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“Hey!” Pavel protested.
“I told you to go back!”
Neno tapped rapidly on the remote, backtracking through the channels until he reached the one with the news report. The first clip he had seen had shown a car upside down on the side of a hill. Now, the vehicle was sitting on the back of a flatbed truck.
Despite the half-crushed roof and other damage, Neno found it instantly familiar. It looked just like the car Kordo had been using. Even the color was the same. At the bottom of the screen was a graphic that read:single car crash kills one.
He turned up the volume.
“...initial reports of yesterday’s accident had stated that the driver of the vehicle had been racing up the road alongside another car, which some witnesses claim to have been a Porsche. But according to the sheriff’s office, that was not the case.”
The scene switched to a sheriff’s officer at a podium, a graphic identifying him as Deputy Richard Evert. “The victim is a male, in his early thirties. We will be withholding his identity until his next of kin has been notified. There was no one else in the vehicle, nor were there any other vehicles involved. The driver appears to have lost control of his car when taking a curve at excessive speed. It is a tragic accident, one that could have been a lot worse if other vehicles had been in the vicinity.”
Neno’s mouth went dry. While there was no way to know for sure that Kordo was the victim, short of calling the police, all of Neno’s senses were telling him it was his friend.
The alarm on his phone started ringing. He blinked, confused by the sound. On the screen he saw that it was 6:07, but even then it took a moment before he realized what that meant.
The video.
“Do we have to watch this?” Pavel asked, gesturing at the TV. “It’s boring.”
Neno considered, then quickly discarded, the idea of telling Pavel what the news report meant. With Kordo now gone, it would only make the punk more likely to question Neno’s authority.
Besides, Neno had something much more important to deal with.
He dropped the remote in Pavel’s lap and opened his phone’s settings. After turning off airplane mode, he went to his email app, where the message with the video was ready to go, and hitsend.
52
Ten minutes earlier, Teddy rounded the corner of the unused building that sat next to where he’d parked his Porsche. As instructed, Rivera was waiting for him there.
“Your men are in position?”
Rivera nodded. “They have eyes on Matthew now. If he moves, we’ll know.”
“I don’t want to scare him, so make sure he doesn’t see anyone, unless he tries to leave the area. If he does, stop him.”
“Understood.” Rivera pulled a set of communications gear from his pocket and held it out to Teddy. “Put it onchannel one for everyone, and channel two if you just want to talk to me.”
“Thanks.”
“You mentioned there was something else we might be able to help you with?”
Teddy raised the hand that held his comm set. “I’ll radio if I need you.”
“Got it.” Rivera headed back to the street.
As soon as he was gone, Teddy exchanged the suit jacket and button-down shirt he’d been wearing for a long-sleeve black T-shirt from the duffel bag. He also removed a pair of gloves and a black ski mask but didn’t don either yet.
A check of the time told him it was 6:03 p.m. It shouldn’t be long now.
He looped the comm earpiece over his ear, adjusted the mic that protruded from it so that it pointed toward his mouth, and turned it on.
“Test, test. This is Billy Barnett.”
A click was followed by Rivera’s voice. “Coming in loud and clear, Mr. Barnett.”
“Copy.”
