Steven James - The Queen

Present day

San Antonio, Texas

10:13 p.m.

Kirk Tyler turned the computer monitor to face his captive.

The video image showed a young woman leaving the Authorized Personnel Only entrance to Lone Star Mall. The mall had closed more than hour ago. No one else around.

Nighttime.

The girl was the man’s daughter.

Dashiell Collet wrenched against his bonds, but the duct tape held him securely to the steel chair and he wasn’t going anywhere. The empty warehouse loomed around him.

“This doesn’t have to end badly for her,” Kirk said, enjoying the view of the seventeen-year-old cheerleader sashaying to her car. Erin was obviously unaware that she was being followed, that she was being recorded, that her life was balancing on such a razor-thin edge. “Just answer my question.”

Dashiell was silent.

“Well?” Kirk asked.

“If you touch her.” Dashiell’s teeth were clenched. “I swear to God-”

“Let’s leave God out of this.” Kirk stared at the screen. The video feed came from a camera hidden in the top button of the oxford of his associate, now twenty paces behind the girl. “I just want you to tell me the name of the person you’ve been in touch with at the Pentagon. That’s it. Just your contact’s name, and this will be all over.”

“I told you before, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You worked at the facility for fourteen years.”

“What facility?”

“Dashiell, please. Enough. I want to know the name of the person in charge of the project.”

Dashiell shook his head adamantly. “You’ve made a mistake. I’m the wrong man.”

Considering Dashiell’s situation, Kirk was surprised by the amount of resolve in the man’s voice. Apparently his training was serving him well.

So, a little convincing.

Kirk’s partner was wearing a hands-free Bluetooth earpiece, and Kirk spoke to him, said two words: “Take her.”

On the monitor he could see the distance between the camera and Erin shrinking as his associate moved swiftly, silently, toward her.

“No!” Dashiell cried.

Erin was fishing her car keys out of her purse.

“This will stop,” Kirk said, “when you want it to stop.”

Dashiell strained heroically to get free, but the way he was bound, his struggles only constricted the duct tape more tightly around his ankles and wrists.

“I don’t know anyone at the Pentagon!” he yelled. “I’m telling you I’m an insurance adjuster! That’s all!”

Erin reached the car.

Opened the driver’s door.

The camera was a yard away from her back.

And then.

She must have noticed the person in her side-view mirror or heard the rustle of movement behind her because she turned abruptly and opened her mouth to scream, but Kirk’s partner was on her before she could.

“I don’t know anyone!” Dashiell hollered.

On the video feed, Kirk could see a hand clamped over the girl’s mouth as she was shoved brusquely into the car. The images became quick, jerky.

“I swear!”

“I don’t believe you, Dashiell.”

“Leave her out of this! Let her go!”

It was hard to tell what was happening in the vehicle. A struggle, yes, but for the moment everything was a blur of arms and colors and cries. Then, the screen showed the flash of a hand backhanding the girl and then, as she called out weakly for help, Kirk watched as her left arm was pressed down and punched with a hypodermic needle.

“Stop this!” Dashiell shouted. “Call him off!”

“Tell me.”

Erin’s eyes rolled back. She drifted down in her seat.

“Okay, I will! Just tell him to stop!”

Kirk spoke into the phone. “Hang on.”

An arm positioned the girl’s now limp body in the front passenger seat, strapping the seat belt across her waist and chest. The driver’s door clicked shut, then the video image remained stationary, the camera staring patiently out the windshield at the stretch of vacant parking lot surrounding the car.

“All right,” Kirk said to Dashiell. “Talk to me.”

“If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t hurt her.” Dashiell was unconsciously wetting his lips with his tongue, nervous. Desperate.

“I promise.”

“Swear to me that this man will let her go. That he won’t touch her. You have to-”

“Listen to me, Dashiell, I swear that if you tell us the name, I’ll let both you and Erin go. You have my word. I’ll have my man leave her in the car, and she’ll wake up in a couple hours with a headache, but other than that she’ll be fine.” He sat at the table and faced Dashiell, carefully steepled his fingers, and leaned forward. “However, if you don’t tell me what I came here to find out, he’s going to bring her back here, and I’ll make you watch as the two of us occupy ourselves with her for the rest of the night.”

Dashiell was breathing heavily, defiantly, but Kirk could see defeat in his eyes. “Rear Admiral Colberg.”

“Colberg.”

“Yes. Alan Colberg. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Works for the Department of Defense. You can look it up. Now, tell him to leave her in the car.”

“Just a minute.” Kirk tapped his laptop’s keyboard, verified the name against the list of potentials his employer had sent him. Yes, the rear admiral had been an employee of the Pentagon’s Project Sanguine, but based on Colberg’s work schedule and job responsibilities, the computer told Kirk there was only a 61 percent likelihood of a match. Not enough to go on.

“I need more.” He held up the phone. “Prove it or-”

“All right, listen. Colberg helped design the extremely low frequency technology back in the eighties. He was on the original team. The first one to man the station.”

“That’s not proof.”

“Check his background. He wrote a paper back in 1979 on 3 to 76 Hertz radio waves and the use of the ionosphere in transmission technology.”

It took Kirk a few minutes before he found anything online, but at last he was able to pull up a PDF of the symposium paper written by then Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Alan Colberg.

It wasn’t 100 percent conclusive, but in this business, very little was. He would confirm everything when he met with the admiral.

Good.

The person who’d hired him for this job would be pleased.

Kirk spoke into the phone, to the man with Erin. “All right, bring her back and we’ll get started.”

“What?” The blood drained from Dashiell’s face. “You said you’d let her go!”

“Yes.” Kirk pocketed the phone. “I did.”

“I’m telling you”-Dashiell’s voice was taut with fear, with the revelation of what was happening-“it’s Colberg. You have to believe-”

“I do believe you.”

“But you swore you’d-”

“Mr. Collet,” Kirk interrupted. “Part of my job involves telling people whatever is necessary to convince them to give me what I want. It’s nothing personal.” Kirk unholstered his Italian-made. 45 ACP Tanfoglio Force Compact and pressed the end of the blue steel barrel against Dashiell’s left thigh. “This is for wasting my time with your stalling.”