The Sins of Lincoln

by Nightly, Alyssa

  “Miss Healy?” said the customer.

  Mav’s eyes locked on a man walking past the bank on the sidewalk, and she followed him until he was just about to disappear from sight. It’s him! Oh my God, it’s him. And I thought it was all my imagination, she thought.

  “Miss Healy? Hello.”

  Mav didn’t hear any of it. The man walking on the sidewalk stopped, turned his head towards her desk and looked right at her. Mav’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes went into a blur, but when she looked again, he was gone.

  “Are you okay?” said the man. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

  “I think I did.” Mav’s heart raced and she was suddenly self conscious that she was blushing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Riggs on the Hunt

  “Well no, it’s not going well at all,” said Lt. Riggs.

  “And why not? I said I wanted this vigilante tracked down. Are you stalling?” replied the captain.

  “Stalling? Are you out of your mind? No, I’m not stalling.”

  “Good. Don’t.”

  “It’s just that I keep hitting brick walls. None of the witnesses at the bar that night had ever seen him before. And apparently he didn’t talk to anyone, not even the bartender.”

  “Oh bullshit. He talked. Did you interview all the women in there?”

  “Every one. Several of them have distinct memories of him.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Rough types, mostly. They said he was eye candy, but with a dark side. They wanted to get to know him better, a lot better, if you know what I mean.”

  “And what about fingerprints? You know good and well he left prints all over that place.”

  Riggs looked dejected. “He did.”

  “And? What’s the problem? Did you run the prints?”

  “Of course I ran the prints. What do you think I am, an idiot?”

  “Watch it, jackass.”

  “Yes, I ran the prints, but they came back a blank.”

  “No hit?”

  “Oh, there was a hit on them alright. But they belong to a dead guy.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that our vigilante, the hero to women everywhere, is a ghost. Not literally, of course. These are definitely his fingerprints, but the identity tied to the fingerprints belong to a William Borders, deceased. Died two years ago this December, Chicago, Illinois, in a car accident.”

  “Damn. You mean to tell me he’s stolen someone’s identity? But...even if he did steal an identity, stolen identities aren’t tied to fingerprints. A stolen identity is tied to a social security number, then they get the credit cards, write a bunch of bad checks, take out a big fat loan and all that. There’s no way his fingerprints would be changed in the system.”

  “Unless he’s a spook.”

  “A spy? Bullshit.” The police captain was incredulous.

  “Damn right. We’re talking ex-military, someone trained in assassinations. Covert ops, CIA, or something similar. Did you see how he annihilated those bikers? Both you know and I know that only a government would have access to change a person’s fingerprints in the National Computer Information System. Whoever he is, he’s highly trained. That much was obvious on the surveillance tapes. He’s someone who’s done this before, many times I’d say.”

  “Done what? Saved a woman from being attacked?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. Killing. He’s no virgin when it comes to killing people. He’s done it many times.”

  “And you’re telling me that some ex-assassin para military guy, who kills for a living, has also got a soft spot in his heart for women? You’re so full of shit.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. And that’s exactly what I put in my report to the Bureau.”

  “You sent a request for a psychological profile to the FBI? And you told them he likely had a heart for women’s rights? You must be insane.”

  Riggs walked out but turned back once at the door. “And the FBI told me they’ve been looking for him for a long time. He’s no ghost. He’s real.” Riggs knew he had won the argument over his boss, but wondered if that was such a good idea.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rage

  Mav lunged out of bed drenched in sweat and gasping. Her breathing was out of control and her heart rate erratic. She screamed into the tears that poured down her face. The nightmare; it was the nightmare. It was all so terrible. In the dream Mav had been catapulted back into that dark, horrible night when all the awful happened. The Lincoln Killers bike gang had nearly killed her that night. She easily could have died from the concussion. But that was something she didn’t remember. It was before they’d smashed her on the head with a bottle of Jim Beam that they had choked her unconscious.

  She couldn’t breathe. The crushing forearm wrapped around her neck wrenched tighter and tighter, pinching off the blood supply to her brain, and her windpipe. Now, in her own bedroom, she gasped for air and gripped at her throat. “The unmerciful bastards,” she yelled. “I swear. I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill them all.” The tears roared out.

  She thought back to those early days in college when she realized that she no longer knew just how far she’d go in a given situation. But this time, instead of not knowing how far she’d go for wild sex with a guy, this time she didn’t know how far she’d go to get revenge. It was the only way, she’d convinced herself. If they’re all dead, the demons that come in my nightmares will stop. They’ll stop and never come back. At least, that was the lie she told herself.

  In college, things were so much more straightforward. At that time her life was a synchronized series of planned movements, each with an intended outcome. She’d wake up early enough to get to class on time, study for several hours in the afternoon, then she’d go out and do a little bit of what Mav called ‘scouting.’ It wasn’t a mission to locate the night’s prey, the best looking set of hardened male abs she could find. Finding that was easy. Instead, what Mav would look for in those days was the next location where the act would occur. It wasn’t just about sexual gratification in bed with some hot guy. Mav wanted danger, and the more danger, the better the sex. To her, the location was the one variable that she could control. She favored places that were dangerously close to where people might walk by. She wanted to hear their footsteps coming, just as she reached climax. It was a slippery slope and a game that she played all too well. Convincing the ‘torso-full-of-biceps’ to get naked in that spot was often another, more challenging matter.

  It was common for Mav to pick out a perfect location for her sexual escapade to commence; somewhere outside in the dark. Sometimes it was as simple as having a guy go down on her as they lay just feet away from a walking path, obscured only by a few shrubs. The thrill of the sex was intensified knowing that they could be caught at any moment. And, every once in a while, Mav did get caught. Once, she was completely naked and on top of a guy just next to such a walking path. She’d gotten lost in her own world, focusing only on the intense rapture happening between her legs when she suddenly arched her back straight up and screamed into the ecstasy. Standing four feet away was a campus security officer, who, in all truth, looked quite startled. Once he pried his eyes off of Mav’s near-perfect chest, he walked away realizing he didn’t want to be the one to spoil such a good time.

  Now that all the awful happened, Mav felt robbed of such pleasures. The danger was no longer a turn-on and Mav didn’t know how to start fresh. She didn’t know how she’d really feel if she found a guy she cared about. And, she didn’t know if she’d ever go back to truly feeling free during sex. She’d always be self conscious, she’d always feel threatened, and she’d never be able to enjoy sex again without thinking about all the awful.

  Mav leaned into her pillow and cried until exhaustion took it’s final toll and she drifted off into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Him

  Brock Paladin had spent so much time staying
‘under the radar’ that he no longer remembered what it meant to be ‘on the grid.’ It was twelve years prior when he’d first been recruited by the CIA. He was finishing his undergraduate degree in forensic criminology at the University of Virginia when a man approached him. Perhaps it was the degree, perhaps it was the fact that Brock had scored off the charts on the GMAT exam, or perhaps it was something in his background that first alerted the CIA recruiter to seek Brock out. Or, perhaps it was the free-thinking loner personality that would make for a perfect covert operative. At any rate, Brock Paladin was literally hunted down by the Company, as the CIA is euphemistically known, and brought into the fold.

  The training was long and intense. Brock already had extensive experience in martial arts during his teenage years, and that only accelerated his release into the field, into active duty.

  Brock’s upbringing had been horrific. His father was a raging alcoholic. He would come home drunk and beat Brock’s mother. Brock spent most of his teenage years provoking his father so that he’d come after him and not his mom. Even with the martial arts training, the results were terrible. Brock wound up in the hospital more than once himself.

  “You’re ready now,” his trainer had said. “Ready for your first assignment.”

  “No women,” said Brock in a steady tone.

  “What?”

  “I’ll serve my country. If assassination is what the country requires, that’s what it will get. But no women. I’ll not harm a woman.”

  “You’ll do what you’re ordered to do.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  It was on old school pissing match and Brock would not back down. Growing up, watching his mother suffer, formed a kind of bond inside of him—a kindred understanding between himself and certain women. They were the vulnerable, the at-risk, the ones you see on the news that have been attacked or abused. Brock couldn’t tolerate it. Over the years, he’d extracted revenge on men who deserved it. In fact, he’d become distracted in his acts of protecting women so many times that he eventually was pulled from active service. The sideshows of protecting some woman were compromising the main missions. After that, he’d gone to work with a splinter group of private contractor operatives that different governments would hire from time to time. As long as the morals were right, and the money was big, Brock was there.

  He’d accumulated enough cash to never really have to worry about it ever again, and that’s when he decided to go completely off-radar. He’d assume yet another identity, and just disappear. He was done with killing for God and country, and now for money. And, he thought he was done with killing for good. But that was before he pulled his Harley Davidson Fatboy onto the dirt lot of a shithole bar called Chopper Town, and heard screams from the back room.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Bank

  The next morning, Mav leaned against the counter in the bank’s break room, sipping a cup of average coffee.

  “Girl, where are you?” said Kiki, one of the tellers, as she walked in. “You sure aren’t here. You look like you’re off in your own world over there.”

  Mav looked up. “What? Oh, no, sorry. Yeah, I’m just daydreaming I guess.”

  Kiki grinned. “Uh huh. Daydreaming about that man again.”

  “Oh stop,” Mav said in a playful tone.

  “Now tell me about him again? He sounds too good to be true. Let me see if I remember what you said. Dark wavy hair, dreamy blue eyes, shoulders out to here, a thin waist, and an ass that is made of steel.”

  Mav burst out laughing. “Stop it. Kiki, you’re too much.”

  “Why do you do this to yourself, child? You know he’s not real. You said so yourself, like it was something out of a dream.”

  “He’s real alright.”

  “Get out.”

  “I saw him.”

  “I know, Mav, I know. You said you saw him in the hospital, but no one else did. You saw his face when he saved you, but no one else did. What now? Did he come to visit you in your bedroom last night?” Kiki giggled like a ten year old girl.

  “No, I saw him. I saw him yesterday. Right outside the window. He walked by and he stopped and looked in. Looked right at me. My heart didn’t just skip a beat, it stopped completely.”

  “Oooooh, child. You’ve got to get control of that imagination of yours.”

  “Kiki, no, he’s real. I don’t think I let myself believe that until yesterday though. I mean, I know a real man saved me that night. But all my memories of someone visiting me late at night in the hospital, he was so, so beautiful and kind. Like a protector, you know? It just seemed too good to be true that he could be real.” Mav stared off into the corner of the room, lost in her own world, then her tone changed. “A protector. A woman shouldn’t need a protector. Sometimes I get so angry, I want to drive over there and kill those sons of bitches.”

  “Good lord, child. Hello in there,” laughed Kiki, in a veiled attempt to distract Mav out of her state of anger. “Well, okay, so lets say he’s real. What now? How are you going to meet him. What are you going to say to him? Are you going to just jump his bones and get it going? Or what?”

  “It’s not all about getting a man in bed, Kiki.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Well, anyway, I can’t stop thinking about him. I mean, he’s real, Kiki, he’s real. And oh my God, he’s so, so...I don’t know. He means so much to me, and I don’t even know him. I don’t even know his name.”

  “That detective that hangs around here seems to know something, that’s for sure. What are you going to do about that? You know the police are looking for him. You need to get over him, you hear me? Mavery Healy, girl, you look at me. How you going to get over him?”

  Mav slid her head back and cast Kiki a sultry grin. “I’m not. I’m going to get under him.”

  They both knew she was making a joke, but nonetheless, the two erupted into laughter loud enough to cause others in the quiet office to hear.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Compadre

  Brock’s experience told him it was a danger to hang around town, but he just couldn’t bring himself to leave. Cops were everywhere; the whole incident at the biker bar had gotten out of hand, and now, the cops wanted an arrest. “How the hell can they care that I killed those assholes? The girl needed help and I helped her.” Seeing that poor girl attacked brought up repressed feelings that he’d thought were long buried. But what scared him more was the unexpected knock on the door. Brock jumped up and yanked a Glock from his waistline, but otherwise stayed as quiet as possible.

  Who the hell is that?, he thought. No one even knows where I live, much less who the hell I am.

  “Come on, compadre,” said a raspy, guttural voice from behind the door. “I know you’re in there. Open the damn door and get me a beer already.”

  “Will?” said Brock as he peered out the peephole.

  “Yes, you big baby. Now put away that Glock I know you’re holding and open the door.”

  When the door opened, Brock smiled. “Holy shit, Will. Damn, I never thought I’d see you this far east. Come on in.”

  The two men embraced and gave each other a prototypical male chuck on the back.

  “Damn,” said Will. “It’s been a long time.”

  “You look like shit. Look at you. Five days of gray stubble. Your hair all long and hanging down the sides of your head. Hell, the last time we worked together you had shaved your head. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice all the gray.”

  “Gray, huh? And you, you young piss-ant. Look at you. What the hell is this? All leathered up? You look like a biker all right. Is this what you always wanted to be? A biker? And you’re telling me my hair is long? Hell, you look like a rock star from the ‘80s.”

  “Oh shut up. Let me get you a beer. Your favorite.”

  “Shit, I’ll bet it’s a Pabst Blue Ribbon. Is that all you ever drink? Hey, you remember that shithole in Bangkok, and we got in that fight with that little dude with the green shiny suit
on?”

  “Remember it? We were so drunk we nearly got our ass kicked by that little pipsqueak.”

  Brock handed Will a beer.

  Will popped it open and held the can high in the air. “To good friends.”

  “The best.”

  “I come all the way across the country to see you and all you have to offer me is a warm PBR. Man, times haven’t changed that much.”

  Brock stood up. “How the hell did you find me, anyway? Scared the shit out of me when you knocked on the door. No one knows I’m here. I was about to go all postal on your ass.”

  Will had always been a mentor to Brock, and that role was not about to end. “Now what would you have to be so scared about with someone knocking on your door? Hmm, compadre?”

  Brock looked down and exhaled. His lack of words and stoic face communicated volumes.

  Will continued. “Got yourself in deep kimchi now, haven’t you?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “How do I know? Man, it’s all over the news, even out on the beaches in sunny California, where I’d rather be right now, by the way.”

  “Is that where you’ve been keeping yourself these days?”

  “Warm sun, warm girls. What the hell’s not to love about that place. But,” Will took a long swig of beer, “when I saw the news footage from that biker bar, I knew it was you. They keep playing a tiny clip of the surveillance tape from that fight you were in. Didn’t take me a second to recognize you.”

  “But my face is hardly visible.”

  “It’s your style, compadre. The way you move. Hell, I taught you half that shit as it is. Now, I just have one question for you, why the hell are you still in this crappy little town? Man, you should have blown clear of this place the moment that fight was over.”

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave.”

  Will looked at Brock out of the side of his eye, like one who’s just watched a puppy shat on the rug. “I can read you like a book, compadre. You’re still carrying that around with you, aren’t you? Dammit. I thought you were through with all that.”