Page 123 of Code 6
“Look, Officer,” said Gamble. “I’ve traveled a long way. Can we have a few more minutes, please?”
“Sorry, sir. Rules are rules. Come back next week, and the two of you can have another thirty minutes.”
Sandra rose. “Hope this can wait a week, Christian.”
“I hope so, too,” he said, watching as the guard escorted her away.
Chapter 56
Patrick watched and waited as his kidnapper laid Javier’s cellphone aside. He and Olga were chained to an exposed metal stud in the wall, seated on a concrete floor.
They were in a warehouse, presumably in Cali. The box truck had pulled up sometime that morning. Patrick had heard the steel garage door open and close before the rear doors of the cargo box swung open, and Liu had ordered them out at gunpoint. Theirs was the only truck in the warehouse, but there were about a dozen cars and SUVs in various states of disassembly. Shelves lined the walls, twenty feet high, and they were loaded with harvested automobile parts. It reminded Patrick of the chop shops he’d seen in the Grant Theft Auto video game he’d played as a kid. Liu had his own desk, though the nameplate readlopez, which Patrick assumed was the name of the actual warehouse manager. The hostages were to his right, near a closet-sized room markedelbaño.Patrick thought the sign should have read “desperate,” as no one in his right mind would have used it if he weren’t.
“Your friend Kate is trouble,” said Liu.
He spoke with none of the screams of anger they would have heard from Javier. His was a wholly different temperament, but it made Patrick even more fearful. He had the eyes of a killing machine, like the soulless black eyes of the great white shark before it tears off your arm.
“If she pulls another stunt like that on the next call, we’ll have to demonstrate the virtue of a healthy fear of burning alive.”
He was looking at Olga.
“It wasn’t a stunt,” said Patrick. “I know Kate. She’s not a loose cannon. She’d take control like this only if there was no other way to make sure you get what you want.”
Liu checked the clock on the wall. “Sounds like you’re willing to bet your life on it, which is good. In six hours, either we have an exchange or we have a dead hostage.”
He took a seat in the desk chair, put his feet up, and escaped into some form of electronic entertainment on his cellphone.
“I told you he was going to kill me,” Olga whispered.
“I’m not sure he meant you,” said Patrick.
“He can’t kill you. You’re the goose that lays the golden egg.”
“I can still lay eggs as long as KatethinksI’m alive.”
“He needs you to make an exchange.”
“I don’t think the actual delivery of a live hostage is part of his plan.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Remember those two phone calls you told me about? It was the day I disappeared in the mountains, and you overheard Javier talking on his satellite phone.”
“Yes. It was like Javier had two bosses.”
“One was Jeremy Peel, who sounded concerned that I disappeared.”
“Yes. Apparently, Mr. Peel just wanted to keep you happy enough to stay in Colombia for a good long while. Not lose you somewhere in the jungle.”
“But the other caller had a different agenda.”
“Totally. It sounded to me like he wanted you dead,” said Olga.
Patrick’s gaze drifted toward the kidnapper. “I think that other caller was Liu. He hired Javier to push me off the mountain. Javier screwed up the hit, and Liu had to come all the way to Colombia to finish the job himself. And take care of Javier.”
“It’s like the good book says,” said Olga. “No man can serve two masters.”
“For he shall hate the one, and be shot in the head by the other,” said Patrick, putting his own spin on Matthew 6:24. It was his best attemptat humor under the circumstances, but he had a serious follow-up. “I didn’t figure you for someone who knew her Bible.”