Shadow Woman: A Novel (21 page)

He answered the blaring phone as he read the message:
Attempted hit going down
.

“Are you on site?”

“Almost there. Just got the message.”

Another IM came through:
Owner outside with shotgun, returning fire
.

“Did you get that?” Xavier asked. He had his Glock out and was checking the clip, slapping it back in. He couldn’t sit there reading IMs when Lizzy was under fire. The coldness he always felt was settling in his veins, his stomach. If they killed her, within the hour the world would know what they’d done, but Felice’s ass was his. No matter what precautions she put in place, no matter where she went, he’d get her—and he’d make her pay.

“Yeah, I’m almost there. Shooters are peeling out.”

“Do you see her?”
That was the most important detail, the one on which his life, and the lives of several others, hinged.

“Not yet. I’m just pulling in. Shit! There she is! She’s coming straight toward me!”

She was alive. The fist squeezing his heart eased its iron grip.

The world hadn’t ended.

“I’m on the way,” Xavier said tersely. “Keep me updated on the secure cell.” He broke the connection and went out the door.

Felice wouldn’t hit only Lizzy. She was far from stupid. The big question was, would her people try to take him here at the condo, or aim for a more secluded area, such as the stretch of road a couple of miles down, which was the fastest route to where Lizzy was?

They couldn’t have known where Lizzy would stop to get lunch, but the restaurant was on the way back to her office, so they might have originally planned to hit her there, but then the opportunity at the restaurant presented itself and they went for it. Setting up on his own most direct route, to get him, would be a logical move.

Felice wasn’t using Al’s people; he’d have known if she was. Al himself would—maybe—have prevented it. The big question was: was she using other operatives, or had she gone outside and hired civilians?

Civilians. They would know only what she told them, they wouldn’t have any contacts that might trip her up, and the cost would likely be cheaper, which would make it easier to hide the money in some unrelated item.

What she would do was have eyes on him, to alert the team when he left the condo.

He had options. He could take his truck, leaving from his private garage on the first floor of the condo—or he could take “J.P.’s” car, and leave from that unit. He also had a motorcycle stored at another secure location. But those vehicles were unknown, and perhaps that wasn’t what he wanted. The best option might be to drive his known, expected vehicle, draw out the team that was on him, deal with it now. That would get them out of the way and send Felice scrambling to replace them.

Moreover, driving his truck might make them think his guard was down, that he wasn’t expecting a move on him. Felice would know better, and so would Al: his guard was never down. But the men she’d hired wouldn’t know, and that was to his advantage.

He spotted the eyes as soon as the garage door lifted and he drove out: a white Chevrolet Malibu, parked five or six units up, opposite side of the street. One guy.

Dumb asses. How obvious could they get? Okay, rephrase that: maybe not dumb asses, but definitely civilians. He shouldn’t underestimate them, but react as if they were seasoned veterans of black operations.

Less than a mile from the condo, he picked up a tail. Not the guy in the white Malibu, but a gray truck, a Dodge. Smart move; the truck would put the shooter on the same level with him if he attempted a shot while speeding down the road, the two trucks side by side. Risky way to do something, but a possibility they should consider, and on a perverse level he appreciated that they’d covered that base.

Two men, he noted as the gray truck drew a car length closer. He didn’t spot a backup, not even the guy in the white Malibu. Just two? Fuck, he felt insulted.

But now he could deal with the team on his own terms, in his own way. He swerved in and out of traffic but drove smoothly, easily, not as if he were trying to shake a tail, but as if he were in a hurry to get somewhere. They fell back, but not too far.

As luck would have it, the empty stretch of road wasn’t empty; a couple of cars and a semi came barreling past, spaced just far enough apart that the gray truck couldn’t pull even with him. Shit, now he had to string them out. He could easily have taken them off the road with his heavier, reinforced vehicle and handled the problem there, but now they were entering a more populated neighborhood and the chances for either of them to act had just gone down.

In the meantime, what was Lizzy doing? His secure phone
had buzzed a couple of times, but he kind of had his hands full at the moment.

He hit a stretch with a long string of traffic, preventing the shooter from moving in on him, and grabbed the phone. Yeah, yeah, don’t text and drive. He did what he had to do.

The texts made him laugh out loud.
“She mugged me and stole my car.”

“Cool.”

His guys were the best. The muggee would take a lot of teasing over the coming months. He thumbed a reply:
“Got 2 on my ass. Will handle. Can you tail her?”

“No can do,”
came back the almost instant reply.

“K. I’ll pick up her signal once I handle these 2 bozos.”

He put the phone down, relief coursing through him. Lizzy was not only okay, she was functioning in a way none of them had expected, not even him. She’d mugged one of
his
guys? Okay, so not one of them would lift a finger to her, but still … yeah, it was cool.

And he still had the two on his ass to deal with.

His favorite park for running was one that would be perfect for him now, partly because he knew every inch of it. It was the right terrain for serious runners who liked some challenge in their workouts. The lunchtime traffic was thinning, but it still took him almost ten minutes to reach the park. The last of the lunchtime runners were just finishing up their routes, and there were several places to park. The jogging trails would be most crowded early in the morning and late in the afternoon, when the weather wasn’t so brutally hot, so with a little luck he shouldn’t have to deal with any witnesses.

The men following him might wonder what the hell he was doing here, but what they thought didn’t matter as long as they followed him. They could reasonably look at his stop at the park as a godsend, allowing them to corner him in a secluded area. He repressed a snort. Yeah, right. Dream on, buddies.

If they wanted him in a place where there were no cameras, no witnesses, their wish was about to come true.

He parked his truck near the head of the dirt trail and bolted for it, disappearing into the heavy cover as the gray truck wheeled into the parking lot.

To his left, the stand of trees thickened; limbs hung over the trail. The location he had in mind was a thickly wooded portion of the trail, where it wound back and forth in sharp curves that created blind spots, with boulders and thick bushes providing additional cover.

He plunged off the path, behind the cover of some big tree trunks, drew his weapon, and waited. The position was a good one, allowing him to see the running path as well as the most likely route if they decided to play it safe and stick to the woods beside the trail.

Best tactic was for them to do both: one coming up the trail, the other in the woods.

Right on cue, he heard footsteps pounding on the path, then slowing, moving ahead more cautiously. Through a small break in the trees, Xavier saw a man move past. Mid-thirties, just starting to lose some hair along the temples, the guy looked like thousands of other men in the area—casual clothes, nothing threatening about him at all.

Xavier knew where that guy was. He switched his attention to the wooded area, straining to hear a rustle, a snap, the clatter of a rock. Where was the other one?

The first man moved into view, his head swiveling. Xavier stood motionless, his drab clothing blending into the background. The human eye, particularly an untrained one, saw motion more than detail. He waited, studying his prey through a tiny opening in the brush and trees, noting the noise suppressor on the weapon in the guy’s right hand.

Thank you, buddy, Xavier thought as the man passed him by, and he silently stepped onto the path behind him.

He took him down with a massive punch to the back of the neck. The guy grunted as he went down, the only sound he had time to make as Xavier wrenched the suppressed weapon from his hand, pressed it to the back of his head, and fired.

The man twitched once, and that was it.

Even a suppressed shot wasn’t silent; the other man on the team might have heard, depending on how far away he was. Xavier assumed he’d be close; otherwise they were piss-poor tacticians. Likely he’d think the shot came from his partner’s weapon—which actually it had—but he had no way of knowing whether or not Xavier’s weapon was also sound-suppressed. Only a complete idiot would yell, “Did you get him?” and these guys weren’t idiots. Too inexperienced to be playing this game with him, but not idiots.

Xavier stepped back into the woods, quickly, cautiously, surveying the area in all directions, waiting—

A bullet smacked into the tree six inches from his head.

Xavier dropped down and rolled away, lifting his own weapon and searching the shaded, wooded area for movement, for a breath that wasn’t as quiet and controlled as it should be.

Nothing.

Could be the man on the path had been designated as expendable from the beginning, and the shooter in the woods had used his partner to flush Xavier out.

Not bad, he thought. Wouldn’t work, but not bad.

Shooter number two couldn’t be far away. Xavier hunkered down, breathing slow and easy. He could outwait this guy, but he had things to do and he was getting impatient. Maybe the oldest tactic in the world would work. Moving silently, taking care he was completely hidden, he picked up a small rock and tossed it to the left. It didn’t make a big noise, but he hadn’t wanted it to. Instead it was the kind of soft sound a slip of the foot might make.

A shot fired; he saw the flash, and then he heard the shooter
step forward, one almost-silent step in the dirt and fallen leaves. It was enough.

Xavier fired twice, and the second guy crashed to the ground. Not taking any chances, staying low, he moved toward the fallen man, eyes on his target.

The guy wasn’t dead. Soon, but not yet. When he saw Xavier, he tried feebly to lift his weapon.

Xavier stomped his boot down on the guy’s wrist, then put a bullet between his eyes. It took only a moment to return to the path and drag the first shooter’s body into the woods before the hue and cry was raised and Felice knew her team had failed. The time it might buy him could be critical. He scraped his boot along the disturbed dirt on the path, wiped his prints off the weapon, and stuck it back in guy number one’s hand. That might entertain the detectives a little bit, especially if the weapon could be traced back to the dead man.

He went back to his truck. Just in case anyone had seen it and connected it to the two dead men in the woods—he didn’t see how, but people did strange shit, like take pictures of vehicles with their cell phones—he’d need to stow the truck in a secure location other than his condo and use a different vehicle for a while.

As he left the parking lot, he used his cell phone to pull up the program that would tell him exactly where Lizzy was.

Instead of working her way out of the city, Lizzy worked her way in. D.C. was a big, crowded city teeming with people: tourists, politicians, everyday residents living their lives. She could blend in if she had to. There was abundant public transportation, especially in the heart of the city, but there was no way she could risk the Metro. There were too many cameras, and too few exits if she was cornered.

Thank goodness she had some cash. Her paranoia—which had not been paranoia at all, as it turned out—had served her well.

She strode down the sidewalk as if she knew where she was going. Her mind churned. What the hell good were all her supplies, when she’d left them at home? Damn it, she should have put everything in the backpack and thrown it in her car. Yeah, she’d had to dump her car, but … oh, hell, she was second-guessing herself. Would she have had the opportunity to swing by her car, grab the backpack, and take off again? As things had played out, no. She’d screwed up. She should have taken the
backpack into the restaurant with her. A lot of people used backpacks in the city; she wouldn’t have stood out.

But now those things were as lost to her as if they were locked in a vault somewhere, and she’d wasted the money buying them. She didn’t dare go home. If the bad guys didn’t get her there, the police would. She was a car thief, and, oh, yeah, she’d also committed assault while stealing the guy’s car, so she was pretty sure that had moved her into a whole different category of criminal. She wasn’t just a thief, she was a dangerous thief. Yeah, home was pretty much out of the question.

Which begged the question: were
they
the bad guys, or was she? If she couldn’t remember, how was she to know? She might have done something really horrible in the past. After all, she seemed to be pretty good at evasive driving, and she was drawn to hunting knives and guns and pepper spray. Why?

She waited for the question to trigger a headache, but nothing happened.

No, she had to be logical about this. They had obviously known exactly how to find her. If she was such a bad guy, why wouldn’t they have done something before now?

Instead they’d waited, and watched. Nothing had happened until she’d started remembering. Despite her best efforts to act normal, she’d done things out of the ordinary, such as ditching the people following her, destroying her cell phone and not turning on the replacement, and oh yeah, let’s not forget the surprise trip into Virginia. To anyone on the alert for such clues, she’d practically taken out a billboard.

Hindsight was so crystal clear, which did her a hell of a lot of good. She should have done
nothing
for several days, maybe even a week or so. Crap.