Those Who Wish Me Dead

by Michael Koryta

  “Fair enough,” Ethan said. “But Allison raises a good point. It’s not just a matter of selling me on it, or the two of us. There are going to be other kids up here. Other kids who may be at risk if we do this. That’s my primary responsibility.”

  “I will tell you, will assure you, that I would not consider doing this if I felt it put other children at risk. First of all, the boy is going to seem to disappear from the outside world before he arrives here. That much I’ve worked out carefully. I know how to make him vanish. I’d enter him in the program with a false identity. Even you couldn’t know who he was. And you wouldn’t try to find out.”

  Ethan nodded.

  “The second thing,” she said, “is that we know who we’re watching. We know who is threatened by him. If they move from…from their home base, I’m going to be aware of it. They aren’t sneaking up to Montana without me noticing. And the minute they move, you’ll have total protection for your entire group. For everyone.”

  Ethan was silent. Jamie leaned toward him.

  “And, if I may offer an opinion: This boy needs what you teach. It isn’t just about hiding him here, Ethan. The kid is damaged, and he’s trying to hold it together. He’s scared. You can make him stronger. I know that, because I’ve been through it with you.”

  Ethan looked away from Jamie and over to Allison, but her flat stare revealed no opinion either way. His decision to make. He looked back at Jamie.

  “Listen,” Jamie Bennett said, “I didn’t come out here on a whim. But I’m not going to pressure you on it either. I’m telling you the truth about the scenario and asking for your help.”

  Ethan turned from her and looked out the window. The snow was still falling fast, and dawn’s light was far from arriving. In the reflection in the glass he could see Allison and Jamie Bennett waiting on him to speak. Jamie seemed more frustrated than Allison, because Allison understood that Ethan was not a man given to rapid decision-making, that he felt rushed decisions were often exactly what got you into serious trouble. He sat and drank his coffee and watched them in the reflection, trapped there in the lantern light with the snow swirling outside, part of that beautiful mystery of glass, of how, seen at the right angle, it could show you what lay both behind it and beyond it.

  “You believe he will be killed if the situation is allowed to continue in its current fashion,” he said.

  “I do.”

  “What is your alternative plan? If I say no.”

  “I’m hoping you say—”

  “I understand what you’re hoping. I’m asking what you’ll do if I say no.”

  “I’ll try to find him a program similar to yours. With someone who’ll take the child off the grid, someone who is qualified to protect him. But I won’t find one I trust as much, I won’t find one I can vouch for personally. That matters to me.”

  Ethan looked away from the window and back into Jamie Bennett’s eyes.

  “You truly will not let the boy be pursued here? You believe you can guarantee that?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “Nothing is one hundred percent.” Ethan got to his feet and gestured to the darkened room behind them. “There’s a guest bedroom in there. Take the flashlight on the table, and make yourself at home. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  Jamie Bennett stared at him. “You’re not going to give me an answer?”

  “I’m going to get some sleep,” Ethan said. “And then I’ll give you an answer.”

  Alone in the dark bedroom, they spoke in whispers beneath the wailing wind and considered the best-case scenarios and the worst-case. There seemed to be many more options in the latter category.

  “Tell me what you think, Allison. What you think.”

  She was quiet for a time. They were facing each other in the bed and he had one arm wrapped around her back, her lean muscles rising and falling under his hand as she breathed. Her dark hair spilled across the pillow and touched his cheek.

  “You can’t say no,” she said at last.

  “You think we have to do it, then?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Clarify.”

  She took a deep breath. “You won’t be able to say no. You’ll be watching every news story, searching for some kid who was killed or who disappeared. You’ll be calling Jamie asking for updates she won’t be able to give you. Your entire summer will be lost to wondering if you put him in harm’s way when you could have taken him out of it. Am I wrong?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You also believe it,” she said. “And that’s a good thing.”

  “Believe her story? Of course I do.”

  “No,” Allison said, “you believe that this can help him. That when he goes back to the world to face it all down, he’ll be more ready than he was before he got here. Before he got to you.”

  “I think it works,” Ethan said. “Some of the time, I think it works.”

  “I know it does,” she said softly.

  Allison had understood from the beginning. Or understood how it mattered to him, at least, and believed that he believed it worked. That was a critical starting point. Many people he spoke to about it got the theory of the program without the soul. Maybe that was on him. Maybe he’d not been able to explain it properly, or maybe it wasn’t something you could explain but, rather, something that had to be felt. Maybe you needed to be sixteen years old with a hard-ass, impossible-to-please father and facing a long stretch in juvie and knowing that longer stretches in worse places waited and then arrive in a beautiful but terrifying mountain range, clueless and clumsy, and find something out there to hold inside yourself when you got sent back. When the mountains were gone and the air blew exhaust smoke instead of glacier chill and the pressures that were on you couldn’t be solved with a length of parachute cord and an ability to tie the right knot with your eyes closed. If you could find that and hold it there within yourself, a candle of self-confidence against the darkness, you could accomplish great things. He knew this. He’d been through it.

  So you learned to build a fire, his old man had said when Ethan explained the experience, unable to transfer the feeling to him. Yes, he’d learned to build a fire. What it had done for him, though, the sense of confidence the skills gave and the sense of awe that the mountains gave…those were impacts he could not describe. All he could do was show everyone: No trouble with the law since he was sixteen, a distinguished Air Force career, a collection of ribbons and medals and commendations. All of those things had been within the flame of that first fire he’d started, but how could you explain that?

  “So you’ll do it,” Allison said. “You’ll agree to it in the morning.”

  He offered a question instead of confirmation. “What don’t you like about her?”

  “I never said I didn’t like her.”

  “I’ll repeat the question. Hopeful for an answer this time.”

  Allison sighed and leaned her head on his chest. “She drove her car off the road in a snowstorm.”

  “You’re bothered by the fact that she’s a bad driver?”

  “No,” Allison said. “I’m bothered by the fact that she rushes, and she makes mistakes.”

  He was silent. Intrigued by the observation. It seemed unfair on the surface, critical and harsh, but she was only commenting on the very things he’d taught for so many years. Good decision-making was a pattern. So was bad decision-making.

  “Just keep that in mind,” Allison said, “when you tell her that you’re going to do it.”

  “So now I’m going to do it?”

  “You were always going to do it, Ethan. You just needed to go through the rituals. That way you can convince yourself it’s the right choice.”

  “You’re saying it’s not?”

  “No, E. I’m saying that I truly don’t know what will come of it. But I know you’re going to say yes.”

  They slept then, finally, and in the morning he told Jamie Bennett that he would take the job, and th
en they set about finding a tow truck to deal with the damaged rental. A simple mistake, he told himself, representative of nothing.

  But he couldn’t help thinking, after Allison’s warning, that the first thing Jamie had admitted to him upon her disastrous midnight arrival was that she had heard the forecast and ignored it, convinced she could beat the storm.

  Up at the Beartooth Pass, chains rattled and winches growled as they pulled that mistake free from the snowdrifts.

  4

  Ian was off duty when they came for him, but he was still in uniform and still armed, and usually that meant something to people. Badge on the chest, gun on the belt? He felt awfully strong in those situations. Had since the academy, could still remember the first time he’d put on the uniform, feeling like a damned gladiator.

  Bring it the fuck on, he’d thought then, and the years hadn’t eroded much of that swagger. He knew better than to believe he was untouchable—he’d attended too many police funerals for that, and he’d shaken a few too many of the wrong hands and passed cash to too many people he shouldn’t have—but day by day, hour by hour, he still felt strong in the uniform. People took notice. Some respected you, some feared you, some flat-out hated you, even, but they sure as hell took notice.

  The single most unnerving thing about the Blackwell brothers was that they didn’t seem to. The badge meant nothing, and the gun even less. Their pale blue eyes would just roll over you, taking inventory, showing nothing. Indifferent. Bored, even.

  He saw their truck when he pulled in. That black F-150 with blacked-out windows, an illegal level of tint. Even the grille was black. He expected they were still inside, and he got out of the cruiser and took a deep breath and hitched up his belt, knowing they were watching and wanting to remind them of the gun, even though they never seemed to care. He went up on the porch and flipped the lid on the beer cooler. Ice had melted but there were still a couple cans floating around in relatively cold water, and he took out a Miller Lite and drank it there on the porch, leaning against the rail and staring at the blacked-out truck and waiting for them to appear.

  They never did.

  “To hell with it,” he said when the beer was done. Let ’em sit, if that’s what they wanted. He wasn’t going to walk down there and knock on the damn door like he was ready to do their bidding. That wasn’t how it worked. They’d come to him, like it or not.

  He crumpled the can and tossed it in the recycling bin on the porch, which was so full the can just bounced off and fell to the floor. He ignored that as he went to the door and unlocked it, hating the uneasy feeling that came with having his back to their black truck. Then he opened the door and stepped inside and saw them in his living room.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing? You broke into my house?”

  They didn’t answer, and he felt the first real chill. Shook it off and slammed the door behind him, trying to hold the anger. They worked for him. He needed to remember that in order to ensure that they would remember it as well.

  “You boys,” he said, shaking his head, “are going to get your asses in trouble someday, you know that?”

  Jack Blackwell was sitting on Ian’s recliner. Had it leaned back so he could stretch his legs out. He was the older of the two, a little taller, a little thinner. Neither of them had much in the way of visible muscle, but Ian had seen the strength in those rangy frames at work, had seen the vise-tight grips of their unusually large hands, the way those long fingers could turn into steel bands. Jack had hair like a damned Beach Boy, hanging down to his collar, so light that it looked bleached. Dressed in faded, rumpled clothes, most of the time in black. His younger brother kept a different look, as if it were important to him to be separate from Jack, even if he never moved far from his side. Patrick could have passed for a Marine, had hair that was cut with a razor and not scissors, wore shirts with crisp creases, boots that shined. He was standing between the living room and the kitchen, arms folded. He never seemed to sit.

  Ian said, “Stupid damn thing to do, you know that? Risky. I get one neighbor who watches you dumb bastards letting yourself in here, one neighbor who calls out a patrolman, and we’ve got major issues then. Fucking stupid, that’s what this is.”

  Jack Blackwell said, “He lectures a lot.”

  Patrick Blackwell said, “I’ve noticed. Most times, it’s about intelligence. Lack thereof, rather. You noticed that?”

  “I have indeed.”

  This was their routine. Talking to each other as if they were alone in the room. Creepy fuckers. Ian had heard it before, and he never did like it.

  “Listen,” he said, “it’s been a long day, boys. I don’t have time to serve as the straight man for your act. Tell me what in the hell you’re doing here, and then get the hell out.”

  “Hospitality is lacking too,” Jack Blackwell said.

  “Noticeably so,” Patrick agreed. “Man stood out there on his porch and enjoyed a cold beer without so much as offering us one.”

  “Didn’t appear to be his last beverage either. So the opportunity for the offer is there, certainly. And still it hasn’t been made.” Jack shook his head, looking at his brother. “You think this goes back a while? The lack of manners?”

  “You’re suggesting his parents are to blame? That it was learned behavior?” Patrick pursed his lips, giving the matter due consideration. “We can’t say that with any level of certainty. But it’s possible. It’s possible.”

  “Hey, dickheads?” Ian said, and he let his hand drift down to his gun. “I’m not fucking around here. If you’ve got something to say, now’s the time. Otherwise, get out.”

  Jack was still looking at Patrick, but Patrick was watching Ian. Patrick said, “If I didn’t know better, I could interpret his attitude as threatening. Got his hand on his gun, even. You see that?”

  Jack turned and fixed his pale blue eyes on Ian. “I had not. But you’re correct. It’s a threatening posture.”

  Ian decided he was done with them, and the feel of the gun in his hand helped build his confidence. He reached for the door, twisted the knob, and pulled it open.

  “Get out.”

  Jack Blackwell let out a deep sigh, then lowered the recliner’s footrest and sat leaning forward, head down, arms braced on his knees.

  “The boy is still gone. You were supposed to have intel by now. A location.”

  Ian closed the door. “I’m working on it.”

  Jack nodded slowly, the gesture of a man both understanding and disappointed. A father hearing his troubled son’s excuses; a priest listening to the confession of a repeated sin.

  “Your sources with the marshals, Ian, are not what they were promised to be.”

  “A great deal of hype,” Patrick agreed, “but very little result.”

  “The kid isn’t in WITSEC,” Ian said. “Trust me.”

  “Well, he’s also not at home. Trust us.”

  “I understand that. But I’m telling you, he didn’t enter the program. My sources aren’t overhyped. They’re every bit as good as promised.”

  “That would seem hard to believe at this point, based upon the evidence.”

  “Give it time.”

  “Time. Sure. Do you understand how this situation troubles us?” Jack said.

  Ian felt a dull throb building behind his temples, a pulse of frustration that usually led to someone bleeding. He was not a man who handled frustration well. He’d understood for a while now that he might have made a mistake with this alliance, but for all their strange quirks and bizarre behavior, the Blackwell brothers were good. They did professional work and they did not make mistakes and they kept a low profile. They were cold and they were cruel but he understood men who were cold and cruel and in the end all he cared about was whether they were good at their jobs. The Blackwell brothers were that, if nothing else. His patience for their attitudes, though, was fading fast.

  “That kid,” he said, “is a problem for me too. All of this comes back to me in th
e end, you better remember that. Better remember who pays you for your work.”

  “The lectures again,” Patrick said, and shook his head. “You hearing this?”

  “I am,” Jack said. “Appears to be questioning our level of understanding. Yet again.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Ian said. “That shit, the talking-like-I’m-not-here shit? End it. I’ll lay this out for you once, okay? The kid is not with WITSEC. If he ever is, I’ll know about it. He’s not right now. So your job is to figure out where he is. And do it fast.”

  “There were rumors afloat,” Jack said. “You recall those, Patrick?”

  “Negotiations with prosecutors. Are those the rumors you’re thinking of?”

  “Well, it wasn’t the Cubs’ possibilities before the trade deadline. So it must have been that, yes.”

  Ian was listening to them and wondering why in the hell he hadn’t driven away as soon as he saw the truck. He’d always been in control of these two, in theory at least, but he’d never felt that control. Now he was seeing the mistake in this association. A wise man didn’t rent attack dogs; he raised them himself. Why? Because he’d never be able to fully trust them otherwise.

  “Listen,” he said, “I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about, with the rumors and bullshit. Nobody wants this done more than me. The parents know where the boy is, you can count on that.”

  “Does the mother talk to us, Patrick? What do you think?” This from Jack.

  “Anyone will talk to us with proper encouragement. Or so we’ve found over the years.”

  “True. But do the parents say what we need them to say in the course of our conversation?”

  “A far more difficult question. They have, after all, nothing but the boy. In such circumstances, even the most persuasive approach may not be effective. It would depend upon the depth of their affection.”

  “My point exactly. The parents also have watchers now. Law enforcement support, a prosecutor who is determined to use that boy as a critical witness and who probably has conned them into believing the boy can be kept safe, and all the boy has to do is simply appear in court. You might remember that we were told by Ian here to leave the scene without the boy, that we couldn’t waste time on a kid who, quote, ‘might not even have seen a thing.’ And that allowed the parents time to seek help. I would say, and you may correct me if you feel it’s necessary, that the parents are a very poor opening option.”