He looked like a sympathetic, soft-spoken attorney. Yep. If she had to put his appearance into words, that’s how she’d do it. A snake in sheep’s clothing.
“Drive down the street and take the first left. Then go two blocks and take a right,” he instructed.
“What do you call yourself and who do you work for?” Jack asked, suddenly. His tone was as calm as the other man’s and his expression did not change. He continued to look straight ahead, at the road.
“At the moment, I work for the Colonel,” the man answered, easily, as he pulled a cell phone out of the front breast pocket of his jacket. “And you can call me Reese.” He pressed a few buttons on his phone and lights flickered on the LCD screen. “I’m sorry to have to do this to you, Thane.” He said it as if he truly meant it.
Jack glanced to his right and his gaze met Reese’s. Then Reese pressed the Talk button on his phone.
The explosion was several blocks away, but it was powerful enough that it still rocked the limousine. Jack’s foot slammed down on the break, sending Annabelle forward to bump her head on the dash board. Reese caught himself easily with the hand he held the phone in. Annabelle straightened and absently fingered her forehead as Jack threw open the driver’s side door and jumped out of the car.
She and Reese followed after.
Jack stood beside his open door, his gaze directed over the houses in the distance. A billowing cloud of black smoke rose from behind several roofs and a thick copse of trees. Sirens could be heard from somewhere not too far away.
“Oh my God…” Annabelle whispered as realization dawned on her. The smoke was rising from Jack’s house. A wave of dizziness washed over her. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.
Cassie… Dylan…Clara.
Jack’s daughter had been in that house, along with her mother.
“Oh my God,” she said again, not able to stop herself and unable to think of anything else to say.
“Get back in the car, Thane,” Reese said then. His tone was gentle enough, perhaps spurred into a sick sort of tenderness through professional empathy, but his gun was once more directed at Annabelle. She barely noticed. And she barely cared.
Something inside of her snapped. She lunged forward, ready to rip the gun out of his hand and maybe take his arm with it. But he reacted as if he’d expected the outburst, easily stepping to the side, grabbing her outstretched arms, and wrenching them in front of her to spin her around and pin her to his chest once more.
“I suggest you calm down, Miss Drake. You’re all Mr. Thane has left in this world. Don’t make me take you away from him as well.” He spoke the words with calm authority.
Annabelle looked at Jack over the top of the car. His eyes caught hers. His expression was unreadable, but something terrifying danced in their cobalt depths. Their normal sky blue had turned slightly dark, slightly gray. Like an impending storm on a Summer’s day.
“Now, get back in the car. We have a meeting with someone and I’d rather not be late.”
Reese released Annabelle and gave her a slight shove. She ducked and crawled back into the front seat of the limousine. Half way, she had to pause and wipe her eyes as she realized she was crying and the liquid was blurring her vision. She sat down in the middle of the seat and stared straight ahead, unseeing.
A thousand thoughts chased each other through her mind. And they all seemed silenced. Muffled. Even as the tears continued to stream down her cheeks, there was a numbness spreading through her. Nothing made sense any longer.
In the last twenty-four hours, she’d lost three of the people in the world whom she cared for the most. And Jack had lost more than that. He’d lost his daughter.
There was no coming back from that. There was nothing worse you could do to a human being.
“Four-ninety-five West to Two-seventy-eight South. Red Hook.” Reese instructed.
Jack put the car back in gear and began driving. Silence filled the cabin. In the rear-view mirrors, the sky continued to darken with billowing black clouds of smoke. At some point before reaching the Interstate, they passed several fire trucks and an ambulance.
Jack’s gaze never wavered. His expression never changed.
Annabelle silently cried.
Chapter Fifteen
It was with feet that wouldn’t move quite right that Annabelle followed Jack down the trash-strewn alley ahead of them. She tripped over herself twice and had to be righted by Reese, who walked behind her. Their footsteps mingled with the graffiti on the tin-covered walls, fading into rare shadows like a muffled cacophony of sound and color.
The warehouse hadn’t been used for industrial purposes in quite some time. This was made evident by the piles of rubble built up around the rusting chain link fences and borders of chicken wire that attempted to block off the larger equipment of an adjacent construction project which appeared to be all but abandoned. It was also made evident by the dated signatures of various gang members and their ilk that layered themselves like strata on the inside of a man-made mountain. At one point, someone had spray-painted a sign, in red, on a white strip of metal, stating that the premises were not to be used as a bathroom. Just beneath the sign were the foul remnants of what people thought of that sign.
The smell of human waste was muted, however, by the overlying stench of rotted fish remains and sea weed, as the warehouses jutted out over the docks and the polluted water below them. At high noon, as it was, there was no place for the refuse to hide from the rays of the sun and, even in early May, it was enough to create a heady, unpleasant perfume.
Absently, Annabelle wondered if this was the place where she would die. She guessed she wouldn’t be the first…
“The door ahead,” Reese instructed.
Jack came to stand before a metal-lined door in the side of a large square building. The warehouse was set apart from the buildings around it, not by any sign or new construction, but by the type of graffiti that graced its outer walls. A painting of Shakespeare’s Ophelia, done entirely in spray paint, stretched horizontally across the tin slats, her graceful figure laid flat atop a moat of water-lilies and cat tails. Her eyes were closed in sublime surrender, her right hand floated by her side, open and empty, her white gown and long, red hair soaked and ethereal. She was a drowned angel in a world of damp metal structures. A failed mermaid in a sea of dead fish and garbage.
Annabelle found herself staring at the figure, focusing on Ophelia’s closed eyes and that open hand.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Reese, who had come to stand still behind her. “It was painted by a young man the Colonel found decorating an alley in Harlem. He was paid quite well, I must say. The Colonel fancies Shakespeare. The tragic figure of Hamlet’s unrequited love is his favorite, I believe.” He spoke as if in casual conversation and then, before either Jack or Annabelle could respond, he used his gun hand to gesture once more toward the door.
Jack grasped the handle of the door and pulled it open.
The vast cavity beyond was utterly dark, but unlike the musty, stuffy atmosphere Annabelle had been expecting, the air smelled fresh and conditioned and felt to be a comfortable room temperature.
Reese nudged her forward and she hesitantly put her hand up to touch Jack’s back, following him in as he cautiously stepped into the darkness.
The sound of their footsteps altered and Annabelle could tell that the surface they stood on was considerably smoother and more polished than the rough, trash-strewn concrete outside.
A clanking sound and a following thunk reverberated throughout the vast black space before them and then a humming sounded overhead. Jack knew enough to shield his eyes, but Annabelle was a little slower and the flash of brilliant white light that came next temporarily blinded her.