“Damn it,” Travers muttered. “That was stupid, Agent Smirnoff.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t care,” Travers said, taking another step forward, “she’s not getting out of this alive. I won’t risk one of my men for her. These men are like blood to me.”
“No,” Troy shot back. He could hear Elaina whimpering pathetically beneath the gag. She knew her life lay in the balance. She’d heard the conviction in Travers’s voice. “We’re better than this. You’re better than this, Agent Walker.”
Pistol still in his right hand, Travers grabbed Troy by the collar. But Troy flipped Travers to the floor, then backed off and swung the barrel of the gun back and forth quickly between Travers and the other agent.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said loudly as Travers scrambled to his feet and looked as if he was going to make another charge. “Give it a chance, Agent Walker. Please.”
Jacob Gadanz groaned as the two men picked him up beneath his arms and dragged him roughly off the floor, sat him on the edge of the bed, and pulled the gag from his mouth. “What’s going on?” He glanced down at Sasha and Sophie, who lay on the carpeted floor where he’d been, wrists and ankles lashed together, gagged and blindfolded. His wrists and ankles were still secured, but not tied together anymore. “Why are you doing this to me and my family?” he demanded.
“Who’s Kaashif?” Travers demanded right back. “Tell me, or your daughter dies.”
At that moment Troy and Agent Shenandoah hustled Elaina into the room. They had put their ski masks back on.
Gadanz gazed at Elaina’s tear-streaked face. Did it really matter if he held out on what he knew? As soon as Daniel realized that they’d fled, he would send killers — irrespective of what was conveyed or not. And maybe, if he played his cards right, he could get protection from these people. As much as anyone could be protected from Daniel Gadanz.
He swallowed hard as he made his decision. The life he’d known for a long time was over forever. “Kaashif is a man who helps my brother.”
Travers snapped his fingers at Troy and the other two agents immediately, then pointed at the doorway. “You guys get the rest of these people out of here. Potomac and Shenandoah, I want you to stay with them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Agent Smirnoff, you come back as soon as you have them in the other bedroom.”
Troy nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Hey there,” Troy called from the doorway.
Jennie glanced up from her book. “Well, hello.”
“How are you feeling?” he asked, moving toward her after shutting the door. She smiled that completely unbelievable smile, and he couldn’t help thinking about Lisa.
“My shoulder’s feeling okay, but that wound in my back is still pretty bad.”
Troy chuckled. “Yeah, well, I know—”
“I know you know,” she interrupted as she put the book down on the hospital bed. “Your father called. So, what are you doing down here?”
When Jacob Gadanz had made his decision to talk and his family was out of the room, the words had gone on uninterrupted for fifteen minutes. They’d learned a great deal very fast, and now they needed to act on it quickly — to determine if Gadanz had told them the truth, and if he had, to jump all over this chance to stop the bloodshed. But the Fairfax County Hospital was close to the townhouse and basically on the way to Dulles Airport, so he’d taken this quick detour. Travers was waiting outside with the Jeep running.
“I came to thank you.”
“For what?”
“You know what, Jennie.”
She reached out and touched his hand when he made it to the bedside. “I hear you thought I was a terrorist.”
He grinned. “I guess I’m getting pretty paranoid in my old age, huh?”
She gave him a coy up-and-down look. “That’s okay. I like older men.”
“I’m sorry I thought that. It’s just the way I’ve been trained.”
“Lisa cared about you very much,” Jennie said after a few moments of silence. “From what she told me, it was a quick romance, but it meant a lot to her. And she was waiting for you. She would have been very devoted.”
Troy exhaled heavily. Those were bittersweet words for him to hear. He hadn’t been so devoted, and it still ate at him. “Well, I’ve gotta go. Like I said, I wanted to come by and thank you. What you did took a lot of guts.”
“I didn’t like the getting shot part. I’m not going to lie to you. But I liked thinking I was making a difference.”
“You definitely did, and you should be proud of that.” He wasn’t sure about this, but what the hell. Sometimes life was all about taking chances. “Um, I was wondering.”
“Oh, yeah, what were you wondering?”
“I was wondering if I could take you to lunch sometime.” That sounded better than dinner, less intrusive somehow.
She nodded. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”
“Good,” he said as he turned to go. “I’ll call you.”
“Troy,” she called.
He stopped and turned around. “Yes?”
“Just so you know.”
He gave her a confused look. “Know what?”
She gave him a great smile. “You were right.”
“What about?”
“If you’d asked me to dinner I would have said no. It would have been too soon for that. But lunch is good.” She hesitated. “Don’t wait too long to call.”
From his comfortable chair atop the raised platform, Daniel Gadanz watched the two young women please his number three in command, Emilio Vasquez. Vasquez was in charge of all distribution east of the Mississippi River. Since Gadanz had promoted him to that important position two years ago, revenues had skyrocketed in the territory, particularly sales of cocaine and particularly in the small towns. Vasquez was single-minded in his approach to driving revenues higher and higher. Anyone who got in the way was murdered. Competitors, law-enforcement officers, pushers, users — it didn’t matter. It was a bullet to the head and on to the next problem.
The man in Colombia who manufactured all of that cocaine was impressed with the increased demand, which was a good thing. Daniel Gadanz feared only one person in the world. That man. Few people knew it, but that man was richer than Warren Buffett and Bill Gates combined — and infinitely more vindictive.
Instead of the wooden chair Daniel had forced Jacob to sit in the other night, there was a comfortable mattress in its place today. Gadanz watched as the two women began to drive Vasquez out of control. They were both voluptuous and absolutely gorgeous with dark features, exactly as Vasquez had requested. In fact, they were sisters, which Gadanz had told Vasquez right before they’d come in here — and that had made the little man with the crooked yellow teeth even happier.
A year ago Gadanz had suffered a terrible injury that had almost killed him. He’d recovered, but the near-death experience had left him physically impotent. So now he took his bitterness out by watching. Perhaps, he mused as Vasquez began to arch his back higher and higher off the mattress, because he subconsciously believed that if he watched enough sex his body might recuperate. Gadanz missed the pleasures of the flesh. It was maddening to have so much money and so much power but be unable to use it on women. The only real pleasure Gadanz took from what was unfolding in front of him involved the fact that Vasquez was married with three children and went to church every Sunday.
He groaned when his cell phone pinged softly. He didn’t want to be interrupted, particularly as Vasquez closed in on the critical moment, but he had to look. Only a few people had this number, so the message was important.