by Tom Abrahams
“I do.”
“So now we need to get to Houston.”
“How long do you think it’ll take to drive?”
“If we go straight through,” she answers, “we can make it in twenty-four hours.”
“We can take four hour shifts. You up for it?”
“I’ll drive first,” she says. “I’ve already filled up.”
“You still have George’s laptop?”
“Yes. Mack gave to us, remember? It’s in the back seat.”
“Have you gotten rid of Corkscrew’s tracker?” I ask, having tossed the earpiece miles ago.
“Yes, so unless there’s one implanted in my knee, we’re good to go.”
“Funny.” I smirk. “Not funny. But funny.”
I take out my phone and take a photo of the front page of the process. I use the filters on the phone to blur most of the image and then text it to Blogis and Sir Spencer individually.
Along with the photograph, I write:
we’ve got it. we’ll deliver this in 48 hrs. tick tock. i’ll be in touch.
Bella’s merging into interstate traffic as I slip the folder underneath my seat.
Forty-eight hours and miles to go before we sleep.
***
We’re in Pennsylvania when I climb into the backseat.
“You need to do this now?” Bella asks, knowing the answer. We’ve been talking about it for the last thirty minutes.
“Yes. I need to look at it before we get there. Now is as good a time as any.” With George’s laptop open, I slide in Mack’s thumb drive. It opens and reveals a single folder.
ELLSWORTH
My real name. My parents’ names.
I thumb the cursor to the folder and, hovering over it for a breath, double click to open it. My heart’s pounding, dulling the ache in my head and lower back.
The folder opens and populates a list of files.
ELLSWORTH.JPG
ELLSWORTH2.JPG
ELLSWORTHASSIGN.WAV
ELLSWORTHSURVEIL.DOC
That’s it. The truth, as Mack put it, reduced to two photographs, an audio file, and a single document. I click on the first picture.
It’s a photograph from our family trip to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. We’re standing at the base of a trail that surrounds the formation. I’m standing atop a six-foot tall rock flexing my non-existent biceps, my parents on the cluster of rocks beneath me. My mom is turned to her side, her arms open as though she’s presenting me to the world. My father’s looking at my mother, laughing at her pose.
I remember the photograph and the kind elderly couple who offered to snap it for us. They were Canadian.
It wasn’t long after that photograph that my dad got a call to “go to work”. My mom protested, I complained, but we cut our trip short.
“You okay Jackson? You look deep in thought.”
“I’m okay.” I fake a smile and click on the next photograph.
It’s my mom in her garden. She’s on a knee, covered in dirt, harvesting cucumbers. My dad’s standing to the side, a rake in his hand. They both look tired but content. Happy.
I took the photograph. It was my mom’s birthday, the last before they died. She told both of us that she wanted to spend “her” day in her favorite spot with her favorite people.
I stare at each of them smiling for the camera, neither aware of what was coming. Neither of them knowing they’d both celebrated their last birthdays together.
I exit out of the photographs and choose the audio file. Quicktime fills the screen and the audio loads. I immediately recognize the first voice.
“We have an issue with Ellsworth,” says Sir Spencer. “He wants out.”
“Is that Sir Spencer’s voice?” Bella asks.
I click pause on the computer. “It’s part of the stuff Mack gave me.” I click the pause icon to restart the audio.
“So I need you to consider our options,” Sir Spencer continues. “because we cannot allow it to happen.”
“I don’t see the problem here,” a second voice answers.
“Who is that?” Bella asks, still craning to listen. “Turn the volume up, please. I want to hear it too.”
I push the volume button and hold it. “I’m pretty sure it’s Blogis.”
“The problem, good man,” says Sir Spencer, “is we’ll have two rogue agents. They’ll be out there in the ether, susceptible to the advances of others.”
“I wouldn’t consider them rogue,” replies Blogis. “She hasn’t been active for years. He’s been loyal. We’ve no reason to think they’ll betray us.”
“That’s revealing a naiveté I’m surprised you possess,” Sir Spencer laughs. “There is no loyalty, no allegiance as it were.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m merely suggesting we consider the options,” Sir Spencer says coyly.
“Which are?”
“We must be the first to the battlefield,” Sir Spencer says. “The victorious do not wait to be attacked.”
“You want them dead.”
“Those are your words, good man, not mine. You do what must be done. If you don’t, I’ll find someone who will.”
“Who?” Blogis asks. “Who else would do what you’re asking?”
“You know him. He’s a man of ambition. A Texan. Good with a rifle, even better with a handshake and a smile.”
“Who is he talking about?” Bella asks. I shake my head. I don’t know.
“You’d ask him?” Blogis’ voice is warbling, stressed. “Even amongst the degenerates with whom we work, he has no moral compass. He’s about power and money and—”
“What else is there, good man? In our world, and you know this, there is power and money. The closer our proximity to the intersection of the two, the more relevant we become.”
“I won’t have any part of this,” Blogis says, his voice distant.
“If you leave,” Sir Spencer warns, “I’ll be forced to have this same conversation about you.”
“Go for it,” says Blogis, his voice echoing from the distance to whatever is recording the conversation. “I’m done. And tell your minion to watch his back.”
Sir Spencer tells Blogis not to interfere, raising his voice. He tells him to stay away from my parents and to let his alternative choice do his job. Then he says the man’s name and the blood rushes from my throbbing head. My fingers, hovering over the computer mouse pad, start shaking.
The alternative choice, the man good with a rifle and a handshake, is a name I’ve heard before. I used to work for him.
He just died in prison.
Blogis had him killed. “He’s had it coming for a while now anyway,” he said on the Metro when I asked for the favor.
The governor. It was the governor.
***
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Bella asks me. We’re about an hour outside of Roanoke, Virginia on I-95 South.
“I’m fine.” My eyes are focused on the halogen-illuminated highway in front of us. “My head’s feeling better.”
“You couldn’t have known, Jackson.”
“My whole life was plotted by the two people who ruined it. Sir Spencer and the governor. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“You’re not—”
“It’s rhetorical,” I snap and then recoil. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I know you’re trying to help.”
“So what happened?” she asks. “The governor did kill your parents?”
There’s not much traffic on the road. It’s the long, slow part of the night between midnight and dawn. Every once in a while a trucker zooms past us. I’m traveling the speed limit with the cruise control set. It’s not worth risking an encounter with a cop.
“Yes. There’s no proof. But he
was involved. Somebody had tapped the phones in the house and knew when my parents were coming and going.”
“Had to be him.”
“There were also eyewitness reports of another car involved in the wreck. Two people claimed it caused the crash and fled the scene. The police did a cursory follow up, but decided it was just an accident.”
“You think they were paid off?”
“Could be.” It’s likely, knowing Sir Spencer. “There are also crime scene photographs attached to a couple of the reports. In one of them, in the crowd gathered near the road, I swear he’s standing there.”
“The governor?”
“Yep.”
We pass a mileage sign for Roanoke. We’re getting close. It’ll be a good place to stop for gasoline and to stretch my legs.
“What did the last document tell you about Blogis?”
“It contained police reports and bank records. That’s pretty much it.”
“You said that thirty miles ago. Give me details.”
“According to what’s in the computer,” I sigh, “my parents were broke.”
“I thought you have a trust fund?”
“I do,” I grip the wheel with both hands and shift in my seat to alleviate some of the pressure on my back. “But it’s not from them. Blogis funded it.”
“What?”
“A little bit of the money was from my parents. The sale of their house and some stocks. But most of it came from Blogis. He set up the trust and most of the money was his. I guess it was guilt money.”
“Guilt for what? Not saving their lives?”
“I don’t know.” An eighteen-wheeler roars past us, shaking the SUV in its wash. “I guess. Or maybe he was trying to minimize Sir Spencer’s influence over me in the long run.”
“So Blogis wasn’t trying to kill us after all,” she reasons. “Despite kidnapping me and holding me in a heavily guarded Russian Embassy.”
I look over at her. She’s sitting with her left side pressed against the seat back so she can face me. I reach over with my right hand and run the back of it along her cheek. “I guess he figured me for a badass.”
“Hey!” she cups my hand with hers, holding it against her face. “Remember I rescued myself.”
“You did.”
“So where does this leave us?”
“I don’t know.”
***
The left side of the highway is awash in orange and pink as day breaks in Roanoke, Virginia. It’s still the darkest part of the night to the right, the sunlight having yet to leak across the sky.
Bella’s asleep, her arms folded across her chest and her head leaning on the window. She’s snoring. It’s a cute-sounding snort every few breaths.
“Hey,” I nudge her as I slow to take an exit. “Time to get up.”
Her eyes open as I pull into a gas station and stop parallel to a pump. She squints against the overhead canopy lighting and stretches.
I grab her credit card and hop out to fill up the tank. She rolls out of the passenger’s side and sleepwalks into the convenience store.
The gas starts glugging into the SUV and a television screen on the pump illuminates with GAS PUMP NEWS.
A young, blonde anchorwoman does her best to earnestly present the top headlines in as few words as possible.
“I’m Chelsea Stallings with your Gas Pump News. We’re pumping out the day’s top headlines while you fill your tank.
“Two suspected killers remain at large. Jackson Quick and Bella Buell were last seen leaving Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York. The couple, already considered a modern day Bonnie and Clyde for the gang-style killing of a Texas television reporter, attacked security guards at the secure government-funded facility late last night. Nobody was killed, but investigators fear the couple may have stolen top-secret documents from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development lab. The couple is considered armed and dangerous and could be anywhere along the east coast of the United States this morning.”
Great.
If Chelsea and her friends already have this information, then it’s everywhere. Apparently everything we do resets the clock on the twenty-hour news cycle featuring the two of us.
The pump clicks off and I finish topping off the tank before locking the SUV and trudging toward the convenience store. My hands are in my pockets, protecting them from the morning chill.
The convenience store looks pretty typical. There are large poster advertisements for snack and drink combos covering the windows. I notice they’re running a special on fountain drinks and Frito-Lay products.
There’s a single car parked at the curb which I’m guessing belongs to the cashier.
The same cashier standing behind the register with a shotgun aimed directly at Bella.
***
I’m reminded of the scene in the Coen Brothers classic film, Raising Arizona, where Nicholas Cage’s character, ex-con H.I. McDunnough, tries to rob the Short Stop convenience store of a package of diapers and the cash in the register. The pimple-faced, paper-hatted teenager behind the counter pulls out a long barrel revolver and takes aim at Cage as he makes a run for it.
This, however, is not funny. Bella has her hands raised above her head, trying to talk the young, pimple-faced teen manning the register out of shooting her with his Remington.
He backs up a step and trains the twin barrels at me when I step into the store and the bell on the door chimes my entrance. He swings back to Bella, his eyes darting between the two of us.
“It’s both of you!” he squeals with delight. Or fear. “It’s Bonnie and Clyde. I knew it. I thought so when I saw you pull up at the pumps.”
“Why don’t you put down the gun,” I suggest, pulling my hands from my pockets and raising them. “There’s no need for the gun.”
“Ha!” He’s jittery, his feet moving like he’s Payton Manning trying to avoid a sack. “Right! You two are killers. I’m calling the cops.”
“That’s fine,” I tell him, inching slowly forward. “You call the cops. We get it, right Bella?”
She turns to look at me, her hands trembling above her head, “Right.”
“Stop moving!” He points at me with the Remington. “Stay where you are!”
“Okay,” I say in a low, non-confrontational tone. “I’m just moving to my girlfriend here.”
“Stop!” he says again. “I’ll shoot you!”
“You don’t want to do that,” I glance at the security camera monitor above his head on the wall. The surveillance system is capturing all of this.
His hands are starting to shake and he’s unable to maintain a steady aim.
“Look,” Bella says, “we’re not going anywhere. You can call the cops. That’s fine. Just don’t shoot.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” he snaps, sweat bubbling on his forehead and upper lip. “I’m gonna do what I need to do. You know there’s a big reward. Dead or alive. Big reward.” He sneers and snorts a weird sort of laugh.
“Here’s the thing,” I move closer to Bella, my hands above my head, “Bella here is not a willing accomplice.”
“So?” The clerk has the gun on my chest, tracking my steps to Bella.
“She’s a victim in this,” I explain. “I kidnapped her and she’s got no choice but to go along with what I tell her to do.”
“I don’t buy—” he starts, taking his eyes off of me for a split second.
It’s long enough for me to dart behind Bella, pull the six-shooter from behind my back and put it to her head. She grabs at my left arm as I wrap it across her chest, pulling her back into me. It’s a little rougher than I would have liked, but it adds to the effect.
Bella squeals, pleading with me not to shoot her.
The clerk gulps and licks his lips. “Wait a second!”
&n
bsp; “I need you to put down the shotgun,” I say, pushing Bella forward. “Put it on the counter and step back.”
“I can’t do that.” He shakes his head. “I’m not gonna do that.”
Slowly, deliberately I push Bella closer to the counter. The clerk still has the weapon pointed at us, but his hands are shaking violently.
“Yes you can.” I pull back the hammer on the pistol and it makes an ominous clicking sound, letting the clerk know I mean business. The funny thing is, there’s absolutely no need to pull the hammer back. It’ll happen automatically when I pull the trigger. But it makes for a nice effect.
“I put down my gun and then you’ll kill me,” he says, his voice quivering.
“You don’t put it down and I kill her.” I push the barrel into the side of her head, burying the end of the front sight in her temple.
“Please,” she pleads with the clerk. “He’ll do it.” Bella winces and struggles. She tugs at my arm, feigning an effort to free herself.
The clerk blinks against the beads of sweat dripping into his eyes. He swallows again and licks the dry white spittle from the corner of his mouth. His eyes are darting between Bella and me. He looks like a man whose head is about to explode from confusion.
“C’mon,” I take another step toward the counter, careful not to move to quickly, “listen to her. Put the gun down.”
The clerk’s jaw tightens and his face reddens before he lets out a frustrated grunt and slams the gun onto the counter. He shoves it forward and takes a step back.
I let go of Bella and she grabs the shotgun from the counter. She pulls it to her shoulder and levels it at the clerk. The color evaporates from his face when he realizes what he’s done, how we’ve played him.
“Sit down,” Bella orders, and she moves around the counter, the barrels trained on the clerk. “Where’s your cell phone?”
He points to the counter and I take the phone, slipping it into my pocket. Behind the counter, next to the condoms and headache medicine, is a wall-mounted phone. I step over and rip it out.
