by Nick Thacker
Brun reached into a drawer on his desk, eliciting a quick response from Roderick, who tensed up and felt for his pistol. Gareth was impressed, confirming his theory that his new pal was indeed a military man — or at least had been at one time.
“No need for that, boys,” Brun said. “No need at all.”
His beefy hand retreated from the drawer and Gareth saw a small, circular object in his fingers. Brun held it up, examining it, then popped it into his mouth.
Gareth waited, the tension in the room ratcheting higher. He knew Roderick felt it as well, as the man’s hand was still on his gun, ready to draw. It was like an old-west standoff, two against one, but the one was fighting with a weird circle that he’d just eaten.
“My friends,” Brun said, chewing the object, “I assure you there is nothing to fear from me.”
“What was that? What are you eating? Are you —”
Brun began to laugh, slowly at first then growing louder until the round man was almost rolling. “I have heartburn, my friends. That is all. Can I offer you one?”
He pulled out a cylindrical container full of heartburn and indigestion tablets.
“No,” Gareth said, sheepishly.
“Very well. Listen to me. What’s done is done. What’s not done is not done. So let it be.”
Gareth had heard that before — it was a prayer, or something like that. The serenity prayer? He wasn’t a church sort of guy, but the quote had stuck with him for years, as it was something simple, yet profound.
“What is done, Rukleveh?” Roderick asked. “What is this all about?”
Brun smiled, his face no longer confused and a look of satisfaction and contentment coming over it. He then looked up at the wall. Gareth followed his gaze and saw a small circular clock.
3:33 am.
Gareth turned to look at Roderick to try to infer what their next move should be, but Brun decided for them.
With a huge cracking sound, the ‘window’ behind Brun smashed into a million shards of wood, sawdust, and whatever material the exterior wall was made of. Brun went next, the pulpy mess of what was once the man’s head now splattering outward in every direction.
And only then did Gareth register the shot.
Like a cannon, from far off, somewhere in the distance.
A sniper rifle.
Brun lay facedown on the floor of his own office, only now he had no face to speak of. Roderick’s own face was covered in blood, his mouth opened slightly.
Gareth did the only thing that made sense — he ducked, anticipating another shot even though he knew it wouldn’t come — then he ran out of the office and down the short hallway into the main warehouse area.
From there he kicked through the door that led outside and ran uphill, around the building.
The shot would have come from…
There.
A few hundred yards out, he saw it. A flash of white, moving impossibly fast against the snowy backdrop of the wooded area that jutted up against the town.
It ran on two legs so it wasn’t a wolf or bear, and the lithe frame disappeared a split-second later and Gareth lost sight of it altogether.
Roderick was there, suddenly. He’d moved silently, running as fast as Gareth but somehow without being heard. Or Gareth hadn’t been paying attention.
“Did you see it?” Roderick asked. “The shooter?”
Gareth nodded, still too stunned to speak.
“What did he look like, then? Talk, Red.”
Gareth looked over at Roderick, long and slow. The shooter was long gone by now, and they had no hope of catching up to them.
“I only caught a quick glimpse. They ran north, up into the woods. No chance we’re catching up.”
“Well then, what can you tell me about him? What did he —”
Gareth shook his head. He was certain of only one thing, but of that one thing he was dead certain.
“No,” he said calmly, his voice nearly a whisper. “It wasn’t a he.”
14
“NOT A HE?” RODERICK ASKED.
“That’s what I said,” Gareth said, turning to walk back into the warehouse.
“But how —”
“Because I saw her. I saw the way she moved, like a cat. A well-trained cat.”
“But she was so far away — are you sure?”
“She was close enough to make that shot. Through a wall, I might add. So yeah, I’m sure. It was a her. And that her is not someone we want to mess with.”
Roderick groaned in frustration, but followed Gareth inside, where it was at least a couple degrees warmer and not windy. “Red, that was our primary source — Brun Rukleveh. He was a major contributor to Likur Holdings, and now he’s —”
“Hey, pal,” Gareth said, his voice growing a bit haughty. “I was there too, remember? I saw it with my own eyes. Your ‘primary source’ is now soup all over his office floor.”
Roderick stomped back into the warehouse, still following Gareth down the hall. “Then what are you doing now?”
“I’m going to see if there’s anything else we can find out about. Weird situation, all around. Wouldn’t you say?”
Roderick’s mouth opened and closed, but he didn’t say anything.
“I saw you in there,” Gareth said. “You were tight, ready. And the way you moved — I didn’t even hear you. You were special forces, yeah?”
Roderick came to a stop next to Gareth, just in front of Brun’s doorway. A bit of flesh and wood chips had landed in the hallway, and it was all Gareth could do to ignore it and not add to the mess himself.
Roderick nodded. “Yes, ten years.”
Gareth nodded. “Glad you’re here, then. I was worried about you. Don’t like working with unknowns.”
Roderick looked down at him. “Really? You? Everything about this mission so far has been an ‘unknown,’ Red.”
Gareth shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Let’s just say I don’t like keeping things unknowns. Got it? So you and me — we’re going to have to get to know each other a bit. And I want to know everything about this little posse you’re working for. The lady on the phone, from the plane? She’s from a bank, isn’t she?”
Roderick stood ramrod straight. Finally, slowly, as if waiting for someone to come out of nowhere and rescue him, he nodded. “Yes. As am I. I work for the bank, and so do the men you spoke with three days ago.”
“And the bank’s the only entity at this point in the game that knows about all these people, and how they’re all tied together.”
“Correct again. The US government will, eventually. But they will take forever to get caught up with it and figure out which side everyone is on.”
Gareth nodded. Makes sense, he thought. Now to figure out what this was all about.
He stepped into the room, carefully moving around the splatters and chunks of wood and concrete. The place was a disaster, and it didn’t help that a headless, bleeding body filled most of it.
Gareth stood exactly where he was standing when it had happened, then turned and looked at the wall.
The clock.
The time.
3:35 am.
“What are you looking for?” Roderick asked.
“Did you know it would happen?” Gareth asked.
Roderick looked shocked, as if Gareth had just accused him of committing the murder himself. “Did — did I know?”
“I’m just curious.”
“And why would you be curious of that?”
Gareth looked around the room once more, then to the lifeless body on the floor. “Well, because he knew.”
“He knew what, Red?”
“He knew it was going to happen. He was waiting for it. Lined it up himself, right on time.”
15
“WHERE ARE WE GOING NOW?” Roderick asked. He had pulled off his parka and slipped into the truck, but this time in the passenger’s seat. The truck was warm, as they’d left it running — another trick of the Yakutians that lived up h
ere. Cars left outside for too long simply wouldn’t start again.
“I don’t know,” Gareth said. “That’s what you’re going to find out.”
Roderick turned to look at him, but was thrown back against the seat’s headrest as Gareth floored it and spun the small truck around. He drove back the direction they’d come from, toward Yakutsk.
Two days to get here.
Two days to get back.
And all we got from it was a dead guy.
Gareth replayed the killing in his mind. It had all happened so fast, yet looking back on it now it all seemed so obvious.
How did I miss it? he thought.
The man had taken an indigestion tablet. He’d basically screamed to them, ‘I’m worried. I’m stressed. I’m scared.’
Sure, he’d been well put-together, even calm. But Gareth knew that meant nothing compared to the other signs.
His outfit suggested not that he was a successful businessman — even though Gareth believed he was — but that this was a man who was dressed up to prepare for something.
To prepare for his own death.
He’d known about it, and he’d basically told them. He’d told Gareth and Roderick that it was too late, that there was nothing left to do.
‘This is a game, and it is all but won already.’
What did that mean? Gareth wondered. He wanted to go back, to snoop around for clues, try to figure out what in the world he had just witnessed. But he couldn’t. He felt the pressing need to push forward, the desire to move on and find out what this ‘game’ was.
There was nothing they could do for Brun Rukleveh now. This was his town, his home. There would be people here who could help the man in death far more than Gareth could even have helped him in life.
You could have kept him alive, though.
The thought came to Gareth as he drove on over the icy road, swerving to miss a massive pothole.
“You think we could have saved him?” Gareth asked.
Roderick looked over at him. “What?”
“Brun. You think we could have prevented it?”
Roderick frowned. “You know you cannot think like —”
“Answer the question, Roderick. Could we have prevented this?”
Roderick sighed.
“You don’t think so?”
“No,” he said. “We did not come here to prevent it.”
Gareth almost swerved again as he listened to the man’s words. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“We came here to witness it, to anticipate it even, but we did not come to prevent it. We could not have prevented it, Gareth.”
“But —”
“If we had known where the shooter was going to be, and what time she was going to arrive, and where Brun was going to stand in that room, and…”
Gareth got the point, and Roderick didn’t have to finish the sentence. The only way they could have prevented it was if they could have somehow known every detail of the operation.
“So you knew he was going to die.”
“We knew, yes. I did not know it was going to be today, but we knew.”
“We?”
“My boss, the woman you spoke with. She knew as well.”
“What bank do you work for?”
Roderick didn’t answer.
“Fine. Next question. How did you know?”
“They all — three of them so far — they have all died. Each of them, shot, the same way. Through a wall, a bullet through their head.”
Gareth felt the rage building inside him. The truck was already shaking, already starting to reach its upper limit of speed. He figured he had long since blown past the upper limit of safety, especially considering the icy conditions outside. He didn’t even want to consider what the severe cold might be doing to the poor vehicle, but then again, the vehicle wasn’t alive.
Not like Brun Rukleveh was alive.
The vehicle wasn’t a person, a living, breathing human being. It wasn’t a creature that could be protected. It didn’t care if a man — or woman — lodged a bullet through its engine from a football field away. It didn’t care at all. About anything.
He felt the rage growing again. The helpless fear of knowing that what existed in real life was vastly different than the reality he’d built in his head. It came upon like it always did, like he’d always known.
First, the recognition.
He could have — should have — done something.
Second, the realization.
He did not do anything. An innocent life had been lost, and he had been there while it happened.
He shuddered. It was there, again, the feeling. The truth. The weight of it.
The reality of it.
He’d known it before, once in real life and then a thousand times after that in his own mind.
His doctors had told him it was anxiety. A form of stress caused by a mismatch in what he believed to be the truth and what was actually the truth.
But he always told them he knew the truth, and that he knew what reality was, and it was still there.
The feeling.
The knowing.
The truth.
He’d done nothing, and this man was now dead.
It was a shudder that matched the truck’s tremors, like the truck itself was now a living, breathing instrument of motion, in tune with Gareth’s emotion, knowing and sharing and believing in the feelings. The truck and Gareth were one, somehow, strangely and unbelievably, but it was true.
Gareth shook his head.
This isn’t reality.
The truck wasn’t feeling anything, and Gareth wasn’t experiencing reality. He was watching it through a lens, a filter of his own creation.
He suddenly realized that Roderick was staring at him.
He turned, watching the road with one eye while he focused on his teammate with the other. He probably thinks I’m insane.
“You — you are feeling it again, Mr. Red?”
It.
How could he know what I’m feeling?
For some reason Gareth felt nothing but more rage. This man didn’t know him — he couldn’t know him. How could he? He’d never met this man before he was a flight attendant on a plane trip.
Even with research, which Gareth was sure he had done, this man — Roderick-something-last-name — Roderick couldn’t know.
No one knew about her.
The reason for his anxiety, the feelings, the emotional upheaval that had nearly destroyed his life as well.
Gareth had purposefully sought out healthcare in a different country, under a completely different name, outside of the military’s prying eyes. They wanted to know everything about their employees, yet some things they couldn’t know.
It would mean the end of his career with them.
It would mean the end of him.
Gareth was the military. He was a little rough around the edges, but the military had given him a home, a life. It had trained him, conformed him, and brought him into the fold.
This man wasn’t one of the military men who shared that bond with Gareth, and even the military didn’t know about the plague that haunted Gareth’s memory.
Gareth opened his mouth to reply. To rebut. No words came out.
The truck shook, shuddering again like Gareth’s hands.
Roderick stared.
Finally, he spoke again. “Wh — what are you talking about, Roderick?”
Roderick squinted in the dawning light streaming into the truck’s windshield. “Mr. Red, you don’t think we would embark on such a dangerous endeavor without doing our due diligence? As I mentioned to you, we selected you because of your past.”
“In the United States Army,” Gareth said, finishing the sentence.
Roderick shook his head. “No.”
“Then —”
“Your past, Gareth. We wanted you, specifically. You alone.”
“I don’t — I don’t understand. How could you —”
&
nbsp; “It’s fine, Mr. Red,” Roderick said, holding up a hand. As angry as Gareth was, the hand, and the seriousness of the man holding it, steadied him. Like a beast riding into battle, the truck seemed to sway a bit and then calm down as well, obeying its master.
What is happening?
“It’s fine because we understand you, and what you are going through.”
“You mean what I was going through? Right at the beginning of my career, when I joined up with —”
“No,” Roderick said again, that steady and assuring accent once again working its magic. “What you are going through now.”
“It’s just stress. I just witnessed a murder. Although it was a brutal, bloody murder. Hell, Roderick, it splattered all over us. It was everywhere.”
“Surely you have seen a dead person before?”
“In my line of work, of course. But I’m a sniper, not a murderer. I don’t stand there and let it get all over me like some crazy serial killer.”
“And does that distance from your victims help you cope with your truth?”
Gareth tightened his grip on the wheel. Now what the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?
“It’s my job. And I’m good at it. And that’s why you hired me.”
Roderick nodded.
“I’m supposed to kill this girl, aren’t I? The sniper? The one that took out Brun?”
Roderick nodded again, a concerned smile on his face.
I’m right, but I’m not completely right. There’s more to it.
“We have more to talk about, Roderick. About me, and what exactly you think you know about me. But that can come later.”
“Indeed.”
“For now, let’s get back on track. You mentioned there were three — I’m assuming Brun Rukleveh is the third. Who are the others?”
Roderick thought for a moment, as if trying to decide if now was a good enough time to spill everything about his mission.
Apparently he decided it was time. “Yes, correct. Brun Rukleveh is the third person on the list.”
“The list.”
“The list?”
“Yes, a list of the men and women who have made recent deposits into the shared account.”
“Liquidating assets?”
“Correct. It is in order, too.”
“How so?”
