“If they’re nationalist dudes, then they’re probably working with Lancer. They’re dead?”
“Somebody’s gonna have to shovel them into body bags.”
“Any way law enforcement can link you to what happened?”
“For sure. I was getting my MRI. My name, insurance, everything. I wasn’t using Lyle Hart; I was still Zack.”
Hanley said, “I’ll talk to Lacy. We can make that part go away; my concern is Lancer. He’s probably still out there. If he just sent a couple of flunkies after you, and didn’t do the op himself, then I expect he had some other play in mind.”
“Yeah, I just cleared a tracker they put on my truck, so they won’t be able to…”
Zack stopped talking, so Hanley said, “Night Train?”
A wave of panic washed across Zack. He’d been so hyped up on adrenaline that he hadn’t picked it up, but Hanley was absolutely right. Lancer was out here, in Boulder; he’d tracked him to the imaging center, and he knew where he’d been right before the imaging center.
The bakery.
Andie’s bakery.
Court Gentry’s voice came over the line now. “Hey, man, I’m en route to Boulder. There was a breach of personal information about you and me out of CIA yesterday. I’ll be there in three hours.”
Zack still did not speak.
“Hey, brother? You with me?”
Zack’s meaty hands clutched the steering wheel so hard he thought he might rip it off.
Finally, Court said, “Hey. It’s okay. I just told Matt about your little girl out there. He knows. If she’s in some kind of trouble, we’re going to—”
Hightower finally responded, his voice even more intense than usual. “Her name is Andrea Delaney. Get Gumdrop working on this. Right now, she’s supposed to be at Eldora Mountain snowboarding. I don’t know who took her there. She’s fifteen, doubt she’s driving. I don’t know what she’d be wearing or where she’d go when she got there.”
Jill Mori came on the line; her voice was all business. “Parents’ names? We can try to track phones.”
Zack hesitated. He wasn’t supposed to know this information himself, and he sure as hell wasn’t supposed to blab it to anyone else. If she wasnotin danger, this could screw up her world over here.
But then he thought about Lancer, about the guys he’d just dealt with in the MRI center, and he relented. “Father is Peter Delaney. He’s deputy fire chief out here. Mom is Tiff”—he caught himself—“JenniferDelaney. I’m heading to my apartment now to get some gear. Help me find Andie before they do.”
Court said, “I’m kitted up with guns, ammo, and body armor. Got equipment for you, too.”
Hanley said, “Gumdrop will be in touch.”
Zack hung up. He was on the highway heading back to his apartment; the snow was picking up.
Just like Andie had said it would.
A minute later, his phone rang. It wasn’t his Signal app, just his cell service, and the number didn’t show up on the screen, but he decided he’d better answer it.
Nervously, he tapped a button on his steering wheel and said, “Yeah?”
An unfamiliar voice came over the line. “Dude…I’ve been listening to the police scanner. Some crazy shit! It sounds like you left a fucking mess back there, didn’t you?”
“Who is this?”
“This could have been so simple. Not involve anybody but you. But I know your type, Hightower, and I had a funny feeling you were going to weasel your way out of that somehow. You kill those guys in your underwear? That’s impressive, but it wasn’t exactly unexpected.”
Hightower wasn’t sure, but he took a chance. “This is Kincaid, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” the man replied, but Zack heard something in the voice that told him he was right.
