He would be the first to admit his apartment complex was on the seedy side, but his girlfriend lived in an upscale area, all of the houses and duplexes fairly recent builds, complete with landscaping that extended beyond the yards of the residences. It gave him a blanket of security that was wholly undeserved.
He took a left off of the road, drove another quarter mile, and then pulled into his girlfriend’s apartment complex, a modern three-story building with balconies at each level and a gate at the entry. He parked the car and sat for a minute, watching the ebb and flow of traffic. Nothing happened. He shook his head, now embarrassed at what he’d done, trying to come up with a story of why he had shown up three hours early.
He punched in the code to the gate, walked to a staircase that split the building in two, went up to the second floor, and found his girlfriend’s door. He hesitated, wondering if maybe he shouldn’t just go back home and meet Pike. Wondering if he wasn’t going a little batty over Jake’s actions.
He knocked. Nobody answered. He knocked again, and heard, “Hang on. I’m coming.”
He strolled to the end of the walkway, thinking about what he would say. He put his hands on the railing and gazed into the parking lot outside. And saw the car that had been with him when he entered the A9, parked right next to his. He jumped back out of sight, the adrenaline from the last hour pouring back into him.
He crouched down and inched forward again, seeing another car approach. One he recognized as the model outside his office earlier in the day. An Asian man and woman exited, conferred with the other car, and then three doors opened, spilling out men. All Asian.
He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, but ignored it, intently watching. One of the men pointed toward his floor, and the driver from the second car gave orders. He began panting, wondering what was coming. Behind him, he heard, “Dunkin? What are you doing?”
He turned around, seeing his girlfriend, Nicole Shoemaker, peeking out of the door with a towel on her head, wearing a bathrobe.
He sprang up and pushed her inside the door, saying, “Get some clothes on. Get dressed.”
She shoved him back, saying, “What the hell are you doing?”
He ran to the window and looked out, then panicked. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” He turned to her and said, “We have to go. Right now. Go get dressed. We have seconds.”
She saw the sweat on his brow and smelled the fear. She said, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t have time to explain. Go get dressed!”
She nodded and ran into her room. Ten seconds later she was pulling on a sweatshirt over her bare breasts and hiking up jeans without panties. She shoved her feet into a set of flip-flops and said again, “What’s going on?”
“No flip-flops. Put on shoes.” He pulled the shade back again and said, “Jesus Christ! Do it now!”
She heard the urgency in his voice and ran back into her room. When she came back out, Dunkin was on the balcony at the back of the apartment, looking at the drop. She came to him and said, “What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t have time to explain, but we need to leave right now. Right here.”
“Over the damn balcony? Have you lost your mind?”
Dunkin cupped her chin in his hands and said, “You know when I talked about my past? Where I was some secret American commando?”
She hesitantly nodded, then said, “Yes?”
“Well, that was all bullshit. I worked for some commandos, but I wasn’t one. Now someone’s hunting me, and I don’t know if I can keep us alive. I don’t have the skill. We need to run. Run like hell.”
“What are you talking about?”
He pushed her to the edge of the balcony and said, “You need to jump. I’ll be right behind you. We need to do it now. We have seconds.”
“Are you crazy? Jump? Why?”
“Because there are some men coming here who want to kill me! And they’ll kill you! They’re about five seconds away!”
He pushed her to the railing and said, “Hang over and drop. Please, dear God, don’t fight anymore. They’re coming.”
She did as he asked, seeing the absolute terror on his face. She crawled over, hung for a moment, looked below her, then said, “I can’t do this! Pull me up.”
Instead, he pried her hands from the railing. She screamed, falling into the bushes below. He scrambled over and followed her, landing on his ass right next to her.
She stood up, incensed and confused, holding her hip. She punched him in the face, screaming, “You son of a bitch! I’m calling the police!” He took the hit, grabbed her hands, then held a finger to his lips, pointing to her balcony. She looked up and saw an Asian man exit. She said, “What—”
He cut her off, dragging her into the bushes underneath the balcony, out of sight. He said, “Where is your car?”
She pointed and he said, “You need to trust me. Let’s go. We need to get the fuck out of here.”
She said, “Are you nuts? I just fell twenty feet into some bushes. It’s amazing I can even walk. I’m pretty sure I won’t be walking tomorrow. What the hell is going on?”
“Nicole . . . Nicole . . . I can’t explain right here. I just can’t. We need to leave.”
She took a breath, glanced upward toward her apartment, then nodded, saying, “Whatever you tell me had better be good.”
The man went back inside, and they raced to the rear parking lot, entered her car, and fled the area, saying not a word. When they were back on the A9, headed away from her apartment, Nicole said, “Okay, what the hell is going on? Who are you?”
Dunkin pulled out his phone and said, “I’m a nobody. I lied to you before. I’m not some secret agent man. I’m just a computer nerd. And I don’t know why those guys were chasing me, but they were. They were trying to hurt me.”
She said, “Wait, so you weren’t in Special Forces?”
He saw a missed call from Pike Logan and breathed a sigh of relief. He turned to her and said, “No, I wasn’t, but I have some friends who were. And they’re a holy terror.”
Chapter 18
Chen entered the apartment with his pistol drawn, not wanting to make a mess of blood and gore, but willing to do so in order to cut off further disaster.
His team swiftly cleared the small area and found nothing. He saw the open balcony door, ran to it, looked over, and said, “They’re in the wind.”
His female partner, Zhi, said, “We need to find them. Kill them quickly. This is getting out of control.”
He nodded and began giving orders, saying, “Find me anything that ties to this apartment. Find out who lives here.”
Zhi said, “Let me recontact the 3PLA. That’s the quickest way to locate him. They probably have the phone now. He needs to be put in the ground before this spreads like a virus.”
Chen said, “I don’t want to get them involved. We’re on our own here. We’ve been given our orders, and they expect us to succeed.”
She approached him and gently touched his arms. “You were willing to get them involved earlier.”
“That was before we had a thread to him. We have one now.”