by Jonas Saul
It reminded him of his favorite movie from years ago, Evil Speak. Stanley Coopersmith, played by a young Clint Howard, was Ben’s hero. As a social outcast, Stanley found a way to summon demons using his computer. His tormentors paid the ultimate price.
It was time for people to fear Ben for something he had actually done instead of fearing him because of a perception.
Minutes later, back upstairs in the master bedroom, Ben typed on his keyboard like he was the Employee of the Month at Lucifer’s company where pain was served electronically to over a billion daily.
And he smiled while doing it.
Then ate more Mars bars.
“Shit wave, I forgot to get my house key back from her. Dammit.”
Chapter 13
Sarah had been strong for so many people over the years, but when it came to herself, her life and the people close to her, strength became dependent upon them needing her. To become nauseous, to vomit because she thought Aaron was dead, denoted a certain weakness she rarely felt. She realized that she loved Aaron so much, the thought of losing him made her physically sick.
Whatever the case may be, she was grounded again. Eyes dry, sinuses clear, breathing fine, no longer crying, and ready for answers.
In the parking garage of the Toronto airport, Daniel led her toward a rented minivan that sat in the back corner by itself. Only the front windshield wasn’t tinted. Inside the front seat, Alex’s white face stared out at them as they approached.
“Is Benjamin here?” she asked.
“No,” Daniel said. “He’s waiting in the hotel restaurant.”
“Good. One less person to witness what’s about to happen.”
Daniel slowed and turned to her. “What’s going to happen?” he asked.
“Aaron’s about to be killed for making me think he was dead.”
Daniel raised a hand in the air. “Now hold on Sarah. Wait until you hear the whole story.”
“You can tell me later. This is between Aaron and me.”
She pushed past Daniel and strode to the van.
“Sarah,” Daniel moaned behind her. “Be nice.”
“Fuck nice.”
She reached the van and tried the door. It was locked.
When she smacked the window beside Alex, he didn’t flinch.
“Open this door.” She smacked the window again. “Now.”
“Sarah.” Aaron’s voice came from the back of the van.
His tone weakened her resolve. She wanted to punch him and hug him at the same time.
“Sarah,” Aaron called. “You gonna play nice?”
“Open the damn door. Take your chances.”
Overwhelmed at hearing his voice, knowing now that he didn’t die, killed a lot of the anger at being duped. He had to have a good reason. It probably had everything to do with the letter Vivian sent him. If so, how could she be angry with him because he didn’t tell her he was going to fake his death beforehand? She didn’t tell him everything when she left the Vegas hotel and headed to Santa Rosa.
Tit for tat.
But fuck it, I’m still pissed.
The sliding door on the side of the van clicked and slid open.
She jumped sideways, grabbed Aaron’s collar as he leaned from the van, and yanked him out the rest of the way.
They embraced. After a moment of smelling him, touching him, she pulled away and punched him several times before he grabbed her flailing wrists and pulled her back into him. She knew he allowed those punches. He was too good. If he didn’t want to be punched, every lunge would be blocked.
They held each other for another moment longer.
“Aaron, I thought you were dead,” she said into his collar.
“I know, Sarah. But I’m not.”
“Why?” she asked, her words muffled by his shirt’s collar. “How?”
“I got a letter from Vivian. Explained everything.”
She pulled away and gazed at his face. “What everything?”
“Get in. I’ll tell you on the way.”
“Where are we going?”
Daniel walked around them and hopped in the van.
“To save a girl who has been kidnapped. Clara Olafson.”
“Olafson?” Sarah mumbled under her breath. “Olafson?” Sarah stared at the concrete floor of the parking garage while she tried to remember what Vivian said in her letter to her. “Oaf and his son.” She met Aaron’s eyes. “Vivian told me Oaf and a son. She might have a letter wrong or something. But it’s Olafson?”
He nodded. “Clara needs us. I don’t want to be late. Hurry.”
Emotionally numbed by the sequence of events, the sense of a cloud circling her head, Sarah climbed into the van. She touched Alex’s shoulder as a greeting and sat beside Aaron. Daniel was already in the driver’s seat.
He fired up the van and started away.
“I called when you were at your parents’ house. There was no time to tell you our plan. Rationally, no one thought you’d hear the news on the plane.”
She held his hand and remembered her mother on the phone while her dad made her a cup of tea. The tea she didn’t drink. Sarah had thought her mother had called Parkman.
“It’s not like you didn’t think I was dead over and over in the past few years. I guess you got one back on me.”
“That wasn’t the intention.” His face drooped and he looked at her with puppy-dog eyes. “I’d never intentionally hurt you, Sarah.”
Daniel slowed to pay for parking at the ticket booth. He slipped a ticket into the machine and the gate lifted.
“No money?” Sarah asked.
“Already paid. You pay on your way to the vehicle, then you have a certain amount of time to leave the parkade.”
“I didn’t see you pay. You were with me.”
“Alex did it when he saw us coming.”
But she didn’t see that either—although seeing Alex when he didn’t want to be seen was almost impossible.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Sarah said. “Vivian’s not talking to me herself right now until I enter into a pact with her. So these letters are supposed to be her substitute. Fill me in. I’m feeling quite lost.”
She turned to Aaron, still coping with the fact that he wasn’t dead. She had gone through a lot to save his life when he was kidnapped by the Enzo Cartel in Mexico. She couldn’t save his missing finger, the one they delivered to her in Greece, but after getting him out alive, and herself, losing him to a terrorist bombing in Toronto had been unbearable. That pressure on her shoulders was already lifting.
Aaron twisted in his seat toward her. “Vivian’s letter told me it would be The Clock who destroyed the dojo. She said it would be at ten in the morning exactly. So we cancelled all the classes. The four of us waited at the dojo.”
“Waited for what?” Sarah asked. “To be blown up?”
Aaron shook his head. “Someone slipped in the night before and planted the bombs. We detected the phone lines cut in the morning, which severed our alarm system. Since we can trust Vivian—”
“Big risk,” Sarah cut in. “Maybe we can trust her now, but this letter was written twenty-five years ago. Basically, you trusted an old document’s accuracy with your life.”
He looked out the windshield for a moment as if he was collecting his thoughts.
“We trusted her,” he said. “And we decided to do it together.” His eyes found hers again. “Because pyros love to watch the explosion, or visit the scene of the crime afterwards, our plan was this. We would wait inside the dojo until a minute to ten, waiting, watching the outside for loitering strangers. Then we’d vacate out the back and watch the people gawking at the fire afterwards, taking pictures. Our goal was to put a face to The Clock.”
“Did it work?”
“Better than we thought. The bomber himself, The Clock, entered the front of the dojo and picked up a brochure. He talked to me about classes. Alex opened the back door and made like he was a student leaving a class. Daniel and Be
njamin made a lot of noise as if they were teaching a class while Benjamin took a photo of the man talking to me. Our guest left a few minutes before ten and we bolted out the back.”
“So where is this guy now?”
“With Clara Olafson.”
“What?” Sarah tried to wrap her head around what he was telling her. “He blew up the dojo, then kidnapped a girl?” Bits and pieces of Vivian’s letter came back to her. Something about protecting the blonde Danish girl.
“As far as we can tell, that sums it up.”
“Why?” she asked, letting his hand go so she could raise hers to her neck to brush at an itch.
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“Did you learn anything else?”
“His name. He’s Ansgar Holm. From a small island in Denmark called Fanø.”
Denmark? How come everything’s pointing at Denmark?
Sarah lifted her right eyebrow and cocked her head to the side. “I’m at a loss for words.” She swallowed. “How did you get his name and where he’s from? I’m assuming he didn’t just come right out and say it.”
“He did.” Aaron’s face lit up. “Just like that.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. Since we were going to die anyway, he probably felt it safe to say whatever he pleased. Darwin Kostas helped us with the rest once he received the picture and the name.”
“What? Did Darwin get a letter from Vivian, too?”
Aaron shrugged. “Don’t know about that. But we learned a lot about the ex-Navy Seal sniper that wanted to kill me. He was nicknamed The Clock because of his precision in Afghanistan. His confirmed kills are classified, but some speculate he has the highest number of confirmed kills on record.”
“Great. A fucking war hero is out to kill you and he’s kidnapping girls, too. Who’s behind it all? Or is this Ansgar working on his own?”
“He’s a merc. A hired killer. Some call him a PMC, which stands for—”
“I know,” Sarah cut in. “Private military contractor. When we take this Clara Olafson from him, I’ll ask him who he works for. I want to be the one to ruin his day.”
“Be my guest. Just keep in mind, this guy has seen combat. He’s a hardened war hero. Confrontation and interrogation is what guys like this eat for breakfast. It’ll take a lot to break him, even if we can.”
“He’ll break. Everyone has something, some weakness. He’ll break.” She looked out the window as Daniel slowed the van and turned. “Where are we headed?”
“The Travel Inn Airport hotel.”
Sarah turned back to him. “Vivian had that much detail in her letter?”
“No, this is Darwin’s gem. He did a little friendly hacking and learned several aliases Ansgar travels under. Peter Ford has checked into the Travel Inn. He’s on the tenth floor in the room across from Clara’s.”
“What’s the plan?” Sarah asked without wasting a second. Ansgar tried to kill Aaron. His dojo was gone, something insurance would cover. But attempted murder? And now Ansgar was after a woman named Clara?
Aaron shrugged. “Don’t really have a plan.”
Dark clouds hovered over the hotel as Daniel pulled in, maneuvered around an airport shuttle van, and found a parking spot on the second floor of the parking garage. Aaron donned a baseball hat.
“I’ve got to remain dead until this is over so we can learn why Ansgar came after me. Also, when you’re talking to Vivian next, thank her for me. It’s incredible that she saw all this happening that long ago.”
Sarah cast her eyes downward, then watched as Daniel and Alex got out.
“I’m not talking to Vivian at the moment,” she whispered loud enough for only Aaron to hear her this time.
“What?” Aaron asked as his breath hitched in his throat. “Wait, you said something about that earlier. Why not?”
“She’s gone.” Sarah lifted her eyes and stared into Aaron’s. “Until this is over, I fear she’s gone forever. There’s not even a residual feeling of her presence in my head. The truth is Vivian saw our connection severed all those years ago. Hence the letters. Without the letters.” She choked back a sob. “I can’t bear the thought.”
“Yeah, I’d be dead right now.” Aaron swallowed. “I don’t like that thought either.”
Daniel stuck his head back in from the front. “You guys coming?”
Aaron waved him away.
“We good?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah. We’re good.” Sarah punched him in the arm. “Just don’t die on me or I’ll kill you.”
“Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d be dead if I died.”
“Don’t care. I’d kill you anyways. Now let’s go hurt this Ansgar guy.”
She moved for the door, but stopped when Aaron pulled her back.
“We can’t hurt Ansgar too bad,” Aaron said.
“Why not? That makes no sense to me.”
“He’s the only lead to whoever’s behind all this. We need him to tell us who’s pulling the strings.”
“We can hurt him first. Then talk.”
Aaron shook his head.
“I’m sure he’ll be more inclined to talk when his legs are broken.” She shrugged. “Don’t you think?”
Aaron crossed his arms.
“Then what are we doing here?” Sarah asked. “You said it yourself, this guy is ex-Navy Seal. Tough as they come. The only way to ask a guy like this a question is to hurt him. Bad.”
“We figure whoever he’s working for keeps in touch with him. Instead of hurting him, why not take Clara and then tail Ansgar?”
Now it was Sarah’s turn to shake her head. “Never work. If he’s half the professional I think he is, the only way to get answers is to hurt him.”
Daniel nodded when Aaron looked at him. Then Alex did. In the distance, a rumble sounded in the sky. A storm was coming and judging by the wind, it was coming in fast.
“You guys just gonna go up and knock on his door?” Sarah asked.
They looked at each other, then nodded.
“Once he opens his door,” Daniel said. “We’ll do our thing and get Clara out of there.”
“Okay, not good.” She wagged a finger back and forth. “Don’t do that. Keep in mind the kind of guy we’re dealing with. He’s armed. Locked in a hotel room with a victim. Also, extremely well trained. C’mon, I’ve got an idea.”
They climbed out of the van and Daniel locked it. Assembled in a huddle, Sarah gave them her thoughts on how to get Clara away from Ansgar Holm and how to hurt Holm in the process.
When she was done talking, the clouds opened up and released a torrent of heavy rain. The parking garage offered them cover, but they’d have to sprint through the downpour to get to the hotel.
The day only got darker.
Chapter 14
Ansgar Holm stood by the hotel room window and stared at the heavy rain as it fell in urgency. He loved the way the rain made him feel. After years as a sniper, Ansgar embraced the rain, let it cool him, cleanse him. Or maybe it was his Danish blood. Denmark received its fair share of rain every year. Regardless of the reason, he stared at it, mesmerized, as Clara slept at his feet.
She had been a good girl since he’d had her in the hotel room. Only a small amount of whimpering, accompanied by soft sobbing and sniffles. He could handle that. A woman crying didn’t bother him. Moaning loudly behind her ball gag, kicking things, or just plain making too much noise would bother him. Clara had forsaken that kind of attitude for rewards like food and drink and bathroom privileges. That was their deal. Only one week. Be good and live. Be good and enjoy her time with him. Be loud, act out, or try to escape and he wouldn’t be so nice. There were ways to change her as a woman for the rest of her short life. She would never get the horrors of the hotel room out of her head if she disobeyed him. And before he took her life, he would take her in a way a man should take a woman. But that could wait. Take her too early and she could become a fighter
.
The Glock was in his waistband at the small of his back. The two leftover bombs he used on Aaron’s dojo were secure in the hotel room’s safe. Clara was at his feet, waiting for the order to kill her to be texted to him. Then what? He pondered his next move, the next city. When he was done with Clara, where would he go? The client had no other tasks in the near future. Ansgar had money. Maybe it was time to relax, travel for pleasure instead of traveling around the globe to kill.
