Love Inspired Suspense June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Exit StrategyPaybackCovert Justice

by Shirlee McCoy

  Katarina had booby-trapped her own car. The steering wheel must have been coated with some sort of drug. A drug that had quickly been absorbed by her hands. A drug that had left her helpless to fight back.

  “Better life through chemicals, I always say.” Katarina’s singsong voice was the last thing Heidi heard.

  EIGHTEEN

  Blake took a sip of Mountain Dew and leaned against his kitchen counter. “That’s where we are.” He glanced at his watch. It had taken him an hour to explain everything that had happened.

  His dad sighed into the phone. “So Mark comes down here, and gets a job with us so he can contaminate containers with anthrax. For some reason, he tries to kill you and Caroline. Several times. And then, when he gets caught he blows himself up, only Heidi doesn’t think he did it. She thinks someone else did it, and given that Katarina is missing, either the mysterious someone killed both of them, or Katarina is the one behind it all.”

  Blake nodded. “Accurate summary.”

  “So for now, we act like nothing happened? Get back to work and carry on as normal?”

  “That’s the plan,” he said. “They have passive surveillance set up at the Kovacs’ house and the local FBI office will be taking over the hunt for Katarina. Max and a couple of agents are staying behind to wrap everything up. And Heidi will stay for a week or so.” He didn’t want to talk about Heidi with his dad. Not right now. He checked his watch again. “Aren’t you about to be late for dinner, Dad?”

  “Yes. You be careful. We’ll be home on Wednesday.”

  “Love you, Dad.”

  “I love you, too, son. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Blake disconnected the call and hit the speed-dial button for Heidi’s phone. It rang four times and went to voice mail. That was odd. He couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t taken a call from him.

  Maybe she was on the phone with Max or Frank. Maybe she and Maggie were in deep conversation. They were probably headed back, but he decided to meet them. He didn’t know how much more time he would have with Heidi and he didn’t want to waste a minute of it.

  He expected to find them before he reached the creek.

  They weren’t there.

  A vague unease settled in his gut. He quickened his pace as he walked back through the forest toward his house.

  He called out for them as he walked. “Heidi! Maggie!”

  No reason to panic. Heidi knew this mountain as well as he did. She and Maggie had probably walked farther than they’d planned and it was taking a while for them to get back. They might have even taken a different route and beaten him back to the house.

  When he reached his house, he jogged up the steps. “Maggie?” He checked each room. Empty.

  “Heidi!” He ran toward the cabin. “Maggie!” He didn’t bother knocking on her door. It was locked. He banged on it with his fist. “Heidi! Maggie!” His breath came in gasps as he fumbled with his keys. His hand shook as he slid the key into the door. He raced through the cabin.

  They weren’t there.

  He tried Heidi’s phone again. Voice mail. “Heidi, where are you? I’m dying here. Call me.”

  He ran down the drive, all the way to the road, calling out their names. He scanned the road on either side of the drive.

  Would they have come down here? Maybe.

  But they would have walked back to the house. Heidi never would have allowed Maggie to walk along the narrow road.

  Maybe they’d hiked up to the waterfall. No. Heidi would never take Maggie up there. Not now.

  Blake rubbed his temples.

  This would be funny in about ten minutes when Heidi and Maggie appeared from some jaunt they’d been on.

  It wasn’t funny now. He jumped into his car and raced up the mountain to Caroline’s. Maggie loved the gazebo at the top of the mountain. So did Heidi. Maybe they’d gone up there.

  He slammed the car into Park.

  The gazebo sat empty.

  He tried to slow his breathing. Tried to stop the thoughts from tumbling over and over in his brain. Missing. Why? Where?

  Who?

  Father, help me. Help me find them. Help me…

  Maybe they’d been circling around each other. He sped back toward his parents’ house. Maybe they were watching a movie. That had to be it. The theater room was basically soundproof. They’d probably gotten cold and Maggie had talked Heidi into a movie.

  But why wouldn’t she answer her phone?

  It took five seconds to determine they weren’t in the basement.

  His phone rang and his heart soared, then crashed. It wasn’t Heidi.

  An unknown number lit up the phone. He answered. “Yes.”

  “Hello, Blake,” a female voice said.

  “Who is this?”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m the person who has what you love most in the world.”

  Blake dropped to his knees.

  “Such beautiful blond hair. Such big blue eyes. Such a treasure.”

  Maggie. Not Maggie. And if they had Maggie, then what had happened to Heidi? “If you hurt her—”

  The female voice tsked in his ear. “Now, Blake. Let’s not be difficult. This is the part where you say…” The voice trailed off. Was she prompting him?

  “What do you want?”

  “Much better. See, this doesn’t need to be difficult.”

  That voice. He knew it from somewhere, but where?

  “I’m listening.”

  “Good. You’re going to help me with a project I’ve been working on. One you have insisted on getting in the way of from the beginning.”

  It couldn’t be, could it? “Katarina?”

  Katarina laughed. “Very good, Blake. You’re going to meet me at HPI and you’re going to ensure my little plan is ready to go with tomorrow morning’s production. And, just so we understand each other. You’ll be coming alone. You won’t be telling any of Heidi’s friends about this little conversation. Not if you ever want to see her or your precious Maggie again. Do I make myself clear?”

  She had Heidi, too. How on earth could she have managed it? Unless… “How do I know you haven’t already killed them?”

  He heard a rustling sound. “Daddy?” Maggie’s tearful voice unleashed his own tears.

  “Yes, baby. Daddy’s here. I love you. Are you okay?”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “Enough,” Katarina said. “You’ve heard her. She’s fine. I’ll meet you at the plant entrance in fifteen minutes. Come alone.”

  The call disconnected.

  His world. His whole world. Gone.

  What should he do?

  What would Heidi do?

  *

  He pulled into the parking lot ten minutes later. He still hadn’t decided what to do. Calling the police seemed like a bad idea. He could call the FBI, but he had no idea how to get to the people Heidi worked for. He didn’t even have Max’s number.

  He needed time and he didn’t have any. Headlights flashed along the drive to the plant. She’d arrived.

  All he could do now was let things play out.

  And pray.

  Father…

  He tried. Tried to wrap words around the emotions cartwheeling through his mind and heart. But no words came. He sat in the car, hands clenched around the steering wheel, mind refusing to cooperate. He might die tonight. Maggie might— No. No, he couldn’t go there.

  He tried again. Father…

  Nothing.

  And yet…a peace began to filter through. Not enough to allay the panic. Not enough for him to feel confident they would all get out of this alive.

  But enough to remind him he was not alone. That God heard him. That God was with him, and with Maggie, and Heidi. That He could see them right now and He would give them what they needed to get through whatever was coming.

  He’d have preferred a fireball from heaven consuming the car Katarina Kovac sat in, but this peace was enough for him t
o unclench his hands from the wheel, open the door and face her.

  Katarina flashed him a friendly smile as she climbed out of her car. “Thanks for coming, Blake,” she said. The friendliness in her voice contrasted with the weapon she pointed in his direction and triggered his sarcasm reflex. As if he’d had a choice. Of course he’d come. What kind of an idiot did she think he was? He had a slew of snide remarks he’d love to make, but this might not be the best time to antagonize the criminal with the gun.

  “What do you need me to do, Katarina?”

  “Nice. Right to business. Yes, I do like that about you. Come on. In we go.” She waved the gun toward the door. A door he’d entered a few short hours ago with Heidi and Max.

  Did Katarina realize they knew about the anthrax?

  If she didn’t, maybe he had a better chance of getting out of this with everyone alive than he’d thought.

  “I can’t figure out what your plan is, Katarina. Why would you need me?”

  “You’re going to confirm the installation for me. Be sure it will do what it’s supposed to. And then, you’re going to go on a vacation. You’ll tell your parents the strain has gotten to be too much and you need a break.”

  Did she really believe they would buy that?

  “All I need is the next two days’ production runs to go off as planned and these bottles will be hitting the baseball diamonds this summer.”

  “You’ll never get away with this.”

  She pointed her gun at the door and waited for Blake to unlock it.

  “I already have.”

  He fumbled with the door.

  “Come on, I don’t have all night.”

  They went inside and Katarina led him to the line.

  “You seem to know your way around pretty well. I didn’t think you’d ever been in here.”

  She smiled. “Markos videoed everything for me. It feels like I’ve been here a million times.”

  Surely she could be talked out of this. He had to try. “I’m not sure what you’re up to here, Katarina, but there has to be a better way. I don’t see how you can sleep at night after killing kids.”

  “Shut up and do what I’m telling you to do.”

  He’d hit a nerve. He’d give her a few minutes before he brought it up again.

  “Here,” she said. She reached into the backpack she carried and handed him a cylinder the size of a thermos. “You’ll want to attach this to a nozzle located under here.” She pointed to the spot on the line they’d discovered earlier.

  “Okay,” he said. “But I still don’t see why you need me to do it. You seem quite capable of handling this yourself.”

  “Kovacs try not to get our hands dirty,” she said with a small smile.

  The force of her words hit him. She had no intention of letting him, or Maggie, or Heidi, ever live. His fingerprints would be on the bottle. If it was ever discovered, there would be no proof to point back to her. The Kovacs could even argue that Markos had gone rogue and they’d had no awareness of his intentions.

  Sure, the FBI would know they’d been behind it all, but their evidence would be circumstantial. Once the anthrax made it into the bottles and was distributed, the Kovacs would make a fortune from their other holdings, and they’d have gotten away with a perfect crime.

  Not that he had any intention of letting it get that far. He’d play along, but if she was going to kill him, he’d go to his grave knowing her plan would ultimately fail.

  “Here.” She handed him the bottle. “You might want to be careful around that. Maybe hold your breath,” she said.

  He took the bottle. “The tubing is installed underneath,” she said. “We’ve succeeded in contaminating several shipments with a harmless substance, so we know we’ve got the pressure right,” she said. “It’s time to put this baby in action.”

  Blake slid under the blower. Katarina held a flashlight for him. “There, do you see it?”

  He tried to pretend it was the first time he’d ever noticed the contraption. “When did Mark do this?”

  “It wasn’t too hard. This thing messes up all the time, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said. She was right. Mark could have done this while he stood five feet away and he wouldn’t have noticed. He wouldn’t have even been suspicious if he’d seen Mark climb out from under there during or after a run.

  “Okay, I’ve found it,” he told her. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I believe you should be able to connect the tubing and there should be a place for the bottle to be tucked under where no one will see it.”

  She was right. Blake went to work. She hovered over him, watching his every move. It only took a few minutes to make the connections. Mark had done a good job. Once the line started, this little system he’d rigged up would shoot a tiny puff of what had to be anthrax into each of the water bottles as they came down the line. As small as the anthrax spores were, they wouldn’t be noticeable in the finished product.

  “Why us?” He tightened a fitting around the tubing.

  Katarina shrugged. “Because you’re the best.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She laughed at his sarcasm.

  “This was all my idea. I knew a company like yours would get some interesting accounts. Markos had a legitimate engineering degree. We thought if we could put him in place, we’d be able to perfect the application. We expected to be here a few weeks, but Markos kept messing stuff up. I was ready to bail, but then you landed the ballpark account. It was like a sign.”

  Blake turned his head to glare at Katarina. “You’ve put a lot into this.”

  “Indeed. And I’m not going to let Markos growing a conscience stop us.”

  “Is that why you killed him?”

  Her mouth flattened into two thin lines. “He was an idiot. Every job I gave him, he flubbed. How many times did he try to kill you? He was furious when he learned I’d intervened.”

  “You intervened?”

  “You think he’d have ever hurt your precious sister?” She rolled her eyes. “She’s the princess of the family, isn’t she? Her death would have had you all in so much turmoil we could have turned the bottles purple and you wouldn’t have noticed.” She clicked her tongue in disgust. “But she got lucky. You both did. I still haven’t figured out how you survived the present I left in your Mountain Dew.”

  Bragging on Heidi wouldn’t do either of them any good. Not now. If Katarina didn’t know what Heidi was capable of, he wasn’t about to help her out.

  “I guess we’re hard to kill,” he said.

  Katarina snorted.

  “Didn’t you think it would look a little suspicious, killing off all three of us in one weekend?”

  Katarina groaned. “Don’t blame the stroke on us. We had nothing to do with that. We never wanted the whole family out of commission. We need this place to keep operating. After that weekend, we had to slow things down. Didn’t want to draw too much attention to how hazardous it had become to be a Harrison.”

  She leaned closer. “Let me see what you’ve done.” She didn’t touch anything, but she examined it all. She obviously knew how it was supposed to look, and she was checking to be sure he hadn’t messed anything up.

  Blake knew this line would never run tomorrow, but he wouldn’t take any chances. If Katarina Kovac killed him tonight, fine. But he’d never allow anthrax to be pumped into those bottles.

  He’d been waiting for the right opportunity, and when it came, he took it.

  Bless Markos.

  Katarina, looking around with a flashlight, wouldn’t have been able to see the bypass Markos had installed. It made sense. He could leave the anthrax in place, and then toggle the switch to contaminate certain products while leaving others clean. The beauty of it was he’d slid the toggle behind a beam. Blake had missed it when he’d been looking at it earlier today, but he had no doubt about how it worked.

  The sense of peace that had descended in the car now flooded over him. No mat
ter what, he would be able to face the next few hours with the certainty that the anthrax would never harm anyone.

  “One more thing, Blake,” Katarina said. “I need you to pull that protective sleeve off the bottle for me.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it, please.”

  “Are you planning to kill me with this stuff?” That would not be a fun way to go.

  “Of course not,” she said.

  He removed the fabric from the bottle and could see why she’d wanted it gone. The bottle was stainless steel and blended in to the equipment. No one would ever notice it.

  “Do me a favor and put both hands on it and shake it. I want to be sure it’s secure. Don’t want you to have left it up there where it will crash to the floor once the system powers up, now, do we?”

  Blake grabbed the bottle and gave it a shake. “It’s not going anywhere, Katarina.”

  “Excellent,” she said. “Out we go.”

  She backed out, always keeping the gun pointed at him. He’d have loved to get it away from her, but there wasn’t enough room under the equipment for any big swings.

  When he stepped out from the blower, he stumbled. Weird. His hands tingled and his vision blurred.

  Katarina gave him a tight smile. “Come on.” She pointed to the door. Why were there two doors where there was only supposed to be one? He blinked. Tripped over thin air and went down to one knee.

  “Oh, dear,” Katarina said. “I may have been a bit aggressive on the dose. You can’t pass out yet—you’re too heavy to carry. Let’s get you to the car.”

  She slid the gun into her backpack and steered him out to the parking lot. He couldn’t stop her. His arms weren’t cooperating. She propped him up against the car and opened the back door. The last thing he remembered seeing was the torn fabric near the dome light. The car door slammed. The engine started.

  Then nothing.

  NINETEEN

  “Blake! Blake!” The voice sounded far away. “Come on, wake up. Fight. I need you to wake up.” The voice sounded closer. Was someone touching him?

  Yes. Hands. On his face. His arm.