The Alpha Deception (8 page)

“Yes.”

“And then they were stolen.”

“I had nothing to do with it. Please let the cat go!”

McCracken wasn’t ready to do that yet. “Who are these men?”

“I don’t know. I swear it! They sought me out, paid me enough money so I wouldn’t have to move from my house. I never meant any harm!”

“These men did plenty today. They’re coming, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Let the cat down.”

“How long?”

“A half hour. Twenty-five minutes maybe.”

“I’ll be going, then. I’ll have to tie you up but I won’t make the bonds too tight. I promise.”

He let the panther down easy and tied Lydia Brandywine into a chair with drapery cords stripped from the wall. He checked to make sure they weren’t too constricting and was halfway to the double doors when he headed back for the glass table.

“She’ll probably be in a bad mood when she wakes up,” he said, lifting the cat food dish up and placing it next to the snoring panther. “I hate to see a good meal go to waste.”

The car screeched onto Lydia Brandywine’s property exactly twenty-seven minutes later. McCracken watched it from a concealed position behind a tree with his Hertz rental stowed safely out of sight. After fifteen minutes the three men returned to their car, and Blaine climbed back into his and followed them all the way back into Manhattan. It was rush hour and he fought with his nerves as the car he was shadowing maneuvered ahead of him, out of sight on occasion. He couldn’t risk being spotted by the men. If they were pros, it wouldn’t take much. He had given Lydia Brandywine his real name and she would have passed it on to them. A check would be made, and the men would know they had problems.

He managed to keep their car in sight right until it swung off Park Avenue onto East 48th Street. They continued on past Lexington and slowed as they crossed over Third Avenue into the Turtle Bay neighborhood, parallel parking into a spot before the low 200s. Blaine pulled past them and double-parked. In his rearview mirror he watched the three men climb out of their car and ascend the steps to the right half of a slate-brown townhouse duplex squeezed between a pair of larger brick buildings. One of the men pulled the steel security grating open and another unlocked the townhouse’s door. Seconds later all three men had disappeared inside.

McCracken saw a space open up almost directly across from the townhouse and reversed diagonally across the street to take it. Tires squeezed against the curb, he settled back against the seat. At this point his plan was to wait until the three men, or at least two of them, departed again before making his way inside the townhouse. Until then, he was alone with his thoughts.

The choice of Turtle Bay for a headquarters or meeting place struck him as strange. After all, this neighborhood was one of Manhattan’s most fashionable, home to numerous celebrities and wealthy businessmen. The townhouses on the north side of the street enjoyed a common garden, Amster Yard, which was not visible from the front; just one of the many features which placed Turtle Bay among the city’s most prestigious residential areas.

Two hours passed. Blaine watched the night fall soundly and the lights come on in the street, those inside the rows of townhouses slowly joining them. Cars continued to line both curbs but traffic had thinned markedly. Across the street, an entry light flashed on over the townhouse he was watching.

McCracken felt something was out of place and gazed up at the windows. None showed any light. Odd. If the men inside were still there, at least some of the lights should have been turned on. Their car was in place and Blaine was certain none of the men had left.

A familiar chill gripped him, a slow shudder following in its wake. He lunged from the car and hurried up the steps to the townhouse’s entrance. The steel grating had not been locked, leaving him only the door to negotiate past. Just a single lock which Blaine had out of the way in under thirty seconds. The door opened into darkness. McCracken stepped inside and waited for his eyes to adjust before pressing on. His vision sharpened and he saw a front hall with narrow rooms on either side of it, one of them a kitchen, and none furnished. The stairs leading upward curved a few yards before him. Leaving the lights off, he started to ascend, silently in case someone might still be upstairs.

The steps broke to the right as they neared the second floor and Blaine froze. Before him a pair of shoes protruded from a door. At the top of the landing he saw the blood, a pool of it in the center of the room’s hardwood floor. The room smelled of must, mold, emptiness.

And death.

The other two bodies had been propped up together along the wall in a neat posture, as if they had been searched after death. Each displayed a single bullet hole, like a ruby in the middle of the forehead. All three had been gut shot as well, which accounted for the blood on the floor. The bullets in their heads had been merely to finish them.

Whoever had done the shooting liked to inflict pain. Or had been ordered to.

McCracken stepped further inside. This room had a huge draped window overlooking the lush garden. The killer could have gained entry to the garden from another of the townhouses and once there could have made a straight route here, entering through the back. His task completed, he would have left the same way. That was why Blaine never saw him.

But had that task been completed satisfactorily? The killer had left the men alive long enough for questions, but they must not have pleased him; signs of a search were evident among the room’s meager furnishings. The stuffing of the furniture had been sliced up and scattered. The drawers from the room’s single desk had been pulled out and their contents tossed around.

McCracken had seen all this before. The apartment must have been a temporary headquarters for a team of agents. Right down to the black rotary telephone; standard issue in mobile operations.

These men had worked for the government!

And now they were dead. Killed by whom, though? McCracken felt the anxiety of confusion tearing through him. He had assumed all along the three men were part of the force behind the 47th Street assassins and the man with the tranquilizer pistol. Now, he wasn’t sure. A second party had made itself known—a brutal and efficient killer.

His heart thudding now, Blaine noticed a yellow legal pad sticking out from under the desk. He moved over to inspect and found the remnants of tape just where he expected them. Yes, standard procedure would dictate that the assigned team make notes at all stages of the operation to ensure accurate reporting. These notes would be kept hidden, usually taped to the underside of a drawer where a casual search would leave them unnoticed. This too was procedure.

Unfortunately the killer must have also been aware of this; the ragged fringe at the pad’s top indicated a number of pages had been torn free. All the pages that remained were blank.

But not totally. McCracken placed the pad atop the desk and grabbed for a pencil. Using the side of the point, he skimmed lightly over the top remaining blank page to trace out whatever had been written on the preceding sheet. The notes contained on it would have been the most recent. It took several minutes of very subtle work with the pencil before the outlines of words and phrases became visible. He found mention of the crystals, of Lydia Brandywine, and Earnst’s gem parlor.

And at the bottom, by itself, a four-digit number. The very last entry the dead agents had made.

McCracken went ice cold.

The number was T.C.’s room at the Waldorf.

Chapter 7

BLAINE RACED BREATHLESSLY
the two blocks toward the Waldorf. His thoughts had shut off by the time he reached the hotel’s majestic entrance. They brought only pain, the realization of a hurt too horrible to accept.

He sped through the Waldorf s doors and took the marble steps leading up two at a time. He rushed to the elevator bank and pressed the up arrow. A compartment slid open and he was inside it immediately, pounding the
CLOSE DOOR
button as if it would make the machine get started faster. Twelve floors later he stepped out and dashed to T.C.’s room. The door was locked, but the security bolts and chain were not in place. He had it swinging open over the carpet less than thirty seconds later.

T.C. sat in a chair by the window, propped up facing the television. Blaine held his breath as he approached and let it out only when he saw the small red hole in the center of her forehead.

Blaine came closer, chewing his lips, fighting back tears. He wanted her to be alive, to be playing possum to confuse the man who had come to kill her.

He had spoken to her five hours before, six maybe. Told her to stay put. Maybe if he had sent her home they wouldn’t have found her. Maybe she’d still be alive. Maybe …

He could see her rushing to the door not long before to respond to a knock, thinking it was him probably. The end would have happened very fast. No struggle. Little pain.

McCracken sank down on the bed, too shocked to cry. He fought to still his shaking.

“Damn,” he moaned. “Damn… .”

T.C. was dead, and he had helped kill her. He accepted the responsibility because he needed the rage that went with it, needed the guilt to push the grief back. The pain in him was sharp and lingering, worse than any bullet or knife. He wanted her back. He wanted it to be eight years ago all over again so he could have another chance.

Why? She hadn’t known anything, damnit!

Whoever was behind the killings in the townhouse was undoubtedly behind hers—the same killer, even, judging by the bullet wound. That there were two forces operating here was obvious. But which was responsible for what? Who was behind the “Hasidim,” the man with the dart gun? What had happened to require such a killing spree? The wild bullets in the street, three dead government agents, T.C., and possibly more.

McCracken buried his rising grief and guilt and forced himself to think. The dead agents were his only lead. They would lead him to someone in the government who knew more of what was going on and how the crystals were connected.

Which would lead him to those behind T.C.’s killing. Making them pay was the only thing he could still do for T.C.

Revenge was no consolation but it would have to be consolation enough.

Blaine covered T.C.’s body with a bedspread. He knew now what wheels he had to set in motion. For situations like the townhouse, various government agencies jointly operated a cleanup service. The contact number was changed often but was readily available. Always an 800 number. He dialed it.

“Sanitation department,” said a voice.

“There’s dirt on 222 East 48th Street in New York City. Operation’s probably on record.”

“That’s improper coding,” the voice came back.

“Send a crew.”

“State your designation please.”

“Tell them it’s going to be a long night.”

“
What
?
Who
is
this?”

McCracken hung up. He had said enough. He knew they would respond because only someone cleared would have the number. They would check the on-call operations roster and find that the townhouse was active. A crew would be dispatched.

He returned to East 48th Street, walking slowly to catch his breath and settle his nerves, knowing it would be awhile before the cleanup crew arrived. In fact it was ninety minutes after his return that a nondescript white van double-parked in front of the townhouse. Two men climbed out and moved up to the entrance. Blaine saw one of them pull the steel grating back while the other worked the door with a skeleton key. Took thirty seconds. Too long. They were dressed in dark blue overalls which looked innocuously like uniforms from the gas or electric company. No one would question them.

At last they had the door open and were moving inside. McCracken waited until the two men were out of sight before drawing close enough to the van to assure himself only the driver remained inside. His elbow was propped into the night air on the open window sill. Blaine came up along the side stealthily, grabbed the exposed arm and yanked it brutally toward him and down.

The driver’s head struck the door frame hard. By the time he registered the pain, Blaine had him by the throat, squeezing just hard enough.

“One chance,” he told the man. “Who do you report to?”

“Don’t know,” the man rasped, straggling to force the syllables out. “Upstairs, they’re in charge.”

McCracken squeezed harder on the driver’s carotid artery until the man was unconscious. Then he made his way to the front door and pressed his shoulders to the left of the frame. Any second now one of the sanitation crew would return to the van for body bags or, more likely, a crate to remove the corpses. He saw a shadow sliding down the stairs inside and shrank further against the building, not even a flicker of his outline visible.

The sanitation man barely had time to open the door before Blaine was on him, hand ramming his face and forcing it backward as he hurled himself inside. He slammed the man hard against the wall, making sure he was out before letting him slump. The final team member was upstairs. The answers would come from him.

After closing the front door, he climbed the stairs and entered the room in silence. The third team member, his back to Blaine, was working on the bodies. Blaine grasped him from behind in a hold that shut off his wind.

He dragged the man to the nearest upright chair and plopped him down in it, easing up on the pressure enough for the man to breathe. He switched his position to the side so he could meet the man’s eyes and let him see the determination in his own.

“I’m going to give you a chance not to die,” Blaine said, maintaining a tight grip. “But only one chance.”

The man regarded him with eyes bulging in terror, proclaiming innocence as well as fear.

“Which branch were they working for?” Blaine demanded.

The man caught his breath and seemed surprised by it. “I’ve got a phone number, just a phone number.”

“I’m listening.”

“585-6740.”

“Area code?”