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

  Should have kept my loud mouth shut.

  It was quiet outside the office, as if everyone had simply abandoned the place. But of course she knew better. HRT was getting into position, and Ben would have already left the van outside and taken command in person inside the nightclub by now. Without the music and club goers, the entire building was eerily peaceful and she could once again hear her own struggling heartbeat.

  And so could Porter, apparently, because he said again, “Relax.”

  Stop telling me to relax, asshole, she thought, but said, “Okay.”

  “Cool as a cucumber, huh? Or, at least, you want me to think so. But we both know the truth, don’t we?”

  How perceptive of you, jackass.

  “What is this, first year in the field?” he asked.

  Nice guess, asshole.

  “Not important,” Porter said. “Ross, hand me her purse.”

  For some reason, Ross had been clutching her purse ever since he had picked it off the floor. By the look on his face, he was just as surprised as she was that he still had it on him, and the man quickly threw it to Porter.

  “They’re after me or you?” Ross asked.

  “You, at first,” Porter said. “Me, now. Right?” That last part was again directed at her.

  She didn’t answer him this time.

  “Right,” he said anyway. “Who’s in charge out there?”

  When she didn’t answer, he nudged her with the gun.

  “Ben Foster,” she said.

  “Put Ben Foster on the line,” she heard him say behind her. After a few seconds, he continued: “I think you know who this is. Let’s not play games. I have one of your agents. Excuse me, I meant, special agents. I know how you guys are sticklers for that.”

  “Fucking FBI,” Ross muttered in the corner. “What did I ever do to deserve this? Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Quinn R. Turner,” Porter said behind her. “This badge looks pretty new. Edgar Hoover’s boys and girls are getting younger every day. Prettier, too.”

  Thanks for the compliment, douchebag.

  “Let me guess, they put you in here because you fit the demo?” Porter asked. “Those other three look pretty old by comparison.”

  She didn’t respond. She didn’t know if he actually wanted her to, and a part of her didn’t care anyway if he did. The less information she gave him, the better. After all, she was already screwed. You didn’t lose your gun to a criminal, and you certainly didn’t let said criminal then hold you at gunpoint with your own gun.

  Bye-bye, career. I hardly knew ye.

  She might have sighed out loud that time, and the thought horrified her, but Porter didn’t seem to notice. Or if he did, he didn’t bother acknowledging it and was more preoccupied with the phone call.

  “It’s simple,” he was saying behind her. “You come in, I kill her. I might even kill Ross, too.”

  “Wait, what?” Ross said.

  “You know who I am,” Porter continued, ignoring Ross. “You can come and get me if you want, but it’ll cost you one FBI Special Agent and a civilian. He’s a criminal, so I doubt you care about what happens to him. I’m willing to bet, though, that you care about what happens to this pretty little thing in front of me.” A brief pause, then, “I’ll let you know my demands in ten minutes. I suggest you do your best to meet them.”

  She heard a beep as Porter cut the phone connection behind her.

  “Well?” Ross said. “What did they say?”

  “It’s not what they said; it’s what they’re doing right now,” Porter said.

  “So what are they doing right now?”

  “Trying to decide how much they’re willing to sacrifice in order to take me.”

  An entire operation, Quinn thought. They couldn’t wait to toss away an operation that’s been months in the making just for the possibility of capturing your ass. That’s how much the FBI wants you.

  Of course, that didn’t bode well for her. If the “higher ups” wanted Porter badly enough and she was in the way…

  Ben.

  Thank God for Ben.

  He was the only reason HRT hadn’t already mounted an assault on the office. She knew that without a shred of doubt.

  “So what are we gonna do?” Ross was asking. He had sunk even deeper into the corner, if that were possible. “I’m just a middle man. I connect buyers with sellers. That’s it. That’s all. This is not my scene, man.”

  Porter might have snorted before she heard the sound of a phone dialing. Was he using her phone to call someone? No, that wouldn’t have made any sense. Chances were he had his own. Who didn’t carry a phone with them these days? Porter being Porter, it was probably a burner, something bought from a convenience store that could be tossed at a moment’s notice.

  “Relax,” Porter said behind her. “It’ll be over soon. Play your cards right and you might even live to be an old ex-FBI agent. You can tell your grandchildren all about how you once met me. Feel free to leave out the part where I took you hostage with your own gun. Gotta be embarrassing, right?”

  Fuck off, she thought, and clenched her teeth.

  “It’s me,” Porter said, clearly not to her this time. “Things didn’t go as planned. You’ll have to proceed without me.” He paused, then added, “I know. Good luck.”

  “Who was that?” Ross asked. “Who are you talking to?”

  Good question, Ross.

  “It’s a personal call,” Porter said.

  “Are they going to help us get out of here?” Ross asked.

  “No.”

  “No? No? Then why the hell did you call them?”

  “Like I said, it’s personal.” Then Porter stood up behind her—she only knew because the barrel of the gun shifted slightly against the back of her neck. “Where is it, Gary?”

  “Where is what?” Gary said.

  “My package.”

  “Are you shitting me right now?” Gary sounded almost angry that time. “You want your package? Man, there is an entire army of FB-fucking-I agents outside my office right this very second, and you want your friggin’ package?”

  “Yes,” Porter said, again in that impossibly calm voice that made her believe this man could casually shoot her in the back of the head and not lose a single second of sleep over it. “I paid for it, and I’d like it now, please.”

  Quinn risked a glance over at Ross and saw the incredulous expression on his face, and she couldn’t quite tell if he was still too scared by the situation or was just too stupefied by Porter’s request to say or do anything right away.

  “Ross,” Porter said. “I’d like my package now, please.”

  Finally, the man in the expensive suit pried himself out of his corner and walked across the room and left her line of sight. Then the sound of a door opening, so she knew he was at the closet at the back, which intelligence told her had a false bottom in the floor. She listened to the telltale signs of Ross prying open the fake lid, then a slight grunt as he reached inside.

  “Nice hiding spot,” Porter said behind her.

  “Here,” Ross said. “What are you going to do with it?” Then, quickly, “You know what? Don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know.”

  “Good call,” Porter said. “You can go back to your corner now.”

  Ross grunted before reappearing in her line of sight as he returned to the other side of the room. He exchanged a quick look with her, but if she thought he might be a potential ally, the hate in his eyes ended that possibility.

  “You were after me,” Ross said to her. It wasn’t a question. “Spit it out, bitch.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “For what? The Chinese stuff?”

  “That too. But mostly for the artwork out of Bulgaria.”

  “Fuck,” Ross said. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to handle those. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Then, glancing over at Porter, “If the FBI staked out my place for me, what’s the deal with him? Is it the package?”

  That would depe
nd on what’s in the package, she thought, but didn’t answer. Not yet, anyway. She allowed Ross to keep speaking, because the more he talked the more information he revealed. She might have been the one being held at gunpoint (By my own gun, Jesus), but that didn’t mean she was completely clueless.

  “I’ve brought packages like that into the country a dozen times,” Ross was saying. “For the bikers, the Mexicans; hell, even some hillbilly Neo-Nazis. But it’s the paintings that got me? Jesus Christ.” He looked at Porter again. “And this guy? This is the guy you were willing to overlook putting me in cuffs for? What’s so special about him?”

  “You don’t know who he is, do you?” Quinn asked.

  Ross stared at her, then at Porter. Then back at her. “Who the fuck is he?”

  “Who did he tell you he was?”

  “John Allen.” Then, turning to Porter, “You lied to me? Who the hell are you?”

  Porter didn’t answer, but she could hear him doing…something behind her. But whatever he was doing he was managing it with just one hand, because the Glock was still jammed into the back of her neck.

  “John Porter,” Quinn said. “This is John Porter. Number one on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for the last five years running. He’s a terrorist responsible for dozens of bombings, kidnappings, murders, and a body count in the three digits.”

  “Just the three digits?” Porter said. He sounded almost amused. “I would have thought it’d be four by now.”

  “If you want credit for all your murders, you should make it more obvious. Maybe send press releases to the authorities and news media like a proper terrorist scumbag.”

  Porter chortled behind her. “Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll think about it.”

  “Fuck me,” Ross was saying in his corner. He was staring across the room at Porter now, as if seeing the man for the first time. “Fuck me.”

  Someone’s seen the light.

  Then Ross’s eyes shifted slightly, but were still trained in Porter’s direction. “What are you going to do with that?”

  The package, Quinn thought. He’s talking about the package he smuggled into the country for Porter.

  There was a slight shift in the air behind her, followed by the feel of Porter’s chest pressing against her back again. Her entire body stiffened as his lips tickled at her right ear, and he said, “Now, this is the part where you get down on the floor and don’t look up.”

  “What—” she began to say, just before a hand shoved her in the back and she lost her balance.

  The floor was suddenly rushing up at her, and it was all she could do to stick out both arms to stop her fall. Her palms had just slammed into the hard and cold tiles when the explosion shattered her senses and the entire office came tumbling down on top of her.

  Brick by brick by brick...

  Chapter 3

  “He blasted a hole through the wall and escaped from the alley next door. There were two HRT guys back there when it went off; they’re downstairs in intensive care right now. One’s probably going to lose an arm, and the other one’s not heading back to work anytime soon.”

  Pete Ringo alternated between peering out her hospital room window at the street below and watching her reflection in the glass.

  “Truth is, they’re lucky to be alive. There’s no telling how much of the stuff he used to take out the wall. The Explosives Unit guys are still going over the scene as we speak, but early word is that it’s some kind of experimental explosive compound that’s not even supposed to exist, never mind be on the market.”

  He’d arrived about ten minutes ago, her first visitor who didn’t have a seemingly never-ending series of questions for her about what had happened last night. Ben had also shown up this morning and stood like a protective father in the back as she was questioned for four straight hours. She had told them everything she knew—or everything she could remember, anyway. The details were hazy and she found herself battling her memories as much as the two men who she had never seen before in her life.

  Ben had left with the investigators, and she was expecting him when Pete Ringo walked through the door instead. Not that she minded too much. If it wasn’t Ben, then Pete was a good stand-in.

  “How a middleman like Gary Ross got his hands on that kind of stuff, well, that’s the question of the day,” Pete was saying. “The other one is, did Porter use everything he had to break through the wall? And if not, what is he going to do with the rest of it?”

  Pete’s presence was a godsend. While waiting for Ben to return, she’d had to settle for memorizing all the wires connecting her arms to the array of monitors beeping on both sides of her bed. Her head throbbed, and every now and then pain thrummed along her shoulders and back (Right; the office fell down on top of you, remember?). There was nothing to keep her from walking around on her own two feet except doctor’s orders and FBI protocol, and the nurse who came in regularly to warn her not to try to get up.

  “We don’t know for sure what he used?” she asked.

  Pete shook his head. “They’re working on it. I guess they’ll let us—or Ben, anyway—know when they’re done. No one’s lollygagging on this one. DC’s got people running around like chickens with their heads cut off. After all, it’s not every day that John-fucking-Porter shows back up on American soil after five years.”

  She smiled. It was good to know she wasn’t the only one thinking about Porter as more than just “John Porter.” And she had to admit, John-fucking-Porter somehow fit the man better than John-friggin-Porter.

  “What about Gary?” she asked, because she knew the nightclub owner was still alive. It was one of the few things her nurse had been able to tell her, that a second person (“Some guy,” according to the twenty-something blonde) had been brought from the same place as her at the same time. “Has he said anything?”

  “He lawyered up as soon as we dug him out after you. Hasn’t said a peep since we brought him here.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “One floor down. His lawyers haven’t left his side since. A broken arm, a broken leg, God knows how many broken ribs. But his girlfriend will be happy to know his face survived mostly unscathed. Putting himself into the corner of the room spared him from the blast and the falling debris.”

  She remembered Gary huddled in the corner of his office, as if he could disappear into it if he pushed himself back hard enough. That was one of the few bits of memory from last night that came easily to her every time. She wished the rest were as clear.

  She was fiddling with the TV remote when she noticed Pete smiling at her. “What?”

  “You haven’t asked me how we dug you out of the place.”

  “I figured you would tell me eventually.”

  “We had to drag you out of about a foot of rubble. We thought you were dead.”

  Quinn shook her head. “I don’t remember any of it.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “He pushed me down to the floor; then there was an explosion.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “Do what?”

  Pete leaned back against the windowsill, the smile replaced by curiosity. “Pushed you down. That probably saved your life. That, and the desk.”

  “What desk?”

  “You don’t remember that either?”

  “No…”

  “You were underneath a desk when we dug you out. We thought you’d somehow managed to roll under it before Porter triggered the explosion.”

  She shook her head again. Trying to recall specific bits and pieces from last night was like swimming through molasses. For every memory that came easily—like Gary in the corner—there was one (or two or three) pieces that refused to clarify themselves.

  “It’s mostly all a blur,” she said. “I can’t even tell you how long after I hit the floor that the office came down. It seemed like seconds when I think about it, but it couldn’t have been.”

  “Probably not. The doctors told Ben that more than a few pie
ces of the ceiling managed to bounce off your head, but it would have been much worse without the desk on top of you. They’re saying there’s a high probability of a concussion. Or concussions.”

  “Concussions?”

  “Quinn, Porter essentially dropped a nightclub on top of you. That’s been known to cause short-term memory loss, or so they tell me. That’s why they didn’t push you as hard this morning. Ben had your doctor explain to them what you went through, what you’re still going through.”

  The notion that the men in suits hadn’t pushed her hard this morning with their questioning was strange, because they were almost combative, constantly asking the same questions as if they expected her to remember things she couldn’t the first five times they asked it. After a while, she wanted to jump out of bed and punch one of them.

  If that was them taking it easy…

  “Ben told me you have experience with that,” Pete was saying.

  “What?”

  “Concussions. He said you’ve gotten them before.”

  She nodded. “When I was young…”

  “Anyways, they think it’ll all come back to you eventually, just give it time. How’s the rest of you?”

  “My head hurts, but other than that it’s not so bad.” She glanced at the saline drip next to her. “Did they give me something for the pain?”

  “You’ll have to ask your nurse. I’m just a visitor.”

  Quinn picked the TV remote back up and channel surfed with the sound on mute. “I haven’t seen a single thing about Porter on the news.”

  “As far as anyone knows, last night’s explosion at Ross’s was an isolated event, the result of an accidental gas leak. The Bureau’s managed to keep the lid on Porter’s return so far. I don’t know how long that’s going to last though. Someone always manages to shoot their mouth off trying to get brownie points from a blonde in a short skirt. But for now, we’ve got it contained.”