The ride to the airplane is met with silence. More fucking silence and so much of it that I’m getting tired of it. This whole retreating into himself as things get progressively worse is grating on my last nerve.
“I can’t take it anymore, Logan. What the hell happened down there? And what has he done with Irina?”
He stares out the window for a beat. “He has her strapped to some explosives. And I could see the wiring around the house. It’s not just on her, but around her as well. If she tries to leave, the bomb goes off. If we follow, it goes off. “
“Then what are we doing?”
“When I traced the call, it locked on to the GPS of his phone. I can access it anytime I need to.”
“So, we let him go back to her, and we find out his location without tipping him off?”
“Exactly.”
“And if he sees us and decides to take us out with him?”
Logan pulls into the private hangars of the small airport and turns the car off. Before he gets out, he winks at me. “Then we better make sure this is one hell of a banging plane ride.”
I groan and roll my eyes, but get out of the car as well. Logan’s sense of humor is clearly not the reason I’m with him but as long as he doesn’t stay quiet, then I’m all for the cheesy innuendos and tacky remarks.
We settle into our temporary home that is the GAMTech plane. I grab a couple of bottles of water from the small refrigerator behind the bar and set them on the table. Logan is scrolling through a tablet in his hands.
“Find anything good?”
“No, Fuckface seems to still be in Miami. But why give us ten hours to get to Miami? He’s obviously not staying here.”
I sit down next to the stack of manila folders left on the table earlier. I find the one marked with his name on it and open it up for the millionth time.
“Okay, let’s start from the beginning. His files say he grew up in New York, went to school at The University of Texas where he met Amber Fenner. They got married, had two kids, and then he had his accident while driving to an airport near Austin. Broke both legs, one shattered so badly that they amputated. Minus the accident, his life seemed pretty cozy until his wife split with the kids. He moved back to New York only a year and a half ago to start working for Irina. Most of his adult life was spent in Texas.”
“Five bucks says he’s stashed Irina there.”
“Make it ten.”
“Let me see how long it will take to get us off the ground and to Texas and you give JoJo a call. Ask him for anything regarding any addresses and places he lived. Or on any property, he owns now. We only got his New York residence. My gut is telling me we aren’t far off on this.”
“Well, lunatics always stay close to home. And even if he’s not there, this is a good potential lead we have to go on. And hey, if he is headed this way, we’ve got a head start.”
I reach into my pocket for my phone and give Jo that phone call. With everything we’re preparing for, flying to Austin takes no time at all and the three-hour flight seems to have passed almost instantly. With another car waiting for us and a new plan in motion, we head to our motel for the night to settle in.
Something startles me awake. It’s not a phone ringing. It’s not Cameron’s light snores – which I’ll have to give him grief for later – or the eerie silence that settles around us for the night. It’s the same pained feeling in my gut. The one that’s been eating me alive for weeks now.
I know we’re close. The GPS tracker has worked like a charm since I traced the call yesterday. But something compels me to look at the tablet I’ve had my nose stuck in since we got on the plan last night. I flip the cover over and swipe my finger across the screen until the app pops up.
Point-five miles away. The light blinks so close to our location that I almost think he’s trailing us. But when it turns into the neighborhood across the street, I know right away where he’s headed.
“Goddamn, we were right.” My stomach actually begins to ease. Fuckface is in our own backyard. Two hours from Houston, we’re so close to home that I can almost smell the salty water of the Ship Channel and breathe in the musky taste of the smog. I turn to my left and watch Cameron as he lies sprawled across his bed. I throw a pillow at him and bite back a laugh as he jumps up.
“Get dressed, Doc. We’ve got a house to stake out.”
I watch his eyes open up, awake and alert. In five minutes, we’re dressed in our camo, goggles, boots, and have every weapon strapped to us.
We’re a two-man army on a mission to take down the most dangerous man in the country at the moment and the only thing that scares me is our lack of backup. Wilkerson and his men will be here tomorrow night. We’ve got clearance on this until they arrive and even though we have direct order to not shoot the hostile, to not engage him or provoke him in any way, Cameron and I both know that it isn’t as simple as asking us to hold off. For everyone involved, save for Suzie and JoJo, this is just another day at the office. For us, this is our life.
When we get to the car, I hold out a cup of stale coffee for Cam. We chug them down before I even get the car started. A quick energy fix to get us going. I hand Cam the tablet and he starts giving me directions.
“Park over here,” he points to a curb a few minutes later. With our gear at the ready, we walk the last few blocks to the small house on the corner. Nothing in this neighborhood looks safe. Everywhere you look, there’s a grungy, rundown, beaten home on almost every street we pass. Most of them are unoccupied, some with squatters in them. The next couple of streets are nothing but trees until after the third one we pass. An open field and a lone house sit away from the rest of the neighborhood.
“Cam, you see what I see?”
“Yes.”
On the porch of the little rundown house is the man I confronted no less than eight hours ago.
“I’ve got him in my scope. He’s just sitting outside like half the world isn’t out for him.
I’m about to tell Cam to take a shot when Steve turns in our direction
“Do it now, Cam. Take the shot.”
Except I don’t hear the shot ring through before he ducks inside his house.
“I can’t. He’s got the whole house wired. One move and this whole block – hell, half this crappy little city – is gone.
I hear the phone in my pocket ring and we look at one another. I pull it out and it’s him
“Fuck, we screwed up,” I whisper, before activating the speakerphone and answering.
“How do you know where I am?” the voice asks bitterly.
“My little secret, asshole.”
“Look at the window.” I turn my head and he’s got a knife aimed at Irina’s throat.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Cameron spits out in frustration. “Even I can see her face from here. What the hell is wrong with you? She did nothing more than give you a job, security, a good life. And you strap a fucking bomb to her chest as a thank you?”
“Do not use His name like that! I’m doing this for Him! You need to leave, now. Or I promise I’ll detonate everything right now. I’ll slit her throat and that will be on you and then I’ll blow the whole place up!”
“Please,” I bark out while watching his moves. “Even you said that God has a plan for Irina. What would He think if you just took over?”
I goad, I taunt, I try to draw him out. Anything for a reaction that will make him drop Irina and come after us.
But I’m wrong. So, so very wrong. As he slides the blade across Irina’s pale throat, redness seeps out before she falls to ground.
I stand there frozen as I hear the laughter bubble up and out of the phone.
“Logan, what did you just do?” Cameron’s voice rings through my paralyzed state but I can’t answer him.
“You see, Logan?” the voice gibes at me from the phone. “Why give me the power if I wasn’t supposed to use it.”
“Logan?” A soft whimper calls to me through the phone.
“Christ, she’s alive?” Cameron mutters to me. We both turn back to the window and Steve stares at us, an eerie smile spreading across his face.
“Yes, you idiots, she’s still alive. Barely. Now here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to call your men and tell them this is between us. I don’t want to see them, hear them, sense them, anything. This is between us. Go back to your motel and I will call you soon with your final instructions.”
He hangs up the phone and disappears behind the heavy curtain.
“Let’s go.” My voice is deep, gruff, emotionless.
This fucker is about to pay.