Arch Enemy (17 page)

T
he university athletic building bore all the signs of its recent renovation—shiny new floors, flags and pennants hanging from the ceiling, a ten-foot-tall graphic of the Springhaven Raptor. Straight through were the athletic facilities. Through a set of glass doors on the right was the athletics office. Its walls were adorned by team pictures, recent and vintage, and a trophy shelf ran along the entire extent of the room, a few feet off the drop panels of the ceiling.

“I'm here to see Coach Groener.”

The student receptionist, a junior or senior whose muscular frame told that she was an athlete, checked a list on a clipboard. “You're from the
Inquirer,
right?”

“Right.”

“I have a friend in the Arts and Entertainment section. Isabel. You know her?”

“Yeah, definitely,” she said. “I mean, she doesn't know of me. Just a freshman and everything. And we're in different sections. But her new haircut looks great.”

Alex had done her homework.

“Doesn't it though?” She smiled. “Go right ahead. He's expecting you. Just knock on his door before you go in.”

Alex crutch-walked over the new carpets to a door that read
ASSISTANT FOOTBALL COACH ADAM GROENER
and knocked.

“Come in!” said a gruff voice inside.

She opened the door. The coach, sitting behind his desk, was a thickset man in a polo shirt bearing the school's colors, maroon and gray. His square face, sitting on a thick neck, was accented by a buzz cut, still a full head of hair, but the first gray hairs appearing on his temples. He extended a meaty paw to invite her to sit down.

“So you're from the
Inquirer
?” he asked.

Alex leaned the crutches against the desk and sat. She was all smiles. “That's right.”

“They have a website, you know,” he said, making a show of scrolling through a website on his computer. “You're not on the masthead.”

She took his suspicion in stride. “I'm a freshman. Started this semester. Reporters don't get on the masthead until induction, and that's not until April.”

“I thought that might be the case.” He fixed his gray eyes on her. “So I called the office. And you know, it's the darndest thing. They've never even heard of you.” He leaned forward and hissed. “So what is it you want?”

That's what it was going to be. She dropped all pretense of friendliness. “I'm here to talk to you about Katie Kesey.”

“I've never heard the name.” He stood up. He was short but broad-shouldered and barrel-chested. “And I don't like liars. It's time for you to go.”

“What did you say to her in the hospital?”

“I'd really rather not call security on a girl with crutches.”

“So you didn't go see her in her hospital room? Your name's not on the guest log?”

He leaned forward, hands on the desk, the weight of his upper body resting on his shoulders. “I'll remind you that patient files are confidential, and it's a crime to look at them without permission.”

“How many players have you protected? How many rapists did you get off the hook by threatening victims?”

“I'm calling security.” He picked up the phone.

“But you made it your business, didn't you?” she said, standing. She leaned forward so that their faces were inches apart. She could hear his tense breathing, see his flaring nostrils. His cheeks bloomed red with anger. “You wanted to make sure she wouldn't get any ideas about going to the police about your star cornerback.”

“That's enough. Get out of my office. Get out!”

Simon was waiting for her in the door niche outside the athletic center, cowering from the cold.

“Did you get anything?” he asked as they walked together back to the Prather House.

“No. He's careful. A hidden recorder isn't going to be enough to hang him. We'll have to find some other way. But you had to see his reaction, Simon. We're on to something.”

L
ily waited at the corner of Garden and Philips, travel bag in her hand, shivering in the cold. Baxter sent an executive taxi to pick her up—he would never take time out of his busy schedule to come himself. She was delivered like a parcel to the airport, where she was whisked past security and out onto the runway into the company Learjet 85—three thousand–mile range, Pratt & Whitney Engines, expensive as hell.

Baxter sat with a glass of whiskey in his hand, ice tinkling as he swirled. Next to him was a thickset man in a light gray suit and a cowboy hat.

“About time,” Baxter said.

“Now, that's no way to treat such a pretty lady,” said the man. “What's your name?”

“Lily, sir.” Baxter insisted on the
sir
, even when it wasn't addressed to him.

“A Brit! How about that?”

“This is Duke Bertrand,” said Baxter.

“And this is the new toy,” he said, leering at her. “The plane, I mean.” Lily knew what he meant.

“She gets the job done when properly motivated.”

Baxter felt up her dress. The flight attendant closed the cabin door.

It was going to be a long flight to San Francisco.

 

Baxter left the hotel room for whatever business he had in town early the next morning, leaving her with his credit card and “Get yourself something pretty. Show it to me later.”

Lily took a long shower, scrubbing whatever she could of him off her, rubbing the sponge against her skin until it was red and raw. She spent an hour working out her anger on the treadmill in the hotel gym, then took another shower—a quick one to get the sweat off.

Next she called Zeta on her secure cell phone.

“No luck yet,” she said. “He won't let his cell phone out of his sight.”

“Keep trying,” Kirby said.

“I don't know how long I can keep this up,” Lily said.

“We're counting on you.”

She hung up.

Alone in the empty room. She looked at Baxter's credit card on the desk. Shopping with it felt slimy, like a tacit acceptance of this filthy bargain.

“Sod this.”

She took out her phone and made another call.

“Scott? I'm in town. Let's do this.”

“I was in the middle of a meeting of upper management.”

“Oh, sorry, shall I call back?”

“That's all right, upper management is basically three of my old college buddies. Our meetings tend to devolve into hanging out anyway, and we're just about at that time. Shall I send a car?”

 

Lily didn't want anyone at the hotel seeing her leave with another man, so she took a cab to the nearest Best Western, where she waited in the lobby until Scott pulled into the drop-off area in his Infiniti Q60. She opened the passenger door, but he climbed out and tossed her the keys.

“I figured you might drive this time. If you can manage driving on the
correct
side of the road, that is.”

She grinned.

Lily tore down Interstate 280 in the tight little coupe. It was a wonder—a feisty, sensitive little thing, responsive to the slightest turn of the wheel.

“So where are we going?”

Scott just shrugged. She laughed.

“You and your secrets.”

“You'll like this one, I promise.”

“Hey, I loved the aquarium. All those fish and . . . more fish. I think I saw a penguin, too.” She laid her right hand on his knee.

“Well, today's going to be a bit of a change of pace.”

She turned off the highway at his direction and took another right until they were on a narrow desert road. On this flat expanse was an oval racing track. Lily brought the coupe to a drifting stop and got out, not quite believing what she was seeing.

There, waiting for them, were two Formula One cars.

Lily was speechless.

“So. Want to take one for a spin?”

“I
count three hundred that I can see,” Morgan said.

Morgan passed the binoculars to Honoré, who was leading the reconnaissance mission. He was an excitable and idealistic young man who had lost his family to Madaki's soldiers. He might have been handsome if his face wasn't disfigured by a scar, extending from the corner of his lip up to his right temple.

They were lying prone on the crest of a hill, overlooking the house Madaki had occupied for his base of operations. It was a French colonial mansion, paint peeling, wood falling to pieces. The perimeter of the estate was marked by a crumbling wall that had collapsed in two places that Morgan could see. The jungle reached into the long-untended estate toward the house. The preliminary survey was encouraging. Plenty of cover, not much need to fight out in the open.

By the fading light, Morgan saw Madaki's men walking around their camp, eating their dinner. The convoy of trucks, four in all, was parked near the house.

“The crates are still on the trucks,” said Honoré. “White's weapons are not with the men. They are carrying old revolvers and Kalashnikovs.”

“We hit the trucks then,” Morgan said. “We jump the wall, over there, where the jungle is thickest, and move in on the trucks, setting enough dynamite to destroy the shipment. Meanwhile, we send our main force in three different groups to set the rest of the explosives along the perimeter. They divide the enemy forces while we move into the house and take Madaki hostage.”
And Zeta tactical will come in to extract me and Mr. White, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.

They returned to sit with the rest of the dozen men who comprised this makeshift squad of commandos, all with their pick of the better weapons in the camp. Honoré had Morgan's stolen MAC-10. Morgan ended up with a Star 30M, a bulky, heavy, no-nonsense semiautomatic, and a knife. It wasn't a real combat knife, just a black-handled kitchen knife in an improvised leather sheath that he wrapped around his calf.

But it was sharp. That's all he needed.

Morgan shared a piece of jerked meat with Honoré. It would be hours before Dimka would arrive with the rest of the troops—and Yolande, who had not spoken a word to Morgan ever since she overheard him speaking to Bloch.

Honoré grinned as he chewed, showing extra teeth on his right where his lip had been mutilated. “In the morning, we meet our victory. And I am going to be the person to put a bullet in Madaki.”

Morgan raised his canteen. “I'll drink to that.”

S
an Francisco Four Seasons, Executive Suite. Roger Baxter stretched in postcoital bliss, hands interlocked behind his head, and closed his eyes. Lily lay back naked, body aching, head swimming with the tail end of her drunkenness, relieved that he was done with her. The luxury of the hotel room around her, marked with shadows cast by the bedside lamps, was a cruel mockery with its comforts, its modern decor, the stupid phallic glass ornament on the coffee table the size of a football, the blackout curtains keeping out the afternoon light.

When she was sure he wouldn't notice, she curled away from him. She let a single, silent sob escape her unflappable veneer—all she could afford. She couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't. Her body would rebel. She would vomit, faint. Anything to stop
him
from touching her again.

Now, lying on the bed, facing the closet door, she waited.

She had plied him with alcohol.

She was a drinking heavyweight, and taunted him about not being able to keep up, although he made her pay for it later. Drunk, Baxter was crueler than ever.

Lily wondered about the other women before her, and what they endured to give him the impression that they enjoyed what he did. Or maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe it was that Baxter believed he possessed some irresistible allure that gave him
carte blanche
to do as he pleased. And for whatever reason compelled them, these women, like her, kept coming back.

It was no small consolation that, if she succeeded, Baxter was going to be put away, probably for the rest of his life. He wasn't going to do this to anyone else, ever.

She heard the faint wheezing snore first. She listened for a few more seconds to his breathing. Then she turned around and saw that he had his eyes closed, and his facial muscles were slack. Finally, for the first time, he was sleeping after one of their trysts.

This was her chance.

She rolled slowly so that her legs hung off the side of the bed and planted her feet on the floor. Digging through her clutch, she found the pillbox that held the device Shepard had given her. She shook it out onto her palm and held it between her manicured fingernails.

Now for the phone.

The bedsprings creaked as Lily shifted her weight to her feet. She looked at Baxter, who stirred but didn't awaken. She tiptoed around the bed to his side, taking careful, measured steps. His phone was right there on the bedside table. Baxter's nose twitched, and she froze. Satisfied that he was still unconscious, she crept on. Once it was within reach, she extended her arm, inch by inch, until her fingers met the cool glass screen. She pulled it off the table and held it in her right hand.

She walked to the bathroom on tiptoes, pulled the door closed and locked the door. She then inserted the device into the cell phone data slot.

The gadget did its work, hiding a worm in the device's subroutines, which would send all the data in his phone to Shepard back at Zeta the next time it was backed up.

The light stopped blinking, indicating that it was done. She removed the device and slipped it between her hip and the elastic band of her panties.

All she had to do now was return the phone.

She turned off the bathroom light and opened the door as slowly as she could manage. Baxter was still in bed, still wheezing.

She tiptoed to the bedside table and set the phone down, nudging it to get it in the exact right position. Then she turned to check on Baxter again.

His eyes were wide open, staring at her.

She moved to turn and sprint away from him, but he sprung out of bed and grabbed her by the arm. His touch caused her revulsion.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I just wanted to make a phone call—”

“You have a phone,” he hissed.

“My batteries were dead.”

Still holding onto her arm, he reached inside her clutch, which lay on the bed, and pulled out her phone. He hit the power button and it glowed, on the start screen, the power meter reading sixty-eight percent.

She kneed him in the groin and hit him hard with her flat palm against his nose, feeling a crunch as it broke. That was enough for him to release her, but he recovered fast enough to swing his fist, hitting hard against her right cheek.

That
, she thought,
was a mistake.

She rolled to the other side of the bed, where she was within reach of the minibar. She grabbed a glass of whiskey and threw it at his face. It shattered.

He looked at her like an enraged animal, his face marred by deep cuts, with remnants of glass embedded in his skin glinting in the lamplight.

He jumped on the bed and she leapt away. What she wasn't counting on was that he would dive headfirst onto her. His weight knocked her down. He held her arms against the floor and straddled her abdomen.

She lost herself in panic. He was too heavy for her. Too strong. She flailed her arms, trying to scratch him, anything to hurt him enough that he would get off her.

But he was drunk and mad with rage.

Looking into her eyes with triumph, he held down both her hands with his right and wrapped his left around her neck. He squeezed, closing her windpipe, cutting off circulation to her brain.

“Time to die,” he growled. Then he moved his face in close to hers. A drop of blood fell from his lacerated cheek onto her bare chest. Her throat throbbed under the constriction. Her lungs seared.

“You won't be the first bitch I kill,” he whispered in her ear. “But I'm going to remember this moment for a long, long time.”

Air. Air.
She gasped for it but none came.

“This is what it means to be a powerful man.”

Darkness slowly engulfed her, and her body seemed more and more distant. All the pain was washing away, and death seemed more and more like comfort.

He wasn't going to beat her. She wouldn't let him.

She gritted her teeth and wrested her left hand free from his grip. She scratched at the wounded side of his face. A stabbing sting as a tiny shard of glass burrowed under the manicured nail of her middle finger.

He roared in pain, which was intense enough for him to release her right hand. Out of the corner of her eye she made out the sleek black shape of her Michael Kors stiletto. She reached for it with her right hand and brought it down hard, heel-first, against his head. Then again. Then again.

He released her neck and brought both hands up to protect his face. She gasped for air, wheezing. It came at such a rush that it made her light-headed. She dropped the shoe and went at his face with both hands, sinking her thumbs into his eyes. Baxter bellowed.

But she couldn't get out from under him. No matter how much damage she did, he was bigger. That was the whole game, and she was on the losing side.

Blinded, eyes bleeding, he grabbed the hideous glass ornament from the coffee table and raised it above his head. He was going to bash her head in.

A knife came out of the darkness and plunged into Baxter's neck. The gloved hand that held it gave it a final thrust and then pulled it out, bathing Lily's exposed chest in blood. Baxter dropped the ornament onto the carpet. Then he collapsed on top of her.

Screaming, she shoved him off her and dragged herself on her heels to a corner of the room. Then she looked at her savior. He had a ski mask on, but she was very sure, even in this state, even in this light, that she did not know him.

He wiped the knife on a rag, which he stuffed in his pocket.

Woozy from the lack of oxygen, she stumbled to her feet, putting too much of her weight on a chair and tipping it over. She fell against a side table.

“You weren't supposed to be here,” he said, as she regained her footing.

“It was supposed to be just Baxter. No one was supposed to see.”

She staggered to the bed and fell onto it, rolling on her back. Dazed from the oxygen deprivation, she flopped like a dying fish. Appropriate. She was about to be gutted like one.

“I'm very, very sorry for what's about to happen.”

He walked over to the bed at a relaxed pace. Her hands closed around the small metal cylinder, the device disguised as lipstick.

The man stood over her with the knife.

“Really, it's nothing personal. I should have let him do it himself, but it seemed distasteful. Well . . .”

He raised the blade, which glinted as it caught the light. She plunged the stun gun against the turtleneck sweater that covered his waist and hit the button. Electricity cracked as the little cylinder delivered over a million volts to her attacker.

The shock scrambled communications between his brain and his muscles, and the man dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Lily willed herself to her feet. She had the presence of mind to wrap herself in a hotel bathrobe before exiting the room. She ran down the hallway, as much as her shaky legs allowed, and then down the stairs. She checked herself before going out into the lobby. The pearly white robe hid most of Baxter's blood, and the fabric was thick enough that only tiny spots had seeped to the outside. Nobody who didn't look too close would notice. She hoped.

She came out and kept close to the wall, walking fast but not enough to attract any undue attention. She got her share of stares for simply being in a bathrobe in the lobby. She stayed out of people's radar long enough to grab an unattended coat from a baggage cart near the revolving doors and pull it on as she exited the lobby.

She plunged out into the afternoon light, power-walking down Market Street, barefoot and bloody. People stared at her as she passed, but no one seemed too concerned. A man wearing nothing but a lime-green Speedo and a bicycle helmet to match roller-skated past her, and it dawned on her that the city's residents were accustomed to weirdness.

A Muni trolleybus came to a halt as she passed the station, and she hopped onto it. As it took off, she looked back through the rear window to see her attacker running out of the hotel, cell phone in hand. He looked both ways, but, at a loss, made the wrong guess and walked in the opposite direction.

There was no ticket inspector on the car, but she was faced with another problem. Passersby on the street were one thing—they had a couple seconds, tops, to look at her. In the trolley car, people had a chance to examine her, and they were drawn to the blood as it peeked out of the fur coat, to the bruises that must be showing up on her neck. She could feel the murmur as people seemed to be trying to decide what to do about her. She had to do something.

Since she couldn't hide, she got up on a seat, holding onto the handrail.

“Hey!” the driver yelled. “Get down from there!”

“The fur industry kills millions of innocent animals every year!” she shouted, opening the coat to reveal her bloody chest. She watched as the previously concerned passengers rolled their eyes. Just another crazy.

“Fur is murder!” she screamed. “Fur is murder!”

The trolleybus pulled into its next stop and she ran out as soon as the doors opened, pushing past the other passengers and disappearing into the foot traffic.

She crossed Market to Battery Street, where she ducked into a diner and sat at a corner booth.

The waitress didn't seem fazed by Lily's current condition. “What can I get you, hon?”

“Some tea, please,” she said. “Do you have any Earl Grey?”

“Sugar, we got Lipton's.”

“That'll do.” Then, as she walked away: “Please, do you have a phone I could use?”

“In the back.”

She went to the old-style wooden phone booth. In these days of cell phones, it was more of a curiosity than anything. She dialed Zeta first, collect.

“This is Shepard.”

“Give me Bloch,” she said.

“Lily? Holy—Hold on.”

A grating MIDI rendition of
Für Elise
played for about three seconds, which was three seconds longer than Lily cared to endure it at that moment, and then Bloch picked up. “Talk to me, Agent Randall.”

“I'm fine,” she said, then corrected herself: “I'm alive.”

“Where are you?”

She related what happened.

“There'll be security camera footage showing me fleeing the hotel.”

“We'll take care of it,” said Bloch. “We'll send a cleanup crew. There'll be no trace that you were ever there. Do you need extraction?”

Lily hesitated.

“Agent Randall,” she said. “Are you safe?”

“I'm safe. I'll be in touch.”

She hung up, took a deep breath, and dialed another number.

“Hello?”

“Scott, please. I need you. Please come get me.”