by Jack Hardin
Kyle still couldn’t understand what had happened. He’d accepted the fact that he had tried to kill himself. But it still didn’t add up. Not at all. As far as he could see, everything was just fine and dandy with the distillery and his family life.
Then there was the matter of Yolanda. She had supposedly been working here for the last couple of months. But once again the problem there was that he couldn’t remember hiring her. She came into his office yesterday and put in her two weeks, thanking him for the opportunity to work with Wild Palm. Her family, she said, was moving to Orlando and she was going to join them. Laurie had come in right after jawing on and on about how she didn’t like “that Yolanda” and how “that Yolanda” was rude and didn’t ever want to go to lunch with her or show her what she was working on or do much in the way of talking at all. Now that, Kyle could remember: if you didn’t like talking then you were going to be hard pressed to get Laurie in your corner.
Laurie had been happy to recount to Kyle that Yolanda had showed up with a couple tough-looking guys one day and that Kyle hadn’t seemed too thrilled after hiring her. After that bit of information, Kyle had brought Yolanda into his office one morning and asked her about it.
“That was my boyfriend and his friend,” she’d said. “They wanted to know if you also had a position in the back.”
“How did I get connected with you? Did I post a position?” he had asked.
“No sir, Mr. Kyle. I was eating lunch at Chicken Palace and you were at the table behind me. I heard you talking on the phone to someone about needing to hire for an office position. Before you left I introduced myself and you had me come in.”
He did like to eat lunch at Chicken Palace a lot. In fact, he had planned on eating there for lunch today since Carlene and the kids were at her sister’s for the day. But now he wasn’t sure if he would make it until lunch. He was tired and his circuitry felt burned out.
He grabbed an egg-shaped handle of the chair and drummed the fingers of his right hand across it—his left arm was still in a sling, still not working. He looked expectantly around the room. His eyes finally fell on the framed dollar bill hanging next to the door, and he smiled as another old memory came up. Carlene had come in with the kids a few days after he’d moved the distillery here, to this building. She’d handed him the frame, produced a crisp dollar bill, and let the children help their father put it together here on his desk.
He stayed focused on the dollar bill and suddenly felt strange, as if something was trying to surface. He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, and focused, waited, straining his mind to recall the carcass of a memory. But nothing happened. Then he remembered what the doctor had told him. “Relax. Your mind needs to relax. Don’t strain it trying to remember. If something is there it will come.” So he tried that too. He sat there, staring stupidly at the dead president and the Treasury seal and Secretary of the Treasury’s signature. He finally huffed shortly through his nose. What was going to happen? Was George Washington going to just jump out of the frame and start talking to him, maybe even tell Kyle why he had done what he did out there on the water that evening? Feeling foolish, Kyle shook his head and returned his attention to the papers on his desk.
The next hour had him slowly working through the financials. The numbers were good. Much better than they had been just eight months ago. The company had increased sales by close to ten percent, and net margins had increased by nearly six percent. And they were now moving rum as far north as Kentucky. Amazing. Just amazing. It was like he had died and gone to—but then Kyle quickly dismissed the impertinent thought.
The only thing weighing it all down was the loan he had taken from Warren Hall. That was over half a million on the books, sitting there like a boulder on a raft. He couldn’t remember borrowing it, but the loan was there. Even Laurie confirmed its legitimacy. Kyle knew that extra capital explained the wonderful growth curve he was looking at. Yes, everything was fine except for that loan and the fact that he’d just spent the last hour working through spreadsheets that should have taken him less than half that time. That, and he already felt done for the day.
Kyle’s office door was cracked open, but when he heard a knock on it he jumped in his chair.
Warren Hall walked through the door. “You know, Kyle, you really shouldn’t make it a habit to work on the Lord’s Day. One day off a week won’t drive you into the ground.”
Kyle smiled weakly and stood up. They shook hands and he nodded toward a metal folding chair in front of his desk. “Please, have a seat.”
“Thank you.”
“What brings you in?”
“How are you doing, Kyle? You’ve been through a lot these past many weeks.”
“I’m fine, Warren. Just fine. Should be right as rain here really soon.”
“What is your doctor saying? About your memory?”
Kyle looked like he was trying to keep back tears when he said, “My neurologist said that with it being a few weeks out now, if I’m not remembering anything, I’m not going to. He said there’s a small area of my brain that...well, I won’t bore you with the details. It’s dead. Let’s just leave it at that.”
Warren nodded understandingly. “Kyle, as you know, you owe me five hundred thousand dollars. Well, over that, actually.
Kyle mustered the best business face he could. “I know.”
“You’re the brains, the secret sauce of this business. I need to say that I’m worried about my investment.”
Kyle lifted his good hand. “No, no need to worry. I’m going to hire a manager to help.”
“But the manager is not you. You, Kyle, are the only one who makes this place work.”
Kyle looked blankly at the paper strewn across his desk. He spoke softly. “I’m trying, okay? That’s the best I can do.”
Warren smiled large, and when he did, it made Kyle feel like everything was going to be all right. Even before he spoke his next words. “Well, that’s what I want to chat with you about, Kyle. I have a bit of a business proposition for you.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Ellie put the old truck behind her and walked around the nursery offices. Just as she stepped beneath the pavilion, AJ appeared. “Boss wants to see you,” he said.
Ellie remained calm in spite of a sudden spike of adrenaline. “He’s here?”
AJ sneered like he knew something she didn’t. “No. Take this.” He handed her a slip of paper with an address and directions written on it. “Go there. There’s some stairs next to the receiving bays. Go up those and knock on the door. Tell them I sent you.”
“Do I ask for anyone?”
“Tell them I sent you,” he repeated.
“Okay,” she said. “Now?”
“Yep.” He looked down toward his feet. “Thanks again for saving my ass the other night.”
“You bet.” Ellie said goodbye and got back in the truck. When she turned the key in the ignition, the engine groaned out a slow, reluctant turn, and then died. Careful not to flood the engine, she pumped the gas pedal a couple times, and, to her relief, it started up. Suddenly, she missed her Silverado.
____________________
AJ’s directions took Ellie to a building in the commercial district, set close to the road. A long, narrow parking strip hugged the front length of the building, where it stopped at a set of concrete stairs. Three receiving bays were on the other side of the stairs, one of which was empty. Ellie parked, went up the stairs, and knocked. When she didn’t get an answer, she tried again, harder this time.
She looked up into an orbital security camera. The door buzzed and was opened by a black woman with platinum blonde braids. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“AJ sent me. I just came from the nursery.”
The woman stepped back and Ellie went in. “I’m Aiesha. Follow me,” she said. Ellie was led across a shiny concrete floor where, to her right, boxes were being loaded onto the trucks she had seen outside. To her left was a closed-in area with large windows
that gave visual access inside. A dozen small machines sat atop stainless steel tables. The floor sloped toward a drain in the center of the room, the far end of which contained an enclosure made of transparent vinyl. On the enclosure’s right was a hook bar on which hung a white hazmat suit and three full-mask respirators.
A blue plastic barrel sat against the wall.
Ellie followed Aiesha to the other side of the floor to an office door. A large window was set into the drywall, tinted with one-way window film which hindered her from seeing inside. Aiesha knocked and opened the door, then stepped back and motioned for Ellie to enter. The room was long and narrow, the floor laid with thin, blue office carpet. A middle-aged woman sat behind a large wooden desk. She had jet black hair and a purple stripe down the right side of her head. She didn't stand, only said, “Thank you, Aiesha,” and then motioned for Ellie to sit in a chair in front of the desk.
The office was cluttered with paperwork on the floor and on the desk and filing cabinets. A snow globe of the Chicago cityscape sat on the desk. A large monitor was on her desk, facing away from Ellie. She reached out and pressed a button. “So, you’re the new girl who ran the Mendez brothers off the other night. AJ said you saved his neck.”
Ellie shrugged noncommittally. “I guess so.”
“Well, I suppose a thank you is in order. So, thank you.”
Ellie only offered a silent nod.
“I am Stacey Blume. Do you know what it is we do here?” Stacey asked.
“AJ is fairly tight lipped,” Ellie said.
“Good. He’s paid well to be that way.” Stacey brushed a lock of hair from her eyes. “So, here,” she said, “we manufacture white label vitamins: vitamin C, echinacea, melatonin. We bring in all the raw base ingredients and the additives and fillers. Those machines you would have seen on your way across the floor—the ones on the other side of the wall—are pill presses.”
“Did you ever meet Julip?”
“Yes, a few nights ago.”
“Yes, well, he’s no longer with us.” Something about the way Stacey said that forced Ellie to read between the lines. Much like the way the management at a nursing home would say to an old friend who had finally come from upstate for a visit. He’s no longer with us. “We’re expanding,” Stacey continued, “and that means we need to move a few pieces around the board. I hear you used to push on the blacktop.”
“That’s right.”
“Any ambitions for something better?”
“I’m open. I guess it depends on what you’re offering.”
The door opened and Aiesha popped her head in. When she spoke, her voice was tight. “Sorry to interrupt. But Ringo’s here.”
____________________
The tips of Ellie’s fingers were tingling, her heart thumping hard behind her ribs. The room suddenly felt lighter than it had five seconds ago. She’d done it. She’d found him.
Stacey stood up. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“He’s up front talking on his phone,” Aiesha said. “He doesn’t sound very happy.”
Stacey turned to Ellie. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
“No problem.”
No sooner had the office door closed behind Stacey than Ellie bolted from her seat. She watched through the window as Stacey moved hurriedly across the floor. A man—a bald man—was at the far end, a phone to his ear. Ellie was squinting, trying to make out some of his features when Stacey reached him and blocked Ellie’s view. She remembered the monitor and quickly moved around Stacey’s deck. It was turned off. She pressed the power button and waited for it to turn on. As the screen grew in brightness it showed four different feeds: the enclosed pill press, the parking lot, the front foyer, and the main floor. The bottom right section was partially filled with Ringo and Stacey.
Ringo and Stacey.
Ringo.
Ringo was real. And he was here. All at once, Ellie felt an amalgamation of pride, excitement, and, to her surprise, fear. The way one feels landing a tiger shark after a long and temperamental struggle.
Ringo hung up the phone and Stacey engaged him, gesturing with her hands. She was still while he replied. She shook her head and threw her hands up. She stepped aside.
Ellie stopped breathing. She blinked as a blurry mist of confusion descended.
She was looking at Quinton Davis.
“Curtis seems to think that whoever Ringo is owns a business down in St. James City.”
Eli Oswald’s words poured across her mind like an evil hallucinogen. “No,” she whispered. Her mouth was suddenly dry, her fingers tingling again. “No,” she repeated, and this time it came out as a mournful dirge.
But it was him. Ellie continued watching as Stacey shook her head and tossed her hands out again, then turned and started back across the floor to her office.
Ellie’s stomach went to her feet when Quinton followed her.
Chapter Forty-Five
Steam ascended from his coffee like a resurrected dew. It was cool this morning, here on the edge of the forest. He sat on the mossy tree stump with his hands wrapped around his mug, looking down on Croatia's port city of Rijeka, which sat four miles out and three thousand feet below, on the edge of the Adriatic Sea, the Italian region of Marche laying just one hundred and twenty miles beyond the horizon.
He took in the view, and a large, deep breath, which he held for several moments before releasing it and then taking another sip of his coffee. The secluded cabin sat behind him like an inconspicuous watchman looking out over the foot of the mountain and the lush, verdant valley below. Silver firs stood thick around him as if they were pillars in a cathedral. A series of clucks similar to that of a chicken came from a cluster of bearberry growing near the edge of the cliff. A rock patridge. It was just him up here. No one else for miles. Just him and the animals. It was the way he preferred it. Especially now.
He was going to miss it here. It was hard to accept that he would never return. The view, baked into his memory by the hundreds of hours he had sat in this very spot, would always remain with him. But the crispness of the mountain air and the quiet seclusion here above the cliff face, those were harder to replicate in the mind. Those he would miss.
The decision had been unilateral, and it would be the first time in his distinguished career that he had selected his own target. Every other time, he had been given a packet, a flash drive, that not only identified his target, but also gave him the permission to move on it.
But this was not one of those times. There had been no such packet, no flash drive, no envelope with an express directive or the sanction to engage. It wasn’t every day that you decided to, on your own accord, execute a high ranking member of the U.S. government.
The decision had not been one based in anger, although he was angry. And it was not a decision intended to absolve him of deep pain, although he felt that too.
He was going rogue and was about to do something he could never come back from. He would be villainized and then, he would be hunted.
But they wouldn’t find him.
His mug was not yet empty when he stood up. He took a final forlorn look at the valley below and walked back to the cabin, a simple one-room structure that was built more for utility than any aesthetic value. It didn’t even possess a bathroom. The outhouse was out back twenty yards further into the forest. He set the mug in the sink and washed it. He would never use the mug again, but he cleaned it out of an unconscious habit, out of the discipline that seventeen years in the military drilled into a man. He set it to the side without drying it. He wiped his hands down the front of his flannel shirt and walked across the room, stopping at the small table where he ate his meals and, as of two weeks ago, where he would write, his small block print filling the pages of a Moleskine journal he had purchased from a paper shop in Rijeka.
Sitting before him was his only friend left in the world. They had been everywhere together. To every continent in the world save for Antarctica. They had been through wet jungles, se
aring deserts, snow-covered wilderness, and the rooftops of Prague, Tbilisi, and Dublin, just a few of the many.
He reached out and ran a hand down the detached twenty-six-inch barrel, it sitting quietly in the custom foam mold of the aluminum case. Tucked in next to the stock was a Nightforce scope and an MK11 suppressor. He patted the stock absent-mindedly.
The two of them had one more adventure together.
On the lip of the table, beside the case, lay a small photo. He picked it up, looked into the eyes of his target. A middle-aged man in a gray suit, starched collar, and red tie who had, for far too long, exercised entirely too much power and quietly stalked the earth as if he had descended from Mount Olympus.
He narrowed his eyes on the man’s features. The photo made his jaw tighten unconsciously whenever he looked at it. Then, as was his custom, as he had for each one of his sixty-three long-range kills spanning the last twelve years, he placed the photo in the case, just above the Picatinny rail.
He shut the lid, and the picture of Scott Reardon descended into darkness.
Brian Carter, the former leader of TEAM 99, the man known by only a select few in the intelligence community as Voltaire, snapped the locks on the case shut and lifted it off the table. Then he leaned down and shouldered his rucksack. Without a final look around, he walked out the front door, not bothering to lock it behind him, the wooden door slapping back onto its frame as he stepped off the tiny porch.
Yes, he would miss it here. And he could never come back. Because, ten days from now, Brian Carter would be a most wanted man.
Chapter Forty-Six
The office door opened and Quinton came in behind Stacey. “Where is she?” she asked.
