Family Ties (John Taylor Book 5)

by Travis Starnes

  The hardest part in tailing someone is watching them while not being obvious about it. You didn’t want to be caught staring at your target for long stretches or running into objects because you were too focused on who you were following.

  On the flip side, you didn’t want to be obviously not looking at your target either. Furtive movements looking this way, and that would also make the tail stand out. The key was looking bored. Most people do not enjoy trudging along the sidewalk on a warm summer morning, seeing it at best as a tedious activity required to get from point A to point B.

  Taylor was doing more than observing his target, though. He was looking for a place where he and the manager could have a quiet conversation. The volume of people wasn’t the only way this section of Berlin differed from Manhattan. There wasn’t long rows of buildings with the occasional alley. There were gaps between the buildings, but the gaps were larger and more obvious than the dark alley’s someone might imagine with picturing an urban metropolis. These areas were too open to be secluded, but narrow enough to make it strange that two pedestrians would turn and walk down one.

  The habits Taylor once formed in the service helped him once again. The Special Forces made it a point that planning was the single most important part of any operation. They were trained to game out every situation and make a plan for as many contingencies as they could find, leaving as little to chance as possible. Taylor and Whitaker had scouted out the area before stopping to watch the apartment building, finding spots where they could grab the manager in all directions he might go. They’d also discussed options if he’d left the apartment complex by car, along with what they were going to do once they had him detained.

  Luckily, the direction the manager had chosen was one of the better options Taylor and Whitaker had mapped out that morning. In between the wide-based office buildings, there was a wide-open section holding a bank with a drive-through and small parking lot. It was an hour after the bank would have opened, but not at lunchtime yet, so the bank parking lot wasn’t very busy. Most of the cars in the lot were parked away from the entrance, which probably meant it belonged to employees and not customers who could come out at any moment.

  Taylor sped up his pace, passing the two pedestrians he’d arranged for cover, pasting a smile on his face as he caught up to the manager.

  “Hey, long time no see,” Taylor said, still in a speaking voice but pitched up enough so the people around them could hear it.

  Taylor matched the man's steps and threw his left arm over the manager's left shoulder in a one-armed hug. The man’s steps faltered as he tried to stop in surprise from the contact, only to be forced forward by Taylor, who continued walking, pulling the manager with him.

  “Was…”

  “I have a gun in my pocket. Keep walking, or I’ll leave your body here on the sidewalk,” Taylor said, much softer this time.

  “Was wilst du?” the man said, starting to walk more regularly as his eyes filled with fear.

  Taylor pulled the man into a turn as they crossed in front of the bank, directing the man into the parking lot. Pulling his arm off the manager's shoulder, he stopped in front of one of the parked cars and spun the manager around to face him.

  “I know you speak English.”

  “What do you want?” he asked in a heavy German accent.

  “Your building has video cameras set up for security. Do you have access to the recordings from them?”

  “What?”

  “Focus,” Taylor said, grabbing the man’s shirt and pulling him slightly but forcefully. “You’re in more danger right now than you have been in your entire life. You need to answer my questions if you want to live.”

  This wasn’t a hardened criminal or soldier. This guy had a job catering to the whims of wealthy residence and keep the high-end building running as best he could for the owners. He hired workman for any physical labor, spending most days sitting on his ass in a padded office chair. He wasn’t used to this kind of approach, and Taylor could feel the fear rolling off him.

  Eyes widening, the manager said, “Yes.”

  “Yes, you have access to the video recordings?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice trembling.

  “Are they on physical media back at your building?”

  “No, we upload them to the cloud.”

  “Can you access them anywhere?”

  “Yes.”

  Taylor had already been reasonably sure that was going to be the answer. He already knew the files were digital, based on the quality. It seemed less likely a high-end building like this would have rows of hard drives storing a few days’ recordings and getting reused. The availability of cloud storage for security videos, its reasonable price, and the good track record for the technology made that the most likely option for the building's security setup. Especially when Taylor added in the fact that the building owners were not on-site and the technology would have allowed them to check up on their property without having to travel out to physically see it.

  While he also had a contingency plan for getting the video from the manager’s office, he’d always considered that one of the less likely scenarios.

  “There’s a small cyber cafe down the street. You and I are going to calmly walk over there and go inside. I’m not alone. If you run from me, I might not be the one to shoot you, but rest assured, you will not get far. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes. Why....”

  “No,” Taylor said, interrupting the man’s questions. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you. If you do everything I ask, this will be an exciting story you can tell your friends at dinner one day. I will, however, hurt you to get what I need. Make the right choices, cooperate, do what you’re told, and everyone will walk away from this.”

  The man just nodded, beads of sweat breaking free.

  Taylor put his left arm through the man’s right elbow and steered him out of the bank parking lot towards the cyber cafe he and Whitaker had scouted out previously. As he crossed the street, Whitaker pulled the bike up in front of the building, pulling off her helmet.

  It wasn’t ideal for them to take off their helmets since their pictures had already shown up on a few morning news programs, but two customers still wearing their motorcycle helmets would draw too much attention once they went inside.

  “You,” the manager said as they caught up to Whitaker, recognizing her.

  While she might not have had a lot of dealings with the man, he would know who the woman accused of murdering one of his tenants was.

  “Now you know how serious we are,” Taylor said. “Do what we ask, and you’ll be fine.”

  The man paled visibly but nodded, his eyes fixed on Whitaker. Taylor steered the man by the elbow, smiling at the person who greeted them when they went in. Whitaker intercepted the greeter while Taylor maneuvered the manager a few steps away.

  The hope was that Whitaker could be charming enough to distract the man long enough so he wouldn’t notice how nervous the manager was. Luckily for them, her charms worked, and a handful of minutes later, the trio were seated around a single computer, with the manager in the middle, in front of the keyboard.

  “We need you to log into the system where the security videos are stored. We want a copy of the video for that entire day.”

  “Which day.”

  Taylor just looked at the man, whose brain finally kicked in.

  “Ohh, that day.”

  The manager logged into a website and started to navigate around. There was a hundred or so videos stored. From the dates, it seemed like they held only videos for thirty days, which meant a few more weeks, and the evidence would have been destroyed. Of course, Graf could say he preserved the video, since he had just the section of the video that Whitaker was on. Still, Taylor was confident something had been at least trimmed if not edited outright from the video.

  “How do you want to get it?”

  Taylor opened his mouth and then closed it. He couldn’t just email it to himse
lf. One, the file was relatively large, and two, they needed a better way to transport the file.

  “Luddite,” Whitaker said to Taylor over the manager’s head before reaching into a pocket and pulling out a small flash drive.

  Taylor kicked himself for not considering this ahead of time. That was the way things went, for everything you planned ahead of time, there were always a few things you’d miss. This, however, was a fairly critical part of the plan that existed in nearly every scenario, and Taylor hadn’t considered the need to actually have something to save the files to.

  He also took a moment to wonder why Whitaker just happened to have that on her, but let it pass as the manager took it and inserted it into the computer. It took a few minutes to download and save the file to the drive. Even with high-speed internet, the file was large and took time to download.

  It took every ounce of willpower in Taylor’s body to keep from looking around to see if anyone had recognized them, since that was a sure fire way to get people to start paying attention to him if they hadn’t already. Instead, he just focused on the small loading bar indicating if the file had been fully downloaded to the flash drive.

  Finally, it finished, and Whitaker pulled it out, capping the flash drive and sliding it into her pocket.

  “Just sit here and keep facing the computer. Don’t look around or do anything to indicate there’s a problem. Once we’re gone, you can go back to your life like none of this happened. Just check your email or something and be calm,” Taylor said as he stood up and leaned over the manager’s shoulder.

  Although he didn’t turn his head, Taylor could see the man’s eyes darting around as he nodded.

  Whitaker and Taylor backed away from the workstation and headed for the front door. Taylor was just starting to reach for the door handle when it pulled open. On the other side of the door stood a police officer. His face went from mild surprise, the kind most people feel when they open a door and there’s a person just on the other side blocking their path, to recognition.

  Behind them, Taylor heard the manager shout in German. Taylor didn’t have to guess what he was saying. The officer’s hand started to go for his belt when Taylor began moving. He’d been holding the motorcycle helmet in his left hand when he’d gone for the door, and he’d also started to move it up as soon as he’d seen the officer.

  Placing his right hand on the opposite side of the bottom rim of the helmet, to ensure he had a secure grip, he smashed it into the officer’s chest, lunging forward as he did. The officer was wearing a vest which blunted some of the impact, but the force and the fact that the officer wasn't prepared - were enough to send the man sprawling onto the cement, hard.

  Taylor and Whitaker vaulted over the stunned man’s body and dashed for the bike. As soon as he felt Whitaker's arms snake around his middle, Taylor twisted the throttle, causing the bike to jump away from the curb.

  Even though his helmet, he heard the crack of a gunshot. The rear window of a parked car they were weaving around exploded. Taylor and Whitaker tore down the street, away from the cyber cafe. In the distance, he could hear a police siren come to life.

  Taylor could only hope the sound was just a coincidence.

  Chapter 10

  Taylor forced the bike he and Whitaker were on around a tight turn, leaning the bike almost too much as he tried to keep from bleeding too much speed as they ran from the cyber cafe. His hopes that the siren he’d heard was just a different officer pulling some motorist over were soon dashed as they flashed past a cross street. Taylor caught sight of a different police car whose lights flashed on as soon as they’d crossed its view.

  Glancing at the side mirror, Taylor saw the police car run through a traffic light and turn to follow them. He was making enough turns that the car he passed was the only one he could see at the moment, but Taylor was nearly certain it wasn’t the only one chasing them. That patrol car had jumped off the mark way too quickly. The officer he knocked down must have called it out on the radio, and the cars in the area had been converging on them. Even if this was the only one behind them, it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  What Taylor needed was a way to lose pursuit, preferably before a police helicopter showed up and made that a lot harder. Taylor turned hard onto one of the main artery streets that lead to the heart of the city. Even an hour after rush hour had ended, the street was still packed with cars, buses, and trucks delivering the people and goods that made a major metropolitan center work.

  Taylor hoped that the denser packed streets would give the smaller, more maneuverable motorcycle an edge over the police cruisers since there were enough vehicles on the road that even if citizens wanted to give way to the police, they couldn’t.

  For that to work, though, they had to survive the trip. Whitaker gripped Taylor hard around the middle as the bike dipped dangerously to one side so they could dodge in between a taxi and a large box van. Roaring down the lane line in between rows, a helpful citizen decided to pull into the space between lanes to help the police, blocking it off.

  Taylor managed to whip around the rear of the blocking car and slid onto the next lane divider at the last second, nearly missing scraping along the side of the car, which would have been bad for both the bike and Whitaker and Taylor.

  The move had cost them speed, which Taylor had been building up as he saw the light ahead turn yellow. By the time he got to the line, it had already circled through to red, and cross-traffic had started. Taylor didn’t have time to wait for the way to clear, however.

  Although the traffic had slowed the chasing police, which had now become three cruisers instead of one, it hadn’t stopped them. They were making progress towards them. There was a chance they’d reach Taylor and Whitaker before the light turned, or that one of the citizens around them would again try to take a hand at helping the authorities. Either way, the decision was already made for Taylor.

  He didn’t even slow down as he plowed into traffic, barely missing a BMW. Behind him, Whitaker screamed, and horns blared, but dumb luck saw them through. The bike exploded through a gap in the traffic, soaring down a now much less dense roadway.

  Their luck didn’t hold. A police car jumped the thin concrete medium and turned to block the lane. Taylor applied the brake and turned hard before opening the throttle back up, tires smoking as he fishtailed, the rear of the bike throwing a bloom of white smoke onto the police car, temporarily blinding the officers.

  The tires bit into the road, and the bike took off once more, now heading down a car lined side street. Taylor wasn’t a hundred percent sure where they were, but he thought he remembered something from a map he’d been looking at the night before. Looking at the improving quality of the street as they drove down, it suggested that Taylor was correct about where they were driving, which was fortunate as the cruiser they’d avoided was now in close pursuit.

  Rounding a slight curve, Taylor saw what he was looking for, a dignified grey stone wall covered in vines with an opening from the road they were on for the bike to pass through. Taylor blew through to the street that ran parallel to the brick wall, a small bus with a bright blue and gold paint scheme on it blaring its horn as Taylor forced it to swerve to avoid hitting him.

  The surroundings opened up as they passed the walls curved archway. The narrow streets and tall buildings were replaced by lush green open spaces scattered with the odd gothic architecture. Students walking with backpacks and books stopped to gawk as Taylor ignored the t-intersection and hopped the curb, tearing chunks of grass out as he accelerated across the open lawn.

  In his mind, Taylor could see the circular loop that ran around the outside of the campus. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the police cruiser slow before turning left, attempting to trace their cross-campus journey by going around the loop and catching up to them.

  “This place doesn’t have a lot of street exists. They’re going to radio ahead and have them blocked off,” Whitaker warned, leaning closer and yelling to be heard.


  Taylor nodded in response so she would know he heard her but didn’t slow down or turn towards the area where one of the exits would be. In fact, Taylor did the opposite and turned slightly in the opposite direction, back into more of the campus, circling around one of the school buildings while dodging a group of kids spread out on the lawn, sending them scattering. Around the building, Taylor saw what he wanted, a large parking garage in between three of the buildings.

  Pulling into it, Taylor drove into an open spot and hopped off.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Just follow me,” Taylor said, pulling off his helmet and the jacket.