Vision Impossible (13 page)

He went down like a sack of potatoes, and the greasy guy was struggling to breathe, while Coffee Face was shrieking. “It burns!” he cried, and I thanked God for Tim Hortons’ hot mug of joe!

“Get in the car!” Dutch yelled, grabbing the hisser by the shoulders before spinning him around and tossing him into the grass.

I ran around to the passenger side and ducked into the car as fast as I could, but Dutch was faster and already had the car in reverse before I’d even closed my door.

We backed out of the space like hell on wheels, and there was a slight bump on Dutch’s side, followed by a high-pitched howl.

Dutch spun the wheel and threw the car into drive and we hauled butt outta there.

I checked the rearview mirror continually for several blocks, but no sign of the bad guys appeared. And then I noticed that I still held my empty coffee cup in my shaking hand.

“Who the hell
were
those guys?” I demanded.

Dutch’s eyes flickered to the rearview mirror. “Some very bad dudes,” he said. “It appears that Des Vries is a bit of a gambler and lately he’s had a really bad losing streak.”

I sucked in a breath. “He owes them money?” I asked, guessing where this was going.

“Yep.”

“How much?”

“Half a million.”

Dutch nodded. “Canadian dollars, that is.”

I waved my hand around dramatically. “Oh, well, with the exchange rate, that’s, still what?
Half a million dollars?!
”

“Abby,” Dutch said, his voice impatient. “
I
didn’t run up the tab, remember?”

I glared at him but didn’t reply.
How
could the CIA have missed the fact that Des Vries owed so much money in gambling debt?

I said as much to Dutch and he said, “It’s in the file that Des Vries likes to gamble, but he’s a very skilled player and almost always comes out on top. This poker game was probably a high-stakes game played and lost right before Rick flew to Jordan. During his interrogation with the Mossad, I doubt Des Vries would have mentioned it.”

I turned in my seat and looked behind us. “So, Des Vries owes those guys half a million dollars,” I said again, more calmly this time.

“Yep.”

“And they bought that
you
were Des Vries?”

“Those guys don’t hold the mark, doll. They’re the enforcers. They’ve likely only seen a security-camera picture of Des Vries, and I’ll remind you that this is Rick’s car we’re driving.”

“Great,” I said moodily. “Do you know who sent them?”

“No,” Dutch admitted, and I could tell that was the part that really bothered him. “I didn’t get a chance to feel them out for a name before you came out with breakfast.”

I sighed and set down the empty cardboard cup in the holder. “So, what’re we gonna do?” I asked. “I mean, they’ll come looking for you again, right?”

Dutch peered out the windshield intently. “We’ll contact Frost when we get to the office and go from there.”

 

 

A
gent Frostbite was totally unsympathetic and, I noticed, not really surprised when Dutch told him he’d been accosted by three men in the parking lot of Tim Hortons looking for payment on a gambling debt. “Let me get a team on it,” he said perfunctorily from the speakerphone in Des Vries’s office, and hung up.

“What does
that
mean?” I asked Dutch when he disconnected the line.

“It means we hang tight until we hear from Frost,” he said.

“What? Like just
sit
here?”

Dutch reached for my hand and kissed it. “Not exactly,” he said. “I’m going to look through Des Vries’s computer files again and see if I can’t come up with another possible contact that can introduce us to Boklovich. And I’ll search his log history to see if I can’t find out who he owes money to.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

Dutch pulled out a thick file from the briefcase he’d carried in from the car, similar to the ones I’d shoved in the drawer back at the condo. “Here,” he said, handing it to me. “These are known members of the Chechen Mafia in Toronto. Look through that and see if your radar dings on anyone who might either be responsible for the drone heist or can get us in with Boklovich.”

“I thought Kozahkov said the thief was a new guy?”

“He did,” Dutch said. “But there has to be a prior connection, maybe to that Oksana woman. Otherwise, how would the thief know to contact Kozahkov?”

“Good point,” I said, opening the folder, which was full of photographs and notes on nearly two dozen men, all of them sending out waves of dangerous energy.

I pulled up one photo right away. “You don’t have to worry about this guy,” I said.

Dutch squinted at the heavyset Chechen with black hair and a thick mustache. “Why?”

“He’s dead,” I said, laying the photo on the desk and picking through the others. “Along with this guy,” I added, pulling out another one from the pile.

Dutch took the photo and studied it. After a minute he asked, “Anyone else?”

“You mean, is anyone else dead?”

“Yeah.”

“No, but this guy’s friend now has a broken leg.”

I pulled out a photo that showed a man with short-cropped hair, a high brow, and a broad square face. His individual features weren’t especially attractive until you put them all together, and then they became sexy as hell . . . oh . . . dolly. Centered right above his top lip he had a slight divot, like Tom Brokaw in his younger days, that made him even more seductive. He exuded a sexual energy that, I hate to admit, affected me. Next to him stood the guy who’d tried to intimidate Dutch earlier—the very one whose leg we’d run over on our escape from Tim Hortons.

“Aw, shit,” Dutch said, taking the photo and studying it.

“Do you know who he is?”

Dutch set the picture on the desk and ran a hand through his hair. “Maksim Grinkov,” he said gravely.

“You know him?”

“Yeah, I read about all these guys last week.” Dutch scratched thoughtfully at his goatee again. “The intel I read on Grinkov suggested that he used to be in deep with the Mafia here in Toronto, but in recent years he seemed to be toning down his criminal activity. It looks like he’s still running some illegal gambling deals, though.”

I moved around to sit in the chair opposite Dutch.

“And now Des Vries owes this guy half a million dollars?”

“Looks that way.”

I thought about all the damage we’d done to Grikov’s goon squad. “What’ll they do if they catch you?”

Dutch barked out a hollow laugh. “They’ll probably torture me for a while before they kill me.”

“Unless you give them the half million, right?”

“Right.”

“Maybe the CIA will come through, then,” I said hopefully. “Maybe they’ll pony up the cash and then, once everything’s even Steven again, we can get back to business.” My radar went off and I made another connection. “Hey, do you know if Grinkov knows Boklovich?”

“I’d be surprised if he didn’t.” Just then our eyes met and I knew he was thinking what I was thinking.

“Make a payment; get an introduction,” I said easily.

Dutch phoned Frost immediately. He told him our idea and that we’d need to start the dialogue by making a payment on the half-million-dollar debt.

“These guys don’t take installments,” Frost snapped, like that was the dumbest idea he’d ever heard.

I glared at the speakerphone. “Do we really have a choice? I mean, if we don’t pay these guys, they’ll eventually find Rick, aka Dutch, and kill him. Do you really want your one shot at getting Boklovich to be a top FBI agent wearing cement shoes?” Okay, I was being a bit dramatic, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Frost was silent for so long, I was beginning to think we’d lost him. “It’ll take some time,” he said at last.

“Time isn’t something we’re in large supply of, Agent Frost,” I told him. My intuition was saying that it was important we move quickly.

There was another pause, then, “Let me see what I can do.” And the line went dead.

Dutch clicked the off button on our end before leaning way back in his chair. Putting his feet on the desk, he looked like he was going to take a nice long nap.

By now, I was way too wound up and I began to pace the room. After a while he said, “You’re going to wear a tread in the carpet, Edgar.”

I stopped. “I think I’m hungry.”

Dutch opened one eye. “Okay,” he said, digging into his pocket to pull out some cash. “I saw a bagel joint half a block down.”

I didn’t wait for him to change his mind and was quick to take the cash. “You want something?”

“Onion bagel with cream cheese.”

I eyed him skeptically. “When you eat those things, I find it hard to kiss you, ya know.”

Dutch smiled wickedly. “Fine,” he said. “Make it a garlic bagel with cream cheese.”

I rolled my eyes and trooped out the door.

It was starting to warm up a little and I enjoyed the feel of the sunshine on my face. I felt like I’d been cooped up in buildings for the past several weeks, mostly ’cause I had.

After getting Dutch a cinnamon-raisin bagel with cream cheese and an onion bagel for me (let’s see how
he
liked it!), I headed back to the office. About halfway there, I felt my radar tug me back toward the bagel joint. I felt like it was suggesting that I’d left something behind.

Annoyed but knowing that I’d better pay attention to the heads-up, I twirled around and hurried back. “Did I leave something here?” I asked the clerk when I got through the door.

The clerk looked around the cluttered counter. “I don’t think so,” she said.

I frowned, and scanned the worn Formica myself. Nothing looked like it belonged to me. Checking in with my crew—that small band of spirit guides clustered around my energy—I couldn’t figure out why they’d wanted me to come back, but I had the feeling it was some sort of warning to stay put.

I glanced up at the clock; it was already well past ten. “What?” I mumbled, completely confused when no additional information was forthcoming and nothing happened in the bagel shop to make me feel like the return trip had been worth it.

I got no reply from the crew and no further clarification for that matter. With a sigh and slightly frustrated, I began to march to the door again, but just as I reached it, I felt this tug on my mind.
Wait!
was the message.

“For what?” I whispered.

So I did. I stood near the door, waiting, while peering anxiously out the window—for what I had no idea, but I knew something would happen sooner or later.

And just when I was about to give up . . . something did.

I
t was as I was reaching for the door in my second attempt to leave that I saw them. Two big thug types dragging Dutch toward a black town car. Even from half a block away I could tell they’d been beating on him.

He was slumped in between them, barely able to hold his head up. For a long moment I stood completely frozen; the shock of seeing two men abducting my fiancé caused all my synapses to fire at once—the overload left me temporarily immobile.

It wasn’t until the thugs started to jam Dutch into the car that I dropped the bag of bagels and took off running. I closed in on them fast, mindless of the people scurrying out of the way along the sidewalk, focusing only on reaching Dutch.

One of the thugs saw me coming, because he paused in his effort to shove Dutch into the car and looked me dead in the eye.

I waved my fist at him and roared a kind of carnal, angry scream.

He countered with a big ol’ gun aimed steadily in my direction.

Point to bad guy.

“Let him go!” I shouted, weaving slightly to the side at the sight of the gun but still pounding down the pavement toward the two men.

At that moment, Dutch shoved one of them aside and reached for the gun. It went off and glass broke right next to me. People screamed and crouched down. Someone yelled, “GUN!” and more people screamed and ducked.

I continued to race right for the town car, but as I got to within about ten feet of it, the two guys wrestled Dutch inside, slammed the door closed, and turned to me.

One pointed his gun at my heart; the other drew his and took careful aim. I knew that the next time they fired, they wouldn’t miss. I stopped, my chest heaving and my blood boiling. Without a word the two men stepped to the front doors of the black sedan and got in. A moment later, they gunned the engine and the car roared to life, jumping forward—right at me. I dove to the side, straight into a couple of trash cans, sending one of them directly into the sedan’s path.

There was a thunderous clash of metal, garbage flew up in the air along with the can, and I covered my head as much of it came raining down on me.