Mark for Blood (Mason Dixon Thrillers Book 1)

by Nick Thacker

  I reached as far as I could with my free hand and realized I was still a good foot away from his arm and the weapon. My bloody wrist was about to wrench free of my arm for good, and I didn’t want that either, so I let up and just redoubled my efforts on my legs and his neck.

  I buckled down again, twice, trying to dislodge the gun from his fingers or at least dislodge his focus from the pistol. Neither happened, and the cold steel of the end of the barrel came up against my calf.

  Not good.

  He’d deafen himself, probably permanently, discharging a pistol that close to his head, but the effect would be exactly what he —

  The muffled blam of the pistol took me by surprise, and I blinked a few times. My legs were still stiff, still holding tightly to their prize, and I knew it would be only a few more seconds before Riley lost his grip and the rest of his air.

  And then the most godawful pain I’d ever experienced only twice before in my life hit me. My calf exploded in fury, my brain screaming obscenities at the rest of my body and my mouth about to follow suit.

  Blood spattered along the bottom of the table and below it on the bridge wall to my left, and I could already see daylight from the tiny bullet hole that had pierced the thin wall.

  I screamed in rage and might have even whimpered just a bit from the pain of it all, and yet somehow it still increased. More. And more. And dammit — still more.

  I sat there for probably 8-tenths of a second, but it seemed like eight days. Just sitting, gasping now in pain from every limb — somehow my free hand hurt as well, which really frustrated and confused me — but especially in the back of my right leg.

  And then, as if the Universe was just having a bad day and I was an itch it needed to scratch away, Riley got up. Simply, easily, like I wasn’t even there. He just lifted his head and pushed against my injured leg, and sat up.

  Holding the pistol.

  Pointing it at my face.

  I closed my eyes, screaming internally and angry at the world for being defeated.

  I heard the shots, two of them, and still my eyes were closed.

  59

  I OPENED ONE EYE, THEN the other.

  Smoke rose from Rayburn’s crispy body, and in front of that, between Rayburn and where I still sat hunched over between the wheel and the pipe in the bridge, Riley lay lifeless.

  Blood seemed to be everywhere. Pooling around his facedown body, around the pistol laying next to him, on the wall and table on the more unfortunate side of my calf, and — somehow, miraculously — a few drips on the ceiling.

  I stared up at these little bloody constellations and just breathed. Rayburn was either dead or severely wounded, and Riley was absolutely dead. Hannah and Joey were somewhere nearby, hopefully alive, and I was alive and wishing I wasn’t.

  A silhouette appeared in the doorway, a suppressed pistol in his right hand. He came forward, stepping over Rayburn and entering the doorway to the bridge. He looked around, looked up, and then looked at me.

  “Dixon,” he said. “Glad you’re okay.”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said. My voice was barely my own. It felt froggy, like I’d barely recovered from a month-long cold. But it also added authority, meanness. “Bout time you showed up, Truman. How’s the family?”

  “Need some help with those cuffs?” Truman asked.

  I nodded, sniffed, then spit out a giant wad of whatever post-fight monstrosity my saliva glands had cooked up. “Yeah, sure. And I could really use a drink, too.”

  60

  TRUMAN AND I SAT IN the main room, across from each other. Truman had pulled over one of the huge chairs near the door, and I sat sideways on the same couch we’d found Hannah on. I had opted for one of the chairs, but some of his team had ordered me to stretch my leg out on the couch so they could — poorly, I might add — work on my leg.

  ‘Just a flesh wound,’ they’d said, but it had torn through muscle and fat and an inconceivable amount of nerves, and only a few of the little bastards had let up. The pain was excruciating, but I was already hard at work dulling it all away with some of my own medical experience.

  Truman had poured the rest of the Booker’s overproof into two more glasses and handed me one. I took about three sips and coughed, but the strong elixir began to work its magic immediately. I kept at it, committed, and before Truman had even finished two sips I’d made my way through half of the four fingers.

  “Tell me what happened,” Truman said. “After you gave Riley the codes. They weren’t the right codes, were they?”

  “Why are you still caught up in the codes? The bad guys are dead. What else do you need?”

  Truman shifted in his seat, trying to make himself look more comfortable but failing. “I told you on the phone this is a big project for us,” he said. “It’s cross-departmental, and it’s international. We’ve been working on it for months.”

  “So?” I asked. “What’s that got to do with this stuff today?”

  “Well,” he said. “You showed up. You got involved, I got suspicious.”

  “Of me?”

  He shifted again. “Well, no, not you necessarily… Look, Mason. It just seemed odd that you — someone who’s got absolutely no ties to this family or this business — would show up, claiming to have just met this girl and wanting to help out, and suddenly take a serious interest in it all.”

  “Well… that’s exactly what happened.”

  “I know,” he said. “That’s what my guys have been figuring out. You were in the right place at the right —” he stopped, looked at my leg — “sorry, wrong place at the wrong time. Hannah walked into your life, not the other way around. That matters to us. For the record.”

  “For the record.”

  “And we’ve been watching the house and the yacht for days. Trying to get a plan for making a move.”

  At this I raised an eyebrow. “So… you could have stormed in here and stopped all of this? Even after you knew Hannah was inside?”

  I started breathing faster, unable to control my anger. The pain didn’t help.

  Truman held up a palm. “Calm down, Mason. You have to understand the pressure and details of it all, from my perspective. Hannah was certainly a top priority, but at the end of the day, there was a much larger mission.”

  “A much more important one.”

  He didn’t acknowledge that, but he didn’t need to.

  “We need those codes, Mason. All of this hinges on the correct transfer codes. I was ordered to stand down until we were positive they were here. I was almost positive you didn’t know them, but I had to wait and see for sure. You told them you knew them, so I was forced to wait it out. We’ve been listening in.”

  “You bugged the yacht?”

  “We bugged everything. Sorry. You weren’t supposed to be anywhere near this, Mason. But rest assured, no one touched Hannah — scuffed her up a bit, scared the shit out of her, but they didn’t want to risk losing her as a bargaining chip.”

  The anger was still there, burning, like Rayburn’s face, but at least now I was able to redirect it from Truman. I looked over at the blackened stain on the carpet. Rayburn’s body had been removed, minutes after I’d been taken from the bridge. I’d heard Riley was still in the bridge, apparently still posing for the final photographing session of his shitty life.

  Rayburn hadn’t been dead when they’d carried me over him. I could see his nostrils, burned down to open holes in his face — still working, trying to breathe through all the blood. I took great satisfaction in that little moment as I floated over him.

  He’d died on the way to the ambulance.

  Truman started up again. “So you would have no way of knowing the codes. Right?”

  I nodded, squinting a bit. I was trying to figure out his game. There was always a game with these government types. Something bigger they were working toward. Even for Truman, a man I could consider a friend and an ally. “You still need the codes, don’t you?”

 
; This time he didn’t even try to look comfortable. “My ass is on the line for this one, Dixon. The guys upstairs have been listening in to everything happening, reading all the reports, trying to get the codes. That’s what this all comes down to. Even with the tech we’ve got access to, we can’t hack into an international banking system to bring down a corporate entity. It’d work in the States, but overseas is a different story.”

  “You can’t serve them a warrant? Get access to the server, something like that?”

  Truman shook his head. “No. We might be able to work a deal, but…”

  He pushed his tongue around inside his mouth, working through it. Wanting me to work through it.

  “Oh,” I said quickly. “You don’t know which bank it is.”

  He nodded. “Sort of. These transfer codes aren’t just simple bank routing numbers and accounts. They’re cyber-encrypted information repositories. Basically, the program that Riley pulled up on Bradley Rayburn’s computer was a decryptor. Type in the right string of codes, and the program spits out a list of the banks and the information for each account.”

  “You need that to prosecute the business, right?” I asked.

  “Sort of. We need it to prosecute anyone we find involved with it all, but the codes, we believe, also give us a list of the people actually involved.”

  “Because those people alone would have access to those banks.”

  “Correct. It’s always the last layer of security at multinational banks. Having a password is nothing if you’re not who you say you are,” Truman said.

  “So you’ll be able to get the people involved, with absolute proof that they’re the culprits, because their names alone will be associated with the bank accounts.”

  “Exactly. And it will save us years in prosecution time, since Crimson Club dealt in legal and aboveboard wares as well. Those account numbers and people associated will be in the system, and the transactions will line up with legitimate transactions on the other end. But the ones that aren’t legitimate — the ones we need to bust — will be in there as well, and a quick search as the buyer and seller on the other end of those transactions will disprove their innocence.”

  “I see,” I said. I winced as I accidentally shifted my leg. “Well I might be able to help you out.”

  Truman’s eyes widened. “Wh — what do you mean?” I didn’t expect him to be so surprised, but I sort of wanted to revel in it a bit.

  “I want to see Hannah, make sure she’s okay. She’s the key to all of this anyway.”

  Truman frowned. “Well, okay, sure. She’s in the ambulance out in the parking lot right now. Joey’s there, too. They’re both going to be fine. But what does she have to do with it all? From what we could tell, she wasn’t involved —”

  “She’s not involved,” I said. “Don’t let anyone think that. But her father — Bradley Rayburn — seemed to have trouble connecting with his daughter growing up. But he certainly had an affinity for her. Named her ‘Hannah,’ after all.”

  “Right, the key to his computer,” Truman said. “We already know that. All lowercase.”

  “No,” I said. “She’s the key to everything.”

  61

  “WELL HEY THERE,” I SAID. It was jovial, lighthearted. I had said it like that on purpose, but I immediately second-guessed my decision as the words slipped out of my mouth. For one, my voice still carried the heavily strained smoker’s accent of overexertion. And I didn’t know how Hannah would react. Was I diminishing the situation? Was I being ignorant?

  She smiled. “Hi,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  She and Joey had been filled in to my escapades shortly after they’d been rescued by Truman’s team, and both had wanted to come in and welcome me back to the real world as soon as possible.

  I wanted a reunion more than anything, but there was still work to do. Truman and one of his men stood by in the room, each so eager I was worried they’d pounce on me if I didn’t get to the point.

  “You’re the key to it all, my Hannah.”

  She frowned, and her eyes welled up with tears. I suddenly regretted saying it. “Why — how do you know that?” she asked.

  “You told me, back at the bar. Remember? You said your dad always used to tell you that.”

  She sniffed, wiped her eye, and straightened up. “Yeah,” she said, “sorry. I do remember that now. It’s been… it’s been a —”

  “I know, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have reminded you of him. But I think he was trying to tell you something. Give you a way to fight all of this.”

  “But… why not just tell me?”

  “Because it was too dangerous.” I turned to Truman, but kept speaking to Hannah. “I don’t believe your father had anything to do with the more sinister parts of the Crimson Club organization, the one the Feds are after.”

  “You don’t?”

  I shook my head. “No, and I think we can prove it and clean his slate. Daniel’s, too.”

  Her lip quivered, and I thought I’d lost her once again. But she took a step forward into the room, sat in one of the chairs across from me and my bum leg, and waited for me to continue.

  “I think they’re both innocent, just like you, and your father was trying to protect you. By giving you a stake in the company, he was telling everyone you had a role to play. But I’d bet my life your stake is somehow protected from the larger organization, legally. Meaning he wanted you to have part of his legacy without the crap of the fallout he knew was coming.”

  Truman spoke up. “He’s right, Hannah. Your father wanted you to be secure, to take care of you. Even…”

  “Even after he died,” Hannah said. “He must have known that he would become a target. My uncle wanted to take over, and Dad thought he would be coming for him.”

  I almost cringed, but I held it together. I still couldn’t tell Hannah that her father had been murdered by my father, but that wasn’t her cross to bear. It was mine.

  They both looked at me.

  “Right. So, I think your old man left you a legacy, but he also wanted to protect his family’s name. As well as his business. He always told you ‘you’re the key, my Hannah.’ He liked puzzles, word games, right?”

  She nodded.

  “So I think he’s been trying to tell you — and us — something this whole time. Your name, lowercase, was his computer password. The computer he did just about all of his work on, here on the yacht. His yacht, the Wassamassaw.”

  I waited.

  “So…”

  “Hannah. H-A-N-N-A-H. A palindrome, remember?”

  “Of course.”

  “Wassamassaw. Same thing. Spelled the same backward and forward.”

  Truman took another sip of bourbon and clicked it in his mouth. I couldn’t tell if that was validation or he thought I was an idiot.

  “I guess… he liked palindromes, but isn’t it named for one of the local American Indian tribes that was in this region?”

  I shrugged. “No idea. Did your dad have any ties to American Indians? Any reason to name it that?”

  “No… I don’t think so.”

  “So it’s not about American Indians. It’s a clue.”

  “Mason…” Truman was trying to reign me in, but I wasn’t about to let up.

  “Your father was trying to tell you that’s it’s all a puzzle. He couldn’t realistically write any of this stuff down, at least not in a secret file, or password-protected database, or anything else. Not without fear of it getting compromised. And he couldn’t just memorize it — what if he died without passing it on?”

  “So he bought a yacht to hide it on? Is that really what you’re saying?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. He didn’t even take this thing out on the water, did he? How often did you get to ride around on it?”

  “Well, never, I guess.”

  “So it’s a piece of the puzzle. How to hide something massive, something big enough to kill for, in plain sight? S
omething only someone he deeply trusted would be able to find?”

  “Mason,” Truman started again, “Wassamassaw is certainly convenient, but that’s not the transfer code. Hell, it’s not even one of the transfer codes. There will be more than one, and it’s going to be a long string of alphanumeric characters. Possibly even special characters as well.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s where I’m stuck. ‘Hannah’ was his computer password, hidden on the Wassamassaw, but I can’t figure out —”

  I stopped.

  Tried to stand up, fell back down as my leg screamed at me.

  “It’s…”

  I couldn’t even speak, I was so excited.

  “What? Mason, what is it?” Hannah asked.

  I stared at Hannah. This had to be it. The answer.

  “Hannah, was your father into kayaking?”

  62

  “IT WORKS!”

  I HEARD THE woman's voice shout up from the office belowdecks, and Truman broke into a wide grin.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said, looking at me. “You did it.”

  He stood up and came over to shake my hand, and the woman yelled again. “Everything’s here. Records, transaction, banks and account numbers, all of it.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I almost didn’t think that would work.”

  Hannah was smiling as well. “Why did you think it would work?” she asked.

  “Well your dad’s boat was brand new, right? Built in the nineties, probably sold without a lot of extra features, no bells and whistles or anything, since he put another million into it after.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “So it wouldn’t have come with a kayak.”

  She laughed. “No, and I can’t imagine him ever getting into one.”

  “And yet the Wassamassaw has a huge kayak mounted up just above the rail. K-A-Y-A-K kayak. Another palindrome.”

  Truman spoke up. “It was on the kayak’s interior wall, just below the serial number. A tiny piece of paper taped to the panel. It had all three of the transfer codes we needed.”