Mercury Rising, page 12
From the master bedroom, she heard the rattling of keys in the front door followed by the deadbolt clicking. For a moment, joy overtook her, surprised by her luck that she’d shown up the same day that her brother returned home. But then she remembered that time she’d been at her friend’s apartment in Washington while in the bathroom and he had unexpected guests. He’d died a gruesome death—and she’d managed to stay hidden until the attackers fled.
Grace swallowed her excitement and crept into the closet in the master bedroom. She hadn’t brought in a purse and left it on a chair somewhere—and she hadn’t set anything else down on the counters, her phone still jammed into her back pocket, her keys digging into her thighs from her front pocket. She pulled the door shut, peering through the slats. All she heard were faint footsteps from someone silently ambling down the hall.
“Hello?” called a woman, her voice feeble and tinged with a Spanish accent. “Hello? Mr. Gordon? Is anyone here?”
Grace doubted that any cold-blooded killer sounded like an abuelita, so she ventured back into the bedroom and called out.
“Yes, I’m here,” she said. “Who is that?”
“It’s Lupe,” the woman said. “Is Mr. Gordon here?”
Grace sensed the situation was safe, yet she proceeded with caution, peeking around the corner into the hallway. The woman was facing in the opposite direction, but didn’t look an inch over five-feet tall, though she was pushing five feet around. The portly woman sported a well-worn dress and frayed sandals. Her feet and the scant portion of her exposed calves were covered in splotches of dirt. A pair of ragged braids hung low over her shoulders, nearly reaching below her waist.
“Hi, Lupe,” Grace said, keeping her voice low and calm. “I’m Grace, Slade’s sister.”
The woman spun around and glared at Grace. “Who did you say you were?”
“Grace, Slade’s sister. And I’m sorry I startled you.”
“I didn’t know Mr. Gordon was expecting anyone. He usually tells me.”
Grace walked slowly toward the woman, whose face was smeared with dirt and dappled with sweat. “It must’ve slipped his mind.”
The woman shrugged and waved dismissively. “I don’t care anyway. I just came to get my money since he hasn’t paid me in almost a month.”
“He hasn’t paid you? That’s unlike my brother. I know he’s been out of town for a while on business and—”
“It hasn’t been that long, and I keep this place in the best condition, muy limpia,” she said.
Grace nodded. “It sure is. And it’s nice to see. Slade isn’t the neatest of people.”
“Actually, he keeps it pretty clean. It’s probably that woman who’s usually with him, but I don’t complain. It makes my job easy.”
The mention of a woman caught Grace off guard. He’d never mentioned another woman before. But it also ignited an idea.
“Can I ask you a question, Señora —”
“Bautista. Lupe Bautista.”
“Well, Señora Bautista, just how long ago did my brother hire you?”
The woman pursed her plump lips and looked up, calculating an answer. “Maybe six, seven months. I don’t know.”
Grace nodded, Lupe’s answer sparking more questions. That was about the last time she remembered speaking to him, other than once a few months earlier. But in hindsight, that interaction had seemed off to her, almost as if it wasn’t him. Or at least, he wasn’t speaking on his own volition. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she could just tell something wasn’t right. Maybe he was under stress—or maybe it wasn’t him at all. Regardless, she knew he hadn’t been in Miami at the time.
“Have you seen him since you hired him?” Grace asked.
“Once. He was here unexpectedly during one of my scheduled cleanings. He paid me but told me just to come back the next week at the regular time.”
Grace dug her phone out of her pocket, her mind whirring with possibilities. She swiped to a picture of them together and then held her screen out for Lupe to see.
“Was this him?” Grace asked.
Lupe squinted as if she couldn’t see the image clearly. She removed her glasses and brought the phone closer to her face, then shook her head.
“No, that’s not him,” she said. “Are you trying to test me?”
Grace forced a smile as she took back the phone. “Lupe, you are very sharp. Now I know why my brother hired you.”
Then out of habit, Grace scrolled quickly through a few more pictures before pocketing the device.
“That’s him,” Lupe said, reaching for the phone.
Grace furrowed her brow. “Who’s him?”
“The man in that last picture before you put your phone away. That’s your brother.”
Grace removed her phone and tried to steady her hand.
Who had Lupe seen?
Grace swiped on the screen, unlocking it. She returned to the photo album and the last picture that had been displayed.
It was Blake Barrett.
“That’s him,” Lupe said, jabbing a finger at the screen. “That’s your brother. He’s the one who hired me.
“Are you sure?” Grace asked, narrowing her eyes.
Lupe nodded emphatically. “No doubt about it. He’s been here with that woman and another man.”
“Oh, there’s three of them?”
“I’ve only seen them once, as I told you. But when I did, that woman was with him and another guy. They look like tough people.”
Grace took a deep breath. “Out of curiosity, Lupe, how far away were you when you saw them?”
“When I walked in the house, your brother was in the kitchen,” Lupe said. “He poked his head around the corner and waved, telling me I could go home. So I did.”
Grace estimated the distance was about ten meters. And based on the size of Lupe’s thick glass bottle glasses, the cleaning lady’s vision was unreliable. But Grace wanted to make sure.
She escorted Lupe to the entryway before telling her to stay where she was. Then Grace walked back to the kitchen and snagged a magazine out of a small collection tucked away neatly beneath the counter. She thumbed through it until she found an advertisement of a woman standing on a veranda in a shimmering dress.
“What do you think of this man?” Grace asked, holding up the magazine.
Lupe’s face lit up. “Oh, he’s very handsome. Muy guapo.”
Back to square one.
Grace walked back, digging out some cash from her pocket. “How much did my brother owe you?”
“He paid me a hundred a week to do a short cleaning.”
Grace counted out five twenty-dollar bills and then handed them to the woman. “I’ll check on my brother and find out what happened to his account. I’m sure he still wants you. Plan on coming by next week like usual.”
“Gracias,” Lupe said as she nodded before turning and leaving.
Grace locked the door behind the woman and then retreated to the sofa. She sat down and leaned back, her head swimming with questions, more questions than she’d had before she made the trip down to Miami.
Something wasn’t quite right, but she sat up, took a deep breath, and determined to press on, vowing not to stop until she figured out who her brother really worked for and why she hadn’t heard from him.
She opened her purse and looked at the special phone Blake Barrett had given her for emergency situations. He’d told her it was encrypted, unable to be traced or monitored. But he’d emphasized it was only for emergencies. For a moment she debated whether or not she should use it.
This feels like an emergency to me.
She dialed the secret number he’d given her, the only one saved in the phone’s address book. It rang and rang. No answer. No voicemail.
Grace was starting to feel like something was terribly wrong.
Col. Sanders’ phone rang twice. Aggravated that someone had interrupted his moment of solace with a glass of mint julep, he placed his drink down with a loud thump on the end table before he answered the call.
“What do you want?” he growled.
“Sir, I’ve been trailing Grace Gordon, and I need to warn you that she’s becoming a bit of a problem,” said the man on the other end of the line. “She just tried calling the number to a burner phone.”
Sanders sat up straight. “Barrett’s?”
“That’s what I think, but there’s no way to know for sure.”
“And?”
“Nothing. That number’s been dark since Barrett was captured. But she’s not going to give up.”
“How much does she know?” Sanders asked, his jaw tightening.
“She’s asking the right questions and seems puzzled by the whereabouts of her brother. She’s not the type to just let this go.”
Sanders stared at his mint julep, watching the ice slowly melt. He’d obtained his power by eliminating problems before they became disasters. He couldn’t help but wonder if a disaster was brewing right beneath his nose. Yet addressing it now was risky. The timing had to be perfect, an art he’d mastered.
“She’ll most likely hit nothing but dead ends,” Sanders said. “We just need to monitor her. Intervening now has the potential to create more problems for us.”
“There are other ways to deal with someone like her, as you well know. Maybe we can use one of those ways that will ensure she never causes problems for us again.”
Sanders grunted. “Patience. Dealing with her like that is like opening Pandora’s Box. We don’t want to start any unnecessary trouble.”
“I’m not sure she hasn’t already.”
“In due time if she continues to be a nuisance, I’ll let you handle her. But in the meantime, just keep an eye on her—and don’t even think of making a move without talking to me first. Is that clear?”
“Crystal clear, sir.”
“Good,” Sanders said before he punched off the call.
He knew Grace Gordon could become a problem, but without her brother or Blake Barrett to step in on her behalf, she would never be able to do much about it, even if she figured out who was behind everything and why.
Sanders ended the call and took a long sip of his drink. The victory he’d been savoring suddenly tasted bitter.
Barrett might be dead, but his ghost was still causing problems.
CHAPTER 16
TENERIFE, CANARY ISLANDS
The three-day journey by boat from the Azores to Tenerife had ranked near the top of Blake Barrett’s worst life experiences. Stocked with sufficient rations, he rode in a small compartment shipping container stuffed into the back of the cargo hold. With dark and dank conditions, the trio survived on snack food, a barely ample water supply, and a five-gallon bucket for their waste, the latter of which required a covert mission to empty it topside after the smell became too unbearable. Barrett avoided three men patrolling the deck in what he claimed was one of his most satisfying missions of his career.
Upon reaching the harbor, Barrett, Watts, and Stone filed down the ramp with an armload of supplies, slipping in line behind several local dock workers. No one was the wiser before they vanished into the port.
Barrett led his team into a resort at one of the nearby beaches before identifying a back entrance for the hotel staff that was propped open, presumably for an employee on a smoke break. They slipped inside, dispersed to the proper locker rooms, and showered. Once clean, they all donned resort uniforms while washing their clothes. After roaming the grounds, Barrett identified a computer he could use to see if there was any news that suggested they’d survived.
He wasted no time performing a cursory search and was relieved to learn that everyone aboard was presumed dead. However, the fact that their names weren’t mentioned in the C-130 crash piqued his curiosity. He dug deeper and found out they were all mentioned in another story about a prison riot where they all died. That was all he needed to read to know that they’d been set up—and that the mention of the riot was a way Col. Sanders or any other government bureaucrat involved could avoid getting interrogated over their deaths in the Atlantic since they were being transported through back channels and not in any official capacity.
Was anyone looking for them?
Barrett wondered if they were truly presumed dead with the rest of the crew, something he was inclined to believe since another story had been fabricated about them to cover their deaths. But he’d been around the military and Washington long enough to know that was standard “cover your ass” behavior. Col. Sanders could still very well be combing the waters for their bodies, something he wouldn’t know unless he was there. But at the very least, stealing away to Tenerife bought them some time. Until he knew more, his biggest challenge was figuring out a way to get off the island and return to the U.S. with proper documentation. He had an idea, but he wasn’t sure if it was a safe one.
Barrett returned to the employee locker room where Stone and Watts were waiting with their clothes fresh and clean. After a brief conversation in hushed tones, Barrett eyed a cell phone and discreetly snagged it off a table. He turned it off and then on again, testing to see if there was a passcode. When he got in without any trouble, he turned it off once more and pocketed the device.
After the trio exited through the employee gate, Barrett waited until they were out of earshot of anyone else before asking Watts and Stone what they thought of his idea.
“Are you crazy?” Stone asked. “That’ll set off alarm bells in every agency in Washington. We might as well broadcast our location too and dare anyone to come get us.”
Watts gave him a sideways glance. “Why are you always so dramatic? Let me guess—you were a theater kid?”
Stone scowled. “I once played Tevye in a production of Fiddler on the Roof when I was in college, but I’m not sure I understand what you’re—”
“Let’s stay focused,” Barrett said, cutting off what he assumed would soon devolve into a spat, something they didn’t have time for. “Now, Stoney, I’m not stupid. We’re not going to use our real names, but we all have secret aliases that we can use, right? The kind that we never used while working with any federal agency?”
Stone and Watts both nodded.
“So, we use those names,” Barrett said. “We can take pictures and distort them on Photoshop just enough that they look like us in person but won’t put us in danger with facial recognition. Sound good?”
They both nodded.
“Good,” Barrett said. “I’ll initiate that process. In the meantime, you two figure out a place for us to lie low.”
“What about the mission?” Stone said. “The one where Father Miguel was sending all the extra rations?”
“I think we can make that happen,” Watts said.
Barrett wrote down the address while he retreated back to the city to make a call. As he walked along a dusty road, he passed other employees who worked at various resorts on the island. On its face, most people would’ve thought they were very different—poor islanders working hard to prop up a luxurious resort versus a trained operative well versed in the ways of espionage. But upon a closer inspection, Barrett realized they were more alike than they appeared. He, too, was a relatively poor man working hard to prop up the military apparatus that engorged the bank accounts of powerful men and women.
No more.
Barrett had learned enough from his conversation with Admiral Becker to know that whatever Col. Sanders had done, it was something he was desperate to keep a secret. Desperate enough to kill for. The key to untethering himself to the Colonel’s all-encompassing web was to expose him for who he really was—and what he was really doing. And it wasn’t something he could do behind a computer screen hiding on Tenerife. No, this was the kind of evil that needed to be confronted face to face, in person. This was the kind of darkness that could only be purged by being dragged out of the shadows and exposed in the light. After all, Barrett had always been told that sunshine was the best disinfectant—and he intended to prove that maxim was indeed true once again.
But everything depended on a phone call. And he wasn’t sure what kind of reception he’d get, both figuratively and literally.
After walking for a half mile, he veered off onto a dirt path that ascended a small hillside. Once he reached the top, he dialed the number to the encrypted phone he’d given Grace Gordon.
“Hello?” she said, her voice shaky, unsure.
“Grace, this is Blake. Sorry about the crazy number, but I’m in a jam and was hoping you could help me.”
“Thank God you’re still alive,” she said. “I tried calling you yesterday, but you didn’t answer.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I can’t really explain why right now, but I really need your help.”
“I’m not sure how I can help, but whatever you need.”
“You told me that you made a friend at the State Department when you went to Congo with Doctors without Borders.”
“Yeah.”
“So, a couple of friends of mine and I need a favor,” he said. “We need new passports.”
“What happened to your old ones?”
Barrett grimaced. He didn’t want to lie to her, but she was asking too many questions. The less she knew the better.
“How familiar are you with the concept of plausible deniability?” he asked.
“Come on, Blake. Don’t patronize me. I grew up in the shadow of Washington. That’s practically a required high school course in these parts. In college, you can major in it.”
“All right. I get it. You understand what I’m talking about, which is why I hope you understand why I can’t tell you anything further regarding why I need your help to make this happen. Can you do this for me?”
“Just text me whatever it is I need to pass along and I’ll see if my friend can help you. Now, where are you?”
“Again, I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you that you need to have your friend send the new passports to the U.S. embassy in Tenerife.”
“The U.S. has an embassy in Tenerife?”
