Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (29 page)

Driving on a two lane highway, Declan kept a close watch on the rearview mirror. Like many other companies in recent years, Sweat Security had chosen a rural location, east of Roanoke and west of Lynchburg, known as Franklin County. Home to the largest lake in Virginia, the area was a popular destination of residents in both cities. In addition to the county's booming construction industry, low corporate taxes and less burdensome regulations by the local government had made it a haven for companies that didn't rely on a commercial storefront. In the case of Sweat Security, the company was located a few miles north of the small farming town of Moneta and about five miles northeast of the waterfront.

Declan slowed the car as he approached the company's property, keeping a sharp lookout for any signs that the FBI or other law enforcement agencies had the building under surveillance. Seeing none, he turned into the gravel parking lot in front of a split-faced block building with a blue metal roof. Immediately, he was struck by the lack of cars in the parking lot and hoped he hadn't made a terrible mistake in coming. Stopping directly in front of the business's main entrance, he shifted the vehicle into park. Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he craned his neck to scan the horizon behind him. Satisfied that no one was around, he looked through the Mercedes' windshield at the hastily drawn sign hanging on the front door: c
losed until further notice.

The front of the building was lined with rectangular windows, but no lights appeared to be on inside. He stepped out of the car, closing the door quietly behind him. Approaching the front door, he cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the tinted windows. Inside the front office was deserted, filing cabinets were wide open and papers littered the gray carpeted floor. Standing back from the door, he again scanned the horizon behind him for any signs of surveillance before he began to make his way along the side of the building.

The adjacent lots were wooded and provided him the perfect cover as he arrived at a chain link fence that surrounded a rear lot where some of the company's service vehicles were parked. Seeing several of the vehicles, he knew he'd found the right place. In the lot there were a dozen police style Crown Victoria sedans and several white Dodge Durango SUVs, just like the one that had tried to run him off the road. Some of the vehicles were marked with red letters reading
security
and some weren't. Grabbing ahold of the fence, he pulled himself up, using the diamond-shaped holes in the fencing as footholds as he climbed up the eight foot barrier and swung his legs over the top, jumping onto the gravel lot beyond.

Standing from his landing crouch, he made his way cautiously to the back of the building where a metal door with a thin window above the latch stood. He tried the latch but just as he'd expected, the door was locked. Knowing the building likely had an alarm that would sound if he broke a window or picked a lock, he considered his options as he looked around. On the opposite side of the building from the fence he'd climbed was a row of four garage doors with small half-moon ports in the bottom for attaching vehicle exhaust hoses. Apparently the building had been used as a repair facility in the past or else the company performed the maintenance on their own fleet. Noting that the exhaust ports were an older style that sat at the very bottom of the door near the cement instead of further up, he got an idea.

Turning and looking around the lot, he spotted an old stake back truck that was missing most of its windows in the far corner. Walking over to it, he reached through the window opening and raised the lock. The hinges protested loudly as he opened the door and got into the driver's seat. Looking at the floor between the driver and passenger seats, he spotted what he was searching for in a metal box attached to the truck's back panel. Lifting two latches, he opened the vehicle's tire changing compartment and withdrew the separated sections of the angled tire iron and the manual vehicle jack. He slid out of the truck and returned to the garage door furthest from the front of the building. Using the hubcap removal side of the tire iron, he pried open the door on the exhaust port and slid the manual jack underneath. Fitting the pieces of the tire iron together to create the long pole used to operate the jack, he inserted it into the end and began pushing it up and down causing the jack to lift. When the door had raised about four inches it stopped, obviously held in place by an internal locking rod. Taking a deep breath, he pushed down on the pole with all of his weight, lifting himself off the ground. Slowly the door raised as the metal locking rod inside was bent downwards by the pressure. With the garage door now about a foot from the concrete floor, Declan removed his Glock pistol from his coat, lay down and slid underneath into the building.

Raising himself slowly into a standing position, he looked around the spacious garage, pistol aimed in the direction of sight until he was sure he was alone. Inside, eight vehicles in various stages of repair sat dormant, the smell of antifreeze hanging in the humid air. Only the natural light allowed in by the building's windows lit the room, the tinted glass giving the interior a greyish hue. The ceiling was at least fifteen feet high with an arched center, and a sliding glass window sat high in the wall closest to the front of the building. As he walked down the center between the two rows of vehicles, a hissing sound caught his attention. The sound was coming from a maroon colored BMW SUV that was parked in the very first bay and indicated the vehicle's water pump was leaking. Declan moved towards it and reached for its hood, knowing that the only way the water leak could make the hissing sound was if the vehicle's exhaust manifold was still hot. Sure enough, as he placed his hand flat on the hood, he could feel warmth through the metal. The SUV hadn't been parked there very long. Had its occupants left in another vehicle or were they still in the building?

He moved to a doorway at the front of the garage and entered a hallway beyond. From the hall he could see the door that he'd peered through earlier and the papers littering the front office floor. Clearing the few rooms off the hallway, he made his way to the front office. The first floor of the building was empty, but he needed to make sure the second floor was, too, before he could begin searching for anything that might identify the four men he'd killed. Inside the office, he searched for a staircase that would lead him to the second floor he knew was there. Spotting a closed door in the far corner of the room, he strode towards it, raising his pistol in one hand and gripping the doorknob with the other. He pulled open the door and aimed the pistol up a set of stairs that hair pinned around a corner and out of view. Keeping his weapon aimed, he climbed the steps slowly, one at a time. On the landing halfway up, he rolled out around a wall, securing the second flight of stairs. There was no door at the top and whatever room was beyond sat off to the right. Nearing the last step before reaching the second floor, he moved as far to the left on the stairs as he could to get a view of the room. Suddenly he heard a loud blast and a piece of drywall disintegrated a foot from him.

"Stay away from here," a gruff voice shouted. "Get out!"

"I'm not here to hurt anyone!" Declan shouted in response. "I just need to ask some questions!"

"The hell you do! Get out!"

Another gunshot sounded, the bullet tearing loose more of the white drywall and causing it to fall to the floor in a dusty heap. Declan stayed put on the steps; unable to see who it was that was firing at him.

"I'm warning you, I'm not going down without a fight! I'll shoot you!"

"I believe you," Declan said, putting his pistol in his coat where it was hidden from view but still accessible. "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm one of the good guys. I'm unarmed. Now, who am I talking to?"

"You know who I am! I'm Tim Sweat, the guy whose family you've been threatening for the last month!"

"I think you've got me confused with someone else. My name's Declan McIver. I'm the owner of DCM Properties in Roanoke."

There was silence in the room for several seconds.

"Do you always go around breaking into people's buildings?"

"No. No, I don't. Now I'm going to step onto the landing slowly with my hands up. Don't shoot."

Declan raised his hands to shoulder level and stepped up onto the last step, gradually exposing one hand and stepping sideways onto the second floor, facing the direction the gunshots had come from. The floor creaked under his weight.

In the rectangular room beyond a heavyset man with white hair, a rose-colored complexion and a thin mustache crouched behind a long desk, aiming a .38 revolver. Perspiration beaded and rolled down his face.

"Easy," Declan said, keeping his hands up and stepping forward into the room. "Now, surely you can see I'm not the man whose been threatening you."

The man sniffed loudly and wiped his sweaty face with his hand. "There are four of 'em. How do I know you're not just a fifth sent here to keep me from talking?"

"I'm here because a vehicle belonging to this company ran me off the road last night. Then its occupants tried to kill me."

"Kill you? Oh, God." The man's grip on the revolver loosened a bit and he raised himself up a few inches to support his body against the edge of the desk. Breathing heavily he said, "I don't know anything about it. Oh, God." Tears streamed from his eyes and he wiped frantically at them.

Declan relaxed and lowered his hands, keeping them just far enough away from his body that the man could see he wasn't going for a weapon. "You said your name is Tim Sweat? Are you the owner of this company?"

"Yeah, at least I was until yesterday afternoon when the FBI walked in and shut us down."

"Why did the FBI shut you down? Because the car that blew up at the university belonged to your company?"

"Yes," Sweat said, nodding. "But I didn't have anything to do with it. I swear. They were threatening my family."

"I believe you," Declan said, being sure to maintain eye contact. "Let's put the gun down and talk about this. I'm here because someone's threatening my family, too."

Sweat stood and slowly lowered the revolver, his face contorting as he fought back tears.

"Now tell me who
they
are," Declan said, though he thought he probably already knew.

"Four men, they came in just a little over a month ago when we first booked the job at Liberty. I don't even know how they knew about it. They said they wanted in on the job but I've got a good crew here. Most of them have been with me for over a decade and I wasn't about to bump them so I could hire these guys. Something about 'em, I don't know, something just wasn't right."

"But they didn't go away when you said no?"

Sweat shook his head. "No. They came back here that same night. I'm always the last one to leave and they approached me as I was getting in my truck. Told me that if I didn't agree to hire them on as part of the security team for the university, they'd hurt my family. They had pictures of my granddaughters getting on the school bus, pictures of my wife in the garden at home. I didn't have a choice."

Declan nodded. Sweat was obviously scared and was showing no signs of deception. The revolver quaked in his hand and clamshell-shaped stains formed in the underarms of his white button-down shirt.

"I knew they were up to something bad," Sweat continued, "but I couldn't have imagined anything like this. I wanted to call the police, but then everywhere we went one of them was there. My wife and I would go out to eat and one of them would walk in and sit a few tables away from us, making sure that I saw him. At night they'd drive one of my own company vehicles by my house and park in the cul-de-sac, watching. I thought you were one of them. I thought you'd come to make sure I didn't talk."

Declan shook his head. "Until two days ago I was just a real estate investor attending the grand opening of the Barton Center where a good friend was the keynote speaker. Now he's dead and there's men trying to kill my wife and me."

Sweat's face contorted again as he said, "Until these four men walked into my life, I was just the owner of a small, family-run security company in Moneta, Virginia. Now the business I started with my two sons in 1986 is gone and I'm going to end up in jail."

Declan could understand both the fear and the frustration Sweat was feeling. Like Sweat, he'd worked hard to build his company and his life. What effect the current situation would have on his business, he didn't know. First, he had to survive, and that meant taking the fight to those responsible. "When was the last time you saw these men?"

"Saturday morning," Sweat said. "They left just before the FBI arrived. It's like they knew they were coming."

"They might have," Declan said, thinking about Castellano. He'd yet to find any evidence to prove it, but his gut instinct still told him the agent was involved. "Do you know anything about these men, their names? Can you tell me what they look like? I need to find them."

"The FBI raided the office downstairs completely and searched the entire building. They took all of my employee files and years of financial documents, but I made copies of the paperwork these guys filled out for their DOJ clearance and kept them up here, tucked away in a filing cabinet full of instruction booklets and warranty information. That's why I came here, to get the files."

"DOJ clearance?"

"Yeah, we do a lot of guard work for government buildings so our guys have to have a security clearance from the Department of Justice. I don't know if the names and information they put down are real, but it passed DOJ, so if not they're damn good fakes."

Sweat spread out a stack of four folders side by side on his desk and opened them. Declan stepped around the desk and looked down at the passport-sized picture on each one. "I don't think you've got anything to fear from these men anymore," he said as he looked at the photos of the men who'd tried to kill both him and Constance. "They're all dead."

Sweat looked up abruptly, fear evident in his eyes as if he was thinking that he'd let his guard down to soon. His grip tightened on the revolver held at his side.