by David Beers
“Dr. Windsor, I’m Officer Bradley Romaine with the Atlanta Police Department. Are you inside?”
Christian’s mind raced, trying to understand what was happening, though missing too many variables to say anything with certainty.
“I’m in my bedroom. I’m uninjured. Can you tell me what happened?”
He heard footsteps falling across the floor and placed his own weapon on top of the nightstand. The police officer turned the corner, his gun raised.
“Dr. Windsor? I hate to ask, but can I see some identification? Your alarm went off, and my partner and I were dispatched here. He’s securing the perimeter.”
“Sure,” Christian said. He crossed the room and went to his chest-of-drawers, grabbing his wallet off the top. “Can I toss it to you?”
The officer nodded and Christian flipped it through the air. The officer caught it easily, holstering his weapon as he looked at the name on the plastic card.
“Thanks,” he said, crossing the room.
“I was sleeping. I didn’t hear an alarm. You’re saying it went off?”
“Yes, sir. It alerted us approximately ten minutes ago. You didn’t hear anything? No one’s been here? Did you have an overnight guest that just left?”
Christian looked at the floor, his eyes narrowing as he ignored the questions. His eyes flicked back up after only a second. “The door was open? The front door?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Romaine? Interior secure?” the partner called from the front door.
“Everything’s secure,” Romaine called over his shoulder.
The other officer walked across the house, joining the two in Christian’s bedroom.
“Sir,” Romaine continued. “Were there any overnight guests?”
“No, no,” Christian said. He walked past the two of them without saying anything else, hustling down the hallway toward the front door. He heard the two officers following behind. Christian rounded the corner to the foyer, where the door still stood ajar.
It had been open when the police arrived.
His alarm had gone off, bringing the police to his house—only it didn’t make noise inside the house.
Yet no one was here. Just him.
Christian stood with his back to the two officers as they entered the foyer.
“Sir?”
Christian closed his eyes and sighed.
“Go ahead and file your report. The FBI will take over once you’re finished.”
LAST NIGHT WAS the first time Christian had slept in four days—or it was supposed to be. He hadn’t, of course, fallen back asleep once the police arrived.
He showed up to the office at 7:00 in the morning. He hadn’t shaven and his hair was a mess, his shirt and tie a poor mimic of someone wanting to look professional. Christian didn’t care about any of it.
He took the elevator down to subbasement C; he and Tommy no longer sat above ground. Waverly had given Christian the subbasement in the new unit’s beginning, Christian telling him he wanted to work alone and the Director not objecting.
There were three offices set up in the subbasement, one for each of the people in the unit.
Christian saw Tommy’s office light on, and he crossed the small interior floor to Tommy’s door.
“Luke is back.”
Tommy’s eyes were the only part of him that could move easily, and they flashed to Christian. (His fingers could do a slow dance on his wheelchair, allowing him to move it and fiddle with his computer.)
“What?” he whispered. It was lucky he could talk at all. Luke had stabbed Tommy ‘perfectly’ in his neck, slicing vertebrae but managing to keep from killing him. Tommy’s vocal chords, through a lot of diligence and hard work on his part, finally came back to him—though weak. They’d never return to their former state. Nothing about Tommy would.
“Luke came to my house last night. The alarm went off, but he of course left before the police showed up.”
Tommy backed his wheelchair up from the computer monitor, turning it so that he faced Christian. “Slow down. How do you know it was him?”
Christian stepped inside the office, laughing as he did. The laugh was high, born of stress and exhaustion. “Who else could it be, Tommy? Veronica didn’t suddenly show up to see me, but leave before I woke up. Nothing was taken, nothing was even disturbed. The lock wasn’t even damaged; the damn cops said it didn’t appear to have been messed with at all.”
“Then how did he get in?”
“He picked it without leaving any trace.” Christian was pacing back and forth in front of Tommy’s desk. “He’s here and he wanted me to know there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Waverly will want to hear about this.”
“I’ll send him the police report. I got them to give me a copy before they filed.”
“You think it lends support to my theory? That he’s coming alone?”
Christian stopped walking and faced the whiteboard at the front of the office. “If it did, wouldn’t he have killed me?”
“No. It wouldn’t have been dramatic enough. It wouldn’t have caused enough chaos. And, no one would know Luke did it. They might suspect, but there’d be no proof.”
“Are you worried he might come to you next?”
Christian didn’t turn around at the soft laughter he heard.
“Seeing Luke again would be a damned relief, buddy. I don’t think he’d let me live this time, and that’s not necessarily such a bad thing.”
“YOU’VE GOT TO GO HOME.”
Tommy listened to Simone Goodfriend chastising Christian, smiling inside even if he couldn’t on the outside.
“I’m not going to watch you pacing around here all day because you didn’t get any sleep. I knew this shit was coming; I’ve seen it the past week. You’ve got to go home and sleep.”
“I’m fine,” Christian said. The two of them stood in Tommy’s office, staring at each other as if Tommy wasn’t there.
“You’re not fine. Look at you. You look almost homeless. When was the last time you slept?”
“It’s not important.”
“It certainly is important,” Simone said. “Because when you don’t sleep, you start acting weird, and it’s too close to the weekend for me to have to deal with your oddness. Go home and sleep.”
Tommy knew what she actually meant, even if her words didn’t say it, per se. She didn’t like Christian’s countenance when he lacked sleep, but that wasn’t her real concern. She knew Christian needed sleep for his own sake, and that’s what she cared about. The woman was brash, and at times, harsh, but Christian knew as well as Tommy that she meant well.
“I’m not going home,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ve somehow forgotten, but Luke was at my house last night. I don’t think that’s the safest place for me.”
“Fine. Go to my house. Sleep there.”
Christian opened his mouth to say something, but paused, a small smirk growing on his face.
Simone didn’t smile. “Go on. Here are my keys.”
Christian shook his head and walked past her, not taking them from her hand.
“He’s ridiculous,” Simone said once Christian was out of the room. She didn’t wait for an answer, but turned and followed him, clearly intent on badgering him until he acquiesced.
Tommy let out a slight sigh as his room emptied. He’d gotten to the office around five that morning, wanting to look at their plan with a fresh set of eyes. He’d been able to get about two hours of work in before Christian showed up. It was eight now, and Christian would certainly email Waverly before he left the office (if he did leave; these power struggles weren’t always decided in Simone’s favor).
Tommy needed some silence to process everything he just heard. He preferred silence more and more nowadays. The only two people he spent time around were in subbasement C right now, but sometimes he didn’t even want to be around them.
Now was one of those times.
He used his right index finger to propel his whe
elchair across the room. He hooked the front right portion of the chair into the sliding glass door’s crevice, then moved the wheelchair forward, gliding the door closed. He turned the chair back around, but didn’t go back to his desk.
He wanted to think about Luke. His relationship with Luke was odd, to say the least. He spent most of each day—the vast majority of it—hunting the man, thinking about nothing other than him. Yet, in any real sense of the word, he never actually thought about Luke. He thought about catching him, about trapping him, about any number of things relating to his capture; yet, rarely did he think on the actual man.
That part of Tommy’s life was dead, perhaps having happened to someone else entirely. Tommy had decided early in his recovery that he wouldn’t venture down that road. To go there was to die, if not physically, than certainly spiritually. Alice, his fiancée, wasn’t coming back—he couldn’t reverse time and take the bullet from her skull. The bullet that Luke had put there.
There was no way to give Tommy his legs back, his arms, or the ability to move.
He couldn’t get any of it back, and thinking about Luke reminded him of that. Tommy didn’t want to be reminded, not of the man he once was, nor the person he’d turned into. So, he focused on work, and left the actual thinking of Luke to Christian.
He couldn’t do that right now, though. Waverly would have questions on what Christian proposed happened last night, and Tommy would need to be prepared. More than that, though …
If Luke was back, it didn’t matter what Tommy had told Christian about it being a relief.
He would come for Tommy. He’d come for them all, and while Tommy wasn’t afraid of death (perhaps what he told Christian was true; perhaps he wished for death), he didn’t want to meet it before seeing Luke meet his own. That’s what motivated Tommy: the hope of seeing Luke lying with his eyes open and blood leaking from his mouth. He hadn’t told anyone that, but he didn’t think he needed to either.
Tommy Phillips didn’t have a lot to live for anymore, and that should have been plain to everyone.
CHAPTER 6
“We’re ready,” Charles said.
“Okay. I trust you have everything you need? The money will clear in the next hour; feel free to wait until after it does, before beginning.”
Thanks for your permission, you fuck, Charles thought.
“Once the money clears, I’ll have everything I need.”
“Where do you plan on watching it from?” Titan asked over the phone.
“I have an area in my house designated to making sure everything goes as planned.”
“Would you mind if I watched it with you?”
Of course Charles didn’t want to watch anything with this man. He didn’t want to be anywhere near him, not unless he could hold a gun to his forehead. What was he going to say, though? The man was paying with cash, and if he wanted to sit on Charles’s lap while the crew gunned down FBI agents, then that’s what he’d get.
The money was just too good.
“No, that’s fine. My assistant will make sure you get the address. You’ll need to be here by five in the morning.”
“Certainly,” Titan said.
“Okay. I’ll see you then.”
Charles hung up the phone and immediately stood up from his kitchen table.
He didn’t pace, but remained standing, both hands formed into fists and looking like an extremely fat twelve year old. Red anger crept up his face, having already laid claim to his neck.
“MOTHERFUCKER!” he shouted into the empty room, spittle flying from his mouth and landing on the table.
He didn’t like being played like a fiddle, and that’s exactly what Titan was doing. Titan, with all his genius, had to know Charles wanted nothing to do with him, yet he would be at Charles’s home tomorrow morning.
This home.
The one he now stood in.
Don’t kill him. Don’t do it. Not until this is finished and your money is right. There’s you and Mom to think about. Your goddamn sister, too.
The red slowly faded from his cheeks, leaving them pale and flabby. He waddled across his kitchen, through the dining room, and into his living room. A large coffee table sat in front of the two couches, at the moment cleared of any decorations. Instead, a map of the United States lay across it, with four tiny, red circles having been drawn on it.
These were the four spots they would attack tomorrow. The mercenaries would be in position. Arrival routes had been planned, as well as paths out—though the ones out would be much, much more difficult to navigate. Perhaps even impossible, Charles didn’t know. He didn’t care either. The mercenaries had already been paid, and if they died, then arrangements would be made to send their payment to whomever they designated. Charles personally didn’t give a goddamn if their kids or wives or Chinese sex slaves got it—if it had been possible, he would have pocketed the cash of every man that died. It wasn’t, of course. They knew they most likely would die, so these desperados wouldn’t have joined without the ability to leave a check for someone else.
The problem Charles had wasn’t with routes or enough men.
The problem was he had no end goal. Titan hadn’t given him one, and when he asked about it, the motherfucker said, “Let’s see how many we can kill. That’s a good goal, no?”
Sure, a great goal. Hell, Charles liked watching people fall over dead, but that wasn’t a goddamn reason to go to war with the government.
Charles had always known he was a bit off. Different than other people. You didn’t exactly get a hard-on from murder and think you were normal. This man, though—Titan … he was truly insane.
VERONICA LOPEZ always knew Luke would come for her again. Even as she signed the papers erasing her old life, she said, “None of this matters. When he wants me, he’ll get me.”
Veronica Lopez was part of the Witness Protection Program, though she had yet to testify against anyone. FBI Director Alan Waverly had explained it to her in cold, calm detail. They didn’t have the resources to follow her for the rest of her life, and yet they knew Luke Titan was alive. They knew, through his letters, that he was looking forward to killing her.
Luke had never forgiven Veronica for insinuating that he’d murdered his superior in academia (though, of course, Luke had murdered the man). In fact, everything that happened in Veronica’s life after that accusation could be directly attributed to Luke, and the sick games he was playing with Christian.
“Luke is going to try and kill you, Ms. Lopez,” Waverly had said. “The only way we can protect you is to remove you from society, or remove Veronica Lopez at least. The Witness Protection Program will allow that to happen. It’ll give you a new life and keep you from Luke’s grasp.”
“Aren’t you trying to find him?”
“We are and we will find him. The question you need to ask yourself, though, is if you’re willing to risk dying until that happens.”
“If you kill him, can I get my life back? This one?” she had asked.
“Yes. I imagine you’ll also get a nice book deal once that happens.”
Veronica hated the Director for saying it, and she hated herself for liking the suggestion, as well.
In the end, she signed the papers because she wanted to live. It had nothing to do with a book deal, or anything else really. In the end, Veronica was weak, and valued living over everything else. Over seeing her parents again. Over seeing her friends.
Even over the man she loved, Christian.
Though, she couldn’t take the full blame for that.
By the time she’d signed, the man she loved didn’t exist any longer. Christian had changed after Lucy Speckle, but …
It wasn’t comparable to the change after Luke.
He wasn’t trying to protect people, as he’d done after Speckle. Christian had quit speaking to Veronica then because he truly didn’t want her in any danger. What happened during his Luke recovery (as Veronica always thought of it) was entirely different. His body healed, b
ut his mind didn’t. His soul didn’t.
“I’m joining the program,” she had told him at his hospital bed. How many nights had she spent there, at his side? She couldn’t count them, but each one had been agonizing, because she’d known when he was able to walk again, he would never walk with her.
Christian didn’t look at her as she told him, but stared out the window. “That’s good,” he whispered.
Tears sprang to Veronica’s eyes, and she knew he would hear them in her words, if not see them fall down her face. “I just wanted to tell you.”
“It’s smart. Waverly is right. Luke will kill you if he can find you.”
Veronica stood and fled the room. Those were the last words Christian spoke to her.
Veronica lived on the west coast now, in California. Once a best-selling author, she now worked as a senior editor at a local newspaper. Their circulation was around 30,000. Her books used to sell that much in the first week of release.
Veronica still thought of herself as Veronica, though everyone else knew her as Betsy Arnold. Betsy. A plain name. And Arnold? Gone was her Mexican heritage, stripped from her the same as Christian’s underlying sensitivity had been.
Luke took everything from everyone, and gave nothing back.
Veronica had thought she wanted life, truly. That’s why she signed the damned papers. It was only after she arrived in California to a life she didn’t understand, that she came to realize perhaps life wasn’t that valuable after all.
Suicide. That was the thought which came to her … always unbidden, and at the most random times. She would be sitting in front of her computer, working on some local assignment about how the lack of rainfall was impacting businesses, and the thought would suddenly arise.
You should kill yourself.
It was shocking at first, but with repetition, it came to be somewhat expected.
You should kill yourself.
When something like that is repeated enough, it feels like a worthy alternative.
You should kill yourself.
And Veronica Lopez, now known as Betsy Arnold, began to give it serious consideration.
