Seeing Red (Gareth Red Thrillers Book 1)

by Nick Thacker

  “You said ‘us.’ You were a client?”

  The woman shook her head again. “Not exactly. I never — and, mind you, would never — engage in such activities. But…” she took another breath. “But my son… he was interested in this line of work. Took a liking to it almost immediately after he found out what it was about.”

  “So he is the last person on the list?”

  “No, unfortunately. I am the last person on the list, but it’s not because I ever saw Latia. It is because I caused all of this, in her eyes. I am the one responsible for it. All of it.”

  Gareth wanted to put his hand on her shoulder, to reassure her. But at the same time he wanted to scream at her. To push her, knock her down, and yell at her that yes, this was all her fault.

  To think she could have ended it a long time ago.

  There was nothing he could say to her.

  He just nodded.

  “Now you understand. Now you know.”

  Now I know, he thought. But now I’m not sure what to do.

  The door opened again, the wind outside picking up and beginning to howl. It was loud, whistling through the narrow gap between the house and the two buildings and the fountain that sat at the edge of them, and he looked up.

  Latia was there.

  34

  “LATIA,” GARETH SAID. “WHAT —”

  “NO,” she replied, cutting him off.

  The woman stared at Gareth, then at Latia. She took a step back and to her left, and Gareth noticed that she was now slightly behind him. So I can protect her, he thought. It was an innocent, involuntary movement, but to Gareth it was a threat. He was never comfortable with two unknowns — enemy or not — sandwiching him in.

  He needed to move tactically, but also tactfully. If either of the woman noticed, they might try to rush their motive. If they were on the fence about attacking, his overt defensive posturing could help make their decision.

  So he moved quickly, but smoothly. First a step to the right, toward the banker. He paused for a beat. Give her the sense that I’m not a threat, that I’ve accepted your offer for help. Next he raised his arms slightly, palms up and open, toward Latia. Tell her I’m not a threat to her, either.

  He did this as he stepped two paces toward Latia, but also back to the left. There he opened up, his back against the wall and now with both woman standing on opposite sides of him, Latia about two paces away and Roderick’s mother one.

  “It is finished,” Latia said.

  Gareth nodded.

  “There is no more,” she said.

  The woman moved to speak, but Gareth beat her to it. “So — you’re done. There’s nothing more to prove.”

  “Yes.”

  He let out a sigh. “Latia, I can help you. This isn’t over yet you — and your sister — you both can find help.”

  She seemed to be confused about this, taking a small step with each foot before stepping just inside the threshold of the warehouse. She didn’t look around. She didn’t need to. She’s seen this before, he thought. She doesn’t want to come in.

  “My sister will not understand,” she finally said.

  “Understand what?”

  “She is out there. Waiting.”

  She’s waiting for us. For the shot.

  “Can you talk to her? Can you tell her to stand down?”

  Latia shook her head. Then she jerked it up and stared directly at the woman to Gareth’s right. The woman’s eyes were wide, scared.

  “This woman allowed this to happen. For years, she know about me. And my sister and everyone else. She make sure there is money for managers, and clients.”

  Gareth swallowed. “Latia, you said it yourself. It’s over.”

  “It is over. But she is still not innocent.”

  The woman began to cry. “Latia, I — I’m sorry. This was never supposed to…” she took a quick breath. When I understood, when I knew what was happening, I tried to fix it. It was always going to take time, you see? It needed to be done slowly, over time.”

  “It is finished now.”

  “Yes, it is over.”

  “When you die.”

  The woman sobbed freely now, and Gareth watched the exchange. He was still carrying Roderick’s assault rifle, but he had no intention of shooting at either person in the quiet building. There has been enough darkness here.

  “Please… no.”

  Latia’s glare seemed to liquefy the woman, to pass right through her and out the other side of the warehouse’s cheap wooden wall. Out to the open world behind it. The real world.

  “I only transferred the money to ensure that the others would follow,” the woman said. “They were hesitant. They did not believe me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gareth asked.

  “It’s how I got them to liquidate. I told them they were reinvesting, starting a new company. A leaner, more efficient one with better security. I told them it was going to be like Likur Holdings, but more discreet.”

  “And they bought it?”

  She shook her head. “A few of them did. Some of them, like the man you met up north, figured it out after they’d transferred money. It was all set up perfectly, but I didn’t follow through for obvious reasons, so they started suspecting things. They started digging around. That’s when I hired my son to start protecting the bank. He discovered that a few of the clients were upset with me, they wanted their money back.”

  “But you had it locked?”

  She nodded. “It’s something I can do at the bank, but I didn’t need to. The account had been stationary from the beginning. It was never set up with a withdrawal authorization, making it effectively a hard asset. Even though it’s full of cash, it’s about as useful as a patch of land that you can’t build on.”

  “I see. So what was the money for?”

  She looked at Latia. “I really don’t know, honestly. I wanted to hurt them, to cripple them by taking their money, but I couldn’t follow through with it. I would have been no better, right? Stealing all of the money, and for what? I clearly wasn’t going to build another Likur Holdings with it.”

  “What about the others? You said Roderick said some of the clients figured it out. But the man we met didn’t seem to be terribly upset about it.”

  She nodded. “Most of these clients were indirectly involved in Likur Holdings’ business proceedings, but all of them were in contact with the, uh, product line. All of them had a favorite, usually a girl, underage.”

  Yeah. Latia. Or her sister, Gareth thought.

  “The man you met was no exception, but he was only involved for a year or two.”

  “So? That doesn’t excuse him.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “But he was a decent man. He found out what I had done, but instead of getting upset, he resigned himself to it. He knew he was old, and he knew that he was guilty.”

  “And then Latia and her sister showed up,” Gareth said.

  Latia nodded. “We sent him same message we send all the clients. Same message they send us when they call. Your appointment is 3:33. Be ready.”

  Gareth watched Latia’s face. She explained it as though she’d explained it before, as if it were the most normal thing she could imagine. It was rehearsed, calculated, crafted. Justified.

  “You used the same time they did. These ‘appointments,’ they were the call times for you and your sister, right?”

  Latia nodded. “They know what the time means. They know who it is from.”

  “But how did they know what day? Surely you didn’t tell them, ‘I’m coming for you at this time, on this date?’”

  “No,” the woman answered. “They didn’t need a date. That was the genius behind Latia’s and her sister’s plan. They just knew that the girls were out there, plotting. They lived in fear, every day at their assigned time. Some of them hired security, but they couldn’t afford to lock themselves up in a castle with an army defending them. At some point, all of them would be vulnerable. A
ll of them had a chosen time, and all of them knew it. Some of them accepted that, and simply prepared.”

  “The man we saw up in Oymyakon was shot through the head, through a wall. The shot was perfect in every way.”

  “He sat there at his allotted time, every day.”

  “He was wearing a suit.”

  “As I said, he had accepted it,” the woman answered.

  Gareth shook his head. “I don’t believe it. He knew he was going to die. So every day he went to his office, the same place, the same clothes. Waiting.”

  The woman nodded.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Why are you still alive?”

  The woman looked at Latia, and Latia’s head fell. “I know the truth. You were not part of Likur Holdings. You made the transfer to convince the others, but you were not part of it.”

  The woman was still sobbing, the great, rolling tears pooling at her feet. They had slowed down a bit, leaving a shiny trail on her cheeks. “Thank you.”

  “But I have not yet told my sister.”

  She swallowed. Gareth’s eyes widened a bit.

  “You have missed your appointment already,” Latia said. “But I do not think my sister will be happy.”

  “Latia,” Gareth said, “we have to find her. She’s out there, right now? Waiting for us to leave this place?”

  The woman put her hand over her mouth. “I thought — I thought I knew it. I thought I was ready for this, but… but…”

  She couldn’t finish.

  Gareth walked over. “It’s okay, we just need to find Latia’s sister, to tell her the same thing Latia now knows. Something changed her mind, right? We can maybe try to —”

  “It is too late,” Latia said. “She will not be convinced. She — she is more angry.”

  “Latia, you have to try —”

  “She is more angry. I cannot.”

  “But why? I thought you were on a team. In this together?”

  Latia shook her head. “She would not tell me. I try to tell her, yesterday. I tell her I cannot finish, that the job need to be done already. All of the clients are dead. She just get more angry.”

  Gareth’s head fell. “Latia, we have to try. No one else needs to die.”

  “Please, Latia,” the woman said. “I’m begging you. Tell your sister I am sorry. For everything.”

  Gareth watched her face as she spoke. The tears were coming again, bigger and more pronounced.

  Suddenly he felt the world slow down. The realization struck him.

  “Latia,” he said. “Go find your sister. Now. If you can, talk some sense in her. If not, get her out. Got it?”

  Latia tried to object. She opened her mouth, but Gareth was finished with this. All of this. “Now, Latia. You asked for my help, remember? You asked me to come with you here, to finish this. This is the end, this is how I help you. Please. Go.”

  She looked at him, looked at the banker, then back outside. Somewhere, up in the hills surrounding the postcard scene, was a scared, cold, angry girl just like Latia.

  Only different.

  Latia knew some of the clients that she’d killed. Her sister knew the others. Sometimes, perhaps even both. They were twins, so he could imagine that there had been some clients of theirs who wouldn’t care which of them was called.

  But there was one more piece. One more major piece.

  Latia left, and Gareth listened as her boots crunched over the gravel, a light dusting of snow beginning to fall around them. When she was no longer audible, he turned back to the woman, still scared and shaking as her tears fell around her.

  “You lied to me.”

  35

  THE WOMAN SOBBED DEEPER, THEN shook her head. “No,” she said, fighting through the sharp breaths. “No, it was all true. It is all true.”

  “But there’s more, isn’t there? More to it than what you just told us. Something you didn’t want Latia to know.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Why did you hire me?”

  “You were the right —”

  “Yeah, I got that. Your dead son explained that to me. But why would you care about someone like me. Any trained sniper can take a shot from two-hundred yards in any weather. Why me? Hell, I haven't even taken a shot this whole trip. It wasn’t about that, was it? You didn’t need me for my training. You didn’t want me because of my professional skills, did you?”

  She looked down, then shook her head.

  “You wanted me for my past. For what I’ve been through. You told your son that, you said I was ‘the right man for the job,’ but because of what I’d been through. His exact quote was ‘I would know what to do when the time came,’ wasn’t it?”

  She sniffed. Nodded.

  “You told him just enough to make him believe that I’d be a perfect teammate, that I’d help him kill Latia and her sister before they took out all the clients, ending your career at the bank. You told him that so he’d push forward with the mission, maybe even accomplish it. But you didn’t want him to accomplish it, did you?”

  She didn’t answer, so he changed tactics.

  “You knew Latia’s sister. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “But Latia wouldn’t have known that, would she? She didn’t ever see you, because how could she? You wouldn’t have been caught dead in this place. I bet this is the first time you’ve even been in here, isn’t it?”

  “She — she was —”

  “Save it. You’re no better than the rest of them, are you? Worse, even, because you funded it. You let this happen, for years.”

  “I wanted it to stop! Everything I told you is true — I wanted to freeze the assets and make sure they couldn’t be retrieved, and then close down the —”

  “But you didn’t mind getting a little more closely involved in the businesses’ dealings, did you? Might as well dip your toe in the pond, since it’s right here in your backyard. Maybe even justify it with your grandiose scheme of eventually closing it all down. Wipe your hands of it, forget it ever happened, move on. No one would need to know about Latia’s sister, would they? How could they suspect it? You were the one who shut it all down — the hero. Right?”

  The woman was gasping, her ragged breaths hardly keeping up with her tears.

  “Latia doesn’t even know about it, you see that? Her sister was saving you for last — you were the one who made the first deposit, so you’re the last one on the list. And the list was the other piece. You made the list, and you gave it to Latia and her sister, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “How else would they know what order to kill you all in? How else would they know exactly how to find all of them, to move around and get them all killed, right on schedule? Your own government has no idea who these clients are, so how would two young ladies figure it out?”

  Gareth shook his head. “Man, I thought I’d seen everything. I thought, when it came down to it, people were either good or bad. Maybe a bit of both on the surface, and certainly capable of making a mistake here or there, but I thought they were one or the other at the end of the day.

  “And maybe they are, you know? Maybe you are either good or bad. Maybe you even wrestled with that yourself. ‘Am I good, for getting this Army guy involved, someone who might understand what’s happening and make sure the right thing happens? Or am I bad, for not just ending it myself? For letting it go on for so long?’”

  The woman was shaking, uncontrollably now. “I — I didn’t — this isn’t what…”

  “Yeah, it never is what we want, is it? One little misstep, and then all of this. One little experience with Latia’s sister, and you wanted more. You wanted to prolong it, even when you knew it had to end at some point. But you couldn’t do it yourself, could you? You put it all in motion. Bought the gun, but couldn’t pull the trigger. You hired your own son for that. For the dirty work. Because if it failed, and none of this did end, you could go back to the way things were, but now with th
e justification that you tried. You tried to make it right, but it didn’t work. So find a new girl, some other twin sister, and keep going.”

  “No, it’s not like that. It’s —”

  “It’s close enough though, isn’t it? Tell me how I’m wrong.”

  She lifted her chin, trying to look him in the eye. He stared, willing her to. Her face came up, defiant, unmoving, then it fell.

  “That’s what I thought. I’m right — it doesn’t matter about the details, except the money. What are you going to do with all that money?”

  “I — that’s… that’s what you don’t understand. What Latia and her sister don’t understand. It was, truly, my hope that I could make this all right for them.”

  “Make it right? They were slaves. For most of their lives.”

  “I know. There is nothing in the world to make it right.”

  “But a lot of money? Money from their clients?”

  She nodded.

  “How?”

  “There is a clause on the account, something I wrote up in the papers when I opened it. Their names alone — both of them — can access the account and turn it into a withdraw-able money market.”

  “How much?”

  “Thirty-eight million, US.”

  “Thirty-eight million?”

  “Yes. Like I said, I wanted to make it right. I wanted to end this, but I couldn’t. Not on my own. So I gave them the list, told them about the deposits. I knew they would do something about it, but I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. If anyone else —”

  “Someone at the bank. Or Roderick?”

  “Right, if anyone else like that somehow saw what was happening and that I wasn’t doing anything to fight it, they would know that I was part of it.”

  “So you hired your son to find the two who you basically hired to kill you.”

  She nodded.

  “Pretty twisted.”

  “But it’s over now, don’t you see? Latia knows it’s over. She is done.”

  “And her sister?” Gareth asked.

  “You have to help me.”

  “I have to?”