The Rook

The Rook

The B
owers Files # 2

Steven James

(c) 2008 by Steven James Published by Revell
,
a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.revellbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data James, Steven, 1969-The rook / Steven James.

p. cm. — (the Bowers files ; bk. 2) ISBN 978-0-8007-1897-8 (cloth) — ISBN 978-0-8007-3269-1 (pbk.) 1. Criminologists—Fiction. 2. Arson investigation—Fiction. 3. Terrorists—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3610.A4545R66 2008

813 .6—dc22

All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to real people, either factual or historical, is purely coincidental.

Thursday, November 5, 2008

Washington, DC

5:32 p.m.

The Chevy Tahoe sloshed to a stop in the soggy patch of unseason-ably thick snow, and Creighton Melice stepped into the twilight.

He scanned the decrepit Washington DC neighborhood. Drug dealers on the corners. A few blank faces staring at him through the windows of dead buildings. Thick shadows spreading across the street. Creighton drew in a breath of the stale air. Ah yes. Being in the rotting core of the city as the day died around him made Creighton Melice feel right at home.

His lawyer, Jacob Weldon, whispered nervously out the window of the SUV. “So, do you want me to wait for you, then?”

Creighton glanced at him. Weldon. A timid little man with over-ripe eyes.

“No. I’ll be all right.”

“Be careful.” Weldon sounded relieved.

“I always am.”

Less than three hours ago Creighton had been in custody. Dank cell. Second-degree murder charges—and most likely a long prison sentence. But then, just as Creighton was rehearsing his story, Weldon showed up and announced he’d made bail. “You’re a free man,” he said.

“Don’t screw with me.”

“I’m serious.”

“Who? Who paid it?”

Weldon shook his head. “I don’t know. Someone. A friend.”

Creighton scowled. “How could you not know? Didn’t he have to sign for it?”

“Sent someone. A big guy, I’ve seen him before, sitting in on the preliminaries. But he was just a delivery boy. Someone else footed the bill.”

“A friend, huh? Well, none of my friends have that kind of money.”

“Maybe you made a new one. C’mon, let’s get you out of this place. Whoever it was wants to see you.”

So they left the jail, drove around long enough to make sure no cops were trying to keep an eye on him, and then ended up here at 1311 Donovan Street in front of this vacant gray building wearing a tilted sign that read “The Blue Lizard Lounge.”

The place Creighton’s new friend had chosen for the meeting.

After Weldon’s Tahoe had disappeared around the corner, Creighton scoured the ground for a weapon, snagged a broken beer bottle, and leaned his hand against the dilapidated dance club’s metal door. It clung to its latch for a moment and then creaked open.

A hallway stretched before him, lit only by a meager network of lightbulbs dangling at odd angles every six feet or so.

He didn’t like any of this. The meeting. The confined space.

Some guy he didn’t even know paying his bail. Creighton tightened his grip on the neck of the bottle. He’d only used a broken bottle as a weapon once. That night had ended well for him, not so well for the guy who’d been hitting on the woman who was about to become his girlfriend. He figured he could do at least as much damage tonight if he needed to.

As Creighton approached the end of the hallway, he could see two doors, one on each side. A single word had been scrawled on each door. And, while it was hard to tell for sure in the dim light, the words looked like they might have been painted with blood.

He reached out his hand. Felt the word
Pain
.

Still damp.

Tasted it.

Yes. Blood.

The word
Freedom
had been painted on the door across the hall.

Creighton glanced behind him. Only an empty hallway. Then he inspected the doors, checked for light seeping beneath them.

Nothing. Looked around the hallway one more time.

Nothing. Just an empty hallway that terminated here. At these two doors.

Freedom or pain.

Creighton pressed his ear up to each door in turn. Listened.

Not a sound.

He needed to make a choice.

The decision was easy.

Creighton chose pain.

With a soft click, the door mouthed open into a narrow entryway. Maybe fifteen feet ahead of him, a tightly focused light sliced through the center of an adjoining room, probably the abandoned club’s dance floor. A spotlight?

Why a spotlight?

Creighton smelled cigarette smoke. Someone was waiting for him.

His new friend.

Creighton crossed the entryway, and as he stepped into the harsh light, a voice halted him. “That’s far enough.” The voice was electronically altered, but to Creighton, the speaker sounded male.

Creighton paused.

At the other end of the room, about twenty-five feet away, sat a figure with an industrial-strength halogen work lamp glowing behind his chair. Even though the person was starkly backlit, Creighton could clearly see that whoever it was had a gun.

“You chose the correct door, Creighton.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see.” He shielded his eyes, then gestured toward the gun. “So, did you set me free just so you could shoot me?”

Electronic laughter ricocheted around the room. The person motioned his gun toward the bottle Creighton was holding. “And did you come here just so you could slice me?”

“Maybe.”

A pause. “I want to offer you something.”

“I don’t work for anyone, and you can’t buy me off. So, if you’re gonna shoot me, make it a good shot because if you just wound me, I’m coming for you.” Creighton raised the cruelly tipped weapon.

“I’m pretty quick, and if I make it across the room, I’m going to bury this in your belly. How’s that for an offer?”

“Now, now. Don’t I even get a thank-you? Your bail was no small sum, and we both know you won’t show up for the trial.

That’s quite a little chunk of change I paid just to have you come here and threaten me.”

Creighton tried to catch the tenor of the person’s real voice, but whoever it was, he must have had a microphone up to his mouth that changed the pitch and tone of every word as he spoke.

“Well,” said Creighton. “I never asked for your help.”

A coarse voice coming through the mic. “Mr. Melice, I’ve been, how shall I say, following your career.”

“So, you’re a fan. Well, that’s just great.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. I am a fan. You have a great gift.”

“Oh, is that what you call it.” It wasn’t really a question. Silence stained the room. Creighton waited for the guy to reply, and when he didn’t, Creighton turned his head and tapped the broken bottle against the back of his neck. “The base of the neck, right there, or maybe the back of the head, would be your best choice. Although from that range you better know what you’re doing. I’m turning to go now. Take your best shot.” Creighton expected to hear the click as the guy snapped off the safety; it would tell him a lot if he did. None of the guys he’d worked with ever used a safety.

Creighton took two steps. Then heard the voice again.

“I know why you chose this door.”

Creighton paused.

“I can get you what you want.”

Creighton turned. “No one can get me what I want.”

“My friend, you wouldn’t be here unless I could. I never would have bothered with you. You’re the one who posted the videos. I read your blog. I know what you want.”

Creighton wanted to ask how he’d been able to link the videos and blog to him, but obviously it had happened, and at this point that was all that mattered. “I’m listening.”

“There’s something I would like you to help me procure. Your background, skill set, and … unique tastes … make you eminently qualified for this job. When I have it in hand, I’ll give you the one thing no one else on the planet can give you.”

“What do you want me to ‘procure’?”

A dismissive wave of the gun barrel. “More in due time, my friend. For now, I’d simply like to know if you’re interested enough to continue this discussion. If not, you’re free to go. I’ll just consider the bail money an investment that didn’t pay off.”

“Free to go, huh? The next time I turn my back, you’ll put a bullet in my brain.”

“No,” said the voice. “I choose the base of the neck instead.”

A sudden chill. Miscalculation. “What?”

An instant later, Creighton heard the simultaneous crack of the gun and the bright explosion of glass beside him. He didn’t feel the bullet’s impact but quickly scanned his body for an entry wound, for a growing stain of blood. Found none.
It was only the bottle. The guy had shot the bottle out of Creighton’s hand.

Right at the base of the neck.

“That,” Creighton said, holding up what little remained of the bottle, “was an impressive shot.”

“If I wanted you dead,” the voice said, “you’d be dead. I want your help.”

As Creighton threw the remains of the bottle to the ground, he noticed a spray of glass shards embedded in his thigh. Blood began to creep from a dozen wounds. He reached down and started wrenching the pieces of glass from his leg, thinking about how badly it should have hurt. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t. And I can’t trust you either. But that’s the nature of these relationships, isn’t it?”

Lately, Creighton had been working alone, but it hadn’t always been that way. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

“So, are you in?”

Creighton didn’t answer, just finished removing the glass from his leg and dropping it to the floor. But he didn’t turn to go either.

“All right. Good. Then I have a surprise for you.”

“And that is?”

“Your girlfriend. She’s waiting for you out back, in the car.”

Creighton straightened up. “My girlfriend?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

He glanced around the room. “Where?”

The man waved the gun toward the far wall. “Door’s over there.

Keys are in the car. So is your plane ticket, driver’s license, FBI iden-tification badge, and a little spending money, Mr. Neville Lewis.”

Creighton let out a harsh sigh. “Neville Lewis? That the best you could do?”

A crackle of electronic laughter. “Go on. We’ll talk soon. I know you must be anxious to see her.”

“Wait. You know my name, what am I supposed to call you?”

“You can call me Shade.”

The light blinked off, and Creighton found that he couldn’t see a thing except for the flashing residue of color swirling through his vision. The passageway he’d come from spit out a tiny pool of light, but other than that the room was pitch black.

He heard a faint brush of movement beside the chair and realized that if he couldn’t see the shooter, the shooter couldn’t see him.

So.

One chance.

Take care of this guy now.
Then you won’t have to worry about
trusting him, or working for him, or paying him back for any favors.

Creighton crouched low and skittered along the wall. Rushed toward the chair.

Groping through the dark, he knocked over the work lamp, and it clattered to the ground, the hot bulbs exploding on impact.

Creighton’s hands found the chair and he lifted it, swung it, hoping to find the person who’d shot the bottle from his hand, but he found only empty air instead.

He swung again. Shuffled around.

Nothing.

He prodded at the emptiness with the chair for a couple more minutes but found no sign of the man who’d invited him there.

Finally, he decided the guy must have slipped away somehow, perhaps out another door.

Rather than waste any more time stumbling around in the dark trying to attack a phantom, he threw the chair to the ground and started for the far wall. The guy had promised that his girlfriend was waiting for him. He wasn’t sure what to think about that, but he definitely wanted to find out.

Creighton found the door, eased it open. Stepped into the alley behind the club. A sedan with tinted windows sat beside a reeking dumpster. Night had fallen, but a jaundiced street lamp at the end of the alley managed to give Creighton just enough light to see.

He made sure no one else was in the alley, then approached the car and tried to peer through the windows. Too dark.

He didn’t trust the guy with the gun, and he wasn’t sure what to expect when he opened the car door.

A car bomb?

But why? Why waste the bail money? Besides, the guy could have killed him inside the building.

Sounds, soft sounds from inside the car. He reached for the door handle. Clicked it open. “Hello?” he said.

No one in the front seat. He slipped into the car. “Hello?” Turned around.

And found her, lying in the backseat.

A woman he had never met.

Bound and tightly gagged.

He pulled the door shut. Her pleading eyes grew large with terror when she saw him, saw that he made no attempt to free her. They had never met, but he’d seen her face. He knew who she was. She squirmed. Couldn’t get free. “So,” he said, eyeing her, smiling at her, fondling her soft blonde hair. “Maybe I can trust him after all.”

Creighton swiveled around and started the engine. “C’mon, my dear. It’s time we got to know each other. I’m going to be your new boyfriend.”

As he pulled out of the alley, Creighton could hear desperate, muffled cries coming from the backseat. He didn’t need to turn around to know what they were. He knew those sounds well. He’d heard them before.

She was trying to scream beneath her gag.

Yes, he knew those sounds well.

It looked like Weldon had been right after all.

Creighton Melice had made a new friend.