Chapter Forty-two

Hunter exited the elevator that had dropped two levels below ground into BAD’s mission headquarters beneath downtown Nashville. He followed Korbin, his silent escort, who led him to the mission room.

Gotthard, Rae, Carlos, and Retter stood or sat around a black acrylic conference table.

“Told you I was coming in. Think you needed all these to lock me up?” Hunter asked Retter.

“No,” Retter said, beefed-up arms crossed over his black T-shirt and long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. “I could handle bringing you in on my own. You did save me the trouble of hunting you. So I’m going to give you a choice.”

Hunter quelled his normal reflex to slam anyone who thought they could actually outmaneuver him in the field. He had one concern and that was getting Abbie back. “What’s my choice?”

“We can put you in lockdown right now or you can help with this mission.”

“Easy choice.”

“Not through.” Retter continued. “When we finish this mission, you come in without any trouble to meet with Joe and Tee. Up to them what they want to do with a renegade.”

“Renegade?” Hunter scoffed. “You guys not allowed to say asshole anymore?”

Gotthard’s eyes twinkled, but he didn’t smile.

Rae and Carlos kept their reactions contained. No surprise there.

Korbin didn’t hold back his black glare.

“If you don’t come in without trouble,” Retter went on, “we’ll lock up Blanton forever, then we’ll find that snitch Borys you keep hidden and hand him over to the CIA.”

Hunter knew coming in that all his moves were gone. “Agreed.”

“Gotthard and Korbin will fill you in.” Retter turned to walk away.

Hunter’s phone buzzed. BAD had installed relays for underground access to cell and satellite links, but only two people should have this number. Hunter read the display. Wasn’t Cynthia, and he was looking at Gotthard, whose bark-brown eyebrows lifted in question.

Hunter answered the phone. “Yes.”

Rae walked out and came back with Retter.

“Now the fun begins,” a smooth male voice said into Hunter’s ear.

“Who’s this?”

“Abigail’s brother, but you can call me Jackson since you know who I am by now.”

Using hand signals, Hunter let everyone know who had called. Gotthard swung around to key a trace, but this prick would not be located that easily. “What do you want?”

“To make my next task a little challenging. I’m going to Colorado for a small job. If you figure out where I am before I complete my job and leave I’ll tell you where Abigail is. I couldn’t harm her the last time we met because she had not been authorized. But, good news, she was included in my new list of necessary kills as of yesterday.”

That’s why the bastard had tried to kill her last night at the Kore center. “Where in Colorado?”

“Be serious. You have to have some challenge, too. Don’t drag your feet. I gave Abigail a cocktail at Kore. Not the same one I gave her mother, but similar. She’s starting to have headaches, like her mother had in the beginning. I altered the files at Kore a long time ago. Abbie and her mother have identical blood to mine so she needs my blood, too.” The phone disconnected.

Hunter was going to kill that man. Not until Abbie was safe and healthy, but one second afterward. If his guess was right about this wacko, Jackson wouldn’t hurt Abbie until the time came to meet. The question was, what did Jackson have planned then? Jackson wanted a game in play, which meant everyone had to be alive until the point when he decided they died.

“What’d he say?” Gotthard asked.

“He told me he’s going to Colorado. If we find him before he finishes his task and leaves, he’ll tell us where Abbie is.”

“We have a time that may or may not be for an attack in Colorado,” Rae shared. “The contact inside Fratelli said there would be a bombing at 2200 EST tomorrow, but the contact has warned us not to trust that time. We don’t have a lot else, so we’ll add Colorado to the mix.”

“Anything significant happening in Colorado?” Hunter asked.

Korbin’s iron-hard glare hadn’t let up since Hunter walked in. He said, “Guess you’ve been too busy to keep up with world events. UK’s prime minister is coming into Denver on Saturday to see a friend, then speaking at a college there on Monday. Then he heads to DC to meet with the president on Tuesday.”

Hunter scratched his two-day start on a beard. “If the killer is after the prime minister it would be easier to take him out in Colorado before he meets with the president.”

“Could be,” Retter said. “But why’s he leading you to him? Why not just tap the prime minister and not play this game?”

“Remember the Fratelli code about ‘no unnecessary kills’?” When the agents nodded, Hunter said, “Killer calls himself Jackson and talks as though he holds to the Fratelli rules of no unauthorized kills. Makes sense. If not, he’d have shot me when I found him at Abbie’s apartment.”

Korbin scowled. “Knew you had her the whole time.”

“Her mother’s dying,” Hunter explained for the benefit of some in BAD. Korbin’s opinion didn’t count. “Abbie went to the Wentworth event to talk to Gwen about finding out what happened to her mother, because her mother had been healthy when she visited Kore almost two weeks ago. Jackson just told me he gave her mother a cocktail of some sort and gave Abbie something similar last night before she coded.”

Rae uncrossed her arms and leaned forward. “Is that how you got the data?”

“Not the way I wanted to, but yes,” Hunter said. “We had to have Abbie’s fingerprint and her blood sample taken through their machines at the same minute we accessed the Kore computer systems. So if we get her out of this we all owe her for those records.”

Rae smiled slightly.

“About the killer,” Gotthard said, pressing him. “Finish explaining why he wants to play this game.”

Hunter walked over and leaned against the door frame. “Jackson sounds like a bored killer, handcuffed by too many Fratelli rules. He wants a challenge. Like Dr. Tatum. Jackson must have put him in a no-win situation and threatened to harm his children if Tatum didn’t take the pills and commit suicide. Jackson gets his rocks off by watching people make life-and-death decisions. I’ve thought back on the mission in Kauai four years ago. Jackson wouldn’t consider Eliot’s death a kill since he shot Eliot in the shoulder, which wouldn’t have necessarily been life threatening. Jackson knew there was no way for someone with a blown shoulder to get down. That bastard laughed after Eliot cut the rope.”

“Eliot?”

Hunter tensed, taking in the faces in the room. “Yes. Those of you who were here then know the intel had changed by the time Eliot and I inserted into the Brugmann house. Once we found the CIA list and plans for a terrorist attack in the UK, we had to fight our way out. We’d just started rappelling when the estate went silent too soon for the FBI to have arrived. Eliot knew something had gone very wrong and that we might be the only two who knew about the terrorist attack if someone got to Brugmann’s before the FBI. Eliot’s leg was broken, too. When he realized he couldn’t get down, he wanted to make sure one of us could prevent the attack planned for the hospital in Britain the next day. He cut his rope so I could get down.”

“Fuck.” Korbin summed up the room’s reaction.

“Jackson was the shooter.” Hunter could hear the laugh echoing in the back of his skull. “He wounded me to toy with me, to let me know he could have killed me, but I must not have been part of the sanctioned hits. It’s as if he couldn’t give me too mortal a wound to climb down or he’d have broken his oath to the Fratelli.”

“You went to the Wentworth party looking for him.” Rae had spoken her thoughts out loud.