Deadly Powers (Tapped In Book 2) (3 page)

“Dig here, Mangus … hurry it up, man,” Gustavo said, making an exaggerated, two-handed digging gesture just in case I didn’t know what
dig here
meant.

I nodded and, keeping with my cover identity, pleasantly started to dig. The ground was soggy—saturated with water.

“Somewhere around here there’s a broken sprinkler pipe … maybe a foot and a half down,” he said. He too was digging and together we piled the dirt and grass onto a growing mound off to the side. I looked into his mind for any indication he’d been involved with Pippa’s abduction. Baltimore had earlier mentioned that Gustavo might have been approached—bought off. But they just weren’t sure. The Lockkeeper’s House was Gustavo’s domain. Anyone would be hard-pressed to gain access into that place without him having direct knowledge of it. Certainly, the man seemed worried about something. Now, watching him in my peripheral vision, I saw the rhythmic tensing as his jaw muscles repeatedly clenched. He was inwardly arguing with someone, replaying the same conversation in his mind over and over again. It was dark so I couldn’t fully make out just to whom he was mentally talking. Someone in a suit and tie; someone Gustavo feared.

“Just do what you’re told, or your big momma’s lack of residency papers will land her on a bus back to Mexico.”

“
She’s a Spaniard … we’re from Madrid.”

“Then onto a boat or a fucking plane. She’s out of here and maybe your wife, too. You’ll do what we want … tonight, Gustavo. End of discussion.”

I wasn’t able to decipher what, exactly, the man in the suit wanted from Gustavo. Whatever it was had made him nervous. It was unethical—against his principles. I was about to leave his mind when an image of someplace dark came into view. It was a dungeon, of sorts … perhaps in an old castle. I’d seen places like that before: cold, damp, and dreary. My mind flashed back to the Goertz’s Baden-Baden castle. And then I saw her … a glimpse of Pippa’s face. Someone had partially unzipped the top section of the body bag. Gustavo was looking down at her … he had never seen a dead body before.

Pippa opened her eyes to total blackness. For a moment she wondered if she had gone blind. She felt the cold wet surface beneath her back and tried to comprehend where she was.
What’s happened to me?

Slowly, the memories of her abduction returned. She’d just left Chandler’s house—had pulled off the road and was about to do a U-turn. They’d fought and she’d been overly sensitive. There came a tapping on her car window. A lost-looking man, staring at her through the glass, was holding a map in one raised hand. He wore overly short shorts and a florescent green fanny pack.
Who even wears fanny packs these days?
He couldn’t have looked any more innocuous. And his very ordinariness should have tipped her off. She should have had the presence of mind to question even the slightest ordinariness. She was trained to do just that. Perhaps she’d let her relationship with Chandler dull her senses—endanger herself and others.

The needle poked into her neck’s carotid artery before she had time to swipe his hand away.
Since when had she so lost her edge?

* * *

She heard water dripping from multiple locations—sounds echoed into the blackness. Pippa forced herself to relax, allowing her heart rate to slowly settle into a normal sinus rhythm. More sounds. She heard voices in the distance—too far away to make out what they were saying. They were getting closer.

Pippa sat up, realizing her hands were bound. She wanted to rub her sore wrists, but the snug-fitting, quick-tie binding wouldn’t allow her to do so. She stood and reached out with both hands in the darkness. Nothing. She took several tentative steps forward, until she felt something hard and cold … and wet … and slimy. She’d reached a wall. She used it to guide her way sideways and kept going until she came to a corner, and another right-angled wall. She followed along it until she felt a strong breeze touch her cheeks and the smell of rank water. Somewhere in front of her was an open sewer line. The voices were now loud enough for her to discern that there were two men arguing. Both had accents, unmistakably German.

Pippa saw light—the back and forth swaying of white flashlight beams. As the men approached, her immediate surroundings became illuminated. She was indeed within the subterranean confines of a sewer system. Three massive sewer pipes, easily ten to twelve feet high, converged here. She was standing on a raised platform, walled in on three sides, with a half-height wall facing out toward the three-piped junction fifteen feet below. This was some kind of water station. She could now see, up three concrete steps, where a series of massive pipes transected into valves; each was topped with a big red-painted shut-off wheel.

The two men came to a halt and stood on a concrete catwalk, five feet above where she now stood. Pippa shielded her eyes from their bright flashlight beams with her hands.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked.

Only one of the men answered her. “Friends, Ms. Rosette. You will not be harmed … if you come without resistance.”

“What do you want with me?”

One of the men began descending on iron rungs. Pippa hadn’t noticed the built-in ladder was even there before. He stepped down and approached her. He was blond and big. He could be a model on the cover of GQ—just the right amount of beard scruff—and a stylish haircut she guessed wasn’t a Saturday morning
Super Cuts
special. His masculine-scented body spray reached her before he did. It was a pleasant scent, and she found herself breathing it in. Dressed in a business suit and tieless, the top two buttons of his fitted dress shirt were undone, revealing a muscular hairless chest. This man put in some serious gym time.

“You can call me Mr. Taffy.”

“Like the candy?”

He didn’t answer.

She watched him appraise her, his eyes first taking in her face and then wandering up and down the entirety of her body. But she didn’t get any hunger vibes from the scrutiny—nothing sexual. Mister metro-sexual had a job to do and she was being appraised, not unlike a rancher assessing the sale of a Jersey cow at a county fair. After pulling a knife out from somewhere, he cut the quick-tie binding on her wrists. Gratefully, Pippa rubbed at the raw skin there.

Taffy gestured with his flashlight toward the ladder. “Mr. Loren has a gun pointed at you. Please climb the rungs.”

Pippa moved in the direction of the ladder, suddenly self-conscious of the wetness of her backside. She was wearing off-white skinny jeans and she wondered what lying in the sewer had … she cut her own thoughts short
. Who gives a shit what my pants look like?

The truth was she had never met a more perfect-looking man in her life, as if he were created in a laboratory.
Weird
. She climbed the rungs and waited next to Loren. In the dim light, he looked to be in his early forties, dark and brooding—almost
gangster-like
.

“What do you want with me?” she asked, as Taffy finished his climb up.

“Shut your mouth or I’ll put a sock in it,” Mr. Loren said.

While Taffy exuded all the emotion of an ant, Loren fumed with pent-up rage. She could see it in his eyes—a powder keg ready to blow at the smallest provocation. Taffy assumed the lead, then Pippa, with angry Loren following in the rear. She felt his eyes on her backside.

They walked along the concrete catwalk for what seemed ten minutes before they came to a nondescript metal door—a door without a handle. Taffy stood still, his body perfectly erect at the door, and looked up. Then she saw it too, a small black box … a camera. She heard a buzz and the door unlatched. Taffy pulled the door open and walked through. Pippa felt a not-so-gentle shove at the small of her back and took the cue to follow. They entered into some kind of transportation terminal—like a subway station—but there weren’t any trains or subways here. The station was immaculately clean. Her eyes took in the polished concrete floors and intricately tiled walls and recognized lots of money had been spent here. Like the earlier concrete sewer pipes, they now approached another kind of pipe: just as big, but totally clear. No, not perfectly clear—it was filled with water. In a blur, a giant pill—like a huge white Tylenol—whisked by.

The scream was high and piercing. “Pippa!”

Pippa spun around, fists clenched, prepared for whatever was coming. To her surprise, it was a woman running toward her. Arms stretched wide, it was Heidi Goertz, wearing a dazzlingly bright smile and designer everything, right down to her red Jimmy Choos. Heidi, tan and fit, her yellow-blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, looked like a million bucks.

Pippa didn’t resist the quickly coming embrace, as Heidi’s arms enfolded her, pulling her in tight. Heidi then stood back, holding Pippa at arms’ length, and appraised her. “Oh … I love the blonde look.”

Pippa remembered the last time she’d seen the WZZ leader, in Baden-Baden, Germany. At that time Pippa’s looks had been altered for cover—her blonde hair dyed almost black—and there were other cosmetic changes as well—including her cup-size.

Heidi spun Pippa sideways and looked down at her water-stained jeans. Her English was near perfect, only the slightest hint of German as she spoke: “We need to get you out of these wet things. I’m so sorry for the dramatics … you must have a thousand questions.” She glanced disapprovingly at silent Loren.

Pippa used the back of her hands to pry Heidi’s hands off her shoulders. “Just one, actually. What the hell do you want with me?”

“Oh, come, come … you can’t still be mad at me?”

“You mean, after you drained out my blood and had a roomful of neo-Nazis drinking it from a bucket?”

“I got caught up in the moment. We all make mistakes, Pippa. But now is now, and we have so much to talk about.” Her smile faded as soon as she turned toward Taffy and Loren. What came next was nothing short of shocking. Heidi moved with the speed of a wild panther. Her right foot swung up and, like a pile driver, extended out into a forward thrust. The bottom sole of her shoe, more precisely where the four-inch spiked heel protruded from it, struck Loren in the solar plexus, directly below his sternum. Startled, he stared wide-eyed and unmoving for at least five seconds. When he eventually toppled over onto his back, clearly dead, Heidi’s right-footed Jimmy Choo was still imbedded in his mid-section.

“Fetch me my shoe, will you, Mr. Taffy?”

Pippa’s eyes moved from the shoe to Heidi, standing with one bare foot raised off the floor. Heidi giggled and shrugged. “You shouldn’t have been so mistreated … that was not my intention.” Her eyes next flashed toward Taffy. Pippa was pretty sure he got her not-so-subtle message, as well.

Taffy retrieved Heidi’s shoe, pulled a folded handkerchief from an inside jacket pocket, and wiped away all traces of Loren’s blood. He handed the shoe back to Heidi. “It won’t happen again, Mrs. Goertz.”

Another huge
Tylenol-like
pill was approaching. This time, it stopped at their terminal and a segment of the pipe separated and rotated upward. Dual streams of escaped water splashed down onto the tile floor, as double doors on the big pill slid apart.

“What is this place … and what is that?”

“Simply a means to an end, my dear Pippa. Subterranean-travel that goes unfettered and unnoticed. There’s so much you don’t know … few do … including much of your own government. With deeply buried tubes like these, now transecting the United States and most of Europe, and terminals like this one operating in most key cities, our organization today has the amazing capability to move great distances in a fraction of the time it would take to fly.”

They left Loren where he lay and moved into the pod-like car. The best way to describe the interior was plush. Pippa thought it made Calloway’s G550 look like a covered wagon in comparison. Everything was done in a soft, cream-colored leather—the wide bucket seats, the walls and ceiling, and even the floor seemed to be covered in leather. A straight line of six porthole windows, positioned halfway up on both sides of the pod car, provided views into the station on one side and more polished concrete walls on the other.

Heidi sat and patted the seat across from her. “Sit here, Pippa. I need to talk to you about something important … something wonderful.”

Pippa sat, keeping her expression neutral. She watched as Taffy continued on forward, waiting for the next hatch to slide open, then sitting down next to the pod’s driver. The hatch slid silently shut.

The pod car began to move and Pippa felt herself being tugged snugly into her seatback. She didn’t need to look out the closest porthole to know they were traveling at high speed.

“Where are we going, Heidi?”

“Eventually, Denver, but first we need to make a quick stop in New York—the Chrysler Building, to be exact. We need to pick up Leon.” Heidi rolled her eyes at her own mention of Leon, then looked Pippa up and down and pursed her lips. “I think I have just the thing for you to wear in my closet.”

Pippa remembered that Leon, Heidi’s husband, had purchased one of the world’s most recognizable New York high-rises, for Heidi’s birthday. She didn’t think, after their plans for dominating the world’s financial markets were squelched, that the purchase still could be finalized. Heidi and her husband, as well as anyone else associated with the WZZ, were currently being hunted by virtually every covert agency around the world.

Nothing was even remotely discernible out the porthole now. “How fast are we moving?” Pippa asked.

“This little thing moves along at hundreds of miles an hour, once it gets going. This one, of course, is our own private hydro-pod; most pods are quite utilitarian-looking, but still capable of traveling the same rapid speed.”

“Where are we? Still in Kingman?”

Heidi smiled at that. “No, my dear … little Kingman doesn’t have a terminal; how silly of you. Actually, you haven’t been in Arizona for quite some time now. You were brought to me unconscious and were kept that way for quite some time.”