The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller (9 page)

I turned around and saw one of Mitchell’s neighbors standing outside the apartment door. She looked like she had just come home from a long day at the office and was shocked at what she was seeing. I kept the phone up to my ear but flashed my badge at her. “Ma’am, you’re safe. Please go to your apartment as we look into what may have happened here.” She stared at me in shock.

The lady had been pulling a laptop bag on roller wheels behind her with one hand and had let go and placed both hands over her mouth when she walked by the room. She nodded, grabbed the handle of her bag, and left as quickly as she had shown up. “I’m not sure I have time to do this,” I said to Morgan.

“What kind of phone is it?”

“It’s an iPhone,” I said and I heard Morgan sigh again.

“You’re going to have to pair it with your cell and use it as a router to send the information to me. Same thing with the laptop. You need to pair both of them to your phone now. Laptop should be easy. But, the iPhone will be next to impossible.” I walked over to the laptop to work on it first and I was able to pair it to my device and Morgan started the data transfer process from Mitchell’s laptop to Morgan’s computer. We didn’t do this kind of thing too often, but it was a process we had followed a few times when in a pinch.

“The phone is locked, I need a passcode to get in,” I said as I heard the sound of a woman’s voice behind me. I knelt down, wiped Mitchell’s thumb clean, and pressed it against the home button to try to unlock the phone, but it didn’t work. “Damn it,” I whispered to myself.

“There’s two men dead and he’s got a gun. There isn’t anyone else here yet, can you please send someone out right now?” I heard the woman say to whoever it was she was talking to – I assumed the police.

“I’m running out of time!” I yelled into my cell.

“It’s not possible to get around that passcode from here, Blake. The NSA can do it remotely. I think the FBI can, too. But we can’t yet. I have software here that might work, but I need the phone to do that.”

The sound of the lady’s voice was getting louder. I thought she might be headed back to Mitchell’s apartment to give the authorities I assumed she was speaking to a play-by-play of what she was seeing.

“Blake? Are you there?” Morgan asked as I decided what to do.

“I have to go,” I finally said and disconnected the call.

I stuffed Mitchell’s phone in my pocket, unplugged his laptop and shut the lid closed and tucked it under my arm as I walked out into the hallway. The lady, who I could see lived in the apartment next door, caught a glimpse of me and shut her door and I ran back to the stairwell that I used to enter the building.

I hurried down the dark stairwell and stopped when I got to the ground floor and cracked the door to look outside. There was nobody on the street so I walked past the Starbucks that was now completely empty and made my way back to my SUV parked at the corner of Wells and Division.

As I got to the car, I could hear the warble of police sirens approaching. I climbed in and ten seconds later, two patrol cars buzzed past me and slowed down to turn the corner when they got to Scott Street.

After they turned, I started my truck and drove south on Wells then west on Division and went back to DDC.

For all the FBI knew, they already had David Mitchell’s cell phone and laptop. Nobody would know that I had taken them. But finding two dead bodies and the only lead being a witness seeing an officer at the crime scene would be highly suspicious. Maybe they’d think the killer carried a badge around with him.

I worried about the lady that saw me in Mitchell’s apartment. I didn’t see any cameras anywhere in the building so I knew it would be hard to prove that I was the person that she had seen. But I had identified myself as law enforcement. I had shown her my badge to help calm her down. But it didn’t help. Instead of calming her down, it made her suspicious because I was the only agent there and that didn’t make sense.

Now the police and soon the FBI would be looking for
me
and not whoever actually killed these two men.

“Miss me?” Victor Perez said as he walked into the warehouse and past the senator.  Keller did not respond and stayed laying down, eyes closed. “I know you’re awake, Mr. Keller. Tired? Yes. Asleep? No,” the kidnapper said and to that Jim Keller opened his eyes and sat up.

“Where did you go?” he asked Perez and got a chuckle returned to him as the only response. The kidnapper entered into the next room, never breaking his stride, and turned the TV back on and flipped through the news channels to catch up.

Keller wondered how his kidnapper would know that he was faking. Maybe the guy was watching him somehow and that was the strange feeling that he kept getting. But that breathing – where was it coming from? Was someone else actually there? Was someone hiding somewhere in the dark room, just beyond the battery-powered lantern’s reach? It did a great job illuminating the area between the rooms that Perez was using to work from to carry out his dark mission, but what was beyond what the light could see?

The thought bothered Keller and he started working on the pipe again, yanking at it every which way but couldn’t get it to budge. He looked up and found that his kidnapper was standing right next to him.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he asked and Senator Keller let go of the pipe and turned to face the man. He tried to place his kidnapper’s voice with the slight accent. Keller thought he had heard it before tonight and was sure that somehow he knew the man and convinced himself that this was why he still wore the mask. Jim Keller had met so many people over the last year, he tried connecting the voice to one of the images in his mind of the thousands of people he had spoken with while on the campaign trail but just couldn’t connect the dots – but he was sure that whoever this man was, they had met before tonight.

The kidnapper laughed at the sight of someone who could have become the most powerful man in the world now handcuffed to a large metal pipe and desperately yanking at it to try to break free and get away.

“Mr. Keller, I suggest you get some rest and save your strength. You have a very big day tomorrow,” he said and began to walk away.

“Whatever you’re planning on doing to me, or use me for, it’s not going to work. By now, there are hundreds of men and women across every governmental agency scouring Chicago looking for me,” but as he said those words, Jim Keller thought of one agent, the only one he believed could save him – Blake Jordan. Keller hoped that Blake was almost there. He didn’t know how much time there was left. But he found the answer a moment later when the kidnapper laughed again and responded one last time to the senator.

“There’s no way out of this, Mr. Keller. Nobody can save you now. And you can’t save yourself either. Tomorrow, you’ll give the speech you were supposed to give tonight. And the whole world will be watching you live. But I’m going to have to change the script a little. And if you’re good, if you give the performance of your life for me, I’ll execute you quickly. Get some rest.”

Jim Keller brought his legs up to his chest, hugged them with his arms, and dropped his head in defeat. He shuddered at the thought that tomorrow he would be used as a propaganda tool for this madman. What point was he trying to make to the world? What would he have him confess to on behalf of America?

Once again, Keller got that nagging feeling that he was being watched – that he wasn’t alone. He had forgotten about the breathing but the thought came back to him and he dismissed it as soon as it did. The kidnapper’s words echoed in his mind:
There’s no way out of this, Mr. Keller. Nobody can save you now
.

He kept his eyes closed for several minutes to clear his mind, but the feeling that someone was there just would not go away. The senator slowly raised his head and it took several seconds for his eyes to adjust to the light from the lantern. But as they did and his vision came into focus, Keller realized that there wasn’t just one light, there were two – a bright one and a smaller, dimmer light. And the small light was
moving
.

Jim Keller realized that the second light that he was seeing was from the screen of a cell phone. Someone
was
there, signaling to him like a lighthouse signals to a distressed ship, telling him
I’m here. I’ll help you
.

When I walked into DDC, I made a beeline to Morgan’s workstation. He was typing away, still trying to get the trace, I assumed. I’ve always been a fan of his work ethic, even if his attitude could use some adjusting. The guy never sleeps and works around the clock if he has to.

“Here,” I said, and handed Morgan David Mitchell’s white iPhone over his shoulder. He grabbed it and slowly turned his chair around and stared at me.

“Blake? You just took the phone?” I shook my head. “No – I took the laptop, too,” I said with a smirk and laid Mitchell’s laptop that I had in my other hand on his desk and it made a loud thud as I set it down.

“Blake, you can’t just take things from the scene of a crime. You know – tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, that kind of thing.”

“The FBI already did that. They have Mitchell’s phone and laptop. Whatever is on these devices is on the ones the Federal Bureau took. And if not, they’ll get easy access to his phone records and Web traffic. We don’t have that kind of access. But we have you. Now it’s a level playing field,” I said and started to walk away. Morgan stood up.

“I can’t be involved in this. Seriously Blake, we can get in a lot of trouble for what we’re doing.”

I stopped and turned around. “And if that happens, I will take full responsibility. You can blame me. When this is all over, if Base doesn’t send someone down here to fire me and if the FBI comes looking for someone to blame, I will step forward. And if I have to, I’ll step down. Morgan, please. I need your help.”

He sat down and I nodded. “Start with the phone,” I said and I walked through the maze of cubicles to Jami’s desk.

“I’m back,” I said as I approached her workstation.

“Still looking into the Jihadi Coalition connection to Aasaal Nazir.” I looked around to find a place where we could set up a command center in private.

“Let’s work from a joint workroom, JW7 should be free” I said and Jami nodded. “I’ll let Morgan know.”

I went back to my office, undocked my laptop, and headed over to JW7. Although the agents and analysts that I worked with directly varied by the case, it felt like the three of us, Jami, Morgan, and I, worked especially well together.

Chris Reed was out on his own island. I had made Chris the assistant special agent in charge because he was a hell of a smart guy, a lot smarter than me and the best thing you can do when you’re the boss is to hire people who are better than you are. Chris not only had a high IQ, he also had emotional intelligence. He could work by the book while being rational when needed. Still, Reed was the kind of guy that really could go either way on things. He could either be against you or fully on your side. It was a crapshoot.

Right now, he was keeping his distance and monitoring the situation from afar as the FBI had ordered.

When I walked into JW7, Jami was already getting set up. I put my laptop down at the seat next to her and walked over to the far side of the room to brew some coffee for us.

“The responding officers at Mitchell’s apartment already turned over control of the scene and briefed the investigators in charge,” Jami said.

“That was quick. Have they issued an all-points for me yet?” Jami shook her head.

“Not yet.”

It was two-thirty in the morning and Morgan checked in with us every thirty minutes or so. Mitchell’s laptop would take more time to decrypt so he said he would run a program to scrape the contents at the same time that he would work on the cell phone. Jami read every report that she could find on Nazir and the JC while I strategized. Sometime past five, we crashed from lack of sleep but were jolted awake at six.

“I’ve got something!” Morgan yelled as he ran to the joint workroom. Jami and I awoke at the sound of his voice. We looked at each other and I felt a rush of adrenaline surge through my body.

About half an hour after the kidnapper returned and went into the next room to catch up on what the media was reporting while he was gone, Keller heard what sounded like an inflatable mattress being filled with air. A small motor was plugged into one of the extension cords coming from the small generator and Keller heard the noise for two or three minutes. Then a second lantern that Victor Perez had been using to illuminate the room he was working in was turned off and he heard the kidnapper lay down.

He was going to sleep
, Keller thought. It was almost completely silent, except for the noise coming from the generator by the bay door, far enough away from his cell that it almost faded into the background. Keller noticed another sound, it was the TV in the kidnapper’s room. In the now dark room that the man was in, he could see the flicker of light coming from the TV. The volume was on low but still loud enough to allow the senator to be able to speak in a low voice without the man in the next room hearing him.

Still, Senator Keller waited a long time before speaking. He once again saw the light from a cell phone signaling to him just beyond what was being lit by the lantern in his cell. Keller shook his head and waved both hands in front of him to communicate to whoever it was on the other side
Not yet, my friend. Wait.

Keller figured that his kidnapper would have been exhausted by the events of the day and would take no time to fall asleep. He knew that it took the average person five to ten minutes to fall asleep and that the next stage of sleep only lasted twenty minutes but would be very light sleep and the kidnapper would be prone to waking up. Keller started counting the seconds to approximate thirty minutes the best he could.

When he got to thirty minutes, the senator started to worry that he may have counted too fast. He was nervous and just wanted to get the hell out of there. If he timed it right, this would be the best opportunity to make a move. But if he was wrong, he might be blowing the only opportunity he might have to escape.

While counting, Keller tried to stay focused but found it hard not to think about the light signaling to him. Who was this person and why were they there? Would they save his life? He was about to find out.

“Okay, it’s safe now. He should be asleep. Please come out,” Keller said.

There was no movement for a good thirty seconds. Then, he saw a foot and then a leg slowly appear from the ceiling. Jim Keller lifted a hand to block the light coming from the lantern and squinted as his eyes adjusted and then he saw it. There was a cubby in the rafters between the first and second floors.

The person slowly let themselves down, holding on to one of the rafters with feet dangling and they let go. The sound wasn’t loud but did concern Keller who looked in the direction of the kidnapper’s room for a moment before his eyes returned to the person now standing in front of him. “Come here,” Keller said.

The man walked to Keller and then knelt down on the floor next to him and the senator realized it wasn’t a man but a boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old. “What’s your name, son?”

The kid was shaking. “Tre,” he whispered nervously.

“Why are you here?” The kid’s eyes darted back to the kidnapper’s room and back.

“My friends and I come out here sometimes to party. They never showed up today. I skipped my last class and came here and waited. I heard someone come in and thought it was them… but it was him,” he said and pointed to the other room. “He didn’t see me. I climbed up and hid. I’ve been there all day.”

The kid sat down. “Are you really a senator?” Keller smiled.

“I am. Listen, there’s no way I can get out of here. I’m handcuffed to this metal pipe and it’s not budging. The man in the next room should be sound asleep. I need you to leave right now and get the police.” The kid shook his head.

“No. I’m not walking past his room. What if he’s awake?” Keller could tell that the kid was terrified.

“Son, this is your only chance at getting out of here alive. He won’t be asleep for long.” Tre nodded. “Tell them you know where Senator Keller is.”

“What if they don’t believe me?” Keller thought for a moment before he leaned in and whispered something to the kid.