Option to Kill (Nathan McBride 3)

  If Voda prevails, you’ll have to step up. As long as Voda’s alive, Lauren will be in mortal danger. I had hoped to be a part of your life someday, but that would put you and Lauren at risk from more than just Voda. True heroism is selfless. No one knows that better than you.

  Han Jin-Kyong (Jin Elizabeth Marchand)

  “You said you were getting the spare key.”

  He whipped around, aiming his SIG. Adrenaline coursed through his body like acid. “Lauren, don’t ever do that again! I almost shot you. Never ever sneak up on me!”

  “What does it say?”

  He took a few deep breaths to quash the rush. “It’s from your mom.”

  “Can I read it?”

  He considered the ramifications but decided Lauren deserved the truth. He nodded her over, and she sat down cross-legged to read it. Nathan watched her eyes move back and forth. Her expression went blank before a single tear formed.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Lauren, you’ll see your mom again.”

  “You promise?”

  He knew he couldn’t guarantee it, but said it anyway. “Yes, I promise.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to find the girl who’s in trouble and save her.”

  “But what about my mom?”

  “There’s not much we can do until she contacts us again. When she does, I’ll tell her not to go after Voda alone and that I’ll help her.”

  “But what if she doesn’t call, like before?”

  “I know how to make her call.”

  She sounded on the verge of panic. “How? How will you make her call?

  “Patience, Lauren. A good marine knows when to lay low and wait. It may not seem like it right now, but we’ve got the advantage. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

  “I won’t deny that’s partially true.”

  She didn’t respond. He wondered when he’d find a chink in her armor. She’d been remarkably poised until now. He chalked it up to frayed nerves and fatigue.

  “Your mom’s going to be okay. She’s a survivor.”

  “Do you think she was a spy too?”

  “Lauren, I never said I was a spy. You said it. Come on, we need to wash your clothes. You can use one of my shirts. It’ll fit you like a tent, but it should be okay. I think Angelica’s shoes will work, but they might be a tad loose. You can wear two pairs of socks.”

  “Can we stay for a while? I’m really tired.”

  “We have to think about the girl your mom mentioned. There’s someone just like you out there, and she needs our help. We have to find her.”

  “How? Do you think she’s on one of those passports?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We should help her.”

  “We will. Come on, let’s go inside.”

  He moved some bark under the solar light and grabbed his hide-a-key. The entrance foyer to his home was no less stunning than the outside. A life-size bronze sculpture of a Civil War soldier was surrounded by a spiral staircase leading to the upper floors. The artist had captured his expression perfectly — part determination, part fear.

  “Looks like Grant and Sherman like you. Want to score some points? Say the word t-r-e-a-t.”

  “Treat.”

  Two sets of ears perked up simultaneously.

  He nodded toward the kitchen. “There’s a jar with dog snacks on the island. When you open it, they’ll sit down. Tell them they’re good dogs and give them two or three each. I’m going upstairs to change. I’ll bring you a shirt.”

  “Is that a library?”

  “I’ve been collecting books for a long time. I’ll be right back.” He hustled up the stairs to his bedroom, thinking about Jin’s note. Several things jumped out at him. She’d mentioned a debt and something about running. She also said she wouldn’t be able to help him again. She didn’t just say help him, she said help him again. As far as he knew, he hadn’t received any help tonight. Maybe she was talking about the initial texts she told Lauren to send, but they didn’t qualify as help, they qualified as get-your-ass-moving commands.

  He wondered about her life in North Korea, what it must’ve been like — growing up in a DPRK orphanage as a GI baby had to be rough. He knew something of Korean society, and it wasn’t tolerant of mixed-race people. People thought America was bad? American prejudice paled in comparison with Asian cultures’. A half-white child, especially from that era, would’ve been ridiculed and shunned. What did she say about her mom’s guardian? He read the note again. He was a powerful yet kind man who cared for my mother over the years and reunited us just before she died. Lauren is his child, but she has her grandfather’s eyes, and yours. Powerful could mean anything from political to military. From the sound of things, this mysterious official was significantly older than Jin if he’d cared for her mother. He hoped Lauren was the result of a consensual union.

  Nathan removed the dog tag from the note and peeled the Scotch tape. His father’s name, mcbride, matthew a., along with his serial number, was stamped deeply into his surface. They don’t make dog tags like they used to, Nathan thought. A small notch occupied the nine o’clock area of its edge. Some other stamps were also present. He turned it over, found a single drop of dried blood, and shook his head. It was amazing this tiny piece of history had survived through the years. It reminded him he needed to call his dad at some point. At least Jin had confirmed that he was unaware of having fathered her. This was going to rattle the senior senator from New Mexico to his core. Scandal would be high on his dad’s concern list. Nathan regretted the thought, knowing it was unkind and shallow. Yes, his father held an important political position, and yes, he’d be concerned about a scandal, but this would tear him up emotionally. Learning about a long-lost daughter after nearly sixty years was going to cause emotional pain. Jin had said her mom loved his dad. Nathan wondered if that love had gone both directions — and maybe still did. Harv was right: he needed to think about his mom. This wouldn’t be easy for her.

  Nathan emptied his pockets onto the bed. The piece of paper from the warehouse loomed large. So did the gunman’s cell phone from the grocery store attack. He unfolded the paper from Marchand’s office and looked at the numbers again. It was obviously a list of some sort, but for what? Probably drugs. He turned on the nightstand light and used his iPhone to take pictures of Jin’s handwritten note and both sides of the dog tag. He texted all three images to Harv’s cell.

  He changed into a fresh set of black 5.11 Tactical clothes, grabbed a spare shirt for Lauren, and reloaded his pockets with everything from the bed.

  Downstairs, he found her in the library, holding a book.

  “This is an old book.”

  He winced, thinking about her dirty fingers.

  As if reading his mind, she said. “I washed my hands. I’ve read this.”

  “It’s a classic, and it’s also a first edition, so don’t drop it.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means you’re holding the very first printing ever made of that book.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Harv gave it to me for my fortieth birthday.”

  She smiled. “That must’ve been a long time ago.”

  “Hey, watch it. Can you name any other titles from the author?”

  “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

  “Well, I see your education is well rounded. I’m impressed.” He returned Treasure Island to its shelf. “Something’s got me curious, though. When I asked you what the Big Dipper was part of, you knew the answer. I don’t think many twelve-year-olds would know about Ursa Major. Care to enlighten me?”

  “My mom taught me the constellations. Other stuff too.”

  “Like directional vectors? Is that how you understood them so well?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What about basic survival skills? Would you be able to make a fire from scratch out in the wild?”
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  “Depends on if there’s any dry material suitable for fraying.”

  Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “Let me guess: you’ve got a dragon tattoo on your back.”

  She rolled her eyes. Although the expression was designed to convey, Give me a break, he found it charming — one of several traits he liked about her.

  He handed her the shirt. “You can change in the bathroom near the laundry room. It’s that way, through the kitchen. Throw your clothes into the washer and use the quick-wash setting. The house has soft water, so you don’t need much detergent. Holler if you need help getting it going. You’ll see a pair of tennis shoes. They’re Angelica’s. Go ahead and try them on.”

  “I’m worried about my mom.”

  “You deserve the truth — that’s why I let you read the note. Your mom is going against a dangerous and cunning man. I’m planning to help her, and you can help me by staying calm. The calmer we are, the stronger we are. We’ll get through this. Together.”

  She gave him a hug. “I’m glad you’re my uncle.”

  For the second time tonight, he found himself hugging a kid. “Are you hungry?”

  “Maybe a little. Where does Angelica live?”

  He pointed to a door on the far side of the library. “It’s like a separate home, but it’s connected by a glass hallway.”

  “She’s like a maid that lives here?”

  “Not at all. I think of her as my adopted mom. Her family was killed in Nicaragua during the civil war.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Yeah, war tends to do that.”

  After Lauren changed into his shirt, he could see from her body language she felt a little insecure. She must be at that age when kids become self-conscious about their appearance. Maybe it happened at an earlier stage, probably did, but Nathan had no experience with it. He'd just act like she looked perfectly normal, despite what a good-looking kid she actually was.

  “Help yourself to something to eat. Grab anything you like.”

  “Okay, but I’ll make it for both of us.”

  “Sounds good.” He turned her loose in the kitchen and settled onto the living room sofa. Since he didn’t know if the gunman from the grocery store was in police custody, he handled the battered cell phone carefully, trying to avoid smearing any potential prints. It was a fairly cheap model that didn’t look like it had smartphone capabilities. He found the call logs and scrolled through them. One number was used frequently — could be Voda’s cell. On the voice mail screen, he saw one unplayed message, from 8:47 p.m. He tapped the button, hoping he wouldn’t need a password — most phones kept it in their memory. He’d know soon enough.

  In Spanish, Voda’s voice came out of the tiny speaker. Nathan turned the volume down. “I want both of them alive.”

  Nathan thought this message must’ve been just before the grocery store shoot-out. He tapped a message with a time stamp of 8:21 p.m.

  “Marcus is dead. Antonio and I are both wounded. Call me right away.”

  One final message was from 7:40 p.m.

  “I have the girl. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  Starting with Lauren’s kidnapping, the voice mails spanned just under an hour. Nathan believed the second message came from Voda, right after the attempted drive-by shooting on Friars Road. Antonio and Marcus were likely the two gunmen from the wreck who’d arrived in the black sedan. Nathan had been forced to shoot below the belt because of their ballistic vests. Antonio had died either from Nathan’s bullets or from Voda’s. Nathan believed the latter. Antonio was likely sitting in the back of the sedan when Voda’s arm got jarred on Friars Road.

  Nathan used the dictation app on his iPhone to record all three messages and inserted the time of each message with his own voice. Next, he found the text messaging screen and saw an entire string of texts to the phone number he’d seen most frequently in the call logs. Almost certainly, this was Voda’s cell number. He went into the kitchen.

  “It’s not ready yet,” Lauren said.

  “I’m just getting a pad and pen.”

  Nathan returned to the living room and wrote the most frequently used number on the notepad. He used his iPhone to take photos of all the remaining numbers stored in the call log. He checked the camera roll of his phone, making sure the phone numbers he’d just photographed could be read. He repeated the same procedure on the text threads. It took about twenty-five photos to capture everything. Not surprisingly, there weren’t any contacts stored in the phone. Based on the short call log and text string, Nathan felt reasonably confident Voda’s man had been mindful to delete the entries, but it hadn’t been done within the last hour before he’d lost the phone. He went back and reread the texts, looking for anything specific, and found a potential candidate. In the middle of a string, Nathan zeroed in on:

  make sure s delivers the opus xas tonight

  Nathan didn’t know what an ‘opus xas’ was, but it looked promising. The text had a time stamp of 7:44 p.m., four minutes after the voice mail message from Voda that he had Lauren. He went into the kitchen again and asked Lauren if Voda had been texting after he picked her up. Lauren said he had been, until he’d caught her doing the same. When Nathan didn’t leave the kitchen, she put her hands on her hips.

  Nathan smiled and returned to the living room, where he opened a web browser on his phone and typed opus xas into the search box. None of the listings looked encouraging. The first reference was to some kind of bistro — a bar and grill in Texas. The next five listings looked equally useless. Maybe opus xa was singular and the s made it plural. Nathan removed the s, searched again, and was rewarded with new listings.

  Master Coffin Opus X A’s were premium cigars made by Arturo Fuente. They were also expensive and rare. From what Nathan initially found, they ranged in price from seventy to one hundred dollars per stick. He checked a few listings and saw they were out of stock. Cigars like these probably had to be special-ordered. Many online cigar retailers claimed they were the most coveted cigars in the world. This definitely sounded like a viable lead, especially given that Voda’s man in Marchand’s warehouse had been smoking a cigar. Nathan hadn’t known what brand, but it had been cigar smoke, not cigarette.

  Other than this Opus reference and Voda’s cell number, the phone didn’t appear to have much usable info, but he knew the FBI would be able to dissect it more thoroughly. He’d research the Opus cigar business more deeply, but right now he wanted to concentrate on the paper from Marchand’s office. He unfolded it and placed it on the coffee table.

  Staring at the columns of numbers, he tried to see a pattern, but nothing jumped out. The parenthetical column seemed the most random. Three of the numbers were in the thirties, two were close to five thousand, but the last number, 116, didn’t seem to have anything in common with the others. Since none of the Bolivian passports had the name Hernandez on it, the list became even more cryptic. There were no dollar signs, but that didn’t mean anything.

  It sounded like Lauren was working on a gourmet meal. Whatever the case, she seemed to know her way around a kitchen. He heard drawers opening and closing and a few pots and pans clank. It could’ve been louder, though — she was making an effort to minimize the noise.

  He closed his eyes and leaned back. A little sleep wouldn’t hurt, but he couldn’t dismiss the image of another girl being in danger…

  Chapter 18

  Wearing a white nightgown, a young girl sits on a bed, her hands balled into fists. Her crying is soft but sounds forced. A mass of black hair hides her face. Without warning, she whips her head, revealing a beautiful but intense expression — like an angel on a mission. Her hair waves from an invisible source. He looks more closely. One eye is blue, the other is gone — its empty socket weeps black fluid. She stands and takes a step forward, bringing a pale hand up, pointing at him…

  “To the dryer.”

  Nathan awoke to Lauren’s startled face.

  “Are you okay?”

  He wh
ipped his head around, orienting himself. “How long?”

  She finished his question. “Were you asleep?”

  He nodded.

  “About ten minutes. You were having a nightmare, weren’t you?”

  He nodded again. “Not too bad, though. Lauren, in the future, it’s best to wake me from a distance, okay? Just yell my name, but don’t ever touch me while I’m sleeping.”

  She sounded a little irritated. “Well, okay…I said I made some mac and cheese for us and moved my clothes to the dryer.”

  The girl on the bed still haunting him, Nathan sat up and ran a hand over his face. “You made mac and cheese from scratch?”

  “It’s easy. Come on.”

  To his surprise, she had two place settings arranged on the dining room table. “You keep this up, and Angelica might be out of a job.”

  “I didn’t add a lot of butter. It’s not good for your arteries.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “I had to use jack. You didn’t have any cheddar.”

  He tried a bite. “This is really good. Thank you for making it.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Tell me something. Why did you pick Treasure Island? There are several thousand books in there. Why that one?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess I was thinking about my ring.”

  “What about it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s kinda like pirate treasure, only modern.”

  “Treasure…”

  Nathan got up from the table and hurried into the living room.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He looked at the typed list of numbers, focusing on the fourth column, but didn’t see what he was after. “When you said treasure, I thought about a map. I thought there might be coordinates, but the numbers don’t work.”

  “Why don’t the numbers work?” she asked.

  “Because GPS coordinates don’t look like this.”

  “What are they supposed to look like?”

  “Latitude and longitude numbers are followed by minutes and seconds, but these numbers don’t work and there’re no decimals for the seconds.”