Authors: James Grippando
A
ndie’s instruction ended with a crackle in Jack’s earpiece.
New destination is covered.
He wondered what that meant, exactly. A SWAT team in position? A sniper ready to take out Merselus?
Paramedics standing by in case it all goes wrong?
Jack was already at Biscayne Boulevard, the western border of the park. Traffic was light on the four northbound lanes between him and the elevated people-mover station, which rose up like an oil rig from the urban sea of concrete and asphalt.
Jack stepped to the curb, then looked up at the platform across the street. A rubber-tired tram entered the station, and its doors slid open. One passenger got on. Two people stepped off and took the escalator down to the turnstile. The tram pulled away, leaving the platform unoccupied. Jack drew a breath, taking in the warm night air, and then started across the street.
Andie’s voice was in his ear again. “No rush, Jack. Decoy to arrive exactly at eleven forty-five.”
Decoy.
He knew what Andie meant—the female agent disguised as Sydney Bennett, the bait who would lure Merselus into the trap. Jack’s head was already filled with worry, but Andie’s last communication had triggered yet another one, as he couldn’t help but wonder how many times Andie herself had been the decoy in one of her undercover operations.
Jack jogged across the fourth lane to avoid being flattened by a Porsche coming around the corner. Bayfront Station was at the fulcrum of what had once been a famous hairpin turn in the first and only Grand Prix race to actually run in the streets of downtown Miami. Some drivers thought the race was still running.
“Guitarist is one of ours,” said Andie as Jack approached the street-level entrance to the station. The tune sounded like something from the Gypsy Kings. The guy actually wasn’t bad.
“You’re early,” said Andie. “Don’t want you trapped on the platform with nowhere to go. Stand where you are and listen to the musician.”
Jack stopped. The guitarist transitioned into Cat Stevens’ “Moonshadow.” Really damn good.
“Okay,” said Andie, “take the escalator up to the platform. Decoy will arrive in ninety seconds.”
Jack fished a couple bucks from his wallet and bought a Metromover token from the machine. He dropped the change in the musician’s open guitar case, which drew a string of “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Nerves had a way of triggering funny thoughts, and special agent Cat Stevens had Jack thinking that it wasn’t just lawyers who yearned for another career.
“You’re welcome,” said Jack. He pushed through the turnstile and started up the escalator. It seemed painfully slow, but Jack knew it was just the circumstances. Halfway up he spotted the Sydney decoy on the sidewalk across the street. She was walking toward the station.
He wondered if Merselus saw her as well.
Jack stepped onto the platform. It was cooler up there, a salty breeze blowing across the park from the bay. His gaze fixed on the FBI decoy as she crossed Biscayne Boulevard. She didn’t look all that much like Sydney Bennett. The blond wig, the scarf, the sunglasses at night—the entire getup was more like what Sydney might look like if she were trying not to be recognized in public.
Jack moved to the thick yellow warning line in front of the track, right at the edge of the elevated platform. No trams were in sight. He looked up and down Biscayne Boulevard. To the north he could see all the way to the arena, home of the Miami Heat. He spotted a few pedestrians along the sidewalk, not knowing which ones were FBI agents, no way of knowing whether one of them was Merselus. If someone didn’t make a move on the decoy quickly, the whole mission would be a failure.
Jack’s phone rang. He checked the number. It was from Sydney’s phone.
Andie’s voice was in his earpiece. “Answer it.”
Jack put the phone to his other ear. “This is Jack.”
Silence.
He glanced toward the escalator. The Sydney decoy was on her way up.
“This is Jack,” he said into the phone.
No response.
Anger rose up inside him. Sydney’s entire role in the operation had been simply to call on her iPhone and tell Jack to meet her at the central fountain at eleven thirty. If Sydney was on a mission to take over and screw things up, she was playing a dangerous game. Jack put his phone away, but it chimed immediately with a text message.
Check the bench
, it read.
He turned around to face the wood bench in front of the billboard in the center of the platform. The bench was vacant. He was completely alone on the platform until the Sydney decoy reached the top of the escalator. Jack glanced at her, then back at the bench, and something caught his eye. He stepped closer, closer. Then he saw it clearly, a polished copper hoop hanging from the armrest on the bench.
It was Rene’s necklace.
“Don’t touch anything,” the undercover agent told him.
Jack stepped away from the bench, sickened by the symbolism of the swap.
“He’s got Sydney,” Jack said.
The agent said something into her hidden microphone about “abort,” which took it from obvious to official that the mission had failed.
Jack’s gaze drifted back to the necklace on the bench, and he wondered if Sydney was still alive—and how much time they had.
A
ndie’s surveillance and apprehension team quickly shifted gears to abduction and recovery mode. The FBI communications van was at the exit to the parking garage, poised to speed down Biscayne Boulevard. Andie was buckled into the passenger seat with tech support on the line.
“I need a location,” she said, her patience waning.
“No GPS reading,” her tech agent said.
“Damn.” Andie was certain that Merselus had found Sydney because she had screwed up the FBI’s directions on how to disarm GPS tracking on her iPhone.
“We’re triangulating now,” tech said.
Andie crossed her fingers. The electronic pulse that every cell phone in the power-on mode transmitted to cell towers every eight seconds was distinct from GPS tracking, but the process of triangulating between a cell phone and towers took more time.
“Got it,” he said, and he gave her an approximate address, give or take a hundred-yard radius. Triangulation was less precise than GPS. “That’s the best we can do.”
“That’s on the river.”
“North of the Brickell Avenue Bridge,” he said. “I’m sending you the coordinates now.”
“Send them team-wide,” said Andie. “And thanks.”
The driver hit the gas, and the tires squealed as the van raced out of the parking garage. They were headed south on Biscayne Boulevard as Andie confirmed backup and got on the line with Special Agent Crenshaw, whose team was already on the move in a black FBI SWAT van.
Crenshaw asked, “How current are the coordinates?”
“About four minutes ago.”
“Four minutes? They could be five miles from there by now.”
“It’s all we’ve got to go on for now.”
“How about an update?”
“Not likely. Our guess is that he texted rather than called to try to keep the phone on for less than eight seconds. He barely missed it. We got one reading when he sent the text, which by itself may not have been enough for us to triangulate. Got a second pulse just before the phone was powered off, which gave us a little more data to work with. I wouldn’t expect him to turn on the phone again and send another pulse.”
“Did you issue a BOLO?”
Andie understood the point of his question. A be-on-the-lookout alert could draw everyone into the conflict—from local police to the neighborhood crime watch. Or even the media.
“BOLO went out three minutes ago,” said Andie.
“Shit,” said Crenshaw.
“Had to do it,” said Andie. “If they’re speeding down I-95, I need highway patrol in the loop.”
“Be on the lookout for what, though? Do you honestly think Sydney Bennett looks anything like what she looked like in trial?”
“Probably not. But we have a decent image of Merselus that we lifted from a snippet of enhanced video taken by a Coast Guard officer of him and Sydney on the runway at Opa-locka Airport. He may not even know we have it, so it may be helpful.”
“Send me that now,” said Crenshaw. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you supplement the BOLO with the usual multijurisdictional caveat.”
“And that would be . . . what?”
“Tell the locals to stay out of my way,” said Crenshaw.
She knew he was only half-serious—maybe a little more than half. “Roger that,” said Andie.
M
idnight came. Jack was driving across the Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Biscayne, halfway home and flanked on both sides by the dark waters of Biscayne Bay. With a slight turn of his head to the left, he could admire downtown Miami and the sparkling skyline that stretched along the shore of the mainland. The view was beautiful—deceptively so, as the city seemed oblivious to Merselus and his plans for the night. Rene, her necklace, and Sydney were heavy on Jack’s mind when the phone call came from Andie.
“Are you okay?” asked Andie.
“Yeah. Where are you?”
“You won’t see me tonight.”
He got that answer a lot in response to “Where are you?”
“Do you want me to notify Sydney’s parents?” Jack asked.
“It’s covered.”
“Good. Not exactly two of my favorite people.”
“Which reminds me. Don’t lie awake tonight mulling over your long-shot theory about Celeste Laramore’s biological parents. It went nowhere. DNA tests showed no possible biological connection between Celeste and anyone in the Bennett family—Sydney, her parents, Emma. No one.”
Andie had told him from the get-go that he was getting carried away with the physical resemblance between Celeste and Sydney. “Still don’t understand why she visited Sydney, why she started looking more and more like her.”
“My bet is that Celeste thought she could be related to Sydney, or maybe even wanted it to be true. I hate to speak badly of a young woman in a coma, but frankly I think it was some kind of weird celebrity worship. Granted, Sydney was the worst kind of celebrity, but she was still a celebrity.”
“Maybe,” said Jack.
“I gotta go. I’ll call you.”
“Stay safe,” he said, and the call ended. Jack checked his speed. He was on the downward slope of Miami’s highest bridge, the end of the causeway and the beginning of the island of Key Biscayne and its notorious speed traps. He brought it down to thirty-five m.p.h. and dialed Theo at his bar. Music and crowd noise were in the background.
“How’s
Abuela
?” Jack asked. Jack hadn’t told his grandmother what he and Andie were up to, but she had still felt uncomfortable staying at the house alone, so Theo told her it was national Take an
Abuela
to Work Night.
“She’s awesome,” said Theo. “She’s sharing a booth with Uncle Cy and on her third Cosmo-Not.”
Cosmo-Not was Theo’s version of a nonalcoholic Cosmopolitan. Uncle Cy was Theo’s great-uncle, an eighty-year-old relic of Miami’s Overtown and its jazz heyday of the mid-twentieth century. Cy was still quite the saxophone player, with emphasis on
player
.
“Tell Cy to keep his hands to himself,” said Jack.
“Will do. How did it go tonight?”
“Don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Got it.”
“I’m almost home, and I’m embarrassed to say that I forgot all about picking up
Abuela
. Too damn much on my mind.”
“No problem. I’ll drop her off.”
“Thanks.”
“Unless she hooks up with Cy.”
“Don’t push it,” said Jack.
Jack ended the call, tucked his cell away, and just drove. The monotonous hum of tires on asphalt was the backdrop for his thoughts. He passed the Seaquarium, home to Flipper the dolphin and Lolita the killer whale. He wondered if they were asleep; and if they were asleep, he wondered if they were dreaming; and if they were dreaming, he wondered if these highly intelligent legless mammals ever dreamed about walking like the trainers who fed them. Then he shook off the silliness and accepted the fact that the old games he played to trick himself were futile. Never in his life—not even as a high-school boy obsessed with the hair and lips of Julia Roberts—had he managed to conjure up a successful diversion from worries and concerns that were certain to keep him wide awake and staring at the ceiling till dawn.
Jack steered into the driveway and killed the engine. The headlights remained on for a few moments, then blinked off. The house was dark, and the porch light was off. The narrow driveway was the only opening in a thick ficus hedge that extended like a castle wall across the front and along both sides of his smallish yard. It was great for privacy, but at ten feet it had grown way too tall, and it made the night seem even darker. He was glad
Abuela
had decided not to stay behind by herself.
Jack opened the car door, stepped out, and then froze. A man was sitting on his front doorstep. He rose slowly—not a threatening motion, but Jack proceeded with caution as he walked around the front of his car and started up the sidewalk. The man waited, and Jack soon recognized the face.
“Mr. Bennett?”
Sydney’s father answered in a low voice, his tone and body language conveying not so much reluctance, but resignation. “We should talk,” he said.
M
erselus killed the lights. His one-room apartment on the Miami River went dark, save for the glow from the LCD of his laptop on the dresser. He closed the laptop and, in the darkness, slid it into his backpack. It fit nicely in the slim and padded pocket—safely separated from the fully loaded Glock 9-millimeter pistol, four extra clips of duty ammunition, and a nine-inch diving knife with a serrated blade. He took the knife, slipped on the backpack, and pressed the serrated blade to Sydney’s throat.
“Come on, come on, come on,” he said in rapid-fire delivery.
Sydney’s wrists were bound behind her waist with plastic handcuffs. A gray strip of duct tape covered her mouth. Her legs were free, which allowed her to walk, but she wasn’t moving fast enough. Merselus grabbed her by the hair and pushed her toward the door.
“I said
come on
.”
Sydney fell to the floor. Merselus unlocked the door, pulled Sydney to her feet, and spoke right into her face, eye to eye.
“Do what I tell you to do, and nothing else,” he said. He put the knife back to her throat, pressing hard enough this time to draw a drop of blood. “It’s that simple. Nod if you understand.”
It was a shaky nod, but she managed.
“Good girl,” he said. “Now I’m going to take the tape off your mouth, and when we walk out of this apartment, I want you to lean into me. If we pass anyone on the way to the car, you’re just a little drunk and I’m holding you up. You got it?”
She nodded again.
He pulled off the tape, which drew a whimper of pain but not another sound from her. Then she breathed deep, mouth open, as if gobbling up air. He grabbed a windbreaker from the closet, draped it over his hand with the knife, and put his arm around her waist. The windbreaker hid the plastic cuffs on her wrists as well as the knife at her spine. Then he pulled her closer and opened the door.
“Here we go,” he said.
The three-story complex was a converted motel, thirty years overdue for a makeover and a developer’s whim away from being razed for a new high-rise. Each apartment had just one door, which opened to the outdoors, and a single window with a noisy air-conditioning unit that faced the parking lot. Residents rented month to month, or in Merselus’ case, week to week. His apartment was on the second floor, and he guided Sydney toward the external stairwell. They were halfway down the stairs when Merselus spotted a Miami-Dade Police squad car cruising slowly through the parking lot. Just the sight of it confirmed his fears. Somehow he’d taken longer than eight seconds to send the
Check the bench
text to Swyteck. The cell had emitted not one but two electronic pulses, double the information he had been willing to release to cell towers in the area, just enough data for law enforcement to work with. Some tech agent had done the computations and triangulated Sydney’s iPhone. They had a bead on his location. A degree from MIT, six years in Silicon Valley, twenty-seven patented algorithms for M-rated video games that had allowed him to retire at age thirty-one and never think twice about a hundred-thousand-dollar bribe to one of Sydney’s jurors—and he slipped on triangulation.
Son of a bitch!
He pulled Sydney behind the wall of yellow-painted cinder block at the stairwell’s midlevel landing. The pungent odor of a homeless guy’s fresh urine hung in the air, but they stayed put, out of sight from the passing patrol car. Merselus gave the police a minute to go by. When the squad car reached the far end of the parking lot, he forced Sydney down the stairs toward apartment 102 on the ground floor. Merselus wasn’t friendly with any of his neighbors, but he’d made a point of studying the makeup of the entire complex. He knew that apartment 102 was occupied by a seventy-year-old man who lived alone.
The patrol car rounded the turn at the end of the parking lot and headed toward a block-long stretch of identical apartments in the west complex. Merselus knocked on the hollow metal door to apartment 102 and positioned Sydney so that anyone who peered out through the peephole would see only the face of a frightened young woman. There was no answer, but a light inside set the closed draperies aglow in the window. Merselus banged harder on the door, and he kept pounding until a sleepy and shirtless old man wearing only pajama bottoms opened it.
“Girl, what the hell are you—”
The old man choked on the rest of his words as Merselus whipped himself around the door frame. In a blur of motion, the knife pierced his skin, and the serrated blade tore a two-inch opening between his ribs. His mouth was agape in a futile effort to cry out in pain as the blade twisted and ripped an even bigger hole in his punctured heart.
Merselus pulled out the knife and let his victim drop to the floor—first to his knees, then onto his side. He lay motionless, the gray hairs on his chest awash in so much crimson. Sydney stood frozen and wide-eyed with fear. Merselus shoved her through the open doorway, dragged the old man farther inside the apartment, and shut the door. The blood-soaked carpeting squished beneath Merselus’ feet as he stepped around the lifeless body.
“Tough luck, old man,” said Merselus. “Already got all the hostages I need.”