[BAD 07] - Silent Truth (45 page)

She stood perfectly still, not fighting him. “You should
take care not to risk angering Fra Vestavia,” she warned.

“You wouldn’t dare say a word to Vestavia. You complain and he’ll yank you off the team and give you to me for sure. The Fratelli would suspect a woman of flaunting herself, even you.”

She didn’t say a word. Basil was right.

And he was going to be a problem whether the mission succeeded or failed.

Hunter left the limousine parked a quarter-mile from the address north of downtown Chicago. Abbie had jumped out, raring to go meet her brother. He hoped she could convince her brother to help her.

If not, Hunter had to find her somewhere safe to hide soon.

Things would turn ugly when he encountered BAD.

She wore a suede coat he’d picked up for her in Bloomington, where he’d changed into jeans and a black turtleneck pullover. The down vest he wore was all he needed with the late-afternoon temperatures hovering in the low fifties.

She surprised him by taking his hand when he reached for hers. They walked along at a quick pace, dodging a woman with a little white dog and another lady with a stroller. When Hunter located her brother’s six-story building, Abbie used the phone on the wall next to the entrance to his apartment to call him so he could key the security code to unlock the door.

Hunter kept an eye on the area, but nothing out of the ordinary moved around the quiet neighborhood.

“Hi, it’s me.” Abbie listened and raised her head to face a security camera, then nodded at Hunter and said, “He’s a friend of mine and he’s healthy, too.”

She frowned, listened, and rubbed her head. She’d had a headache on the way back, but this seemed to be a new headache. “Uhm, let me find out.” She covered the phone
and turned to Hunter. “He doesn’t want anyone else up there but me.”

“That’s a negative.” Hunter eyed the camera, not caring if the guy didn’t like what he saw.

“He’s sickly. I read in the file he’s a hemophiliac,” she explained. “I’m just going to go up for maybe ten minutes and come right back down.”

“Tell him I’ll stand outside the door.” That was more ground than Hunter would normally give.

She told her brother, then covered the phone again. “He said he has elderly residents nearby who get upset if anyone lingers in the hallway.”

“I’m not letting—”

She cut him off. “I know you’ve been holding off all day to turn me over to somebody and I do appreciate the trouble this is causing you. I have to talk to my brother now, because the minute you hand me off my mother’s dead if I don’t make this work. I can’t live with missing this chance for her. If you aren’t going to let me go up there to see my brother then just kill me now because I will fight
everyone
to the death who tries to stop me. I need ten, maybe fifteen minutes. If I’m not back down by then, come and get me.” She lowered her voice. “I know you can get inside this building.”

He wanted to ask her to trust him to know what was best, but she’d throw back in his face that he didn’t trust her. The longer they stood outside, the higher their chance of being seen, especially if Gotthard had found the time to search Abbie’s file further and find the connection to her brother. “Okay, you go up, but do not go anywhere except up there and don’t leave his apartment unless I’m outside the door when he opens it.”

“You think I’ll
run
the minute I get up there?”

“No, Abbie. I know you’re going to try to convince your brother to go to the medical center right now. If you manage to do that, I don’t want you to leave with him because you think I’m going to hand you over to someone. Trust me when I say I’ll tell you before that happens.”

She didn’t say a word.

Hunter put a hand on her shoulder, wanting to keep her right here with him. “Stop looking at me as if I’ve treated you like that pig did. I just want you safe. I’m not turning my back on you. Dammit. If I could make it happen, I’d take you away with me somewhere I could spend hours showing you how much you do matter.”

Her bottom lip quivered. “You have the worst timing.”

“I know. I just need you to be careful… for me.” He kissed her and thought about shooting his finger at the damn camera, but he didn’t. He ended the kiss and whispered, “Hurry up and remember to wait for me to reach his floor before you leave. I’ll be standing within ten feet of his door in ten minutes or less.”

She looked torn in half, unsure what to do, but she said, “Thank you,” then spoke into the phone. “I’m coming up alone.”

The minute the door closed and she stepped onto the elevator, Hunter backed away and walked calmly to the end of the building, out of sight of the security camera. When he turned the corner, he ran.

Abbie stepped off the elevator, wrinkling her nose at the suffocating mildew smell. This building had appeared old downstairs, but not this dilapidated. Spiderwebs climbed the wall and trash littered the carpeted hallway.

Couldn’t her brother afford a better place? Especially with his illnesses?

She found his door ajar with a note stuck on it that read:

Come on in and walk to my library on your right. Walking strains my asthma.

She pushed the door open and squinted at the dark living room that smelled like the hallway, but a light shined from a room fifteen feet to her right. “It’s me, Abbie.”

When she’d taken two steps inside the living room, the front door shut as though kicked and someone strong grabbed her arms, twisting them behind her.

“What are you doing?” she yelled.

One hand held both her wrists. Cold fingers wrapped her neck. “Hello, sister.”

She tried to think past the slamming of her heart. “You’re scaring me.” Was her brother some kind of freak?

He didn’t say anything.

Why hadn’t she insisted on bringing up Hunter? “Who are you?”

“The only person who can save your mother.”

“She’s your mother, too.” Abbie’s words tripped over her tongue on shaky breaths.

“Details, details. I’m only interested in negotiating.”

“You
know
about her… that she’s sick? So you know who I am?”

“Of course I do,
sister.”

She cringed at the sound of the word sister coming out in a taunting voice. “What do you want?”

He ran the back of his hand along her cheek and down across her breast.

Please don’t let him want that.

He whispered, “I’m going to let you choose.”

“Between what?”

“Who lives and who dies.”

Hunter needed tools, something he could use to activate the power-operated lock on the gate constructed of crisscrossed metal. Abbie’s brother had picked an apartment with decent security, but nothing really challenging…
if
Hunter had tools.

His phone buzzed and he considered not answering, but Gotthard was the only one helping him right now. He pulled his phone out in one hand and kept searching for a way into the parking garage while he spoke quietly. “Yes.”

“Still working through all the records, but Rae broke the coded file with the ten males that were designated for training. I’ve cross-referenced everything I’ve got so far.”

Someone cranked a car engine on the bottom garage level.

Hunter squeezed between a hedge and the concrete
wall that surrounded the parking area. “What’d you get?”

Gotthard said, “We ran the data on all ten boys and found a Kore file showing updates every two years. The nine students who died have been noted as deceased. The last one is still counted as living. That’s our JC killer.”

The car inside the garage drove to the exit, activating the electric gate, then passing through and speeding away. Hunter shot out from where he hid and jogged toward an exit door marking the stairwell.

“Joe’s using this new information to find out if the JC killer was with MI6 or still is. While we’re waiting on that, I ran his profile through our computer and got a hit… from the rest of the Kore files.”

“Makes sense he’d be in the test files.” Hunter opened the door to the stairs carefully.

“Not what I mean. I found a family tie to him. His name in the secret files is Royce Jack.”

Hunter had started quietly up the stairs and froze.

Abbie’s brother’s was J. Royce.
No. Can’t be.

“He’s got the exact blood type and matching physical characteristics as a male child by the same woman who birthed Abigail Blanton. Her brother is the JC killer.”

And Abbie was in her brother’s hands.

Hunter took the stairs two at a time.

“We went through Abigail’s records from Kore.”

“She’s not fucking involved,” Hunter said in sharp whisper even though he was now banging steps to get to her as fast as he could. He’d made it up two floors. Three to go. Abbie needed her brother for her mother, but Hunter wanted the bastard’s blood.

Shouldn’t take long to get it from a hemophiliac.

“What I’m talking about is Abigail’s medical file from
yesterday and last night. I’m going to assume you know she coded at Kore.”

Hunter grunted rather than waste breath he needed to race up two more flights of stairs. He would catch that bastard and hand him over to Joe in trade for clearing Abbie out of this mess.