“You made a promise,” he said aloud. Hearing the words made it real.
Follow the protocol.
How many times had Mom said it in the last hour that they were together? She was his mother, for crying out loud. And Jolaine was only a . . . whatever the hell Jolaine was. A nanny with a gun. If Mom hadn’t thought that that number was important, she wouldn’t have made him memorize it. And if it wasn’t important for him to deliver it, she wouldn’t have made him promise to do just that. No way did Jolaine outrank that.
Graham turned his head to look at the phone on the nightstand. He knew without searching that Jolaine had taken her cell phone with her. Just as well, because cell phones were traceable. He’d seen on television that as long as you didn’t stay on a landline for more than a few minutes, calls made from them couldn’t be traced.
Jolaine’s words rang in his ears. Everything but doing nothing is a risk. Did she know things that he didn’t know? Was she a better judge of what was the right thing to do? Maybe better than him, but not better than Mom.
Follow the protocol.
Until today, he didn’t even know what that word meant—he still didn’t, if he really thought about it. All he knew was it had to do with something his parents had been planning for a long time. Follow the protocol meant follow the plan.
Graham sat back down on the bed and he picked up the phone. He hesitated. Then he dialed.
“Two nine four one,” the voice said through the phone.
Graham opened his mouth to speak, but found that his vocal cords were hesitant. He had no idea what he’d been expecting when he called the number, but it had been more than that.
He heard the tentativeness in his own voice when he said, “Um, hello?”
“Two nine four one.” There had been urgency in the man’s tone before. Now it was joined by annoyance.
The protocol.
Mom had made him practice this part. If ever there was an emergency, he was to find a phone and follow the protocol. She’d made him recite the phrase. Now all Graham had to do was remember what the hell it was. “Um, Billy Bob Seven Nine,” he said. They were the correct words, but he had no idea what they meant, or what weight they might carry.
“I copy Billy Bob Seven Nine,” the voice said. “What is your status?”
Graham hesitated. He didn’t know what to say.
“Billy Bob Seven Nine, what is your status?”
There might have been an accent. While Graham had never been to Chechnya himself, he thought he recognized that in the man’s voice, the same accent as his father’s. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” When all else fails, he thought, go for honesty.
The annoyance in the man’s voice magnified. “What is your status? Are you hurt?”
“No,” Graham said. “I’m fine.”
“And others?”
“I don’t know.”
A pause. “You are calling a panic number,” the man said. “Why?”
“My mother told me to,” Graham said. “If anything bad ever happened, this was the number I was supposed to call.”
“Are you alone?”
“I am now.”
The man on the other end of the phone sighed deeply. “Try to think past the words and listen to the message. Were you alone five hours ago, and will you be alone five hours from now?”
He got it. The guy was really asking if Jolaine was with him. “I have Jolaine,” he said.
“And your parents?”
Just like that, Graham found himself without enough air to speak. “No,” he said. It was the best he could do.
“I need details,” the man said.
What could he say? How could he describe the awfulness of what had happened? “They attacked our house,” he said. “Men with guns. My mom was shot. I think my dad was . . .” He couldn’t complete the sentence.
“Killed?”
Graham didn’t answer.
“What is your location?” the voice asked. “And where is . . . your friend?” He seemed hesitant to say Jolaine’s name.
“I think she’s out shopping,” he said. “She wrote that in a note.”
“A note? Where are you?”
Graham felt a flash of uneasiness. This whole conversation had been far too one-sided. “Where are you?”
“Right where I’m supposed to be,” the man said. “You, however, seem to be in trouble. How long do you want to continue playing games?”
“This isn’t a game,” Graham said. “This is my life. This is our lives. Why are people trying to kill me?”
“That’s complicated,” the man said.
“I want it to stop,” Graham said. “Can you make it stop?”
The man on the other end paused. “Do you have information for me?”
Warning bell. “What kind of information?” He was hedging, seeing how much the guy on the other end already knew.
“I think you know,” the man said. “How about a string of numbers and letters?”
So he knew.
“What do they mean?” Graham asked.
There was a smile in the man’s voice when he said, “So, you do have them.”
Graham felt a flash of anger. He wasn’t ready to give that away yet.
“Your mother did well. I need you to give me that code.”
“So it is a code,” Graham said. It felt like a victory to turn it back on the man. “What’s it for?”
“You don’t want to anger me, young man. Graham, isn’t it?”
Graham didn’t respond.
“You want me as a friend, Graham. More important, you don’t want me as an enemy. Your mother asked you to do her a favor, didn’t she? She asked you to make this phone call. You’ve been a good son. Now why don’t you continue being a good son and tell me that code.”
His mind raced, trying to find a way out. He knew he should just hang up, but he couldn’t make himself do that. He didn’t know why. He understood now what Jolaine had been trying to tell him. This man was not his friend. If anything, he was the enemy.
“I don’t have it anymore,” Graham said. “I lost it.”
The man laughed. “Now you’re lying to me, Graham.”
“No, really, I’m not.” He didn’t like the way this asshole kept using his name. It was creepy. “I had it, but I lost it.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“To tell you that.” Graham was proud that he manufactured that lie so quickly. “My mom told me to call and she gave me this piece of paper. But in all the stuff that happened last night, I lost the piece of paper.”
“Liars go to hell, Graham. You have what they call a photographic memory. Less than one percent of the population of the world can do what you do. Your mother brags about that a lot.”
A glimmer of hope. “You know my parents?”
“Of course I do. How would I know so much about you if I didn’t know them?”
Now who was lying? It was something in the man’s voice, like he was making fun of him. Sure, I’ll tell you anything if it’ll get me what I want.
Graham’s eyes shot to the clock radio. How long had he been talking? Was it long enough for them to trace the call?
Goddammit, why hadn’t he looked at the clock before dialing?
Shit!
He dropped the receiver back onto the cradle and brought his hands to the sides of his head. What had he done?
“Shit, shit, shit.” He said it aloud with brittle emphasis. “Ah, shit.” When he brought his hands down they were shaking.
A noise beyond the draped window pulled his attention to the left. The noise sounded like a car, and it sounded very close. Very, very close.
Graham jumped to his feet. Christ, how could they be so fast? They must have been waiting for him. His pounding heart was the loudest sound in the room. He glanced down at his chest—past the downy patch of dark hair that had begun to decorate his breastbone—and he could see his flesh pulsating with each stroke.
This wa
s it. He fought the urge to rush to the window and look out, because he knew with certainty that a man with a gun stood on the other side, waiting for him to do that very thing. It would be a man with murder in his eyes, and he’d be committed to inflicting upon Graham the same fate that he’d inflicted on his parents.
Goddamn that Jolaine! Why hadn’t she left him with a gun? Or a knife or a frigging brick—anything that he could use to defend himself? He’d shot a gun before, after all. At Boy Scout camp, he’d shot .22 rifles and he was damn good at it. Why had she taken all the guns with her? Why had she left him defenseless? Even if he didn’t know how to shoot and he totally screwed it up, so what? Dying in a fight beat the shit out of dying with your hands in the air in a crappy motel begging for mercy.
Graham braced for a fight, a physical fight to the death that he knew he was destined to lose. He weighed a hundred thirty-five pounds after a big meal, and he’d never actually been in a fight—not a real one, like the ones on television. He had no idea what he’d do if a guy with a gun actually did kick open the door, but he was for sure going to do something.
Just please, God, let it be something other than dying a painful death.
The engine shut down. If something was about to happen, it was going to happen soon. And probably fast. In sixty seconds, Graham Mitchell would know if checkout time would see him dead or alive.
As terrifying as that thought was, he found it invigorating.
He braced himself.
Someone knocked on the door.
CHAPTER TEN
Jolain e paused as she approached the motel room. If Graham was awake, he had to be frightened. If she walked right up to the door and slipped the key into the lock, he might panic. Knocking seemed like the better way to go. She rapped with a single knuckle. Light and friendly. She hoped that Graham would hear the knock, look through the peephole, recognize her, and all would be right.
None of that happened.
After waiting fifteen or twenty seconds, she knocked again and said, “Graham, it’s me. It’s Jolaine. I’m coming in.”
As she slipped her key into the slot, she was struck with the possibility that things might not be normal on the other side of the door. As remote a possibility as it might be, she supposed that the bad guys might have found Graham while she was gone. She’d struggled with the decision whether to leave the M4 in the room as a hedge against a door-crashing invader, but as far as she knew, Graham didn’t know which end of the gun the bullet came out of. Any mistake made at 2,300 feet per second was as bad a mistake as could be made.
She laid her bags on the walkway to clear her hands, and poised her right hand on the grip of the pistol strapped to her chest. If it came to that, she could draw and fire in less than two seconds.
The lock turned and Jolaine paused before shoving the door open about 50 percent too hard. She’d intended it to float inward, when in fact it exploded open and bounced off the perpendicular wall.
In a single glance, she eliminated the possibility of a bad guy, but she sensed danger—from Graham. He stood between the beds, poised in a comical Bruce Lee–wannabe pose, his feet wide set, his fists clenched.
“Relax, Graham,” she said. “It’s me.”
He didn’t move.
“Graham?”
“Where have you been?” He looked younger than she’d last seen him—more vulnerable.
“Didn’t you find my note?” she asked.
“You left me.”
“You were asleep,” she said. “And I couldn’t exactly take you along half-naked.” If it were a normal day, she would have reminded him of her warning back in the house to get dressed.
“I thought you were gone,” he said. His chin muscles trembled.
“I’m sorry I worried you,” Jolaine said. “I thought I left it all in my note. I’m here now. I didn’t leave you. More importantly, I wouldn’t leave you. You have to believe that. You have to trust me.”
As Jolaine spoke, she removed the key from the lock and pocketed it. Keeping her right hand free, she picked up the bags and stepped inside. She pushed the door shut.
Graham’s eyes reddened. “Are my parents dead?”
“I don’t know.” Jolaine launched the words to get them out before she could show that she didn’t believe them. “But I think they may be. Hand to God, I don’t know anything more than you do. But what we both know leads mostly to bad conclusions. I’m sorry.”
Graham stared at her as he processed the words. He seemed to have found a neutral place in his mind, neither calm nor stressed. It reminded Jolaine of the mental space she sought when she was about to step into harm’s way. It was the spot you went to when you realized that tomorrow may never come, yet you were too old to cry.
“What’s happening, Jolaine?” Graham half sat, half fell back onto the bed.
Jolaine had learned a long time ago that hyper-stressed situations required hyper-fidelity to the truth. “I don’t know,” she said. “We’re under attack, and as far as I can tell, we can’t trust anyone.”
Graham’s eyes darkened.
“What?” Jolaine asked.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
Jolaine placed the shopping bags onto her bed, the one closest to the door. With both hands clear, she pointed to her eyes with both forefingers. “Look at me,” she said.
Graham rolled his eyes, dismissing the overkill.
“No, I’m serious,” Jolaine said. She’d modulated her voice to be serious and then some. “Look in my eyes.”
Graham’s entire face morphed into a scowl. But his eyes met hers.
“Think of the person that you trust more than anyone else in the world,” she said. “You can trust me fifty points more than that.”
Graham’s scowl deepened. “Why? You’re not even part of our family. If people are trying to kill Mitchells, why wouldn’t you just hand me over and go home safe?”
Jolaine wished that she had something lofty to say. Again, she defaulted to the rawest form of the truth. “Because that’s what I signed on for,” she said. “Keeping you safe is my job.”
Graham seemed unsatisfied. “Is that all of it?”
She knew what he was trolling for. He wanted to believe that her interest was personal—that she was motivated to protect him because she cared. With all that had transpired, she knew that he was in a dark place, that he needed affirmation that he wasn’t alone in the world. Believing that her mission was to protect Graham-the-individual as opposed to Graham-the-obligation would put him in a better place emotionally.
But preservation of his emotions was not on Jolaine’s priority list. Her focus was exclusive to his physical body. When the dust settled on all of this madness, she could claim victory if the boy still had a heartbeat.
“That’s most of it,” Jolaine confessed. Reading his eyes and the sagging of his shoulders, she added, “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care for you. This personal protection stuff is complicated.”
Graham took his time forming his next question. “Bottom line. Are you supposed to give up your life for mine?”
Emotion stirred in Jolaine’s gut. “My job is to see that you’re still breathing at the end of every day,” she said. “I have no intention of dying in the process.”
“Good,” Graham said. “I don’t think I could live with the thought that someone had gotten killed protecting me.”
Jolaine was thunderstruck. She’d never heard a selfless word from him before.
He gestured toward the bags on the bed. “So, what did you buy me?”
The Defiance County Memorial Airport offered precious little in the way of creature comforts, but it had a long, flat runway that was more than capable of handling the little Lear that a client named Mannix had made available for Security Solutions’ short-notice call. It was a nice thank-you present to acknowledge Jonathan’s safe return of Mannix’s daughter from a very unpleasant place.
Boxers flew the plane, as he always did—there were few
machines with wings, wheels, or rotors that Boxers couldn’t pilot with the best—and Jonathan sat up in the cockpit with him. In the back, in the area where Mannix no doubt entertained his hotshot friends and clients while in flight, Jonathan and Boxers had stacked duffels filled with the tools of their trade. That translated to long guns, pistols, body armor, a few explosives, surveillance toys, and enough ammunition to launch an invasion.
Once on the ground, they needed a car, but they needed one without the traceability of a rental. Here’s where Venice’s command of the Internet came into play. While the guys were airborne, she’d worked the online ads and found an SUV for sale that would fit the bill. She’d contacted the owner and negotiated a figure that was ten percent above his asking price, on the condition that he have the vehicle at the airport in time to meet Jonathan’s flight.
You’d think that the spectacle of two men carrying a couple hundred pounds of equipment divided into four duffel bags would attract attention in an airport, but therein lay an important benefit of using the civil aviation terminals. People minded their own business. After parking the Lear in its assigned slot and locking it up, they just walked straight through the Spartan departure lounge and back out into the sunlight.
Boxers pointed to a ten-year-old blue Ford Expedition that was parked at the curb. “Is that it?” he asked.
As if to answer the question, the driver’s door opened and out stepped a guy in his sixties. Tall and trim, he wore all the accoutrements of a cowboy, from the jeans to the boots to the hat and the plate-size belt buckle. The man approached readily, yet warily. This was a guy who’d been around the block a few times, and from the lines etched into his face, Jonathan sensed that he’d seen as many bad times as good. Not a man to jerk around. He wore a sleeveless denim jacket covering a T-shirt, leading Jonathan to wonder if he, too, was concealing a firearm on his hip.
“Howdy,” the man said as he approached. He offered his hand. “Name’s Wortham. Are you Mr. Smith?” he asked Jonathan.
Actually, Jonathan had no idea what name Venice had given the guy. He chose to say nothing and just shook the man’s hand. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Are you the car guy?”
End Game Page 12
