Most Wanted (The Red Sky Conspiracy, Book 1) Read online

  Most Wanted

  Book 1 in The Red Sky Conspiracy

  Sam Sisavath

  Contents

  More Titles by Sam Sisavath

  About Most Wanted

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  The Conspiracy Unravels

  From the Author

  Most Wanted

  Copyright © 2017 by Sam Sisavath

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Road to Babylon Media LLC

  www.roadtobabylon.com

  Edited by Jennifer Jensen & Wendy Chan

  Cover Design by B&J

  More Titles by Sam Sisavath

  The Purge of Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series

  The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival

  The Gates of Byzantium

  The Stones of Angkor

  A Purge of Babylon Prequel: Keo (The Walls of Lemuria)

  The Fires of Atlantis

  The Ashes of Pompeii

  The Isles of Elysium

  The Spears of Laconia

  The Horns of Avalon

  The Bones of Valhalla

  Mason’s War: A Purge of Babylon Story

  The Allie Krycek Vigilante Series

  Hunter/Prey

  Saint/Sinner

  Finders/Keepers

  For all my Purge of Babylon readers, thank you for giving me a career.

  About Most Wanted

  A rookie FBI agent with a past.

  A terrorist who has finally come home.

  A conspiracy with unlimited reach…

  Quinn Turner is a freshly minted FBI agent who has just joined a field unit run by her mentor. Her first operation goes smoothly…until she spots the #1 face on the FBI’s Most Wanted list from across a room, and nothing will ever be the same.

  John Porter is a saboteur of billions in property damage and a killer with a list of victims in the three digits. He’s wanted dead or alive, but you can’t capture what you can’t find—until now, when he resurfaces on American soil after a five-year absence.

  For Quinn, what started out as the opportunity of a lifetime quickly spirals into a nightmare. In the aftermath of her clash with Porter, she finds herself on the run from friends and colleagues and accused of crimes that put her right on the list alongside Porter.

  To prove her innocence, Quinn will have to find and stop a man who can’t be found, while at the same time eluding the vast resources of the U.S. government. As the noose tightens and the conspiracy around her grows, Quinn Turner will discover that sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t…or even knew existed in the first place.

  Chapter 1

  He looked younger in person—the eyes were a duller shade of blue, the jaw more oblong than round, and he appeared taller than his listed height. If she were to bump into him on the streets, she would never think he was capable of slaughtering hundreds in a rampage that stretched from one corner of the globe to the other, leaving charred bodies, grieving widows, and billions in property damage in his wake.

  It can’t be him. Can it?

  He had gone by a handful of aliases over the years—at least the ones the U.S. government knew about—but he had begun life as John Porter before disappearing into the ether five years ago. There hadn’t been an official verifiable image of him since, despite his continued terrorist actions.

  It’s him.

  John Porter. It was such a mundane-sounding name for a killer.

  Jesus, it’s him.

  The first time she laid eyes on him, she was almost one hundred percent sure it was a trick of her mind, a by-product of the seizure-inducing lights that flashed and spun and changed colors every few revolutions around her, and maybe a lingering effect of the two cocktails she’d gotten sent her way from would-be lotharios she’d had to politely turn down.

  But it wasn’t because of any of those things. There was nothing wrong with her eyes.

  John-friggin-Porter.

  How many times had she seen his face during her time at the FBI Academy in Quantico? Too many to count. She’d stared at it in posters, on computer screens, and seemingly in every class she’d attended.

  And here he was.

  Or was he?

  Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not him. Maybe it’s the last cocktail. What the hell would John Porter be doing here?

  If she wasn’t sure when she first spotted him from across the room, she was almost certain (Ninety percent? Eighty? Maybe seventy-five…) by the time he was halfway through the room. It wasn’t just his face, but the way he moved. He didn’t so much as walk from the front door toward the back, where she was camped, as he slid through and glided around the jam-packed bodies in his path.

  Eighty percent…

  “Quinn,” a voice said inside her right ear. “Did you hear what I said?”

  She didn’t answer the voice right away. There was a big gulf between following her instincts and obeying orders. And right now the former was telling her that this was him, that this was John friggin Porter.

  “Quinn,” the voice said again, more urgently this time. Maybe even louder, but any sound trying to overcome the house music was fighting a losing battle. “Quinn. Special Agent Turner. Come in.”

  The use of Special Agent Turner instead of just her name snapped her out of it. “I’m here, I’m here.”

  He was almost on her side of the club, and she didn’t dare take her eyes off him for even a second, too terrified he would disappear in a puff of smoke. He was dressed appropriately for the place—black blazer over plain white shirt, with black slacks—and didn’t stand out from the throng of men trying to score. He moved through a dozen guys who could have been his clones and smiled at a party girl who stumbled in his way.

  “What’s going on, Quinn?” the voice asked in her ear. “What are you looking at?”

  “New guy,” she said, holding the phone up closer to her mouth.

  The phone was connected to the earbud in her right ear via Bluetooth, allowing her to hear the voice on the other end despite the tremendous noise. She would have been worried about being seen talking on a phone if there weren’t four other women and two guys at the other ends of the same bar doing the exact same thing at the moment. In a place where everyone was doing it, not being self-absorbed with her phone would have made her stand out.

  “Black blazer and black pants,” she said. “He just came into the club about two minutes ago.”

&n
bsp; “Quinn, there’s nothing but guys in black blazers and pants,” the voice said.

  “He’s almost halfway through the club. I think he’s headed for the back room. The manager’s office.”

  “Give me a sec…”

  A sec turned out to be more like ten seconds, and Quinn spent all ten excruciating heartbeats of it watching the man wind his way toward her before angling right as he finally emerged out of the forest of bodies. He seemed to scan the semi-dark room around him for a moment before continuing on. That attention to his surroundings further convinced her—

  He stared right at her.

  Shit, she thought, and had to fight against every instinct to look away or turn around in her stool or lower the phone.

  But she did none of those things (Don’t move. Don’t move a muscle!) because they would have been signs of panic, someone caught doing something they shouldn’t have. Right now she was just a woman at a nightclub bar so bored with what the place had to offer she had resorted to talking on her phone.

  So she met his stare for a second (Don’t look away. Don’t look away!) before turning slightly in her stool, all the while continuing to mouth silent words into her phone. She glimpsed him in the mirror behind the bar as he turned away and continued on to the lone door at the other side of the back area. She waited for him to sneak a second glance at her, but he didn’t.

  Close. Jesus, that was close.

  I think I just had my first heart attack.

  Quinn was sure she let out an audible sigh of relief, but she couldn’t hear it over the music and din of voices.

  But she could hear the voice in her right ear just fine: “Quinn, who are you talking about? Be more specific.”

  “He’s almost at the manager’s door,” she said into the phone. And I think he might have caught me watching him, she thought about adding, but didn’t.

  “Okay, wait,” the voice said. Then, “Black blazer and black pants. At the door…now.”

  “That’s him,” she said, turning around in her stool just as the man (John-friggin-Porter!) knocked on the door and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait very long—the door opened a couple of seconds later, and a large mountain of a man stood back to let him in before closing the door again. The back office had windows, but the blinders were shuttered.

  “Who is he?” the voice asked.

  “I think…” she started to say.

  When she didn’t finish, the man in her right ear said, “Quinn, who is he?”

  “I think it was John Porter.”

  There was silence from the other end of the phone.

  God, please let it be John Porter.

  Quinn sighed and wondered how long it was going to take before word got out that she was a flake and couldn’t be trusted out in the field—

  “Are you sure?” the voice asked.

  The question shocked her—not the question itself, but that it was a question and not an order for her to get her ass back to work and stop daydreaming.

  “I think so,” she said into the phone.

  “Quinn, you have to be sure.”

  Hell no, I’m not sure. I’m not even sure if I can move if you tell me to right now, she thought, but said, “Ben, it looked like him. I think it’s him.”

  “Anyone else?” Ben asked, not talking to her now.

  “Negative,” a male voice answered through her earbud.

  “John Porter?” a female voice said. “Are we talking about the John Porter?”

  “Yes or no,” Ben said impatiently.

  “That’s a negative,” the woman said.

  “I gotta go with no here, too,” a third male voice said. Pete Ringo. Tall, dark, and handsome Pete Ringo. “Sorry, Quinn.”

  Such a gentleman, too.

  “Goddammit,” Ben said. Ben Foster had been in her ear all morning and all afternoon and now all night, and it was easy to detect the frustration in his voice.

  “What should I do, Ben?” Quinn asked.

  “Nothing. Don’t do anything. Just sit there for now. I need to run this up the pole.”

  “Understood,” she said, and turned around in her stool to stare at her heavily made-up face in the mirror behind the moving bartender. She’d never worn so much makeup in her life. Then again, she’d never worn a tighter or shorter sleeveless and backless dress in her life.

  Don’t be a flake, Quinn. Don’t be a goddamn flake.

  She sighed and rubbed at her face and probably scraped off a big layer of makeup at the same time, but it was impossible to tell with the dark (multicolored, but somehow still dark) lighting in the place.

  “She’s just a rookie,” the other agents listening in on the line were probably thinking right now. “They’re always seeing things. It’s all those months staring at the Most Wanted list, dreaming of the bust that’ll make their careers. Every single one of them comes out of Virginia after five months with Most Wanted on the brains.”

  “Quinn.” Ben’s voice, back in her ear.

  Already?

  No, not already. He’d been gone for at least five minutes, even though it’d felt like…seconds?

  Focus, girl. Focus!

  She lifted the phone back to her lips. “I’m here, Ben.”

  “Can you access the room?”

  Another question that caught her off guard, and this one took her longer to process—two seconds, three…five…

  “Quinn,” Ben said in her ear, “can you gain access to the room?”

  “The back room?” she said, just to be sure.

  “That’s the one. We need eyes on the occupants.”

  Why me? she wanted to ask, but didn’t. It wasn’t the kind of question someone who wanted to advance in the Bureau asked. Why not me was the real question.

  “What about the operation?” she asked instead.

  “I’ve been authorized to run an audible,” Ben said.

  “Are they sure, Ben?”

  That was a stupid question. Junior field agents didn’t ask a Special Agent in Charge if they were sure; they said Yes, sir and asked how high to jump. But she wasn’t asking that right now, and she hoped (God, she hoped) that Ben knew it.

  “They want him,” Ben said. “Even if there’s a one percent chance it’s really John Porter back on American soil, they want us to find out.”

  “John Porter,” someone said in her ear. Female, so it was Anna Miller, who would be staked out in a booth across the room with Pete right about now, playacting as a couple. “Jesus Christ.”

  John Porter, she repeated in her head. But what if it’s not him? What if it’s just someone who looks a little bit like him? What if I just blew an operation months in the planning because I still have Most Wanted on the brains?

  “All right, Quinn,” Ben was saying in her ear. “I need you to get as close as you can and make an ID. Either it’s him, or it’s not. That’s it. Nothing more than that. Take a good look and get the hell out of there. You still game?”

  I should have kept my mouth shut, Quinn thought, but said, “I’m on it,” and turned around on the stool to face the back room across the nightclub. Was it just her, or had the door moved farther away since the last time she looked?

  “Good,” Ben said. “Everyone outside the nightclub, stand by; we’re changing up the play. Everyone on the inside, follow Quinn’s lead. There’s no back door into that office; there’s only one way in and out. And right now we just need an ID. That’s it. You understand? Do not pull, and absolutely do not discharge your weapons unless you absolutely have to.”

  Three voices answered in the affirmative, but Quinn wasn’t one of them. She was too busy clutching the small purse in her lap and tracing the edges of the Glock G42—the smallest of the semiautomatic handguns that the brand offered, because bouncers didn’t check purses barely the size of their wallets on pretty girls in way-too-small backless dresses.

  “Quinn,” Ben said in her ear, “you have the ball.”

  Ben and his football analogies,
she thought, the smile helping to chip at (some of) the fear coiling itself all around her like an anaconda. If her entire body wasn’t still pulsating with the sounds pouring out of the subwoofers, she would swear her heartbeat had doubled (tripled?) in the last few seconds.

  “What’s the play, Quinn?” Ben asked in her ear.

  Does trying not to die of regret count as a play, Ben? she thought, but said, “I’m going to walk across the room and knock on the door.”

  “Just like that?”

  “What other play is there?”

  Ben didn’t answer right away. Finally: “Don’t do anything stupid. Just get them to open the door and make the ID. Whether it’s Porter or not, you are to get away as fast as you can after that.”

  “And if it is Porter?” she asked, straightening her legs and preparing to climb off the stool. The tight dress made every little movement a chore.

  “Make the ID and get away. That’s it. I have HRT standing by to breach.”

  “There’s an awful lot of people in here, Ben,” Pete said.

  “It’s John Porter,” another male voice said. Kyle Danford, the other male agent in the club with them. Danford didn’t say anything else, and maybe he didn’t have to.

  Because it was John-friggin-Porter.

  Her feet felt deceptively light as the one-inch heels (Thank God it’s just one inch) touched the glossy tiled floor, and for a moment she thought she might have to grab at the girl with the bottle-blonde dye job sitting next to her to keep from going down, but she was able to stand up straight and push off the bar without a problem.

  One step at a time…

  She clutched her purse in her left hand, the phone gripped tightly in her right. After a couple of steps, she unzipped the purse and left it open.

  “Easy does it, Quinn,” Ben said in her ear.

  Gee, thanks for that very helpful advice, Ben.

  She felt Danford’s eyes on her as she neared his position. He was camped out in the second bar, temporarily taking a break from hitting on the barely-dressed women ordering drinks and talking on their phones around him to pretend-play with his own cell.