The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller (21 page)

“All clear,” the agent upstairs called out before reappearing at the top of the stairs and walking down. The second FBI agent had taken the woman into the kitchen and had started to question her. Jami stood alone, trying to figure out where Derek was and looking around to see if there were any signs of forced entry.

“Did he say where he was going?” she said to the woman sitting down, interrupting the agent.
“I’m not talking to you. How did you even get in here?” she asked while lighting a cigarette.

Jami turned to the other agent and asked what he could do to help her.

“We can’t do much if he’s not here,” he explained.

“Can’t you locate him by his cell phone?”

“I understand it’s turned off – we’ll keep trying and I’ll let you know if we’re able to find him.”

Jami thanked the man and left the agents to do their job and question the woman to see if they could find out where Derek had gone. She walked to the truck and climbed inside. Jami tried calling Derek again, but the call went straight to voicemail. She left a message, asking him to call her back, and said she would try again and asked him to go back to his house where agents were waiting for him.

Deciding that there was nothing more that she could do from the house, Jami called Blake to let him know about Derek and to tell him that she was heading back to Pearson to join him.

But, as soon as she dialed the number, she heard a phone ringing. The sound was coming from inside the car and Jami realized that a phone was tucked away underneath the passenger seat. She leaned over, felt around, and pulled it out. As soon as Jami answered the call, she heard a loud echo and that’s when she realized that the other phone was Blake’s.

Why did Blake leave his phone in the car?
Jami thought about calling Morgan, but decided to first take a look at the phone. Blake didn’t make mistakes like this – leaving his cell phone in the car was intentional. Jami thought about how Blake had insisted on walking her out.
He needed an excuse to leave the phone.

While she held the phones side-by-side, Jami noticed that both of the batteries were draining quickly. She remembered how earlier, the battery in Blake’s personal phone had drained and how he was sure that he was being tracked.
Was Blake worried that he was going to be tracked again? Why would it matter if he was working with the FBI now?
Jami put her phone down and held onto Blake’s to take a closer look.

After she disconnected the call, the screen went back to the file that Blake had been viewing before he hid it in the car. Jami noticed that it was the first file, the archived employee contact list.
Why was he looking at that file and not the latest version?
She thought. But, as she scrolled through the list looking for her name and knowing it wouldn’t be there, Jami found the reason why Blake asked Morgan for that file.

Jami saw a name that caught her eye – Maribel Lopez. It was Marco’s sister, listed as his emergency contact. Then she saw her address noted right underneath Maribel’s name: 9405 McCarthy Road, Palos Park, IL 60464.

“Oh my God,” Jami whispered to herself. That’s when she realized why Blake had left the phone with her. He wasn’t worried about the FBI tracking him – he wanted them to track him – and think that she and Blake were together. Jami wondered why the two agents inside didn’t ask her where Blake was. Maybe Blake was able to leave Pearson without any of the onsite FBI agents realizing what he had done.

He’s doing this alone
, she thought.
His terms. His way. I have to help him
, she convinced herself and keyed Maribel’s address into the GPS. A few miles down the road as Jami got onto the highway, her phone rang. She didn’t answer. A moment later, Blake’s phone rang. Jami knew that it was Morgan. The FBI saw them moving and wanted to know where she and Blake were going. “Sorry, Morgan,” she whispered.

When Jim Keller opened his eyes, he awoke to a woman removing an injector from his leg.
Epinephrine
, he thought immediately and looked at the woman, trying to figure out who she was and why she was giving it to him. Maribel Lopez set the spent injector down on a dresser in the room she was working in.

Keller started to remember what had happened over the last hour. He realized that he had been drifting in and out of consciousness. He remembered being sat in a chair behind his kidnapper while he recorded a video, but couldn’t recall what he had said. He remembered laying back down in the bed that his arms were now tied to and hearing a loud gunshot from outside of his window and staying alert just long enough to hear the sound of a body hitting the ground before falling back into unconsciousness.

In that moment a thought came to him that troubled the senator greatly.
Who had been shot outside of my window? Was it Blake? Had he figured out where he was being held and tried to rescue him, only to be shot to death before making it inside?
Keller prayed that it wasn’t Blake but the thought bothered him. He decided that he had been too far out of it when he heard the sound to connect the dots, but now the epinephrine shot given to him by this woman was helping him stay awake and think more clearly.

That’s when the senator noticed something else. The same pain he had in his leg from the injection that he was just given was also coming from his other leg.
Good God, she gave me epinephrine twice
, he thought. Keller knew how dangerous that was. His wife had worked as a nurse for a number of years and he remembered the day that she told him about a patient that had to receive two injections in a short period of time to save his life. It was early in her career and she came home distraught over the situation.

Jim Keller realized that the woman wanted him awake for a good reason. He’d be executed very soon.

He thought about his wife and prayed that she was being comforted by family and friends. He wondered if she knew that the man, somewhere inside the house getting things ready, was going to be murdering him in just a few minutes or had their family and friends kept her in the dark from the media that was likely reporting everything?

Had the Secret Service picked her up and was she with them somewhere?
His thoughts returned to Tre, the kid in the warehouse that ended up being an answer to his prayer for finding a way out of there.
Had he gone to the authorities?

Finally, Keller began to think about Blake. He had been like a son, the son he never had. The two of them had worked so hard to prepare Blake to become a SEAL. Keller had pushed him harder than he himself had been pushed. He knew what Blake was capable of. He knew his strengths and weaknesses and his sense of loyalty. Keller was convinced that Blake, with all of his resources at DDC, was doing everything he could to find him.
You don’t leave a fellow SEAL behind.

Keller watched as the woman got up and disappeared into another bedroom adjacent to his.

He was surprised to hear the sound of a man groaning. Keller moved his head to look in the hallway, even though he knew that wouldn’t help him see inside of the room.
Who was that? Are there two of us being held captive? Are both of us being executed?
He wondered if it was Blake, captured by the kidnapper.

Suddenly, the madman appeared at the doorway of both bedrooms and spoke to the woman attending to the other person.

“How’s Keller?” he asked.

“He’ll be conscious for at least twenty minutes.”

“Good,” Marco said. “And how’s our special guest doing?”

“Just fine, not running into any problems with him at all.”

The kidnapper looked at the senator and smiled. “Well then, let’s get going. It’s show time.” Marco pulled out a gun and handed it to the woman. “In case he gives us any trouble,” he said and moved to the bed and used a knife to cut the long zip ties that had been securing Keller’s arms to the side of the bed. He got the senator up and walked him out of the bedroom, heading for the den. As Keller walked past the other bedroom, he looked inside to see if it was Blake, but the lights were off and the room was completely dark.

As I approached Maribel’s house on McCarthy Road, I saw the signs for the Sag Valley Trail and my thoughts once again returned to Maria. Memories of the two of us together hiking the trail overwhelmed me and I realized that we had driven on this road together one rainy afternoon, just before she died.

We had dinner at Hackney’s on the corner of McCarthy and South La Grange. I remembered how I had complained about eating at the hole-in-the-wall burger joint, but she loved trying out new restaurants. The twelve dollar burgers ended up being better than I thought they would be and Maria couldn’t get over the atmosphere and the vaulted ceilings. Just as we finished dinner, a musician set up in the corner and began strumming his guitar and singing. We saw an elderly couple stand up and start dancing together.

Our waitress smiled, saying that it was their Wednesday night tradition. When she left, Maria reached her hands across the table and grabbed mine, asking if that would be us one day. I promised that it would be. A promise I wasn’t able to keep. A promise that I knew would haunt me every day for the rest of my life.

One of my biggest flaws as a federal agent had always been separating my personal life from my professional life. I didn’t believe in work-life balance. I had explained to Maria that there is no balance. Sometimes you have to focus just on work, but then you have to disconnect and take time away. But the truth was, as a DDC agent, and the guy in charge of the whole Chicago operation, you never could really take time away and disconnect. I deeply regretted that after Maria died and spent many sleepless nights thinking about my wife and how I wished I had spent more time with her while I had the chance.

After she passed away, I focused on my job. It was a good distraction. Mostly to keep myself busy so I wouldn’t have time to think about what had happened to her.

I never found out who murdered her. I wondered if she had fought her mugger – she could be hard-headed and stubborn when she wanted to be. Or had she given them her purse and they killed her anyway… I would never know. Her belongings were gone and there were no eyewitnesses.

I parked my car at the far corner of Hackney’s and decided to cut through the woods to put the odds of surprising Marco in my favor. I left the car running because I didn’t know what to expect at Marco’s. If I needed a quick getaway, I wouldn’t have time to fumble with the wires that I had spent so much time on.

When I got out of the car, I noticed that the sun had disappeared behind the woods past Hackney’s and across from La Grange. It was getting darker very rapidly and I knew that I only had a few minutes before Marco would get started. I removed my Glock from my holster and ejected the mag to make sure it was fully loaded. Feeling the inside of my jacket, I confirmed that I had one more mag ready if I needed it.

I shut the door and held onto my gun with both hands and headed east through the dense woods. I was surprised by how thick they were. I could see Fitzjoy Farm to my left. They offered horseback rides through the Sag Valley Trail. Another thing on the bucket list that Maria and I never got to do together.

My plan was to avoid approaching the house from the obvious entry points. I needed a way to catch Marco off guard. I could have parked on McCarthy and approached from the driveway but I knew he’d be watching that area. Knowing that Marco was an ex federal agent, I was sure that he’d be watching from all sides. Still, I had no choice but to settle on an approach and I decided that this way would be best.

I moved through the tall grass and trees that surrounded the house. I shielded my face from being scratched by the heavy overgrowth as I pressed forward to make it to the other side. I felt my heart race and my stab wound started to ache again. I needed to get to a hospital, but my first priority was getting to Keller. Five minutes later, I came to a clearing and I could see Maribel’s house. I crouched down to survey the area and decide on my next steps.
How was I going to take Marco by surprise and get inside?

While crouched at the edge of the woods, I noticed a satellite dish on top of Maribel’s house. I saw that it was the same kind of dish that they had at Hackney’s. I remembered how the last time I was there with Maria, the manager had been frustrated because the TV and Internet kept cutting out because of a storm that was passing through.
That has to be how she accesses the Internet out here in the woods
, I thought.

If I could take down Maribel’s Internet access, maybe I could stop or at least delay the execution.

I reached for my phone before realizing that I didn’t have it. I wanted to check my cell coverage to know just how effective shutting down her Internet would be.
Would the signal still be strong enough for Marco to move forward with streaming the execution online? Or would he be forced outside to try and figure out why his sister’s Internet access had been shut off?
I wasn’t sure, but it was my only play.

I made a run for it. I sprinted to the side of the house and nearly tripped over something I hadn’t noticed from where I had been hiding in the woods while planning my attack. It was the body of a man. He had taken a single bullet to his back and blood had drenched his shirt. I turned him over and saw that the man was in his early twenties. As I stayed low looking around, I saw the kidnapper’s black van in the driveway and a silver sedan parked next to it and decided it had to belong to the dead man next to me.

Who was he, why was he here, and why did Marco kill him?
I wondered while trying to stay focused.

I moved quickly to a box on the side of the house and reached into my jacket and found my knife. There was a cable line running from the box up along the side of the house and ending at the roof where the satellite dish was mounted. After I pried the box open, I found a grouping of cables and held them out with my left hand and quickly cut through them with the knife in my right. I hoped that this would work.

I stuffed the knife back inside my jacket, closed the box, and ran to the driveway and stood behind the black van. I pulled out my Glock and pointed it to the ground while holding it tightly with both hands and keeping my back against the van. I winced as the pain from my wound hurt more than it had before. For the first time, I started to feel lightheaded, but I pushed the thought out of my mind again and ignored it.

I stayed quiet, waiting to hear the sound of the front door open. But Marco didn’t come outside.

“Damn,” I whispered to myself, realizing that I was going to have to force my way inside, not knowing anything about the layout of the house or which room Marco was in. I wished I had access to Morgan. I could have used his help, but then again, I had no idea at this point if I was too late or not. The only confirmation I had that Marco and Jim Keller were inside was the black van that I was hiding behind.

It was here. So they had to be here.

Just as I started to move, I heard the front door open. I quickly stepped back and kept myself against the back of the van. I leaned forward and saw Marco. “Damn him,” I said and pointed my Glock at him. Before I could pull the trigger, I heard Maribel call from inside.

“Do you need help?” she asked, but Marco didn’t respond. I watched as he stepped over the body of the dead man and looked up at the satellite dish. I didn’t have a silencer on my gun and I wasn’t sure if there were more men inside the house so I decided against shooting Marco dead on the spot. He walked around the back of the house and disappeared. I wondered where he had gone and how long until he’d come back.

All I wanted in that moment was to chase after Marco and kill the man. I resisted the urge and instead moved toward the house, passing in between the van and sedan, and I walked through the front door.