by Linda Howard
That would be the smart thing to do, not push Lizzy, let her settle back into her routine. The biggest question was, did Felice know how not to push? She had too much confidence in her own cleverness, which meant she was constantly underestimating what other people could and would do to fuck up her plans and schemes. In her world, all she had to do was give orders, and she expected them to be followed. In the real world, people disobeyed orders all the time. If it wasn’t in their own best interests, people could be amazingly uncooperative.
So she would be shitting bricks that Lizzy had blown the surveillance put on her. Al would be … God only knew. Predicting what Al would do at any given time wasn’t easy, which was why he was so good at what he did.
Felice was completely predictable. Al was the opposite. So why did he trust Al the most?
Because Al had been through a lot of the same experiences that he himself had dealt with, that was why. Al knew what it was to take live fire, and to return it. Al knew what it was like to kill someone. What they did was real to him, not an abstraction. Five years ago, they had all become involved in a bad situation; four years ago, the bad situation had devolved into a nightmare. How they’d handled it was something that kept them all tied in an uneasy alliance.
They all had to live with what they’d done. All except Lizzy. She’d been the outsider, the one deemed untrustworthy. Considering she’d been at ground zero of the plan Xavier didn’t see how she could be untrustworthy, but he had to admit she’d had a hard time dealing with it afterward, and that was what had tipped the scale against her. She’d been a mess, withdrawn, crying a lot. The solution had been a bullet in the head or undergoing the process. Lizzy had chosen the process. Yeah, some choice. Lose her life, or lose herself.
He himself hadn’t had a choice, not at the time. Either way, he lost Lizzy, and he’d been damn pissed about it.
But he was nothing if not tactically aware, so even though he hadn’t been able to stop that snowball from rolling downhill, from the beginning he’d been working on his trip wires. By the time Felice noticed he wasn’t falling in line like a good little soldier and was ready to turn on him too, she’d found out that if he went down, so did she, along with everyone else who’d been in the group.
Originally there had been eight of them. Two of them were now dead. One had died a natural death; the second one had been helped along. Xavier knew, because he was the one who’d done the helping.
Himself. Lizzy. Al. Felice. Charlie Dankins. Adam Heyes. They were the perpetrators, and the survivors. Charlie and Adam had both retired, gotten on with their lives, secure in the knowledge that they’d done the right thing and content to let Felice and Al handle any situations that might crop up in the future.
Xavier could have done the same thing … except for Lizzy. He had kept watch over her since she’d been installed in her new life, all her fire and spontaneity destroyed—or so they’d thought. Thank God the others had been so convinced of the success of the process, and thank God they’d been so wrong.
He’d given up hope, accepted that the chemical brainwash had been permanent, that his Lizzy was gone forever and only that dull shadow of her remained. Al and Felice would have been equally as confident that nothing would change. Then she’d gotten sick, and the Winchell woman had dropped that verbal clue that things in the world weren’t as the incurious, routine-bound Lizette thought they were.
No—wait. Damn, he should have seen it before. The vomiting. The severe headache. That hadn’t been a virus; that had been her brain beginning its recovery, fighting through and around the memory-wipe process. That was why she hadn’t reacted at all to Winchell’s comment: she’d already been aware something was going on. And at the first feasible opportunity, she’d destroyed her cell phone.
She probably didn’t remember everything; she might never get all of it back. But her basic personality was reasserting itself, which meant the process was breaking down. That was a good thing to know, concerning the future applications of the process—because it would be used again, maybe already had been.
Al would need to know that, at some future date, but definitely not now. If they knew the process was breaking down, Lizzy wouldn’t live out the morning.
But for now, everything had settled down. Lizzy was at work, none of his network of watchers was reporting anything alarming, and he was able to get some sleep.
He was awakened at noon by an alert. He swung his feet down from the desk, sat up in his chair, and studied the computer screen. Lizzy was in her car, and moving. It was lunchtime, so that wasn’t unusual. Everything else was normal, too. There was some old coffee left, so he zapped it in the microwave, threw a sandwich together, and downed both as he monitored her.
The trackers showed her stopping, and the screen gave him the address. Another screen gave him the physical picture of her location. Shit, she was at the bank again. A big alarm sounded in his head. She’d stopped at the ATM yesterday on the way home from the sporting goods store. Why was she going back to the bank less than twenty-four hours later?
Cash. She was getting more cash. She knew better than to use a credit card, would know it was instantly traceable. Not by regular cops, no, but Felice’s people, Al’s people, his own … hell, yeah.
Was she planning on running?
He sent out an alert code, eyeing the movement of Lizzy’s car on the map. Now she was heading back in the direction of the office. She stopped again; he pulled up the address of a barbecue restaurant. She was picking up lunch. Okay, everything still mostly normal, except for the bank. Al’s analysts might or might not catch that, because a different analyst was on duty now and he wouldn’t necessarily know that she’d stopped at the ATM the evening before. The surveillance records were destroyed daily. Al got updates, and he’d sure as hell catch that anomaly if—big if—the analyst now on duty reported that she’d gone to the bank.
He’d just swallowed the last of the bitter coffee when all hell broke loose.
His computer screen blew up with a red-flagged message, and simultaneously his secure land line began ringing.
“Fuck!” He snarled the word as he surged out of the chair. He knew exactly what was happening: that fucking Felice had bypassed Al and was acting on her own. If she succeeded, if anything happened to Lizzy, he’d blow that bitch’s world apart.
He answered the blaring phone as he read the message: Attempted hit going down.
“Are you on site?”
“Almost there. Just got the message.”
Another IM came through: Owner outside with shotgun, returning fire.
“Did you get that?” Xavier asked. He had his Glock out and was checking the clip, slapping it back in. He couldn’t sit there reading IMs when Lizzy was under fire. The coldness he always felt was settling in his veins, his stomach. If they killed her, within the hour the world would know what they’d done, but Felice’s ass was his. No matter what precautions she put in place, no matter where she went, he’d get her—and he’d make her pay.
“Yeah, I’m almost there. Shooters are peeling out.”
“Do you see her?” That was the most important detail, the one on which his life, and the lives of several others, hinged.
“Not yet. I’m just pulling in. Shit! There she is! She’s coming straight toward me!”
She was alive. The fist squeezing his heart eased its iron grip.
The world hadn’t ended.
“I’m on the way,” Xavier said tersely. “Keep me updated on the secure cell.” He broke the connection and went out the door.
Felice wouldn’t hit only Lizzy. She was far from stupid. The big question was, would her people try to take him here at the condo, or aim for a more secluded area, such as the stretch of road a couple of miles down, which was the fastest route to where Lizzy was?
They couldn’t have known where Lizzy would stop to get lunch, but the restaurant was on the way back to her office, so they might have originally planned to hit her there, but then th
e opportunity at the restaurant presented itself and they went for it. Setting up on his own most direct route, to get him, would be a logical move.
Felice wasn’t using Al’s people; he’d have known if she was. Al himself would—maybe—have prevented it. The big question was: was she using other operatives, or had she gone outside and hired civilians?
Civilians. They would know only what she told them, they wouldn’t have any contacts that might trip her up, and the cost would likely be cheaper, which would make it easier to hide the money in some unrelated item.
What she would do was have eyes on him, to alert the team when he left the condo.
He had options. He could take his truck, leaving from his private garage on the first floor of the condo—or he could take “J.P.’s” car, and leave from that unit. He also had a motorcycle stored at another secure location. But those vehicles were unknown, and perhaps that wasn’t what he wanted. The best option might be to drive his known, expected vehicle, draw out the team that was on him, deal with it now. That would get them out of the way and send Felice scrambling to replace them.
Moreover, driving his truck might make them think his guard was down, that he wasn’t expecting a move on him. Felice would know better, and so would Al: his guard was never down. But the men she’d hired wouldn’t know, and that was to his advantage.
He spotted the eyes as soon as the garage door lifted and he drove out: a white Chevrolet Malibu, parked five or six units up, opposite side of the street. One guy.
Dumb asses. How obvious could they get? Okay, rephrase that: maybe not dumb asses, but definitely civilians. He shouldn’t underestimate them, but react as if they were seasoned veterans of black operations.
Less than a mile from the condo, he picked up a tail. Not the guy in the white Malibu, but a gray truck, a Dodge. Smart move; the truck would put the shooter on the same level with him if he attempted a shot while speeding down the road, the two trucks side by side. Risky way to do something, but a possibility they should consider, and on a perverse level he appreciated that they’d covered that base.
Two men, he noted as the gray truck drew a car length closer. He didn’t spot a backup, not even the guy in the white Malibu. Just two? Fuck, he felt insulted.
But now he could deal with the team on his own terms, in his own way. He swerved in and out of traffic but drove smoothly, easily, not as if he were trying to shake a tail, but as if he were in a hurry to get somewhere. They fell back, but not too far.
As luck would have it, the empty stretch of road wasn’t empty; a couple of cars and a semi came barreling past, spaced just far enough apart that the gray truck couldn’t pull even with him. Shit, now he had to string them out. He could easily have taken them off the road with his heavier, reinforced vehicle and handled the problem there, but now they were entering a more populated neighborhood and the chances for either of them to act had just gone down.
In the meantime, what was Lizzy doing? His secure phone had buzzed a couple of times, but he kind of had his hands full at the moment.
He hit a stretch with a long string of traffic, preventing the shooter from moving in on him, and grabbed the phone. Yeah, yeah, don’t text and drive. He did what he had to do.
The texts made him laugh out loud. “She mugged me and stole my car.”
“Cool.”
His guys were the best. The muggee would take a lot of teasing over the coming months. He thumbed a reply: “Got 2 on my ass. Will handle. Can you tail her?”
“No can do,” came back the almost instant reply.
“K. I’ll pick up her signal once I handle these 2 bozos.”
He put the phone down, relief coursing through him. Lizzy was not only okay, she was functioning in a way none of them had expected, not even him. She’d mugged one of his guys? Okay, so not one of them would lift a finger to her, but still … yeah, it was cool.
And he still had the two on his ass to deal with.
His favorite park for running was one that would be perfect for him now, partly because he knew every inch of it. It was the right terrain for serious runners who liked some challenge in their workouts. The lunchtime traffic was thinning, but it still took him almost ten minutes to reach the park. The last of the lunchtime runners were just finishing up their routes, and there were several places to park. The jogging trails would be most crowded early in the morning and late in the afternoon, when the weather wasn’t so brutally hot, so with a little luck he shouldn’t have to deal with any witnesses.
The men following him might wonder what the hell he was doing here, but what they thought didn’t matter as long as they followed him. They could reasonably look at his stop at the park as a godsend, allowing them to corner him in a secluded area. He repressed a snort. Yeah, right. Dream on, buddies.
If they wanted him in a place where there were no cameras, no witnesses, their wish was about to come true.
He parked his truck near the head of the dirt trail and bolted for it, disappearing into the heavy cover as the gray truck wheeled into the parking lot.
To his left, the stand of trees thickened; limbs hung over the trail. The location he had in mind was a thickly wooded portion of the trail, where it wound back and forth in sharp curves that created blind spots, with boulders and thick bushes providing additional cover.
He plunged off the path, behind the cover of some big tree trunks, drew his weapon, and waited. The position was a good one, allowing him to see the running path as well as the most likely route if they decided to play it safe and stick to the woods beside the trail.
Best tactic was for them to do both: one coming up the trail, the other in the woods.
Right on cue, he heard footsteps pounding on the path, then slowing, moving ahead more cautiously. Through a small break in the trees, Xavier saw a man move past. Mid-thirties, just starting to lose some hair along the temples, the guy looked like thousands of other men in the area—casual clothes, nothing threatening about him at all.
Xavier knew where that guy was. He switched his attention to the wooded area, straining to hear a rustle, a snap, the clatter of a rock. Where was the other one?
The first man moved into view, his head swiveling. Xavier stood motionless, his drab clothing blending into the background. The human eye, particularly an untrained one, saw motion more than detail. He waited, studying his prey through a tiny opening in the brush and trees, noting the noise suppressor on the weapon in the guy’s right hand.
Thank you, buddy, Xavier thought as the man passed him by, and he silently stepped onto the path behind him.
He took him down with a massive punch to the back of the neck. The guy grunted as he went down, the only sound he had time to make as Xavier wrenched the suppressed weapon from his hand, pressed it to the back of his head, and fired.
The man twitched once, and that was it.
Even a suppressed shot wasn’t silent; the other man on the team might have heard, depending on how far away he was. Xavier assumed he’d be close; otherwise they were piss-poor tacticians. Likely he’d think the shot came from his partner’s weapon—which actually it had—but he had no way of knowing whether or not Xavier’s weapon was also sound-suppressed. Only a complete idiot would yell, “Did you get him?” and these guys weren’t idiots. Too inexperienced to be playing this game with him, but not idiots.
Xavier stepped back into the woods, quickly, cautiously, surveying the area in all directions, waiting—
A bullet smacked into the tree six inches from his head.
Xavier dropped down and rolled away, lifting his own weapon and searching the shaded, wooded area for movement, for a breath that wasn’t as quiet and controlled as it should be.
Nothing.
Could be the man on the path had been designated as expendable from the beginning, and the shooter in the woods had used his partner to flush Xavier out.
Not bad, he thought. Wouldn’t work, but not bad.
Shooter number two couldn’t be far away. X
avier hunkered down, breathing slow and easy. He could outwait this guy, but he had things to do and he was getting impatient. Maybe the oldest tactic in the world would work. Moving silently, taking care he was completely hidden, he picked up a small rock and tossed it to the left. It didn’t make a big noise, but he hadn’t wanted it to. Instead it was the kind of soft sound a slip of the foot might make.
A shot fired; he saw the flash, and then he heard the shooter step forward, one almost-silent step in the dirt and fallen leaves. It was enough.
Xavier fired twice, and the second guy crashed to the ground. Not taking any chances, staying low, he moved toward the fallen man, eyes on his target.
The guy wasn’t dead. Soon, but not yet. When he saw Xavier, he tried feebly to lift his weapon.
Xavier stomped his boot down on the guy’s wrist, then put a bullet between his eyes. It took only a moment to return to the path and drag the first shooter’s body into the woods before the hue and cry was raised and Felice knew her team had failed. The time it might buy him could be critical. He scraped his boot along the disturbed dirt on the path, wiped his prints off the weapon, and stuck it back in guy number one’s hand. That might entertain the detectives a little bit, especially if the weapon could be traced back to the dead man.
He went back to his truck. Just in case anyone had seen it and connected it to the two dead men in the woods—he didn’t see how, but people did strange shit, like take pictures of vehicles with their cell phones—he’d need to stow the truck in a secure location other than his condo and use a different vehicle for a while.
As he left the parking lot, he used his cell phone to pull up the program that would tell him exactly where Lizzy was.
Chapter Eighteen
