Steven James - The Rook

In the rearview mirror he saw her kick at the tire of the car as he sped past her. She was shaking her arm at him, yelling.

For a moment he was tempted to go back for her, to see just how good a time Randi with an “i” might have provided him. But no.

He had a job to do for Shade, and if he stuck to the plan, then he would soon die happily ever after.

But before that, an FBI agent would die too.

But not quite so happily.

Creighton needed to pick up a few things. He wanted to break the speed limit but was careful to keep all the traffic laws on his way to his condo to pick up the darts and the dart gun Shade had given him to use.

After all, you can never be too careful.

Victor Drake was irritated. And when he got irritated, he couldn’t sleep.

And when he couldn’t sleep, it only made him more irritated.

So, after laying wide awake in his bed for nearly two hours, he climbed out and plopped into the Jacuzzi in the glass-enclosed sunroom overlooking the ocean. He shut off the whirlpool’s jets so he could hear the high-def TV screen mounted on the wall beside his Monet, but then got annoyed at the sound and turned it down and simply watched the numbers of the Nikkei Stock Index scroll across the screen.

Just as he was beginning to relax, the guard at the front gate buzzed him.

Victor ignored the buzzer. All he wanted to do was unwind enough to go to sleep.

Another buzz.

Victor didn’t move.

Another.

He slammed his finger against the remote control, and the television screen split into two images, with the mute stock index on the right side and the live video feed of the guard station at the driveway’s entrance on the left.

“What!” yelled Victor.

“Senor, I have two men here who-”

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Victor shot back.

“I know, senor. They are very insist-” “You don’t bother me unless-”

Another voice cut him off, and a face appeared on the screen next to the guard. “It’s Octal. I’ve got Geoff with me. We’re coming up.”

Victor’s fingers shook slightly and he dropped the remote control into the whirlpool. He cursed and fished it out, but by the time he’d retrieved it, he saw on the screen that Dr. Octal Kurvetek’s BMW had cruised past the confused-looking guard and was on its way to the house. Victor decided to fire that useless rent-a-cop tomorrow, but for right now, he needed to deal with Geoff and the doctor.

They were never supposed to come here.

Never.

He’d made that very clear.

Victor switched off the television, stepped out of the tub, and dried himself off. A few moments later, before he had time to finish getting dressed, he heard the footsteps of the two men on the stairs.

He knew he’d locked the front door earlier, but that hadn’t seemed to slow Geoff down one bit. Victor cinched his bathrobe around his waist and stalked out of the master bedroom.

The two men were waiting for him in the hall.

“What are you doing here?” His voice was seething. “I told you never to-”

“I know what you said.” Geoff was an immobile mountain of a man with a broad nose that looked right at home mounted on his bulky face. “But this is important.”

The other man stood beside him quietly. A gray-bearded man in his sixties with cool, piercing eyes, Dr. Octal Kurvetek had worked for twenty years for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as the supervising physician for the executions by lethal injection.

He’d always made Victor nervous, but his skills had made him the perfect man for the job Victor had hired him to do.

Victor tore his eyes off Dr. Kurvetek and glared at Geoff. “Well, what is it? And this better be good.” “There was a slight problem.” Geoff’s face registered no emotion.

“What kind of problem?”

“Hunter never showed up,” Dr. Kurvetek added.

“What?” gasped Victor. “He didn’t show up? How could he not show up?”

“The subject reacted unexpectedly,” Dr. Kurvetek said. “And the police were called in.”

“And?” Victor demanded.

“Obvious suicide,” said Geoff. “Hunter probably bolted.”

“We kept an eye on the scene, but even after everyone left, he didn’t come,” Dr. Kurvetek said. “We went to his apartment but he wasn’t there either. His drawers are a mess. It looks like he left in a hurry. I thought that instead of calling you on the phone we should discuss this in person.”

Victor tried to connect the dots. It was hard to tell how much Hunter knew. He hadn’t been told much, but it was almost certainly enough to hurt them if he decided to talk to the authorities.

Plus General Biscayne would be arriving on Thursday.

No, no, this couldn’t be happening. Not now.

“Where’s Suricata?”

“At Hunter’s,” said Geoff. “Case he comes back.”

Victor let all this sink in for a moment. If anything happened to the device and the Project Rukh Oversight Committee found out about it, Drake Enterprises would lose its defense department contract. And then the investigations would begin. “And, you took care of the-”

“Don’t worry,” Dr. Kurvetek said. “It’s safely tucked away at the base. We did that first.”

This was one time Victor was glad he’d put Octal on the books so that he could receive unlimited access to Building B-14, but still he didn’t want to think about any of this. His head was beginning to hurt. It was all too much. But at least the device was secure. He needed a drink. “Take care of the house, and find Hunter. Call me when you know more. Let’s rein this in. No more loose ends.”

The two men left the house and Victor went searching for his bottle of pills.

It only took Creighton five minutes to gather the necessary items from his condo. Even though he didn’t like the idea of having to move on this so quickly-and he was more than a little ticked off at having to say good-bye to Randi-now that everything was in play his adrenaline was jacked up and that was something he liked very much.

After loading the darts in the hydraulic-powered dart gun, he left to find Cassandra Lillo, the woman he’d already started to think of as his next girlfriend.

Tuesday, February 17

5:10 a.m.

I rose before dawn for a jog. Tessa would be asleep for another three or four hours, so it gave me a chance to be alone, think through the events of the previous night and not feel guilty about splitting my attention between her and my work.

The wind had calmed down but left the morning cool enough to warrant sweatpants. Despite all that had happened the night before, after twenty-five minutes of running I felt my mind clearing.

Last night, when I’d returned to the hotel and tapped on Tessa’s door, Lien-hua had stepped into the hall and told me that Tessa was asleep.

“Is she doing all right?” I’d asked Lien-hua.

“I believe so. Yes. But I thought it would be best to stay with her, anyway, until you arrived.”

It seemed like there might be something else on her mind. “Are you OK?"

“Just processing some things. Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow. I need some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning, OK?”

There was more to be said, but it wasn’t going to happen that late at night. After I’d thanked her again and she’d left for her room, I began to wonder if maybe Tessa had said something to her. Maybe John Doe’s suicide had been harder on Tessa than I thought. If so, my plans for the week might have to take a dra-matic detour. As dawn arrived, a streak of high cirrus clouds drifted above me, and early morning sunlight squeezed out the night. But with the day came the heat. In contrast to last night, it seemed like God had dialed the thermostat for Southern California up all the way the moment he sent the sun to awaken the city.