The Shadow Constant

by AJ Scudiere

  “You didn’t deliver it?” His eyes widened for a moment then flitted around the room, landing on one spot then another. Maybe he was rethinking his position.

  “Of course we did. We wanted to see what would happen. But nothing has happened, has it?” She shook her head, the movement exaggerated so she could read the clock out of the corner of her eye, 4:37. “It’s late. Are your friends overdue? Or did they come, then decide to leave you? Because even the dogs quieted down.” He wouldn’t be able to argue that. “Did they plant a bomb or something? Because that would kill you, too.”

  The words tumbled free, the speaking of them being the first time she’d considered a bomb, really considered that this could easily get bigger than her cat and mouse with the fake cop tied in front of her. They had been sending spies in ones and twos. Even the kidnapping was an attempt to get information. But killing them? Killing them all?

  There was no good reason not to blow them all up.

  So she shifted tactics. “If you want to negotiate release, we’ll need something in exchange and something that shows you won’t come back.” And she’d need to give them all a reason not to just take out the whole lot of them.

  35

  Dining Room, Hazelton House

  Evan looked up from the table.

  Kayla was coming down the steps, her eyes roving the scene, checking the table person by person. Reenie and Ivy had wandered down a while ago. Reggie was staying out of sight of the man upstairs.

  Evan had initially been distrustful of Standish. But then he was distrustful of most of the people in Kayla’s life at first. It had been hard on him to watch out for his sister from a distance these past several years. But he’d gotten his own life, met Reenie, and fallen in love. Now he was back to find that it was just as hard to protect Kayla from up close.

  What was easier was sharing it and realizing that Kayla had grown up. She was no longer his younger sister who got ostracized in school for a combination of factors ranging from poor social skills, to straight up strangeness to keen intelligence. What he saw now, through this better lens, was that she was really like any other younger sister. He’d watched out for her, and still did—still fielded and vetted the people in her life—but as adults it had become a give and take. What Kayla added—strong business sense, organization, moral support—was just as much as he did.

  So maybe they didn’t have the same breakdown as normal brother/sister pairs did, so what? And while Kayla had given not only her savings and some brilliant business plans to Hazelton House, she’d also designed the device that was threatening to bring death like a tsunami.

  Just another day in the Reeves family, he thought.

  Kayla’s words surprised him. “He’s asking to negotiate his release.”

  “What?” Reenie jerked up from the paperwork she was typing out for Reggie, clearly shocked.

  Nodding dejectedly, Kayla sat down hard. “I then asked if his people were going to just blow us all to hell, and he implied that wasn’t an impossibility.”

  Reggie smiled at her.

  To anyone else, that would be taken the wrong way. Maybe the old man had a touch of the Aspergers himself. But Reggie’s voice was soft and soothing. “We’ve been working on that.”

  Evan chimed in. “I had the same thought earlier and didn’t want to worry everyone. But when Reggie showed up and we had to stay down here, we started planning. Reenie’s typing up agreements and plans and emailing Marcus as we go.”

  “Will email be enough?” His sister wasn’t as concerned with stopping a bomb as she was with making sure the bomb didn’t shut down the machine.

  So once he’d taken Curie and made a few passes around the outside of the building, he’d felt a little better. He’d failed to locate anything he recognized as a bomb. While he knew it wouldn’t look like Wile E Coyote’s bundle of red dynamite, he wasn’t exactly sure what it would look like. Still, he didn’t find anything bomb-like. Then he went around again, looking for places the ground had been disturbed, checking extra close around the machine. Once he’d examined everything he could, he gave up, came back in and ran his doomsday scenario by Reggie.

  Evan passed their progress on to Kayla. “Reggie has a password with Marcus that will make the email a legal document in his absence.”

  Kayla perked up, looking from Evan to Reggie. “You can do that? That’s really cool. So what are you setting up?”

  Evan took her hand before he spoke. Even though he knew he didn’t need to soften things for her, he did anyway. “Wide, public release of the machine in the event of our deaths. Something big, something they won’t be able to completely clean up or shut down.”

  Nodding, Kayla looked to Reenie, then finally to Ivy. Ivy seemed to have been waiting for acknowledgment, but without any rancor. “We’re all good with that.”

  Reenie nodded back at her. “I’m writing it up. It’s not the way we wanted to release the machine, but it makes things happen if no one here is left to do it. And by ensuring that, their position becomes better if we stay alive.”

  Squeezing her hand again, Evan got her attention. Then he pointed at Reggie. “Standish here is putting a large chunk of his money in trust. In the event of our deaths, that trust will reward people handsomely for putting as many Whitney Devices out there as possible.”

  He watched as his sister jumped up and ran around the table, a kid at the best birthday ever. All because of a death clause. Just another day in the Reeves family.

  She hugged Reggie and the old man smiled as he hugged her back. “I figure we ought to fund the trust even if we live. Let’s go big.”

  She squeezed him again and stood up straight. “So do we go tell them about the contingency plan or negotiate prisoner release first?”

  Reenie’s eyes darted back and forth and she looked at Kayla like drugs were a major part of the equation. “Um. I vote we save our own asses first.”

  They came to an agreement about wording. Reenie printed it out, and the four of them left Reggie in the kitchen with the dogs. Reenie opted to read, speaking awkwardly to the corner of the house. “I’m here to inform you that as of fifteen minutes ago, legal and binding documents have been filed. Each of us, upon our death or disappearance, will have all our worldly goods converted to cash and . . .”

  Evan smiled, Reenie had gotten rolling. His future wife telling someone high up in a nasty organization just how and just how badly they were going to get screwed if anything happened to any of them. He loved her more than yesterday. Less than tomorrow.

  While her voice kept going in severe monotones, she turned and offered him a small smile. He wondered if they could hear a bit of that grin on the other end of the line.

  In just a few minutes, she finished, and they all stood silently, looking at the small bump on the siding as though it would suddenly speak back, offer instructions or countermands. But communication was one way and one way only. With a shrug, Reenie headed back inside, the rest of them trailing.

  Reggie greeted them with a questioning look.

  Evan shrugged, then turned to Kayla, “Shall we go negotiate prisoner release?”

  Kayla lowered her voice. “He’s been sitting up there for a while, stewing. Which I think is good. I told him he had to trade us something for his release and he has to prove to us in some way that he won’t be back. . . . And he thinks it’s almost 5 a.m.”

  Reenie frowned and pulled out her cell phone. “But it’s only just after two.”

  Kayla smiled. “I know.”

      

  They clustered there, at the edge of the doorway, Kayla looking over their prisoner.

  He either was actually still tied or else he was good enough to make replacement knots look exactly like the ones she had bound him with. If it was the second case, she figured he deserved to escape.

  Deciding he wasn’t much of a problem, she stepped further into the room, Reenie and Ivy spilling in behind her. The four of them naturally lined up like
a roadblock. If this guy was going out the door he was going through at least one of them.

  “You have something for us?” Kayla asked.

  His eyes went to the clock, again telling Kayla she’d played that well. The only thing he’d asked about was the time. So she’d reasoned time was important to him and if she messed his up, she might get something from him. She hoped the next few minutes would yield something valuable.

  “Yes. I’m ready to negotiate.”

  36

  Second Floor Hall, Hazelton House

  Kayla laughed. “One name for one knot undone is not a negotiation.”

  His face remained impassive. “You get four names or four pieces of information.”

  “No, I don’t. I get one.” She frowned at him. “You only need one knot undone to get out. You give me four. Then I’ll release you.”

  They went back and forth, finally agreeing to Kayla’s demand. He wanted out; they didn’t want to keep him. He saw the wisdom in trading information on people who had screwed him over in exchange for an early escape.

  He gave them three names, one associated with botched inspections and cleanup in the Gulf spill. He also gave an account number that had incoming payments traceable to accounts linked to Big Oil. Then he looked them in the eye. “Chavez Mahoney hired me to hit you. That’s free. Because he’s ditched me here.”

  “Alias?” Reenie asked even as her fingers flew over her keyboard, checking his intel for any accuracy.

  Ivy snorted. “Chavez Mahoney?”

  “Now release me.” He demanded, tugging hard at the straps, moving the cinderblocks a bit, showing that he could.

  “What’s your name?” Kayla countered.

  “I was ordered to gather intel, and to take out any dog or person in my way. I’ll still carry it out, if you fail to either release me or kill me within the next sixty seconds.”

  Kayla was glad for Reggie’s last will. Marcus had already e-filed it. It wouldn’t post with the county yet, but it would register with a recorded drop in the middle of the night.

  Kayla nodded. “It was a code right? Shangri-la?”

  “Doesn’t matter. If I missed my check-in, they were supposed to come for me. Fifty seconds.” He held his bound hands up as far as he could.

  “What was the time frame?” She tilted her head, hoping she didn’t sound like she really cared.

  “Before 4 a.m.”

  Her heart started to race. “And what was going to happen?”

  “Break me out. Take out the dogs. Find me, preferably not my body. Twenty five seconds.”

  Evan looked at her, “2 a.m.?”

  “Yeah.” Her eyes stung, and before she knew what she was doing she was pulling her gun out. She swung suddenly toward him. “Would they just leave you? Or blow the place with you in it?”

  A shrug was his only answer, and Kayla pushed the rest of them out of the room. She drew her gun, and aiming it at him, used her other hand to release one of his wrists. Then she backed out of the room, gun still on him.

  “Where are you going?” The man hollered after them from his spot on the floor.

  “To clean up. It’s nearly 2:30.” But as she started down the staircase, Kayla heard noises from the room behind them. It took less than a second to figure out the man was already partway out of his bonds.

      

  Evan saw Reggie pop up out of his seat from over Kayla’s shoulder. The old man didn’t ask any questions, just reached down to remove a hefty looking gun from an ankle holster and joined the party.

  When Evan made it to the bottom of the staircase, he told Reggie, “There’s a 4 a.m. deadline.”

  One brief look at his watch had Reggie sucking in his breath. “Not long.”

  Kayla looked at all four of them, “If I were them, I’d take the machine and the computers.”

  “Shit.” It was a sweet voice. Reenie hugged her computer tighter to her, then considered a spot to hide it.

  With a flick of his head, Evan signaled Ivy, who understood and immediately followed Reenie. Ivy’s gun stayed poised in her hands and Evan hoped it was enough.

  Immediately, his attention was pulled back to Kayla, who was already out the back door, Reggie following her because somebody ought to.

  Evan began stalking the perimeter from the inside of the house. He heard Reenie and Ivy arrive at the base of the stairs then begin riffling through things on the table, but he didn’t go check. He had to trust them to take care of themselves.

  Cautiously, he checked out each window, carefully scanning the horizon, breathing low as though that would make any sounds come clearer. He was rounding the front corner when he heard Kayla and Reggie come inside, snippets of their conversation floating to his straining ears. For a moment he wished they lived in a normal house, not a 200 year-old mansion that came stocked with bloody clothes, handwritten confessions, and dangerous schematics hidden in the walls and under the stones.

  As he moved to the next window, he realized that this was not the first time the machine had brought madmen to the doorstep of this house. It wasn’t even the second time. But it had to be the last time.

  He heard loud thumps from the back and slips of words in Kayla’s voice saying something about removing gears. Footsteps told him that the others had split up and were checking the rest of the house, hopefully scanning the dark horizon in all directions as they went. Each reported that all was quiet.

  At least the ground floor was. Upstairs, thumping told him the fake cop had ceased to care about the threat to his person if he ruined the hard wood floor.

  As they stood there, all of them looking at each other, each with guns drawn, the thumping stopped. A moment later they heard the French doors open and the sounds of the man leaving from the second-story balcony were both impressive and unmistakable.

  Kayla’s mouth quirked. “I really thought I tied him better than that. At least he’s got to be starving, that protein shake wasn’t worth much.”

  They stayed there, guns drawn, all five of them in a cluster in the middle of the old house, until Evan realized the folly in that. “This is a good way to put Reggie’s last will into action, guys. Let’s split up.”

      

  All quiet on the western front, Evan thought.

  He and Reenie had slunk softly across the back to the Overseer’s House. Well, as quietly as they could with two large and sometimes snuffling dogs in tow.

  They periodically checked the front lawn through the windows in the smaller home, then the side windows that faced away from Hazelton House. Reenie paced nervously.

  He wanted to put his arms around her, but he wouldn’t do anything that didn’t leave his hands completely free—not as 3 a.m. rapidly approached.

  She sighed, not in exasperation or confusion, but in bone-weary resignation. “When will this end?”

  He could only shake his head. “I truly don’t know.”

  All his life, he’d felt his purpose was to deal with the things that came at him. Life happened to him. Aside from his work—which he honestly partially picked because of the ability to follow Kayla around if need be—the only thing in his life he felt he’d actually chosen had been Reenie. And even that hadn’t been easy. He’d held onto that ring for a long time, knowing what he wanted but not knowing if it was the right thing to do. He didn’t want to give Reenie a future that slowly wore them down until there was nothing left. And that’s all he’d been able to see when he first put the two women together and watched their oil-and-water dance.

  But they had surprised him. In spite of all the craziness, Kayla only had one episode when she’d come close to shutting down. She’d been kidnapped for Christ’s sake and she’d come through just fine. She was more open about saying what she was feeling, and she’d learned to better interpret people while they’d been apart. When he thought about it, he realized she’d been calling him less frequently these past few years, leaning on him less often than usual. And he had taken
more control of his own life, gone out more, been interrupted less. He’d found Reenie.

  She held the gun clasped in her hands, her engagement ring winking at him. He was pretty sure she polished it every day. She dug in the dirt, she clasped a gun, she took notes for a last will and testament and she loved him enough to find ways to not only get along but actually become friends with his strange sister.

  So what if she shouldn’t be allowed near a credit card or an account ledger?

  Reenie kept pacing, seemingly unaware of the turn of his thoughts. She was wearing him out just from watching, so he went over to the old wingback chair and sat down.

  He didn’t know how long he should expect to wait. Their prisoner—held in place more by their watchful eyes than by their jury-rigged containment system—had fled. Because of that, the information well had run dry.

  He looked at his phone; they were due for another checkin in five more minutes. The time dragged, his system tired but on an odd buzzing alert. Reenie and the dogs all wandered nervously, but Evan couldn’t tell if the dogs had anything to be edgy about besides Reenie.

  His brain was fading, his breaths deepening, and his eyes starting to drift close when it sounded like his world exploded.

  37

  The Overseer’s House

  It took his brain a moment to register the pandemonium that he heard. It wasn’t so much an explosion as a series of them. Gunshots.

  From the back of the buildings. At the main house?

  He heard glass breaking in the distance. The dogs had gone nuts the moment the first shot was fired, making it harder to distinguish what was happening outside from what was going on inside.

  Reenie hit the deck at the first shot and he, too, had rolled his ass right out of the recliner. For some reason he looked at his phone and saw that the time was just after 3 a.m. They had hit their mark and still managed to come right as the group was starting to relax.