A Soldier's Revenge: A Will Cochrane Novel (12 page)

A thought occurred to me. The cops ahead would know about me holding up a car outside of Philly. Maybe they were expecting me to have done the same to get here. I looked at the guy next to me. He was still sleeping. Most people in the bus were oblivious to what was going on outside. Very slowly I started easing the guy’s cell out from his pocket.

He moved.

I froze.

But he was just adjusting his position while still sleeping.

I got the phone out.

His eyes were shut. He didn’t move.

I entered the bathroom. The place stank and would have been a dreadful sight for anyone needing to use it. I didn’t care. What I needed urgently was privacy.

I called 911.

A woman answered. “Operator.”

In a Virginian accent I spoke in fast, hushed tones. “I’m in my blue Porsche. An Englishman’s held a gun at me. Think he’s the guy on the news. We’re on route 81. Traffic’s not moving because there’s a police roadblock ahead. He’s out of the car, freaking out. Oh, shit, he’s coming back!”

I hung up and turned off the cell in case the operator tried to call back. I turned on the sink tap, removed the battery, and held it under the running water. Replacing the dripping wet battery into the phone, I was sure the device was now completely inoperable. If its owner were to wake up, turn it on, and get a call or SMS from the police, he’d take one look at me and work out what was going on.

I went back to my seat and slid the phone back into the passenger’s pocket.

God knew if the cops were going to fall for this. I chose a blue Porsche because I thought it would be unusual. And I hoped the police at the roadblock would be desperate to get me close enough to them so they could gun me down.

For one minute the methodical checks continued. Then everything changed. The guys in the gap remained in place. But two other officers were ahead of them, waving traffic through. The spike-strip cops were no longer lifting and setting the trap back down with each car that passed.

They were getting traffic moving.

And hoping the mythical Porsche driver would feel comfortable to proceed. Once he was close to the roadblock, the cops would fling the spike strip back in place and draw weapons.

At least, that’s how I hoped they were thinking.

We were very close now. Thank goodness there were no real blue Porsches in front of us.

The cops were pointing at vehicles and instructing them to pass.

I held my breath.

Three vehicles were in front of us. Vehicles one and two were told to proceed. Ditto vehicle three.

Come on, come on, I thought to myself.

The bus engine rumbled as we picked up speed and passed the police.

Now I saw two more squad cars positioned in exactly the same way as the first, plus two officers with another spike strip.

But the strip wasn’t in place. We were let through.

I exhaled as the bus changed lanes and continued its journey.

It was 7
P.M
. as the bus pulled in to Roanoke. I disembarked, with only fifty-three dollars in my pocket.

I went to the station’s men’s room and changed into my newly acquired clothes—a Windbreaker jacket, jeans, and hiking boots. I looked at my face in a mirror. I looked like shit: face drawn and heavily stubbled, eyes hollow and red with dark bags underneath, and lips that were cracked in places. The good thing, though, was that from a distance I would look nothing like the guy in the newspapers. But close up I was sure I’d be recognized.

Still, the beard would grow. And every day of being on the run, I’d get thinner.

I was used to being alone. Parents killed. Sister keeping her distance from me because she knew that lots of people wanted me dead. My work as an operative mostly done without support.

But God, this was different. What I’d give to see just one friendly face.

Anyone who could look me in the eyes and tell me they knew I wasn’t guilty of murder.

That encouragement would mean more than a hundred hot dinners, a bed, and a full night’s sleep.

Time to focus.

On foot, I made my way out of Roanoke.

One hour later, I was in the outskirts of the city. I found a quiet street and stopped under a streetlamp. Most of the street was in darkness and there were few houses in this area. I ate the last of the food I’d bought in the Baltimore convenience store, my stomach rumbling as I did so.

That’s when they stepped out of the shadows and came at me from different directions.

Three men.

With knives.

Muggers.

They were wearing hoodies. Two of them white, one black. All of them in their early twenties. They surrounded me.

I held up my hands and said in my fake American accent, “I got no money. That’s why I’m on the streets. Got no place to stay.”

They were circling.

The black guy said, “What’s in the pack?”

“Just old clothes. You
definitely
won’t want them.”

“How come you don’t look scared?”

“This ain’t the first time this has happened. Comes with the territory.”

The gang leader said, “Give us the pack.”

No way was that going to happen. I definitely needed my gun and the encyclopedia.

Casually, I said, “You’ve got the wrong guy. Unless you’re looking for a pair of muddy pants and a sweater that smells like crap. I can show you.”

All three took a step closer.

“Just throw it here.”

“Come on, guys. I need my bag.”

The leader came right up to me and put the tip of his knife against my gut. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.

“You’d seriously stick a knife in me, just for what I got?”

The leader nodded.

I wished he’d said something different. This was the last thing I needed right now.

“Okay, okay,” I said with resignation, unslinging my pack.

I dropped it and swooped my leg against the man’s heel, causing him to completely lose balance and topple away from me. His head smacked the pavement. He was out of it. I ran at one of the other men. He lunged with his knife. I dodged, elbowed him in one eye, grabbed his head, and hurled him at his pal. His colleague moved his knife, but not quickly enough. It sliced into his friend’s arm as they connected. The wounded man fell to his knees, his face screwed up as he clutched his arm. The one still standing rushed me. His knife was aimed at my stomach. I twisted, locked my hands on his wrist, kicked him in the balls, and kneed him in the face. Still gripping his wrist, I slammed my other knee into his elbow. I wrenched back on his arm, hearing bones snap. He screamed and dropped the knife. I kicked it away. The man with the slashed arm was trying to get to his feet. I walked up to him and punched his face so hard that his body lifted off the ground as he flipped sideways.

I checked his colleagues. They were moaning, starting to regain consciousness. “Don’t get up,” I said to the mugger with the broken arm. I pulled off his hood and patted his head. “It’s in all of our interests that no one hears a thing about what just happened. Agreed?”

The mugger nodded while gasping.

“Good.” I smiled. “I did warn you that you’d got the wrong guy.”

I walked on, needing to cover twenty miles before I reached Robert and Celia Grange’s house.

CHAPTER 15

T
hyme Painter was giving a briefing to a room of forty-six uniformed and plainclothes Charlottesville cops, midway in the 277 miles between Baltimore and Roanoke. Her cell phone rang, and it was a call she had to take—Detective Inspector Toby Rice from the London Metropolitan Police. “Excuse me for one moment.” She listened to the call, glanced with a look of excitement at Kopa
ń
ski, and said to Rice, “Excellent work, Detective.”

When she ended the call, all eyes in the room were on her.

She said, “Ladies and gentlemen, by chance, we’ve had a breakthrough. A man in Scotland called the British police because he was concerned about the whereabouts of his English wife. In tandem, NYPD forensics reached out to the UK with details of the Waldorf victim’s DNA. London’s Met Police compared the DNA of our victim with the DNA of the missing wife.” She smiled. “We have a match.” Her smile vanished. “But this takes the situation to a whole new level. The victim is Sarah Goldsmith. In the next hour, I will be revealing her details to the media and asking members of the public to come forward if they have any information about her that might relate to her death. It appears she was lured to New York on the false pretext that she was being interviewed for a job. That fraud may or not be related to her death. We will be investigating it. More important, her identity, the fact that she was murdered in Cochrane’s room, and the fact that he fled mean we’re damn sure Cochrane is guilty of her murder.”

Everyone else in the room was silent.

“Sarah Goldsmith is Will Cochrane’s sister.”

T
he diner in Roanoke was one of the twins’ favorite places to eat out because it served burgers as big as their heads and offered second helpings of fries and soft drinks for free. This evening, Billy was alone with his aunt Faye, too nervous to eat because he knew they were about to have a grown-up discussion. He thought it would make his tummy churn again. And he knew that the conversation would be about Uncle Will.

Faye watched him stab at his fries but not lift them to his mouth. “Billy, Uncle Will’s done something very bad.”

“Killed someone,” muttered Billy.

“Yes. Well, maybe not. We don’t know, but we do know the police are trying to catch him so they can ask him what happened.”

“Why doesn’t he just go to the police and tell them he didn’t do it?”

Faye’s eyes moistened. “Maybe because if he does that, they’ll arrest him and put him in prison for a very long time.”

“Not if he’s innocent.”

“And if he’s guilty?” Faye hated saying the words, though she knew that right now Robert and Celia would be having the exact same conversation with Tom. They’d agreed that in order to give the twins certainty about their immediate future, they had to use unambiguous language and not supply false hope. But talking this way still made Faye feel terrible. “When people run away from a dead body and don’t contact the police, it usually means they’re guilty of killing the person.”

Billy dropped his fork, tears running down his face. “He could be scared. That’s why he ran.”

“A man like Uncle Will doesn’t get scared easily.”

The ten-year-old blurted, “I wasn’t scared on the valley swing we made. Then one day I was and couldn’t go on it. I don’t know why. Uncle Will just got . . . just got suddenly scared.”

Faye placed her hand on his. “It’s possible, but the police think he murdered a woman. They want to arrest him. He can’t be your father if he’s a wanted man.”

“Wanted?”

“If the police want to catch him and put him in prison.”

“But . . . but . . . he bought us a new home, close to our school. He got a job in the school so he could always be close to us. Tom and me were going to teach him how to open a Microsoft account so he could . . . could . . .” His face turned red as his sobbing intensified. “Who’s going to look after us?”

Faye rubbed his hand. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about this evening. Uncle Robert and Aunt Celia and I have spoken about this. We will continue to look after you, though I will be your parent. Even if it’s just temporary because it turns out Uncle Will is innocent.”

“But you couldn’t look after us before. You kept crying.”

“I’m better now. At least . . .” She paused to be sure of what she was about to say. “The most important thing is that you and Tom know that life will continue as normal. You’ll keep going to school, have your own rooms, play in the garden, life as normal. And I’ll stay in the house until . . . until we know what’s happening with Uncle Will.”

V
iktor Zhukov, six other men, and one woman were standing by three vehicles on the side of a dark, deserted Virginia country road.

The males in the team comprised ex-military and technical experts, the female a doctor who’d had her license revoked. Zhukov didn’t know any of them, but that didn’t matter because Edward Carley did. All that mattered to the Russian was that the others did what they’d been told to do this evening, with clockwork precision. If any of them deviated from that task, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them.

Zhukov and his team had covertly watched the house for two days. However, the plan of action was not his. After Zhukov had relayed surveillance updates to him, Edward Carley had told him exactly what to do.

“Two of the family are away this evening. That doesn’t matter. But if they return while I’m there, I will deal with them. First I need to take care of the car.” Zhukov looked at each person in turn. “Give me five minutes. Once that’s done, I will call. Move very fast then. And make no mistakes.”

He left his vehicle and walked alongside the road, away from the group.