Chapter 14
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE FINAL THREAT
Kaden
I'm out the door before the second buzz finishes.
She is two steps behind me, already moving.
She has no questions or panic.
She grabs her bag from the floor as she goes, the one she still hasn't unpacked since I dropped her off.
In the hallway, three doors down, the elevator dings.
I push her toward the stairwell instead.
"Service stairs."
She doesn't argue.
We go down four flights at a pace that I would have called controlled.
Her hand is in mine. Not because she needs it. Because mine needs it.
At the bottom I pause her at the door. Look out the small, wired window. The service alley is empty.
There is a delivery van across the street.
And man at the end of the block facing away from us.
The man at the end of the block is not on his phone.
He's standing still.
"Other way."
We go up half a flight and out through the side door that opens onto the laundry court.
I picked up on it on the way in, in case I needed it on the way out.
The truck is on the side street.
We reach it and I get her in the passenger seat.
We pull out.
I take the side streets in a pattern that doesn't repeat.
Three turns later I check the mirrors.
A black sedan two cars back.
Same one I saw on the second turn.
I take a fourth turn the sedan does not expect.
The sedan takes it anyway.
"We have company," I say.
"How many?"
"One car visible. Probably one more I'm not seeing."
"Where are we going?"
"Change of plan, we aren’t going to the Eagle offices.
I take an alley and make extra turns to be sure we lose our tail.
I even pull out onto a one-way street going the wrong direction and then turn through a parking lot a delivery driver has propped a back gate open for the night.
The sedan is gone.
I drive another six minutes before I'm satisfied, we are alone.
She is steady in the passenger seat.
Her hand on is her knee, but she’s not shaking.
She’s watching me, not the road.
"Where are we going?" she asks again.
"Marcus has a safe location on the east side. It’s industrial and locked down with a small apartment inside. I’m taking you there until the facility can send a hard escort."
"Why not the facility direct?"
"Because the route to the facility is what they were positioning for. They didn't move on you tonight. They wanted to follow us in."
She absorbs that.
"Alpha has a leak?"
"Marcus is working on it.”
I take her hand anyway and put it on my thigh.
She doesn't move it.
I keep my eyes on the mirrors.
I like the feeling of the weight of her hand on my thigh; I know where she is without looking.
The east side property is a low concrete industrial looking building set back from the road.
It’s an old machine shop, repurposed.
There are two doors and one camera I can see.
There are three more that no one can see.
Marcus has used it for fourteen years for exactly this kind of contingency.
I pull around back. Cut the engine. Sit. Listen.
The street is quiet, just a streetlight buzzing and nothing moving.
"Stay here. Doors locked. If I'm not back in three minutes you drive."
"Kaden—"
"Three minutes."
She holds my gaze. "Okay."
I get out and make sure she’s locked.
I take the perimeter at a fast walk. I check all sides, front, side, back and come around to the truck again.
The door is intact. The lock is intact.
The camera over the back door shows the timestamp running clean.
The place is clean.
I come back to the truck and open the passenger door.
She's already getting out.
We go inside.
The interior is what you’d expect inside an industrial building.
It’s a concrete floor with industrial lighting that flickers when it turns on.
There’s also a folding table, two chairs and a small refrigerator.
There is a bathroom in the back.
There is also a military-grade door between the main room and a smaller back room with a cot in it.
It is not a cozy cabin.
She doesn't complain.
I get her settled inside with her bag on the table.
There is a phone is connected to the secure network Marcus has set up.
There is water in the refrigerator.
I call Marcus.
He picks up on the first ring.
"You're at the east site?
"Yes."
"The hard escort is two hours out. We had a problem in dispatch. Working on it."
"How bad?"
A breath on the line.
"Bad," Marcus says. "Stay where you are. Eyes on her. I'm coming personally."
He hangs up.
I look at her. She's sitting at the folding table with her water, watching my face. Reading it.
"How long?"
"Two hours."
"Okay."
"Marcus is coming personally."
"Okay."
She's calm. She's very calm. The settled voice has held since we left the apartment.
I sit down across from her and put my phone on the table.
"Talk to me."
"About what."
"Anything. Just talk to me."
She looks at me. Reads me again. Then she does what she does best.
She talks.
About the soup at the second cabin.
About the bird guide from the first one, she still has it in her bag.
She talks about a patient she today, an old man who came in convinced he was having a heart attack and was, in fact, having a panic attack about his daughter's wedding. The wedding was the next morning. He left later in the day. with a list of breathing exercises and her cell number.
"Did he call?"
"He texted. From the reception. He sent a picture of himself with his daughter."
She is smiling at the memory.
I am paying attention to her face.
I am not paying enough attention to the door.
The first tell is the camera over the back. The timestamp jumps. Two seconds. Then three. Then the feed cuts to gray.
I am moving before I've finished registering it.
"Back room. Now."
She doesn't ask why. She is up and moving.
There is a loud bang, and the front door comes flies off the hinges.
Two men enter, both have weapons and both are faster than I want them to be.
Both wearing tactical gear and a gas mask hanging around their neck that did not come from a sporting goods store.
The first one I take down with the table.
I flip it, lever it and drive him into the wall.
The second one fires twice. The first round goes wide.
The second round catches me in the side. Not center mass.
It’s a graze but it’s hot, immediate, searing pain.
The kind of pain I have catalogued before.
I get the second man on the third move. Disarm. Knee. Throat. He goes down.
A third man comes through the door, and I do not see him in time.
What I see is the canister.
It hits the floor and rolls. White vapor. Fast.
I get one breath of cold air with no oxygen in it and my legs forget what they're for.
Then I see a fourth man as I go down hard.
I can hear her in the back room.
I hear the door come open and from somewhere far away I hear her say my name once, sharp, the way she said it on the ramp.
Then nothing.
The last thing I see before the gray takes me is one of them looking down at me.
He does not have the face of a man who came to kill me.
The man steps over me toward the back room, towards Melinda.