The Specter (20 page)

There was no plan that involved getting out of his tenth floor condo with an international strike force taking the building by storm, but he had to try something.

He grabbed cash he had stashed in the condo, his cell phone and a gun, and headed for the condo door. The camera by Jessica’s desk showed no one was in the main elevator lobby outside.

For part of his plan to work, he would have to open the door. If they were on the other side, he was done.

05:58 a.m.

He opened the door, held his breath and entered the lobby. No one waited for him. He pushed the button of his private elevator, which always parked on the tenth floor. The doors opened. He stepped in, pressed the button for the lobby and slipped back out. The elevator doors closed.

It would take less than a minute for the elevator to get to the lobby. When it got there, they would see it was empty and that he was on to them. That left him little to no time to execute his plan.

He pulled out his cell phone and texted the code entrusted to him years ago by the electrician who worked on the freight elevator. He walked away from his private lift and stood in front of the freight elevator. The code he typed into his cell would place the freight elevator into service mode. Then it would tell anyone watching the numbers that it was ascending to floor number twelve and not ten, where it would actually be going. The electrician made it so it would always show it was two floors above where it was.

With his eyes on the locked door to the stairwell, he waited, tapping his foot for the freight elevator to arrive.

06:01 a.m.

The freight elevator’s door clicked and opened slowly. Clive entered and pushed the button for the basement parking level. The electrician who helped him orchestrate his escape plan all those years ago was long dead, never able to expose Clive’s secret.

Maybe he’d kept Jessica on too long. Maybe she was disgruntled, feeling entitled. There wasn’t an employee in the world who didn’t feel entitled at some point. That led to a bad attitude, stealing, and insubordination among the staff. One of the reasons he changed his staff over regularly and used hit men from a distance.

The doors closed and he started to descend.

He knew if they did detain him today, he would be out tomorrow. His legal team would get him out and then build a case that would put him right back in the driver’s seat. Jessica would end up dead of an apparent suicide, and so would Aaron Stevens and everyone else on the Toronto list, leaving no witnesses to testify against him.

This would all go away. Within weeks, he would be relaxing, a new secretary handling his affairs. He would also make a point of changing over his staff more frequently. The stress of being hunted was not good for his heart.

The elevator slowed as it neared the basement. He smiled as he thought of the strike team watching the numbers and thinking the elevator was stopping on floor number two while he was one below the main floor. He leaned into the corner of the elevator by the button panel, his gun gripped tight in his hand. As the doors opened, he flipped off the safety.

The darkness of the underground bled into the elevator.

Nothing happened.

No one tried to enter and no demands were called out. He waited. In service mode, the doors would remain open until someone inside the car pushed a button. Slowly, so as not to make any noise or draw any unwanted attention, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and pushed off the wall.

A thought occurred to him. If agents were waiting for him in the gloom of the underground, walking out with a gun in his hand made him a target and he didn’t want to die with a bullet in the face.

He slipped his weapon in the back of his pants and slid around the corner of the elevator doors into the basement. This was the do or die moment. Either they would take him now or they were too stupid to think he would go to the basement. He wouldn’t put it past them to assume he had no idea they were in the building, that they were smarter than him. As far as he was concerned, the strike team was probably waiting for him to walk out in the lobby to meet his driver to go for breakfast.

The light from the freight elevator spilled out onto the cracked concrete of the basement parking floor. Small bulbs strung up by their wires lighted the area where cars were parked in dusty rows. He could hear water dripping somewhere to his right. Russian Ladas of all makes made up the majority of the vehicles in the dank lot one floor below street level.

Two men stepped out from behind cement pillars, firearms raised above their heads, aimed at him.

“Down on the floor. Now!” one of them ordered in Russian.

He raised his hands shoulder height and played dumb in his surprise. He responded with the strongest British accent he could muster in the moment. “I’m sorry, you have mistaken me for someone else. I don’t speak Russian …”

He moved sideways away from the line of fire of the man on the right.

“Down on the floor. Now!” the man repeated in perfect English.

“Oh …” Clive feigned fear on his face and raised his hands higher.

The man to his right talked into a lapel mic in Russian. As far as Clive could tell from the distance of six meters, he was radioing someone to tell them that they had the suspect in custody.

Oh no you don’t
.
Not yet.

“I’m just looking for my car …” Clive said as he shifted to the left hard and dropped behind the boot of a Lada Sputnik.

A bullet pinged off the rear of the car not one foot from his face. He pulled his gun out, leaned down on the dirty cement floor and shot the foot of the closest man. Reaching for his wound, the man wailed and fell to the cement floor.

The man who had stood on Clive’s right was now out of sight. Time was short. He had less than a minute before every member of the strike team in the building would rush into the basement.

He was out of options.

The freight elevator remained open.

He shoved his gun away, got to his knees and shouted, “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot. I give up.”

The man with the foot wound had dragged himself behind a car, leaving a dark trail of blood behind. He could hear whimpering from that direction.

Clive raised both hands and stood to his full height beside the Lada.

Then he walked out into the open.

Chapter 24

Aaron pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, searching for anything unusual. The sun was setting, the evening lights casting an orange glow over the lot filled with the tenants’ vehicles. He drove the length of the lot twice, passed his own spot and then parked in visitors.

He turned the Nissan off and waited, listening to the ticking of the hot engine as it cooled from the two-hour drive to Hamilton and back.

A four-door sedan, the model hard to make out in the dusk, pulled in, drove past him and parked a dozen cars away. The driver got out, laughed and slammed his door. A woman stood from the passenger side and joined him at the trunk where they embraced and shared a long kiss. Hand-in-hand they walked to the side door of the building, used a key and entered.

Nothing else moved. He understood that the police could be waiting for him, but what scared him more than the police was whoever hunkered in the shadows with murderous intent. Clive sent the two men to the strip club with instructions to murder everyone. The intruder showed up at Julie’s home shortly thereafter. That meant two things. Clive knew where everyone lived and he wouldn’t stop sending hit men until the job was done, and of all the people Clive wanted to remove, Aaron topped the list.

No amount of training could teach Aaron how to block a bullet. Guns meant no real defense. That’s what scared Aaron.

Maybe coming to his apartment was a bad idea. He could get clothes elsewhere. He didn’t have a passport or any other real need to go to his apartment. It was only out of habit.

“Fuck it.”

He started the car and backed out of the parking spot.

A large GMC SUV slowed and pulled into the parking lot. Aaron had never memorized all the cars at his building, but he was sure he had never seen the extended SUV before. It drove toward him slowly and passed by.

He accelerated, hit the road and drove away.

Three blocks later, the headlights of an SUV appeared behind him.

“No way …”

How could they work that fast? If they did, and it was the guy with the missing eye or some other hit man, there was no way to outsmart them. Clive just had too much money. Folley couldn’t fly over to Russia and arrest the man.

Aaron drove faster, then slower. He took two unnecessary rights and then three lefts. The SUV stayed with him at least two car lengths back.

Unless he wanted to hit the highway and try to outrun the SUV, he wasn’t going to lose the tail. His stomach rebelled. He had lost his fear of confrontation years ago at sparring matches and tournaments. He was perpetually ready for and willing to fight if needed, but hired hit men with guns was real life and death, and that scared him.

The only way to lose the tail would be to meet up with Daniel and the Russell brothers and take them to another meeting spot.

He turned onto the 427 heading south toward Toronto’s International Airport and the Quality Suites. He hoped Alex had checked in as he had directed.

The SUV stayed with him, accelerating without trouble on the busy highway.

A part of him wanted to slam on the brakes and have the SUV ram his back bumper, lose control and crash in a ball of flame on the side of the highway. Maybe the way to deal with these kinds of people was how they dealt with things: with extreme prejudice and over-the-top violence.

But that would put innocent lives at risk and he wouldn’t do that, which was the problem with the scale. It weighed heavily in their favor. They didn’t care who got hurt to take down their target, while the good guy had to stay alive with minimal damage to himself and his surroundings.

Aaron watched his mirrors and kept his speed under control. He took the exit ramp to the airport. It turned into Dixon Road near the hotel, but he forgot exactly where.

The SUV followed without pause. The driver couldn’t be more obvious. Aaron had no doubt what was happening. His would-be executioner was driving the vehicle behind him, waiting for his prey to place himself unknowingly into his sights where he would pull the trigger and send Aaron to see his sister.

The only way to get out of the target range of the unlimited supply of hit men was to kill Clive. He couldn’t believe he would even think that way, but the circumstances called for it. Within one or two more attacks, it would be Aaron who would lose. He would get stung by bee after bee until he succumbed unless he could find a way to get to the queen bee and destroy the hive. A seemingly impossible task, but he had to try.

He turned left onto Carlingview Drive and immediately turned left again, pulling into the front of the Quality Suites. He backed into a spot a few down from the main doors and jogged into the lobby before the SUV turned in. Over his shoulder, the large vehicle lumbered into the parking lot, raced across and screeched to a stop beside his car.

“Can I help you?” the man behind the counter asked with a genuine smile.

“Alex Russell would’ve left a message for me. My name is Aaron Stevens.”

The SUV’s doors were just shutting.

“Ahh, yes, he said to give you this.”

The clerk handed him a folded piece of paper. Aaron opened it to read room number 432. He handed it back to the clerk.

“Men are coming in behind me. Give them this paper.” Aaron backed away and jogged down the short hall for the elevators. An older couple were waiting for the elevator, the light red lit up around the button. The elevator descended to the second floor on its way to the first.

Aaron moved behind the couple to block the view from the front lobby door. The doors slid open and the intruder from Julie’s house stepped into view, a large white bandage taped across his left eye.

Holy shit!

Three burly men followed him in.

The elevator doors opened. People filed out. Aaron followed the couple on. Before entering, head down, he took one more look at the intruder, who scanned the lobby as he approached the front desk.

The elevator doors closed. The couple had pressed the seventh floor. Aaron pressed the number two. Room 432 actually meant room 234. The spy novel reference Alex would’ve known was to switch the number. It was something Alex read over a year ago in a novel and talked about for months with Aaron, covering all the details of being in an action adventure. Alex lived this fantasy life through video games and novels. Aaron knew that if they were checking into a hotel, there was almost no doubt Alex would leave a note with the room numbers reversed.

Aaron jumped off when the elevator stopped on the second floor. He hustled down the hall to room 234 and rapped on the door hard.