The Short Drop

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  Gibson studied Billy’s face. His boyish eyes, the premature crow’s-feet, the tuft of gray hair amid his unkempt blond rat’s nest. No one was perfect, but when it came to Suzanne, Billy Casper was as close as a person got. He’d stuck his neck out for her and then done it again. The risk he had taken to find her. This absurd long shot he had played by hacking ACG. Gibson had no parallel in his own life, and it was humbling.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot,” Billy said, resting his head on the pillow.

  “How long did you and Suzanne talk online?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “When did she start talking about running away?”

  “Right from the beginning, man.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the baby. I told you.”

  “No. You said she wasn’t showing when she got here. That meant she was only a couple months pregnant. So why did she want to run away before that?”

  Billy said he didn’t know, hadn’t really considered it.

  Gibson opened Bear’s book and read the passage about the baseball game again.

  “What is it?” Billy asked.

  The sound of a vehicle coming down the driveway interrupted them. Gibson put the book on the sink and stood up to look out the small porthole window. Billy watched him with wide eyes.

  Powerful headlights fractured the brooding dark of the woods. Gibson yelled back toward the kitchen that they had company, but Hendricks and Jenn were already on their way. Jenn was turning off lights as she went. She stuck her head in the bathroom.

  “What do we have?” she asked.

  “Headlights. Is this your deal with the feds?”

  “No,” Jenn said. “Stay with him. Call out anything you see.”

  She shut off the bathroom light and left them in the dark.

  A huge black SUV broke the tree line, curved slightly to the left, and came to a stop. A second SUV, running dark, pulled up alongside. Together they blocked the driveway back to the main road. Like a play-by-play announcer, Gibson relayed it all out to Jenn.

  In unison, both SUVs flipped on their brights, scouring the back of the house in blinding white light. Gibson had to look away, but not before he saw the blue-and-red strobes from the vehicles pulsing off the trees. So much for cutting a deal.

  Over the low rumble of the idling engines, they listened to car doors open but not shut. Footsteps in the gravel. He glanced cautiously over the lip of the window frame. Two figures approached, silhouetted in the bank of headlights that cast long distorted shadows. More men were behind them by the vehicles, but he couldn’t make out their number.

  A voice of sandpaper and rust called out that they were FBI. There was an edge of Kentucky in his accent.

  “Jenn Charles! Daniel Hendricks! Step out of the house. We have warrants for your arrest.”

  A lonely minute passed. He could hear Jenn and Hendricks talking in hushed tones. Billy was banging his head lightly against the toilet seat. Gibson ducked down and put his hand on the back of Billy’s head to hold him still. The agent called out again, repeating his instructions.

  Less warmly, if that were possible.

  A hand tugged the hood off, and George Abe found himself kneeling on a dirt escarpment overlooking a valley that swept away to the south. The night sky was brilliant with stars. It amazed him how much sky you surrendered to live in a city. Why was it only in moments like these that a man noticed such things?

  He rolled his head, hoping to unknot the muscles in his neck. His wrists were cuffed behind his back; his arms were zip-tied just above the elbows, which forced his shoulders back painfully. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a position that took the stress off his back, and his arms were going numb.

  His interrogator had had only two questions. Where were Charles and Hendricks, and what happened to Abe Consulting Group? The questions got asked a lot of different ways, but it made no difference. The first he wasn’t answering. Not under any circumstances. They would kill him before he’d give up his people. As to the second, George didn’t know what they were talking about. Something about his offices being shut down and dismantled. It sounded insane, probably a ruse intended to get him talking. Through the pain and blood, he strove to keep his mind sharp.

  The second round of “questioning” had involved an especially brutal beating. Titus’s thug had tuned him up pretty good. George’s left eye felt loose in the socket, his nose definitely broken. Dried blood was caked down his chin and shirtfront. The thug was right handed, and the ribs down George’s left side felt wet and pulverized beneath the muscle.

  When they came back the third time, he was braced for things to take a serious turn, but instead they had thrown a hood on him and brought him here.

  He’d been transported in the back of an old pickup, tossed in the bed like a side of meat and driven up this scarred and jagged road. At the top, he’d been hauled out and forced to kneel here in the dark. Frankly, he was relieved at the change of scenery. Not that he was under any illusions about his prospects improving.

  Titus must have gotten what he needed some other way, which was bad news for Jenn and Dan. At least Gibson Vaughn was safely out of the way, although George wondered if that would make any difference. Benjamin was clearly playing for keeps.

  A hooded figure was shoved down in the dirt beside George. The hood came off to reveal a terrified Mike Rilling. He was handcuffed but otherwise looked unharmed.

  Mike got a good look at George in the moonlight. “George?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Mike shook his head dumbly.

  “Michael. What are you doing here? What did you tell them?”

  “It’s okay,” Mike said uncertainly. “I took care of it.”

  “What did you do, Michael?”

  “They just want to talk to Jenn and Dan. Resolve this peacefully.”

  “Do I look peaceful to you?”

  Mike wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “What did you tell them?” George demanded.

  Mike didn’t get a chance to answer. A single gunshot interrupted them and echoed across the valley. Mike toppled into the dirt and lay still. George watched blood pulse from the back of Mike’s head, the final spasms of a dead heart.

  George let out a snarl and struggled to his feet. His captor cracked a gun barrel across his head and stilled him with one strong hand to the shoulder. George exhaled softly and looked up at the night sky, knowing he would not hear the shot that killed him.

  “Ridge, what’s your status? Over,” a radio squawked.

  The muzzle eased off his skull.

  “One for two. Over.”

  “Who? Over.”

  “Rilling. Over.”

  “Okay, hold there until relieved. Copy. Over.”

  “Roger, holding. Hard copy.”

  The two men left George kneeling in the dirt. He lowered his head and watched them over his shoulder. They strolled back to the pickup. They leaned against the front fender, the casual stance of experienced killers. A radio set on the hood played something that was too far away to make out clearly, but it had the choppy cadence and static of a police scanner. The two men talked in monosyllabic grunts and followed the broadcast the way other men might follow football.

  After a time, another vehicle came up the road. It pulled to a stop, and a car door opened and closed. After a brief conversation, the new arrival ordered the two men to depart. George heard several crisp “Yes, sirs.” It was Titus.

  When the pickup was gone, the sound of its engine faded from earshot, and another car door opened and closed. Behind him, George could hear Titus talking to a woman. He looked despairingly at Mike Rilling, whose blood was already fading into the dirt. Poor fool.

  The sound of footsteps made him tense. Titus appeared in front of him. He
set down a folding chair and left without a word or a glance in George’s direction.

  “Keep it short,” Titus said.

  “I’ll keep it however I wish, Mr. Eskridge.” Calista Dauplaise sat in the chair. “Hello, George.”

  Jenn opened the front door a hair and slipped out onto the porch. She shielded her eyes with her hand. Damn lights were bright. Hendricks stood just inside the doorway, behind her, gun drawn.

  “Down on the ground!” the agent barked. “Fingers interlocked behind your head.”

  “Let me see some ID,” Jenn yelled back.

  “Come down off the porch, ma’am, and we can talk.”

  “Not until I see ID.”

  The two agents conferred for a moment and then came forward slowly. The rear one had his suit jacket pushed back and his hand at his beltline. “A fragile situation” was what one of Jenn’s instructors called these moments. And they had a nasty habit of slipping out of control over the least little thing.

  The lead agent wore an ID on a chain around his neck and waved it at her as they approached. As if she could see it from here. He just wanted her attention on it and not on his partner, who was lurking off to the right and behind him. Someone fancied himself a magician. Look at this hand while the other one’s busy elsewhere. If the other agent drew, Jenn’s view would be obstructed, and he’d have the drop on her.

  Her eyes had adjusted to the glare enough that she could make out the outlines of at least five more agents standing behind the SUV’s open doors. Another agent had moved off to her left, flanking her some thirty yards away. It put him at the edge of an effective range for a handgun; he’d want to start moving up to close the distance. Unless the men at the back had rifles. In which case, if this thing went sideways, the house would be nothing but a shooting gallery, and they would wind up shredded paper targets.

  A very fragile situation.

  The lead agent came as far as Gibson’s car, which was still parked blocking the stairs leading up to the porch. He kept it between them and held up his badge for her to see. If it was a forgery, it was a damn good one. She tapped the back of her leg once and heard Hendricks curse softly.

  “Satisfied?” the agent said. “Now, are you Jenn Charles?”

  She nodded.

  “Is Dan Hendricks with you? Is he in the house?”

  She started to nod when the glint of something metallic caught her eye. The agent’s jacket had flapped open momentarily as he dropped the ID to his chest; it was his sidearm, and it was the wrong color.

  Jenn glided forward, down the steps, toward the agent—drawing her weapon and moving in one liquid movement. She had it raised by the third step. The agent fumbled his draw and froze, his gun still pointing at the ground uselessly as his eyes locked on the business end of hers. They stared at each other over the hood of Gibson’s car.

  His partner stepped to her left, trying to get a good angle to put his gun on her. She took a step right, matching him. As it was, he would have to fire over the roof of the car, and it didn’t give him a great shot. She prayed that Hendricks was backing her play and had a clear line of fire if it came to that. The agents at the SUVs brought rifles up and trained them on the house.

  “Tell your boys to stay cool,” she said to the lead agent. “Because you’re gonna miss all the action if they don’t.”

  He nodded and called back to them to stay where they were.

  “Not the first time you’ve had a gun on you, is it?”

  He shook his head.

  “I can tell. Most guys, you point a gun at their chest, and they freak the fuck out. But not you. You’re just mister ice water. I admire that. I do. So why don’t you tell me who you all actually are, so this isn’t the last.”

  “We’re the FBI, ma’am. Now put that down.”

  “No, I like this gun. I’ve been shooting it, or one like it, since I was eight years old. So run that by me again.”

  “FBI,” he said stubbornly.

  “Is that a Glock 23 in your hand, Agent?”

  The agent looked down at it. When he looked back he was nervous for the first time.

  “No,” she answered for him. “That looks a lot like a chrome-plated Colt 1911.”

  The agent nodded glumly.

  “You know who carries chrome-plated 1911s? Guys with small dicks and big complexes. You know who doesn’t? Bureau guys. Never have, never will. So tell me again who you are, and if you say FBI to me again, I’m going to punch a hole in that ID like it’s a train ticket.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  When George Abe was fourteen, his father began taking him to business meetings. He would sit quietly in the corner and listen. Afterward, his father would quiz him on the particulars. George was allowed to ask questions, and his father would explain his tactics. In this way, George learned the principles of negotiation and the art of reading situations. One of his father’s principles was never to ask a question unless absolutely necessary.

  “Wait,” his father had cautioned. “Never ask a question in surprise. You will give yourself away. Wait. Think. Often the answers will be given to you.”

  George watched Calista, working to piece together what her presence meant. Contemplating how deep her betrayal ran. When it began. Masking both his anger and his deepening fear for his people, who he knew now were in terrible danger. He would not allow his concern to make it easier to threaten him.

  “Oh, George, spare me your meditative samurai pose. We haven’t the time.”

  “What do we have time for?”

  “A few questions, perhaps.”

  “Ask them, then.”

  Calista smiled. “That’s what I admire about you. You’ve taken Asian inscrutability and worn it like a badge of honor.”

  “Clearly, I still have much to learn from you.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do.”

  “At least now I know what happened to my offices.”

  “Yes, well, that. After consulting with my attorneys, we felt it prudent to liquidate Abe Consulting Group and write it off as a loss. For tax purposes, you see.”

  “I do. And I’m impressed. That must have taken some planning.”

  “Years of it,” she said.

  Years? How could that be? What exactly was Calista planning?

  “So, how is Benjamin?” he asked.

  Her face brightened like an actress who had forgotten her line and had just been fed her cue. “In the past few hours, Benjamin and I have come to an understanding.”

  “About Suzanne?”

  “About a great many things,” she said.

  “And you think that wise?”

  “Things will be different this time. He and I understand each other now.”

  George studied her. “What is it you want?”

  “For Benjamin to be president.”

  “And what do you get out of it?”

  “Everything my family has earned.”

  “And me? Do I wind up like Michael? Is that what I’ve earned?”

  “Who on earth is Michael?”

  “The man lying here!” George spat, his anger finally eclipsing his will. “The man your new partners just murdered.”

  Calista looked down at the body as if noticing the dead man for the first time. “That was unavoidable.”

  “And Jenn Charles? Dan Hendricks? Gibson Vaughn? Are their murders ‘unavoidable’?”

  “It’s an imperfect world, George. Evelyn understood that.”

  Evelyn Furst? Was she that profoundly evil? “What have you done?”

  Calista looked away. “Sacrifices had to be made.”

  “My God. Your own sister. And what about Pennsylvania? Suzanne?”

  “Suzanne isn’t in Pennsylvania.”

  For a moment, he took what she said as defeatism. That she’d given up
on finding Suzanne. But that wasn’t what she meant at all.

  “Where is she?”

  Titus came back from the truck and whispered something in Calista’s ear. Calista listened but kept her eyes on George.

  “I’m afraid we’re out of time,” she said.

  “Where is she?” he yelled. “Answer me!”

  “Enough!” she snapped, then took control of herself again. “That’s enough. I think we’re done here.”

  George looked up at her from his knees.

  “I see. And am I your last loose end?”

  “Nearly,” Calista said and held out her hand. Titus handed her a radio. She turned up the volume and rested it on her knee. It was the communications channel for a Cold Harbor tactical team.

  “Jenn Charles! Daniel Hendricks! Step out of the house. We have warrants for your arrest,” a voice barked over the radio.

  “We have a white female on the porch,” a team member said.

  “Is it Charles?” asked a second.

  “Stand by.”

  George held his breath. The voices chattered back and forth.

  “Positive contact. Visual confirmation. It’s Charles.”

  Calista looked back to George.

  “Very nearly.”

  Fred Tinsley knelt on one knee deep in the woods and watched with mounting irritation the standoff develop between Charles and the seven men from the black SUVs. He’d been waiting here all day for darkness to fall before taking the house. It would have been simple. He knew its layout from the last time.

  Then, as if on cue, these men had roared up, gung ho, bristling and loud. Charles didn’t believe they were FBI. Tinsley didn’t care one way or another. Whoever they were, they couldn’t be allowed to take anyone from the house. Tinsley needed one of the three alive. Temporarily. There were questions that needed answering. Gibson Vaughn, if possible. He appeared to have leapfrogged ahead of the other two, and Tinsley wanted to know how.