Page 35 of Call Sign: King
“The airport,” Ryder said at the exact same time as MacGyver and Torch.
“Okay, but which one? They aren’t taking her on a commercial flight so that should rule out Pearson.”
“Call Crash and have him and Burn break out the weapons and go on offense. They’re waiting for me at the Burlington Executive Airport. The assholes have to be headed there, right?” Ryder asked with a small prayer.
“Shit. A Google search is finding six small regional airports in the Greater Toronto metro area.”
“We can’t cover all of them alone, but let’s see if we can get local police’s help.”
“This is MacGyver. I’m heading back up to the suite to check on the team and to run interference with the crime scene investigators who have to be swarming by now. I want to know everything they know.”
“And this is Arrow. I met up with Michael. He’d taken the south stairs when I took the north. It sounds like he got back to the lobby just in time to get a good look at the van as they drove in front of the hotel. He even got a partial on the license. He’s pretty sure it was a newer model Ford Transit with a white plate and 998 as the first three characters. Repeat. 998. I’ll get this to the police commander on site so they can get an APB out.”
“Roger that,” Axel confirmed “And I have Bing and his team in D.C. hacking into the Toronto red-light camera network to see if we can track their movement that way.”
Even though Ryder could barely think straight, he recognized how lucky he was to have his team handling things at the moment. They were staying calm even if he felt like he was losing his mind.
As he rounded the final corner before approaching the hotel he panicked. The entire street was blocked off already. A half dozen police cars were parked between two ambulances and a fire truck. Hundreds of people stood in small groups for as far as the eye could see. People in uniforms he suspected were employees who had been evacuated mingled with cameramen with their telephoto lenses. As he pulled to a stop at the edge of the fiasco, a local news van rushed past, coming to get their scoop.
All around him was a flurry of excited activity and all he could think about was how they were all vultures, circling the scene, trying to collect their salacious gossip. Scandalous tidbits they could share with their families over dinner that night, or worse, take to Twitter and fucking TikTok.
That’s all Khloe was to them. A celebrity. A star. Someone to gossip about or collect an autograph or selfie with if they were lucky.
But to him, she was his everything. The reason he got up in the morning. With a rare clarity, Ryder knew he wouldn’t survive losing her.
Think, Helms. Think.
The policemen who had been chasing him on the drive from the motel were standing at his window… knocking for him to open the window or better yet, get out of the car. If he did that… if he got out… all of those fucking cameras would point at him, and he had no intention of becoming the star of this damn story. If he got out, there was a good chance he’d be detained… questioned… It was bad enough the entire team inside was caught up in the aftermath of what had happened. He was the one and only BSO member other than his pilots still outside the net of the hotel’s crime scene and that meant he wasn’t going inside.
Not yet.
His mind made up, Ryder threw the car into reverse, slamming it into the cruiser that had parked right behind him. The policemen were shouting at him to stop. He could see them drawing their weapons, preparing to shoot out his tires, so he gunned it, taking evasive action as he went the wrong way down the one-way street. Because traffic was jammed, he had to drive onto the sidewalk at the corner, riding the curb until he could turn onto the next street.
“This is the King. I need you to give me your best guess on which regional airport they’re going to.”
“I can’t know that,” Axel replied.
“I know, but you can give an educated guess.”
Several seconds went by as Wrath evaluated the options.
“I’d narrow it down to Oshawa to the North and Burlington to the South.”
“Why’s that?”
“Billy Bishop is the closest, but they won’t want to wait for a ferry, so that’s ruled out. The others seem so small I doubt they’d support the kind of planes that would handle international flights.”
“You mean to the US?” Ryder asked, still unsure which direction to head in.
“No. I mean Eastern Europe. Your old haunting ground. We may not know exactly who yet, but based on how they got the drop on our team, it has to be one of your old friends.”
While it terrified him to think of it, Ryder couldn’t disagree. Dozens of ruthless men’s faces flashed through his brain, each one more terrifying than the next. The only saving grace was that they’d eliminated the three Volkov brothers years before. The Volkov Bratva was by far the most dangerous monster in his closet, but he just couldn’t see the remaining leader, his old pal Alexi, pulling something like this off.
Hopefully he wouldn’t need to worry about who the asshole was for much longer. If he picked the right air strip, he’d put the bastard out of his misery sooner rather than later, but that required him to choose the right airport.
He went with his gut.
“I’m heading to Oshawa. Text me the address so I can punch it in my cell. Tell Crash and Burn I’m counting on them covering Burlington. I know they don’t normally get pulled into active duty other than flying, but today everyone is an agent.”
