No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7)(111)

He followed her down a short flight of stairs, stopping in an alcove, the men’s room on the right, the women’s on the left. She opened the door and found it empty. Devoid of any help. One more blow to her dwindling courage. She immediately looked for a method of escape, but saw it would be impossible. The only window appeared to be welded shut and was five feet off the ground.

She couldn’t believe how filthy the place was. No seats on the toilets, graffiti all over the walls, and water on the floor. She settled for relieving herself, hovering over the stained toilet. Back outside, she found Colin waiting for her. He pointed to the upstairs balcony. “Up there. Sit at the back, against the wall. I want to see them coming.”

They paused at the bar, a woman behind it with dreadlocks and a ring through her nose, a chain running from it to a hoop in her ear. Colin said, “You guys take euros?”

“Nope. Pounds only.”

He dug out his wallet, producing a credit card. “Run a tab. I’ll start with a Guinness. She’ll have a glass of water. We’ll both take a couple of baskets of fish and chips.”

The lady swiped his card and handed it back, saying, “Fifteen minutes for the food.”

While they waited on the drinks, Kylie considered what he’d said about wanting his back to the wall and wanting to see the men coming. It meant they weren’t exactly friends.

It was the reason he’d stopped here, in a large public place. He wanted the crowd to keep the men in check. After all, if they were such good buddies, and he had her safety at heart, why not just drive to their house? Why meet in a bar?

Colin handed her a glass of water and led her to a circular metal staircase, telling her to go first. The rungs were so narrow she felt as if she were standing still and turning in a circle. They reached the top, the balcony completely empty, deflating her. Driving home her lack of options. She’d again hoped to see someone. To give her a chance, no matter how small, to communicate her status.

He pointed to a couch against the wall, a small table in front of it.

He said, “I’m going to get the food. I’ll be right next to the stairs. You come down, and I’m going to hurt you.”

She said nothing, sagging back in the worn vinyl cushions and putting her head in her hands, her thoughts swirling about.

Nick’s face came into her mind’s eye, and she wondered if he was still alive. The last, vicious kick he’d taken replayed over and over, his head snapping back, his body dropping straight down. She began to weep in small, silent hitches.

She was now completely and utterly on her own. Nobody was coming to help.

She thought bitterly of her uncle, the man she’d placed so much faith in. He had failed her. She knew it wasn’t fair, but the blame filled her nonetheless. He and his pack of friends, all bragging about what they’d done on operations while she hid on the periphery, listening. She’d always believed them but now realized it was just the adoration of her youth. She rubbed her throat, feeling the absence of her pendant. An allegory for her misplaced trust.

Her uncle’s friend swam into her consciousness, and for the first time, she felt true betrayal. She was so sure he would come, like a child believing in the tooth fairy, that the realization he didn’t care crushed her will to continue.

The small bit of weeping grew, the jagged hitches so great she couldn’t breathe.






79




The argument was getting heated, but there was no way I was backing down. “Blaine, she’s climbing the wall. We need to see inside the apartment.”

“Pike, this isn’t a Spider-Man movie. It’s damn near noon. She can’t get up the backside without compromise. We take the team and hit the place with overwhelming force. It’s only a two-room apartment.”

“It was your call on the daylight hit, but no way am I setting foot in that place without intel. We could be walking into a firebox.”

Blaine said, “We’ve got the intel. Jesus, we have more than we ever did back when we used to do this shit at Bragg. We have the entire floor plan.”

The flight out of Ireland had taken as long as I thought it would, with the usual delays, but we put the time to good use, planning our next steps. The Taskforce had managed to give us a complete schematic of the entire structure the Somalis were allegedly in, and their room—318—was a corner one, with a window from the bathroom looking out into an alley and the bricks of the building next door. We’d hit the ground and rented a cargo van and a sedan, then driven straight to the target.

It was on a street called Edgware, which had the nickname of Little Beirut, but that was somewhat misleading. I’d expected it to be like other Little Arabias I’d seen in the past, in other countries. A small enclave of Middle Eastern culture, with BMO women walking about—Black Moving Objects completely covered head to toe—and men dressed in Gulf attire.

Instead, it was just a busy street in London with a few hookah-smoking establishments and a smattering of Arabic lettering on various stores. Definitely not Little Beirut, unless you were calling it that because of the international nature that city boasted in the ’60s. There were just as many westerners as people from the Middle East.

The apartment complex was set back from the street by a block of stores, a hallway leading past to the stairwell for the residences. It appeared fairly straightforward and simple to assault. Straight up the stairs and in, three rooms and ten seconds before target secure. But that intelligence was based on nothing but a sanitized piece of blueprint. It couldn’t tell us what they’d done inside. Didn’t show if they’d ringed the walls with RDX.