06 Double Danger (8 page)

The doors slid open, and they stepped out onto the fifth floor, J.J. thankfully oblivious to the turn of his thoughts. They walked in silence as they made their way down the hallway, slowing as they reached Wilderman’s door.

“So this is it,” she said. “How do you want to handle it?”

Simon pulled out his gun. “You armed?”

She shook her head.

He swallowed a grunt of dismay. “But you know how to handle a weapon?”

“I’ve been trained. I’ve just never had any reason to carry a gun. Until the other day, my disaster scenarios were just drills.”

“Well, you need to start carrying one now.” Simon reached down for the gun he carried at his ankle. “Until then, take this.” He held it out, and to her credit, she took it without hesitation, checking the magazine and releasing the safety. “I’m going to knock, and I want you to identify yourself as housekeeping.”

“Packing heat,” she added, the corners of her mouth tilting up into another smile.

“He won’t know that from your voice.” Simon returned the smile and then reached out to knock, the sound seeming overly loud in the quiet hallway.

“Housekeeping,” J.J. called. There was no answer, so Simon knocked again. “I don’t think there’s anyone here,” she said, lowering her weapon as Simon slid the key down the lock, his gun still at the ready. Motioning her to stay behind him, he opened the door and swung inside, his gaze moving over the empty room.

“Looks clear,” he called as he moved to check the closet and bathroom, then lowered his gun.

“I was right,” J.J. said. “He’s gone.”

“At least for now. But there’s still luggage. Most of it unpacked.”

“So maybe he wanted us to believe he hadn’t left.” J.J. bent to look through the open suitcase.

“Or maybe he’s just out in the city somewhere playing tourist. Totally oblivious to the fact that someone has been using his name.”

“Except that they had his watch.” J.J. frowned, biting her lower lip. It was a habit he remembered well. Something she did when she was thinking. “Remember the coroner said that it had his initials.”

“Could have been a plant,” Simon said, rifling through the clothes hanging in the closet. “Neiman also said that the guy was wearing an expensive suit. Most of this stuff looks like it was bought right off the rack.”

“In the old days, you wouldn’t have known Armani from Men’s Wearhouse.” She looked up at him, her gaze teasing.

“I still don’t.” He laughed. “But the label on this sports coat says Sears. And even I know that doesn’t qualify as high-end.”

“So we’ve got a guy who presents himself as Wilderman but doesn’t actually make an effort to look like the guy. Physically or economically. Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Probably didn’t have to.” Simon shrugged as he walked over to check out the nightstand. “I mean, Neiman only has to verify the identity of his passengers. If there’s nothing suspicious, he’d certainly have no reason to dig further.”

“I suppose you’re right,” J.J. said. “And since most of Neiman’s customers are well-heeled, our pseudo-Wilderman would have wanted to look the part. Maybe you’re right, and the real Wilderman was clueless. His computer is still here.” She motioned to a laptop sitting open on the room’s small desk.

“Doesn’t make sense that he’d have left it behind if he was trying to hide something.”

“Unless it was on purpose,” she said as she hit a button to turn it on. The machine whirred to life and then stopped, presenting the blue screen of death. “What the hell?” She frowned at the screen and hit one key and then another. “There’s nothing here. This machine has been wiped clean.”

Simon walked over to have a look. “Well that’s weird.”

“Yeah, and, unfortunately, it puts the spotlight clearly back on the possibility that Wilderman had some kind of active role in all of this.”

“Didn’t you say that he booked the tour online?” Simon asked.

“Right. Your guy, Harrison, was working to try to trace it back to an IP. But I’m guessing we’re looking at it.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to take the thing with you rather than go to the trouble of wiping the hard drive and leaving it behind?”

“Maybe Wilderman’s trying to mess with our heads,” she said, her attention shifting to something by the edge of the bed.

“Well, it’s working.” Simon walked over to the window and pushed back the draperies to look out the window. “Not exactly a room with a view.” Directly across the way, maybe seven or eight feet away, was a crumbling brick wall. And below, a rubbish-strewn walkway complete with an overloaded Dumpster directly beneath the window.

“Simon,” J.J. said, pulling his attention back to the room. “Come look at this.”

He crossed over to where she was kneeling beside the bed, using a hotel pen to lift the nap of the carpet. “What have you got?” he asked, bending down for a better look.

“I’m pretty sure it’s blood,” she said. “And it looks like there might be more over there.” She nodded toward the floor by the window and a small brown stain on the carpet.

“Son of a bitch,” he mumbled as he knelt to examine the new discovery. “I think you’re right.” Frowning, he stood up, examining the window more carefully. “There’s another spot here on the curtains.”

She joined him, pulling out the fabric for closer inspection. “There’s more here.” She pointed to a spot higher up. “But there’s no cast-off. And nothing to indicate a struggle. So what the hell happened?”

“God’s truth, it could be from anyone,” Simon said. “I mean, we have no way of knowing how old it is. Or even if it is, in fact, blood.”

“Yes, but look at the window. It’s unlatched. And unless I’m seeing things, there’s another stain here on the sill.” She pointed to a streak of what appeared to be dried blood.

Simon looked down at the Dumpster, his mind suddenly moving into high gear. “We need to check the passageway between the buildings.”

“I’m not following,” she said, sliding open the window and leaning out for a better view below.

“I’m saying that if I had a dead body in a hotel room and a Dumpster right beneath the window…” he trailed off as she pulled back inside, spinning around to face him.

“You think Wilderman, the
real
Wilderman, is down there? In the Dumpster?”

The walkway between the hotel and the building next door smelled like dead fish… or something even worse. Trash was scattered everywhere, a derelict cardboard box pushed behind an empty crate a sign of someone’s home away from home. Jillian could hear rustling in the refuse as they moved. Rats, most likely. She suppressed a shudder, following Simon as they made their way toward the Dumpster.

As they drew nearer, Simon waved her back, and despite being annoyed at his efforts to protect her, she had to admit that she was grateful for the reprieve. Uncovering the body of a missing man wasn’t exactly on her list of fun-time activities. Still, she’d meant what she’d said earlier—she’d damn well play her own hero.

And it was that thought that spurred her forward.

“So, any sign of him?” she asked, fervently hoping for a negative answer.

“Unfortunately, yeah,” Simon said, his mouth tightening. “And it’s not pretty.”

She took a step backward, and then forced herself to advance again, rising on her tiptoes to see inside. Simon was right. The bin was half covered, which had shielded their view from above, but from this angle, the man was in plain sight, his body sprawled across the Dumpster, eyes open.

“Looks like a single shot to the head,” Simon said, pointing to a black ringed hole near Wilderman’s temple. “Execution style. I’m guessing, from the size of the hole, it was small-caliber gun. So either he knew his killer, or the guy was a pro. Either way the killer knew what he was doing.”

“Then why not dispose of the body in a less public place?”

“What’s easier than a Dumpster? The trash is emptied through a chute.” He pointed to the metal-rimmed opening through the brick wall. “So no one from the hotel is going to be checking. There’s no traffic in this passageway, except maybe for the homeless, and even if they found him, they most likely wouldn’t have called it in. And the thing is emptied mechanically, probably twice a week.”

“Which means he hasn’t been dead more than a few days.”

“Seems probable, but the ME will be able to narrow that down.”

“So Wilderman would have ended up in a landfill somewhere. But still, there was at least a small chance someone would find him and call the authorities.”

“Maybe they didn’t care. Or maybe they figured that,
by the time someone found him, it would have been harder to identify him.” Using a stick, Simon carefully lifted one of Wilderman’s hands.

“Oh, God.” Jillian fought for control as her stomach threatened revolt. The ends of the man’s fingers were ragged and torn, bite marks already obscuring his prints.

“Between the rats and decomp, IDing him would have been difficult at best. Especially if no one was looking for the guy.”

“But surely…” she started, and then stopped, remembering Wilderman’s dossier. “He didn’t have any family.” She blew out a breath, her eyes falling to the dead man’s face. “There was no one to miss him.”

“Makes him an ideal target.” Simon shrugged.

“So, what, you think that someone used his computer to book the helicopter trip, and then stole his identity to make the flight? But that doesn’t fit with the idea that Captain Essex was flying the helicopter and that the fake Wilderman was already dead.”

“I’ll admit there are a hell of a lot of unanswered questions. But there’s no doubt that this is Wilderman. And the fact that he’s dead seems to support the idea that he’s involved somehow.”

Jillian nodded and pushed up for a closer look, steeling herself as she studied the body. “Look at his wrist,” she said, nodding toward Wilderman’s left arm. “There’s a tan line.”

Simon moved closer, squinting as his gaze followed hers. “From a watch. I’ll be damned. So the watch we found was probably his.”

“Except that it doesn’t quite jibe with the clothes from Sears.” Jillian frowned.

“So maybe it was a gift. None of this really makes any sense.”

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

“We call in backup and then meet with the team to regroup.”

Köln, Germany

B
oss, we’ve got a problem.”

Michael Brecht looked up from the papers he’d been studying, a chill of premonition running down his spine. “A-Tac.”

“Yes.” Gregor nodded, his craggy face impassive. He’d been working as Michael’s right-hand man since Alain DuBois’s unfortunate accident. Wrong place. Wrong time. Too much information. It was the risk that came with working for the Consortium. “They’re starting to put the pieces together.”

“I thought you told me that we’d covered our tracks. Left nothing to find.” Even as he said the words, he knew that in the face of Solomon and his relentless band of legitimized thugs there was no such thing.

“I did. And at the time I believed it.” Gregor crossed his arms as he dropped down into the chair opposite Michael’s. “The crash was ruled an accident. But we had
no way of knowing that there’d be an A-Tac operative on site. It was pure coincidence.”

“There is no such thing.” Michael grabbed the rubber ball lying on top of the desk, squeezing as he tried to manage his anger. It always came back to A-Tac. And Solomon. “They must have found something in Afghanistan.”

“But Kamaal sent in people to sanitize before they arrived. There shouldn’t have been anything to find except for the things we’d intended.”

“Well, obviously there was something more. And now, as you so succinctly put it, they’re assembling the pieces. It won’t be long before they confirm that the crash wasn’t an accident. Which means we need to rethink our next step.”

“You want to call it off?” Gregor asked, his gaze unflinching. “In light of everything that’s happened, maybe it would be for the best.”

“For whom?” Michael asked. “Certainly not the Consortium, and therefore, by definition, for you or for me. We’ve spent too much time to abandon our plans now. We’ll just have to revise them a bit. Improvise.”

“And do what exactly?” Gregor asked.

Michael’s fingers tightened around the little ball. “Set it up so that we can use A-Tac to make the brass in Manhattan believe one thing is another.” Michael opened his hand, the ball rolling across the desk and onto the floor. “They’ll think they’ve stopped us, and we’ll be back on track with no one the wiser.”

“Okay, so we’ve got a dead guy who books a flight over Manhattan and winds up in a Dumpster outside his hotel with a single shot to the head.” Simon paced nervously across the small office in the back of the FAA-procured
warehouse where Tyler and her bomb team were going over the debris from the crash.

Jillian’s nerves were strung almost as tightly. In a matter of days, she’d seen more dead bodies than most people saw in a lifetime. And yet somehow, Wilderman’s had been the worst. She hadn’t even known the guy, but something in the callous way he’d been discarded struck a chord deep inside her. Still, despite the grisly discovery, they were no closer to putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

Which was why they were here now, comparing notes—trying to find the pattern in all of this. Everyone was present except Drake, who was on his way, and Nash and Tyler, who were still in the main room of the warehouse examining fragments from the helicopter.

“And we have another guy,” Avery said, continuing Simon’s thought, “pretending to be Wilderman, who winds up dead before the helicopter even takes off.”

“Which leaves us with Captain America who, for reasons clear only to him, conceivably kills our impostor and then rams his chopper into the hospital.” Simon stopped moving for a moment, the crease between his eyes evidence of his frustration.

He looked older and more battle-weary than she remembered. And he was clearly favoring his leg. Although he made every attempt to hide the fact. There was a part of her that wanted to reach out—to comfort him, to let him know that he wasn’t alone. But the days when she’d been close enough to get past his barriers were long gone. He’d torpedoed any chance the two of them had ever had. Now if only her heart would accept the fact.