Enemy of Mine: A Pike Logan Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

now. I’ve got the beacon track. I’m getting someone on it. I’ll have a visual ASAP.”
    “How’d he get out without you triggering?”
    He got no response and knew there’d been a screwup. He saw no reason to drive the blade home a second time, and simply waited. He was in a position to react, should he have to.
    Still plenty of time. Let it play out.
    Knuckles called Blaine in the Ops Center, giving an update and letting him know they were in motion.
    Retro, the other operator with him, analyzed the beacon track andsaid, “He’s doing the usual pattern. No issues there, but how the hell did he get out of the building without Johnny seeing him? Something’s not kosher.”
    “I don’t know, and I don’t trust this tech surveillance bullshit. All we know is that his moped is moving. No idea if he’s on it or not.” Knuckles thought about it for a second, then said, “We’re still good. He’s either in the building or on the moped. We got that track, and he’s still a good twenty minutes away from his house.”
    Knuckles was about to check in with Decoy, when he was beaten to the punch. “We got an intruder. I say again, we got an intruder.”
    What the hell?
In all the time they’d tracked Crusty, he’d gone to this apartment alone.
    “Say again?”
    Decoy’s breath came in pants as he sprinted somewhere Knuckles couldn’t see. “His mistress just entered the building. We’re moving to the roof. We’ve got the cameras operational on WiFi. She’s on the ground floor, and searching. I don’t know what she’s searching for, but it had better not be us.”
    “Get out of sight. Get gone.”
    Seconds later, Decoy came back, no longer out of breath. “She’s packing up. She’s got some luggage and she’s shoving things in.”
    “What do you mean? She’s packing
his
clothes? How’s she acting? Is she taking a trip with a friend, or running from the law?”
    “She’s definitely running from the law. She’s packing like someone’s going to kick the door in. And it’s all of his shit. There isn’t any women’s stuff in here. She’s on the second floor now, and ripping his laptop apart from the docking station.”
    Knuckles remembered the mission. “Did you image it?”
    “No time. She came in before we could.”
    It took a moment for the full ramifications to hit home.
He knows he’s being hunted. He’s going to run.
    He called Blaine and gave a SITREP, getting authority for an in-extremis takedown of a fleeting target. It was risky, because theyweren’t set for a perfect hit, but they
did
know his habitual route. Knuckles was positioned to intercept if necessary. The only problem was that Crusty was now going to pick the kill zone. Not optimal.
    Retro gave him a location of the beacon track, and he saw it was only a few blocks away, on a street headed to the P12 highway. Still inside the residential area where the roads were no more than alleys, ribbons that wandered aimlessly, hemmed in by wall-to-wall buildings on either side.
    Got to get to him before he hits the thoroughfare.
    He gunned their van, swinging it around the narrow street, ignoring the bleating horn from the vehicle behind him as he hopped the curb to complete the U-turn.
    “Retro, give me a lock-on.”
    “Two blocks back. He’s on a one-lane road right now. Take a left, and we’ll intersect his line of march behind him. What’s the play?”
    Knuckles thought for a moment, driving like a madman, then said, “Push his ass over with the van. If anyone’s on the road, let him go.”
    “Vehicles aren’t the only threat. You can’t predict who’ll see this from the buildings. You sure?”
    “No. But he’s running, which means we’ve been blown somehow. We need to get his ass for that as much as anything else.”
    They made the left and entered a narrow one-way road with barely enough room for the van, the uneven cobblestone surface rattling Knuckles’ teeth. In front of them was a moped, the man on it having a