It took over an hour after she landed at Dulles, though, before she was at his door. He'd been checking out the window at every car door slam, and he had the door open before she could knock. He expected a sarcastic comment. She just walked in and handed him a pack of cigarettes.
"What the fuck?"
"You're welcome, Jack. Really, you are. And we won't even mention what a pain in the ass it was for me to find your damned brand without detouring over half the city."
"I was just in Ireland. Brought back a carton."
"Which I'm sure you left in your locker when you picked up your supplies. You're going to need them to get through the next few hours. In fact, I suggest you have one right now."
He shook his head and tossed the pack on the bed. "I'm fine. You called Nadia? Got an address?"
Evelyn walked over, picked up the cigarettes, took one out and handed it to him. "Smoke. I'll pay the cleaning fee."
He loomed over her. "You did talk to her. Right?"
"Yes."
He exhaled. She tried to pass him the cigarette again. He shoved it back into the package. "Where is she?"
Silence. He turned to Evelyn. "You talked to her . . ."
"I think so."
"What? How can you fucking think--?"
"I called her and someone answered, and I'm ninety percent sure it was her. But she was . . . in rough shape. I don't know what exactly happened, but she was trying to answer me and then she just couldn't. The line didn't go dead, and I kept trying to talk to her, but there was no answer."
Jack grabbed his jacket and strode to the door. Evelyn caught his arm, releasing it before he could throw her off. She sidestepped in front of him, blocking the door.
"What exactly are you going to do, Jack?"
"Find her."
"How? You have no idea--"
"Felix," he said and reached for the doorknob, but she slammed her hip against it, wincing slightly, the move not quite as easy as it would have been fifty years ago.
"Fine," she said. "You're going to call Felix and hope he can help. So call him. From here."
Jack shook his head. "On the road."
"Slow down."
He met her gaze. "No."
She returned the look. "Yes, Jack, because as guilty as you feel now, you're going to feel a helluva lot worse if you get her killed by wasting time running off half-cocked to find her."
"Wouldn't do that. I'll be careful. Just--"
"Do you even have your weapons?"
He had his main gun holstered, as usual, but hadn't taken his backups. He glanced over his shoulder at the duffel bag from his Washington locker. When he turned back, Evelyn had her own gun pointed at him.
"Slow the hell down, Jack," she said. "Or I swear, I'll put a bullet through your leg."
"That's not my leg."
"Close enough. Now call Felix and see what he can do."
Jack glowered at her, but the truth was he'd only been heading to his rental car so he could feel like he was taking action. So he could drive farther into Virginia and get closer to wherever Nadia was. It wouldn't make much difference. It would just make him feel better. Wouldn't do any harm, either, but he knew better than to call Evelyn's bluff. She'd shot him before.
He called Felix. "Dee's phone," he said when Felix answered. "I need to track it."
"I'd make some smart comment about the lack of pleasantries," Felix said in his perfectly-articulated English, "But I know you're not asking because you forgot where you're supposed to meet her for lunch. I presume there's a problem?"
"Yes."
"And you need to know where she is. But the thing about making a phone that doesn't register on GPS, Jack? It doesn't register on GPS."
"There's a back door."
"I don't believe I ever said--"
"There is. You have the key. Open it."
"It's not that simple. If it was, anyone with a little knowhow could do it."
"Just open that door. Whatever it costs. Bill me."
"I'm not trying to justify a higher price, Jack. I'd hope you'd realize that. Nor am I stalling. I'm at my computer working on it as we speak. But it's going to take time, and if Dee's in trouble and you have any other way of locating her . . ."
"I don't."
"Then let me do this, and I'll phone you back."
Jack grunted his thanks and hung up. Evelyn waved him back toward the bed, her gun still trained on him.
"Put that away," he said.
"Not until I'm convinced you won't run out the door."
He snorted and backed up to sit on the bed. "Wouldn't run. Just knock you out of the way. You're old."
"Fuck you, too, Jack." She holstered her gun but kept her tailored suit jacket open for easy access. "My role here is to make sure you keep it together, and if that means putting a bullet in you, I will, because I sure as hell don't want to deal with you if you lose her."
He shifted on the bed as he tried to shove that thought from his head. Really not the way to calm him down.
"This is what you need to fix," she said. "Not making sure she's safer. You've done everything you can short of locking her up at that damned lodge of hers, which, by the way, I don't suggest you try, however tempting it might be."
He gave her a look.
She continued. "You don't need to make her safer. You just need to calm down. You love her. Which is a pain in the ass, as you're about to discover. Life's a whole lot easier when you don't give a shit about anyone. But this is your choice. So deal with it. Get off that hamster wheel of this-is-all-my-fault-and-I-have-to-save-her. She'll save herself."
"She's hurt."
"We have no idea what happened, and as frustrating as it is to sit on our asses and wait for Felix to give us her location, that's what we have to do."
Before Jack could answer, a phone rang. He grabbed his only to see that the screen was dark. It was Cillian's, over on the nightstand. He started to scramble for it. Then he stopped, inhaled and closed his eyes for a split second before answering.
"Yeah," he said.
"We have her," a voice said in a thick Spanish accent.
Jack ramped up his own accent as he said, "Wha?"
The man spoke slower, as if communication was an issue. "We have his girl. Dee. She took the bait. We grabbed her."
Jack's heart pounded, but he only grunted. "Now what?"
"Where is he?"
Jack resisted the urge to give another short answer. Cillian liked to talk. So he said, "He's doing the job I set him on, like we agreed. I've been having a fuck of a time with it. He's not a fucking amateur. He wants to get done and get home, and I keep having to find new fucking things for him to do to keep him here."
"We are paying you very well for any inconvenience, so do not whine to me, old man. Your part is almost over. Call him in. Have your men disarm and disable him. I will call in two hours to speak to him."
"Two hours? I'll be lucky if I can even get hold of him in--"
"That is your problem, and I would not advise you to make it ours. Two hours."
"Make sure you have the girl."
"What?" the man said, his voice sharp.
"He's going to want to speak to his girl before he believes you have her."
"Do not tell us how to do our job."
"I'm just warning you. I know Jack and--"
"And you will control him and convince him to do as we ask. He will speak to his girl when we are ready. We have much experience in these things and we do not appreciate some drunk mick thug--"
"Hey! I'm--"
"A thug. A blunt instrument. Do not attempt to think. You will only strain yourself. Two hours."
The line went dead. Jack stood there, holding the phone, eyes closed.
"So they have--" Evelyn began.
He raised his finger, asking for a moment. To his surprise, she actually stopped talking.
"All right," he said when he opened his eyes. "They seem to have her. But she's okay. Alive. They won't hurt he
r. Not unless I refuse their job. I have two hours."
"They won't have left her cell phone on, Jack," Evelyn said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. "They probably wouldn't even take it with her."
"Yeah, but it'll tell us where she was last. That's my only clue. I'll take it. I just need to set an alarm." He took out his phone and did so. "Two hours. Gotta make sure there's no background noise." He pocketed it. "Now can we drive? Get into Virginia?"
Evelyn nodded, and Jack retrieved his backup weapons and kit.
Twenty minutes after they left the motel, Felix called with a GPS location. The current one. Her phone was still on. Felix had tried calling but gotten no answer. That was troubling--both the lack of an answer and the fact that the phone was still active. In the meantime, Felix wanted to know what was going on. Jack was driving . . . and feeling even less talkative than usual.
"Put Evelyn on," Felix said. "I'm trying to help, Jack, not merely satisfy my curiosity. I can tell by the number you used that you're on a backup phone from one of your lockers. It's a safe connection, yes?"
It was. Jack had disabled the phone he'd used in Ireland. He hated doing that to his only possible connection to Nadia, but it was the safe move. He passed his phone to Evelyn. She left out the details of where Jack had been and who he'd been working for--most of which Jack hadn't shared himself. Then she put Felix on speaker.
"So the client who brought you overseas, Jack," Felix said. "You knew him?"
"From years back. Owed him a favor. Open chit."
"And he conveniently chose to close it at a time when you're trying to cash all those in."
"Yeah. Guaranteed I'd come."
"Where's he now?"
"Tied to a bed."
Felix chuckled. "Did you leave him a bowl of dog food and water? I've heard that's a specialty of yours."
"Something like that. He's fine. Not going anywhere. Gotta figure out how to handle it. What to do with him."
Evelyn made a noise that said the answer was clear. Cillian had to die.
"If you need someone to handle it for you . . ." Felix said.
"If it needs doing, I'll do it. Only right. Anyway, he's alive. Needed that. Just in case."
"Agreed, but you've made sure he can't tell this cartel you're coming for Dee and that's the important thing right now--that he is incapacitated. As for the cartel . . . Evelyn is right, this scheme is a lot of effort to hire a pro. That means they need the best. No substitutes possible. I'm going to guess it's political. That is, sadly, becoming more common for the cartels. If they can't bribe a politician, they take him out of office--permanently. To need you on the job suggests it isn't some village mayor they want killed. We're talking serious political assassination."
"Doesn't matter. Not doing it."
"No, but the point, Jack, is that it will help if I can find out what they want you to do. That will tell us who's pulling the strings, and then Evelyn and I can scour our contact lists for someone who can get inside information. Go through the back door."
"Right," Jack said. "Okay. Good. Appreciate it."
"I know you do, and while I won't turn down a return favor, this is mostly for Dee and Quinn. Yes, I know you aren't a fan of Quinn's, but he's saved my skin a few times. I owe him. Let me see what the news is on the grapevine for cartels and political assassination jobs."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome. Evelyn? Let's put our heads together on this while Jack drives."
As soon as they neared the GPS spot, Jack knew what had happened. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to read the signs. Skid marks suggested a hard braking on the road. Then tire treads led into a partly overgrown laneway, the undergrowth mowed down. When Jack slowed driving past, he could peer down that lane and see the rear bumper of a car.
"They ran her off the road," Evelyn said.
Jack kept driving. "No. She led them off. That's not her car. Too big. Not a rental either. She made them. Braked. Drove down there. They got stuck."
"And you're doubting that she can handle herself?"
"Never said that. Everyone can use help."
He found another pull-in farther down and drove the rental in as far as he could and then pulled off to the side, rolling over the rough ground until he was sure the car couldn't be spotted from the road.
"We need to be ready for a trap, Jack," Evelyn said as he opened the door.
"Know that. But her phone's on. Gotta be a reason."
The reason he hoped was that Nadia had known she was about to be taken and ditched the phone so Evelyn would contact Felix and unlock the GPS. But there was also a good chance that whoever took her had left that phone on intentionally, to see who might come looking.
Jack checked his watch. Just under ninety minutes until the cartel goons would call "Cillian" again.
He got out and looked around. Everything seemed quiet, but that didn't mean shit. He started in the direction of the GPS signal, his own phone out, using a tracker Felix had installed remotely. Evelyn followed. They were about five hundred feet out from the signal now.
They'd barely gone another dozen paces before voices floated over, men speaking Spanish. Evelyn tried to catch his eye, but he ignored her. The men weren't whispering so it wasn't a trap. Maybe they'd come back for Nadia's missing cell phone. Or a missing comrade she'd killed. Trap or not, Jack would still approach with care.
He covered half the distance to the voices. He'd picked up some Spanish over the years--couldn't really avoid it, living in the States--but fuck, it wasn't like he'd studied it or anything. He wasn't like Nadia, who learned new things just because she found them interesting. While he was more likely to pick up a novel than turn on the TV, he'd never been good at school. He'd dropped out to become a mechanic. That's what he was good at--figuring out stuff like engines. Or how to kill people without them knowing they were about to be killed.
From what he could pick up, the men were hunting for something or someone, which he'd already guessed. He looked at Evelyn. She knew more Spanish, but she was frowning, head tilted, and he suspected it wasn't so much a language barrier as the fact she couldn't hear the voices as well as he could. She was too vain to wear a hearing aid until her doctor recommended one. Which meant she got along fine in day-to-day conversation. But ask her to decipher one a few hundred feet away and she struggled.
Jack hunkered down. Evelyn motioned to say she wanted to get closer. He raised his hand, telling her to hold on. He picked apart the voices and the sounds of movement. Two men talking. What sounded like a third searching without adding to the dialogue.
He lifted three fingers and then pointed in each direction. Moving to the side, he scanned the best view of the playing field. Then he indicated a route they'd take. Evelyn didn't argue, which was as sure a sign as any that she needed to rely on him to hear from this distance.
Jack aimed for the silent guy first. When he drew close enough, he motioned for Evelyn to continue toward the other two, in hopes she'd overhear their conversation better, though he knew not to say so. Pointing out Evelyn's weaknesses was like intentionally stepping on a tiger's tail.
He slipped through the woods until he could see the third man. It was a young guy, maybe mid-twenties. Not Hispanic, which may have explained why he wasn't joining the conversation--most likely local hired help, not considered a real part of the team. He was clearly hunting for something, doubled over and pulling back shrubs and undergrowth. Paying absolutely no attention to his surrounding. That preoccupation meant Jack could get within ten feet. He lined up his shot and put a bullet through the back of the guy's head, dropping him to the ground with a thump no louder than the suppressed shot. His two comrades continued talking, oblivious.
Jack pulled brush over the dead man's head to hide his light hair. As for the guy himself, the only thought Jack spared him was to wonder, for a moment, whether he ought to spare him a thought. Whether Nadia would. You couldn't be a philosopher in this job. Or much of a humanist, for that matter. Only now
that he was with Nadia did he pause to contemplate what she'd think. Because that was still the only criterion that mattered. Not whether it was right or wrong, but whether it might bother her. This wouldn't. Yeah, the guy was young, but he wasn't a child. He knew what he was getting into, and if he didn't believe it could cost him his life, that was just stupidity. No cure for that.
Jack remembered the first time he'd really understood the risks himself. He'd been sixteen when the group recruited him, and all he'd cared about was showing his brothers he wasn't a little kid. Second mission, he took out his mark with ease and then realized one of the other recruits had been made. Jack killed the guy who made him, but not before the guy popped off a shot. Wasn't fatal, and Jack dragged his comrade into an empty building. That's when his handler came along, decided the guy needed serious medical care and popped him two in the head.
The kid had been six months older than Jack. Signed up because his infant daughter was sick and he needed money for medicine.
"Too fucking bad," his handler said when Jack protested. "He wanted safe? Shoulda stayed on the farm."
That was when Jack realized that not only could he die, but if he fucked up, his termination papers would be the permanent variety. And all he'd taken from that lesson? That he had to make himself less disposable. Had to be so fucking good that if he'd been shot, they'd have gotten him to a fucking hospital.
As for the rest? Well, if he wanted safe, he could go back to being a mechanic's apprentice, making a couple bucks an hour and praying the boss's rusted hoist didn't drop a car on him. You make your choices. You live with them. Or die with them.
Jack was on the move again, sliding through the forest as he made his way to Evelyn. When he reached her, she typed out a note for him on her phone to avoid speaking.
They're looking for something. That's all I know. Chatter is just macho bullshit about sisters they want to screw. Seems the gals are holding out for wedding rings.