When You Can't Stop (Harper McDaniel Book 2) Read online

  PRAISE FOR JAMES W. HALL

  “A masterful writer.”

  —James Patterson

  “No writer working today . . . more clearly evokes the shadows and loss that hide within the human heart.”

  —Robert Crais

  “The king of the Florida-gothic noir.”

  —Dennis Lehane

  “Delivers taut and muscular stories about a place where evil always lurks beneath the surface.”

  —Michael Connelly

  “I believe no one has written more lyrically of the Gulf Stream since Ernest Hemingway.”

  —James Lee Burke

  “Hall keeps the tension mounting as motives and alliances shift with the foul-scented wind. Even as violence looms, Hall’s talent for description adds a balancing, poetical note.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Big Finish

  “As ever, Hall is in colorful command of his South Florida setting . . . Compared to other mystery writers, he plays things refreshingly low key, but he’s always in control, thriving on the setup as much as the payoff . . . with its nicely observed characters and lively dialogue—and terrific sex scenes—it keeps readers turning the pages.”

  —Kirkus Reviews on Going Dark

  “A damn good mystery.”

  —Booklist on Dead Last

  “Hall is one of those rare thriller writers who can build character as he ratchets tension, who can do no-holds-barred action scenes with panache and, in the midst of bedlam, never lose sight of nuance. All those skills are on display here, as Hall assembles a full-bodied supporting cast whose stories hold our interest as much as Thorn’s attempt to save his son without helping to bring about a South Florida version of Chernobyl. A fine thriller on every level.”

  —Booklist on Going Dark

  “Hall’s latest novel, titled Going Dark, proves he’s one of the best genre writers working today.”

  —Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered

  OTHER TITLES BY JAMES W. HALL

  Harper McDaniel Series

  When They Come for You

  The Thorn Series

  Under Cover of Daylight

  Tropical Freeze

  Mean High Tide

  Gone Wild

  Buzz Cut

  Red Sky at Night

  Blackwater Sound

  Off the Chart

  Magic City

  Hell’s Bay

  Silencer

  Dead Last

  Going Dark

  The Big Finish

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Bones of Coral

  Hard Aground

  Body Language

  Rough Draft

  Forests of the Night

  Short Story Collections

  Paper Products

  Over Exposure

  Nonfiction

  Hit Lit

  Hot Damn

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by James W. Hall

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503903067

  ISBN-10: 1503903060

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  PART TWO

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  PART THREE

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  PART FOUR

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off.

  —Deuteronomy 28:40

  PART ONE

  ONE

  Madrid, Spain

  Gerda watched the tall American leave the vegetable market with her net bag half-full. As usual, the woman was oblivious, doing no countersurveillance, no backward glances or sidelong looks, no sudden stops, no switching back against the flow. Dim-witted woman heedless of Gerda, her icy shadow.

  Gerda followed on the sidewalk across the avenue, a half block back. The woman, Harper McDaniel, was doing her daily food shopping, venturing to the same four shops as yesterday. After shopping, she would return to her hotel. Almost a month in this city and every day was the same routine.

  The American was a slow walker. To keep pace with her, Gerda had to reduce her stride to an amble. She hated ambling.

  Gerda also detested Madrid. Late September and it was still muggy and crowded with noisy children and tourists, and the food was foul. She would be relieved when the woman departed the city, headed off to wherever it was she was going next.

  The McDaniel woman stopped at a fruit stand to buy more oranges. Or perhaps a single banana, which she fancied now and then.

  After grocery shopping, she would take her prizes back to the hotel and stay inside her room until one o’clock in the afternoon, when she strolled to the national library and photocopied internet articles and pages from books, all of it about the olive-oil business. Gerda hovered nearby as the McDaniel woman read and searched the stacks, watching her page through periodicals and books, choosing what to copy.

  Around five the woman carted her papers back to the hotel and stayed in her room all night, where she dined alone, no pleasure, no friends. Hotel to markets, hotel to library, back to hotel.

  In the weeks Gerda had been tailing her, the woman’s limp had improved. Back in Bilbao, the American dragged her left leg as though it were hollow and filled with lead shot. Today it appeared almost normal.

  Gerda had been warned the American woman was a skilled combatant. She was instructed to proceed with care. She was told the woman was smart, strong, fast, dangerous. Gerda saw none of this. She saw a half-lame woman, too skinny, too tall, a gangly creature with a weak leg and long black hair that would be easy to grip and use to twist her head back and expose her naked throat. This was not a woman to fear, not a woman who required special precautions.

  While the American woman chose her fruit, Gerda dallied in a cramped pharmacy. She pretended to interest herself in a rack of pain pills. Pain pills for every part of the body, in every dosage and shape. Gerda had no pains. She was untroubled by discomfort of any kind.

>   She was fit and strong, “a perfect anatomical specimen,” as the newspapers had described her after her triumph at the Olympic decathlon. She’d won a silver medal for her homeland, while the gold went to a Russian steroid junkie. Betrüger. Cheater.

  Even today, these three years later, Gerda remained superbly fit. She was five foot nine, still exactly 67.5 kilograms, or 149 pounds of ripped, perfectly proportioned musculature. She could sprint, vault, and hurl the discus and javelin, high-jump, long-jump, shot-put better than any female decathlete in the world. Her high-jump record still stood at six and a half feet. Her standing vertical jump was thirty-seven inches. Better than most American basketball stars.

  Gerda followed all the international track-and-field events, checked the times and distances of her former competitors and a few promising newcomers. No one matched her performance records, no one even close. Still at her peak. No pains. No injuries. She was Gerda the Invincible.

  Undefeated, except for that miserable, drug-assisted Russian, Tatiana Zyablikova. Dead and buried now, poor thing, a gruesome end. Decapitated in a hit-and-run accident. Which was no accident.

  Struck down by a five-ton snow-removal truck with its plow raised to shoulder height. That beastly vehicle smashed into poor Tatiana at high speed as she crossed Sobornaya Square in the black heart of her country. Russia . . . now there was a truly wretched land.

  McDaniel was moving again, off to the panadería for her daily baguette, which meant there was only one store left on her rounds, la quesería. The woman loved her cheese.

  Patience was not one of Gerda’s gifts. Obedience, however, was. If it had been Gerda’s choice, by now the McDaniel woman’s body would be decaying deep inside the earth. But Gerda was not permitted to act until the order came. Till then she would follow and observe as instructed. Simply record the woman’s movements and note any contact she made with other individuals.

  Until Gerda was notified by her boss, all she could do was watch. Watch and salivate.

  TWO

  Hotel Gran Meliá Fénix, Madrid, Spain

  “This line’s secure?”

  “You damn well know it is,” Lavonne said. “And your phone?”

  “Burner,” said Harper. “I’ll toss it when we’re done.”

  “Still in Bilbao?”

  “Madrid.”

  “You left Bilbao why?”

  “Needed a change of scenery.”

  “Are you on the run, in hiding?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just what I said. Four months rehabbing my leg on those steep streets, I was sick of Bilbao. It was dreary, rained all the time. I’m a Florida girl, I need sunshine. Bilbao’s sky was so hazy I just wanted to nap all day. It was time to move.”

  “Not getting out of bed . . . maybe that was more than the weather.”

  “Of course it was. I’m not trying to fool myself.”

  Harper McDaniel looked out the hotel window at the scene below, a sunny side street near the Plaza de Colón, the smell of pastries and diesel fumes. A steamy Madrid morning, summer hanging on. Absently, she ran a fingertip around the sleek rim of scar tissue above her knee. It was a new bad habit, reliving the grim memories that flooded back when she fondled that seam in her flesh.

  After a moment she caught herself and tugged the hem of her skirt to hide the scar. She peeled off another wedge of orange and slipped it into her mouth. Succulent with a tart edge, like the ones in the backyard in Miami, her home. When she’d still had a home.

  “So talk to me, Harper.”

  “I’m ready to get back to work.”

  A pause. Lavonne humming to herself, buying a few seconds.

  Then: “Rehab complete? Everything healed?”

  “If you mean my leg, yes.”

  “And the rest of you? Has the sunshine helped?”

  “What do you want from me, Lavonne? Am I still grieving? Damn right. Everybody says give it time. Screw that. It’s like I’m wading through quicksand. Most mornings I wake up, there’s a bag of cement on my chest. So yes, my leg is better. That’s the best I can say.”

  Lavonne was silent for several breaths, then in a quiet voice:

  “Last winter, after Ross and Leo were killed, it was just a week later, you got on your saddle and rode after the bad guys. Africa, Switzerland. I didn’t say anything at the time. Everybody handles loss their own way. But what I’ve seen is, you can’t cheat grief, no way to speed up the process. Yeah, you can push it aside for a while, go manic, but sooner or later it comes back and won’t stop ripping at your guts till it’s done.”

  “Look, I appreciate your concern. I do. You’ve been a good friend, Lavonne, and I thank you. But I need to get back to work.”

  “Just so I’m clear, you talking about coming back to work for me?”

  “No, not that.”

  “Okay.” A pause that lasted several breaths. “So what then?”

  “I need new IDs, a passport, maybe a couple of different ones just to be safe, a few other docs I’ll tell you about, just little things.”

  Lavonne groaned. “You consider those ‘little things’?”

  “Can you help me?”

  “For your personal vendetta, you want to tap into DCS resources?”

  “You’ve got a dog in the fight,” Harper said. “Albion shot you too.”

  “He wasn’t the first, probably won’t be the last.”

  “If he’d killed your husband and son, would you be so glib?”

  Lavonne fell silent for a moment, absorbing the blow.

  “That’s not fair, Harper.”

  Harper didn’t reply.

  “Look, the man was found innocent. Extradition failed. It’s over. I don’t like it, but there’s nothing to be done.”

  “DNA match, public confession, a video showing him in the act, for god’s sake. The judges were paid off.”

  “Sorry, honey. Doesn’t matter. Guy’s one of their leading citizens. Maybe money changed hands, maybe it didn’t. All we know is the magistrates caved. It’s officially finished. As difficult as it is to accept, when the courts have spoken, that’s it. Unlike you, I’m bound by the law.”

  “Sure you are, whenever it’s convenient.”

  “Anything else you want to talk about?”

  “Okay, okay,” Harper said. “I get it. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I called.”

  They’d known each other for years, she and Lavonne. First contact was in Milan when Harper was working alongside her mother, Deena, on a photo shoot. At dawn one morning Lavonne rapped on Harper’s hotel room door. Harper opened the door to the statuesque African American stranger, and Lavonne breezed past Harper into the room, introduced herself, and launched into her pitch. Recruiting her as an asset for a special task force within the Defense Clandestine Service, an elite intelligence unit buried away inside a half dozen obscure agencies within the Defense Department.

  Other than two decades of martial arts training, Harper had zero relevant experience at the time. But because her mother, Deena Roberts, a celebrity photographer, had regular access to some of the globe’s most influential people—from rock musicians and movie stars to reclusive princes and brutal despots—Lavonne believed that Harper, who worked as Deena’s assistant, was perfectly positioned to gather intel on certain power players hidden behind otherwise impenetrable layers of security.

  All Harper had to do was listen, pass along anything juicy, maybe take guidance from Lavonne now and then. Espionage Lite.

  Bored and directionless at the time, disenchanted by her menial role as her mother’s protégé, Harper had been intrigued by the idea and eventually accepted.

  Next had come training. Claiming she needed a break, Harper took a leave from her apprenticeship with Deena and did a six-month stint at Harvey Point, a DOD facility in North Carolina, followed by six weeks at Quantico. Weapons training and surveillance techniques. Skills that last winter had saved her life.

  Now in her Madrid hotel room, Harper listened to the empty phone line, to t
he white noise that haunted the thousands of miles between them, a fierce low crackle like the hum of blood in her veins.

  Breathing quietly, she kept her eyes on the street below, expecting at any second for Lavonne to sever their connection. Sever it forever.

  After another pause, Lavonne cleared her throat and said, “Do you have a plan?”

  Harper settled back in her chair and exhaled quietly.

  “Olive oil,” she said.

  “Olive oil?”

  “It’s Albion’s current pet project, groves in southern Italy.”

  “Olive oil isn’t a plan.”

  “Don’t worry, Lavonne, I have a plan.”

  “And how do you happen to know this is Albion’s pet project?”

  “Is that important?”

  “Let me guess. Adrian Naff, he’s feeding you information.”

  After a moment of internal debate, Harper said yes, Adrian had steered her to olive oil. A place to start, nothing more. Olive groves in Puglia, the bootheel of Italy. Beyond that, she was on her own.

  “What’s Naff’s agenda? Top dog on Albion’s security team takes a huge risk and throws you a tidbit? What makes you think he isn’t playing you?”

  “He’s an honest guy.”

  “You know that how?”

  “I know, Lavonne.”

  “Oh, right, you read his eyes. A superpower skill you picked up from Deena. Photographer’s trick. You gaze deep into Naff’s baby browns and, bingo, you know he’s honest.”

  “Scoffing at me, Lavonne? Is that how it is?”

  “Okay, let’s say you’re right. Naff is honest. You think that’s his sole motivation for helping you?”

  “He’s trying to get me in the sack.”

  “Well, of course he is, a single guy that age. So you’re leading him on, not the other way around? That’s what you think?”

  “Don’t worry,” Harper said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “All right,” she said. “Go on, then. I’d like to hear this plan. In fact, if I’m going to assist you, I have to hear it.”

  Harper closed her eyes, summoned the lines she’d prepared.

  “Have you ever seen a bullfight, Lavonne, start to finish? A real one?”

  “I know how they work, but no, can’t say I’ve seen one.”

  “Well, there’re three acts. First is the tercio de varas. That’s the picadors. They come on horseback with their barbed lances. They injure the bull, slow him down, piss him off. Display the bull’s tendencies. Next is the suerte de banderillas.”