by Bob Mayer
“Don’t ask questions you know the answer to,” Sarah said. “They worked for Walter. At first. Although they didn’t have a clue what they were getting into. They just did what we texted them to do.”
“How did Karralkov get them? He was torturing them to find out what the hell was going on, just like we were.”
“I gave them up to him. Worked, didn’t it? Reinforced your belief.”
“They’re the ones who shot you?”
“Yes.”
“You ordered them to shoot you?” Chase was trying to accept the unacceptable.
“Wound me,” Sarah said. “I was a bit concerned about it. But they did a good job, you have to admit. Ivan was a good shot. You were wavering. Your friend Riley was actually talking some sense, and I couldn’t have any of that, so I had them up the ante.”
“But you were dead on the boat. Erin did CPR.”
Sarah smiled. “Tetrodotoxin. I injected myself, remember? Erin thought it was ketamine. But I’d brought my own special cocktail. Simulates death at just the right dosage. Too much, you die. Too little, you flail about.”
“Why?” Chase asked.
Sarah stretched her arms over her head, her breasts arching perfectly. It was a move Chase was sure she had practiced many times in front of a mirror. He now knew there was nothing that Sarah did that was by chance. “Why, what?”
“Why did you pick me?”
She smiled as she let her arms drop to her sides. She leaned over and pulled the champagne bottle out of the ice bucket. “Like some?”
“I’ll pass.” Chase waited.
“You should know the answer to that question, too, now that you’ve had some time,” Sarah said. “Remember when I first saw you? Facing down a gun over a dog. I knew right then that a man who would do that for a dog would do anything that appealed to his sense of honor. And you have a magnificent sense of honor, Horace.”
“In the future, I’ll stick to dogs,” Chase said.
“No, you won’t.” She poured herself more champagne. “You can’t help yourself. That’s the thing about people, Horace. We’re born a certain way, raised a certain way. We are who we are.”
“So that was it?” Chase tried to sort it out in his brain. “You decided right then and there to use me? That was your plan?”
“You think I was behind everything?” Sarah asked. She laughed. “You give me too much credit. You weren’t far off in how you looked at me. I was trapped. My husband had his own plan to claim the Russians were muscling in on him again. We had to get out, and we needed to get out with money. We knew the Russians would come after us again, after the first time they shut SAS down. It was inevitable.”
“So they never came after you to start with?”
“Oh, those two poor Russians did. That was Walter’s half-assed idea, so he could say I had been kidnapped and make it look like Karralkov. I made it an actual event, including you in the script. I knew Walter would fuck it all up from the start. He just wasn’t smart enough. I knew I would be the one left standing in the rubble with nothing, if I survived at all, which wasn’t likely, especially with Karralkov involved, and all of those whose money was siphoned off. And the clock was ticking, and then I thought of you. The honorable stranger who rode into town. And I saw my way out. The rest, you know.”
“Walter was your brother.”
“Very good. We did pretend well for years.”
“You were the brains of SAS. You don’t miss him.”
“Another question you know the answer to. He was always flawed.”
“You took all the money you said was being funneled to the Russians.”
“I did. And, as a bonus to God-fearing citizens everywhere, you took out Karralkov, who was, you have to admit, not the nicest person and will not be missed in the slightest.” She regarded him over the lip of the flute as she took another sip. “So are you going to kill me, Horace? Over money?”
“I wouldn’t kill you over money.” He looked at her. “And the non-existent son, Cole? When did you plan that?”
“I didn’t.” She smiled and she was quite beautiful, in a very cold way. The dark hair was a better look, Chase thought. It fit her soul. “You gave me that. On a platter. It was so delicious, I couldn’t resist. It didn’t occur to me until you asked where my son was as you looked at your poor, wounded dog. That was your assumption from just seeing me talk to some kid on a bike one time. You truly are very naïve. You invented the phantom, and I knew it would work perfectly the moment you asked. I figured the ghost would last for forty-eight hours, which was all I needed. And it did. The rest, as they say, is history.”
It was the answer Chase had feared but expected. “How did you get Walter onboard with the son story?”
She laughed. “Those goons were trying to kidnap me that night, except Walter had hired them. Make a big scene, have the cops come in, and then the cover story would hold. It didn’t work the way Walter planned, because I came up with a better one. What else could he do but play along?”
“Like me.”
“Like you. Frankly, I didn’t trust anybody. Except you, of course, Horace. You, I knew I could trust. I talked to Walter right after we got to the vet’s, while you were reminiscing with your childhood sweetie and saving your dog’s life, and got him up to speed. A better plan, actually. No one on the island had ever seen me. So they had never seen our son. Walter was very secretive about his personal life, hinting he had a wife. It worked. Perfectly.”
Chase stood as still as the rocks behind him.
His lack of action seemed to bother Sarah. “So are you going to kill me over your sense of betrayal, then?”
Chase looked at her. “You couldn’t have used me if I hadn’t allowed you to. As you noted. It was my fault.”
She put the flute down. “It is a blind spot in your character, Horace. You should work on that. Don’t be so trusting in the future.”
Chase shook his head. “I’d rather be me and be used, than you and use people.” He looked around. “You’re alone.”
“You were alone when you came to Hilton Head.”
“True, but I’m not any more. I have you to thank for that. The team is back together, and this time we’re really together. Because it’s real now. I sensed something was wrong, and something was hurting the team. It was you.” Chase lowered the submachine gun. “Enjoy your mansion.”
She sat up and leaned forward. Her eyes were intent on his. “You can stay, Horace. Really.”
Chase shook his head. “My friends and my dog are waiting for me.”
“We could have a good life here.”
“I don’t—” Chase brought the stock of the MP-5 tight to his shoulder as he spotted movement at the rear of the house. A slight figure stepped out into the light.
Erin, wearing a sundress, her tiny body toned and tanned, walked out. She had two flutes of champagne, one in each hand.
She came forward, ignoring the gun.
“Hello, Horace.”
Sarah spoke up from her chaise. “You should have brought the gun, dear, not champagne. Horace is a bit perturbed, as one might expect.”
Erin walked up. She offered a glass to Chase. He shook his head, and she put it on the table while she took a sip from the other. She looked up and regarded Horace with those beautiful eyes he remembered from that wild summer so long ago, just before he went off to West Point.
“Horace won’t hurt us,” Erin said. “Will you?”
Chase slowly lowered the submachine gun.
Sarah shook her head. “I could tell he was smart. That’s where you were wrong about him. He found us.”
Erin cocked her head and regarded her compatriot. “Oh, Sarah. Of course, I knew he’d find us. I thought you knew that.”
“I’m right here, you know,” Chase said. “I can hear you.” Despite the lightness of his words, Chase felt a heavy weight pressing down on his heart, as if an anvil was in his chest, trying to plunge down through him into the very earth.
“How did you two get together?” he asked, trying to gain time to figure this out.
Sarah laughed. “Horace. Like attracts like. Have you ever had a normal friend? Your boat full of friends, waiting for you out there. Any of them normal? Riley? He’s the poster child for PTSD. Gator? The steroid use is obvious. Do you know why he was booted from the Army? Kono? I guarantee he’s got secrets, deep in his heart. You ever have a normal relationship with a normal woman? Perhaps your wife, who left you. The moment Erin and I ran into each other, we knew what we were seeing. We were looking into a mirror. Hell, Horace, you were attracted to Erin as a teenager, and you were no different with me as an adult.”
Chase closed his eyes, because he knew what she was saying was true. ‘Normal’ wasn’t part of his world. Never had been. Never would be.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Horace,” Sarah said. “We’re women. When we go bad, we go way bad. You’re a good guy.” But her eyes were shifting between him and Erin, and he knew he’d hit a chink in the link between the two of them; this was something Sarah hadn’t expected. “I knew you were a good guy,” she continued, “from the moment I saw you in that driveway. Erin had told me you were coming to Hilton Head, so I made sure to be out there. My plan wasn’t crystallized yet, but it was forming. Then I saw you, and I saw what you did, and it all came together. And then there was your question about my son. So now, you know it all. Not as simple as I first explained. I did have some advance notice about you.”
“You’re still lying,” Chase said. “You were lying from the beginning, you’ve always been lying, and you’ll never stop lying. That’s who you are. I’ll never know the truth from you, but I don’t need to.”
Sarah sighed. Her focus was on the other woman now, even though the words were directed at him. “I tried to tell Erin that about you. That you were a good man. But Erin never understood that about you, and she knew you longer than I did.”
Chase looked at Erin. “Why?”
Erin drained her flute of champagne and tossed it away. It crashed on the patio behind her. “Because you weren’t there when I needed you. You didn’t show up when I needed you.”
Chase was mystified. “What did you need me for?”
“You broke my heart, Horace. You broke it when I was seventeen, and then you broke it again when you came back. You put your life on the line, searching for a boy that didn’t exist. I couldn’t believe it. But I saw it. It was like you were going out of your way to slap me in the face with your every action.”
Chase did what would have been unthinkable just five minutes earlier, turning to Sarah for amplification. “All this over a teenage fling?”
Sarah sighed, and Chase could clearly see it in her eyes now, something he’d seen in a handful of men in combat. She was one of those who had no real fear outside of them. A psychopath, through and through. One to whom everyone was like the large chess pieces outside Erin’s old office. Pieces to be moved and played.
“Horace,” Sarah said, “Erin is upset because you walked away when she got pregnant.”
Chase blinked in stunned disbelief and Sarah registered that, leaning forward on her chaise, her first surprise of the meeting. “You never knew?”
Chase could only shake his head.
Sarah glanced over at Erin, who was as still as one of those pieces.
“Don’t act like you didn’t know,” Erin said, her voice cold.
“Of course he didn’t,” Sarah said, nodding in understanding. “He nearly got killed trying to find my kid, who didn’t even exist. You don’t think he’d have given a shit about his own?”
“I called you,” Erin said. “I wrote you.”
Chase’s mind was racing, thoughts tumbling over one another in a confusing cascade: what had happened to the child? Did she have an abortion? Adopt it out? Raise it? “I didn’t know. I was in Beast Barracks at West Point. We couldn’t get calls. Or even letters, for those two months. Nothing.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Sarah said to Erin.
“Shut up!” Erin finally cracked, screaming at Sarah. “How the hell can you know?”
“Because if he’d have known, he’d have crawled over broken glass to help you,” Sarah said. Her head was swiveling back and forth between the two of them, as if sorting out a Gordian Knot from so many years ago. “You gave up,” Sarah suddenly realized, staring at Erin. “You made a feeble attempt to contact him, just to cover yourself, and then you just gave up. Because you did know he’d come back. He’d give up West Point, everything. He’d have come back for you and for the child. You did understand him. Even if you don’t know you did. You didn’t want him to do that, and, ultimately, you didn’t want him.”
Chase felt stupid, listening to them talk about him as if he weren’t even part of this, but Sarah’s words sent a chill through him on another level.
“No,” Erin said. She seemed confused. “My father. He wouldn’t have it. When we didn’t hear back from Horace right away, he said I had to leave. I had to go to my mother’s in Oklahoma. That she’d take care of me. My father got rid of me. Just like you did, Horace,” she hissed at the end, drawing her hatred back to the present.
Chase took a step toward Erin. “I’m so sorry. I would have come. I’m sorry you had to go through it alone. I’d have held your hand.”
Sarah laughed, sending Chase’s thoughts into freefall.
“Horace! Erin knew you so much more than you ever knew her. She didn’t want you there holding her hand while she got an abortion. Because she didn’t get one. She didn’t want you there holding her hand while she gave birth to your son.”
Chase’s knees buckled, and he almost fell. “My son?”
Sarah got to her feet. She was focused on Erin. “That’s what this has all been about to you, isn’t it, you bitch?” There was real anger in her voice. The betrayer, betrayed. “This has been a game to get Chase here, right now, because you knew he’d show up. You want to hurt him. All you’ve ever wanted to do is hurt him. It was never about the money. Why? Why, Erin? Why was that so important to the point you’d get us both killed to do it?”
“Because he left me,” Erin said.
“I didn’t leave you,” Chase protested weakly, his mind elsewhere. “I had to report to West Point.”
“You left me,” Erin said. “Everyone left me.”
“You never asked me to stay,” Chase said. “We have a son?”
“You left me,” Erin said, and then her right hand snaked behind her back and she brought the gun out.
Chase didn’t even attempt to lift the MP-5 as she brought it to bear on his head.
She was the mother of his son.
The shot startled him.
Erin looked down at the small black hole in her upper chest, just over the top of her sundress. She gave the slightest of smiles. “His name is Horace, too.”
And then she crumpled, in the inelegant way the dead do.
At least Gator hadn’t used the Barrett, was the bizarre thought that went through Chase’s brain as he looked down at Erin’s body.
Chase turned to Sarah.
Her face was white. “I didn’t know she was crazy like that, Horace. You have to believe me.”
Chase stared at her, the weight on his heart gone. “The money—whatever’s left—will switch accounts in”—he looked at his watch—“twelve minutes.”
Sarah stiffened. “What?”
“Sarah.” Chase shook his head. Clearing it. Feeling a warm glow, growing deep inside. “I might have my faults, but stupid isn’t one of them.” He reached into his waterproof bag, tied to his waist, and pulled out the USB key. “My acquaintance in black ops programmed this. He did what I should have done. As soon as I called him on my way down to see Karralkov, he checked on you. He learned you didn’t have a son. Or a husband. He knew who you were, and what you were. But he let it play out for his own reasons. And it worked for him. You might be good, Sarah, but he’s in a world you can’t even
imagine.
“Before I left the Fina, I sent a retrieval code so that it automatically moves your money to several pre-programmed destinations. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.” He checked his watch. “Eleven minutes.” He turned and headed back toward the point.
“Horace?” Her voice had lost all its allure, and bordered on the shrill.
Chase turned. “You know, if I can find you, so can someone else. And they’re looking. Hard. Karralkov had friends. And the bettors, those whose millions you took, they aren’t happy, either.”
He opened the gate and took the stairs down to the beach. He threw the USB key into the water, took off the running shoes, and retrieved his fins. He couldn’t see the Fina at this level, but knew it was just a couple of hundred yards offshore. He whistled, and heard Chelsea’s short bark. Chase whistled back, turned in that direction, and dove into the water heading toward his dog and his friends.
It was over, but it wasn’t over.
It was just beginning.
He had a son, and his son’s mother was dead.
It was all just beginning.
The End
Other Books
by Bob Mayer
"Heart-racing, non-stop action that is difficult to put down."-Mystery News on Bodyguard of Lies
"Thelma and Louise go clandestine."-Kirkus Reviews on Bodyguard of Lies
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“ . . .delivers top-notch action and adventure, creating a full cast of lethal operatives armed with all the latest weaponry. Excellent writing and well-drawn, appealing characters help make this another taut, crackling read.” Publishers Weekly
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