Dance with the Enemy (The Enemy Series)

by Rob Sinclair

  Logan moved into the doorway, gun raised. Then stopped in his tracks when the cold steel of a gun barrel was pushed against his temple. His brain was still trying to work out what was happening when she spoke.

  ‘Logan?’

  It was Grainger. She lowered her gun.

  ‘You’re lucky I didn’t just shoot you!’ she shouted.

  ‘Ditto,’ he said, lowering his acquired gun and turning to face her.

  ‘I would have done too, without even looking,’ she said. ‘But I guessed it might be you. You gave me quite a scare, though.’

  ‘I thought you were in trouble,’ he said, moving away from her, further into the room.

  ‘What kind of cheap trick is that anyway? Throwing your gun into the room? What, was I supposed to be distracted or something? They need to teach you guys some new tricks.’

  Logan laughed, embarrassed more than anything. But as he turned back to face her, he saw that Grainger wasn’t smiling. She looked concerned.

  ‘What happened?’ he said.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  She walked up to Blakemore, who was still strapped to the chair. Logan only now noticed that he was covered in blood; he had a hole in his leg, shoulder and one in his chest. This wasn’t good. Not at all. Blakemore would have been a key asset. May have known exactly where Selim was going with Modena.

  ‘You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him!’ Logan snapped, well aware that he hadn’t actually told Grainger to do that, but unable to hide his frustration, as much with the situation as with her.

  ‘Nice to know you’re concerned for me.’ She indicated to the man out in the corridor. ‘He pulled a handgun from nowhere. He was probably shooting at me, not Blakemore,’ she said. ‘Luckily for me, the guy couldn’t shoot straight, him being half dead and all. Still, he managed to get two shots off before I put him down for good.’

  ‘What, you didn’t check that he was dead? And where’s his rifle gone?’

  ‘His rifle is right here,’ she snapped, pointing over to the weapon, which was propped up against the wall next to the door. ‘I didn’t want anyone else getting it. And no, I didn’t check that he was dead. Did you?’

  ‘No, I went to try to get Modena.’

  ‘No. You went out for Selim,’ she shouted, angrily pointing a finger at him. ‘You left me here on my own.’

  Logan turned away from her and moved over to Blakemore’s dead body. He crouched down, inspecting the damage. There was a distressed, pleading stare etched onto the face of the corpse. Logan knew little about the man he had been, but he was sure he had suffered horribly before his death.

  ‘I thought you could handle yourself,’ Logan said.

  ‘What, haven’t you noticed? I can. Still here, aren’t I?’

  He didn’t want to argue with her and knew that Blakemore being dead wasn’t really her fault. It was just a bitter pill to swallow. They’d been so close to Selim, to Modena, to Blakemore. And they’d wound up losing all three of them. It was hard to take.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said, getting back to his feet and stepping up to her. She didn’t move from the spot, but turned her head away from him. ‘It’s just …’

  ‘No need to explain,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling the frustration just as much as you.’

  Logan wasn’t sure that she was. That she could. For him, it was personal. For her, this was just her job. An assignment.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, reaching out and putting a conciliatory hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m glad you’re all right. You did good.’

  His genuine apology seemed to lift her, and she turned her head back to look at him, giving a meek smile.

  For the first time, Logan noticed a third body in a heap in the far corner of the office. The blotchy trail of blood that led to it, and the body’s ungainly position, suggested the man had been killed by the door before his body had been dumped there. Logan moved over to him and turned him over. He recognised that it was the big man who had loaded Modena into the van earlier. Presumably one of Blakemore’s men: the victim of the first gunshots they had heard when they were still in the garden.

  ‘Come on,’ Logan said. ‘We need to check this place out, make sure it’s safe.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  They set off one after the after, guns drawn, and spent the next ten minutes searching the house, going into each of the many rooms. They found the property’s vast wine cellar, a closed-off portion of which it appeared had been used to house Modena. And it was clear from the state of the bedrooms that Blakemore had been accommodating a whole host of people recently. But other than the three bodies downstairs, Logan and Grainger were now alone.

  As they headed back toward the office, Logan looked closely at the man Grainger had shot, the one out in the hallway. He must have been one of Selim’s men. Logan saw for the first time just how young he was. He couldn’t have been far out of his teens.

  In a strange way, Logan felt some sympathy towards him. Their lives may not have been that different at one time. Selim and the other terrorist recruiters worked off a simple and well-oiled model: they took young, disillusioned males, indoctrinated them, radicalised them; gave them a sense of importance and something worth living and dying for. Cradling a dying friend in his arms at seventeen, Logan had been just about as lost and disillusioned as anyone could be, until Mackie had given him a reason to live: trained him to give his all for the cause, to die for his job and his country; taught him a sense of right and wrong, us versus them.

  Was he really so different to this young man who had been recruited and trained by Selim?

  Perhaps it was possible that Logan as a young, lost man could have been swayed by someone like Selim. But not anymore. He did at least believe in what the JIA stood for. What Selim stood for – advocating the murder of innocent people – Logan could never tolerate.

  Logan walked back into the office. Grainger was standing by the desk, next to Blakemore’s body.

  ‘Did you get a chance to talk to him?’ he said to Grainger, his voice calmer, less critical now. ‘Did he say anything at all?’

  ‘No. He didn’t say a word. They’d tortured him pretty badly. Just look at him.’

  She wasn’t wrong. Selim had gone to town on Blakemore. He was missing both of his thumbs, cut off right at the knuckle. Both of his feet were bare and looked like they’d been smashed to pieces, holding little shape or sense of structure. And it was evident he’d taken quite a beating; his face was a big, red, swollen mess.

  ‘Why would they do that to him?’ Grainger said, clearly disgusted by the brutality in evidence in front of her.

  Her tone suggested it was a rhetorical question and Logan didn’t bother to answer. He’d seen worse, but he’d no doubt that Selim had only just got started when he’d been interrupted. This would just be foreplay for Selim.

  ‘Do you think they were trying to get information out of him?’ Grainger asked.

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe Selim just wasn’t happy not being in full control,’ he said. ‘So he took it back. The question is, why now? Why not yesterday, two days ago or in two days’ time? There has to be a reason he did it now. They had Modena in the van, ready to move. Something happened here. Something we’re not seeing.’

  ‘There’s a lot we’re not seeing,’ Grainger conceded.

  ‘Selim must only have had minutes with Blakemore. The wounds are all fresh. We heard the gunshots that killed that guy over there and the one that’s in Blakemore’s leg. Selim wouldn’t have worked so quickly unless he was after something. Blakemore had something he wanted. And he wanted it in a hurry.’

  ‘Well, they already had Modena. He was safely in the van before we heard any shots.’

  ‘You’re right. So Blakemore had something else.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Money,’ Logan said. The look on Grainger’s face suggested she didn’t agree.

  ‘Seems to fit if you ask me,’ Logan stated. ‘I think Selim crossed Blakemore
. Not just because he wanted Modena for himself, but because he wanted to make sure he got Blakemore’s cut as well.’

  ‘It sounds good, but that’s all dependent on Blakemore being behind Modena’s kidnapping in the first place. How do you know it wasn’t Selim leading it from the get go?’

  Which brought Logan right back to where he’d started. The kidnapping. Because if Selim had wanted to snatch someone, he would have done it his way with his own men. He didn’t need Blakemore or that big man, or Johnny or Lorik. Something else was at play. And Logan knew that one thing that could bring all such men together was money.

  So who was paying? And for what?

  ‘We have to call this in,’ Grainger said, taking out her phone. ‘Get Forensics combing over this place. There must be some clues in here somewhere.’

  Logan knew she was right; the house could be a goldmine of information. This was Blakemore’s home and his place of business; it would all be here.

  ‘Just give me a few minutes,’ Logan said, putting his weapon away for the first time, and moving over towards Grainger and the desk. ‘See if we can find anything in here. Diaries, address books – there might be something that can help us.’

  ‘You’ll get your prints everywhere,’ Grainger said, frowning. ‘How would I explain that?’

  ‘Are you worried that I’ll contaminate the scene or that you’ll have to explain who the mystery man is?’

  ‘The latter.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s not like there’s a public record of who I am. And I’ve already left my prints in plenty of other places here. I’ll just go down as an unknown.’

  ‘The same unknown who visited Djourou? Who was in the car park yesterday? Who was here tonight? I think that’ll raise a few eyebrows, to say the least.’

  ‘I don’t see why. They’ll mark it up as another one of Blakemore’s men. Or Selim’s. And anyway, it’ll get sorted out in the end. My employers wouldn’t let my prints stay on that file.’

  ‘Why do I not doubt that?’

  Logan moved over to the desk and started opening drawers and leafing through papers. He noticed that the tremors were still in his hands. They’d lasted longer this time than before. Seeing Selim had made them worse. They weren’t just in his hands; he could feel them running through his whole body. There was also a feeling of failure, of dejection.

  He found a notebook and flipped through it. Grainger had gone over to the cabinet and was pulling open doors and drawers. But it was too much to expect that there would be a smoking gun right there in front of them. Logan was tempted to take away some of the documents and spend some more time going over the information. But he knew that could actually hamper the investigation. The key was having every last detail to work with. Some pieces of information, on their own, made no sense, were worthless. It was when they were combined with other information that they became key. Evidence analysis wasn’t Logan’s role, but he knew that taking away something now could harm that whole process. He would have to just hope the police put the required time and effort into it.

  Actually, no. What he hoped for was that he found Selim way before that.

  Just give me one more chance, he thought.

  ‘Okay, we’re wasting time here,’ Logan said. ‘Let’s make a move. Are you calling it in?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What are you going to tell them?’

  ‘I assume that means you don’t want me to tell them the truth? About you, I mean?’

  ‘Can you do that for me?’

  ‘I can try.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He looked at his watch. It was not even three a.m. The sun wouldn’t be up for a few hours. He was reluctant to leave, knowing that the key to the whole kidnapping, to Selim’s whereabouts, could be right in front of him. But it was the only option.

  ‘Why don’t you make your call? I’ll go back for the car and pick you up out front.’

  Grainger nodded and took out her phone. With one last look at Blakemore, Logan walked out of the room, dismay washing over him.

  Just one more chance. That was all he wanted.

  Chapter 40

  Grainger knocked on the passenger window, making Logan jump. She could tell he’d been deep in his own thoughts. He put his hands onto the steering wheel, gripping it tightly, as if hoping the contact would be able to hide the fact that the tremors in his hands were now worse than ever.

  She gave him a big smile when she entered the car.

  ‘You done?’ he said to her.

  ‘Yep. I spoke to my boss. He wasn’t too impressed at being woken up in the middle of the night. But he’s sending a team in now. He wants me to wait for them here, contain the scene.’

  She saw the deflated look on his face as she spoke.

  ‘But I don’t think anyone is coming back here,’ she added, smiling again. ‘Selim will be long gone by now. So screw it – the Feds will just have to write me up for it.’

  Logan did his best to reciprocate her smile, then pulled away from Blakemore’s gates and headed back in the direction they’d come from earlier.

  Grainger could tell Logan wasn’t in a good mood. Losing Selim had really shaken him. She didn’t know the full story yet, but she could read him well enough to know that Selim was the big goal for him. They’d had the chance to get Modena out but Logan had opted to go after Selim instead. She’d gone along with it, hoping he was right – that they could bring Selim down and still get Modena out of there. After all, she knew what a monster Selim was and Logan had every right to want to quash him. But in the end he’d been wrong.

  It hadn’t all turned out bad, though. Blakemore wasn’t going to be a problem anymore, that was for sure.

  ‘So what did you tell your boss?’ Logan asked.

  ‘More or less the truth,’ she said.

  ‘More or less?’

  ‘I told him exactly what happened. All except the part about me getting help from an MI6 spy.’

  ‘MI6?’ Logan said, managing a laugh. ‘That’s what you think I am?’

  ‘You’re telling me you’re not?’ she responded, her smile broadening.

  ‘I’m not telling you anything.’

  ‘Well, regardless, he thinks I was acting alone.’

  ‘He bought that?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he? I’m good at this,’ she said, although with no sense of genuine pride. She didn’t like having to lie to people.

  ‘We’re not left with much to go on now, are we?’ he said.

  ‘No, we’re not. But you never know when something’s going to come around the corner.’

  And she really did mean that. She wanted to help Logan. And she knew her own goal would be helped in the process. Selim, the man whom Logan craved, was holding Modena. And she knew she couldn’t leave Modena out there with that madman. She had to save Modena; Logan could have Selim. And after that, the whole sorry saga could be put to bed.

  She yawned, aware that her focus and strength were waning badly. Part of her wanted to keep going. To get to the end right there and then. But she also knew they’d both had a rough few hours – not just at Blakemore’s, but before that as well.

  ‘I guess we’ve got a bit of time to kill,’ she said. ‘Before anything else is likely to happen at Blakemore’s place.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess we do,’ Logan said, looking over at her quizzically. ‘It’s not even four a.m. yet. And we don’t have to check out at the hotel till one. Why not just crash out there? I could do with a rest anyway. You’re a tiring guy to be around, Carl Logan.’

  He mulled over the prospect for a bit too long. He was clearly torn, wanting to find some excuse to carry on. But where else could they go? What would they do?

  ‘Okay, let’s do that,’ he said eventually.

  It was still dark out when they reached the hotel and the temperature had dropped further. They both shivered as they made their way across the deserted car park, which was barely lit by a single overhead orange streetlight that cast an
eerie glow over the cars below.

  They made their way up to the second floor and Logan opened the door to their room. He headed in first and sat down on the unmade bed.

  ‘I know you’re disappointed, but we did good back there,’ Grainger said, still standing by the doorway.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’ She closed the door, moved over towards him and stood over him at the side of the bed. ‘No way were they expecting us to be so close. Just look at the way they scarpered when we turned up. We’ve got them on the run now.’

  ‘True. But we may have just panicked them. Modena’s chances of getting out of this alive are looking a lot slimmer now.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ she said, not quite fully believing her own words. ‘Selim knows we’re onto him. He’s a long way from home and that may just prove to be a deal-breaker for him. We may have them running scared.’

  ‘I’m glad you were there with me, Grainger,’ Logan said, looking up at her and taking her hand. His forward move shocked her initially but she didn’t recoil. ‘It’s not how I normally do things, but I think we made a good team.’

  ‘We did,’ she said, squeezing his hand. ‘I could never have done all that on my own. I would’ve called in a whole team of people to do what we just did. You’ve shown me a thing or two today.’

  She truly was grateful for that. When she’d abandoned him the previous day she’d felt so alone. She’d taken it upon herself to finish this off on her own because it had seemed the only way. But whether because of what his job entailed or because his desire to fell Selim so closely aligned with her needs, she knew now that their being together was beneficial for them both. At least until Modena was safe.

  But there was more to it than that. Twice in just a few hours Logan had shown himself to be courageous, a true warrior, and he had saved her life. Even though she knew it would only complicate everything, she couldn’t help but feel an attraction to him. And it was strong.