The lead man grabbed the woman’s purse and pulled out her wallet. He flipped it open and saw her Illinois driver’s license. “Jill Fastone,” he informed the cell leader, who promptly relayed the information over the radio. “She was in here with the primary and she was holding a weapon on him. Over.”
Master recognized the name from the mission briefing. He quickly calculated his next move, feeling precious seconds ticking away. “This is Master. Terminate. Over. Break. Surveillance, we’re missing the secondary target. Find her. Over.”
The door to the ladies’ room swung open and the waitress peered around. “Are you all right, miss?”
Lisa raised her head from the sink and met the other woman’s eyes. “I’m all right. Something I ate.”
“I was just checking on you—the way you ran in here and all,” the waitress explained.
Lisa blinked and tried to sort out her thoughts. She couldn’t confront Philip here in the bar, and not with that woman next to him. She decided to go to the room and wait for him. “I think I’ll just go back to my room and lie down.”
Lisa walked out on unsteady legs, her eyes seeking the booth where she had seen Philip and the woman. They were gone. Lisa continued toward the door to the lounge, fearing the coming stormy confrontation.
“Please,” Jill Fastone whispered, her eyes riveted on the large black bore pointed at her. “Please don’t.”
“What are you doing here?” the cell leader asked.
She shook her head. “Please. Just let me go. I won’t say anything.”
He held up her pistol. “What were you going to do with this? Who sent you?”
“I can help you!” she pleaded. “I can give you information about—”
“Let’s go!” The third man hissed, not interested in what she had to say. “Master said terminate. We’ve been in here for seventy-five seconds.”
The cell leader pulled the trigger, and Jill Fastone’s body settled onto the plastic with a thump and a twitch. “Let’s wrap ’em and go,” the cell leader ordered. They rolled the bodies in the white plastic. The third man, who’d been watching out the window all this time, cracked open the door and took a quick look. “All clear.”
The cell leader and the first man picked up Philip Cobb’s body and headed out the door.
“This is Surveillance. I’ve got what looks like the secondary leaving the lounge. Over.”
“Door, did you get that? Over.”
The cell leader looked up from his end of the body they were carrying and spotted the woman on the sidewalk fifty feet away. “Fuck!”
Lisa Cobb stared at the two men with the bundle between them, and she realized they were staring back at her. They dropped the bundle, and she gasped as Philip’s body rolled out of the plastic. The men were pulling guns from their jackets. She turned and ran.
The door cell leader hissed into his microphone, “Where’s she going? Over.”
“Into the lounge. Over.”
“This is Master. Clean up and let’s get the fuck out of here. Over.”
“What about the secondary? Over.” The door cell leader watched the woman disappear into the lounge; he was torn between taking care of the dead body at his feet and the live one running away.
“You want to follow her in there?” Master’s voice snapped at him over the air. “Do as I goddamn tell you. Clean up and clear out. Surveillance, you maintain. Over.”
The men dumped Philip Cobb’s body unceremoniously into the back of the van. Jill Fastone’s followed. The three men swept the room, removing all signs of occupancy and relocking the door on the way out.
The van pulled away from the motel and was on the interstate heading north within two minutes.
“Do you have a phone?” Lisa demanded of the bartender.
He looked at the desperate woman and jerked his head toward the restrooms. “There’s a pay phone back there.”
Lisa glanced at the front door, expecting at any minute to see the two men come hurtling through, guns ablaze. She reached across the bar and grabbed the man’s arm. “I need to call the police! Right away.”
The bartender extracted his arm from her grip and peered at her, his mind struggling with the conflict between the woman’s obvious panic and the house rules. He grudgingly reached under the bar and pulled out a phone.
Lisa grabbed the receiver and punched in 911. The other end was picked up on the second ring.
“I’ve got a call!” the commo man yelled out. “A unit to respond to this location. Possible two-five-one.”
Master twisted in his chair. “Who’s responding?” The commo man glanced at his screen as he listened. “One-four.” He tapped the glass. “This one. About five minutes out.”
“This is Master. Everyone pull back to alternate assembly point. Over.”
“This is Surveillance. What about the woman? We’ll lose her! Over.”
Master leaned forward and spoke slowly into his mike. “This is Master. We won’t lose her.” His voice became ice cold. “The next person who questions my orders is dead. Out.”
Chapter 4
CHARLOTTE
29 OCTOBER, 12:44 a.m.
The cop looked around the empty motel room and then back at Lisa Cobb. “Doesn’t look to me like anybody was in here, never mind someone getting killed.” He scanned a page of his notebook. “The desk says this room is reserved for a Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart, but they never checked in.”
Lisa sank down in the cheap chair and stared around her. Philip was dead. Everything was gone. All she had was the few dollars in her purse. She didn’t exist as a real person anymore.
“And,” the cop added, “since you can’t show me any ID, I think we might have a problem here. I talked to the bartender and he told me that one of the waitresses says you were sick in the bathroom just before you called nine-one-one.” He considered Lisa. “I don’t smell any alcohol on you, miss, but there isn’t anything to back up what you’re saying. I’d take you in and run you for drugs, but I get off shift in thirty minutes.”
He stuffed his notebook back in his breast pocket. “I don’t know what your story is, lady, but don’t waste our time. If your boyfriend dumped you here and is gone down the interstate now, then call someone who can come get you.” He gestured for the door. “Get out of here and I’ll forget all about this.”
“But I’m in the Federal Witness Protection Program and my husband was too, and they killed him!” she explained for the fourth time.
The cop nodded. “Right. And you were just sitting here in a motel and the mob found you and killed him and left you alive and made everything disappear. Uh-huh.” He pointed at the door again. “I’ve heard better stories than that to get out of a speeding ticket. Get going.”
Lisa stepped out of the room, feeling the early morning chill sink into her bones. The cop opened the door to his car and paused, watching Lisa. She turned and walked down the sidewalk, not sure where she was going but knowing she had to get away from the motel. Her body was working on automatic, her mind no longer able to function after too many shocks.
“The cop called in clear.”
Master leaned forward. “She’s not with him?”
“Negative.”
“Nothing from the room?”
An irritated look flashed over the commo man’s face, but his back was to the other man. “The cop’s going off shift. He called in nothing on the woman or the room,” he repeated.
Master’s foot pushed the transmit button. “Surveillance, this is Master.”
In the van parked next to his at the rest stop, the man sitting in the passenger seat pressed his own transmit. “This is Surveillance. Over.”
“It’s clear. Move in and reacquire the secondary target. Over.”
With a squeal of tires, the van roared out of the parking lot, heading back to exit 12.
The radio crackled in the van. “Master, this is Door. I know what to do with the remains of the primary, but what should I do with the other one? Over.”
Master thought about that for a few moments, then a nasty smile crossed his face. He pressed the transmit button with the answer.
The lights of the all-night truck stop beckoned just before the on ramp to the interstate. Lisa walked along the side of the road, her shoes crunching in the gravel. The patrol car drove by slowly, the officer swiveling his head to look at her pointedly. She saw his brake lights come on; he was waiting to see what she did. She walked across the oil-spattered asphalt and into the diner. A couple of truck drivers eyed her briefly over their steaming cups of coffee as she settled onto a stool. She looked out the window and the cop car was gone.
“Coffee,” she said as the waitress came up. She had to think. She opened her purse to grab a dollar bill and spotted the card that Donnelly had given her. She grabbed it the way a drowning person would a life preserver.
“Can I have some change, please?” Lisa said quietly, giving several dollar bills to the waitress.
She took the change and went outside to the pay phone on the wall. A set of headlights shining from the off-ramp caught her eye. A van with dark windows rolled by slowly. Lisa caught her breath—the van looked exactly like the one Philip’s body had been thrown into. She dropped the phone and quickly walked back into the illusive safety of the diner, then watched from the window as the van disappeared into the darker shadows of a closed gas station on the far side of the road.
“Got trouble, little lady?”
Lisa tore her eyes away and stared at a man in grease-stained overalls. A big wad of chaw poked his cheek out to the left, and the broken veins in his nose spoke of large quantities of alcohol imbibed over the years. The skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “That’s my rig there,” he said, pointing at a run-down tractor truck with a livestock trailer attached. “You need to get out of here?” he persisted.
Lisa glanced across the street one more time and then nodded. “Yes. Where are you going?”
He grinned and stuck out his hand. “Carrying a load to slaughter up at Greensboro. Name’s Ted, but back home in Texas they call me Bubba.”
“Lisa.”
“Let’s roll, Lisa.”
“Secondary is getting into a tractor trailer. Georgia license AFT- 649. Too many people to do anything here. Over.”
“Shit,” Master swore to himself. He keyed his mike. “Maintain contact.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of aspirin.
“You just get in a fight with your husband or something?” Bubba asked.
“What?” Lisa said, her red-rimmed eyes momentarily looking away from the rearview mirror.
“Well, you got a wedding band on your finger there, and you been crying, and some asshole’s following us,” Bubba reported succinctly.
Lisa thought quickly. The van had been behind them now for the last ten miles, ever since they’d pulled onto the interstate. “It’s him. He’s been beating me.”
“What?” Bubba glanced over with his forehead furrowed.
“My husband. He’s been beating me. I’ve got to get away from him.”
Bubba sat in silence for a few moments. “Son of a bitch,” he said, pounding the steering wheel. “Son of a bitch. I hate assholes who hit women.” He looked over. “You got any kids?”
Lisa felt her heart lurch. “I had a daughter.”
“Had?”
“She died two years ago.”
“Shit, ma’am, I’m sorry.” Bubba’s face tightened. “He didn’t kill her, did he?”
Lisa couldn’t do it anymore. She slumped forward, head in hands, and the tears came out in great heaving sobs.
“Oh, shit,” Bubba groaned. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m real sorry.” He looked in the rearview mirror and spit a gob of chaw out the partially open side window. The van was about two hundred feet back. You fucking asshole, he said to himself. He eased up on the gas pedal, and the van crept to within a hundred feet before the driver started to compensate. Bubba slammed his foot on the brakes and, with a startling screech, the rig slid, wheels locked.
The driver of the surveillance van cursed as the rear of the tractor trailer loomed in front of them, closing at a dangerous rate. He slammed on his brakes and threw the wheel to the left. The van hit the shoulder of the road at twenty miles an hour. A tree suddenly appeared in front of the van, and the driver threw up his hands in front of his face as the front end crumpled inward.
“Yea-hah!” Bubba screamed. “Did you see . . .” He paused as he looked at Lisa. His voice dropped to the closest he could manage to a concerned whisper. “You all right?”
Lisa nodded, wiping her sleeve across her face.
“Well, you won’t have to worry about your husband for a while, ma’am.”
Lisa nodded, unable to speak.
“Hey, listen,” Bubba continued uncertainly, the excitement of the moment wearing off. “Where you heading? You got some folks to stay with?”
Lisa sucked in her breath and tried to get control.
“You can drop me off wherever you’re going.”
Bubba looked at her and opened his mouth to speak but then shut it. He drove on.
“This is Surveillance. We’ve lost the target and we need maintenance help. I-85, mile marker forty-two. Over.”