Finders/Keepers (An Allie Krycek Thriller, Book 3) (14 page)

Who were the two men with the MP5Ks? Who was shooting at whom outside in the parking lot? And dear God, what was it going to take to shut up those damn car alarms? She focused on the shattered windows, flinching at the shrill cries of the alarms as they attempted to drill right down into her soul.

Would someone please shut them up!

When she looked back over, Reese was limping toward her. “Time to go, Alice.”

“I can’t move,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. She wished it were, but it wasn’t. She simply couldn’t move at the moment. Just maintaining her current sitting posture was taking everything she had.

“Yes, you can,” Reese said.

“No, I
can’t.”

“Yes, you
can
,” he said, and holstered his sidearm and grabbed her arm and jerked her ruthlessly up to her feet.

She didn’t even bother to stifle the screams this time.

H
e didn’t think
she would ever stop screaming, and it made the twenty or so feet from the motel door to Dwight and the Chevy feel like an eternity. He wasn’t even sure how he did it, but he kept pushing, dragging her with one hand, the other gripping the MP5K he’d salvaged from one of the dead guys.

One foot at a time. Move, move,
move!

Then they were outside and at the car, and Dwight, a scowl on his face, was shouting at him, “Leave her!”

Reese didn’t waste time arguing and instead opened the back door of the Chevy and pushed her inside. She stumbled and fell face-first onto the seat, but thankfully her momentum put her inside the vehicle as he slammed the door shut after her and turned his attention to a white van parked about ten rooms down from them. His ears were still ringing from Alice’s screams, which he guessed was a good thing because it meant he didn’t have to hear the car alarms filling the night air around them with impunity.

“You good?” Dwight shouted from the other side of the car.

Not even close, old sport!
he thought, but shouted back, “Yeah, let’s go!”

Dwight unslung the Heckler & Koch UMP45 hanging off his right shoulder by a strap and tossed it into the car before ducking inside after it. Reese gave the parking lot one final look—the two bodies around the bullet-riddled van, a third slumped over the open driver-side window—before pulling open the Chevy’s front passenger-side door. He dug out and dropped the burner phone to the pavement, then smashed
it under his shoe before climbing inside.

The Chevy was a stolen replacement for the Ford, which they had ditched in one of the wooded areas on their way to the motel. Reese hadn’t asked Dwight where he had gotten it, though his partner assured him the owner wasn’t going to notice it was even missing until sunup.

With the windows rolled up, they were mercifully spared most of the blaring car alarms. Dwight reversed, then spun the wheel until the vehicle was facing the right direction before he gunned it. In no time, they were back on the road with the motel fading fast in Reese’s side mirror. Dwight floored the gas and their car’s headlights sliced through darkness. Instead of turning back toward the interstate, Dwight took a small country road where they were the only moving object for as far as Reese could see in either direction.

“How many at the room?” Dwight asked.

“Two,” Reese said.

“Lucky you. They were getting ready to send over more before I pulled up. You should have seen the slack-jawed looks on their faces when I whipped out the UMP. Sad-looking motherfuckers.”

“You grabbed any of their weapons?”

“Didn’t have time. You?”

He held up the MP5K. The submachine gun was highly portable and had a pistol grip under the barrel. The long, skinny magazine offered up a thirty-round load. “I should have grabbed the other guy’s, too. More guns are going to come in real handy after tonight.”

“Understatement of the decade, dude.”

“How’d the scavenger hunt go?”

“Fruitful,” Dwight said, and grabbed a plastic bag from between their seats and tossed it into Reese’s lap. “Don’t ask where those came from.”

Reese opened the bag and peered down at a pile of pill bottles. “Where’d you get them?”

“Didn’t I just say not to ask?”

Reese grabbed the first bottle. He had to turn on the ceiling light in order to read the label: Tramadol. It wasn’t the Vicodin he was hoping for, but it was a hell of a lot stronger medicine than the Ibuprofen Dwight had gotten from the gas station earlier tonight.

He sifted through the other labels just in case there was something stronger. They were all prescription-strength painkillers, but the Tramadol was the best of the lot. He popped its lid, shook out two, and gulped them down.

“Easy there, Bend it Like Peckham,” Dwight said. “You get yourself knocked out again, and there won’t be anyone to stop me from taking care of your girlfriend back there.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I very fucking would in a heartbeat.”

Reese grunted, then turned around and looked into the backseat at Alice. She had somehow turned over onto her back and was staring at him. Even though he knew she was in tremendous pain and had been since waking up in the motel room, that didn’t stop her from gritting her teeth and firing daggers in his direction.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I had no choice. It was stay behind and die, or run and live.”

She blinked but didn’t say anything.

If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man a million times over.

“Peace offering,” he said, and took the bottle out of his pocket and shook out two pills, then leaned between the seats and held it out to her. “Painkillers. Blink twice for yes, once for no.”

She blinked twice rapidly.

He smiled. “See, we’re already getting along.”

He pried open her lips and slipped one pill through them. He waited for her to swallow, but she didn’t.

“Water?” he asked.

Two blinks.

He turned around and picked up a water bottle from the floor.

“Jesus Christ, you really are into her,” Dwight said from the driver’s seat.

“Don’t be ridiculous; I’m just trying to keep her alive,” he said, and returned to helping Alice swallow the pills.

E
ither the pills
knocked her out or the combination of pain and meds did. Either way, Alice was sleeping soundly in the backseat by the time Dwight pulled the Chevy into a roadside convenience store and parked next to a couple of semitrailers that had shut down for the night.

Dwight killed the engine and let the darkness swallow them up. Whoever was working the store would still be able to see them, thanks to the streetlights, but Reese doubted if the employee would care about a sedan parking for the night, especially amongst two big rigs that were already there and doing the same.

“I guess we’re fucked,” Dwight said, tearing open a bag of Twinkies before sucking out the white cream filling, while his other hand busied with opening a large-size can of Red Bull wedged between his thighs.

Dwight didn’t sound nearly as angry as Reese had been expecting; in fact, he was remarkably calm, which was a rarity when it came to his partner. That in itself was surprising, but considering the series of failures they’d had to deal with today, it was downright miraculous.

“Not necessarily,” Reese said.

“You don’t think so? Not even after those guys back at the motel?”

“It’s safe to say they figured out we never intended to make the rendezvous point, so they came searching for us.”

“How’d they do that, by the way?”

“The burner phone they gave me. They probably had some kind of tracking software installed on it.” When Dwight flashed him a concerned look, “I got rid of it back at the motel.”

“That wasn’t the first phone they gave you.”

“Nope.”

“You think they could always track us, even on past jobs?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Paranoid bastards.”

“Indeed.”

Dwight started working on the yellow part of the Twinkie. “So what are our choices?” he asked between bites.

“I guess it all depends on how determined they are, whether they want to cut their losses or make their dissatisfaction with our performance a permanent thing.”

Dwight chuckled. “You say it like we screwed up their pizza order. We probably coast them a few hundred grand with that shipment.”

“You’re lowballing it.”

“No kidding?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Well, damn. Maybe I’ve been in the wrong business all this time.”

“You were in the right business; you were just at the wrong end of it.”

“Figures,” Dwight grunted. “When have I not ended up on the wrong end of things?”

“At least the pay was good.”

“Yeah, but I bet it’s gooder on the other side.”

Reese smiled. “Likely.”

“So, the drivers are probably goners,” Dwight said. “If they’re even still alive after Sleeping Beauty back there pumped their cab full of bullets.”

“I think that’s a safe assumption. Leave no loose ends.”

“Like us.”

“Uh huh.”

Reese watched a van pull into the parking lot behind them and instinctively reached for the MP5K resting in his lap, but relaxed when the vehicle drove past them and pulled up to one of the gas pumps instead. A fifty-something man climbed out of the van and made his way to the store, hitching up his pants as he went.

“Our reputation’s going to take a hit,” Dwight said.

“That’s putting the cart well before the horse, partner.”

“So, what’s the cart?”

“Getting out of this alive.”

“Makes sense. I’m very biased toward staying alive. Call me selfish if you want, but that’s just me.”

“First things first: We need to find out how far they’re willing to pursue this.”

“You still gotta ask that after the motel?”

“The motel is here, now. It was an easy decision. Tomorrow, the week after that, won’t be so easy.”

“And if they’re not going to stop?”

“We can only run so far for so long before they eventually catch up to us.”

“I don’t know, dude, I can run pretty far.”

“Even so…”

“So worst case, what happens if they don’t feel like letting us off the hook after tonight?”

“Then I guess we’ll have to kill them.”

“All of them?”

“That goes without saying.”

Dwight chuckled. “And I thought I was the crazy one.”

“I call it practical.”

“Your ‘practical’ sucks.”

“That may be, but I don’t see any other choices. If they won’t let it go, then we need to end them before they end us. It’s as simple as that.”

“Simple and stupid.”

“Only if we fail.”

“Which, in all likelihood, we will. They’re bosses and we’re worker bees for a reason, you know.”

“Even the bosses were worker bees once upon a time.”

“That supposed to make me feel better?”

“Does it?”

“Not even close.”

“Oh, well,” Reese said.

“They probably have more assholes like the ones bleeding out back at the motel,” Dwight said. “A whole bunch of assholes. An asshole factory, if you will.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“This job just keeps getting better and better,” Dwight said, and opened a bag of chips and started loudly crunching them. “Have I told you how much I regret this partnership of ours?”

“Only twice in the last week.”

“Well, it really sucks.”

“Noted,” Reese said. “You got some water left?”

“What happened to yours?”

“I gave it to Alice to help her with the pills.”

“Then ask Alice for it back, motherfucker,” Dwight said. “Or you could do something for once and go buy your own damn water from the store, instead of always letting me do the legwork.”

“I’m wounded. You really think it’s a good idea for me to walk in there with nothing on but a blazer? Plus, I can barely walk without limping. It’s going to be pretty noticeable—”

“Okay, okay, Jesus,” Dwight said. He put the chips away and opened his car door. “Water, and what else?”

“Some food would be nice. Anything with protein.”

“You want I should make you a special plate, princess?”

“Would you?”

“Dinner and a show; I better get sex out of this.”

“Not now, dear; I have a gunshot wound,” Reese said.

T
he Tramadol was
strong enough to knock her out, but she fought through it anyway, letting it do its job of numbing her body and fighting back against the excruciating pain, but at the same time never letting go completely. She remained in the backseat of the stolen Chevy, not moving or opening her eyes, but letting herself breathe normally (or as normally as she could manage, anyway) as if she were asleep.

None of those things were very hard to pull off since she wasn’t even sure she could
move more than just her head if she had wanted to. Being dragged out of the motel room to the car was like having needles shoved into every part of her body. She had been forced to move on legs that might as well be engulfed in lava, while every inch of her spine gave the impression they were about to collapse inward like some black hole.

Reese had done that. The asshole.

The painkillers, she guessed, was his way of making up for what he had put her through. He hadn’t needed to do that, and as he pushed her lips apart and slipped the pills inside her mouth one at a time, then tilted the bottle so she wouldn’t have to move her head too much to drink down the meds, she thought she saw something that was almost like…
concern?...
on his face.

Bullshit. He’s a killer. A criminal.

Worse than that, he’s an enabler to the people who stole girls like Faith and Sara and sentenced them to a life worse than death.

No, don’t buy his lies. Reese is human garbage. Kill him when you get the chance.

After some driving and putting miles between them and the motel, Dwight finally turned off the road and parked. She heard cars passing in the background, but there weren’t enough extra clues to tell her where they were exactly. If she had to guess (and that was really all she could do while lying in the back of the Chevy), they were probably still using one of the country roads.

She had the satisfaction of knowing that Dwight and Reese weren’t just hiding from cops this time.

Men with guns at the motel. They came there for us.

No, not us. For
them.
Reese and Dwight.

Looks like someone’s in trouble…

Maybe it was the pills, but her mind was a lot clearer now, and it wasn’t very hard to piece together all the evidence in front of her. You didn’t lose precious cargo like Sara and the others and not have to face consequences. That was the problem with dealing with criminals. They weren’t necessarily the most loyal group of people.

Allie lay silently in the backseat and listened to them talking up front. If they knew she was listening in, they didn’t appear to be altering their conversation to keep her in the dark.

“Our reputation’s going to take a hit,” Dwight was saying.

“That’s putting the cart well before the horse, partner,” Reese responded.

“So what’s the cart?”

“Getting out of this alive.”

“Makes sense. I’m very biased toward staying alive. Call me selfish if you want, but that’s just me.”

“First things first, we need to find out how far they’re willing to pursue this.”

There.

She had been waiting for the opening, and there it was. She knew what she had to do next, but she bided her time and listened to the rest of their back and forth. They sounded muted and calm, even Dwight. Finally, the car rocked slightly as Dwight climbed out and slammed the door shut.

“There’s a way out of this,” she said.

Reese turned around in his seat. He looked surprised to see her staring back at him. “How long have you been awake?”

“Long enough.”

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough.”

He might have smiled, but in the semidarkness of the car (where the hell had Dwight parked them, anyway?), she couldn’t be entirely sure.

“How’s the pain?” he asked.

“Like my skin is on fire.”

“Welcome to the club. You remember that you shot me, right?”

“I remember.”

“Not very nice.”

“You didn’t give me any choice.”

“Didn’t I?”

She shook her head. Or managed to move it just slightly left, then right, anyway.

“Fair enough,” Reese said.

“I know a way for both of you to get out of this alive.”

“This? You mean this situation you put us in?”

“I didn’t tell Vanguard to shoot those state troopers.”

He thought about it briefly before shrugging. “No, but you’re definitely here on false pretenses. Is Juliet dead?”

“No.”

“Incarcerated?”

“Yes.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Why are you telling the truth now? Or is it even the truth? It’s getting hard to tell with you, Alice.”

“Because now I have a proposition for you and Dwight.”

“I’m listening…”

“You can stay and fight—which is essentially suicide, but I think you already know that even if you pretend not to—or you can go on the run. Far, far away from here, to someplace where your former employers can’t reach you. Overseas, I’d imagine.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Alice.”

“If you choose to live—and run—then you’re going to need money. A lot of it.”

“Oh?”

“I can give it to you. The money.”

“Are you saying you have money, Alice?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Enough to make a big difference.”

“I don’t think you fully understand how much it’s going to take...”

“One million,” she said.

He stared at her in silence.

It stretched to five seconds.

Then ten…

“One million,” he repeated.

“Each,” she said.

“Each?”

“One million for you, and one for Dwight.”

Another long pause as he gazed at her, and she could practically see his mind working, processing what she was saying, maybe even crunching the numbers.

How much would it take to run? How much did he have on hand? How much could he afford?

All those things took a while, until he finally said, “Bullshit.”

“Not bullshit.”

“Where would you get two million?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

“That means you don’t have it.”

“I can prove it.”

“How?”

“The same way you access the money you don’t want anyone—any government—to find out about. Call your money man and I’ll give you a bank name and an account number, along with a password, and whoever manages your money can verify the two million’s existence. He won’t be able to touch it, of course, but you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

There was just a ghost of a smile on his lips when he said, “Who
are
you?”

“Make the call, Reese,” Allie said.

R
eese made the call
, using a burner cell phone that Dwight had grabbed from the convenience store. Dwight sat behind the steering wheel, drinking from a large can of Red Bull and scooping freshly-microwaved frozen TV dinner into his mouth while watching on with genuine curiosity.

When Reese finally made contact with his “money man,” he glanced into the backseat at her. She had sat up, both because the pain wasn’t quite as unbearable as before, and she knew that from a purely psychological standpoint, sitting was a better position to negotiate from than lying helplessly on her back.

“Two million?” Dwight said doubtfully.

“That’s what she said,” Reese nodded, holding the phone to his ear. He had been waiting for a response from the other end for the last couple of minutes.

Dwight turned in his seat and looked back at her, cheap plastic spoon filled with dripping creamy white something poking out one corner of his mouth. “So you’re not a cop.”

“No,” she said.

“Then who are you?”

“Verify the money; then we’ll talk.”

Dwight reached down and drew his Smith & Wesson .45 and tapped it against his seat’s headrest. “You better hope everything comes up roses, Alice in Wonderland, otherwise this is gonna be the last ride you’re ever going to take. I don’t care that Reese here’s smitten with you, either.”

“The money’s there,” she said.

“So you keep saying.” He turned to Reese. “Well—”

Reese held up his hand to silence Dwight, then said into the phone, “Confirm it again.” He paused to listen, then, “All right. I’ll be in touch.”

“Well?” Dwight said.

Reese turned the phone off and put it away. “She’s not lying. There is over three million in the account.”

“Three million,” Dwight said, putting the gun away. It might have been her imagination, but he looked either impressed or confused. Maybe somewhere in between. “You willing to give two of that to us?” he asked her.

“Only if you agree to my proposition,” Allie said.

“And what would that be?” Reese said, also turning to face her.

“I’m looking for a girl named Faith.”

“Never heard of her,” Dwight said.

“You wouldn’t. Two years ago, she was taken off the road in a nearby state during a cross-country road trip with her boyfriend. He didn’t survive.”

“Sister?” Reese asked.

“No,” Allie said.

“Friend?”

“I’ve never met her in my life.”

Reese gave her a quizzical look, then exchanged the same with Dwight.

“So what, her parents paid you to find her?” Dwight asked.

“Her mother asked me to,” Allie said, “but she’s not paying me.”

Dwight scratched his stubble, not even bothering to hide the confusion on his face this time. “So what are you, some chick with a Robin Hood complex who just happens to have three million bucks sitting around in a foreign bank account, accumulating interest?”

“What I am, or why I’m doing this, is my business.” She looked at Dwight, then at Reese. “The question is: You want to try outrunning your pissed-off employers with what you have on hand, or would you rather do it with an additional million each?”

The two men exchanged another look, and this time it was much longer than the first.

Reese finally turned back to her. “So that’s it. The reason you climbed into our car in the first place. This girl, Faith.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“So what was the plan?”

“Let you take me to your employers, and from there, find out where they’re keeping Faith.”

“She’s with them?”

“If she’s not presently, then they would know where she is.”

“So you’re going to pay us to find a girl who is currently working for the same assholes we’re trying to avoid?” Dwight said. He sounded on the urge of either laughing or crying. “Which part of trying not to get dead by running don’t you get, Alice in Wonderland?”

“He’s got a point,” Reese said. “It rarely happens, I’ll grant you, but this is definitely one of those rare occurrences.”

Dwight snorted, but Reese ignored him and continued:

“Your big sell is a million dollars each to help us run from the men trying to kill us, but in order to get that payday, we have to actually
go back
into the viper’s nest.” Reese shook his head. “You didn’t really think this through, did you?”

“On the contrary,” Allie said, “I’ve thought it through enough to know you’ll do it.”

“Is that so?”

“Your former employers are looking to either silence you or punish you for your failures. Either way, it ends with the two of you below ground. The smart thing for you to do is run. And they know that. The last thing they expect is for you to head right back into the belly of the beast.”

“It’s the last thing they would expect because it’s the
dumbest
thing,” Dwight said.

“I don’t want you to take them on. I want you to go around them. Use your knowledge of their operation and help me locate one girl. After that, you’ll both have a million dollars each to run to your heart’s content. Tell me that’s not a better plan than just disappearing tomorrow with what you have on hand.”

“What makes you think we don’t already have a million bucks socked away?” Dwight asked. “You know how long we’ve been doing this?”

“Because you wouldn’t even be considering my proposal if you did,” Allie said and smiled back at him.

Dwight grunted, but that resulted in a third exchange of glances between him and Reese in the front seats.

“Maybe,” Reese said.

“Suicide,” Dwight said.

“Not if we’re careful.”

“Too many guns. Too many meatheads. Too much everything bad.”

“There are always too many guns, always too many meatheads. At least this time we come out of it a million dollars richer. That’s a lot of operating room. We can run pretty far and pretty long with that kind of bankroll.”

She sat quietly in the backseat and didn’t interject. Despite his reluctance, she could almost sense Dwight coming around. Reese was already halfway there.

“It’s still suicide,” Dwight said.

“You already said that,” Reese said.

“That’s because it deserves to be said twice.”

“There’s a way…”

“A good way?”

Reese shrugged. “A better way.”

“Go on…”

“The houses.”

“The houses?” Dwight repeated.

“The houses,” Reese nodded.

“Maybe…”

“What houses?” Allie finally said.

Reese turned back to her. “You wanted to know where the girls were being taken. The houses. There are a handful of them spread across the countryside—four that we know of in this region alone, three that we’ve delivered to in the past—where they receive the girls and groom them.”

“And you think Faith might be in one of these places?”

“It’s possible. You said the girl was taken off the road in the state next door?”

Allie nodded. “Yes.”

“Then the closest house wouldn’t be the one we were headed to originally; it’d be the one north of us. If she’s not there—but she was, once upon a time—they would know where she was moved to, like you said. These people keep meticulous records, but they don’t trust computers. It’s all written down.”

“I got a better idea,” Dwight said. “We give you the locations of all the houses, and you send in the Feds. We’ll even only take a million between us.”

“Sounds fair,” Reese said.

“No,” Allie said without hesitation. “But you’re still going to give me the locations, except we’re still going to the one you think Faith might be at anyway. I know how law enforcement works. Even if I handed them the addresses on a silver platter, it would take weeks, maybe months to get any movement. I can’t afford to wait that long. Faith’s already waited too long.”