Option to Kill (Nathan McBride 3) (20 page)

“Do you think she was a spy too?”

“Lauren, I never said I was a spy.
You
said it. Come on, we need to wash your clothes. You can use one of my shirts. It’ll fit you like a tent, but it should be okay. I think Angelica’s shoes will work, but they might be a tad loose. You can wear two pairs of socks.”

“Can we stay for a while? I’m really tired.”

“We have to think about the girl your mom mentioned. There’s someone just like you out there, and she needs our help. We have to find her.”

“How? Do you think she’s on one of those passports?”

“I don’t know.”

“We should help her.”

“We will. Come on, let’s go inside.”

He moved some bark under the solar light and grabbed his hide-a-key. The entrance foyer to his home was no less stunning than the outside. A life-size bronze sculpture of a Civil War soldier was surrounded by a spiral staircase leading to the upper floors. The artist had captured his expression perfectly — part determination, part fear.

“Looks like Grant and Sherman like you. Want to score some points? Say the word
t-r-e-a-t
.”

“Treat.”

Two sets of ears perked up simultaneously.

He nodded toward the kitchen. “There’s a jar with dog snacks on the island. When you open it, they’ll sit down. Tell them they’re good dogs and give them two or three each. I’m going upstairs to change. I’ll bring you a shirt.”

“Is that a library?”

“I’ve been collecting books for a long time. I’ll be right back.” He hustled up the stairs to his bedroom, thinking about Jin’s note. Several things jumped out at him. She’d mentioned a debt and something about running. She also said she wouldn’t be able to help him again. She didn’t just say
help him
, she said
help him again
. As far as he knew, he hadn’t received any help tonight. Maybe she was talking about the initial texts she told Lauren to send, but they didn’t qualify as help, they qualified as get-your-ass-moving commands.

He wondered about her life in North Korea, what it must’ve been like — growing up in a DPRK orphanage as a GI baby had to be rough. He knew something of Korean society, and it wasn’t tolerant of mixed-race people. People thought America was bad? American prejudice paled in comparison with Asian cultures’. A half-white child, especially from that era, would’ve been ridiculed and shunned. What did she say about her mom’s guardian? He read the note again.
He was a powerful yet kind man who cared for my mother over the years and reunited us just before she died. Lauren is his child, but she has her grandfather’s eyes, and yours.
Powerful
could mean anything from political to military. From the sound of things, this mysterious official was significantly older than Jin if he’d cared for her mother. He hoped Lauren was the result of a consensual union.

Nathan removed the dog tag from the note and peeled the Scotch tape. His father’s name, mcbride, matthew a., along with his serial number, was stamped deeply into his surface. They don’t make dog tags like they used to, Nathan thought. A small notch occupied the nine o’clock area of its edge. Some other stamps were also present. He turned it over, found a single drop of dried blood, and shook his head. It was amazing this tiny piece of history had survived through the years. It reminded him he needed to call his dad at some point. At least Jin had confirmed that he was unaware of having fathered her. This was going to rattle the senior senator from New Mexico to his core. Scandal would be high on his dad’s concern list. Nathan regretted the thought, knowing it was unkind and shallow. Yes, his father held an important political position, and yes, he’d be concerned about a scandal, but this would tear him up emotionally. Learning about a long-lost daughter after nearly sixty years was going to cause emotional pain. Jin had said her mom loved his dad. Nathan wondered if that love had gone both directions — and maybe still did. Harv was right: he needed to think about his mom. This wouldn’t be easy for her.

Nathan emptied his pockets onto the bed. The piece of paper from the warehouse loomed large. So did the gunman’s cell phone from the grocery store attack. He unfolded the paper from Marchand’s office and looked at the numbers again. It was obviously a list of some sort, but for what? Probably drugs. He turned on the nightstand light and used his iPhone to take pictures of Jin’s handwritten note and both sides of the dog tag. He texted all three images to Harv’s cell.

He changed into a fresh set of black 5.11 Tactical clothes, grabbed a spare shirt for Lauren, and reloaded his pockets with everything from the bed.

Downstairs, he found her in the library, holding a book.

“This is an old book.”

He winced, thinking about her dirty fingers.

As if reading his mind, she said. “I washed my hands. I’ve read this.”

“It’s a classic, and it’s also a first edition, so don’t drop it.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you’re holding the very first printing ever made of that book.”

“Seriously?”

“Harv gave it to me for my fortieth birthday.”

She smiled. “That must’ve been a
long
time ago.”

“Hey, watch it. Can you name any other titles from the author?”

“
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
”

“Well, I see your education is well rounded. I’m impressed.” He returned
Treasure Island
to its shelf. “Something’s got me curious, though. When I asked you what the Big Dipper was part of, you knew the answer. I don’t think many twelve-year-olds would know about Ursa Major. Care to enlighten me?”

“My mom taught me the constellations. Other stuff too.”

“Like directional vectors? Is that how you understood them so well?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What about basic survival skills? Would you be able to make a fire from scratch out in the wild?”

“Depends on if there’s any dry material suitable for fraying.”

Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “Let me guess: you’ve got a dragon tattoo on your back.”

She rolled her eyes. Although the expression was designed to convey,
Give me a break
, he found it charming — one of several traits he liked about her.

He handed her the shirt. “You can change in the bathroom near the laundry room. It’s that way, through the kitchen. Throw your clothes into the washer and use the quick-wash setting. The house has soft water, so you don’t need much detergent. Holler if you need help getting it going. You’ll see a pair of tennis shoes. They’re Angelica’s. Go ahead and try them on.”

“I’m worried about my mom.”

“You deserve the truth — that’s why I let you read the note. Your mom is going against a dangerous and cunning man. I’m planning to help her, and you can help me by staying calm. The calmer we are, the stronger we are. We’ll get through this. Together.”

She gave him a hug. “I’m glad you’re my uncle.”

For the second time tonight, he found himself hugging a kid. “Are you hungry?”

“Maybe a little. Where does Angelica live?”

He pointed to a door on the far side of the library. “It’s like a separate home, but it’s connected by a glass hallway.”

“She’s like a maid that lives here?”

“Not at all. I think of her as my adopted mom. Her family was killed in Nicaragua during the civil war.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yeah, war tends to do that.”

After Lauren changed into his shirt, he could see from her body language she felt a little insecure. She must be at that age when kids become self-conscious about their appearance. Maybe it happened at an earlier stage, probably did, but Nathan had no experience with it. He'd just act like she looked perfectly normal, despite what a good-looking kid she actually was.

“Help yourself to something to eat. Grab anything you like.”

“Okay, but I’ll make it for both of us.”

“Sounds good.” He turned her loose in the kitchen and settled onto the living room sofa. Since he didn’t know if the gunman from the grocery store was in police custody, he handled the battered cell phone carefully, trying to avoid smearing any potential prints. It was a fairly cheap model that didn’t look like it had smartphone capabilities. He found the call logs and scrolled through them. One number was used frequently — could be Voda’s cell. On the voice mail screen, he saw one unplayed message, from 8:47 p.m. He tapped the button, hoping he wouldn’t need a password — most phones kept it in their memory. He’d know soon enough.

In Spanish, Voda’s voice came out of the tiny speaker. Nathan turned the volume down. “
I want both of them alive.
”

Nathan thought this message must’ve been just before the grocery store shoot-out. He tapped a message with a time stamp of 8:21 p.m.

“
Marcus is dead. Antonio and I are both wounded. Call me right away.
”

One final message was from 7:40 p.m.

“
I have the girl. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.
”

Starting with Lauren’s kidnapping, the voice mails spanned just under an hour. Nathan believed the second message came from Voda, right after the attempted drive-by shooting on Friars Road. Antonio and Marcus were likely the two gunmen from the wreck who’d arrived in the black sedan. Nathan had been forced to shoot below the belt because of their ballistic vests. Antonio had died either from Nathan’s bullets or from Voda’s. Nathan believed the latter. Antonio was likely sitting in the back of the sedan when Voda’s arm got jarred on Friars Road.

Nathan used the dictation app on his iPhone to record all three messages and inserted the time of each message with his own voice. Next, he found the text messaging screen and saw an entire string of texts to the phone number he’d seen most frequently in the call logs. Almost certainly, this was Voda’s cell number. He went into the kitchen.

“It’s not ready yet,” Lauren said.

“I’m just getting a pad and pen.”

Nathan returned to the living room and wrote the most frequently used number on the notepad. He used his iPhone to take photos of all the remaining numbers stored in the call log. He checked the camera roll of his phone, making sure the phone numbers he’d just photographed could be read. He repeated the same procedure on the text threads. It took about twenty-five photos to capture everything. Not surprisingly, there weren’t any contacts stored in the phone. Based on the short call log and text string, Nathan felt reasonably confident Voda’s man had been mindful to delete the entries, but it hadn’t been done within the last hour before he’d lost the phone. He went back and reread the texts, looking for anything specific, and found a potential candidate. In the middle of a string, Nathan zeroed in on:

make sure s delivers the opus xas tonight

Nathan didn’t know what an ‘opus xas’ was, but it looked promising. The text had a time stamp of 7:44 p.m., four minutes after the voice mail message from Voda that he had Lauren. He went into the kitchen again and asked Lauren if Voda had been texting after he picked her up. Lauren said he had been, until he’d caught her doing the same. When Nathan didn’t leave the kitchen, she put her hands on her hips.

Nathan smiled and returned to the living room, where he opened a web browser on his phone and typed
opus xas
into the search box. None of the listings looked encouraging. The first reference was to some kind of bistro — a bar and grill in Texas. The next five listings looked equally useless. Maybe
opus xa
was singular and the
s
made it plural. Nathan removed the
s
, searched again, and was rewarded with new listings.

Master Coffin Opus X A’s were premium cigars made by Arturo Fuente. They were also expensive and rare. From what Nathan initially found, they ranged in price from seventy to one hundred dollars per stick. He checked a few listings and saw they were out of stock. Cigars like these probably had to be special-ordered. Many online cigar retailers claimed they were the most coveted cigars in the world. This definitely sounded like a viable lead, especially given that Voda’s man in Marchand’s warehouse had been smoking a cigar. Nathan hadn’t known what brand, but it had been cigar smoke, not cigarette.