Please.
“You don’t know who you’re looking for?” Baylor asked the table.
“Other than he’s wearing a Storm suit, no,” I said.
“Obviously it’s the man you’re calling Emergency. There’s your man.”
Bradley and I said, “No.” Filet said, “Not boss manses.”
“Sure, he is,” Baylor said.
Then July explained she only got a quick look at the man who abducted her, and she agreed with Filet, it wasn’t Emergency.
Her, he believed.
“Can anyone tell me who this Emergency person is?”
Their paths hadn’t crossed the day before, or if they had, Baylor didn’t remember.
Bradley slapped Emergency’s ID on the table. Baylor clicked on his flashlight.
“So where is he?” Baylor asked.
“He’s to the velvets boxeses,” Filet said.
Baylor leaned back. “What?”
“No, Filet.” We’d been through this about a hundred times. “You told us he wasn’t the man who locked you in Rocks.” Filet’s face was a mass of confusion. Not that Baylor’s wasn’t. “You said he wasn’t the man who asked you for the black box.”
“The black what?” Baylor asked.
“The zip drive from Player Services,” Bradley explained.
Baylor turned to Filet. “Where’s the black box?”
A question we hadn’t asked.
A question we hadn’t thought to ask.
A question Filet answered with a lengthy Vietnamese speech, poking Emergency’s likeness on the table every tenth word. When it became obvious we hadn’t quite hit the bottom of the Filet knowledge well yet—between rescues, car bombs, and chasing the two-way radio—Bradley stopped him. “Filet? Do you know where this man is?”
“Yeses.” He crossed his arms on his herringbone chest.
Bradley and I shared a glance. Had we been asking Filet the right questions while he’d been giving us the wrong answers, or had we been asking the wrong questions while he’d been trying to give us the right answers? “Filet.” Bradley leaned in. “Do you know where the black box is?”
“And if you don’t answer in English, Filet,” I said, “I’m going to shoot you.”
Filet pointed at me. “You funnys.”
“I’m not kidding even a little bit, Filet.”
“She’s not kidding, Filet,” July said.
Filet leaned over the candle. “In. The. Velvetses. Boxeses.” Filet stabbed Emergency’s picture with every word.
“He’s not, Filet,” I said. We’d been in, out, and through Rocks five hundred times—it felt like five hundred times—and Emergency hadn’t been perched on a stack of empty jewelry boxes.
“Maybe he means the display cases,” Baylor said.
Bradley’s head fell back, a whoosh of air escaped him, while I went numb, except my foot, that I just wished would go numb. There were several, three or four at least, jewelry display cabinets. Big. Long. And velvet-lined. There wasn’t a chance Emergency was trapped in one of the cases. We’d have heard him trying to bang his way out. He didn’t have spiked lasagna for lunch, so he wasn’t sleeping in one of the jewelry cases either. We’d passed the jewelry display cases every time we’d been through Rocks. We’d woven in and out of them. We’d run into them. We’d tripped over them. We all, I was sure, had bruises from the jewelry display cases, because other than the first few minutes when the glow of FEMA’s headlights illuminated Rocks enough for us to maneuver around them, which was hours earlier, it had been center-of-the-earth dark in the Rocks showroom.
The game changed again after Baylor left the casino the way he’d come in, through the tunnel to Rocks. Upon his return, he took a hard seat and slapped our salvation on the table, then gave us the horrible news: Emergency was dead, single shot to the back of the head, execution style, and laid out inside a dark jewelry display case. We’d been back and forth in front of, behind, and even over his body again and again. And in the display case across from Emergency’s body, Baylor found the zip drive. Filet, Broom, and July too, were only alive because our zip drive thief was still on Disaster. Waiting for his zip drive.
Choking the living daylights out of Filet wouldn’t help anything. It was just as much our faults for not asking as it was his for not answering. Besides. We’d kept him alive that long, we might as well keep him alive a little longer. I clasped my hands on the table in front of the candle. I tried to keep my voice steady. “Filet?”
He pointed to himself. And if he did that one more time, he wouldn’t live one more minute. How many Filets were there? ONE. Him.
“Filet,” I tried again. “Your boss man.”
“Yeses?”
“When is he coming to get the black box?”
Filet tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Whens Filet, who is my person, callses ons the—” He searched the dark ceiling for the plural of whatever English word he may or may not have had a hold of yet.
“The radio?” Baylor asked.
Filet pointed gun fingers at Baylor. “You gotses it.”
“Where is it?” Baylor asked the table. “The two-way?”
Well that—we looked around—we didn’t know.
We’d lost it again.
* * *
We found the elusive, slippery, utterly forgettable two-way radio for the last time under our three-desk stronghold in Player Services. We, in that case, was Baylor. Back at our Stir table, we stared at it.
We were about to learn who’d caused the death of the fake officer, who killed Emergency, who’d hidden the cash carts from the original thieves, forcing them to enlist Pine Apple assistance, who’d locked us in the casino, who’d disabled Bradley’s phone, who’d spiked the lasagna, then feigned sleep as if he’d eaten it too, who’d compromised every life in the building more than even Hurricane Kevin could, and all for the zip drive sitting next to the two-way radio.
For all we knew, it was Miller the Medic.
Baylor clicked the two-way on. The green and red lights lit, and we were plunged into the middle of Disaster negotiations between Fantasy, who it would seem was safely behind the Disaster vault door with what, from what we could gather, sounded like everyone else, and the man behind it all, not Miller the Medic, but Head Storm Mark Perry, who was obviously on the other side of the Disaster vault door. With the Weather One camera and No Hair. Who Mark Perry was willing to trade for the zip drive. Otherwise, his plan was to execute No Hair on live television. If there was one person on Disaster who could take down No Hair, it was his old friend Mark Perry, Head Storm, Mississippi State Trooper, and Special Agent in Charge of Detail for Governor Vernon R. Wilson.
Make that Double Agent in Charge of Detail for Hurricane Kevin.
Fantasy said back, “For the last time, Perry. The explosion downstairs took out your chef, anyone with him, and your zip drive. We’ve never had it, we don’t have it now, and can’t trade for it. Take the jewelry, let No Hair go, and walk away. We’ll write this off as collateral storm damage and you’ll never hear a word from any of us again.”
“Hilarious,” Perry said. “You’re hilarious.”
Filet pointed at the two-way radio. “That boss manses.”
He smiled.
TWENTY-THREE
“No.” I slammed my hand on top of Bradley’s and Baylor’s, already fighting for control of the two-way radio. “Not so fast. If we jump in, we’ll get No Hair killed. Just wait.”
Neither budged.
“Obviously, this was a crime of opportunity, both the hurricane and the fact that when the Storm call went out, No Hair wasn’t here and wasn’t expected. Perry thought he could pull it off. It wasn’t a perfect plan to begin with,” I said, “then he was tripped up by the casino heist, and somehow No Hair put it together on Disaster, at least enough to get everyone to saf
ety behind the vault door. Now Perry’s plan is falling apart.”
Their grips loosened.
“He’s weak, he’s desperate, and at this point, he has no idea we’re here, which means we’re holding all the cards. If we play them right, we might get out of here alive.”
They let go.
“Filet tellses you and tellses you, boss manses.”
The whole time, Filet had been telling us it was Head Storm Mark Perry, and every time, it had fallen through the cracks of his broken English.
Communication was key.
And we’d had so very little.
Fifteen minutes later, after we’d gone around the table proposing, then abandoning, several dead-end strategies that would get us all killed and it looked like there was no solution, I broke my own heart when I played our trump card. “Mark Perry has a daughter.”
The movement around the table reduced to the flicker of the candle.
“She’s Bex and Quinn’s age,” I said. “And she lives in Montgomery with his ex-wife.”
We heard the crack of thunder outside.
“Her name is Madeline.”
No one said a word.
“They live on Pine Needle Place.”
* * *
Bradley pushed the green button on the two-way radio.
“Perry.”
Static.
More static.
Even more static.
“Who is this?”
“Bradley Cole.”
It felt like a week before the two-way radio beeped with a response. “Ah, Cole,” he said. “Where have you been, my man?”
“Busy.”
Filet was in the driver’s seat of Jug Dooley’s van. Crying.
I was in the back of the van with a loaded Glock, Baylor and his loaded Sig, and fifty million dollars. Bradley was in the passenger seat with the two-way radio.
“Where’s your wife?” Perry asked.
“She’s in Alabama.”
“Liar.”
Nothing.
“Wait him out, Bradley.”
The whispered words were barely past my lips when the two-way beeped again. “I know she came back with you on the helicopter.”
“Hours ago.”
Plenty of time to get back to Alabama.
“Where’s your boy?”
Beside me, Baylor huffed.
“Also in Alabama.”
“How’d they get there?” Perry asked.
“In a rental Suburban.”
Another week went by.
“My wife is in Pine Apple with our daughters.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” Perry said.
“Baylor’s in Montgomery with yours.”
It took him a minute to respond. When he did, he almost broke the two-way radio. “LIAR!”
“Madeline?” Bradley’s head dropped, and I knew exactly how he felt. “Pine Needle Place?”
Week three crawled by.
“Cole? Touch a hair on my daughter’s head, so help me God, I will put a bullet between your eyes.”
None of us doubted it a bit, especially Filet, who, head to steering wheel, was bawling.
Week four crept by.
“Where’s my zip drive?” Perry asked.
“Not your zip drive, Perry.”
“Where’s the chef?”
“Right beside me.”
Filet sobbed.
“Let me talk to him,” Perry said.
Bradley passed the radio. Filet laid it on thick. Total Vietnamese, except for the wailing, which broke all language barriers. Bradley put us all out of our misery when he reclaimed the radio. “He’s your getaway driver, Perry.”
Week five dragged out.
“Where’s his cousin?” Perry asked.
“He didn’t make it.”
Filet cried even harder at the thought of his dead cousin Broom. Who wasn’t dead. I was about to start crying with him. My foot hurt all the way to my ears, Jug’s van smelled like a swamp, and Perry could very well be on a satellite phone with his ex-wife, who would tell him there was no Suburban outside.
“Keep him talking, Bradley,” I said. “Don’t give him too much time.”
Bradley pushed the green button. “Perry? I have a getaway vehicle for you, the only witness who can take you down, and ten million dollars. Walk away.”
Filet let out a series of wails. So during week six, we tried our hardest to reassure him we weren’t throwing him to the wolves. (“Wolveses?”) We explained again it was a ruse. (“Ruses?”) It was a trap. (“Trapses?”) It was a setup. (“Setses upses?”) Finally, Bradley told Filet to shut up, which he understood, if not the words, the tone, and dialed it back to a whimper. Then Bradley pushed the green button. “I’m giving you a way out, Perry. Take it. Take the money and run.”
Week seven.
“What’s in it for you, Cole?”
“Forty million,” Bradley said. “You get ten. I get forty.”
“Not buying it.”
Static.
“Now or never, Perry.”
The radio went dead.
* * *
Six months later, or what certainly felt like six months later, Mark Perry radioed back. He wanted all fifty million, then demanded the vehicle identification number of the getaway car and wanted Filet at the lobby-level stairwell security door with his money. Bradley gave him the VIN number and told him he’d leave one canvas bag of money at the lobby-level stairwell security door. No Filet, but a canvas bag of earnest money.
Eighteen of the longest minutes of our lives later, the two-way radio beeped.
“Van at the front door,” Perry said. “Every door open including the back. I want to see the money. You’re driving, Cole. Be outside the driver door, legs spread, hands on your head. The chef goes in the backseat behind you and my insurance, Miss Hawaii, goes in the backseat behind me.”
“Miss who?” Bradley asked.
Baylor said an ugly, ugly, ugly word.
“Don’t play with me, Cole. Do you think I’m stupid?”
Bradley pushed the red button. “The girl you’re talking about is in Alabama with your little girl, Perry.” We collapsed in relief at the improvisation. “Madeline.”
And then we scrambled through the rain.
Filet, screaming his lungs out, switched seats. Baylor and I climbed out of the back of the van. I kissed my husband, we tried to tell each other it was almost over, but couldn’t tell each other anything over Filet’s howls. Baylor carried me over the glass and past the bones of FEMA’s car. My Glock and I took a right for the dark valet desk. Baylor and his Sig went left for the dark bellman’s desk. We took cover. We didn’t plan on Mark Perry making it past us to Bradley, Filet, the money, or the van, but that was only until he appeared. The black canvas bag of earnest money slung across his back, in one hand he had a Maglite leading the way, and in the other hand, he had a gun. And the gun was against the back of Biloxi Police Captain Sandy Marini’s head.
We couldn’t take the shot. Bradley knew Mark Perry would frisk him, he’d relinquished his gun, he couldn’t take a shot at all. Sandy Marini had been relieved of her firearm hours earlier, and she probably just wished she could take the shot. It was Filet, who, from the backseat of the van, pulled Bradley’s Smith & Wesson .45 from his shearling boot and emptied it into Mark Perry.
* * *
Baylor carried me up thirteen flights of steps while No Hair did something—I didn’t know and didn’t want to know—with the bodies, both Emergency’s from the jewelry display case in Rocks and what was left of Mark Perry’s from Jug’s van. Fantasy and Sandy Marini crawled through the tunnel to the casino for July and Broom, who was still asleep. Bradley had the worst job of all; he took custody of Filet.
By the time Ba
ylor and I made it up the stairs to the great hall, the Storm electrician had restored generator power, which turned out to be as hard as flipping the on switch Mark Perry had flipped off. I asked Baylor to find a satellite phone so I could call my parents. Before we hung up, my father, my sweet, sweet father, said, “Honey, I know you’ve been through a lot, and I don’t want to add to your burden, but I need to tell you something.” With everything I had left, and a lot I didn’t have left, I prayed it wouldn’t be about Bexley or Quinn. Daddy said, “You owe Bea Crawford a hundred dollars. She said you promised her cash.”
I went to the control room and ran recovery software on Bradley’s office computer, pulled the casino lockdown program first, then downloaded it to a Disaster computer. I changed the lockdown code, enabled the generator, and unlocked the doors. I stumbled down the residence hall and checked on Danielle and Bacon. I didn’t mean to check on Eddie the Idiot, but they were together. Finally, I poked my weary head in Bianca’s door.
“Bianca?”
Her head snapped up. “David!”
It was in her doorway that I stumbled.
The last thing I remember was Bianca running to me.
* * *
I woke ten hours later in the strange Disaster bed wearing Bianca’s black silk pajamas. My hair smelled like her shampoo, my husband was asleep beside me, I was starving to death, and the storm had passed.
TWENTY-FOUR
At five o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, the fifteenth of October, with the sun shining brightly on battered and saturated Biloxi, Bradley and I stepped off the elevator into the demolished Bellissimo lobby. We set our suitcases down behind the small crowd gathered around Chip Chapman. Mr. Sanders, having finally found his way home from Norway, spotted, then joined us. He gave me half a hug. “How’s your foot?”
“Eight stitches,” I said.
“When will you be back?”
Bradley answered, “We’re not sure.”
Double Agent Page 23
