Dream On (Dale Conley Action Thrillers Series Book 2) Read online

  “And when is your husband’s next broadcast?” Dale said.

  “At five. Which means he’ll be getting to the station anytime now.”

  Dale turned to Spiro. “And so could Owen Kelso.”

  “Denny, Rachel, keep up. Mommy’s in a hurry,” Alicia said.

  They were back to the police station and the parking garage across the street where Alicia had left her car. Dale glanced up the steps at the building. He hoped Copeland wouldn’t randomly emerge. Dale would need to wrap this up quickly and get Alicia and her kids on the road.

  Because Copeland was not going to be involved in this.

  “Do you have friends or family you can stay with?” Spiro said to Alicia.

  “Carl Bradford said we could stay with him. But he’ll be at the station until the show’s over.”

  “Don’t go to the station,” Dale said. “And don’t go home. Find a hotel for now.”

  Alicia looked down at her children and hesitated before answering, as though processing a thousand immediate and outrageous thoughts at once. Finally she said, “Okay.”

  Dale put his hand on her shoulder. “And if a blond man in a suit approaches you telling you he’s from the CIA, don’t trust him.”

  This didn’t seem to shock Alicia. She just nodded. It was as though her mind had become numb to shocking revelations.

  “Be safe,” Dale said.

  Alicia pulled her kids across the street.

  “You took this upon yourself,” Spiro said. “That’s bad enough. But now you’re telling this woman not to trust Copeland. You know the amount of shit you could get into for this?”

  Dale watched Alicia and the kids cross the other side of the street and walk into the parking garage. He turned to Spiro. “I know. But something about this doesn’t feel right, Spiro, and I don’t want that woman and her children taken to some ‘secure location’ like Andrew Riley.” He took a breath. “Listen, I’d like you to come with me, but you’d be putting your ass on the line too. So all I’m asking is that if you go back to Copeland, you don’t try to stop me from leaving right now.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” she said and, for the second time, she smiled at him. “Because I’m going with you.”

  Dale nodded. “That’s what I like to hear,” he said with a shit-eating grin. “Let’s do this, partner.” He turned and ran toward Arancia.

  Chapter 42

  Alicia had her children on either side of her, holding their hands. This was a comfort, albeit a small one, in this ordeal. At least they were with her. At least they were safe. But everything else was ripping through her like a wildfire. For the last couple hours, she’d been certain her husband was a serial killer. Her mind had already run through the long-term implications of that. How it would affect her and, more importantly, how it would affect Denny and Rachel. How would Alicia be able to tell them? How could she tell them?

  And as quickly as all those terrible but very real thoughts had been put in her brain, they were torn out and replaced by something entirely different: the fact that she may have to tell her children that their father had died. Murdered.

  Because her husband was being hunted.

  The parking garage was dark and moist from the earlier rain. There was a musty smell tinged with the scent of automobile exhaust. Alicia’s heels tapped on the cement, and the sound echoed through the garage, bouncing off the support beams. Patches of pale orange light from fixtures hanging from the ceiling broke up the darkness.

  Alicia tried to control her breathing, but it was difficult. Her chest hurt. Felt tight. She was beginning to get lightheaded.

  Denny was tugging at her arm, trying to go to the left.

  “Look at that car, Mommy!”

  “Denny, come on. Hurry up.”

  She saw the BMW up ahead, the Channel 16 parking tag hanging from the rear-view mirror. Again she felt a small bit of comfort. She’d take them out of town. They’d go somewhere to the east. Corbett or maybe Sandy. The Channel 16 station was on the east side of town. She didn’t want to be too far away from it. And away from Adam.

  She thought of him. His handsome face. Her eyes watered. In the few minutes since she’d found out that he wasn’t a killer but was rather being hunted by one, she had tried not to think about him. She had tried to focus on the kids instead. Getting them to safety. But now she kept thinking about all the news coverage on TV and in the newspapers the last couple days. All the talk of knives. Stabbings. Slashed throats. She thought of Adam in pain. Dying.

  She fought back tears, squeezed her children’s hands tighter.

  They were almost to the BMW. She let go of Denny’s hand to get the keys from her purse. And she stopped with a jolt.

  A figured appeared before her. A man. He stepped out from behind the column next to her car.

  Alicia gasped, began hyperventilating. She wrapped her arms around her children.

  The man was hidden in shadow. He stepped forward into the light. The first thing Alicia saw were those eyes. Blazing blue. Like ice crystals. Terrifyingly intense. He wore a filthy trench coat and a baseball cap. His hair was wavy, brown, and fairly long. Greasy. His unshaven face was covered with scabbed-over wounds. There were scabs on the knuckles of his left hand too, cracked and bleeding. His right hand was behind his back.

  “Mrs. Steele, I presume,” the man said.

  He took a step toward them and pulled his hand from behind his back. In the hand he held a large knife.

  Chapter 43

  Arancia’s siren screamed as she tore down I-84 away from downtown and toward the Channel 16 news station. The emergency light swung from the rear-view mirror. They were in the fast lane, and the traffic was moving over for them. Dale saw Spiro in the passenger seat clenching the door with her right hand and the base of her seatbelt with her left. The V8 bellowed. They were riding in a rocket, a small sphere of controlled chaos.

  Spiro glanced over at him. There was a look of awe and quite a bit of excitement on her face. “Some ride,” she said. “So if Adam is the next one on the list to be hunted, why was he also crossing off the names in the phone book?”

  “Because the Five Wisemen were programmed to get their message out. He was trying to find his partners. He was going through the same process as Owen Kelso, trying to locate the rest of the Five Wisemen. But not to kill them. They were going to organize to get their Jesus theory out to the world.”

  “The code names!” Spiro said.

  Dale nodded, encouraging her. “Right …”

  “They were broadcasting to each other. They must have been programmed to do that. If one of them was killed—say Isaac Bennett, the first one to die—then putting the name Josephus out there would signal to the others that a man by the name of Isaac Bennett who was murdered was indeed the Isaac Bennett of the Five Wisemen.”

  “Exactly,” Dale said.

  There was a car in front of them that hadn’t heeded the siren and lights. Dale gave a long blast of the horn. The car moved over. Arancia bolted off again.

  Dale shifted back into fifth. “Now Adam Steele—Mr. Tyko Hautala—knows that all the other Five Wisemen have been killed or, in the case of Andrew Riley, disappeared. He got the news on Friday—hell, he was the one to deliver the news—that two of the other four had been murdered. He would have tried to reach out to the other two over the weekend. Then he would’ve seen the news that Nathan Cook was killed and Andrew Riley was attacked. He would have tried to get a hold of Andrew Riley. But he’s at a ‘secure location,’ remember. Adam would have called over and over and over. He would have gone to his house. And he would have thought it extremely suspicious that Riley suddenly disappeared after being attacked. And now it’s Monday, the first evening news broadcast for Adam Steele since he reported the first two deaths on Friday.”

  Dale turned to her and saw a look of realization on her face.

  “So he’s going to try to broadcast the theory,” she said.

  “Exactly. So not onl
y is there a high chance that we’re going to have to protect him from Owen Kelso, but we’re going to have to keep him from delivering the message. Maybe the theory’s right; maybe it’s wrong. But it can’t get out there like this. Not as the result of some government experiment with brainwashing and forced hallucinogenic drug use.”

  “What’s our plan of attack?”

  The exit was ahead of them. Dale’s eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror, and then he downshifted into fourth and yanked the steering wheel to the right. Arancia swooped over, her tires chirping.

  “We prioritize,” Dale said. “We need to stop Adam. But saving his life comes first. Let’s just hope that Owen Kelso hasn’t figured out who Adam really is.”

  Chapter 44

  Owen was getting better at frightening people.

  It wasn’t so much that his skills were improving, but rather that God had built in him such a tolerance for it, that he was really starting to enjoy it. As he studied the beautiful woman before him, the look of fright on her face was rewarding. After all, since she was married to a prominent member of the media, it stood to reason that she had a sinful nature about her.

  He was impressed with the way in which he had handled this situation. He approached out of the shadows, quite theatrically. Not only did the suddenness of it frighten her, but the delayed reveal of his knife amplified things. He was beginning to understand that catching people off-guard was a key to getting them to do what you wanted. Once a person was shocked, they were less likely to know how to react. So he was glad that he was developing more sophisticated methods. His latest efforts were much less crude than when he had been kicking in doors, bursting through glass.

  What he didn’t like was frightening the children. They cowered behind the woman’s arms as she pushed them back and toward her body. They were both crying, the girl clenched upon her mother’s leg. They were innocent, and he hated that they had to be involved. But he was going to have to get past that. He was going to have to harden his heart to the children’s pain like he had to Mrs. Steele’s.

  Because they were about to become a lot more involved.

  Owen turned his attention from the children and back to Steele, gathered his resolve. “Tell me, what is the wife of one of the most famous men in town doing in the late afternoon with her children talking to the federal agents investigating the recent murders?”

  The woman was panting, gasping for air. Her arms shook as she continued to hold her children behind her. “I … Who are you?”

  Owen stared into her, adjusted his grip on the knife. What could the connection be? It was so strange. Why was she here? Why bring the children? Some sort of tie to the Five Wisemen? It had to be.

  “Do you know Tyko Hautala, Mrs. Steele?”

  “No,” she said desperately.

  If not Hautala, then who? Andrew Riley? The man was an author and a recluse. Would the Steeles rub shoulders with him? Maybe. But Owen wasn’t seeing it.

  He turned to the side for a moment, thinking. The BMW. Its Channel 16 parking tag hung from the rear-view. That’s how he’d found the right car. When he first saw her leaving the parking garage, he recognized her as Adam Steele’s wife. When he went into the garage and saw the nice car in the back with the Channel 16 tag, he knew where to wait for her.

  He considered the tag now. There was a picture of Adam Steele and Brittany Smalls on it. They were back-to-back, arms crossed and heads turned toward the viewer. Big smiles. The same image was on billboards and buses all over town. He looked at Adam Steele. He thought about his quandary: why was Steele’s wife talking to the feds?

  Adam Steele’s eyes. An idea exploded in Owen’s brain.

  He frantically reached into the pocket of his trench coat and grabbed the picture of the Five Wisemen, zeroed in on Tyko Hautala, the one who remained. He compared it to Adam Steele’s image on the parking tag. The eyes? He looked back and forth.

  He held the image of the Five Wisemen in his line of vision in front of the parking tag. He put his thumb over Tyko Hautala’s face, leaving just the eyes. He looked at the parking tag, held his right hand with the knife in front of him, extended a finger to cover Adam Steele’s mustache. The eyes. They matched.

  Adam Steele was Tyko Hautala.

  He turned to Steele’s wife and smiled. “I know who your husband is, Mrs. Hautala.” The pieces began to fall in place inside his head. “His meltdown on Thursday. The words. Actiones secundum fidei. Whatever it was Brittany Smalls said, whatever sounded like those words, that’s what awoke his mission. And mine. I’m remembering now. Yes, I’d been watching the news. I couldn’t recall how it happened. I just came out of a fog, like coming out of anesthesia. I was suddenly awake. I knew my mission. I didn’t know how I’d forgotten it, couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten it. And I knew your husband and any of the other Five Wisemen who had heard the words were awoken too.”

  He stopped and shook his head, sighed, letting it all sink in. Then he looked at his watch.

  “3:45. And it’s Monday.” He thought again for a moment. “Getting close to time for the evening news. I know where your husband is. And I know what he’s going to try to do tonight.”

  Chapter 45

  Adam walked into the news station. He was still wearing his T-shirt and jeans, and he had his suit, in a protective bag, draped over his arm. As he strolled down the hall—posters of various on-air personalities framed on the walls, fluorescent light fixtures hanging from above—he noticed again the people staring at him. But there was a different sort of look to the way they were watching him now. There was a frenzied energy about the place. It was as though everything that had gone wrong at the end of last week was now compounded by the absence of Carl Bradford.

  Bradford, on a normal day, would have already been there for hours. He was a first-to-arrive-last-to-leave sort of leader, and he valued punctuality. People milled about aimlessly. A snake without a head.

  At the end of the hall he saw Brittany Smalls. She wore a long, brown, skirted business suit. She strode toward him.

  “Adam, where have you been?” she said.

  “Sorry. A couple things I had to take care of.”

  Brittany looked him over. “You look a mess. You haven’t even shaved. Have you heard?”

  “About?”

  “Bradford. He hasn’t shown up yet.”

  Adam looked at his watch, for show. “There’s still time.”

  Brittany seemed to be sizing him up as they quickly made their way down the hall. There was an expression on her face, and it reminded Adam of the look that Alicia had been giving him the last few days. Concerned but also suspicious. Even Brittany was wary of him now. It was a good thing that things were about to come to an end.

  Because they were unraveling before his eyes.

  Chapter 46

  It was a destitute alley. Dumpsters. A crumbling, pockmarked path with puddles. Trash. Brick walls pushing in on either side and phone lines crisscrossing the open sky above. Owen looked at his watch again. It was 4:17. He didn’t have time to take them to a hotel or even to stop and purchase rope. He cursed himself for not being more prepared. The best bet he had was to drop them off in an abandoned part of the city on his way to the TV station. The way he figured, this woman was used to a life of luxury; a situation like this would be nearly insurmountable to her. If nothing more, it would buy him the time he needed.

  He put a palm against the woman’s back and shoved, and she stumbled forward in her heels. She had each of the children by the hand. They were all three crying, the children audibly so and their mother trying in vain to silence her sobs. He walked behind them, one of his knives in his hand. When they made it midway into the alley, he said, “Stop.”

  Mrs. Steele and the children turned around.

  “I know you’ve figured out where I’m going next,” Owen said. “So how am I going to keep you from calling the police?”

  “Don’t hurt my husband,” Steele said. She used her arms to push her
children behind her again like she had in the parking garage. She was trying to be subtle about it. But Owen noticed.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He looked them over. He sensed that he should feel something, but he knew that God was was the one who was giving him the strength. God knew the nature of his mission, and He was imbuing in Owen the callousness that was required.

  Owen would need some sort of leverage when he approached Adam Steele. And he needed a way to intimidate the man’s wife. His eyes landed on the little girl.

  He grabbed the girl’s wrist. The woman pulled on the child’s other arm. “No!”

  Owen yanked at the girl, who was crying louder now.

  “Mommy!”

  The woman tugged back again.

  This frustrated Owen. “Let go, bitch!”

  A feeling of guilt washed over him. He had said a swear. This was something God would not be as forgiving about. He’d lost his control, his composure.

  Owen squeezed the girl’s wrist tighter and pulled her hard at the same time. With the other hand—the one holding the knife—he took the woman by the face and shoved her away.

  He had the girl now, and he scooped her up under his arm. She started swinging her little arms and legs, hitting Owen on the arms and ribs.

  “Quit,” he said. His voice echoed against the walls. The child obeyed.

  He took half a step back and pointed the knife at the child’s mother and young brother.

  The woman’s face went white, and her eyes closed. “Let go of my baby!”

  “Your child will be unharmed if you and your husband do the right thing. Just play along, Mrs. Hautala. That’s all you have to do.”

  He walked away from her, backwards, and when she took a step toward him, he put the knife to the girl’s neck. The child sobbed. Her mother let out a wail that shot all the way down the alley. He kept the knife to the child’s throat and continued to walk backwards.