Ashen Rayne (Shadowlands Book 1) (10 page)

“Ms. MacKenna, will you please get down? That’s state property you’re denting.”

“Sure, Barney, I’ve got shit to do,” Smoak replied. “Go tell your lieutenant I’m not repeating myself, and if he has any more dumbass questions, he can call Chandler.”

She stepped off the car and made her way toward the tape and where Blaze was standing. Blaze saw her and waved, a puzzled look on her face. Smoak waved back and stopped opposite her.

“Hey, Blaze,” she said. “Don’t take this wrong, but what the hell are you doing here?”

Blaze laughed. “I could ask you the same thing. You look like someone tried to drown you. Are you okay?”

“Ms. MacKenna saved a bus full of kids,” the patrolman said. “It was brilliant!”

Thanks, officer
, Smoak thought.

Blaze bounced on her toes like a child at the carnival. “Really? That’s awesome, Kamryn, what happened?”

Smoak could feel the flush rising in her cheeks, and she shot an angry glance at the patrolman, who moved a step away.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said. “But what brings you out here? You didn’t come all the way out here to gawk…”

Blaze shook her head. “Of course not. The officer on duty downtown told me that Detective Murphy might have made some headway in my sister’s case. When I found out he’d taken the day off, I drove out to talk to him.”

Smoak sighed and pointed at the bloodstain on the pavement behind her. “That was Detective Murphy. Or what’s left. He was the sniper’s first victim.”

Blaze frowned. “Shit… I was hoping he’d found Rayne.”

Smoak shook her head. “I’m sorry, hon, I don’t think so, or there would be cops out looking. His Lieutenant would have called you or something.”

Blaze continued to stare at the blood. “They have to find her.”

“They will,” Smoak said. “Didn’t you say this guy was an asshole, anyway? Someone better will get assigned the case, and they’ll find your sister.”

Blaze looked at Smoak, a hint of a smile on her naked lips. “Yeah… I can’t say I’m glad he’s gone, but I
am
glad he’s off the case. He wasn’t a very good detective.”

“I’m sorry you had to see this,” Smoak said.

Blaze shrugged. “Not the first time I’ve seen blood, and I got to see you, even if you do look like you’ve been swimming in your clothes.”

Smoak looked down at her damp, salt-encrusted pants and smiled. “I have been. I should go home and get changed.”

“Oh!’ I have some clothes in my car that should fit you,” Blaze said. “I keep spare stuff with me, just in case.”

“I can go home, really it’s fine,” Smoak said.

“Why go home when you can change right here?” Blaze asked. “Are you avoiding me?”

Smoak blinked in surprise and looked at Blaze, who was standing with her hands on her hips, her green eyes shining.

Finding her voice, Smoak said “What? No, not at all. I just don’t want to be a bother.”

Blaze lifted the tape high enough for Smoak to pass through. “It’s no bother. Come on, I’m sure I’ve got some shorts or something.”

Smoak knew she shouldn’t. Wasting time with Blaze wasn’t going to find Rayne. But something made her duck under the tape and follow the redheaded woman through the crowd to the street where her Honda was parked. Blaze let go of her hand and opened the trunk to rifle through a large duffel bag that was placed to one side. A few moments later, the girl turned and handed Smoak a pair of shorts and a fresh tee-shirt with the Pepsi logo emblazoned on the front.

“Get changed and I’ll see if I have a brush in the car. Your hair looks...well, it looks like something has been nesting in it,” she said.

“Where?” Smoak asked.

Blaze grinned. “On your head? That’s where we usually keep big piles of blonde hair.”

Smoak flushed. “No, I meant—”

Blaze cut her off, “I know what you meant. I was being silly. Why not right here? Face that way and only the seagulls will see anything.”

Smoak stared at Blaze for a moment and saw the hint of challenge in the younger woman’s eyes. With a shrug, she set down the pile of clothes and turned away from the crowd. She tugged off her still soaking wet jacket and wrung it out as best she could before dropping it on the pavement. This was followed by the knife sheath that hung over her shoulders. She then pulled her top over her head and tossed it aside.

“I don’t suppose you have a towel in that bag?” she asked.

Blaze turned and her jaw dropped. “I didn’t know you weren’t wearing a bra!”

It was Smoak’s turn to grin. “You didn’t ask.”

A fluffy white beach towel hit her in the face. She grabbed it and dried off, mindful that Blaze was still watching. Maybe Ashley was right and Blaze was her kind of girl.

She wrapped the towel around her waist and put the tee shirt on before kicking off her boots and dropping her pants. She finished drying off and tugged on the denim shorts Blaze had offered. They were a little snug around the hips but would do for now. When she was finished, she sat on the hood of the car to dry off her feet.

“What are those scars?” Blaze asked.

Smoak didn’t look up from drying between her toes. “Which ones?”

“The ones across your belly.”

Smoak tossed her socks aside and started putting her boots back on. “Bullet holes an angry soldier gifted me with while I strangled his buddy to death.”

“I thought you said you were a dancer,” Blaze said.

“I am. That was before. I use makeup to cover the scars when I work. You can tell if you look close, but so far, no one has complained,” Smoak said. “Some customers think they add an air of mystery to me.”

“And the wing tattoos on your back. Those are to cover more scars, aren’t they?”

Smoak nodded. “The Wings of the Devil is what my CO used to call them. I had them done while on leave overseas.”

Blaze handed Smoak the hairbrush.

Smoak took it and began working on the knots that held her hair in place like glue. She could feel the redhead woman’s eyes on her and she said, “Go ahead, you can ask.”

Blaze looked away, her eyes falling on the knives. “Why were you carrying a pair of swords?”

Smoak laughed, but could feel butterflies waking in her belly. “They aren’t swords. They’re specially made Khyber knives I picked up in Afghanistan.”

Blaze looked back at Smoak and frowned. “Give me the brush, you’re making a mess.”

Smoak stopped and held the brush out to Blaze. The other woman took it with a flourish and attacked Smoak’s hair with gentle vigor.

“Thank you. So why were you carrying your Klingon knives or whatever? Those things have got to be illegal, even in Florida.”

“I rarely go anywhere without some kind of weapon. Call it my own special form of PTSD, but I don’t like to go unarmed. It makes me nervous.”

Smoak was surprised at how smoothly the lie poured from her lips and how guilty she felt as soon as it was hanging between them.

“It’s lucky you had them. The officer said you saved a busload of kids from that sniper,” Blaze said.

“I guess so,” Smoak said. “I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I’d say you were in the right place at the right time, Kamryn. If you hadn’t been here, some of those kids would be dead, and I’m willing to bet the sniper would have gotten away. You’re a hero.”

Smoak swallowed a bitter reply and closed her eyes, letting Blaze brush out her hair.

Half an hour later, the two women were sitting in a coffee house enjoying iced coffee and some kind of Danish Blaze had chosen. The coffee was good, but Smoak thought the pastry tasted like old pumpkin. Which is what it looked like. She picked at it with her fingers while she listened to Blaze talk. She knew almost everything Blaze was telling her about growing up in Ormond Beach, but it was nice to hear it come from the woman’s lips. Her voice had a musical quality that was almost mesmerizing.

“Sorry if I’m babbling,” Blaze said after a while. “I just haven’t had anyone to talk to since Rayne…”

Smoak smiled. “You’re not babbling. I like listening to you talk.”

“You should hear me sing,” Blaze said.

“I’m sure I will,” Smoak said. “Those detectives will find your sister, and then you can go back to doing regular gigs. When you do, I’ll come see you.”

Blaze nodded. “They will, and then I’ll get you a spot right in front of the stage to listen to me caterwaul.”

Smoke laughed and pushed her snack aside. “You have a great voice, Blaze. I can’t wait to hear you sing.”

Blaze frowned. “I hear a ‘but’ coming on.”

Smoak sighed and nodded. “Yeah… I need to get going. I should be at work.”

“At the club? You work the afternoon shift?”

“Um…something like that,” Smoak said. “It will be late by the time I get cleaned up and my makeup on.”

“Maybe I’ll see you at the club, then,” Blaze said. “I’m off tonight.”

She scribbled her number on a napkin and handed it over. “I know you threw this away or you would have called. Don’t lose it this time. You’re wearing my shirt, and I want it back.”

Smoak picked up the note and slid it into the pocket of her borrowed shorts. “I’ll call you later, I promise.”

She left the coffee house and crossed the street to where her bike was parked behind Blaze’s Honda. She slipped into her sun-dried jacket and looked over her shoulder. Blaze was watching her through the window. When she saw Smoak looking, she smiled and gave a little wave of her fingers. Smoak waved back, retrieved her spare sunglasses from her tank bag and sped away, hoping Ashley wouldn’t ask where she’d been all afternoon.

Ashley woke just after noon to sunlight gleaming through her windows. She blinked at the light and rolled out of bed, her bare feet sinking into the soft blue carpet. Her room had the only real color in the whole apartment. Smoak liked everything to be clean, white and replaceable. They’d had to bleach enough towels and sheets that Ashley no longer complained about the lack of color.

She showered and changed into a pair of drab olive BDU pants and a tan tank top matched with combat boots. A tactical holster with a new Beretta M9 hung low on her right thigh and balanced the KA BAR combat knife on her left hip. After the previous night, she wanted to be ready for whatever happened, and it didn’t look as if this was going to a be simple case.

It was half past one when she sat down at her computer and started searching for Rayne Nightingale’s cell phone number. After an hour, she found it listed with a small local carrier and it did indeed have a GPS installed. It took another thirty minutes to locate the GPS signal and match it with a local map. The phone’s last location was an abandoned hospital on the south side of the city.

Bingo
, she thought.
What’s a girl like you doing in a place like that, Rayne?

She sent the information to her tablet and used her dedicated TTY line to call Smoak.

There is no answer
, the screen read a moment later.
Would you like me to leave a message?

Try again
, Ashley typed.

There was another pause and again the operator sent the message that there was no answer. Ashley ran a hand through her hair and glared at the screen. The cursor was flashing, awaiting her response.

Leave a message telling her to call Rock or me as soon as possible,
she typed.
Then call Rock and ask him to come pick me up.

Yes ma’am
, was the reply.

Ashley put the TTY on vibrate and slipped the tablet into her backpack. She would feel the pulse even through the leather. She gathered spare magazines, a small taser and a handful of other odds and ends she thought she might need and threw them into the pack as well. She then headed to the lobby to wait for Rock.

She’d checked her text messages over a hundred times before a white Cadillac Escalade pulled into the drive with Rock at the wheel. Ashley hurried out and climbed in before Rock had time to open the door for her.

“Where to, Miss?” he rumbled.

“Head south on Ninety-five,” Ashley replied.

Rock nodded and turned around, guiding the big truck out of the driveway and south toward the interstate.

“We’re heading for that abandoned section near the 923,” Ashley said when they were clear of traffic. “That piece of land those fat cats from Boston were going to turn into shopping malls and condominiums. Don’t get us pulled over, but hurry, there is a chance we’ll find Rayne out there somewhere.”

Rock nodded and the big SUV surged forward, weaving through traffic like a sports car on steroids.

While they drove, Ashley sent a series of texts to Smoak. When she received no response, she pulled out her tablet, hacked into a trucker’s mobile hotspot and tried to ping Smoak’s phone. The GPS told her the last location was near Murphy’s home in North Beach.

“Dammit, SK, where are you?”

She stared out the window and tried not to think of all the times she’d asked that question. One of the worst had been six years ago.

Dammit, SK, where the hell are you?
Ashley thought.

She knelt, shivering in the mud in a ditch behind an occupied building in the middle of Baghdad. It wasn’t raining, and it wasn’t water she knelt in. It was human filth, and she wasn’t happy about it. She couldn’t hear, but she could smell just fine, and the stench in the gully was going to stick with her for some time to come.

We aren’t even supposed to be in Baghdad, we were told to get the hell out. But no, Smoak and Chandler have to play hero, and I end up kneeling on someone’s turd because these assholes can’t be bothered to walk to the toilet.

She gripped her silenced H & K Mp5 submachine gun and craned her neck, trying to make out any sign of Smoak in the surrounding darkness. She glimpsed a flicker of motion to her right and ducked as one of the handful of guards stepped into the yard through an archway. He had an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and a flask of booze in his hands. He glanced around the area, set his rifle aside and unzipped his fly. A moment later, Ashley could smell the acrid odor of his urine.

Oh for shit’s sake! I’m sure that place has a damn bathroom…
Ashley thought.

She moved with quiet grace along the ditch, the puddles at her feet not even shimmering as she scampered toward the guard. When she had a clear shot at his head, she aimed and squeezed the trigger in a smooth motion, putting a bullet through his ear. She caught his lifeless body before it could hit the ground and dragged it into the ditch, where she patted him down, removing a set of keys and a radio. She turned the useless radio off and tossed it into the muck,  then rose and scanned the yard again.

Nothing but cloud-filtered moonlight danced across the scrub. This was her chance. She rose and dashed the short distance to the archway. Beyond was a narrow hallway, one end open to the building’s central courtyard where she could see a pair of guards flipping through a pin-up magazine. To her left was a doorway open as wide as a man’s head, to her right a metal stairway leading upwards. Unsure exactly where Smoak was, but certain the computer center was somewhere upstairs, she closed the door behind her and stepped past the other door toward the stairs. She laid a hand on the cold iron and confirmed no one was coming down before dashing up, her weapon leading the way.

She reached the second floor to see another guard sucking on a hand-rolled cigarette that smelled of cloves. His eyes widened when he saw her, but it was too late. Her first shot hit him in the chest, the second took the top of his head off and he dropped like a marionette with its strings cut. She stepped over the corpse and spun, her weapon covering all entrances to the corridor, but none of the antique doors opened. She smiled to herself and proceeded down the corridor, her left hand trailing along the stone wall. She could feel every cold and cracked surface beneath her bare fingertips as well as the faint vibration of machinery.

She slowed at the next door. She had meant to continue down the corridor, but something made her stop. She would never know if it was a scent, a vibration or some unknowable sixth sense, but she somehow knew Smoak was on the other side of the door, and she needed help.

Ashley placed a gentle hand on the door and felt nothing. She then reared back and kicked the rusty lock with all her strength. The door flew open, and she stepped through, her finger caressing her weapon’s trigger four times. Inside the room, two men dropped with bleeding wounds in their chests and skulls, revealing Smoak sitting half-naked on a chair, both hands tied behind her with a stretch of blood-soaked rope.

“Hey, SK, did you miss me?” Ashley asked.

Smoak smiled and stood, the piece of rope she was holding dropping from bloody fingers.

“Bout time you got here, Ash,” she said. “These guys were getting on my nerves.”

Smoak pulled her desert-sand tee shirt over her head and scooped her blades up from a nearby table.

“The ugly one told me that the computer center is on the floor above. There is a staircase at the far end of the building,” she said, tightening the sheathes over her shoulders.

Ashley looked at both men then back at Smoak.

“They’re both ugly.”

Smoak shrugged. “What do I know, I like girls. The target is on this floor, western corridor. You go get the disk thing—”

“It’s called a flash drive, Smoak, join the twenty-first century, huh?”

“Whatever. You get that, I’ll go get the target and meet you behind the building in ten.”

“Do you have any idea how the hell we’re getting out of here? The rest of the unit has already bugged out,” Ashley said. “Some people can follow orders.”

“We’ll think of something,” Smoak replied, leaning through the doorway. “It isn’t like we’re part of the actual unit, anyway. Me, you, Juno and Drake pretty much do whatever Chandler needs us to do.”

Ashley rolled her eyes. “You make it sound like we’re the fucking A-Team. This is real life, and I spend most of my time teaching sign language and cracking codes. This gun bunny shit is your deal.”

“Which is why you’re the second best shot in the whole unit.”

Ashley’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘second best’? Did Drake beat my score?”

Smoak grinned. “Last week during time trials. I thought you knew.”

“If I knew, I would have gone back to the range!” Ashley said.

“Now you have something to look forward to. Can we get a move on? Our nonexistent ride isn’t going to wait forever.”

Ashley moved out of the way, her rifle sweeping the corridor.

“You know you’re crazy, right?” she asked.

“You’re the one who followed me. See you in ten,” Smoak replied. She winked at Ashley and hurried away, one hand on her blade.

“Fucking crazy,” Ashley repeated to her friend’s retreating back.

She watched until Smoak was out of sight before turning and heading across the second-floor walkway that overlooked the courtyard. There were two guards below, and she hugged the wall, feeling her heart pound in her chest. Sneaking around was the worst part of the job. A straight up fight would be better any day of the week.

She reached the end of the walk and glanced into the yard below. The men were still there, passing an earthenware flask back and forth. She nodded to herself and placed a hand on the door beside her. There were no vibrations. She opened it a scant crack and glanced through. Beyond was another narrow corridor, this one lit by two bare bulbs that flickered like candles in the wind. Three doors opened into the corridor, one with a bored-looking guard standing next to it.

Bingo

She slung the Mp5 and stepped through the door, walking through as if she belonged there. The guard looked at her and straightened, one hand smoothing his rumpled hair. She saw his lips move, but reading Arabic took all her concentration. She smiled and shrugged, still walking at a normal pace. The guard tried his challenge again, this time laying one hand on his weapon.

“My Arabic is terrible,” Ashley said. “How ‘bout English?”

The guard frowned and started to raise his rifle, but by then, he was in range of Ashley’s boot, which caught him in the stomach. He doubled over, clutching himself and retching on the wooden floor. Ashley knocked him out with an elbow to the head, gifting him with a concussion and a fractured skull. He slumped to the floor, and she unslung her weapon and pushed the door open with her left hand. Two men sat behind computer consoles, a cloud of cigarette smoke circling their heads. She killed them both with double-tap shots to the chest and head, then closed the door.

It was the work of five minutes to download the data Chandler was looking for and another two to route the rest of the data to her personal network for later review. When she was done, she pulled a packet of plastic explosives from her belt pouch and pressed it against the underside of one of the tables. The detonator had a long enough range she could set it off when they were well away, disrupting the network and permanently erasing any indication it had been tampered with.