Unfortunately, having left his night-vision goggles in his rented car, he’d lost her in the darkness of the dense woods.
“The FBI just passed by,” he told Bishop as he hopped back onto the road. “Probably tracking her phone. I suspect she tossed it.”
“They won’t find her. Not before you do.”
Pavel was happy to hear the certainty in Bishop’s voice.
Then again, why wouldn’t the man be certain? After all, how many targets had Pavel neutralized for Bishop? A dozen? Two dozen? More?
When Bishop called, Pavel answered. Not only did Bishop pay well, but his ambitions closely aligned with Pavel’s.
Bishop was after total societal collapse. The ruination of the American Dream. The spectacular downfall of thatshining city on the hill, as Ronald Reagan had so often called the United States of America.
Pavel snorted at the audacity.Imagine believing your country is such a beacon of hope for the world that you would refer to it in biblical terms.
Things had changed in the decades since The Gipper occupied the oval office, and some of those things could be laid directly at the feet of the man himself. The seedy underbelly of American society had been exposed. All the corruption. All the bigotry, hate, racism and greed.
Pavel was happy to say he had not only watched the unmasking but had also played a part in it. Continued to play his part by irradicating any threats to people like Bishop.
Grace Beacham was a threat. One they’d hoped to easily nullify by making her look like a murderer. But the instant she’d run from the authorities, all bets were off. Her life was now forfeit.
Foolish woman.
“Give me the numbers for the plates,” Bishop instructed. “I’ll run them through the system. We need to find out who we’re dealing with. Although, I think I already know.”
“Do you?” Pavel’s tone brightened with interest. “Who?”
“Trouble,” Bishop said cryptically.
After Pavel rattled off the letters and numbers, he took one final drag on his cigarette. Tossing the butt onto the pavement, he crushed the smoldering tip with his bootheel and cut a sharp left, back into the trees. Back to the spot where he’d parked the rented car.
“What would you have me do now?” he asked as he opened the driver’s side door and slid inside the vehicle.
“Cross your fingers I’m wrong about who has her. But head west toward Chicago all the same.”
For the first time ever, Pavel detected a hint of apprehension in Bishop’s altered voice. He was quick to reassure the man. “Trouble comes with the territory, yes? The plan has changed. But the outcome will be the same.”
“If she’s with who I think she’s with? Things could get far more…complicated.”
“I live for complications,” he boasted. “They are the spice of life.”
He disconnected the call without signing off. After pocketing the phone, he whistled his favorite tune.
Hunting humans always put a song in his heart and a skip in his step.
5
Black Knights Inc.
Hunter had assumed Grace’s rattled nerves were the reason she’d spent the entire ninety-minute ride from Indiana to Chicago squirming around on the back of his bike.
As soon as they pulled up to the giant iron gates that kept the city of Chicago and all its inhabitants out of the BKI compound, however, he realized her nerves had nothing to do with her backseat boogie.
“Oh, thank god,” she breathed when he cut the engine. “Ten more minutes and I might’ve pulled a Harry to your Lloyd.”
“Huh?”
He’d like to blame his inarticulate response on lack of sleep. He’d only gotten a couple hours before the dream of her had wrenched him awake. And it was now going on six o’clock in the morning. But he knew the real reason he went all tongue-tied and ineloquent was because the instant he’d turned to look at her, he’d been struck by her eyes.
