Читать книгу Day Zero - Chris Jayne - Страница 9

Angela

Monday

11:10 AM Mountain Time

Interstate I-90 near Reed Point, Montana

Angela Jones looked out at the terrain that flashed by the car, impressed by what she saw. Montana was absolutely spectacular, so different from everywhere she’d lived in the United States, and also very different from Albania.

There, she’d grown up in the mountains, but it was nothing like this. Albania was deep valleys, sharp hills, small squalid villages, all rocks and up and down. The glimpses of the ranges she was getting to the north, towering over endless grasslands, were breath-taking, made all the more impressive by the fact that what she was at least fifty miles away, perhaps even more. From the highway, she was even getting occasional glimpses of the Yellowstone River.

Angela had been tracking their progress on the map app on her phone, and she glanced at it now. Just a few more minutes until they’d be pulling off the Interstate and traveling north on a two lane road. Angela’s options were rapidly diminishing.

She understood now, fully, why she was here. They needed someone whose FBI credentials were absolute and unimpeachable. Rossi, as a Miami cop, had some cache in Florida, but across state lines, he was a nobody. She was not. To get out of tough spot, they’d use her. By the time anyone checked that no FBI agent named Angela Jones was working in Florida - or now Montana - in any official capacity, they’d be gone. Her cover would be blown forever, but Saldata didn’t care. Couldn’t care. If they didn’t find and neutralize Lori Dovner, it was likely his life in the United States was over.

Her options were narrow and getting worse. Reflexively, she opened her bag and checked for her gun. Ironic that they had taken away her burner phone and left her with her own cell and a gun. Clearly they thought the horrific threats Saldata had made against her family were enough to keep her in check. Unfortunately, at least for now, they were.

Angela was a small woman; unlike the massive handguns that the men carried, she preferred a Glock 43 - 9mm. Though she’d been an agent for seven years, she’d never fired her gun in the field. She was terrified that those days were at an end. She also knew that in the trunk of this rental car were several long guns in their hard shell cases, as well as a bag containing items she didn’t even want to think about. On the private jet, they had been able to transport quite an arsenal.

Angela knew that the next time the car stopped, she could put a bullet in both of the men’s brains before either could turn his head halfway back to look at her. But what good would that do? The call that Saldata had promised her had to be made at regular intervals would not be, and she would be signing a death warrant. She might live, but her family would not. Saldata’s threat was not a bluff.

Considering her options, she looked at the stack of papers and folders next to her on the back seat, and wearily she picked up the top folder, wanting to review her notes again about Bowenville, Montana and the home where they all assumed Lori would be staying with her sister and brother-in-law. She’d reviewed the information about the town while on the plane, and she had to say it didn’t look good. Although the town was isolated and rural, the actual house was in a very standard neighborhood. No forest cover to hide behind, and the town small enough that a car parked randomly on a street for hours was sure to be noticed. Parking on the street and waiting for Dovner to show her face was not a very smart option. Unfortunately, she didn’t see what other choices they had.

Flipping through the stack, she saw Lori Dovner’s face staring out at her on one page, then another and another. They had many photos of her; she’d been photographed extensively through the years at many parties, as well as featured in local magazines that covered local food and lifestyle stories, but the one in the stack Angela paused on was Dovner’s simple driver’s license photo, provided to Saldata by Rossi who of course had access to her DMV files. Most license pictures were horrible, but Dovner’s was actually quite good, clear, her attractive face staring directly at the camera. In most of her photos, her red blond hair flowed loose around her face, but in her license photo it was tied back in a ponytail, almost hidden, and, her eyes…

Angela paused. Dovner’s eyes. They were so familiar. Those eyes in a face with no hair…

Before she could stop or control her reaction in any way, she gasped loudly enough for the men in the front seat to hear her. Raoul Saldata turned sharply and looked at Angela. “What?”

Angela realized in a heartbeat that she had made a terrible mistake, but it was too late to try to cover it. Saldata would know she was lying and if he even suspected she was not being completely truthful with him, they’d stop the car and Garth would start cutting her fingers off until she talked. And talk she would. Everyone did eventually, so in the millisecond after she realized her mistake, she also realized that there was no point in trying to hide anything.

“I saw her.” She raised her face and looked him confidently in the eye. “She was there.” Hopefully her utterly calm demeanor would fool him far more than any attempt at prevarication would.

It seemed to. “Who?”

Tentatively, her hand shaking, she held up the printout of Dovner’s license photo. “Dovner. She was there at the rest stop. I saw her in the ladies room. She looks totally different. Her hair is very short and black and I would never have realized it except she took her sunglasses off.”

Her stomach churned with nausea, but she prayed nothing showed in her face. Her plan - that if she could just find and warn Dovner somehow - had been handed to her. Dovner had been there, in front of her, in the one place Saldata was not watching her, and she’d not seen it.

“Go back,” Saldata hissed to Garth. “Now.”

Garth, behind the wheel, stepped on the gas, accelerating to nearly a hundred miles an hour, before de-accelerating almost as sharply to near zero. With wheels squealing, they turned into a “Authorized Vehicles Only” crossover in the interstate’s median. The eastbound lanes were clear, Garth jerked the wheel to enter the road and…

…the car slowed, then rolled to a silent stop.

And in one instant, the world changed forever.