Betrayed

Chapter 13

Panic seized Alesandro. He’d scared the mierda out of his sister, then sent her over to S&D to get the information he needed. All the time he’d been waiting in her apartment, he’d thought she’d done it.

But the puta’s nerve had failed.

That left him up shit creek in a wire canoe, an interesting American phrase that fit his present situation well.

He channeled his panic into anger at Elena for double-crossing him. Jesus, if he’d known she was going to screw him, he would have gotten the hell out of her apartment hours ago. With his heart almost blocking his windpipe, he pushed himself off the couch, wincing as his injuries protested.

Waiting a moment until he was steady on his feet, he started moving, heading for the door. The climb down the stairs was agony, and he cursed Elena for living in an apartment without an elevator.

Outside, he paused for a moment on the stoop to catch his breath and make sure the coast was clear. To his relief, he saw no one lurking in the shadows. He was almost to his car when two tough-looking men stepped up, one on either side of him. One was tall and muscular, the other shorter but also in good shape. He knew who they were—enforcers for the man who had given him the assignment of getting the information from S&D.

“What?” he gasped, fighting the sudden sick feeling in his chest that made breathing almost impossible.

“Give me your keys,” one of them demanded.

He looked wildly around the parking lot, hoping someone would show up and interrupt the scene, but there was no one around but him and the ruthless thugs. They must have been outside all along, waiting to see what would happen. Which meant it wouldn’t have done any good to leave earlier.

“Wait. My sister will be here soon.”

“You lying piece of shit. We had a directional mike on her apartment. We heard you talking to her on the phone. She’s not coming back. Now give me those keys.”

Struggling to control his shaking fingers, Alesandro dug out his keys. The man snatched them away and hustled Alesandro to the back of his car, where the man clicked the lock on the trunk.

“What…”

One of them held his arms. The other punched him in the stomach, making him double over in sudden pain. Another punch to the jaw made him literally see stars. He was fighting to stay conscious, for all the good that was going to do him.

Dimly he heard them talking.

“The boss said to make sure he arrives with his cell.”

More of his senses returned as one of the men fumbled for the phone at his belt and unclipped it. Then they dumped him into the trunk and folded his legs so he’d fit inside, the awkward position adding to his misery.

“No, please,” he managed to gasp.

Before he could say more, the trunk lid slammed shut, leaving him in darkness. He clenched his teeth, trying to think. Was there some way out of here? Like if he broke a taillight, could he stick his hand out and attract someone’s attention?

“Christ.”

Shane couldn’t let them take Elena out of the garage. Determined to cut them off, he ran for his SUV, then realized he didn’t have the goddamn keys. He’d given them to Elena.

Cursing, he thought his only option was to rush the other car on foot. Then he spotted something on the cement floor where the thugs’ vehicle had been moments earlier. The keys. She had dropped them, maybe on purpose, knowing he was going to need them.

As the car with Elena headed for the garage door, he scooped up the keys and ran back to his vehicle. Once inside, he whipped out of his parking space, almost crashing into a pickup in the row behind him.

As he gunned the engine, he could see the car with the bad guys ahead of him. There were two men inside—in addition to the ones who had come into his apartment. An impressive strike force. Apparently whoever had sent them wasn’t taking any chances.

One of the thugs was driving, and one was in the backseat with Elena to keep her under control. She was sitting up, which he hoped meant she hadn’t been drugged, and she’d be able to run when he needed her to.

The lead car slowed as it approached the mesh door at the garage entrance. The driver must have acquired the code for the garage door and an automatic opener to go with it. As the door wheezed upward, Shane barreled forward, intent on escape, but there wasn’t enough head room to exit immediately.

Taking advantage of the momentary delay, Shane pressed the button on his own automatic opener clipped to the sun visor. The wide door made a grinding sound and reversed directions, coming down just as the other car sped forward. Taken by surprise, the driver crashed his car into the barrier, and the vehicle bounced back toward Shane.

The driver leaped out of the car and whirled, firing his automatic pistol at Shane. But Shane had already opened the door of his SUV. Using it as a shield, he returned fire, and the guy went down and lay unmoving on the floor of the garage. As Shane advanced on the car, he could see Elena in the backseat struggling with the other man, who had his attention focused on her.

The thug yanked her long, dark hair, whipping her head around so violently that Shane was afraid her neck might snap. The guy was hauling back his other hand to smack her when Shane pulled the door open, jerked the guy out, and slammed him onto the ground, hearing his head crack against the concrete. Elena raced out after him, crunching her shoe on his gun hand. He screamed and let go of the weapon. Shane kicked it a few feet away, then kicked the man in the face. He went still.

Grabbing the extra weapon, Shane fired a bullet into the car’s engine before hurrying Elena to his car.

“Are you all right?” he asked as they both climbed inside.

“Yes.”

“You dropped the keys.”

“I was hoping you’d find them.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He worked the controls on the garage door again, lifting the metal barrier just as the stairwell door in back of them burst open and the men from upstairs stormed out.

He gunned the engine, making it out of the garage as he heard bullets whizzing past.

They sped into the night.

Elena had twisted around. “They’re getting in the car I was in.”

“I don’t think it’s gonna start.”

She was still looking back as they exited the apartment development onto Rockville Pike.

“Did you kill that man?” She asked. “The one you shot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t we call the police?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Because?”

“Because those goons found you at my apartment. They could just as easily find you at the police station. Or maybe they even have contacts inside the police department, for all I know.”

“Madre de Dios,” she whispered, then asked, “Where are we going?”

“To a safe house where we can hole up while I find out what’s really going on.”

“I told you about my brother.”

“But there’s more to it. I mean, who wanted that information, and why?”

Jerome Weller made a fist with his left hand and pounded it into his right. He wanted to spit out a stream of curses, but he knew that wasn’t going to do him any good. He’d thought everything was under control, but then it had all blown up in his face because Elena Reyes had had a stab of conscience.

That was the trouble when you dealt with people who thought they had a moral code. He’d had no problem like that with Arnold Blake. The guy might have once cared about right and wrong. But he’d given that up when he’d found out he could get more of the luxuries that his wife insisted she wanted and that were impossible to procure with his salary from S&D.

Blake had agreed to steal a valuable piece of software under development, something Lincoln Kinkead called Falcon’s Flight. That was only a code name, of course. The product had nothing to do with birds. It was just designed for people who thought of themselves as high fliers, and apparently Kinkead had enjoyed the little joke.

Jerome had always maintained legit business interests to cover his other activities. He’d gotten wind of Falcon’s Flight at a software conference in Las Vegas. He’d stumbled on it by accident in a bar when a guy named Rosenbloom, who should have been keeping his mouth shut, was bragging about his hotshot son, the computer whiz.

As soon as Jerome found out about the product, he knew it was worth a fortune. He could use it, but even better, he’d found a client who would pay big bucks for the program.

Jerome had researched S&D for vulnerable employees and found Blake. He’d arranged to bump into the guy at the public golf course where he played and got to talking with him. After several conversations, he’d come around to the subject of the software, and Blake had been interested in working out a deal. Jerome had been sure the IT guy would deliver it to him. But after they’d come to an agreement, the little worm had held out for more money. His mistake.

Too bad he’d croaked under torture. That put Jerome back at square one. But he’d figured out another way to get what Blake had stolen. He’d gone back to his list of employees in the S&D IT department and started doing background checks—not just on the individuals, but also on their relatives. That had led him to Elena Reyes. Her loyalty to her family was supposed to get him what he needed. Only she’d double-crossed her own brother and taken the information to the S&D security chief instead.

He snorted. Although he hadn’t counted on that little twist, he’d scrambled to have her intercepted her at Gallagher’s place.

Unfortunately, his guys had come up against some serious problems. And why had she run to Gallagher? Because she trusted him? Or because she was sleeping with him? He should have checked that out more carefully.

Now one of his men was dead, and Reyes was in the wind. But there was still a good chance of getting her back.

Jerome’s cell phone buzzed, and he looked at the number. It was one of the men he’d sent to Reyes’ apartment.

“We’re here with the brother.”

“Good work.”

“Where do you want him?”

“In the interrogation room downstairs. No point in letting him think that we’re going to make him comfortable.”

The man on the other end of the line laughed.

“And you got his cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Keep it handy. I’m betting that his sister is going to call to find out how brother boy is doing. And she’s going to be upset when she finds out where he is and what’s been happening to him.”

The man on the other end of the line made a sound of agreement.

“Strip him and strap him down on the table. I’ll be right there,” Jerome said, feeling like things were looking up. Elena Reyes might have double-crossed her brother initially, but how was she going to react when he started pleading with her to save him?

Elena turned toward Shane and kept her gaze steady as she punched out her words. “I told you what’s going on.”

“I want to hear your story again.”

The way he was looking at her made her cringe. “It’s not a story. It’s the truth.”

“Start at the beginning. Did you and Arnold Blake have some kind of scam going?”

“No.”

“Okay. You found something in his desk,” he prompted, seeing if he would get the same story from her that she’d given him in the apartment.

“An old cell phone. I think he transferred the information he stole to the phone’s SIM card. The way you could put it on a memory stick. Only it wouldn’t be obvious.”

“You think so because?”

“Because of the emails he sent me. About SIMon Sez.”

Lincoln Kinkead sat down at the monitoring station and looked at the two uniformed security guards from the night shift. Philip, the one who had called him, was in his late thirties with thinning brown hair. He had been with the company for five years. The other one was Charles, who had come on board six months ago. He was younger, with blond hair a beat too long for Lincoln’s taste. Both were very reliable.

“Let’s go over what happened step by step,” Lincoln said.

He kept his gaze on the guard’s face as Philip repeated the story.

“I was in the can when she came in. But I saw her on the monitor when I rewound. She took the elevator upstairs, just before the cameras on the IT floor went off.”

“You have the camera feeds?” Lincoln asked.

“Right here, sir,” Charles answered, apparently not wanting to be overlooked.

He pressed a button, and the view showed Elena in the lobby crossing to the elevator. He switched screens as the camera in the car showed her going up. Then a camera in the hall took over, and he saw her walking into her office.

There was no camera in the actual IT offices. When Charles switched back to the hall camera, the screen was blank.

“Can you account for the lapse?” Lincoln asked.

“No, sir.”

“Okay. Let’s see the rest of it.”

“Can I fast forward through the blank part?” Charles asked.

“Yes.”

Just after the camera came on, Elena was stepping rapidly out of the ladies’ room.

“She looks like she was in a hurry.”

“Maybe she had—you know—a tummy ache.”

“Or maybe she heard me getting out of the elevator,” Philip suggested.

“That’s a good point.” He looked from one guard to the other. “Go up and search the ladies’ room.”

“What are we looking for?”

“I’m not sure. You’ll know it when you see it.”

When the men had disappeared into the elevator, Lincoln looked at his watch. Where was Gallagher? He’d said he was coming right in. He should be here by now.

Shane kept his voice even. “Tell me again what you and Blake were doing together.”

He saw Elena suck in a sharp breath. “Nothing. I didn’t even know him outside of work.”

“But you say he was emailing you, and he trusted you enough to give you valuable information.”

She lifted one shoulder. “I can’t explain that. All he was to me was a nice man who showed me the ropes at S&D. Then he kept up an email correspondence with me.” She dragged in a breath and let it out. “He and I had a lot in common at work.”

“Right.” He shook his head. “And then it just happened that your brother needed your help to recover what Blake had stolen.”

She turned her hand palm up. “I can’t explain that, either.”

He snorted, then ordered himself not to jump to conclusions about her. There was no reason why she had to come to him. She could be on her way out of town by now. And she’d certainly been in trouble when she’d come to his apartment—and later when he’d gotten her out of that car.

To get her reaction, he said, “Of course, Kinkead knows you were in the building and that the cameras in the IT section were off.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “Madre de Dios.”

“I assumed you turned the cameras off. How did you manage that?”

She clenched her teeth, then deliberately relaxed her jaw before answering. “My brother gave me this thing to use.”

“What?”

“Something that looked a little like a smartphone. It had a numeric pad. I guess he got it from the men who wanted me to search Arnold’s office,” she said, jumping ahead to anticipate his next question.

“And where is this thing now?” he asked, punching out the words.

“I stuck it in the bottom of the trash can in the ladies’ room.”

“Jesus!”

“What?” she asked in alarm.

“You think they’re not going to find it?”

“They might have found it on me. They looked inside my purse before they let me leave the building.”

“How did you get the cell phone out?”

She flushed. “I stuck it in my bra. And with that other thing, there’s no proof I was the one who brought it into the building.”

“Fingerprints,” he muttered.

“I had on rubber gloves.”

“Oh, did you?”

“My brother gave them to me.”

“You were seen coming out of the bathroom. That’s when the camera started working again. They’ll check to see what’s in the trash now. And they’ll know the night cleaning crew emptied it shortly before you went in there.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Or a lot of other things, apparently.”

She looked like she was working hard not to cry, and he told himself to ease up on her. At least for now.

“Where did you leave your car?”

“On the street outside your building.”

“How do you suppose those four men knew where you’d gone?”

“I guess they could have followed me to make sure I went to S&D.”

“Or they could have had a tracking device on your car. This looks like a high-tech operation. They supplied you with something to turn off the cameras. And they had an opener for the apartment’s garage door.”

Before he could say anything else, Shane’s cell phone rang. He looked at the number, then at Elena, then back at the phone and sighed.

“It’s Kinkead.”

She grabbed his arm. “Don’t answer it.”

“I have to. When he found out you were there after hours and there was something funny with the cameras, he called me to come in. He has to be wondering why I’m not there trying to figure out what happened. Don’t say anything,” he ordered, then pressed the screen.

The voice on the other end of the line was angry. “Shane, where the hell are you?”

“Something’s come up.”

“What?”

“Elena came to my apartment after we spoke.”

Beside him, she drew in a startled breath.

“And you’re bringing her here?” Kinkead asked.

His answer was immediate. “Actually, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Listen here, Gallagher, I make those kinds of decisions, not you.”

“There were gunmen at my apartment a few minutes behind her. The police are probably there now. And the fire department, since I started a fire in a trash can to make a smoke screen.”

“Jesus.”

“And if you want, you can go over and see the bullet holes in the walls and my front door. And the mess in the garage.”

“What mess?”

“I had to shoot our way out.”

He heard Kinkead’s shocked exclamation on the other end of the line. But the man’s words were calm. “Come in. This isn’t something you can handle alone.”

“I’d do it if I were alone, but I don’t think it’s safe to bring her there,” Shane said.

“We can protect her.”

“I’m not betting her life on that.”

“Gallagher…”

Shane clicked off, then pulled to the side of the road. Getting out on the shoulder, he dropped the phone onto the gravel and ground it under his heel. Then he got back into the car.

Elena was staring at him.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because we can be traced through the GPS in my phone. Yours, too.” He held out his hand.

“But we won’t be able to call anyone.”

“Inconvenient.” He kept his hand out.

She dug into her purse and pulled out a phone, which he subjected to the same treatment as his own.

Then he drove away, wondering if he was making the wrong move.

He switched on WTOP all-news radio and waited through an announcement of sports scores.

The next item was what he was thinking he would hear. “A shoot-out at a Rockville apartment complex has left one man dead.”

Elena’s breath caught. “They’re talking about what happened at your apartment, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. And we’d better listen.”

“Shane Gallagher, head of security at S&D Systems, and Elena Reyes, another employee of the high-tech firm, are wanted for questioning regarding the murder.”