Wounded Animals (Whistleblower Series Book 1) (7 page)

“Get in the car,” he said, whispering it to the back of my neck. His breath was hot. “We need to do this quick, so don’t do anything stupid like run or yell.”

The car was a Mustang, something late-model, and fast. I didn’t know much about cars, but I could tell from the growling engine that it was what they referred to as a “muscle car.”

The driver was a man in a dark leather jacket with wraparound sunglasses. He hadn’t turned his head toward me, instead kept his hands on the wheel, gripping it like motorcycle handlebars as he revved the engine.

Something poked into the small of my back.

“Okay, just be cool,” I said. “Whatever’s going on here, you should know that I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’m just going to walk away, then get back in my car and go home.”

The thing in the small of my back pressed harder. Maybe it was a gun, I couldn’t tell.

“You listen to me, Candle, because I’m not playing around with you. You’re not going to walk away from anything. Just get into the car and don’t make any trouble, if you want to live out the day.”

CHAPTER TEN

I lifted my hands in surrender, and the man behind me smacked my arms back down. “Don’t do that, you idiot. Just get in the car right now. You have a lot of questions, we can answer them. But only if you get in the car.”

I wondered which questions he might answer. Or if he was telling the truth, but I didn’t see how I had much choice. I could do as he said, or they could shoot me on the street in front of the police station.

The driver patted the passenger seat next to him, then revved the engine.

I slid in as the other, older man got in the back seat, then he mumbled something to the driver and we left. He’d been surprisingly lithe for a man with silvery gray hair.

Neither of my kidnappers said anything for the first fifteen minutes. We drove out of Denver to the west, toward the mountains. The driver was a short guy with a scruffy beard, but I didn’t try to turn around to get a better look at the man in the backseat. Just a glimpse or two in the rearview. All I could see was that he was also wearing a leather jacket.

The passenger leaned forward, between the seats. I smelled pickles—or something like pickles—on his breath. “Turn there,” he said. “Toward Eldo.”

Eldorado Canyon? We were going near Golden, apparently.

The driver nodded and turned at the next light. We had slowed enough at a few stoplights that I could have jumped out of the car, but they’d promised me answers. Each time we slowed enough to make fleeing possible, my brain went to war with itself.

Was I foolish to trust that they weren’t planning to throw me from the top of a cliff in Eldorado Canyon? Maybe. But the temptation to find out what they knew was enough to keep me in the car, for now.

If they could tell me where Grace was, it would be worth the risk.

They didn’t speak again until we had driven through Eldorado Springs, a tiny little town that served as a gateway to a state park popular with hikers and rock climbers. Thirty minutes from Denver. We pulled up to a ranger station at the edge of the park, and the driver flashed a state parks pass to get in without paying a day fee.

Inside the park, they pulled off at the first dirt parking lot, one half covered in the icy remains of a recent snow. “Out of the car,” said the passenger.

I stepped out, feeling the change in the brisk air at the higher elevation near the foot of the mountains. A bit of misty fog hung in the air, cool and wet.

The passenger opened the trunk. He removed four pieces of rubber netting, like spider webs, with metal coiled around the strands. He handed two to the driver, who put one on the bottom of each of his shoes. Crampons, for the snow. We were going hiking?

“What are those for?” I said.

“Ice,” said the passenger.

“Do I get a pair?”

He shrugged. “Only got two. You just be careful and try to keep up.”

He lifted a full Nalgene water bottle from the trunk and passed it to me. I stared at it, unsure what to do next.

The passenger laughed. “It’s water. Do you think if we were going to poison you, we would have brought you out to a state park to do it?”

He and the driver marched off toward a wooden signpost indicating the start of a hiking trail.

I hadn’t yet followed them. The lack of information weighed on me. “What are we doing here? You told me you’d answer my questions.”

Passenger turned toward me, still walking backward. “I said no such thing. I said you have questions, and we have answers. I didn’t say I’d answer your questions. Well, maybe I will. Depends on what you ask. Either way, you’re going to have to come with us if you want to find out. I need to get in a hike today, and truth is at the mountain-top, my dear boy.”

I felt like such an idiot. But what choice did I have? I was half an hour from home with no car.

I followed them onto the hiking trail, a steep and rocky set of natural steps that crisscrossed a path to a mountain peak whose name escaped me. Some packed snow bracketed the sides of the trail, but no ice, at least not at our current elevation. Depending on how high we hiked, the path could become dangerous. Slow going when you have to watch every step.

We trudged for a half hour, not passing a single other person, and neither of them spoke again. Crested switchback after switchback, as the skyscrapers of Denver slowly came into view, their tops slicing above the mist across the city. Grace and I used to hike here and up in Boulder most weekends before our main hobby became preparing our house for the arrival of Little Candle.

I looked at the water bottle they’d given me, unsure if I wanted to drink. If they had poisoned it, that would make it easy for them to roll me off the side of the cliff once I was unconscious. Just another hiker standing too close to the edge who fell. Despite the dryness in my mouth, I wouldn’t drink it.

The trail turned, and at the turn, a bench sat on a lookout at the edge of a cliff. The driver and the passenger both walked toward the lookout, sipping their water bottles.

“Are you going to tell me why the hell we’re up here?” I said.

“I like the view,” said the passenger. “I don’t get to come to Denver too often. Bit foggy today, but still, this is lovely.”

I heard a little bit of a southern twang in the last sentence.

“Do you have answers for me or not?” I said, feeling ire bubbling up through my legs and into my chest. The full Nalgene in my hand was heavy enough, maybe I could crack it over his head. Or I might fall on the slippery ground and split my head open.

“Maybe. First, I’m going to have to get you to tell me the truth about some things.” As the passenger spoke, the driver slowly circled around behind me. I didn’t like being in between them. Maybe I didn’t have any control to begin with, but not being able to see both of them at once unnerved me. This close to the cliff edge, the driver could easily rush me and knock me over. But he could have done that at any number of points along the trail so far, though. Poison me, throw me from me a cliff… guessing their endgame was wrapping my head all in knots.

“What do you want to know?”

The passenger slipped a granola bar from his pocket and tore off a mouthful. He chewed with his mouth wide open, smacking his lips. One of my biggest pet peeves.

“You called to report your wife missing,” he said, pointing the granola bar at me like a knife.

Okay, so they had my phone tapped, or bugged, or hacked, or whatever it was they did now to access phones. That didn’t surprise me. “Yes. Do you know where she is?”

The passenger lifted his palms to the sky. “I have no idea. Keeping track of your wife isn’t my business. What
is
my business is that you stop calling the cops about anything, because involving them is going to cause problems for everybody on down the line.”

“Who are you people?”

“It’s not your turn to ask the questions yet. As I was saying, you called to report your wife missing. As of this moment, right now, your interaction with the police is over. That little mess that happened at your house last night? That could be the end of it if you start doing the right thing.”

“Why don’t you tell me what the right thing is,” I said through clenched teeth.

“I can hear you getting a little upset. That’s no good. Maybe it would help if we were a bit more on personal terms. You can call me Mr. Thomason. We haven’t been introduced, but I’ve been watching you for a long time.”

The driver moved closer to me, from behind. My fight or flight response triggered, and I had an urge to grab him and flip him over my shoulder. But I resisted. If these guys knew something, I was going to get the damn information.

The passenger, AKA Thomason, finished his granola bar and tossed the wrapper in front of the bench. Littering, another one of my pet peeves. “Does the name Muhammed Qureshi mean anything to you? Sometimes, he goes by Kareem Haddadi. That’s the name he usually uses in this country, so I’d guess you’d know that one. Ring any bells?”

My eyes shot wide open. Kareem, my mythical water-into-wine friend, the one who had begged me not to take the trip to Dallas. He’d barely entered my thoughts since finding the note on the back of the toilet, but it seemed natural that what Thomason and his people wanted somehow connected with Kareem. Or Muhammed Qureshi, or whatever his name was.

“I can see that the name Kareem Haddadi does mean something to you,” Thomason said. “I’m not surprised.”

Haddadi. Kareem Haddadi. There was something about that last name that seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it.

“You want to tell me about Mr. Haddadi?” Thomason said.

“No. I want you to tell me what’s going on here, who you people are, and what you want from me. I want to know where my wife is, and why there was a dead tech support trainee in my bathroom. If you know something, you need to tell me.”

Thomason’s eyes narrowed. “You need to take that venom out of your tone right now, boy.”

“You need to answer my damn questions. I’m tired of your games.”

“When you’re ready to cooperate,” Thomason said, “we’ll talk. But not so long as you’re still doing silly things like calling the cops about your wife.”

I felt the driver’s hand grip my shoulder, and I reacted. Grabbed his hand, dropped to one knee. Then I pulled with all my might so he flipped forward, landing on the ground in front of me. I straightened my fingers and stiffened my hand, then jabbed it into the driver’s throat.

His hands rushed to his neck, gasping and coughing.

I looked up as Thomason was digging in his inner coat pocket. He was only five feet away, so I rushed him, barreling into his chest and driving him toward a tree near the edge of the drop-off.

He swiped at my back as I lifted him and a sharp blade sliced through my jacket. I felt something warm drip on my back.

Legs churning and feet slipping on the hard-packed snow, I thrust his body against the tree. The force whiplashed his head backward, and I heard a crack as the back of his head smacked against the tree trunk.

I leaped back and he slumped to the ground. Eyes closed.

The air changed and I turned around just in time to dodge the driver as he swung a vicious right hook. He missed me by inches.

I blinked, trying to get my bearings. I could feel the blood running down my back and collecting at the base of my spine. But my adrenaline had spiked and I had no sense of how deep the cut was.

The driver put up his fists in front of his face, ring-boxing style. He wore brass knuckles on both of his hands, and a good swipe from either hand might break my jaw.

But I could see from his stance and posture that he was nothing but a brawler. I knew what to do about that. Wait for him to get close, to get off balance. I’d sparred against these guys in judo many times before.

He grinned as if he knew something I didn’t. Inched toward me. I stayed firm, not moving at all.

He jabbed, and I took my chance. With his weight forward, I grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward me while I stepped out of his way. As he fell, I jabbed him in the ribs. When he hit the ground, I slammed a knee into his back. He cried out.

I flipped him over, then grabbed his wrist and bent it backward. He screamed in pain as I pushed it within an inch of breaking. I moved closer to his face. “Where is my wife? What do you people want from me?”

Driver said nothing, only grunted.

I applied just a little more pressure to break his wrist, and he mewled, a screech worse than anything my cat had ever made. I let go and he turned on his side and morphed into the fetal position, cradling his broken wrist against his chest. He panted, gasping for air.

Fifteen feet behind me, Thomason moaned and stirred. I took a figurative step back and thought about what was going on here. I had attacked these men, and now stood alone on a mountaintop. What was I going to do, kill them? I’d surprised them, but I couldn’t survive forever as one against two. No, I needed to get away.

Inspiration struck and I dug a hand into the driver’s pocket. My finger felt the poking of car keys, and I yanked them free.

I shoved the keys in my pocket as I started to race back down the trail. The inertia of energy carried me for the first ten minutes, never stopping, never thinking about anything more than getting back down to the car.

Turn after turn, trying to hop over icy patches, keeping my feet on rocks that would give better footing.

My ragged breathing caught up with me and I had to lean against a trail-side tree stump to catch my breath. Now I wished I’d kept that water bottle. Poison or not, I needed something to drink.

I looked back up the trail, but there was no one above me.

A minute went by, but I couldn’t get my heart rate under control. I was certain that my judo sensei would have been proud of the way I’d handled myself. But, on the other hand, I had beaten up and broken the bones of two men who were probably quite dangerous, so maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing, after all. Didn’t see that I’d had much choice; I reacted and events moved forward.