Hunting Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #3)

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

The sun set quickly in the overcast sky as the quadcopter raced north to deliver its cargo, one determined CIA operative and father, to the Starlight Motel in New Jersey.

His ETA was five minutes. A message on the screen blinked a warning: Prepare to deploy. He glanced out the side of the cockpit and saw, far below, that they were soaring over a wide industrial park of boxy warehouses and manufacturing facilities, sitting silent and dark, illuminated only by the dots of orange streetlights.

He unzipped the black duffel bag sitting in his lap. Inside he found two holsters and two guns. Reid struggled out of his jacket in the tiny cockpit and put on the shoulder rig that held a Glock 22, standard-issue—none of Bixby’s high-tech biometric trigger locks like he had with the Glock 19. He pulled his jacket back on and tugged up the leg of his jeans to attach the ankle holster that held his backup weapon of choice, the Ruger LC9. It was a compact pistol with a stubby barrel, nine-millimeter caliber in a nine-round expanded box magazine that stuck out just an inch and a half further than the grip.

He had one hand on the rappelling crossbar, ready to disembark from the manned drone as soon as they reached a safe altitude and speed. He was just about to tug the headset from his ears when Watson’s voice came through it.

“Zero.”

“Nearly there. Just under two minutes—”

“We just got another photo, Kent,” Watson cut him off. “Sent to your daughter’s phone.”

Icy fingers of panic gripped Reid’s heart. “Of them?”

“Sitting on a bed,” Watson confirmed. “Looks like it could be the motel.”

“The number it came from, can it be traced?” Reid asked hopefully.

“Sorry. He already ditched it.”

His hope deflated. Rais was smart; so far he had sent photos of only where he had been, not where he was. If there was any chance of Agent Zero catching up to him, the assassin wanted it to be on his terms. For the entire ride in the quadcopter, Reid had been nervously optimistic about the motel lead, anxious that they had might have caught up to Rais’s game.

But if there was a photo… then there was a good chance they had already moved on.

No. You can’t think like that. He wants you to find him. He chose a motel in the middle of nowhere specifically for that reason. He’s baiting you. They’re here. They have to be.

“Were they okay? Did they look… are they hurt…?”

“They looked okay,” Watson told him. “Upset. Scared. But okay.”

The message on the screen changed, blinking in red: Deploy. Deploy.

Regardless of the photo or his thoughts, he’d arrived. He had to see for himself. “I have to go.”

“Make it quick,” Watson told him. “One of my guys is calling in a false lead at the motel matching Rais’s and your daughters’ description.”

“Thanks, John.” Reid pulled off the headset, made sure he had a tight grip on the rappel bar, and stepped out of the quadcopter.

The controlled descent of fifty feet to the ground was faster than he anticipated and took his breath away. The familiar thrill, the rush of adrenaline, coursed through his veins as wind roared in his ears. He bent his knees slightly on approach and touched down onto asphalt in a crouch.

As soon as he released the rappel bar the line zipped back up to the quadcopter, and the drone buzzed away into the night, returning to wherever it had come from.

Reid glanced around quickly. He was in the parking lot of a warehouse across the street from the dingy motel, dimly lit by only a few yellow bulbs outside. A hand-painted sign facing the street told him that he was in the right place.

He scanned left and right as he hurried across the empty street. It was quiet here, eerily quiet. There were three cars in the lot, each spaced out along the row of rooms facing him—and one of them was clearly the white SUV that had been stolen from the used car lot in Maryland.

It was parked right outside of a room with a brass number 9 on the door.

There were no lights on inside; it didn’t seem like anyone was staying there at the moment. Even so, he dropped his bag just outside the door and listened carefully for about three seconds.

He didn’t hear anything, so he pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster and kicked the door in.

The jamb splintered easily as the door flew open and Reid stepped inside, the gun level at the darkness. Yet nothing moved in the shadows. There were still no sounds, no one crying out in surprise or scrambling for a weapon.

His left hand felt along the wall for a light switch and flicked it on. Room 9 had an orange carpet and yellow wallpaper that was curling at the corners. The room had recently been cleaned, insofar as “cleaned” seemed to go at the Starlight Motel. The bed had been hastily made and it reeked of cheap aerosol disinfectant.

But it was empty. His heart sank. There was no one here—no Sara or Maya or the assassin that had taken them.

Reid stepped carefully, looking over the room. Near the door was a green armchair. The fabric of the seat cushion and back was slightly discolored with the imprint of someone who had sat there recently. He knelt beside it, outlining the shape of the person with his gloved fingertips.

Someone sat here for hours. About six-foot, a hundred and eighty pounds.

It was him. He sat here, next to the only point of entry, near the window.

Reid tucked his gun back into its holster and carefully peeled back the bedspread. The sheets were stained; they hadn’t been changed. He inspected them cautiously, lifting each pillow in turn, careful not to disrupt any potential evidence.

He found two blonde hairs, long strands without the roots. They had fallen out naturally. He found a single brunette strand in the same fashion. They were here, together, on this bed, while he sat there and watched them. But why? Why had Rais brought them here? Why had they stopped? Was it another ploy in the assassin’s cat-and-mouse game, or was he waiting for something?

Maybe he was waiting for me. I took too long to follow the clues. Now they’re gone again.

If Watson had called in the fake report, the police would be at the motel in minutes, and Strickland was likely already on a chopper. But Reid refused to leave without something to go on, or else all of it would have been for nothing, just another dead end.

He hurried to the motel office.

The carpet was green and coarse beneath his boots, reminiscent of Astroturf. The place stank of cigarette smoke. Beyond the counter was a dark doorway, and behind it Reid could hear something playing at low volume, a radio or television.

He rang the service bell on the counter, a dissonant chime ringing out in the quiet office.

“Hmm.” He heard a soft grunt from the back room, but no one came.

Reid rang the bell again three times in quick succession.

“All right, man! Jesus.” A male voice. “I’m coming.” A young man stepped out from the rear. He looked to be in his mid-twenties or early thirties; it was hard for Reid to tell on account of his bad skin and red-rimmed eyes, which he rubbed as if he’d just awoken from a nap. There was a small silver hoop in his left nostril and his dirty-blond hair was trussed up in mangy-looking dreadlocks.

He stared at Reid for a long moment, as if annoyed by the very concept of someone walking through the office door. “Yeah? What?”

“I’m looking for information,” Reid said flatly. “There was a man here recently, Caucasian, early thirties or so, with two teenage girls. One brunette, and a younger one, blonde. He drove that white SUV here. They stayed in room nine—”

“You a cop?” the clerk interrupted.

Reid was quickly growing irritated. “No. I’m not a cop.” He wanted to add that he was the father of those two girls, but he stopped himself; he didn’t want this clerk to be able to identify him by any more than he already could.

“Look, bro, I don’t know nothin’ about teenage girls,” the clerk insisted. “What people do here is their business—”

“I just want to know when he was here. If you saw the two girls. I want the name that the man gave you. I want to know if he paid in cash or with a card. If it was a card, I want the last four digits of the number. And I want to know if he said anything at all, or if you overheard anything, that might tell me where he went from here.”

The clerk stared at him for a long moment, and then he let out a hoarse, raspy snicker. “My man, look around you. This ain’t the kind of place that takes names or credit cards or anything like that. This is the kind of place people rent rooms by the hour, if you know what I mean.”

Reid’s nostrils flared. He’d had just about enough of this nitwit. “There must be something, anything, you can tell me. When did they check in? When did they check out? What did he say to you?”

The clerk shot him a pointed stare. “What’s it worth to you? For fifty bucks I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Reid’s fury ignited like a fireball as he reached across the counter, grabbed the young clerk by the front of his T-shirt, and yanked him forward, almost off his feet. “You have no idea what you’re keeping me from,” he growled in the kid’s face, “or how far I’ll go to get it. You’re going to tell me what I want to know or you’ll be eating through a straw for the foreseeable future.”

The clerk put his hands up, his eyes wide as Reid shook him. “All right, man! All right! There’s a, uh, registry under the counter… let me grab it and I’ll look it up. I’ll tell you when they were here. Okay?”

Reid hissed a breath and released the young guy. He stumbled back, smoothed his T-shirt, and then reached for something unseen beneath the counter.

“Place like this,” the clerk said slowly, “the kind of people we get here… they value their privacy, if you know what I mean. They don’t care much for people snooping.” He took two slow steps back, withdrawing his right arm from underneath the counter… as it gripped the dark brown slide of a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun.

Reid sighed ruefully and shook his head. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that.” The clerk was wasting his time for the sake of protecting scumbags like Rais—not that he knew what Rais was involved in, but other sordid types, pimps and traffickers and the like.

“Go on back to the suburbs, man.” The barrel of the shotgun was pointed at center mass, but it was shaky. Reid got the impression that the kid had used it to threaten, but never actually fired it before.

He had no doubt that he had the faster draw on the clerk; he wouldn’t even hesitate to shoot him, in the shoulder or in the leg, if it meant getting what he needed. But he didn’t want to fire a shot. The report would be heard for a half mile in the industrial park. It might spook whatever guests were staying in the motel—might even prompt someone to call the police, and he didn’t need that attention.

Instead he took a different approach. “You sure that thing’s loaded?” he asked.

The clerk glanced down at the shotgun for a dubious second. In that moment, with his gaze averted, Reid planted a hand firmly on the counter and vaulted over it easily. At the same time he swung out his right leg and kicked the shotgun out of the clerk’s hands. As soon as his feet were on the ground he leaned forward and swung his elbow into the kid’s nose. A sharp gasp erupted from the clerk’s throat as blood flowed from both nostrils.

Then, just for good measure, Reid grabbed a fistful of filthy dreadlocks and slammed the guy’s face into the counter.

The clerk collapsed to the rough green carpet, moaning as he spat blood onto the floor from his nose and two cracked lips. He groaned and tried to get to his hands and knees. “You… oh, god… you broke my fuckin’ nose, man!”

Reid snapped up the shotgun. “That’s the least of your concerns right now.” He pressed the barrel into the dirty-blond dreadlocks.

The clerk immediately dropped to his stomach and whimpered. “Don’t… don’t kill me… please don’t… please… don’t kill me…”

“Give me your phone.”

“I don’t… I don’t have one…”

Reid bent at the waist and quickly patted the guy down. He was being honest; he didn’t have a phone, but he did have a wallet. Reid flipped it open and checked the driver’s license.

“George.” Reid scoffed. The clerk didn’t look much like a George. “You got a car here, George?”

“I got, I got a dirt bike, p-parked out back…”

“Good enough. Here’s what’s going to happen, George. I’m taking your bike. You, you’re going to walk out of here. Or run, if you prefer. You’re going to go to the hospital and get your nose checked out. You’re going to tell them that you were sucker-punched in a bar. You’re not going to say a word about this place, or a word about me.” He leaned over and lowered his voice. “Because I’ve got a police scanner, George. And if I hear one mention, even one word of a man fitting my description, I’m going to come to…” He checked the ID again. “Apartment 121B on Cedar Road, and I’m going to bring your shotgun with me. You got all that?”

“I got it, I got it.” The clerk blubbered, blood and spittle hanging from his lips. “I got it, I promise I got it.”

“Now, the man with the girls. When were they here?”

“There was… was a guy, like you said, but I didn’t see no girls…”

“But you saw a man that fit that description?”

“Yes, yes. He was real serious. Barely said a word. Came last night, after dark, and paid for the night in cash…”

“When did he leave?”

“I don’t know! Sometime in the night. Left the door open, or else I wouldn’t have known he was gone…”

During the night? Reid’s heart sank. He had hoped, but hadn’t truly expected to find the girls at the motel—but he thought he was catching up. If they had a full day’s lead on him… they could be anywhere.

Reid dropped the wallet and stepped back, taking the shotgun barrel from the kid’s head. “Go.”

The clerk scooped up the wallet and ran through the dark doorway, tripping once and falling onto his hands before hurrying out into the night.

Reid ejected the cartridges from the shotgun, four of them in all, and stuffed them into a jacket pocket. He wasn’t actually going to take the gun with him; it was an illegal weapon by virtue of having its barrel and stock cut off, and likely unregistered even before its modifications. He wiped the shotgun clean of his prints before replacing it beneath the counter.

He didn’t need to invite trouble. He had enough as it was.

The police would arrive at any moment, but he couldn’t leave without something more to go on. He hurried back to the broken door of room 9 and searched again, this time not caring to replace anything or handle with care. He tore the pillows and sheets from the bed. He searched under the bed and chair. He pulled out the drawers of each shoddy nightstand and the bureau, but found nothing but an old Bible with a cracked spine. He fanned its pages and shook it out, just in case.

At every opportunity so far, Maya had left something behind on purpose. According to the clerk, the girls had spent most of a night here.

Reid hurried into the bathroom. It stank strongly of bleach as he checked the shower stall, the sink, the vanity with the cracked mirror. He opened the single small cabinet beneath the sink and found two spare rolls of toilet paper, a spray can of air freshener, and, curiously, a blue ballpoint pen.

Reid turned on the hot water in both the sink and the shower and closed the door to the tiny bathroom, letting it fill with steam. He inspected the mirror in the hopes that Maya had perhaps written an invisible message that would only show with condensation—but there was no message. Still nothing.

I’m missing something. She left a clue. I know she did.

Sirens wailed in the distance, floating to him through the open motel room door. The police were en route. He grunted in frustration and kicked at the toilet bowl with his boot, hard enough to chip the porcelain.

He looked down and blinked.

I should have seen that. Should have known.

Atop the toilet tank was a single hair, brown, long, with a white root still attached. He dropped to his hands and knees and found a few more scattered on the floor. They were Maya’s hair, tugged loose from her head on purpose—to give him a clue.

He lifted the lid from the back of the toilet.

Reid reached in and tugged loose the furled scrap of fabric that was looped into the flush lever’s chain. He unrolled it in his fingers, which began to tremble as soon as he recognized the familiar pattern of pineapples.

Sara.

The scrap was triangular; a pocket, he realized, torn loose from her favorite pajamas.

He held the scrap to his face. It could have been his imagination, but it still smelled like her, like his baby girl.

He turned the fabric over to the other side, the all-white side, where three words were written in blue ink.

“No,” he whispered hoarsely.

Port Jersey. Dubrovnik.

Reid sprinted from the bathroom as fast as he could.

Rais was trying to take his girls out of the country… if he hadn’t already.