by Jeff Carson
“Who are you calling?” Rachette asked.
“Lauren.”
The ringer trilled in Wolf’s ear.
“Oh.” Rachette eyed him suspiciously. “Can I ask why?”
“What’s going on?” Patterson appeared next to them.
“They’re taking Luke. He’s calling Lauren.”
The call went to her voicemail. She must have been in a dead zone over the pass. He was about to leave a message but killed the call.
“What’s up?” Patterson asked.
Wolf turned and stared into nothing. “I’m leaving.”
His two detectives eyed one another.
“Where?” Patterson asked.
“Washington.”
Chapter 16
“That’s what I was afraid you were going to say,” Patterson said.
“Yeah, well …” Wolf pulled out his phone again and dialed.
“But—”
“I’m getting married tomorrow. I know.”
“Yes, you’re getting married tomorrow,” Patterson said.
He ignored her and listened to the electronic trill in his ear. Once again it went to Lauren’s voicemail. The message beeped and he moved away.
“Hey, Lauren. You must be out of reception on Williams Pass or something. I … have to go. Just call me. Actually, I might be out of touch for the next few hours so I’ll call you. Actually, listen.” He stuttered, started to explain, then chickened out. “I’ll call you.”
He twirled around and saw his two detectives staring at him with dumbfounded expressions.
“Don’t you two have work to do?”
“Not really,” Rachette said. “Kristen Luke was in a car accident outside town, and now she’s woken up from a coma. We’re here, at the hospital, making sure she’s okay.”
“She’s okay now and she’s headed back to Washington. So you two get back to the station and interview Eli Banks. Get his statement on record.”
He turned away, dismissing them.
“You’re leaving?” Patterson asked.
A nurse emerged from Luke’s room, followed by the wheeled gurney and Luke’s blanketed feet.
He eyed Patterson. Her mouth hung open, reminding him of a wedding-tent entryway.
“I don’t have a choice,” he said.
“You’re getting married tomorrow,” Patterson said.
“You told me that already.”
“I’m just concerned that if you leave with them, all the way to Washington, you might not be able to get back in time. Jack’s in town. Your mother’s in town. Her sisters. Other people. Lots of other people.”
“Thank you, Heather. I know that.”
She lifted her chin. “Why, exactly, are you going?”
“She drove from central Washington to Rocky Points. Her injuries indicate she was beaten, held captive, and shot. She stole a car and drove here. Not to the cops. Not to her field office, which would have been a two-hour drive. She drove eighteen hours here.”
Patterson exhaled. “Okay, you have a point.”
“He does,” Rachette said. “But he has one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“He hasn’t told them he’s coming yet.” Rachette thumbed toward Earnshaw and Nackley, who walked behind Luke’s gurney toward the elevators, both studiously avoiding eye contact.
Earnshaw spoke on the phone.
Wilson came over. “They’re taking her?”
“Hey.” Wolf stepped to Earnshaw.
Earnshaw lifted a pinkie finger but kept talking into his phone.
“I’m going with you guys,” Wolf said.
Earnshaw lowered the phone. “Excuse me?”
“I’m going with you.” Wolf walked in front of the gurney, beating the procession to the elevator bank, and pressed the up button.
Nackley eyed his boss as if he were watching an MMA fighter who’d just been called a wimp by an unsuspecting stranger.
Earnshaw ended his call and pocketed his cell. “You’re not going with us.”
“She came here for help. I’m not abandoning her because she can’t yet remember why. I’m not letting you leave in that helicopter without me.”
The elevator dinged and opened.
The nurse and the two medevac personnel pushed Luke inside.
Wolf got in with them and faced front like an at-ease soldier.
Nackley and Earnshaw eyed one another.
“Don’t you guys dare get in a fight in this elevator.” The nurse darted her gaze between them.
Her words seemed to stir the room behind the two agents. Wilson stepped up close, looming over Earnshaw’s shoulder, and Rachette came up on Nackley’s rear.
“Let’s work together on this, okay?” MacLean said.
A smile spread on Earnshaw’s mouth, but his eyes sizzled with annoyance. “Fine. Detective Wolf is coming with us.”
Nackley’s head whipped around to his superior. “Sir?”
“Let’s go.” Earnshaw stepped inside with Nackley on his rear. “While we’re young.”
The pilot punched the roof button and the doors slid shut.
Wolf looked down at Luke’s sleeping face. The worried crease was there again.
Chapter 17
“He wasn’t there again.”
Tong Wei let out his breath, constricting the back of his throat so it was audible in the aft room of the new warehouse. He watched sweat bead along his soldier’s hairline.
“I should have put a GPS on his car the first time I saw him. But how was I to know he wouldn’t come back?”
Tong held his unblinking, icy stare, crumbling the confidence of his soldier.
“I’m sorry. Please. I’ll find him. I’ll … put a tracking device on his car. I’ll—”
“Shut up.” Tong pulled out a silk handkerchief and wiped spittle off his cheek.
“I’m sorry.”
The leather of Tong’s jacket creaked as he put the silk handkerchief back in his pocket.
“Take out your gun.”
“Please.”
“Take out your gun,” he said again with a precision that left nothing open to misinterpretation.
“I don’t want to.”
“And I don’t want to put your wife and child in my rotation.” He was lying. Nothing this man did could stop that from happening. He was short on product.
The soldier mumbled and reached into his pocket.
Tong pulled his own QSZ-92. When the soldier opened his eyes, he found a barrel pointing at his face.
“Thank you,” the soldier said, closing his eyes again.
As if relief would be that easy. Tong was simply protecting himself, just in case.
“I said take out your gun.”
His soldier’s eyes opened. “What?”
“Take out your gun!” It was Tong’s turn to fling spittle. “Out!”
The soldier stared, then raised his gun, put the barrel to his temple, and pulled the trigger.
Hot gas, light, and warm mist hit Tong full in the face, but he remained still, watching the body stand erect for a split second and collapse in a heap.
Tong held his hand out to his bodyguard, who handed him a towel without hesitation. He wiped his face and hair, and threw the towel back.
His phone chirped. He pulled it from his pocket, noticing with detached curiosity the way his hand shook.
As was his custom, he pressed the button and put the device to his ear without speaking.
“Sir?”
Tong let out an affirmative noise.
“I have something.”
He hung up. “Clean him up. I’ll be back.”
Tong left out the metal door, despising the squeal of the hinges as it swung shut too fast behind him.
Tyrone was with a girl with black holes for eyes. Tong would pass them on his way to Bohai’s office.
Office? It was an old boiler room with the rat shit swept out and wiring brought in. The place stunk like a slaughterhouse.
He strode quickly, locking eyes with the girl the entire way. She was defying him again.
When he reached her, he stopped and gripped the twenty-year-old girl’s face between his thumb and forefinger. Her skin was soft, but she had acne on her forehead.
His expression softened and he let go. “You did well today.”
Her eyes dropped and stared through his heart.
“I want you to look at me.”
She did, and he saw himself at age twelve.
“You are so important to us.” He hooked a sweat-drenched strand of hair behind her ear, and she flinched. “You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“Good. Tyrone, how many clients has she seen today?”
“Six,” the large man said.
Tong held out his hand and Tyrone slapped a wad of cash into it. Tong pocketed the money without bothering to count. Tyrone was a trustworthy product master. He’d have been dead otherwise.
“I think that’s enough for today,” Tong said.
Tyrone raised his eyebrows and Tong nodded.
It was not enough. Seven clients per day gave Tong his net profit for this grade of product. Six was one job too few, but this girl looked like she was ready to collapse, and he’d learned years ago that sometimes he needed to appear merciful to keep certain products alive—pull back the veil of despair and reveal a sliver of hope every few days, or else they’d simply lose the will to live.
She was a mere two weeks into this. There was no sense driving what little he had into the ground because of his frustration.
The homeland youth he’d grown up with were so much stronger than these American suburbanites. These kids had tasted a life that Tong would have killed for as a child, with their warm houses, loving families and mini-vans taking them to glass schools. Pulling these kids from their former lives often severed their attachment to sanity.
The girl glared at him and he felt his skin tingle.
“Put her back.”
Tyrone pulled her away.
The cage door squealed open and shut. Tong took out his handkerchief and scrubbed the girl’s filth off his hand. Some men had a gift for seducing their products, parading them unleashed around town, relying on psychological trickery to keep them tethered. Tong had to stop pretending he was like them.
He walked between two rows of mostly empty dog kennels, resisting the urge to go back and tell Tyrone to put the girl back out until she’d finished what she’d started. But that would have made him seem indecisive.
He twisted the knob to Bohai’s office but the door held firm, as if it were rusted in place.
He cursed in his native Mandarin and put his shoulder into it.
The door swung open and bashed into somebody on the other side.
“Ah!”
Tong slipped in and shut the door. Bohai stood behind it, holding his nose.
“What are you doing?”
“I was going to open the door for you.”
Tong ignored him and sat down in a plastic chair against one of the exposed brick walls. “What do you have?”
Bohai rubbed his nose, his sliver-like eyes watering behind rimless glasses. His pasty skin appeared red in the electronic glow of the room. He walked to a swivel chair, sat down, and spun toward the bank of screens on the wall.
Tong passed his eyes over the sixteen video windows—only three showed products sleeping or resting—and landed on the black-and-white footage on Bohai’s oversized laptop.
“I have another positive identification.” Bohai’s fingers were like running spider legs on the keyboard as he pulled up a picture. “Another employee with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Rage pulsed through Tong. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“How?”
“I finished scrubbing the audio and heard one of the other men uses his name. I cross-referenced it with the field-office database.”
Bohai handed over a glossy photograph.
Tong memorized the perpetrator’s face, then stared into his eyes and vowed vengeance in this life and all that would follow.
“Good work,” he said, spurring his soldier toward continued improvement.
Tong swallowed and let his eyes move to the image of his brother’s bleeding corpse on screen. Surprisingly, he felt little, the flash of panic now muted.
His mother’s ghost was losing her power.
“And where is he now?”
Bohai spun around and lowered his glasses. “Interesting, that answer is.”
Chapter 18
“Passengers, prepare for landing,” said the pilot, snapping Wolf from semi-consciousness.
He cinched his seatbelt and straightened his seat.
Earnshaw and Nackley remained reclined. The doctor, and a nurse who’d already been aboard the plane at Eagle Airport when Wolf arrived, brought their seats forward.
Clouds flitted past, the windows flickered, and the Learjet 45 dipped into unobstructed sky. Wolf leaned toward his window and took in the view below, recognizing the southern outskirts of greater Seattle.
Twenty-five-year-old memories surfaced—stepping out of the concourse and walking through driving drizzle. Stepping up into the army bus. The smell of linoleum seats. And the body odor of the man who’d sat next to him. He stared at the silver Puget Sound and reflected on the dark place he’d been in back then, only weeks from burying his father and searching for vengeance a world away from home. And now? Lauren was a ray of sun that had broken through the clouds, and he’d just left her holding a wedding dress.
And for what?
He eyed Luke for the hundredth time. To Lauren, Special Agent Luke was a former lover. To Wolf, she was somebody who’d gambled her own life and career for him.
Luke’s head, strapped in place on the gurney, wriggled with the turbulence. She was pale. He was used to seeing her tan and vibrant. And conscious.
His phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out.
It was a message from Lauren.
Hey. Okay. Keep me posted.
Wolf’s stomach had been firing acid in anticipation of this moment. Now that she’d finally responded, it was if a stove had been lit in his gut. He’d texted her the moment they’d lifted off in the helicopter, explaining his sense of duty, how sorry he was, how hard he’d work to get home within hours so he’d be back in plenty of time for the wedding, no matter what it took.
It had taken her four hours to respond, and the simplicity of her message spoke volumes.
She’d probably written several versions over the past few hours, each less scathing than the last, each the result of more contemplation, a diminishing sense of betrayal, more understanding. Or, at least, he hoped.
The plane bucked and Wolf clenched the arm rest as he lifted in his seat.
Earnshaw and Nackley sat up and across the center aisle from Wolf. Nackley leaned forward and said something into Earnshaw’s ear. Then they turned and looked at Wolf.
Nackley nodded, as if Wolf was supposed to believe they were saying something amicable. Nackley seemed hospitable enough, and Wolf wondered what Luke thought of him. And Earnshaw? The SSA was a hard-ass type, just like every other SAC or SSA Wolf had ever met.
The skyscrapers loomed on the northern horizon, the iconic Space Needle jutting into the low clouds, but they dropped down well short of the city and landed on the wet tarmac with a bump.
Luke’s face remained peaceful through the landing and taxi process. They rolled to a hangar and stopped, where an ambulance waited with two black Chevy sedans. Two agents, dressed in FBI raincoats, stood smoking cigarettes near one of the cars.
The stairs were lowered and Earnshaw and Nackley were first off the plane. Wolf waited for them to off-load Luke before climbing out himself.
His pores and lungs absorbed the moist salt air.
Luke’s gurney wheeled to the open ambulance, Earnshaw and Wolf alongside.
“I’ll ride with her,” Earnshaw said. “
You go with Nackley.”
“I’ll ride with her,” Wolf said.
Earnshaw’s face softened. “Listen. She’s fine. She’s home. She’s my agent, in my field office, and I’m pissed off just as much as you that she’s lying here on this gurney.”
Wolf looked into the man’s eyes and saw hard sincerity.
“I’ll go with her,” Earnshaw said.
Wolf watched them load her in, and turned to Nackley who stood next to one of the sedans. The other two agents piled into their vehicle and turned on the engine.
“Let’s roll,” Nackley said.
Wolf got into the car, which was warm compared to the tarmac.
Nackley fired up the engine and eyed Wolf’s hooded Carhartt sweatshirt. “You have a raincoat?”
“No.”
“Sucks for you.”
Chapter 19
“So, tell me about Luke’s partner,” Wolf said, gazing out the rain-streaked passenger window.
“Jake Swain?” Nackley shrugged. “I don’t know. What’s there to tell? He’s from northern Cal. Came to our FO a few years ago.”
Silence took over as they slowed, waiting for an automatic traffic arm to let them out of Boeing Field.
They passed through, and the car revved. Wolf sucked back into his seat as Nackley edged up to the rear of the flashing ambulance.
“Are you friends with her?” Wolf asked.
“Luke?” He smiled, then laughed. “Friends? You could say we’re colleagues—how about that?”
They followed the ambulance onto I-5, cut across four lanes of traffic, and settled into the left lane. Nackley seemed to have a suicidal streak, narrowly missing cars as he swerved to see ahead of the ambulance.
“So how do you know her?”
“We met while she worked for the Glenwood Springs FO. Worked a few cases together over the years.”
Wolf sat back and tried to relax as they cruised feet from the ambulance bumper, but lurching into his seatbelt every time Nackley jammed the brakes was bad for a Zen state of mind.
Outside, the sea of concrete, steel, and wood of the southern Seattle metro area was denser than the last time he’d visited, with more traffic.
