by David Beers
He put his hands on the back of her daughter's chair and rolled it through the living room.
"No, no, Matthew! Brand! Listen, don't take her, PLEASE DON'T TAKE HER!"
Allison screamed and screamed, and Brand never looked over. He only rolled both her loved ones out of the room and left Allison alone, sobbing in her house.
Chapter Thirty Eight
Jeffrey placed his bag on the ground, and then unfolded the paper he'd bought from the vending machine.
Matthew Brand takes entire family of Resigned F.B.I. Agent.
The New York Times screamed the headline in font so large it called Jeffrey from across the waiting area. He wore headphones and was doing his best to avoid looking up at the airport televisions. He didn't want to be reminded of Brand, didn't want to know his newest escapades, because he didn't want any temptation to stay. If he stayed, he would die, but the chance of finding more was alluring. He had already told everyone close to him what was happening and what they should do. They weren't too pleased with him to say the least, quite a few ending the phone call with a curse and a promise to hurt him pretty severely if they saw him again. They probably wouldn't see him, which was fine with Jeffrey. He hadn't received anymore emails and Jeffrey shut his old phone off, completely, so there wasn't any way for Brand to contact him.
If he had tricked himself into believing there would be peace when he left, this headline relieved him of that notion.
Allison Moore, the woman that had called incessantly at the beginning of all this—she'd been attacked? Her family taken?
F.B.I. Agent Allison Moore's husband and child are gone, taken in perhaps the most horrific fashion imaginable. Stolen from the house they were staying at, Jerry Moore's parents were brutally murdered before Brand brought the husband and daughter back to Allison Moore's house, where she was staying alone. There Brand let her see them, while speaking at length.
He took the daughter, Marley, and Agent Moore's husband, apparently intent on them helping further his theoretical mission of bringing his son back to life.
The article went on, and Jeffrey scanned it, looking for important details but finding none. He laid the paper on top of the vending machine and picked his bag up again. Was there anywhere he could hide? If Brand really wanted him, was there anything he could do to stay safe? The man had just gone into two houses, killing and taking whoever he wanted. He had invaded an F.B.I. Agent's house; did Jeffrey really think he wouldn't be able to cross an ocean? He pulled his plane ticket from his pocket and looked down at it. Gate A16, destination Italy. His lawyer knew. His agent knew. The publisher knew. He'd be given six months to get this thing hammered out, with a $700,000 advance. Half now and half upon completion. Brand wouldn't forget about him, not under any circumstances, but would he come for Jeffrey? Would he wait for his son to be reborn and then decide that one last end needed to be tied up? If that happened, there wasn't anywhere Jeffrey could go. He couldn't hide, not if the person in charge of the entire investigation had just had her whole family taken. Jeffrey could leave this country. He could run to the other edge of the Earth, and if Brand wanted him, he would find him. Here, there, anywhere he went—he couldn't run if Brand decided that Jeffrey's life should end. All he could do was turn Brand in now. To pick up the new cell phone from his pocket and stop him. Jeffrey had everything he needed for his book, and he could turn out to be a hero.
Jeffrey swallowed and looked down at the bag. Everyone was on board with his current plan. They might not respect him, they might not like him, but they knew he would make everyone a shit load of money if he went forward. No one in the business even tried to stop him. Sounds good. Let us know when you land. We'll make sure we have our lawyers ready. It's important we have the manuscript ready in time.
On and on they went, and on and on he had gone until now he was at the airport, listening to planes being boarded with about thirty minutes until his own would be listed over the speakers.
You leave now, you might be forfeiting your life at some point. You get out now and you publish this; he may come for you. You put him down, there's no chance for him to come back.
Jeffrey wasn't drunk. He wanted a drink, but he hadn't had one yet. He was going to wait until he boarded the plane and then order a double something or other. He hadn't drank last night either and so his head didn't feel like it might explode off his shoulders.
Call, now. Call and have it all over with today, then go write your book and you won't have to worry about whether or not he's going to come for you.
Jeffrey picked his phone from his pocket and brought it to life.
Life for him or life for Brand, that's what this was coming down to. A man he understood, a man he might even respect, gone from this world so that Jeffrey could live.
You're not the one running around killing people.
No, you're the one watching.
Do you want to die for him?
That answer was as clear as any had ever been for Jeffrey: no.
He dialed 911 into his phone and waited as it rang.
Chapter Thirty Nine
It would have been humorous if Matthew had the time to laugh. Both Marley and Jerry taped down to the car so expertly that they couldn't move anything but a toe. Even their fingers were wrapped in gloves of silver. They would scream, especially the father with his fucked up face, when all that tape came off, but that was a ways down the road. Right now, he had to travel that road. Matthew kept the radio on and everyone in the car listened to it, even if they were laid out across the back seat. They could hear it, if not speak about it.
They knew that Matthew had sprayed gasoline on a fire.
He knew it too.
He told himself when he woke up from that freeze that life wouldn't be like this. That he would do what he needed to do to get his son back, and that would be all. None of the previous nonsense that ended with him wearing a gas mask, laughing as cops surrounded him. Now what? Now he would be lucky to drive another ten miles without a roadblock stopping him, asking why he had two people taped up like packages in his backseat. Maybe a cop would see the man's busted up face, something that hardly looked human anymore, or maybe the cop wouldn't need to? Maybe the taped up little girl and man, matching the descriptions of the missing people, might be enough to go ahead and pull Matthew out of the car? He had two more hours of drive time, and listening to the radio, it sounded like the entire country might be put under martial law to stop him. Mandatory curfews, mandatory roadblocks in almost every state. He had stuck his hand in a beehive and removed it without a single sting. Now the bees were pissed and looking for him. It took them twenty-five hours to find Allison, and another hour to get the word out to reporters. All Matthew could do, all he could hope for, is that he wouldn’t hit a roadblock over the next two hours.
He was driving through Florida. There were long empty stretches of road, especially at night, and he hadn't slept a bit since he'd wheeled these two out to his car.
He took a quick look over his shoulder and found the girl, Marley, staring back at him. Her eyes were no longer puffy and red rimmed, instead they watched, like he might have been a squirrel and she sitting on a park bench. Matthew could smell the urine on her, having emptied her bladder hours ago with nowhere to go except on herself. He glanced forward again, and then turned back around with a knife in his hand. He brought it to the girl's face and opened the tape at her lips with a quick snip.
The little girl didn't say anything as he faced the road again. She lay there in her silence, staring at the back of his seat, while her dad probably slept—his body trying to heal the wounds on his face.
"They're going to catch you," the girl said after ten minutes or so.
"You think?"
"Yeah. There are too many people after you for you to get away. The whole radio is even after you."
"They haven't caught me yet, and we're halfway home."
"You still got another half to go."
"How about we make a deal
? If I get caught, I'll let you go. If I don't, you're stuck?" Matthew asked.
"Doesn't seem like much of a deal, seeing as that's what will happen anyway."
"Not really. If they catch me, I could just kill you both."
* * *
Allison watched the writer she had spoken with a dozen times on the phone. He was older than the book jacket photo she had seen, but the same man. More wrinkles, a little more gray, but still attractive if you didn't know him. He sat in an interrogation room, his lawyer beside him, neither cuffed although she would have put them both in a cell if it was her choice. Hung them from a noose, even. Jeffrey Dillan called today, and an hour later, Art contacted Allison and then she flew to Orlando on her own dime, paying six hundred dollars for a one-way flight the very next hour. Now she stood in front of a one-way mirror staring at the man who had lied to her since they first spoke. A man who said he was on some tropical beach, a man who said he could care less about her investigation and didn't want to be bothered with it unless she gave him information too. A man who had taken, and taken, and given nothing back. Now here he was, trying to take more, just another inch here and there, and holding her family's fucking lives as collateral.
He sat with his hands in his lap, leaning back in his chair, looking at the ceiling and not saying a word to his lawyer. Both of them were silent, waiting on Art to walk back in and tell them their deal was accepted. Because what choice did the F.B.I. have? Tell them no, they wouldn't be granted immunity, and Allison's kid and husband would die? She would murder everyone in this room right now if that happened. She would take her gun out and pull the trigger until the clip was empty or everyone in here was shivering and shaking with holes in them.
They tried threatening him, telling him all of the charges that would be listed next to his name if either of her family members died—accessory to murder for one. He didn’t even blink.
“Go ahead, play tough. I’ve got all the time in the world, does Agent Moore?”
Dillan had pointed at the one-way mirror she stood behind.
He was right. They could charge him, could threaten him and turn those threats into reality, but both her daughter and husband would die.
"You want to know exactly what he's asking for?" Art said, standing at the door to her right.
"No. You're going to give it to him, right?"
"He wants complete immunity and access to everything we have. Access to anything The Wall has on Brand, access to anything you have, access to anything I have, and access to Brand during his time in jail if he survives the raid. He wants a public thank you for his help in capturing Matthew Brand once we have him either apprehended or dead," Art said.
"Are you going to give it to him?"
"Yes."
"Good." She didn't look over at Art, just kept staring at Jeffrey and his pet lawyer next to him. She'd trusted this guy in a way, told him more than she should and got very little from him in return. This whole thing, every single part—she had been so stupid in it all. Thinking she could catch Brand. Thinking Dillan should be someone brought into the fold, because he might be able to supply her with information she couldn't get elsewhere. She had been naive, over matched by everyone involved, and now her daughter was missing.
"Wait," Allison said. "Add a stipulation. If my daughter's dead, he gets nothing. No immunity, no access, no thank-yous. He only gets any of it if we save my daughter."
Art stood without saying anything. No one else in the room spoke either, a bunch of faces that Allison didn't know and even if she did, she hadn't looked hard enough to recognize anyone.
"If he rejects that, Allison? Then Marley's dead anyway."
Warm tears flooded her eyes. "We'll worry about that if it happens."
Art shook his head and looked down at the floor. "I can't do it, Allison. He's getting the deal; we don't have any more time to waste."
The stipulation had been stupid anyway and she knew it. Offering Jeffrey something that he could reject with absolutely no problems. Her kid dies? What did he care? He didn't have to tell them anything, and her kid would die all the same. She hated Dillan, maybe as much as Brand. She wanted Dillan attached to those machines Brand was bringing her daughter to. If the F.B.I.'s calculations were right, Brand should be about five hours from Florida, although once in Florida they didn't know where he was heading.
She had five hours until her daughter would be lost forever.
She watched as Art walked into the room in front of her, watched him put down a folder in front of the lawyer.
"It's all here. Everything you asked for. Obviously we don't have time for you to read all of it. What we need is your signature and then the place this guy is."
Dillan looked over to his lawyer, a fat guy that Allison spoke to at the beginning of all this, on what felt like another world and in another life.
"Most likely, they aren't lying. None of this would look good for them if it were to come out. If you were some black guy here alone, I'd say don't sign it, but they're probably on the up and up. I can have it read over the next couple of hours and let you know for sure," the lawyer said.
"You really know how to make me feel secure, Frank," Dillan said, not looking up from the document.
"Gentlemen, we just don't have time. He's a few hours from finishing this. He's got four bodies and that's all he needed last time. He could get there, hook these two up, and his kid comes walking out of the wall or something."
Allison placed her fist against the mirror, gently at first, and then pressing harder and harder until pain bit back against her knuckles. This was all bullshit, this whole conversation and those papers full of ink. Her daughter, her husband, both were going to die soon, and these people were arguing about what a contract said.
Dillan put his fingers to his forehead and massaged as he closed his eyes.
"If they fuck me here, will we have a chance in court?"
"Yeah, of course, Jeff. I didn't start this career yesterday."
"Okay, okay."
Dillan opened his eyes and pulled the packet to him. With a quick flick of his wrist and fingers, he signed the back page.
"Forty-six nineteen, Lackluster Lane, Daytona, Florida."
Chapter Forty
The Devil’s Dream
By Jeffrey Dillan
Epilogue
It's hard to say what the world will think of Matthew Brand in another twenty to thirty years. His accomplishments before his reign of terror were deep and long lasting, but brief in timespan. He spent perhaps ten to twelve years working after he finally left school, digging deep for a few years into whatever interested him and changing the way the world looked at that subject, before moving onward. Nothing kept his attention for long, unlike an Einstein, who dedicated his entire life to theoretical physics. Brand's mind could not find one task to obsess over until his son was taken from him, and then all the powers of the United States law enforcement could barely stop him.
There's no doubt that the police who gunned down Hilman Brand were wrong, as well as the judge who let them off; all four should have done jail time for their actions. What about Matthew Brand though? What should he have done when his son was stolen from him and the courts refused to serve justice? There used to be Godfathers and the Mafioso for such things, but in today's world, what retribution can someone find? What would you have done if it was your son and the power to move planets rested inside your head?
I keep coming back to that question over and over, even now with my interviews done and the book nearly ready for publication. I keep wondering, was he wrong? Did those cops deserve to die in the fashion that they did? What would I have done?
Matthew Brand, with God's help, will never be allowed back into public again. Someone like him, with that much power, with those gifts—the world is theirs to do with as they see fit, and Matthew decided that the world could burn if it meant he would have his son back. The justice system didn't take his life, but they took his freedom—both mental and physi
cal. They took all the weapons from him that he had used to terrorize families and kill those he hated. Should he have died for his actions? Should they have inserted a needle into his veins and pumped him full of chemicals? Would that have been justice?
The humorous part is that they saved him for mankind. They wanted him here so that he might be able to help us in the future. He gave up on the world years ago, looked down two paths and chose the one of damnation, yet we're holding onto him like some sort of National Treasure. A man that would have killed everyone on this Earth to regain his son and we've frozen him so maybe one day he'll help us.
Chapter Forty One
Matthew pulled past the security gate, a blanket covering his passengers in the back. The tape had been replaced on the little girl's mouth just in case she got any smart ideas about trying to make noise. Matthew wondered if Jerry was dead; he'd heard some noise from him a couple hours ago, just moans, but nothing since. He might have some serious brain swelling going on; Matthew just hoped he would live. He didn't have to thrive, just live. Jerry could be brain dead and lay on one of the gurneys inside the warehouse, as long as his heart still beat and blood still flowed through his veins, things would be okay. If the man died, Matthew would have to go find someone else and he was feeling that he had probably overstayed his welcome here in Florida. Maybe in the United States.
He needed to get these two hooked up and the power turned on. He needed to have his son back and they needed to leave.
Matthew stopped the car in front of his warehouse and he turned it off.
"We're here, everyone," he said to the backseat.
He went to the door, unlocked the padlock and pulled it halfway open. Back to the car, he opened the rear doors and threw the blanket to the floor. The little girl looked at him with wide eyes, not puffy, not crying, but terrified all the same.
"Don't be scared. You won't feel anything."
