CHAPTER NINETEEN
LEO
“You should stay in the car,” Jack says to me when we arrive in the general area where the stolen van was parked or possibly abandoned.
I look over to Jack, hoping he isn’t serious. But there’s no hint of joking on his face. He means it.
“We’re partners, Jack,” I remind him forcefully, taking off my seat belt. “We do this together. I swear, I’ll have your back.”
Jack doesn’t look at all convinced by my promise. He just shakes his head, puffing in annoyance and getting out of the passenger seat.
I get out of the car too and survey our surroundings. As Dru said, we’re deep into the countryside now. There’s nothing but fields and hedges for miles. I’ve parked in a dirt lay-by, intending to walk down the road and see if we can catch sight of the van. It should be pretty easy to find, considering how open and empty everything is. We’re hardly likely to mistake a stray cow for a van.
Jack already has Siggy out of its holster, held down low and tapping lightly against his thigh. He gives me an impatient look and jerks his head, indicating that he’s going to start walking down the road.
I close my door and move around the car to join Jack. Together, we stay close to the large, unkept hedge which runs along both sides of the road.
“At least stay behind me,” Jack pleads, “since I’m the one with the real gun.”
Since getting aggy with him would likely lead to another spiteful argument between us, I don’t bite back like I want to. Instead, I push at his shoulder, gesturing for him to get moving.
Jack doesn’t seem happy to go on without my agreement that I’ll stay behind him, but tough shit. I’m willing to work with him as a unit and respect his superior skill set when relevant. But I refuse to be treated like some incapable civilian by him.
When Jack does eventually start walking, I speak to his back.
“You told me to stop treating you like a child,” I say quietly, knowing he’ll hear me with his superior ears. “Same for me, thanks.”
Jack offers a grunt of acknowledgement, but he does allow a bit more space between us, which I choose to take as a show of trust.
We trudge along the country road for about ten minutes until we find the van, abandoned as I suspected, next to a large tree in the middle of an equally expansive field.
It’s immediately clear the van has been left by its last users. No one else is visible in the immediate area, and there is another set of tyre marks on the field to indicate another car drove in and out of the field other than the van.
Still, Jack and I are watchful as we make our way towards the medium-sized white van, just in case our kidnappers have managed to hide somewhere.
When we reach the van, I circle it slowly as Jack goes to the back.
It seems like a mistake to me they didn’t just burn the van. If they wanted to get rid of any physical evidence, setting the van on fire would be the best and easiest way to accomplish that.
Once I give the all-clear sign and go to join Jack, he opens the van’s back doors, Siggy drawn in case there’s a surprise waiting for us inside.
As it turns out, there is. Just not the sort that a gun could ever solve.
The smell hits first, like a solid punch to the nose. Tangy and potent. Decaying flesh. Death.
It’s an unmistakable odour, and one I’ve had far too much experience with since becoming a FISA agent.
Laid down in the back of the van is a dead body. From pictures we’ve been shown, I recognise the body as belonging to our missing scientist.
Ryan Rush was a tall, blond man whose blue eyes now stare out blankly to his left.
There are no bullet wounds on the body that I can see, so it’s unlikely he was shot dead. His neck isn’t angled awkwardly as if snapped either. He looks perfectly fine except for the utter blankness of his open eyes.
Besides Rush’s body, there isn’t anything else in the van to indicate it was ever used by anyone.
This whole thing strikes me as bizarre. There are so many questions that still need answering.
Why take Rush in the first place if they were just going to kill him straightaway? Unless killing him was the objective. Maybe he knew something, and they wanted to shut him up before he could tell anyone?
