Hodges poured another glass of whiskey, took a drink, and walked to his desk. He leaned back, hands behind his head. “Okay,” he said.
“Okay?” Mark asked.
“Okay, Verge gets the contract. You sold me.”
Mark, feeling like he just got an elephant off his chest, was speechless.
“I had a feeling I was making this decision for the wrong reasons. My gut has always told me to go with Verge, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Mark wanted to leap into Hodges’s arms, embrace him tight, but restrained himself. “General, truly, thank you. I appreciate your open mind and—”
“Good night, Mark,” Hodges replied. “You have a pregnant wife. Go home to her.”
Mark nodded and left.
He’d won. He felt the laces hit his hands, making that game-winning grab against Ohio State. Victory was a high, and Mark was cruising on it. He’d been down, out, manipulated, and cheated. But here he was, still, on top.
There was no better feeling.
8
11:27 P.M.
And there was no worse feeling than coming home to an angry wife.
Mark knew he’d messed up. He didn’t even know where to start cataloging his sins. Abandoned wife at party. Broke date night. Broke date night on the same day Sarah told him she was pregnant. And those were just the things that had happened today. Mark wasn’t proud of any of his transgressions and shortcomings, and though he knew that his reasons for doing them were for a greater good—especially now—he’d given Sarah the same excuses for so long that they no longer meant anything to either of them. They were just words that tumbled out of his mouth. There was going to be hell to pay, and all Mark could do was pull out his wallet.
Only hell wasn’t looking to settle its debt, not tonight. And that only made things worse.
Sarah wasn’t angry. She wasn’t hurt. She was worried.
By the time Mark got home, she was already in her pajamas and curled up on the couch, streaming Stranger Things for the umpteenth time on her iPad. The living room windows were open, ushering in a cool breeze and the ambient sounds of D.C. at night. Mark could almost identify and pick out each bit of chatter: the distant sounds of interns partying deep into the night; the political junkies conversing over the Beltway news of the day; the soft tread of tires on the streets as hustlers, like Mark, kept chasing their next meal.
“This has to stop,” Sarah said. Nothing further was needed; they both knew what “this” was and why it had to stop.
“I know,” Mark said, sidling up to her as she tossed her iPad onto the chair. “But some things, they can’t just end midsentence. That deal had to be closed, other deals will need to be closed. It’s my job.”
“It’s not your job, Mark. It’s your life. You do this twenty-four seven and despite promises to slow down, to get better organized, to get help from your firm, it never happens. Every other problem takes precedence over our problems.” Sarah took Mark’s hand and placed it on her belly. She met his gaze, and Mark could feel her deep concern. “What’s going to happen in nine months?”
Mark knew it was crazy, but he felt something in Sarah’s belly. Not a kick or anything like that, but an energy. Something inside of her was alive, and it was the most amazing thing in the world. It made him feel immediately remorseful, like he’d already become the father he never wanted to be.
Mark let out a deep breath. “Sarah, when I was a kid—”
“Don’t,” Sarah said, stopping Mark cold. “Don’t try to game me with some sentimental nugget from your youth. I’m not a client.”
“Fine, you want the truth?” Mark asked, pulling back on his blatant attempt to play on Sarah’s emotions. “My days are filled with relentless fear. I’m constantly afraid that if I fail, if I stumble, I’ll lose everything. We will lose everything. And I have nothing to fall back on. These other guys who do what I do, they have a margin for error. They have powerful people in their lives who can scrub their record, and if that doesn’t work they have trust funds to rely on. If I slip up—”
“I’ll be there to catch you,” Sarah said. “That is what this is, Mark. Me. You. We are together, and when one of us falls we pick each other back up again.”
Mark smiled, getting emotional. “I know that, and it’s taken me a long time to realize that if you weren’t here, I’d fall forever. I need you more than anything else in the world, and I will become the man you need me to be. The man our baby needs me to be. I promise.”
Sarah embraced Mark. “I don’t want you to change,” she said. “You already are the man I want. I just want you to be here.”
Mark stood up, holding Sarah’s hand and raising her up with him. “Come on, let’s go get some sleep. It’s late.”
Sarah shot Mark a sly smile. “Sleep? Are you saying date night is over?”
“Well, we’ll sleep eventually.”
6:07 A.M.
Mark heard something.
He was startled from sleep by a muffled and unusual sound. His phone could vibrate all night, and it often did, but he could snooze through it. But this sound, whatever it was, was an intrusion on Mark’s rest; its foreignness trickled into his mind and sounded an unconscious alarm. He rolled over on his back, looking up at the ceiling as the memory of the noise played and replayed in his head. Maybe it came from outside; maybe it was the thud of newspapers landing on a neighboring stoop; maybe it was an animal rooting through a garbage can.
None of the speculations gave Mark enough peace of mind to close his eyes and enjoy the fifty precious minutes he had left before his alarm went off. He looked over at Sarah, who was still sleeping. The morning light bathed her in a soft glow. She looked peaceful. Mark knew he was likely being paranoid, but he couldn’t help but think about the safety of Sarah and the baby inside her, and he wondered if this was how his life was going to be for the next eighteen years. Quietly, Mark eased out of bed.
Stepping over the three creaky floorboards between his bed and the door, Mark slipped out of the room. He tiptoed down the stairs to the living room where he found the windows still open. The curtains gently billowed with the entry of crisp morning air. Mark was struck by the strangeness of seeing the windows open, like he was walking in a dream. He never left them open, just like he never left a door unlocked or a key hidden in a fake rock on the porch. He was strict about safety, but between getting carried away with Sarah and his sheer exhaustion, he forgave himself for the lapse. It was a comfort, in fact, to have an unmistakable source for the sound that still nagged at his mind. Something must have happened outside and the noise carried right into the house. Mark closed the windows, and as he did, he spotted two vans parked across the street. A matching pair of all-black utility vans with no one in them. He didn’t think much of it, other than acknowledging that a utility van on his residential street at this time of the morning felt somehow strange.
As Mark turned around, windows now closed, he heard the sound again. It was clearer this time. Something like footsteps.
Before Mark could even turn to peek out the windows to see if something was happening outside, he heard the crashing of the front door as it exploded off its hinges.
He only got a glimpse of the men dressed in black tactical gear as they charged into his home. Mark raced toward his bedroom the moment he heard the sound; he had no idea who these people were or why they were there. It didn’t even cross his mind. He had only one thought:
Protect Sarah.
A man’s voice roared from behind, ordering Mark to stop. It was loud, but the man’s voice sounded muffled to Mark, like his head had been submerged in water. Adrenaline, fear, and the instinct to protect his wife and unborn child overwhelmed Mark’s entire system, drowning out the world around him. He was being carried away by primal impulses—there was no stopping his body even if he wanted to.
Mark reached the hallway and spotted Sarah standing in the doorway, wide awake and terrified. She screamed, but Mark couldn’t hear her through the pounding in h
is ears. She wanted him to stop, or maybe move, Mark wasn’t sure. He hardly had a moment to react when, suddenly, he was blasted by the debilitating charge of 50,000 volts erupting into his back. Mark’s body crashed to the ground and he began to twitch uncontrollably. No matter how hard he tried, no amount of determination would grant him control over his body. He was locked in a state of convulsive paralysis and could merely watch as Sarah tried to rush to him only to be cut off by two of the intruders. They grabbed her and dragged her back, and that’s when the sound rushed back to his ears. She screamed for them to let her go, to leave Mark alone. But all he could do was lay there and helplessly watch.
He willed his mouth to produce sound. “Preeee,” he said, nearly inaudible. Sarah continued to thrash against the men, screaming to be let go, but they didn’t relent. “Preegggnnaa,” Mark mumbled. He pushed to get off the floor, feeling the effects of the Taser blast wear off just enough for him to fight his way up.
A nearby intruder, though, didn’t like Mark’s fight.
As Mark rose, the intruder yanked Mark up to his feet and threw him against the wall. Mark could feel the plaster shatter at his back, and he would have collapsed back to the ground had the same man not held him up. He wrapped his hands around Mark’s throat and began to squeeze.
“We could end this right now, quick and easy,” the man said, and Mark could see cold fury behind his eyes. “The traitor resisted; the traitor had to be neutralized.”
Mark was suffocating; he could feel his windpipe on the verge of shattering.
“Banks!” a voice called from behind. “Damn it, Banks, let him go! That’s an order!”
The man, Banks, shot an icy look at Mark. “You’ll get it. Soon, you’ll get it.” He released his grip, and Mark dropped to the floor. He held his throat and used what little oxygen he had to squeeze out one word:
“Pregnant,” he gasped inaudibly. Then again, this time louder: “Pregnant.” Still, no one paid him any mind. Mark huffed in a deep breath, ignoring the pain it caused his damaged throat, and yelled, “PREGNANT!”
The room grew quiet, and Sarah stopped resisting. The men understood what Mark was conveying, and it caused them to pause—this gave Mark hope. These men weren’t here to kill them. Or, at least they weren’t there to kill Sarah.
But his optimism was short-lived. Banks and another man grabbed Mark beneath his shoulders and lifted him up. They turned Mark around and he found himself facing a man in a gray suit with a pockmarked face, intense blue eyes, and a discomforting grin. He cocked his head to the side and looked at Mark, examining. His expression turned to sardonic pity.
“Mark, Mark, Mark,” the man said. “This is some trouble you’ve made for yourself.”
Mark’s mind began to clear, and he started running through scenarios of who this man might be working for. Senator Dudek? Terrance’s dad? Someone else? What had he done—who had he pissed off—to warrant this kind of extreme action?
“My name is Agent Richard O’Neal,” the man continued. “And you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States.”
Mark opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Everything this O’Neal had said—conspiracy, espionage—made absolutely no sense, and Mark didn’t even know where his response should begin.
He had no time to consider his words, though. O’Neal continued to smile as he nodded to one of the men at Mark’s side. The agent’s grin was the last thing Mark saw before a hood was thrown over his head and the world went dark. He heard Sarah yelling that O’Neal had made a mistake, that this was impossible, but soon her voice drifted away.
Two men dragged Mark forward, his toes scraping across the hardwood floor all the way to the front door. Before leaving the building, someone slapped a set of handcuffs, hard, on his wrists. Mark cringed, but didn’t bother to protest. He was too shocked. The men continued their forward march with Mark in tow, and just as he heard his building’s front door squeak open he felt a rush of brisk autumn air turn the sweat on his body frigid. Mark began to tremble, from the cold and from the fear. The men quickened their pace once they got outside, and Mark heard O’Neal tell someone, “Get the doors.”
The men carrying Mark stopped. Mark assumed he was in the street, judging by the cold, gravelly texture beneath his feet. He tried to plead, desperately.
“This, this…” Shivering uncontrollably, Mark struggled to get his words out. “A mistake. I’m not … I didn’t do anything wr-wrong.”
Mark felt a hand on his shoulder—O’Neal’s. Mark could practically hear a smile on his face through his satisfied tone. “Strain—we’re well beyond that point,” he said. Then, after a pause: “Toss him.”
Mark was shoved forward, and he landed with a hollow thud on a corrugated, metallic surface. The utility van he’d seen earlier, most likely. Mark’s head cracked against the floor, inducing a nauseating feeling of vertigo. By the time he lifted himself up, he heard the van doors slam shut. There was no time to yell in protest, no time to scream for someone to help.
As the van pulled away, Mark felt something warm trickling down his face. Blood. Coming from his head and flowing in a steady stream. Mark had no idea where he was being taken. And he had no clue why. The blood, the vertigo, the growing claustrophobia—Mark’s final thought before passing out was that this was all just a dream.
Soon, he’d be back home.
9
8:48 P.M.
When the van finally stopped, Mark was yanked out of the back and forced to his feet, which were still bare. He didn’t resist. He was too tired and too afraid that any act of aggression might be grounds for a bullet, and he had no interest in committing suicide by stupidity. When a voice behind him told him to walk, that’s exactly what he did.
Once inside wherever they were, Mark felt cold concrete beneath his feet, but not like the concrete from outside. This was like the kind of sterile cold floor found in a warehouse. He could see it was painted a flat bluish gray through the bottom edge of the hood, but that gave him no indication as to where he was. It might have been a Costco warehouse for all Mark could tell. He only knew to keep quiet and obedient as he was nudged down a small corridor, unsure what lined either side of him. He could sense something was there, though. Maybe it was warehouse pallets or stacked freight; or, maybe it was the armory of a terrorist operation, and this was all much worse than he had even imagined. Mark tried to convince himself that if his captors wanted to kill him, he’d be dead by now. But there was no palliative for the incessant thought that he was going to die an anonymous, violent death in this place, whatever it was.
A voice told Mark to stop, and he did. Ahead of him, just a few paces away, he heard a heavy door get pulled open. Mark was shoved past the doorway’s threshold and pushed down on a cold, metallic chair. First his feet were cuffed to the legs, then his hands were briefly uncuffed then cuffed again behind the back of the chair. The hood was pulled off his head and, even though the room’s light was a muted fluorescent, the shock to his eyes made him recoil. Mark turned to catch a glimpse of the men who’d been moving him along, but all his eyes captured were two blurry figures in all black just as they were leaving the room. The reinforced door was pushed shut, and Mark was alone.
All he could do was stare at the floor, and that helped straighten and focus his mind. He could think a little clearer. Mark knew where he was—sort of. He’d heard about this kind of place before. Clandestine holding centers operated by federal agencies for people who weren’t going to be entered into the system. They were never charged with a crime, they never saw the inside of a courtroom. They went to these centers and then, a day or two later, went somewhere else.
Mark shivered at the idea of where somewhere else might be.
If his captors were trying to disorient him, they’d done an exceptional job. Mark had no idea where he was or whether it was day or night. When he’d come to, the van was still driving, and it kept going for what seemed like hours. He could be
in South Carolina for all he knew, or he could be ten minutes from his house, and they’d just gone in circles to confuse and destabilize Mark’s sense of time and place. It was a common interrogation tactic, keeping the subject afraid and disoriented; in this weakened state, detainees were more likely to comply with questioning and, ultimately, surrender useful intel. Mark knew the textbook. You had to when dealing with military contracts. He just never dreamt, not in a million years, that those tactics would be used on him.
Mark’s room had no character. Gray walls, gray floors, a single fluorescent tube light hanging from the ceiling. A metal chair directly across from him. There was no two-way mirror common to interrogation rooms, no camera perched in the corner. No one would watch what would happen, no one would record it.
Mark startled at the sound of the door opening. He looked up to see O’Neal enter. The cocksure agent sauntered across the room and sat in the chair opposite Mark. But the satisfied smile he’d been wearing earlier was absent; now, he just look exhausted. Weary, even.
“Hello, Mark,” he said. “I’m really sorry to break it to you, but the game’s over.”
“I want a lawyer,” Mark said, as confidently as possible.
O’Neal grunted.
“Mark, Mark,” he said, composing himself. “Do you really think you’re in a place that welcomes lawyers? You’re caught. Your entire ring is in our custody. It’s over.”
“Who put you up to this? Who? Was it Dudek? Is this his twisted way of getting back at me?”
“You mean Senator Dudek, the man you blackmailed to help your client secure a lucrative security contract? Don’t worry, Mark, we’ve spoken to the senator. And we are in the process of thoroughly investigating Verge and getting to the bottom of what they were planning to do with this contract.”
Mark shook his head. The more O’Neal spoke, the less he understood. This was real. Mark understood that, clearly. Whatever was happening, whatever all this was, it was real.
“I want to talk to my wife. Let me talk to Sarah. She can help explain, she can—”
The Throwaway Page 7
