Evil Without a Face (20 page)

Her body moved, a series of sharp tugs. And her head lolled from side to side. Jess sensed the motion and caught only glimpses she couldn’t explain. Her legs felt useless, heavy as lead. A relentless blaring sound persisted, surging over and over. She couldn’t shut it out. And with the noise came a blinding flash of light. She tried covering her eyes, but her arms wouldn’t move.

She strained to see through a dense fog, nothing more than blurred images. But finally her eyes spiraled to a stop and focused, centering on a face. A woman with blond hair. The stranger’s lips moved, but the words were garbled and out of sync. She wanted to respond, but couldn’t force herself to speak.

Inside, an inexplicable urgency gripped her heart, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. She drifted in and out—fighting to stay awake—but had no idea if she was more dead than alive.

Alexa Marlowe had hoped to find the bounty hunter in better shape. When the men attacked Jessica Beckett at the gas station, she only saw the end of the assault. And the woman’s
associate, Seth Harper, had been hot on her trail and called in the cavalry. She’d seen his distinctive blue van. Planting the GPS tracking device on the bounty hunter’s car outside The Cutthroat pool hall had paid off in spades, but her sense of accomplishment quickly faded after seeing Beckett so messed up.

The relentless woman had been a regular pit bull when it came to Lucas Baker. And now she had gotten herself in the middle of Globe Harvest’s U.S. domestic operation. She had to give Beckett props for getting the job done. In another life, she would have liked to call the woman a friend, but in her line of work friends were a crutch she couldn’t afford.

Having admiration for the woman’s guts was one thing, but pulling her to safety had cost her time. Time she didn’t have. She’d found an alternative way into the lower levels of the old textile factory but was too late. The evacuation of the abducted kids, the physical abuse of the bounty hunter, and a thermite explosion—it all went down without her weighing in.

But she wasn’t one to give up easily. She had that in common with Beckett.

After pulling the bounty hunter into the corridor, Alexa peered back inside what looked like a major control room of the operation. The place was an inferno, belching smoke. White residue covered the walls and desks, and the computers were a total meltdown. Fires with a strange green tinge had sprung up all over. The chemical barium caused the peculiar color, a known component to enhance the effect of thermite. She held her breath and raced through the room looking for anything of value—another lead to follow.

Damn it!
Nothing much remained.

In the back of the chamber she found a large fire erupting from trash bins. Covering her face with a hand, she ventured closer, close enough to see that what fueled the fire might be of interest. All around her heat flared. She felt it on her exposed skin. Even her clothes absorbed it and radiated through
her body. She gagged from the heavy chemical smell and the smoke, but she had to try.

After several attempts Alexa eventually plucked a stack of badly singed paper from the fire. Blackened scraps with sections of readable print.

“Shit!” She burned her hands and dropped the pages to the floor, stomping out the fire. Afterward, the skin of her fingers throbbed with pain, and goose bumps sent shock waves over her body, but at least she’d retrieved something the bastards working for Globe Harvest had wanted to destroy.

She rolled up the pages and headed for the door, dodging burning rubble and holding her breath against the smoke. Back in the corridor, she debated her next move. The unconscious bounty hunter needed help. She wouldn’t survive alone. The bastards who’d beaten her had seen to that. And carrying dead weight would slow her down, maybe get them both killed.

Moving quickly, she stuffed the Globe Harvest papers into the waistband of her pants, then knelt to grab Beckett’s arm and raise her off the floor. But before she hoisted the woman over her shoulder, she heard muffled voices in the distance. The cop had brought company.

“Nice,” Alexa whispered, lowering the bounty hunter back down. Kneeling by her side, she stroked Beckett’s hair. “You’ve got friends, Jessica. Count your blessings.”

With fingers to her lips, Alexa stood and let out a loud shrill whistle that echoed down the corridor. Then she yelled, “Over here. I need help. This place is gonna blow.”

She waited to make sure the bounty hunter would get help, then disappeared down the corridor in search of a back way out before anyone saw her. She didn’t need the distraction. This was the closest she’d been to finding a division of Globe Harvest.

And she owed Jessica Beckett for that.

With her .45-caliber H&K MK23 in hand, Alexa defied
the dark maze of tunnels and mounting gas fumes to search for the men who had eluded her again. The way she figured it, there was only one way to pay back the bounty hunter. And for once headstrong Jessica might not argue.

“I heard something. A whistle, a woman’s voice.” Payton gestured for Joe and Sam to follow. “This way.”

He raced back to the entrance where they’d come in and turned a corner. One of the corridors was filled with dense black smoke, making it hard to see. Farther down, a fire blazed. And a wall of heat made it hard to breathe.

“There’s a fire,” he yelled over his shoulder. “And I smell gas.”

Sam caught up to him and grimaced. Even stoic Joe couldn’t hide his concern.

“Shit! This place could blow,” the detective said, covering her mouth with a hand.

“Then we better move.” Without hesitation, Payton rushed through the smoke.

He held an arm over his nose, and his eyes watered and stung like hell. The Kevlar he wore made the heat unbearable, but it also protected his skin from scorching. When he got closer to the fire, he spotted someone on the floor. The sight jolted his heart and all he could think about was Nikki. He knelt to get a better look.

The injured woman wasn’t Nikki and something inside him broke. He rolled her onto her back and checked her pulse. When Sam got to him, she knelt and smiled.

“It’s Jessie. Thank God.” But she’d hardly said the words when she looked at Payton with a pained expression. “Sorry. I mean…did you find your niece?”

With her question, desperation closed in. “Not yet.”

Joe came up, and the two men ran into the burning room, desperately searching for Nikki. They came back nauseous and gagging, covered in soot and barely able to breathe.

When Sam looked up, Payton only shook his head. He
couldn’t bring himself to say it. The tunnels were filling with gas, and the fumes made him light-headed and sick. He peered behind him, seeing only billowing clouds of black smoke.

“Maybe she was never here, Payton.” Joe reached out with a strong hand and grabbed his arm. “This place is rigged to blow. We can’t stay. And Sam’s friend needs a doctor.”

Payton shut his eyes tight, feeling the sting. A flood of memories washed over him, stemming from the grief of losing his parents. He knew Joe was right. Maybe Nikki had never been here, but it didn’t take the pain away. And Jessie Beckett looked in bad shape.

Payton nodded and reached down, pulling her off the floor in one swift move. He carried her like a small child. She was unconscious and pale, her face covered in grime. If he hadn’t checked her pulse, he might have thought she was dead.

“Let’s go. Now.”

As he picked up the pace, a threatening low rumble from the bowel of the tunnels magnified into a massive roar. The whole building shook, and walls tumbled in their path.

They’d waited too long.

“Run!”
he cried. “Don’t look back. Just go, go, Go!”

Sweat stung his eyes, making them blur. And his lungs were burning. He couldn’t get enough air. And sucking in the smoke made his throat burn like acid. He prayed that he’d picked the right way out. The smoke was so dense, he couldn’t see fallen debris until he was on top of it. He vaulted over anything in his path. Behind him, he heard Sam and Joe running, trying to keep up.

But another sound overpowered the wailing siren and sent a stab of fear through his chest. A raging fireball ripped through the corridor behind them with roaring force. And like a vacuum, it sucked air in its wake.

Carrying Jessie made his body ache, his muscles burn.
Up ahead a flash of light speared the murky black. A flashlight. He had no idea who carried it and he didn’t care.

“Head for that light. Move,” he called out to Sam and Joe.

Payton heard voices, and shadows moved through the thick haze. Whoever these people were, they were going the wrong way.

“Get out. Now! This shit hole is coming down!”

He barreled past them, slamming his shoulder against the entrance door, using his body to protect Jessie. As he cleared the door, he heard a loud crash and something snagged his leg. He nearly fell over but managed to keep his balance.

“Joe, Sam, stay with me. We’re almost there.”

No answer, but with all the noise, his words sounded muffled and distant.

He shoved through the outer door, unable to shake the intense smell of smoke, then sucked the night air into his aching lungs.

A circle of men stood a safe distance from the inferno—cops, firemen, and paramedics. Emergency vehicles had arrived, flashing their lights across a pitch-black sky.

He held Jessie, not wanting to put her down. When he turned, the building had started to implode and fire raged inside, hitting pockets of gas and erupting. In the growing crowd of faces he searched for Joe and Sam. They’d been right behind him.

Payton clung to Jessie, feeling her move in his arms. But when a massive explosion caved the front of the structure into a fiery heap, the only words that came from his mouth sounded like the voice of a stranger.

“Oh, God. Please…no.”

Running down the dimly lit corridor, Alexa Marlowe heard the explosion deep in the tunnel. The ground shook under her feet and nearly knocked her off balance. She knew in an instant what had happened.

“Damn! Move it, Marlowe.”

She secured her H&K in its holster and ran for the underground construction elevator dead ahead—no more than a wire basket with a layer of cement as flooring, hoisted on a motorized steel cable with a hook suspension. If she didn’t get ahead of the blast, she’d be cooked where she stood. And if the contraption didn’t have power, or juice supplied from a backup generator, none of her effort would matter.

“Come on.” She secured the basket door behind her and punched the lift button. “Damn it! Move.”

The elevator heaved with an uneasy jolt, and the motor kicked in with a loud whir. It strained and lifted her into a dark shaft, heading to the surface. She couldn’t see where she was going, but the elevator was the only escape route possible. Since the corridor below had dead-ended, she had no doubt the men of Globe Harvest had done exactly as she did now.

A loud rumble trailed after her with a huge sucking sound, depleting the air in its wake—a toxic vaporous cloud building momentum in the dark. And a rush of heat swelled around her. Alexa knew she was running ahead of a massive and deadly fireball. The basket swayed under her feet, and between the fumes and the motion, she felt light-headed and nauseous.

She punched the button again and again, unable to stop the compulsion.

“Come on. Almost there.”

The darkness of the elevator shaft swallowed her. She couldn’t see anything, not even the hand in front of her face. But as an orange molten glow erupted below, she realized that the black void had been a blessing.

“Oh, God.”

She looked down long enough to feel the blast on her face. Scorching heat surged up the shaft like a frenzied snake, writhing after her. Waiting for impact, she fought the natural tension in her muscles. When the time came, she wanted to roll with the punch, grappling for safe ground. As she peered through the dark above her, she felt a cool wisp of night air on her cheek and knew her race to beat the fire would be close.

Alexa braced her feet and held on, taking a last gulp of air so her lungs wouldn’t cook.

Raging molten flames soon devoured the inky black of the narrow shaft. And for an instant she had enough light to see what lay ahead—shored up stone walls leading to freedom. But when the blast hit, it slammed into her, hard. It catapulted the basket and launched her like a human cannonball, propelling the wire cage with her inside. Her body collided with the metal girding and she narrowly escaped being crushed against the hoisting mechanism. Finally free of the cage, she forced her body to tuck and roll. When she landed, she hit with such force that the impact jarred her knees and back, but she managed to go with the flow and minimize the shock.

Dodging falling debris, Alexa scrambled away as fast as she could and avoided the wire cage that smashed to the dirt near her legs. When the worst was over, she lay on the ground, stunned by what had happened. She rolled to one side, out of breath and completely spent, her body shaking like a junkie in withdrawal. She stared at the blaze that nearly killed her. Like a torch, flames licked the night air, rupturing from the shaft. Yet seeing how close she’d come to becoming a skewered bratwurst brought an unexpected and aching grin to her face.

“Holy crap!” she panted, still shaking off the adrenaline burn. “What a…ride!”

At the surface, an old barnlike structure had been built around the elevator shaft to keep out prying eyes. By her estimation, Globe Harvest’s evacuation route was a few miles from the abandoned textile factory. Authorities would eventually find it. The old building had started to catch fire, an aftermath of the explosion, the top of the barn blown apart in the blast.

“You bastards had this all under control, one step ahead.”

Alexa knew she needed to head for her car before anyone came to investigate the barn fire, but she had quite a hike back, and the way she felt, procrastination had appeal. Sweat covered her body, along with a layer of dirt. And smoke rose off her jeans and shirt. She felt the sting of burns on her fingers and elbows, with hot spots on her legs, but nothing that needed immediate attention. And it took her a moment to feel the rain. It soothed the raging heat of her skin, although her face and body were almost numb. All things considered, she’d been lucky.

But a distant commotion nudged her awareness. Slowly and with great pain, she stood on shaky legs and listened through ringing ears, straining to hear what instinct told her was there. It took time to realize that what she heard was the rotors of helicopters—more than one.

To regain her night vision, Alexa ran into the dark beyond
the barn and away from the fire. She narrowed her eyes and focused on the night sky.

“Shit!” They were running without lights, and she had no idea which way they headed or how many there were. She spun and searched for any signs of movement, but beyond the city lights there was only darkness.

She’d lost them again.

Desperation turned her stomach, and she bent over, exhausted, drained, and still shaking. But when she moved, she felt a crumple of paper at her waist and remembered what she’d found in the control room. She pulled out the documents and examined them in the light from the fire. Nothing but a series of numbers, but she knew where to get help in deciphering the pages.

Suddenly, the hike to where she’d hidden her car didn’t seem so daunting—yet one dark thought lingered to taint her small victory.

With luck she might uncover a thread of evidence leading her to another arm of Globe Harvest. The online international organization operated in secrecy and answered to no one, committing heinous atrocities. But tonight any discovery would be too late to help the young girls being flown out of Chicago to parts unknown.

She couldn’t handle that harsh reality. Alexa collapsed to the ground and emptied her stomach.

Nikki stared out the window, squeezed next to another frightened girl. The ground fell away from under the helicopter when it lifted, making her queasy. Once they got high enough, she fixed her eyes on the horizon with its glittering patches of city lights in the distance, fighting the throbbing headache instigated when the Russian knocked her unconscious. The textile factory besieged the night with its belching fire, giving the skyline the appearance of sunset, but the sight barely registered.

All she thought about was Uncle Payton. His smiling,
handsome face with that crooked dimpled grin. He came to Chicago to find her, and now…he was dead. Her eyes blurred with tears as she choked back her guilt.

All the reasons she’d left home, and her desperate struggle for independence, suddenly felt unimportant and trivial. She’d come half a world away to learn what really mattered, but it was too late to do anything about it. Memories of her mother didn’t give her comfort, as they had only hours before. Her mom would be alone to deal with Payton’s death and she wasn’t strong enough to do that.

Nikki shut her eyes tight, but nothing would hold back the pain…or the fear. Now, no one would find her. And she had a feeling with what these men had in store for her, death would be a mercy.

Amidst the moans of the wounded and the commotion of the scene, Payton heard the man say, “Give her high flow oxygen. Fifteen liters per minute for smoke inhalation.”

A paramedic gave direction before moving on to the next victim. Each of the injured got a colored triage tag around the neck, indicating the severity of the injury. Jessie had a yellow tag. Payton had no idea what it all meant, but the medics worked with care and efficiency.

“Put her on a heart monitor and start a large bore IV.”

Another man in uniform shined a light into Jessie’s nose and mouth, assessing the damage.

“Smoke around the nostrils, but rest of upper airway is clear. Voice okay. No need to intubate this one.”

She had cuts and bruises on her body, but most critical were the head wound and smoke inhalation. Her head had been bandaged with trauma dressing, and at the hospital she’d need X rays and maybe a CAT scan to determine if she had a skull fracture.

Although Payton had been reluctant to leave her side at the makeshift triage area, he had to look for Joe and Sam, and refused medical treatment for himself until he found
them. A barricade had been set up to keep nonessential personnel from getting too close to the fire. Sporadic explosions were still happening deep inside the collapsed structure. When Detective Garza arrived, he helped establish the police barricade, but the fire department was in charge of the scene—a remarkable lesson in controlled chaos.

Payton felt bombarded by the intensity of noise, even with his ears ringing and out of commission. Ambulances came and went, carrying victims. Radios crackled and blared in all directions, filtered through sirens and air horns. Shouts from firefighters and medics could be heard over the racket of generators running lights.

He’d never seen a fire up close. Firemen came in and out of the triage zone needing medical evaluation to keep going. With gear soaked and smoking, each man clamored to get back into the fight. Empty water bottles and discarded dressing wrappers littered the scene, with emergency strobe lights strafing the night sky. And across the asphalt, the fire reflected off the ponds of accumulating water, runoffs and leaks from a series of large and small hoses used by the firefighters. The smell of diesel fuel hung heavy in the air as fire engines operated on high idle, the odor competing with the smoke. Payton doubted he’d ever get the stench of smoke from his nostrils and off his hair and skin.

With all the upheaval, he had a hard time sifting through the crowd, until he found Seth. The kid helped him search the faces of the injured, hoping they’d locate Joe and Sam among them. So far that hadn’t happened. And the more time passed, the more Payton lost faith in finding them at all.

Then, silhouetted against the flames, he saw a man and a woman, walking. He couldn’t make out their faces but recognized a familiar gait and manner. He squinted into the bright light, narrowing his eyes for a better look at the pair. Slowly, he walked toward the man, not taking his eyes off him. And as he got closer, Payton started to run. By the
looks of him, Joe Tanu had been hurt. He leaned on Sam Cooper, grimacing with every careful step.

“Seth!” Payton yelled over his shoulder, slowing down as he got close. “They’re alive.”

Then he muttered under his breath, “Damn it! They’re alive.”

Joe was in pain but looked damned glad to be on the right side of the turf. A regular sight for sore stinging eyes. Payton hugged him, fighting the lump in his throat. And as he held Joe, he whispered in his ear, “Good to see you, old man.”

“I thought I’d lost you too.”

Payton’s eyes brimmed with tears as he hugged the man he thought of as his father. When he pulled back, he looked down at Sam and kissed her cheek.

“Thanks…for everything.”

The detective smiled. “How’s Jessie?” she asked.

“She’s over here, Sam,” Seth cut in, then led them to the tarp where he’d last seen her.

Joe needed help to the triage area, and Payton lent a hand, setting him down on a tarp close to Jessie as Sam knelt and took her friend’s hand. Jessie opened her eyes and started to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Don’t try to speak, Jess. You’re going to be okay.”

Jess shook her head and tried again, this time reaching for Payton. Her urgency caught him by surprise. He turned from Joe and leaned closer, clasping her trembling hand.

“You don’t know me, but my name is Payton. I—”

“I know…who you are.” She swallowed and pulled down her oxygen mask, wincing at the pain when she lifted her head. “I found…Nikki.”

At first he thought he hadn’t heard right, but his confusion was quickly replaced by urgent concern.

“What? She was in there?” He squeezed her hand when she started to fade. “Did you talk to her? Is that how you knew it was her?”

He had bombarded her with too many questions. And he wasn’t sure she heard him until she spoke again.

“I found Nikki. Did I already say that?”

“Yeah, you did,” he replied, recognizing her confusion. He’d seen it on the football field, when a guy got his bell rung.

“Here…take these.” She fumbled for something under her blanket, then retrieved crumpled and bloodied papers, and thrust them at him. “Keep ’em. I’ll explain…when I can.”

Turning her attention to Sam, she insisted, “Don’t let anyone take ’em. We need to know…” She laid her head back down, unable to finish.

“But they’re evidence, Jess,” Sam said. “We need to process the paper for fingerprints.”

“Then please…promise me you’ll make a copy…for me,” Jessie persisted, with a crazed look in her eye.

Sam gave in, reassuring her, “I promise, we’ll process the originals, but you’ll get a copy. You’ve got my word, honey.”

“What’s this?” Payton glanced at the pages in his hands before he handed them over to Sam. “And what does it have to do with Nikki?”

“I found her…Nikki.” Jessie struggled to tell him more. “The Russian. He left her…in the control room.” She choked and nearly lost it. A paramedic rushed over to adjust her oxygen mask, but she held him off until she finished. “She was…unconscious.”

Jessie was practically delirious from head trauma, leaving him to wonder. Had she only imagined seeing Nikki?

“No, that can’t be,” he insisted, but doubt crept into his mind. “I was there.”

Had he checked the control room well enough? Had he somehow missed her? The possibility that he didn’t see Nikki through all the smoke made him sick. He stared off toward the burning building and shook his head in disbelief.

“This can’t be right…we looked.” A tear drained down his cheek. He couldn’t breathe. “Dear God, she can’t still be in there.”

In that moment, his world stopped. The noise and the fire, everything faded to a pervasive emptiness—a hollow no one could fill. Sam reached for him, and he became aware of Joe’s voice, but nothing sank in.