by Alex Howell
Thus, with extreme caution, he reached in for the imprint, found it, unfolded it, and handed it to Diego. Case looked silently at him, waiting patiently to see if reacted in any way. He needed his suspicions confirmed, he needed a clue—he, and the team, just needed something, anything.
Diego did.
But not in the way that Case had expected.
He dropped a few swears, shook his head furiously, and looked at Case.
“You had better swear on your life that you found at this at the crime scene,” he said. “And that you didn’t make this up.”
“There’s no way I could have!” Case said. “I’m not that good of an artist. I just noticed it. I was going to have it for my team to look at it, not to cross-examine you. That was unexpected.”
Diego grumbled, balled the paper up, and tossed it back at Case.
“Some smart boy is trying to imitate Joras jewelry,” Diego said, and the manner in which he spoke had even Case a little bit nervous. “This is a Joras problem. Nobody does that and gets away with it. Only true members get to wear it. You get out of here now.”
Imitate… so someone must have paid off the Joras to say it was them, and then went ahead and did it to make it look like it was them.
Who would have the funds to pay off a Joras for this and then try and frame them in the crime anyway? Couldn’t be someone who knows them well. They’d know the Joras would never go beyond the terms of the payment.
“But you don’t know who it could have come from? You don’t know—”
“You want to know more?” Diego said, the heat in his voice obvious. “You either pay me with cash or you take a bullet. I’m not going to tell you where the bullet is going to go though.”
Case knew he’d hit his limit, and, even if he paid cash, there was no way he had enough to satisfy the needs of the Joras. He just nodded, took his leave, and waited for the threatening words from Diego.
But they never came.
Perhaps he wasn’t bluffing. Perhaps whoever had done this really had crossed some major line with the Joras and, in doing so, had put themselves at serious risk. It was a bold move, most especially if it came from Warrior, given that now he’d have more than one group eager for his skull.
But more likely than not, they were, by now, long gone and out of reach of the Joras—and frankly, with the level of demands that Warrior had, the Joras were probably the least of his concerns. And if it was someone who was an accomplice…
Something was missing. The Joras still had not said who had paid them to take the kids. They had revealed that whoever had paid them had probably betrayed them, but that person’s identity was a secret. He needed to do that trade as Diego had said, but he wasn’t taking a bullet and he wasn’t going to be able to procure the cash.
However, as Case thought about it, he realized he did have some leverage he could use.
16
August 19th, 2028
8:02 a.m. CST
Topeka, KS
A full night had passed, and Mason had gotten the exact minimum amount of sleep he needed to function the next day.
Which was to say, no more than an hour and a half—and even that was not really the most restful sleep he’d ever gotten.
It was just as well, because even if Mason had wanted to, there was no chance he was going to with the amount of frustration and anger he was feeling.
He was aggravated that his one lead, his one purpose in the mission, had only resulted in a warehouse blowing up, a target gone cold, and a land mass of other empty warehouses, ash, and smoke.
He was infuriated by the presence of his daughter. He was especially angry that she seemed not only unrepentant about having shown up, she seemed annoyed that he didn’t understand her presence. What did she not understand about a mission being extremely dangerous? What did she not realize about things being life or death? It really didn’t help matters that she had gone to bed seemingly pleased with herself for having come, which had only upset him even further.
Despite all of that, he was disappointed in himself that Clara had discovered, surprise, surprise, he was human. Not every mission was going to work out. Not every operation would succeed. Sometimes, these chases resulted in nothing more than dead ends, wasted time, and red herrings. Those missions, of course, got forgotten because of the more successful ones, but they still happened, and, right now, Clara was seeing the ugly truth about them.
But, most of all, Mason was restless. He hadn’t gotten anything else from Raina or anyone else at Onyx. Luke hadn’t said a word. It was as cold as the trail Warrior himself had left. He might as well have come to Kansas on some random, stupid summer vacation with Clara, except he had done so with a whole lot of weapons, advanced tech, and, now, burns across his face and body. He actually found himself pacing down the hallway of the hotel room around 6 a.m., unable to sleep and just hoping for something to happen. He got more than a few strange looks, but he was almost oblivious to their gazes.
Clara, meanwhile, seemed to have sleep with unnerving ease. In a weird way, it would have made Mason happy to have seen Clara sweat a bit through the night. It would have given him something to point to as a sign that she was not cut out for the dangerous life, that she would best function on the periphery of all of this and out of harm’s way. He could have told her as much, provided the evidenced, and at least had reason to believe that she would take a step back and realize that she was not built for such a life.
Instead, she slept a full eight hours. She didn’t tossed and turned. She seemed completely at ease, as if she had spent the previous night with her best friends at a house party.
It was the last thing Mason needed to see.
It also didn’t help matters that when she awoke, she seemed chipper, happy, and excited—almost flippantly so.
“Good morning, dad!” she said. “Ready to go tackle Warrior and save the day?”
That’s not how things work, Mason thought, but he decided on a more tactful tone when he spoke to her.
“Uh, I’m ready to get a lead,” he grumbled. “We’re in waiting mode right now.”
“Really?” Clara said, disappointed.
Duh.
“Yes, and if you have any sense, you’ll wait for me to finish back home in Baltimore.”
Mason only regretted that he left the choice up to Clara instead of forcing it, but then he knew that would just result in a repeat of the night before when he failed to get Clara home. The look Clara gave Mason right there told him he wasn’t going to succeed in any case. His daughter had too much of him in her to listen.
“You already lost that argument last night, dad,” Clara said, a hint of amusement in her voice. “So, if you have any sense, you won’t bring it up again.”
Much as he hated it, she had a point. Mason just shrugged and coughed.
“So, you sure you can’t do anything?” Clara asked. “There’s nothing at all that you can do?”
“If I wasn’t sure, I’d be out there right now,” Mason said. “For right now, we stay here. Go get some food or go to the gym if you want. There’s nothing to do and I doubt there will be for some time.”
Hopefully not too long. We’re halfway through the three-day deadline… I don’t need to be saving the kids with seconds to spare.
Clara grumbled something about how just staying there wasn’t what she had in mind when she came to Kansas. It tempted Mason greatly to remind her that she had no idea what she should have in mind as someone who wasn’t even a soldier and as someone who had never gone into the field, but deciding that he’d had enough hard-line discussions the night before, he ignored her and turned the TV on. Ideally, she’d get the hint, go to the gym, blow some steam off, and get too tired to go out into the field with him.
Not surprisingly, the explosion at the warehouse had made the morning news. There wasn’t anything in the reports to suggest that the leads had followed Mason back to his hotel room or that they even knew it was an act of domestic terrorism,
but the attention was unwanted. Just knowing that cameras would be on the lookout for explosions or dangers meant Mason had to act with extra caution—if for no other reason than that Warrior would likely see or at least know of the reports and have strong feelings about it. Plus, if Onyx commanded him to go back to the warehouse, he’d have a real pain of a time trying to get past the cameras and yellow tape.
Clara headed to the shower, the blast of water a welcome, soothing sound to Mason’s ears. It meant he didn’t have to deal with any grief with his daughter, didn’t have to wonder how he’d failed to keep her line, didn’t—
His special-ops phone rang. It was a number from Washington D.C.
Raina. Or Onyx.
Either way, maybe we finally caught our break.
“Hello,” Mason answered.
“Mr. Walker, this is President Morgan,” the president said, causing Mason to immediately sit up out of bed, as if the leader of the free world had come into his very hotel room at that moment. It wasn’t a leap of excitement, but of extraordinary nerves. “What’s going on, soldier? What’s the situation over there?”
The president did not sound happy or pleased to be talking to Mason. Mason, for his part, didn’t exactly take any pride in knowing that all he had to deliver was bad news and no news to the man whose family was still taken hostage. In fact, he prayed that during the call, Warrior would call back in, the better to distract from Mason’s failures.
“There was nothing at the warehouse, sir,” he said. “When I walked in, a bomb went off and detonated the place. But there wasn’t anyone inside. Your nieces and nephew were not there.”
The president dropped a few swears as Mason grimly stood, looking out his hotel window at the flat Kansas geography, wondering where, if anywhere, Warrior might be hiding out in the area. If he’s even in the same state.
If the kids are even alive.
“So you’re telling me that there’s nothing we can do right now except to wait?” President Morgan said. “You’re telling me that my family is in danger and we can’t do anything but wait for him to call us and torture us more?”
Mason didn’t know what to say that would assuage the president. So he defaulted to what he always went to in awkward moments—the truth, no matter how painful it was. And boy, was it extraordinarily painful right now.
“Yes, sir.”
“Damnit, Mason,” the president groused. “We don’t have anything over here. I had hoped that you might have managed to pull something together in the last twelve hours or so.”
Wonder why he came to me directly. Why not just talk to Raina or Luke?
Maybe he just figures I would’ve found something and kept it to myself. After what happened with my daughter, maybe he wants to deal with me directly.
Either way, he’s the president, you better not be anything but completely truthful and honest with him.
“Unfortunately not, sir,” Mason said. “We searched the entire area. The surrounding warehouses were completely empty. It was like the entire facility had been abandoned a dozen years ago.”
“We?”
Damnit.
“I thought you went by yourself.”
Mason let out a long, long sigh. Only the truth would deflect suspicion, but in its place would come a lot of annoyance. Mason could only hope the president would forgive all when—if—he got those children back and apprehended Warrior.
“My daughter sneaked into the mission, following me here,” Mason said. “I knew I’d lose ground if I—”
“She’s got a hell of a lot of guts following you after what she went through.”
I… I guess that’s one way to look at it. Or she’s so damn crazy that she’s going to get both of us killed before we leave this state.
“In any case, though, as long as she’s not getting in the way… so nothing?”
Mason could not have felt more relieved to know that the president either didn’t care that Clara had gone with him or almost admired the decision. The relief, however, was tempered somewhat by knowing that if President Morgan had scolded Clara, it would have served as great leverage to get her to go back to Baltimore.
“No, sir,” Mason said.
“All right. Keep us posted if you find anything. We’re running out of time—and I am not going to lose this. Don’t make any mistake about that, Mason.”
President Morgan hung up without so much as a goodbye; not that Mason could blame him. With the possibility of losing his family, losing face before the world, losing track of the terrorist… this was, in some ways, worse than the incident three months ago from the president’s perspective. Now it was his family, it was his reputation, and it was his legacy on the line, not Mason’s. At least when General Jones had betrayed him, it had come from someone that the president only had a professional tie to, not a personal one.
Clara came back into the room fully dressed, wearing black shorts and a green t-shirt, as if she was about to go for a run. Maybe she is going to the gym. Please let that be the case.
“Who was that?” she asked.
How did she… wasn’t she in the shower?
Or did she not get in so she could eavesdrop?
Damnit, Clara.
“An old friend,” Mason said.
“That you called ‘sir'?”
Maybe I just speak really loudly. Guess I should work on that.
“He’s in high places,” Mason said, allowing himself the slightest of smiles—it was the least that he could give to Clara in this moment of immense frustration and disappointment. “He’s earned it.”
Clara just shrugged, went to the bed, and switched the channel, now that the news had gone to some local puff piece about a nearby animal shelter. She aimlessly flipped through the channels, never quite settling on any one of them, but not exactly breezing through them either. She, like Mason, was killing time in about the most passive way possible.
“So…” she said, her voice trailing off.
Mason turned to look at her. While she was definitely itching for action, she was more itching for just anything to happen, even if that “anything” was coming home. He was in the same boat, anticipating anything to happen.
“Can you show me your gear again? The special package you got?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. Your box of things that you put in your car? The stuff that got delivered to the house? All of that stuff that you unpacked?”
“Oh,” Mason said, wondering how many state secrets he’d break if he showed Clara—or had broken. “Stuff to help me on the mission.”
A silence fell on the room as Mason assumed the conversation had ended. When he saw that Clara had not affixed her gaze anywhere else, though, Mason knew full well that it had done anything but that.
“You want to see again, don’t you?”
“Oh, my God, yes please!” Clara said. “What if you get shot and I have to rescue you with that gear? It would make a world of difference if I know what I’m doing with it!”
Mason rolled his eyes.
“Tell you what,” he said, exasperated, but having hit upon a negotiating point. “I’ll make a deal with you.”
“Oh, my God, what now?” Clara said, drawing a laugh with her repeated excited tone.
“I’ll show you what’s in the box, but you have to promise to leave by the end of the day. If we don’t have any leads by sunset, you have to head out back to Baltimore.”
“And if we do?”
“Then you’ll help until sunset and then head home.”
It felt like the kind of thing that could easily backfire on Mason. It was another 12 hours until sunset, and though the incident in New York and D.C. had only lasted about 24 hours, give or take a couple, it had felt like a lifetime. An awful lot could happen in the next 12 hours that could make Mason seriously regret the offer.
If he was a smart man, he would have limited the time to much less—perhaps to noon or 4 p.m. at the latest. But even then, too much
could happen in that time span.
Still, if she agreed to the deal, it meant he could do the last 24 hours, the most critical time, on his own. She would likely escape the worst of it, and she could say she had the experience of helping on a mission. It was as much of a win-win as he could imagine.
“I’m not leaving here,” Clara threatened. “If you kick me out, I’ll just go explore on my own. And I don’t think you’ll want that.”
She’s the spitting image of me, isn’t she. No matter what I say or do, she’s got the same damn stubborn streak that I do. She’s only going to accept a total win on her part.
“Why do you have to be like me,” Mason said, albeit with an exaggerated expression that sincerely demonstrated the sarcasm in his voice. “I made you a deal.”
“How about by sunrise tomorrow?”
Mason rolled his eyes.
“There’s really no getting rid of you, is there?”
“You know that I’m going to do everything I can at Stanford to land a job in the CIA or NSA, right? I’ve already spoken to Luke about using his connections for an agency job.”
As if her hardheadedness could not get any worse. Damnit, Luke.
“Jesus, of course you did.”
Mason saw there were two paths. One, continue what he was doing and teach her how to survive in his world, an option that seemed more and more necessary with every passing second. Two, believe in the principal of his action, send Clara home, and risk more danger when she stumbled into the middle of the action. She was not exactly a dumb horse walking between two enemy soldiers shooting at each other, but the same willful blindness to the situation seemed present in her.
“All right, by tomorrow at 8,” Mason said, knowing full well that when 7:45 hit, the only thing Clara was leaving was her promise to go home. “If we don’t have any further leads, you go home. Deal?”
Mason extended his hand, which Clara shook with enthusiasm and excitement. 12hours. The last 12 hours. I suppose it’s the best I can swing with this one.
