Flee (22 page)

"How?"
I asked.

Jack
stayed quiet.

"Don't
play around here, Lieutenant. If I'm in the system, I'm fucked."

"The
gun you left on the roof," Jack said. "Got a partial index on the
trigger. Not enough to match it. But..."

She
let her voice trail off. I felt myself go cold.

"But?"

"The
Medical Examiner is my friend. He's doing the autopsies on those women you
dispatched, the ones with your faces. He ran the prints on one. No matches in
the system. But, for fun, I ran it through some POC software. Guess who it
matched?"

POC
was
points of comparison
, and I knew who it matched.

"Who
else knows about this, Jack?"

Her
eyes narrowed. "You think I'm an idiot, Carmen? That I'd offer up this
information so I can get myself tortured and killed?  I don't know all the
powers at play here, and I'm not going to wake up one morning with assassins in
my room because I stumbled across some secret, government experiment and
blabbed about it. You know it's statistically impossible for more than one
person to have the same prints. Even twins—"

"I
know," I said, interrupting. "Did the M.E. check the prints on the
others?"

"Not
yet. I had a feeling, and told him to hold off. He didn't even finish the
autopsy on the first one."

"You
probably saved his life."

"A
smart person would go to the morgue, make sure no more prints are taken. She
might even find the previous autopsy records there as well."

"And
what about the gun with my partial on it?"

Jack
smiled. "A smart person would have that locked away in a safe place, with
a note to examine it if she died suddenly. I assume we're both smart people."

"So
you're asking me to trust you?"

"Yes.
And to tell what's going on."

"If
you know what I know, that might put you in even more danger than having that
gun."

"I
like to live on the edge."

I
had a choice. I could give a little, or I could snap her neck. I sighed, then
gave her the Reader's Digest condensed version of the last few hours. I wasn’t
sure why I decided to tell her, and I was even less sure why I felt better once
I had, but when I finished, Jack let out a slow whistle.

"That's
a lot to swallow."

"It
is what it is."

"Your
codename is Chandler?"

"Yeah."

"It's
a pretty cool codename."

"This
from a woman named Jack Daniels?"

She
rubbed her cheek, which was beginning to bruise. "So the only two left are
Clancy and Hammett."

I
nodded, taking my tools back to the living room. I opened the box and removed a
short pry bar. "I'm going to go take care of Clancy now. I have to save my
handler."

"She
and Hammett look exactly like you?"

"Hammett
has a small scar on her chin. If you run into her, shoot first. She's
psychotic."

I
measured off five paces from the far wall, then began to pry up floorboards.

 "This
is a bit outside my normal jurisdiction," Jack said. "How can I help?"

With
the information about the morgue, she already had. "You can stay out of my
way."

"Do
you know why Hammett wants that transceiver thing?"

"No.
Only that it would be bad if she gets it."

"Where
did you hide it in the Hancock building?"

"That
I can't tell you."

Three
more boards up, and I saw my rifle case. I wiped the prints off the pry bar
using my shirt, tossed it aside, and pulled out the case. Then I caught Jack's
eye. "You know there are bad people, and even some good people, who will
kill you if they find out what you know."

She
gave me a brief arch of the eyebrows. "Interesting life you lead."

"Mostly
it's a lot of waiting around. You caught me on a busy day."

"Chandler..."
Jack's voice trailed off.

"What?"

"You
should still consider turning yourself in. I could take you out of state, we
could go to the media."

"Not
going to happen."

"How
long can you keep functioning at this level? I can see you're trying to keep it
together, but right now I'm not looking at some special ops superspy. I'm
looking at a breakdown waiting to happen."

"This
breakdown still managed to handcuff you to a fridge."

Jack's
face softened. "They're going to kill you, Chandler."

I
paused. She was right, of course. Even with my training, the odds were very
much against me. I doubted I had more than a five percent chance of surviving
this, and that was playing fast and loose with statistics. Maybe that was why I
felt okay about spilling my guts. "Have you ever faced death before, Jack?"

"Yes."

"Did
that ever make you quit?"

Jack
slowly shook her head. "No."

"I
guess that makes two of us who like to live on the edge."

Then
I tucked the rifle case under my armpit and got out of there.

"When you're undercover, you can't pretend to be another person,"
The Instructor said. "You must become that person. Your success depends on
whether or not people believe you. Your life is at risk if they don't."

Hammett
surveys the chaos around her, the chaos she has caused, and runs the tip of her
tongue across her lower lip.

It might be more efficient to just kill them all
.
Or at the very least it would be more fun
.

She
leans on the maître d’ stand and watches the last of the Signature Room
employees file into the elevator, following in the wake of diners who were
evacuated from the top of the John Hancock Building first. They are scared out
of their minds, she can smell it, and their fear makes her pulse spike.

The
world is divided into predators and prey. These men and women scurrying to
escape the fake bomb threat she and Victor cooked up are weak. They are so
desperate for someone to save them, they accept the fake bomb squad uniforms
and generic tool boxes without a blink. They dash from their hundred-dollar
meals in a scramble to catch the first elevator. They are animals begging to be
culled from the herd.

And
she's itching to do the culling.

Hammett
is aware of the weight of the .45 on her hip, the knife in the sheath at her
ankle, but she doesn't use them. As much as she would enjoy taking each of the
remaining sheep out, making them beg, making them scream, she doesn't have
time.

When
the elevator doors close, she turns away and climbs the staircase leading to
the floor above. As she ascends to the balcony, she scans the restaurant a
floor below. Beyond linen-covered tables and meals in various stages of being
eaten, the city shifts from day to sunset through enormous floor-to-ceiling
windows. The dark void of Lake Michigan shifts and sways. Lights of ships dot
the horizon, only the occasional red or blue differentiating them from glimpses
of stars beginning to light the sky.

The
world is a big place. And Hammett has plans a lot bigger than toying with
waiters and chefs. Even the maître d’ who didn't quite believe her bomb scare
story, the one she most itches to kill, isn't worth it.

Maybe
she'll catch up with him later.

She
steps onto the balcony's marble floor and glances past the upper floor's maître
d’ stand. Dressed as bomb squad techs, Victor and his men started searching the
bar on the 96th floor while she was arguing with the manager. She pauses to
watch two of them comb the private dining rooms off the bank of elevators.
Hammett doesn't fully trust them. She doesn't fully trust anyone, but since she
needs the money and manpower Victor provides, she will play nice for now.

She
sets off down the long hallway to the lounge to check up on Victor. He better
have results.

In
the lounge, the western, southern and northern vistas open beyond the glass,
along with a spectacular sunset. Victor's men dot the lounge, some searching
under tables and looking under the radiator rimming the base of the room with
long-handled mirrors. Some behind the center bar, moving bottles and glassware.
Some probing the ceiling, checking the recessed lighting fixtures.

Victor
spots Hammett and crosses the bar, the look on his face pure KGB, soulless and
mean.

Hammett's
not sure if she should be worried or turned on. She gestures to his men.

"Let
me guess, you haven't found it."

"My
people have gone over everything. It's not here. She lied."

"She
wasn't lying. It's here. And we would know precisely where if you hadn't killed
the old man."

He
shrugs. "Accidents happen."

"Incompetence
and fragile egos happen. A few jokes about your small cock, and you're willing
to fuck up the simplest task just to get payback. You men take size so
personally." She lets a smile play across her lips. "Especially those
who are not so well endowed."

The
fingers of his right hand twitch, as if they long to fondle a trigger. "I
didn't hear any complaints from you last night."

Hammett
cups Victor's cheeks. "A little sensitive, comrade? What you lack in size,
you make up for. In speed."

Victor 
knocks away her hands. His dead-eyed Russian mask falls back in place. "My
superiors are getting impatient. They want a return on their investment. I'm
the only thing protecting you right now."

As if I need his protection.

"Don't
threaten me, Victor."

"Then
get me results."

"I
did my part. Tell your men to search again. They do a good job and your
superiors will have their return."

"Right.
If you had let me try a few more things on Chandler, my men wouldn't have to
guess the transceiver's location."

She
shakes her head. Victor is pretty, but sometimes he's rather dense. "You
really don't understand the training she's had, do you? The old man was our
leverage. After he was gone, she would have willingly died."

"You
overestimate her."

"Maybe."
A buzz tickles her hip. She pulls out her cell phone and checks the display. "If
your men can't manage to locate the transceiver, we'll go back to the apartment
and test your theory. Now hurry. The maître d’ didn't leave willingly. I wouldn't
be surprised if he calls the authorities to check on our little bomb threat."

She
steps away from him, walks down the hall and ducks into the women's room.
Staring out the restroom's glass wall at the city below, flaming orange in the
sunset, she holds the phone to her ear. "Have you gotten inside?"

"Negative. 
I'm on a ridge overlooking the house. If anyone leaves, I'll know."

She
knows the odds of Clancy getting inside are steep, but her sister's failure is frustrating
all the same.

Hammett
pulls in a steady breath. It's almost over. She almost has what she wants. She
can't let impatient Russians or impenetrable bunkers get the best of her now.

"Hold
your position."

Hammett
tucks the phone away. Then, impulsively, she pulls out her tablet PC, just to
make sure Chandler is still safe and sound at the apartment.

When
she sees the blips on the screen, every muscle in her body tenses.

You crafty little bitch. How did you get away?

Hammett
watches the blip move south, and quickly figures out where Chandler is headed.
She redials her cell.

"Clancy,
it's Hammett. Chandler is on her way. She'll be there within half an hour."

"Shall
I kill her?"

"Don't
kill her. We still need information." Hammett smiles, thinking of Clancy's
Hydra report. Clancy could shoot the legs off a butterfly at two thousand yards
during a hurricane on a starless night. "Shoot to wound," she orders
her sister. "And make it hurt."

"In a fight between two snipers, the outcome is predetermined,"
The Instructor said. "The higher ground always wins. Always."

The
wind carried the scent of oak leaves, wood fire and Lake Michigan. Driving The
Instructor's car, I passed a handful of McMansions stuck into rustic settings,
and wound my way closer to the lake. Here gigantic homes dotted multi-acre lots
forested with oak and maple, most nestled so far off the narrow, twisting road
that they couldn't be seen, even though tree branches were half bare. I checked
the tablet PC and continued. The road flanked a forest preserve, and houses
fell away to forest and wetlands. A private road turned off and I took it.

The
sun was showing off as it went down, throwing spectacular pinks and oranges
across the trees, turning the horizon into a Monet painting. Soon it would be
dark.