Winter Frost (A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery Book 2) Read online

  “They’ll be secure?”

  “It’ll be like locking them up in Fort Knox.”

  As soon as the words left Tristan’s mouth, the limousine lurched forward as it was rammed in the rear. The tablet tumbled out of Tristan’s hands. Spencer spilled off the seat. In the front of the limousine, Bernie cursed.

  CO spun around to look out the rear window. All she could see was the grill of a tractor trailer truck pelting the bumper to plow them off the road.

  “What’s he doing?” Tristan asked while scrambling to recapture the tablet to upload the files.

  “What do you think he’s trying to do?” CO pressed a button on the console next to her. “He’s trying to kill us.”

  Tristan finally grabbed the tablet only to have the truck ram the bumper of the limousine again. The tablet bounced off the edge of the seat and landed next to Spencer on the floor.

  The back of the refreshment bar dropped to reveal an arsenal. CO grabbed the largest weapon—a Sig Sauer nine-millimeter semi-automatic rifle—and snapped a magazine into it.

  With the next hit, the limousine sideswiped a van before crossing two lanes to hit a car, which swerved out of control.

  Clutching the rifle, CO was knocked out of her seat. She landed on top of Tristan, who had managed to grab the tablet. He clutched it with both hands.

  She pressed another button and the sunroof opened. She kicked off her stilettos. “Time to get this party started.”

  Instead of getting on the toll road leading into the city, Chris turned onto a four-lane freeway that snaked through the suburbs of northern Virginia.

  The clandestine cloak had dropped. Burnett’s SUV kept Chris’s truck in sight while it maneuvered through heavy traffic. Chris did nothing to dissuade him.

  The truck and SUV made their way through Lansdowne, an area that consisted of chic townhome villages and office parks connected by fast moving freeways. From there, they moved on to Herndon, an older town made up of small single-family homes with grassy lawns and two-lane roads.

  They crested the top of a hill at a four-way intersection. The light turned yellow. Chris slowed down. Just as the light turned red, Chris stomped on the accelerator and raced through the intersection.

  “Move it!” Burnett punched his partner in the arm and pointed to the truck disappearing out of sight. “He’s making a run for it.”

  The SUV raced across the intersection at the same time as a construction vehicle. Horns blared. The heavy truck hit the brakes and spun around until it stopped, facing the opposite direction.

  The two-lane road went down a steep hill and then up again. Gun in hand, Burnett scoured the landscape along the tree-lined road. “Do you see him?” He twisted and turned in his seat. “He has to be around here somewhere.”

  They kept driving through one intersection after another. Herndon turned into Vienna. As they neared the heart of town, Burnett’s partner sat up in his seat. “There he is.”

  Burnett saw the black pick-up truck pull out of the metro parking lot. They could see Sterling’s face pressed against the rear window. Burnett compared the license plate number to the one he had for Chris Matheson. West Virginia tags. The numbers were a match.

  As they closed in, the truck sped up.

  “Don’t lose him this time. I’m through playing games with Matheson.” Burnett reached behind his seat for a grenade launcher.

  Doris swung the steering wheel to make a hard right into a parking lot.

  Ray directed them to turn left onto the street on the other side of the lot.

  The SUV in pursuit followed. Hanging out the open window, the woman in the denim jacket ejected the magazine from her gun and slapped in a fresh one just as two bullets hit her in the shoulder and back of the head. Her weapon dropped to the pavement. She slumped out of the window. The driver lunged to grab her leg before she slipped out of the moving vehicle, which swerved from one lane to the other.

  With only one hand on the handlebars, Murphy looped around to the front of the SUV while firing continuously on the assailants. Three bullets found their mark. The driver dropped his grip on his partner’s leg. She fell out onto the street. The rear wheels of the vehicle ran over her dead body before the SVU crashed into a power pole.

  Murphy didn’t wait around. He spun the motorcycle around and raced across the parking lot to find Doris.

  “Okay,” Ray announced from the tablet in the back seat, “we have one more team of bad guys left.”

  “Do they have guns?” Jacqui asked with a breathless tone.

  As if to answer her, the front windshield shattered with two gunshots.

  Doris hit the brakes and spun the wheel. The car swung around one-hundred-eighty degrees. Screaming, Jacqui and Francine were thrown against the side door and windows.

  “I’m going to be sick!” Jacquie clutched her stomach.

  “Are you serious?” Francine said. “This from a woman who made a career of cutting up dead people?”

  “They never tried to kill me!”

  As Doris headed in the opposite direction, Murphy came at her head-on.

  “Keep on moving!” he ordered via the ear com. “Don’t look back! Get to the Capitol now!” He reached under his jacket and pulled out a semi-automatic rifle slung across his shoulders.

  As they raced away, they heard rapid gun fire moving further in the distance.

  “The toll road is right up ahead,” Ray said. “You need to get on there. Beyond that is nothing but construction for the new subway stop. You should be good now. I gotta go help Chris. I’ll check back in in a few minutes.”

  As she approached the intersection to turn onto the toll road, Doris could see the heavy equipment lined up on the other side of the wooden barricades.

  The traffic light was green.

  She lifted her foot off the accelerator. The car slowed down.

  “Doris,” Jacqui said, “you need to speed up. We need to get to Washington. The confirmation hearing is starting, and they’ll lock the doors to the chambers.”

  “I can’t leave him.” Doris hit the gas and made a U-turn.

  “Murphy can take care of himself,” Francine said.

  “Kirk will haunt me if I leave a LEO back there to fight without back-up.” Doris sped up. “Jacqui, hand me my purse.”

  Jacqui picked up Doris’s handbag from where it had been resting at her feet. Doris reached inside and pulled out her pearl handled thirty-eight caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. Waving the gun, she let out a wicked laugh. “Time for Annie and me to kick some bad-guy ass!”

  “Tristan, have you uploaded those files to the cloud yet?” Chris asked via the ear com.

  Sprawled on the floor of the limousine racing to stay ahead of the truck trying to run it off the road, Tristan could barely hear him above the squealing wheels and car horns around him. Spencer had wedged herself under his arm. Tristan clung to the tablet with both hands. His fingers trembled while he tried to drag the files on the disc to Nigel’s cloud where they would be secure. If anything happened to any of them, the Phantoms would be able to access the files and make sure they got into the hands of the right people.

  Before any of that could happen, he needed a secure connection, which was difficult to maintain with the limousine bouncing back and forth across the freeway like a ball in some arcade game.

  Barefoot, CO stood on his back and raised up through the sunroof. The wind whipped through the fur on her hat. She lifted the rifle up onto her shoulders.

  The truck rammed into the back of the limousine.

  Spencer whimpered and attempted to burrow under the seat. Tristan’s fingers slipped from where he had grabbed the folder containing the files.

  CO fell back against the edge of the sunroof and dropped down. “Damn it!”

  The truck sped up and pushed the limousine down the freeway.


  “I’m sending that cretin straight to hell!” She adjusted the strap on the rifle. Her face was filled with determination as she jumped onto the rear-facing seat, sprang up through the sunroof, and fired off a barrage of gunfire.

  Releasing its hold on the limousine, the truck swerved to the right and then the left. It crossed three lanes of traffic before it hit the cement barricade and rolled over several times. It ended its vicious ride by bursting into flames.

  Bernie regained control of the limousine and they continued on their way.

  CO placed the rifle back into its case and hit the button. The drawer flipped shut. After smoothing her hat and clothes, she put on her shoes. Spencer jumped up onto the seat and snuggled next to her. The sheltie shook to smooth her ruffled fur and uttered a sigh of contentment.

  “Have you gotten those files uploaded yet, Tristan?”

  His knees shaking, Tristan climbed into his seat. They were transferring. “Just about.”

  Concealed behind the dark glasses, her eyes bore into him again. “What have you been doing?”

  It was a game of chicken that Murphy could not win. There were three men in the SUV—the driver and two passengers. He was being shot at from both sides of the vehicle as it came at him on the road. Without the protection of metal barricades in an enclosed vehicle, Murphy was exposed. His only defense was speed and agility to dodge their gunfire while trying to keep them occupied so Doris could escape.

  Murphy was accurate enough with his gunshots to drive the gunman in the rear seat back into the vehicle. Like a flying insect refusing to give up, Murphy managed to drive the SUV off Doris’s tail and down a side street.

  When one of them would get the upper hand, they would be driven back onto the defensive—each one chasing the other, intent on achieving the fatal end goal. Eventually, the SUV crashed through the heavy fence marking off the construction site for the metro.

  The last straw was when two of Murphy’s gunshots took out the gunman in the rear seat, who happened to be the brother of the assailant in the front.

  “Kill ‘em!” The gunman stepped on the driver’s foot to press the accelerator to the floor.

  Murphy gunned the bike over the hilly terrain—sailing up one hill and down the other while the gunman fired continuously at him—intent on revenge for the dead man in the back seat.

  The course made it impossible for Murphy to steer with one hand while shooting with the other. His only hope was to kick up enough dust to conceal himself so he could outrun the gun fight.

  Spotting a bulldozer nearby, Murphy spun the bike around and around until he had created a massive cloud of dirt. The driver was driving blind when he raced through the dust cloud. He had no idea what he had hit when the SUV smashed head-on into the bulldozer.

  The dust cloud turned orange as the flames shot up into the sky.

  With a sigh of relief, Murphy turned the bike around to head back toward the main road. He didn’t hear the shot that ripped into his thigh. He fell over the handlebars. He and the bike cartwheeled down the hillside.

  The motorcycle landed on top of Murphy—pinning him against a dirt mover. His leg throbbed. The bike felt heavy across his chest. He had no doubt but that he had broken several ribs.

  Murphy could see the legs of the gunman making his way slowly from the top of the hill toward him. His clothes were torn and covered with soot from the explosion. Blood and ash covered his face. He carried a semi-automatic rifle in his arms.

  Insane rage-filled his eyes.

  Murphy fought to catch his breath. The pain from the broken ribs felt like a knife slicing through his chest. He reached under the bike for his rifle only to find it pinned under his back.

  The gunman’s rage-filled eyes met Murphy’s. Saying nothing, he held up the rifle to take aim on him.

  Murphy tried to remember if he had told Jessica that he loved her before leaving the house that morning.

  He braced himself for the pain that would precede death.

  He heard the shot.

  It wasn’t at all as loud as he had thought it would be coming from a rifle only a few feet from him. Also, he expected that the gunman would fire more than one.

  He blinked and refocused.

  The fury in the gunman’s eyes had been replaced with confusion. His mouth hung open. Blood trickled down his chin before he dropped to his knees and keeled over.

  At the top of the hill, Doris lowered Annie, her revolver. “You’re welcome, Lieutenant.”

  Seeing Murphy injured, Jacqui scrambled down the hillside to him. “What happened to you?” She called over her shoulder, “Francine, get my bag out of the car.” She took off her jacket and folded it to put under Murphy’s head.

  “I told you to go to Washington,” he said as the three women lifted the bike off him. “Why’d you come back?”

  “We Geezers have a saying,” Francine said. “‘No man left behind.’” She winked at him. “Especially when he’s a cutie.”

  Burnett and his partner kept a steady distance behind Chris’s truck, which merged onto Route 66, heading for Washington. Despite the seat being set back as far as it could go, the tall man’s legs were cramped from hours being spent in the vehicle. His knees shook where he had the grenade launcher propped between them.

  The closer they got to downtown Washington, the less chances he would have to take out Chris Matheson and his friend. His dog, too. Burnett was getting increasingly annoyed at the dog staring at him through the rear window with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

  The traffic was getting increasingly heavier—which meant more potential witnesses.

  “Looks like we may have missed our chance,” Burnett’s partner said.

  “We may have to make it a drive by.” Burnett turned around in his seat to see how many cars were nearby. He turned back to see the truck take a left exit into Ballston, an older section of Arlington populated with strip malls, convenience stores, and gas stations. A slimy grin crossed his face. “Perfect.”

  The truck turned into a shopping center parking lot and slowed down.

  “Don’t lose ‘em.” Burnett reached into the bag and extracted a grenade.

  The SUV followed.

  The truck moved slowly along the row of parking spaces until it turned into a space in the far corner of the lot.

  Burnett lowered his window. “Move up behind them and block them in.”

  As the SUV moved in crossways to block any escape for the truck, Burnett dropped the grenade into the launcher, threw it up onto his shoulder, aimed, and fired it through the back window of the vehicle.

  The SUV roared out of the shopping center as the Chris’s truck went up into a giant fireball.

  “Bummer!” In his computer room in West Virginia, Ray buried his face in his hands when his computer lost its connection with Chris Matheson’s truck and the screen on his monitor went black.

  His grin filled Paul Burnett’s face when his partner merged into traffic to take them into the city. With the Mathesons eliminated, all threats to Daniel Cross becoming director of the CIA were gone. Leban Slade could continue doing business as usual without inconvenience.

  He anticipated a huge Christmas bonus coming his way.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The media was getting antsy. Daniel Cross’s confirmation hearing had been scheduled to begin at ten o’clock. Inexplicably, the chair of the committee, Senator Graham Keaton had decided to delay the start for one hour.

  That allowed Dan more time to mingle with the media and supporters in the Capitol’s rotunda. Soon, he anticipated becoming an official member of the Washington elite. He was finishing his sixth on-the-spot interview with a leggy journalist when he spotted Stu Dunleavy on his cell phone.

  The lawyer shot Dan a thumbs up sign and a toothy grin.

  “Everything’s taken care o
f?” Dan asked Stu in a low voice when they met at the bottom of the steps leading up to the chambers.

  “Burnett just called. Matheson’s husband will not be a problem.”

  “What about Goldman’s report? All copies, including digital, deleted and wiped from any hard drives?”

  “What if someone shows up with a copy?” With a scoff, Stu started up the stairs to the next level. “Samuel Goldman was a bitter jealous malcontent who saw that his deputy chief was on the fast track and would soon bypass him.” An arrogant grin crossed his face. “As a matter of fact, Goldman was so disgruntled that he tried to frame you for treason.”

  Dan stepped back and blinked. The corners of his lips curled upward.

  “That’s why I’m Washington’s number one fixer. I’ve got a team of witnesses and journalists from all major networks ready. If anyone so much as mentions Lithuania today, we’ll launch a smear campaign like no one has ever seen before.”

  “No wonder you’re Leban Slade’s go-to guy.”

  “It’s best to leave sticky situations to my people.” Stu narrowed his eyes. Over the railing, he saw a group of people crossing the floor of the rotunda. “Killing the Matheson woman was sloppy. We would have had an easier time containing that situation if you had allowed my team to handle her instead of going out on your own.”

  Dan grabbed his arm. “Don’t you try to pin Matheson’s murder on me. I had nothing to do with that. After Senator Douglas told me about Anonymous’ s letter, I went straight to Slade. He told me to leave everything in your hands. That’s exactly what I did.”

  Stu was about to object when someone announced that the chamber was open. The hearing would start in five minutes.

  “It’s about time.” Dan hurried down the corridor.

  Stu couldn’t take his eyes off the group making their way to the stairs.

  “Surprised to see them?” Ripley Vaccaro asked.