Blood Trust (19 page)

Thatë held his empty hands up. He grinned at her.

Behind her, Dardan had managed to free the knife, which slashed through Jack’s jacket and shirt, questing to slide between his ribs. Jack felt the blood running hot down his side as he struck the inside of Dardan’s left knee. The knife blade missed its mark, but Dardan slammed his fist into Jack’s solar plexus, doubling him over.

Dardan slammed him against the edge of the desk and Jack, dazed, slid to his knees. Dardan reached down and began to draw the blade across Jack’s throat. The pain cut through Jack’s wooziness and he jammed the heel of his right hand against Dardan’s wrist as he tilted his head back. The knife passed directly in front of his face. Jack, struggling for purchase, slipped and, in desperation, and grabbed the base of the blade. As the edge sliced into the meat of his palm, he shoved the point back and up. It passed just above Dardan’s cheek and punctured his eye. He screamed. Jack pushed the blade deeper, burying it in his head. Then he slumped down, his heart hammering in his throat, the adrenaline surging so strongly he thought he would retch.

Then Alli was prying the body off him, pulling him to his feet, drawing him away.

“Fuck me.” Thatë was staring at Dardan’s corpse.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Alli said without knowing who she was addressing.

A sudden hammering at the door brought the kid out of his trancelike state. “I know a way.” He came away from the door. “But you must promise to take me with you.”

His eyes were big around. Jack, regaining a semblance of composure, could tell that he was terrified. “What is it?” he said, as the hammering continued on the other side of the door.

They could hear shouts now—curses, imprecations.

“What’s happened?”

“There’s no time.” The hammering was louder. “Without me you’re trapped. Will you take me with you?”

A gunshot splintered through the door. The angry shouts grew louder, more frenzied. The pounding increased in intensity until the door shuddered.

“Yes,” Jack said. “All right.”

Thatë nodded and, putting his shoulder to the desk, shoved it all the way to the door. In the area of the floor that was under where it had been was a trapdoor. Bending, he pulled an iron ring and the trapdoor swung up.

“Quickly,” he said. “Quickly, or we’ll die here!”

There was an iron ladder leading down into absolute blackness. Alli went first, then Jack. Thatë came last, pausing to lock the trapdoor from underneath. There was no light at all.

“Keep going.” Thatë’s voice floated through the void.

They were enmeshed in damp, in sharp mineral smells, and in the stench of dying things.

“Thatë,” Jack said when he reached the ground, “what happened back there?”

He could hear Thatë breathing. At last, the kid said, “Have you heard of a man by the name of Arian Xhafa?”

Jack felt a chill go through him.

Thatë took a breath. Jack could feel it on his cheek.

“Dardan, the man you killed? He was Arian Xhafa’s brother.”

P
ART
T
WO

BLOOD TIES

Five Days Ago

The worst thing about dying alone, he used to say, is not being able to say good-bye.

—The Skating Rink,
R
OBERTO
B
OLAÑO

T
WELVE

“Y
OU
’
RE A
dead man, Jack, you know that.” Dennis Paull shook his head. “All of you. You and Alli and this kid.”

Jack tried to find a comfortable position, keeping the pain in his side to a minimum. He’d gone to a surgeon. The slash was superficial. His hand needed a number of stitches, and he was on antibiotics.

“Why state the obvious?”

“Because now it’s a race against time,” Paull said. “We’ve got to terminate Arian Xhafa before one of his people puts a couple of sniper’s rounds into the three of you.”

Thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic, Jack and Paull sat side by side in the front section of the 757’s luxuriously reconfigured interior. In the cargo hold below them, packed and ready, was the arsenal of DARPA weaponry Paull had handpicked for Chimera’s first assignment.

Alli and Thatë sat in the lounge area near the rear, eating pizza and drinking Cokes. The sight was incongruous and, for Jack, slightly eerie. They were just like two kids at a ’50s malt shop. Looking at them, the terrible events of the last twenty-four hours might never have happened.

Paull glanced at Thatë. “This fucking kid. I don’t like that you dragged him along.”

“I promised him. I had no choice.”

“Sure you had a choice.” Paull’s voice was like granite. “You could’ve ditched him the first chance you got.”

“And leave him to be picked off by Dardan’s men?”

“He carried that Stem pendant.”

“He didn’t lift a hand to protect Dardan.” Jack shook his head. “No, he’s straight, so far as that goes.”

“Still.”

“One day that cynicism will kill you,” Jack said.

Paull grunted. “In our business, there is no sharper blade than trust.”

Jack gave him an ironic smile. “I’ll try to remember that in the days ahead.”

“Still.” There was an insistence in Paull’s voice. “Why do you keep putting Alli in such danger?”

“I don’t do anything,” Jack said. “She does it herself.”

“How big is her death wish?”

“She was a holy terror in the Ukraine.”

Paull shifted, returning to the topic on his mind. “If I’d been kidnapped and held captive for a week, my death wish might be the size of New Jersey.”

So that was it. “She’s fine now, Dennis.”

“So you’ve got enough evidence to clear her on Billy Warren. What about her uncle’s security team?”

“Trust me.”

“Remember what I said about trust, Jack. But of all the people I know, you’re the one I do trust, so I got the fugitive warrant on her frozen—until we get back. I burned significant political capital with the president.”

“I appreciate it, Dennis.”

“Bullshit. You had me over a barrel. Tell me, would you really have refused to come?”

“I said it,” Jack nodded, “and I meant it.”

“You must love that girl more than life.” Paull shook his head. “You really are a fucking piece of work.”

“I appreciate the compliment.”

Paull still had a sour look on his face. “Did it ever occur to you that this kid might have killed Warren and strung him up?”

“It crossed my mind,” Jack said.

“Then why are you letting her sit with him?”

“She can take care of herself. Besides—” He sensed Alli coming toward them.

“Am I interrupting?” she said, plopping down in one of the empty seats facing them.

“We were just talking about you,” Jack said. “What’s the verdict?”

Alli shot Paull a wicked look before she addressed Jack’s question. “The jury’s still out.”

“Meaning?”

“He hasn’t lied to my face, but there’s something he’s holding back. He’s clearly frightened. Dardan’s death has unhinged him in some way I can’t fathom.”

“Do you think he killed Billy?”

“Too soon to tell.”

Jack, responding to the expression on her face, said, “What’s the matter?”

“He doesn’t trust us—not really, anyway.”

“Smart boy. He has no reason to keep trusting us.”

Alli risked a quick glance over her shoulder. “I’m doing my best to change that.”

“Go slow,” Jack said. “The kid’s skittish.”

Alli nodded and stood up. Jack reached out and took hold of her hand.

“I’m okay.” She touched his bandaged hand, and Jack nodded.

She smiled, and went back to rejoin Thatë.

Paull appeared stunned. “What are you two, a team?”

Jack smiled. “Let’s say we have an understanding.”

“Jesus, I wish my daughter and I understood each other like that.”

“Every relationship has its own difficulties.”

“Nevertheless.” Paull glanced after Alli. “What’s the secret?”

The secret,
Jack thought,
is Emma, reaching out to both of us from her unquiet existence beyond the grave.
But that explanation would mean nothing to Paull.

“There is no secret.”

“Sure. It’s personal. I get it.” Paull nodded absently and took a swallow of single malt from a glass that sat by his right elbow. “Do you know why the Warren boy was murdered?”

“I now know that Dardan gave the order.”

“Why?”

“Billy Warren had something going with Arjeta Kraja, even though Arjeta belonged to Dardan. That’s more than enough cause for a man like him.”

“So Dardan had him whacked.”

“Wouldn’t that tie everything up in a nice, neat package.”

Paull stared at him. “You think not?”

“You bet I think not. Dardan had Billy Warren tortured. Why? To teach him a lesson before he died? I doubt it. No, Billy was tortured for the usual reason: information. Either he had discovered something about Dardan or he was in possession of something Dardan wanted. I think Arjeta knew it, too, because Billy told her the night he was murdered. Remember that Alli got a panicky call from Billy, but when she went to Twilight, she saw them disappearing together into the shadows.”

Paull flexed his shoulders. “So what’s the information?”

“That,” Jack said, “is the ten-billion-dollar question.”

*   *   *

N
AOMI AND
McKinsey stayed late at the office, fact-checking the backgrounds of the three Fortress employees, plus pulling together a timeline of the murders from whatever other notes and intel they had gathered so far.

“There’s nothing from the forensic report on Alli’s room at Fearington,” McKinsey said.

Naomi picked up a plastic evidence bag. “Except this damn vial the roofies were in.”

“With her fingerprints on it.”

“And no one else’s.” Naomi shook the bag and hard light glinted off the yellowish plastic. “Jack thought that was odd and so do I.”

“Setup?”

Naomi nodded. “But who? And why?”

McKinsey looked at the whiteboard, where various possible motives were written out, and shook his head.

“How’s your look-see into our friends, the bogus O’Banion and Willowicz, coming?” she asked.

“It isn’t. The Metro police who interviewed us today took me off that. They say since the real Willowicz and O’Banion are on leave it’s an internal matter.”

“Do you believe them?”

“Metro police does not harbor spooks, Naomi.” He shrugged. “They’re two men without names.”

She glanced up. “Meaning?”

He shrugged. “For all intents and purposes they don’t exist.”

She looked vexed. “They must exist, just not under the names Willowicz and O’Banion.”

“Not our job now,” he said.

“It pisses me off,” she said, “those two running around, doing whatever the hell they please.”

“Leave it, Naomi. We have bigger rats to run down.”

Neither of them said anything for a while. The air system rattled and hummed, a cleaning cart rumbled down a hallway outside their office. A tuneless whistle approached, then was gone. The place stank of hamburgers, stale sweat, and anxiety. Silently, they got back to work. The hands of the wall clock ground slowly forward.

Around midnight, McKinsey said, “We’re never going to find Arjeta Kraja.” He threw a cup of cold coffee in the trash. “You know that, don’t you?”

She sighed, suspecting that he was right. “She’s probably buried deep.”

“More likely chopped into pieces.”

Naomi sat back, surveying the mess of papers, reports, and crime-scene photos, which now seemed to whirl before her eyes like a pinwheel at a carnival. “One person killed Billy Warren and both the guys at Twilight. The MO Jack found proves that, and yet we have not one solid lead.”

“We don’t have even a ghost of one. We don’t even have a motive. I mean why were these people murdered? What did they know? Carson’s going to be asking us questions and we’re not going to have any answers.”

“Fuck him.”

“You say that now.” McKinsey stretched. “Fuck this, I gotta get outta here.”

Naomi realized that she was fried, too. Besides, she had another agenda to tend to. “I’m starved. Let’s go get something to eat.”