Vendetta (30 page)

“Thanks, Pamy,” Cat said. Obviously the woman didn’t know that Cat and Gabe weren’t on speaking terms. Cat did think it very strange that Gabe had borrowed her car, and hadn’t even had the good graces to—

Reynolds. Gabe’s gone after him.

One look at Tess, and Cat knew that she was thinking the same thing. Cat said, “Well, Captain, we’re closing in on end of shift and I’m wondering if you plan to maintain surveillance on me?”

“We are bringing you a beautiful drug case,” Tess reminded him. “You have our witness in protective custody. How is he, by the way?”

“You are bringing me the possibility of a drug case. So far all I have is hearsay evidence,” he countered. “And… he’s scared.”

“Tess, please call our union rep for me right now,” Cat said.

“You got it, partner.” Tess pulled out her phone.

“I’m doing this to protect you,” Captain Ward said.

Oh, my God, he sounds just like Gabe. And my father. Maybe they’re working together.

Her lips parted. Maybe they
were
.

“Cat? Are you okay?” Tess said.

Stress and exhaustion and suspicion tugged at her. But shooting straight through it all were her priorities:
Keep Vincent safe, find Angelo DeMarco alive.

“Place the call,” Cat said, and Captain Ward raised his hands in the air as if she were holding him at gunpoint.

“Okay. Backing off,” he said. “If you get any emails that incriminate you—”

“That
appear
to incriminate her,” Tess said.

“File your paperwork,” he snapped, and walked away.

Once he was out of earshot, Tess said, “Oh, my God, is Gabe MIA? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” Cat pulled out her burner phone. “Tess, Vincent sent me a message. I think he’s found where Angelo’s being held.” She texted him back
on our way
but the message was undelivered.

Then Tess’s phone rang. “It’s J.T.,” she said. She put the phone to her ear. “Yeah, hi, babe,
what?
Oh, my God, are you all right? I’ll be right there.”

She was a blur of movement as she grabbed her purse, hat, and gloves. “Someone roughed him up,” Tess said. “He’s at his place.”

“What? Who?”

“Two guesses,” Tess said. “Agents Ass and Hat.”

“Go,” Cat urged her. “I’ll catch up with Vincent.”

Tess was halfway to the door. “Call me.”

“Same. Let me know how he is.”

Tess had just made it out the door when Captain Ward planted himself in front of Cat. “Where did Detective Vargas go just now?”

“A C.I. she’s been developing just called in,” Cat improvised. “He’s afraid he’s been made and he wants an assist.”

He pursed his lips and raised his brows, the perfect picture of skepticism. “And you stayed behind to do the paperwork.”

She took a breath. “Yes.”

“Good. Because I’m staying late tonight. So I’ll be here when you finish it.”

* * *

He’s here
, Vincent thought.
I can smell him.

Most illnesses brought with them odors that a beast could detect—part of a predator’s arsenal was its ability to cull a sick animal from the herd—but doctors also learned that some diseases carried with them a detectable smell. Diabetes was one of these. And Vincent caught that scent now, in the air.

But it was the scent of a diabetic on insulin, which was different.

The compassionate doctor inside Vincent rejoiced. Whatever else was going on, Angelo DeMarco probably wasn’t puking his guts out, or in a diabetic coma. Someone had shown him mercy by increasing the shelf life of their captive.

So Paul and any co-conspirators—Vincent could tell there were other people in the vicinity—had not followed through on their threat to murder Angelo. He would be dead by now if they hadn’t dosed him.

But that was just one of many things that didn’t add up. The inertia of ransom demands, the awkward drop and retrieval… a scarcity of leads and then a set of “clues” so obvious that they might as well as written the address of the Santangelo Meat Packing Plant, abandoned since the 1930s, in neon. Not to put too fine a point on it but this whole situation smelled. He had begun to think it was a smoke screen for Robertson and Gonzales’ drug activities, but he couldn’t figure out exactly how.

That was why he had ditched the car on the outskirts of the gutted factory district of Washington Heights—block after block of derelict buildings that reminded him of the training grounds where he and his buddies in Special Forces had run a hundred simulated ops until they could complete their missions without “dying.”

The warehouses on the next block were in even worse shape, featuring rows of broken windowpanes and blasted-out loading doors. Beer bottles, cans, paper napkins and trash were mixed into the snow like buried treasures.

He felt his burner phone vibrate. It could only be Tess, J.T., or Cat. He pulled it out and read a text from Catherine:
there soon.

He texted back,
No. Stay away.

He jogged in the shadows. The sun was just going down, slanting on crumbled toward and silos. He heard the sibilant whoosh of tires on asphalt. Four blocks behind him, a car moved very slowly down the street. Its lights were off. Vincent ducked behind a rusted-out mailbox and held his breath. A sentry on patrol? Had he been spotted?

A thick whirl of snow splotched the top of his head, startling him. It was followed by another. And another. Wind blew snow like ocean waves and then fresh snow drifted down from the sky, weaving itself into the tapestry of odors that told him stories about the ramshackle, forlorn wasteland.

And then the car smell became a diesel smell became a diabetic smell, and he dodged behind a concrete wall beside the mailbox lined with broken glass, walking in a crouch as fast as he could go as the car rolled past him.

The car turned left onto another street. Vincent had to cross the street to keep up, and he wondered if it was a ploy to flush him out of the darkness. They might have infrared trackers on. If so, they probably already knew where he was. He selected the darkest section of the street, the angle of the weak sunlight obscured by the jagged roof of what appeared to be some kind of storage elevator, and blurred across the street. Hopefully anyone who was manning surveillance would assume they had a glitch and lose interest. Maybe they would continue to point at where they had last seen a dark orange human shape, focusing on where he had been, not on where he was.

He blurred until he was pacing the car. It was going very slowly. They had to be looking for cops or maybe DeMarco security. Or maybe even renegade FBI agents out for a private payday.

The car turned right. Alarm bells clanged. Every time he had to cross the street, he was taking another risk of exposure. There could be sentries posted on rooftops. If only they had some idea of the size of the operation that had snatched Angelo. His soldier’s reflexes and training served him well as he wove through the deep shadows, and a part of his subconscious traveled back in time to wartime Afghanistan, when he had been turned into a beast. The wilding had come over him and the men and women he served with; they had lost all sense of strategy and coordinated tactical maneuvers and became ravening monsters, like superhuman versions of horror movie zombies.

Only much, much worse.

He zigzagged, a boot crunching down on a can, crushing it. The
pop
of escaping air sounded like a gunshot and his adrenaline spiked. He morphed and the world was doused in a white glow. He heard dripping water and a low-level electrical hum. It was possible they were jamming cell phone transmissions. He couldn’t check his phone now; his eyes were on the car.

The vehicle glided like a shark toward an enormous brick building topped with a four crenelated towers like castle turrets. Angling down, it slid aloud into what had to be a garage, and Vincent raced toward it. Then something tripped him—a thin wire stretched parallel the length of the building down the last one-fifth of the street.

I can’t believe I didn’t see it!
he thought angrily as he went flying. As he hurtled through the air he fully beasted out. With a roar he stuck a landing. His ankles screamed but he did not crumble.

Suddenly the car picked up speed and a gate began to zoom down behind it. Still beasted, Vincent roared again and ran full-tilt to make it beneath the plummeting metal.

He was a second too late.

Thousands of volts of electricity rocketed through him. Brain, skull, eyes, groin, toes… heart. Everything was seized and shaken by savage, man-made lightning. Vincent broke into a seizure, completely helpless as continued contact with the gate jetted fresh pulses of electricity through his agonized, fully stressed body.

Then something fell over him—a wire mesh net sizzled and burned him. His body no longer responded to the stimulus. He lay inert, quivering. His mind was gone. The world became one tiny pinprick of platinum light.

And then light was gone too.

* * *

Slicing.

Through his shoulders.

Muscle tearing. Searing pain.

The coppery tang of blood. The acrid odor of sweat.

Ice water hit Vincent in the face and he didn’t so much come to as become slightly less unconscious. The very first word that formed in his mind was
Catherine
.

He kept his eyes closed and tried to take a breath.

He couldn’t.

His arms were stretched outward and slightly behind his torso, so that his chest was already over-expanded. He was unable to inhale. As he began to suffocate, he opened his eyes.

He saw nothing. Something was covering his eyes. Blindfold. Fabric grazed the deep wounds in shoulders. Hood.

A protesting sound struggled from the upper quadrant of his chest cavity. Then something crashed into him like a bolt of lightning and his body contracted, hard. His spine folded back on itself and bones cracked.

With a mighty animal shriek he became the weapon Reynolds had fashioned him to be. His right arm was suddenly free; then he landed with bare feet onto white-hot coals. Pain seared through him and juiced him with adrenaline. He sprang forward, but the restraint around his left arm swung back onto the coals. The stench of his own burning flesh dosed him with more adrenaline.

“Run! Run!” someone yelled. “He’s loose!”

His left arm pulled free and he hurled himself forward, blind. Somewhere in his brain his human intelligence walked Beast-Vincent through the required motions to rip the hood off from his head.

Dungeon
, came the word.

He had been locked in a dungeon before. Imprisoned.

His mind conjured the sight of an unconscious, alabaster-white woman with brilliant-red hair. A dead woman, in a dungeon cell with him.

Tori
, came her name.

Then Beast-Vincent lost purchase on language and the language of his existence was
Kill.
Mayhem, chaos, destruction: he had zero human awareness as three figures cowered together, then forced open a thick door and disappeared through it. The door closed with a ringing clang.

His blistered feet oozed as he stumbled after them, fists slamming down the on the metal. The muscles in his shoulders clutched. Blood poured down his chest and back. The door held fast. He pounded on it again. Again.

He whirled in a circle, raging, roaring, seeking other prey. He was in a large room illuminated by electric camping lanterns. The bed of coals had been spread beneath a configuration of dangling meat hooks and heavy chains, each of the links an inch in diameter. Supported by the chains, he had been hung from the hooks.

A cattle prod lay on the blood-smeared concrete floor. As Beast-Vincent attempt to pick it up, overwhelming pain and weakness conquered him and he fell to his knees. He began to lose his edge and he became just Vincent again, battered, burned, beaten.

He grabbed the cattle prod as he panted. Despite all the pain, the sensation of breathing freely was what he focused on, rejoiced in.

They’ ll come back
, he told himself.
Move, soldier.

But he was so hurt, debilitated. He didn’t know if he could stand, much less take on any adversaries. He tried to beast out, but instead he only fell forward, landing on the cattle prod as his face hit the concrete.

Get up, get up
.
If you don’t get up you will die.

But Vincent couldn’t get up. He could only lie utterly still.

And pass out again.

* * *

Gabe couldn’t believe his luck.

The snapping sound behind him had only been the sound of ice cracking on a tree limb, but faced with an instinctual fight-or-flight reaction, Gabe had chosen to flee—toward the motel, just as chatter from a radiophone covered the noise. He flattened himself against the wall, trying to catch his breath. All his life, until less than two years ago, he had been strong, and agile, and never short of breath.

I chose the wrong path.

I can fix that.

The sentry said something into his radiophone and walked away from the door. He kept talking, turning back around once, then moving on.

Gabe put his hand around the door. Locked. He could shoot the lock but he didn’t dare. He didn’t know how many people were traveling with Reynolds. He didn’t know what their agenda was—why they were restraining the ex-agent, why they had captured him in the first place.

He ran around the other side of the building, to discover that there was a window minus storm shutters. The drapes were pulled back and he could see Reynolds.

And as he turned his head, Reynolds could see him. His eyes widened, and then he smiled very oddly. He mouthed,
Raise the window.

Gabe was confused. Reynolds moved his head toward the bottom of the sill and Gabe felt along it. He understood: the window was not quite shut. Possibly it had been opened to allow in a little fresh air.

Gabe slid his fingers into the space and pulled upward. He was able to raise the window maybe six inches, and then it stopped, stuck. Gabe applied more pressure; he was so tired.

Another inch.