Elite Operatives: Demons Are Forever Part 21

a distance, it was clear her hands were shaking. She placed them between her thighs.

"I'm going out for a stretch," Jack said.

Chase didn't reply or take her attention off Heather, but she heard the door shut behind Jack.

Heather brought her knees up to her chest and laid her head there. Her shoulders began to shake; she was crying, but holding it in. The audio feed was silent.

Chase felt helpless and miserable. She placed her hand on the monitor and caressed Heather's hair. "I'm so sorry." Her voice broke as she whispered the words.

* 161 *

* 162 *

ChaPter seventeen.

Southwestern Colorado Montgomery Pierce closed the blinds in his office and joined Joanne and David at the conference table, where Reno was pa.s.sing out his latest set of briefing papers on Operation Phoenix.

"You look like h.e.l.l, Reno," Joanne Grant said.

Reno took a long, noisy sip of his economy-sized soda and set it to one side. "Sleep is overrated. I'm fine." He pointed to the top paper on the neat stack before each of them. "First off, I finally cracked one of the large encrypted files that Rozsa had on his hard drive. Turns out he was into more than just brewing viruses at his lab. He was selling organs, probably from some of his human guinea pigs.""He was in the organ trade? You're sure?" David Arthur asked.

"In a big way. Those furniture manifests we found were codes for organs, not viruses. That dummy firm in New York I've been trying to trace? Dragon Imports Unlimited? He's been dealing with them regularly for at least a couple of years. It's likely that whoever sent him the payment our ops are tracking, works for that company.

Could be where he got the money to build his lab and fund his research."

"Have you had any luck tracing the owners.h.i.+p of this Dragon company?" Monty asked.

"Not yet, unfortunately. Whoever's behind it has gone to great lengths to s.h.i.+eld their ident.i.ty. It's like peeling an onion. Dragon is * 163 *

owned by a sh.e.l.l real-estate company in Turkmenistan, which is a front for a fake delivery service registered in Nauru-an island in Micronesia with a history of illegal money laundering. I haven't gotten further than that because a lot of their databases aren't online."

"I'll see if I can call in some favors to get you a contact on Nauru," Monty said. "The Russian mob funneled billions through there in the '90s, and the island was selling thousands of pa.s.sports around the time of 9/11, so I'm sure the feds have a good deal of intelligence from there."

"That'd be a big help," Reno said. "On another front, I've been trying to ID this guy Dario that Chase and Jack think may be responsible for the transfer to Rozsa." Monty corrected him. "Phantom."

"She hates it when I call her that."

"Stick to protocol, Reno."

"Sure, Boss. Anyway, since Dario's kind of an unusual name, I ran it through every database I could think of, concentrating, of course, on the New York metropolitan area. Came up with a couple of low-level drug dealers, a wife-abuser, a gang member..." He set a small portable tape recorder on the desk. "And this 911 call to emergency services in Teaneck, placed just a couple of weeks before the money transfer." He hit the Play b.u.t.ton.

"911. What is the nature of your emergency?"

"Some guys have me locked up in a room and I think they're gonna kill me," a woman's panicky voice replied. The words were slurred, as though she'd been drinking.

"What is your name and location, ma'am?"

"I don't know where the f.u.c.k I am. A big white house. Near Teaneck, I think. There are trees and a swing set outside, and one of those blue kiddie pools, upside down. And I can see a cell tower."

"What is your name, ma'am?" the dispatcher repeated.

"Gigi. Uh, no...uh, Francine Shelhorn. Look, that's not important, just get the cops out here. These guys are gonna do something to me, I know it. I think they're gonna kill me and deliver me to some guy named Dario."

* 164 *

"What makes you think your life is in danger, ma'am? Have they hurt you or threatened you?"

"I just know, okay? They've f.u.c.king locked me up, I said!"

"Have you been drinking, ma'am?"

At that point, the line disconnected and a dial tone sounded.

Reno switched off the recorder. "The cops did follow up, but it took a couple of hours to find the house because of the sketchy info.

The house she referred to was vacant and up for sale. Since the owner checked out-he was out of the state at the time and readily allowed them to go in and look around-the whole thing was dropped. I suspect it also wasn't pursued because of the unreliability of the caller. Francine Shelhorn has a long arrest record for prost.i.tution and drunk-and-disorderly conduct."

"So we have two prost.i.tutes with a Dario connection," Monty said. "It gets better," Reno said. "Francine Shelhorn was reported missing a few days ago to NYPD. The caller who phoned it in was a woman who refused to give her name. And she used a pay phone just a couple blocks from Heather Snyder's apartment."

"Have you pa.s.sed this on to Chase and Phantom?" David asked.

"Going to as soon as I leave." Reno took another long swig of his soda. "I got the missing-persons info just a little while ago."

"Any further news from them, by the way?" Monty asked.

"Yes. They sent me photos and license plates last night of three guys they think might be this Dario. My software's matching them as we speak."

New York Chase tried to work on her novel once she got back to the hotel, but she couldn't stop thinking about Heather. She supposed it wasn't the first time a working girl broke down in tears after seeing a customer, and according to Jack-who had heard everything- * 165 *

the john hadn't hurt her. But Heather's reaction had thrown her off-kilter. All Chase had wanted right then was to hold her and tell her everything would be okay.

A knock interrupted her thoughts. "It's me," Jack said.

Chase quickly covered her sketches before she opened the door.

"You all right?" Jack asked.

"Yes, why?"

"You seemed to be...out of sorts."

"I'm fine."

Jack lingered in the doorway, obviously in no hurry to leave.

"Want to join me for a drink? Or, in your case, a refres.h.i.+ng beverage?" Chase checked the time. "Thanks, but no."

"Okay." Jack took a step into the room and looked around.

"Have you heard from Reno?"

"Not yet."

Uninvited, Jack sat on one of the armchairs by the window.

Was she looking for a distraction or waiting for Chase to reveal what she knew about her past? Chase wasn't sure, but something told her Jack simply wanted company. She looked tired and lost, like she was holding on by a thread.

"What's going on, Harding?" Chase asked.

Jack blew out a long breath. "I can't imagine what Ca.s.s is going through, and I feel so G.o.dd.a.m.n useless. I don't know what I'll do if I lose her. It almost killed me the first time."

"Self-destruction is not the answer."

"But it's my go-to reaction. Always has been."

"Just focus on getting her back and you'll be fine." Jack shook her head. "I'm not a half-full kinda person like Ca.s.s.""You never were."

"I'm tired." Jack sat back and shut her eyes. "Tired of having to struggle for everything, including a bit of happiness. Tired of feeling tired.""It never gets easy, Jack," Chase said. "Life is made up of brief moments of happiness. The rest is all either shades of gray or downright miserable."

* 166 *

Jack sat up and looked at her with surprise. "I thought you had it all figured out."

"You a.s.sumed this because you've been such a big part of my life?""Can you drop the sarcasm for tonight?" Jack asked without rancor. "What I meant is, you always kept it together, always made the right decisions, and even managed to reason s.h.i.+t away with time slots. Even now, you live like nothing touches you or matters. I envy that ability."

"There's nothing to envy." Chase sat opposite Jack on the other chair. "When you go through life like nothing matters, you wake up one day surrounded by exactly that." She looked away from Jack's intense stare. "At least you have someone to look forward to, and you have a reason to get up in the morning. So stop feeling sorry for yourself."

"All I said was I'm tired of having to try so hard to be happy."

"Who the h.e.l.l isn't?" Chase asked. "But you found someone who can tolerate your dysfunctional a.s.s."

"I did." Jack walked to the minibar and came back with a minibottle of Scotch, which she downed in one long pull.

"Why do you try so hard to numb what others have been deprived of?"

"Because feelings aren't all they're cracked up to be." Neither spoke for a while.

Jack finally broke the silence, her voice etched with pain.

"What I did ten years ago...leaving the organization. I didn't have a choice."

"Only you can be the judge of that."

Jack stared out the window. "After what happened to me in Israel, I couldn't go back."

"What did they do to you?"

"A woman I was involved with betrayed me. Turned out she actually worked for the arms dealer I was hired to kill. She handed me over to them and they tortured, raped, and beat me to near death. It lasted for weeks. By the time I managed to escape, they'd damaged my face beyond repair and pulled most of my teeth." Jack * 167 *

absentmindedly ran her finger over the scar that marred her left cheek.Chase cringed at the images of Jack's suffering that were running through her head. She knew something had prompted her disappearance, but she hadn't expected this. It was difficult to picture her friend in such agony. Her friend. "I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything," Jack said tiredly. "I'm not looking for sympathy. I need you to understand why I had to fake my death, change my face, and leave that life behind."

"Did you contact the EOO when you got away?"

"If I thought weeks of torture were the worst pain I'd ever feel, I was severely mistaken. When I contacted Pierce and told him what happened he...he shrugged it off. Told me I should know our job involves certain risks." Jack's voice broke and she looked at Chase with red eyes. "He said I needed to get back to base ASAP for the next a.s.signment."

Chase sighed. "Jesus."

"I couldn't go back." Jack stood up and went to the minibar again."I wouldn't have gone back, either." Jack unscrewed another minibottle and downed it. "And this is why I drink. I'm afraid without Ca.s.s to stop me, I'm going to do something crazy."

"Like what?"

"Kill Pierce."

"Jack, don't."

Jack started pacing. "Can't you see what he's doing? He's using Ca.s.s to lure me back. Get me where he wants me. No one escapes the EOO, and he's just proven that to everyone by bringing me back from the dead. I won't let him own me again." Chase got up. "Listen, we're going to get Ca.s.s back and you're going back to your life. He will not stop you." Jack stopped and looked at her. "How are you so sure?"

"Because I won't let him."

"I thought you didn't give a s.h.i.+t about me."

* 168 *

"d.a.m.n it, Jack." Chase ran her hand through her hair. "You...

you..."

"What do you know about me? You said you would have killed me if it hadn't been me. What does that mean?"

"I don't want to get into that right now, but our paths crossed."

"When?"

"When I took a deep-cover job." Chase's cell rang. It was Reno.

"Let me put you on speaker."