Ava Gray - Skin Tight

If you cooperate, she won’t be hurt. Answer the pay phone in Exeter at 10th and Washington tomorrow at 9 P.M. If you miss the call, the woman dies.

They wanted him back within easy reach of Micor. He’d known the Foundation had to be responsible; only they had the reach for this. He had no other enemies.

Accepting Mia was gone-that he’d failed to protect her-hurt worse than anything since Lexie. There was no point in asking how Micor had found them; though if he had to speculate, he’d say they must have become suspicious after he fled and run some tests on DNA material left in Thomas Strong’s office. Now they’d made the necessary-and terrifying-connection. He had to get her back. Once, he would’ve considered her acceptable collateral damage and gone on with his mission.

Søren had changed.

The time frame offered plenty of time to make the drive. There was no rush. Instead, he cleaned up the broken glass. His jaw tightened when he saw a dark smear. Leaning close, he inhaled and recognized the sweet, coppery tang. She had been bleeding when they dragged her out. Tactically, it was smart that they’d taken her after finding her alone. It forced him out of hiding, and who wanted to face the enemy on his home ground?

Methodically, he set out two ceramic mugs, a box of cornstarch, a candle, matches, and a roll of tape. After lighting the candle, he applied the flame to the bottom of the mug until it began to scorch. He scraped it off into the first mug until he had equal measures of dark and light powders. Søren mixed them and then went to Mia’s purse. She had a clean makeup brush suitable for his purposes.

Dusting carefully, he came up with a perfect print on the knife handle. He picked up the tape and carefully collected it. There was no point in sticking around. Taking the evidence, he headed for the car at a run.

It took only a minute to get his satellite uplink in place, and while the network initialized, he went to work with his portable scanner. In less than a minute, he had an image of the fingerprint. Now he needed access to the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, more commonly called IAFIS; fortunately, he’d used it before and he had a list of valid logins.

Soon he knew the man’s name: Bruce Travis. He had a number of aliases, including Mr. Smith and Michael Hunt. His record indicated a history of theft convictions before gradual escalation to violent crime. There were several outstanding warrants in the system, one for attempted murder in Milwaukee. Søren memorized the information, took a screen shot, and then shut down the connection. The longer he stayed in the system, the greater chance someone would notice.

Time to go. He disassembled the gear, stashed it in the trunk, and headed out. The Toyota bounced as he went back down the mountain. Twenty minutes later, he was on the highway heading east.

The drive passed in a blur of desperate focus. He couldn’t think about what Mia might be suffering or it would drive him mad. Instead he made plans.

He had to assume this was a trap-the bastard responsible for Mia’s abduction wanted to face Søren on Travis’s turf, Travis’s terms. There would be no phone call. It wasn’t a kidnapping. When Søren showed up at the pay phone, they’d shoot him, and then she was dead, if she wasn’t already. She was bait in the trap.

Can’t think along those lines. I’ll get her back. He didn’t know why it mattered so much, but if he couldn’t save Mia, then something would break inside him irrevocably. Søren had thought there would never be any pleasure in life again, but she made him laugh. She saw him.

Oh, God, Mia, where are you? Did you scream and wait for me to come running? How much do you hate me?

He took comfort in the fact that there hadn’t been enough blood in the cabin for her to have died there. No, she’d walked out under her own power. That had to mean something.

It would help if he knew what he was up against. He hadn’t been this frightened in years. Before, it had been a game with nothing but his life at stake-and it had been years since he’d cared about that. The tires on the highway seemed to echo his bleak thoughts: They know, they know, they know. Fear spiked through him. Did they know about Lexie, too? Jesus, he’d come so far, only to have it fall apart because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Søren slammed his hand against the steering column and cursed aloud in a vile mix of English and Danish.

Eight hours.

He stopped once for gas and once to stretch his legs. The Toyota bore the high speeds like a champ, despite its age. By nightfall, he was back in Exeter, only this time he carried with him the stink of failure.

Tenth and Washington. It didn’t take long for him to find the pay phone, and once he did, he immediately understood the choice. In this block alone, there were at least five suitable sniper blinds. When the appointed time came, he wouldn’t see the gunman before the bullet hit him.

He had to think like Bruce Travis. What would the man expect? He could use his gift here. Since Bruce was a thug, he would expect others to be governed by fear. Therefore, he wouldn’t expect to find Søren here early. He’d expect his target to comply with his instructions, because that was how normal people operated. They didn’t take risks with a loved one on the line.

In a flash, Søren knew what to do.

There were three motels within a one-mile radius of the meeting point. All of them appeared to be the no-tell type, where you could rent the room by the night or by the hour, depending on your need. Travis would be holed up in one of them, waiting for the meet. Since he’d doubtless seen the Toyota when he was up at the cabin, Søren had to ditch it.

The distance wasn’t far enough to bother him if he covered it on foot. He wrote down the addresses, copied the screen shot of Travis’s file to a flash drive, locked the vehicle, and took off at a jog for a copy shop where he could print the picture. Next, he headed for the first place on the list.

It was a rundown two-story structure with a guttering blue neon sign. Inside the place, the manager looked almost as seedy as the exterior: he was an unshaven middle-aged man wearing a sweat-stained wifebeater. The bristling dark hair on his back made him look particularly ursine.

“You want a room?”

“I’d rather have information.” He slid a fifty over the counter. “Can you tell me if this man checked in here?”

After giving it a good look, the man said, “Nope,” and palmed the money.

“Thanks.”

The second motel yielded similar results, but at least it only cost him twenty bucks. Over the years, Søren had gotten good at calculating someone’s price, down to the penny. At the third motel, it took forty, and then the old woman at the front desk nodded vigorously. “He’s a real piece of work. If I didn’t need the income, I’d have turned him out. His neighbors have already called down here twice to complain about his TV.”

To drown out a woman’s cries? Somehow he managed not to flinch. “Did he have a girl with him that you saw?”

“No, he said he was alone. If he’s brought a prostitute up in here, he needs to give me more money. I charge more by the hour than for the night.” She scowled at the idea someone might be having sex in her shitty motel without paying her for it.

“Will you tell me what room he’s in?”

“You gonna arrest him?”

“I’m not a cop, ma’am.”

She narrowed her eyes, nearly lost in a sea of liver-spotted, wrinkly flesh. “Are you gonna bust up the place?”

“If I do, I’ll pay for damages. Want me to leave a hundred bucks as a deposit?”

Satisfied, she extended a gnarled hand for the bill. “That will do fine. The lummox is in 214. Try not to break the lamps.”