Nowhere to Hide (3 page)

“Probably have it wrapped up earlier than evening,” Mundie said. “With luck, Evans can fly King back. He got tied up with something at the last minute. That's all I can say. It's a matter of national security.”

Mundie grinned as Ella's eyes widened in alarm.

“Standard agency joke,” Mundie said, leaving his grin in place. “With the CIA, everything is national security. Even something as boring as stopping for a cup of coffee.”

King found a way to put a grin on his own face. “Two creams, two sugars. Evans didn't like anything else but that. Got fussy when I didn't put enough sugar in it.”

“That's Evans,” Mundie said. “When we're in the air, he'll probably call and tell me to make a Starbucks run.”

“Not Tim Horton's?” King asked.

“Tim Horton's?” Mundie said.

“Standard family joke,” King said. “Tim Horton's is a Canadian franchise. My mother is Canadian. Everybody there loves Tim Horton's.”

“Hah,” Mundie said. “Your family joke isn't much funnier than our CIA joke.”

“Hah,” King said, feeling the panic symptoms surge back again.

As Mundie began to lead him to the helicopter, it took every ounce of determination for King to move one foot in front of the other and
follow. Not only was King feeling the dread that came with thoughts of leaving the island, but now he knew something was wrong with this scenario.

Evans always took his coffee black. So why had this guy, Mundie, just lied?

CHAPTER 5

The drizzle became light rain as the helicopter lifted and headed east from McNeil Island. With visibility reduced, the prison buildings at the corner of the island were blurred to King as Mundie maneuvered over the shoreline and continued toward Tacoma. Or maybe the blurring was a problem with his eyes.

He'd done his homework on panic attacks. Who wanted to admit to anyone he was going crazy? King wanted to keep it to himself.

First, a few possible other causes: phobias, chronic illness, hyperventilation syndrome, short-term triggering causes, or biological causes.

Well, his self-diagnosis ruled out phobias. He didn't have any.

He was healthy, so it wasn't a chronic illness then.

Hyperventilation? That meant overbreathing, resulting in too much oxygen and not enough carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. But his panic attacks didn't follow any overbreathing. Instead, they led to overbreathing. So no, it wasn't hyperventilation.

Short-term triggering causes included significant personal loss or significant life changes. Nope. He'd
nearly
lost his mother to the coma, but he had not lost her, and until the coma he'd been looking forward
to a significant life change—leaving the island for the freedom of the outer world.

So King was down to suspecting a biological cause for the attacks. He didn't have symptoms for suspected underlying conditions like hypoglycemia or hyperthyroidism or Wilson's disease or pheochromocytoma or labyrinthitis. Googling each of those conditions just to learn what they were and eliminate them as possibilities had taken him hours.

There was, however, one possible biological cause that had jumped out at him. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Something that sometimes happened to soldiers and firemen and policemen either after long-term and continued stress or after a particularly high-stress situation—like the dead man's switch episode King had survived a month earlier, which was the reason his mom nearly died in a coma.

Yeah. King would say he qualified as a survivor of a high-stress situation.

Some people with PTSD got depressed and angry and lost their appetite. Others were suddenly and without warning inflicted by panic attacks.

For King, that included a choking impulse, unexpected trembling, tingling sensations, sweating, and feeling as if the world was going dark and he was looking through a tunnel.

Like now. Strapped into a helicopter, leaving the sanctuary of a quiet room, where he knew he was safe and his mother was safe with him.

He'd wanted to bolt before entering the helicopter, wanted to run back to his bedroom in the house and crawl into bed and pull the blanket over his head and sob.

But that would have been abandoning his friends. Something was wrong about this situation.

As Mundie flew the helicopter toward the city across Puget Sound, King was terrified by the sensations. The shaking of the chopper, the occasional short drops through air pockets, the noise. The only thing that drove him forward and kept him from giving in to the panic was an even bigger and even more stabbing fear.

If he didn't do this—with a degree of intelligence unclouded by his growing panic—he was worried that bad things could possibly happen to his friends.

King clung to the straps over his shoulders and told himself to think, think, think. Not feel, feel, feel.

What was going on? How could he prepare himself to manage the situation—whatever it might be—in the best way possible?

CHAPTER 6

A person could assume that if a hotel had a heliport on the roof, it was the type of hotel where guests dropped an American Express card on the counter and expected to spend for a night what most people spent for a week in other hotels.

King's assumption was confirmed when a uniformed bellhop waited for the helicopter blades to stop rotating and then dashed through the rain with an umbrella. He held it over Mundie and King as they walked across the rooftop toward an elevator door.

It wasn't Tacoma, but Seattle. Downtown Seattle.

The hotel was surrounded by other buildings of similar height, and Mundie had shown his expertise by clearing the flight pattern, alerting the hotel manager of his impending arrival, and setting the helicopter down with hardly a bump.

The rooftop wasn't the place to bolt for escape from Mundie. Nor would that be intelligent. If King bolted, that would alert Mundie to King's suspicions. And if King's friends really were in danger, that would only make things worse.

Maybe, King wanted to believe, they weren't in danger at all. Maybe his paranoia was another symptom of the panic attacks. But
he couldn't find a way to convince himself otherwise—Evans drank his coffee black, not with two creams and two sugars.

Maybe Mundie's lie was a tiny lie, so maybe it didn't mean anything. Maybe this was an irrational fear because of King's panic attacks. But why would Evans send Mundie to get King, without Mundie knowing that Evans never called King by his first name of William?

Inside the elevator, the bellhop—short and wide with hair curling out from beneath his red cap—pressed the button for the lobby floor.

Mundie reached over and pushed the button for the tenth floor.

“Already checked in,” Mundie said. “We're all good.”

“Yes, sir,” the bellhop said.

No further conversation.

The elevator slowed in total silence. The doors opened, and King followed Mundie into the hallway. The carpet was expensive, and large, framed prints hung on the walls.

“You've been quiet,” Mundie said. “No questions about why your friends need you?”

“Evans sent you, right?” King replied. “My friends and parents and I trust him completely.”

“He trusts you guys too,” Mundie said. “I've read the reports on what we started calling the Dead Man's Switch episode at the agency. I can see why.”

Then Mundie frowned. “You okay?”

King was shaking. He could feel the sweat on his face. He wanted to stop and lean on the wall and draw in huge gasps of air.

“Just getting over something,” King said. “Same thing that kept me from coming here a few days ago. Nothing to worry about. It's not contagious.”

Mundie nodded.

They stopped at room 1010.

Mundie knocked, and King heard approaching footsteps inside.

“Stand in front of the peephole,” Mundie said. “They'll need to see you before they open the door.”

Was this why Mundie had needed King? To get the door open? Was
King betraying his friends by going along with this? Or was the danger all in King's imagination? If it wasn't his imagination, was this the time to run? After all, if Mundie needed King to get inside the room, maybe running would be the best way to protect Blake and MJ.

Too late. MJ swung the door open.

“Kinger!” MJ said in his radio announcer voice that he thought was cool but no one else did. “Glad you made it. You feeling better?”

MJ—Michael Johnson—was tall, gangly, and working hard on a mustache. If MJ's hair had been blond, his mustache would have been invisible. Instead, because he had dark hair, the mustache looked like a smudge of dirt. And MJ was proud of it.

MJ gave Mundie a questioning glance.

“Evans sent me to pick up William and bring him to you guys,” Mundie said, pushing his way inside.

William
. A warning flag. Or not?

“I'm CIA,” Mundie continued. “Need to see a badge?”

“Uh…” MJ said.

King could tell that MJ was still trying to figure out why Mundie had called King by his first name of William.

Without waiting for an answer, Mundie pushed past MJ down the short hallway. King stayed with Mundie. The hallway opened to a large suite that had a view of the Seattle waterfront. An open door led to a bedroom. There was a big, luxurious couch in the suite. It still had blankets and sheets and a pillow, as if either Blake or MJ slept in the bedroom and the other out in the suite. The sheets were folded neatly with the blanket, so King guessed it was Blake.

Empty pizza boxes were stacked on a counter that separated the open suite from a small kitchen area. Beside the boxes were empty soda cans, stacked neatly. That would have been Blake's work. Blake bordered on obsessive compulsive.

Blake Watt barely looked up from a couple of computer screens on a desk against the far wall. Directly between both screens was an iPad on a stand, its screen black.

“Hey, King,” Blake said. “Good to see you.”

The computers and monitors were obviously not part of the hotel suite. Cables snaked from the desk to outlets and to a printer on a smaller desk nearby.

Blake's chair was on wheels. He swung sideways a few feet to look at the other monitor and then did some rapid-fire keyboarding, still ignoring King and Mundie.

Blake was fourteen and looked eleven. Skinny and blond. He wore a Minecraft T-shirt. Anyone who looked closely would see small circular scars on his arms. King knew they were burn marks from cigarettes. That too had been part of the Dead Man's Switch events, all started by Blake and his computer expertise.

Mundie walked to the screen.

“Huh,” Mundie said after a few moments of observation. “Drone surveillance.”

That's when Blake seemed to realize someone else had entered the room with King and that the someone else hadn't been Evans.

Blake swung away from the screen.

“Who are you?” Blake said bluntly. “Why are you here?”

“Evans sent me,” Mundie said. “He wants an update.”

“Code phrase?” Blake asked.

“Code phrase,” Mundie repeated.

“MJ,” Blake said, his irritation making him sound ten years older. “You let someone in without a code phrase? Evans said—”

“He's got a badge,” MJ said. “He came with King.”

Blake stood and faced Mundie squarely. He was half Mundie's size.

“Sir,” Blake said. “If you don't have the code phrase, you're going to have to leave the room.”

“Good work,” Mundie said. “Evans wanted me to test you. That's partly why I'm here.”

Mundie was focused on Blake, and Blake was focused on Mundie. That gave King the chance to slide toward Mundie's back. King was so intent on what he needed to do, some of the symptoms of his panic seemed to slip away.

King undid his belt and pulled it free of his pants loops. He slid the belt back through the buckle and left it looped.

“Glad I passed the test,” Blake said. “Now let's see you do the same.”

As King held his belt in one hand and tiptoed a final step toward Mundie and Blake at the computers, he marveled at Blake's toughness. But then Blake was so tough he had not given answers to a man with a lit cigarette. That's why Blake had so many of those circular scars on his arms.

“Today's code phrase,” Mundie said, “is that—”

King didn't let Mundie finish. He flipped the belt loop over Mundie's head and yanked the noose tight. He pulled hard, staggering Mundie backward.

“Pillowcase,” King said to MJ as Mundie clawed at his own neck to relieve the pressure. “Shake it loose so you can put it over his head!”

To Blake, King said, “Your belt. Around his ankles.”

King gave a violent tug on the end of his belt and toppled Mundie, rolling him onto his stomach. King jumped on the man's back, still pulling the belt as if it were a choke chain.