Tall, Dark and Lethal (12 page)

Of course, there was the camera, continuously scanning. Except that it was pointed up the street right now. She quickly stepped forward, as close to the door as possible, where hopefully the camera wouldn’t be able to see her.

The hinges didn’t make a sound as she inched the door open, and she gave heaven thanks for that.

The main dining room was dark. Chairs were stacked on the tables, the floor dusty except for a path leading to the kitchen in the back, spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling. Didn’t look like the place had seen a cleaning crew since it had closed abruptly a few months back.

There was a strange, stale smell in the air which permeated everything. She followed the path back to the kitchen, walking past a professional-size refrigerator and stepping on a large, dark stain on the tile floor where something had leaked out of the fridge. The dank odor was even stronger here.

Had the owners left in such a great hurry that they didn’t even clean out the food before they moved on? Were they pushed out by some terrorist cell who wanted to take over their location? Or were they involved in it all?

She opened the fridge out of curiosity, thinking that any clue might be useful. Cade was probably scouting the back, too busy with the men who’d come in the vans. It was unlikely he would even make it all the way up here.

As soon as she cracked the refrigerator seal, she knew she’d made a mistake. She gagged, shoving the door closed again, but not before she caught sight of the blackened corpse inside.

Fighting the urge to either scream, faint or puke her guts out, she felt her heart just about stop when a hand clamped over her mouth.

“What do you think you’re doing in here?” Cade whispered, his tone low and none too happy.

But before she could answer, voices came from the far end of the room. People were coming. Cade whirled her toward a cleaning closet and squeezed in there with her, placing himself in front. He didn’t have to tell her to be quiet.

Men came into the kitchen, about a half dozen of them, judging from their voices. They spoke a language she didn’t understand. They were fighting—that, at least, was clear.

Broom and mop handles stuck in her back. She was plastered against Cade’s wide shoulders. His presence was reassuring in a situation that made her want to jump out of her skin. She was no longer scared—she’d crossed over to petrified, as in physically hurting with fear, her lungs too tight to breathe in air; her muscles were clenched so tight that they cramped. She could think of little else but the terrorists outside the closet and the corpse in the fridge next to it. If it weren’t for Cade, she might have passed out or started shaking hard enough to betray her hiding place.

Should have stayed in the car.
She could have cried, she was so mad at herself. What on earth had she been thinking?

She struggled for air, waiting to be discovered at any second. But the men went on and on, talking and not doing much else. Chairs slid around the tile floor. Was the kitchen their meeting place? Didn’t the dead body bother them? If this place had been their headquarters for a while, surely they had noticed the corpse and its stench. She could still smell it, even in the closet, her stomach rolling with nausea. She pressed her nose into Cade’s back and inhaled his scent.

Steps neared. The closet door creaked. She nearly peed her pants. Then, after a breathless moment, she realized that one of the men had leaned against their door.

Cade shifted soundlessly, extended his left hand back, took her hand and wrapped her arm around his chest. His heartbeat was steady and strong. He kept his hand on top of hers—a gesture of comfort and tenderness. She needed both badly at the moment. Then she realized it might not be a gesture of comfort at all. Maybe he was saying goodbye. Maybe it was the sort of gesture that said,
Let me hold you one more time before we die.

H
E DIDN’T LIKE THE
situation he was in, not with Bailey there next to him. Apparently, he hadn’t been clear when he’d told her to stay out of trouble. Next time he was handcuffing her to the steering wheel.

They weren’t exactly in an easily defendable position. They were sitting ducks in that closet. Their best bet was to remain undiscovered. Man, the stench was bad. Brought back memories of his first mission to Colombia, where he’d been caught by a local warlord and tossed into a dungeon. He’d had a roommate, a crazy Russian who died from his injuries. They never bothered to remove him. Sergey was still there when Cade finally broke out a month later, not that far from death himself.

He’d had trouble with being locked up since, one of the reasons why he wasn’t willing to give himself up to the FBI and wait in a cell until they cleared him.

Bailey pressed tight against his back, distracting him from the past, and from the tangos in the kitchen who were bickering over funds that hadn’t arrived. And complaining about American coffee. He didn’t speak fluent Arabic, but he understood more than enough to get the gist.

A door creaked to his left. Probably the same one that he’d come through earlier.

“Any news from New York?” The speaker’s voice held authority.

The others immediately quieted.

“Not yet,” somebody said.

“If we can’t get the weapon today or tomorrow, we’ll have to go with our other plan.” The boss’s voice held undisguised anger.

“It’s a good plan,” someone volunteered. “We are ready.”

“And your martyrdom is appreciated. But this time we don’t want anyone to tie the crash back to us. The weapon would allow us to destroy our enemies without leaving a trace,” the boss said.

The Arabic language had many dialects. Cade was most familiar with the one that was spoken in Southeast Asia, where he’d completed a number of missions. This man’s dialect sounded a lot like that of people Cade knew from Nigeria. Similar but not the same. Maybe from somewhere farther south?

“Our cause is worthy. If we make the ultimate sacrifice, it will be remembered. But I’m not one to think it righteous to waste a human life if it isn’t absolutely necessary.”

A couple of men murmured their agreement. There seemed to be a solemnity to the occasion, a hush that came over the room outside. It made Cade’s skin crawl and his finger itch on the trigger.

Martyrdom
and
crash.
Two words you didn’t want to hear when eavesdropping on a terrorist group.

Cade shifted slightly. Not enough information to be useful, but more than enough to send the Department of Homeland Security into a frenzy.

If he could make it out of here and pass on the intelligence.

“The plane leaves tomorrow,” the leader said. “We must be prepared.”

“If we don’t have the weapon by then, we’ll be on the flight,” another man added. Instead of sounding scared, he sounded wistful.

B
AILEY DIDN’T UNDERSTAND
a word that was being said outside their hiding place, but from the way Cade’s body stiffened, she knew it couldn’t be good. The men lounged around for nearly an hour before moving on. When several minutes passed with no noises filtering through the closet door, Cade pushed it open an inch.

He paused before opening the door fully. “All clear,” he mouthed.

Bailey stepped out after him, her legs stiff from standing in the cramped space for so long. Her knees were weak from nervous exhaustion. If this day wouldn’t make her go gray, nothing could.

“Where did you come in?” Cade was moving forward, gun in hand.

“Front. The door was open.”

“You have your gun?”

She showed him.

“Okay. Go back that way. Sit in the car.” He gave her a hard look. “Wait. For. Me. I mean it.”

“And you?” She didn’t want to sneak around this place alone, not since she’d seen the contents of the fridge. And she didn’t want him to stay here alone, either.

“I’m taking a closer look. They were talking about a plane. I need more, something we can use to stop them.”

He headed toward the kitchen’s swinging door, looking through the round glass window. “You should be fine. There’s nobody out there.” He opened his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“I got a few pictures before you came in. I’m passing them on to a friend to check them against some databases.” He hit a series of buttons and slipped the phone back into his pocket. “If they have Zak, we’ll find him.” He pushed the door open and waited for her to pass through.

On impulse, she put her arms around him and squeezed before slipping through, and damn if she knew what
that
was about. Something had shifted between them, but she couldn’t put her finger on when that had happened or what it was. And she didn’t want to.

“Be careful,” she whispered, hesitating on the other side of the door.

“You, too.” He watched her with an unreadable look in his eyes.

Then he closed the door behind her, and she was alone in the large, dim room which looked fit to be haunted. She made her way to the front carefully, making sure she didn’t knock against a table or a chair. But she did look back when she got to the door. Something dark had moved into the restaurant since she’d last been in here with friends from work. Something that had brought spiderwebs and emptiness and the stench of decay. A shiver ran down her spine.

Zak was somehow involved with this darkness, had been taken by it. He was just a kid, too smart for his own good. A kid with an exceptional brain who hadn’t yet learned how to channel his energies and his talent. A kid who might never get a chance to do so. Her throat tightened at the thought. For a second, the image of the blackened corpse in the fridge crowded out everything else in her brain.

Oh, Zak. What have you done?

He’d done something crazy. Crazy wrong. He deserved to be shaken, to be scared straight, to be grounded until his twenty-first birthday. But he didn’t deserve what these men might do to someone who crossed them.

She glanced back at the kitchen. Cade was there. Cade would help. The gruesome image of the corpse flashed into her mind again. It would take time to forget that. A sob escaped her, and she drew a breath, too deep. Her nose filled with that stale, sick smell, and she gagged.

She didn’t hear the front door open behind her, so she was startled out of her skin when a gun pushed into her back.

Bailey’s first instinct was to scream, but the hard, pointy object in her ribs shifted, and the next second she was hit hard enough on the back of the head to see stars. Her knees gave and the wave of nausea that’d been rising in her throat rolled over her.

Whoever had come in hooked his hands under her armpits and dragged her toward the kitchen.

Thank God. Thank God.
Cade would be there.

But when they went through the swinging doors, Cade was nowhere to be seen. Panic engulfed her even in her stunned state. She could feel little, in fact, beyond pain and fear.

She might have blacked out for a while, because suddenly she found herself in a small, dark space, disoriented, unsure which way was up for a second. She was pressed against something fuzzy.

All she could think of was the corpse in the fridge.

She filled her lungs with dank air and screamed her head off, pushing wildly with her hands and kicking with her feet, hoping to open the door. Nothing gave.

She was interrupted by the sound of a car starting, and her place of confinement began to vibrate, then move. The stench of exhaust filled her nose.

Relief came so sharp it brought moisture to her eyes. She wasn’t in the fridge, or buried alive. She was in the trunk of a car. She reached out. Her hand met not with hair, but with the carpeting in the trunk.

Her moment of relief passed quickly. She might not be in the fridge, but her situation was far from rosy. She had little doubt over who had taken her.

Calm down. Don’t panic.

Too late for that. The fear rushed back all over again, but she fought it. She couldn’t give up. If she did, she was as good as dead.

At least they hadn’t shot her right off the bat. She was alive, and as long as she was alive, there was always the hope of rescue or escape, always a slim chance. Cade would soon be looking for her.

She wouldn’t allow herself to think that he would have absolutely no way of knowing where they’d taken her.

C
ADE SEARCHED THROUGH
the building methodically, avoiding the men who occupied it. At least six terrorists were upstairs, according to his best estimate. He started in the basement, in the storage rooms, but found nothing. No computers, no guns, no explosives, no documents.

Didn’t look like the headquarters were in the abandoned restaurant. Maybe they used the place only for clandestine meetings. Possibly for meetings with people they didn’t trust enough to take to the base of their operations. There had to be more than this somewhere else.

He made a thorough search, hoping he might find Zak or a clue to his whereabouts, but that hope diminished with every room he found empty. He moved up to the main level, listening. Complete silence. Maybe while he’d been in the basement, the men had left. Still, he exercised maximum caution as he searched the place, but came up empty again. Except for a piece of paper that hadn’t burned all the way, stuck to the bottom of an ashtray. He could make out the letters
AA
and the numbers 0703. Flight number? Could they be that lucky? To be on the safe side, he called it in.

Frustration needled him. He wanted complete information and he wanted it now. Had Bailey not been with him, he would have nabbed one of the men and spent some time questioning him.

He could still do that. He could go back to the car and send Bailey back to the shack with it, and lie in wait here until someone else stopped by. That seemed the only way for him to move forward, as much as he disliked leaving Bailey alone even for a short time. But he didn’t want her to wait for him here, for hours maybe, alone in a stolen car.

It would be great if he could make up his mind about her. Part of him wanted her with him, never leaving his sight. But he had to admit that she was safer away from what he was about to do. He would find a way to get back to the shack when he was done here.

He sneaked out the back and made his way toward the Avalon that he should probably ditch. He’d get a new car for Bailey before he went back in, something small and easy to drive, something nondescript, and tell her to stick to the side roads. She should know them—she was from around here.

But Bailey wasn’t in the car.

Had she gone up to the stores? Dammit, this was not the time to window-shop. He strolled that way, scanning the people who were going about their business in the shopping plaza.

He couldn’t see her.

He didn’t think she would go into a shop. She was smart and perceptive, with a good head on her shoulders. She understood the precarious situation they were in. But if she wasn’t shopping, where was she? His gaze settled on the fast-food restaurant in the middle of the parking lot. Maybe she’d gone to use the bathroom.

He picked a spot from where he could see most of the square and settled in to wait. Ten minutes passed. No Bailey. He started out for the restaurant, went in and sat at a booth by the bathroom doors. People came and went. Bailey wasn’t one of them.

As minutes ticked by, a cold feeling pooled in the pit of his stomach. He waited until the last person he’d seen go into the ladies’ room came out, and he knocked on the door. No response.

“Excuse me.” He stuck his head in.

Empty.

That cold feeling solidified into a block of heavy ice, the blood running cold in his veins.

He turned and nearly bumped into a five-foot, white-haired lady with cat-eye rhinestone glasses and a disapproving look on her wrinkled face.

“Well, young man!” she said, scolding him for being where he didn’t belong.

She was the least of his problems.

Bailey had been taken.

H
E PASSED THE DAY IN
stone-cold control. He couldn’t think of Bailey, couldn’t sink into despair over what they might be doing to her. He had to stay detached, focused and ready. Night came, interminably long, and his control slipped from time to time, replaced by murderous rage.

Nobody came.

Cade hid by the back door of the restaurant. This place was his only connection to the bastards, and a flimsy connection at that. He had no way of knowing how often they used the restaurant. It could be days or weeks before any of them came back here. He tried to steer clear of thoughts about what might happen to Bailey in the meanwhile.

But, of course, he couldn’t. He’d seen enough, had been through enough to know.
If they touch a hair on her head, so help me God.

H
E HAD CHOSEN TO STAY
with Palmer instead of going after the woman. Like he had chosen to follow Palmer back to the ruins of the house the night before instead of taking advantage of her being alone in the shack. She looked like a tasty enough morsel, but Cade Palmer was his primary target. He was the one he couldn’t afford to let out of his sight.

He could have taken the man out last night—he’d had the chance, from afar. Cleanest way, and the safest. But all of Palmer’s mad comings and goings had gotten him intrigued. Maybe there was some money in whatever he was doing here.

So he’d done nothing but follow and wait all night outside the restaurant while Palmer, for whatever reason, waited within. He wasn’t keen on going in after him without knowing the lay of the land. He preferred not to barge into a situation where he’d be at a disadvantage. He was as cocky as the next bastard, but smart enough to know when the odds were stacked against him. The advantage was always to those who defended any given structure, as opposed to the ones who tried to enter it.

Urban warfare 101. He’d had some practice at it.

A
CAR PULLED DOWN THE
alley, something old and clunky. Cade’s ears perked up, and he felt that cold calm come over him that he’d often experienced before battle. His senses sharpened. The car stopped; a door opened, then closed. He moved to the peephole in the steel door and watched in the dawn’s dim light as a man got out of an ancient green Chevy. Only one guy. Thirtysomething, wearing black sweatpants and a green T-shirt with combat boots. Not suspecting that his morning was about to take a turn for the worse.

He looked around carefully before he came to the door and put his key into the lock.

Cade shoved his gun into the guy’s temple the second he stepped in. “Take me to your boss,” he said in Arabic, in a helluva mood after the endless night he’d spent worrying about Bailey.

The guy grabbed for his own weapon. Cade ripped it from his hand, blocked a kick and shoved a well-placed elbow into the guy’s chest hard enough that he doubled over. The idiot still didn’t seem to comprehend the severity of his situation. “You can’t do,” he said between two harsh breaths, with a stupid smirk on his face. “Warrant search?” He sneered.

He wanted to see a search warrant? Did he think he was facing a cop? If Cade weren’t so exhausted by the night’s vigil, he would have laughed.

Instead, by way of explanation and in order to prevent wasting any more time, he slammed the butt of his gun into the man’s face and didn’t even wince when a bone crunched under the force. “Your boss,” he said as the guy howled, fear in his eyes at last, finally catching onto the program.

And he still hesitated for another second or two before pushing his hands into the air, bright blood running down his chin. Then he turned and led Cade back to the old Chevy.

Cade checked it before getting in, scanning for weapons, which he’d have to take away. Nothing but empty soda cans on the backseat. No weapons, no documents, nothing of Bailey’s, no sign that she’d been in the vehicle. Cade tied the man with his own belt, shoved him inside, then got in without taking his gun off the guy. He made one stop only—the Avalon, to grab his bag of tricks.

The ride lasted about half an hour, the man directing him to an abandoned factory building near the Philadelphia airport. And for the time being, Cade was satisfied with that, not bringing up his next question until they arrived and got out.

“Where are the kid and the woman?” He held the gun to the man’s forehead, making sure he felt the reality of the barrel. At this point, he didn’t care what he had to do to find the ones he sought.

Judging from the fear on the man’s face, he got that.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Where are the kid and the woman?” Cold rage spread through him. He wasn’t going to lose them. Not this kid. Not this time. And nobody touched Bailey if they wanted to live.

“I don’t know.” The man fell to his knees. He was crying now, the blood on his face mixing with tears. “No kill. I don’t know,” he begged.

Cade got his bag of weapons and ammunition. He picked up the guy and put him in the trunk, locking him in. Then he made a single call, to the Colonel, giving his location. He’d told him about the planned attack when he’d called the day before, even though he didn’t have much to go on.

“One day, the tangos said yesterday. Whatever’s going down is going down today,” he said grimly into the phone. Could be he had only a few hours—at best—to figure out what the plan was and stop them. And he had to save Bailey and Zak in the meantime.

Once these criminals succeeded in bringing the plane down, they would have no need for hostages. Their goal achieved, they would want to clear out fast. If they didn’t succeed, Bailey and Zak would be on hand for revenge. Either way, there was little time left.

“By the way, there is no American Airlines flight number 0703 out of Philadelphia, or anyplace else. Aviation security decided to put the airport under lockdown until further notice, anyway. Other American Airlines hubs are under heightened security all around the country,” the Colonel told him.

He sure hoped that would be enough. “They should pay special attention to flights to Africa.” As long as he wasn’t mistaken about the men’s accents. And then it popped into his mind. “Air Africana?”

“That would be AFR.”

“Could be. I don’t know. The paper I found was half burned.”

“Could be they weren’t using official aviation codes for their communications. Maybe it’s their own code. I’ll get someone on that and have Air Africana checked. You stay put, and don’t do anything crazy. How bad is it?”

“Undetermined number of tangos inside,” he reported. “They have two hostages. I have one of the tangos disabled in the trunk of an old Chevy up front.”

“Reinforcements are coming. I repeat, stay put. That’s an order.” The Colonel’s voice was as stark as he’d ever heard it. “You can’t make any mistakes here, Cade. The FBI still wants your head on a stick.”

“Yes, sir.” He closed his phone, grabbed his bag of tricks and took off toward the old factory, running along the fence, keeping low to the ground.

S
HE WOULDN’T HAVE THOUGHT
this much pain was possible. Bailey rested her back against the cool wall of the small room in the basement where they had brought her after yet another round of “questioning.” Her clothes were covered with blood and sweat.

But the worst wasn’t what they had done to her. The worst was knowing that they had probably done the same to Zak. They wouldn’t care that he was just a kid. Some of the monsters who had worked her over weren’t much older than he was.

“Where is the electromagnetic weapon?” “What were you doing at the restaurant?” “Who do you work for?” The questions had been endless.

Pretending that she’d only gone to see if the place was opening had been useless. There was no point denying her identity. They knew who she was. They had a picture of her, taken in front of the garden center where she worked. It had been taken a week ago, as she was getting into her car after her shift. Her skin crawled with the thought that she’d been watched by these creeps.

No use in protesting her innocence, either. They had found her gun. The gun she hadn’t even been able to pull before she was so effortlessly captured. She was spitting mad at herself for that. She had failed Cade and failed herself—but what hurt the most was that she had failed Zak.

She’d thought she was so tough, knowing how to use a gun, searching for her nephew and going after Cade, assuming she could help. She was nothing but easy prey.

The room was empty, just bare cement walls, a steel door, a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and some kind of vent with a grating over it. It was close to the floor and too small to fit through, even if she could get the grating off with her hands tied behind her back.