Extrasensory (17 page)

Nate Wilson believed life had been very unfair to him. He’d started out twenty-five years ago in the Army full of piss and vinegar. In short order his commanding officer had discovered Nate’s aptitude with explosives and made good use of him. He blew up bridges, roads, enemy strongholds, whatever was required of him.

Then he got careless, waiting too long to haul ass from some charges he set up. A blown knee and a back injury earned him a medical discharge and a lot of pain.

Unwilling to sit around feeling sorry for himself, despite his injuries he’d talked himself into a job with the San Antonio Police Department bomb squad. He didn’t have to be agile, just clever with his hands.

Then Fate stepped in again. A bomb with a hair trigger went off as he was disarming it and blew off two fingers of one hand and blinded him in one eye. That ended his police career and his marriage. It also increased his pain quotient and he quickly became addicted to Vicodin and Oxycodone. Needing to feed his habit, he put out the word here and there and soon a third career was born. If you wanted someone or something blown up, Nate was the man for it.

He’d been making himself a nice little living and keeping up his supply of drugs when the job for Mia Fleming came down. And everything came to a screeching halt.

“You told me to make her disappear.” He snapped the words off angrily. “Well, nothing makes a person disappear more than a bomb, right?”

“Disappear as in take her away. Kill her someplace else so people would think she’d left on her own. Are you an idiot?” The caller’s rage vibrated through the connection.

“Let’s not start with the name-calling. You needed a job done in a hurry and it seemed to me you weren’t too fussy about how it got done. I did it. I want my money.”

“You do realize that you killed a man from the Phoenix Agency, right? Dan Romeo won’t take very kindly to that.”

“Fuck Dan Romeo,” he nearly shouted. “How the hell was I supposed to know someone else would be driving her car?” He held the receiver away from his head to tone down the voice shouting into his ear.

“That’s what you got paid for.” The caller was nearly incoherent with fury. “It would have been bad enough if she’d been in the car. Maybe we could have tried to pass it off as one of those nuts always stalking her. But now, besides the cops who were all over the place last night, Phoenix will be on your ass until hell freezes over.”

“Fine.” Nate pulled a soiled handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. This was not going well at all. “Then I want the rest of my money and I’ll get out of town. But now I need more than the original amount. Give me enough to stay gone so they’ll never find me and I won’t need to look for more work.” There was a long pause. “And exactly how much are we talking about?”

“Half a million.”

“Are you crazy?” the caller exploded. “No way. You fucked up what should have been a simple job and now you want to hold us up like this? No way in hell.”

“Don’t give me grief,” he ordered. “I know you can get your hands on that kind of money. I know all about your secret stash. So pay up or I’ll be talking to the cops instead.”

He waited out the silence while his caller mulled over all the possibilities.

“Fine,” the answer came back. “Tell me where to send it and I’ll wire it.” Nate snorted. “You think I’d fall for that? Then I really
would
be an idiot. I want cold hard cash. And I want it right now.”

The caller sighed. “All right. I’ll get it ready.”

“Good. Give me your address. I’ll come by and get it.”

“Are you crazy?” The rage rolled through the phone connection again. “I don’t want you anywhere near here. Let me think a minute.”

“Yeah, well, think fast. I wanna get going.”

Another pause. “All right. Let me think.”

“Meet me at the airport,” he said. “You know where the cell phone lot is, right?”

“You don’t think that’s a little public? The idea is for us not to be seen together.”

“There are cars in and out of there all the time so no one will pay any attention to us. You can get in and out before anyone even knows you’re there. Then I can hit the interstate or get on a plane and go wherever I want to.”

“All right. Fine. But I don’t ever want to see you or hear from you or about you again. Otherwise you really will disappear.”

“Thirty minutes,” Nate said and disconnected the call.

* * * * *

Joe Harmon had been working at San Antonio International Airport for ten years.

When an on-the-job injury had sidelined him from the Kendall County Sheriff’s Department, a friend had referred him to airport security and he’d settled very comfortably into a position as a guard. The hours were much better than when he was a sheriff’s deputy, the work was much easier and since his wife had died, it proved a good way to fill up his nights. People thought he was crazy but everyone was always happy to let him have all the night shifts he wanted.

He wondered frequently who all the people were coming and going at the airport at three o’clock in the morning. The crowds simply amazed him. Why would anyone want to travel at that ungodly hour? His shift started at midnight and things seemed to get progressively busier rather than slower.

In his airport-issued golf cart Joe patrolled the open places around the terminal.

That included the drive-up areas and the parking garages. His job was to make sure there was no mischief afoot and that people didn’t keep their cars past the allotted time at the passenger pickup areas. The cell phone lot was one of the many areas he was responsible for. Here people could wait for arriving passengers who would then call on their cell phones when they arrived. It was a good system and for the most part worked pretty well. Joe usually just had to do a quick drive-through and move along.

It was very unusual for a car to be in that lot for more than fifteen or twenty minutes. People usually timed their arrival so they’d have a short wait. Whoever they were picking up would call them on their cell phone—hence the name of the lot—and by the time they got to the pickup area their passenger would be waiting with luggage in hand.

So when he realized the banged-up Toyota Corolla was still parked in the same place more than an hour after he first spotted it, he became suspicious. Normally he wouldn’t even have noticed. He basically just counted cars and went on his way. But when he pulled up behind the car he noticed the man inside appeared to be asleep. In the best of circumstances, which this was not, a parking lot wasn’t a great place to take a nap.

Unsnapping the flap on his airport-issued sidearm, he climbed out of the golf cart, walked easily over to the car and rapped on the driver’s side window.

“Hey, buddy. You okay?” When he received no response, he banged harder on the glass. “Buddy? You all right in there? Time to wake up.”

He turned on his flashlight and shone it into the interior. That’s when he saw the blood.

“Holy Mother of God.”

He backed away, grabbed his radio and called the main security office.

“Hey, Sheila,” he told the dispatcher. “Get the boss down to the cell phone lot pronto. And tell him to call the cops. I got a dead guy here.”

* * * * *

Mia felt as if she was swimming up from the bottom of a deep pool of water. She needed to wake up or she would drown. She swam and swam but she couldn’t reach the surface. Just as the last of her breath disappeared an explosion rocked the water and a gun came tumbling down to her.

She sat up in bed, dragging air into her lungs, perspiration covering her body. She closed her eyes, trying to bring the image back and there it was. The gun tumbling out of the ball of fire into the water.

She flailed at the air with her arms, screaming when something clamped down on them.

“No! No! Let me go.”

“Mia?” A deep, slow voice rolled into the dream. “Honey. It’s all right.”

“No!” Desperation clawed at her.

“Mia. You’re dreaming. It’s okay.”

Warm hands stroked her, soothed her. Eased her. The same voice coaxed her out of the nightmare. She forced her eyes open, consciousness coming slowly.

“What is it, Mia?” He smoothed his hand down her arm and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She realized he had pulled her against the hard wall of his chest, protecting her from whatever demon was chasing her.

“Someone’s been shot.” She wiped her forehead with the sheet. “I don’t know who but it’s someone connected with the explosion. Oh, Dan. God!” She leaned into him, shivering.

“All right.” He continued to stroke her as one might a wild animal. And truly, that was almost what she felt like. “Tell me exactly what you saw.” He pulled her upright and plumped the pillows behind them, leaning her back with him against the headboard. His arms circled protectively around her. “Would you like a cold drink? Some hot tea?”

“No.” She shook her head vehemently. The after-image was still burned into her brain and she needed to get the details out. “Okay.” She pulled in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Here’s what I saw, everything I can remember.” She described it all to him—the water, the feeling of drowning, the explosion and the gun.

“Could you get any sense of who was doing the shooting?” he prodded gently. “Or who was being shot?”

She shook her head again. “No. I didn’t even see a hand to tell if it was male or female. But I know it’s somehow connected to the bomb in my car. Whoever planted it is going to try a gun next. On me or someone connected to the project.” She smacked a hand against her forehead in frustration. “Or maybe that person will be shot.”

“Okay, honey.” Dan’s voice was low and soothing. “Let’s first make sure all our principles are covered. We need to find out where they are right now and check if anyone’s in trouble.”

He reached over for his cell phone and flipped it open. In rapid succession he called Chase’s penthouse, Lucas’ home, Paul Harrison’s townhouse, Ladd Tolbert’s condo and Stan Forbush’s bungalow. From Dan’s end of the conversation she guessed they all bitched and cursed at being awakened but at least she knew they were all alive and well.

Next Dan began contacting his team and making assignments, still keeping one arm around her, holding her firmly against him.

“No one,” he kept repeating as he connected on each call, “is to be left unguarded.

“They can raise as much stink as they want to but that’s an order. If anyone gives you too much of a problem, call me. And I want everyone in the Carpenter Techtronics conference room at nine o’clock.”

His last call was to Rick Latrobe, back in the Phoenix office after some downtime following his high security mission in Morocco. He held the phone so Mia could hear both sides of the conversation.

“You were going to get with Andy and do some research on Carpenter Techtronics and the key players,” he reminded him. “Get anything I need to know?”

“This and that,” Rick told him. “If I’d known you were going to call me in the middle of the night about it I’d have brought the stuff home with me.”

“Never mind. Pack it all up and bring it with you to Texas. I need you here. This case is taking some unusual twists. Mark’s on board for several reasons, and I need you here too. How’s everything at the office?”

“Surprisingly quiet for the moment. Nothing going on that requires any senior attention. God must be smiling on us.”

“No,” Dan contradicted, “he saved all his wrath for this gig. Just get your ass here five minutes ago.”

“No problem. I’ll wake Ed and tell him to get the plane ready. It’s a good thing you sent it back.”

“I’ll call Mark and ask him to pick you up at the private hangar,” Dan told him.

“We’ll worry about getting you a vehicle later. I want him to bring you directly to the meeting at Carpenter Techtronics. It’s set for nine this morning, so get Ed’s rear end moving. You need wheels up ASAP. Oh and have Mike bring the chopper and sit on it at the hangar.”

“That’s a lot of air power,” Rick pointed out.

“Yeah, I know. I just have a funny feeling we may need it.” He snapped the phone shut and dropped it onto the small table.

“Now,” he said to Mia, giving her a brief kiss, “everything’s in place so you don’t have to worry. So let’s go over this in detail once more, okay?”

* * * * *

The cell phone lot of the airport had been roped off with crime scene tape. The head of the night security shift had taken a look in the car and put in another call to the San Antonio Police Department. This would require more than a cruiser and two patrol cops. Shortly the patrol car that had originally been dispatched arrived along with two detectives in an unmarked car and the crime scene unit. Now the driver’s door of the Toyota had been popped open, pictures taken from every angle and the body removed.

Detective Steve Aragon took a good look at the man with the two bullet holes in his head. “I know this guy.” He turned to his partner. “So do you.” His partner walked around the body that was being zipped into a body bag and stopped the zipper as it reached the man’s neck. “Hold it a minute.” He had them pull the zipper back down and reached for one of the man’s hands. “You’re right.”

“It’s Nate Wilson, isn’t it?” Aragon asked.

“Sure is. Who the hell shot him? And why here?”

“You got me. But he must have really pissed someone off. This is an execution-style hit.” He nodded to the men from the medical examiner’s officer. “Okay. You can take him away now.”

He turned around as a van pulled up with the call letters of one of the television stations on it. “Mud suckers,” he commented under his breath.

“They must sit on a police scanner,” Aragon muttered.

“So who gets to talk to them, you or me?”

“I’ll do it. How much do you think they’d want to know about an asshole like Wilson?”

“Enough to give them a hot sound byte. Go on.” He nodded at the reporter holding a microphone and talking to her cameraman. “Miss Twinkletoes is waiting.”

* * * * *

Dan watched Mia choke down part of the breakfast he’d ordered for her before finally moving her plate away. She’d have stuck with coffee and dry toast if he’d let her but she already looked as if she’d pass out any minute. The strain was taking a heavy physical toll on her body and he wanted to get as much sustenance into her as possible.