Intentional Consequences

by Charles Harris

  “Yes. The driver on the ground by the truck may have a gun. I think the other two men are dead. My husband’s in a bag in the pickup bed. He may need an ambulance. I have a rifle and a shotgun. I’m going to stay on the ground until you tell me it’s safe to get up.”

  The police handcuffed and shackled the driver and confirmed the other two men were dead. One officer took Eva’s weapons and helped her to her feet. The other climbed into the pickup bed and pulled Dan out of the bag. He was breathing but unresponsive.

  Eva climbed into the truck bed and took Dan’s hand. “He’s really hot, probably from being in that bag. They must have knocked him out with something.”

  The paramedics arrived and got Dan onto a stretcher, where they checked his vitals and gave him an IV for hydration. They said he’d probably been sedated but should be OK.

  Eva unlocked the drive gate from her watch and walked up to the house with one of the police officers. She wrapped a coverup around her skimpy beach dress and drank a bottle of Gatorade as she sat on a barstool in the kitchen. The second officer came to the door to report Dan and the driver of the pickup were on the way to Ascension Seton Medical Center. A few minutes later, two other officers appeared and asked Eva’s permission to check the house and grounds. The crime tech team showed up soon thereafter. By now, Eva was getting way too used to the process.

  As the police went through their questions, Eva kept wondering what the police were wondering: Who would want to kidnap Dan, and why? Her mind raced. Could it have something to do with the Hope woman? Was Dan in trouble? Did somebody want something he had? Did they want to force him to do something? Could it be related to his JPAC work? Could the Chinese be involved again? She kept thinking. Bernbach’s dead. Dan doesn’t know anything about Andy’s investigation.

  Then it hit her. Andy. I need to let Andy know what happened. Valerie and Rakesh too. Where is Andy today? She grabbed her phone and called him. No answer. The call went to voicemail. She sent him a text. No response.

  She called Valerie, who said, “He was supposed to be coming over here at 11:00 a.m. He never showed up. Didn’t call or anything. We’re getting concerned about him.

  Eva told her about her ordeal with Dan and the kidnappers. She was horrified.

  “Is Dan OK?” Valerie asked.

  “I think so, but I need to get to the hospital to be sure. I haven’t had an update yet from the ER.”

  Chapter 55

  Eva put on white jeans and a loose yellow sleeveless top with a scoop neckline. She politely ushered the police out of the house and left them to complete their work outside. Driving to the hospital in her Porsche, she called Debby Jenkins to see if she had heard from Andy.

  “Not since we left the house about 9:00 this morning,” Debby said. “Steve and I are out on the lake with some friends. I haven’t heard from him.” She promised to let Andy know Eva had been looking for him Eva gave her a sanitized summary of the morning’s events.

  At the hospital, Eva found Dan was still in the ER, waiting for a regular room. The doctors had decided to keep him overnight for observation. He was awake, but still a little groggy from being sedated by the kidnappers. His vitals were back to normal, although he was still on an IV for hydration. Based on Dan’s limited description and his hallucinations, the doctors thought the kidnappers had probably given him Ketamine, but the tests were not complete yet. The police had stopped by to ask Dan a few questions, but they had not told him much about what happened. Eva gave him the ugly details. She also told him no one knew where Andy was.

  After spending 45 minutes or so with Dan, Eva called Andy again. As before, the call went to voicemail. After re-checking with Valerie, Eva decided she’d drive out to Debby Jenkin’s house for a look around.

  Debby and Steve lived in an old two-story frame house on the Colorado River north of Austin. Located on an acre and a half of wooded land, the historic house had been remodeled and expanded over the years into a Texas Hill Country decorator’s dream filled with modern art and antiques. The original house had been built over crawl space. The additions had been built on slab.

  Eva pulled her Porsche off the quiet street into the gravel driveway. The house was set well back from the road. Andy’s rental car was parked in front of the garage. Eva stepped out of her car and rang the doorbell. No one answered. She retrieved her Glock pistol from the locked compartment in the car and walked slowly around the house. She saw no signs of life.

  She walked around the house again and called, “Andy! Andy! It’s Eva!”.

  At one point, she thought she heard a faint “Eva”. She tried again. Again, she thought she heard “Eva.” Then louder, “Eva, under here. The house.”

  Eva looked around the stone foundation below the clapboard siding. There. There’s a vent under the house, she thought. She couched down and looked through the wire screen into the crawl space. It was too dark to see anything. Placing her Glock on the ground beside her and triggering the flashlight on her iPhone, she panned the light into the space. Then she heard it, “Eva, it’s Andy. Help me out. I’ve been shot.”

  Eva grabbed her Glock and stood, looking around the yard. She killed the flashlight and dialed 911. She didn’t know the address, but the 911 operator verified Eva’s GPS location was at the Jenkins’ house. Eva told the operator what little she knew and asked for her to send the Sheriff and an ambulance. Eva told her she was armed.

  Keeping the operator on the line, Eva squat down and leaned her face close to the wire vent. “Andy, where are you?”

  “Straight back. Use your light.”

  Lying on the ground, she flashed her light into the crawl space. There he is. “Andy, is that blood on your shirt?”

  “Yes. I got shot about 10:00 this morning by a man who broke into the house. Mexican, I think. He shot me in the shoulder. Hurts like hell. I managed to run out of the house and get under the crawl space from the back yard. There’s a square panel. You’ll see it around back. The man stayed a long time, trying to find me. I think he finally figured out I might be under the house. He came into the crawl space with a big flashlight but didn’t see me because I was behind a foundation pier. He went out. When he came back, he put the access cover back on. I think he locked it somehow. I waited until I was sure he was gone. I tried to push the panel open, but it wouldn’t move even when I kicked it. I think he hoped I’d bleed to death under here before anyone found me. I couldn’t call. Phone’s inside the house. I’m feeling very weak. My shirt is soaked in blood. I’m really thirsty. I need some water.”

  “OK,” Eva said. She told the operator where Andy was and how he got shot. Leaning back down to the screened opening, she said, “Andy, the police are coming. Ambulance too. I’m going to check the access panel.”

  She walked to the rear of the house and found the panel. It was held closed by two large slide bolts on the sides and a staple hasp latch at the top that was tied shut with a twisted piece of Romex electrical wire. Looking around the yard, she took off the wire and opened the slide bolts. The panel fell open against her knees.

  Eva tossed the panel aside and looked in. The crawl space was about 30” high to the bottom of the floor joists, with a sand and rock floor. “Andy, it’s open. Can you get over here?”

  Andy said, “I can try. I’m feeling weak. Lightheaded.”

  “I have a bottle of water in my car. I’ll get it. Try to move over here if you can.”

  Eva picked up her phone and asked the 911 operator where the ambulance was. “Five minutes out” was the reply. “First Sheriff’s car in two minutes.”

  Eva ran to her car and grabbed the bottle of water. As she rounded the corner of the house on her way back to the crawl space opening, she saw a man walking up from the river. He looked Mexican.

  As Eva froze, the man raised his pistol and fired. The round hit the side of the house inches from Eva’s right shoulder. She ducked behind the corner of the house as a second round whizzed by where she had been standing. Damn, wher
e did he come from? she wondered.

  Eva quickly realized she had two problems. She had to keep the man from getting under the house to finish off Andy. And she was on the wrong side of the corner. The house was to her right. As a right hander, there was no way to reach her shooting arm around the corner. To shoot, she’d have to step out. She peered past the edge of the corner, watching the man advance toward the house. He fired a third shot at her. The round slammed into the house above her head. She winced, wondering if she should run around to the other side of the house. She peeked around the corner again.

  Suddenly, a burst of four quick shots exploded from behind her. The man crumpled to the ground. A voice called to her, “Deputy Sheriff, Mrs. Johnson. Please drop your weapon.”

  Oh, my God. She tossed the Glock out to her left. Raising both hands, she slowly turned around to face the Deputy, who had his rifle pointing in front of him, but sloping toward the ground. Another deputy was getting out of a second patrol car, pistol drawn. The Fire-Rescue truck was pulling in behind.

  The first deputy picked up the Glock. “You can put your hands down, Ma’am. I’ll take care of your gun for a while if you don’t mind. Where’s the man who’s injured?”

  The second deputy checked the man his partner had shot. The shots had torn through the man’s chest, killing him before he hit the ground. The officer followed the trail to the river, where he found a small fishing boat tied to a piling on the shore. The outboard motor was still warm. Returning, he checked the house, which was locked. He saw no signs of forced entry.

  The paramedics ran to the crawl space opening and found Andy collapsed about ten feet inside the access entrance. Seeing Andy’s bloody shirt, one crawled in to start the triage assessment while the other ran to get a body board. They had him in the ambulance in five minutes. With Andy’s pulse rate increasing and his blood pressure dropping, the paramedics started fluid therapy to counterbalance the blood loss. Although the bullet had cut some veins, his arteries were intact, which had made the difference between life and death. He lapsed in and out of consciousness on the ride to Ascension Seton Medical Center.

  ◆◆◆

  After emergency surgery to stem the bleeding, Andy spent the night in the ICU, largely because of concerns about organ damage from the blood loss. By Sunday morning, he’d been moved to a regular room. A police officer was stationed in the hall outside his room.

  Chapter 56

  Billings received a call from Franks early Sunday morning. Franks said, “Bad news: I didn’t reach my man in time. Worse news: Both jobs got botched. The reporter got a slug in the shoulder, but he’s in good condition in the hospital with a police guard outside his door. Two of the men who went after Johnson got killed. The other was arrested after he got shot. They knocked Johnson out, but he got away. He was in the hospital overnight. He’ll probably go home today. I’m still trying to get the facts. Apparently, Eva Johnson was in the middle of all this again.”

  Billings said, “You seem jinxed, Mr. Franks. How can your special ops people lose four resources in a week messing around with something like this?”

  “Yes, sir. Doesn’t look good.”

  “So, are they going to try again or give us our money back?”

  “My man’s done. He’s willing to return $25,000 out of the $35,000 we paid down and forget the second payment. I never gave him his advance on Dan.”

  “How honorable. We should cut our losses. With David dead, you may need that cash for other expenses while we figure out where we are. At least the reporter took a hit.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m still in Austin. I’ll try to get the money and head out of town by tonight.”

  “Good. Call me when you get back. We might want to meet next week.”

  Billings terminated the call and looked at the framed photo of his wife on his desk. She was standing in front of the Rhododendron bushes along the driveway to the mountain house. Clusters of rose and white blooms covered the towering plants.

  Opening his laptop, he looked at his calendar for the week. His daughter and her family would be driving up from Atlanta on Thursday for a long weekend. As usual, his son and snotty daughter-in-law in California were too busy to come. The following week, he’d begin treatment for Stage III pancreatic cancer. He closed his eyes and prayed, as if treatment of any kind for an 82-year-old made sense when the gemcitabine chemo was almost worse than dying and the survival rate from the cancer at this stage was less than ten percent.

  Chapter 57

  While Billings was on the phone with Franks, Eva was sitting alone on her porch staring across the pool nursing her third cup of coffee. After calling Valerie and Steve Cole and going by to see Dan in the hospital, she had slept fitfully despite a couple of glasses of wine and two private security guards Rakesh had provided. For once, she had been glad to trade some privacy for security.

  Saturday’s events continued to flash across her mind. In two weekends, I’ve personally killed four people. How did I get into this? Did Bernbach have a heart attack or did our internet campaign take him out? The mental images flew like thumbnails on a photo stream. Where does it end? How does it end?

  One of the security guards walked up to the pool from the lake. He was a young Black man, maybe 25, with short hair and the reassuring look of a professional soldier. “Good morning, Mrs. Johnson,” he said. “Is everything OK?”

  “Yes, thank you. I appreciate your help.”

  “My shift is over at 11:00 a.m. My partner out front will be here until 5:00 p.m.”

  “That’s fine. Thanks.”

  Eva wanted to pull off her short cotton beach dress and jump in the pool. She wanted to swim naked and dry in the sun as she usually did. She wanted to bake the memories of the past week out of her system. But she knew better. She showered and dressed in the pool bathroom, putting on a blue low-cut sundress to bring Dan home from the hospital. With luck, she’d be able to see Andy while she was there.

  ◆◆◆

  As Eva gave the Suburban to the hospital valet, she received a text from Steve Cole: “Can we talk this afternoon or tonight?” She replied: “Yes. Call me 4pm.”

  With 30 minutes before Dan was being dismissed, Eva went to see Andy. After checking her ID, the police guard let her into his room.

  Eva said, “Hi. How are you doing? They wouldn’t let me in to see you last night in the ICU.”

  “I’m feeling a lot better than I did yesterday afternoon. Shoulder hurts. I’m trying to stay on Advil instead of Oxy. Docs say the physical wound should heal OK. I feel a lot stronger, but they still want to keep me another day to watch for organ damage from the blood loss. They gave me two pints of blood and some other blood products. Said I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Well, you look a lot better. I was really worried about you, even more when that guy showed up from the lake as I was getting you some water from my car. Not sure what would have happened if the sheriff deputies hadn’t shown up when they did.”

  “Last I remember is trying to crawl to the access hatch. Then I was in an ambulance.” She filled him in on what he’d missed.

  “God, that’s awful, Eva. My mom’s flying down this afternoon. My dad wants me to come to New York as soon as I get released. He may be right.”

  “With everything that happened to you yesterday, I never got to tell you about my morning.” She told him about the attempt to kidnap Dan and the aftermath. “Dan spent last night a few floors below you here. They think he’s OK. I’m taking him home in a few minutes.”

  “Eva, that’s crazy! What’s going on? We need to talk about this,” Andy said.

  “Yeah, I’ll try to come back up here this afternoon after I get Dan settled at the house.”

  ◆◆◆

  Back home, Eva and Dan ate a late lunch in the kitchen and talked about Saturday. Eva thought Dan seemed back to normal until she pressed him about why someone would want to kidnap him. Then he got flakey.

  He said, “I don’t know. Tech guys like
me lead a pretty dull life. You know that.”

  “Maybe on the technology side. What about the political side? You have some powerful people as clients. You must know some things somebody else would like to know.”

  He waited a moment. “That’s probably true, but I don’t think they’d kidnap me for it.”

  “Dan, look at what’s happened over the last two weeks. For that matter, what’s happened this year, with the drone and the home invasion and all.”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Eva. Just sounds like spy novel stuff. What do you think?”

  “I see two common threads: Bernbach and China.”

  “And either or both of them tried to kidnap me? I think your creative mind is working overtime.”

  Eva stood and walked out by the pool. “Dan, something’s damn well going on. Five people are dead in the last week if you count Bernbach, probably because of me. Andy was shot and left for dead yesterday. I don’t want to see us join them. The more I look at this, the more I think you’re not telling me something I need to know. It’s not a comfortable feeling. I don’t want to die because of some secret you’re hiding.”

  Dan looked out across the yard towards the lake. “You’ve been through a lot,” he said. “You should get some rest.”

  Eva glared at him and said, “I’m going to the hospital to see if Andy has any ideas about what’s going on. I need to talk to somebody. I’ll be back. Security guard leaves at five.”

  ◆◆◆

  As soon as Eva left, Dan called one of his project leaders and killed the offensive campaign against Bernbach.

  He also took a photo of himself by the pool and used his Snapchat App to send it to Tara Hope. He hadn’t heard from her since Bernbach died.