Michael lay on the pavement looking up at what used to be his apartment. He ached from head to toe and was pretty sure there were some broken bones somewhere that were the cause of the sharp pains radiating from his neck. The fire poured out of the hole that used to be his door and he could feel the heat washing down over his face. He should probably move, eventually the fire would reach something else explosive in there and he probably didn't want to be in its path, but he just couldn't move yet.
Oleg came running through the gate shouting his name, "Michael?" He mumbled something else followed by loud cursing in Russian as he ducked under the rain of debris and knelt at Michael's side. "What happened? Can you move?"
"Fire truck?" Michael groaned as he tried to roll over so he could get up.
"On the way," Oleg responded running his gaze over his tenant to determine if he could be moved or not.
Michael was trying to take stock of his injuries by slowly moving various parts, he could feel and move his feet so he was pretty sure he didn't have a spinal injury so he motioned for Oleg to help him up and they staggered out the gate towards the street to wait for the fire trucks. Michael leaned against a car and looked up at the ruined mess that used to be his apartment. It hadn't been much but it was a roof over his head. And now, the key card was probably gone too so he really had no chance of stopping Carla.
Something tickled at his memory and the faint thought of what Sam had told him before the explosion registered, the assassin was dead. Wondering what the hell Carla was doing he asked Oleg for a phone and the Russian man pulled one out of his pocket and handed it to Michael. He dialed Fiona's number from memory and waited for her to pick up. "Fi? We've got a problem."
"No kidding Michael, I wrecked my brand new car to save your ass. Who's going to pay for it?"
"Fi, bigger than that. Someone just blew up my apartment."
"What?" He could hear the brakes of her car squealing as she turned around and headed for his place. "Are you okay, what happened?"
"I'll live." He turned away from Oleg for a moment and said quietly, "The key card is history though."
"Hang on Michael, I'm on my way," Fiona said before she hung up.
XxXxXxXx
Both Fiona and Sam arrived a short time later. Sam had heard the explosion before the phone went dead and he'd wasted no time in tearing across town to Michael's apartment. Fiona beat him there but not by much. They found Michael sitting on the back bumper of an ambulance with an EMT shining a light in his eyes. He waved feebly at them and they waited for the exam to be over before hitting him with a barrage of questions.
"Relax you two, I'm fine. And I have no idea what happens next."
"You think Carla did this to tell you to back off?" Sam asked.
"No, this was done before she lured me to the pier. She knew you put a tracker on her bike. And she sent someone else to do this and take out Johnson knowing full well I'd come back here." He started pacing back and forth as he tried to work out what the hell Carla was up to.
Sam looked startled and shook his finger at Michael, "You don't think that bunch of pictures you found in her room were a hit list do you?"
"No, I don't think she wants me dead. Plus Victor was in there too and he's her little lap dog. No, she's up to something but hell if I know what it is."
"So what's the next step?" Fiona asked as she looked over at the ruined bumper of her car.
Michael stopped pacing and looked at his friends, "Find out what Carla's next move is and hope that gives us a clue what her end game is."
XxXxXxXx
Two days later Michael was pacing the old ratty carpet of the crappy hotel he'd been staying in. The room left a lot to be desired but it was the best he could do for now. There were pieces of paper strewn all over the room with scribbled bits of information that he'd been jotting down in an attempt to piece together the puzzle Carla had given him. He'd been trying to find that one elusive piece that would make everything else fit together but he just couldn't reach it.
While he and Fiona watched his apartment burn he'd sent Sam back to the hotel to see if he could pick up Carla's trail again. She had long since cleared out by the time he got there though, and Sam reported back that he would shake the contact tree again and see if anyone he knew could come up with anything. So Fiona had dropped him off at this hotel and promised she too would see if she could come up with anything.
Nate had been released from custody after being questioned for several hours about a drug smuggling ring that he obviously knew nothing about. Once that little problem was taken care of Michael had gone to his mother's house and changed all the locks and installed a listening device of his own and a camera to keep an eye on her. Of course he didn't tell her about the camera or the bug because that would just make her panic more. She'd been so freaked out by Nate's arrest and the apartment exploding that Michael had to send her out of town to keep her from making him crazier than he already was.
The cell phone on the table rang and he hurried over to it, "Yeah Sam, what did you find?"
"Not a lot, Carla is in the wind and no one can get a bead on her. Whatever she had going on, it seems to be done."
"Damn it," Michael hissed under his breath, "Okay Sam, thanks for your help. Lemme know if you hear anything at all."
"Will do Mikey," Sam said before he hung up.
Michael looked at the phone in his hand like it could give him the answers he needed. Something big was going down and if he didn't find out what in time to put a wrench in the operation, he had a feeling that a lot of people were going to get hurt. The last time he'd had a feeling like this his whole world had shattered and he'd lost everything he cared about in the space of an hour. So he wouldn't ignore this feeling, he couldn't, not if he wanted to retain some small portion of his sanity. And Carla was the key to it all so he would do whatever the hell it took to find her.
Thinking it might be helpful to try to track down someone else who had a hand in the pie he grabbed his jacket and the keys to the Charger and headed out the door.
