Rose City Renegade

by DL Barbur

  “I don’t think there’s much I can do here,” I said. “I’m going to get some food and some rest.”

  “There’s food in the break room, and nobody’s using that trailer over in the corner,” Drogan said as she pointed at the camera feed that covered the factory floor.

  “Thanks,” I said, and she replied with a grunt. I wasn’t much in the mood for conversation anyway.

  Still carrying my bag of gear, I went in the break room and made myself a giant sandwich. After eating it, I made another one and ate it too. I was too mentally fuzzy to do the math and figure out how long it had been since breakfast at the Williams’ house, but I knew it was a few helicopter rides and one shootout ago.

  The inside of the trailer was small but clean. This was another good idea. Instead of trying to turn the old factory into living quarters, they’d just hauled a bunch of these inside and hooked them up.

  I set the bag of gear down on the inviting-looking bed. As I showered, the rescue played back over in my mind. I didn’t feel any particular remorse over the man I’d shot. He’d kidnapped Gina and was going to kill her. It bothered me sometimes how cold I could be about something like this, but the bottom line was he was dead, and I wasn’t. That was what really mattered.

  I was toweling off when there was a knock at the door.

  “Dent?” It was Alex.

  “I’m in here.” I wrapped the towel around my waist.

  She walked in, saw me standing there dripping, then looked around the trailer.

  “I’ve never been inside one of these before,” she said.

  “I grew up in one not much bigger than this. How’s Gina?”

  “Asleep. She’s stoned out of her mind on Ativan.” She took a step towards me. “Thank you for saving her. Are you ok?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t do my hearing any good, but I’m fine.”

  Things still sounded a little muffled, and I hoped the tinnitus would go away soon so I could sleep. I stood there with the towel around me, dripping on the carpet and trying to figure out what was going on. I didn’t know where I stood with her. I wanted to get dressed but wasn’t sure if it was ok to be naked in front of her. We’d spent two long, intimate days together last year, then she’d dropped out of my life for six months. I felt two equally powerful emotions at the same time. On one hand, I was pissed at her, wanted to yell at her for ditching me and being mostly silent for months.

  On the other hand, I wanted her. I’d always been attracted to Alex. For years it had made me uncomfortable, because she was so much younger, and was Al’s daughter to boot, but it was there, a primal attraction that I couldn’t deny. I wanted to hold her, and smell her skin so bad just then. I was glad I was holding the towel, but soon it wouldn’t be hiding much if this kept up.

  She took another step towards me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For what?” I asked, taken aback by the change in direction.

  “For leaving you. For not talking to you.”

  “Why did you?” It came out almost as a cry. I’d been asking myself that for months, had stared at the ceiling at night wondering it. It was like I’d lost her and Al both at the same moment.

  “I…” She looked away, ran her hand through her hair. “I can’t explain it all right now. But it wasn’t you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “What are we doing right now?” I asked. She’d spent the last six months in de-facto control of our relationship, and part of me was still pissed about it. I was going to be damned if I was going to stand there in a towel for much longer.

  She took another step towards me.

  “Is that shower big enough for both of us?”

  “Uh. No.”

  She peeled off her shirt.

  “I guess you’ll just have to stand outside and watch then.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Later, we lay there in a tangle of arms and legs on the bed, not talking. I was enjoying running my hands over her and feeling her pressed up against me. I didn’t want this to end. This moment was simple and free of all the complications that were between us. Before, when I’d been with somebody, I’d accepted the fact that someday the relationship might end, and to be honest, given my track record, probably would. But with Alex, I was terrified that now that she was back, something would happen to drive her away again.

  We’d been quiet for a long time, and when she spoke, it startled me.

  “At first, I drank, and I didn’t want you to see that,” she said. “I went on a hell of a bender in the week after my dad died.”

  I didn’t know what to say about that, so I kept my mouth shut. Alex’s mom had been an alcoholic. Her dad had never quite been a full-blown alky, but after Alex’s mom committed suicide he’d hit the bottle pretty hard. Alex had her own issues, from time to time. She’d gotten a DUI a couple of years ago, and that had been a wake-up call for her.

  “I woke up one morning embarrassed. If my dad had seen me, he’d have been ashamed. I didn’t want you to see me that way either. I’d had you on my mind for a long time, and now I was screwing up. I wanted to be around you, but I just didn’t know how to go forward after what happened. So I left. I sold everything. The house. The Mustang. Cashed out my retirement. Then I got on a plane”

  “To Hawaii,” I said. I knew that much at least.

  “At first,” she said. “I surfed. I hiked. Every time I wanted to drink I went for a run, or a hike. I found a Kajukenbo school and started training.”

  I was vaguely familiar with Kajukenbo. It was a martial art that blended techniques from all over Asia, with some western boxing thrown in for good measure.

  “I was the only woman there. It was a nasty little place. It smelled like balls and ass and there was a hole in the wall where somebody’s head went through one day, but they trained hard. Every day. After a while most of them accepted me. It helped that I could do stitches and stuff on the side. One guy though, just couldn’t handle it, just couldn’t take no for an answer.”

  She smiled a little. It was a smile I’d seen on her dad’s face, more than once.

  “I left him needing some dental work, and probably unable to have children. I decided to leave Hawaii for a while. I went to Japan and trained at the Kodokan.”

  The Kodokan was the home of Judo, the Japanese grappling art. The people there were hardcore. I’d always meant to try Judo one day. Alex had been doing it since college, which strangely had made me avoid it. Before, I’d always been a little uncomfortable when our paths crossed.

  “I lived there. I trained hours every day. I kinda had a big head on my shoulders walking in. I won some tournaments and stuff in college. These people made me look like an amateur. I loved it. All I had to do was move my body. While I was practicing I didn’t have time to think. I didn’t have to remember my dad’s head exploding. After I practiced, I was too tired to do anything but sleep.”

  She rolled onto her side, propped her head up on one hand, and ran the other hand over my chest.

  “I missed you though. I thought about you every day. I just couldn’t talk to you because there just wasn’t space in my head. I just needed to do what I was doing. Then one day, I managed to throw five opponents in a row, people that could toss me around like a rag doll when I first walked in the door. Then it clicked. I was done. I’d done what I needed to do. It was time to come back here, and see what was left. I wanted to see you.”

  I was quiet for a while. I liked the way she felt next to me, liked the way she touched me, liked the way she smelled. There was a rough callous on the bottom of her hand, from gripping those heavy canvas Judo uniforms, but it didn’t bother me. I wasn’t really into women that were China dolls. I was tempted to ask her to get dressed and go get in one of the cars outside. We could just point it in a direction and go, away from all this madness and violence.

  “What is it about me? What makes you want me?”

  I was used to being attracted to women. There had been more
than a few over the years, ranging from mild interest to outright infatuation. But I was used to them not being attracted back. When a woman did seem interested in me, it usually took me by surprise. I wasn’t any good at this.

  “I think part of it is pheromones,” she said. “I think there’s something about you that my body is drawn to, probably because your genetics are a good match for mine.”

  “Oh,” I said. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  She laughed. “That’s not the only thing silly. People like that come along from time to time. There was a guy in college. Good grief. From the neck up I knew he was an asshole, but from the waist down I totally wanted to have his babies.”

  Part of me wanted to know how that ended, but I decided it was best I didn’t ask.

  “The other part is you’re a good man. Like my dad. I don’t mean that in a creepy way. It’s just that I grew up thinking all men were like my dad. It really wasn’t until high school I started to realize most of them weren’t. You were a good guy though. My dad thought the world of you, which made me even more interested in you. I could tell you were attracted to me, but you’d never do anything about it, at first because you were so much older than me, then later, I think because you’d gotten it into your head that it just couldn’t happen.”

  “I’m still older than you,” I said before I had a chance to think. I thought about that frequently.

  She shrugged. “When I was sixteen, and you were twenty-six, it would have been creepy. Now though? Every guy I know that’s my age is like a giant overgrown man-boy. I need to be with an adult.”

  I realized I was fighting sleep. I felt like I was having one of the most important conversations of my life, and I was fighting to stay awake. Maybe I was too old.

  “Your dad would have killed me.”

  “Yeah, he would have, then. Now he would be happy for us.” With that, she sobbed a little and buried her face in my shoulder. I held her and stroked her hair. Then I cried too.

  Finally, exhausted, we both fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  If Bolle had a problem with two of his people sleeping together, he didn’t say anything. Alex and I had felt a little conspicuous walking out of the trailer together the next morning, but there was nobody on the factory floor to see us. Bolle was in the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee when we walked in.

  “Good work yesterday, both of you,” he said. “I’m glad you’re rested. Things were a little rough.”

  Considering I’d shot a guy in the face, after running through a hole blown in a wall, I thought rough was a little bit of an understatement.

  “Gina is doing better, and I think it’s time we try to find out what she knows. How would you feel about doing a soft interview?”

  I was a little taken aback. I was technically a Federal law enforcement officer. During my years in the Portland Police Bureau, I’d killed two men, and both times I’d been on paid leave, subjected to endless rounds of interviews, after action reviews, tactical debriefings, and a psych eval. On Bolle’s squad, I could apparently smoke a guy one day, and go right back to work the next day.

  “I’ll give it a shot,” I said.

  Bolle had done a decent job of turning one of the old offices into an interview room. The pastel walls still smelled faintly of fresh paint. I was already seated in the interviewer’s chair when Drogan led Gina in.

  Somebody had found her a pair of sweatpants and a sweater, definitely not her usual standards of couture. She looked tired and haggard, but not stoned out of her gourd like she’d been last night.

  “How are you, Gina?” I asked.

  She was nervous. Her eyes darted around the room and she kept picking at the hem of her pants.

  “Better than I was last night, Dent,” she said. “When can I leave? No one will tell me. I just want to go home.”

  “Well, Gina, we want to make sure you’re safe. The people that took you were some pretty bad dudes. We’re not clear about some of the details, so we want to work with you to understand exactly what happened.”

  I was trying to create a sense of rapport with her, make her feel like we were both on the same team and my biggest interest was in making sure she was safe. To a certain extent, that was true, but I also smelled a rat. I strongly suspected there were some things Gina wasn’t telling me.

  “They… Took me,” she said, not meeting my eyes.

  “The men at the house? Where they tried to kill me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “The ones you shot.”

  “Had you ever seen them before?” I asked.

  “I’d never seen those men before. They took me to that house, told me I had to call you and to try to get you inside. They made me.”

  “You said ‘those men,’ but there was somebody else, somebody you had seen before, and he was behind all this, wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said quietly. She didn’t meet my eyes.

  I scooted my chair closer, moved in towards her.

  “Gina, I think you need to understand a few things. This is a big deal. That man out there is a Federal investigator from the Justice Department. We think the men you were involved with were terrorists. The normal rules don’t apply when it comes to terrorism cases. One of the decisions we need to make real soon is whether we’re going to treat you like suspect or like a victim. The guy in charge of this doesn’t buy your story. He thinks you’re a suspect. Right now I’m the only friend you’ve got in this building, and I don’t think you’re being honest with me.”

  I didn’t believe her either, but by making Bolle out to be the bad guy, I was hoping she’d see me as her only salvation. She kept her eyes down. She was picking at one of her nails now. She probably didn’t realize she was doing it, but if she kept at it she was going to draw blood.

  “Why don’t you start by telling me his name?” I asked. I tried to keep the tone of my voice level and low like I was soothing a child.

  “Bill,” she said, keeping her eyes down. “He told me his name was Bill. I don’t think it was his real name though.”

  “What did he look like?” I asked, already knowing what the answer would be.

  “He was big. As big as you. Maybe taller. A few years older than you. Maybe as much as ten. He was super fit, and athletic. His head was always shaved. He had blue eyes, pale blue eyes.”

  Todd. That description fit him down to the last detail.

  “But you knew him before the night they took you, didn’t you. Gina?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, staring over into a corner of the room.

  “You knew him while you and Al were married, didn’t you, Gina? While Al was still alive?”

  “Yes.” This time she was barely audible. I wasn’t sure the microphone in the room would pick it, but she was looking right at one of the hidden cameras.

  “When, Gina? When did he approach you?”

  “About a year before Al died. When he took the new job, working for the Feds.”

  That was louder. The microphones would have no trouble with that.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Whatever I knew. When Al was traveling. What city. Whatever I could overhear on the phone.”

  I could feel a rage building that I knew I had to control.

  “What did he give you, Gina?”

  “Money. Jewelry.” Her voice broke. “But that wasn’t it. I was alone so much. When Al got his new job, he was gone. Even when he was there, he wasn’t really there. Bill was… Nice to me. At first.”

  “At first?”

  “At first. Then after he had me hooked, he started threatening me. Told me he’d make sure Al found out about us if I didn’t do what he wanted. That’s when he wanted me to start seeing the other guy.”

  “The other guy?” I asked. I hadn’t seen that one coming.

  “He was a cop too. You knew him. Steve. Steve Lubbock.”

  Lubbock. That explained all the missing
things his wife had taken from the house. Apparently, it hadn’t just been about Lubbock losing his job.

  “Then, after Al… died, Bill just disappeared. I didn’t hear from him for months until he showed up at my house with those awful men. He told me I needed to do what they said, or…”

  This time she did break down, she sobbed for a few seconds, then collected herself.

  “They told me I needed to do what he said, or he’d fly me over the Pacific Ocean and drop me out of a plane, somewhere between Oregon and Japan.”

  There was no doubt in my mind that was true. That was Rickson Todd’s preferred way of tying up loose ends. Casey had been on her way to being tossed out of a plane when I’d rescued her. No doubt Todd would have been happy to do it to me if he could have grabbed me.

  “You must have been really scared,” I said. I fought to keep my tone level, sympathetic. I wanted to build the level of rapport back up.

  “I was. It was horrible,” she said.

  “One last question, Gina,” I said. “It’s important that you’re honest with me. There’s no holding back now.”

  She nodded her head.

  “The day Al was killed, did you tell him where Al was going to be?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “But he mostly wanted to know if you would be there.”

  I replayed it all in my mind again. I had relieved the moment Al had been killed over a thousand times. I’d stumbled right before the shot came. The bullet had whizzed past my ear and hit Al in the face.

  I’d suspected I’d been the true target. Now I was sure I was right.

  Gina looked at me hopefully as I stood. I’d never hit a woman before, but right now I wanted nothing more than to smash her head in the wall. Al had been more than a friend to me, more than a mentor. He’d been my father, much more than my real father ever had been. Gina had betrayed him and helped get him killed.

  I needed to get out of this room.

  “What now, Dent? Can I go now? Can I go home?”