Jae's Assignment

by Bernice Layton

  Only his quick reaction allowed him to strike her on the back of her head with the butt of his gun before she saw him.

  Initially, he was just curious to see where Jeanie was going in such a hurry after she ran out of the office so quickly. He could tell that she was lying when she said she was going to lunch. He was still fuming at what she’d said a few days before that bank robbery fiasco. He’d been careful the night he’d taken the two juveniles on a test run up the alley behind the bank. He’d done his homework. Yes, there was a movie theater a block away, but the featured movie wasn’t scheduled to end until 11:30 that evening. If Jeanie had seen him like she’d said, Randy guessed she and her sister must have left early. That’s the only way she could’ve seen him. In any case, she hadn’t mentioned anything, but now threatened to give a statement, which caused him to wonder what else Jeanie might have seen that night.

  As he’d followed her leaving the parking lot at work and down the highway, Randy had fantasies of running into the back of her car. Yes, he’d wanted to send her flying into a ditch somewhere, or get behind her at a red light and ram her car into oncoming traffic. Regrettably, he couldn’t do either in broad daylight with traffic cameras on every street corner.

  He’d been shocked when she ended up at Grainger’s house. His curiosity piqued even further because he knew Jeanie and Grainger didn’t travel in the same social circles. Their interactions in the office were always cordial but professional. He had never heard Jeanie address Grainger by his first name or flash him her ruby red smile. But it was odd that she would be there with keys and full access to his house and garage.

  Thinking fast, Randy crept up behind Jeanie when she went into the garage and bopped her on the back of her head, knocking her out. Then scooping up Jeanie’s unconscious body, he carried her back into the house. Snatching up her purse from the kitchen counter, he crossed the kitchen and walked down into the unfinished basement.

  Studying her impassively to see that she was still breathing, Randy would have to wait until she regained consciousness to get answers. Meanwhile, as a precaution, he bound her hands and feet behind her back and stuffed a gag into her mouth. While she was out, he went upstairs and looked around. He had to find out why she was there and what she was searching for.

  After a cursory look around, he found nothing out of the ordinary since he’d been there last. That night, he and Myers, dressed head to toe in black, complete with ski masks and had jumped Grainger in the garage as he worked on that rusty heap of a Mustang in the middle of the floor.

  Walking downstairs from the second floor master bedroom, Randy was about to head back down to the basement to see if Jeanie was still unconscious when his cell phone rang. His ship was about to come in with Randall out of the way and Grant soon to be shipped off and delivered to his Middle Eastern conspirator. When he reached the kitchen, he was smiling, pleased that things were working out as planned.

  Glancing at the incoming call on his cell phone, Randy was immediately annoyed and braced himself before answering the call. “What is it now, Dana?” he asked in a tightly controlled, irritated voice. He listened as she complained about another credit card being turned down at the store. He tried to interrupt her pitiful, tearful sobbing and when he couldn’t, he reached into the box of peanut butter cookies sitting on the kitchen counter and popped one into his mouth. He was more interested in reading the ingredients on the box than listening to Dana’s whining.

  He was sick and tired of her constant badgering and crying. When she mumbled that the gardener had quit, Randy’s temper blew. “Dana, fuck the gardener, and shut the hell up, will you? I told you, I would take care of everything, but how the hell am I supposed to do that with you constantly bitching about every nickel and dime!”

  Randy was incensed that she had disobeyed him by bringing up the forbidden subject between them—asking her parents for a loan for fear of losing their house.

  “Dad said he could loan us $35,000. That would be a tremendous help, wouldn’t it?”

  Randy heard her asking timidly, but chose to act as if he hadn’t. “Why don’t you go take a bubble bath and read or do…something? I’ll be home soon,” he said dismissively and disconnected the call before she could say another word.

  Randy strode to the back door and paused. He wondered what to do about Jeanie. His instinct was to suffocate her or perhaps slit her throat, and although she hadn’t seen his face, she was still a loose end. When his cell phone rang again and he recognized his home telephone number, Randy banged his fist against the frame of the back door. “I’m going to fucking kill Dana!”

  He paced in a tight circle to steady himself from the rage building up inside of him, then left Grainger’s house. He hurried to his car parked at the corner. Disgusted and angry, he no longer cared what Jeanie Walker was doing in Grainger’s house.

  What he did know was without food or water and bound, she’d be dead in a few days anyway.

  He drove off thinking, Problem solved.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Darius, McGuire, Amil, and Mike all sat outside the Coroner’s Office waiting for the coroner’s report on the dead man found in the garage of the Sheraton Hotel.

  Darius got up and paced the ice-cold hallway. In his hands were the crime scene photos from the hotel garage. He reviewed them for the fourth time. After several minutes, he stopped and faced the men sharing Mike’s large bag of sunflower seeds. He was used to hearing the familiar popping of the shells.

  “Why would Jae leave her calling card with that defused bomb?” Darius asked. They all knew it was Jae’s handiwork. After defusing a bomb during tactical trainings, Jae would never leave the wires dangling, fearing they could touch in transport and still be explosive. Instead, she’d twist the negative wires together and cap them off. The thing is, she’d use whatever was available—tape, putty, a Band-Aid, and more than once, she had used a wad of chewing gum.

  “Come on, now, think. Why wouldn’t Jae just call and get in touch with us?”

  “Because she thinks there’s a BOLO out on her and the doctor,” Amil said.

  “She thinks you’re still pissed about your car.” Mike snorted around a mouthful of sunflower seeds, then spit the shells into a paper cup he’d pulled from the water fountain.

  Not appreciating Mike’s comment, Darius returned one of his own in kind. “Mike, if you had told Jae that we believed her regarding the danger surrounding she and Grainger she wouldn’t be on the run. But no, you had to wait until you were duck taped to the toilet to start mumbling.” Darius glanced at the pictures again. “It’s obvious that a scuffle took place on two levels of that garage and it’s obvious that Jae was involved in both.

  “And, it looks to me like she was the one putting up a hell of a fight. I’ll bet my next paycheck that it was Jae who shot the driver up his ass. Damn good shot though, wouldn’t you say?” Darius said.

  “One bullet nicked the aorta and lodged in the muscle there.” The coroner’s baritone voice echoed in the chilly hallway. As the four men surrounded him, the coroner gave a preliminary report of his findings. “We’re still running more toxicology and urinalysis tests, but this man had a lot of drugs in his system. Some of which, we’re still trying to identify. In any case, he was a walking zombie,” the coroner said, passing Darius a glass jar containing the bullet he’d extracted.

  “Thanks, Doctor. Please contact me as soon as you get those toxicology reports. Did you find anything else unusual about him?”

  The coroner had already turned to go back inside the room he had exited from but stopped at Darius’s question. “Actually beneath the suit, the guy was wearing institution-issued pj’s,” he said before leaving.

  As Amil was studying the bullet slug in the jar making note of the markings on it, he said, “Hey, did he say institution issued pj’s, as in—”

  “The Pentford Institution,” all three men sa
id in unison. They hurried down the hallway and into an even chillier coroner’s lab to get a look at those pj’s.

  * * * * *

  Luke hung up the telephone and turned to Jude and Betty sitting at the kitchen table. He was worried about Jeanie. Yes, he knew some of the office staff and agents thought she was flighty and a blonde bombshell, but he knew better.

  To Luke, Jeanie was one hell of a smart woman. She was also beautiful, sexy, and spunky. She could quote football scores and touchdowns and was a heck of a poker player. She couldn’t cook worth a damn, but he was madly in love her. As much as he wanted to shout that declaration from rooftops, he couldn’t. Because of his position as her employer, and the Bureau’s policies against fraternization, Luke wouldn’t chance either of them losing their jobs.

  “Say, Luke, do you think now would be the time to put in that call to your fellows? You’re worried about your lady friend now, aren’t you?” Jude asked.

  Luke nodded. “It’s not like Jeanie to not answer my calls and it’s been too long. All she had to do was go to my garage, grab the book from the trunk of the car, and come directly here.” Luke drew both hands back through his hair. When Betty suggested he call the police and send them to his house, Luke gave that serious consideration.

  “Yeah, Luke, or call in your reinforcements. ’Cause it’s been hours since you talked to her.”

  “You’re right, both of you. But I was thinking maybe Jeanie wasn’t able to go out on her lunch break and could only go when she got off work at four thirty.”

  “And that was two hours ago,” Betty said, holding out the cordless telephone.

  He needed no further encouragement because Luke was beyond worried about Jeanie. With his heart beating as fast as the throbbing in the area of his bullet wound, he first dialed Jae’s cell phone. The call went straight to voicemail so he hung up and dialed Darius Hall, that call also going to voicemail. Going through his FBI teammates and friends, Luke dialed each one. He knew their cell phone numbers by heart. He also got their voicemail messages.

  Knowing what he did about Randy, Luke’s mind was running on empty. When Jude commented that he sure hoped the bad apple in the bunch hadn’t harmed or threatened his fellow teammates, Luke’s head snapped up because that was certainly a possibility. “I need to go. Something is seriously wrong. I’m unable to reach anybody on my team and I’m praying to God that rotten apple agent hasn’t gotten to them,” Luke said, worriedly.

  “Can the rotten apple tamper with their cell phones?” Jude asked.

  “Absolutely.” In that second, a picture was coming together in Luke’s mind. He now knew how Randy had been able to isolate his team and cut them off from him, and possibly why Jeanie believed he had been on a special assignment.

  “Oh, no,” he whispered, staring down at the cordless, then setting it on the table as if it burned his hand. His mind was continuing to open up and now pieces of the puzzle were sliding into place. Luke could see himself moving about with limbs so heavy he could actually feel his feet making impressions in the floor. “So, that’s how he did it. That slimeball. He’s been pulling all the strings on us like puppets for months, acting like he didn’t have a care in the world.”

  Trepidation caused Luke to panic. He knew if Jeanie had crossed Randy’s path, then she was in danger. He looked across the table at Jude and Betty. “You folks have a computer I can use?”

  Betty called for one of her daughters to bring her laptop down to the kitchen.

  When the preteen rushed into the kitchen minutes later, Luke smiled and took it as a good sign because the laptop was just like Jeanie’s, pink and covered with colorful gems and stickers.

  * * * * *

  Jae had decided she’d waited long enough. The sky was darkening and that would lessen her chances of being spotted as she crept through the parking lot.

  She already knew the placement of each security camera and had scoped out another car to steal. In Jae’s experience, car thieves were caught because they continued to drive the car they stole, instead of ditching it when the owner would have surely reported it to the police. She spotted a late model Buick parked along a side fence. It was also out of camera range. Perfect!

  Parking the hatchback alongside a large SUV that blocked her exit from the car, Jae slithered to the backseat to scramble over the car seat and stuffed animals until she eased out of the hatchback. Crouching down on the driver’s side of a Buick with a tool in hand to pop the lock, she lifted the lever to access the keyhole. To her surprise, it was unlocked. When will people learn? she wondered. She slid into the front seat and angled the top half of her body beneath the steering wheel. In a matter of two minutes, she’d pulled wires down from the dashboard panel, left them hanging for a fast start, and then eased back out of the car.

  A quick glance at her watch showed it was almost eight o’clock at night. The patients should have already been served dinner and the staff was most likely on their dinner break. The less staff on the floors the better.

  Having watched the comings and goings for a while, Jae knew that a service entry door about thirty feet from her was slow to close when opened from the inside. Many staff exited that door then rounded the building to a courtyard designated for smoking. That door, she decided, would be her point of entry.

  Without further delay, she stood near a shrub pretending to admire the tiny flowers, but seconds later when she spotted someone walking down the inside corridor, she inched closer. The staff member hit the door bar and stepped outside, lighting his cigarette as he hurried to the courtyard. Seconds before the door snapped closed, Jae hopped over the smaller shrub and slipped inside. It closed just as her feet cleared it.

  The first area she came to was marked Laundry. Keeping her back against the wall to her right, Jae thought she had entered a wind tunnel. It was loud, but smelled of clean linen and bleach, a pleasant scent to her.

  Not seeing anyone, she walked between long metal tables, massive washers and dryers, and metal racks. Running her eyes along the racks piled high with folded sheets and towels, she searched other racks until one caught her eye. It was marked Pajamas and Hospital Gowns. Searching through the stacks, she found a pair of pajamas that wasn’t too big and put them on over her clothes. Before leaving, she hid her bag behind a stack of clean towels on a low rack near the door after removing the weapon, her ID, and the key and ID badge she’d stolen from Darryl.

  Finding the corridor empty, Jae hurried to a bank of elevators to her right, and to her surprise, there were no buttons, only slots. Pulling out Darryl’s ID card, she pushed it into the slot, and with a silent rush of air, the doors opened.

  Studying the interior of the elevator as she slowly stepped in, she searched for hidden cameras. She kept her head down as she pressed the panel for the fourth floor.

  Seconds later, the elevator arrived without a beep or ping. Jae found the floor eerily quiet, but strained to hear any sounds. When the elevator closed as silently as it opened, she angled her head to the right and that’s when she heard muffled voices. Staying flush with the wall, she crept farther along the corridor until she spotted a nursing station situated to the right of a glass door. The Authorized Staff Only sign brought Darryl’s statement to mind about the floor being kept on lockdown. She ducked around the first corner so she could get a better view of the workstation.

  One nurse was standing behind the desk drawing medication into several syringes, while another nurse waved goodnight. Jae had to think of a way to get beyond that glass door. Somehow she didn’t think Darryl’s ID would work.

  When the lone nurse set a digital clipboard on the counter that read Medication Run—Back in 30 Minutes, Jae watched her swipe her ID card and wait five seconds for the door to open before walking through. With a seemingly clear stretch ahead of her, Jae crept along the wall, making her way slowly toward the workstation.

  Having made it there
and seeing no other staff in sight, she hurried to the computer and tapped a few keys to bring up what she hoped were medication orders for the patients. Problem was, none of the patients were listed by name, only numbers and the medications they were being administered. After not recognizing any of the drug names, she surveyed the large nursing station and spotted an emergency door bypass button beneath the counter but hesitated pressing it for fear of setting off an alarm.

  Weighing her options, she had none if she was to get Trevor out of there, Jae went with her gut, took a deep breath, and pressed the button. When no alarm sounded or blinding flashing lights happened, she let out a little laugh as the glass door slid back. She almost squealed in relief and then she ran through the door, which closed quietly behind her.

  Pressing herself against the far right wall, her mouth dropped open. It looked like a prison ward beyond the glass door. Could the beige steel doors with large security glass windows actually be patient rooms? As she crept along the hallway, peering in through the first two windows and testing the doors, she was shocked. They were in fact patient rooms and the doors she tested were locked. Two more doors she tried weren’t locked, and she saw a patient sleeping in each room. Slipping into one of the rooms, she found a man sleeping and by the look of his haircut and muscular build she thought he might be military. He was hooked up to an IV, but otherwise the room was empty.

  Relieved that it wasn’t Trevor, she quietly eased from the room.

  Continuing down the hallway, she stopped in her tracks. A few feet from her was another workstation. Two men dressed in green scrubs were talking to a man in a suit as they sat at the workstation. She assumed they were all doctors discussing a patient. Pressing her back against the nearest door, Jae was struck by the familiarity of the doctor dressed in a suit. His back was to her so she couldn’t see his face.

  Jae listened as they talked about blood tests and levels, and increasing medication doses. When the man in the suit stood up and extracted two envelopes from his pocket, passing one to each of the men, Jae’s heart nearly jumped out of her chest when he said, “Wait until the eleven o’clock shift change to move the newest subject. He’s going overseas tonight so make sure he’s well sedated.”