Eleven (Brandon Fisher FBI Series)

by Arnold, Carolyn

  I rose from bed, put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Where are you going?” Her voice was groggy, yet laden with more sexual appetite.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Of course I worry about—” Her last word faded from exhaustion, and she sat up. “It’s late.”

  “We fell asleep.”

  “Where are you going?”

  For some reason when I looked at her now, I saw her differently. I cared about her, dare even say loved her, but she was involved with my boss. Now that we could possibly be together, life still kept us apart. I realized the irony in it and appreciated life a little less.

  “You should get back to your room. Jack.”

  She lifted the sheets to cover herself. “Jack?”

  “We can’t have him finding out about—,” I rolled my hand “—this.”

  “This?”

  I was saying everything wrong. “I mean—”

  “You think I’m sleeping with him?” Paige’s mouth tilted upward to a smile. She shook her head, amused at something. “I kind of led you to believe that.”

  I dropped on the end of the bed. “You mean you’re not.”

  “Heavens no.”

  “You were in his hotel room back in Salt Lick.”

  “You knew?”

  “Why were you there?”

  She pulled her legs in, and tucked her head to her knees.

  “Fine you don’t want to tell me.”

  “I was just talking to him.”

  “Just talking?” Anger raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  “Yes, just talking.”

  “Why haven’t you denied my accusations? Why make me believe—”

  “I guess I just wanted to make you—”

  “Jealous?”

  She pressed her lips and nodded.

  I got off the bed. She followed.

  “Brandon?” Her hand touched my arm. I turned and looked at her. I pulled her to me and caressed her forehead. I kissed her there, and then her lips. She tried to pull me back to bed, but my mind was interfering.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? Sorry for what?” She was angry now and worked at gathering her clothes.

  “I just have to think.”

  “Now you have to think?” She stopped outside the bathroom door.

  “Please don’t take this personally.”

  “How can I not take this personally?” She slammed the bathroom door behind her.

  The lounge of the hotel was like many others with dim lighting and candle lit tables. Glass shelves behind the bar showcased various types of alcohol, and the lighting cast a seducing illumination over them, making what should be enjoyed in moderation a call to those desperate in heart. Right now I was one of them.

  I sat at the bar and ordered a double Manhattan. Less than a minute later, the bartender sat the drink in front of me. The glass looked like crystal, yet I suspected it to be a cheap knockoff. I found irony in the thought of false appearances. Before all this, before Salt Lick, I thought Deb and I were okay. Now I realized I had deceived myself.

  I drained back on the drink and enjoyed the potent flavor of the alcohol as it filled my mouth. I listened to the music of a piano assuming it was simply a recording until I spotted a man playing, tucked around the corner. I hadn’t even noticed at first how big the lounge was. I got up, taking my drink with me. I heard the breaking of billiard balls before I saw the tables.

  A few black oak pool tables lined with red felt were there. A stained glass light feature consisting of three pyramid-shaped shades hung from a black iron bracket and illuminated the tables.

  The man on the piano played The Way You Look Tonight.

  Playing pool at the one table was a familiar face. As I walked toward Jack, I extended a hand.

  He looked at my hand as if it were a foreign concept to shake hands as a greeting. He rubbed a piece of chalk on the end of a pool cue. “You play, Kid?”

  I retracted my hand. “I have a couple times.”

  “Twenty a game too steep for ya?”

  I shook my head. “I should be able to handle it.”

  “You wouldn’t make a good poker player. You some sort of pool savant?” Jack set up the rack.

  I had been made. Truth was I had spent most of my teenage years at a billiard hall not far from here. I smiled at him, but it faded when I noticed the drink on the side table. It was another olive martini with three olives on a plastic skewer.

  Had he been drinking since we left the restaurant hours ago?

  “Your break.”

  “Alright then.” I took a sip of the Manhattan before setting it on the table beside the martini. “I’m not taking it easy on you just ’cause you’re the boss either.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  I pulled a pool cue off the rack, and as I chalked the end all the conflict from the last week, from the last several months, paraded through my mind. I attributed the reflective nature on the alcohol and the soft background music.

  I bent over and lined up the shot. Three balls went into pockets, two stripes and one solid.

  “Pretty impressive, Kid.”

  It took three shots for me to miss and for it to become Jack’s turn. He lined up and took a few shots in a row himself. When he missed, he straightened out and headed for his martini. He took a draw on it until there wasn’t much left in the glass.

  “It’s been kind of a rough week.”

  Jack wasn’t facing me when I said this. The glass he had sat down, he lifted again. When the glass went back to the table, it was empty save the olives. “If it’s too much for you, you can leave anytime.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  Jack turned to face me. He held his pool cue in his left hand. The reflection in his eyes, the downward arch of his brows, and his tightened lips, told me he only needed one reason to send me home.

  I took a sip of my drink as if it would provide some courage to speak up to him. “I was just commenting.”

  “I’m not your buddy, Kid. I’m the team leader. Your mentoring agent.”

  “I just thought—”

  I gestured toward the drinks and the billiard table.

  “You thought wrong.”

  We stood there by the table, me sipping on the Manhattan and Jack eating the olives from his martini.

  Jack broke the silence with, “Your turn again.”

  I didn’t move. “Is there something I’ve done wrong? Something you don’t approve of? I’d like you to be straight enough to tell it to my face.”

  Jack watched me, and even though I had asked part of me feared hearing something about my job performance. I couldn’t handle being told I was a failure at the one thing I had wanted to do with my life, the thing that had cost my marriage.

  “You have one great weakness.”

  I prepared myself to hear about how I had a temper and needed to learn self-control. I prepared to hear how I tended to overreact. I took a sip of my drink to appear as if what he had to say wouldn’t affect me at all.

  “You’re too positive.”

  The glass stayed at my lips.

  “You think we catch all the bad guys, that we can stop the evil in the world.”

  I slowly lowered the glass. “If you don’t think that way why bother—”

  “You believe in hope even when there is none.”

  With Jack’s last words, I sensed the sadness which emanated from both his eyes and body energy. I realized in that moment, despite the tough exterior, he cared more than he calculated worth the risk.

  I drained the rest of my drink, took my shot and rid the surface of a few more striped balls.

  Jack took his turn and cleared the table of the solids with the exception of the black ball. “Right corner pocket.” He lined up the shot and drew the cue stick back.

  Smack! Thunk.

  “Looks like you won.” I fished out my wallet; not even a buck was in there. �
��I’ll have to get it for you.”

  “You make a bet and don’t have the money to pay up?”

  “Figured I would have won against an old guy like you.” The words came out, and I wished I had swallowed them, but I noticed the hint of a smile on Jack’s lips. “I’ll have it for you in the morning.”

  “Not a problem, Kid.”

  “I’m going to call it a night. I’m sure we have a lot ahead of us.” I turned to leave.

  “Hmm.”

  I stopped walking. “What does Hmm mean anyway? It’s not even a word.”

  Jack’s eyes aligned with mine. “It can mean a lot of things.”

  “Like what? What does it mean now?”

  “It means you hear something you don’t like and you clam up. You’re like a kid.”

  “And that drives me too. I’m twenty-nine. I’m not a child. I’m not in need of another father.”

  “Never said you were.”

  “You act like it sometimes. Don’t take this call, don’t take that one.” I knew by a glaze that passed over Jack’s eyes I might have gone too far, but I was tired and feeling relaxed from the drink. “And I have a name.”

  I swear the corner of his mouth tweaked upward, even though a full smile never formed.

  “You call Paige and Zachery by their names. You call Nadia, Nadia. Me, while I’m either Kid or Slingshot—which I resent by the way because I scored well over the acceptable percentage on the gun range.”

  “I’ve told you before, a name is earned.”

  “We’re not some Indian tribe. We’re individuals doing a job. It’s a career, nothing more.”

  “Hmm.”

  I raised my hands in the air. “Night.”

  “Kid.”

  I let out a moan, turned around. “What?”

  “This isn’t like TV.” He chalked the end of his pool cue as if he were completely unaware that I was questioning everything in life.

  I had a woman in my room who loved me, yet I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about her. I had a wife who I did love, but she had called to end our marriage and disconnected her cell phone. And to top off the metaphorical sundae, I had a boss who viewed me as too positive and inexperienced to deserve a name. I could punch something. “Not like TV?”

  “We’re not best friends just because we’re on the same team. First and foremost this is a job. I need to know I can trust the people on my team.”

  “And you don’t trust me?”

  “I’m not saying that, Kid. But we mind each other’s personal space and respect it. Do you have a problem with that?”

  I said nothing.

  “Good. Then, I’ll see you in the morning. You better have my twenty.”

  “Not like TV,” I mumbled Jack’s words as I entered the hotel room.

  “Brandon?” Paige’s voice called out from the darkness.

  I flipped the light on.

  “Oh, thanks for blinding me!”

  “What are you—”

  “Don’t ask me what I’m still doing here.” She shimmied to a seated position on the bed. “I’ll help save you from yourself. I’m not quite sure why.”

  I didn’t say anything. I tossed the contents of my pockets on the dresser.

  “Where were you?”

  “Just downstairs.” I took off my shirt and sat on the edge of bed beside her.

  She moved behind me, scooping her arms around me. Her fingers interwove in my chest hair. She sniffed the air. “You smell like whiskey.”

  “There’s a good reason for that.”

  “What did I hear you say when you walked in? You mumbled something.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Her hands stopped moving. “If I asked, it does.”

  “I ran into Jack down there. We played a game of pool. What is that man’s problem anyway?”

  “We’ve been through this. He’s seen a lot—”

  “And it gives him an excuse to make everyone around him miserable.”

  “Jack cares too much about other people. That’s his problem.” Paige retracted her arms and slid back until she rested against the wall.

  “Cares too much?” I laughed.

  Paige never smiled. “His mother is in her eighties, boarded up in some nursing home. She’s losing her mind to Alzheimer’s. He spends as much time with her as he can, which as you can see with this job, isn’t much.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Maybe if you actually talked to the guy.”

  “I try to, but he either seals up or grunts. He kind of reminds me of that sow at the pig farm.”

  Paige smiled. “He’s not that bad.”

  “You’re not with us when we try communicating.”

  “He’s just not trusting with new people.”

  “I wish he’d get over it.”

  “And he saw a lot of horrible things during his time with the Special Forces.”

  “You know what he just said to me?”

  Paige studied my lips when I spoke. “It’s not like on TV.”

  She let out a small laugh. “Not like on TV?”

  “Yeah, as in we’re not all best friends, connected by the job. And I mean as if he had to say the job isn’t like on TV. The horror we’ve seen in the last week speaks for itself.” Her smile was contagious. I leaned into her and kissed her lips. Afterwards I pulled back. “Do you think I’m too positive?”

  Paige attempted to cover an outburst of laughter with a hand.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “No, you being too positive, that is funny.” Our eyes locked, and her expression turned serious. I found mine responding in the same manner. Her eyes went to my lips, then mine to hers. I kissed her again. We made love and at some point afterward, Paige fell asleep. I didn’t think I would.

  CHAPTER 38

  Morning came too soon, and it felt like I had just fallen asleep when the alarm sounded at seven. I swept a hand across the side of the bed Paige had been on to find it empty. I strained to see if light came from the crack beneath the bathroom door. It was dark and I didn’t hear anything. She must have slipped out and gone back to her own room.

  I got up, showered, and met everyone at Jack’s room where he had ordered in room service for breakfast. He figured with the privacy of the room it would be a good place to discuss where we were with the case.

  “We’ve tried going about this the traditional way,” he said, pausing to place a forkful of scrambled eggs in his mouth. After swallowing, he continued, “Bingham is an organized killer, and we expect no less from his followers.”

  Zachery sat on the arm of the sofa, balancing a plate on his lap. Paige sipped back on a cup of coffee.

  I said, “Bingham’s followers seem to desire involvement in the investigation. Look at Royster. He dropped off the pictures of me to the prison and the hotel. He knew it was going to come back to him. Heck, he was armed and ready for us.”

  Paige lowered her coffee cup. “He even said to his CSI buddies that he wanted to know how fast the FBI worked.”

  “And he wasn’t afraid of getting caught. He felt he deserved to die for the murder, or murders, he had been involved in. And then the unsub we’re looking for was blatant enough to go into your home, Pending.”

  I stood up from where I was on the sofa. “I agree and wonder if they’re acting on their own, or from direction somehow.”

  “One thing’s for certain, our unsub loves the cat-and-mouse game. They have narcissistic qualities like Bingham and believe they’re untouchable.” Jack placed his plate on the nightstand beside the bed where he was sitting. .

  “They won’t be remorseful either,” Paige said. “We also need to figure out how Bingham communicates with them. The prison warden hasn’t contacted us so no new mail. It has to be another way.”

  “Twitter hasn’t been active since his message from Wednesday, that’s five days ago now.”

  “We’ve got to be overlooking how they communicate. Or maybe the unsub is acting on
their own now.” Jack looked at Paige. “We need a background check pulled on all the prison guards.”

  She got up from where she sat at the table. “I’ll get right on it.” She dialed on her cell phone. “Nadia…”

  Jack turned to me and Zachery while Paige spoke on the phone. “We know a stressor for Bingham sprung from his childhood. He saw others who didn’t live up to daddy’s standards and felt inclined to punish them as his father did him. We need to figure out what motivates our unsub.”

  Paige hung up the cell, and sat back on the chair folding her legs beneath her. “She’ll have the backgrounds for us as soon as possible.”

  Jack nodded. “We know there was something special about Anna Knowles. She started the entire cycle. What was it about her?”

  Jack’s question sat in the air as if it was rhetorical, and at this point it might as well have been, because none of us had the answer. Jack continued, “We’ve visited the family of the victims—”

  “There is one person we haven’t spoken to,” I said.

  Everyone looked at me, and for a moment I wondered if I should have kept quiet. Maybe what I had to say wasn’t relevant.

  “Speak, Pending.”

  “Well, we spoke to the A.W.O.L. wife of McCartney, Anna’s husband and interrogated the son, but didn’t they also have a daughter? Maybe she remembers something about her mother or Bingham? She’s older than Reggie.”

  “She was only a year when her mother was murdered,” Zachery said.

  “Yeah, but it sounded to me like Bingham was a family friend long after. Keith Knowles didn’t express anything like Bingham had disappeared. Besides to do so would attract attention. We also know there were more victims in Sarasota after Anna and he didn’t move to Salt Lick until ’86.”

  “Oh my God, Brandon. The guy tortured and murdered his friend’s wife and hung around for Sunday mass and family dinner.” Paige’s face paled.

  “Yeah.” The room held a tangible silence for a few seconds. “And he must have come across innocent, because the police never questioned him at length. It tells me he kept a low profile and didn’t stand out.”