Authors: Dakota Banks
M
aliha took her private jet to Dulles International Airport in Virginia. She rented a silver Nissan Sentra under a false identity, Ginger Wade, and headed out to D.C. on a half-hour drive that took her an hour and a half due to traffic. She checked into a boutique hotel in the business district on Capitol Hill. For a walk-in at 6
P.M.,
all the hotel had left was a suite with a whirlpool tub and two large-screen TVs. It wasn’t her idea of staying under the radar, but she liked the location. She sent Amaro a text to let him know where she was.
If Mr. X is watching me, he knows I’ve gone to D.C. to do the job. There shouldn’t be any more parts arriving at the condo. I’m cooperating, at least so far.
Maliha unpacked her weapons. She didn’t know what the situation would require, so she brought everything, from her CheyTac M200 Intervention long-range rifle system to swords and knives. It was depressing to see them all laid out on the bed.
Just like old times, with someone else jerking my strings.
There was more snow on the ground here than in Chicago, an odd reversal for the time of year. Fresh snowfall made the view out her window, all the way from the back of the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, a postcard scene. What remained on the ground of Chicago’s snow was piled in dirty mounds, recently glazed with ice by the rainfall and drop in temperature.
Why is it I live in Chicago, anyway? I guess it’s because I love the place, filthy snow and all.
Maliha flipped through the dossier on Presser again, looking for clues for why someone wanted this man dead. From the scanty information provided, he seemed to be an all-around good citizen.
Either this is a test to see if I’ll follow orders or this guy has a big secret. What if he is some random man? Do I trade his life for Yanmeng’s?
Her mind was whirling with alternatives, none of them good. She decided she’d try to relax in the tub and then get some dinner. After that, she hoped, her team would have some news for her.
She started drawing water for the tub and tossed aside her travel clothes.
Come, wash off the dust of the journey. That’s something I’ll always have left of Abiyram.
Remembering Abiyram got her started on thinking about Jake, the blood gold, and his possible role in the assassination of her dear friend. She’d shoved aside the heartbreak and the whole subject of Jake when she was swept up in rescuing Yanmeng, but Jake kept making his presence known.
Jake is Ageless. He could speed right by Hound’s surveillance crew at Harbor Point and disappear fast from in front of my door. I don’t know about the static, but it’s worth mentioning to Amaro and Hound. He wouldn’t need me to kill someone for him, though, unless this is some kind of crazy control scheme.
There was a knock at the door. “Room service.”
She walked back toward the door and considered what to do. She hadn’t ordered any room service.
“I didn’t order any room service.”
“Compliments of the hotel, ma’am.”
She thought about ignoring it or telling the man to leave the tray outside her door, but then thought it could be an opportunity to get more information about Mr. X.
Could even be Mr. X.
“Just a minute.”
She went into the bedroom and selected a pistol from the weapons on the bed, picked the right magazine from her supply, and loaded it. Standing off to the side of the entry door, she undid the chain and twisted the deadbolt lock open. The waiter opened the door and began to push his cart into the room. She quickly checked his aura and found that he had some tendrils of black, an imprint of something he’d done that wouldn’t make his mother proud. He wasn’t Mr. X. Still, that twinge of black made her uneasy.
She pointed the gun at him. “Hold it right there.”
Being confronted by a naked guest pointing a gun at him wasn’t in the waiter’s job description. His eyes were round and his jaw dropped. He raised his hands.
“I . . . I don’t have any money,” he said.
“Just do as you’re told and you won’t have a problem. Step inside and close the door.”
The young man was in his mid-twenties. He did as he was told and started to tremble.
“Tell me where Yanmeng is,” she said.
“I don’t know anybody like that, please don’t kill me—”
Maliha stepped closer and planted the tip of the barrel on his forehead. “I said, tell me where Yanmeng is.”
“Please . . .”
She stepped back but kept the weapon pointed at him. “Uncover the plate.”
He did so, but his hand shook so much he dropped the metal cover on the floor. It was a plate of sliced fruit and cheese with a bowl of chocolate-covered cherries in the center.
“I’ll take it back if you don’t want it,” he said.
She lowered her gun. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll keep it. And don’t say anything about this.” She signed the bill to give him a generous tip. It was the least she could do after the scare she’d given him. He backed out of the room with the cart, his head bobbing nervously.
She plucked a cherry from the bowl and headed back to the tub. Muscles relaxed but mind still worried, she went out for pizza from Matchbox on Capitol Hill. She called ahead and lucked out getting someone else’s cancelled reservation for one, probably due to the weather. She walked there, with snow falling gently, leaving footprints on the sidewalk. Walking back to the hotel, hers were still the only footprints, and they were filling in with snow.
L
ater she placed an encrypted phone call to Amaro and waited for the authentication to complete. “What’s up?” she said. “I just had pizza.”
“We had Chinese delivered. If we’re through discussing our dinners, we do have some news for you,” Amaro said.
Maliha heard Hound’s voice in the background. “Gimmee that phone.”
It sounded like there was a brief scuffle for the phone, and then Hound came on. “It’s me.”
“You’re reverting to boyhood, both of you. Couldn’t you just put me on speaker?”
“Oh yeah. Hold on. Okay, we’re both here. You know, this is a lot of stress on all of us. You might cut us a little slack.”
“Sorry.”
“We have what I think you wanted to hear. Nathan Presser is no angel. Remember he was a real estate developer?” Hound said. Without waiting for her to answer, he went on. “He was buying up property in Florida for a high-end condo building with some retail stores on the ground floor. The land was mostly undeveloped but it had great highway access to Naples. A gem in the rough. Once he got the building through, he was planning a whole village of homes, schools, and shopping.”
“Okay so far,” Maliha said.
“The only problem was that there was an old mobile-home park in the way,” Amaro said. “You can probably guess where things are going from here. Nathan pressured and intimidated the residents to leave. The last two holdouts turned up dead.”
“Convenient for him. Was anything ever proven?”
“No. The police screwed up the investigation. Evidence was lost, witnesses changed their minds. Some say money changed hands, but no one was able to prove that, so Nathan got off,” Amaro said.
“He did the killings himself?”
“He was overheard talking to one of his partners about blasting two people in the face, said he wished he’d done it sooner because of all the trouble they’d caused him,” Hound said. “The project went through. His partners bought him out during the first phase of construction, so he’s not associated with it anymore. That was the last time he worked in real estate. Even though he wasn’t convicted, somebody powerful might have scared him out of the business, and out of the state.”
“How sure are you of all this?” Maliha said.
“Absolutely sure. Your target’s a killer. Does that make it any easier for you?” Hound said.
“I don’t like being given orders, regardless of how bad the target is.”
“Does that mean you’re not going to do it?” Amaro said.
Maliha knew exactly what he was asking. Was she going to compromise her morals and give them more time to search for Yanmeng?
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Wait!” Hound said. “You asked about routines. This scumbag lives in Alexandria and runs every morning in Potomac Overlook Park. Seven fifteen
A.M
.”
“Give me his address.” She copied it down. “Every morning? It’s snowing here.”
“Says here he’s a dedicated runner, enters marathons, comes in among the top ten.”
Yes, he’d be out in the snow. The question is, will I?
A
t 7
A.M
. the next morning, Maliha was on the rooftop of a four-story medical building about two blocks from Nathan Presser’s home, with a perfect line of sight to his front door. The snow had stopped. It was the gray, still time right before dawn. She was leaning against an air-conditioning unit, staying in its shadow. Her long-range rifle transit case was at her feet, soft-sided with a backpack sling. She didn’t have a spotter to work with her, but then again she never did. She’d already determined the distance—at 750 yards, not much of a challenge.
The challenge is pulling the trigger.
At about five minutes after seven, she took her place looking through the CheyTac’s sight, her gloves removed for a better feel on the trigger. The sun’s rays were leaking over the horizon, touching a few clouds with gold. A moment later—early—the door opened and Presser stepped out. He was dressed in layers of running clothes. There was a woman in the doorway, wearing a nightgown. He had a lover who’d stayed overnight. She hadn’t expected that. Presser took the woman in his arms and gave her a lingering kiss. Words were spoken, and then the woman crossed her arms over her chest and shivered.
That’s right. It’s cold out here. Close the door, woman.
As if she’d heard Maliha, the woman closed the door. Although Maliha didn’t expect overpenetration of the bullet, she waited a few seconds for the woman to move away from the door. Presser obligingly delayed by bending over to tighten his shoelaces. When he stood up, she held her breath and . . .
For Yanmeng.
. . .
pulled the trigger.
The rifle’s suppressor masked much of the noise. She remained in place to see if a second shot was necessary. Through the scope, she could see the man slumped back against the door, a hole in his forehead and a streak of red tracking where his head slid. She picked up the shell casing and obscured her footprints so that no clear impression remained. Repacking her case, she slung it over her shoulder.
A few blocks away, she was gripped with the pain of the scale on her body moving. It seemed that Anu didn’t mind Nathan Presser’s dispatch from the Great Above. She didn’t think Hound or Amaro lost any sleep over it either. To them, it was like any other case. Investigate, determine badness, bang bang—especially in this case with Yanmeng’s life in the balance.
Back in her hotel room, she called Hound.
“It’s done,” she said, and hung up.
M
aliha was back in Chicago. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since she’d shot a man on his front porch, the kiss of his woman warm on his lips. There was no news about Yanmeng.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Hound asked. He sat next to her at the kitchen table. They were having a cup of coffee, her favorite, Kopi Luwak. It was distinctive and rare. The beans were eaten by civets in Sumatra and passed through their digestive system. Afterward, they were hand-collected from the floor of the forest. Amaro was asleep. He’d refused to drink the coffee once he found out where it came from.
“No.” She understood he was talking about her feelings on the killing.
If I did, it would be with Yanmeng. Don’t think I’m going to get any answers out of his fingers.
She missed the touch of her friend’s mind as he remote-viewed her. He checked in with her daily, and she hadn’t realized how reassuring that had been.
I can only imagine how Eliu feels. Their bond was so close. Shit. Not
was
, is.
Hound shrugged, a move that sent one of his shoulders up higher than the other due to his war injuries. “I know you’re unhappy. We’re all unhappy, but we’re each doing our part. Yours happens to be worse.”
“What was the story with your surveillance people?”
“They swear they weren’t asleep, drunk, or drugged, and that nobody with a package got past them. No word on Yanmeng’s location. I’ve been visiting some medical facilities in person, and Amaro has been hacking in, looking for sedation orders. Are we assuming he’s still in the city?”
“In it or close. Those severed fingers were very fresh. They haven’t traveled far from Yanmeng, not hundreds of miles or anything.”
“Within, say, a drive of an hour or two?” Hound said.
“That’s likely. They hadn’t been refrigerated before delivery.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. What about getting a look at who’s bringing the packages to the door? The cameras don’t seem to do any good.”
“Amaro is worked up about that, but it looks like we need eyeball surveillance.”
Maliha nodded. “From the emergency stairs at the end of the hall.”
Jake watched me from there when he figured out how to get into my haven.
That incident, coming home and finding Jake in her secure sanctuary, had rattled Maliha so much that she’d increased security at the doorway. Instead of having a switch on the wall to abort the launch of deadly darts, there was now a number panel to enter an eight-digit code, her fingers moving in a blur. While nearly blinded, after lunging across the vacant space of the entry chamber—tasks with split-second timing piled on top of each other.
As if reading her mind, Hound said, “Jake phoned while you were in D.C. Again. He’s back from his assignment. What about involving him? He has a lot of resources . . .”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? You planning to wait until Yanmeng’s nothing but a stubby torso?” He narrowed his eyes. “What’s the deal with you two? Trouble in Happy Town?”
“I have new information about him. I don’t know if I can trust him.”
“Tell me . . .”
Maliha held up her hand to stop him.
“So now you don’t trust me, either,” he said. “What do you think I’m doing on those missions we go on? Looking to shoot you in the back?”
It stung to hear Hound talk like that. She trusted him with her life, and knew the feeling was mutual.
“Hound, it’s all too much right now. I’ll talk to you soon, I promise. I love you, you know that.”
“I love you, too. Always have, since you carried my sorry ass out of that killing field in Nam.” He put his hand over hers on the table.
“You know about that?” Maliha thought his rescue was a secret.
Maliha sped into the firefight and crouched over Hound to make sure he was still alive. To her astonishment, the man was conscious enough to react to her, and lifted his arm to her face, touching her tenderly. His fingers left a trail of blood across her cheek.
He must think I am the angel of death come to claim him, yet he reaches out for me.
Then his head lolled to the side. She gathered him up and took him to his platoon, leaving him on the ground so that one of the men tripped over him. She went back to the clearing, but the man Hound had been working on was dead.
“Damn straight. You were my angel.”
“I . . .”
“You don’t have to say anything. It’s between us.”
“Let me decompress a little. I’ll take a shift watching in the stairwell. I’ll tell you about Jake when I’m done.”
“Fine. I have something I need to do anyway. I need to have a talk with Chick.”
“You think he’s involved?”
“With the timing of his coming on board as doorman, maybe.”
Maliha picked out two knives for close-up work and her current choice of pistols, a Sig Sauer P266 in a waist holster. Full sized, with a reassuring heft and fifteen rounds, it was usually her last-ditch weapon. She was trained early in her life with edged weapons and usually turned to them for both attack and defense. There were times, though, when blowing someone away was the best move. Mr. X fell into that category.
Hound woke up Amaro so that someone in the condo was awake and staying with Eliu.
“What’s building security going to think when their stairway cams get a look at me?” Maliha said.
Hound waved his hand in dismissal. “Nothing. Those guys have selective blindness if the bribe is high enough.”
“That’s nice to know. I feel so much more secure.”
Hound headed down the hall toward the elevators. Maliha went in the opposite direction. On the landing of the staircase, she was pleased to find Hound’s viewer exactly as he’d described it: a small hole in the wall a little below waist height. Inside was a wide-angle lens that gave her a view of the corridor. She couldn’t miss anyone coming to her door. She settled down on her knees, blanked out all thoughts about Jake and being a puppet killer again long after she’d left Rabishu’s control, and looked through the lens. She knew that a few people in her building took the stairs for exercise. If she heard one of them coming, she’d step into the hall for a moment.
Six hours later, she stood up and stretched. She’d seen nothing.
Back in the condo, Eliu was fixing dinner. She’d insisted—it gave her something to do. Amaro was ready to take his turn in the stairwell, but Eliu put down a steaming bowl of rice and stir-fried vegetables in front of him.
“You have to eat sometime, and you might as well eat while it’s hot,” Eliu said.
They all sat at the table as she served the food. Maliha was pleased to see her active and contributing in her way. Amaro shoveled in the food with his chopsticks, the bowl held in one hand. He was hungry, but rushed.
“Nothing to report,” Maliha said. “Three people came into the hallway. I know them as neighbors and they each went into their condos.”
“I talked to Chick,” Hound said. “After a little persuasion, he admitted that he receives illegal packages of prescription pills from a car that pulls up in the cab zone outside the building. Three different people in the building pick them up from him. They have pain-pill addictions. He told me the names and I broke into their condos on the off chance that the pain pills are for Yanmeng, but I couldn’t find any evidence of that. I’m not interested in a little personal medication abuse.”
“I’m surprised Chick only has three customers,” Amaro said.
“Told me he’s just getting started. Give him a few more months and he’ll have an extensive client list.”
Eliu said, “When will we hear something about Yanmeng? Shouldn’t he be released now?”
“That’s what we’re hoping, but we can’t count on it,” Amaro said. “Once a blackmailer gets started, there’s no way to compel him to stick to his terms.”
My thoughts exactly.
Amaro stood up. “Sorry to eat and run, but I have an appointment with a spyhole.”
He opened the door and nearly tripped over the box at his feet.