Bentley gave him the side eye. Then she searched her mind to see if she did know any actual numbers. Her smirk when she looked back at him said it all.
“Right,” he said. “Anyway, you’re all set. When you get back to the car, just drive around until I call you on the phone in the bag. Got it?”
Bentley held up Karen’s phone and repeated the instructions back to him. “Overnight this phone to the address in the notes, pay for it with the money from the grab-bag, or whatever you call it, in box 221, then get back to the car, power on the Bat-phone, and drive around until you call. Got it.”
“Bentley, do nothing else but those things, do you understand?”
His tone brought a look of fear from her. She nodded.
“Nothing else, I mean it. And if you see anything suspicious, you call me, and you drive.”
“How do you know I won’t run from you? You’re supposed to kill me, remember?”
King opened the door and got out of the car. Then he turned and ducked his head back in. “Because I’m also the only person who can keep you alive.”
King watched as she swallowed hard. This time there was a quiver in her voice. “You’re really scaring me.”
That was exactly what he wanted to hear.
“Good.”
King shut the car door and started back toward his apartment. The web was tangling all around him, but his mind stayed focused. When he was a Navy SEAL, they taught him that the only easy day was yesterday. With all that was swirling around him, he knew that tomorrow that saying would be more true than ever. But there was nothing easy about what he was walking into. When a man has been fighting battles for half his life, he develops a sort of foreboding ability to sense a battle coming on. And right now he felt like he was walking right back into the snake pit. For King that feeling was nothing new. In fact, it kind of felt like home.
Chapter Fifteen
King rounded the final corner on the way back to his apartment. He couldn’t stop to search for followers; that would be too obvious if someone was watching. Instead, he slowed his pace and pretended to take in the scenery as any tourist might. It was still early in the night, and the hustle and bustle all around him was heavy. Someone could come at him from any angle. Being exposed was a terrible feeling. Though he didn’t know for sure that Karen had managed to get out of his apartment, he knew he needed to be fully ready for anything once he got back there.
He was just a block away now. The traffic was steady, and the neon glow of storefront lights were shining, beckoning potential shoppers like moths to a flame. The last couple of months he would watch these pedestrians from the window of a coffee shop, wondering what it would be like only to have to worry about the shirt they might purchase next. How it might feel to be so oblivious to the horrors of the world that constantly surrounded them. How they had no idea that the guy having a coffee next to them had killed before, and the only reason he had was because he and his government were determined to ensure that they could continue to worry only about that shirt and whether or not it made them look cute. It was an odd world, but just as the layperson could never imagine doing what King does, he could just as easily never imagine doing what they did to pass the time either. All because someone murdered his parents when he was young, he never had the chance to try a different sort of life. A normal life. And with the adrenaline beginning to leak into his veins as he approached the door to his building, and a possible deadly situation, he couldn’t imagine wanting to live any other way.
He approached the door with a focused mind. He moved his right hand to his hip holster hidden beneath his coat as he punched in the door code with his left. The door buzzed as it unlocked, and King stepped into the empty lobby. There was no doorman, no building security either, part of his criteria when he was searching for a place in this part of the city. He bypassed the elevator, moved through the door beside it, and made his way up the stairs, his hand fixed to the grip on his gun.
The stairwell was quiet. So much so that the squeaks of his sneakers echoed through the entire space. While he wasn’t sure what he would find when he made it back to his apartment, he was sure it wouldn’t be Karen snuggled up on the couch with one of his books. Some people might kick themselves for not noticing that Karen wasn’t Bentley, but they really did look a lot alike. And with Karen’s hat pulled low, coupled with the fact that he’d never actually met Bentley in person, it was an easy miss. But King still didn’t like misses. Even the smallest ones often meant the difference between living and dying—solving the puzzle and not solving it. However, the good fortune of catching Bentley’s lingering stare on the street had erased that for him. It gave him the second chance to gain the upper hand. Though he might not know where Karen was at the moment, just to know to be more on edge made all the difference for a man as skilled as King.
He came to the door to the hallway on his floor. There was no window, so he had to open it to have a look. The hallway was empty to the right. He took out his phone, opened the camera, and edged it out around the doorframe. Just enough to snap a picture of the left side. The picture showed a couple making out against the wall but nothing else. He knew this couple well. She liked to be tied up, and he liked to play dress up. Oh, the joys of city living and thin walls.
King entered the hallway. The couple stopped kissing when they noticed him approaching.
“Hey guys, sorry to bother you,” King said.
“He speaks!” The too-cool-for-school young man in the Ramones T-shirt was a walking hipster cliché. He held out his fist, and King gave it a bump. “I’m James, and this is Tish. Nice to finally meet you. You sure are a quiet one.”
The two of you certainly aren’t, he thought. King already knew James by name. He’d heard Tish scream it at least a thousand times.
King nodded to Tish. “Nice to meet you both. Listen, I don’t mean to be short, but I can’t seem to find my niece. Either one of you happen to see her leave a bit ago?”
“Dark hair, long legs?” James said.
Tish gave him a playful punch to the shoulder.
“What?” James laughed. “I did see her just a few minutes ago, is all.” He looked back at King. “I said hello, but she just pulled her hat low and rushed down the hall.”
“She take the elevator or the stairs?” King said.
“No, mate, she was going back to your place.”
A chill ran down King’s spine.
“How long ago was this?”
“Couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. I was out here waiting for Tish ’cause I forgot my key.”
“Thanks.” King rushed toward his door.
“Everything okay, mate?”
He ignored the question as he pulled his gun. There was no reason to try to hide the weapon now; he was never coming back to this apartment complex again anyway. If Karen had left and come back, that meant she was not only a professional but most likely an assassin. An assassin in waiting.
King looked back down the hall at the couple. “Just do me a favor and both of you go grab a pint. It’s not safe here right now.” Then he glanced down at his gun.
The couple didn’t need any more of a hint than that. The two of them scurried toward the stairwell and disappeared. King had no idea what he was about to walk into, but he didn’t want them caught in the cross fire if they didn’t have to be.
He reached for the door. It didn’t surprise him that it was unlocked. Karen would want him to think that she had escaped and never come back. He let go of the knob and backed away from the door. She wanted him to walk in, that much was clear. But to what end? To kill him? She had to know, after what happened in the underground—the train stopping and King knowing the back way out of the tunnel—that he wasn’t the type of guy who didn’t think things through. That said, he knew she would still try to kill him if she got orders to do so, even if she thought it was too dangerous.
The thing King hated the most was not knowing anything about who he was dealin
g with. Having a CIA file on someone didn’t mean you knew everything about them, but it at least gave you a glimpse into their tendencies and their actions. With “Karen,” he was flying entirely blind. She could be a simple lower-level agent, sent in to mirror Bentley and learn about her, or she could be a high-level agent tasked with pinning terroristic acts on an innocent girl. Bentley is guilty by association having a father like Andonios Maragos. If King knew that, so did other people in the world. All of those musings collided with his initial hypothesis when he learned she’d left and come back. She may be any one of those things he considered, but coming back now meant she was there to kill him. Low-level agent or seasoned assassin, murder was what awaited him.
He couldn’t just walk into the apartment guns blazing. This wasn’t a Spaghetti Western. Bullets in real life don’t just magically miss the good guy. Before he could begin to form a plan, he heard a click on the other side of the door, right at eye level. He knew it was the cover on the peephole, because the next thing he heard was Karen’s footsteps as she bolted away from the door.
She wasn’t ready for him to be home so quickly.
Big mistake.
He knew she was headed for the fire escape outside his bedroom window on the back side of the building.
King also knew that if he let her get away now, he would never see her again. And she might be the clue he’d been seeking for the past year. The clue that showed him the path all the way to the monster at the top of a global terrorist regime.
Chapter Sixteen
King was going into his apartment after Karen regardless, but the smell of smoke put an extra rush in his step. When he opened the door, a dark gray cloud was billowing from the kitchen on his left. It smelled like burnt cotton. With his gun extended, he raced for his bedroom door in front of him. The sheer window curtains were still blowing in the breeze from the woman who’d just escaped his apartment.
King surged forward, popping his head out the window. Karen was two floors below him, and moving fast. The metal fire escape and the people below on the sidewalk made it impossible to take a shot. Just as he threw his right leg over the windowsill, a blast behind him pushed him on through before he was ready. He didn’t know if it was a small bomb Karen had left or the oven range exploding; either way, as he landed in a thud against the outside rail, he was too disoriented to care. His gun, however, was a casualty after it flew from his hand and landed inside a dumpster below.
Though he was thrown off by the explosion and loss of his weapon, he didn’t let it pull his focus. The burning apartment was behind him, and there was nothing he could do about the gun. Meanwhile, Karen had made it another two floors down before he could get to his feet and jump most of the stairs in front of him to the next level. He rounded the rail and sped down the crooked fire escape as fast as he could.
King was on the second floor when he watched Karen connect with the sidewalk. The woman could run. He was fortunate he had decided to go out with his sneakers on; it gave him a better chance at catching up. But if Karen made it a couple more blocks, the streets were so packed, there was a good chance he would lose her.
As he ran down the last of the fire escape, he threw his coat off and bounded forward. Because he was taller than average, King could still see over pedestrians well enough to keep an eye on the white hat weaving in and out of people on the sidewalk. As he made a similar pattern dodging people, he tried to think ahead. The direction she was going, she could hit the Tube at Piccadilly Circus in a few blocks. But there were dozens of shops to disappear into along the way. Not to mention a myriad of side streets, and that was if she wasn’t already headed for a getaway vehicle.
King was making up ground, but not fast enough. He was losing her more and more in the crowd. The lights weren’t as bright on this side of the street, and he couldn’t help but think she was going to get away.
Then he lost sight of her completely. As best he could while he continued running, he craned his neck for a glimpse. But no white hat could be found. He ran up on an intersection, dodging a baby carriage and a Rolls Royce, missing both by inches. With another look forward, Karen was nowhere in sight. King had lost her.
A cell phone began to ring. It wasn’t a ring he recognized, so he maintained his pace, thinking it was one of the many people he was passing on the street. When the same ring went off again, just as close as the last time, he realized it was his burner phone. Only two people had that number. His partner in crime, Sam, and Bentley Martin.
He pulled the phone from his pocket without slowing down. He wasn’t going to give up. There was too much at stake. “Hello?”
“Everything okay? I could have sworn I just saw Karen in her white hat run out in front of a car.”
“Where?!”
King’s shout brought urgency to Bentley’s voice. “Uh . . . I just passed the Whole Foods, so I guess it would be . . .”
“Brewer Street! She’s headed toward Chinatown. Meet me there!”
King pocketed the phone, then turned left, sliding across the hood of a car. Horns erupted as he crossed without hesitation, which brought shouts from onlookers on the sidewalk. None of this registered to King. He was close, and he had found another gear as he moved onto Brewer Street.
This side street was less crowded than the last, and without having to do so much dodging, he could really turn on the jets. Chinatown was only two blocks away, but it would be easy for Karen to get lost there. He knew he couldn’t focus on the white hat any longer; she would’ve been smart enough to lose it. He just hoped seeing her dark hair contrasted against the white Mind The Gap T-shirt he’d given her earlier would be enough to draw his attention.
King crossed the street as he made a right on Berners Street. He sprinted forward, making a left just past St. Anne’s Churchyard. Just up the street and one more right turn, he found himself in the middle of what seemed a different city. Chinese lanterns hung in row after row above the street. King was familiar with this part of town, not only because he got to know everything about his surroundings in case something like tonight happened, but also because he’d found a tiny restaurant down there that had phenomenal pork dumplings.
Unfortunately, the heavy crowd was back, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw a white hat duck inside a storefront.
He had her.
King jogged forward and turned into a noodle restaurant that couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet wide and thirty feet deep. A bell dinged above the door when he walked in. Tables on the left and right were full of patrons, and a line of people ordering filled the middle aisle. At the end of it, a dark-haired woman in a white T-shirt was acting like she was digging in her purse.
King stepped forward and put his hand on her right wrist and another on the back of her neck. He was ready for a fight. What he got instead was disappointment when he saw an Asian woman turn toward him with a look of fright. King threw up his hands and backed away. “I’m so sorry. My mistake.”
He pushed the door open with his ass and backed out into the street. He was breathing hard. Not from the run but from the anger flooding him for letting Karen get away. This was going to come back and haunt him at some point. He knew that much for certain.
His phone began to ring. It was Bentley. He needed to get her to safety as soon as possible. He was going to have to regroup tonight and be ready with a plan of attack first thing in the morning.
“Where are you?” he answered.
His adrenaline jumped when Bentley’s voice came through in a whisper. “You’ve got to help me. I’m hiding behind a tree! She saw me. She has a gun!”
“Where are you?”
Silence.
“Bentley!”
Doubt that he could help her in that moment began to seep in. Then he remembered turning Bentley’s phone off and putting it in his pocket. He quickly got it out and powered it on. If he could find the app she was using to track the chip she’d placed in Karen’s hat, it would lead him right to her. As soon as
the Apple disappeared on her phone, so too did the hope of finding the tracking app. He didn’t know Bentley’s passcode.
King put the phone away and closed his eyes. He was going to have to find her using means other than technology. The only lead he had was that Bentley mentioned she was hiding behind a tree. Though that may have seemed vague, it actually narrowed things down quite a bit in the area surrounding Chinatown.
As he concentrated with his eyes still closed, people brushed past him on their way toward dinner or drinks. However, as the chatter from their conversations faded and the street noise behind him became muffled like a hand covering a speaker, King focused everything he had on the map of the area he’d pulled up in his imagination.
Behind the buildings to his left was a parking structure. No trees there.
Behind the buildings on his right was nothing but restaurants, then the Picturehouse Central movie theater. No trees.
In his mental map, he moved across the street in front of him. There were rows of shops and restaurants, in particular the LEGO Store. This was burned into his memory because every time he passed it, he couldn’t help but think of his niece, Kaley. She loved LEGO. But right now the best part about that LEGO store was that it was across the street from Leicester Square.
Leicester Square had trees.
Chapter Seventeen
As the Chinese lanterns above his head swayed in the breeze, King created his own wind as he sprinted for the next block. He ran around the row of buildings that housed more than a few Chinese eateries, then stormed down Leicester Street, past the Empire Casino, heading straight for the Square. Lights glowed from the buildings surrounding the small green courtyard, but they didn’t much penetrate the trees. Under the canopy it was quite dark.
Alexander King Thriller Series: Books 1-3 Page 8
