Hidden Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure Read online

  “Yes and no,” she says to her lap and not to my face. “That is, I do trust you. I know that everything you do, every plan you concoct, every remote hiding place you find, is for our common good. And you’ve kept us alive for months now. But so much of what we’ve survived, or escaped, or defeated was by pure luck. You’re not James Bond, Jackson. You’re not even Mack, when it comes to tactical experience.”

  Mack grunts from the recliner, acknowledging his interest in our conversation. George returns with his liquor and our waters.

  “I’ll finish later,” she says, shifting away from me in her seat to grab a glass.

  “Please, we’re all together in this confederacy of dunces. No need to finish later.”

  “Okay,” her eyes narrow as though she’s confused. “I’ve suspended my disbelief up until now, Jackson. I wanted to see you as the hero. I wanted to think of you as infallible, as un-killable. I bought into the idea that you were always one step ahead of everyone else.”

  “And?”

  “And since you dove into the water to rescue that woman,” she spits back, counting on her fingers my missteps, “brought us back into the lion’s den here in Houston, reunited us with two people who’ve betrayed us for the sake of the man who killed your parents and has you under his thumb….”

  “Wow,” Mack chimes in, smacking his lips after a sip of his drink. “Tough room.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” I yell, pushing myself from the sofa to stand over her. “What would you have me do?”

  “I don’t know, Jackson.” Tears well in her eyes, pooling on her lower lids. “I don’t know.”

  “Let me show you the third floor,” George offers to Mack. “There’s a great terrace off of the master bedroom. You can see the downtown skyline in the distance.”

  “This scene is better than any view of downtown,” Mack laughs and raises his glass toward me.

  “So you haven’t changed, then,” Bella fires at Mack, blasting the smirk from his suddenly wounded face. “That’s what I figured.”

  Mack nudges himself from the recliner and follows George to the stairwell, disappearing up the flight to the third floor. Bella watches them go and then wipes her eyes with the back of her index fingers.

  “I never suggested I was part of Seal Team Six,” I say. “I didn’t drag you into this. You hired me. You and Sir Spencer, who you also hired, got me mixed up in this crap.”

  “That’s not fair,” she pouts. “I didn’t know—”

  “I was on my own, Bella. I was surviving, escaping, defeating whatever on my own. You brought me into your fold as nothing more than a desperate survivalist with good aim and a wish for a life free of violence. And you’re right when you say I’m lucky. But I’d rather be lucky and alive than James Bond and dead.”

  Bella turns away, burying herself in the corner of the sofa. She’s like a cat trying to make itself as small as possible.

  A wave of guilt rushes over me. “How long have you been feeling this way?” I ask, my voice softer.

  “Since Hawaii,” she says, her back to me. “I mean, it started then.”

  “When Blogis found us?”

  “Yes,” she sniffles. “And then when that woman tried to kill me on the beach, the feeling grew.”

  “What feeling?”

  “The feeling that you—we—are in over our heads. I tried to bury it. I tried to ignore that growing, nagging feeling in my gut that we’ve been making one bad move after another.”

  “I don’t think that—”

  “Let me finish, Jackson,” she bristles and rolls her eyes.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m carrying around a sense of dread,” she says flatly. “It’s not going to end well. It’s just not. Despite your best efforts, and your uncanny ability to shoot a flea off of a dog, you can’t win. And the final straw is this mess with your parents. Your head is spinning in so many different directions at once you can’t possibly keep your balance. Are we going after Blogis? Are we going after Spencer? Are we trying to find out who killed your parents? Are we going to kill Spencer? Or Blogis? Or both?”

  “I have a plan.”

  “I know,” she laughs, out of frustration probably, “and I love that about you. You never give up. It’s not enough.”

  “How so?”

  “It’ll never end, Jackson. That’s the crux of it. That’s the dread and the fear and the anxiety all wrapped into one. It’s the clarity I’ve found in understanding it will never, ever end.”

  “Yes it will,” I tell her, pulling her chin up so her eyes meet mine. “It will end. That is the plan. Just stay with me on this, Bella.” I put my hand on top of her hers.

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “Truth be told,” I laugh, “not really.”

  She nods, swallowing hard. “I’ll try.”

  She leans in to hug me and buries her head in my shoulder. I put my hands on her shoulders and slide them down her back, holding her. It’s quiet; maybe the last moment of peace we’ll have until this is over, if my plan works. It’s likely the last, even if it doesn’t work.

  And then it ends.

  ***

  Bella pulls away from our embrace. “Did you hear that?”

  I put a finger to my lips as a door slowly creaks and clicks shut.

  “It’s downstairs,” she whispers.

  I catch her hand and pull her from the sofa, quietly leading her to the window overlooking the street.

  Parked behind George’s SUV is a black Suburban with ridiculously dark tint on its windows. Still, the driver is visible behind the wheel. His aviator sunglasses and military haircut are a dead giveaway: F. Pickle.

  I pull Bella’s nine millimeter handgun from my waistband and grip it in my right hand. Padding quietly across the room, leading Bella, I’m reminded that George didn’t close the garage door. The stairwell is out.

  I change direction and lead Bella to the kitchen. Above the sink, there’s a wide double window that opens with the flip of a couple of latches. Quietly, I slide one of the panes open and climb into the sink to look outside. It’s about a fifteen-foot jump down, but we’d be visible to the Suburban. I flip over and look up. About four feet above the window is the edge of the third floor bedroom terrace. I stuff the gun back into my waistband at the small of my back.

  I motion quickly to Bella and pull her into the sink. “We’re going up,” I whisper into her left ear. “Follow me.” Her eyes go wide, but she nods.

  There’s about a four inch sill outside of the window, which is barely enough for me to use for leverage as I pull myself outside. I reach for the concrete bottom of the terrace, hoping to grab the foot of the iron railing, but it’s just out of reach.

  “They’re coming!” Bella whisper-shouts. “Hurry!” She’s crouched in the sink, holding on to one of my legs.

  To my left as I face the window, on the same side as the terrace, is a gutter downspout that leads to the roof two stories above us. It’s attached to the stucco with a thick metal tie and a pair of bolts. I test the tie with my left foot and push myself up just enough to grab the iron footing above with my left hand. With my right, I wave Bella through the window and she scurries out onto the thin sill. I’m hanging by my left arm, barely braced by the metal tie as Bella steps onto my right leg, which I’ve braced against the stucco with my foot. She pushes herself upward, nearly causing me to lose my grip, and with her right side pressed against the stucco, gets just enough height to grab the railing with both hands.

  Straining against the weight, I look straight ahead, wincing against sweat dripping into my eyes. Through the upper windowpane in front of me, against the glare of the glass and the sting in my eyes, the dark outline of two figures appear, growing larger as they run toward the glass. One of them yells something and the other raises his arm, maybe aiming a gun.
r />   “Hurry!” I yell to Bella. “They’re here!”

  Scrambling now, she uses me to leverage herself up the four or five feet needed to throw herself over the railing and onto the terrace. Her last push was just enough. It was also too much.

  Pop! Pop!

  A pair of shots from one gun, or maybe two, crash through the window just as my foot slips from the gutter tie and I swing outward, hanging from the iron footer by my left hand. My fingers lose their grip in super slow motion and as Mack and George peer over the railing, reaching for me, I fall.

  The sensation is at once surreal and too real. For what seems like an eternity, the terrace grows smaller above me. A head pokes from the opening at the sink, looking down at me and then up at—

  Thud!

  Fifteen feet later I’m on my back in a flowerbed between George’s house and the one next to it. Stunned, the wind knocked from my lungs, I’m disoriented.

  Pop! Ziiiip!

  A bullet explodes the rose bush a foot from my head. Rolling over, I reach for the gun to return fire. It’s not there.

  Pop! Ziiip!

  Another explosion into the mulch next to my hip. If this guy were any good, I’d be dead twice.

  I roll over again, trying to find cover where there isn’t any.

  Pop! Pop!

  No zip? I look up to the window. The shooter’s gone. But one level up is Bella with her nine millimeter aimed at the window.

  She grabbed it from me!

  “I got him!” she calls down to me. “Are you okay?”

  I wave at her and try to get to my feet. “There are two of them!” I call back.

  She disappears behind the railing as I stand up to brush myself off.

  A deep voice from behind freezes me. “Jackson Quick?”

  I’m screwed.

  “Quick, look at me.”

  I consider my lack of options. “Why, so you can shoot me in the face?”

  “Your luck is running out, Quick,” he snarls, his feet brushing the grass as he moves toward me. “If you won’t turn around, put your hands on your head. Clasp them together.”

  I keep my hands at my side.

  “I’ve got him,” the driver says. “We’re outside the house. What are my instructions?”

  He’s obviously communicating with the kill team, or what’s left of it, inside the house.

  “Got it,” he says. “I’m—”

  Pop! Ziip!

  A bullet zings past me, just overhead. I glance up to see Bella standing on the terrace, a small trail of smoke trailing from the 9MM.

  The driver grunts, gasps, and drops to ground. I turn around in time to see him slump forward on his knees. Spinning, I lunge to the ground and grab his weapon, a Glock 19 with a standard 15-round magazine.

  I look back up to the terrace and Bella is gone again. I race around the front of the house and back through the garage. I’m halfway up the stairwell to the main level when the shouting gets louder.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

  There’s more shouting as I round the last step onto the main floor, sprint past it up the next flight of stairs, nearly losing my balance, and close in on the third level.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

  The gunshots, coming from at least two different weapons, are louder. Maybe on the third floor.

  Bella screams something I can’t understand as I find myself between the third and fourth floors and only a few steps behind one of the black suits. He’s bleeding, wincing with pain from the shot to his shoulder. I can see the exit wound through his dark jacket to the left of the seam for his right arm. He’s turned sideways in the stairwell, and he hasn’t yet spotted me. His injury has forced a loss of focus, given him tunnel vision. Behind him, I see the angled, ragged holes in the drywall. The window on the wall at the turn is broken. I level the Glock, take aim, and put just enough pressure on the five and half pound trigger to fire.

  Pop!

  He’s not in pain anymore. Pushed into the wall at the stairwell turn, his body goes limp. Certain there’s a second black-suited Pickle further up the stairs, I inch my way up to the dead man’s body. Breathing in and out through my nose, I’m trying to maintain the quiet. My eyes focused upward, I don’t see anyone. However, when I reach the landing at the stairwell turn, the momentary silence is shattered.

  Pop! Ziip! Pop! Ziip!

  Two shots fly past my head to the left, one of them nicking the top of my left ear.

  Rolling onto my side, ignoring the stinging burn on my ear, I nudge my body halfway under the dead Pickle.

  Pop! Thump! Pop! Thump!

  Two more bullets lodge themselves into the dead Pickle, this time protecting me from his very much alive partner.

  Pop! Pop!

  Another pair of shots echoes in the space, farther away.

  Pop!

  The third shot, from the same distance, is followed by a wail, a guttural moan, and a body sliding down the stairs like a flattened cartoon character until it slams into the wall next to me.

  “They’re down!” I yell, pushing one body off of me and then stepping over the other one. “It’s clear!”

  I bound up the final flight of stairs into a hallway. There’s a pony wall separating the hallway from a door at the far end. The door has half a dozen smooth bore holes in it, most of them centered near the handle, and another dozen ragged punctures at random spots across its face.

  “It’s clear!” I yell again, holding the Glock low, in front of me, with both hands. “It’s me, Jackson. It’s clear.”

  ***

  From behind the door I can hear Bella crying. “Oh my God! Oh My God!”

  I call to her, shouldering the door to shove it inward. It craters against my weight and I stumble into an office. I’m first caught by the large maps on the walls, the clutter of files and papers on the corner desk, and then, at almost the same moment, my attention turns to Bella.

  On the floor, his head in her lap, is George. Bella is rubbing his forehead rhythmically, gently rocking back and forth.

  She looks up at me, tears streaming down her cheeks, snot bubbling from her nose.

  Mack is sitting with his back against the wall, his favored Ukrainian Fort-12 handgun in his lap. His gaze is fixed on George.

  George Townsend, News 4 Houston, is dead.

  His eyes are open, his chest is bloodied, his legs are splayed on the floor at odd angles. There is no life left in him. And for some reason, my bottom lip quivers, my chest burns, and the knot in my throat grows painfully thick.

  George, the self-centered narcissistic teevee dude, whose “all about me” approach to journalism had won him accolades and awards, had also earned him a fatal bullet to the chest.

  Dropping to my knees in front of him, I join Bella in mourning. Putting the Glock on the floor, I grab the fabric of his pants at his knee. The tears are streaming down my cheeks, mixing with the sweat dripping from my forehead.

  I’ve never cried in front of Bella, not like this. It is a draining cry, the kind that sucks energy and will with every whimper. I can’t explain it, really. Why am I so emotional about the loss of a man who sold me out more than once? Why is Bella crying over a virtual stranger for whom, mere minutes earlier, she could not hide her disdain?

  Maybe this is not about George. Maybe our collective breakdown is about what we know is coming, about what we imagine our own fates will be. We’re facing our own mortality through his horribly sudden, bloody death.

  Maybe this is about the realization that regardless of Blogis’s plans, or those of Sir Spencer, the governor’s relentless obsession to see me dead is ultimately unbeatable.

  Bella is right when she says I’ve been lucky, that I’m no Jason Bourne or James Bond, or Mitch Rapp, or any number of super mercenaries capable of outwitting their foes time and time ag
ain.

  Mack leans forward to put his hand on my shoulder. “Jackson, we don’t have time to mourn him right now.” He places a hand on Bella’s arm. “We can do this later. We need to go.”

  I loosen my grip on George’s knee, push myself to my feet, and wipe my face with the back of my arm, sniffling like a child. “We need to get what we can from this room and get out of here.”

  Bella closes George’s eyes, puts her hands on each side of his head, and gently lays it on the floor.

  Breathing deeply, I reach down to pull Mack to his feet. “Look at the walls.” I motion around the room. “What do you think?” I offer a hand to Bella, who declines and stands on her own, not able to take her eyes off of George.

  “He was doing some extracurricular research,” Mack says. “Something outside the scope of his television work.”

  In the distance, a siren wails.

  “We’ve got maybe two minutes,” I tell Mack. “Let’s grab what we can and go.”

  Mack starts pulling maps from the walls. Bella, still transfixed by the dead reporter, stands in the corner with her arms folded. She looks stunned. I haven’t seen her like this since our trip to Odessa, Ukraine. The violence there almost sent her over the edge. And here we are, in her hometown, where she’s now killed two men and had another die in her arms.

  Shaking free of my instinct to hold her, I rummage through the drawers in the corner desk, finding three thumb drives, a 2TB hard drive, and an armful of file folders labeled “Neutrinos.”

  I stuff the drives into my pockets, tuck the folders into my back waistband with the Glock, pull my shirt over them, and unplug a large MacBook Pro from its high-speed cable connection. The sirens are getting louder, and now there are at least two or three of them.

  “We’ve got to go.” I reach for Bella’s hand, my eyes still stinging from tears. “Bella, c’mon.”

  She snaps out of her trance and takes my hand, pulling herself to her feet. Without looking at me she leads us out of the room as though she knows where she’s going.

  “Bella,” Mack says, his arms full of folded maps, “Where are you going?”