Read Into the Crossfire Online
Authors: Lisa Marie Rice
Nicole listened, heart pounding.
"I said--you saw that gun!" the voice roared.
Nicole tried to get her voice to work but her mouth and throat were too dry.
No sound would come out. She coughed, managed to croak, "Yes. Yes, I saw the
gun."
"Good. Remember that gun. Now listen carefully. This is what I want you
to do." The voice was back to cool and calm. Giving instructions as if indicating
which way to Balboa Park. "Call a taxi, tell him to take you to Fleetridge, to the
Westwood shopping mall parking lot there. Keep this line open so I can hear and
see what you're doing, otherwise your father will pay the consequences. If you
don't come alone, your father's dead meat. He's dead meat, anyway, anyone can
see that, but I'll make him suffer before he goes. If you don't do exactly as I say,
I'll disappear with him and you'll never see him again, but you'll know that every
second of what's left of his life I'll be hurting him. Is that clear?"
The temperature in the room had suddenly dropped. Nicole was shivering
with terror and cold. "C-clear," she whispered.
"If you call anyone, if you signal anyone, if you don't come alone, your
father will pay first, then you. At the parking lot there will be someone to meet
you. Is that clear? Deviate one inch from this and your father gets a bullet in the
knee, first thing. I don't have to tell you how excruciatingly painful that would be."
"No, no!" Panic exploded in her head. "Don't do that! Oh God, please!
Don't worry, I'll follow your instructions to the letter."
"Of course you will." That horrible voice, now sounding genial and chirpy.
"Oh, and pray that you find a taxi right away, because I'm giving you twenty
minutes to get to the meeting point, after which I start shooting bits of your father
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off."
"N-no." Her teeth were chattering so hard she could barely get the words
out. "D-don't. P-please."
"Then bring me what I want."
Oh God. What was it? "I don't know what you want!"
But she was talking to dead air. He hadn't hung up, though. He was keeping
the connection open.
So terrified her hands wouldn't work properly, Nicole tried to pick up Sam's
cordless handset, fumbled it badly and watched as it bounced on the floor. It took
her trembling hands three tries before she could hold it, and she ripped a page out
of the telephone book pawing through it to the Ts. It took her two tries before she
could punch in the taxi service's number. While waiting for the call to go through,
she fumbled her shirt on and pulled her jeans up, sliding her feet into loafers,
picking up her purse.
The instant she heard the taxi dispatcher tell her that a car would be arriving
in four minutes at the front gate, she rushed out to the bank of elevators, punching
the button over and over again in her anxiety.
Her skin prickled with panic as she got into the elevator and punched for
the ground floor. The damned thing was so slow! When, after a million years, it
finally reached the ground floor, she shot out and ran across the lobby and into the
landscaped front garden, checking anxiously along the dark road for a car with a
taxi sign on top, trembling with anxiety.
It was 2 A.M. and the residential area was quiet, the vast darkness of the
ocean across the road silent and oppressive.
She was holding her cell phone in her hand, gazing at it longingly. Sam.
Sam was at the other end. All she had to do was close this connection and call
him. He'd come running. Oh God, Sam. For just a moment she yearned with all
her heart to be able to listen to that deep, reassuring voice. Sam would know what
to do, would know how to help her father.
But that cold implacable voice had been very specific. Don't make any
calls. Keep the line open or your father will pay.
She couldn't risk it. She'd give anything in her power to communicate with
Sam, but not if her father was going to pay the price. A small voice somewhere
inside her said that her father was going to pay a horrific price, anyway. And so
would she. But she had to play this according to the rules set down by that sadistic
bastard.
The man had been willing to casually slice her father's face open just to
make a point. If he felt that she wasn't obeying his orders...
It didn't bear thinking about.
She hopped up and down, chilled to the bone in the dark night, checking the
time feverishly, obsessively. Twenty minutes. He'd said she had twenty minutes to
get to the mall parking lot and five had already gone by. Another couple of
minutes and they couldn't possibly make it in time.
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Ah! Bright headlights and a taxi sign on the roof, traveling fast on the
empty road. Inside a minute she could see the taxi sign clearly and heaved a sigh
of relief as the yellow cab pulled to the curb. She rushed out, wrenching the cab
door open.
"I'll pay you double if you can get me to the Westwood shopping mall
parking lot in Fleetridge inside of fifteen minutes." Her voice was high, hysterical.
The driver looked like a student, clean-cut and very young, a bit astonished
at the wild woman flinging herself into the backseat.
"You got it," he grunted, taking off so fast the tires squealed against the
asphalt.
She stared out the window at the black ocean disappearing from sight as the
driver turned inland, making good time on the empty streets.
Sam, she thought again. She wanted to hear his voice with a ferocity that
astonished her. A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away impatiently.
Tears wouldn't help. Nothing could help.
She shuddered as she thought of her father in that man's hands. Her dad was
barely kept alive with all the love and care in the world, and all the tricks the
medical profession could pull out of its bag. Being held against his will by a
violent man capable of hurting him...it could kill him. She might be speeding
toward a place where she would only find her father's corpse and a violent thug
willing to harm a helpless old man. A thug who wanted something from her,
though she had no idea what.
She imagined he wanted her computer files, even though there was nothing
in her hard disk that could possibly be of any use to anyone besides her and her
clients. When the man discovered this, discovered that she didn't have what he
wanted, whatever it was, he'd kill her. She was speeding toward her father's
possible death and her own certain one.
The young cab driver reached the parking lot and entered with a dramatic
turn, slewing slightly on the gravel of the soft shoulder. The lot was empty except
for a dirty off-white van, a man standing outside the driver's door. The lot was
illuminated with streetlamps except for the one directly above the van, so she
couldn't make out the man's face.
"There you go," the driver said cheerfully, stopping the meter. It read $15.
"Fifteen minutes on the dot."
Nicole didn't trust her voice. She simply threw a twenty and a ten at him
and climbed out of the car on rubber legs.
Nicole crossed the parking lot slowly, her legs barely holding her up. By
the time she reached the man standing by the van, he had his hand out.
It wasn't the intruder. There were at least two men involved in this, then.
Deep down, there had been a faint hope that somehow she could outwit the
intruder, even if she couldn't outfight him. She wasn't going to be taken by
surprise. Maybe she could whack him over the head with something while he
wasn't looking or...her imagination stopped there. But it wasn't going to happen.
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There were two men involved and she wasn't going to come out of this alive.
"Phone." This man's voice was just as calm, just as cold as the other man's.
Cut out of the same mold. Alert, icy and deadly.
Her hand shook as she held the cell out to him.
The man gave a short jerk of his head. "Get in."
Never get into the car.
One of the cardinal rules for State Department families in countries where
kidnapping was a major industry. Never get into the car. Make a run for it. Attract
attention by screaming. Carry Mace and use it. But never, ever get into the car. If
you got into the car, you were as good as dead.
Wonderful advice. Only one thing. The clever men and women running the
State Department Security Force seminars never told their listeners what to do
when a loved one was being held hostage.
Never get into the car.
She got into the car.
The man threw her cell phone on the ground, crushed it with his boot heel,
kicked it into the scrub off the lot and got behind the wheel.
Never get into the car.
Nicole was in the car and her last hope of reaching Sam was lying in shards
on the dark asphalt.
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Sam walked into his office, which looked like Mission Control. Every
single light was on, the banks of computer monitors all lit, and four men were
sitting around his desk. Harry, Mike and two guys he had no trouble at all
identifying as Feebs.
All looking grim.
"Show me what you have," Sam said, sitting down behind his desk.
Silence for a moment, then Mike stirred. "Nothing good. First let me
introduce the two newcomers. They're--"
"FBI," Sam said. "Yeah, I could tell."
Two bland looks. "It's the shoes," Sam explained. If they'd been from
military security they'd have been wearing boots. If they'd been CIA, the footwear
would have been top quality.
A moment's silence. The taller one, obviously senior, nodded. "Special
Agent Ross and this is Special Agent Vanzetti."
Sam didn't care if they were Special Agents Mulder and Scully. He'd never
liked the Feebs. He just wanted them to cut to the chase.
"So give me the lowdown." He looked each in the eye.
But it was Mike who answered. He'd been staring at a laptop screen. He
turned it around so Sam could see it.
It was a page scanned from a military jacket. Prominent in the upper left
hand side of the page was an unsmiling photograph of the man who'd broken into
Nicole's office.
The man was wearing a black beret, had a skull with two crossed knives
flash on his shoulder. Ranger tab on the left sleeve.
Dishonorable discharge, for selling military arms off base.
It was all there, the massive threat to Nicole.
Sam's jaw tightened and he bit down hard on his back teeth as he read
carefully. The man's name was Sean McInerny, 75th battalion. Saw action in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Dishonorable discharge in 2005.
Sam looked up at the four men. "A Ranger, like you said."
Special Agent Ross replied. "That's right. We've been chasing him for a
couple of years. After he got his discharge--"
"Dishonorable discharge," Sam interrupted.
"Yeah." Special Agent Ross's jaw muscles jumped. "After he got his
dishonorable discharge he simply dropped off the face of the earth. We suspect
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he's become a contract killer. There was a partial found at the site of what was
made to look like a mugging but was an assassination of a bank CEO. And a
security tape caught a half profile at another killing. We were lucky this time, your
tape caught him full face. We have no idea where he lives. There is no record of
any Sean McInerny renting or buying a house or a car, or using credit cards or
entering or leaving the country. We don't know where he is. He's off the grid."
"You do know where he is," Sam pointed out coldly. "He's here in San
Diego, obviously on a job. Have you checked the hotels?" He kept outwardly calm
but inside he was raging. A Special Forces soldier as a gun for hire. The news
couldn't have been worse.
"We've done this before, believe it or not," Ross said. "We're making the
rounds now with a photograph, because if he's in a hotel, he's using an alias. We
want him worse than you do."
I doubt it, Sam thought grimly. They were just doing their job, wanting to
bag a bad guy. It would go on their record, maybe snag them a promotion. He
wanted to keep his woman safe. Big difference. He opened his mouth to say
something when his cell vibrated, three times in quick succession.
Every hair on his body stood up. He could actually feel them brushing
against his shirtsleeves and shirt front, tiny little spears of terror. He froze, unable
to move, unable to breathe, panic exploding in his head in a surge of white-hot
light.
The two Feebs didn't notice, though Harry and Mike were looking at him
strangely. Sam shook his head sharply and they got the message. Not now.
Ross was checking something on the laptop, pointing to the screen and
Vanzetti was talking quietly into his cell. He switched off and turned to his
partner. "We've just checked all the hotels and motels in the metropolitan area.
Nothing."
Sam clenched his jaws. Even if they'd started checking immediately, they'd
only had a couple of hours. The fact that they'd already checked with all the hotels
and motels in the area meant that they'd called in local law enforcement officers,
too. Probably the entire SDPF. This was a huge manhunt. All the more reason to