Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The sound that followed Cici’s warning—a sharp, sickening thump—ignited every protective instinct Asher possessed.
“Leave her alone.” The words tore from his throat. Another muffled cry of pain reached him, and he squeezed his eyes closed. “I swear, if you hurt her—”
“Easy, Asher. Easy.” Grant’s voice cut through his earpiece, steady and commanding. “Remember, you’re desperate. You’re scared. Play your part.”
Asher forced himself to breathe, to channel the rage burning through his veins into something useful. The emotion was genuine, threatening to consume him. “Please don’t hurt her.” His voice cracked with the weight of it. “Please.”
The thought that she’d risked pain to warn him, that, as terrified as she must be, she’d tried to protect him, made his chest tighten with something that went far deeper than strategy or duty.
“Much better.” Gagnon’s voice carried a note of satisfaction, as if he were conducting an orchestra and enjoying the music. “Now that we understand each other, perhaps we can discuss terms. What exactly do you think you have to bargain with?”
Asher pushed down the image of Cici crumpled and hurt. “I have what you’re looking for.”
“Do you now?” There was amusement in Gagnon’s tone. “And what exactly would that be?”
“An SD card.”
Asher counted twelve seconds that followed his pronouncement.
“Interesting.” His tone was cooler now, more calculating. Far less amused. “And how exactly did you find it?”
“I was there when your guys came back looking for it.” Asher kept his voice steady, injecting just enough smugness to sound believable. “Had a front row seat to their little treasure hunt. Amazing how much you can learn when idiots think you’re dead.”
Through his earpiece, he heard Grant’s quiet “Good” and the barely audible sounds of his team moving into position.
“You were listening,” Gagnon said.
Another GBPA agent, Whiteman, spoke in Asher’s ear. “Two men closing in on your location.”
He was well hidden behind an old oak tree. The ditch where he crouched was protected by bushes all around. Even if they managed to track him, he’d see them long before they saw him.
“I heard every word,” he said to Gagnon, his gaze roaming the darkness, thankful for the night-vision goggles Bartlett had brought with the arsenal he’d distributed out of the back of his SUV. Asher picked out the first enemy, coming from the west, the direction of the road.
He continued speaking, his voice steady. “Including the part where they admitted they couldn’t find it.” Asher shifted. Where was the second man? “I dropped a little present in their truck too—a cell phone with GPS. Led me right to your front door.”
“You’re alone?”
“Cici’s got people, and I’ve got people, and they’re all on their way.” He let that hang in the air, still searching…
Got him.
The second man had circled and was closing in from behind.
Asher had gotten close enough to the front gate to let himself be seen. So far, the plan was working.
He needed to finish the conversation and move before they got close enough to hear. He had about two minutes.
“Thing is,” he said, keeping his voice low, “I don’t care about taking you into custody or bringing down your organization.
I don’t give a rip if you keep doing whatever it is you’ve been doing.
I’m not here to make you pay. All I want is Cici.
But if you and I can’t come to terms now, well, our people will be here soon, and then it’ll be too late. ”
“Why not just let them do their work?” Gagnon asked. “Maybe they could take us all out.”
“We could kill every one of you, no problem. But she could be hurt, and I’m not willing to risk that.
Do you want to deal, or take your chances?
Because if you wait until every law enforcement agent in New England converges, I won’t be able to control what happens to you—or this SD card. Your window’s closing.”
The men moving in still didn’t show any sign they’d seen him, but he needed to shut this down. To take these two enemies out.
“Think it through,” he said. “You have five minutes.”
He ended the call and shoved the cell into his jeans pocket. Through the night-vision goggles, he watched the men converge from opposite directions on his general location, their movements deliberate but uncertain. Both wore night-vision goggles and carried handguns.
The first man, compact and wiry, gestured in the direction where Asher hid. His partner, taller with broader shoulders, shook his head and pointed east. As the first man neared, Asher could hear his whispered words.
“I’m gonna swing south,” the wiry one said.
The other guy must’ve answered because he snapped, “I don’t see him yet.”
Asher smiled grimly. I’m about six feet below your eye line.
He eased his knife from its sheath, the matte black blade catching no light in the darkness.
Two targets, two different approaches needed.
The wiry one should go down easily—he moved like someone who relied more on speed than strength.
The bigger guy would be a problem if Asher didn’t drop him fast.
The wiry man stepped closer to the oak, weapon drawn, scanning the forest.
His partner moved in the opposite direction, creating distance between them. Smart, but not smart enough.
Asher waited until Wiry was directly above his position, then exploded out of the ditch. His hand clamped over the man’s mouth as the knife found its mark between his ribs, angled upward toward the heart. The man’s body went rigid, then limp, and Asher lowered him silently to the ground.
He took the man’s earpiece and listened.
“Marco?” The voice carried a note of concern. “You got something?”
Asher whispered, “Yeah,” hoping the commando wouldn’t realize the voice hadn’t come from his partner.
“Coming.” Sure enough, the larger guy started moving toward him.
Asher crouched behind the oak, controlling his breathing. His shoulder throbbed, his knee ached, but adrenaline kept the pain manageable. He had maybe ten seconds before the partner realized Marco wasn’t there.
“Hold up. Patrol,” Grant said in Asher’s ear.
Hold up? They needed to move in. Asher could only divert for so long.
The larger man’s footsteps crunched through the underbrush, moving toward the oak. “Marco, status.”
Asher heard the words both through the enemy’s comms and through the forest. He gripped the knife, sticky with blood. This one would be harder—bigger, maybe more experienced, considering the way he moved silently on the bracken.
Asher was creeping out from behind his tree when the commando spun, raising his weapon.
Asher dove, tackling him around the waist and driving him backward into a cluster of saplings.
The man’s handgun discharged into the canopy above them.
They hit the ground hard, the commando’s breath whooshing out. Asher drove his elbow into the man’s solar plexus, then brought the knife up. The blade caught him in the throat, and he went still, his eyes staring sightlessly at the night sky.
Asher rolled off the body, chest heaving. The gunshot would signal where he was. He needed to move.
He shoved the enemies’ comm units into his pocket, speaking into his team’s. “Two down. Shot fired.”
“We heard.” Grant’s deadpan reply might’ve made Asher smile under other circumstances. “We’re moving now. Stay low and don’t get caught.”
Asher was already jogging, needing to be far from this place before anyone reached him.
He ran deeper into the forest, making all sorts of noise on his way. Follow my breadcrumbs, boys.
His phone buzzed—Gagnon calling back.
He kept moving, silently now, and ducked behind a bush twenty feet from a fallen tree, hoping the enemy would look there first. He pulled out his phone and answered. “I bet you hoped I wouldn’t pick up.”
The question was met with a long beat of silence. “The men?”
“Won’t be reporting in.”
“You just signed your death certificate.”
“You’d better hope not.”
“You have no cards. Every second you evade capture is another moment of torture for your little girlfriend.”
Cici screamed, punctuating the point.
“You will protect Cici, or I will end you.” He let fury resonate with the words. “With a push of a button. And if your goons happen to get to me first, you’d better start running.”
Speaking of goons, he spotted a couple moving through the woods, far enough away that he wasn’t worried he’d be heard. Not yet, anyway.
Gagnon said, “What are you talking about?”
“If I don’t check in, my dead-man’s switch activates. Every name, every transaction, every dirty secret of every dirtbag you’ve collected goes public.”
“You’re bluffing. How could you possibly have—?”
“It’s amazing what you can do with AI these days.
Just had to upload the information to the cloud and type up an email, addressed to law enforcement and, for good measure, every newspaper I could think of.
Times, Herald, Globe. Even added the Inquirer out of Philly.
Wouldn’t want your friends at the club to miss the news. ”
Guys like him always had a club, didn’t they?
“It’s scheduled to send in half an hour. Unless I stop it, that is.” Asher let that simmer, then said, “Are you ready to make a deal?”