by James Hunt
“Two people.” Grant’s cheek scraped up against the rough siding, and he winced as the cuffs tightened around his wrists. “I can get Links. You just have to trust me.”
Hickem spun Grant around, slamming him back against the wall with an added force. “I did trust you, Grant.”
“Let him go, Hickem.” Sam appeared from around the corner, gun up and aimed at Hickem’s head. He slowly lifted his hands. “Sorry, Grant. I saw him follow me and knew that he’d stick around until you showed.”
“God dammit, Cohen, you’re really going to throw your career away over this?” Hickem backed up as Sam moved closer. “It’s not worth it.”
“Take the cuffs off,” Sam replied. “Now.”
With Sam’s finger on the trigger, Hickem let Grant free then tossed the cuffs to the ground.
Grant rubbed the tender flesh around his wrists then gestured to the bag. “Is it even in there?”
“Yeah,” Sam answered, her gun still on Hickem. “I didn’t have time to switch it out after he started to follow me.”
“So what now, Bonnie and Clyde?” Hickem looked between Grant and Sam.
“Grant is going to leave, and I’m going to take you back to the location. What you choose to do once we arrive is up to you.” Sam quickly glanced at Grant. “You won’t have a lot of time, so you better move.”
Grant discarded the bag and then pocketed the USB. “Thank you.”
“Even if you can bring him in, it won’t absolve you of what you’ve done,” Hickem said. “Neither of you.”
“This isn’t about me.” Grant sprinted from the alley and into the road by the bagel shop. He didn’t look back. He didn’t stop running.
No quarter would be given, and Grant wouldn’t be surprised if officers were told to shoot on sight. The hounds had been released, and he was the fox that needed to find a hole to hide in.
8
After a few miles, a cramp bit at Grant’s left side and forced him to stop. He winced, trying to breathe and stretch, but the cramp refused to wane. Knowing time was short, he settled his pace at a quick walk.
The address was on the outskirts of the city, which boded well for Grant’s low profile. But while the miles chewed up behind him eased his stress, he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Grant found a water fountain near a running trail, and he drank from the cold stream thirstily, filling his stomach until he felt queasy.
A siren caught his attention, and his heart jumped. But the noise was nothing more than an echo from the inner parts of the city. The authority that it belonged to was nowhere in sight.
The water helped some, and Grant stretched, massaging the cramps plaguing his legs. The hot spasms of pain had slowed him to a limp. He was going on nearly a day and a half with no rest, and it was finally catching up with him.
Grant kept the USB in his palm, staring down at it every few minutes to remind himself that it was there and what was at stake.
God only knew what Mocks was going through now. But he was confident that Links would keep her unharmed until the money was transferred. They’d already agreed to a proof of life. Links wouldn’t jump the gun by maiming her before it was necessary. He was too patient for something like that.
The muscles along Grant’s legs started to loosen up, and he broke into another jog, letting his steps find a rhythm. After a few blocks, he was on autopilot, just like his days at the academy when he was up before the sun, running in his sweats with the rest of the recruits, all of them sweating and puking, desperately trying to avoid finishing last.
Drenched in sweat, Grant clutched a rusted chain-link fence as he caught his breath, staring up at the abandoned five-story apartment building that was the address that Links had given him.
The building looked like a relic from after the second world war. It had been uninhabited for quite some time, at least as far as paying tenants were involved. There was more than enough evidence to suggest that it was frequented by the homeless as a means of escape or shelter.
The windows were boarded over, the grounds littered with trash, and a litany of graffiti covered the walls. But when Grant turned the knob of the front door, it opened without resistance.
Light penetrated the darkness inside, and a wave of heat and the stench of rotten eggs bombarded Grant’s senses as he entered the foyer. His shadow grew long down the hallway, and he waited for his eyes to adjust.
Cardboard boxes, needles, and discarded clothes littered the floor. A rusted shopping cart blocked the staircase, and Grant tossed it aside. He tested the first few steps with his right foot before deciding that they were still sturdy enough to climb.
Links had told him that the room was on the third floor, so Grant ascended quickly but kept his eyes out for anyone that might be waiting for him. He didn’t think Links would be here himself, but that didn’t mean a few of his henchmen weren’t lurking around. He felt foolish for not having a weapon. Even a knife would be better than going into the situation unarmed.
But in the end, Grant knew that the only life he planned on ending, if it came to that, was his own. And in the small chance that all of this was successful, he’d still face charges of treason and obstruction of justice. And while Hickem said that bringing in Links wouldn’t do much to ease his sentence, Grant had a different perspective on that take.
The higher-ups were quick to judge and condemn, but they were just as quick to forgive, given the right incentive. Grant suspected that if he hadn’t killed that human trafficker kingpin four years ago on his last case and instead brought him back to the authorities alive, he might still be wearing a badge.
His attorney had argued with the jury that Grant had saved many lives by stopping the trafficker. But wasn’t that what Links had done? All he needed to do was kill one family, and it granted him access to money and a buy-in with one of the world’s most powerful black-market thugs.
Grant was willing to bet that Links’s new friendship with Joza would grant him the ability to change all sorts of lives. The man could singlehandedly reshape the United States’ foreign policy without ever having to try to push a bill through Congress. And the price of admission was only the lives of three people: Charles, Mary, and Anna Copella.
A dog barked somewhere out back, and even more sweat oozed from his pores. The heat and the smell only worsened the higher he rose in the building.
Light filtered around the cracks of the boards over the windows, acting like tiny solar eclipses as Grant reached the third floor. The staircase came up the middle of the building, and he followed the faded apartment numbers down the hall until he spied the room that Links had told him on the call: 836.
The three had been removed from the door, and the eight and six were on their way to join it, but the glue residue from the three was still intact.
With the hinges groaning, Grant released the brass knob, letting the door open the rest of the way on its own until it hit the adjacent wall with a light knock.
An old coat hanger clung to a single nail on the wall to Grant’s left, and when he stepped across the plane of darkness, the floorboards groaned in warning. He stopped and looked around behind him but then pressed forward.
A light glow edged the darkness deeper into the apartment, and Grant followed it. He passed the kitchen and stepped through the living room, the soles of his shoes crunching against the carpet, which had gone brittle with dust and mites and filth from whoever else had inhabited the sickly-looking apartment.
There was no furniture, only discarded beer cans, cigarette butts, clothes, and old blankets. A shoe was propped up in the corner by a traffic cone, but Grant bypassed the clothing and crept toward a closed bedroom door, where the source of the glowing light radiated through the cracks in the frame.
Grant pushed the door open, and the light’s brightness intensified, and he found himself staring into the glow of a computer screen.
The laptop sat on a table next to a chair, all three of which looked brand new, sticking out i
n the room like a sore thumb. A wire led from the laptop to a nearby window that had its boards peeled away. Grant followed the wire and found that it was attached to a small satellite latched to the exterior wall.
Grant didn’t sit, and he examined the USB in his hand. If this didn’t work, then Mocks would die. Everything was riding on Grant’s ability to deceive Links. He shut his eyes, whispered a prayer, and then inserted the USB into the computer.
The program was recognized by the software, and a text bubble appeared in the top right-hand corner of the screen. When Grant opened it, the bubble expanded, revealing the message.
Hello, Grant. There should be one folder available for you to open on the desktop. Place the file that you brought into that folder and wait until the download ends. When it is finished, I will provide the location of where to pick up your former partner. And to prove she is still alive, I have included a link to the webcam set up in the room where she is being held.
Don’t try anything stupid.
CLICK HERE.
Grant read the message at least three or four times, the cursor hovering over the link at the bottom of the description. His heart caught in his throat, and his finger wiggled over the button to click it. Finally, knowing he needed to confront the truth, he gathered the courage and clicked the link.
A video appeared, revealing a room that was nothing but concrete, a light, and a door. Grant immediately spied Mocks in the center of the room, her stomach protruding onto her thighs. She sat in a chair, and while the image was a little grainy, he knew it was her.
But there was someone else in the room with Mocks. It was a man tied to a chair. He thrashed, bucking wildly against the restraints. The video provided no sound, but Grant watched the man scream.
Grant zoomed in on the man. His face was beaten and bloody. At first, he thought that it might be Rick, but that wasn’t possible. Sam or Hickem would have said something, wouldn’t they? And how in the hell would Links be able to get to Rick in the marshals’ building? It just didn’t seem possible.
But while the identity of the mystery man eluded him, Grant knew that he still had a job to do. He dragged the file he brought into the folder just as Links had instructed and then waited for it to download.
It all came down to whether the program would even work, and if the ghost file that Grant had Sam insert into the drive had enough juice to handle the amount of transactions that were about to be shoved down its throat.
Grant waited for the first sign of life in the progress bar, and after a minute of waiting, he still had nothing.
Petyr and Andrei watched Grant enter the apartment building from the opposite side of the street and two houses down. Petyr held a pair of binoculars to his face, while Andrei peered through the scope of his rifle.
Andrei sat propped up in a chair, his finger over the trigger of the sniper rifle, with the barrel of the gun protruding through the slightest crack of the window. He was a tall man but skinny, all bones and angles. Two thick gauges pierced the lobes of his ears, the heavy metal dragging them down and causing them to sway.
“How long do we wait?” Andrei asked, finally looking away from the scope.
Petyr kept the binoculars glued to his eyes. “Joza will text once the transaction is done.” The shirt that covered Petyr’s muscles was stretched tight across his chest, shoulders, and arms. The physique was manifested from hours dedicated at the gym. It was his daily morning routine. And the physique was only made more ominous by the dense head that controlled it. “We kill him after.”
Andrei reclined in the chair and removed a switchblade from his pocket. He twirled the knife around with expertise, the motion so practiced that he didn’t even need to look at his hand. “Do you think we will get Joza’s son back? Like the little man said?”
Petyr scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest, which bulged from the effort. “The little shit deserves to be in jail.” Snot dribbled from his nose, tickling his upper lip, and he wiped it away, leaving a trail of green slime along his hand. “All he did was fuck and drink.”
Andrei folded the blade up, turning to Petyr. “That’s all you do, too.”
“Yeah, but at least I work. The playboy wants for nothing and does nothing to receive it. Let the prick rot in prison.”
Andrei laughed, placing his hands on the top of his head. “Joza won’t let his son rot in jail.”
“That’s because Joza is a good father.” Petyr’s left eye twitched, and he turned away from Andrei. “He takes care of his sons.”
“Hoping the old man might finally acknowledge you?” Andrei snickered, and then folded the blade and clutched it with both hands. “You and I both know that there isn’t any place for a bastard at his dinner table.”
Petyr spun around, whirling on Andrei with a speed and a force that lifted him from the chair and slammed him up against the nearest wall, where a crater formed in the old plaster and wood.
Andrei’s head whipped back and dented the drywall as he held onto Petyr’s arms for dear life to stop him from choking him to death.
“Joza is a good man! A good father!” Murderous rage filled Petyr’s eyes as he tightened his hold around Andrei’s throat. The muscles in Andrei’s neck convulsed against Petyr’s palms.
Andrei’s cheeks turned purple, and his eyes bulged from their sockets as he desperately clawed at Petyr’s arms. But the effort fell short as the life faded from his eyes and the squirming ended.
Petyr provided one last crunch of Andrei’s windpipe and then released the skinny bag of bones to collapse into a pile on the floor. Petyr stepped back, his chest heaving up and down, more snot dribbling from his nose, and his cheeks a cherry red. He stared down at the man he’d killed. “Joza is a good father.”
Slowly, Petyr regained control of his breathing and then stepped away from the body, pacing the room slowly. “I’m not a bastard…” He mouthed the words from breathless lips and stumbled back toward the window.
The sill groaned when Petyr set his hands down, leaning all two hundred forty pounds of his body onto the old wood. He had no idea how he was going to explain this to his father. He could lie, though.
Yes, that was it. He would just say that Andrei was killed by the man when they attacked him. That was believable. And that was what he would do.
Vibrations hummed from Andrei’s body, and Petyr jumped from the noise. A rectangle of light appeared through the pocket of his tan pants pulled tight against his leg, and Petyr approached slowly.
Grimacing, Petyr removed the phone from Andrei’s pocket and pinched it between his fingers as though it had been contaminated with death and it was a disease that he could catch. Petyr touched the screen and revealed the message.
Kill him.
He turned toward the window where the sniper rifle was still aimed at the building their mark had entered. He packed up the rifle, leaving Andrei in the room to rot, though he did pause at the door before he left for good, turning his head slowly to look back at his friend’s body.
It had been so easy to kill him, but killing had always come easy to Petyr. It was a fire that his father said was born from himself. Joza had told him that the fire was good, that it was life.
And while that fire raged inside of him, sparking flames of death at random, Petyr wasn’t sure how death could be life, but he had never questioned his father before. He looked down at the screen in his hands, rereading the message. And he wasn’t about to start now.
After the first ten percent of the progress bar filled up, Grant paced around the room, examining the paint peeling off the walls and the carvings etched into the drywall.
He traced one of the names that had been carved on the wall recently. The name was John, and the hand that etched the name into the wall was unsteady, the lines forming the letters jagged and crooked.
He wondered how many people had lived here, what their lives had been like, and where they were now. He’d always found it interesting that people felt the need to mark the place t
hey’d inhabited. It was as if some lingering primal instinct in marking territory had never been erased.
But we still hadn’t evolved past many of the primal functions of our ancestors. That lingering survival instinct was still imprinted in our DNA, despite most of the world moving into modern civilization.
Emotions of fear and anger and jealousy ran amok in the minds of every person Grant had ever known, including him. We fought and killed and hurt, and while all of that suffering and pain could snowball into a heaping pile of insanity, Grant held onto the one idea that he used when he was a detective: save one of them at a time.
That was all he could do. That was all any normal person could do. And despite all of that talk of being a legend, and how there had never been an individual with the exceptional skills of a detective like Grant possessed, the truth was he just worked hard and remained focused on the goal. Maybe in that way he was special, but anyone could do what he did. So long as they had the stomach for it.
The computer beeped, signaling the download completion. Grant approached the laptop slowly, staring at the completed file. Hesitantly, he hovered the cursor over the folder then finally clicked. He leaned forward, examining the files associated with the drive, and as he scrolled, his heart started pounding.
All of the money was still there. All 5.8 billion of it, dispersed onto the subsequent files. The ghost drive worked. Grant opened up the message box again and started typing his response.
What’s next?
Grant lightly drummed his fingers on the table, his eyes flitting between the text box and the video feed.
Mocks was still alive, and the man next to her was still screaming. But a second look at the man provided more detail of his features. Because while his face was swollen and bloody, Grant noticed the familiar pointed ears that belonged to Nathan Links.
“Oh my god.”
If Links was tied up, that meant Joza was running the show, and that didn’t bode well for Mocks. He needed to leave, and fast.
