Kill Chain

by Meg Gardiner

  Slowly Christian turned. Jesse held Lily Rodriguez’s revolver aimed at his head.

  “I won’t miss,” he said.

  Christian gazed at him, and then he looked down at his mother. She mouthed, Please.

  He shook his head. “You killed me.”

  He took the pistol from his belt, put it to his temple, and squeezed the trigger. This time he got it right.

  The gunshot blew Christian sideways. He hit the tailgate and pinwheeled out of sight. The pickup vibrated from the blow. We stood motionless with the sound of the shot ringing in our ears. After long, long seconds we heard a splash.

  Rio let out a single helpless sob.

  The truck creaked again. The longshoremen shouted for equipment, but we had no time to wait for cranes or launches or the police.

  I grabbed Dad’s arm. “There’s a rope in the cargo bed.”

  He climbed onto the front of the forklift, groaning as he bent his knee, and into the bed of the truck. I followed. Scrambling over the wall of the cargo bed, I balanced on the tine that had slammed through it, trying to stay close enough to help without adding any more weight to the equation. Rio hung bloody below me. Dad unlashed the rope from the hooks and inched up to the back window. Fast as the old sailor he was, he let out a length and passed it through to Jesse.

  “Can you tie a bowline?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  Jesse pulled Georgie upright. Thank God she hadn’t seen Christian shoot himself. He ran the rope around her waist and tied the knot.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “It’s okay. Phil’s going to take you.”

  Dad crouched low and held out his hand. “Come here, honey.”

  Face fraught, Georgie nudged up to the window. Dad checked that the knot was secure and threw me the rope.

  “Tie it off on the dock, Kit.”

  The truck shifted. Metal screeched, the front end of the pickup keeled, and the cab dropped two feet. Georgie screamed. I grabbed the tailgate for balance.

  I glanced at the cab. Jesse was holding Georgie still, hoping to keep the truck from shifting any further. We looked at each other. He might as well have been twelve thousand miles away.

  With a sound like piano strings bursting, the pickup twisted. The door tore loose from the front tine.

  Screaming, Rio fell free and plunged toward the water. I clawed to hold on to the tailgate. Suddenly stuck on only one tine, the truck swung down like a broken arm and hung above the harbor with all of us aboard.

  I dangled from the tailgate. The truck rocked back and forth, metal shrieking against metal.

  Gripping the rope, I wedged my foot against a hook on the inside of the cargo bed, got a secure foothold, and pushed myself up. I got my elbows over the edge of the tailgate, boosted myself onto it, and lay flat, feeling the wind, the height, the swaying. Scared shitless, I looked down.

  “Oh, my God.”

  They were all inside the cab. Dad had fallen through the empty window frame and landed against the back of the passenger’s seat. He had knocked Jesse down between the seats. He was bundled on top of the steering wheel.

  Below them Georgie lay on the windshield. Seventy feet above the water, swinging back and forth with nothing between her and death but fifty millimeters of safety glass, she held as still as ice, whimpering.

  Metal creaked. The hole the tine had punched through the truck had stretched into a rip, curled at the edges. We were unzipping.

  “Kit,” Dad said quietly, “get off. There’s too much weight.”

  “I’m going.” Flat on my belly, I inched forward.

  “Hurry. It won’t hold.”

  I clawed my fingers against the metal. From the cab came the sound of rubber stretching, and Georgie whimpered harder. Christ—the truck’s chassis was bent, and the seal on the frame of the windshield had popped open at one corner. Jesse eased his hand toward her.

  “Careful, don’t move, let me pull you up,” he said.

  On the dock, a police car screeched to a halt and an officer jumped out, radio to his face. I heard a megaphone from the police boat circling on the water below. They had dive teams, but if this rig plunged into the harbor they would be doing body recovery. With everybody trapped in the cab, if the fall didn’t kill them, they’d drown.

  A longshoreman cupped his hands to his mouth. “Throw me the rope.”

  If I missed we were screwed, and I didn’t trust my arm. “Get on the forklift; I’ll hand it to you.”

  He looked as if he’d rather shoot out his eyes with a nail gun. I crawled forward, grabbed the machinery of the forklift, and climbed onto it, pulling myself off the tailgate.

  With the squeal of aluminum and the clatter of junk and hardware and people, the tine sliced another six inches. Georgie shrieked. Dad lost his grip, fell between the seats, and landed next to her. The impact tore loose more of the seal around the windshield. Slowly it began coming unglued. An inch, two inches, a foot.

  Jesse held out his arm. “Phil.”

  Dad grabbed his wrist. The break in the seal accelerated and began running around the edge of the frame like a lit fuse. Jesse tried to pull Dad up but the rip tore around in a circle, the seal came completely unstuck, and the windshield popped out. Dad and Georgie plunged through.

  I was too horrified to think anything beyond Hold on. I slung the rope around my waist, locked an arm around a spar on the forklift, and braced myself. And abruptly everything stopped.

  Hanging in midair, bound by the slim strength of the knot Jesse had tied, Georgie spun in open space below the truck. Above her, feet dangling, Dad hung onto Jesse’s wrists. Jesse was wedged against the steering column with his arms and head hanging out.

  Dockworkers shouted, climbed onto the forklift, and edged toward me. There shouldn’t have been slack in my end of the rope. I reeled it in and felt it catch.

  “The rope’s caught on something in the cab,” I said.

  Jesse looked. “Gearshift. Shit.”

  Georgie cried, “Don’t let me fall; please don’t let me fall.”

  Dad called down to her, “Grab my leg. Climb.”

  She spun in a circle and hooked her hands around his ankles like a monkey, feet wheeling. He looked up at Jesse. “Hold on. Don’t let go for anything.”

  “I won’t.”

  Jesse’s voice was harsh with exertion, his hands white from the strain of holding Georgie’s extra weight. Christ, he wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer, and he couldn’t pull with his legs. I whipped the rope and yanked on it, but it wouldn’t budge. With another groan from the truck, Georgie slipped down past Dad’s feet again, squealing.

  “Jesse, you have to free the rope,” Dad said.

  He let go of Jesse’s right wrist and grabbed his left arm with both hands. Jesse reached back inside the cab and tugged on the rope. I heard him fighting for breath, desperate with the effort.

  “I need two hands to free it. Phil, you have to grab hold of something.”

  Hell, this wasn’t going to work. “I’m coming. I’ll get it.”

  “Don’t do that,” Jesse said.

  “No,” Dad shouted. “Any more weight and it’ll collapse.”

  Throat dry, I stayed put and looked around for a pole, a chain, some other tool we could use to reach them.

  A longshoreman climbed on the forklift. “Give me the end of the rope, I’ll tie it off. You stay here and belay.”

  I reeled it out to him. “Get another forklift to brace the truck.”

  I heard Jesse. “Phil, grab the frame of the windshield.”

  “I can’t,” Dad said.

  Jesse’s voice rose. “Hang on, you son of a bitch. You have to walk Evan down the aisle on Saturday.”

  “Don’t think Saturday’s gonna work,” Dad said.

  Whatever reserves of horror I still retained now emptied. “Hang on, Dad. Don’t give up.”

  He looked at me, and his eyes filled with resolve. I hooked my arm tightly around th
e spars of the forklift and pulled on the rope, getting ready to take the weight when Jesse freed it. The creak of the truck shifted up to an alarming pitch. Glancing at the dock, I watched the longshoreman run toward a cleat where he planned to tie down the rope.

  Dad said, “Jesse, there’s only one way to do this.”

  Jesse shouted, “No. Grab hold.”

  “Come on,” Dad said.

  Jesse’s voice went hollow with effort. “Phil, I can’t.”

  But he was the only one who could—he had the strongest grip; he could lift two hundred pounds with one hand. I yelled, “Blackburn, damn it, you can do it.”

  “Jesse, you can,” Dad said calmly. “Let go of me.”

  My head whipped around. Dad had deliberately released his grip from Jesse’s wrist. The only thing holding him up was Jesse’s refusal to let go.

  “The truck won’t hold with my weight. If you hang onto me, we all go down.”

  All the blood fled from my head, from my heart, from my soul. “Dad, no. Jesse, hang onto him.”

  Jesse’s voice was almost gone with the strain. “Phil, you wouldn’t survive. If the fall didn’t kill you, the truck coming down on you would.”

  Dad said, “If the truck goes with the rope caught, it’ll pull Evan over. It’s me or it’s all of us.”

  My pulse thundered in my ears. “Dad, no. I can hang on. They’re tying down the rope. We’ll find a way to stabilize the pickup. Jesus Christ, Jesse, hold him.”

  “Phil, I won’t do it,” Jesse said.

  “Hang onto me and they’ll die,” Dad said. “Let go. Free the rope and pull Georgie up.”

  “Don’t!” I yelled.

  “I know what I’m asking,” Dad said. “Forgive me.”

  Jesse choked, “Damn it, Phil.”

  “Jesse, no,” I shouted.

  “Do it for my daughters. Now, for the love of Christ.”

  His gaze was hard and bright, brimming with a certainty beyond anything I had ever seen. The sky seemed to still.

  And with the slightest motion, the single action that will haunt me for the rest of my life, Jesse let go.

  Dad hung in the air, eyes pinned to Jesse’s, and he fell.

  I know the incoherent screams I heard were my own. I know that Jesse swung the rope free from the gearshift, that two longshoremen grabbed the rope from me, that they pulled in unison and Georgie came up through the window with Jesse hanging on beside her. That as they did, the tine ripped through wall of the cargo bed. It shattered the taillights, caught for a moment on the tailgate, and then the truck’s three thousand pounds broke loose and hammered down on my father in the cold black water of the harbor.

  They had to drag me kicking and screaming off the forklift. Georgie sobbed and clung to Jesse as they hauled them to shore. The police swarmed over us. I fought loose from the longshoremen, crawled to the edge of the dock, and stared down. The police boat circled, shining a spotlight on the water. The surface was already smoothed over. I watched, waiting, begging, and all around me lights flashed, noise abounded, the stars sank invisible beyond the searchlights and vaulting empty heaven. Eventually somebody, maybe even Lily, pulled me back from the edge. Georgie was crumpled against Jesse’s chest. Spent and shattered, they held each other. Jesse stared at the undulating water for an agonizing endless time, until finally, when there was no doubt, he dared to look at me.

  Maybe he prayed. Maybe he spoke. I couldn’t feel, couldn’t see straight, could only know. I climbed to my feet. Somehow I walked toward him, and managed to put out my hand.

  “Georgie,” I said.

  She grabbed my hand, clawed up into my arms, and sobbed against my chest. I held her tight and walked away.

  39

  Might have been will make you insane. I knew that. But I didn’t know that it would make my ears ring and my throat lock. That it would turn the light in the sky too bright, anesthetize my fingers and heart and even time itself, somehow permitting the world to flow forward while I hung suspended, caught on emotional barbed wire.

  The day I was arraigned on charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, Lavonne Marks stood beside me in federal court. When the judge asked, “How do you plead?” my voice didn’t shake. “Not guilty,” I said. Lily Rodriguez sat in the visitors’ gallery, and afterward promised that if the case went to trial, she would testify on my behalf. I appreciated that. I didn’t care about the rest.

  Nicholas Gray wasn’t in attendance, nor Drew Farelli. They had been suspended from the U.S. Attorney’s office. Gray faced indictment for solicitation to kidnapping, Farelli for conspiracy and assault on a law enforcement officer. Disgrace was only a start on what they deserved.

  The warrant seeking my arrest for the murder of Boyd Davies had been dropped. Somebody had convinced the Santa Barbara district attorney to declare me a hostage in the shootout. The men in the shadows were working to bury this debacle. Charges were not going to be brought over the Bangkok death of the ex-hooker named Bliss. Drew Farelli had never called the FBI about the attack—he and Gray had cared only about obtaining the evidence they thought would put my father in prison, and so had let me face Rio’s hit team. However, the Bangkok police closed the case. Shiver’s fingerprints were found in the hotel room, and she took the fall for killing her partner. The people behind Riverbend were slowly ensuring that everything connected with the operation would sink out of sight.

  Given that, Lavonne felt confident that I could bargain my way down to a misdemeanor plea. I wouldn’t go to jail. My law license was going to be suspended, but so what? What mattered anymore?

  The gold blaze of anger, the ceaseless roll of anguish, the finality of death. The way the world went on behind a screen, a dazzling, oblivious swirl of lives and cares and laughter, paying no attention. Things should stop. The planet should have come to a halt in silent observance. My brother, Brian, understood that. My mother, Angie, seemed to understand that, if only on my behalf. They would bring me into their embrace, and sometimes I would fall, would let go.

  And then I would remember the consequences of letting go.

  What mattered? That with Nicholas Gray exposed and the government eager to smooth things over, Dad’s whistle-blowing was set aside. And so he got a sendoff with full military honors.

  On a spring afternoon in Shawnee, beneath an endless prairie sky, with the wind soft against my face and a sea of bluebonnets spilling down the hillside, I stood with my family and heard the priest’s words. Ashes to ashes. Alpha and omega. Brian looked as dry as iron in his dress blues. My nephew, Luke, squirmed against me, sad and tired in his jacket and tie. Georgie was silent and drawn. My mother seemed faraway and angry, as though she had expected this all along, all her life, and wasn’t about to forgive Dad for it.

  In the flag that draped the coffin, I saw Dad’s life. For a moment that vision forced away the rest, the sight of him pulled from the harbor, the irrevocable stillness of his hand when I took it, the sound of my own sobs, the comprehension that I had failed and was forever powerless to undo this. My breathing snagged. Two sailors removed the flag and folded it. Because Mom was his ex-wife, they gave it to me. I pressed it to my chest and bent my head low.

  Brian put an arm around my shoulder. As he drew me close, I heard the thunder of jet engines. The sound sank into my bones, and from out of the sun a formation of F/A- 18s raked the sky above us. Dad had been NAVAIR, and Brian’s squadron was giving him this honor. When they swept near, a single fighter curved skyward. The other jets roared overhead in the missing-man formation, but I watched the lone fighter arc upward.

  I wondered where Dad was, out beyond never. I wondered about his choices. About his call to action, and how it had split my world in two. About the price he exacted from the man I had loved so fiercely.

  The jet soared higher, the sun flashing off its wings, until the light forced me to shut my eyes. When I looked again, it was gone.

  What mattered? Georgie.

  Her father was deceased. He
r mother was missing. As much as I tried, I could uncover no information about what happened to Jax on that London street after she told me to take her girl and run. Perhaps she was dead. Perhaps she was in custody. I simply didn’t know. In the meantime, Brian and I were Georgie’s closest known relatives, and she was staying with me while Lavonne arranged for me to assume guardianship. She spent her days wary and blank behind a wall of confusion, watching Nickelodeon and attending the school up the street, trying to feel her way into this exploded world. It was more than I could manage myself.

  As I sat on my porch in the spring twilight one evening, two stars hung on the western horizon, white fire against the cobalt sky. Circling, entwined, hundreds of million miles apart and destined never to come together, except in the well of eternity, which eats us all. Georgie came out and dropped down at my side. I put an arm around her shoulder and watched the night come on.

  It was a thundery May morning, strange weather, when a burst of rain brought me out of bed to grab the morning paper from the front porch. When I opened the door I saw the envelope sitting on top of the News-Press. My hands went cold.

  I stood vacantly on the porch, getting soaked. After a minute I brought the envelope in, set it on my kitchen table, and stared at it.

  I knew the handwriting. It was the hand of the man who had slipped a diamond ring on my finger, who had held me and pledged himself to me and ended my father’s life. I ran my fingers over the ink, smeared with rain. I wondered how long it had been sitting there. Wondered if he was waiting outside for me. Wondered if he was asking me to write, to call, to talk to him. To tell him I hate him. I love him. I can’t love him. To take a step, any step. Forward, backward, into a chasm, into the future. I wondered what the hell he could possibly say. How could he attempt to unravel the chaos, when my own heart was so tangled? My hand closed around the envelope. My eyes were stinging. I crumpled it and grabbed it with both hands, ready to tear it in half.

  I stopped and tilted my head back.

  Life is like a narrow bridge. The important thing is not to be afraid.