What was happening out there?

Joe had to find out the old-fashioned way. By looking. Actual looking with his actual eyes because sure as fuck his electronic eyes were shot to hell.

He peered around a corner, trying to find Isabel and Blake in the sudden gloom in the restaurant. People were standing up, having patiently waited for the lights to come on. Now that they weren’t, they were getting agitated.

With the restaurant-goers milling around he couldn’t see the table at the front windows where Isabel sat. He moved through the diners as quickly and unobtrusively as he could, head on a swivel and as he moved toward the windows he saw Isabel and Blake outside. Who knew what he’d done to convince her to go with him but the fucker was wrong if he thought he was going to be able to kidnap Isabel.

In a fury, Joe took off, but in the darkness, a couple stumbled in his way and by the time he’d shoved them aside, Isabel was gone. Gone. In an old van with mud on the license plate, red brake lights winking as it took a corner. It had come racing to the entrance and in a second, Blake had pushed Isabel in then climbed in after her.

He hadn’t had a straight shot otherwise he’d have killed the fucker.

Joe raced to the back where the crew was.

“She’s gone!” he shouted.

Felicity slammed her computer shut. “Damn thing is fried. All comms are down. Must have been some kind of limited EMP. If he killed my computer, he’s going to be sorry.”

Metal and Jacko ran in, grim-faced, carrying their rifles. “Our vehicles won’t start,” Jacko growled.

Joe punched a wall. “Contact Bud Morrison! Get a description of that van out in a BOLO!”

Jacko’s friend Chuck, the owner of the restaurant, held up his hands. “Guys, sorry. The cells are fried and I don’t have a landline. The nearest public pay phone is a mile away. East to Stone Avenue. We’re completely cut off here. And I gotta get out there and deal with the customers.”

Joe was clenching his jaws so hard it hurt. Even running, it would take them minutes—minutes they didn’t have—to get to the public pay phones. By then Blake would be long gone. Joe had no doubt that they’d be finding Isabel’s dead body somewhere far away, on some roadside, tumbled down a remote hillside or fished out of the river.

He’d never felt so fucking frustrated. On any op there was always something you could do. But now? Any step could be wrong, waste precious time. It scared the hell out of him.

For the very first time since he signed up to be a warrior, he didn’t know what to do.

Metal and Jacko and Nick were looking at him, all three of them with their useless cells in hand. Felicity was looking at him, too, fingers touching the closed cover of her useless laptop.

Time was rushing by like a flood, Isabel was getting farther and farther from him with every passing second and he didn’t know what the fuck to do!

A vehicle slewed to a stop outside the back room, in the loading area, spewing gravel. It was ancient—with more primer than paint, two dented fenders. A jalopy.

A man got out, tall, with dirty blond dreadlocks. He was moving fast and Joe drew his weapon. The man had an athlete’s body but he looked like a homeless person, clothes rags, boots ancient. Hands and face grimy with dirt. And with a lump on his hip under the filthy long overcoat.

Was he sent by Blake?

“Hold it right there! Hands up!” Joe held his Glock two-handed at chest level. If this guy was sent by Blake he was going to kill him where he stood, homeless or not. The guy wasn’t raising his hands. “There are two snipers behind me. You reach for your weapon you’re a dead man.”

The man was frowning. “Goddammit, we don’t have time for this shit! You let them take Isabel! She’s getting farther from us every damned second.”

Joe lowered his weapon.

The bum glared at Joe. “Name’s Jack Delvaux. I’m Isabel’s brother and you’ve been talking to me on the computer. Blake must have used a miniature, controlled-pulse EMP so whatever tags you put on Isabel are useless. But I’ve got a hardened tag on that fucker Blake, so you and your friends hop in, we’re going after the son of a bitch.”

* * *

“You’re never going to get away with this.” Isabel kept her voice steady as she rode in the back of the van on a bench set along the side. Hector had been leaning forward conferring with the driver. She couldn’t hear what they were saying over the loud engine noise of the ancient vehicle.

Hector’s eyebrows rose as he looked back at her. “Oh, but I am going to get away with it. As I told you, I’m in Washington, DC, right now.” He sat back down next to her. “You’ve been rich all your life so you should know this. Money can buy a lot of things, a lot of people.”

“And you’ve made plenty of money,” she spat.

“Plenty, yes. With more to come. But that won’t concern you, my dear, because you’ll have taken your own life. Poor, broken Isabel checked into a cheap motel and took enough pills to kill a horse.”

She tried to still her hammering heart. He sounded so certain, so matter of fact. But he couldn’t fake her suicide, could he? “People know I’m with you.”

Blake shook his head. “People know you’re with someone. Maybe an old lover, maybe the guy who filled your prescriptions for you. All anyone knows—if they even saw it in the dark—is that you willingly went with someone and drove away. No one could possibly know it’s me. And I put out a small electromagnetic pulse and anything with a chip is fried. My hat—” he tipped the brim of the fedora, dark eyes sardonic, “—has infrared lights in the brim. In case the cameras caught my face for one second before everything was switched off, all theyd get was a glow. I wore gloves. Even if someone saw me all they could say was that they saw a man in a black coat, hat, dark glasses and a scarf over the bottom half of his face. No one could possibly recognize me.

“My friends will know I didn’t kill myself! You’re crazy! They won’t rest until they get the truth.”

“Your friends can make all the noise they want. You checked into the motel under your own name with your own credit card, records showing you bought a huge stash of pills back in Washington, DC, will be uncovered. You tried to build a new life for yourself in Portland, but sadly that didn’t work out. You decided to end it once and for all. The autopsy will show a lethal dosage of a commonly prescribed antidepressant in your system. No signs of violence. Oh, and there will be some very sad—very, very sad entries in your journal and in your computer. No, my dear. No one will question this and if they do, we can buy the coroner, any PI they hire, any investigative journalist. We have more money than God.”

Smug and composed, he leaned forward once again to talk to his thug.

Isabel tried to think against the rising panic. He couldn’t possibly get away with this! Could he? But then, he’d gotten away with the Massacre. He’d hidden in plain sight. The worst terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 and no one had a clue who had orchestrated it.

Three trillion dollars had been drained from the economy, which was enough to buy off every single government bureaucrat in the chain. Of course Joe and his friends couldn’t be bought, not for anything. Nick couldn’t be bought off. And the way they spoke of him, neither could their cop friend, Bud Morrison, be bought. But it wouldn’t be the first time someone was murdered and the murderer got away free.

They’d raise a fuss and maybe some journalist or blogger would mention her.

But in the meantime, she’d be dead.

A suicide.

But—for it to be a plausible suicide by ingesting pills, the body had to show no signs of violence. If there were signs of violence on her body, even the most corrupt cop would have to investigate.

Violence like—

She banged her head against the van wall, once, twice. She changed the angle and banged her head hard against a bolt and felt skin tear. It hurt but being dead was worse. She beat her head, her shoulder against the wall, tearing at the soft fabric holding her wrists together, twisting them so that her hands started turning blue from lack of circulation.