Chain Reaction Power Failure Book I

by Andrew Draper

  “Don’t get excited,” he laughed. “I think I made my point last time.”

  As the distance between the two expanded, Trish retracted the blade with an audible snap.

  “Yes. You reminded me why I left you the first time.”

  Aaron’s inner smile grew as he germinated the seed of an idea to pull the bacon from the fire. He cleared his throat loudly, breaking the tension.

  “I hate to interrupt, but can you let her out of the chair? She’s freezing too,” he said, “At least let her move around to stay warm until we leave.”

  Clark paused in thought for a second before patting the revolver in his pocket, “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

  “We won’t.” he said.

  Clark turned back to Trish. “You’re the one swinging around the big blade. So, go cut her loose.”

  Her face painted in stark disbelief at his sheer audacity, Trish moved to the other side of the room, kneeling on the cold floor by Jenny’s side. “Prick,” she muttered under her breath while cutting through the duct tape holding Jenny immobilized.

  Finally free of confinement, Jenny glared at Aaron maliciously. Rubbing her wrists, she worked to restore the circulation to her hands. “Thank you.” Jenny said as she walked unsteadily, moving toward the heater.

  As she approached, he saw a strange light in her eyes. Before he could utter a word, she let loose with a right cross, slapping him sharply in the face. Strength-depleted and still foggy from the drugs, she nearly fell over from the recoil. He caught her in his arms just inches above the floor’s cold wood planks.

  “You bastard!” she seethed. “How could you sell me out? I trusted you!”

  She struggled in his grasp, trying to free herself. “Let me go! Dammit!”

  “I didn’t sell anyone out,” he said, a red handprint beginning to appear on his cheek. “I’m just trying to save our lives. Don’t you get that?”

  Her face inches from his, she hissed in anger. “I get that you’re giving them my project to save your skin.”

  He gave her a sheepish look. “Whatever it takes to get us out of here alive.”

  Effortlessly lifting her and standing her back on her feet, Aaron watched as she stalked off. Shaking her now-stinging hand, she threw a backward glance over her shoulder. “You coward!”

  The cruelly-rendered words seared his senses, piercing his heart like a well-aimed laser beam. He clenched his jaw in frustration. He didn’t dare answer her condemnation aloud, so he moved to her side. “You have to believe me. I’m doing what’s best…for both of us.”

  He lifted his hand to her shoulder. Eyes blazing in fury, she whirled around, knocking it away. “Don’t you dare touch me!”

  “Jenny, just try to understand…” he started.

  She cut him off, her eyes drilling into his with a poorly controlled mix of heated emotions. “Understand what? That you are giving them my life’s work, something you swore to protect. Or was that little speech about keeping me and my project safe just a pretty lie?”

  He turned to avoid her searing, condemning stare.

  After a tense moment, she turned away from him, shaking her head. “I believed you. How stupid does that make me?”

  “You’re not stupid. I just…” he stumbled over his words.

  Clark interrupted. “How much longer do we have to wait? I’m not the most patient man.”

  Aaron paused briefly, still looking for some sign of understanding from Jenny, now sulking in the corner of the room. Seeing none, he turned back to face his captor. “Look, you don’t want to follow the delivery man up to the desk do you? It might look a little suspicious, considering the fact that you’re not a guest at the hotel.”

  Clark paced, walking from one end of the room to the other and back. “I see. We check into the hotel and then pick up the package?”

  Aaron shrugged his shoulders. “Easy as getting drunk.”

  Clark stopped in the middle of the room, still for a moment as he contemplated the scenario. “But, most business travelers don’t come back to their hotels until the end of the day, right?”

  Aaron looked at his watch again. “About two hours away.”

  Clark also scanned his watch. “Makes sense. Okay, we wait.”

  Aaron joined Clark in the center of the room. “Look, I just want this to go smoothly, so we can all get out of here,” he pointed at Jenny, “She’s in no shape to take much more of this cold. She should be in a hospital. I’m counting on you to honor your word and let her go.”

  Aaron knew time was running out. He could feel it in his bones. Every instinct he possessed told him Majors would kill them both the instant he had what he wanted…and his instincts were never wrong. The time would have to be soon.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Locating Sean Murphy wasn’t a big chore for Kelly Ingersol. Murphy’s careless decision to shop the stolen technology around, coupled with his choice of recreational additives, left a trail her Boston contacts and their criminal connections couldn’t miss.

  She’d sat waiting outside his condominium for two hours yesterday and three so far today. The routine quickly got old…and cold. Scanning up and down the frozen street, she began to wonder if he would ever return home. Ironically, her persistence paid off only minutes later when she saw a solitary figure approach the door.

  About damned time!

  Hood pulled up against the sub-zero temperature, the unidentified stranger huddled in the doorway. Kelly watched as a cigarette lighter flared and the stranger’s face became visible through the small but powerful binoculars she held to her eyes. The woman inhaled deeply at the cigarette, causing the ember to glow brighter, making her face an eerie blend of blood red and coal black. Kelly watched as the woman continued to puff, stealing a series of guarded glances up and down the street.

  “That’s it.” Kelly said, her voice a low whisper in the otherwise silent car. “You’re safe. Now go inside and get what you came for then lead me to Murphy.”

  As if she heard the words, the woman on the steps flipped the cigarette into a snow bank and extracted a key from the pocket of her ripped and faded jeans. Taking one last look over her shoulder, she opened the street door.

  Kelly waited for a light to come on in the building before she exited her car and quickly strode across the frozen pavement.

  Once a four-story clapboard home for a single family, the white Colonial-style building was now divided into four up-scale condo units, one on each floor.

  Reaching the entrance, she, too, checked the quiet neighborhood for any signs of unwanted attention before closing the street door behind her. She moved quietly up the narrow flight of stairs to the second floor. She glanced at the brass plate on the door facing the street. She tried the knob and found it unlocked, swinging the door silently out of the way.

  Peering around the edge of the door into the living room, she saw no sign of her target. She silently entered the apartment and moved through, toward a hallway on her right.

  Standing motionless, she heard muffled sounds beyond, in the shadows at the end of the hall. Stopping at a partially closed door near the end, she waited, listening intently. Kelly pushed it open a fraction of an inch and saw the woman from the street, back toward her, busily pulling clothes from an open dresser against the wall to her left. On the bed, a small duffel bag sat half filled.

  Kelly listened silently as the woman groused, throwing another shirt into a pile on the bed.

  “For Chrisssake! I’m not your fuckin’ errand girl,” the woman cursed. “You want your stuff, next time, get it yourself…lazy bastard!”

  Reaching into her purse, Kelly felt the cold yet comforting steel of the small automatic. Drawing the weapon, she checked the safety and stepped silently into the room.

  “Going somewhere?” she said, her firm voice breaking the silence in a booming echo.

  The woman packing the suitcase emitted a small scream and turned around.

  “Who the hell are you?”r />
  With the hood down on her shoulders, Kelly could now see the woman’s face. Pock-marked and gaunt, the woman showed the tell-tale signs of the meth addict.

  The woman swallowed hard, gathering a shred of courage before speaking again. “You can’t come in here without a warrant!”

  Kelly quickly swept the room with her eyes and leveled the pistol at the woman’s chest.

  “Who said I was a cop?”

  “You’re not a cop? Then get the hell out of here before I call them.”

  “I’m looking for Murphy. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.” She answered, body stiffening in fear.

  The dim light coming from the table lamp washed out the addict’s heavily blemished face, throwing harsh shadows on her emaciated features.

  Kelly closed the distance between the two and pointed the weapon at the woman’s forehead. “I think you do. Tell me where Murphy is.”

  She repeated her demand, cocking the hammer. The terrified woman put her hands up in defense, face now ashen. She pleaded. “Really, I don’t know.”

  Watching the waif’s eyes expand in naked terror, Kelly frowned a deep, sinister sneer. “I’m going to give you three seconds to tell me where he is. If you don’t, I’m going to shoot you. When the police eventually find your body, they’ll conduct a perfunctory investigation…before they shelve it. Do you want to become another unidentified body in an unmarked grave?”

  The woman’s face went completely white and she began to shake, her entire body wracked by small tremors. “All right, I’m telling you the truth. I really don’t know where he is. He sent me to get his passport and some of his stuff.”

  Kelly eased the gun away from her face and continued the questioning. “He’s planning a little trip I see. Where and when are you supposed to meet him?”

  Standing a little taller, the woman reached toward her coat pocket.

  “Easy!” Kelly warned as the pistol again rested between the other woman’s eyes.

  Moving very slowly, the waif produced a cell phone. “He’s gonna call me in about 15 minutes.”

  Kelly lowered the pistol and considered her options for a few seconds. “Okay. I think we can do this the easy way. For the next hour or so, you and I are partners. I think you’re a smart girl. You do as I say and you can walk away from this with a little cash. You screw up and it’s a toe tag. Understood?

  The woman silently nodded.

  “Good.”

  Kelly took five one-hundred dollar bills from her wallet and showed them to the frightened woman. “Consider this a little finder’s fee for Murphy.”

  Kelly placed two in the woman’s trembling hand.

  “You get the rest when you deliver Murphy to me.”

  Again, the shaking girl nodded passively.

  The minutes passed in silence for the two women as the waif chain-smoked and finished packing the clothes she’d selected from various piles in the small bedroom. Nerves on edge, both women flinched as the cell phone broke into an electronic version of a well-known rap song.

  The junkie answered the call. “Hello?”

  Kelly held her ear against the back of the speaker, taking it all in.

  “Susie, did you get the stuff I asked for?” the caller’s voice scratched.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Meet me at the Charlestown Bridge, on the Navy Yard end, in twenty minutes…and don’t even think about being late.”

  With a loud click, the line went dead. The waif snapped the phone shut. “You heard, twenty minutes.” She said, looking at the floor.

  Kelly motioned toward the door “I’ll drive. Let’s go.”

  The cars moved slowly as the rush-hour traffic clogged the six lanes of Interstate 93 as it wound through Boston’s North End. Taking to the surface streets, the pair turned onto Washington St. and approached the Charlestown Bridge entrance. They traversed the bridge in strained silence before Kelly found a space in a public lot at the Boston National Historical Park and shut off the engine.

  She turned to her new-found partner. “Okay, Susie. Here’s where you earn your money. You get Murphy and bring him to this end of the walkway along the bridge. I’ll do the rest.”

  “How do I get him to follow me?”

  “I don’t care how. Tell him you left the passport in the car or something. Use your imagination.”

  “Then what happens to me?” Susie asked, the resurging fear plainly visible on her drug-ravaged face.

  “As soon as I cuff and stuff Murphy, you go your merry way… five-hundred dollars richer.”

  “That’s it?” her eyes opened in frightened disbelief. “How do I know you won’t shoot me after I bring him to you?”

  Kelly looked deep into the sunken eyes of the frightened woman. “I’m a businesswoman and dead bodies are bad for business. I’ll only shoot you if you force me to. Follow the plan and you get the cash. But, you better not screw up. Now go.”

  Watching the waif step from the car, Kelly peered into the thickening darkness, then backed into a space hidden among the shadows, keeping an eye locked on her new “partner”. Reaching in her coat pocket, she wrapped her gloved fingers around the pistol’s Mother of Pearl handle. The firm feel of the weapon comforted her.

  She stared down the empty street as the gaunt woman traversed the bridge ramp before disappearing into a pedestrian tunnel, the passage wallpapered with billboards for local political candidates. She braced against the biting cold in the car. Listening to the wind whipping in off Boston harbor, she waited…but not too patiently.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Power-sliding his 1968 Ford Bronco to avoid the on-coming traffic, Ed climbed the on-ramp to I-295 and accelerated into the storm. He’d debated with himself for several long minutes before deciding to follow Carla. He knew any confrontation between Aaron and federal agents would end badly. He had to try again to convince her of Aaron’s innocence. He banged his hand against the steering wheel in frustration.

  Typical transplant! No respect for the New England winter. Don’t these people know how dangerous these storms are?

  He replayed the encounter with the lady agent in his mind while the wipers struggled with the ever-increasing snowfall. While on one hand he found her to be frustrating in the extreme, there was still something about her that intrigued him. He readily admitted that she was not only a stone fox, but obviously uber-intelligent and driven as well. He briefly imagined the two of them sipping Cognac in front of a crackling fireplace and smiled.

  Why did she have to be so dammed stubborn? Ed groused internally as he struggled to see through the still-falling snow. I can help her find Aaron…and we wouldn’t be out driving in a blizzard right now. Women!

  Snapping back to the present, he yanked the wheel hard, correcting the Bronco’s drift as he felt the truck’s oversized tires and four-wheel drive struggle to maintain their tenuous grip on pavement.

  Down-shifting the hand-built five-speed transmission, Ed concentrated on keeping the vehicle from sliding off the ice-covered road as the cockpit reverberated with the intimidating bark of the 429cid Super Cobra Jet engine rescued from a wrecked police interceptor.

  While the partially restored classic was the product of hundreds of hours of work and sported in the neighborhood of 600 horsepower, Ed rubbed his gloved hands together and mentally kicked himself.

  Why didn’t I fix the heater last week, when I had the dashboard out?

  Following the fresh tracks in the compacted snow, he rounded a curve, still searching ahead for any sign of the agent’s G.I. sedan. Minutes later his heart skipped a beat when he spotted the blinking emergency lights through the white waves ceaselessly pounding the windshield in front of him.

  Slowing as he approached, he counted three cars stopped on the road and several people walking toward a hole in the guardrail.

  Oh, Shit! This is not good!

  Hoping against hope that it was someone else and not Agent Raven, he slid to a stop and jumped down fr
om the truck, retrieving a flashlight and a first-aid kit from under the seat as he went.

  Striding purposefully through the deep snow piled on the road’s shoulder, he closed on the group of onlookers before seeing one set of tracks leading off the road and down the embankment.

  “Anybody see what happened?” He asked.

  The man next to him answered while pacing nervously along the road’s shoulder. “Somebody slid off the road and hit a tree,” he said. “Some guys went down to check it out.”

  Ed peered over the edge and his heart sank at the sight of the agent’s sedan resting upside-down as expanding clouds of steam billowed up from the crushed engine compartment.

  He also noted a man carefully making his way down the steep slope to where the car lay wedged against the base of an enormous maple tree.

  “Did you call 9-1-1?” Ed asked the man standing next to him peering down at the wreck.

  “Done,” the by-stander said. “They’re on the way.”

  Crouching down and sliding on his heels, Ed shot past the man carefully picking his way down the slope. He reached the agent’s car to find another man already there, trying to pull open the driver’s side rear door.

  Taking in the chilling scene of still-smoking destruction, Ed’s trained eye followed the line of the inverted sedan’s roof, now bent at a sharp angle where the windshield frame had folded. The driver’s door was completely crushed, the window space reduced to only a few inches.

  “Is anyone alive in there?” he called as he skidded to a halt near the rear bumper.

  The man struggling with the crushed door answered. “There’s a woman in here. She’s alive, but she’s trapped and I can’t get the door open.”

  “Did you try the other side?” he asked.

  “Yep. It’s twisted up good.”

  Ed scrambled to the front of the car doing a quick check for any sign of fire or leaking fuel along the way.