The Collective (43 page)

Turcotte paused in a crouch by the ambulance doors, waiting.

“Don’t …” she started, drifting. “Don’t call … me …”

Then the world slid away. She felt the motion of the ambulance, but nothing else.

The remainder of the flight passed in silence as Josh contemplated his relationship with Rachael Voss. No one meant more to him than she did. But they had both agreed long ago that they could never be more than partners. So why did he
feel hesitant to act on the attraction he felt toward Nala Chang? It wasn’t as if he was contemplating cheating on a wife or girlfriend.

He stared at Chang’s back for a while, admiring the curve of her hip and the gentle slope of her neck. When his admiration started to drift into lurid imaginings of what they might do in that private jet all by themselves, he forced himself to turn away again.

In spite of his vow to remain awake, after a while the hum of the engines and the darkness of the cabin lulled him and he drifted off, only to wake a short time later to the jerk of the wheels touching down on the tarmac. He woke to find Chang watching him, a sleepy smile on her face. They both glanced away, but the air inside the cabin felt electric with unspoken potential.

When they stepped off the plane in D.C., Josh wondered what would have happened if the flight had been longer, and was torn between relief and disappointment that he would never know. But it was for the best. The thought of Voss finding out he’d had sex with Chang mid-flight, during a case—or at all, for that matter—made him queasy.

Not for the first time, he considered the possibility that he would never be able to have a normal relationship. And, also not for the first time, it occurred to him that maybe he didn’t really want one after all.

“So, what’s the plan?” Chang asked.

Josh had put some thought into it. “No way there isn’t someone on duty at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, even at this time of night. Satellites don’t sleep. But we want Sean McCandless’s boss, so as much as I hate to wait, I figure we get there at eight a.m. so nobody can try telling us to come back tomorrow.”

Chang nodded. “Sounds logical. And in the meantime?”

“Go home, get a few hours’ sleep, get washed up.”

“It’d take me almost two hours to get there from here, and the same to get back. There doesn’t seem much point. But I would love a shower.”

Josh hesitated, watched her watching him with a spark of mischief in her eyes, and he laughed. “I have a shower.”

“You don’t say.”

“And a spare room where you can get some sleep.”

She grinned. “Spoilsport.”

Josh had turned his cell phone off for the plane ride. Now he turned it back on, watching it power up, the screen lighting. He’d expected a message from Voss, letting him know how the McCandless situation went down in Hartford, so he waited for the phone to beep, showing him that he had voice mail. When it didn’t, he frowned, troubled, and started scanning his contacts list to call her, but then that familiar double beep came after all.

But it wasn’t a voice mail. What he’d gotten was a single text message from Theodora Wood, the director of the ICD. Josh staggered to a halt in the middle of the terminal. His fear must have been plain on his face, because when Chang turned to see what had halted him, she reached out and laid a hand on his arm.

“Josh, what is it?”

He ignored her, trying to stave off the panic that tried to seize him. Director Wood tended to leave things like texting to her subordinates. Any message should have come from Assistant Director Unger or from his own partner—this was Voss’s case after all.

He opened the message.
It’s your case, Josh. Voss shot, in surgery now. WILL recover. Call me directly to report. Don’t turn your phone off again. And watch your back
.

“Stupid,” he whispered to himself, staring at the message. “What the fuck’s wrong with me?”

“What do you mean?” Chang asked.

Josh looked at her, feeling himself come unmoored. “I’m so used to shutting my phone off for commercial flights, I wasn’t even thinking. And such a short flight, I just … Fuck!”

“What
is
it?”

He handed her the phone and she stared at the open text message for a few seconds before giving it back. Josh slid it into his pocket, barely aware of Chang’s hand returning to rest on his arm again.

“You love her,” Chang said. It wasn’t a question.

Josh looked into those lovely brown eyes. “Of course I do. She’s my partner.”

“It’s more than that.”

“She’s been shot. I shouldn’t be worried about her?”

Chang squeezed his arm, letting the subject drop. “Director Wood says Voss will recover. She’s going to be all right.”

“I never should have left her.”

“And maybe you would have caught a bullet, too. I wouldn’t have liked that very much.”

Josh looked at her. Somehow she had managed to convey a dozen meanings in that one sentence, not just in words but in tone. She wanted to comfort him, wanted to understand him and reassure him, and yet her voice was playful, tapping into the bone-deep attraction that had been simmering between them since they’d first met. He knew she didn’t want to confuse him, but for a few seconds all he could think about was how soft her skin would be under his hands, and that wasn’t helping at all.

“Nala …”

“What was that about watching your back?” she asked, shifting gears.

Josh blinked, appreciating that she knew now was not the time. Troubled, he frowned deeply and pulled the phone out again to reread the message, wondering the same thing. He had been so focused on Voss being shot that he had barely paid attention to that cryptic warning.

Now he returned the call, glancing up at Chang. “Let’s find out.”

Shortly before dawn, the aging Mercedes made its way along narrow streets near the Hudson River. Following Lynch’s directions, Jordan turned left onto an access road that ran past blocks of run-down warehouses in Yonkers,
New York. Beyond the hulking warehouses, Cait could see the Hudson River rushing by. The open window let in the stink of rotting fish.

Just getting to the Bronx had been an odyssey in and of itself. Cait had taken the loss of Lynch’s Cadillac hard. In addition to the money and guns that Lynch had socked away in the trunk, they’d been forced to leave behind everything they needed for Leyla. At minimum, they needed a car seat, a baby bottle, formula, baby food, diapers, and something to change her into if she made a mess of herself. All they needed was to be pulled over because of a crying baby without a car seat.

Just off the highway, they had found a 24-hour Walgreens pharmacy. It had everything they needed, if they could get in and out without trouble. They had listened fervently to radio reports and no one had mentioned Jordan yet. Still, they had been cautious. A good soldier, Jordan had a first-aid kit in the car. While Cait sang softly to Leyla, trying to keep her calm despite the fullness of her diaper and the disruption of her sleep, Lynch and Jordan had been forced to doctor each other. Parked in the midst of the cars and vans of employees—hiding in plain sight—the two men had disinfected and bandaged each other’s wounds. Lynch had been shot in the right side, just above his hip, so Jordan packed both entrance and exit wounds with gauze and taped them up. The bullet hadn’t seemed to hit anything vital. He might still need to be stitched up, but he would be all right.

After Lynch had taken care of the graze on Jordan’s right shoulder, Jordan had donned a clean sweatshirt from the trunk. If a BOLO had been issued for him, they could not afford for him to be recognized, so he put a baseball cap on sideways and slid his pants low on his hips so that his boxer shorts showed. He looked ridiculous and out-of-date, but anyone seeing him would notice the ridiculous look
of
him without really being focused on looking
at
him, or so they hoped.

The disguise had worked. And in addition to the things they needed for Leyla, Jordan had managed clean shirts for himself and Lynch, using crisp hundreds the old man had in
his wallet. The shopping had left them with very little cash, but it didn’t matter now.

They were here.

“Pull around back,” Lynch said.

Cait felt a weird giddiness envelop her at the idea of rest. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep—she’d endured far worse in Iraq—but the adrenaline hangover that had started to drag at her. Leyla had been awake for nearly two hours, alternately whimpering and playing with her feet. Cait had given her a bottle of formula, thinking that would put her out again, but it hadn’t. The baby must be exhausted, too, and Cait hoped that would mean they could both get a little sleep now that they’d found a temporary sanctuary. The whole world seemed set against them and only tiny vestiges of hope remained within her. She knew she couldn’t make any decisions about their future until she’d had some sleep.

Jordan drove between two old warehouses, their paint faded and peeling, and took a right turn. On the left was a short concrete wall, and beyond that, the river. There were piers up and down the Hudson here, places where ships would off-load cargo to be stored in warehouses—or where they would have done so in better times for the area.

“Right in front of the garage,” Lynch said.

When Jordan pulled up, Lynch got out and walked stiffly—age and injury slowing him down—toward a small metal box beside the garage door. He opened the box, revealing a keypad beneath, and when he entered the code, the broad metal door began to groan and then to rattle upward.

Lynch glanced around suspiciously, then waved the Mercedes in. As Jordan drove into the warehouse, dim lights flickered to life high up on the ceiling of the garage, revealing some kind of delivery van and several other vehicles. He turned the car off, creating a single moment of silence before the garage door started rattling downward behind them.

Cait checked on her daughter—momentarily content to chew on her fist—then climbed out of the backseat. She stretched, nose wrinkling at the stale smell of her own body, and looked around. The garage took up a relatively small part of the warehouse. Two small doors led from it into other
parts of the building, but they remained closed. Once the metal groan of the garage door ceased, the only sound was the ticking of the Mercedes’s cooling engine.

Lynch pulled out a set of keys and strode toward the nearest door. Jordan stepped out of the car, careful not to startle the baby, and looked around.

“Not much of a welcome,” Jordan said.

“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing.”

A chill raced through Cait. Part of her wanted to jump back in the car with Jordan and Leyla, just leave Lynch and get the hell out. But the old man had already taken one bullet for her and had blown who knew how many opportunities to hunt down these baby-killers by coming out in the open. She had to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’d earned that.

She unbuckled Leyla and took her out of the car, carrying a plastic Walgreens bag with formula and bottled water, baby wipes, and a couple of tiny T-shirts Jordan had gotten her to sleep in. He grabbed the other bags and the package of diapers and followed her as she went to the door Lynch had gone through. It stood open, darkness yawing within.

“Lynch?” she called.

“In here,” he replied.

From beyond the door, she heard a rustling and then a click, and the room lit up. Cait stepped through, Leyla tugging on a fistful of her hair, and stared around at the headquarters of the Resistance. Perhaps forty feet by sixty, this was clearly the nerve center of the operation. There were cubicles and computers around the edges of the room—in the middle, a conference table. To the left, Cait saw an array of various televisions—some flat-screen, others older—with cables snaking everywhere. To the right was a row of whiteboards covered with photographs of men and women who were clearly targets. Some of the pictures had been crossed through in red marker, presumably indicating that they were dead.

All of this had been done a long time ago.

“Oh, no,” Cait said softly.

Months’, maybe years’, worth of dust lay over nearly every surface. The desk and black chair in a single cubicle and the television array seemed to have been used more recently.
Papers were spread across the conference table, stacks of files, and those also seemed to still be in use. The rest of the place seemed silent and abandoned.