Chapter 38 #2
Mick rubbed his reddened eyes. “I almost did,” he said hoarsely.
“More times than I could count. But it was almost like Nicole could smell it on me, in the air. Just as I was working up my nerve, another video-call would come in. Jay, screaming. Every new one worse than the last. Every time, I kept thinking, I’ll just keep pretending to be compliant, keep gathering more intel until I can save Jay, and that just stretched on and on.
I swear, I’m not trying to excuse myself. ”
I just stared at him. “You’re not holding anything back now, right?”
“No reason to,” he said dully. “I’m all yours.”
That made me flinch. “Don’t say that, because I don’t want you, asshole. Hey. Are you wearing a listening device? Did they put anything on you? Inside your body?”
“No,” Mick said. “So far, all contact has been on the phone.”
“And how about that phone? Have they put anything in it? Do they listen to us? Have you planted anything here?”
“No. Just your phone. I have been listening to your calls, for the last few days.”
That stung. I gritted my teeth. “You asshole. This whole time.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. But I was able to persuade Nicole that you would be sure to find any bugs or cameras with your obsessive bug-sweeping protocol, so she didn’t make me plant anything here,” he said.
“I haven’t found anything running on my phone, but I leave it in a drawer by my bed, just in case.
” Mick pulled out another phone. “I’ve got another one.
With a sensor that alerts me if her ringtone sounds, so I won’t miss her calls. ”
Amos stepped forward. “Okay, Mick,” he said. “What have you got for us that you can trade for your worthless, miserable life?”
“It better be fucking good,” Remy said, his arms folded over his brawny chest.
“I’ll give you all of it.” Mick sat at a computer and inserted a flash drive. “First off, their plan is to explode a huge motherfucking bomb at some financial summit in Portland.” He glanced at me. “The one you were supposed to go to.”
“The Emory Summit,” I said. “Right. I bailed, after the elevator incident.”
“They needed a suicide bomber,” Mick said, his voice flat and lifeless.
“I was sure they were planning to force me to do it, by threatening to do some horrible thing to Jay. But they probably decided they liked Kat better, after I told them about the mob hit on her sisters. All the violence in her past tracks better with the—”
“You told Nicole about Kat’s past? For real? You volunteered that information?”
“I…I had to,” Mick admitted, miserably.
“The summit has already started,” I said. “It’s in full swing now. I was supposed to give the opening statements this morning.”
“Yes,” Mick said. “She decided to wait to nab you, until closer to the summit. They made their play in the elevator, but that went to hell, so they moved on to this.”
“If the summit has begun, the bomb could go off anytime,” Jed mused.
“They’ll reel me in first,” I said thoughtfully. “They’ll want me right on hand, to do their dirty work afterward. In all the chaos.”
“I bet she would wait to detonate the bomb until the moment when the most people possible are looking,” Freya said. “She’s a grandstanding bitch. She wants it to be seen by everyone.”
“So, the keynote address?” Darius mused.
Freya paged through something on her phone, frowning at the screen. “That’s tomorrow—no, it’s midnight thirty, so it’s today,” she said. “At noon. Jesus, it’s all happening right now. We’ve got no time.”
All eyes turned to Mick. He looked around, throat bobbing.
“So?” I prompted. “Where the fuck are they? How many? Give us everything.”
“I don’t have a lot,” he admitted. “Today was only the second time they made any physical contact with me, aside from the very beginning.”
“Which was what? Spit it out,” I prompted, through my teeth. I was going to have to drag this shit out of that dickhead.
“I met Nicole in a bar,” Mick admitted. “She chatted me up. Then she took me out into the parking lot and invited me into her car. I got in thinking I was going to get lucky. Then she showed me the first video of Jay, and my whole world went to shit.”
We all looked away from him. The conflict, being so murderously angry and also feeling his shock, horror, and despair—it made my flesh creep. “What did you do?”
“I was so blown away, I didn’t get anything more than her license plate that night,” he said.
“When I followed it up, it was just a long-term rental from the Seattle airport. Reported stolen six months ago. When they told me they were coming today, I prepared as best I could. I still hoped I could save Jay, so I—”
“We don’t give a fuck what you were hoping,” Darius snarled. “We would have, if you’d come to us for help. We would have done any fucking thing in the world for you. But you didn’t, so fuck you. Stick to the point. What have you got for us now?”
Mick pulled up a city map. I came closer, recognizing the rivers and bridges of Portland, Oregon, a few hours’ drive from us.
“I needed to find out where they were headquartered,” he said.
“When she said she was coming, I rolled up about two hundred of the round mini traces in sand-colored putty and scattered them all over the helipad. I figured someone was bound to step on one of them, and take it back in his boot treads.”
“Did they?”
“Yes. Six of them made it into the helicopter. And they all went…here.” He pointed. “A defunct hydraulics factory in northwest Portland. It’s called Braithwaite.”
Darius nodded, slowly. “And you chose to let hours go by before telling us.”
“I was waiting to see if they contacted—”
“Shut the fuck up, Mick. We’re not interested,” Remy said curtly. “Let’s go to Portland.”
“Wait.” Mick held up his hand. “We can’t just up and leave—”
“Watch me,” Remy retorted.
“Really. Listen,” Mick pleaded. “She’ll have specific instructions for Ethan.
She’ll expect him to follow them exactly, in real time, and if he doesn’t, she’ll punish Holly and make you watch.
Trust me, I know. She does not bluff. On the contrary.
She gets off on it. We have to at least seem compliant. Both of us do.”
“Don’t ask me to trust you,” I said. “You were pretty fucking compliant, Mick.”
Mick let out a slow breath, lifting his hands. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, I was. I hate myself for it. I’m so sorry. I’ll do anything I can to fix this.”
“Let me tell you how this works,” I said.
“If we pull off a miracle, and Holly and Kat all live through this, you can leave. Go as far away on this earth as it is possible to go. I never want to see or hear from you again. But if anyone I care about gets hurt, then nothing can save you. I will hunt you down, and I will tear you to pieces.”
Mick gave me a jerky nod. “Fair enough,” he said. “I’m willing to die, if it comes to that. Grateful, even.”
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re willing or grateful,” I told him.
Mick nodded. “So, back to being compliant. When she calls, she’s going to order you to go straight to her. Alone and unarmed. What are you going to do?”
I shrugged. “I’ll go,” I said. “What the fuck else can I do?”
Freya made a sound under her breath. “Oh, God, Ethan.”
“You’re a fine one to talk,” I told her. “You pulled the exact same stunt yourself when they got Jed. I don’t want to hear a single fucking word about it out of you.”
“Aside from that,” Amos said. “You and Mick have to look compliant, but the rest of us don’t, right? That is, if Mick is telling the truth.”
“I am telling the truth,” Mick said, through his teeth.
Amos’s eyebrows tilted up. “If he’s telling the truth about the surveillance situation,” he repeated, his voice stony. “…then she doesn’t have eyes on us at the moment. Darius and Remy and I could go on down to Portland right now, and start gathering intel on Braithwaite. There’s no time to lose.”
“It’s safest to assume Nicole monitors our outside gate,” I said.
“Then we’ll go out the tunnel,” Amos said. He turned to Mick. “Unless you told Nicole about the tunnel, of course.”
“Of course not,” Mick muttered.
The tunnel was an escape hatch I’d designed when I built the place.
It was a short tunnel blasted through the rock that led from the garage to a longer, hidden natural passage through the thick woods.
It opened out onto an old logging road a couple of miles away that connected with the highway farther on.
If they didn’t use headlights, no one would ever see them leave.
“Sounds great,” I said. “Thanks. Make it happen. Please.”
“Okay. Darius and Remy and I will blast out of here right now. We’ll set up shop as close to Braithwaite as possible. Send in a fleet of micro-drones, check the place out, start getting hard intel right now. Preferably before she reels you in. Keep us posted as to what she says and does.”
I nodded, grateful for their loyalty and their competence. “Excellent.”
“Then let’s load up and go.” Amos got to his feet, and Remy and Darius followed suit. They hesitated, near the door, looking uncomfortable.
“Good luck,” Darius said.
“Watch yourself,” Remy said.
I nodded. After the Drakes filed out, the room took on a suffocating, breathless silence, like we were all waiting for an ax to fall. In a way, we were.
I made an inpatient gesture at Mick. “So? What are you waiting for? Give it all to us. Blow by blow. Every interaction you ever had with her.”
For the next couple of hours, we grilled Mick mercilessly, and combed through every data point he could give us.
The trackers, five of the six, were still clustered in the Braithwaite facility.
One wandered off for a while, but soon came back.
Maybe someone going out to fill a vehicle with gas, or going to pick up take-out.
We studied satellite photos of the place, we hacked blueprints, we searched out sales records.
It had been bought by a shell company, and there wasn’t either the time or the headspace tonight to do the kind of nitpicky forensic accounting work necessary to track down who owned what.
Chances were, they’d covered their tracks well, in any case.
At some point, I got up to stretch my legs, and went to the kitchen. I turned on the water in the sink, splashed my head and face. Grabbed one of Angela’s neatly ironed tea towels to rub my hot face, my aching head. My jaw hurt from grinding my teeth.
Freya followed me, and leaned on the kitchen entryway, studying me.
“Try not to punish Mick right now,” she said quietly. “Do it later, if you want. When Holly and Kat are safe. We need him as functional as possible right now.”
I shrugged. “I’m being more than fair. He made his choice, and he didn’t choose Holly. I’m being as civil as it is humanly possible to be, under the circumstances.”
She nodded. “I feel the same. It’s a fucking nightmare. And even so. I can already think of three things to be grateful for right now.”
“Tonight? Really?” I let out a harsh laugh. “Three?”
“True thing,” she said, her face solemn.
“I know you want to tell me what they are, so go on. Put me out of my misery.”
“That, big brother, is beyond my power right now. But here they are. One, I’m so incredibly glad Angela wasn’t here when all this came down.”
I hissed in a sharp breath, imagining it. “Fuck, yeah,” I muttered. “That’s lucky.”
“Two, our niece is brilliant,” Frey went on. “She broke the spell Nicole had on Mick, which left us an opening. Not much of one, but still. What a kid.”
“Okay, I’ll concede that one, too,” I said. “Holly rocks. And the third?”
Freya gave me a gentle smile. “Kat,” she said softly. “She was for real, from the very start. No matter what happens, you don’t have to swallow that bitter pill. Your heart steered you true. You were right to trust it. That’s something to celebrate.”
I have no idea what look must have come over my face, but she made a low sound in her throat, grabbed me, and held on tight.
I hid my face in her curly hair and just kept on trying to breathe.