The Crypt (13 page)

Slowly, staring into his eyes, she released his sack and stepped back, Imre’s gun about an inch from his eye the whole time.

“Move.”

He started up the stairs on wobbly knees. Good to his word, they made it to the third floor without him trying to be a hero.

Sarah saw that the fire extinguisher was exactly where it sat earlier. She reached behind it and snatched her passport back placing it in her front pocket. It might get bent in there but at least she knew she’d never lose it.

The man was informed. He knew what room was hers. He’d walked to the door and stopped in front.

“We going in?” he asked.

“Open the door.”

He didn’t ask for the key nor did he use one. Even though when Sarah left last she’d locked it, her door was unlocked now.

From what she could see the room was a mess. They stepped in and Sarah ordered him to go stand in the corner.

Never taking her eyes off him in case he pulled a weapon, she took quick glances around. The room had been ransacked. They’d been looking for something. Maybe notes from Vivian. Or her passport so she’d be stuck here and then the only option would be to go to the American embassy for help. That must’ve been their plan as they could easily snatch her there.

Sarah knew that asking what they had been looking for would be pointless. But she couldn’t help herself.

“What happened here?”

He stood five feet away from her. His breathing was more under control, the veins in his forehead gone back down. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well now, that’s no kind of answer.”

Sarah flipped the gun to her right hand and clicked off the safety. Then she aimed the weapon down to his right leg below the knee and fired.

His leg shot back with the impact of the bullet and smacked into the wall behind him. He instantly fell to the floor and curled up in the fetal position trying to grab at his wound.

Sarah stepped forward and with both hands on the weapon leaned over him.

“Hands up or the next bullet is between the eyes,” she ordered.

He complied. She couldn’t take the risk he would pull a weapon out of some hidden place.

“Where is Parkman?” she asked.

He lay on the floor, bleeding from the hole in his leg and panting in and out in a rapid gesture, yet defiance was written all over his face.

“You know, I don’t want to do this. But you leave me no option. What you ass whores don’t get is that loyalty is stronger than a paycheck. You do this for a living. I do this to live. Parkman saved my neck more than once. I intend on saving his and I will do it at any cost, making me loyal to him as he was to me. I owe him.” She stopped and leaned down on one knee, placing the end of the gun on the bridge of the guy’s nose. “Think of me as a psychopath. You’re nothing to me other than an obstacle. I don’t even see a human before me. After I kill you I will feel no guilt. Actually there’s something oddly pleasurable about that. Your side will have one less fighter thereby evening the odds for me a little more. Killing you makes it a point for my side. One to nothing.”

He shook his hands back and forth. She was getting through to him. “Wait, wait. We have Parkman.”

“I know that. Tell me something I don’t know, like a location.”

“There is no location.”

“Talking in riddles doesn’t make you any less dead.”

“We don’t have offices here in Hungary. All we use are three Escalades. Anyone we take in to question is usually placed in the middle Escalade. Find the vehicles and you find Parkman.”

“Why did you take him in the first place and not me? When I was with Imre your team decided to tranquilize me. I mean, when is the best time to kidnap someone?”

“Parkman was forced to talk. He told us what we needed to know about you. Kill me if you want, but they will never stop. Now that we have proof of your abilities, you are property of the United States government and you will be treated as such.”

She pushed on the barrel of the gun, ramming it into the guy’s nose. His head leaned back to avoid the pressure. She couldn’t think of anything else to do. Her anger was really starting to burst through the dam she had walled it in.

“I’m seriously getting sick and tired of people saying that I am property of the American government. I’m not and never will be. What did your people do to get Parkman to talk?”

“That wasn’t my doing. I’m part of the surveillance team, that’s it.”

Her legs were starting to cramp. Sarah stood back up. In the time she had been down talking to the guy she hadn’t noticed how white his face had gotten. A glance to the side showed his leg wound was bleeding profusely.

“Before you lose too much blood and die in this dirty hostel, tell me one last thing. Where will I find these Escalades?”

“I never know. They’re always on the move. We’re a roving force. We monitor through the use of electronics and continuously drive to the next target. It makes less of a target of us too.”

Sarah leaned back down and snatched the device out of his breast pocket, the earpiece cord coming with it.

“Not anymore. You’re in my sights now.” She took a step back toward the door. “You guys made a mistake.”

She paused at the door and looked into the hallway. Luckily no one was around. Maybe the gun going off sounded like a firecracker to the hotel’s tenants or maybe it was just filled with heavy sleepers.

“Your mistake was coming after me,” Sarah said and slipped out of the room. She ran down the hallway and down the stairs as fast as she could, the gun still in her hand.

She reached the lobby without incident. The front desk guy wasn’t there. The area was too quiet.

She guessed the only reason the hotel wasn’t being stormed was because the janitor had radioed in that he had her and was following her up to her room. After the gun shot, if anyone had called the local police, the fedora wearing government men would have told them they were on the scene and to not respond to that call. Which meant that the government men would be attempting to get in touch with their guy who was without a radio, lying upstairs bleeding.

That gave her no more than a few moments time to clear the area before they stormed the hostel wondering what happened to their man. But since no one could’ve predicted where she would turn up, the roving Escalades could be anywhere. Either way she looked at it, they weren’t there right at that moment but they would be seriously soon.

She ran up and jumped over the front counter, landing on the other side easily.

She lifted her weapon and opened the door to the back room.

The night auditor guy was sitting in a chair with a coffee in his hand, a television on in front of him.

“Why did you have the janitor doing the floors? That wasn’t cool.”

The clerk raised his hands at the sight of the gun, the coffee cup balanced perfectly. “Bocsánat, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The guy came in earlier and paid
me
to do the floors. I was told that when he leaves the lobby I was to spend the next half an hour in here on a break. That’s it.”

“How much did they pay you?”

“Five hundred American dollars. That’s good money.”

“Okay, not your fault. But I need something and I’m not going to pay for it.”

His hands still raised, no coffee spilling yet, he said, “Take what you want.”

“I need a knife. A good knife, nothing dull.”

He pointed to the side bureau. “In the drawer over there. I have fork and knife for when I eat on duty.”

Sarah moved a few steps to the side and pulled open the top drawer. All she saw were papers and notepads.

“The other one to the right.”

She shut the drawer and moved to the right. This one held eating utensils, napkins and paper plates.

She grabbed the steak knife and stepped back to the door.

“I’m checking out now. You won’t see me again. Actually it would be better for you if you didn’t see me at all. Do you understand? All you did was take the money and let a stranger mop your floor.”

He was nodding his head. “I understand.” A little coffee slipped over the edge of the raised cup as his hands began shaking.

Sarah turned, walked out of the back room, hopped over the counter again and then hustled over to the front windows. Nothing was happening out front yet. The Escalades hadn’t shown up to rescue their man.

Won’t they be surprised when they see what I’ve got planned for them?

Sarah ran from the front and headed to find another exit in the back. She wanted to be ready when the cavalry showed up. She had two guns on her now and a steak knife and she knew exactly what she was going to do.

Chapter 12

Sarah exited the side door and stepped out into the warm Budapest night. It was around three in the morning, which left only six days until “the crypt”.

She silently wished she could talk to Vivian about these things in a more detailed manner. Knowing that something ends at the crypt in so many days doesn’t give her a lot of details to work with. What ends, and why is Vivian sorry about it? Where is this crypt and how will she get there? Vivian had said it had something to do with “vampires”. How could that be? She would have to do some research on the Internet if she could ever find the time.

Vivian’s messages always seemed to be a riddle when they involved Sarah personally. But the
go here and save someone’s life, or run there and stop a kidnapping
were messages with clear details. When the message was regarding Sarah, Vivian never gave specifics, just cryptic notes. Maybe she wasn’t allowed to offer Sarah too much of a glimpse into her future. Maybe there were rules about this kind of exchange after all.

Focus Sarah. Come back to the here and now. They could arrive at any moment.

Sarah headed around the side of the building until she had a clear view of the front. She hung back in the shadows and waited for the three SUVs to arrive as she knew they would.

And they didn’t disappoint her. Not two minutes after being in place three Cadillac Escalades pulled up about half a block down from the hostel. Sarah leaned out of the shadows and watched as the passenger doors of the first and third Escalade opened and two men got out. No one moved from the center vehicle.

The two men dressed in suits and wearing fedora hats walked with purpose to the front of the hostel and stepped inside.

Sarah edged along the building. Staying as close to the wall as possible, she made her way toward the three parked vehicles. If anyone inside either vehicle saw her she was sure they’d recognize her for who she was, even with her new hair color, and the problems would escalate quickly.

Five feet from the SUVs she could make out a little of the interior of the first vehicle. A lone driver sat staring at the hotel his passenger had just entered.

She was as close as she needed to be to the lead vehicle. With the stealth of a cat, Sarah hopped across the sidewalk and dropped down below the hood. If she’d been seen the driver would exit his vehicle so she waited to a count of three.

Nothing. No noise of any kind.

The three vehicles were parked one after another. The way she had approached them kept her out of view of the other two. Since no one had exited the center SUV to go into the hotel Sarah assumed Parkman was in that one.

She crawled along the baseboards of the lead vehicle until she reached its back bumper. A quick peek around the bumper revealed two men in the front of the second SUV.

Her time limited, knowing that the two men who entered the hotel were going to be coming out soon, or radioing down the condition of their colleague, Sarah had to act and she had to do it fast.

She lunged out from behind the lead vehicle, staying low, and reached the front tire of the second SUV undetected. The steak knife sat firmly in her grip as she lay down on her back and slid along in the dark feeling for the brake fluid line. It was all she could think of on such short notice.

Or maybe she should puncture the gas tank? What kind of damage could she do that would slow them down or stop them? They’d only jump into the other vehicles.

She lay there in the dark, going through scenarios knowing that time was running out and she was in a precarious spot.

She realized that she needed to steal one of the SUVs. Preferably the one with Parkman in it. She set the knife down gently and rolled away from the underside of the vehicle. She continued to roll across the sidewalk until she hit the side of the building and was covered in another shadow. This low on the ground, someone would have to be looking right at her to have seen the movement.

She got to her feet, careful to do it slowly and remain covered by the shadows. Then she removed one of her weapons and clicked off the safety. As fast as she could, Sarah fired with precision and care into the front tires of the lead and rear SUV. Instantly doors opened on both vehicles. The drivers walked around, a gun in hand, to inspect the damage. Unless they changed the tires themselves or called a tow truck, both SUVs weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Both men stood armed about ten feet on either side of her.