by The Behrg
He turned the dials slowly. Sixteen–forty-two–eleven. The safe door popped open. Inside were stacks of bills wrapped in rubber bands—much more than three thousand—two manila envelopes bowed with the amount of contents they contained, a flash drive in a Ziploc bag, and two cartons of bullets next to his .38 Special. The Smith & Wesson’s wooden handle was turned toward him, six-inch barrel pointed toward the back of the safe. He always kept it loaded.
I had always hoped our family was worth the risk.
Drew was upstairs with Adam. Would he hear the gunshot? Undoubtedly. And what would his reaction be with Blake’s son at his side? And if something went wrong? If the gun misfired or, worse, he missed?
Blake felt that sharp ache behind his eyes again. He reached in, his palm knocking against the six-shooter, and grabbed a stack of bills. “Here,” he said, tossing it down to Joje, who was sitting on the desk.
“Empty it,” Joje said.
Twelve stacks, crisp hundred-dollar bills bending around the bands at their center as he handed them down. Each small stack contained one hundred bills, a hundred twenty grand in total. He had always kept cash on hand in case of an emergency, though real emergencies, he had come to learn, couldn’t be solved with any amount of money.
“I never realized how much three thousand looks like,” Joje said.
Blake grabbed the final two bundles. “A hundred and twenty thousand,” he said.
Joje had the cash stacked neatly on Blake’s desk, next to his wireless keyboard. “Don’t you get tired of all the lies, Bwake? Three thousand . . . What else have you got in there?”
Breathing harder, the pain behind his eye like a needle plunging its way through his oracular orb, he wrapped his sweaty palm around the wood stock of the gun. It felt so solid in his hand, its weight balanced. He hadn’t brought the gun out since he had put it in the safe, shortly before Adam was born. His first wife had hated guns, made him promise never to even show it to their then unborn son. It was a promise he had kept even after her death.
One of the few, he thought.
The gun hadn’t been shot for over fifteen years, its last cleaning long before that. So many things could go wrong, would go wrong if he made a mistake.
“Bwake?”
He loosened his grip on the revolver and grabbed the two manila envelopes, dragging them along the bottom of the safe. “Here,” he said.
Any risk.
Joje opened the first envelope, spilling its contents onto the desk and shuffling through them. It contained every legal document for Blake’s holdings—rental properties in Park City, Utah, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming; a list of the corporations he had an interest in; stock certificates and trade ventures—it was all there, the final pieces of Blake’s wealth.
“You’ll sign these over to me,” Joje said, “just as a precaution. After our week is through, it’ll all be returned of course.”
“Of course,” Blake said.
Joje ripped into the second envelope, much thinner than the first. Out fell passports, social security cards, birth certificates, marriage and death certificates; the latter, documents Blake had never read. Joje took much longer with these, studying them, reading each one through. He rearranged them, setting a few side by side.
“Rachel Lynette Green. Your first wife? Pretty name.”
Not when it was pronounced Wachel Gween. Blake felt the loss as if it had happened yesterday. Odd, he rarely thought of her these days, and yet having Joje go through these private moments, he felt more dismayed than the thought of signing over any of his holdings or stock.
These were locked here for a reason—memories and regrets no one had a right to peruse.
“Married January first, nineteen ninety-six. New Year’s Day. Was that right after college?”
“During,” Blake said, still standing on the roll-out chair. “My senior year.”
“College sweethearts. Quite the commitment that young. So, married in ninety-six, four years later Adam Green Crochet is born, February nineteenth, the year double zero. Five pounds, three ounces. Small.” Joje looked up as if it were a question.
“There were complications. He came early.”
“More complications two and a half years later it seems. US standard certificate of death,” Joje read. “Lot of boxes to be filled out. And there’s your signature . . . did you pronounce or certify her death?”
Blake felt his jaw clenching.
“Cause of death: caowdiopulmanao-wee awest, ductal . . . How the hell do you pronounce that? Adeno . . . ?”
“Pancreatic cancer,” Blake said.
“They could have just written that. So let’s see, your wife, to whom you were so in love you couldn’t wait to finish college before marrying, dies . . . and six months later you remarry. Jenna Shurtleff. No middle name. I like that.”
Joje turned another paper over, laying it beside the others. “No kids, no kids, and then after nine years, boom—a daughter. Evaline Stacy Crochet. Evaleen or Evalin?
“Evalin,” Blake said.
Joje held up two pieces of paper, shuffling them back and forth. “Birth and death certificates only two years apart. Life can be tragic.”
The lump in Blake’s throat was hard.
“You know I haven’t seen a single picture of her in the whole house. Was there a fire? In your previous home? Were all your photos destroyed?”
Blake felt his hand tightening on the grip of the gun.
“Must be tough losing your wife and daughter, though you don’t seem one to grieve long. Upgraded your wife after six months, how many days before you took down the photos of your little girl? What, did the dog take her place?”
I had always hoped our family was worth the risk.
“I guess in the end our lives are nothing more than dates and numbers on a sheet of paper,” Joje said. “All that blank space on the page? The details of our lives between the numbers? No one remembers that. They’re just locked up in some forgotten vault.”
Any risk.
Blake closed his eyes, steeling himself for the moment to come. Just as he began pulling his hand from the safe, the hilt of the revolver pressed firmly in his grasp, he felt the cold steel of Joje’s own gun against the nape of his neck.
Joje had been waiting for him.
“I had such high hopes for you, Bwake. Did you really think staying on that chair looked natural? Like you had nothing to hide? Open the cartridge and empty the chamber.”
His hands trembling, Blake did as he was told, letting the six-shooter slide open, the bullets dropping and bouncing off the chair.
“I’m gonna need that gun.” Joje extended one hand around the chair in front of Blake. It was gloved in the plastic bag the flash drive had been in.
Blake lowered the empty revolver, chamber still hanging to the side like a lifeless limb. At the last second, he whirled against the chair, the tall back whipping Joje in the side and slapping his hand away. Joje’s gun went off right next to Blake’s ear, the blast deafening. He fell from the chair, hitting into the closet on his way to the floor. The chair suddenly came reeling toward him, Blake barely able to bring his hands up in time to keep it from his head.
Joje stood where it had been, his face twitching. He set Blake’s .38 on the desk with a loud clunk. “You, Bwake, are testing my patience.”
He ran one arm against the desk, sweeping off its contents—the stacks of money, legal documents, clock, keyboard, and mouse all flying from the desk, crashing into the chairs and bookshelves carved into the wall. The rubber band on one of the wads of cash must have broken, hundred-dollar bills streaming outward and floating down like leaves in autumn.
“You’re sitting on the bullets. Pick one up. Come on, Bwake, do it!” Joje ripped one of the drawers from his desk off its hinges, dumping the contents to the ground. Mini drives and DVDs spilled to the floor, scattering along with the assortment of pens, staplers, letter openers, and all the little knickknacks that collect at the bottom of desk drawers.
“Pick up a bullet!” The next drawer came out, this one full of files. Business plans and financials, the confidential information of industry leaders converged into a heap of stapled papers and opened folders.
Blake shifted slightly, picking up one of the copper-cased bullets that had rolled beneath his foot. He held it, his hand shaking so violently he could have had Parkinson’s.
Joje tore out the contents of the small bureau in the corner, wires and cables, electronic gadgets and components, most of it junk that Blake had kept in case he needed it one day. The monitor on Blake’s desk followed them to the floor.
“Go ahead, Bwake, load your gun!”
“No,” Blake said.
Joje crossed to the other side of the desk, grabbing the gold-trimmed lamp and ripping it from the wall. He used it like a baseball bat, swatting at the bookcase, framed pictures, trophies, and artifacts tumbling from the shelves. One shelf broke, collapsing into the one below it, hardbound books, some rare editions, others signed with dedications to Blake, spilled from the shelf, a waterfall of turning pages.
“Put the bullet in the gun, Bwake!”
“No!” Blake shouted.
The US Civil Affairs challenge coin Blake had received from Major Blackledge with its display case flew across the room, shattering on the wall. The ceramic rooster Michiyoshi at Fujitsu had given him in Japan wobbled, now splintered and headless. Countless treasures, testaments of his accomplishments and triumphs, were discarded and destroyed, trampled on by Joje who callously walked back to Blake’s desk, book bindings ripping and glass popping beneath his feet.
“Why? Why won’t you load the gun, point it at my head, and pull the trigger? Why?”
“You’ll kill me,” Blake said. “And my family.”
“I would,” Joje said, looking at Blake like a wounded dog. “I will. If you don’t get your act together.”
Blake glanced behind Joje, wondering why Adam and Drew hadn’t come in yet? The gunshot alone should have triggered a reaction, not to mention Joje’s rampage of destruction.
But his office doors were closed. He remembered screaming at the top of his lungs as Adam stood just outside his doors only a few days ago. A few days that felt like a few years.
Joje snapped his fingers in front of Blake’s face, dragging him from his reverie. “Are you going to be a problem tonight, Bwake?”
“No.” No pwobwum.
“Are you going to try to escape? Or get help?”
“No,” Blake said again. There was no hewp.
“Are you going to follow my orders with exactness?”
Blake’s head hung. “Yes.”
“Because if you don’t?”
“You’ll kill me and my family.”
“Say it one more time,” Joje said. “Like you mean it. What will happen if you disobey?”
Blake closed his eyes, wanting to believe that whimper was coming from someone else. “You’ll kill me. And my family,” he said.
“Such a fast learner,” Joje said. “I’m glad we had this talk.”
Chapter Seven
Day Five Continued
1
A single police cruiser was parked halfway up Tom Jones’s driveway, its rotating lights bathing the shadows in unwanted color. Where the gate normally stretched across that driveway, a line of police tape ran connecting black stone wall to black stone wall. Blake wondered if the cops had finished inside and were there only to keep an eye on him and his family. Would they be following them tonight? Only a part of him hoped they might.
Joje drove Jenna’s Escalade, and Adam sat in the back dressed in all black—pants, long-sleeve shirt, he even had a black beanie he was turning in his hands. Blake and Joje were both dressed similarly. Blake wore black gym pants and a dark zip-up sweatshirt with a hood. Joje had needed to borrow a set of clothes, though they hung much looser on him.
Dark streets and darker alleys shot past as Joje drove them to a part of LA Blake was unfamiliar with. The small houses they passed were painted in what once were bright colors, now dulled with time. Reds faded to swollen pinks, yellows rotting, violets tinged with black streaks as if it had recently rained tar. Bars lined the exterior of every window, rusted gates encircling yards, big signs warning of dogs or guns or gangs depending on the amount of graffiti.
East LA? Compton?
Blake supposed it could be a lot of neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The street signs floating past were as blurred as his thoughts. He was just grateful they weren’t in his convertible.
He wondered if Joje had grown up in a similar neighborhood, the product a cesspool like this spits out. But Joje had risen above. He had taken the streets to those who thought they were immune, those unprepared to fight back—dirt for dirt, blood for blood, rule for rule.
A phone buzzed, vibrating in the cup holder. For a second Blake thought it was his shattered Cyborg, then recognized Jenna’s jewel-encrusted case. Joje glanced at the screen, smiling. “They’re ready for us.”
“How are you keeping in touch with Drew if you have Jenna’s phone?” Blake asked. “Your twenty-minute rule?”
“Some rules change.”
After a few turns that put them into a section of town without streetlamps, they pulled into an abandoned gas station. Two rows of pumps were set like headstones in a cemetery, hoses and nozzles long removed. The small booth in the center of the station that should have conveniently stored candy, beef jerky sticks, beer, and soda was now inhabited with spiders, cockroaches, and rats. Its windows were covered in boards decorated with the sprayed ink of whatever gang had claimed the deserted relic, like dogs pissing on a tree, marking their territory.
In the back near a dumpster, a large white box truck with dark windows idled. Shadows clung to it, and Blake felt his mouth go dry.
“Stay cool,” Joje said. Blake hadn’t realized Joje was nervous as well. Maybe this was even outside his element.
They drove slowly ahead, stopping a few feet short of the truck that looked like a U-Haul that had been painted over. No front license plate, two indistinct men in the cab.
Blake felt himself tensing. “You know these guys?”
“These aren’t the type of guys you know. They’re the type you know of,” Joje said.
He shut off the engine and climbed out, the ding of the open door bleating in Blake’s ear. Which meant the keys were still in the ignition.
Blake didn’t think, he leapt across the gap between the front seats, clawing at the driver’s door. He slammed it shut, engaging the locks and turning the key. The engine purred quietly to life. Blake cranked the gear into reverse, tearing out from the gas station, leaving a bewildered Joje behind.
But no, he was still sitting in his seat, that every-other-second ding pounding through his head. Because it would go wrong.
He’d crash into the abandoned convenience store. The men in the truck would open fire, spreading his brains against the headrest. Joje would call Drew, and Jenna would be waiting for them back at home on their couch, headless.
Adam stood outside the car, looking through the driver’s window. He held the black duffle bag Drew and Joje had brought with them, now stuffed with Blake’s cash from the safe.
One of the men opened the passenger door of the cab and stood, looking out over the frame with what looked like an automatic rifle slung over one shoulder.
Blake stepped out. Though he closed the SUV’s door, he still heard the ding.
Gloved hands assaulted him from behind, shoving him against the white truck. His son grunted as the man moved down the line, checking every pocket and crevice. The man wore a faded ball cap on his head, a thick brown beard tinged with random strokes of red draped over his shirt like a bib. Curls spilled from the sides of his hat, as greasy and dirty as the charcoal jumpsuit he had on.
“There’s a gun in my back pocket,” Joje said.
The man lifted the gun out and threw it onto the asphalt. “Take off your shoes.”
Blake be
nt down.
“Stand up! Just kick ’em off.”
Blake stood, his heart thrumming in his chest. He kicked his shoes free, squeezing his feet out. He thought he heard the truck’s engine rev, though it could have been his imagination. The other gunman still stood above the open door, rifle trained down on them.
“Follow me,” the man said.
They walked toward the back of the truck, loose rocks and torn asphalt pressing into the bottom of Blake’s feet. The bearded man watched them with beady eyes buried beneath all that fur on his face. At the rear of the truck, he unhitched the lever, rear door climbing upward with a rattling roar. No light came on from within.
“Climb up, don’t cross the yellow line.”
Blake hoisted himself up then bent down, offering Adam a hand. Adam ignored it, scrambling up on his own, Joje following. They stood at the edge of the trailer’s entrance, a barely visible line of paint running across the flooring in front of them. Beyond that line the floor went black, lost in shadows as dark as any cave. Blake thought he heard the slightest of sounds, a quiet shuffle, but that could have been anything in a truck whose engine still sputtered.
“Make up yo mind alweady!” Joje suddenly said.
A blue light pierced the darkness from the top of the back of the truck, blinding in its intensity. In that brief glimpse of light, Blake thought he saw a giant insect with huge, bulbous eyes toting what had to be an automatic rifle pointed at them. It was gone before he had time to process it.
An overhead dome light swelled. Blake felt his son grab onto his arm, then quickly let go.
In the center of the vehicle stood a man who looked like the actor from The Fly halfway through his metamorphosis. He wore a black mask that covered his face, with dark elongated eyes extending out, a green grated panel for a nose. Bands stuck out at odd angles with a shroud that draped over his shoulders and neck. He was dressed in black fatigues that made their own getups look like ninja-themed pajamas, the kind that go on clearance before Halloween.
