Poe (35 page)

Frida followed
Powell, El-Hashim, and their new boyfriend all the way to the end of the tunnel, staying just far enough back to not be noticed.

She knew taking El-Hashim’s life in the tunnel was no longer an option, but she had never aborted a job before, and wasn’t about to now.

Once they had all exited out of the hole in the roof of the tunnel, she stood below it and listened to their conversation. When the man expressed the need to get out of there as soon as possible, Frida knew it could only mean that guards had begun searching for the missing prisoners. They had probably discovered the body of the nurse. Not really unexpected.

She waited until she was sure they gone before climbing up. She found herself in a small room in what turned out to be a stone-sided building. She hadn’t made it very far from the room when she heard the motor. To get a better view, she headed up to the rickety second floor, and moved over to one of the holes where a window had once been. Staying out of view, she peered outside. There were two vehicles, heading toward the building she was in. The first was about two minutes ahead of the other.

More than enough time, she thought.

She was in position well before the first vehicle arrived. As she had guessed, the four guards who had been inside split up so they could cover more ground. She targeted one at random, and moved in behind him.

It was so simple, it made her brain hurt from inactivity. She came at him from behind, and swung to the side, grabbing his gun hand and pointing the barrel of the weapon at his chest before he even knew what had happened.

“Bye-bye,” she whispered as she forced her finger over his and pressed the trigger.

As he fell to the ground, she ripped the gun from his hand, and moved around the corner of the building.

His buddies came quickly, first one, then the other two.

Bam. Bam-bam.

It wasn’t even a fight.

She took off in their vehicle a full minute before the second group of guards arrived.

* * *

N
O MATTER HOW
Alex asked the question, El-Hashim kept her mouth shut.

There had always been the possibility that this mission would end without Alex learning any more about her dad, but she never truly thought that would happen. This was why she had come here. This was why she had said yes.

But short of jamming a gun down El-Hashim’s throat—a tactic that probably wouldn’t work, either—Alex now knew she would come up empty. She should have followed Deuce’s advice and stayed home, taken Danny to the ballgame, and not had her hopes raised.

Knowing she’d receive the same nonresponse again, she decided to ask one more time, for her brother’s sake.

No, for her own, too.

“My father left us when we were teenagers. My mother was already dead. He’s the only parent we have. I’m not asking because—”

She heard the revving of a motor. A second later, the car leaped forward with a loud crunch as something smashed into the back of their sedan. Alex flew into El-Hashim, her knees slamming against the bottom of the trunk.

Before they had a chance to recover, there was another crash.

Wind suddenly whistled through the trunk as the lid buckled upward an inch on both sides. Alex could hear Cooper and Deuce shouting in the front of the car, but there was too much other noise to understand them.

Without warning, their sedan swerved to the side, as if dodging an obstacle in the road. At the same time, Alex heard the sound of the second motor again, racing back toward them, but instead of once more smashing into their rear end, it passed alongside them.

Metal crunched again as the other car swerved sideways into the sedan’s back panel. Alex could feel Cooper fighting for control of the vehicle, the tires skidding sideways before finally biting the road again.

Another side slam, but while the car didn’t fishtail as much this time, the trunk popped open. Alex grabbed the lid to keep it from flying all the way up. As she did, the vehicle that had been ramming them swung back and behind again.

It was one of the prison jeeps. The sedan’s taillights illuminated enough that Alex could see it wasn’t a guard behind the wheel, but Frida.

The jeep came forward again. Alex tried to hook the trunk lid down, but the latch was bent and wouldn’t catch. Something pierced the lid only a foot away from her, punching a hole in the metal.

“Are you kidding me?” Alex said under her breath.

Frida was armed.

The jeep started rushing forward again.

“Hold on!” Alex yelled as she let go of the lid and ducked down.

Frida smacked into their rear bumper again, sending the lid of the trunk flying all the way up.

As the jeep fell back a few feet, Frida stuck a gun out her window and let off another shot. This one went into the trunk itself, puncturing the floor right where Alex had been lying moments before.

As soon as Alex saw Frida pull the gun out of sight, she hopped up on her knees and reached for the lid to pull it back down.

The jeep sped forward again.

Realizing there was no way she’d get hold of the lid in time, Alex did the only thing she could. She crouched, her feet poised and ready. Right before Frida’s vehicle hit them again, she jumped.

She almost blew it. Her jump had been too good, sending her all the way over the jeep’s hood into its windshield, nearly bouncing her off the vehicle altogether. The only thing that saved her was throwing her arm around the top of the windshield at the last second and hanging on.

“If only I had a camera,” Frida shouted. “YouTube gold!”

She pointed the gun directly through the glass at Alex, but instead of pulling the trigger, she jerked the steering wheel first one way, then the other.

Alex’s feet swung out over the edge of the car, then slammed back into the front fender, but she didn’t let go.

Frida smiled. “Oh, you’re good. How about we go again?”

When Frida jerked the wheel again, Alex was ready. Using the swerving vehicle’s momentum, she swung around the windshield and dropped into the front passenger seat. Caught off guard, the grin on Frida’s face disappeared as she whipped the gun toward Alex. Alex shot her hand out, grabbing the woman’s wrist, and pushing it into the dash. The gun went off, the bullet slicing its way through the passenger door and into the night.

“Stop the car!” Alex yelled.

Frida laughed. “Does that really work? Do people listen to you when you say stupid things like that?”

Alex slammed Frida’s wrist against the dash again, trying to dislodge the weapon, but the assassin held on tight. Realizing she needed a different strategy, Alex swung her left leg into the driver’s side footwell and shoved it toward the brake.

Frida blocked it with her own foot, kicking it to the side. That was fine by Alex. She hadn’t thought it would work, but she knew it would provide the distraction she needed to grab the emergency brake handle.

She yanked it up.

The tires screamed and the smell of rubber filled the air. Frida let up on the gas as she tightened her one-handed grip on the steering wheel and fought for control. Alex moved her foot over to the regular brake and slammed it home.

The car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the road, the vehicle spinning sideways until it was almost perpendicular to the lanes.

Frida let go of the steering wheel and twisted to the side, pulling with all her strength to free the hand holding the gun. When she was finally able to yank it away, the momentum brought her arm upward, pointing the gun at the sky.

Alex thrust forward and reached for it. She wasn’t able to get hold of the weapon, but she
was
able to knock it out of Frida’s hand, sending it tumbling onto the jeep’s floor.

Both women scrambled for it. Alex got there first, but Frida’s hand was right on top of hers. The gun rocked back and forth on the floor of the vehicle, its barrel pointing skyward again. Alex felt Frida’s finger slip over the trigger, so she shoved at the weapon just as it went off.

The bullet passed through the front lip of the driver’s seat before cutting a hole through Frida’s thigh. The second shot entered Frida’s body, just below her rib cage, traveling through a lung, nicking her heart, and finally coming to rest against the C4 vertebra of her spine.

She didn’t die right away, but it was only a matter of seconds.

For the rest
of the ride, Alex used a
rope to hold the trunk lid closed from inside. Eighty-five minutes later, they reached the secluded bay southwest of Slavne with no further incident.

The arranged fishing vessel was waiting for them.

By the time the sun came up, they were twenty-five miles off the coast, where they met up with the
Nanu
, a Belgium-registered, oceanic science vessel. The
Nanu
was owned by the Teetaert Institute, a research firm that was itself owned—after a few additional corporate layers—by Stonewell International.

The scientists aboard the
Nanu
were a bit miffed that their research trip to the Black Sea had to be put on hold for several days, while the ship made its way back through the Bosphorus and then to a Greek island in the Mediterranean Sea. The purpose of the side trip was to ferry a group referred to as VIPs who had suddenly shown up on the ship one day. But a promise of adding the missing time to the end of the voyage seemed to mollify most of the researchers.

Alex never got the name of the island where they were dropped off. They were met at the pier by a blue sedan with black-tinted windows, and whisked away to a private airfield where a Stonewell jet was waiting.

El-Hashim was assigned to the back row of the plane, where she sat with the two Stonewell security officers who had been waiting for them at the airfield.

Alex took a seat in a row by herself near the front of the jet. She tilted her chair back the moment she was able and fell fast asleep.

“Miss Poe?”

Someone touched her.

“Miss Poe?”

She opened her eyes. It was one of the security men, his hand on her shoulder. She thought at first she had slept right through the landing, but no, she could hear the engines still droning.

“Yes?” she said as she tried to blink the sleep from her eyes.

“The prisoner has asked if she can speak with you.”

“Uh, sure. Okay.”

She followed him to the back. As she passed through the cabin, she could see Deuce passed out a couple rows behind where she had been. Cooper was on the other side of the plane, reading a book.

El-Hashim sat in the middle of the back row, holding a cup of water. When she saw Alex, she nodded a greeting and gestured to the seat beside her.

She then looked at the guard who’d brought Alex back. “May we have a bit of privacy?”

The man didn’t move for a moment, but finally said, “Five minutes. That’s all.”

“It’s more than enough.”

The security man nodded to his partner, and they both moved a few rows up.

“What do you want?” Alex said.

“You asked me a question.”

“One you didn’t feel the need to answer, if I remember correctly.”

El-Hashim tilted her head, conceding the point. “I’ve had time to think.”

“And?”

“I will tell,” she said, glancing at the two security men. “
If
you will do me a favor.”

“I don’t do favors for terrorists.”

“I’m not a terrorist.”

Alex shrugged. “Semantics.”

“I simply want you to deliver a message.”

“That doesn’t do much to change my mind.”

“Maybe this will. The person I want you to deliver the message to is your father.”

Alex narrowed her eyes, but said nothing.

“All you need to say is, the committee should know that El-Hashim never forgets.”

“And what’s that code for?”

“I assure you, there’s nothing coded in that message at all.”

“You will, of course, forgive the fact that I have a hard time trusting what you say.”

“So, will you do this for me?”

Alex looked away, shaking her head to herself.

“You realize,” El-Hashim said. “All you need to do is say yes. I won’t actually know for some time if you delivered the message.”

“And maybe the contact information you give me won’t even be for my father. Maybe it’s a way of sending a message to someone in your network.”

“You asked me for the information. And now I am offering it to you.”

Alex was surprised by her own hesitation. Now that she was potentially this close to contacting her dad, was she actually scared?

“All right,” Alex said. “I’ll do it.
If
I decide to use your information.”

“That doesn’t concern me. It would be very difficult to never try and reach him, I think.”

Alex didn’t respond.

“How’s your memory?” El-Hashim asked.

“Excellent.”

“Like your father’s, then.”

Again, there didn’t seem to be the need for a reply.

El-Hashim leaned over and whispered an e-mail address—a seemingly random mix of letters and numbers—in Alex’s ear.

“Would you like to repeat that back to me?”

Alex shook her head. “I’ve got it. Is that all?”

“You want more?”

“Do you have more?”

“Unfortunately, no,” El-Hashim said.

Alex stood up.

“You’ll remember the message, yes?”

“I’ll remember,” Alex told her, then headed back to her seat.

* * *

M
CELROY WAS WAITING
for them at the airport when they landed. With him was a squad of black-suited men who screamed government agency. Which one, Alex wasn’t sure.

He smiled and shook each of their hands as they exited the aircraft.

“Excellent work,” he told Alex. “Well done.”

She said thanks, then stood to the side as El-Hashim was escorted off the plane.

“It’s certainly a pleasure to meet
you
,” McElroy said.

El-Hashim frowned. “Am I supposed to know who you are?”

“I’m the one who sent the team to pick you up. But that’s not important. We won’t be spending any time together, so no need to become buddy-buddy. These men, however…” He gestured to the group of suits. “I have a feeling you’ll be getting to know them quite well.” He turned to the oldest-looking one in the group. “I remand El-Hashim to your custody.”