by JL Terra
Mei shifted on her own stool. “Had you ever seen the man before?”
“I’d never seen him.” She looked at her hands, adjusting the handkerchief. “I have no idea who he is.”
He figured Elaine’s response was a mix of wariness—because she thought Mei might be encroaching on her time with Special Agent Holmes—and an attempt to cover her deception over the whole “break in” thing.
Daire decided then where he was going to take this. He pulled out the phone Remy had given him and quickly searched online for an old picture of John Mason, Ben’s sheriff brother. The resemblance was close enough it would get what he needed. It wasn’t like they carried around pictures of Ben with them. They didn’t even take a group one for the company Christmas party. If they did, Ben wouldn’t be in it because he never attended.
Daire held up the phone. “Is this the man you saw?”
Elaine’s eyes widened. “How did you know?” There was a flicker there. She knew it wasn’t Ben, but a man who looked like him. She covered it well.
Daire stowed the phone back in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “He’s a dangerous fugitive. Special Agent Tang and I have been chasing him for almost two years now.” Elaine needed to know they understood Ben was serious business. “He’s always one step ahead of us. Slipped through our fingers so many times we’ve lost count. Our boss thinks we should give it up, move on to someone we can actually catch, and quit wasting time on a ghost. But there’s too much destruction left in this man’s wake.”
And just so Elaine would think she had the upper hand, Daire said, “We don’t even know his name at this point. All we have is that photo and the carnage he leaves behind.”
Elaine’s eyes shone. “Two years?”
Daire nodded. Somber. The look of a man who had about given up.
“I had no idea the FBI was looking for him.” An air of pride laced her tone. Her people had beaten the Bureau, because they’d found and captured Ben in a matter of weeks.
Daire didn’t comment on the fact her last statement was incongruent for someone attacked by a stranger. How could she have known the FBI were chasing a man she’d never met before? He said, “It’s imperative you tell us everything you can. This is the closest we’ve come in a long time. Mere hours behind him.”
“Well, I’m not sure how much help I can be.” The attempt to stall, while she figured out what to say, was accompanied by a grudging acknowledgment of Mei’s presence in the room. Elaine would have much preferred to be in the room alone with Daire.
He handed her tea over. “Anything you can tell us about what happened would be greatly appreciated.”
Elaine sipped. “The guards were already dead when I found them. Shot in the back, like they were running away, and he killed them anyway. One had a hole in the middle of his forehead. It was brutal.” Tea sloshed over the rim, and she set the mug down. “Killed like they were nothing.”
“They were here to protect you?”
She glanced at Mei for a second. Nodded. Elaine cared nothing for the two dead men, but that wasn’t surprising. “Hired by my father. He wants all of us to be safe, at all times.”
If this father of hers wanted her safe, why would he leave Elaine to face Ben? She was either expendable, or the scapegoat. Given the task of making sure things went smoothly with the cops. So no one found out Ben had been held here.
Daire wanted to search the house for signs of what had been done to his friend. It was tough to believe Ben had been bested. Captured. Tortured, probably. But he had. Daire wanted to know all of it.
Ben had escaped, killed those two men, and taken off. He’d led them to the house with that call to Remy. So why hadn’t he made contact? He drilled protocol into all of them. Make contact. Now, when it counted most, Ben had thrown out his own advice and left before anyone could speak to him.
Which meant he had a real good reason for doing so.
Daire wanted to know what the reason was so he could understand his friend’s actions. Almost as much as he wanted Ben to just pick up the darn phone and call in. If Ben was running, alone, there weren’t many places he might go. Daire knew nothing about Ben’s bolt holes—if he’d even established any. All he knew was that Taya was a good place to start. Daire had known Ben long enough he knew he had a woman in the world he felt deeply about but never saw. The fact she was Mei’s mother was not a surprise. Daire just hadn’t known what her name was. Until now.
When they were done here, Mei needed to call her back. Find out if Ben had made contact with her at least.
Daire found another picture on his phone. Held it out for Elaine. “Do you know this man?”
Her eyes flared at the image of Ted Tiller on the screen. She coughed. Shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is.”
Lie.
Daire decided to drop the pretense. “But you know who Ben Mason is.”
Her eyes widened.
“Cut the act, Elaine.” Mei hopped off her stool. “We know he was here.”
“Of course he was here,” Elaine wailed. “He killed those men.”
“Why? What did you guys do to him?” Mei evidently wanted the same answers Daire did.
“I—we…” Elaine’s head moved side to side, her gaze flicking between them. “You don’t understand. He killed my mother!”
Her gaze locked on Daire’s. “He’s a killer. He came to my house when I was young and murdered my mother.”
Daire pointed out the obvious. “Ben Mason would have been a child as well.”
“He was a teenager.”
“And he murdered your mother?”
She sputtered. “Yes! That’s why I shot him. I had to! Then he didn’t die. His eye—” She choked on her own words. “I ran away. I had to.”
She kept saying that. I had to. Dr. Elaine Alterman was a woman who let others dictate her life, and likely that would never change. Daire almost felt sorry for her.
Mei said, “Ben isn’t the enemy. He’s the good guy.”
Daire winced. She hadn’t claimed that Ben wasn’t a murderer. Neither of them would bother lying—to themselves or anyone else—about that. “He’s gone now, Elaine.”
Daire gave her a second to compose herself. “Where did he go?”
Chapter 26
Spencer, WV. Thursday. 09:17 EDT
Keys were still in the ignition. The officer with his log book, long gone. Daire and Mei had come outside and were now searching the grounds. For him.
Ben watched the windows and doors of the house. The cops had left. The bodies of the men he’d killed taken away by the coroner. Ben turned the key and left before Elaine had the chance to look out the window and see him drive away in the feds’ SUV. His head still hurt from that shot to his eye.
He tapped the wheel with his thumb as he drove. As much as he wanted to go this alone, he needed answers.
Mei’s phone was in the cup holder. Don’t think about anything. He couldn’t let any errant thoughts in. Not right now. But too much had happened in the past week for him to act like nothing was wrong. He felt like he’d been torn apart, and didn’t know how to put himself back together.
Would she know?
He scrolled through Mei’s contacts and dialed the number she’d labeled Mom.
The voice that answered was shaken. “Mei?”
Ben had to swallow before he said, “No. It’s me.”
She said nothing. Ben listened to the hum of the road stretched out before him.
“I saw you,” Ben said. “They drugged me, and I remembered. I remembered everything.” He sucked in a breath. Gripped the steering wheel so hard he was probably leaving grooves. “I was in your house. I touched your father before he even realized I—”
“Don’t.”
Tears filled his eyes. “You never hated me the way those people do, the ones who kidnapped me. I wronged them, the way I wronged you.” He’d known something was different though. “I destroyed someone they love, and they captured me.�
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“I know.” Taya sighed.
She’d given up her job. “You went missing.”
“For you.” She paused. “Where’s Mei? Why do you have her phone?”
Ben shook his head at the abrupt shift in the conversation. “She’s with Daire. Where are you?”
“Why?” Her voice hitched, and he heard a low moan of pain. “Why do you want to know where I am?”
“I always want to know where you are.” Didn’t she know that? “You’re hurt.” It was in her voice. He didn’t ask what had happened. “Tell me where.”
She was quiet for a minute then, “Why does it matter?”
“Just tell me.” She needed him, probably about as much as he needed her right now. “I’ll come to you. We can figure this out…together.”
She was quiet for a second then said, “There’s nothing to figure out.”
“Just tell me where you are. Please.”
Quiet flooded the line. Brought with it everything Ben didn’t want to remember. It ended with Elaine and that gun pointed at him. The ripping, tearing. That rush of heat. Healing.
His stomach churned. What am I?
Finally, she gave him an address. Cascade, Idaho.
“I can be there by this afternoon, but I have to dump Mei’s phone. Remy will use it to find me.”
She said, “That’s a good thing. They’re your friends.”
“They can’t help me.”
“Why do you think I can?”
“That’s what we do, isn’t it?”
She was silent. Then, “Maybe. Before.”
Before what? “Don’t give up on me now.”
More silence.
He figured she wanted to give up. Maybe this had all pushed her too far, and she was done. Ben whispered, “I need you.”
“I know.”
“Can you honestly say you don’t need me?” Whether she did or not, he’d still go to her. Mei was busy, and that left them with only each other. The CIA wasn’t going to help. They couldn’t help Ben, either.
“No, I can’t say that.” Her answer was so quiet Ben almost didn’t hear it. “I’ve tried.” Her breath hitched. “God knows I’ve tried.”
He hung up. Drove to the closest airport and bartered a ride on a cargo plane headed for Denver. From there he lifted cash off a half dozen people and bought a ticket to Boise, where he got a phone. The cab driver tried to talk to him, but Ben said nothing. They rode the rest of the way to Cascade in silence, up the winding highway that curled alongside the Payette River.
Was it as cold as the Potomac? Ben wasn’t sure he wanted to find out, but the rush of snow runoff would clear his head. Too many thoughts. Memories. Faces. All of it swam behind his eyelids as he pretended to doze. He pushed it aside and called up the feel of being surrounded completely by water. It had washed away the remnants of what he’d done, but Ben still carried it inside him. He’d come out of that water clean. Still himself on the inside. Yet different, as well.
Life hadn’t been better since then. He longed for that same feeling of cleansing.
“We’re here.”
The guy pulled up outside a two-story house with log siding. “Looks like they got more snow recently.”
Ben handed over cash without making eye contact. “Keep the change.”
The man had seen his face. Ben couldn’t help that. He shut the door and strode to the house. This was where she’d been? The CIA probably still had no idea where she was, and for what? Night had fallen now, and no lights were lit inside.
Ben picked the lock on a side door. The inside was cool, and the smell of death permeated every part of the house. He moved to a row of framed pictures and stilled. Every muscle in his body tightened as he looked at Karl Friedman. Eiffel Tower in the background. Statue of Liberty. Mount Rushmore. The man had family vacation pictures from nearly everywhere. He smiled, the woman and boy with him doing the same. Not happy, but they were living their lives.
Ben turned around, hardly able to believe whose house this was. His gaze stilled. Beside the door was a suitcase, backpack, and purse. He stared at them and then turned to the hall. Called out, “I’m here.”
It took several moments, but she emerged from a room. A limp in her stride, her arm tied tight to her body with a scarf.
“What—” He strode over. She held up a hand to hold him off. Palm out. “...happened to you?” Ben stopped in front of her.
Her hand touched his chest for a brief second before she lowered it. “One of them came here. Roger is dead, so is his son Malcolm.” Her dark brown eyes avoided his gaze.
“And the one that did this to you?”
Taya turned, walked slowly down the hall. Her straight dark hair swung as she walked. Ben looked inside. Two bodies lay on the floor, one on the bed. Ben breathed through his mouth.
“When I’m done searching for what I came here to find, I’m going to burn the house down.”
Ben stared at the carnage. “All these years,” he said to the quiet.
“I know.” Blood had dried in her hair, and her clothes were still rumpled. Ben took a step toward her.
She backed up. “We’re looking for a shrine. A token of some kind he can use to control it.” She spoke with an edge of fear. A person who had faced down their worst nightmare and knew now what it was. “Roger is dead, so there’s no one controlling it. If he gave it an order before he died, then we need to know what that order was. And when it’s done, we need to destroy it.”
He watched her walk away. Nothing new for him.
At the edge of his conscious thought, a sliver of something irritated his thoughts. He turned back to the room. Not just Roger. Another man, at the edge of the clearing.
Ben had spent days with Roger—Karl—the subject of the old man’s experiments. Now he looked nothing like the terror who had lived in Ben’s unconscious mind for years. Still, the line of those fingers. The corners of his mouth. Roger had tested. Poked. Prodded. Ben still didn’t remember what all it entailed, but Roger must have completed his work. Positive result or no, he’d let Ben go. Though Ben had in no way been released by Roger. Despite his lost memory, a shadow had lived inside him since that summer.
He stepped over the son’s body and collected a number of hidden weapons from the assailant whom the Teacher had sent.
His phone was switched off. Radio silence for the mission. Ben would get it to Remy so she could go through it and try to figure out who these people were. He’d leave the phone here. Remy could collect it. Ben wasn’t going to send her anything, but he could leave her a message to point the team in the right direction. If they weren’t actively trying to find him—which he found hard to believe, as it was exactly what he’d do—then they would be trying to locate Elaine’s “Teacher” to get answers.
So long as they were safe in the process of obtaining them, he didn’t mind.
“Find anything?” She leaned against the door frame, eyes heavy. Her breath coming fast. She wasn’t going to last much longer.
“It could be anything. How do you know Roger didn’t just use words to control it, instead of an object?” That sliver niggled again at the edges of his memory.
“You would know.” She held a medallion in her palm. “Does this mean anything?”
Ben stepped back. Forced himself to still when everything about this made him want to run. Just go, and keep running forever.
“You’ve seen it before.”
He nodded. “She stole it.”
“She?”
“When it was Charlota. Took it from Anton and left.” Ben took it from Taya now. Stared at it. “Karl put it on me.” Ben ran his thumb over the three Hebrew letters. “Emeth.”
“Truth.”
“What if there is no truth here? No answers.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Ben shrugged. Life didn’t usually come with a pretty, packaged explanation. As much as his brothers wanted the Bible to tell him everything, it couldn’t tell Ben why
he’d been picked by a madman to house some thing. “Roger had that on him?”
“No,” she answered. “It was in one of those boxes I was looking through.”
He moved to the side of the bed. Roger might be dead, but he still had a presence that unnerved Ben. Even withered and old, battered by a fight with cancer. Ben still had his strength, though he felt like a stiff wind would knock his senses to pieces. Roger was… he couldn’t even explain his reaction.
“Maybe someone took it off him when he got sick and packed it away, not knowing what it was.”
Ben shrugged. He checked the drawers by the bedside. Nothing but odds and ends. He pulled back the blanket. Roger’s body was frail, but nowhere near the condition of so many of his victims. A more honorable man would have found some compassion for him. Ben had none. He found a notebook under the pillow and flipped it open. Every page was full of Roger’s scratchy notations.
“Let me see that.”
He handed it over.
“This isn’t German.”
“It’s Czech, I think.”
“Great.” She leafed through the pages anyway. “Can you read it?”
“Only parts. I think they’re medical notes, like from his experiments. But that’s a serious presumption mostly based on our history. We need someone in the field who also speaks the language to translate it.”
“Remy?”
“You know who she is?” Remy knew about Taya, though not much more than the fact she existed and was tied to Ben somehow. When Taya shrugged, he said, “Is everyone I employ hiding a secret?”
“Depends.” The smile was small, but he saw it in her eyes. “On whether or not you think I’m on your payroll.” All trace of humor left as she looked again at the bodies. “Let’s go.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.” She walked out of the room.
Ben followed. “What do you need?”
“Help with my suitcase.”
She’d left the CIA and come here. Deserted her oath. All she wanted was a pack mule to haul her stuff? “Then what?”
Taya shook her head. “One thing at a time.” She opened the door to the garage with her good hand and looked back at him. “Actually, you can lay down the accelerant.”
