by Kate Morris
“Warren set it up,” he tells them, referring to the senator by his first name. “He set it all up. He knew the guy back before.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. And he’s working with the President’s liaison mostly.”
“Then what’s his name?” John keeps going.
“His? You mean her?” he asks confusedly.
Cory looks at John, who mimics his confusion.
“What do you mean ‘her’?” John asks.
“Angelica,” the car dealer replies. “She’s our contact.”
He quickly does a mental scan of all the people he knows in town and their allies in other towns and villages. Nothing rings a bell.
“Who the hell is Angelica?” Cory asks the man.
“She’s our contact,” he repeats as if he finds the question idiotic.
“How does she contact you?” John asks him.
“By radio,” he says.
“In person?”
“No, I’ve never met her. She’s our liaison to the president,” he tells them. “Warren has met with her and her people, though, a few times at the mansion.”
Cory wonders if she works for the new President, the man who wants to destroy Robert McClane, the man from the bunker who is a Socialist prick.
“Where is she?”
He shrugs, then winces at the pain in his shoulder. “I don’t know. I’ve never met her. I think Warren met her once somewhere north of our settlement and sometimes at the mansion. Not sure where. He was stationed at the Cheekwood estate, and I was at the Gaylord, which I guess you already knew about.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t that hard to get,” Cory informs him, to which the man frowns.
John resume questioning, “Who is she with, what group? I know she’s not out there somewhere on her own.”
“I don’t know. All I know is that she’s our contact for when we need to get in touch with the president. We usually have to go through her first.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He told Warren that it wasn’t safe to contact him directly all the time. I guess he had some traitors in his group or something.”
Robert, Cory thinks. Robert McClane is the traitor who left the President. He betrayed and abandoned the new sitting President and took thousands of people, followers with him to Fort Knox. No wonder the dude is paranoid and uses a middle-man, or woman. A lot of the puzzle pieces are starting to come together.
“Who’s the president?” John asks next.
“The president? What kind of a question is that to ask?”
Cory clenches his fist, and the man cowers.
He quickly answers with fear in his voice, “The new President of the United States, of course. Don’t you hayseeds know? There’s a new sheriff in town, literally. He’s taking over. The McClanes don’t stand a chance.”
“He’s here? You’ve spoken to him?”
“Just a few times,” he answers. “Most of the time it was Warren working with him. I was in charge mostly of getting new recruits, new followers, growing the group. Like I said, they knew each other before. I knew Warren. We had a few…business deals before all this.”
“Yeah, we know about your ‘business deals’ and the fact that you were both about to be indicted,” John informs him, earning a surprised look from the slimy car dealer.
“Why’d you rob people?” Cory asks the question that’s been bugging him. “Why do that? You had enough people that you could’ve grown your own food, worked hard like the rest of us to survive. Why kill innocent people?”
“The President told us to,” he says.
“What?” John asks with disbelief.
He nods vigorously. “Yeah, he said to grow the army, get as many people on his side as we could at any cost. That’s why we did it. He said to eliminate anyone who wouldn’t join. It was all his plan.”
“Did you hear him on the radio? Is that it? We know others who’ve heard his radio broadcasts,” John inquires. Sam certainly heard the radio messages that the new President was sending out.
“No, I don’t know what you mean. I never heard that. We only recently started using a radio system. We didn’t need to. Before Warren started talking to him, before we got that short-wave radio figured out to communicate with people, we weren’t doing that bad. We lived in our houses down in Brentwood. It was going alright, not great, but we were surviving and had about a hundred people working for us. Then he talked to the new President on that radio, and he convinced Warren that he was going to get everything back to the way it used to be. You know, running water, electricity, cars, gas, everything. He told us he was gonna cut us in on the deal and give us high ranking jobs in the new government. I don’t know. Maybe Warren did hear him talking on the radio. I’m not sure. I just know what he told me after he talked to him directly. He knew him, though. They knew each other for sure. Went to military school or some shit together as kids in upstate New York, some yuck-yuck snob place to send rich kids.”
“And you just thought it was fine and dandy to kill innocent people?” John asks with anger.
“No, not at first. But she told us that we either did what he wanted, or he’d take us out, too. Warren said it wasn’t a big deal, that we were doing it so that the country would improve. I didn’t feel like we had a choice.”
“Did someone remove your free will?”
He pauses and looks down. Cory knows this was a choice he and the senator consciously made. They could’ve told the President to go to hell. They didn’t. Instead, they made a deal with the devil for the promise of power in the new government and a place at the head of the table.
“Where’s his camp?”
“Who? The President? I don’t know. He’s not here yet. At least, I don’t think he is. He said he was on his way from Colorado somewhere or some shit. I don’t know. That was months ago. Warren said he couldn’t come right away, that he had to work out the plans better. Like I said already, I wasn’t in on those meetings. It was mostly Warren and Angelica.”
Cory looks at John again. So they really are dealing with the same President who wants to overrun and kill them all. Now they need to figure out who this woman is and eliminate her before she gives away every secret and detail to the man coming to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to establish.
“If you knew who we were, why didn’t you just attack us?”
John asks.
“He told us not to. He knows who you people are, too. He knows this General McClane dude, too. I think he’s about half afraid of him. He said not to fuck with the McClanes, that we couldn’t win yet. Guess he was right.”
“Yeah, guess so, motherfucker,” Cory says, losing his temper, causing the man to cringe again.
“Hey, it wasn’t my idea. None of it. We can work something out,” he pleads.
John looks at Cory and nods over his shoulder. They go outside and shut the door to the calls of the man begging them not to leave him.
“We shouldn’t kill this douchebag just yet,” John says. “We might need him. We could get him to talk to this Angelica chick on the radio and give up her location.”
“Maybe,” he says with a nod. “What do you want to do with him?”
John sighs as if irritated by the whole situation. “Guess I’ll go get Doc and have him do a cheap patch job on him just so that it’s enough to keep him alive.”
“Yeah,” Cory agrees. “Dick-weed lives another day.”
“Great,” John says with sarcasm.
They don’t return to the room to explain anything to him but leave to get Doc and tell everyone what they’ve found out. A little more bleeding isn’t going to kill the asshole. Or maybe it will. Cory doesn’t really care either way, even though there is still much to learn from him.
Dave is still in town and immediately asks after they’ve told them everything, “What about the dead people of Robert’s on your farm? How’s that explain them? This Angelica broad doesn’t live here in t
own, so where’s she laying her head at night? Doesn’t make sense.”
“I know,” John tells them as Reagan takes his hand. “I’m not sure yet. We need more info. It’s strange, but I get the impression he’s telling the truth. I don’t think he knows the President personally or this woman.”
He looks at Cory who nods. “Yeah, I don’t think he does. I think he’ll sing like a canary as long as we’re keeping him alive. He said she’s his contact as if he doesn’t know her well but was assigned to her. I think the senator was our main player, but now he’s dead. Kinda’ hard to question him.”
“Yeah, too damn bad. Missed opportunity. Got any of those shocker paddles in your office, Doc?” Dave asks, getting a laugh from John and a smile from Herb.
“I think it might be a little too late for that, son,” he jokes about bringing the man back from the dead. “Perhaps we ought to believe this Mr. Romano and concentrate instead on getting him to trust us enough to tell us more.”
“He ordered the deaths of many innocent people, Herb,” John reminds them. “He’s not exactly a trustworthy person.”
Herb nods thoughtfully and puffs on his pipe, “Probably right in assuming that. It’s only that my conscience nags at me that we aren’t doing the right thing in this.”
“What do you mean, Grandpa?” Reagan asks as Sam and her uncle also join them.
“Perhaps this car dealer fellow was being manipulated by the senator and the President. From what my son has told us, and Parker, as well, our new President is not a man of his word and is very skilled at getting people to do what he wants.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Reagan says. “He should be executed like the rest of his group for what he’s done.”
Herb doesn’t look like he agrees with this. “We’ll question him further and see what he can offer us. Then we’ll make that decision as a group.”
“Yes, sir,” John states and glances at Reagan, who is frowning hard at her grandfather as if she disagrees with him.
“For now, allow Reagan and I to see to his medical care,” Doc orders.
Nobody argues because Herb McClane has the final word.
Cory and John meet with the sheriff while Reagan and her grandfather work on the asshole car dealer under the watchful guards of Dave and two of his men, of course.
“Do you know anyone in town or any of the people in our allied circle named Angelica?” John asks him.
The sheriff thinks for a moment before saying, “Angel. That’s the name of one of the little girls from the Campbell Kids, but she’s only six or seven. Other than that, I’ve never heard that name before.”
“Check around for us, if you will,” John requests. “We need to find this woman. I think she’s our mole.”
“Sure thing, John,” he says with a nod and leaves.
They go around the village for the next two hours to find out from people they know and only those they trust and ask the same series of questions. Nobody knows this woman. None of them have heard of her, either. She seems to be a ghost, but Cory knows she must exist. Someone was feeding the highwaymen information about them. Someone killed two men on the grounds or close to the McClane farm. The longer they question people and come up with squat, the more pissed off Cory becomes.
When they circle back to the clinic, Parker is there with his men and appears to be arguing with Dave. Doc is also present, probably having finished their work, as well.
“Where’s Reagan?” John immediately asks, interrupting them.
“They’re done with him,” Dave answers. “We put him back in his hamster cage. I think your wife went over to check on the Campbell Kids with that Melora girl.”
“Good,” he answers.
Cory looks at his distracted friend, whose only concern is for his wife, and then back at Dave. “What’s going on?”
Parker jumps in to say, “Why wasn’t I told about the raid on the cabin camp in the woods?”
“We didn’t need your help,” Cory answers as Reagan joins them again, tucking herself close to John’s side.
“This is bullshit,” Parker complains. “We’re supposed to be working together on all this, and you purposely left us out.”
“No, there just wasn’t time,” Dave says, which is sort of a lie.
They could’ve met Parker and his men somewhere close to the site. After the battle at the mansion, Parker left with his few, remaining men and went back to the Fort Knox compound to report in to the general. His sense of self-importance is boundless. He said he needed to go personally to tell the general everything in detail. Cory is quite sure he left out the part about losing two men and leaving his assigned post during the battle. Cory was glad to see him go. The asshole has eyes for Paige, and many times over the last few weeks, he has wanted to put a fist in his creepy, pale face.
“You were told implicitly by Robert to include us in the attacks,” he argues.
“We did,” Dave says. “This time, you weren’t even around during the initial consult.”
“It did happen quickly,” John agrees.
“The general will not be happy about this…”
Reagan steps forward to say, “We don’t take orders from you or my father. He hasn’t been here for anything up until this point. There have been many other battles with other groups waged that neither of you were a part of, so back the fuck off and quit your whining.”
He levels a vicious stare on Reagan, so much so that Cory would like to take him to the deck. Little Doc is not putting up with Parker’s shit.
“Your father is who made this all possible. If it weren’t for the generosity of his volunteering men and weapons, you wouldn’t have won this battle.”
Dave chuckles but doesn’t say anything.
Doc steps forward and says, “I’ll speak with Robert tonight on the radio and apprise him of the situation. I’m sure he’ll understand. I think what’s important now is for you to return to Fort Knox and help them there. We appreciate what you’ve done and the sacrifices you and your men have made, but I feel like this is over. It’s all over now. The threat is gone.”
He pauses a long moment before saying, “Well, at least Romano is dead, and the shacks were torched. I’m glad you finished it completely.”
Doc reaches out to shake the man’s hand, although Cory would like to shake it instead and crush the bones. Parker regards them warily, offers one last look of disdain at Reagan, and leaves.
“We didn’t torch anything or kill the car dealer,” Cory says.
Dave steps forward and says, “Yeah, I know. Doc and I decided while you sissy boys were talking to people that it might not be a good idea to let too many people know he’s still alive. It’s classified intel, and we should be careful who knows. Whoever the mole is or might be could get word of this situation and try to regroup and form a rescue posse for that fuckin’ weasel car dealer. If he’s really working with the President and this Angelica chick is, too, then it’s better that everyone thinks he’s just dead. Only a few people in town know the truth.”
“It’s not gonna take long for that info to get leaked,” John points out the same thing Cory is thinking.
“Yeah, that’s why you guys are going to wait until after dark and take him home with you to the farm,” Dave says with a bawdy laugh and a slap to the back of John’s shoulder.
He and John look to Doc for confirmation of this. He nods.
“Great. We get all the winners,” John remarks.
“We got you, and that worked out all right,” Reagan comments, getting a snarl from her husband.
Doc explains the decision, “If we keep him in town, someone is bound to leak this to someone in another community or a relative with whom they communicate on the radio. We can’t afford that. Not now. I still think this man will be useful for information. Like Dave said, depending on how valuable they find this Mr. Romano, they may want him back. If they attack our town, we could be putting a lot of innocent people at risk. We still don’t know how close th
e President is, either.”
“Yeah,” John says with a disturbed sigh. “If he’s close and has the numbers we think he does, he could overrun this town in ten minutes flat.”
“What if this car dealer idiot isn’t important to him?” Reagan poses the question.
“Can we take that chance?” Doc asks his granddaughter and the rest of them.
John nods as if he already knows the answer to this.
“Looks like we’re gonna have a houseguest for a while,” Cory states.
Nobody laughs. This situation just went from sucking to the absolute worst-case scenario. He’d rather go down to the jail and shoot the asshole in the head. Instead, they are taking him to the farm. Cory knows one way or the other, the car dealer is a dead man walking. He just doesn’t know it yet.
“I’ll call Kelly and Derek and let them know to start building a jail cell,” John says and strides away.
Chapter Twenty-six
Paige
After breakfast, Cory asks her to go for a walk with him. She has to decline the offer because she’d already promised Reagan to watch Charlotte while she visited the wounded leader of the highwaymen now handcuffed and chained to the wall of the old milking parlor. They have covered the windows in black plastic so that he cannot see out and borrowed handcuffs from the sheriff in town, who’d seen to his transport and had carefully inspected their new ‘jail’ for signs of weakness that the man could use to his advantage and escape.
Everyone has been on edge for the past forty-eight hours since he was brought to the farm. Then he fell into a coma-like state from wound infection. It hadn’t mattered. They haven’t moved him into the med shed. Doc said that securing a prisoner there in the place where they store medical supplies and so close to the armory wasn’t a good idea no matter his state.
“Maybe when you’re done with Charlie, we could take that walk,” he suggests, not giving up.
She glances around and doesn’t see her brother. “I don’t know, Cory. He’s been a lot better lately. I don’t want to go backwards. You guys have been getting along.”
“Hm,” he says with a devilish grin. “Would it surprise you if I said I already asked your brother to take you for a walk and he said it was ok?”
