Beyond Limits (Tracers #8)(85)
Derek stepped back and waited.
Vincent darted another look at Elizabeth. She took out her phone and scrolled through her photos.
“Last week,” Vincent finally said.
“When last week?”
“Tuesday.”
“He alone?”
“What?”
“He come to see you alone, or did he have someone with him?”
“He had a girl with him.”
Elizabeth eased closer. “Name?” she asked.
“How should I know?”
Derek motioned for her to hand him the phone. He showed Vincent the photo of the composite drawing. “This her?”
He shrugged. “Could be.”
Derek eased closer.
“Yeah, fine. That looks like her. What the hell’s this about, anyway?”
“What did Palicek buy?” Derek asked.
“Guns. What do you think?”
“What kind?”
“A couple nines and a shorty shotgun.”
“What about an AR-15?”
“That was the time before.” He looked at Elizabeth, obviously not liking the fact that she was a cop.
A cop who hadn’t identified herself. A cop who was—for all intents and purposes—assaulting a suspect in an alley. She looked at Derek.
“What else?” Derek’s voice was tight.
“What do you mean?”
“What else did you sell them? C-4? Det cord? Willie Pete?”
“No way.”
Derek slammed him against the Dumpster. “Don’t lie to me, you piece of shit.” He shoved his arm against his throat and pressed until the guy’s face turned red.
“Detonators,” he choked out.
Derek backed off, and Vincent clutched his neck, wheezing.
“He wanted some detonators, okay? I sold him some.”
“Where’d you get them?” Derek demanded.
“People I know. I’m a businessman.”
Elizabeth’s mind was reeling. She wanted to get out of there and call Gordon.
“What else? What’d you sell the woman?”
“An SR-25. Shit. Look, this isn’t personal, all right? It’s business.”
“Business? It’s called treason, motherfucker. It’s called murdering innocent people.”
Suddenly, Derek’s arm snaked around her. He jerked the handcuffs from her waistband and slapped a bracelet on Vincent.
“Hey!”
A loud clink as Derek snapped the other bracelet to the bar on the front of the Dumpster. Then he was frisking the guy.
“Derek, what—”
“Hey, that’s my phone!” Vincent yelped.
“It’s mine now.” He turned to Elizabeth. “Let’s go.”
“You can’t just leave me here!”
He grabbed Elizabeth by the arm and propelled her down the alley and around the side of the building.
“Derek, what the hell are we doing? We can’t leave him there like that!”
“He’s a squirter.” He tossed the cell phone at her, and she caught it one-handed.
“A what?”
“If we let him go, the second we leave he’ll be out the back door, calling up everyone in his distribution chain. This way you guys can arrest him.” He looked at her. “What? You should be thanking me.”
He popped the locks on his truck and jumped behind the wheel. She slid inside. “Are you crazy?”
“No. But I’m a little pressed for time.” He shoved the truck into gear and rocketed backward out of the space. “Check out that phone. See if there’s anything from Rasheed or Ameen.”
Elizabeth’s heart hammered as she stared down at the phone.
This was bad. Everything about this was bad. And that didn’t even take into account the extremely illegal “apprehension” they’d just made.
“Stop the truck.”
He looked at her.
“Stop the truck! I need to think a second.”
“No can do.”
“But—what’s an SR-25?”
He shot her a look. “You really don’t know?”
“What is it?”
“A sniper rifle.”
Chapter Twenty-three
She blinked at him across the truck. “A sniper rifle.”
“That’s right.”
“But I thought he sold them bomb-making components?”
“He did.”
Elizabeth clutched Vincent’s phone in her hand. She dumped it into the cup holder and took out her own.
“Who are you calling?” he asked.
“Gordon.”
It went straight to voice mail. She left him an urgent message and hung up.
“We have to figure out the target,” she said.
“That would be useful right about now. My contact at the Delphi Center’s been analyzing the comments on that home-improvement blog. He called me an hour ago and told me he thinks someone posted a launch code.”
“Where are you going?”
“The hospital,” he said. “Maybe the motel clerk knows something. Maybe she saw Fatima leaving for work, wearing some kind of uniform. Or maybe she chatted her up and she mentioned her job.”