Andrew Peterson - First to Kill

* * *

When Nathan awoke, the message light was blinking on the nightstand phone. He picked it up and hit the retrieve button. It was from Holly, asking for a return call. He dialed Harv’s room.

“Get any sleep?” Nathan asked.

“Four hours. You?”

“About the same. I’ve got a message to call Holly.”

“Two minutes,” Harv said.

Nathan used the head, splashed some water on his face, and stared into the mirror. That damned garage, he’d awakened still thinking about it. For some reason he couldn’t get it out of his head. What was bugging him? The tools? The Enduro?

He answered the soft knock on the adjoining room door and Harv stepped through. Without sitting down, he punched nine, waited for the dial tone, and called Holly Simpson’s cell.

“Holly Simpson.”

“Holly, it’s Nathan. I have you on speaker. Harv’s with me.”

“The news is not good. It was James Ortega. The ME confirmed his identity from dental records. I just found out ten minutes ago. He’d been subjected to severe blunt-force trauma. Six of his fingers were missing. They found smoke residue in his lungs.” Her voice cracked. “Nathan, they burned him alive.”

He squinted and looked at his partner. Harv’s jaw started working.

“You still there?” she asked.

“I’m really sorry, Holly.”

“We wouldn’t have found him this quickly without your help. I never thanked you guys last night.”

“I kept hoping we’d find him alive, dehydrated and hungry, but alive.”

“Me too.”

“We’ll tell the family.”

“I appreciate it. I have to go. It’s a real mess over here. Call me later?”

“I will.” He hung up and looked at Harv. No words were necessary.

The situation had just turned personal. This isn’t over, you lousy shit birds. This isn’t over atall, not by a long shot . He knew their call to Frank Ortega was going to be an emotional train wreck. Although Frank had suspected his grandson was dead, having it confirmed was another matter. Until you had absolute proof, there was always a glimmer of hope, however small. Now there was none. James Ortega, third-generation FBI, was dead, killed in the line of duty. No, not just killed. Tortured, humiliated, and burned alive by two cold-blooded thugs. It made Nathan sick to his stomach thinking about what James Ortega must have gone through. Wasn’t there even the tiniest speck of humanity left in the Bridgestones? They could’ve easily killed him first. A hard blow to the head. A bullet to the temple. A slit throat. A plastic bag over his head. Anything. Why burn him alive? Why? It was a message. Loud and clear, with no chance of being misunderstood: Mess with us and you’ll die badly.

Nathan looked at Harv. “We should call Ortega. Want me to do it?”

“No.” Harv reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper. He stared at the phone number.

“Harv?”

“I’m okay.”

But Nathan knew his friend wasn’t okay. Far from it. Nathan walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Dark blue eyes stared back. With his teeth clenched, he balled his hands into fists so tight they hurt from the pressure. Had James Ortega pleaded at the end? Had he begged to be killed first? Had they looked at each other in mock sympathy and then laughed at the request before tossing the match? Had they stayed and listened to his screams of agony?

He drove his fist into the mirror.

It shattered into a thousand pieces.

He staggered back and sat on the edge of the tub. Damn those assholes.

Harv appeared at the bathroom door. “Lemme see that hand.”

Like an automaton, Nathan held it up, allowing Harv to remove the small shards of glass from his flesh. Blood was already running down his fingers and dripping onto the marble floor. Harv wet a washcloth and dabbed the damaged skin before wiping the blood from the floor. “We’d better get you a couple bandages. You okay?”

Nathan nodded.

“Sit tight.”

From the bathroom, Nathan listened as Harv called the front desk and reported an accident. He asked for a first-aid kit and maintenance man for the broken mirror.

“Come on,” Harv said. “Let’s get some chow in you. We haven’t eaten in over eighteen hours. I’ll order room service. The usual? Various hors d’oeuvres?”

Nathan nodded. “Sorry about the mirror.”

Harv forced a smile. “You beat me to it.” He sat Nathan down on the bed and wrapped the washcloth around the damaged knuckles.

“We have to get these guys, Harv. No matter what it takes.”

“Count on it. Any ideas where we should start?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking we follow the money, the cash we didn’t already find. We’ll start with the visitation logs from the Castle. I want to know who visited Ernie Bridgestone.”

“An old girlfriend?”

“Maybe. Let’s also work on getting the names of people Leonard knew in northern Iraq. On the drive up to the cabin, I told Holly he might even have someone on the inside of a financial institution to launder their money. We’ll be looking for someone who’s living beyond his means. Someone who’s living within a one-day drive, maybe Reno or Vegas. Somewhere where large cash deposits are fairly common.”

“This will be a lot easier with some inside help,” Harvey said. “Let’s call General Hawthorne in the Pentagon, see if he’ll help.”

General Robert “Thorny” Hawthorne was the Marine Corps Commandant, the top man in the Corps, one of four Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hawthorne had been their commanding officer during their operations in Nicaragua and their successful missions had helped boost Thorny’s career by a star.

“Good thought,” Nathan said. “I’ll call first thing in the morning.”

“Think he’ll help us?”

“Yeah, I do. He won’t have time to do it personally, but he’ll assign us a liaison officer to dig into the DOD computers.”

“We’re going to need some help up here for the legwork. There’s no way we can do everything. I’ll pull two of our guys up from San Diego. We’ll set up our base of operations here. We’ll need a secure fax line to send and receive transmissions. I’ll make sure Lewey sets our guys up with an encrypted cell phone connected to a fax. Thorny will want assurances we’re using secure lines for the data transfer back and forth.”

Nathan was already feeling better. It felt good to be doing something, to have a plan and work toward a goal. And it was a worthy goal. The Bridgestones were going to be hunted down like the rabid dogs they were. A reckoning was coming, coming like a freight train with its engine roaring and horn blaring. Those two turds had no idea of the wrath they’d brought upon themselves.

Harv ordered room service and asked for it to be delivered next door in Nathan’s room. A few minutes later, Harv answered a soft knock at the door. Carrying a first-aid kit, the maintenance man strode into the room, tools hanging from his belt. At the bathroom door, he looked at the broken glass covering the countertop and floor, looked at Nathan sitting on the bed, looked at the bloody hand and the damaged face it belonged to, and decided silence was the best course of action. He handed the first-aid kit to Harvey.

“How long do you need?” Harvey asked.

The maintenance man shrugged. “Maybe an hour.”

Harvey pulled a couple of butterfly bandages out of the kit and applied them to Nathan’s knuckles. He wrapped a couple layers of gauze around the wound and secured it with white tape on the palm side, opposite the cuts.

“Thanks,” Nathan said.

“Think nothing of it.”

With the maintenance man in the bathroom, Harv transferred their duffel bag containing their Sig Sauer pistol belts, night-vision visors, and other tools into Nathan’s room through the adjoining door.