I live. They die. Charmed life.
She rolled onto her side and checked the clock. It was 9:40 a.m. She had no place to be. No word from Cyrus. There was just silence. A dead quiet that made her question whether she was even alive at the moment. She lay back down and rubbed her temples.
Maybe I should go for a run? Maybe I should go drink?
She ran through a mental checklist. Smoke was gone. The Hellcat was gone. Ted’s murderer, Deanne Drukker, was gone. Someone needed to find that woman. Make her pay. Deanne had been so cold and calm after what she’d done. Soulless. Is that what’s in store for Allison? Can she be saved?
“You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.” Sid’s dad, Keith, had told her that when she was a girl. He’d arrested so many people and had tried to help countless faces. He wanted to help get their lives back on track. But almost all of them didn’t want to dig themselves out of the hole. No amount of convincing could change that. Her sister was like that. It was scary. Not even the love Allison must feel for Megan was enough to pull her out of the abyss. So it seemed. Perhaps Deanne Drukker was the same way.
Maybe I should move on.
A battle stirred inside Sid. One side wanted to quit. The other wanted to fight. Deanne needed to be brought to justice. Murderers and other monsters were running free. Someone had to stop them. She eyed her guns hanging inside the door of her closet.
Bounty hunter by day, babysitter by night?
Quickly she got up off the bed and made her way to the closet door. She checked her wallet. It still had her FBI liaison card. She had some access left. Some authority. Maybe Cyrus was wrong or lying. He just wanted her away from the case, but if anyone had answers, it would be him. Him and that little snake, Rebecca.
She strapped on her shoulder holster and gun. “That’s better.” She got a little bit of a charge from it. A feeling of wholeness. She picked up her phone from the nightstand and sent out a text to Sam:
“We need eyes and ears on Cyrus and Rebecca,” Sid wrote.
A text came back. “We’re on it like flies on stink. Glad you’re back in the game.”
CHAPTER 31
Over the next two days, Sidney lay low. She kept things routine. She took Megan to school in the silver Dodge Charger she’d rented. She texted with Sam a couple times a day. She paid close attention to the local news, both on TV and on the Internet. She even logged into Nightfall DC, but there weren’t any new stories. Things were quiet. Oddly so, leaving her too much time to think. She couldn’t help but think that the Buffalo Brothers were going to strike.
She pulled the car into the parking lot near the Washington Memorial. Wearing her bright-green-and-black jogging clothes, she donned her headphones and took off at a trot, thinking a few miles would do her some good. She made her way toward the Reflecting Pool and had finished two laps when the phone buzzed. She checked her screen.
The text from Sam read, “Cyrus is headed to Law Park Offices. Murder scene. Bad.”
“Morning glory.”
On long legs, Sid sprinted back to her car. The Law Park Offices were where Winslow Swift worked. She and Smoke had been assigned to stake it out that day, to keep an eye out for Winslow Swift. She’d pretty much forgotten about him. Now it seemed another mistake had come back to haunt her.
Back at the rental car, she hopped inside and fired up the engine. She noticed a case in the passenger seat. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The silvery metal case was just like the one she’d gotten before—from Mal Carlson. Glancing around the area, she shook her head and popped open the case.
There was a typewritten note on a small piece of white parchment paper. It said, “You’ll probably need this. MC.”
A Sweet Heart suit was inside. Special bullets in clips that fit her Glock. A matching pair of razor-sharp knives that would fit her hands. There was even a small bottle with a cork in it. She rattled around the glimmering emerald pill that was inside. It was a little different than the super vitamin she’d taken the last time.
“I’ll be damned. Everyone knows what I’m doing but me.” She got out her pistol and slapped the clip of green-tipped bullets into it and charged the handle. Looking around, she ducked down in the front seat and started to slip out of her clothes to put on the Sweet Heart suit, saying with a smile, “Why not fight the good fight.”
***
The parking lot at the Law Park Offices was almost empty. People in business attire were filing out of the building. It was more like a fire drill. No one hustled. There wasn’t any panic in their voices. Calmly, they chatted among themselves, loaded into their cars, and headed home.
Sid got out of her car and approached a middle-aged woman in a dark-grey business suit. “What happened?”
“The power went out,” the lady said, lighting up a cigarette. “They told us all to go home. Heh. I’ve been here twenty-three years, and I’ve never had a break like this. Hell, I never even get Christmas Eve off. I’m taking it.” She looked Sid up and down. “Uh, you got business?”
“Yep.”
“Well, you better reschedule.” The woman blew smoke into the air and stared at the misty clouds. A power truck pulled up to the building’s curb, and two men in white jumpsuits hopped out and rushed into the building with metal boxes. “I’d hate to be those guys. My bosses are a bunch of real a-holes, if you know what I mean. This’ll cost somebody a buttload of money. It’s always money.” She sucked the cigarette down to the last ash and dropped it. She crushed it with her shoe. “Money, money, money, money. See you around.”
Sid made a quick scan of the parking lot. There were only a couple unmarked FBI cars. She was pretty sure the black Navigator near the front was assigned to Cyrus. Some other men and women agents, in plain clothes, had positioned themselves at the corners of the building. The best that she could tell, no one coming out had any idea that somebody had been killed.
Feeling spry in the Sweet Heart suit, she navigated through the people and slipped unnoticed into the building. All of the lights were out, but the daylight illuminated most of the lobby with dim light. She found the directory near the elevators. Sherman Investments was on the top floor. Finding the emergency stairwell, she swung open the door. The emergency lights were on. She jogged up three flights of steps and peeked through the stairwell portal.
The office was dark but not without window light. The secretary’s desk was abandoned. A flashlight beam flashed over cubicles deeper in the room.
Sid pushed through the door and quietly closed it behind her. The Sherman Investments lobby was top flight. Leather chairs and sofas. Chocolate marble walls. A waterfall dripped into the pond full of large goldfish. She passed the break room. There was an industrial-sized cappuccino machine. The scent of rich coffee grounds lingered in the air. On cat’s feet, she pressed deeper into the facility. There were low voices and rustlings coming from a conference room that was enclosed in glass. Sid’s heart skipped. There was blood splattered all over it. A flashlight glared in her eyes.
“Freeze!”
CHAPTER 32
In a lightning-quick swipe, Sid knocked the flashlight out of the man’s hand. She wrenched his hand behind his back and drove him into the wall. Two more men burst out of the conference room with their guns lowered on her chest. One of them was Cyrus.
“Dammit, Sid!” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Serving as a liaison,” she said.
“I oughta shoot you.” He shook his head and holstered his weapon. The other man did the same. “Since you’re here, well,” he stepped aside, out of the doorway, “be my guest.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Really?”
“I don’t think it’s going to make a difference. Your life is finished anyway.”
She walked into the conference room and surveyed the grisly scene. Five bodies sat around in office chairs with buffalo nickels inside their eyes. Four men. One woman. They’d been cut to ribbons. A knife still protruded from one
man’s chest. Another’s neck was shoved backward. The woman had darkening bruises around her neck.
“I don’t see Winslow Swift,” she said. “So, where’s your partner?”
Cyrus was texting someone when he looked up. “Huh? Oh, don’t you worry about her. So what do you make of this?”
“Do we have anything other than the bodies? Any video?”
“Power’s out.”
“The power is out thanks to you.”
“Heh. Look, you’ve seen. Now you can go.”
“Just like that?”
“You stuck your nose into it, Sid. Get a sniff, offer some advice, and move on. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
She noticed a folded letter in the crook of his arm. She snatched it and opened it up to read it out loud. “This is what happens to thieves.” There was a Drake stamp on it. “Interesting.” She laughed. “He robbed the Drake, and we’re worried about it? Excuse me, you’re worried about it? So how much did this swindler steal?”
“Uh, Zed,” he said to the other agent in the room, “give us a moment.” Cyrus watched the man leave and then continued in a low voice, “Over a billion.”
“Oh, now that must have hurt. So now the FBI is helping the Drake find their money?”
“No, we are following the money,” he said. “And Winslow Swift has it. This is a message. A nasty one.”
Her eyes searched the dead bodies. There were signs of torture on all of them. Broken fingers and missing ones as well. Sadistic carnage. “So the Buffalo Brothers came to deliver a message?”
“Er, and to find Winslow,” he said with a twitch in his eye. “Naturally.”
She knew he was holding back. The FBI, or someone over the FBI, was protecting Winslow for some reason. There was something bigger. Something deeper going on. Watching Cyrus text, she said, “You have Winslow, don’t you.”
Cyrus kept texting.
She stepped closer and covered his phone with her hand. “Look at me, Cyrus.”
He glanced up. His eyes were all jittery. His forehead beaded in sweat. His Adam’s apple rolled inside his neck. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Sid had never seen Cyrus nervous before. If anything, he had ice in his veins. Perhaps Ted’s violent death had gotten to him. Perhaps he knew he could be in the crosshairs next. Something was on the man’s conscience. Something bad. She decided to play nice. She put a little honey in her voice. “Come on, Cyrus. You’ve always known that I was trustworthy. And I’ve never lied to you. It’s not like we haven’t shared secrets before. Let’s be a team again.”
He stepped over to the door and closed it, leaving them in a stuffy room filled with the dead. “We have Winslow. We’re using him as bait to capture the Buffalo Brothers. They want those guys off the Slate. They want them bad.” He blotted the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. He started shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have agreed to this. I never should have let her do it.” He kicked the chair. “How stupid of me!”
“Let who do what?” Sid said.
“Rebecca was guarding Winslow. Back in the same place we held you.” His face filled with strain. His voice cracked. “They took her. They took Winslow.” He handed her a cell phone. “Look.”
There was a picture on it. Rebecca was bound up in a chair. Her face was bruised and swollen, her blonde hair matted. Two men with knives were in the picture as well, but their heads weren’t showing. She moved to the other picture. Winslow was stripped down to his undershirt and lying on the floor. His nose was busted open.
There was a text message: “Return the money or they die.”
CHAPTER 33
Every man had a weakness. Cyrus’s was women. He fell too hard for them. He’d fallen hard for Sidney and overdone it. Now that same thing was happening with Rebecca. Sid could see it in his face. He was all torn up inside over it. The same tormented look was on his face like the day she had walked away from him. It tugged at her own heart a little.
“We’ll get her back,” Sid said to Cyrus. “I swear it.”
Over the next few hours, they worked with a tactical team. During that time, Cyrus came clean with a few more things.
“Winslow embezzled one billion from the Drake,” Cyrus explained. “Sort of. You see, according to Winslow, the money was supposed to be spread out among several political fund-raising organizations. As it turns out, that money never showed up. Instead, it wound up in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. Maybe some of it’s buried in Swaziland, for all I know. Well, May is coming up. Election time, and a whole bunch of incumbents are about to get burned.” Standing outside the Law Park Offices, he strapped on his body armor and checked his gun. “So that’s why we’re involved. I hate to say it, but some congressmen and senators are all up in this, and they aren’t happy at all. It’s just a damned dirty business. Not what I signed up for.” He holstered his gun. “I just want to get Rebecca out of this jam. But Winslow, he’s screwed. He has names. They want to either control him or shut him up. I don’t know. I just want to get Rebecca out.”
The information was a lot for Sid to swallow, but she felt a chuckle inside. The Drake was out a billion in resources. It would cost them power and influence. The dirty politicians were screwed because many of them would be out of jobs. And it was all on account of one greedy little SOB.
The snakes devour each other. How poetic.
Sidney eyed the little case Cyrus had in his hand. Another agent had delivered it an hour earlier. It had a coded chip in it, and on that chip was an account for one billion in bitcoins. “So, if the money’s hidden, how’d they scrape up a billion?”
“Huh. I don’t even want to know, but clearly Winslow had insurance,” Cyrus said. “He had names. I’m pretty sure if anything happens to him, then all of that dirt under the rug is going to be exposed. You’d think they’d kill Winslow, but it’s like Catch 22. He’s their lawyer. If he dies, then I think all their hard work is set back a decade.” He almost laughed. “One way or the other, a lot of heads are going to roll because of this.” He glanced at Sid. “So, are you sure you want to do this?”
A light rain began to speckle her rental car. The balmy day was unusually cool for this time of year. “I guess this is what liaisons do. Let’s deliver the mail. My car or yours?”
***
The plan was simple. Per the request of the Drake, they were to deliver the chip to Mallows Bay. If everything was in order, Rebecca and Winslow would be released, and everyone could walk away. Sid pulled into the Mallows Bay parking lot. She was surprised Cyrus had let her drive, but he was preoccupied with his phone. He talked. He texted. She wasn’t entirely sure who with. It seemed he had access to whoever was calling the shots, but the odd thing was—why was she included? Again, someone knew what she was doing before she did. It ate at her.
The brakes squeaked as she brought the vehicle to a halt at the edge of the Mallows Bay boat ramp. “Are you ready?” she asked Cyrus.
Cyrus rubbed his hands on this thighs. “Why do you think I let you bring your vehicle and not mine?” He coughed out an uncomfortable laugh. “I hope you got the damage waiver on this rental.”
Sid studied the choppy waters of the bay full of sunken ships. Now that she knew what she was looking for, her keen eyes could make out the faint outline of a road underneath the water. She peered at the edges of it, envisioning the deaders crawling up onto them. Come on out so I can run you over. “All right, let’s go.”
The car eased into the water, tires almost a foot deep, following a straight line toward the half-sunken tanker. A dozen yards out they were surrounded by the murky waters on all sides. Sid sat up straight in her seat, peering over the edge of the car’s hood. The hairs on her arms tingled. A gaping hole appeared in the middle of the bay. A rush of water poured around the tunnel’s mouth, spilling into a great vat surrounding the submerged road. It was a marvel. A feat of engineering or something else. Something unnatural. The road moved deeper into the waters.
<
br /> Cyrus looked at her and said, “I think I’m going to vomit.”
“You can swim, right?” Sid asked.
“Yeah. Now why did you have to ask that?”
She made a little smirk and eased on the gas. The car’s hood dipped down, and in seconds, they were below the waters and driving through a tunnel of glass or plastic. It was something similar to what Sid had seen at the massive National Aquarium in DC before it closed. There weren’t any colorful fish, however, just glimpses of sunken ships in the muddied waters.
After they had driven along at five miles per hour for what seemed a long time, the great tanker’s hull appeared. The tunnel led right into its belly. She kept driving, headlights on, into the darkness until some lights appeared ahead. After another thirty yards, they were inside the sunken ship’s belly.
Cyrus’s mouth dropped open. “You have got to be kidding me.”
The inner hull of the ship gleamed with new metal. There were catwalks. Rows of metal shelving. A forklift. A Bobcat bulldozer. Several cars. Sid brought the car to a stop and turned the engine off. She and Cyrus got out. Behind them, a white cargo van with the Drake markings blocked their exit.
“Looks like we’re staying for dinner,” Sid said. Her thoughts drifted to Megan. I’m a lousy aunt.
The van groaned as the big man stepped out the door. It was Warren Ratson, mirrored glasses and all. Coming from the other side was his brother, Oliver. His chin jutted out from his long, crane-like neck. A nasty smirk was on his face. The two imposing men flanked them.
“Time for a pat down,” Oliver said, closing in on Sid. “Don’t get all excited, pretty girl. My sap doesn’t rise like it did in the good ol’ days among the living.”
She turned her head. His breath was like the rot of the dead. He ran his hands down her shoulders and over her chest and stopped. He took her gun and tossed it aside. “Wouldn’t do you any good against us anyway, but there’s still a few other warm bodies around.” His gruff hands rested on her hips. He swayed a little. “You know, I used to like to dance back in the day. I liked that Chubby Checker’s Twist. Ew, what do we have here?” He slipped out the knives she’d pulled out of Mal Carlson’s case. He thumbed their edges. “Very nice. I bet I could skin your eyeball with this.”
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