The Event

by McBride, Michael

  Lawton focused on the last remaining gates—8A and 8B—at the very end of the corridor. Windows granting a view of a runway fringed with multicolored lights framed the check-in desks, above which the red LED signs announced British Airways Flights 1145 to Dublin and 1284 to London. The majority of the passengers at Gate 8B were already up and pacing in anticipation of the boarding call.

  What if Adams’s accomplice was a woman? After all, every bit of evidence they’d found pointed to the involvement of a man and the clues they’d discovered today led them straight to Adams. They had absolutely nothing that pointed to a female accomplice beyond speculation. The voice alterations. The bear mask. The gloves. So if it was a woman, what made Hargrove think Lawton knew her well enough to include her in his mysterious “they”?

  The answer had struck her like a blow to the gut and she’d sprinted out to her car to call for backup.

  That day at Webster & Lloyd. She remembered it clearly. Advancing through the door to Hargrove’s office with her weapon drawn. Adams swinging around to her left in her peripheral vision. Hargrove, standing behind his secretary with the window at his back and a gun to her head.

  What’s your name, sweetheart?

  H-holly. Holly Middle—Middleton.

  She’d already learned as much from dispatch. But beyond that she only knew the hostage’s occupation. Nothing at all about her personal life. Nothing beyond the moment, for that was all that had mattered at the time.

  You have a husband and kids at home, Holly?

  T-two boys. I have two boys at home. Christian and Michael. Their father. Their father left us. He moved away. I…I take the subway. I take the subway in every morning.

  She’d looked back before she’d said the names of her children. Not at Hargrove, but past him. Out the window. The window through which she’d seen the entrance to 53rd Street Station and the digital billboard above it, advertising the new Cadillac sedan and The Dark Knight, which listed its main cast in alphabetical order at the bottom, starting with Christian Bale and Michael Caine.

  It was the kind of lie anyone in Lawton’s position would believe, because there was really no reason not to. And the subway detail was the kind of random and unrelated fact people tended to blurt out when they were terrified. The entire scenario had been masterfully played and Hargrove had known it. That’s why he’d whimpered. He’d known Holly had sold her lie to Lawton and Adams was circling around to kill him. He’d known right then and there that he was never going to leave his office alive.

  Think of her as your partner. Right now, your partner’s the only one keeping you alive. She dies? You die. You let her go and we all walk out of here as friends.

  Had Adams’s statement been meant to slip the metaphorical concept of a partnership into Lawton’s head so she’d dismiss it if Hargrove used it in the more literal sense, or to manipulate Hargrove into thinking the situation could still be salvaged if he released Holly?

  She’d been a secretary at Webster & Lloyd for three years. Hired at the same time as Hargrove and his fellow intern from Harvard, Wes Adams, who’d abruptly changed career direction shortly afterward and joined the arm of the Justice Department responsible for policing their eventual crimes. Placing him right in the middle of the investigation and in position to subvert it should they get too close.

  I didn’t lose anyone’s money. I made a fucking fortune for them! For them!

  For them.

  Them. The objective case of they.

  Hargrove had been referring to the only other people in the room. To Adams and Holly. To them. That’s why he’d expected Lawton to understand. They were the only ones there.

  Good thing—for both of us—she wasn’t smart enough to get herself a lawyer or she’d probably have her own key to the mint, right? Not to mention my vacation home in the Hamptons.

  Holly, who’d played dumb and elected not to get a lawyer and sue the FBI or Webster & Lloyd when she easily could have made herself rich off of either. Who’d used the implied threat of lawsuit to keep the FBI at arm’s length and guarantee her job security at Webster & Lloyd and Global Capital Management. Who’d been inside the brokerage the entire time and in a position to influence the brokers around her, using her feminine wiles and the prospect of making a fortune overnight. Who, as a lowly secretary, would never be accused of masterminding anything.

  Because that girl your partner shot—my poor, innocent secretary—could have called you as a witness against your partner…

  Change the hair color and the wardrobe and that was the reason the secretary she’d seen at Lloyd’s office had looked so familiar. The reason the secretary had turned away or left as soon as Lawton appeared. She knew that Lawton would recognize her if she got a good look at her face and wonder why she was still working there.

  She was stunning despite the mascara streaks on her cheeks. The kind of woman whose assets guaranteed her secretarial skills would be in demand for the foreseeable future.

  Holly Middleton, who had the kind of body that could easily be used to control teenage boys, especially if she was catering to their emotional needs in addition to their physical desires. And maybe even those of a partner whose scarred face repulsed other women, a partner who she had been setting up to take the fall from the start.

  Holly Middleton, who Adams and Hargrove had known at Harvard as Holly Newton before she divorced her abusive Southie husband, dropped out of grad school, and left her accent and her married name behind. Along with her past.

  Holly Middleton, whose final act of misdirection had been to book Adams on a flight out of Newark. The ticket had been in the bag on his bed. And the most effective way to get there from inside the closed zone would be to walk right through one of the National Guard checkpoints in his FBI-issue CBRNE suit, ditch it, and catch a cab to the nearest international airport outside of New York, where he assumed she’d be waiting for him. Not Holly, though. She would have wanted to run in the opposite direction, and what better place to run than back home.

  She had the trace of a Boston accent, as though she’d spent a lifetime trying to erase it.

  Trying to erase her life. A life of poverty in an area of Boston from which few people escaped. A life that started with an abusive father she traded in for an abusive husband. A life she would have put behind her forever when she landed in England and cashed out the portfolio she’d been amassing in the London Stock Exchange for the last five years to the tune of nine billion dollars. A veritable fortune she wouldn’t have to share with a soul.

  “Attention ticketed passengers, British Airways Flight 1284 will now begin boarding at Gate 8B.”

  Lawton watched the line form behind the cordon from a distance before casually strolling to the back of the line. She peered around the people in front of her, then stepped to the side and walked beside them. Looked back at their faces as she passed. Looked into their eyes. Looked ahead. At the backs of heads. At their bodies. Their stances. Mannerisms.

  A redhead near the front. Dressed down. Jeans and a baggy sweater. To hide a body worth killing for. A backpack hanging from one shoulder. Sunglasses. Shifting her weight restlessly. Craning to see why the line wasn’t moving faster.

  Lawton squeezed in behind her. Offered an apologetic smile to the couple she had cut in front of. Leaned closer to the redhead. Whispered into her ear, so that only she could hear.

  “A tragedy what happened on Wall Street this morning.”

  The redhead stiffened. Stood stock-still.

  “It doesn’t look like it’ll be a bear market after all.”

 

 

 
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