Blind Rage (18 page)

Read Blind Rage Online

Authors: Michael W. Sherer

He drove down the slope slowly, gun ready in his lap, eyes searching the darkness for signs of ambush. But all was quiet. Pulling up in front of the house, he stopped. When no hail of bullets met his arrival, he put the SUV in gear and swung around the circle to the garage. Yoshi’s pickup truck sat inside, as did the older sedan that Alice refused to give up. Even James and Sally’s wrecked hulk that used to be a Range Rover sat in the far bay. He needed to fix it or junk it, but every time he thought about it, he hadn’t the heart to get rid of it, nor the energy to repair it. Analogous, he knew, to the lives of the four people who still lived in the house.

The BMW, though, was gone. Which didn’t mean anything by itself, but if Yoshi and Alice were in the house, he wondered why they hadn’t closed the gate.

Unless
. . .

His heart hammered the bars of the cage that held it. He made a point of slowing his breathing as his hearing became more acute and his field of vision narrowed. Adrenaline pushed his body into battle mode, and he eased out of the car, the pistol out ahead of him in a two-handed grip. He made no sound as he glided across the ground like a wraith.

At the door leading into the house, he crouched low and put one hand on the knob. It was unlocked. He turned it slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, until it couldn’t turn any farther. Drawing in a deep breath, he burst through the door, staying low, and rolled to one side as soon as he was clear. He came up on one knee, swinging the gun in an arc as he quickly panned the room. Yoshi and Alice sat across from one another in the breakfast nook, Yoshi bent over Alice’s pale arm, which was stretched out on the table. Both the arm and the table were streaked red with blood. The pair looked up, startled, but didn’t move or speak. On the floor, a man’s legs stuck out from behind the island, black camo fatigues neatly tucked into combat boots.

“Any more?” Travis said.

Alice shook her head. Yoshi calmly went back to stitching up the laceration in Alice’s forearm. Alice winced.

“Are you two all right?” Travis said, getting to his feet.

“Fine,” Alice said. “Just a scratch.”

“Tess . . . ?” Travis let the question hang.

“I hired an assistant for her. Nice boy named Oliver. I told him to get her out of here and take her somewhere safe.”

“Did he?”

She shook her head. “No idea. We think they made it out okay.”

“A boy? Are you sure?”

“Young man, then. He’s smart, Travis. He’ll figure it out. Tess, too.”

“How many were there?”

“Three inside,” Alice said. “Yoshi thinks he saw another outside, but he came in to help us before all hell broke loose. There may have been others. Judging from the firepower, though, I think they figured four would be enough. Three in here, and a lookout just in case.”

“How’d they get in?”

Alice frowned. “Rosa. Hard to believe. She’s been with us—”

“Since the accident,” Travis finished for her.

“I’m sorry, Travis,” she said. “It never should have happened. This is my fault.”

“Not your fault,” Yoshi said. “She fool us all. Important thing is you save Tess.”

Travis looked around the kitchen. “Where’s Rosa now?”

“She took off with the others. We fended them off long enough to give Tess and Oliver a good head start, but I dropped my focus, and Rosa cut me. Yoshi came to my aid, and they ran.”

Travis walked over to the body on the floor and crouched next to it. He let out a low whistle when he saw the HK MP5K-PDW machine pistol.

“This is military spec hardware, not a street weapon.” He rifled through the man’s pockets, but found no wallet or ID. “Any idea what they were after?”

Alice nodded toward a camera on the table. “That. But the memory card’s gone.”

Travis frowned. “I’ve never seen that before. Is that Tess’s?”

Alice nodded. “I have no idea where she got it. I haven’t seen it in ages, not for a year at least.” She paused, brows knitting. “Oliver took her to school before dinner to ‘get a textbook.’ She must have left the camera at school last year some time.”

“Why was it so important she needed it now all of a sudden?”

Alice bit her lip and gazed into the darkness outside the window. Yoshi looked up from his work on her wound and stared at her.

“What is it?” Travis said.

“He need to know,” Yoshi told Alice. “Better to tell him now.”

Alice sighed and turned to Travis. “Tess thinks she’s been getting e-mails from her father.”

“James?” Travis felt his eyebrows climb up toward his scalp. “It’s not possible.”

“I know that, but she came home early from school very upset. Said she’d gotten an e-mail from Mr. Barrett. While she was sitting here waiting for Rosa to fix her something to eat, she screamed and said she’d gotten another one.”

“You saw it?”

“No, I was in my office speaking with Oliver. But Oliver apparently did. He thought someone might be playing a prank on her. A while later, though, Oliver drove Tess and a school friend on some ‘errand.’”

Travis knew what the errand had been. Cyrus Cooper had called him to tell him what Tess and her “escorts” had been up to. And if they’d traced the source of the e-mails to a computer at the office, that meant someone at the company had sent them.

“I wonder how Rosa knew what they were up to,” Travis murmured.

“She took them a snack in the library,” Alice said, “after they came back from their errand. She must have overheard or seen something.”

Yoshi finished wrapping a bandage around Alice’s arm. She pulled the sleeve of her cardigan down over it and rose from the table as if nothing had happened.

“I’m sorry about the mess, Travis,” she said, all business. “We’ll clean up as soon as we can. In the meantime, can I fix you something to eat? That must have been a long flight.”

“Sit down, Alice,” he said gently. “Please. I owe you and Yoshi a huge debt for protecting Tess. And after all those years in the army, I think I can manage to fend for myself in the kitchen. You’re not to lift a finger until that arm heals. Now, would you like some tea?”

Somewhat cowed, she lowered herself into the chair and said, “Yes, thank you.”

Yoshi got up, collecting blood-soaked towels, and went to the sink.

“I will make tea,” he said. “Maybe you go call garbage collector.” He glanced at the body on the floor and sniffed.

“That’s a good idea, Yoshi. Excuse me a minute.”

Travis set his gun on the counter and walked down the hall to a small study past the library. Even though he’d taken over the reins of James’s company, he couldn’t bring himself to use James’s office in the house. The study suited him better anyway. Distrusting his cell phone and the house landline, he unlocked a drawer in the small desk and pulled out an encrypted satellite phone. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was close to ten in the evening on the East Coast—late, but not too late. He dialed a number by heart.

“There’s been some trouble,” he told the voice on the other end. “I don’t know what it means yet, but we we’ve got one down in need of disposal. I’d rather not involve the locals. At least not for a while, until we know what we’re dealing with. I know there has to be an official investigation, but any way we can keep this on the q.t. for now?”

“The line’s clean, Travis. You can speak plainly. One down . . . Not one of ours, I take it. Anyone hurt?”

“Alice, but not badly. Jack, Tess is missing. I presume she’s safe—some kid who’s helping her with school got her out on Alice’s orders—but they’re both in the wind for the time being.”

“Any idea what they’re after?”

“James may have risen from the dead, general. Apparently, he’s been sending Tess e-mails. Best we can figure out is that she was directed to retrieve a memory card on a camera.”

“Could it be him? No, I know he didn’t come back from the grave, Travis, but could he have set up some program to do this?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. I mean, look how far behind we are on the program because of the damn worm he used to infect the software for the prototype. Just when the tech geeks think they’ve got it licked, it morphs into something else.”

“We can’t afford more delays,” Turnbull said. “Better figure this out quick, Travis.”

“Until I talk to Tess, I’m not sure what I can do.”

“Then find her.”

“I’ll call in the team. You know if any of them are out of pocket?”

“Not so far that they won’t come when you call.”

“You’ll get someone on our garbage disposal problem?”

“It’ll probably be a couple of hours, Trav, but I’m sure I can get a secure forensics team out of JBLM to take possession. Don’t touch anything. I’ll have them start an investigation but keep it off the books for now. That way, if anyone asks, you and the folks there will come out okay.”

“Thanks, Jack.”

Travis didn’t see any need to tell him he’d already gone through the dead guy’s pockets. After all, he hadn’t really disturbed the scene.

“Good luck, son. Keep me posted.”

C
HAPTER
24

I’d never seen death up close before, other than roadkill, which doesn’t count. Actually seeing someone die, violently, was different, unpleasant. For a brief moment I envied Tess, glad that what I’d seen wouldn’t haunt her dreams for months the way it would mine. But shock had set in, distancing me from the event like a thick layer of fuzzy cotton, numbing me to its horror, its finality. I concentrated instead on keeping us alive, trying to figure out the right tack to take. I didn’t like leaving Tess alone after what had happened, especially in a strange place, but I didn’t see a way around it. The Beemer had to go, much as I enjoyed driving it.

Out on the street, I called Matt, told him what we’d found, and asked if he was willing to meet me. His nonchalance when he said he could was less than convincing. We agreed on the high school parking lot, and I told him to give me twenty minutes or so to get across the lake. The street bore the usual stream of traffic common at that time of evening around the U District. Knots of pedestrians clotted the sidewalks, students mostly, laughing and talking. Solo professionals on their way home from working late race-walked around them, heads down, eyes front. No suspicious characters lurked in doorways, but I executed three ungainly pirouettes on the way to the car to see if anyone had followed me.

Paranoia still skulked around my head when I reached the high school. I pulled in to the nearly empty lot, parked, and sat there a moment, checking for signs of a tail. When Matt stepped out of some shadows and rapped on my window, my heart tried to leap out of my chest.

“You trying to kill me?” I said as I climbed out.

“What’s wrong with you?”

The funny smile he wore faded as I told him what had happened since we’d dropped him off earlier. By the end of it he looked a little green around the gills.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“No, I’m in.” He shrugged. “Nothing else to do.”

A door banged open loudly. Voices floated across the parking lot. Several figures stepped through the rectangle of light at the far end of the gym and came through the darkness toward us. Baseball players leaving after a game.

“Woof, woof,” called a voice as they approached. “If it isn’t the seeing-eye dog.”

Hoots of laughter followed as Carl and three friends walked into a pool of light.

“Trouble,” Matt muttered.

“Where’s your bitch?” Carl said to me. “Tsang, are you his bitch now?”

My hands balled into fists, but more laughter from Carl’s buddies reminded me the odds were against me.

A tall blond kid I remembered from the jock table at lunch took a step. “Yeah, Tsang, you his
biatch
?”

“Shut up, Tad,” Carl growled.

“You should learn some manners, Carl,” I said.

“Who‘s going to teach me? You?”

“You want to go, just you and me?” I said evenly. “Come on, then, let’s go. Or do you need your friends there to help you?”

He hesitated, unused to being challenged. A brief look of uncertainty crossed his face, but his friends were watching. His gaze darted, looking for a way to save face, and landed on the BMW behind me. His eyes lit up.

“Nah,” he said. “You want manners? How’s this? Give me the keys to your ride before we stomp your face into the pavement,
please
.”

I hesitated, then tossed him the key fob. “Oh, what the hell. It’s not my car.”

Carl plucked the key out of the air and stared at it for a moment. His buddies hooted. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed he wouldn’t get to rough us up or elated I’d just handed over an $80,000 car.

“Guess you’re
my
bitch now, huh?” he said, eyes gleaming.

He strutted past me, key fob held high, buddies circling around him, clamoring for a ride. He shrugged them off, too selfish, apparently, to share ill-gotten gains, and climbed in the driver’s seat. He started it up and backed out with a chirp of tires. Throwing it in gear, he roared out of the lot. The others eyed us angrily, muttering, but slowly wandered off.

“What did you do that for?” Matt said.

“You liked the alternative more?”

“No, I mean . . . He just stole Tess’s car.”

“Let him have his jollies. We’ll report it later. Have you got wheels?”

“Sure.” He nodded toward an old, beat-up, compact car.

“Nice to see not all the kids here get a Mercedes when they turn sixteen. Let’s go.”

I directed him into the city, and a short time later I let us into my apartment. Matt headed straight for the laptop on the kitchen table.

“Oliver?” Tess said in a small voice.

“Yeah, we’re back. Are you okay?”

“What took you so long?”

“We ran into Carl,” I said. “It was no big deal. We didn’t get into a fight or anything, but I sort of let him borrow the BMW.”

“My mom’s car? You let him take the car?”

“He won’t go far with it. I’ll get it back later.”

“Uh, guys?” Matt said. “I can’t help you much here.”

“Why not?” I said, looking over his shoulder. “I thought you were the expert.”

“I am. What you’ve got here is source code for a program of some sort.”

Other books

Fade to Blue by Bill Moody
Paper Sheriff by Short, Luke;
The Heart Of It by M. O'Keefe
Blue Lorries by Radwa Ashour
The Story of a Marriage by Greer, Andrew Sean
Magic at Midnight by Marteeka Karland