by Brad Taylor
“You think that’s smart?”
“Well, it’s smarter than walking. Trains have quit running this late.”
“Yeah, that’s my point. You’ll be remembered when they find Lucas. I mean, you’ll probably be one of two cabs who stop there tonight. You and Lucas himself.”
“So, you have a better idea?”
“Yes. Let me drive you.”
The offer surprised me, but it was out of the question.
“No way. Nobody else is getting involved. Especially you.”
“Why? You need the help. Why ‘especially me’?”
I hadn’t meant for that to slip out, but I meant it. We’d never had our big talk on where we stood in our relationship, even though she’d threatened it a couple of times—scaring the hell out of me—so I’d never really told her how I felt about her. Truthfully, I was afraid of rejection and had tricked myself into believing that I was content with a lesser connection of being simple business partners. A little Jennifer was much better than none. But that didn’t alter the fact that I would protect her from harm, whether she felt the same way about me or not. Especially since this harm was easily averted.
“Jennifer, you’re not going with me. Period. Out of the question.”
She came over and sat on the bed next to me, pulling up a pillow to place behind her back. And revealing the Glock.
She stared at it for a second, a look of regret on her face, as if she’d caused it to appear. She said, “Pike, I want to be a part of this. I feel responsible. I’m the one who told you. I want to help.”
I waved my hand. “Quit it. It’s not going to happen. Just drop it.”
“It is going to happen, dammit! I am going to be a part of this operation!”
Whoa. Where’s that coming from?
Before I could say anything, she continued. “Pike, it’s my fault. I’m the reason you’re doing this. I’m the one who brought it about. I know you don’t understand. I don’t expect you to, but I need this. I need to be a part of the operation. It can’t be all you. We both suffer the consequences. I can’t have you doing this alone based solely on what I told you.”
What the hell was she talking about? Because she found the hotel rooms, she should be culpable for his death?
I decided to end this with a lie. “Okay, okay. Head on back to your room. I’ll call you when I get the trigger he’s back in bed.”
She said, “Why don’t I just stay here?”
“Because I want to be alone, all right?”
She squinted at me, catching the whiff of dishonesty, but walked to the door. She opened it and said, “You’d better call.”
I said, “I will. Go.”
I lay back on the bed, thinking again of what I was doing. More and more, it didn’t seem right. Maybe it was simply disingenuous mental gymnastics, but Taskforce operations were sanctioned at the highest levels of government. When we went out on a hit, we did so after a thorough vetting, always because the target was a distinct threat to American lives. Doing this on my own, simply for revenge, was beginning to eat at my soul.
We operated with rules for a reason. I wondered if ignoring them made me no different than Lucas. Made me like the stalker of my dreams. A murderer.
Time passed quickly, and when I looked at the motel clock, I was surprised to see it was now past one A.M. The call would be coming at any moment. I made my decision and felt a measure of peace immediately.
Sorry, Ethan, but you know it’s the right choice.
I reached for the phone to call surveillance when there was a knock on the door. Jennifer stood behind it, causing a little thread of anger.
“What are you doing here? I said I’d call.”
“I couldn’t sleep, and I figured it was getting close, so I came back.”
She glanced away, refusing to look me in the eye. She can’t lie worth a damn. But apparently you can’t either. She knew you weren’t going to call.
“Well, you can go to bed for good. The mission’s off.”
She said, “Why? Did he get on a train or something?”
“No. It’s me. I’m not going to pull the trigger.”
69
It took a moment before the implications of his words settled into Jennifer’s mind.
No, no, NO. He can’t get a conscience now.
She said, “What do you mean? What happened?”
Pike turned away from the door, saying over his shoulder, “I can’t do it. I’m going to call Kurt tomorrow, tell him everything we have and get him on board. Make it legal.”
Jennifer said, “Pike, you know that won’t work. Kurt will flip out that we’re even in Germany. He’ll order us home and then rip us apart. Even if he agrees, he’ll want a support team here, and we don’t have time for that.”
He held up his hand. “Let it go. I’ve been thinking about it for two days. I’m not going to do the hit unsanctioned. Either Kurt facilitates or he doesn’t, but I’m not going off on a vendetta like a Mafia hit man. It’s eating me alive, and I don’t like the damage.”
Jennifer heard what he said and felt shame for what she was putting Pike through. She considered letting it go when that day sprang forth. Lucas’s hot breath, the lamp cord cutting into her hands on the bed as she tried to keep him away, the beating she had taken.
That bastard deserves to die. And Pike deserves to kill him.
“Pike, I need to show you something.”
“Jennifer, forget it. You didn’t see me at my worst. It was a living hell, and this damn mission is bringing me back.”
“Please sit down.”
He did.
Jennifer said, “I found more than Ethan’s driver’s license in Lucas’s room.”
“What do you mean?”
Jennifer pulled out an ID card and handed it to him. She watched him recognize the face, then saw him begin to change before her very eyes. The resignation of only a moment ago disappeared, replaced by a rising tsunami of violence rippling just underneath the surface. A rage vibrating the very air around him. She felt the threat from across the room, and knew she’d made a mistake.
His face twisted toward her, almost unrecognizable, the scar on his cheek standing out stark white against the mottled red of his fury. “Where the fuck did you get this? What are you up to? Some parlor trick to get me to destroy myself? Why?”
He leapt to his feet, shouting now. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you’d do this! I don’t even know you! I don’t want to know you. Get the fuck out!”
She began to backpedal, holding out her hands, getting out of the danger zone while she still could.
“Pike, it’s real! I didn’t want to tell you before. I didn’t know what to do with it. I found Heather’s license with Ethan’s. Lucas killed your wife. And your daughter.”
Pike stopped, the violence beginning to crack the surface. He stared through her, saying nothing, his body beginning to tremble. The phone rang, and he snatched it up. He listened for a moment, never saying a word. He ended the call, picked up the Glock, and racked the slide.
“Let’s go.”
She hesitated, frightened by the change. Unconsciously, she prepared to fight. To defend herself against what she’d created.
He didn’t attack her. Just shoved her into the wall, stabbing his hands into her jacket pockets. She began to fight back when he found what he wanted, ripping the pocket open and removing the keys to her rental car.
“Fucking stay here then. I’m not going to beg you.”
He slammed the door behind him, sucking the darkness out of the room. She collapsed into the chair.
What have I done?
70
I parked illegally on the street, right outside the front door of the hotel, the traffic light enough that I could do so without drawing attention. Not that I gave a damn anyway.
I stalked past the front desk, the woman behind it wishing me a good night. When I looked at her, she melted back, then glanced down quickly, pretending to become
interested in something on her counter.
I sprinted up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time to the fifth floor. I glanced down the hallway, seeing it was deserted.
I walked until I reached the elevators, then took a left. Shortly, I was standing outside Lucas’s door, the Glock now in my hand.
I felt the press of time, knowing someone could poke their head out at any moment and see me with the pistol. I gently slid in the key-card, getting a green light. I popped open the door a crack and listened. I heard nothing, the room dark.
I snaked my way inside, leaving the door propped open a crack with the damaged dead bolt to give me enough light from the hallway to see.
I made out Lucas in the bed, lying facedown. I walked up to the foot and placed the red dot from the Glock right at the base of the skull, holding it in a two-handed grip. I’d already decided not to do anything stupid like waking him up and telling him why he was about to die. No, it would be a quick double-tap and I would be gone, leaving the maids to clean up the mess and the devil to explain to him why he was now in hell.
The barrel trembled, wobbling up and down, left and right, refusing to settle. My little corner of darkness wanted more than a simple bullet. Wanted to slice his life away one cut at a time, drawing it out as long as his body could stand. I finally had a face to the stalker of my dreams. And the black corner of my soul wanted to kill him exactly the way he had murdered my family.
Get a grip. Get a grip. Can’t do that and escape. Clock’s ticking. Put a bullet in his head.
I took a deep, slow breath, the crime-scene photos shining in stark Technicolor in my mind. I felt the darkness swallow me and saw my hands steady, my arms becoming twin rails with a thin bloodred dot at the center. I tightened my finger, the slack from the trigger safety gone, the trigger beginning its journey smoothly to the rear. I saw movement under the covers next to Lucas. Someone groaned, a sleep-filled little exclamation.
A whore? He brought a whore up and Knuckles said nothing?
The covers snapped back, and a boy of about six flipped to the floor, walking to the bathroom with sleep-filled eyes, completely oblivious to the storm of death standing less than four feet from him. A boy the same age as my daughter when she had been murdered.
I waited until he closed the bathroom door, then backed slowly out of the room. I made it to the stairwell before the margin between life and death slammed home. A razor’s edge that made me sick to my stomach, causing me to stop and hold on to the railing for support.
Two more pounds of trigger pull and you would have killed an innocent man.
71
The sun burned my eyes, even given the dark sunglasses I was wearing. The rays felt like sandpaper against the dryness. I hadn’t gotten much sleep, then had awakened at the crack of dawn to control the surveillance effort for one final try. I handled the radio while Jennifer drove, trailing the surveillance box yet again. For her part, Jennifer was treating me with kid gloves. Unsure of what I would do, and I didn’t blame her.
I had touched the face of the devil, gone further into the abyss than I had ever known, and almost became the personification of evil. Almost became the man in my dreams.
Now, we continued the hunt, but I knew it was futile. I had only one more night before Kurt began asking questions, and there was little chance we’d get lucky with the Jennifer distraction to find Lucas’s room like last time. Shit. You ended up not finding his room.
Knuckles brought me out of my thoughts. “Still eating breakfast at the Burger King. Still got his bags with him.”
Lucas had gone back under the Hauptbahnhof, wandering around doing nothing until a Burger King had opened up, and was now killing time eating a hamburger. In my mind, I half-wondered if he wasn’t going to get on a train this time instead of a new hotel. I almost wished he would. It would make my decision much easier. I wasn’t going to follow him all over Europe.
I decided to pull the trigger anyway, not waiting to see what he did. “Knuckles, go ahead and back off. Let him go.”
Jennifer whipped her head at me, and Knuckles said, “Come again? What was that?”
“Break down the box. Get the boys on the street and let Lucas go.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Because you hit the wrong room last night? You want to quit?”
“We don’t have the right equipment or manpower for this. Winging it isn’t working. We’re all leaving tomorrow anyway, and there’s no way I’m going to crack into an unknown room again without intel. We’ve got no beacons, no tracking of him, no hacking capability, nothing. He can defeat us simply by changing rooms. On top of that, we’ve been conducting a full-up surveillance effort with the same two men. They’re probably burned to a crisp, with Lucas planning some sort of ambush. It’s over.”
“Why don’t I just keep the box until he’s through eating? See what he does? You never know, he might go to the woods all by himself or something.”
“Fucking let him go!”
There was a pause, then a “Roger.” He hung up, and we sat in silence for a few minutes. Jennifer finally broke it.
“I’m sorry I gave you Heather’s license.”
I hadn’t told anyone except her what had happened. I’d simply said that I’d entered, realized it was the wrong room, and left. I didn’t want to relive it. Relive how close I’d come to slaughtering a complete stranger. A man who’d checked into a room, fully expecting to take his son to the zoo or something, only to have his son wake up with his father’s brains all over the sheets.
She saw me lean back into the headrest and said, “Are you okay? I’ve never seen you like you were last night. I thought you were going to attack me. You acted just like…someone else. But I think I’m now more scared of leaving this unfinished. Of opening up your scars and leaving them bleeding. You sure you want to call it? Not that I’m pushing. If you’re good with it, I’m good with it.”
I spoke softly, feeling the blackness wanting back in control, not happy with my decision. “Jennifer, I almost killed an innocent man last night. In front of his child. I almost became Lucas. I’m not taking that chance again. Heather wouldn’t want it, and I don’t want it. I’ll just have to wait for vengeance. Sooner or later, he’ll cross Taskforce lines again. He’s just not built any other way.”
She put her hand on my arm. “Hey, in the end, you weren’t someone else. You’re better than that. You wouldn’t have killed him.” She smiled and patted me. “I think I’ve got you trained just about right. The only man who would have died is Lucas. But I’m glad you’re worried. It means you’re still the Pike I know. Last night I wasn’t so sure.”
I pulled off my sunglasses and looked into her eyes. “I was squeezing the trigger. If his son hadn’t woken up, I would have killed him. I almost did anyway. When I entered, I wanted to pull Lucas’s body apart with my bare hands. The crime-scene photos were in my head like an actual memory. Living and breathing as if I had been there. They were so clear. So…more than a memory. I could even smell the blood. There’s one where Heather and Angie are laying on the floor, beaten almost beyond recognition. Tim in the background gutted. The room painted in red. Angie with her hand on Heather’s leg…”
I stopped, the pictures springing back into my mind, causing a physical pain. I forced them away and continued. “The blackness came, and I almost couldn’t turn it off. Even when I saw the boy. I swear to God, for a split second my brain was computing how best to kill them both…kill someone just for the fuck of it. Bring a little of the pain I had to endure to the world.”
Jennifer heard the words, the implications of what she had done sinking in. My fault. My fault. Jesus. I’m destroying him. She felt her eyes begin to water and quickly wiped them, before he noticed, but it was too late.
“What’re you getting all teary for?”
“Nothing. I’m just sorry about this. Sorry I told you. Let’s go home. Forget about Lucas. It isn’t worth your sanity.”
Before he c
ould answer, his phone vibrated. She only caught one half of the conversation, but it was enough.
“What the hell do you mean he’s back in the Internet café? I told you to back off.” Pike listened for a second, then said, “Don’t give me that shit. Back. The. Fuck. Off. You copy?”
He hung up the phone and said, “Lucas is using the café again. Apparently, Decoy and Brett were stupid enough to break the box down and go get breakfast at the Hauptbahnhof. In view of the Internet café.”
She said nothing, wanting to dial Knuckles and tell him to quit herself. Stop the torture she’d brought on for selfish reasons. Get Pike back to being Pike, away from the loss of his family, her need for vengeance overcome by her concern for Pike’s welfare.
He continued. “Let’s head back to the hotel and check on flights out of here. I’m exhausted, and this isn’t helping my attitude. I want to go home. Forget about this place.”
She said, “Me too. Let’s get a seat in first class. Do nothing but watch movies for the next forty-eight hours. Go to some stupid bar you like. Forget about this whole damn mission.”
He smiled for the first time and said, “Maybe go back to the Blind Tiger. If you can keep from kicking someone’s ass.”
“I could do that. If it would help you with this.”
He stared at the ceiling, saying nothing for a moment. She wondered what she’d said. His next words caused her more pain.
“I was thinking it would help if we had that big talk you keep threatening. About where we stand. You know, last night I didn’t want you to participate for different reasons than Knuckles. I protected him as a friend. Not the same way I think about you.”
She heard the statement and felt immediate loathing mixed with fear. She didn’t want to go there. Not so soon after what had happened to her. The thought of intimacy alone made her physically ill. The mission and vengeance against Lucas had kept her feelings at bay, but Pike’s words scared her. Sickened her. If Pike found out what Lucas had done, he’d leave her for sure. She was now tainted goods. Polluted from the man who had slaughtered Pike’s family. If they talked, she knew she would crush him instead of telling him why—something he didn’t deserve. She felt tears again, hating herself, hating Lucas, hating what he had done, feeling the overpowering need for vengeance spring forth again.
