by Dan Decker
Martinez smiled as he got into the vehicle. “I’ll see you guys at Black Brick.”
As the suburban peeled away, I stared after them, positive I’d seek a smirk on Payne’s face as the car disappeared.
“Wasn’t that Payne?” Tom asked running up. “Why did you let Martinez take him?”
I turned away from the road and studied Tom. He was out of breath and his face was flush with sweat.
“We’re fools,” I said. “Martinez isn’t going back to Black Brick.”
Shannon shook her head but remained silent. I got the impression that she didn’t want to rip into me so soon after being shot.
“Where have you been?” Cherry asked.
“Looking for you. I found Lauren Griffith’s body surrounded by a bunch of men in suits. They’re on my tail—”
The sound of approaching sirens reached our ears and I noticed that there were way too many people looking at us. I shoved my pistol into my pocket.
“See you guys back at Black Brick,” Tom said, taking off at a run. Cherry ran in a different direction.
“Are you okay?” Shannon asked, nervously looking around. “We can go together if you want.” It would have been against protocol for us to stay together in a situation like this. Beltran already had enough to be unhappy about; it didn’t seem worth it to push it much further.
“Take care of yourself,” I said and jogged away. I struggled to breathe and my chest hurt but I didn't slow down.
The others weren’t convinced, but I knew the truth. Martinez had just betrayed us. I tried to run faster but I was rewarded with a coughing fit that forced me to slow until I could catch my breath.
Chapter 5
The conference room at Black Brick smelled like sweat and I wasn’t the only with a ring of perspiration around my neck. We’d all made it back within a few minutes of each other and were waiting for Beltran to join us. It wasn’t going to be a pleasant meeting. I took a sip of coke and stifled a groan as pain shot up my chest.
I’d spoken with Dolores, who had been manning the reception desk in the lobby again, and learned that my instincts about Martinez had been correct.
He had in fact betrayed us. After taking Payne, Martinez had called Beltran. Dolores hadn’t known what the conversation had been about but Beltran had ordered Black Brick into lockdown and restricted Martinez’s access to our base and internal systems.
I leaned back in my chair, trying to find a more comfortable position, immediately wished that I hadn’t, and sat up again. In addition to my chest screaming with every move, my lower back also hurt. I must have done something to it when I fell after getting shot. It was a miracle I’d been able to run as far as I had on the way back here.
The painkillers I’d taken hadn’t kicked in yet. I took another swig of Coke, wishing I’d thought to bring in another can or two because I was afraid this was going to be a long meeting.
When Beltran entered the room, the temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. His face was a cold mask but the anger danced in his eyes as he struggled to retain his composure. Beltran would sometimes fly off the handle and all we could do was wait until he was done shouting.
I took another sip of my drink as Beltran set a folder he was carrying onto the table. He leaned down, putting his hands on the top and scourged us with his eyes.
“Why did you let Martinez take Payne?” Beltran demanded. “I wouldn’t have assigned your mission to another team without telling you. You know that.”
Shannon was staring out one of the windows, fiddling with a pen. Cherry didn’t appear to be listening. Tom was handling Beltran the best of any of us because he hadn’t been there for the Martinez part of it all.
I wasn’t in the mood to say “I told you so” or give the others a knowing glance. Meet back at Black Brick to sort this all out, indeed!
This failure was as much mine as theirs, if not more mine since I’d realized something was off. Beltran was angry, but not as furious as I was expecting. The betrayal of one of his most trusted agents should have been accompanied by a tirade of swear words and yelling.
There was something about all this that bothered me.
“How long have you known Martinez was a traitor?” I asked.
Beltran looked shocked and I could see him trying to come up with a convincing lie, but it wasn’t going to work.
“Martinez was being managed,” Beltran finally admitted.
Managed? What did that mean? Why would Beltran leave a traitor in the ranks?
“You had information that would have been key to a successful resolution of the mission,” I said, “and withheld it from us. This is as much your fault as ours. If we can’t trust a team member, who can we trust?”
“That’s the motto,” Tom said, “trust your team.”
Shannon looked up. “How many times have you told us?”
“You’ve got to trust your instincts as well,” Beltran said. “Jake was the only one to recognize something was wrong.” He looked right at me. “You should have done everything in your power to keep Martinez from taking Payne, shooting them both if you had to. I’d much rather be cleaning up bodies now then guessing what Martinez is going to do next.”
I tightened my jaw. I’d just been shot, if that wasn’t a good excuse for a lapse in judgment, I didn’t know what was.
“Payne is dangerous.” Beltran looked at Cherry. “And I’m afraid Martinez is every bit as dangerous in his own way.”
Was this why Beltran hadn’t been bothered by Cherry’s relationship with Martinez? Beltran had bigger things to be concerned about. During the meeting it had taken a real effort on my part to avoid staring at Cherry to monitor her reaction to all of this. Out of respect for her, I’d kept my eyes away. If she was crying, it was best that I didn’t notice.
“Yeah,” Tom said. “We know. We’ll keep our guard up. Blah, blah, blah.”
An idea occurred to me. There might be a good reason why Beltran had left Martinez where he was.
“This was our test,” I said. “We were supposed to discover that Martinez was a traitor. This whole time, I just thought you were being lax on the rules but you wanted us to figure this out.”
“That is correct. You failed.” As Beltran let that sink in. “Every one of you had an opportunity to put this together. You all knew things he was doing wrong but did nothing. You should have trusted each other with what you knew.
“Jake, you watched him torture a man. Cherry, you knew he was embezzling from Black Brick. Tom, you knew he was taking calls on a cell phone that wasn’t one of ours, but didn’t report them.” He looked at Shannon. “You caught him on my computer. Now, because you failed, Martinez has the resources Kurt transferred to Payne and we have a much bigger problem on our hands.”
We all looked at each other, except for Cherry, who kept her eyes down. Beltran was right; we’d have known something was wrong if we’d been talking to each other.
“It is you that failed,” I said. “Sure, we didn’t pick up on your little exam, but you should have had a failsafe. It should have been impossible for Martinez to pull what he did, because you already knew what he was.”
Beltran glared at me. “Forgive me for my misplaced faith in all of you.”
“So are we out now?” Shannon asked.
“Everybody fails their test the first time.” Beltran looked at us each in turn. “The next test will be much harder.”
Beltran’s revelations weren’t sitting right with me. “If you knew that we weren’t putting things together, you should have stepped up to do something about it, especially if you thought Martinez was going to team up with Payne. You knew that Payne would come after Lauren Griffith, didn’t you?”
Beltran didn’t need to answer the question, his face was enough.
“Jake’s right,” Tom said, although it looked painful for him to admit it. “How can you expect us to do our job when you keep back important information?”
“Did you know that Payne and Ma
rtinez were connected before today?” I asked, thinking back to our briefing the day the Kurt house had exploded. Martinez had been in the room when we’d been talking about Payne and he must have been laughing at us. When Beltran had assigned him to locate Payne, Martinez must have also been amused by that.
I remembered the look of shock on Martinez’s face when the explosion had happened. Had Kurt been working for Martinez as well or had it been an act? I recalled everything I could, but couldn’t decide. If my guess that Vargo and Diggon had been behind the explosion was correct, Martinez would have been surprised.
No, that felt wrong.
Martinez was a better actor than I gave him credit for. If Martinez had recruited Jason Kurt as well, he had the most to lose if we brought in Kurt.
I thumped my fist on the conference room table. “Martinez killed Kurt and his family because he was afraid that after we’d learned Payne was connected to Kurt, we’d bring in Kurt and pump him for information. It was in Martinez’s best interest that didn’t happen.”
“That’s how Gina Townsend knew my name,” Shannon said. “She was working for Martinez. He was behind this all along.”
“Kurt’s family is dead because you didn’t do anything,” I said to Beltran.
Beltran bit off a growl. “Tone it down a notch or two. I knew nothing of the sort, but I did have my suspicions. That being said, I didn’t know enough to operate on. Anytime I send a team on a mission, I expect things will not go according to plan. So should you.”
“That’s a fancy way of saying you’re going to continue to withhold vital information from us.” Shannon was leaning forward, perched to attack. She’d never looked more beautiful. “People have died today. We could have saved lives if you would have been more forthcoming.”
“I will do as I see fit!” Beltran snapped, raising his voice for the first time. “This is bordering on insubordination. You’ve blown off your steam. Now it’s time to get back to business.”
“Oh it is, huh?” Cherry demanded. We all looked at her; it was the first she’d spoken. As I had suspected, there were tear stains on her face. “You should have told us Martinez was a traitor.”
“No,” Beltran said firmly, though his tone was softer. “There will always be information that you won’t have. Get some rest. We need to figure out what Martinez and Payne will do next and stop them.”
Chapter 6
It was the first warm day in months and the students of Kingstone campus were taking advantage of it. A group of people on the grass in front of the Lincoln library were tossing around a Frisbee and there were even a few ambitious girls sunbathing. It was warm, but it wasn’t warm enough for that.
Several women who walked by chatted animatedly. In the brief snippets of the conversation I overheard, it sounded like they were discussing a celebrity, but I didn’t hear enough to overhear who. Not that it would have mattered if I did, I didn’t know much about those sorts of things.
I marveled at their energy. To me they looked like kids, but I knew they were the same age as me, if not older. How was it possible for me to feel like an old man when I was barely old enough to be in college? What would I have become if I hadn’t been raised by the government?
I headed into the library. I wasn’t sure if I intended to get anything done but I had to get out of Black Brick. It had been two days since the train incident and I was going stir crazy. Beltran hadn’t even made us attend class, which I’d been thankful for until I felt the walls start to close in.
When I passed the lobby, I noticed Thor sitting at a table near the librarian’s desk and decided to go to the second floor. I didn’t feel up to dealing with the man.
I found an empty table in a corner and pulled out my tablet computer and set it down without turning it on. It had been a long couple of days and I still couldn’t tell up from down. The last week had been intense. Explosions left and right, people connected to Diggon dropping like flies, and hidden agendas everywhere I turned.
Beltran could call it a test if he wanted, but that didn’t make it any better. When we’d been told that there would be a final test in order to become active, I’d expected a hard mission that tested my personal abilities and limits.
What Beltran was doing tested my faith in him and our organization. What else would Beltran be willing to do as a test? How far was he willing to go? Would he let people die?
I was certain about only one thing. Payne and Martinez needed to be brought to justice.
Turning on my tablet, I avoided the temptation to check the news because it would be focused on the train wreck. More than twenty-five people had died so far, with more deaths expected. My subconscious had somehow been able to accept the fact that the situation hadn’t been of my own making and that I’d done my best. This kept the guilt from overwhelming me.
Yawning, I looked around the library, and saw I was alone. Shelves of books towered all around me, providing me with the refuge and solace I sought. Shifting, so that my back was facing a wall, I decided it was safe to open work related information and review it. I needed to do something to keep my mind off the madness. The only way out was through.
As a team, we had expressed interest in helping chase down Martinez and Payne. Beltran had refused our offer, but given us Martinez’s file to review.
“Make no mistake, you’re not on this case,” Beltran had said, “But Martinez knows enough about us that it would be best if everybody kept an eye out for his meddling.”
I opened the Martinez file and began to sift through it. Snorting, I realized that much of the information had been redacted or password protected. Later, if I had time, I’d try to get around the encryption on the documents. For now, I sifted through what was available.
Martinez had been recruited when he was twelve after his mother had died in a car accident. That wasn’t a surprise; all of us came from similar backgrounds. We’d all lost parents at a young age and never been adopted afterwards.
I guess Beltran had adopted us all.
Did that make him our father? The thought made me shift in my seat. I hoped Beltran didn’t think of me as his son, I would never think of him in that way.
I noticed a file called activity logs and tried to access it, but found that it too was password protected. I'd been hoping to learn what Martinez had been doing the night that Andrews was killed. If he’d been using Payne and Kurt to get at Diggon, that made him our best suspect for the Andrews murder. Had he killed Gina to keep her from ratting him out? He could have killed us but that might have drawn too much attention from Beltran.
“You made a mistake with Peck the other day, you know that, right?”
The statement broke into my thoughts like a cannonball diver at the deep end of a pool.
I looked up into the face of the dark haired girl that had been staring at me all semester. The tight pink sweater and jeans complimented her dark hair and it was an effort for me to remember that I was already spoken for.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
The woman smiled and shifted her head to the side. She was holding several books which she set down on my table. Without asking, she slid out a chair and took a seat.
“Peck’s going to call on you more frequently, just to see if you’ve done your reading.” She smiled, her white teeth stood out against her brown complexion. “Should I just call you Mr. Chever or do you have a first name?”
I was uncertain what to do and hoped that Shannon didn’t decide to come looking for me. I’d left without telling her where I was going, but she knew that when I went for a walk I oftentimes ended up in the library. I wasn’t sure that Shannon would be the jealous type, but it was always wise to be careful with a woman who made a habit of being armed.
“Sam,” I hesitated. It was only polite to ask her, but I didn’t want this to go on too long and let her get the wrong idea. “You?”
“Kris Lee.” She slung her bag off her shoulder, set it on the floor, and leaned forward. “So you’re a history ma
jor, you going to teach?”
I hesitated. Was she stalking me? I was about to ask how she knew when I remembered that it had come up in class one day.
“No. Just thought it’d be nice to know something more about the world. You?”
She smirked. “I’m getting a real degree. Marketing with a sales emphasis.”
“You call that real?” I asked, smiling.
Kris returned it. “I liked your suggestion about having politicians fight it out in a ring.” The playful look on her face didn’t quite match the tone of her words and she seemed nervous. I remembered what Shannon had said to me about this girl being out of my league. Well, Shannon was too. Kris was comparable to Shannon, at least on looks.
“Why should our soldiers die to settle disagreements between government leaders?” I asked.
“Politics becomes the ultimate reality TV show. Presidents aren’t elected but instead fight their way to the top.” Kris hesitated. “Wanna go grab a coffee?”
I bit my lip; it was hard to reject a woman with a smile like that. Shannon had a nice smile too. I just wished I got to see it more often.
“Look Kris, you seem like a nice woman, but I’m seeing someone.”
“Oh! You think I’m asking you out.” I couldn't decide if it was my imagination or not, but I thought she had turned a little bit red in the face. “I didn’t mean it like that. I have a boyfriend, but he hates talking politics. I was just hoping to chat.”
“Ah, sorry. How about a rain check? I’m working on a project right now.” My phone vibrated. It was Shannon. “Nice talking to you but I need to take this call.”
I was glad for the interruption because I didn’t know how to handle this situation. I almost would have preferred that Kris had come at me with a gun, if she had, I would have known how to respond.
“Have a good night.” Kris stood. “See you in class.”
I answered my phone and watched her leave. It had been a puzzling encounter and I didn't quite know what to make of it.
