by Chad Zunker
“Hey,” she said, with a warm smile. “Thought you might be hungry.”
Natalie held up a bag from Ching Ching Cha, their favorite Chinese restaurant.
Swallowing, he couldn’t even speak. She seemed to pick up on it.
“I miss you, Sam. I know this has been a hard month. But we really need to spend time together.”
“I can’t,” he managed. “Not right now. I’ve got too much going on.”
“There’s going through the proper steps of healing, and then there’s running away from them. I feel like you’re running again. You don’t need to do that.”
“What if I can never stop?”
“I refuse to believe that. I know you now. The real you. I know what’s inside.”
“What’s inside is broken.”
“Okay, so we work on it together. You and me.”
He swallowed again, his eyes beginning to well up. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
He stepped around her, felt like he was going to vomit.
“Sam, please wait.”
He didn’t wait, just kept putting one foot after another.
THIRTY-ONE
Alger Gerlach was now Charles Lambert from Cleveland with a wife and three young kids. Gerlach even had generic pictures of kids in a worn leather wallet. Working for a small printing company, he traveled around the country selling notepads and special paper goods. He told his travel companion he grew up in a large family, the fourth of seven kids. Dad owned a construction company. Mom was a teacher until child number three, and then she stayed home. A good family man, he talked a lot about his brothers and sisters. The fortysomething blonde woman sitting in the airplane seat beside him on this crack-of-dawn flight from DC to New Orleans said she’d visited Cleveland ten years ago with her family and had taken the kids to an Indians game. He found it humorous that she had no idea she was actually sitting next to the great Gray Wolf. The most famous assassin in the world. What a story that would be for her kids. The truth was, Gerlach never knew his parents, who’d died in a bus bombing in Munich at the hands of Palestinian nationalists when he was only two. He’d moved in with an uncle who abused him in every way possible for more than a decade, until Gerlach finally ran away from home at age fifteen.
They carried on a conversation for the duration of the two-hour flight. Gerlach had no real interest in chatting with the woman, but he enjoyed the art and practice of deception. He wanted to know at any moment he could carry on a believable conversation with just about anyone in America—even law enforcement, if necessary.
His hair was gray now. He’d gotten rid of the black in a hotel bathroom in DC. He’d lost the goatee and replaced it with a salt-and-pepper gray beard. The green eyes were now brown with contact lenses. He wore a cheap gray suit that he’d purchased at a discount store. He looked forward to climbing back into his $5,000 Italian designer suits when this job was finally finished. He’d done some theater as a youth and had always enjoyed the makeup, the fake facial hair, the wigs, the constant costume changes. His teacher, Mr. Müller, always said he had a real eye for it and had a future in drama. If only Mr. Müller hadn’t died before seeing just how far around the world Gerlach would take this cultivated gift.
Once on the ground, Gerlach took a cab from the New Orleans airport into downtown. He checked into the Omni in the heart of the French Quarter near the Mississippi River. The hotel clerk handed him an unmarked sealed shipping box slightly bigger than a notepad. He was supposed to have a suite reservation with a view of the river. The young hotel clerk with slick blond hair and a cocky grin typed into the computer and insisted that the reservation had only been for a regular room. Sorry, Charlie. Those were the clerk’s exact words. Gerlach instructed the clerk to change the reservation to a suite with a view of the river and stop wasting his time. The clerk frowned at him, a look that said, “Who the hell do you think you are?” The kid told him they were booked solid. There was nothing he could do. Or wanted to do, Gerlach felt. It was really irritating him. The clerk asked in an annoyed tone if Gerlach wanted to speak with his manager. Gerlach said no. He did not want to draw unnecessary attention to himself.
He calmly took his key and left the counter. He noticed the clerk rolling his eyes and flipping the bird at him through a mirror on a column. The elevator escorted him up to the fifth floor. He put his black bag on the bed, pulled the curtains back. The sun was rising over the city. It was a view of buildings. Not the river. It wasn’t too bad. But not what he wanted.
He sat on the bed, tore open the box. Inside, he pulled out a small computer tablet, powered it on, and waited. After loading, he opened the photo icon and began scanning a dozen color images that were clearly taken as part of security surveillance. The same face as the hard-copy photo he’d received upon his arrival yesterday, only now the young man in the image was completely bald. He also looked to have a gash on his forehead. In the series of photos, he wore a black T-shirt and jeans and was holding a cell phone. The last photo had a digital tag along the bottom. Alias: Ethan Edwards.
Gerlach set the tablet to the side, dialed from the hotel phone. A quick answer.
“Yes?”
“Where do I go to listen to jazz?”
“Jazz music?”
“Yes.”
“The best place is Davenport Lounge.”
The code words were out of the way.
“Do you have my package?” asked Gerlach.
“Yes. It’s in the van, which is in the parking garage.”
“Good. What happened with my hotel reservation?”
“What do you mean? We booked it to your specifics.”
“It’s not to my specifics.”
“The hotel must have changed it. Sorry.”
He hung up, pressed his lips together. The package mentioned was his trusted companion. He could not operate without it.
Forty minutes later, Gerlach was standing outside the hotel, in an alley near a service exit at the back of the building. He had watched several hotel employees come out the back door for a quick ten-minute smoke break. Cigarette butts littered the pavement. Gerlach was tucked behind a building column, watching, waiting. As expected, his cocky friend from behind the front desk eventually drifted out to the smoking area. Gerlach had smelled the smoke stink from the kid’s breath, had seen the imprint of a cigarette box in his front left pants pocket.
The kid unbuttoned his hotel-clerk jacket, quickly lit up a cigarette.
Gerlach was behind him like a panther. The right arm went around the neck, the other arm around the top of the head. Gerlach ripped violently with both arms and heard the familiar snap of bones in the neck. The kid squirmed and then fell limp in his arms, the cigarette dropping to the pavement. Gerlach did a quick check of the pulse. He then dragged the hotel clerk over to the metal dumpster, where he tipped the body into the cluttered container filled with trash bags and cardboard boxes. He pulled a smelly black bag and several boxes on top of the kid, so he wouldn’t be found immediately.
Satisfied, he stepped through the service door back into the hotel.
He was hungry. He’d read that Café du Monde was the place to go.
THIRTY-TWO
Spencer Lloyd barged into his apartment.
“Pop! Where the hell are you?”
The day nurse had called, said his father was acting more ornery than ever. He’d locked himself inside the bathroom, kept calling her a fat pig, among other much worse expletives, and demanded that she get the hell out and leave him alone. The nurse said she was never coming back to deal with his father again. She didn’t need that kind of abuse. It was the third nurse to quit on him in the last nine months. Lloyd was fed up. He didn’t need this crap right now. It was embarrassing even to have to tell one of his superiors that he had to leave a critical strategic meeting to go deal with his stubborn father and his overbearing ways.
Lloyd banged on the bathroom door. “Pop!”
“Go away!” his dad yelled back, his voice hoar
se.
“It’s me, Pop. Spencer. Open the damn door.”
“Is that pig gone?”
Lloyd exhaled. “She’s not a pig, Pop. You said you really liked her. And, yes, she’s gone. She quit. You ran off another one.”
“Good. That pig treated me like a little kid.”
For good reason, Lloyd thought. “Are you going to open the door? Or do I have to break it open?”
“Break it open,” he muttered. “What do I care?”
“Pop, open the door now. Or I’m serious, I’ll drive you straight to the old folks’ home. Let them deal with you. Do you understand me?”
There was silence on the other end. Lloyd took another deep breath. It was such a surreal thing to have the roles suddenly reversed in life, to have to treat his father like a child. Lloyd was about to go find a screwdriver to pry open the doorknob when he finally heard the lock click open on the other side. But his father did not open the door. He heard his dad sit back down on the toilet. Lloyd turned the door handle, parted the door, and looked inside. His father was sitting on the toilet, in a gray FBI T-shirt Lloyd had brought home, but with his checkered red-and-black pajama pants still pulled all the way up to his waist. And that’s when Lloyd smelled it. An awful smell. The heinous odor of a kid who had crapped his pants. Except his kid was eighty-nine years old. Lloyd felt his heart sink. His father had obviously accidentally soiled himself and had locked himself in the bathroom out of humiliation. He wasn’t going to let a young and attractive female nurse inside to deal with his mess, even though he needed help. It was one thing to have a nurse check blood pressure and get him to take his medicine. This was something altogether different. There was still some sense of pride in the old man.
His dad wouldn’t even look at him. Lloyd put a hand on his shoulder.
“Come on, Pop. Let’s get you some fresh clothes. Get you cleaned up. Maybe we’ll grab some breakfast at the diner down the street together. You love that place.”
“Fine,” his father grunted.
Lloyd’s cell phone buzzed. He stepped back into the hallway, pulled it out, saw that it was Agent Epps.
“Everything all right, Chief?” Epps asked.
“You don’t even want to know. What do you have?”
“Krieger thinks he has a solid track on the Gray Wolf.”
“Where?”
“New Orleans.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No, sir. Krieger is adamant.”
“Wasn’t Callahan trying to get to New Orleans?”
“Yes, sir. But we still haven’t picked anything up on him since he was last spotted at Mexico City International last night.”
“What about the girl? Natalie Foster?”
“She’s still missing. She never came home. I had two guys at her place waiting all night. We checked in at her work this morning, but her boss said no one there had heard from her since yesterday afternoon, which he claimed was very unusual. He was very concerned.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Me neither. We’ll keep looking.”
Lloyd glanced back inside the bathroom, where his father was slowly getting undressed. He shook his head, knew he needed to get in there and help the old man.
THIRTY-THREE
The same bushy-haired guy who brought her a turkey sandwich last night also delivered her breakfast. Sun rays poured in through the window at the top of the warehouse wall to her left. Natalie’s body ached from head to toe. Sleeping secured to the hard wooden chair all night long, virtually stuck in one uncomfortable position, had been brutal—although she was grateful she’d been spared the black hood. Her eyes popped open at every creak, rustle, and gush of wind. Every time the fatigue took over and her eyes fluttered closed, images of a huge rat crawling up into her lap would creep into her mind, and her eyes would fly back open. Over and over again. But most of all, she feared the men coming in to check on her while she was asleep, desperate not to show any signs of vulnerability. She was determined to prove she was tougher than they were and could outlast them.
The bushy-haired guy still wore the same tan slacks and coffee-stained white button-down shirt as yesterday. Natalie guessed he hadn’t gone home for the night and then returned. He’d been stuck in the front room. She’d made up nicknames for her four captors, just to keep her mind busy. She called this guy JB because he reminded her of the pop singer Justin Bieber, his face unusually boyish. The bald van driver with glasses was Abe because his thick beard reminded her of Abraham Lincoln. Named after his likeness to the movie character in Forrest Gump, she called the crew-cut guy Lieutenant Dan, only he had a new black eye—the result of a swift kick of her foot. Abductor number four was called Strahan because of his resemblance to the TV host and former football player Michael Strahan. Creating the goofy nicknames somehow made her feel more in control of the situation.
Walking over to her, JB set a paper plate with two croissants on the floor and tugged the tape off her mouth. She exhaled at the new freedom to breathe, twisted her dry lips all around to stretch them out. JB used a small pocketknife and cut the duct tape free that held her arms down to the chair. Although her wrists remained wrapped together, she was given just enough freedom to use her hands to feed herself. Natalie had been patiently waiting for this moment, anticipating an opportunity.
“You’ve got to let me go to the bathroom,” Natalie exclaimed.
“I can’t do that.”
She frowned. “Are you serious? You really want me to pee myself? You can’t possibly expect me to sit here all night long and be able to hold it any longer. I’m dying. Please.”
He seemed to consider it, took a quick look back over his shoulder.
“Come on,” she begged. “You can walk me to the bathroom and then bring me right back here. It won’t take me but a few minutes, I swear.”
“Fine. But you try to run, lady, it won’t be good for you.”
“You think I don’t already know that? There are four of you and only one of me.”
She watched him closely, but JB didn’t tip his hat in any direction. The van had started up and left the property at some point during the middle of the night. An hour ago, the van had returned. She was sure it was the same van. Were they now working in shifts? Was JB alone at the moment? Or were Abe, Lieutenant Dan, and Strahan still on-site somewhere? Figuring that out was critical in discerning her next move.
JB knelt in front of her, cut the duct tape that held her ankles around the chair, and pulled Natalie up into a standing position. Although her wrists were still bound together, she was now free to walk like a normal person. She took a moment, thinking, and allowing the feeling to come back to her legs. Holding her firmly by the arm, he ushered her forward toward the front room. He opened the door, pulled her through, his grip tight on her arm. With a quick glance around the small front room, Natalie observed a round table covered with junk-food wrappers and soda cans. Four chairs surrounded it. A small TV with rabbit ears was sitting on a counter in a corner, currently showing a local morning talk show. The best news was that none of the others were in the room. No Abe. No Lieutenant Dan. No Strahan. So unless one of them was outside somewhere, which she highly doubted, she was one-on-one with JB.
He opened the door to a small single-toilet bathroom that was connected to the office and turned on the light. “Hurry up, and make this quick.”
“What about these?” she asked, holding up her bound wrists.
His forehead bunched. “What about it?”
“I’m not a guy, okay?” she huffed. “I can’t just stand up in there and take a leak. Not to be crude, but I need to be able sit down and use my hands, if you know what I mean. So I’d appreciate a little flexibility. Unless you want me to make a complete mess of this.”
He sighed, took the knife back out, and slit her wrists free.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Just get going already.”
Natalie turned, stepped into the bathroom, shut the d
oor behind her. She really did have to go to the bathroom, but she also had other intentions in mind. There was no fan switch in the bathroom, so she turned on the faucet water to full blast to drown out as much sound as possible—something any girl would do when using a public toilet with other people outside.
She quickly did her business but didn’t flush. Her eyes were searching everywhere. There was no window in the bathroom—it was an internal room inside the building. She wasn’t sure what to expect if she got this far. She checked the cabinet beneath the sink. Nothing inside that she could use for a weapon. Not unless she wanted to hit the guy with a small pack of toilet paper. Her eyes drifted up to the eight-foot ceiling. Standard white two-by-four acoustical-tile ceiling that she might find in any cheap office building.
Natalie quietly closed the lid to the toilet, quickly stepped on top of it. Then she carefully stepped onto the sink counter, where she accidentally bumped the wall loudly with her hip. She stood very still, listened. When she heard nothing from JB, she returned to the task at hand. From her heightened position on the sink, she could now easily push up ceiling tiles. She pushed the one ceiling tile directly above her all the way up, out of the bracket, and then moved it over to the side to be able to see into the space above the bathroom. A dark and wide-open space, just like the rest of the warehouse. She spotted a thick steel beam about four feet above the ceiling tiles; she couldn’t quite reach it. Not without a little help. She searched the floor but saw nothing she could stack on top of the sink to give her an extra few feet of reach.
She felt the clock ticking. She didn’t have forever.
Her eyes fell upon her gray hoodie, and she got an idea. She quickly pulled the hoodie up over her head, tugged her arms out, exposing the white tank top she wore underneath. She bent down and grabbed the clear plastic hand-soap dispenser. She tied the end of one arm of the hoodie around the plastic pump head on the dispenser, pulled the knot tight. She looked back up through the missing ceiling tile at the steel crossing beam. She probably only had one shot at this without drawing unwanted attention to herself. Holding the hoodie by one arm, she counted to three and then flung the second hoodie arm—the one tied to the plastic dispenser—up and over the beam above her. The dispenser landed right on top of the beam with a clang and then fell over the other side. She reached out and snagged the dispenser with her free hand and now had her hoodie completely wrapped around the beam.
