“You’ve got the TQ trace app on your phone, right?” Bill asked.
“Yes. It’s like you said. It’s just like a GPS tracking app, except Kaashif can’t turn it off.” His expression turned grave. “Which means, if Kohler really did get the stuff into me, Maddux can track where I’ve been and,” he hesitated, “where I am. Just like I can tell where Kaashif has been.”
“Maybe that’s why he wanted to take you with him in North Carolina,” Troy said. “Maybe somehow he knew about Kaashif, and of course, he’d want to track the guy himself.”
“Very possible,” Bill agreed. “All right, let’s wrap this up and get you guys out of here. I don’t want Maddux showing up. What are your next steps?”
“I check on Kaashif,” Travers answered. “I see where he’s gone and follow up.”
“I’m going with the major,” Troy said firmly. “And at some point, I’m going to see that girl in the hospital again, the one who survived the attack at the mall in McLean. Jennie Perez. I talked to the doctor while we were on the flight up here. She’s doing better. Maybe she can tell me something.”
“Don’t waste your time with her,” Bill advised as he donned his reading glasses and scanned the screen of his phone. “She won’t be any help.”
Troy watched Bill scroll down on the phone. He’d said the same thing about Jennie the other night, that it was a waste of time. “Yeah, well, I think I’m still—”
“Jesus,” Bill muttered. “People around this country are starting to lose it.”
“What is it, Mr. Jensen?”
“It says here that a crowd in Dayton, Ohio, attacked two men who they thought were ‘acting suspiciously’ in front of a strip mall,” he answered, tapping the phone. “They beat one of the men to death, and the other’s in a hospital in critical condition.” Bill glanced up, over his half-lenses. “It turns out they worked at one of the mall’s stores and they were outside just having a smoke. Somebody thought one of the guys had a gun, but he didn’t.”
Troy looked down at Little Jack. This was the world the boy was entering. He’d never thought much about the danger before. All he’d ever had to worry about was taking care of himself, and he’d always figured he was bulletproof. Now he had to worry about this little guy’s well-being.
“Here’s another result of the attacks,” Bill said, tapping the small screen again. “The eleven malls that were hit two days ago are reporting a drop in traffic of between sixty and eighty percent. There’s a picture on here of the interior of one of them. We’re six days before Christmas, and the place is empty. It’s killing the economy.”
“Have any of the death squads hit anything since shooting up that elementary school in Missouri yesterday?” Troy asked as he continued to gaze down at Little Jack.
“No.”
Troy felt that fear again as the baby squeezed his finger hard and seemed to grin up at him. “You know it’s going to happen again soon, Dad.”
“Absolutely,” Bill agreed. “They aren’t going to sit around and wait with Christmas only a few days away. That’s why they did it at this time of year, to have the maximum effect on the season.”
Troy lifted L.J. up and kissed him gently on the forehead. He and Travers had to get out of here. “You ready, Major?” he asked, standing up.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
Five minutes later he and Travers were headed down the Jensens’ long driveway in a Jeep Cheryl used to get around the large property to deal with her horses and to run errands into town.
“So check your phone,” Troy said from the driver’s seat.
“What?”
“Check the app on your phone to see where Kaashif’s been over the last two days.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The phone’s at my place in the mountains. I always hide it someplace when I go to sleep, in case of exactly what happened the other night.”
Troy nodded. That made sense. “I guess I know where we’re going first.”
CHAPTER 23
Karen stood statue-still in the darkness of the lonely cemetery as she gazed sadly at Jack’s tombstone. How long had she been here like this, motionless beneath the leafless trees that ringed the cemetery’s stone fence — three minutes, five, ten? She had no idea, and she didn’t care. She couldn’t stop thinking about how both men she’d loved had been killed by Shane Maddux — first Charlie and now Jack.
Tears trickled down both cheeks as Jack’s handsome image drifted through her memory. Those dark, rugged features and that haunting and unmistakable honesty always present in his expression, no matter his emotion, which she’d recognized right away and found so attractive. She muted a sob as she thought about how much she missed that crooked smile of his, too.
She leaned down to place a single red rose on the ground in front of the stone, and wiped her face as she lifted back up. But the tears kept coming.
She was thinking about that poor guy she’d shot in North Carolina, too. And the terrible result of the bullet tearing into his chin and neck. How his time left on earth had suddenly gone from being measured in years to seconds. Had it been necessary to kill him? She absolutely believed so in the moment, but having had time to second-guess herself now, wondered if maybe she acted too quickly. Either way, she’d put a man down for good. The finality of the act was still hard to accept.
She sobbed again, loudly this time.
“Stop it.”
She shrieked and spun around. Ten feet away stood the same man who’d held the knife to Troy’s throat in North Carolina. Her heart was suddenly racing a thousand miles an hour, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She’d recognized him instantly even though he wasn’t at all memorable. He was small and plainly unattractive, not someone who would stand out in a crowd.
“What do you want?” she asked, trying to make her voice strong.
“First I want you to stop crying,” he answered.
He wasn’t armed. At least he wasn’t holding a weapon. But she was still terrified as she stared into his cold, dark eyes through the dim light. Death seemed to surround him like a terrible aura. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. Her pistol was in the holster at the small of her back, but, God, what a risk it would be to draw. The man in front of her wasn’t physically imposing at all, but if he could neutralize Troy, he was no one to trifle with.
“You did the right thing in North Carolina.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guy you shot would not have killed you, Karen. I wouldn’t have let him. But you didn’t know that. You did the right thing, and I liked that. You had an objective, and you stayed true to it.” He smiled thinly. “Don’t beat yourself up too much for killing him.”
How could he know what she was thinking? “How do you know my name?”
“I know all about you.”
“Who are you?”
He chuckled softly. “Oh, that’s right, you and I never met. It was rude of me not to introduce myself right away.”
“Who are you?”
“Shane Maddux.”
For several moments the world before Karen blurred to a haze of nothing recognizable. Shane Maddux. Charlie had told her all about him before he’d been “lost” off the Arctic Fire. He’d been a Falcon, Maddux was his superior, and at first, her fiancé had been in awe of the man who he claimed could do anything.
But over time, the bright shine from the star had faded until it died completely the night Charlie secretly discovered a terrible truth. Maddux was using his privileges and immunity from prosecution as a member of Red Cell Seven to further his own lurid agenda — murdering civilians in the name of justice, vigilante-style. It seemed some of the victims weren’t as guilty as Maddux claimed.