by R. A. McGee
Exeter had left the stairwell.
Clark slowly moved up the next flight and saw that the door was missing, replaced by a thick, white plastic tarp. Clark pushed the tarp aside and stepped from smooth flooring to rough concrete.
There was construction dust in the air and the space was cold. Clark looked and saw more tarp where windows should be, the light of the morning filtering through, casting the entire area in a soft haze. He walked past rows of exposed metal studs. Large toolboxes, machines, and piles of drywall were stacked to the side of the walkway.
Clark slowed down, making as little noise as possible as he moved down the walkway, eyes darting back and forth. He walked around a pallet jack and looked down, finding footprints on the dusty floor. He followed them until they dead-ended into a stack of drywall.
Mind racing, Clark looked up, just as Exeter dropped down at him. Clark stepped back, dodging the man’s controlled slashes with a syringe.
“Pretty smart, figuring me out.”
“You’re shitty at your job,” Clark said. He stepped back again, putting a metal stud between him and his assailant.
“Says you.”
Clark watched the man, his syringe held high, ready to plunge deep into Clark. His first instinct was to draw his pistol and end Exeter. The attempt on Miri’s life was a deal-breaker. But littered around the construction site were various flammable chemicals and even a welding tank, which suggested shooting might be a bad idea.
Besides, he needed to know what Exeter knew, and he couldn’t ask a dead man any questions.
Clark leaned around the metal stud, drawing Exeter closer. The blond man feinted a downward strike as if wielding an ice pick, but at the last second altered his trajectory, aiming for somewhere on Clark's arm
Clark shifted backward, the syringe narrowly missing its mark. Exeter’s arm smacked into the stud and Clark slammed his forearm against it, pinning it to the metal. He pushed Exeter’s wrist, using the stud as a fulcrum, until there was an audible crack.
“You fucked up,” Clark said, firing lefts at his foe. Several connected, and once Clark heard the syringe fall to the floor below him, he released Exeter’s arm.
The man backpedaled, right arm hanging loosely at his side.
Clark stepped around the metal stud. “I assume you’re with Keever? Why would you work for that freak show?”
“He said it was sanctioned,” Exeter said.
“Maybe it was. But a defenseless woman? You should have damn well known better.”
Exeter’s eyes darted back and forth, like a caged animal. He lunged behind a stack of scaffolding, coming up with a paint trowel.
“Really?”
Exeter held the handle of the trowel, swinging the sharp end like a weapon. It was obvious that he was right-handed, and his left-handed slashes were uncoordinated.
Clark walked the man down, oblivious to the improvised weapon. Exeter swung and followed all the way through. Clark blocked his elbow and swung an enormous right hand at the man, smashing into the side of his face.
Exeter fell on his ass, his poor excuse for a weapon skittering away on the unfinished concrete floor. Clark kicked the man in the side of the head, separating Exeter from consciousness and leaving him sprawled out on the floor.
He knelt down and put two fingers to Exeter’s neck, feeling his carotid artery pulsing.
“Good. We’re just getting started.”
Fifty-Two
Clark looked around until he found a bucket of water, dirty from rinsing off tools, and brought it back to Exeter, then splashed it on the man.
Exeter’s eyes shot open, and he coughed and sputtered. Clark watched as the realization sank in on the man that he was tied up. He pulled—first his arms, then his legs—and could find no give in the industrial extension cords Clark had wrapped him in.
Clark had him tied to a roof rafter, hands stretched out above his head, the tips of his toes barely touching the ground. Exeter's hands were purple from supporting his weight.
“Hi.”
Exeter started laughing. Clark smiled the entire time, standing directly in front of the trussed man, his hands behind his back. “You’re going to torture me? That’s what this is?”
“Not exactly,” Clark said. “When I torture someone, I like to take my time. Make the fear of what I’m going to do to them worse than what I actually do. The mind is pretty powerful.
“But that's for when I have time. In this case, I need to know some information. You’re going to tell me, or I’m going to hurt you. I’ll keep hurting you until you answer me. At this point, I wouldn’t so much call it torture as sheer, naked aggression.”
Exeter’s smile faltered, but he didn’t say anything. He was shirtless, his torso thin but muscular.
“Now that I see the rest of your ink, I can tell you were Navy. SEAL for a while?”
“Guilty.”
“I was CAG myself. Worked with plenty of squids, though. Kind of like them, if I’m being honest. A little too Hollywood sometimes, you know? You guys write too many books, but other than that, top-notch guys.”
“CAG? You were a D-boy? I guess I can see it,” Exeter said.
“See, there’s no reason we can’t be cool. I might even be willing to overlook the fact that you almost killed my friend. I understand that sometimes orders are orders. You had no clue that Keever was giving you bad info.”
“Is it bad, though? He’s acting under the authority of the CIA. Said the woman was a target that needed elimination.”
“Why? Did you even bother to find out? Of course you didn’t. He was using you to cover up for his mess.”
“Come on, you know the why doesn’t matter. Everything he showed me looked legit. I had no reason to believe he was lying to me. Hell, his intel was good. He said you might be here as well. He was right.”
“And I was what? A collateral target?”
“The data sheet on you said you’re disavowed. You know how it is—when someone’s disavowed, they’re out. Everyone wants a piece. That’s not personal. No reason for me to think I was getting fed a load of bullshit on you or the woman.”
Clark raised his eyebrows.
“What’s that look?”
Clark stared at the dangling man.
“Wait a minute, you didn’t know? Disavowed, man. You’re out. As far as I knew, you were just a target of opportunity,” Exeter said, “in the wrong place while I was going after the woman.”
“Except this time, the target is shooting back. Let me level with you. If you don’t tell me where Keever is, right this instant, I’m going to break your right kneecap. The cap itself, you know, not the leg bone. You’ll never dance again.”
Exeter’s face was stone.
“Then, I’ll just keep breaking things. I’ll swing my little hammer until you give him up. It’s going to happen, so why not make it easy on yourself?”
The man going by the name of Exeter looked down for almost a full minute. Clark stood patiently in front of him. Then Exeter looked up, finished with his mental calculations. “I don’t think you’ll do it.”
Clark couldn’t help the bemused look on his face. “Why?”
“Eventually someone will come up here and find me. One of the workers or a guard or someone.”
“It’s Saturday,” Clark reminded the man.
“Still. Someone will hear me if I scream, and believe me, I’ll make a lot of noise.”
Clark kicked a small roll of industrial-strength plastic wrap. “I think this will muzzle things well enough.”
Exeter looked down, then back up at Clark. “You can’t leave a dead body up here. There’ll be an investigation; your prints will be everywhere. Someone will know it was you.”
“That’s possible, but not likely. That girl? The one Keever took? She’s magic behind a computer. She’s already scrubbed me and the rest of my people from every facial recognition database she could think of, not to mention ‘lost’ my fingerprints that were on file with
the Army.”
“But you’re disavowed. They’re going to input your biometrics again, you know that.”
Clark unclasped his hands and brought them around to the front of his body. He was wearing blue surgical gloves. “Just in case.”
Exeter’s eyes opened wide. “You’re serious.”
Clark nodded his head. “Where is Keever going with my friend?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.” Clark picked up the plastic wrap and wrapped it several times around Exeter’s head, closing off his mouth completely. Exeter kicked, trying to stay away from Clark, but it was useless since he was tied up. His toes dragged little trails in the dusty floor.
“Where is my friend?”
Exeter could no longer speak, since his mouth was bound, but he did enough to indicate that he was sticking with his original answer.
Clark reached into his back pocket and pulled out a drywall hatchet. It was a tool used by the laborers who put the drywall up on the wall and ceilings—essentially a hammer with a rounded striking surface, to keep from denting the drywall as it was put into place. The more striking feature of the tool was a bladed hatchet edge on the back.
He flipped the handle in his hand and stepped close to Exeter. He stared at the man, face-to-face, then nodded.
The first swing connected solidly with Exeter’s kneecap. The man convulsed in pain, as if he were being probed with a hot poker. His muffled voice grew higher and higher as he screamed.
Clark hit him again, and again, and again. Eventually, there was a ragged hole in the knee of Exeter’s pants; his leg, to the extent that it could while he was tied up, sagged inward.
Clark stepped away, turning from Exeter, breathing deeply and regaining his composure. He couldn’t kill him. Not yet, anyway.
Wiping the blood from the hatchet, Clark looked at the bound man. Still wiggling, Exeter was trying to find a release for the pain.
“Was that worth it? Honestly? Just tell me, and I’ll stop breaking things.”
Exeter stopped bucking, so Clark unwrapped the plastic wrap. “Where’s Keever going?”
“Up. Your. Ass,” Exeter said, spitting the words out through uneven breaths.
Clark didn’t respond, instead just re-wrapping Exeter’s mouth. This time he didn’t ask anything before he started swinging away. His target? Exeter’s other knee.
Over and over he brought the drywall hatchet smashing into the kneecap. When he was done, the exposed meat looked like hamburger with chips of bone ground up in it. Clark sat down on the empty bucket, waiting for Exeter to stop moving. Several minutes later, Exeter’s demeanor indicated he wanted to speak.
Clark hesitated before he pulled the wrap off. “I don’t want to hear anything except what I ask you. I don’t care who you know, or how much money you have. I don’t care what you can give me, or what you think you’re going to do to me. Just answer my damn question. Where’s Keever?”
He unwrapped the wrap and Exeter took a deep breath. “I don’t know where he is, but—”
“Nope,” Clark said, raising the plastic wrap again.
“No, no, but I know how to find out. I know how to find out.”
“Tell me,” Clark said.
“There’s a burner phone in the trunk of my car. I’m parked in the parking garage. You can call him, it’s the only number programmed in the phone. Ask him yourself, I have no idea.”
Clark fished around in the jacket he’d taken off the man, retrieving a set of car keys. “These yours?”
“Yes. Hell yes. Take them. Just stop hurting me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. I told you if you told me, I’d stop breaking stuff. Why would I lie?”
Clark pocketed the keys and looked around the area, looking for anything he might have forgotten. “I swear I always forget something. I think I’m good.”
“That’s it? I mean, you just leave me alone? Let me go?”
He walked over to a toolbox behind Exeter and retrieved something. “I didn’t say all that.” He walked back in front of Exeter and held up the syringe that the man had swung at him, identical to the one that had almost stabbed Miri.
“Wait, wait. You can’t stick me with that,” Exeter said.
“Why?”
“It’ll kill me.”
“So?” Clark said.
“You said if I talked, you’d be willing to overlook what happened in the hospital room. Forget I tried to kill your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. And I told you the truth,” Clark said. “I forgive you for trying to kill Miri. We all make stupid decisions. That being said, you aren’t off the hook for trying to kill me. I’m kind of particular that way.”
Clark stuck the syringe into Exeter’s chest and depressed the plunger.
Exeter stammered, looking for the right words. “You, you stuck me. Holy shit, you stuck me. I have to go. I have to go. Get the antidote. Get me to a hospital.”
“You’re at a hospital, asshole,” Clark said. Not knowing how long the compound took to work, Clark decided against wasting any more time. Exeter’s reactions told him he was already a dead man.
Clark patted his pockets, ensuring he had the dying man’s keys, then stripped his gloves off and turned them inside out. He turned his back on Exeter, leaving the man’s death throes behind, then shouldered out of the makeshift tarp door and began descending the stairwell.
Exeter's cries grew more and more faint, and then they disappeared.
Fifty-Three
Clark slipped into his seat by Miri’s bed quietly. There was no sound; not so much as a breath escaped him.
“I don’t hear any sirens.”
“I can be clandestine, you know. With a little luck, no one’s even going to find that guy for another day or so.”
“Took you long enough,” she said, her eyes still shut.
“You don’t have a watch, how would you know how long it took?”
“I know,” Miri said. She raised her right hand, revealing a small handle with a red push button on it. “The nurse came in about half an hour ago and hooked up my new bag of morphine. I’ve been waiting to drop the hammer on this bad boy.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“To make sure some guy wasn’t coming back to kill me, dummy. I wouldn’t be in any shape to stop him if I was doped out of my mind. That’s why I know how long you've been gone. I’ve been waiting.”
“Sorry about that,” Clark said.
Miri’s left hand reached across her body and handed Clark the syringe Exeter had dropped. “I had to palm this when the nurse came in. Take it before I stick myself.”
“Better that you don’t do that. I’m not sure what this shit is, but Exeter didn’t seem to be enjoying himself.” Clark capped the syringe with the top of a new syringe from a drawer, and slipped it in his front pocket.
“Whatever. He deserved it.” Miri pressed the red button. She raised her eyebrows, then nodded. “Been a while since I’ve had this, but you never forget morphine. So what did Exeter tell you about Keever?”
Clark paced back and forth in front of Miri’s bed. “Nothing. Gave me a phone so I could get in touch. What he knew about me is way more interesting.”
Miri opened her eyes. “What about you?”
“I’m out.”
“You’ve been out. Why’s that news?”
“No, Miri, I’m out out. Disavowed. The Old Man burned me.”
She tried to sit up. “What?”
Clark put his hand on her shoulder and guided her back to the thin hospital mattress. “You can’t be moving around.”
“Who the fuck does he think he is? It’s one thing to take away all your Blackthorn access, but disavow you? Everyone will think you’re a traitor. How are you going to get around? Your passports and IDs are no good. People will come looking for you now. Why would he do this?”
“Before I went to see Butterfield, I swung
by the Blackthorn office.”
“So? He doesn’t have any clue what we found out in Mexico. He’d still pretend to be happy to see you.”
“He did,” Clark said, “until I hit redial on César’s burner phone. The number that arranged the hit that killed Samantha. I pushed send and a burner in McHenry’s drawer started vibrating. The phone was in his desk, Miri.
“He didn’t say anything. He tried to play it off, but we both knew what that vibrating phone meant. So I left.”
“You didn’t strangle him on the spot?”
“It took everything I had not to do it. In the end, I realized that the information about him framing Butterfield is better in the long run. He gets disgraced and put in prison. Maybe I’ll kill him then, who knows. What I do know is, if I kill him before we get things straightened out with the disavowal, I’ll never get a chance to stop. I’ll have to run forever.”
“We will. We’ll get the information into the right hands. Prove that McHenry’s corrupt.”
“Right. But first Lucy. I can’t leave her with Keever.”
Miri hit the plunger on her morphine again. “Okay, I’m ready. Call the nurse to unhook me.”
Clark sat next to her. “No.”
“What do you mean, no? You can’t tell me no.”
“No.”
“You need me.”
“Yes, I do. I need you very much. And if you go out while you’re injured and something happens to you, then I won’t have you. That’s not something I’m willing to accept. So you stay your ass in that bed and I’ll come back when I’m done. And then we’ll leave.”
Clark looked down at Miri. Her two-toned eyes still captivated him, despite the swelling and blackness around them.
“I need you too,” Miri said.
“I know.” Clark leaned over and kissed Miri on the cheek, the kiss lingering longer than he’d planned.
If Clark had known how long it would be until he saw her again, he would have lingered even longer.
Without another word, Clark walked out of the hospital room, heading toward the exit. He felt a heaviness in his chest, as if leaving Miri was the wrong thing to do. He pushed that aside, fishing through his pocket for the key from Exeter.
