by Ken Warner
“And there you have it,” said Clarita. “Now, there will be a phone number on your screen at the end of this segment. If you believe you may be the man in question or have information about that man, you can call that number, and we will forward your information to Ms. Hastings.”
“Great, thank you so much,” Sydney said once they’d finished filming.
“You’re very welcome,” said Clarita. “And thank you for the interview! I hope our audience can come through for you!”
“Do you know when the segment will air?”
“I believe tonight, during the six o’clock newscast.”
“Awesome, thanks again!”
Sydney went back to her condo and called Brian to tell him about what she’d done. And then she lay out on the beach for the rest of the day waiting for the newscast.
She found the station on the TV a little before six. To her surprise, they led with her interview.
“Oh God, does my voice really sound that nasal?”
Sydney hated seeing or hearing herself on film. But she hoped it would be well worth it, especially with it being the lead story.
She went back into the city to find some dinner.
After eating the local food for several days, she found herself craving pizza. She found a pizzeria downtown in Old San Juan and ordered a small pie.
When she was done, she went for a walk through the city. There were quite a few people out and about, enjoying the pleasant evening. She went by a couple of clubs that seemed very busy. After a while, she found herself back at the military fort she’d visited on the tour earlier. Thirty-foot-high walls surrounded the main gate. The walls followed the coast as far as she could see in either direction. She was leaning against the railing, looking down the wall when she saw someone staring back up at her.
Her heart jumped into her throat—it was the man in black. She was sure of it.
Her knee-jerk reaction was to run, but she hesitated just long enough to see him start scaling the wall. Then she ran.
It wasn’t that late, and the city was still busy—she couldn’t believe the man would attack her with so many people around. But she wasn’t taking any chances.
Sydney headed in the direction of her condo but kept to busier streets to make sure she wasn’t alone.
After a few blocks, she slowed down and looked back the way she’d come. She didn’t see him anywhere. But when she started moving again, she spotted him sitting at a table on the front patio of a restaurant on the next corner. He waved to her.
“Shit!”
Sydney turned back and ran the other way. She turned up another road with plenty of foot traffic and kept heading in the general direction of the condo.
As she was running, she pulled out her phone and found the contact for Brian’s pilot.
“Hello?” he answered after the third ring.
“Dave! It’s me, Sydney. Listen… I gotta get outta here… like right away! How soon… can you have the plane ready?”
“Is everything okay? You sound winded.”
“I’m running… and everything is NOT okay!”
“Alright, yeah—I’ll have her ready in ten minutes!”
She opened the Uber app next. There was a driver nearby. She hailed him and kept running to his location.
Once she’d found the car, she got in, and they zoomed off into the night. Sydney looked back through the rear window and saw the man in black standing in the middle of the street, feet from where she’d found the car.
“Jesus Christ!”
She wasn’t going to stay on this island a minute longer than she had to. There was no more reason to remain here—the news station would forward her any messages that came in, and she could call her mystery man from home if need be.
After what she’d seen the man in black do to Martha, there was no way she was going to risk getting caught by him.
It took only a few minutes to get to the condo.
“Hey, can you wait here just a minute?” she asked the driver when they pulled up in front of her building. “I gotta get to the airport right away, but I need to grab my stuff.”
“Si,” he said. “I be right here.”
Sydney got out of the car and hurried inside her condo. And the moment she crossed the threshold, she stopped dead in her tracks. Someone had been here and strewn the contents of her suitcase all over the room.
As quickly as she could, she stuffed everything back in and ran outside. She got in the back seat, and the driver sped off the moment she’d closed the door. But he slammed the brakes only seconds later.
“What is it?” Sydney yelled, peering out the front window. The man in black was standing directly in front of the car.
“Shit! Back up! Back up!”
The driver didn’t need to be told twice. He threw the car in reverse, backed up a hundred feet, and made a tire-screeching K-turn. As they sped off, Sydney looked out the back window in time to see the man in black launch himself straight up into the air and out of sight.
“Crap! Drive faster—I need to get to the airport now!”
“Si, senorita!”
He sounded terrified.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m just afraid of what might happen if that man catches up to us.”
“No need to say sorry,” he said. “I am afraid, too!”
“Once you drop me off, you won’t have anything to worry about—he’s only after me.”
Sydney pulled out her phone and called Brian.
“Hey! Are you okay? Dave called me—what’s going on?”
“It’s him,” she said. “The man in black. He’s following me—he ransacked my condo. Well, I assume it was him—my crap was all over the place. I’m getting out of here!”
“Yeah, good call! Dave’s filed the flight plan; he’ll be waiting for you at the terminal.”
“Perfect, thanks. I gotta go—we’re here!”
“Text me the moment you’re airborne!”
“You got it!”
Sydney gave the driver a huge tip, then grabbed her bag and hurried off toward the terminal entry.
She ran into Dave before she got there.
“This way,” he said. “No need to go inside.”
The two of them set off at a run toward the private hangar where he’d parked the jet. Sydney kept looking over her shoulder but didn’t see the man in black anywhere.
They boarded the plane. Sydney sat down and buckled her seatbelt, and Dave started the engines. As they taxied out of the hangar, she kept her face glued to the window, looking for any sign of their pursuer.
Sydney didn’t see him anywhere. The plane moved toward the runway.
“We’re third in line,” Dave told her. “I’ll have us out of here in no time.”
She kept her gaze fixed out the window. Every few seconds, she leaned across the seat to look out the other side of the plane.
“Second in line,” said Dave.
Suddenly, off in the distance, she spotted something falling out of the sky and landing on the tarmac.
“Oh, shit!”
It was too far away to see clearly, but whatever it might have been, it was moving toward them. Within seconds, she could see that it was a man. He was walking directly toward the plane.
“Dave, get us out of here! He’s coming!”
“We’re next—hang on!”
For whatever reason, the man in black didn’t seem like he was in any hurry. He was walking at a brisk pace but not running.
“Go, go!” Sydney yelled.
She was suddenly pushed back into her seat as the plane built up speed to take off. The man in black broke into a run, parallel to their course. He shot straight into the air as they lifted off into the night sky.
Chapter Eight: Safehouse
“Holy shit—where the hell did he go?!” Dave yelled back to her.
“I don’t know!”
She sent Brian a text: “We’re in the air, but so is the man in black!”
They’d be above the range of the cell towers soon, so she didn’t expect a reply.
As they climbed higher, Sydney kept her eyes out the windows. Several tense minutes went by. She half-expected to hear the man in black landing on the roof of the plane or see him out on the wings at any moment. But by the time they’d reached their cruising altitude of 40,000 feet, there had been no more sign of him.
Sydney relaxed a little. Maybe he couldn’t actually fly.
They landed at the airport just south of D.C. and found Brian waiting for them by the hangar.
“You made it,” he said with a big grin. “No more sightings of our friend, I presume?”
“No, nothing,” Sydney told him. “We didn’t see him again once we took off.”
They said farewell to Dave and got into Brian’s Mercedes—he’d parked it next to the hangar.
He drove her to her house.
“Hey, you wanna just wait here a minute while I go inside?” Sydney asked. “You know, just to make sure…”
“No problem,” he said. “Go ahead.”
Sydney grabbed her suitcase from the trunk and went into her house. She froze, only steps into her living room.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Someone had ransacked her house. Bookshelves were knocked over, their contents scattered throughout the room, furniture was overturned, and sofa cushions were torn open, their stuffing thrown all over the place.
Sydney dropped her suitcase and ran back out to Brian’s car. He rolled down his window.
“Good?” he asked.
“No! Come here!”
She ran back into the house. Brian turned off the car and followed her inside.
“Oh, no,” he said with a gasp.
Sydney moved cautiously into the kitchen—what if someone was still here?
The kitchen was worse than the living room. Someone had emptied the contents of the cabinets and the refrigerator all over the floor.
Brian picked up a milk carton—most of its contents were on the floor, but there was still some in the container.
“This is still cold—whoever was here did this very recently.”
Sydney felt a chill go down her spine.
“Where’s the cat?” she asked, suddenly panic-stricken. “Charlie? Charlie?!”
She ran around the first floor, but couldn’t find him anywhere.
“He always greets me at the door! Where could he be?! Charlie?”
She was about to dash up the stairs, but Brian grabbed her by one arm.
“Careful—they might still be here,” he whispered.
She nodded and continued more slowly.
Her office and bedroom were torn apart. Clothes were scattered everywhere; the bed was ripped open.
“Charlie?” she called out.
Suddenly, she heard a noise. She froze, listening intently. There it was again.
“That was a meow!” she said. “Charlie, where are you?”
She went from room to room, checking the bathroom, her office, and her bedroom. There were more meows—they sounded muffled.
Finally, she found him in her closet, stuffed inside an old hatbox under a pile of clothes.
“Charlie!” she said, lifting him out of the box and holding him tight to her chest, kissing him on the top of his head. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I was so worried! What did they do to you?”
“I hate to interrupt the happy reunion,” said Brian, “but we should get out of here.”
“Yes, right you are!”
She carried the cat back downstairs, fetched the cat carrier she kept in the basement and coaxed him inside. Running back upstairs, she grabbed a larger suitcase and threw every item of clothing she could find that wasn’t torn to shreds haphazardly inside.
Hurrying back down to meet Brian, she said, “That should do it; I’m ready.”
They ran out the door. Sydney almost left without locking the door but then thought better of it. She set her things down, locked the door, then brought the cat carrier and suitcase out to Brian’s car, dropping them in the backseat.
As they were moving to climb into the front, there was an explosion. Sydney felt the shock and heat of it knock her back.
“Oh, my God!”
Her attached garage had gone up in flames.
“Let’s go,” Brian yelled. “We can call 911 from the road!”
“Yeah…”
They got in, and he fired up the engine. He slammed the gas, and the tires screeched, launching them up the road.
Sydney looked back and watched flames growing higher. She was crying freely now.
Brian called 911 by voice command and reported the fire, all the while speeding toward the highway.
“Don’t worry,” he said when he was done. “They’ll take care of it.”
“I know,” said Sydney, taking a deep breath. “Hopefully, the insurance will cover the repairs.”
“If they don’t, I will. Consider it hazard pay,” he said.
“Thanks,” she replied. “Well, where are we going now?” she asked as they accelerated onto the highway.
“My ranch,” he told her.
“In North Carolina?”
“Believe it or not, that’s the only ranch I own.”
“Aw, poor baby only has one ranch.”
Brian chuckled.
“How long will it take to get there?”
“Five hours or so,” he said. “But the place is a fortress. If we can make it there, we’ll be safe.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “If I recall correctly, the door was left wide open last time I was there.”
“Yes, because I left it open for you,” he said with an exasperated tone. “Trust me; they can’t touch us there.”
“I hope you’re right.”
They rode in silence after that, each lost in thought. Brian had classical music playing quietly in the background. He drove quite fast, and it ended up taking only a little over four hours to get to his ranch.
The iron gates opened of their own accord as they pulled up to the driveway.
“Uh… how did the gates know you were here?” Sydney asked.
“My phone,” he said. “It’s a geofence—they open when I come within fifty feet or so.”
“Ah, well, that’s convenient.”
They pulled up in front of the ranch. Sydney grabbed her suitcase and the cat carrier from the back seat, and they went inside.
“Here, put your stuff down, and come over here for a second,” Brian said from the door. She dropped her things on the couch and joined him at the door.
“See this?” he asked, turning the latch on the lock with the door still open. Half a dozen steel bars extended from inside the door. “Hardened steel throw bolts. They each extend three inches into the solid steel door frame when the door is locked. See the keyway here on the outside? This cannot be bumped like that crappy lock Martha had on her door. It’s manufactured by a company in Sweden—there’s no pin and tumbler in there—it’s got eleven rotating discs, much like the locks they use for bank vaults.”
“You know I have no idea what you’re talking about right now, yeah?”
“Just making the point that nobody will be able to break through this door the way we did at Martha’s,” he said. “These walls are all steel-reinforced concrete block. The windows are quarter-inch polycarbonate—which means they’re bulletproof, with hardened steel window bars over them.
“Add to that the cameras and proximity sensors all over the property. If anyone does try to get to us here, we’ll know about it the moment they set foot on my land. And then I wish them luck trying to get inside this place.
“As I said, we’re safe here. I promise.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate it. But I just realized…”
“Yes?”
“Unlike me, you didn’t pack anything.”
“Oh—this is my primary residence, so most of my wardrobe is here.”
> Sydney yawned and checked her watch.
“It’s nearly dawn, I know,” he said. “Let’s do one more thing, and then get whatever sleep we can.”
He closed and locked the door, and she followed him into his office. He went to a cabinet in the corner and removed a small box. Opening it, he pulled out a cell phone. It looked like a regular iPhone, but Sydney knew better.
“Use this, and only this from now on,” he said. He powered it on and handed it to her. “All radio communication over this is fully encrypted, whether using cellular or Wi-Fi. Nobody can track you or intercept your communications. It’s also got full access to the cameras and alarm system here. So, you can lock and unlock the doors, open the gates, and check in on the cameras from anywhere on the planet.”
“Cool! As long as it’s got Instagram so I can post photos of Charlie in his new home, I’m good to go!”
He gave her an exasperated look.
“Kidding. I got it, thank you.”
“Well, let’s get some sleep, and in the morning—well, later in the morning, we’ll figure out what we do from here.
“Sounds good,” she said.
He showed her to one of the bedrooms. Sydney closed the door, let Charlie out of his carrier, and collapsed on the king-sized bed. She kicked off her shoes and went to sleep without even bothering to undress.
She slept soundly for a few hours. When she woke, she went straight to the window and gazed outside. She was half-expecting to see the man in black out there, but there was nothing to see but the surrounding trees.
Sydney wandered into the attached bathroom, finally stripping out of her clothes, and took a long, hot shower. Once she’d dried off, she put on a thick, fluffy bathrobe she found hanging from the back of the bathroom door and wandered out to the kitchen.
“Good morning,” said Brian, looking much more awake and refreshed than she felt. “Coffee’s brewed and breakfast is almost ready.”
“Mm, it smells delicious,” she said, pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“Sleep well?” he asked as she sat at the table.
“Well, but not nearly enough.”
“Yes, agreed.”
