Killer Focus Page 22

  “Le Clerc.” She was bluffing, but anything that made Colenso feel less secure had to work in her favor.

  He shrugged. “Lopez can’t kill us all, only a selected few, and most of them are past their used-by date.”

  The pronouncement was chilling, highlighting the real personality that Colenso had successfully masked for years.

  Taylor worked her fingers, stimulating the blood flow as she skimmed the sitting room. Most of the surfaces were bare. She couldn’t see Colenso’s wallet or the keys he’d used to lock the cuffs, which meant he was either carrying them in his pocket or had them stashed in the briefcase she’d seen on the backseat of his car. “Lopez has finished the cabal. No criminal network can survive that kind of exposure. Reichmann will close you down.”

  He set his empty glass down. A muscle worked along his jaw. The silence drew out, punctuated by the increasing whine of the wind and the spatter of rain on the windows. “Who told you about Reichmann?”

  Taylor spotted the briefcase, slotted beneath the elegant side table that held the decanter. Unless Colenso left the room, there was no way she could get to it to search for the keys. “That she really runs the show, and that she’s not included in the book that she lost? Who do you think?”

  His stare was intense. “What le Clerc knows about the cabal wouldn’t cover the back of a postage stamp.”

  “But it’s enough to take it down. Nazis operating on U.S. soil? The media will go crazy. The witch hunt will make McCarthyism look like an Easter egg trail.”

  “It won’t happen.”

  “You can’t stop it”

  “Yes, I can.” He picked up the briefcase, laid it on the table, flipped it open and pulled out a plastic Ziploc bag with a syringe in it. “And you’re going to help me.”

  She stared at the syringe. “The damage control’s a bit late. Lopez has already killed three cabal members.”

  He smiled. “Did you think we didn’t know what Lopez was up to? As far as Reichmann’s concerned, Lopez couldn’t be doing a better job if he were on the payroll.”

  Her stomach sank. That answered one question. Colenso didn’t work for the cabal as a whole; he worked directly for Reichmann. His interest was in protecting her. As long as she survived, Colenso was still in business. “Reichmann might be safe for now, but Lopez won’t stop.”

  His stare was direct and cold. “He won’t reach her. Reichmann is connected.”

  Radcliff had been a senator. If one member of the cabal had managed to step into the political process, it was a given that others had, too. Fischer was investigating on the basis that national security was threatened from within the country’s security agencies. “What are you talking? Political? Or the Intelligence community?”

  “Come on, Jones, you can do better than that.”

  Higher than the intelligence community itself meant he was talking the White House. “So, what now?”

  He smiled. “We drive to the motel.”

  Colenso’s cell phone buzzed. He answered, speaking in monosyllables, then hung up.

  “Who was that?”

  “Not lover boy.”

  Her stomach sank. He had seen through the ruse with le Clerc. He knew he was dealing with Fischer.

  The phone rang twice more. Colenso’s conversations were brief and concise; he was putting his men in position.

  Colenso walked over to an occasional table, pulled on latex gloves and took her gun from his briefcase. He checked the clip, extracted his own gun from his shoulder holster and replaced it with hers, and suddenly the full scope of Colenso’s plan was crystal clear. He wasn’t happy just to reclaim the book. He was going to ambush Fischer, and anyone else who made the meeting at the motel. Using her gun, he would then stage the scene to make it look as if she was one of the killers. Once she was dead, he would plant the syringe on her, linking her to Shaw and Tate’s deaths. His choice of ketamine—a drug that had sent her into months of therapy and had, arguably, lost her her job—made sudden sense.

  The tabloids would love it. When interviewed, Colenso would make sure to emphasize her past association with Lopez, her problems with ketamine, and leak the false surveillance report that had “exposed” her as the FBI mole. In one stroke he would have cemented her role as Lopez’s insider in the FBI and covered his own trail, and Reichmann’s.

  If the plan ran smoothly and Reichmann managed to influence her “connections,” support for the investigation into the cabal could be scaled down or even withdrawn. Reichmann would remain anonymous and protected and Lopez and Taylor would go down in history as the villains.

  The only hitch in Colenso’s plan was the existence of the ledger, which was incendiary enough to guarantee a continued flow of support for the investigation. But if Colenso destroyed the original and Lopez’s copy never came to light, that avenue to expose the cabal network would be gone. “What about Lopez? He’s not going to stop.”

  Colenso shrugged. “Now that we know he’s working to a list, every time he kills he presents us with an opportunity to take him down.”

  Us. The calmness of his statement reminded her that Colenso was working with a team. His men would already be in place at the motel he’d chosen.

  She had never thought of Colenso as particularly clever, but he was. He was keeping her alive for now, but only because he couldn’t afford to kill her until shortly before he did the other killings. If he shot her now, rigor would set in, negating the “evidence” of his staged murder scene. He needed all of the murders to happen within a window of an hour and, preferably, just a few minutes.

  He picked up the briefcase and jerked his head toward the door. “Time to leave.”

  Minutes later, Colenso turned off the narrow country lane and onto a highway. Taylor stared at the landscape, now dotted with houses. A luminous sign indicated they were entering the city limits of Portland. Traffic thickened. They had to be close to the motel, so she didn’t have much time. Colenso braked. Across the intersection a highway patrol car was stopped, waiting for the lights.

  Suddenly, she knew what she had to do. Fischer would know it was a setup, but if he had to play by Colenso’s rules he wouldn’t stand a chance. If she could attract some attention, maybe even get them stopped by the highway patrol, she would have a chance at escaping. At the very least, she could delay Colenso’s schedule and give Fischer the opening he needed.

  The lights turned green.

  “I feel sick.” She leaned forward and used the movement to fumble at the seat belt clasp. The belt went slack.

  The patrol car flashed past. Sucking in a breath, she flung herself sideways, grasped the wheel and wrenched. The car spun sideways across the road. Horns blared, tires screamed. The gnarled branches of a tree appeared, suspended, in the headlights. A split second later the car hit the tree with a sickening jolt and she was flung sideways.

  The engine screamed as Colenso put the car in Reverse. The tires spun, then finally gained traction, and the car shot back. Scrabbling for the door, she tried to get out. The door, which was locked, wouldn’t open.

  She heard the snick as Colenso unbuckled his seat belt. Instinctively, Taylor swung, using the cuffs. Blood arced from Colenso’s mouth. She had a moment to register the recoil of his fist, then hot light exploded inside her skull and everything went black.

  Thirty-Five

  When she came to, the car was parked on a quiet side street, which meant Colenso had managed to get the car back on the road. Dimly, she could hear the sound of a siren in the distance.

  Colenso climbed out, then reached in and pulled her across the driver’s-side seat. “If you’re awake, you can walk. If you don’t walk, I’ll shoot you now. We’re close enough.”

  Apart from the glow of the motel light and the residential houses clustered around it, the street was pitch-black. Colenso—or Fischer—had taken out the street lighting. Hope surged. Her money was on Fischer.

  His fingers bit into her upper arm as he pulled her out of the car. He kept
a tight grip on her arm as they walked.

  Taylor scanned the street. It appeared to be empty but, from the conversations she’d overheard, she knew Colenso had at least three men staking out the meeting, and probably more.

  Keeping to the shadows, they turned into the parking lot.

  Deliberately, Taylor dragged her feet. “How’s your schedule?”

  “We’re on time. Hold out your hands.” He jabbed the barrel of the gun in her throat, unlocked the cuffs and put them in his pocket. “Talk again and I’ll shoot.”

  As they passed motel units with vehicles parked outside, her gaze was automatically drawn by a gray truck. There was no mud spattering the wheel rims or toolbox fitted to the rear of the cab. It wasn’t Fischer’s truck, but it was the same model and the same color. Her heart sped up as she skimmed the rest of the vehicles parked outside the units. They were mostly sedans, with the odd SUV just for variety. At a guess, the sedans belonged to the motel’s business clients, the SUVs to tourists on holiday. The truck, a no-nonsense workhorse of a vehicle, stood out like a sore thumb.

  As they got closer, she noticed the plate. It was a rental, and suddenly she was certain Fischer had placed it there. He had rented the same model truck that he owned and parked it outside the motel unit as a signal.

  Movement flickered in the unit opposite where the truck was parked. Colenso’s head whipped around. A series of detonations filled the air with thick, choking smoke. Time seemed to slow, freeze. A door was flung open and metal glinted. Simultaneously, a dark figure flowed up from one of the small gardens separating the units. “Taylor, down.”

  Fischer.

  Colenso’s hand came up. He was already firing, his grip viselike as he pulled her back toward him, using her as a shield.

  Smoke swirled, stinging her eyes. The air stank of cordite. Fischer was down. Raw panic exploded, a fierce sense of disbelief. A dark shadow appeared next to Colenso, then a second. His men, she realized.

  She heard the roar of a powerful engine and headlights cut through the smoke. A van braked to a halt; the passenger-side door slid open. A burst of gunfire split the air; one of Colenso’s men went down. Colenso jerked her toward the van. The change in direction gave her the momentum she needed. Instead of pulling away, she surged toward the opening. As Colenso stumbled, off balance, she spun, grabbed the hand holding the gun and used her momentum to slam it against the side of the van.

  Colenso grunted. The gun skittered across the asphalt. Tearing free of his grip, she flung herself clear.

  “Bitch.”

  The door slammed as she pushed to her feet. The van accelerated out onto the road, fishtailed and shunted aside a vehicle blocking the exit. Gunfire erupted, the sharp thud of rounds hitting metal punctuating the roar of the engine as the van disappeared from sight.

  She picked up the gun Colenso had used—her gun—and stumbled over to Fischer. He was sprawled on his back. For a heart-stopping moment she thought he was dead, even though she knew he had to be wearing body armor.

  Relief poured through her as he wrenched at the Velcro fastenings of the Kevlar vest he was wearing and sucked in a breath. Colenso’s sustained firing had knocked him over, but the ceramic plates in his vest had taken the brunt of the impact. He was winded and bruised, but otherwise unharmed.

  Fischer spoke rapidly into a mike, bringing himself up to speed with the search for Colenso. When a dark shadow—one of his men—melted out of the trees, he pulled her to her feet, retrieved his automatic weapon, and urged her out onto the street and into the rear of a van similar to the one Colenso had used.

  Fischer leaned in the door. “Bridges is staying with you.”

  Bridges, the dark shadow, stepped into the van and closed the door. He pulled off his balaclava and held out his hand. “You can call me Matt.”

  She shook his hand. Young, fit, a Southern accent and very short hair. At a guess, ex-Navy.

  She stared in the direction Fischer had gone. “What happened to Shaw and Tate?”

  The warmth in Bridges’s expression evaporated. “Shaw’s in recovery, Tate’s on life support. We’ll know in a few hours.”

  Within twenty minutes, several of Portland’s police cruisers had blocked off the street and a news crew had arrived. The last of Fischer’s team, which for this operation had included a number of FBI agents, their faces blanked out by balaclavas, had piled into a second van and left. Fischer, a balaclava now in place courtesy of the camera crew, had wrapped up the formalities with the Portland PD. Colenso’s men, the five that had been caught, had been charged with attempted murder, resisting arrest and a number of weapons offences, and had been taken to the Portland police station for processing. Since two had criminal records and one had a warrant out for his arrest, the likelihood that any of them would be released on bail was slim.

  The operation had been high risk, and only partially successful. Taylor had survived, but Colenso had managed to slip the net.

  Visibility deteriorated as a heavy, cold rain set in. The news crew left, frustrated by the weather and the lack of action. The van door slid open, but this time it wasn’t Fischer. Dana Jones, followed by Jack, climbed in out of the rain.

  Taylor’s throat closed up. Of all the things she hadn’t expected to happen, this was at the top of the list. The meeting could only have been arranged by Fischer; no one else had the pull and the nerve.

  Dana hugged Taylor, the pressure fierce. “Fischer’s given us five minutes, then we have a rendezvous with a chopper at an airfield just outside of Portland.”

  That, at least, made sense. With Jack’s past, Fischer would want to avoid the airport itself, because the press would be staking it out, expecting at least some of the personnel, maybe even the prisoners, to fly out from there. “Where to?”

  Dana sat next to Taylor, keeping a firm grip on her hand.

  Jack took an adjacent seat. “Florida.”

  Taylor glanced at Dana. “You’re going with him?”

  Her expression was wary. “For a couple of weeks. Maybe. I need some time out.”

  The van door slid open again. Fischer pulled off his balaclava. “Time to go.”

  Dana hugged her again. “Stay in touch. You’ve got my number.”

  A vehicle pulled up next to the van. Dana and Jack ducked into the rear passenger seats. Seconds later, Fischer motioned for Taylor to step out.

  The rain had eased to a filmy mist that wreathed the sidewalk and trailed across the road. The crowd of onlookers that had gathered to watch the show had thinned, driven off by the rain and the fact that for the past hour, nothing of any note had happened.

  Fischer dug in his pocket for a set of keys and depressed a locking mechanism. Ahead a vehicle beeped and lit up. Taylor recognized the gray truck that had been parked in at the motel. Fischer must have moved it out to the road, which made sense, because the motel was still choked with police cruisers and sealed off from traffic.

  Climbing into the truck felt like going home, which didn’t make any kind of sense, since it was a rental, and nothing about Fischer should represent “home.”

  Fischer pulled out from the curb. She studied the houses flashing by. A lone highway sign indicated they were heading west, not south—the direction she had expected him to take. “Where are we going?”

  “Vermont. Cold Peak is about two hours away.”

  The sense that Fischer wasn’t playing by the rules intensified. He had liaised with the Portland PD and the Bureau, but if he was following procedure he should have joined his men for the debriefing. “What’s going on?” The question was rhetorical. She already knew they were out on a limb; she just had to understand why.

  His gaze connected with hers, hot and edgy and undeniably male. Question answered.

  “Burdett will have your head on a platter.”

  “It’ll be worth it.”

  He handed her his cell phone. “If you want out, all you have to do is put a call through to Burdett.”

  Taylor set the
phone back down.

  Thirty-Six

  At two in the morning, a creak on the stairs jerked Helene out of the dazed limbo she’d fallen into.

  She stared at the deep well of darkness. There was nothing there.

  She remained frozen, the gun locked into position, oblivious to the burning pain in her shoulders and arms. Lopez hadn’t shown. If he had, her men would have opened fire and he would have died.

  For long moments she sat, listening to the incessant sound of the wind and the sea. She checked her watch. It was time to leave.

  Lopez had won this round. Somehow, with that uncanny instinct he had, he had known. Which meant she had to be extra careful leaving. He could be waiting for her outside. If he wasn’t personally there, he would have someone waiting to tail her.

  She’d made the mistake of underestimating him. He had known that she was aware of his killing agenda and that there was only one name left on the list. He had also known that she had chosen to protect herself at the expense of the others. Now—too late—it made a twisted kind of sense that he had stepped back on the last kill, leaving her to carry out the execution and saving him the trouble, but the irony didn’t amuse Helene.

  Using the banister to haul herself to her feet, she made her way down the stairs, wincing at the stiffness of muscles and joints that were no longer young. As she passed the pool of light in the study, she glimpsed Ritter’s legs and remembered that he was dead. For a brief moment she regretted his loss. He had been dangerous but brilliant; she could have used his mind. For the first time in her life she felt truly alone.

  Now, it was just her…and Lopez.

  The glare of street lighting woke Taylor. She checked the clock on the dash. It was just after two in the morning and she’d been asleep almost the whole time they’d been driving.

  Fischer stopped for an intersection and a familiar sign registered. They were in Cold Peak.

  The light turned green. Fischer accelerated through the deserted intersection. “Tomorrow you can collect your cat and anything else you need from your place.”