The Code Within: A Thriller (Trent Turner Series) (13 page)

The newcomer leveled his Beretta at Turner’s head and said, “You’re a fuckin’ dead man now.”

Turner knew instantly the man wasn’t a pro. A professional would have taken him out from the shadows and skipped the Hollywood theatrics. The man looked scared and seemed to be waiting for further instructions.

The silence was broken by an agonizing groan from his friend on the ground. Turner had no doubt he was a man who would have already pulled the trigger.

“What the fuck are you waiting for? Kill him,” Millar’s captor coughed as he slowly regained his feet.

Trent Turner’s eyes darted over to the assassin and then back to the gunman. He knew this was about to get ugly. He noticed a telltale squint followed by a slight lift of the gun’s barrel.

ETZY MILLAR’S HEART was pounding as the events unfolded in front of him. The pain from his ribs was washed away by the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He’d only seen one person killed before, and that was just yesterday. Millar was paralyzed by a potent combination of fear and confusion. He had no idea what was going on. He was having trouble wrapping his mind around this, but from the looks of it, things would soon turn deadly.

He had tunnel vision, and the constant throbbing of his heart intensified as the blood pulsed through his veins. He saw the killer bark out a command to the man in the baseball cap and then turn his attention back to the man who had come from out of nowhere.

A few moments went by before the assassin began to walk toward the spot where his weapon had landed. It was the loud groan the assassin let loose that brought Millar out of his trance. He watched the killer fall flat on his face and start to convulse. The next thing that invaded his senses was the sound of metal skidding across the ground. He looked down and saw the pistol in front of him at his feet. His sensory overload leveled off, and he instinctively traded his laptop for the gun. He looked over at the killer. He had stopped convulsing.

“Sizzle, sizzle,” the stranger said with a smile.

The killer had a pissed-off look on his face. Millar was still confused, but the situation was becoming clear. He already liked the new guy.

“Okay,” Millar said in a shaky voice. “Nobody move, or I’m just going to start shooting.”

His hands were trembling, his eyes full of a crazed fear of what might happen if he blinked. He cycled the gun from one person to the next as he tried to figure out what to do next.

“Be careful, or your sister is dead,” the killer coughed as he stood back up.

“Don’t move,” Millar said. He was visibly more nervous.

“Calm down, calm down. I’m just getting my phone. I’ll move slowly. Just take it easy.” The killer spat a mix of blood and saliva onto the ground and slowly took out his cell phone. “I have to make a call.” He punched a number into his phone and raised the device to his ear.

“Who are you calling?” Millar asked, shifting his weight nervously.

He shot a cold stare at Millar. “If this conversation ends without me, kill the girl,” he said into the phone.

A new wave of fear washed over Etzy Millar. It started at the back of his head and worked its way forward. “What are you doing?” he insisted.

The assassin pointed out the stranger. “Kill that man now, or your sister is dead,” he said.

Millar’s hands went from a tremble to a shake as he redirected the weapon, aiming at the man.

“You don’t want to do that,” the man said. “I’m here to help. He doesn’t have your sister.”

His voice was confident, and the expression on Millar’s face turned to a deeper shade of confusion.

“Come see. You can speak with her,” the killer said as he held out his phone.

He started to move toward Millar, and the stranger sent him a quick jolt that stopped him in his tracks, almost dropping the phone.

“Sizzle, sizzle,” the stranger repeated.

Millar gave the stranger a questioning look.

“nsEP,” he said with a wink. “A Nano-Second Electrical Pulse. Not something you’d want to attach to your balls.” He looked to the killer as though he had a second thought. “Well, at least for most of us.”

The killer tried to reach for the Taser leads in his back, but he zapped him again.

“Ah ah ah,” the stranger said as he shook an angry finger back and forth. He turned to Millar and said, “Don’t let him get near you. He’ll take that gun away and snap your neck before you can blink.”

The hacker turned the gun on the assassin and slowly reached into his back pocket to pull out his cell phone. “Stay there,” he said nervously, and then rattled off a number for them to call.

The assassin shook his head in disgust and then spoke quietly into the phone as he stared down the hacker.

“I can’t hear you. What are you saying?” Millar said, his voice panicked.

“Ease up. I gave him the number,” the killer barked.

A few seconds later Millar’s phone began to vibrate. He angled it toward his face to view the caller’s number. It was bogus, all sixes.

“You’d better answer that, or they’ll kill her,” the killer said.

Millar fumbled to answer the phone. “Hello? Melody?”

“Kill him or she’s dead,” the caller said.

The words caused Millar’s stomach to crawl.

“Do it now, or it’s all over,” the assassin ordered in a dark tone.

“I want to talk to my sister,” Millar said, sounding desperate.

“You don’t make the demands here,” the caller told him.

The man’s tone was patronizing, and his foreign accent made him sound even more sinister. He clamped the phone between his shoulder and ear and turned the gun toward the stranger with both hands. He squinted as he tried to squeeze the trigger.

“I heard that Etzy was looking for some help on the boards,” the stranger said coolly. “It’ll be tough to help you out if you put a bullet in my head.”

Millar released the pressure on the trigger, unsure of what to do next.

“Kill him or she dies,” the voice on the phone barked with a sense of finality.

It had been a long time since Etzy Millar’s father had taken him to the range to shoot a gun like this. That was in happier times, before his father had turned into an alcoholic.

Nothing had happened the last time he tried to squeeze the trigger. He nervously turned the side of the weapon toward him and flicked off the safety. Millar would do anything to save his little sister. He took a deep breath as he prepared himself to go through with the deed.

Somewhere in Poolesville, MD

“LOOK OUT, MOM!” Maria Soller yelled.

Her mother swerved, narrowly missing a group of men in dark clothing. The two women sped out of the apartment complex, trying to make it to the exit in time to link up with the vehicles that had taken Melody Millar. They had barely made it.

Maria pointed to the right and said, “Look, they’re over there.”

“I see them, I see them,” Matilde Soller confirmed. She stepped on the gas to close the distance.

Nerves augmented the frantic twists and turns in the road as they tried to keep pace with the SUVs at a distance. It wasn’t long before they reached the Washington, DC suburb of Germantown and then the lightly traveled roads in the small community of Poolesville, Maryland. Both of them had been mostly silent as they concentrated on the trio of vehicles.

“Mom, turn off your headlights,” Maria said. “You know, like they do in the movies.”

Matilde glanced at her daughter and then back to the road. The farther they got from the city, the more deserted and rural the roads became. She doused the headlights, and a few turns later the three SUVs pulled into a long driveway.

“Pull over, Mom, or they’ll see us,” Maria said.

Matilde carefully pulled the car onto the grass on the side of the road and turned off the engine.

“Don’t do that, Mom,” Maria said nervously.

Matilde shot her daughter a quizzical look. “What?”

“Turn off the engine.” Her voice was a panicked whisper.

“Why not, honey?”

“What if it won’t start? Please turn it back on before they get out and can hear it start.”

“Okay, honey. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

Matilde turned the key, and the engine came quietly to life.

Maria breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m not so sure, Mom. Did you see what just happened?”

“It’s okay,” she said firmly. “Calm down. I’ll go have a look.”

“Are you crazy?” Maria locked her fearful eyes with her mother’s. She had sensed the doubt in her mother. “You’re not fast enough to get out of there if they see you. I’ll go. Just keep the car running, okay?”

Matilde’s expression left no room for negotiation. “Absolutely not.”

“Look, Mom, I’ll call you and keep my cell phone on speaker. That way you can hear what’s going on. Just don’t say anything, or they’ll hear you.”

“No. Honey, we need to call my friend. This is already out of control. We can tell him where Etzy’s sister is and let him work out how to get her out of there.”

Maria shook her head no and said, “Mom, I’ll just take a quick peek. I’ll leave the phone on. Don’t worry. I won’t get too close.”

A beam of light burned through the trees and killed their conversation. They both ducked down in a panic.

“Oh my God, it was one of those trucks.” Maria was shaking with fear, and her pulse had quickened. “Do you think they saw us?”

“No. Just stay low.” Matilde pushed her daughter’s shoulder down.

The Mercedes’s engine was practically silent, so they heard the sound of gravel crackling as the heavy SUV made its way down the driveway. The sound evaporated into the rev of an engine that then faded off into the distance.

Maria slowly began to peer over the dashboard, her eyes wide with fear. “Holy shit, that was close.”

“You’re not going near that house,” she decided. “I need to make a call.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” Maria insisted. “You need to stay here in case something happens. If we both go, nobody can get help.”

In a single motion she dialed her mother’s number, opened the door and dashed toward the line of trees surrounding the perimeter of the house. Slowly, she crept her way down the property line along the trees. Soller stayed perfectly still for a couple of minutes, straining to see or hear anything inside. She was about to run across the lawn into some bushes when she heard car doors slam shut. She froze in her tracks.

“Mom,” she whispered into her phone. “Get down. I think another car is coming.”

Adams Morgan, Washington, DC

SWEAT POURED DOWN his face, and his hands continued to shake. The gun he gripped tightly was getting heavier by the second as the irony of the situation weighed on his mind. Etzy Millar now knew the man he saw down the length of the gun’s barrel was there to help him. Every avenue leading away from killing a man in cold blood, especially this one, was blocked by the cruel realization that his sister’s life was on the line. His mind raced as he considered what he believed to be inevitable. He was about to kill his only hope.

His trancelike state was broken by the vibration from his phone. There was only one other person who knew this number. He nervously removed a hand from the gun and took the device from his ear. He looked down at the display, and it confirmed what he had already been told. It was a text message from his girlfriend, Maria. The message was a single digit. He began to breathe again and swung the weapon toward the man with the baseball cap.

“Freeze, police!”

The words jolted Millar. He looked over to his left and saw an officer with his service revolver aimed directly at him, and froze.

“It’s okay, Etzy, just relax. Everything’s going to be fine,” the stranger said. His voice was only loud enough for Millar to hear.

“I said, put the gun down!” the officer yelled again.

This time there was more urgency. Sirens echoed through the city in the background.

“I’m only going to—shit!” the officer yelled.

Millar watched the killer and his sidekick take off and then disappear around the side of the building. He tossed the weapon to the ground, and the police officer cautiously approached. The sirens grew louder, and the officer seemed to have more confidence, until the screeching sound of tires followed by the sound of scraping metal took center stage.

“Motherfucker!” the officer barked.

The cop watched the double-parked gray Chrysler 300 ram into his squad car several times. It was what had raised his suspicions enough to check out the park. With a final surge, the vehicle slammed his black-and-white into a line of parked cars on the other side of the street and sped off.

Before the officer could turn back to the two men, he found himself flex-cuffed to a railing.

“Sorry about this,” the stranger said as he emptied the rounds from the policeman’s gun. “Be safe out there.”

Millar watched curiously as the stranger wiped everything clean and handed the weapon back to the officer. He then pocketed the weapon Millar had tossed to the ground.

“Grab your laptop,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”

He followed the stranger across the street, and within two minutes they had reached the hustle and bustle of Adams Morgan. They quickly ducked into a basement bar called Club Asylum. The place was small and dark, with exposed redbrick walls and a couple of pool tables crammed before its single bar at the far end of the room. He followed the stranger to one of the small tables that provided some privacy from the line of patrons situated along the bar. Millar was glad to be sitting again. He was getting used to the pain in his ribs, but it hurt like hell when he ran.

“Who are you?” Millar asked, noticing the stranger had positioned himself to keep an eye on the club’s entrance.

“Trent.”

He offered his hand, and Millar shook it nervously.

“Nice to meet you.” Millar knew the man sitting across from him had everything under control, and it helped to calm him down. “So, what happens now?”

“That depends on you, Etzy.”

Millar’s voice was uneasy. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on. One minute we’re driving down the road, and the next thing I know, Max is dead and…” His voice trailed off as he tried to regain his composure. “Max, he got shot, and then this guy comes after me, and I’m, like, holy shit, you know, what the hell is going on?” He thought about it some more and made sure nobody in the bar was listening. He wasn’t sure what he should share but shook his head, knowing he had nothing to lose. “The same guy shows up at the hotel after I ask for help on the boards, and he says he’s going to kill my little sister. I don’t know what to do, you know? She’s all I’ve got now.” Millar stopped speaking for a long time. He was startled by the sound of a cue ball assaulting freshly racked balls.