CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

 

 

Micah sat across from Frank at the conference table in meeting room B. Only five minutes had passed since they’d entered this room, but it had seemed like hours. They were no closer to discovering what to do next. Micah wasn’t sure anymore why they were even here.

Frank got up and wandered over to the window, looked out on the endless rows of condos wearing mountain peaks for hats. Living room lights flickered down on the town.

“Think they’re coming back?” Frank said.

“I do.”

“Maybe we set up on either side of the door, snatch them when they walk in.”

“Not sure what good that does us, though,” Micah said. “You can apprehend Zaluski for missing his court appearance, but then Nathan walks away, hops on a plane, and he’s gone.”

“Fair point, kid. Maybe we need to be somewhere we can watch from the outside. Then we bust in on their meeting after it’s started. But even that won’t help if there’s no hard evidence. This is a shitty hand we’ve been dealt.”

Micah’s phone rang, but he ignored it. It buzzed against his thigh, and he assumed it was some telemarketer. He never answered numbers he didn’t recognize. This call, though, he didn’t bother to check the caller ID. Little busy right now. “Whatever we do, sitting here is not the answer.”

“Right,” Frank said. “Let’s go. Get a better vantage point.”

“Top of the parking garage?”

“Something like that.”

Micah led as they walked toward the conference room exit. But, as he reached out a hand to grasp the doorknob, it opened inward at him.

Micah found himself staring at two men, one of them a little pudgy and balding, the other well-built, with a square jaw. For a second, no one did or said anything. Micah figured the look of surprise on his own face must have matched the looks on these two.

They weren’t expecting to find him here. They were expecting to find Nathan, Alec, and Zaluski. Was it meeting time, or were these two a scouting party? Or a raiding party?

The brawny one reached a hand into his coat pocket, and Micah saw the butt of a pistol jutting from a shoulder holster. He shot out a fist to punch the guy in the forearm. The guy jerked his hand away from the gun, and Micah reached into his back pocket for his taser.

He’d almost managed to pull it out when the brawny guy jabbed his hands under Micah’s armpits, knocking him back. The taser flew from his hands and tumbled onto the soft carpet of the meeting room. Out of reach.

As Micah stumbled backward, trying not to fall on his butt, he caught sight of Frank struggling to raise his gun. The pudgy one (cops, they had to be cops) cracked a right hook across Frank’s jaw so suddenly that Frank’s body twisted and flailed, landing on the edge of a conference chair.

His gun flew out of his grasp.

Frank grabbed at the chair and flung it toward the pudgy cop. It scooted across the carpet and hit him in the stomach, forcing him to bend over.

Micah regained his footing and leaped forward. Didn’t know where his taser was, and he didn’t have time to find it. The brawny cop would have that gun out in a second and could kill both of them with two quick yanks of the trigger.

As he sailed through the air, Micah tucked into a somersault. He pointed his body at the brawny cop’s legs. He bowled into the man’s knees before he’d had a chance to move out of the way.

The cop toppled over Micah’s back, unintentionally pinning him. Micah scrambled to get free, but the cop’s weight pressed down, a giant block of flesh keeping him locked in his somersault position.

A gunshot sounded. Deafening.

The noise in the room collapsed under the pressure of Micah’s ringing ears. He felt the cop above him shifting his weight, and Micah struggled against his confinement but couldn’t get his legs underneath him.

Micah looked up to see Frank and the pudgy cop wrestling for control of his gun. Bits of pulverized tile floating down from the ceiling like snow falling in the room. Beige flakes dotted Frank’s gray hair like dandruff.

Micah turned onto his back, and the brawny cop was now kneeling on his chest. The cop saw his advantage, grinned, and swung a fist down on Micah’s nose. Micah felt the whiff of the air as that meaty hand came crashing down on him.

His eyes instantly filled with tears. He could feel the cop rearing back to punch him again, so he wrenched his left shoulder up with all his might, and it shifted the cop enough off balance that he could get a hand up and grasp the guy’s hip. Micah rolled his body as he pressed, knocking the cop to the side.

The cop landed on the floor, his head thudding against the metal base of a chair. Bleary-eyed, disoriented. That wouldn’t last long.

Micah scrambled to his knees in a flash, whipped out one of the zip ties he was carrying in his back pocket. He grabbed one of the brawny cop’s hands and pushed it up his back, a few inches away from breaking the guy’s arm. Forced the struggling man’s face into the carpet. Micah pressed his knee on the guy’s wrist to keep it in place, then grabbed one hand and pushed it next to the other. He looped the zip tie over the joined wrists and yanked it tight.

The brawny cop yelped and Micah jumped to his feet, then he grabbed a conference chair and slammed it into the cop’s head. Now dazed, he quieted and closed his eyes.

Frank.

Micah spun to find his boss standing behind the pudgy cop, Frank’s hands under the guy’s armpits and laced behind his head. The cop was thrashing but couldn’t break free. For now, at least. Frank was leaning back to keep the restrained man from throwing him forward.

“Little help here,” Frank said, struggling to keep his leverage. He backed up to the wall, and the pudgy cop jabbed an elbow in Frank’s gut. Frank moaned but didn’t let go.

Micah dropped to a knee and looped zip ties around the cop’s ankles, then Frank wrenched the guy’s hands into place so Micah could restrain his wrists.

The cop tried to get away, but with his ankles tied, the first step sent him crashing onto the floor, next to his buddy.

“Let’s go,” Micah said. People outside would have heard that gunshot. Nathan and Zaluski were probably on their way here, with backup. Micah and Frank had lost their element of surprise, so the only option was to flee and regroup. “Out of here, now.”

Frank snatched his gun up off the floor and they dashed out of the room. A young couple cowered in the hallway nearby, the young man standing in front of the woman, shielding her.

“Get out of here!” Frank bellowed at them.

Micah and Frank sprinted along the hall, back toward the lobby. Micah heard Frank wheezing, but the old man didn’t slow down.

Micah’s phone rang again, and without thinking, he yanked it from his pocket and answered it.

“Hello?”

“Micah, it’s Gavin Belmont. I wasn’t going to come, but I started thinking about—”

“Wait, what? Going to come?” Micah rounded the corner in the lobby to find a dozen or more people standing around, looking concerned, asking each other what they had heard. But no Nathan. No Zaluski. “You’re in Vail?”

“I am. I’m out walking through Vail Village right now.”

“We’re at Mountain Haus.”

“Really? I was just over there.”

“Get your ass back here,” Micah shouted. “It’s happening, right now. It’s all about to get real messy if we don’t do something to stop it.”

 

***

 

Across the street from Mountain Haus, nestled in the shelter of the bus stop, Nathan and Zaluski watched it all happen. Two of those plainclothes police officers had come out of the parking garage and entered the condo building. Nathan might not have even realized they were cops if one of them hadn’t adjusted his jacket, which briefly exposed the badge clipped to his belt.

These were not cops Nathan knew. Had to be Everett’s men.

Nathan’s pocket buzzed and he fished out his phone.

“Yep.”

“Nathan, it’s me.”

Took Nathan a second to recognize Scott’s voice. Scott worked in logistics at the company in Broomfield, one of the few people who knew what was going on in that boarded-up side warehouse. Nathan hated to involve outsiders in the organization, but Scott had been instrumental in keeping the space private. Someone local who was full-time and could keep an eye on things. Plus, keeping him quiet was inexpensive, which Nathan appreciated.

“What’s up?” Nathan said. “Make it quick, please. This isn’t a good time.”

“I wouldn’t call unless it was important, Nate. It’s the warehouse.”

Nathan felt his chest tighten. “Go on.”

“Everything is falling apart. Someone got in there last night, stole all the product, called the cops. There were detectives, crime scene people, reporters. It’s all a big mess.”

Nathan leaned forward and gripped his forehead with his free hand.

“What is it?” Zaluski said.

Nathan waved him off. “What do they know?”

“I’m not sure,” Scott said. “I haven’t been able to find out much. But I haven’t told you the worst part. It’s Alec.”

“What about Alec?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this. Your brother… he was near the warehouse. Someone stabbed him to death and then dumped him there. Doused him with bleach. I’m so sorry, Nate.”

Nathan’s mouth grew suddenly dry. A throbbing ache came from behind his eyes and made him woozy. He drew several deep breaths to keep from passing out. “I see. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“That’s all I know.”

Nathan hung up the phone, then he let it slip out of his hand and fall to the ground in front of the park bench. The clattering sounded far away, like an echo.

“What’s going on?” Zaluski said.

Nathan leaned forward and picked up his phone. “We’re fucked, that’s what’s going on. They sold us out. You were right about Alec. You were right the whole time.”

“Alec was arrested?”

“No,” Nathan said. “He’s dead.”

“What do we do?”

Before Nathan could answer, an old black man and a younger white man came sprinting out of the front of Mountain Haus. Running like someone was after them. Probably those cops who had gone in a few minutes before.

In a moment, Nathan recognized the white guy. Micah Reed.

But Alec was supposed to have taken care of Micah. And that meant if Micah was here instead, then he had killed Alec. He had probably surprised Alec, murdered him, and then ditched his body at the warehouse to tie the whole thing to Nathan.

Micah was at the heart of this whole betrayal, not Everett and his cop buddies. Micah had killed Nathan’s only brother.

Micah.

This Micah was the one who had invaded his surgical room at the warehouse in Broomfield, had turned it over to the police. Had to be. The room Nathan had spent years developing, outfitting, securing. And in one night, this shithead had ruined it.

Nathan wanted to scream, to run, to tear Micah’s head from his neck. Instead, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to calm down. Think. He needed to think.

Zaluski grabbed Nathan’s arm. “There. That’s the cocksucker who attacked me by the hangar. Let’s kill that piece of shit.”

“No,” Nathan said. “Not yet. We need to get up to The 10th on the mountain. Get our guns. Then we come back and we will kill those two, and Welker, and all of these sons of bitches.”