“In a perfect world we would,” Jonathan said. “But we don’t know his whereabouts. We do know where the girl is.”
“She’s not the primary target.”
“That’s why we have secondary targets,” Jonathan explained. “When the primary is unavailable, you go for second best.”
Boxers shook his head. “No,” he said. “We’re not choosing a trained professional over a helpless kid.”
“We’re not choosing anything,” Jonathan corrected. “We’re playing the only hand we were dealt. In Column A we know something — it’s not much, but it’s a GPS tracking point. In Column B we know zip. It makes no sense—”
“Then let’s learn something,” Boxers said. He opened his door and stepped out into the night.
“What the hell—” Then Jonathan got it. Big Guy was going to confront the men in the other car. “Box, no!”
Too late. Big Guy was already striding toward the van.
“Shit,” Jonathan spat. He opened his own door and stepped out to cover his friend. “If you’ve got a plan, this would be a good time to clue your boss in on it.”
“Just gonna chat,” Boxers said. He moved with surprising grace and speed. For the Big Guy, chatting and head-breaking were often synonymous.
To their credit, the guys in the van read the situation for what it was. They pulled away from the curb and drove off. In a hurry. At first, they seemed to be heading directly toward Boxers, but when Big Guy didn’t dodge out of the way, they swerved around him.
“Do not draw down on them!” Jonathan commanded. Boxers hadn’t made a move for his Beretta, but Jonathan knew the man well enough to anticipate.
“Cowards,” Boxers grumbled.
“What the hell was that?”
“They’re bad guys,” Boxers said. “They know where Graham Mitchell is.” He glared after the van as it disappeared down the residential street and turned the corner.
“No, they don’t,” Jonathan countered. “We just discussed this. If they were scoping the place out, then they didn’t know that the Markham vehicle was hit.”
Boxers shifted his eyes and looked down at Jonathan. Realization dawned. “Well, shit,” he said. He started walking back toward their vehicle. It was as close to an admission of a mistake as Boxers was capable of making.
Jonathan pressed the transmit button on his radio. “Mother Hen, Scorpion. I need you to send me the coordinates for PC Two’s location, and a probable intercept point.”
In all the years Jonathan had been plying his trade, he had never lost a precious cargo. He wasn’t starting now.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Graham’s world had no meaning. After shooting the Markhams, his captors had descended upon him. It was five against one, maybe more. He couldn’t resist as they shoved some kind of cloth into his mouth and sealed it in with a long strip of what looked and felt like duct tape. They passed three loops around his head, and then he was silent. He’d tried screaming, but the sound went nowhere. Next, they pinioned his arms behind his back. They wrapped something — rope, maybe, but it felt wider than that — around his wrists, and then they wrapped more of it around his elbows.
With his mouth and arms taken care of, they’d pressed lumps of what felt like moist clay against his eyes and wrapped them in place. Then they did the same thing with his ears. The final step was to bind his knees together, and then his ankles. He was blind, deaf, and dumb. As time passed, and his limbs fell asleep, he was also paralyzed.
He’d lost all track of time. Someone could have told him he’d been wherever he was for hours or for days, and he wouldn’t be able to argue. All he knew was that he was in a vehicle of some sort, and he only knew that because of the constant bouncing movement. He also smelled the faint aroma of gasoline. Nothing strong or nauseating, but definitely there.
There was also the stink of his own sweat and his own fear. He didn’t think he’d pissed himself, but the smell was definitely there.
God, it was hot. He was soaked through with sweat. He’d hoped for a while that the sweat on his face would loosen the tape around his mouth, but he’d had no such luck. Not yet, anyway.
His nose was clogging up, and he was terrified of suffocating. He kept blowing out hard and then trying to inhale easily. God only knew how much snot he’d blasted all over himself and his surroundings.
These people wanted him dead.
Or did they? Killing him would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. They didn’t hesitate for even a second before killing the Markhams. How difficult would have been to shoot him in the head just as they’d shot Peter and Anita?
The Markhams, he thought. I killed them. If it hadn’t’t been for me, they’d still be alive. Even as the thought formed in his head he knew that it wasn’t true — not completely, anyway — but it was true enough not to be false.
How many more people had to die because of this ridiculous code? What could possibly be so important, so vital, that a stupid, random string of numbers and letters was worth killing for? And what had the Markhams done to deserve being shot and left in the grass to be found by animals?
Out of nowhere, images of wolves and buzzards appeared in his head, tearing and picking away at the Markhams’ dead bodies. He tried to will the images away, but they wouldn’t go. He knew that wolves didn’t even live in this part of the country, but that didn’t stop the horror-movie footage from playing in his brain. They rooted deeply into Peter Markham’s gut, pulling out intestines and—
The car hit a huge bump, big enough to make him bounce, and it seemed to be slowing. In fact, there were a lot of bumps, making him wonder if they’d gone off-road.
Oh, shit. No one will ever find my body!
Graham shook his head and thumped it against the floor. He had to quit thinking things like that. He needed to become more like Jolaine, more logical. Not everything was a huge crisis. Not everything spelled his imminent death.
“Settle the hell down,” he said, though the words came out as a muffled, jumbled mess. He remembered Jolaine’s words: Always think, and wait for an opportunity to take action.
But what action could he take when he couldn’t even move?
That couldn’t last forever, could it? Sooner or later, they were going to have to at least free his mouth. They wanted information from him, after all. If he couldn’t speak, there wasn’t a hell of a lot for him to say, was there?
He decided that the first and only thing that he would say was that he wouldn’t say anything until they untied him. He’d heard that arms and legs could get gangrene or some such thing if they didn’t get enough circulation, and gangrene meant getting the arms and legs cut off. Well, that for damn sure wasn’t going to happen to him.
The motion stopped.
Graham didn’t know whether he’d felt the vehicle stop, or if he’d just noticed the stillness for the first time. He sensed movement, and then hands were on him and he was being lifted. Unable to kick his feet, he tried an inchworm motion that seemed to loosen their grip, but only for a second before someone got a good hold on his bound knees. From there, he was destined to go wherever they decided to take him.
After a minute or two of manhandling, they rested him on a hard surface. It felt cold against his sweat-soaked T-shirt. The chill was a relief at first, but then not so much. It was a little too cold. They laid him faceup so that his bound hands pressed into the small of his back, hurting his thumbs and stretching his spine backward past the extent it was supposed to go.
Graham knew that people were talking around him, but there were no discernible words, only muffled rumbles that had the rhythm of speech. He jumped as someone touched the bare flesh of his knees, and jumped again when they touched his ankles. When hands fumbled at his head as well, he understood that they were in the process of untying him. That in itself was a relief until he realized that the serious business of why he was here was about to begin. For the time being, they needed him alive. That gave him a few more minutes, anyway.