination. Which, all things considered, was a good thing. There would be armies of people around. Nothing too bad could happen there.

  Instead, just at the edge of town, so close to people that she could see the golden arches of McDonald’s right down the road, the sedan turned into a used-car lot just ahead. Big Jim’s Pre-owned Cars was spelled out in giant neon letters arching over the entrance. The neon wasn’t lit, which Katharine presumed meant the lot was closed. It was, after all, nearly eleven by then. But big halogen lights glowed down on the rows of cars, each of which, as far as she could tell, had its price painted in white on the windshield. The term junkers came to mind as her gaze ran over some of them, but that wasn’t what was worrying her.

  A used-car lot didn’t seem like a place she wanted to go.

  Her stomach lurched. Her hands tightened on the wheel. Her gaze shot to Starkey.

  “A used-car lot? You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. By this time, the attitude in her voice was pure bravado.

  “Pull in.” His eyes were hard on her face. His mouth was tense and unsmiling. She could sense Hendricks leaning toward her, sense the threat he represented. Doing anything other than what she was told was not an option: If she didn’t, her situation just became much worse. At this point, she could still take the high ground, claiming that she had left only to go fetch her cat. None of them—not even Ed—were mind readers. They had no way of knowing that she had ever intended anything else.

  Whatever was coming, she was just going to have to try to bluff her way through it.

  Her heart started knocking in her chest. It was an effort to control her breathing, make it seem normal. The key, she thought, was not to reveal the slightest hint of fear.

  Although she was scared to death.

  She pulled into the car lot, and at Starkey’s direction followed the sedan past the small, trailer-like sales office toward the rear. The wheels bounced over uneven pavement that, once the sales lot was passed, turned to gravel. A squat brick building sat in the shadows at the far end of the lot, with an open field ending in a line of scraggly trees stretching behind it. More trees formed a narrow strip of woods on either side of the building, which had three big white garage doors and a smaller, people-sized door in front and, over them, in more unlit neon letters, a huge sign that read Service.

  A handful of cars were parked in front of the building, cars without prices on their windshields. Of course, the sign did say Service, so it was possible that that was exactly what the cars were there for. But she didn’t think so.

  Looking around, Katharine felt her throat go dry. There was no chance that they’d stopped here because somebody needed to get, say, an oil change. She could practically feel the bad vibes emanating from the building.

  The sedan pulled up at the end of the line of cars. Starkey indicated that she should park beside it.

  She did, turned off the car, and got out, standing there all alone for a moment, her heels sinking into the gravel as she took a deep, she hoped calming, breath and cast discreet looks in all directions. Despite this place’s location on the outskirts of town, from where she stood there was nothing to be seen except dark fields and trees behind and to the sides of the building, and, in front of it, the deserted used-car lot. They were totally isolated, a speck of nothing beneath the vast dark sky.

  In space no one can hear you scream. The words popped into her head out of nowhere. They applied, she realized, to this place, too. And she was as sure as it was possible to be that it was no accident.

  By then, Starkey and Hendricks were getting out of the car. Another short-haired man in a suit exited the dark sedan just as the Mercedes, tires crunching, pulled in beside them. Katharine spared the Mercedes no more than a glance as Bennett cut the engine and got out, too. Instead, she took another long, assessing look at the building. It was box-like and unremarkable, a nothing place, like hundreds of thousands of other box-like brick buildings the world over. The faintest hint of white light showed under the garage doors. Someone was definitely inside—Ed, most likely, and probably other people, too.

  Swallowing hard, she had to battle the sudden urge to turn and run. But Hendricks stood right behind her, practically breathing down her neck, and Starkey was coming around the front of the car toward her. Bennett was moving in from the right, and the fourth man stood waiting, apparently for them to head his way, on her left. They would catch her in a heartbeat if she tried.

  And she would lose the whole presumption-of-innocence thing she had going on, which was the only defense she had against whatever was coming.

  Her throat was dry, and her heart was beating far too fast.

  “Let’s go,” Starkey said. He reached for her arm, but she jerked it sharply out of his reach and he didn’t force the issue. Head held high, she started walking toward the building, with Starkey beside her and Hendricks bringing up the rear.

  A piteous meow reached her ears.

  “Muffy,” she exclaimed, stopping dead and glancing over her shoulder. “What about Muffy?”

  This time, Starkey did grab her arm, his fingers digging in just above her elbow. Katharine glared at him, but she didn’t try to break free. She didn’t want to not succeed, and then end up as his de facto prisoner.

  “The cat?” He was already urging her forward again. In response to the pressure on her arm, Katharine reluctantly began to move. “The cat’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry,” Hendricks said. “I like cats.”

  Somehow, Katharine didn’t find this reassuring.

  Starkey fished his cell phone from his pocket with his free hand, and they stepped onto the concrete walk that ran the length of the building. He pressed a button, and she could hear the call being dialed.

  “We’re here,” Starkey said into the phone a moment later, then listened briefly before continuing with “yes” and—pause—“right now.”

  Then, as they reached the building, he clicked the phone shut, put it in his pocket, and punched a code into a keypad next to the people-sized door. There was a beep and a click. Then Starkey turned the knob and they entered.

  The interior of the building looked like—big surprise—an extra-large garage. There were three work bays, complete with car lifts and banks of tools. A red Jeep sat in the far bay, its hood up. The other two were empty. Overhead, rows of fluorescent lights gave off a white glow. The floor was smooth concrete. The walls were gray-painted concrete block. A rattling hum filled the air, courtesy of the huge industrial fan mounted in the far corner. It apparently was designed to pull in fresh outside air through the small, rectangular windows located near the ceiling. But none of the windows was open, and the result was that while there was a breeze strong enough to stir her hair, the temperature was nearly as warm inside as out and the air smelled stale.

  “What is this place?” she asked Starkey, who was already steering her toward a metal door to her left. He shrugged. Not that it mattered. Even as she asked the question, she had a feeling she already knew the answer: The car lot was an Agency “front,” a place where they could take care of business away from the eyes and ears of the couple thousand people who worked at headquarters. The car lot, and maybe even the garage, might
well be operated as legitimate businesses. No one would raise an eyebrow at lots of people and vehicles coming and going at all hours of the day and night. But somewhere on the premises—downstairs, she assumed, because the door Starkey opened led to a set of stairs that went down—Agency business would be conducted. The kind of business that was best taken care of, to put it in Agency parlance, “off the reservation.”

  The rattling fan would make an excellent source of masking noise—the kind of noise that kept conversations and other sounds from being picked up by the increasingly refined surveillance equipment that could, if not thwarted, listen in on a private, low-voiced discussion in a closed room from inside another building a quarter of a mile away.

  The thought made her blood run cold.

  “Hey, you think maybe I could get a good deal on a used car?” Hendricks asked in a jocular tone. “My girl-friend ’s kid’s getting ready to turn sixteen.”

  Nobody answered. For everyone but Hendricks, the mood seemed to be growing more tense by the second. They were all walking down the stairs now, their feet making hollow clanging noises on the metal treads, which had no risers, so the concrete floor at the bottom was clearly visible with every step. Katharine was in the lead, moving with care because the stairs were steep and her legs were jelly, with Starkey, who had been forced to let go of her arm because of the narrowness of the stairwell, right behind her. Bennett and Hendricks followed in that order, with the newcomer bringing up the rear. The stairwell was fully enclosed, with doors at both the top and bottom. The outside wall of concrete blocks was cool and slightly damp—she knew because she rested her hand against it as she descended, since there was no handrail; the inside wall was metal sheeting. Only a single bulb hanging from a cord at the top of the stairs provided illumination; its position caused their own elongated shadows to precede them. The air in the stairwell was stagnant and smelled faintly of mildew.

  By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, Katharine’s heart was pounding. Her pulse raced. Her stomach had tied itself into a knot. She eyed the closed metal door in front of her with trepidation. What was on the other side? She had a feeling she didn’t want to know. When Starkey reached around her to turn the knob and push the door open, it took every bit of courage she could summon to walk through the opening with her shoulders back and her head high. The others were right behind her.