Runaway Model (23 page)

"I've got nowhere else to turn. I'm begging you. I'm begging you. Please. No matter what you think of me, think of Stoney. He's the victim in all this. I wouldn't ask for an army just for me self. I know I'm not worth it. But I can't just leave Stoney out there in that sicko's clutches. Please. I'm begging. I have no pride left. If you won't help me, I don't know where to turn. I can't do this alone. But I will if I have to."

"We're in Minneapolis right now. Minnesota." Bryce had a neutral tone of voice that must have served him very well when negotiating oilfield royalty contracts. "I'll have a team on the ground in Manhattan in six hours. I can't assemble the men and get a flight plan any sooner. There are laws of physics involved. Jets fly only so fast."

"Thank you, Bryce."

Call ended.

"This is amazing," Chance said. "I feel like Bruce Willis."

"You can't talk about this, Chance. Not to anyone. We'll all end in prison, innit?"

"Bruce Willis never ends up in prison."

"Hollywood tells lies. Who knew."

"I've got to confer with the agency's lawyer. The minute the statute of limitations runs out, we've got to sell this story. I'm thinking a seven-figure advance.
Stoney's Salvation
by Chance Lanconi and Kyle Marchane. Shit title but the producer will think of a better one. I can see it now. This is going to be an Oscar-winning movie one day. The model and the oilman who saved a rock star from a madman."

"We're gay, innit? It isn't going to be a fucking movie. Or if it is, they'll change it up to be a girl singer." Anyway, the agency's lawyer was an entertainment attorney. Kyle wasn't taking any advice about the statute of limitations for gun crimes from him.

"I like the way you think. Big budget. Big picture. Taylor Swift could play Stoney's part. She'll be old enough then."

"Please, Chance. Just shut the fuck up for a few minutes and let me think."

"Maybe the model could be the girl. Maybe she could be a supermodel. There really aren't any male supermodels. If it's a girl, it would be a bigger story. Irika is already nineteen. She'll be too old to play you in the movie. But maybe an up-and-comer who looks like Irika..."

"Please, Chance. Let's worry about Hollywood when we know how the story ends."

"Y
ou're risking your ass for a boy you hardly know," Arnold said. "There's a damn good chance the whole thing is a con."

Bryce knew that. Of course he did.

The corporate jet was as plush as ever, but he wasn't pouring any bourbon and branch on this flight. The three soldiers at the table behind him were talking in low voices over energy drinks that probably included stimulants far more powerful than caffeine. Bryce didn't want to know the details. He'd crossed a line into darkness.

All for a boy who loved another man.

All for a runaway hustler.

The espresso in his porcelain cup tasted like ink.

Bryce had given Arnold a shortlist of men he trusted. Arnold said there were only three of them who'd be stand-up if somebody got hurt. Or arrested. Bryce didn't want anyone on this mission that Arnold didn't trust. Three soldiers would have to do.

Fuck, an army of three was probably overkill going up against a math teacher from England. Especially this army.

Two of them had served with Bryce in the previous mission to rescue Kyle from the concert attack. Bryce hadn't needed their guns that time. He prayed he wouldn't need them now. But it was better to be prepared.

Between them, Leon Roberto and Irwin Johnston had conducted sixty-three raids in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Roberto had received multiple medals for missions that required him to go house-to-house and fight hand-to-hand.

Johnston, an African-American from east Texas, had fewer medals because most of his missions were secret. But he was an expert in extractions—the fine art of bringing men back alive. He'd played a pivotal role in the capture of several known terrorists wanted for questioning by military intelligence. They would've been fuck-all useless dead. He'd also brought home two American CIA agents who got caught on the wrong side of the border between Iraq and Iran. The Iranians had been hoping to trade them for nuclear concessions.

Laurence Wilton was the odd man out. A former associate of Arnold Geurne, he'd emerged from federal prison after three years with a burning desire to change his life the way Arnold had. He too was highly experienced in urban warfare. But his battles had been fought in the streets of Houston and New Orleans. He knew about the costs of blasting away indiscriminately. If there was such a thing as a discreet assault on a building in the middle of a densely-populated city, Wilton was the man to get away with it.

He'd gone to federal prison for a tax charge. They never got him for the drug war firefights. They never would.

Bryce hadn't known Wilton well in their high school days. But he'd distributed some of the drugs Arnold Geurne produced. If Arnold said he was stand-up, he was stand-up.

And Bryce could sure as hell use his skills.

Of course Bryce had a professional hostage negotiation team on call. It was included in his kidnap and ransom insurance coverage He called his K&R adviser and asked a few questions about how they'd handle it if an abduction ever occurred on American soil.

The adviser picked his words carefully. "We would, of course, notify the appropriate law enforcement authorities and work closely under their remit to make sure the hostage was released safely." Pompous ass.

Bryce could read between those lines.

It was one thing to conduct an extra-legal rescue in Nigeria. You just had to know who to pay off when all the shouting was over.

It was quite another thing in New York. People didn't stay paid off. They took your money and fucked you anyway. And the city had mandatory sentencing for gun offenses.

They couldn't call the police. They couldn't use Bryce's K&R team.

It was all down to the five men on this plane.

Arnold had already transferred the files he'd been collecting over the past few months on Roman Nigel and Kyle Marchane. They weren't any more useful on Bryce's laptop than they'd been on Arnold's.

"Are we any closer to figuring out where Nigel has gone to earth?" Bryce asked.

Arnold shook his head as he gulped the last of his Red Bull®. "He's been careful to stay off the grid. He hasn't used a credit card or withdrawn money from an ATM since he landed in America. It would suggest he's operating under another identity. But I haven't been able to find it yet."

"I don't like it that Kyle wants to swap places with Rockland when we don't even know where Rockland is being held."

"I don't either. But maybe it's the only way to get to Nigel at this point. Have him lead us there himself." 

Some time ago, Arnold had installed a program that tracked the GPS location of Kyle's phone in real time. Bryce didn't fully understand the details but Arnold had a way to do it over the internet. One day when Kyle went online to look at some Instagrams, he'd picked up a hitchhiker and never even noticed.

Roman Nigel tracked Kyle too. There must be a way to infer Nigel's movements from Kyle's. But Arnold hadn't figured it out yet.

Neither had Bryce. "It doesn't make sense. How can a simple math teacher from a small village in England be such a ghost?"

Arnold glanced up from the screen. "I think it's clear that Roman Nigel wasn't always a simple math teacher. It's possible he has some background in military intelligence. Or maybe some mid-level involvement in organized crime. There are some odd gaps in his background. Not much evidence that his alleged parents ever existed."

"Roman Nigel isn't his real name." Bryce had independently reached the same conclusion.

"Depends on what you mean by real. He's had the name a long time. At least a decade. He's established himself as a fairly stable middle middle-class teacher in a quiet village. Whatever he was before, he found a way to get out and blend into society."

No matter how hard Bryce stared at the monitor, the police reports—or the lack of them—didn't change. Roman Nigel had never even received a traffic ticket.

By contrast, there was a dump truck's load of gossip, allegation, and investigatory reports on Kyle. The boy would be horrified if he knew his juvenile arrest record had been accessed by a hacker from a foreign land.

He'd be more horrified if he realized that ICE knew perfectly well who he was and how he'd made his way in Vegas. The paperwork for his deportation order was waiting, but there weren't enough officers and hours in the day to run down every visa overstay.

That was the only reason Kyle was still in America. He just wasn't that important. The United States immigration authorities had bigger fish to fry.

"You realize I'm still tapped into Kyle's cell," Arnold said.

They had to assume Roman Nigel had Kyle's phone now. "Yeah, right, the minute it comes back on, it sends you a GPS location."

"I can do more. Earlier today there were some calls going back and forth between Kyle and Stoney Rockland's security chief. Now I'm not saying Daniels doesn't know how to do his job. But a hostage extraction is a far fucking cry from protecting a rock star from some thirsty sixteen-year-old girls."

"You think there's a chance Nigel will call Daniels to negotiate?"

"Actually I think it's highly unlikely. Especially on Kyle's phone. But we can't rule it out entirely. Especially if he decides he'd like to get some money for his hostage, and he doesn't want the conversation linked to his own phone. It could happen."

"So there's some small chance Nigel calls Daniels to set up a meet."

"Again, it's a small chance. But you never know. So I've got a program running that will insert a new worm into Kyle's phone the next time it comes on. If someone uses it to dial Daniels..."

"The call comes to us." Bryce smiled. A brief smile but still a smile. He had the right team on his side. "Fucking brilliant, my man."

Roberto, Johnston, and Wilton were experts at stillness. Bryce was secretly amazed to see Wilton sit on the jet's Persian carpet, his heavily muscled legs somehow twisted into what looked suspiciously like a lotus pose.

Arnold couldn't sit still. He went from device to device, always seeking. Always searching. "For years Nigel passed as a relatively normal human being. It's almost supernatural how much he knows about flying under the radar."

"And then he saw Kyle and lost it. Why Kyle?" Too late Bryce realized how ridiculous the question sounded coming from him.

He'd fallen under the spell of Kyle Marchane himself. Found himself doing things he thought he'd never do.

And he wasn't alone. Some powerful designers, photographers, and magazine editors had taken the boy under their wing.

Kyle's crooked little smile was both his blessing and his curse. To see him was to want him.

To see him was to love him.

Arnold poked into the fridge for another can of Red Bull®. "We'll never know why Kyle," he finally said. "Maybe Kyle reminded him of someone he lost. Maybe he reminded him of a more innocent time in his own life."

"OK, that makes sense. Stay with me here. Nigel views himself as some kind of protector maybe. The constant stalking and spying... in some ways it was as invasive as an overt attack from the victim's point of view. But Nigel himself doesn't see it that way. And Kyle's not able to get anyone to take it seriously because the creep hasn't actually touched him. He just... watches. He's just... always there."

Arnold put down the can with a clatter. It was already empty. "When Kyle runs away, Nigel loses his final shred of sanity. He can't protect a boy who has fled alone to a country famous worldwide for its well-armed criminal class. He might even have tried to forget him, but he couldn't make himself do it. He has to get him back, no matter what the cost."

Nigel wasn't the only one who had to get him back no matter what the cost. Bryce felt as if he were in free-fall. Was he as crazy as the freak? Was he destroying himself for a fantasy? Was he going to drag good men down along with him?

Too late for second thoughts. Conspiracy to commit a crime was also a crime. A crime they'd committed the moment the five of them loaded their weapons onto the jet.

No choice now but to go all the way.

"Maybe I'm starting to understand the freak. But, Arnold, tell me. How does this psychological profiling really help us? On TV it always seems to help the FBI. In real life? I'm not so sure."

"You know something, Bryce. I'm out of my depth here. We all are. I don't know the answer to that. You really should call in the FBI and step away from this."

"You can back away at any time, man. I can send you on an extended trip to Oslo the minute we land at Teterboro. You won't be implicated in anything I do."

"Don't be a dick, Bryce. You know perfectly well I'm not leaving this fight until the bitter end."

The three soldiers behind him lifted their glasses and clinked them together. They weren't talkative men.

But they knew when and how to listen. And they knew when and how to look Bryce dead in the eye.

Nobody was leaving this fight until the end.

***

S
ix hours. Of course Nigel wouldn't give him six hours. Not if he could help it. He'd have to know that Kyle would use that time to try something.

Not that he knew what the fuck to try. He didn't have the first clue where to even begin looking for Stoney.

He'd have to somehow hold out until he met with Bryce's team. They were the professionals. Surely they'd know what to do.

Kyle slipped out of the agency's building through a delivery exit. But he couldn't stop looking over his shoulder. Roman Nigel had been popping up out of nowhere from the time Kyle was fourteen. It worked on a man's nerves, didn't it?

He couldn't go back to the flat. He needed people and noise around him. A lot of people. There was no use allowing himself to be taken easily. He'd make the exchange if he had to. He'd trade himself for Stoney. The music was more important than one eighteen-year-old's life.