Undercover Memories (12 page)

A flame momentarily flared behind John’s eyes as the mended skin over the old burns grew tight.
Something about a fire…
no, it was gone. He said, “I don’t know. Seems possible.”

“Yes.” She paused in front of a very shiny red truck with an enclosed cab and an open back filled with hoses and tanks. There was a siren on the hood and a huge wench on the bumper. Lone Tree Vol. Fire Co. was printed in black and white on the door, along with the number 302.

“This one is absolutely charming,” she said as she stepped up on the running board. “Look, the window is down and something is caught,” she added as she grabbed the handle and pulled open the door.

Gasping, she pushed herself away from the truck as though poisonous snakes had jumped out to bite her. John scrambled to catch her before she hit the cement floor, then turning with her in his arms, peered into the cab to see what could have caused such a violent and spontaneous reaction.

With the opening of the door, a body had fallen toward them, face up, legs jammed under the wheel.

The man appeared elderly. He also appeared to be very, very dead.

Chapter Nine

“Who is that?” Paige gulped.

John shook his head as he set her on her feet. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

She looked away, her stomach churning, her head reeling. Three dead bodies in two days was way too much to handle.

“I’m checking the other trucks,” John said, and she could hear in his voice the dread that each might contain a body. She herself seemed unable to move except to turn her head.

But not staring at the man did not obliterate the image that was stuck in her mind. He looked elderly, over eighty, with white hair and wire-framed glasses that had been knocked awry. There was a slash across his throat, but he was dressed in dark clothes so it wasn’t easy to see blood....

Her stomach rolled and she closed her eyes, holding on to the wall for support. All around her, she heard doors opening and slamming shut as John checked for more bodies.

She was aware of his return when he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “No more dead people,” he said. “The poor old guy must have been killed right there in the truck. It’s so cold decay was slowed down.”

“I wonder how Korenev got that close to him.”

“I wonder.” John closed his eyes as he took a deep breath and then fixed his gaze on her face. “I sure as hell hope I didn’t help kill this guy.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Paige said. “We should check the body for some sort of identification.”

“Like a wallet? I don’t think so. It’s unlikely his name would mean anything to either of us, and I don’t want to make an official investigation any harder than it’s going to be already.”

“Spoken like a policeman.”

“Spoken like a man who doesn’t want any of his DNA on a dead body.” He ran his free hand through his hair. “I wonder if he’s a relative of mine. How creepy is that? I could be looking at my own father’s body and not even know it.” He swore to himself and studied his feet for a moment. Frustration was written all over the handsome angles and planes of his face.

“You were adopted,” she reminded him, unsure how that could help. Adopted father or natural one, uncle or stranger, the result was the same. A man was dead, murdered in John’s own space. And John didn’t know for sure whom he was or how he got there.

Nerves and fear scratched at her skin, and suddenly her mind was filled with fear for everyone she knew or cared for. “I have to call Katy.”

“Her phone is dead, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I’ll call Matt.”

She made the call to Matt’s cell and he picked up on the first ring. In the background, Paige heard what sounded like a game on television and the sound of other voices. Male voices.

“Are you guys almost done?” she asked.

Matt had to talk loud to be heard. “We’re getting there. Oh, and Katy says to tell you she called the cops and gave a description of Brian’s uncle and told them you were okay and all and you should stop worrying.”

“You tell her I’ll stop worrying when she gets the hell out of that apartment,” Paige said and hung up, looking around the warehouse, looking anywhere but at the poor, dead man spilling out of the truck. There simply was no good way to put his body back to how it had been.

The place felt like a morgue, and she shivered, anxious to get out of here.

“Don’t you wonder why I have so much security?” John said.

She turned her attention to him. Was it possible his disgrace with the police department and his lifestyle were connected? She had to tell him about his past.

Before she could, he seemed to shake off his doubts. “I’m going upstairs to see if I can find out something about myself. Good, bad or indifferent, I have to know.” He gestured at the convertible and the SUV. “I obviously have transportation now, so you’re free—”

“To return to my apartment where Anatola Korenev has already made a cameo appearance? Oh, wait, what apartment? Sister dearest is cleaning it out even as we speak. Or I could knock on Brian’s door and ask where he dumped all my belongings. Nope, I’m staying with you until this is resolved. Don’t ask me why, but I feel safe with you, so just get used to me.”

He smiled that way he had that seemed to say so much with so little effort. “I shouldn’t admit it but I’m glad. Let’s look around upstairs.”

“And I need to wash up,” she said.

She didn’t take in many details as she made her way through the clutter to the bathroom, which seemed to sport the only real walls in the place. She ran warm water over her hands and scrubbed every inch of exposed skin with soap as though she could wash away evil. It took a while.

Stomach still in a knot, she rejoined John, finding he’d uprighted a chair and was sitting at his desk. There was a roomy satchel at his feet containing what appeared to be a few pieces of clothing and a box of ammunition.

When he saw the direction of her gaze, he explained. “Might as well be prepared, right? I grabbed some stuff.”

“Smart thinking.”

The desk was situated against an outside wall on which were mounted three black-and-white video monitors, two of which appeared to be working. The other had been smashed. The monitor on the far wall showed the front of the warehouse, the one next to it, the back door.

“Find anything in the desk?” she asked, glancing out the window at the empty yard below. No sign of the police…yet.

“I picked a few pictures up off the floor,” he said, gesturing at a small pile.

“Any sign of a computer?”

“None. Whoever did this must have taken it. I found a cord, but the machine is gone.”

As John continued searching the desk, running his hands inside the drawer cavity and under the top, Paige studied the photographs. In one John wore a mortarboard and held a diploma—looked like a college graduation. In another it appeared he was graduating from the police academy. There was one of him taken with a very pretty redhead with a ski lift backdrop signed
Love: Natalie
across one corner and another with a shorter, swarthier man who held in his arms a tiny girl with huge brown eyes. And there was one taken of a polished antique fire engine in the middle of a parade of some sort.

She showed the picture of the redhead to John. “Ring any bells?”

He’d been knocking on the front panels of the old wood desk, but he paused to look at the picture. “Nope.”

“How about this?” she said, handing him the photo of the fire engine. “Is that one of the rigs downstairs?”

“I don’t know. It could be the big one in the back. Wait a second.” He plucked a magnifier from the mess at his feet and angled it over the photo. “I think that’s me standing on the running board. Hey, take a look at the driver.”

He showed the photo to Paige, who squinted as she peered through the glass. “He looks like the guy downstairs.”

John turned the photo over. “No names. It’s dated three years ago, though.”

Paige went back to the stack and shuffled through a few of what appeared to be vacation shots taken in Hawaii. “Any of these jar any memories?” she asked.

“None. Wait a second, this is a false front. Listen when I knock.” He rapped his fingers against the desk panel…it did sound hollow. Running his hands over the wood, he finally managed to slide open a small hidden compartment.

From this, he withdrew a manila envelope, and they both cleared off room on the desktop. John emptied the contents. “My passport,” he said. “And another photo.”

In this picture, a young teenage version of John stood between a man and woman who looked way too old to be his parents. Behind them she could see a river and one end of a bridge with green turrets. It looked somehow familiar to Paige.

She had checked the reverse side of every photo for identifying names or locations and found very little. This time she struck gold in the form of names.
Sergi, John and Galina Ogneva, 1988
was written in block letters.

“Eureka,” John said.

She glanced at him but he wasn’t looking at the photo; his attention was focused on the passport. He opened it and perused the pages. “Late last year, I went to Canada,” he said. “A few months later, I flew to Kanistan.”

“Kanistan,” Paige repeated. “That’s in the Ukraine somewhere, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Wait a second, I remember,” she said, tapping the top photograph with a fingertip. “Look at this picture. See that turret? It’s an unusual color and shape. It’s on a bridge that crosses over to a big hotel that sits on an island in the middle of a lake. It looks like a fairy-tale castle in the winter when the lake freezes over and everything is covered with ice. I used an image of it in a calendar a few years ago.”

He studied the photograph, his finger touching the people. “Who are they?”

“The adults are Sergi and Galina Ogneva and the kid is you.”

He flipped the photo over and then back again. “So, where is this place?”

“Kanistan.”

“Anatola Korenev’s accent sounds eastern European, doesn’t it?” John said.

“It sure does.” They needed more information. She began to pick through the remaining papers when she realized John’s attention was now riveted on one of the outside monitors.

An old, dented, heavy-duty van with an oversize grille and enough antennae to track a satellite had pulled up to the front gate. As they watched, the door opened and a man with a bushy black beard got out of the car. He wore a bandage on his right hand. As he approached the fence and shook the chain and lock, Paige’s stomach did a belly flop.

“That’s Korenev,” she mumbled.

John swore. “He’s getting back in the van. Maybe he’s leaving.”

Indeed, the old vehicle backed up thirty feet, but then shot forward toward the gate. The crash was silent to them, but the monitor screen filled with the images of flying metal as the van battered half of it away.

“Quick, get everything back in the envelope,” John said, scooping up the passport and the other papers.

Paige stuffed the photos in her pockets. She glanced up at the monitors to see Korenev at the back door now, holding a huge gun that looked as if it belonged in a war zone. He fired at the door. The sound traveled up the stairs into the loft. The screen filled with smoke. They’d be sitting ducks if they attempted to use the stairs.

From below, they heard gunfire, then Korenev’s booming voice. “I see you found old man,” he yelled. “You two go next to join him. No mercy this time.”

No mercy this time?
Was the man delusional? Since when had he ever shown anyone any mercy?

A bullet shattered one of the glass panels, and Paige retreated deeper into the room as glass rained down on the floor. My God, they were trapped. They were going to die. Korenev wasn’t fooling around with knives. He had himself an honest-to-goodness automatic weapon and there was nowhere to go....

John grabbed her hand and pulled her into the kitchen, where they hunkered down near the floor, in among cooking gear and dishcloths. He fired off a shot toward the open doorway, which was around the corner from them. “There has to be a fire escape,” he said.

“I didn’t see anything under any of the windows—”

“We couldn’t see the northeast side from any of our positions. It has to be over there.” He fired off another round. “Go find it and use it. Once you’re outside, you’ll have to go out the front gate and run back to your car.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll try to slow him down. Go.”

“You’ll follow?”

“If I can,” he said, pushing her away.

“John…”

“Please,” he said, with a hasty look. “Go.”

As he fired again, she scooted out of the kitchen and made her way back to the northeast corner. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw John creep toward the shattered interior window. The sound of ammunition firing underscored urgency, but leaving him to face Korenev alone was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

Okay, a fire escape had to be attached outside the windows in either the bedroom or the bathroom. Those were the only areas in that corner and she hadn’t seen anything when she was in the bathroom. Maybe it was a rope piled inside a closed drapery, though. She’d have to look. She flew around the big bed, stumbling when she hit a stool, knocking it aside and catching herself by grabbing for a bedpost. She tore open the drapery covering the bedroom window.

And there it was, a metal platform affixed to the outside of the window with an attached ladder. She opened the window and screamed at John as she picked up a stray boot and popped out the screen. She followed it out onto the fire escape.

The platform sported a railing on one side and felt steady enough under her feet, but it appeared the ladder was cantilevered. As she put her weight on it, it creaked and groaned and began to descend. She grabbed for the hand railing and for a dizzying moment thought she was going to fall.

Holding on for dear life, she proceeded down the ladder, trusting it would support her and praying John would find a way to follow.

* * *

J
OHN HEARD THE CLATTER
of metal and hoped it meant Paige had found a way out of this hellhole. Now he had to figure out how to stop Korenev.