Every Wicked Man

by Steven James

+++

  Timothy found the camera.

  It was near the television, and he couldn’t figure out how his father might have planted it there—unless it was the guy who’d come in to fix the cable that one time . . .

  In either case, it was the last straw.

  The bugs. The visit by the Feds. His dad watching him.

  Everything was spinning out of control.

  He destroyed the camera, found two X-ACTO knives—one for each hand—and headed to the bathroom.

  * * *

  +++

  Tessa located Timothy Sabian’s house and made her way through the falling snow toward it, quickening her steps as she did.

  * * *

  +++

  Ralph and I were traveling north to leave the city when we received word from the team that was staking out Sabian’s house.

  Ralph put the call on speakerphone.

  “There’s someone walking up to his front door,” the agent told us.

  “Who?” I said.

  “I don’t know. A girl.”

  “A girl?” Ralph asked. “Not a woman? Not Julianne?”

  “Looks to be an adolescent. She has a maroon backpack—you know, those book bags kids these days carry and—”

  “Wait,” I cut in. “A teenage girl with a maroon backpack?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  A quiver in my heart. “What’s she wearing?”

  “Torn blue jeans. I don’t know. A raincoat.”

  “What color?”

  “Black.”

  That was enough for me.

  “Get up there. Find out who she is.”

  “It’ll blow our cover.”

  “Then blow it. I need you to find out if that’s my stepdaughter.”

  A pause. “Your stepdaughter? Are you serious?”

  “Get moving. Her name is Tessa Ellis. Find out if it’s her.”

  * * *

  +++

  “Are you a member of his family?” the doctor asked Christie.

  “I’m a friend.”

  “We had to take Mr. Werjonic into surgery. Will you be here?”

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “An injury like this is difficult to assess without doing so visually.”

  “I realize that, but . . . what are his chances?”

  “I’m not able to answer that right now, I’m afraid. We’ll know more once he’s in surgery. We’ll need to do an exploratory laparotomy and see what it tells us.”

  “Yes, I should be here. Let me know what you find.”

  * * *

  +++

  As Tessa pressed the doorbell, out of the corner of her eye she saw two men approaching her. They were dressed in suits, and one of them called to her by name, shouting for her to stop.

  Timothy opened the door, saw them, and immediately whisked her into the house.

  When she glanced back, she noticed one of the men tug out his phone while the other started hurrying toward the porch, reaching toward his waist.

  A gun?

  Maybe.

  “Who are they?” she gasped.

  Timothy pointed. “Go hide in the garage. Hurry.”

  But she was curious who the men were and what they wanted, and she didn’t think she’d be able to hear from the garage, so she hid behind the corner of the hallway and listened.

  “Hello,” Timothy said to them. “How can I help you men?”

  “Who was that girl?”

  “My niece,” he replied. “Why were you chasing her?”

  “We were told to find out if she . . .”

  There was a long unexpected pause, as if he’d suddenly lost his train of thought, but then Tessa heard him talking to someone on the phone.

  “Are you sure, sir? . . . Yes, but he said we should see if . . . Alright. But what about the girl? . . . I understand . . . Yes, sir.”

  Then the guy apologized to Timothy for troubling him, and Timothy closed the door.

  Tessa returned to the living room. “What was all that about?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s safe for you out there.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be safe?”

  “Without knowing what they want, I don’t feel right about sending you back outside.”

  “So, what? I just stay in here?”

  “Until I can sort this out.”

  She was about to argue but realized that she felt safer here, right now, than she did when she thought about going outside.

  He scratched repeatedly at one arm and then the other.

  Unsure what else to do, Tessa said, “Um . . . I brought the journal for you.” She dug it out of her backpack and handed it to him.

  “Thank you.”

  A weird silence stretched between them, but maybe it wasn’t as weird as it could have been.

  “And I have my book for you to sign.”

  She found the novel, and while she was looking for a pen, his phone rang.

  “Yes,” he told whoever was on the other end of the line. “They’re gone . . . What do you mean . . . ? Okay. I’ll be there.”

  He hung up.

  “What is it?” Tessa asked.

  “You can’t stay here. I need you to come with me.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s someone I have to see. I’ll bring you along, but you need to hide.”

  “Hide? Hide where?”

  “In the backseat of my car. I’ll cover you with a blanket. I need to get you out of here, and that’s the only thing I can think of.”

  “I probably shouldn’t go anywhere with you.”

  “I don’t think it would be safe for you here. He might come.”

  “Who?”

  Timothy was quiet.

  “That woman who disappeared,” Tessa said. “Miranda Walsh. Did you hurt her?”

  “No.” But he didn’t answer right away.

  She slung her hands to her hips. “You’re gonna have to tell me more about what’s going on here before I get in a car with you. Seriously. And it better be good.”

  “I think that Miranda is dead and that the man who killed her might be watching the house. I think you might be in danger.”

  “Then we should call the cops.”

  “No. He’ll know.”

  “How?”

  “Trust me. Listen, I trusted you the other night at the Mystorium when you helped me. Trust me now. I promise I’ll protect you.”

  Timothy went upstairs and came back down with a handgun.

  Tessa backed across the room. “What’s that for?”

  “You,” he said, holding it out for her.

  * * *

  +++

  When I didn’t hear from the agents who were staking out Sabian’s house, I called them back.

  “Well?” I was navigating through traffic with one hand while holding the phone to my ear with the other. “What was the girl’s name?”

  “It was Sabian’s niece,” the guy said.

  “Did you talk with her?”

  “No. We were actually called off the house.”

  “Called off the house? What are you talking about? Who called you off the house?”

  “Assistant Director DeYoung.”

  What? Why would he do that?

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  Silence.

  “Well?”

  “The call came from his number. The guy said it was him.”

  Numbers can be mimicked, piggy-backed—

  “But could you tell for sure?”

  “The call was grainy. No.”

  “Are you still there at the house?”

  “We just left.”

  I smacked the steering wheel. “Get b
ack there and see who she is.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now!”

  With all that was happening, I asked Ralph if he could take over driving and we made the switch.

  Thoughts flew through my mind—mainly about Tessa, but also about the case. How was Sabian involved? Who was Jon’s dealer? Did someone help Mannie escape when he managed to get out of the Field Office on Sunday? How did the quantum encryption fit into all this? I had the sense that everything was connected, but I still couldn’t identify the through-line that tied it all together.

  Or what it had to do with Tessa.

  * * *

  +++

  Blake’s men in Phoenix notified him that Reese was last seen leaving Plixon Pharmaceuticals’ office with two FBI agents.

  So, he was working with the Feds.

  Alright.

  “Load the semis,” he told his men, “and get them on the road. We move on this now.”

  Earlier, he’d disabled the tracking device that Agent MacIntyre had brought with her in her shoe, but now that the Feds were onto Reese, he didn’t want to take any chance that it might be able to be traced, so he directed Mannie, who was preparing for the fire, to destroy it.

  * * *

  +++

  When my phone rang, I thought it would be the agent I’d just had on the line, but the screen told me it was Greer instead.

  “Patrick, listen, something’s wrong.”

  “Does this have to do with my stepdaughter?”

  “Your stepdaughter? No. The tracking device that I gave to Sasha—it’s come online.”

  “How do you know that? You’re on leave.”

  “I’ve been keeping tabs on . . . Listen, that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that it’s back online and I don’t know who to trust. I think Blake might still have someone at the Bureau who’s feeding him information.”

  I evaluated that.

  Thurman was conveniently attacked by Mannie but was left unhurt.

  He’s the one who suggested that Julianne may have been looking for Timothy’s father. His job at the Bureau is handling confidential informants . . .

  He’s also the one who located the charities.

  What if . . . ?

  “Where’s the device?” I asked Greer.

  “It’s on the move just north of the line in Connecticut.”

  “On the move?”

  “Yes. On I-95.”

  He told me the GPS location, and I punched it in.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Let me check something.”

  After putting him on hold, I contacted Transit Corp and had them send me the GPS locations of their trucks in the area.

  Two were located on a property off a county road just a few miles from where the tracking device was currently traveling away from.

  “When did that device come online again?” I asked Greer.

  “About two minutes before I called you.”

  Timing.

  Location.

  A quick calculation—

  Yeah, it worked for leaving the property.

  A decoy?

  I plugged the coordinates in and learned that it was the site of an old greenhouse complex that’d been closed down for several years.

  Alright, but then why are there two semis there right now?

  That’s it.

  I asked Greer if he had anything else, and he told me no but that he’d contact me if anything came up. “I’ll get state police on the vehicle with the tracking device,” I said to him. “Ralph and I will go to the greenhouse.”

  Then, I summed up the call to Ralph and directed him where to drive, but he scoffed with disbelief.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Greer again. Really? He just happened to know that? To come up with that? Why haven’t we heard it through dispatch?”

  “You still don’t trust him?”

  “No. I do not.”

  “What do you propose?”

  It took him a moment to reply. “If he is involved with all this, I don’t want to tip him off. We head to the greenhouse like you said, assess the situation, and call in backup as needed. But this time, I don’t want another team on-site until I can eyeball things.”

  I called back the agent who’d been stationed outside Sabian’s place. “Well?”

  “We’re at the door,” the guy said, “but Sabian’s not answering.”

  “Break it down.”

  “We’re not authorized to—”

  “You are now. Do it!”

  I listened in as he identified himself as an FBI agent, then gave a verbal request for Sabian to open the door. After a short hesitation, I heard the splintering crash of the door being kicked in.

  Anxiously, I waited while they searched the house. Finally, the agent told me, “The place is empty. There’s no one here, and . . .”

  “And what?” Fear overtook me. The worst kinds of fears a father might have.

  “The car’s gone from the garage. He got away.”

  “And the girl?”

  “There’s no sign of her.”

  73

  I didn’t know what to do.

  We could turn the car around and head back to look for Sabian’s vehicle, but from here that was much farther than the greenhouse. Besides, I didn’t even know where to begin searching for it.

  But then what about Tessa?

  I texted her to call me, then contacted her school to see if she was in class. They told me they’d check with her teachers. Finally, I texted Christie to see if Tessa had been in touch with her.

  * * *

  +++

  The Matchmaker parked behind the first greenhouse and then walked through the deepening snow to speak with Fayed Raabi’ah Bashir in the office.

  * * *

  +++

  The principal from Tessa’s high school called me back.

  It turned out that she’d been kicked out of class this morning and hadn’t been seen since. As her stepdad, I was shocked that the faculty hadn’t informed me or Christie earlier that she was gone, but we could deal with that later. Hassling with the school administration was the least of my concerns at the moment.

  Christie texted that she hadn’t heard from Tessa today.

  What is it? What’s going on? she wrote.

  I’m just trying to find Tessa.

  She’s at school.

  No. She hasn’t been there since this morning.

  That brought a phone call from Christie instead of a text. “What is this? Tessa isn’t at school?”

  “I’m trying to locate her. I just want to make sure she’s safe,” I said honestly.

  “I can’t believe the school didn’t contact me,” she said, echoing my thoughts from a few moments earlier. “Where are you?”

  “On the way to Connecticut checking on a lead. Are you still at the hospital?”

  “Yes. They took Calvin in for surgery.”

  “I heard. Listen, I’m going to do all I can to find Tessa. If she contacts you, let me know right away, okay?”

  “Yes.” She jammed a paragraph of worry into that single word. “I’m calling the school.”

  After she was off the line, just as I’d done on Sunday afternoon, I contacted Collins to see if she could locate Tessa’s cell, but the last location she could come up with was Timothy Sabian’s house in Ozone Park.

  He took her.

  He’s going to harm her.

  * * *

  +++

  Christie tried the school, but the administrators had no idea where Tessa was, just that she wasn’t on campus.

  Becoming even more distressed, she called Candice, one of the girls Tessa had started hanging out with lately, but not surprisingly, since it was during school hours, Candice didn�
��t pick up.

  Praying that her daughter was okay, Christie stared out the window at the snow-cloaked skyline of this city of eight and a half million people, wondering where Tessa might be, wondering if she was safe, wondering how to find her.

  The discussion with Dr. Werjonic came to mind, along with his declaration that truth is always a gift, no matter how hard it is to hear or to bear.

  His words hit home.

  Yes.

  Christie couldn’t even imagine how she might react if something bad had happened to her daughter, but despite that, she wanted to know, needed to know the truth.

  Earlier, she’d thought that perhaps Tessa and Pat could one day forgive her for keeping the truth from them about her cancer diagnosis, but now she thought it’d be best not to give them anything they needed to forgive her for in the first place.

  A lie isn’t a gift. Truth is. And that’s what you need to give to your husband and your daughter.

  Although Christie still had questions about God, about his plan for her, about how much she actually trusted him, she decided that right now loving her family was more important than her personal faith struggles.

  And the way to love them was to let them know about her condition.

  Trust. Love.

  Truth.

  But first, she needed to locate her daughter and make sure that she was okay.

  First, she needed to—

  Someone knocked on the door, and she called for whoever it was to come in, anticipating that it would be a nurse or a doctor with news about how Calvin was doing.

  Instead, a man she didn’t recognize entered and introduced himself as Special Agent Bill Greer. “I’m with the FBI. Are you Christie Ellis?”

  “Yes.”

  “I work with your husband.” He showed her his creds.

  “Okay,” she said somewhat distractedly, still worrying about Tessa. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Pat hadn’t mentioned Greer’s name to her before, but there wasn’t anything necessarily unusual about that. She didn’t know too many of his Bureau coworkers.

  “I was looking for Dr. Werjonic,” Greer said.

  “I’m afraid he’s in surgery.”