Both Ends Burning (Whistleblower Trilogy Book 3)

by Jim Heskett

  “What, like a flash drive? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Then he leaned in close. “If it’s true you don’t know about the memory stick, then that’s unfortunate for you. Because if we don’t get it back, we’re going to rain hellfire down on everyone you know until it materializes. I’ll give you a few days to think about it and get it back from wherever you stashed it, but then you’re going to have to turn it over.”

  Just a few hours ago, my dad had smashed that thing in front of me with a glass ashtray.

  “Does Susan have it now?” he said.

  Now I had to make a choice. Maybe IntelliCraft would let me be, if they thought it was destroyed. Or maybe Thomason wouldn’t believe me, no matter what I said. If I led him to believe I still had it, maybe that would buy me some time.

  I chose to say nothing. Reclined my seat, closed my eyes, and tuned out Frank Thomason.

  ***

  When the plane landed, I waited for Thomason to deboard first before I bothered unbuckling my seatbelt. He didn’t say another word to me, but he didn’t have to. He cast one last winning smile at me before he stepped into the jetway, and I averted my eyes.

  One option occurred to me: race after him, take him to the ground, and choke the life out of him. He couldn’t do anything to me and Grace if he were dead. But, spending the rest of my life in jail for murdering this asshole wasn’t a great outcome either.

  And it’s not as if Thomason was the head of the snake. Someone else would take his place.

  I had to warn Grace. I had to get us both out of town and find somewhere safe to hide. But where the hell could we go to remain sheltered from a company that had seemingly endless resources? Where was somewhere they wouldn’t know about?

  I was the last person off the plane. I finished reading the article about Jacksonville’s sushi restaurants, trying to calm myself and give Thomason time to leave.

  I didn’t have a carry-on since all my belongings were in that house in Three Rivers, so I unbuckled and shuffled off the plane with nothing in my hands.

  I half-expected him to be waiting for me at the gate, but he’d cleared out. Or, seemed to have cleared out. Just the thought that he’d be running around Denver, waiting for me to come up with the memory card was enough to unsettle my stomach.

  I dialed Grace on the prepaid cell once I was off the jetway.

  “Hey baby,” she said in a dreamy voice.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Yeah, but that’s okay. Are you back already?” she said, yawning.

  The sun was beginning to rise, sending eye-piercing light bombs off every metal surface in range. I hurried through the airport to the moving walkway as fast food joints and souvenir shops rolled up the metal grates in front of their stores and flicked on interior lights. “Yes. Sorry to call so early, but it’s important. Things have changed, again, and we need to act fast.”

  “What’s going on? You don’t sound right.”

  “It’s not over. I’m so sorry baby, but we have to leave. Pack your things, and we’ll talk about it when I get home.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I was surprised to see that Grace’s parents and sister weren’t there when I got home. Dog was so excited to see me that he nearly mauled me when I came through the door. “Down, boy,” I said as I closed the door behind me.

  The house felt warm and lived-in again. I smiled at the accumulation of Grace’s shoes near the front door, her wet and muddy boots lined up next to a pair of heels.

  She came to the top of the stairs, draped in a bathrobe. Her hair still wet. An open and empty carry-on bag hung loosely from one hand and tears were streaming down her face.

  Without saying anything, I rushed up the stairs and threw my arms around her. The bathroom vent was still on. Had I told her that was where I’d found the mutilated body of my former trainee? Could I ever use that toilet again and not think of the bloody tie hanging around his neck or the blood pooling on our tiled floor?

  She let me hug her for a few seconds, sobbing quietly, then pushed me back. She lightly touched the bruise on my head from where Glenning had kicked me. “What happened here?”

  “I got in a little fight. It’s nothing.”

  She scowled. “You need to talk to me, Tucker. You need to tell me what’s going on with you, because you scared me half to death with that phone call this morning.”

  I nodded, deflated. “Where are your parents?”

  “They had to fly back last night. My sister is out for a walk.”

  “Seems a little early for a walk.”

  Grace huffed a sigh. “She’s not sleeping well. But forget about that. Please tell me what’s going on.”

  “The people who did this to us, they’re still after me. They think I have some memory card, but I don’t. I gave it to my dad and he smashed it last night.”

  Her eyes shot wide open. “You gave it to who?”

  I forgot I hadn’t told her about that. The events of the last few days had all morphed into an ugly blur. “He faked his death to hide from IntelliCraft. There’s so much I still need to tell you. I don’t know where to begin. Omar is dead. My dad is alive. IntelliCraft is going to kill us all unless they get what they’re after.”

  “Can’t you just tell them you don’t have it?”

  “I don’t think that would make any difference. They won’t believe me, no matter what I say. If they think I have it, that might buy me some time.”

  “Time for what?” she said.

  I didn’t answer the question, so she walked back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. Dog came rushing from downstairs and leaped onto the bed next to her, lapping at her face.

  “I see you’ve made a new best friend,” I said.

  She smiled through the tears. “He’s very sweet.”

  Another suitcase sat open on the bed, and Kitty was sitting in it, staring at me. I lifted her out and set her next to it. “You can’t come, Kitty. You’ll be okay here, though.”

  “What are we going to do?” Grace said.

  “We need to go somewhere they don’t know about. Somewhere they can’t find us. We can’t fly there, obviously,” I said, pointing at her third-trimester belly. “We can’t leave a paper trail or they’ll know right away. They’re tapped into my credit cards and my phone. Probably yours too.”

  “What happened to Omar?”

  The corners of my eyes stung. “He didn’t make it. We were almost there, but… they caught him.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, baby.”

  “That doesn’t matter anymore. All that I care about is our safety, and finding a place to hide.”

  “I don’t understand why we can’t call the police,” she said.

  “They’ve proven before that they have cops on the payroll. We can’t trust anybody.”

  She stroked Dog’s fur for a few seconds, then her eyes lit up. “Rodrick has a timeshare at Keystone, at the base of the main ski lift. It’s perfect, and I do trust him.”

  The sudden revelation about her boss’ timeshare seemed off place. How did she even know about that?

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to put him in danger. Rodrick helped me the day I found you. I talked to him several times, so they have to know about him. For all I know, they’ve got him under the same surveillance as us.”

  “No, that’s the thing. It’s his ex-wife’s condo, but he has control of it, for some reason. It’s in her name. It has no connection to him, he just has a set of keys.”

  Dog jumped off the bed and sat in front of me, big drooly grin on his little mutt face. Looked up at me with pleading eyes.

  “Do you think he’d let us borrow his car, too?”

  ***

  Grace called Rodrick, and he agreed to come by. Then she and I spent the next few minutes in bed, holding each other. I felt our son move, struggling to burst out of her stomach like the alien in that old movie.

  She faced away from me and I spooned her, s
melling her hair and remembering again all the reasons I fell in love with her. Her strength. Her intuition. Her ability to stay calm under pressure.

  “I’ve been thinking of some names,” she said.

  “I have a few in mind, too,” I said, but I didn’t have anything good. Just like Dog, I couldn’t come up with anything I liked, or anything that would meet Grace’s approval standards. Best to let her pick one.

  I sat up when the front door opened.

  “It’s Janine,” Grace said.

  “I’ll go talk to her,” I said, and jumped out of bed.

  My wife’s sister Janine had never been my biggest fan. When she came back from her walk, I got a stark reminder of this in the way she flashed her eyes at me while I was standing at the top of the stairs. She stamped her boots on the carpet square in front of the door to shake off some snow.

  “Hi Janine,” I said. “You’re looking well.”

  In response, she crossed her arms and said nothing, then leaned down and flicked off her boots. Classic Janine. I’m sure she wasn’t happy about me going on a trip to Texas just two weeks after Grace had been kidnapped. That was understandable. Probably the whole world that knew us felt that way, but they hadn’t been there afterward; they hadn’t seen how Grace and I had come to the decision of me leaving together.

  “Hey, we need to talk,” I said. “There’s been a new development.”

  Grace came down the stairs, dragging suitcases behind her.

  “Where are you going, sis?” Janine said.

  “Actually, we’re all going,” I said as I joined Grace and put an arm around her. “Janine, it’s not safe here. We need to take a little vacation while I sort some things out.”

  Janine pointed at Grace’s baby bump. “Are you crazy? She’s seven months pregnant and is less than a month away from the most traumatic ordeal anyone could possibly imagine going through. You go tramping off through Texas, and now you want to go on a vacation?”

  Grace dropped the suitcases. “I’m okay, Janine. This is what has to happen. You need to trust me for now, and we can explain everything on the way.”

  “Where are we going?” Janine said. “Will there be a washer and dryer there? I only brought a few days’ worth of clothes, so—”

  “Keystone,” I said.

  “We’re going skiing? My skis are back in Aspen. What—”

  “It’s not that kind of trip,” I said.

  A car pulled into the driveway. A few seconds later, a knock on the door. I opened it to find Rodrick standing on the other side. A hesitant smile rested on his lips, and he dipped his head at me. “Hey, Candle.”

  “Rodrick. Glad you could make it.”

  He forced a smile. The guy was probably terrified of me because the last time he’d seen me, I’d been covered with the blood of least three different people.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I sent Rodrick and Janine out to pick up some supplies. Mostly, cash from ATMs and a few prepaid cell phones for all of us to use. I made Grace understand the importance of not using her own cell phone anymore. Not even having it turned on. She agreed to leave the smartphone world of Facebook and casual games behind for a few days.

  I’d have to explain the reasoning to Janine on the way. Or, maybe I’d let her sister do that.

  Grace and I sat in the living room and I told her everything that had happened in Texas: about searching for Omar, driving him south, the visit in the motel room from IntelliCraft’s CEO, about the crazy house full of gun-toting rednecks in Three Rivers, about the shootout near the border, about my dad still being alive. Omar dying a pointless death and floating along the Rio Grande River. About me snapping Glenning’s neck in a rage-induced mental haze.

  When I was done with my story, Grace breathed for several seconds, her head bobbing a bit with each inhale. Her hands rested on her belly, which seemed to have grown again in the week since I’d last seen her.

  Dog jumped up next to her on the couch and nuzzled against her neck. I could see where I was in Dog’s order of importance, but we’d have time to reconnect later. I had access to dog treats, my irresistable loyalty-gaining weapon.

  “So all of your baggage and the things you took to Texas are at that house in Three Rivers?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And they know your cell phone and laptop are at that house?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you know if the police know about that yet?”

  “I’m not sure, but I would think they would have contacted me by now if they did. Thomason made it seem like no one might have to know. He said they could clean it up and remove any trace of me being there, as long as I turned over the memory card.”

  “But you don’t have the memory card. You gave it to your dad. Why didn’t you tell them about him still being alive?”

  I sat back in the chair, staring out the window at a gray December Colorado day. “I don’t know. I didn’t have much time to think about it. Maybe I can use that information as leverage somehow, if they think I still have it.”

  Grace pushed Dog back as he was trying to lick her face. “No, that’s not it. I know why you did it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s because there’s some part of you that thinks your dad may be telling the truth. That Kareem was the bad guy in all this, and maybe smashing that memory card was the right thing to do. Part of you wants to stay loyal and protect him.”

  I didn’t answer at first, just kept staring out the window. Grace has a habit of knowing me better than I know myself, but her theory sounded ludicrous. Why would I unconsciously put trust in my asshole absentee dad? What possible reason had he ever given me that he was trustworthy?

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, maybe not. It doesn’t matter now, though, because they think I have it.”

  Her lip quivered as her eyes wetted. “What’s it going to take for this to be over?”

  “They’re going to have to be exposed. The whole company. Whatever it is they’re doing that all these people are dying for, it’s going to have to come out and get media attention.”

  Grace nodded. “And how do we do that?”

  “We don’t do anything. You are going to hide in the mountains, where I can know you’re safe and protected.”

  She shook her head. “No. I can’t have you running off into danger again. I can’t risk losing you after everything we’ve been through.”

  I crossed the room and knelt in front of her. I took her hand, ran my fingers over the wedding band on her ring finger. “We’ll never be safe unless I demand justice for what they’ve done. My first priority is putting you somewhere no one can get to you. Then, I need to find out what was on that card. If I find that, I can bust the whole thing wide open. I need to end these people, once and for all. If I do that, then we can be sure it’s over.”

  ***

  Me, Grace, Janine, Rodrick, and Dog all piled into Rodrick’s car and drove out of Denver, along I-70 into the mountains. Rodrick was a good sport, and I couldn’t stop thanking him.

  I’d put out a heaping bowl of dry food for Kitty, and she’d looked at me like she knew what it meant. Not happy about it.

  Janine sat in the back of the car and pouted. Kept trying to push Dog off of her, who seemed intent to deposit as much of his drool on her as possible. Good boy.

  Grace didn’t want to speak to me, and I understood why. She couldn’t accept why I had to be the one to wrestle with this megalithic company. I almost agreed with her. But I saw it as a means to an end. I couldn’t call up the cops or channel 9 news and spill my guts, because I didn’t have concrete evidence. And IntelliCraft had managed to point enough fingers at me that I needed hard evidence before I could make some waves.

  I knew people were dying, and the company was involved in more than web design software sales. I knew my dad and Kareem founded the company more than twenty years ago, but they’d been pushed out by the board of directors. And I knew Dad and Kareem h
ad gone to war with each other, for some unexplained reason. Maybe if I uncovered the contents of the memory card, I might find the answer to that question as well.

  We made it through the Eisenhower tunnel without encountering too much traffic, but an ice storm on the other side slowed us to a stop-and-go crawl. Was late in the evening by the time we exited I-70 and drove through the little cities of Dillon and Silverthorne to find the tiny resort town of Keystone. Was it even a town? I wasn’t sure. I think maybe you called these little non-incorporated collections of housing villages. It was close to Breckenridge, just a smattering of outrageously priced and trendy-looking condos and shops nestled next to a ski resort. A constructed faux-town lining the valley, not more than two or three city blocks long.

  Rodrick’s ex-wife’s condo was close to the main gondola lift at the bottom of the skiing area. When we parked, I made a fifteen-minute sweep of the surrounding buildings, examining anyone with a suspicious appearance. Up and down the main icy street, ducking through people swishing along in ski pants to head up for night skiing, clacking their expensive plastic boots on the ground.

  Not that I’d proven myself any good at spotting a tail, but I had to try. I had to tell myself that I’d brought them here in secret so I could leave in peace to do what I needed to do without constantly worrying about them. After I was satisfied that nothing funny was happening, I rejoined my group.

  As Janine and Rodrick lugged everyone’s possessions up into the condo, Grace and I sat in the back seat of the car, holding hands and staring at each other. Like a couple of teenagers, except without the messy lusting. Just tension. Running my thumb back and forth across the palm of her hand, trying to think of the right thing to say.

  “When you went to Texas again,” she said, “I tried to understand. I knew it was important to you, so I pretended like I wanted that for you.”