by Cate Clarke
But just as she stepped forward, reaching with the same hand she’d used to grab the knob of the motel door, she was pulled back again. Not this time by Willow’s hand, but by something hard and metal, the barrel of a gun pressed against her back.
Chapter 17
Dominic Ratanake
Bakersfield, California
“Sir.”
A file was shoved into his hands.
“Jeremy Messer. 431 Steiner Road, Bakersfield, California. Nineteen years old. Father—deceased. Mother—homeless. Adopted by foster mother, Rosanna Aguilar.”
“How many did they allocate?”
“Three. Fully loaded.”
“That’ll do.”
Ratanake didn’t even open the file and handed it back to the red-haired soldier that had picked him up from LAX and briefed him from the passenger’s seat of a blacked-out Audi. They transferred to an armored van about an hour out of Bakersfield, meeting up with local SWAT to pool some resources, and then headed out with his three guys. Two SEALS that he’d been training for months: Winslow and Carson—two bright-eyed guys with a passion for fistfighting each other, and a veteran, Branscomb, diligent and steely-eyed. Almost as good as the best. But not quite.
He couldn’t help but think of her as they sorted through the necessary weaponry. It had been good to see her. And he’d told himself, repeated it—it wouldn’t make him spiral back down. But that didn’t stop him from pocketing two mini scotch bottles off the flight attendant’s cart that were jangling against his thigh as he put on his bulletproof vest.
Never had a woman had an effect on him like Diana had. Ratanake had barely dated before Diana simply because it was inconvenient to try and make room for it in his schedule. Stronger than him in many ways, she was his absolute match. So the hole in his chest grew bigger with each passing day that he couldn’t be with her. The scotch put a bandage over it, temporarily stopping the puss and the blood until he sobered up and had to deal with not only putting on a new one, but removing the stuck gauze from his skin. Ratanake grimaced at the imagery as he strapped his handgun to his leg and the rifle to his back.
“Boys—” Ratanake stepped around the van to where Winslow, Carson and Branscomb were. “You got the brief?”
“In and out, sir,” Branscomb said. “Get the boy for questioning.”
“Right. Suspected Kushkin contact so use caution. Check all doors for explosives. You know they love their IEDs,” Ratanake said, looking around to each of his men as they nodded. “No shoot to kill unless absolutely necessary. This is a suburb.”
“Yes sir,” they all said with less enthusiasm than Ratanake wanted, but he would take what he could get on this scalding morning in the Californian desert. He looked out over the yellow landscape, shaking his head at it. He’d always hated California. DC had been home for a while now, but he would make the move to Seattle if Diana asked him to. After this, after they saved Kennedy, she’d have to at least agree to a drink.
Pulling through the rows of bungalows, they rode in silence. The equipment, strapped to the walls, bumped as they passed around parked cars and strollers. Jeremy Messer’s house was a one-story with a large carport that was filled with stuff—lawn equipment, cardboard boxes of stuffed toys, cassette tapes all piled around the driveway with barely any room to park a car. It was just there for the taking, and it was clear the people had rifled through it, looking for anything valuable. The rest of the house was plain and cream with grime on the windows.
Ratanake nodded across at Branscomb. “Take the lead.”
Branscomb jutted out his chin and stood up, opening the door with a strong grip and jumping down onto the Messer’s driveway. The two new SEALs followed, and Ratanake took the rear. Branscomb’s huge gloved fist came down on the door. He knocked only once but very loud, so that anyone inside would have heard.
No answer.
Signaling behind his back, Branscomb cracked the door open with a shove of his shoulder. They all stepped inside the narrow hallway. It was dark, the grime on the windows preventing much light from getting through. There was a living room to their left and a kitchen to their right, both in complete disarray.
It was hard to tell if that was its usual state or if someone had been here recently, going through things.
Ratanake stepped into the living room, his boot crunching against a piece of glass.
“Anyone home?” Branscomb called, his throat hoarse from too many cigarettes.
There was a beeping somewhere. They all looked at each other, Ratanake giving the hand signal for bomb. Creaking down the hall, approaching the beeping, they all took out their guns, holding them either down between their legs or up by their shoulders.
There was a closed door, the beeping coming from beyond it—it was slow and methodical, a constant in the mess of this house. Branscomb put his ear to it, nodding at them all before opening the door, his gun out in front of him.
They all braced for it—a gunshot, an explosion. But there was nothing but the consistent beep.
“Shit,” Branscomb said. “Call the medical crew.”
In the middle of the bedroom, there was a woman in a hospital bed. She was hooked up to a variety of tubes and machines, the heart monitor the source of the beeping even though she looked like she was already dead. Her face was pale and her lips were cracked and blue. The wrinkles along her arms matched the ones in the sheets. It reeked of piss and shit. Carson gagged.
“Get her out of here,” Ratanake said. “She’s still alive but…” He put two fingers to her throat, and she didn’t even budge. “Barely.”
“Messer’s gone,” Branscomb said.
“Car’s gone too.” Ratanake nodded and exited the bedroom, going to the room across the hall—the last closed door. The other bedroom was clearly that of a nineteen-year-old. Anime posters on the walls, underwear and the smell of BO across the mattress of an unmade bed, schoolbooks that were still wrapped in plastic leaning against the wall. There was a laptop on a desk, and Ratanake gestured to it with one hand. Winslow picked up and put it in an evidence bag.
“Handgun case,” Ratanake said, looking down at the opened black case with gray foam inside, spread out over the mattress and squishing the Naruto pillowcases. “Looks a lot cleaner than the rest of this place. Newer.”
“Unregistered?” Winslow asked.
“They didn’t have anything registered to this address, so I’d say so,” Ratanake replied. “Take the case too. Be careful with it. No smudges.”
They were either too late or too early. Jeremy Messer wasn’t here, and he’d left his sick foster mother to die without his care. Either that or he’d been taken by force. If he was dealing directly with Kushkin, it was more than possible that they’d bagged him a couple of days ago. But the case was throwing Ratanake off. If he had been taken, would he have had time to get out an illegal handgun? If he did, why were there no shots fired in the house? No bullet holes in the walls or in the doorframes.
Unless, Messer came back.
Taken by Kushkin and then returned to his home with a new toy, no time to care for his mother before he had to leave again, taking the Mazda out front to…where? Where was he going now? They’d already issued the APB, but he could be anywhere across the West Coast by now, if not cross country.
“Ratanake,” Winslow called, searching through the desk and caked-on soda stains. “Look at this.”
Ratanake crossed the small room in one step, looking over Winslow’s shoulder to a photo printed out on paper. Winslow picked it up between two fingers and passed it to the lieutenant.
“That’s her, right?” Winslow asked.
Ratanake nodded, staring down. Curly brown hair piled up on top of her head. One of her eyes closed and her lips jutted out, her fingers in a peace sign, looking to the camera with one hazel eye. She had the same eyes as her mother, round and wide, a complicated light brown. A hard lump formed in Ratanake’s throat, staring down at Kennedy Tennison-Weick, wishing he’d stepped
in to help much sooner than he did. Because there was something telling him, at the back of his mind, whispering in Diana’s voice, that they were too late.
Chapter 18
Diana Weick
Death Valley, Nevada
Diana drove all night. She pulled over on the side of the road to take two twenty-minute power naps, giving her just enough to get all the way to the Pinepoint Motel, the sun rising behind her. She had the information from Ratanake. The motel room number where her equipment was waiting and pictures of several different people: the ones who had taken her daughter, and the FBI agents who were staking out the motel.
As she pulled into the u-shaped parking lot, she did a full scan, ducking down into her seat when she saw them. The Lefferts came out of the lobby, Styrofoam coffee cups in their hands, whispering to each other as they walked down the sidewalk and then opened the door at room three.
Diana shook her head, cursing them, resisting the impulse to run over right now and smash their heads into the pavement. After their door had closed, Diana got out of the car, gathering her things and approaching room nine. The agents had left it open for her per Ratanake’s recommendation. What kind of motel still used actual keys?
She turned the knob and opened the door with her shoulder. Bulletproof vest, several gun cases and a black duffel bag were spread out on the one bed, waiting for her, unlike the agents who were nowhere to be found.
A brief tingle ran down her spine. Diana pushed herself against the wall and used two fingers to peek through the blinds, looking out into the parking lot. Nothing. Empty. But a flash of something in her peripherals, disappearing around the corner. She blinked.
There was no time to waste.
She wasn’t waiting around for the agents.
Slipping the vest over her shoulders and choosing a Sig Sauer to strap on her thigh and MP5K to put on her back, Diana was ready to go just as the knob to the room began to jiggle. She’d sensed someone out there before, and yet she’d done nothing. Now, she was berating herself, holding the handgun up and pointing it right at the opening door.
Thank God, she’d looked closely at their pictures, or else both Agent Cameron and Agent Park would have had bullets in their chests.
Shaking her head and lowering the gun, Diana hissed, “Where the hell were you?”
“Ms. Weick!” Cameron said, a young black man with a wide grin.
“You got here fast,” Park said, running a hand over his shaved head and looking at his partner. They both had Styrofoam cups of coffee clutched in their grips. They were fresh. The best the FBI could muster in short notice for a stakeout were so new to the game that they hadn’t even flashed their badges.
Diana stated, “Badges. Show me.”
They exchanged glances again.
Diana raised the gun and said, “Now.”
Scrambling through their windbreakers, they fished out their FBI badges and Diana stepped forward to analyze both of them.
“Should always do that first,” Diana said, tucking the gun back into the holster around her thigh.
“Yes, ma’am,” Cameron replied, giving her a small salute.
“Don’t do that… at all.” Diana gestured to the awkward hand by his forehead.
“Well, you’re a SEAL,” Cameron murmured. “So I just figured…you know, my dad was a SEAL!”
“You don’t say?”
“Officer Thomas Snowman.”
“You’re Snowman’s kid?” Diana turned around, not able to hide the shock across her face. “But—”
“Yeah. Cameron is actually my first name,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “He had such a reputation that I thought it might be easier on me if I went by that. FBI was cool with it, at least. I don’t know if it’d be the same in the SEALs.”
Diana was still processing, walking back, almost tripping over the bed. The last time she’d seen Snowman, he was lying facedown in Kushkin’s security camera, blood and brains grouped around his head.
“Sorry—” Cameron began.
“Look what you did, asshole,” Park muttered, moving his sunglasses up and onto his head. They both watched as Diana had to sit herself on the edge of the bed. The room was spinning. She needed to sleep. Snowman, dead. Rank, dead. Kushkin, dead. Kennedy, gone.
“Ms. Weick—”
Their words dissipated to the back of her mind, her ears filled with static. The guns felt heavy on her body, weighing her down and pushing her to lie back on the black bag behind her. It was filled with explosives, so she had to adjust herself against it to get to some of the softness of the bed underneath. She clamped both hands over her chest, trying to stop her heart from beating out of her chest.
Because Diana had to do everything 100 percent, even panic attacks, she flipped off the bed, smacking to the floor. She clutched to the shoulders of the bulletproof vest, trying to steady herself, ground herself.
But it was just picture after picture of Kennedy and then Taras Kushkin and then his father. The CCTV surveillance footage, the picture on the beach, the purple ponytail, all spinning in front of her eyes like she was on a subway, concrete advertisements and graffiti passing by outside the window, all pasted with the same message.
Park was standing overtop of her, removing the bulletproof vest over her head and throwing it on the bed. He was undoing the guns, yelling down at her, but she heard nothing but static until Cameron said from the window, “Shit. They’re on the move.”
Immediately, Diana sat up, Park almost falling backwards at her sudden movement but clutching to the edge of the bed.
“Holy hell,” Park said. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
Diana stood up and brushed herself off, wiping at the sweat on her forehead and at the back of her neck. The two young agents kept a concerned gaze on her as she redid the bulletproof vest and re-strapped the guns.
“Are you ready?” she asked them.
“Are you ready?” Park took an incredulous step forward, swinging a muscular arm to one side, his dark eyes looking her up and down.
“Tired,” she said. “Lack of sleep.”
Grabbing her cell phone and shoving it into the back of her jeans, Diana pushed Cameron back to the door, peering out the spot in the window he’d just been looking through. There was still heat gathering on her lower back, dampening her T-shirt.
“They’re just getting something from the car,” Diana said. “They’re going back in.”
“What’s the call?”
“We go in now while we have the surprise.”
“You don’t want to wait—”
“No. Numbers are in our favor.”
As soon as the Lefferts had gone back inside their room, something wrapped in the man’s arms and the woman whispering frantically in his ear, Diana left room nine. She was thankful she’d traded out her boots for sneakers or her feet would be sweating too as she crossed along the hot sidewalk, keeping close to the doors.
Cameron and Park followed behind her, mirroring her movements, hands on their belts, ready to pull when necessary. Perhaps, they’d be more competent than she’d originally given them credit for. Cameron was a Snowman, after all. She hadn’t seen it initially, yet watching him now, his eyes intense and driven, each movement chosen carefully, she saw a bit of his father in him. But Snowman’s meticulousness hadn’t been enough to save him. And neither had Diana.
From beyond the window, Diana could hear them arguing, yelling at one another. She waited, listening for Kennedy’s voice, but it was just the Lefferts' bickering. Placing herself in front of the door, she gestured to Cameron and Park with two pointed fingers, Cameron behind her and Park, a few feet back from the window in case they tried to escape that way.
They may have left the door unlocked, but Diana wasn’t going to risk it. Based on the hinges, the door swung inwards, making it easier for her to kick it down. Bringing one foot up and just below the lock, she kicked hard.
The door cracked open.
T
here was a scream as Diana held up her gun, shouting, “Down. Down on the ground now!”
There was an open suitcase, clothes strewn about the room, a handgun on the table by the TV and a laptop open on the bed. The woman quickly bounded forward, sitting herself down on the open laptop.
“On the ground!” Diana repeated, pointing the gun at the husband as Cameron came inside, keeping his gun on the wife.
They both slowly got to their knees.
“Oh. Sure,” The man said. “We were just doing what we were told, hey?”
Diana stepped around him as he put his hands up to his ears. Flinging herself through the motel room, checking the closet and the bathroom, underneath the beds, the Lefferts trembling as she did.
“Where is she?!” Diana screamed after checking the bathroom a second time. She picked the wallet out of the man’s pocket, checking his ID.
“Bobby Leffert.” She put the gun to his forehead, clicking the safety off. “Where is my daughter?”
These two were even fresher than the agents behind her. They hadn’t even used fake names, wrapping themselves up with international terrorism for the rest of their lives by giving Kushkin that type of information.
“She was gone when we came back!” the woman cried from behind the beds.
“Willow, shut up,” Bobby hissed.
“I swear,” the woman said between sobs. “We came back from breakfast, and she was right gone. We thought she was asleep.... She can’t be far!”
Bobby yelled, “Willow!”
Diana cracked the butt of the gun against his face, causing his nose to break and bleed into his mouth. He spat it forward, some of it sprinkling Diana’s jeans. She kicked him in the stomach so he keeled forward, and then rounded toward Willow.
Park finally closed the door behind them.
“What time?” Diana asked.
“Oh. I don’t know… it’s like eight o’clock now, right?”
“What time did she leave?”
“Oh yeah. I gotcha. Like seven, maybe? Right after we went for breakfast. I saw you fellas in there—” She looked to Park and Cameron. “You know, I said to Bobby, I told him. I said those fellas over there are government boys.”
