The Warrior (24 page)

As expected, the plane buzzed the house, low enough to be able to distinguish the camo covering on the chopper. He watched as it continued on, still low, but still moving away. Then, just when he thought he'd made a big deal out of nothing, the plane suddenly banked.

He cursed beneath his breath.

“John? Are they gone?”

“They're coming back.”

“Dear God,” Alicia whispered.

“If I tell you to run, head for my room,” he said. “There's a small door in the back of my closet. It leads
to what amounts to a storm shelter. Get in there, and don't come out unless you hear my voice.”

She didn't answer.

“Alicia…did you hear me?”

“I'm scared.”

“I know, baby,” he said.

It was the gentle tone of his voice and the tender word he'd said without thought that calmed her soul. Whatever was going to happen would happen. She was just thankful she didn't have to face it alone.

The plane was retracing its route exactly.

“So…you want a look at what's under that cover, don't you?” he muttered.

He adjusted the binocular sights. Just a little bit closer and he would be able to see their faces.

T
here was a reason why Sam Watkins could set his own fees. He never failed.

When Dieter Bahn had called him about a job, he'd asked one question. “Who's the subject?”

“Alicia Ponte.”

Sam considered himself a man who kept up with current events. After all, it was usually in his best interests to know what was going on, so when he heard the name Ponte, alarms went off all over. There was only one person who would want Alicia Ponte dead, and that was the man she'd given up to the Feds. For a moment Sam was speechless. He knew who Bahn worked for. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Richard Ponte wanted his own daughter done, when Dieter spoke up.

“There's a problem with this, though.”

“There's always a problem,” Sam countered. “Talk to me.”

“A man named John Nightwalker has taken her underground. Last sighting was in a hotel in Washing
ton, D.C. Nightwalker took out the hit man. Left him on a service cart in a storage room.”

“I heard about a body being found, but no one said it was related to a hit on Ponte's daughter.”

“That's because no one knows it but her, and for whatever reason, she's not talking.”

Sam frowned. That didn't make sense. Why keep something like that a secret? It was something to consider before he decided whether to take the job.

“So…I never did hear the identity of the body they found. Who was it?” Sam asked.

“Joiner.”

Sam's gut tightened. Besides himself, Shark Joiner was the best—or at least he
had
been. This meant Nightwalker was not to be underestimated.

“What do you know about Nightwalker?” Sam asked.

“He's Native American, tough as hell, and apparently unstoppable. The rest is your problem.”

“Two million…all of it in my account before I take one step on his behalf.”

Dieter hit the ceiling, cursing in German and English, and adding in the few Polish curse words he'd learned on the wharf as a young man. When he could talk without screaming, he lit into Sam.

“Don't fuck with me, Watkins. This is serious.”

“Don't
you
fuck with
me.
I know who's calling this hit. I know what he's worth, and I know he's number one on America's most wanted list. If he wants his daughter dead, it's gonna cost him. You want the account number to send the money to or are we done?”

“Give me the number,” Dieter asked, then wrote it down. “I'll call you back.”

“You've got fifteen minutes. After that, I'm history. Do we understand each other?”

Dieter was still cursing when he disconnected. What was worse, now he had to deliver the news to the boss. He dialed the number, holding his breath that Richard would answer and not let the call go to voice mail. Time was of the essence. Even with the deadline looming, when Richard answered, Dieter felt a moment of panic. Revealing Watkins' ultimatum to a man who scared him shitless wasn't easy.

“Yes?” Richard said.

“Boss, I connected, but there's a hitch.”

Richard frowned. “I don't like hitches.”

“Yes, sir. I know, sir.”

“So what is it?”

“He wants two mil or he's gone, and he gave me a fifteen-minute deadline.”

“Hell no!” Richard yelled. “You tell him I said—”

“Boss, he's serious, and he's not dealing. It's that or no go.”

Richard stifled a shriek of frustration. He was over the proverbial barrel, and the whole fucking world knew it. “Fine. Pay it. Then, when it's done, kill him.”

Dieter gasped. “Boss!”

“You heard me,” Richard said.

Dieter's gut knotted. “Yes, sir. I heard. Uh…he wants the money wired into his account. Said he won't start looking until it's there.”

“What's the number?” Richard asked.

Dieter rattled it off as Richard wrote. He was still fuming when he gave Dieter his last instructions. “This phone number is no longer any good. I'm going to give
you a new one. And after we disconnect, get rid of the phone you're using and get a throw-away. I don't want the Feds trying to get to me through you.”

“Yes, sir,” Dieter said, and took down the new number.

When the line went dead, Dieter flinched. This wasn't the first time he'd wished he'd given Paul Borden's advice more serious consideration. Borden had told him to throw away Ponte's number and run. He should have listened. Now it was too late.

He called Sam Watkins back.

Sam answered on the second ring. “Yeah?”

“Done. But if you fail, you're a dead man.”

“I don't fail. Ever,” Sam said, and hung up.

 

That had been two days ago, and now Sam was in the air in an old Piper Cub with a pilot who'd pissed him off within minutes of being airborne. When the plane banked, Sam had hiccuped, which led the pilot to ask if he got airsick and point out a barf bag. Sam had fired back with a none-of-your-fucking-business-just-fly-the-plane look, and thus the flight had begun.

This would be his third site check in two days, and the first he'd had to fly to get to so he could avoid calling too much attention to his presence. As they flew, he did a mental recount of his progress to pass the time.

The starting point for his search had been the hotel in D.C. It was where Alicia Ponte had last been seen in Nightwalker's company. Part of what made Sam Watkins good at what he did was his ability to find where his targets had gone to ground. He knew every trick in the book that involved hiding ownership within other companies: shell companies that didn't really exist,
businesses registered in mothers' maiden names. You name it, he'd seen it.

Knowing John Nightwalker most likely owned the Georgia house gave him his first clue. According to county records, that property had belonged to several different corporations over a period of the last hundred years. What was really weird to Sam was that, for over a century, the same name kept cropping up in the corporate records. John Nightwalker.

Lots of families used the same first name, especially for their male children, but what surprised him was that a hundred years ago, there weren't a lot of Native Americans with the financial wherewithal to acquire such properties.

Running a check on one corporation had given him another lead, and then a third and a fourth, but the locations were scattered all over the place. Now he had to do some follow-up, and part of that involved on-site investigation. Because he was certain that if he could find Nightwalker, he would find Alicia Ponte.

“We're almost there,” the pilot said, pointing out the window.

Sam could see the Spanish-tile roofline of a house below. Even from the air, it looked huge. Two long wings, one on either side of a large central area. The landscaping was desert-style, with cacti and the occasional large boulder placed in a pleasing alignment with the house. None of it was unusual for this part of the country.

He didn't see a car, but there were several outbuildings, at least one large enough to house a vehicle. He didn't see any people, but that wasn't an indicator of anything. They
were long past the days when people would run out of their houses to watch a plane flying over.

“There's a helipad down there,” the pilot said, pointing downward. “Got what looks like a chopper under that camo cover.”

Sam swiveled in his seat. He knew Nightwalker owned a chopper. He and the Ponte woman had left Georgia for Washington, D.C., in one. His pulse accelerated. Something told him he'd just hit the jackpot.

“Do another flyover,” he said.

The pilot nodded and, a few moments later, banked into a right turn for another sweep of the area. Coming at the house from this angle and this low, Sam could tell that the pilot had been right. There was a chopper under that cover.

He grinned to himself as he adjusted his binoculars.

“Gotcha,” he said under his breath.

“What did you say?” the pilot asked.

“Nothing. Just take me back to the airport. I've seen all I need to see.”

 

John had seen the pilot but had immediately discarded him as no one of interest. It was the man in the passenger seat who got his attention. The man was using binoculars, too, and seemed far too interested in the chopper. John cursed beneath his breath. Whoever the man was, he had done some serious digging to even know to look for them here. And finding a chopper on property he owned was, more than likely, the cherry on the sundae.

He watched them fly over, then ran to the front window to see if they came back again, but they didn't.
He watched until the plane disappeared beyond the horizon. It wasn't until he went to hang up the binoculars that he realized Alicia was still crouched in the hall.

“You can get up now,” he said, and offered her a hand up.

She was shaking as he pulled her to her feet.

“Are they gone?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God,” she said, and then tried to make light of it. “Probably just sightseers, right?”

“Maybe,” John said. It wasn't a lie. There was that thin possibility, although every instinct he had told him the man would be back—and soon.

“I guess I'd better finish dinner,” Alicia said.

John grabbed her arm as she started to walk away.

Startled, she stopped, then looked back.

“What?”

“You should be proud of yourself today,” he said, looking down at her hands and separating her fingers with his thumb, gently tracing the lifeline on her palm.

Alicia shivered. He was making her so crazy she couldn't think.

“Proud?”

“Yeah…you took on a whole meal by yourself, and that's nothing to ignore.”

Alicia beamed in spite of herself. No one had ever praised her for such a simple task.

“Thanks. I just wanted to do my part, you know?”

Her emotions were there on her face for him to see. All he had to do was move and she would be in his arms. But something held him back. He didn't want her, not like this. Not when she was so distracted. If this hap
pened—and he knew it was bound to—he wanted it to be on equal terms.

“So…how about those potatoes?” he asked.

Alicia shivered with sudden longing. Right now, cooking was the last thing on her mind, but his was obviously focused on food.

“Yes, coming right up,” she mumbled, and headed for the kitchen. She looked as disappointed as he felt.

John started to follow her, but there were some things he needed to do before it got dark. Before whoever was in that plane had time to come back. And he
would
come back. Of that John was certain.

A short while later they sat down to fried potatoes drowning in grease, hard-boiled eggs so rubbery that if they'd dropped on the floor, he was pretty sure they would have bounced, and toast. It was the oddest meal he'd ever been served, and yet the one that had touched him most. Talk about a woman out of her element, and yet she'd tried.

“Looks great,” he said as he seated her first. “I like butter on my toast. How about you?” he asked as he got some from the refrigerator.

“Oh. Yes. I should have thought of that,” she said. “And jam. Do you have jam?”

“Coming up,” he said, and got a small jar of blackberry preserves from a shelf in the refrigerator door.

As he set it on the table, he couldn't help but remember White Fawn picking blackberries until her fingertips were the same dark purple color, just so she could put them in the ground maize she cooked, knowing it was his favorite.

“I love blackberry,” Alicia said. “It's my favorite!”

John was a little taken aback as he sat. He still hadn't forgotten their shared dream the other night. Still, he
was convinced it was nothing more than the mysticism of Sedona messing with their minds.

Alicia was so taken with the fact that she'd cooked the food that she didn't seem to notice the excess grease and the chewiness of the eggs. She slathered her toast with butter and jam, licking bits off her bandaged fingers and smiling at him as he dug into the food on his plate.

“It's really good,” John said, knowing he would be forgiven for the lie.

“Thanks,” Alicia said, and for the first time in her life, she felt a huge glow of satisfaction for a job well done.

When they were finished eating, John started gathering up the dirty plates.

“You cooked. I'll clean up,” he said.

Alicia wasn't going to argue. With the passage of time, the cuts on her fingers were beginning to hurt.

“Thanks. If you don't mind, I think I'm going to go lie down.”