The Prophet (Ryan Archer #2) (24 page)

It was sprinkling now. A few of the cars that passed on the street already had their wipers on. The sun was setting. Even with the gathered clouds heavy with rain, ribbons of orange and purple were visible on the horizon. The sky rumbled. The streets were busy, sluggish with traffic. Archer was happy to be on foot. Too many days in the truck, too many miles and hours stuck in traffic stole a piece of one’s soul, he believed. It felt good to sweat, to loosen his legs and feel the muscles burn a little.
 

He couldn’t shake Danielle Robbins from his mind. She had been facedown in the reservoir, hair twisted and matted, streaked with slime and crud. The recovery team had lifted her out and carried her to their van. She was already bloated, eyes open and vacant. Her lips were swollen and blistered. Archer wanted to know what they had done to her. He wanted to know how she died. Her death pissed him off, and he was ready to do something about that.

When he was within half a mile of the church, his phone rang. It was Jason Eckhart. Archer pulled up and leaned against a light pole.

“Talk to me,” he said.

“Got a name for the second gunman who jumped you,” Eckhart said.

“Go ahead.”

“Name is Markovich. Born in Berlin but family moved to the Soviet Union when he was twelve. He joined the Soviet air force straight out of school, became a pilot and flew MIGs. When he left the military he went into private security and did contract work for banks and various other corporate entities.”

Archer was staring south into traffic. He swiped mist from his face. Headlights flashed in his eyes as traffic streamed by.

“Tell me something I actually need to know,” Archer said.

“Right. Well, here’s where it gets interesting,” Eckhart said. “The private security firm that hired him was run by a man named Victor Klosko, retired Soviet army. According to the intel I was able to get my hands on, Klosko is a no bullshit kind of guy. Ruthless. Bloodthirsty. All-around nasty dude. And here’s the kicker, guess where Klosko is now? He works as head of security for the Church of the Narrow Gate.”

Archer leaned away from the light pole. He felt warmth spread through his chest, like a giant smile. He finally had the link he’d been looking for. Klosko was the missing piece of the puzzle that made the big picture swing into focus.

Archer dialed Webb. The call went voice mail. So he tried Rosemary’s desk line.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Never mind,” he told her. “Where is Tom?”

“He decided to distract himself with another client for a few hours.”

“Good plan. Any word on the kids?”

“No. Nothing,” she said.
 

“What about Karla?”

“She’s staying with a friend. I’m going to drop by later and check on her.”

“Okay. Call the hospital and get the latest on Smith. Send me a text. I’m going to be unavailable for most of the evening.”

“Where are you?” she asked again.

“On a beach with a drink,” he said.

Rosemary smiled. “I wish I was there with you.”

“You and me both.”

“Ryan,” she said. The smile was gone.

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

Archer set his phone to silent.
 

The streets were lined with towering palm trees and multi-million dollar homes. Cars were parked along both sides of the streets. Streetlights had already begun to come on. The rain had arrived, sizzling on the sidewalk. Archer jogged to the opposite side of the street and cut down a cross street when he realized how close he was to the church property.
 

The fact that Silas Sawbridge had hired a man like Victor Klosko to head up security spoke volumes to Archer about how much value Silas placed on keeping people out and protecting his secrets. It also told him those people weren’t going to play games. He was walking into a hornets’ nest.

The stone privacy wall loomed directly ahead in the gloom of evening. A moving van was parked at the curb and Archer used it to shield himself from perimeter cameras. The church sat on a thirty-acre spread. That was a lot of ground to cover without being spotted. It sat on a corner lot and he was certain they had cameras and motion-sensor equipment mounted everywhere. The rain was good because it would reduce visibility for the cameras. Archer had worn black, but that ultimately didn’t matter. What mattered most was the ability to think like a shadow.

The moving van was parked on the opposite side of the street from the privacy wall. The rain was coming down harder, drumming on the roof of the van. A Porsche was parked behind the van, and a Honda CR-V behind the Porsche. He remembered the photos of Tatum from her bedroom. Her sad eyes. Her small form hidden beneath the baggy sweatshirts, desperate to fade away. The pain reflected in those young eyes had made her susceptible to the promises of people with ulterior motives, and had led her to put her trust in a shadowy organization. He remembered the photos of her friends, and thought about Cecile on the table in the morgue and Danielle floating in the muck. His gut told him that Victor Klosko had made the call to do away with both girls. The muscles of his back tightened. His adrenaline was rising.

The street was greasy with rain. The palms swayed in the wind. A middle-age jogger in running tights and an Under Armour pullover ran past him without a word and without breaking stride. He watched her disappear around the sweep of the curve in the road. Archer walked across and stood close to the wall. Stared up past the tangle of ivy to the swaying branches. The wall was low enough to hook his fingers along the top edge if he made a good jump. He looked for cameras but didn’t spot anything obvious. So he made his first effort, bending at the knees and springing up, but made a poor grasp at the lip and slid back down.

His hands were bleeding. He wiped the wet grit off onto his jeans, then glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one had noticed. His second jump was better. He managed to successfully hook the fingers of his right hand onto the lip and claw his way up. He hoisted himself up and over, dropping into a crouch on the other side. The ground was a bed of pine needles over lush green grass. He was surrounded by the sound of rain falling amid leafy tree branches. It caused him to flash back to weeks spent deep in tropical rain forests, stalking the enemy, and being stalked by them. He could almost taste the vacuum-sealed rations and sleepless nights camped on the damp ground.

He crouched against the trunk of a tree, his eyes sweeping the terrain, watching for movement and lights. He remained frozen, moving only his eyes for a full five minutes. It felt like an eternity. Rain rattled the branches and ran down his face.
 

Archer touched a hand to the Beretta.
 

From his position he still couldn’t see the castle. He felt uneasy about having to cover so much open ground. Lightning crackled and lit the grounds for a full one Mississippi. It gave him a better idea of how to navigate. That was the good news. But there was also bad news. Because he had seen two men standing a hundred feet ahead, carrying automatic weapons and walking directly toward him.

* * *

The dark-haired man was named Grohl. He stood in the kitchen of the grimy sixth-floor apartment with his cell phone to his ear. His partner, the blond, was named Havitz. Havitz was seated in the bedroom with the two children. The door was closed. Grohl was speaking to Victor Klosko, updating him and receiving updated orders.

The children had been injected with a sedative at the time of the abduction to make them sleep most of the day. The sedative had now worn off and both children were awake, hungry, and growing restless. Grohl hated kids.

“Keep them occupied and keep them quiet,” Klosko said impatiently, then dropped off the line.

Grohl put the phone away and growled. He would have preferred to kill both kids now and dump the bodies in the desert for the animals to dine on. Babysitting was a waste of his time. He knocked on the door and gestured for Havitz to step out.

“How are they?” he asked.

Havitz grimaced. “I want to bury them in a deep hole,” he said. “They say they are hungry. They want to play. They complain every five seconds.”

Grohl glanced around his partner into the room. The children were huddled together on the mattress.
 

“They haven’t eaten all day,” Grohl said. “Perhaps we should bring food.”

Havitz nodded. “I’m hungry too.”

“Full stomachs might keep them quiet.”

“I doubt that, but it’s one less thing for them to complain about.”

Grohl frowned. “What do children eat?”

Havitz shrugged. “Hamburgers. Pizza. Terrible food.”

“Can you handle them while I step out?”

“Just go,” Havitz said. “Everything here is under control.”

Grohl considered this for a beat, then nodded. “Keep them quiet. I won’t be long.”

Havitz closed the door and returned to his chair.

Grohl locked the front door as he went out and took the elevator down six floors to the car.
 

Rain had beaded on the window over the mattress. Sonny was transfixed by the streaming water, more out of boredom than actual fascination. The rain streaked down, obscuring the glass. He watched the droplets race to the bottom of the pane, cheering for one and then another. It was actually kind of exiting to his young, bored mind. He smiled, naming them. Then his mind would wander to the cracks and stains in the ceiling and wondering how the cracks and stains had gotten there.
 

His sister looked angry, and had continued to have staring contests with the man in the chair. Natalia was much more moody than her brother, and the man in the chair was officially on her bad side. She wanted to kick him in the shin.

Natalia was a planner and schemer. She had been since birth. Sonny was more happy go lucky. Natalia had an edge. She was always thinking, always looking for an angle, even at six years old. She had awakened and sat up on the mattress, leaned against the wall, and started pondering their predicament. She had stared at the blond man in the chair, watching his eyes, biding her time, listening to the stories the two men told them about Mom and Dad coming later to get them. She had watched the window, watched the bathroom door, watched the man with the dark hair come and go. The entire time her mind had been hard at work.

* * *

Tom Webb felt trapped. There were times like this when he wished he were more like Archer. He wanted to disregard the rules, ignore the apparent dangers of a given situation, scoff at the threats of madmen, and simply take action. But today he felt paralyzed. His children had been taken and he had been told they would be harmed if he didn’t do exactly as told.
 

He felt like a horrible father. The worst father in the world. Both of his children were in danger, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

On the other hand, maybe there was.

THIRTY-SIX

Archer pressed himself flat to the ground. The two men in the distance had stopped walking but were staring in his direction and appeared to be talking. Archer’s face was in the grass. He could feel the steel of the Beretta pressing against the base of his spine. He held his breath.

The men angled away, surveying the grounds. They were near enough that Archer could hear them talking. One of them was talking into a walkie-talkie. Archer could hear a voice from the walkie-talkie feeding them updates. He could hear voices but their words were obscured by the white noise of the rain.

From his position, about fifty feet from the wall, the castle was still not visible. The church sat on a hill, surrounded by staggered trees and other landscaping, and yet another wall made of stone. Visibility was limited due to the trees and overcast sky. The moon had been blotted out. Halogen flood lamps were mounted in trees and along the wall up ahead, casting an eerie amber glow. The two men he was watching drove away in a golf cart, cruising down a paved path toward the gate to the street. Archer waited until they were out of sight before he moved.

He crab crawled on his elbows for a hundred feet, pulling himself along, knowing he had to be patient. He was cautious to steer clear of the flood lamps and motion sensors. His military and FBI training had taught him to be a man of infinite patience. He caught his first glimpse of the roof of the castle and used the folding binoculars to glass the surroundings. Raindrops beaded on the lenses. He still couldn’t see enough to make a proper assessment but somewhat recognized what he was looking at based on the Internet photos he’d found.

It took another ten minutes of patient advancement to reach the interior wall. There was shrubbery planted along the south side. The wall appeared to be at least a hundred years old but could have easily been a thousand. The stones and grout were slick from the rain. Archer placed a hand flat against the wall and moved silently through the shrubbery. At the end of the wall he leaned out and peered beyond to the front of the castle.
 

The castle was well lit. Flood lamps in the rain gave the place a faraway, dreamlike appearance, like it would have been better suited in the mountains of Transylvania. There was a circle drive at the entrance, with an ornate fountain placed at the center of the blacktop lane. Several cars were parked around the circle drive. The fountain gushed and bubbled as if the evening was complemented by typical Southern California weather. The statue in the fountain was an angel with an infant child tucked beneath one arm, soaring toward Heaven. Archer ignored the religious imagery and focused instead on the logistics of the task at hand.

Headlights appeared and Archer ducked behind the wall. A thorny bush was in his face. He remained in a sitting position with his back to the wall as a car approached and stopped at the castle’s entrance. Archer twisted around onto his knees and leaned out to have a look. The car was a Rolls-Royce with a California tag. A man got out of the driver’s seat and opened an umbrella. He walked around the car and opened the door for a woman of about sixty and held the umbrella for her until they were both safely under the portico where the rain couldn’t reach them. A man with thick, broad shoulders in a dark suit stood guard at the entrance. The couple from the Rolls approached and presented proper ID. The man in the suit spoke into a radio mike clipped to his lapel, and a moment later the door opened and the woman was welcomed inside. Then the man with the umbrella returned to the car and drove around the castle and out of sight.