Striking Distance

“Joaquin says she went to meet with a veteran named Ted Hollis, but he can’t find the address she gave him. His GPS says it doesn’t exist. He admitted he hasn’t updated for a while. He’s tried calling Laura, too. No answer.”

Javier didn’t like this.

Wherever she was, Laura was alone.

He needed to get to her now. “I need to borrow a vehicle.”

“Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” the editor asked.

Sophie answered, her face pale. “Laura may be missing.”

Alex stood, tossed Javier a set of keys. “Take mine. It’s a black Chevy Tahoe. I gassed up this morning. There’s body armor and an AR-15 and two loaded thirty-round mags in the back.”

Javier wasn’t even going to ask why Alex carried all that shit. An asshole like him probably needed it for self-defense. He caught the keys. “Thanks.”

He was on his way downstairs when McBride called.

“You with Laura?”

“No. She’s not here. She left a half hour ago, and she’s not answering her cell.”

“Son of a bitch!” McBride brought him quickly up to date—and the news wasn’t good. “I pulled up the files on the other men involved in the shakedown scheme and called our Miami and Detroit offices. While I was on the phone, Edwards’s social worker caught sight of the files and pointed to one of the men—Theodore Kimball.”

“He’s the one who was declared dead.”

“Right, but his remains were never recovered. The social worker swears she saw him at Edwards’s place a few weeks back. He said he was Edwards’s old army buddy. She says he introduced himself as Ted, but didn’t give a last name.”

¡Puñeta! Fuck!

Javier’s heart gave a single hard knock, fear flooding his veins like adrenaline. “The man Laura was supposed to meet is named Ted Hollis. I’ll bet my ass that’s him. I’ve got the address, and I’m on my way there now in a borrowed vehicle.”

Javier gave McBride the address and directions.

“That’s north of Denver in an undeveloped area of Adams County,” McBride said. “Hang for a minute, and I’ll pick you up in my car.”

“I can’t wait. If he’s got her, Laura doesn’t have much time.”

As he ended the call, the thought jabbed at him, a splinter in his mind.

She might already be dead.

* * *

“WAKE UP, LAURA. Rise and shine. It’s time to die.”

At first, Laura thought she was dreaming, but dreams didn’t come with throbbing headaches. She struggled to open her eyes, panic threading sluggishly through her veins. The voice was familiar. But something wasn’t right.

Someone pulled her hair, forced her head up, and gave her head a little shake, pain making her scalp tingle and temples throb. “Open your eyes.”

A man’s blurred face swam into view, blue sky and steel beams above him.

Where was she?

She’d been on her way to meet Joaquin. She’d gotten lost. There had been open fields and then . . .

The black van.

It had struck her car, and a man with a rifle had come for her. Ether. He’d drugged her and dragged her away.

She’d been abducted again.

Blind terror surged through her, her heart slamming painfully in her chest, her eyes coming open. But she must still have been drugged. Nothing she saw made sense.

She was sitting tied to a chair in a room that had no ceiling, a building without a roof, nothing above her but steel girders and sky. In front of her was a partial wall with openings in the shapes of a wide door and windows that looked out onto a lake.

Was it some kind of partially constructed building?

A hand slapped her cheek, the pain sharp.

“There you are. Come on. Snap out of it.”

Ted Hollis.

She recognized his voice now.

He loomed over her dressed in olive-colored workman’s coveralls, blue nitrile gloves on his hands, and a baseball hat on his head with little lights sewn into the bill.

Infrared LEDs. The sniper.

Ted Hollis was the sniper.

Her pulse thrummed against her eardrums, fear making her sick to her stomach. Or maybe that was another side effect of the drug.

He reached for her face. “I guess I can take this off. There’s no one out here to hear you scream anyway, except for me, of course, and I enjoy that.”

He tore something from her mouth, pain making her gasp.

A piece of duct tape.

She swallowed, her mouth dry, whether from the ether or terror, she didn’t know. “Wh-where have you taken me?”

He smiled. “Don’t you recognize me, Laura?”

“Mr. Holl—”

“No, that’s just an alias.” He smiled, clearly satisfied with himself. “I’m Theodore Kimball, one of the soldiers whose lives you destroyed.”

Her mind raced, trying to put the pieces together. Wasn’t one of Edwards’s coconspirators named Theodore Kimball?

Yes.

So Ted Hollis was Theodore Kimball.

She fought her fear. She’d been through this before, and this time she was not going to let it break her. If this was her last hour on earth, she would live it as much on her own terms as she was able, no matter what he did to her. He wanted the satisfaction of seeing her afraid, the control of hearing her plead for her life, the thrill of seeing her buckle under his cruelty. Well, she wouldn’t give it to him.

And with that decision, she felt herself relax, her mind clearing.

“I understand now why you didn’t want Joaquin to take your photo.” It was perfectly clear in hindsight. “You were afraid I’d recognize you. There was no reason to worry. You have a forgettable face.”

“You may have forgotten my face, but I haven’t forgotten yours.” He took her chin roughly in his hand. “All these years of living off the grid, pretending to be dead—I thought about you every day.”

She jerked her chin away. “It’s a good thing you’ve had so much practice being dead, because by tonight you’ll be dead for real.”

He backhanded her, the blow leaving her dazed, the taste of blood filling her mouth. “Don’t threaten me, Laura. I’ve been a dozen steps ahead of the cops this entire time. They still haven’t figured out half the shit I’ve done to cover my tracks.”

“Like framing poor Ali Al Zahrani?” The startled look on his face told her she’d been right about that. “They know. They just haven’t made it public yet.”

He glared at her. “You’re lying.

“I was the one who figured it out. Those searches all took place when Ali was at work. He couldn’t have been responsible for them.”

There was a spark of alarm in Kimball’s eyes, but he quickly hid it behind a grin. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. I haven’t yet told you what I plan to do with you. Aren’t you curious?”

Another attempt on his part to regain control.

“Let me guess. You want to kill me. Is that supposed to be a surprise? You’ve been trying—and failing—for weeks now.”

“Oh, much longer than that.”

A shiver slid down her spine at the tone of his voice.

“You and I are going to have a little conversation. After that, I’m going to kill you and set this house on fire. All of this is wired to blow at a touch of a button.” He held up a device with a gray button in its center and gestured toward gasoline cans she hadn’t noticed before. There were dozens of them, including one on each side of her chair. “Out the windows behind you, I have an unobstructed view of the only road into this development, so if the cops

do

show up, I’ll have to push the button early and let you burn alive. Either way, by the time help arrives, you’ll be incinerated.”

The thought of burning alive revived her fear, left her fighting panic. “You really need to listen to me and leave here while you can.”