League of American Traitors

by Matthew Landis

  “If that said Dan Brown, I was going to freak out,” Sheldon said.

  Jasper went to a computer and pulled up the website listed on the card. “Guys, this is an actual place in Philly.”

  He scrolled to STAFF.

  No Dan Cooper.

  “Your dad made the world’s lamest fake ID,” Sheldon said. “Why would he do that?”

  Jasper took out his phone and dialed the number. It rang three times before somebody picked up. “Yeah, hi. I’m looking for a guy who used to work for you. In the archives.” He put the phone on speaker. “His name was Dan Cooper.”

  “Hold, please.”

  The group listened to boring transfer music.

  “Archives. This is Greg,” said an older guy.

  “Hey, Greg,” said Jasper. “I’m looking for Dan Cooper. Is he available?”

  “Ah. Great.” They could hear some papers being shuffled around. “Let me guess, he came to your house, said he worked for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and looked through your family papers and heirlooms.”

  Lacy gave Jasper a thumbs up.

  “Uh … yeah. Yeah, he did.”

  “Let me get your name and number.”

  “So, Mr. Cooper doesn’t work for you?”

  “No.” Now Greg sounded pissed. “But you’re the third person to call asking for him since I started here last year. Name, please?”

  “Right. Um … Chester. Ton.”

  Sheldon was miming the cut-it-out gesture.

  Jasper hung up.

  “Great work,” Lacy said.

  “So my dad posed as an archivist to look through people’s stuff?” Jasper said. “That’s extremely weird.”

  “Yes it is, Chesterton,” Sheldon said. “Yes. It. Is.”

  ****

  Lacy sent Cyrus a super-encrypted email over the super-encrypted network connection and then they all shuffled off to bed.

  All except Nora.

  Jasper wasn’t following her, not at first. It was more about wanting to apologize without everybody listening; he still couldn’t get that day in the range with Kingsley out of his mind. The coward feeling had never really left.

  On the way to the girls’ wing, he saw her and some of the Civil War kids heading out the front door.

  “Where are they going?” he asked Colton.

  “Kinda got a clubhouse in the chapel.”

  They followed.

  Outside, he saw shadows heading into the tiny chapel across from the rundown cottages. Jasper jogged after the group. The frigid air had blasted him awake.

  Jasper pulled the door open slowly and stepped inside a greeting area lit by some candles sitting off to one side. A deep bass pumped up from a basement stairwell near the front stage where a wooden lectern stood. Nora sat in a pew, hands clenched, head down, muttering.

  “Hey.”

  “Shit.” Nora jumped. “Holy shit Jasper! What the fuck?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Fuck.”

  An office door near the altar swung open and a middle-aged guy with brown hair stepped out.

  “Sorry, Pastor Bob.” Nora’s voice had lost its edge.

  “Doesn’t bother me, but it does … scare … other people.” The guy came over and took Jasper’s hand. “Bob. Services Sunday at nine if you’re up. The door’s always open.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You okay?” he asked Nora.

  She nodded.

  Pastor Bob turned and went back to his office.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Sorry … about scaring you, but also the other day at the range. That’s why I followed you…. I feel awful. I mean, you saved my life and then I just acted like a coward, and it’s kind of been eating me up ever since.”

  Nora sank back into the pew. “Whatever.”

  “I didn’t tell the others what happened with Kingsley. A little—okay half—because I was embarrassed, but mainly because of what you did before. The brownie and everything.”

  He cautiously sat down next to her. They looked at a stained glass image of Jesus on the cross for a while.

  “You come here a lot?” he asked.

  “When I’m not babysitting you.”

  The bass turned into some horrible screaming and guitar shredding. “So you think the poetry book would have knocked him out, if you’d hit him? That thing is massive.”

  “Poets have a lot to say.”

  “I guess.”

  Jasper finally got a good look at the tattoo on Nora’s arm, and then wished he hadn’t. A super creepy girl with deep, black eyes in a dress pointed up at him, mouth wide open.

  “Kingsley’s a prick, huh?” Nora finally said.

  “I’m actually completely afraid of him.”

  “That’s the point. He’s trying to mold you into a killer. Don’t let him.”

  “Sheldon says it’s self-defense.”

  “That little prick might as well be a Libertine. Families like his keep this whole dueling BS going.”

  “I think I saw his brother’s plaque on the wall, though.”

  “Don’t rationalize it,” Nora said. “That’s what the Libertines do—use honor to make murder okay.”

  “I’m just saying it makes sense that Sheldon feels so passionately about it.”

  “Then you’re an idiot, too.”

  She shoved past him and headed to the stairwell. “Don’t ever follow me again.”

  ****

  The Code exam was a beast, mostly because Kingsley leaned on the desk like a gorilla as Jasper took it. He needed a score of at least eighty percent to move on, and he was super ready to get out of these remedial sessions and onto the range with everybody else, mainly because Kingsley had been keeping him almost till dinner lately.

  Jasper got a hundred.

  Kingsley carried a small, metal case into the classroom and undid the latch. He glared at Nora—daring her to say something. She didn’t.

  A cold-steel pistol with a form-fitting grip sat resting in foam. “This here’s the SIG Sauer 226. Nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun. In a duel, it’ll be your best friend.”

  “Is it loaded?”

  “You treat it like it is always.”

  Kingsley named each piece as he took the gun apart, oiled it, then put it back together. “Now you do it.”

  With about a million wrong moves, Jasper took the weapon apart, and then reassembled it. Kingsley yelled when he dropped pieces and cursed when he put components in the wrong way—so he pretty much yelled and cursed the whole time. After an hour, Jasper’s fingers throbbed, but he could field strip the gun and put it back together in under a minute.

  “It appears you can teach a monkey anything,” Kingsley said. He left the room and came back pushing a cart full of gun cases. “They won’t clean themselves. Get to it.”

  Halfway through the cart, Jasper’s fingers cramped and began slipping on the edges of the pistol he was holding. He thought about asking Nora to help, but then imagined her giant book hitting him in the face. A little while later, Kingsley came back to inspect Jasper’s work and found most of it unsatisfactory. Then he made Jasper start all over again.

  Around four in the afternoon, Kingsley finally dismissed Jasper. By then, his fingers were swollen and his eyes ached. Nora’s left leg was bouncing like a jackhammer—it was her nicotine tell. They trudged outside, through a light rain, to the manor house.

  “I was thinking about something,” Jasper said.

  “Were you?”

  “I want to make sure you’re not going claw my eyes out if I say it.”

  “Better not, then.”

  It was hard to tell if she was kidding.

  The rain kept putting her lighter out.

  Jasper decided to take a gamble. “I was thinking that this must suck for you. The range—being there with me. All the kids shooting. Piles of guns.”

  “It’s certainly not my favorite place.”

  Jasper turned and cupped
his hands around her lighter. “Right, but you’re there because Cyrus put you on guard duty, which means it’s my fault.”

  “The whole world isn’t about you, Jasper.”

  The rain picked up. Nora turned down a path that twisted toward a covered amphitheater behind the east Wing. Weeds shot up in the cracks of the stone benches, but at least the stage was dry.

  “Cyrus didn’t make me do anything,” she said when they were out of the rain. “I volunteered.”

  “Why?”

  “Penance.”

  “Is that why you go to the chapel so much?”

  “It’s safer than pills.”

  “Cheaper, too.”

  Nora snorted. She offered him her cigarette. He waved it off.

  “The cemetery guy told me to pray at my dad’s funeral, but instead I just insulted his corpse.”

  “Did your dad deserve it?”

  “Yeah. Actually, I don’t know now. You saw that picture Tuck found. Okay, so my dad drank and neglected me and my mom, but Cyrus says he did it to save me. What am I supposed to do with that information?”

  “Real people aren’t like the ones in movies, you know. They’re not either all bad or all good. Most of us are just trying to get by.”

  “So you think I should forgive him?” Jasper asked.

  “I think you should stop trying to figure out if he was the worst dad ever. Just let him be the person he was, even if that guy was a total bastard.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  Nora took a long drag. “My dad moved us ten times before I came here because he was so paranoid about being found. That’s why my parents got divorced. I hate him for it. But I realize now that he was just doing what he thought was best.”

  The wind changed direction, and rain started blowing onto the stage. Jasper checked his phone and saw twenty texts from Sheldon. Most were cat emojis.

  “Let your blisters air out at night,” Nora said. “Calluses will build up faster that way. And stop repeating the manual barrel check. If the slide lock slips—which it will—you’ll lose a finger.”

  “Thanks. I’ve never held a gun before.”

  “No shit.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  This is it. I can feel it.” Sheldon kicked his legs up for the twentieth wall handstand attempt. “I am Atlas. Bow before me oh balls—”

  His shoulder gave out and he slid down the wall.

  The study room smelled like Cheetos and sweat. Jasper was one sentence away from an aneurysm in his eye. Lacy had stopped trying to hide that she was really texting. Nora was still somehow only halfway through that freaking poetry book. But nobody wanted to leave because they hadn’t found anything meaningful and Cyrus was coming the next day.

  “Maybe he’s up here to deer hunt with Chilly P,” Sheldon said.

  “I just threw up in my mouth,” Lacy said.

  Jasper rubbed his temples. He probably needed to sleep for a week.

  “It smells like boy in here,” Lacy complained.

  Sheldon flexed his muscles. “You’re welcome—”

  Colton burst through the door, one of his brothers or cousins on his heels, and hauled Jasper out without a word. Four more Donelsons surrounded them in the library below and formed a shield around Jasper as they charged down the hallway. Colton shouldered his way into a boiler room near the cafeteria, then raced down a flight of steps to a football-field-sized cement basement. The Donelsons flicked on flashlights and ran them over iron beams, before settling the lights on a small room near the back filled with office supplies. Colton shoved Jasper and Nora in and locked the door behind him.

  “Secure in the shelter office,” Colton said into his walkie.

  “Colton, what the hell!” Nora snapped.

  “Patrol spotted somebody in the woods outside the south wall. They’re chasing him on foot.” Colton pulled a handgun from a belt holster and handed it to Nora.

  “Get that thing out of my face.”

  “I’m askin’ you to help us if we need it.”

  “I will cave in your nose with the handle of that murder weapon if you don’t get it away from me right this second.”

  “Won’t be on my conscience if Jasper goes down.”

  Nora sent Colton flying into the door with a two-handed shove.

  The room pressed in on Jasper as Nora and Colton ripped into each other. He slid to the floor and counted his breaths.

  At two hundred, Colton’s walkie crackled. “All clear.”

  Nora dragged Jasper out of the room. She didn’t let go of his hand until they reached the main floor.

  ****

  Cyrus was waiting in the study room when they got back from the range the next day. While Jasper unloaded documents from the safe, Larkin and Byron put a new lock on the study room door and handed out keys to the research team.

  “Rufus informed me that his men chased the intruder to a campsite before the perpetrator escaped on a four-wheeler,” Cyrus said. “Evidence shows he was there for a good while. Perhaps a few weeks.”

  “Recon.”

  Everybody turned to look at Nora. She’d been doing that more lately—weighing in without being asked. They were all still getting used to it.

  “Perhaps,” said Cyrus. “The Donelsons will double perimeter patrols. Now, what have you found out from James’s papers?”

  Lacy ran down the catalogue of materials and Jasper told Cyrus about the business cards and the fake historical society job. He ended by holding up the mobile, which they’d started hanging from the ceiling fan whenever the safe was open.

  “We divided all the readings up, but so far my dad hasn’t actually said what he was looking for,” Jasper explained.

  “By design, I’m sure. He was a careful man.” Cyrus went into the hall and came back with a backpack. Unzipping it, he took out two brand-new laptops. “These cannot be connected to the Internet; transfer your data here and keep them in the safe when you are not using them.”

  “My network is a vault,” Sheldon said. “Nobody can get in.”

  “I’m not doubting your skill, Mr. Burr. I’m exercising caution.” He looked at Jasper. “A word, if I may?”

  Jasper and Nora followed the Counselor to his car. Cyrus waved Colton and his brother/cousin out of earshot.

  “This morning, I told Instructor Kingsley that an assault on you will be regarded as an assault on Jasper,” Cyrus said to Nora. “I assure you it will not happen again.”

  “It was pretty messed up,” Jasper said.

  “Larkin made sure that Kingsley received the message. But the same is true of the Donelsons. Rufus did not appreciate you laying hands on his son, Ms. Booth.”

  “I warned him,” Nora said.

  “I don’t care. The Donelsons have chosen to aid us out of good will, but they’re still mercenaries. Do not jeopardize that partnership again.”

  “I’m not picking up a weapon,” Nora said. “That was our deal.”

  “And I’ll never ask you to do so. But you will defer to the protections I have put in place. Otherwise, I will hold you personally responsible for any harm that comes to Jasper.”

  The pair watched Cyrus’s taillights disappear down the lane. Nora made chimneystacks with her cigarette. Jasper expected her to claw Colton’s face when he drifted back toward them, but instead she looked straight through the boy and said, “You think you understand, but you don’t. And then, when you do, it’s too late. It’s just too late. Then it’s over, and you want go back to the way things were before, but you can’t. There is no going back.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jasper picked at a blister as he waited for Kingsley to roll in the cart. “I’m his gun boy. That’s what I am.”

  “He’s punishing you for tattling on him,” Nora said. “Shove it in his face by not wincing every five seconds.”

  Kingsley barged in. This time, there was no cart. Just a single, sleek case. “Suppose you’ve had enough of cleaning by now.”

  �
��Yeah.”

  Kingsley placed the case on Jasper’s desk and opened it. He took out a black bandanna and tied it around Jasper’s eyes. “You’ve got twenty seconds to field-strip and reassemble this weapon. Fail three times and you’re back to the carts.”

  “Twenty seconds,” Jasper said.

  “Begin,” Kingsley barked.

  On his first attempt, Jasper’s fingers found the familiar levers and edges quickly enough, but he knocked the barrel off the desk during the reassemble.

  “Looking for this?” Kingsley asked. “Ah right—you can’t see. I forgot.”

  The second try was a total disaster. Jasper didn’t set the takedown lever to the right spot and he almost lost a finger when the rail slammed forward.

  “Got a fresh cart of guns waiting if third times not the charm,” Kingsley muttered.

  Jasper laid his palms flat on the desk and took a deep breath. He saw the gun in his head. He carefully ran through the sequence. It was just mechanics—a metal puzzle.

  “Begin!”

  Jasper’s hands moved on their own. He was on autopilot. There was no thinking. The metal clicked and slid and scraped in perfect rhythm. He reassembled the gun so fast he counted a full five seconds before Kingsley whispered, “Feck me.”

  Jasper undid the bandanna. “I passed?”

  “Barely.” Kingsley packed up the gun. “Suppose you’re ready for the real thing, then.”

  Jasper followed his instructor out of the classroom to the empty range. Nora watched through the clear glass. He waited anxiously in the firing lane for Kingsley to come back with a box of ammunition.

  “This here’s a .357 Sig round, full-metal jacket.” He pushed the round into the magazine and slid the whole thing into an opening inside the handle. Flicking the slide catch lever with his thumb, Kingsley armed the gun by sending the slide forward and chambering the round. “Now, your stance: weak-side leg out in front, strong-side back.” Kingsley demonstrated, and Jasper tried to mimic the body positioning. “Strong arm fully extending the pistol toward your target, weak arm slightly bent with your hand wrapped around the knuckle of your strong hand. Lean forward a bit, knees bent a touch to absorb the recoil.” Kingsley exaggerated the motions, and again Jasper tried to copy his instructor. “Line the front sight post with the rear and aim it at the target. When you’re ready to shoot, slide your finger to the bottom of the trigger and breathe in, out, half-in, hold, and then squeeze.”