Deadline

by L. T. Ryan

  His sobs trailed off. Had he accepted his fate? Maybe he figured if I hadn’t done anything yet, I didn’t plan on it.

  “Call your girls out,” I said.

  “Oh, Jesus, no,” he said.

  “Now.”

  He wiped the tears and snot and ash from his face with his sleeve, called his daughters by name. A moment later the bedroom door opened and the young girls stepped out. I tucked my pistol away before they noticed it. It might’ve taken a while considering the condition of the kitchen. They stared at their father and the mess of what had been their mother’s remains. The oldest said something to her father in German. Tears streamed down her face. He reached out, pulled both girls to him and hugged and shushed them. I couldn’t understand what else he said to them but they both turned their attention to me and nodded.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “Those aren’t her ashes.”

  He floated his gaze toward me, confusion on his face. He ushered the girls back to the bedroom. “What do you mean?”

  I raised the pistol and aimed it at his chest. “They stay, for now.”

  “Girls,” he said. “Stop.”

  They turned and saw me aiming a weapon at their father. I expected screams and tears. Neither child blinked.

  “She’s dead, Bernd,” I said. “You can cash the check.”

  He looked back at the table, then under, and around at the floor.

  “Looking for this?” I held the freezer bag up, pinned between my pinky and palm. In the same hand, I fingered a lighter.

  His face went slack. Soon he’d tell the truth.

  “Go back to the bedroom, girls,” I said.

  The room fell silent except for the air pushing through the vents. Sounded like a beach on the gulf with small waves breaking on the shore.

  “Is she really dead?” he asked.

  “You knew she wasn’t when you received this, didn’t you?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, stopped, licked his bottom lip. Working up a story, I supposed. He held out a hand. “Listen, sometimes things are so bleak, and you are so without hope, you agree to do something that makes no sense. Because only in that state can you possibly find a rational explanation for the crazy.”

  I didn’t care to listen to his garbage. “What was the plan?”

  He glanced around the room. “I don’t know all of it.”

  I lit the lighter, angled the flame toward the bag.

  “Please,” he said, throwing up both hands. “That is my daughters’ futures. It’s all they have left of their mother.”

  “How much is it really?” I knew it wasn’t ten million. With that kind of scratch, he could’ve found a way to hide. If he had wanted to.

  “A million. Enough, I suppose, to get us away and start a new life.”

  “All right,” I said. “If you want it, you need to tell me everything.”

  He stumbled onto a chair and slumped back as though what he was about to say would drain him of all his energy and he had to be prepared.

  “She was sick the entire time,” he said. “She had improvements here and there, but nothing much. In the end, the diagnosis never changed. It was a matter of months that she would live. We knew that any kind of treatment was going to drain us of everything we had. She told me that Veronica could make her comfortable. Give her a little less pain for the remainder of her life.”

  Had his wife sold him a line? After all, a year had passed since she left and was murdered.

  He sighed. “And then there was the offer.”

  I shook the bag. He nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “They arranged for that so once she passed, the kids would be taken care of. It was the only way. She convinced me of it. So she left, and I never saw her again. That woman arrived with the urn and the check and told me not to cash it in yet.”

  “And you knew she wasn’t dead yet.”

  He held steady for a moment, then lifted his head and let it drop down again. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “She told me.”

  I couldn’t imagine that Ahlberg had let Martina keep in touch with her husband. “In secret?”

  He nodded. “She’d manage to get a phone and call or message a couple times.”

  “When’s the last time you heard from her?”

  “Two weeks ago.” He drew a circle in the remaining ash on the table, then a line dividing it in half. “That was the last time I heard from her.”

  “What’d she tell you?”

  “She never went into too much detail. Just that she was getting treatment and being taken care of.”

  “She send pictures during this time?”

  He frowned, shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”

  I didn’t bother to tell him that his wife had undergone slight plastic surgery in order to look like Ahlberg. I also failed to mention that she had overcome the cancer. It grew more apparent in my mind that the ongoing sickness had been a ruse for the sake of the plan. For whatever reason, Martina decided that money for her daughters was better than them having her in their lives.

  “Is she really dead?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  Tears filled his eyes, spilling over and running down his cheeks. There were no sobs to accompany them. He’d lived this moment so many times and likely awaited the ending so that he could move on.

  “Anything else?” I said, half-extending the freezer bag.

  He shook his head. I tossed the bag to him, turned toward the door.

  “What if she comes back?” he said.

  “Your wife? This ain’t the movies, man. She’s not rising from the dead.”

  “No, that woman.”

  I wanted to tell him what he could expect if she did. Because maybe that was Ahlberg’s plan. Set all this up in order to get the money she promised to Martina Kohl to give up her family, her life.

  I opened the door, leaned out into the hall, then looked back at the guy.

  “She’s not coming back.”

  CHAPTER 38

  The bright blue lighting of the dungeon entrance coated Brandon’s desktop and washed out the backlighting on his keyboard. He glanced at the bag of cheese puffs that were just out of arm’s reach.

  “Ahem,” the soft voice boomed through his speakers.

  Brandon glanced up at the chat box on the upper right portion of his main screen. Kimberlee stared back at him, an eyebrow arched and her lips pursed.

  “Keep your hands off those manufactured fat sticks,” she said. “You’ve got a month until our visit and I want you in to be in proper shape for it.”

  Brandon sighed as he looked at his protruding belly. “I don’t know, babe. I think round is a nice shape.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  For a man in his condition, he’d stayed in relatively good shape for most of his life. The spare tire around his mid-section was a recent development. He tried to tell himself it was because he was a year closer to forty — too close in fact — and that he would soon resume the workouts his doctor had recommended to him years ago. Soon routinely waited for tomorrow to arrive. He’d only fallen out of the habit in the last two years. But now he had a reason to get fit and continue to beat the odds that said he should have died over twenty years ago.

  Kimberlee’s scowl shifted to a wry smile. She adjusted her camera and zoomed out, revealing the low-cut top that barely covered her nipples. Brandon leaned forward, thought he could make out the edge of her right areola. The camera quickly zoomed in on her face.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was searching for something there.”

  “Lean back again,” she said. He did as instructed and once again, she zoomed out. Brandon leaned forward. Kimberlee repeated the process a few more times. “See, this is how we begin your workouts. Feel that burn in your abs?” She scrunched up her face like some crazed fitness trainer.

  Brandon’s laughter was interrupted by the sound of an attack. He shifted gears. They would not be defeated by trash mobs. He reached for his
mouse and knocked it off the desk. His eyes were glued to the simulated violence on his monitor.

  “Christ, Kimberlee, heal me before that damn mob kills me.” He reached for his grabber tool with one hand and secured the mouse. With his other hand he entered several strokes on his keyboard. A series of special attacks were carried out by his virtual avatar.

  After the carnage had subsided, Kimberlee said, “Maybe you’re too distracted right now to play.”

  Brandon shifted his gaze to her video feed and noticed her right index finger hooked in her bra. She tugged on it, stretching it outward, but not down like he hoped she would. He marveled at the beautiful woman who was ten years younger. Why the hell was she with him? Outside of a few awkward relationships in college, Brandon had avoided the traps of commitment.

  Of course, he convinced himself of that because he was unable to find a woman willing to be with him. He tried to blame his condition. Being a wheelchair-bound cripple had its drawbacks. But he knew that wasn’t it. He never made the effort, never left the house, never attempted to meet someone he could be interested in.

  The job kept him busy and fulfilled his need to be a productive person. In the early years, he worked for the Agency. The man who was now the director of operations had recruited him after Brandon had fallen into a little trouble for playing around. That’s what he called it at least. The Feds had another name for what he’d done.

  Hacking.

  But the guy had had enough clout to get Brandon out of trouble so long as he used his powers for the Agency and their purpose.

  These days Brandon contracted with several intelligence outfits, domestic and foreign, government and private sector. He worked with independents, too. People like Jack Noble, who he had known for years, were always calling him to help straighten out their messes. Brandon smiled as he recalled a time when Jack and his partner Bear had saved Brandon’s life. Had it not been for the duo, Brandon wouldn’t be staring at Kimberlee’s ample cleavage right now.

  Outside of the job, he made no attempts to meet people. Isolation was his preferred state of being. Food and medical supplies were brought to him through a service that also provided cleaning and took care of the maintenance of his house. They were never allowed in his office, the room he now occupied and which he lovingly referred to as The Cave.

  Three thirty-four-inch monitors adorned his desk. Four more were mounted to the wall above. He had sixty-inch plasma displays on the other three walls, all constantly displaying intelligence feeds and financial data from around the globe. Brandon knew before most of the world’s leaders when something was about to go down. He’d predicted terrorist attacks with accuracy. Sometimes those in charge listened to him and the threat was thwarted. Other times, they brushed him off and innocent people paid with their lives.

  It was easy for him to access the classified data he relied on to earn his living. He’d engineered the majority of the systems. And the ones he hadn’t designed he had managed to crack relatively easily and, more importantly, without anyone noticing.

  At any given time if you walked into The Cave you would find Brandon constantly engaged and monitoring the various feeds while performing whatever task the Agency, NSA, FBI, or a host of other acronyms had asked of him.

  But today wasn’t like that.

  He focused on Kimberlee’s smile and occasionally her breasts.

  He’d met the woman through a mutual acquaintance. The ATF agent had told Brandon that his cousin was quick-witted, hot-tempered, and shared a similar background. She wasn’t a hacker or computer whiz, though.

  She was a paraplegic.

  Thrown from a horse at the age of eight, her spinal cord had been severed between her L3 and L4.

  But where Brandon isolated himself, Kimberlee feared nothing. She set out to conquer the world. And now she seemed focused on conquering him. She knew exactly what he did for a living and she didn’t care. He supposed she found it exciting. She was dating a spy, albeit one that did his work from behind a network of computers and monitors. But the intelligence he provided was as important as the work the men in the field performed.

  They were less than one month away from meeting. Twenty-nine days to be precise. He had the date marked everywhere he looked. If all went well, they’d soon be together full-time. She might be the first to ever enter The Cave.

  “Are you there?” Kimberlee said.

  Brandon shook his head and cleared out the thoughts of the future and instead focused on the semi-nude woman smiling at him. He returned the smile and leaned forward.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Now, just how much gold are you willing to send over to me if I reveal a bit more to you?”

  “That depends—” Brandon noticed the screen on the wall to the right flickering. He pushed away from the desk and spun his chair around. “What the hell?”

  “Brandon?” Kimberlee said. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m gonna have to get back with you in a minute, babe.” He pressed a button on his screen and the video game and chat window disappeared.

  In front of him the plasma screen seemed possessed. Lines of code were flying past at well over a thousand rows a minute. Brandon could speed read with the best of them, but this was beyond his abilities.

  He pulled the keyboard from his desk and issued a command that switched control to the television. Once connected, he could do nothing to stop it from the apparent dump it was performing. His mind raced to recall everything he had on that system. There were years worth of financial records for politicians, governments, terrorists and their supporters. He’d been careful not to link his own records to that computer.

  The speakers on his desk rang out with a quick boop-boop sound. Kimberlee was attempting to reach him again. He’d ended their call without much warning. Maybe he should give her an update. He turned his chair toward the desk, dragging his keyboard shelf along.

  “Holy hell.”

  If he hadn’t been strapped in, Brandon might’ve fallen out of his chair. The three monitors on his desk looked like the plasma on the wall. Line after line of white text against a dark gray background raced past. He switched his keyboard to control his main system. Every command he issued failed to respond.

  “The hell is going on?” He slammed his fists against the surface of his desk. Pain rode through his arms up to his elbows. He grunted against the shock, fearing he’d broken something. Brandon clenched and unclenched his fist and fingers. Everything worked. His brittle bones had remained intact.

  The plasma to his left was out of his control, as was the matching screen on the back wall. He didn’t bother to attempt to override them. Whatever was happening was taking place beyond those four walls.

  He turned and glanced up. Two of the four wall-mounted thirty-four-inch monitors were still under his control. Both screens were linked to the same PC. He adjusted his keyboard and mouse and entered the system.

  Without thinking, Brandon issued command after command in an effort to regain control of his office. He thought about bringing up his security feeds but put it off for the moment. The overhead light cut off. The ceiling fan stopped circulating. The screens cast a dark glow over the space. The whirr of his computers that weren’t running on a water-cooled system overtook the room with rhythmic bursts of air. He wondered if that’s what it sounded like inside a jet in the middle of the night. Despite experience controlling drones flying thousands of miles away, he’d never been inside a plane.

  One of the systems blinked off. Was it his doing? He thought about the command he’d issued moments before and realized that nothing he’d done would have powered down the unit.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  It felt as though he raced against the clock. What were they doing with the data? How long until they took control of this system?

  He decided it was in the best interest of the country that he run a self-destruct directive. The computer contained all his personal files on the men he had worked with directly. Not th
e pencil pushers and geeks who hid behind their computers when they had working legs and able bodies. But the men out in the field.

  Brandon glanced at his phone and thought about a recent conversation. The thought led him to Jack Noble, just one of the many operators Brandon had complete files on.

  A blinking cursor sat at the end of the waiting command. All he had to was slap the enter key and the system would dismantle itself one byte at a time.

  Brandon froze. Years of work was locked up in that system. As solid as his memory was, there were things he could not recall. Information that a simple keystroke would reveal to him.

  He tried to think of a plan. Brandon had a row of servers in a clandestine data warehouse available to him. The reason his most confidential information was not already stored there was because he could not control access to the rack. The right team of agents and analysts could breach his files.

  That didn’t matter now.

  His mind raced to recall the details in order to start transferring the information. The system in question was large, but his internet connection was basically a wall of fiber optic cables with triple redundancy built in. He could utilize all of it at once and transfer the data in a matter of two seconds.

  An image of Kimberlee formed in his mind as he put together the string of letters, numbers and symbols required. She was smiling, tugging on the lacy edge of her bra.

  “Not now!” Brandon shouted, breaking free from the temptation.

  Stroke by stroke he entered everything he needed to encrypt the drive and send the contents to rack one, server a, console four.

  The progress bar moved slower than that damn strip of grass on the Plants vs. Zombies game. Brandon tapped on his desk. Perhaps too loudly. It caused him to miss something.

  The screen going blank was not lost on him, though.