by Rob Sinclair
She opened the passenger door and got out.
‘Angela! Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing!’
Logan was incensed. What was she playing at? He shook his hands back and forth against the cuffs, getting more and more angry with each thrust.
Grainger rushed over to her car, parked further down the street in front of Logan’s, not once looking back towards him. She got in and sped off into the distance.
‘Fuck!’ Logan bellowed.
Amidst all of the thrashing, his confused mind tried to make sense of what had happened. Had Grainger found Dennis? Did she know where he was? Was all of the lying and conniving so that she could take the credit for finding the bad guys before he did? Perhaps it was him who had just been a good fuck, while she was only intent on furthering her career. Would she really do that to him?
But then, from all the turmoil in his mind, the answer came to him. Something she had said to him. Something that had meant so much to her. Something that he had been able to relate to equally: ‘Every day I think about what it would be like to find him, to come face to face with him.’
For Logan, it had all been about Selim. For her, it was the man who killed her father.
Kennedy. It was all about Kennedy.
He had to find her. He had to stop her.
Logan changed tack. Rather than struggling against the cuffs, he gripped the steering wheel and began to yank on it. His whole body moved up and down with the effort as he tried desperately to lever the wheel. It began to give, but the discomfort in his injured shoulder was becoming extreme. He closed his eyes tightly and screwed up his face in a fruitless attempt to take away the agony. He could feel his head going into a spin; he was almost delirious with pain. But he battled through, yanking and shoving the wheel with all of his strength, fuelled by his pent-up anger.
Something snapped. He felt the wheel give way.
He opened his eyes and gave one more tug. There was a crunching sound as the wheel snapped off the steering column. He lifted the wheel away. But he was going nowhere with the steering wheel dangling between a chain attached to his hands. He dropped his hands down to his waist and awkwardly pulled the gun from his pocket. But he dropped it almost straight away, and it landed in the foot well. With the wheel giving him little space and leverage, he struggled feebly, trying to pick the gun back up again. Eventually he managed it.
The angle was tight, but there was just enough slack for him to manoeuvre his right hand so that the Glock’s barrel was pointing towards the chain that connected the two cuffs. He couldn’t do this in the car, though. It was too confined a space. He could end up with shards of metal and plastic flying into him. He hunched his body over, opened the door with his left hand and clambered out. Out of the car, he stood upright, put his hands in position, held out as far as he could, and turned his head away. Eyes closed, he fired.
The blast from the gun rang out, echoing around the buildings in the more or less deserted street. The noise would surely alarm the residents of the nearby houses and apartments. He had to expect that within minutes the local police would turn up.
He looked at his hands. Either he’d missed, or the chain was too tough and hadn’t broken on impact. But it didn’t look to be that thick, so it must be the former. He lined up again and fired. This time he felt the weight released from his arms as the steering wheel fell to the ground.
Rubbing his wrists, each of which still had a cuff on it, he picked up the wheel and returned to the car. Would the steering wheel work again? Could he just push it back on? He’d never broken one before so he really didn’t know how complex the system would be. But when he turned the wheel over and saw the damage he had done to the back of it, he realised that there was no chance.
He shouted at the top of his voice – frustration more than anything else.
Grainger would be miles away from here already. And he didn’t even know where she was going.
No, that wasn’t strictly true. He had a good idea of where she would go. He just didn’t know how to get there.
He knew he had to call Mackie. He needed his boss’s help. But he had to get moving first. Grabbing the GPS and stepping out of the Saturn, he ran back towards the high street. There had to be more chance of finding people there. Some semblance of life. A car he could commandeer.
But when he reached it, except for a handful of pedestrians, it was empty. Everything was shut for the night.
He began to look around for a vehicle to hotwire. Then he heard a car coming up from behind him. He turned and ran out into the road in front of it. The driver slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a stop, only inches short of Logan, who was standing with his gun pointed at the windscreen.
‘Police! I need your vehicle,’ he said, rushing to the driver’s door. ‘I’m really sorry!’ he added.
The wide-eyed man behind the wheel looked like he might have just wet himself. Logan felt truly sorry for having put an innocent bystander in this position.
But as Logan put his hand to the door, the driver stepped on the accelerator and hurried off into the distance.
‘Shit!’ Logan shouted.
With every second counting, he cursed his back luck. But not long after, a second vehicle turned up – a battered old pick-up. He felt incredibly bad for what he did, though: left an elderly man by the side of the road who had looked like he might have a heart attack from the shock of being carjacked at gunpoint. But it was the only option he could think of.
Now that he was on the move, it was time to focus again. He had to catch up with Grainger before it was too late. He was still in disbelief about what had just happened. But finally everything was starting to make sense. And all of the unanswered questions in his mind were being resolved.
Every day I think about what it would be like to find him, to come face to face with him.
Then I guess we really are the same.
But he and Grainger weren’t the same. Not at all. That was clear to Logan now.
Revenge had driven both of them. But to very different outcomes. Kennedy was the man that had killed Grainger’s father. And a whole sorry scheme had been concocted to achieve her vengeance. Carlucci, himself wanting Kennedy dead, had provided the funds to recruit the crooks – Blakemore and Graham – who would snatch Modena and obtain Kennedy’s new identity. It almost sounded simple. But from there, Selim had become involved and it must have seemed to Grainger like the plan was going astray. Which would explain her desire to team up with Logan and ensure Modena was rescued from Selim. She had probably never intended for Modena to fall into the hands of a sadistic terrorist. Not that it made what she had done any more palatable.
Logan took his phone out and switched it back on. There were ten missed calls from Mackie.
Shit. Had Mackie been trying to warn him that there was no Greg Dennis, at least not anymore?
Logan pressed redial and Mackie picked up on the first ring.
‘Logan! Where have you been?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Look, we’ve found out about Dennis … You’re not going to like this –’
‘Mackie, I already know. Greg Dennis was Angela Dennis’s father. Angela Grainger.’
‘Shit. How did you know?’
‘Because she was just with me. At Dennis’s address. She cuffed me to my car.’
‘What! Where are you now?’
‘That’s the thing. I don’t know where I’m going. Not exactly. I think Grainger’s still got Kennedy. I’m pretty sure he’s still alive.’
‘Why would he still be alive? She probably killed him the first chance she got.’
‘No, I don’t think she did. This is all about her father. Getting her own back. She’s taking Kennedy to somewhere that was special to her and her dad.’
‘Did you actually go into Dennis’s place?’
‘No.’
‘No?! For all we know Kennedy may still be in there! Get yourself back there and check it out!’<
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‘I’m telling you, he’s not there. I just know it.’
Mackie sighed but Logan knew he had his attention.
‘Look, we need to do this urgently,’ Logan said. ‘Send a team or whatever you want over to that property, but I’m going after Grainger. I need you to pull up any property owned by Greg Dennis or Angela Dennis or Angela Grainger near the Appalachian mountains.’
‘That’s a pretty big area, Logan! It covers multiple states, for Christ’s sake!’
‘I know, but that’s where she’s going. Just trust me. Try Virginia first, given that she lives there. Then work out away from there.’
The short period of silence that followed told Logan that Mackie wasn’t sure, but also told that his boss was coming around to the idea. Otherwise he would have blown it away without even thinking.
‘Okay. I’ll get someone onto it right away. You do realise you’re lucky she didn’t kill you? Anyone else in that position and she would have put them down.’
Could Grainger have done that? To him? He really didn’t know right now.
‘I’m heading in the right direction, more or less. And I have a GPS. I just need the final address.’
Logan heard rustling on the other end. He assumed Mackie was relaying instructions to someone else. Eventually he came back on the line.
‘Okay, just give us a few minutes. Land records are pretty easy to trace. Hopefully it won’t take long.’
‘How did you find out about Dennis?’ Logan asked.
‘Two different people found it at pretty much the same time. We had some people looking into Greg Dennis, like you said, and we found that there was a Greg Dennis who had been an FBI agent killed by Kennedy. Or executed, I should say. Dennis was investigating the mafia at the time, but hadn’t banked on meeting one of their hit-men. We also found out the same thing through looking into Kennedy’s past. Dennis’s murder was one of the key crimes that the Feds had on Kennedy. They had enough to put him away for life, but in the end they gave it all away for some dirt on Carlucci. It didn’t take long to spot the link between Greg Dennis and Angela. Grainger is her married name.’
‘I know. I figured that.’
Logan heard his phone bleeping. He looked at it. Low battery.
‘Shit. I need to ring off – my battery is almost flat. Call me when you have the location. Do it soon. I don’t want to go off course. It’s a big place out there.’
Logan hung up. Should he turn the phone off altogether? Doing so might save a bit more battery. But then he’d have to keep powering it back on to check if Mackie had called. Better just to leave it on for now and hope that Mackie got back to him soon.
If they didn’t find an address for him, he really would be out of luck.
With nothing but the road ahead of him, he started to go over everything he knew, or thought he knew, about Grainger.
Was it possible for things to be any more messed up than this?
She was the first person he’d really opened up to in his life. And what was she? A murderer? Some sort of psychotic? Did she actually keep the likes of Blakemore as company? Or had the scheme just spiralled far out of her control? Even if that was the case, her actions were still beyond reckless. How many people had died? And all so she could get to Kennedy.
Logan just couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen it. Had never even imagined it. Not one sodding bit.
As he replayed his time with Grainger, everything started flooding back to him. All of the little hints as to what was really going on. When he thought about it, there had been plenty. Her leaving him stranded while on the way to Blakemore’s. How Blakemore had been fatally shot while Logan had run after Selim. How Grainger had miraculously found the address where Selim had taken Modena. The look of recognition at Modena’s words about being lucky. And how she had been so cagey and awkward about when they would see each other again. Because she knew that once her scheme was out in the open, they had no future together.
And now he was feeling like the biggest fool who’d ever walked the earth.
His attraction to her had been real. But what had she seen him as? Just another cog in her wretched plot? Or had some part of her really felt for him like he had for her?
Despite everything, he really hoped it was the latter. Because he couldn’t ignore the feelings he had for her. They were still there. And he knew that the biggest concern right now was how this was going to end. If it came down to it, could he take her down? This woman he had cared about so much?
He didn’t even want to think about that.
Chapter 62
13th October
The trip was long, the roads quiet. Miles went by without his seeing any other cars. Logan was no longer keeping to the speed limit like he had earlier. He was pushing the car as hard and fast as it would go. Each time he saw the nearing taillights of a car in front, he half wondered whether it might be Grainger’s. But it never was; each car that came and went only resulted in disappointment.
What would he have done if one of the cars had been hers? Shoot her there and then? Ram her off the road? Ask her nicely to pull over?
In the end, he hadn’t needed to make that decision.
After travelling on wide freeways for the first hour or so, the roads had eventually become narrower, darker, more desolate. Even with the bright light coming down from the moon there was little to see around him. Dense forests surrounded the roads for much of the journey, and whenever he reached a clearing in the trees, the horizon stopped abruptly in the near distance with the murky silhouettes of the surrounding hills and mountains.
In the daytime, the setting would have been magnificent. Travelling alone at night, the vast, unknown blackness was much more sinister.
Despite the long, tedious and lonely trip, made worse by Logan’s already weary state, he was surprisingly alert and ready –wired, heart racing, mind on overdrive. It felt like he had a steady stream of caffeine and adrenaline coursing through his blood. It should have been a good feeling. But it wasn’t.
With help from Mackie and the team, he’d finally been given an address in the northern part of the Allegheny Mountains about an hour earlier. The GPS had done the rest.
Finally, over four hours after leaving the Dennis place in Binghamton, he was driving through Linville, the nearest village to his destination. His head was still in utter confusion. Over the course of the drive he’d even begun to question whether he’d somehow been wrong about coming here. Maybe Grainger was still back in Broome County. And maybe Kennedy was already dead after all, just like Mackie had said. But the reports from Mackie were that there was still no sign of Kennedy. He’d also been told that it appeared Grainger had been staying at the apartment in Binghamton.
And as he arrived at his destination, the lake house Grainger had talked about to him so fondly when they’d been together in Paris, his uncertainty was put to rest when he saw Grainger’s car parked up on the gravel driveway. The house, which was an oversized log cabin, was one of five on this part of the lakefront, all in a row, separated from each other by a good few hundred yards. Space wasn’t an issue out here. There was just so much of it. It was clear that each plot carried a large acreage.
Dense forest lay behind, leading into the mountains. In front was the shadowy expanse of the lake, its dark, inky water shimmering in the moonlight. Wanting to approach the property quietly, Logan parked his car out on the carriageway. He felt a chill as he stepped out of the car. Not from the weather, even though it was probably five degrees cooler here than it had been in New York, but because of the eerie setting. This really was about as remote and isolated as it got.
It took him back to a conversation he’d had with Grainger about where Selim would run to. Grainger had been surprised that Selim would take Modena to a residential area rather than the middle of nowhere. Now Logan knew why. Because to her, this was always going to be the rendezvous for this final act. Remote. Deserted.
There were lights on in the cabin. He wal
ked up the steps which led to the raised porch that ran the entire length of the lakefront side of the property. When he reached the top, he slowly put his hand out to the door handle and turned it. It was unlocked. Slowly he pushed the door ajar and stepped in, gun out but pointed at the floor.
As he glanced around the room, he spotted Grainger. She was standing no more than six or seven yards away from him beyond a sofa, an elaborate oak-and-red-brick fireplace behind her, and pointing a gun at his head.
‘Carl?’ she said, in an exasperated tone. ‘How did you find me?’
‘I’m good at this, remember?’
‘Put the gun down. We don’t have to do this.’
‘No, you don’t have to do this. I really do. It’s my job.’
Logan took a step forward, towards the sofa that separated the two of them.
‘Don’t move!’ Grainger screamed.
He stopped. From this angle he could see the bound and gagged figure curled up on the floor by her feet. It must have been Kennedy. The man had a bloodied face. Logan wasn’t sure what other injuries he had, but he was still alive; his eyes were wide open and his nostrils were flaring widely.
Logan looked back up at Grainger.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Carl. I’m not a bad person. This man killed my father!’
Kennedy squirmed and moaned but both Logan and Grainger ignored him.
‘How many other people have died, though, because of what you’ve done?’
‘That wasn’t my fault!’ she protested. ‘Blakemore wasn’t supposed to do it like he did. I was never responsible for the way it panned out. When Selim became involved, it changed everything. He was the one who made it like it was. They were never supposed to kill anyone.’
‘How could you even deal with those people?’ Logan said, disappointment in his voice and hurt in his eyes.
‘It was all Blakemore. I hired him and he brought in all the others. Somewhere along the line, the whole plan got corrupted.’
‘Yeah. And look how it turned out.’
‘I was trying to do the right thing,’ she said.
