Now You See It (21 page)

The EMT nodded.

“Okay. We’re right behind you.”

Sirens wailed to life as the aid car rushed away.

Gemma was five feet behind him.

“Get in the car,” he said.

She was shaking so badly she could hardly buckle in. “How bad is he?”

Brady looked at his hand and squared it into a fist before gripping the steering wheel. “He’s alive. He hit his head, and there’s something else, I think the guy shot him. I couldn’t get it clearly from the bus door—too much overlay. But I think Mike’s all right. Or will be.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Hang on, Gemma. It’s four minutes to Harborview.”

The longest four minutes of my life
, Gemma thought and jumped from the car almost before Brady brought it to a full stop at the Emergency Entrance. “Go,” he said. “I’ll find you.”

Blind with anxiety she blundered through the sliding glass panels before they had fully opened. A hurried exchange at the desk, and Gemma found herself pacing outside brown double doors.

Brady was five minutes behind her. “Parking was a bitch. It took less time to drive here behind the bus than it did to park and get inside.”

“I haven’t heard anything.”

He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. Then he pulled her close and she put her arms around him and clung.

* * *

“Cavanagh?”

Gemma started up from Brady’s shoulder. “Yes?”

The young man in green scrubs had bags under his eyes, but he smiled a bit as Gemma braced to meet him. “Mr. Cavanagh is resting. The bullet wound in his upper chest was through-and-through. He has a slight concussion. I’ve ordered a CT scan, but it’s strictly as a precaution. We’ll be moving him to ICU in a few minutes.”

While she was asleep, two uniformed policemen had taken up positions near the double doors.

“Can I see him?”

The doctor smiled. “Sure. Just for a minute, though. He’s going to be out of it for a while, yet.”

Gemma nodded and followed him down the corridor to where Mike lay flat, arms at his sides, his body invaded by tubes and wires and bathed in beeping noises from screens with graphic and digital readouts. Freckles stood out in his ashen face, and his hair was matted and bloody above a set of small butterfly bandages near his temple.

Gemma put a trembling hand to his clammy cheek. His eyes flickered, but didn’t open. She felt his strong awareness reaching out to hers. Relief crashed into her like a warm wave, and tears followed. The tears escalated to full sobs as she groped her way into the hall where Brady was waiting.

“He’s okay. He’s really okay. He knew I was there,” she babbled into Brady’s shoulder.

“Yeah. He’s one of your tougher Booger Eating Intel Weenies,” he said, brushing his thumbs under her eyes.

She grabbed his shirt so tightly her fingers ached, but she couldn’t stop crying. All the fear and anger of the last few days ripped out of her chest and burned her throat.

Brady laid his cheek against her hair and let her cry. As she wore down, he started slowly stroking her back until she subsided with a final shudder.

“I need to go back inside,” she croaked, wiping her cheeks with the heels of her hands.

“Go. I’ll call Mary Kate. She doesn’t know?”

Gemma shook her head. “No one knows she’s in Ohio, and Mike couldn’t get to her. It only works between the two of us.”

“Okay. Go on. I’ll call her right now.”

He watched Gemma until the doors closed behind her. Then he took a deep breath and stepped outside before flipping open his cell phone. The phone in Ohio rang through to voice mail once, but when he redialed, an older woman answered.

“I’m sorry to bother you so early,” Brady said,
God, it’s 4:30 a.m. there,
“My name’s Brady McGrath, and I need to speak to Mary Kate, please. It’s urgent.”

The only response was the sound of the receiver hitting—a table, he supposed. Distantly, he could hear a child’s frantic crying. Then Mary Kate’s voice came, thin and stressed.

“Brady, is Mike all right?”

“He’s going to be. Someone broke into his office tonight, and Mike ran him off. He took a wing shot,” he said, not even wincing at the white lie, “and a crack on the head, but he’s going to be fine.

“Timmy has been screaming about a fire. I’ve been trying to call Mike’s cell, but it goes straight to voice mail.”

“Yeah, but the building security guy got to him in time.”

“I’m coming back.”

“No, you’re not. That’s the last thing he’d want. Believe me. M-K, they killed Cinda. They would have killed Mike, too, but he was alert. Look, Gemma’s in with him now, and I’ll have her call you as soon as she comes out. He’s going to be in ICU for a while. He’s got two uniformed nursemaids,” he said, grinning because he knew how pissed off Mike would be about that. “One’s even named O’Reilly. So tell Timmy his dad’s okay.”

“I will. You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. I’ll have Gemma call you in a little while. M-K, don’t come here. Mike needs to know you’re all right, not worry about it.”

“Okay. Thanks, Brady.” The line went dead.

Gemma came through the double doors and made straight toward him.

“Mike’s on his way upstairs.” She looked so fragile he felt his heart twist in his chest. Nothing was going to touch her, he swore to himself. Nobody had better try. He pulled her close and planted a noisy kiss on her hair, then smiled and buried his lips in the tangles. Her hair smelled like spice and clover. He couldn’t help a small grin. She was going to totally freak when she realized she went out with it all snarled up.

“I talked to Mary Kate.”

She looked up at him.

“I told her Mike was okay. She already knew about the fire.”

Gemma blinked.

“I guess it’s inherited, after all,” he added.

“Timmy.”

“They’re waiting to hear from you.” He looked her over carefully. She was pale, and gray smudges had bloomed under her eyes, but she seemed alert and ready to fight. Good. However long her energy lasted, he was sure they were going to need it. “You want to stay here?”

“For a little while.”

“The police are going to be all over you.”

“And you need to be where they can’t find you.”

He grimaced. “Yeah. Not yet. There’s some stuff I need to take care of first thing tomorrow. Today. I was planning to wake up early and get ready, but I might as well just work through.”

Brady gave her one more quick kiss. God, she felt good. Smelled wonderful. Tasted like heaven. He wanted to stay there, near her, but didn’t dare. “See you later. I’ll call.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Is everything all right,
sir?”

He smiled just enough to throw her off.
Reassure her. Keep it together just a few more seconds—just long enough to
get into his office. “No calls, Trina.”

“Yes, sir.” So young, so enthusiastic. The
admiration in her eyes told him she’d be available, if he wanted her. Right
now sex was the last thing on his mind. Well, he made a wry grimace,
obviously that wasn’t true, or the idea would never have come to him. Still,
he hadn’t expected his arm to hurt even more the day after. Somewhere in his
desk he had some oxycontin —he fumbled at the rear of a side drawer until he
found the amber plastic prescription bottle. He tried to hold the bottle
steady with his injured hand, but when he twisted the top, the pain drove
the air from his lungs and he bit down on a shout. He had to use his teeth
to get the container open, and his good hand was shaking as he poured two
tablets out onto the pristine desktop. As he stood behind his desk, waiting
for the medication to kick in, he caught sight of his reflection in the
glass doors of a bookcase and shuddered. He looked like Michelangelo’s Lost
Soul. He had to pull himself together.

It was all coming apart. Everything. It
should all have been so easy.

Who’d have imagined Ned was clever enough
to hide the information where he couldn’t find it? Worse, he wasn’t even
certain there actually was anything there to find. Realistically, that
scribbled InfoPath in the coffee pot lid could have been
anything.

He hadn’t believed the threats were
serious. A week ago, when he’d found out Ned was dead, he’d been sure he
could straighten up any loose ends in just a day or two. But everything he’d
tried to do had only made things worse. It was all slipping out of his
hands. Vinh Li had made absolutely clear he wanted the materials Ned had
threatened him with. All of them. It hadn’t been enough to say he had
destroyed them, trashed the machine beyond recovery—even to offer Vinh the
overwritten hard drive.

Vinh had made sure he knew the
consequences if he failed. He was carrying some very painful reminders,
inflicted by two of the most terrifying men he’d ever met. Two medium-sized
Asian guys you’d pass on the street without a thought. Last night they had
stripped him, tied him up, paying no attention to his bleeding shoulder, the
bastards, and peeled three two-inch wide strips of skin off his torso with
no more compunction or compassion than if they’d been pulling the legs off a
cockroach. The whole thing took place in total, expressionless silence,
except for his cries of pain. And when it was over, Vinh’s message,
delivered in terse, straightforward words that left no room for questions.
He’d never felt so dehumanized, so deeply, thoroughly terrified, so utterly
helpless. The wounds were agonizing.

He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk
and took a quick count of the syringes that lay capped in a small cardboard
box. Only two left. Not enough. He needed a lot more drugs if he was going
to get through today unscathed. He grimaced. He’d bet most people didn’t
know local applications of morphine worked almost as well as lidocaine. One
of the advantages of having friends in low places.

Reconstructive surgery could repair the
damage—assuming, of course, he lived long enough for the flayed areas to
heal. And that would be a slow, hideously painful process, because the
strips were too wide to suture, and would have to be kept open until the new
flesh grew in. They’d simply peeled his body like a grape, or a tomato, one
stripe down the side beneath each arm and one across his stomach at the belt
line. They’d made sure their work would be covered by his clothes. The
lesson, he was informed, was for him, not for the world to see. He and Ned
had been in this together, and Ned’s mess was his to clean up. And if he
couldn’t clean it up, and fast, he was a dead man.

He shuddered. The crime scene photos from
Mendelson’s cabin had left no doubts about his employers’
sincerity.

Ned had hidden something in that safety
deposit box he’d thought was so super top secret. No way to get at the box.
But no reason to think anyone else even knew about it. He wouldn’t have
known about it himself if he hadn’t seen Ned go into a strange bank a few
months back, and followed him inside.

Damned fool.
He
might have been smart to keep a record, but he was terminally stupid to let
me know he’d done it.
How much did he tell them
before he died?
I’m guessing he told them
everything in that clever, shallow little mind—everything he knew, or
guessed, or had ever even thought about. I would have.
And that means he did.

And Gemma. How much did she know? There
had to be a way to find out. Ned said she “had the goods” on him. But what
did that mean, exactly? She wasn’t acting like someone who knew all the
truth.

He touched his shoulder tentatively. It
still hurt like hell. Lucky shot—lucky for him. Another inch in almost any
direction and the bullet would have hit something vital instead of just
punching through. He checked his reflection again. He’d kept the bandaging
to a minimum, and he was pretty sure nothing showed. Trina hadn’t seemed to
notice.

He tried reaching for a notepad, caught
his breath as the pain seared him.
Shit!
He
still had loose ends to take care of, but Gemma and that bastard McGrath had
both dropped off the face of the fucking planet. Together? He’d bet on it.
He couldn’t wait to get his hands on that smug, macho son of a bitch.
McGrath had a lot to answer for.

Brady opened the bottom drawer of his desk and dug under the
carefully random layers of detritus until his hand found the slick surface of a
cell phone. He took a deep breath and swallowed before pulling it out. He’d
sworn to himself he’d never touch it again. Never. Not even under torture.

He’d made it nearly ten months.

When he left the Drugs and Weapons Task Force last year, after
four years of hunting the scum of the earth across four continents, he was
finished there. Burned out, exhausted. Soul-sore.

Law enforcement had seemed like a good choice when he bottomed
out of SEALs. A way to put his training and special skills to work for something
positive. Something
good
.

The transition had been brutal. Not physically. After SEALs,
the physical training for almost any other organization was bound to be a
dawdle. But he’d missed the sense of brotherhood he’d shared with his Team. Even
if he had killed so many of them.

Task Force units worked closely together, but it wasn’t the
same. Maybe that was his fault—after the clusterfuck in Afghanistan that got
half his men killed, and all the rest wounded, he just couldn’t give as much of
himself as he used to. He’d always felt, too, as if most of his Task Force unit
had problems like his, some past betrayal or disaster that kept a kind of
barrier in place against total trust.

And then, there was the slime factor.

As mindlessly vicious as religious fanatics could be, at least
most of them were acting from some sort of principles, however bent and twisted
they might seem to his Western mind.

The people the Task Force hunted didn’t deserve to be called
human beings. And each time he had to think like them, even if it was to try and
anticipate their next move, intercept their next shipment, head off their next
massacre, the experience had left a sick feeling he couldn’t shake, a layer of
corrosion on his spirit like tarnish on silver. He’d had to leave, before the
pits grew into big, ugly, irreparable holes.

He plugged in the odd-shaped connector and speed-dialed a
number. With any luck it had been changed and the Universe would take care of
the whole conundrum for him. If he couldn’t reach them—

The unique sound pattern of Task Force encryption made his
stomach twist. If he’d had any choice, he wouldn’t be—

A voice answered with a series of numbers.

“Zipline,” Brady responded.

“Wait one.” Twenty seconds of static. “Confirm?”

“It’s too bad zippers are being replaced by Velcro.” If he ever
found out who had thought up such an inane code, he was going to strangle them.
Slowly. In stages.

“Oh seven-sixteen,” the voice said, just before the line went
dead.

Fucking spooks
, he thought. Why not
just say “afternoon matinee at the palm Cinema,” or whatever? And how dumb was
it to give him a code name so close to his old SEAL handle?
Fucking stupid spooks.
Of course, they’d probably never heard the
actual story of the tablecloth, his recalcitrant zipper and the admiral’s
wife.

He disconnected the phone and had barely set it back into the
drawer and begun to pull papers over it when his other cell vibrated. The caller
ID was unfamiliar, but it was supposed to be.

He pushed the green button. “Yeah.”

“Yo, Zips!”

“Caz?”
Holy shit!

“Dude! Long time, and all that. I’m just in town. Wanna show me
around?”

“A round or a square?” Brady responded, giving the
countersign.

Caz laughed. “Same old Zip-Man. So—drinks?”

“Sure. Where are you?”

There was a pause, as if Caz was looking around. “Pine and
First.”

“Pike Place Market? Perfect. See you there in—give me twenty or
so minutes.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Me, either,” Brady said, his voice dark. He meant it more than
he’d ever thought he could.

Brady approached the bus stop at Second and Stewart from
slightly uphill. The voice on the phone had sounded like Caz, had given all the
right responses. Still—

And there he was, sitting inside the glass bus shelter, reading
a bus schedule as if it were the latest Clive Cussler. Brady broke into a
grin—which still didn’t prevent him from scoping out the area every few
seconds.

“Yo!” Caz said, getting up. He’d clearly been doing some
scoping of his own.

Casimir Kovashvili wasn’t enormously tall. He only had an inch
or so on Brady. But his chest was a solid wall of muscle, and his thick arms
ended in large hands that were surprisingly agile when working a K-Bar or a
sniper rifle. Last time Brady saw him, Caz had been sporting a fierce, swirling
black moustache like some bandit chieftain from the Georgian Caucasus. Which, of
course, is what he probably would have been if his grandparents hadn’t fled to
the States from one of Uncle Joe Stalin’s innumerable purges.

Caz had cleaned up pretty well. His wild black hair worked well
in the new metro brush cut. There was no disguising the rake-hell gleam in his
black eyes, but all-in-all, in a “Save the Whales” T-shirt and Gortex jacket, he
could easily pass unnoticed in downtown Seattle.

“You ready?” Brady asked. The bear hugs and shouts could wait
until they were out of public sight.

“Yeah,” Caz said as casually as if they’d been apart a few
minutes, instead of nearly five years.

“Damn, McGrath, you’re looking good. Civilian life must agree
with you.”

“It has its moments,” Brady said as he unlocked the car doors.
“Wait’ll you see my new digs.”

“Last I heard,” Brady said as he twisted the top off a dewy
bottle of ale and handed it to Caz, “you were at Quantico.”
Training snipers and SWAT specialists.

“Yeah. Ninja lessons.”

“What happened?”

“Got bored. Got married.”

“Whoa! No shit?”

Something in Caz’s face cut off Brady’s next caustic
remark.

“Didn’t take.”

“Sorry, man.”

“Yeah.” Caz took a half-bottle swig of Moosehead. “Besides,” he
continued, “I don’t really fit back East.” He flexed his shoulders uneasily.
“Too rigid.”

Brady diplomatically concentrated on his beer. Time to change
the subject. “I need a meet,” he said after a couple of sips in silence.

“What’s up?”

Brady laid it out for him.

“Whoa,” Caz said, setting his bottle down with a
thunk
.

“I need to know what the Task Force has going, and what they’ve
dug up on Ned Carrow. I can’t reach Tran.”

“He’s out of position for the time being.”

“Can you set it up?”

“Fuckin-A. You coming back in? It’d be great to work together
again.”

Brady shook his head. “I don’t think I can, dude. Not anymore.
Or maybe not yet—I’m not sure about anything much but right now.”

“Hunh. You still got the oh-my-Gods, eh?” Caz asked.

“Ever bother you?”

“Not so much. Once in a while. The more I see these dirtbags,
the less I stress over putting them out of the world’s misery.” He turned his
bottle, making damp rings on the table. Brady looked at his watch. “I gotta go
see a guy and then go pick up Gemma at the hospital.”

“Can’t wait to meet her, bro.”

“Wipe that grin off, Master Chief. If you still had your
moustache, you’d be twirling the ends of it right about now, and I’d have to
hurt you.”

Brady followed Caz out of the building. He’d forgotten how good
it felt to laugh with a friend who really knew him.

* * *

“Hey, Abernathy! You’ve got a call from Seattle
P.D.”

There were none of the hoots and catcalls he would have
expected just a few years back. The two departments worked together more
smoothly these days—as smoothly as two neighboring law enforcement organizations
could expect.
And a good thing, too,
Abernathy
thought,
in a fucked-up mess of a case like this
one.
Two bodies, three break-ins, two arsons, three
jurisdictions and a partridge in a pear tree...

He picked up his extension. “Pierce County Sheriff, Detective
Abernathy.”