Killer Thrillers Box Set: 3 Techno-Thriller, Action/Adventure Science Fiction Thrillers (43 page)

“Who are you? How did you find me here?” Jen asked.
 

The woman didn’t respond. She didn’t even glance in Jen’s direction.
 

“We didn’t want to get the police involved, Ms. Adams,” the man said. “Unfortunately, we believe there’s more to your son’s kidnapping than what you’re currently aware of.”
 

So they knew,
she thought.
 

“You’re going to come with us. We have a secure facility just outside of town where we can debrief.”
 

As he finished his sentence, Jen heard a scuffle and a muffled shout from behind them. She whirled around to see a
third
soldier, this one a young man, blond, running toward Dr. Storm’s open office door from the other side of the hallway. Mark was also running—directly toward Jen.
 

“Jen! Let’s go!” he shouted, almost caught up to them. They were about twenty feet away from the intersection with the other hallway, and therefore about 100 feet from the exit.
 

There was no way they could outrun them.

Mark was going to get them killed. She struggled to free herself from the death-grip of her captor, the iron lady. It was no use; the woman was unbelievably strong.
 

Mark was getting closer.
 

What is he going to do?
She thought to herself as the large man turned and prepared for a fight.
He’ll kill him.
The man outweighed Mark by at least fifty pounds, and he was certainly better prepared for a skirmish.
 

It didn’t matter.
 

Before Mark could get any closer, a loud gunshot reverberated through the hall of the dark school. Mark’s body was flung forward with a jerking motion, dropping to his hands and knees onto the marble floor. Behind him, Jen could see the third soldier still aiming down the sight of his smoking assault rifle.
 

Mark looked up at Jen quickly, teeth clenched in defiance, then collapsed all the way onto the cold tile.

CHAPTER 6

DETECTIVE LARSON’S EVENING WAS NOT going very well.

He’d promptly called up his second-in-command, Ken Dawson, after talking with Durand on the phone and reading through the email thread. Larson briefed him on the phone call he’d gotten earlier as well as on the email that had come through about fifteen minutes ago.

Ken agreed that it sounded like the English were out to make a power play somehow. The problem was, that was about all the information they had so far. Neither could figure out exactly what the connection was between the kidnapping, the murder, and why the British intelligence agency was interested.
 

Ken hung up, agreeing to head over to Larson’s apartment. While Larson waited for him, he poured himself another drink: Jack Daniel and Coke, his third that night. He flipped on the TV to catch the end of the evening news as he waited and sipped his beverage.

Kidnapping, the murder of an old professor, British intelligence. What the hell did they all have in common?
 

He swirled the ice around in his glass and thought about the problem until Dawson arrived. The knock on his apartment door fifteen minutes later alerted him that he’d been drifting off. As he rose to let the younger man in, the front door opened, and Dawson walked straight into the entryway.

“Well shit, Ken, why don’t you go and give an old man a heart attack?”

Dawson was about ten years younger than Larson, but he’d been Larson’s right-hand man for about as long as either of them could remember. They’d been on cases together, trained people together, and their families even vacationed together once a few years back. Their relationship now was interesting––stronger than ever, but as Dawson was gearing up for the pinnacle of his career, Larson was winding down for retirement.

“Haha, right. I’ll be damned if you die before the rest of us, Craig. Eating right, no smoking, and—” he glanced down at the highball glass in Larson’s hand “—up until tonight, no drinking either.”

“Ah well, you know. I guess I just decided that life isn’t long enough. Speaking of, need a drink?”

“Vodka, if you got any. Any news?”

“Nope, not unless you brought some with you,” Larson responded. He motioned for Ken to sit down at the kitchen table and went to make his drink.

“Well, I found that folder I was talking about, but it’s old. I’d used it as reference material not too long ago for a case, so I had it sitting around. But everything inside is dated at least twenty years ago. I’m not sure it’ll be much help.”

“At this point, I think anything would be helpful. Greg’s tone was a little hesitant, almost reserved. We can assume something’s heating up. Anything in that folder about Dr. Mitchell Storm?”

“Storm, right. He was an environmentalist from way back in the day, but no one’s really heard from him in, like, thirty years. He worked on some projects that led to very important research in geothermal technology, geology, and even nuclear power. I only remember the name because one of his projects led to an immediate interest from governments and research corporations around the world.” His voice trailed off as Craig handed him his drink. He sipped it, winced, then smiled. “Perfect. Thanks. Anyway, these guys all wanted a piece of what he was studying.”
 

“Which was?” Larson asked.
 

“No idea. You can flip through the folder yourself. It just has a few clippings from trade journals about the Storm brothers and their research. It’s a bird’s-eye view though; nothing incriminating, and nothing of interest.”

“To you.”
 

“Ha. Right. Nothing that I’d bat an eye at.”

Larson flipped through the folder, verifying that nothing inside was of much use to the case.

“It seems odd that the attacks involved the same person: Jen Adams. She was working very closely with Dr. Elias Storm from that university. On what, we don’t know. He was considered rather tame compared to his older brother. Could be that Elias was continuing the research on something Mitchell started back in the seventies or eighties, before he fell off the radar.”

“Hmm. I get it, but I’m just not seeing the connection. If this Dr. Elias Storm was in fact working on something that his brother had started years ago, it makes sense why they would kill him. Maybe he wouldn’t give them information or something like that. Then they turned to the only other person who would know what he was doing––Jen Adams—and went after her by way of kidnapping her son.”

“Right, go on.”

“But that does not explain why the British cared about it. I just don’t see how it fits in,” Larson said.
 

Dawson frowned, then spoke. “Well, you said Durand called in a favor, since one of his acquaintances apparently heard about the attack from local police. Maybe they’re not interested yet. Just covering all their bases.”

“No, you and I both know these agencies don’t chase weak leads very long. For it to blow up this quick, they
have
to be thinking something. They’re all related somehow, and I need to figure out what it is. Greg’s a friend, but he’s not going to screw himself over just to give me the full scoop.” Craig left the kitchen and came back holding his MacBook Pro. He sat down in the chair across from Ken and slid the computer over so both men could see the screen.

Larson typed a search query into the bar at the top of the browser and pressed enter.
England America Mitchell Storm.
He quickly scanned the first three pages of results, finding nothing of importance. He changed the query, adding the word
research
.
 

Still nothing on the first three pages. On the fourth page, however, he paused and clicked on the fourth result. A webpage opened. It was a poorly designed blog from what seemed to be a conspiracy theory nutcase.
 

Abandoned American Research Station Sold to British
was the title of the post. The post was written around two letters the author had allegedly come across at his office during his working days, but he was trying to build a case on a severe lack of logic and no hard facts.
 

“…Mitchell Storm worked with the Agartha crew among British and American private companies for three years before resigning from the program, eventually moving to the backcountry to Canada.
”

“Agartha,” Dawson said. “Interesting name for a research station.”

The article didn’t link to any other sources, nor did it cite any in the content. Further, the author seemed to have forgotten what the title of his own post, never mentioning more about the “research station” or “Agartha.”
 

“Well, that’s a bummer,” Dawson said when he had finished reading the post.
 

“You’re telling me. This nut job is the only thing even
close
to real information, and there’s no way we’re getting anywhere by tracking him down.”
 

“Even if it was a good lead, I’m not sure I’d
want
to track him down.”
 

Dawson and Larson perused a few more of the posts—collections of “research” on Area 51, scraps of newspaper headings that the author claimed were forgeries, and other bits of old-fashioned American propaganda.
 

Larson stood and searched the apartment for his cellphone. He dialed a number and waited for a response.
 

“Greg? Hey, did I wake you?”

Dawson looked toward Larson as the man continued his conversation.
 

“I don’t care. Listen. We need more. What—” he paused a moment. “Of course the line’s secure; you think I haven’t been doing this job for thirty years?” Again, he paused as Gregory Durand spoke on the other end of the phone. “What? What are you talking about?”
 

“What is it?” Dawson asked, now standing at the doorway to the living room.

“Durand. What do you mean ‘you sent in a team?’”

He frowned, then hung up the phone. He slammed it down onto an end table and stormed back into the kitchen, a wide-eyed Dawson waiting patiently for an explanation.

“We need to move. Durand’s group apparently sent a team to the states right after we talked last. They don’t want this getting out, and he said it’s a matter of ‘national security.’ Apparently I’m not enough of an asset to them. They had to take matters into their own hands.”
 

“But what do they want to do? What do they want
you
to do?” Dawson asked.

“Ken, I don’t think they’re wanting me to do anything other than pick up the pieces. Durand got me in this thing before the rest of his organization got wind of it. I’m pretty sure we’re lucky to know about it at this point. We’re not getting anything else from them. We want this, it’s on us.”
 

“Okay, we can work around that. When’s this ‘team’ supposed to get here?”
 

Larson stared at the younger man in his living room. “They’re already here.”

CHAPTER 7

0226 HOURS

JEN HEARD A loud groan. Her husband. She stood and walked over to his bed; a hospital gurney set up in a makeshift operating room. The powerful lighting in the room projected shadows along the warehouse walls—brick, no doubt old. She took in the surroundings.
Why a warehouse? Who are these people?
 

The old brick building loomed overhead. Though the room they were currently in was small, the walls climbed almost a hundred feet straight up to meet the sloping corrugated steel roof of the structure. The door to the room was also modern reinforced steel. It was an odd juxtaposition, but Jen had a feeling there was a reason for the setting. No doubt this place looked innocuous from the outside.

Mark Adams was lying on the bed wearing a hospital gown and trying in vain to scratch an itch on his shoulder, but finding it impossible to lift his arm. A military doctor, Dr. Pritchett, was bustling about in response to her husband’s waking.
 

That ass,
she thought. “You okay? What the hell was that?” she asked him.
 

Mark just frowned. “That bastard shot me!” he said.
 

“Well no shit, Mark, you ran from a man with a loaded gun. I
told
you stay down.” Her voice shook; she knew she couldn’t feign anger with him. After everything that had happened, she was in no place to lose another person close to her.
 

They needed to find Reese.
 

“Well, I wasn’t going to just sit there and let them kill us. If he would have just said he wanted to talk…” his voice died as the metal doors to the small warehouse’s inner room opened.
 

“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Adams. Excuse me—you prefer ‘Ms.’?” Jen didn’t know how to respond to the question.
 

She recognized the man’s voice was the same as their captor’s from the university: British, deep, posh, and educated.
 

She turned to look in the man’s direction and almost choked. The man in front of her was absolutely
huge
—at least six-foot-five and made of pure muscle. The hulk of a soldier walked up to the bed, and only then could Jen see that he was being followed. When she’d seen his outline in the hallway at the Academy, she noticed he was a large male figure, but seeing him in the surgical light of the warehouse was shocking.

A woman—the same one she’d “met” before—strode up behind the large man. She was almost as tall as the man. A small torso and short, skinny arms rippling with well-formed muscle made her look like a runway model-turned-mercenary.
God, who are these people?
Jen thought. The woman nodded once, curtly, and stood at attention behind and to the left of her commanding officer.
 

“Thank you for your cooperation thus far,” the man continued. Jen couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “I’m terribly sorry to have to have met under these, well, circumstances, and I am especially sorry for your shoulder. How are you feeling?” He faced Mark.