Unthinkable

by Brad Parks

  The man who’d had her daughters kidnapped simply so he could use them as chess pieces.

  And then DeGange drew closer, and she felt this uncertainty coming over her. There was no animosity coming from him. He was just this old guy, all loose skin and thinning bones, shambling along barefoot in his pajamas.

  There was death surrounding him, yes; it came off him in waves as strong as anything Jenny had ever felt.

  But it wasn’t Nate’s death.

  Or her death.

  Or the girls’. Or her parents’.

  The nearer he drew, the more sure of this she became.

  Sure enough that she hurtled herself into Nate, knocking him off balance, almost taking both of them down. This ended with Nate embracing her awkwardly, which was where they still were when DeGange reached the doorway and began surveying the scene.

  Jenny still did not detect any threat in his bearing, just a cool intelligence at work. He scanned the bedroom; then his face drew into a scowl as he glanced down and to his left, toward where Rogers was hiding.

  And Rogers was, as usual, the first to start talking.

  “Everything is fine, Mr. DeGange,” he said, a little desperately. “Just a misunderstanding with our guests here. I’ll get it sorted out. You can go back to sleep.”

  “I’ll be spending too much time sleeping soon enough, thank you very much,” DeGange replied gruffly.

  Jenny kept her focus on DeGange, curious as to what his next move would be. He leaned into the room and soaked up the sight of the two Praesidium men, Bobby and Tino, now lifeless.

  She could almost see DeGange’s mind doing the calculations. You didn’t need to be a crime scene expert to tell that, contrary to what Rogers had so loudly claimed, Nate hadn’t been the one to shoot them. Not from where he was standing. Not given where the bullet holes were and where the bodies had ended up.

  The killing shots had clearly come from Rogers’ direction.

  And now DeGange’s scowl was firmly fixed on his employee.

  “Lorton,” DeGange said. “Are you responsible for this?”

  Rogers had no response.

  DeGange looked back into the room. Jenny saw his gaze fall on her for the first time. He openly gawked for a moment; then his head tilted with curiosity.

  “You’re Jenny Welker, aren’t you?” he said, like it both pleased and startled him.

  Jenny noted the change in DeGange’s voice now that he was addressing her. It was warm. Caring. Like he was speaking to a dear friend, even though they’d never met.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  He turned toward Rogers. “What’s she tied up for?”

  DeGange’s sharp tone had returned. So had his disapproving demeanor.

  “I told you, it’s just a misunderstanding,” Rogers said. “She thinks I’m going to harm her husband and I keep trying to explain to her that they have nothing to fear and that they will be treated very, very well here. Everything is going to be fine.”

  “It doesn’t look fine.”

  “I just need to talk some sense into them.”

  “You need to talk less, Lorton,” DeGange said.

  “Sir, this is all—”

  “Shut it, Lorton,” DeGange snapped, then turned back toward Jenny, a gracious smile spreading across his lined face.

  “Ms. Welker, I’m Vanslow DeGange. This is my house. I wish we could be meeting under different circumstances. Strange as it sounds, I feel like I know you already. I’ve been seeing you in my thoughts for a long time now.”

  Jenny nodded. Her throat constricted slightly.

  There was still death everywhere around him.

  But she had finally figured out whose it was.

  “I’m starting to feel the same way, sir,” she said. “I just now had a thought about you.”

  “You saw me dying, didn’t you,” he said, his smile never leaving him.

  There was no self-pity in his tone. At least not that Jenny could detect. He genuinely seemed to be more concerned for Jenny than he was for himself.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “I’m not. It’s about damn time, if you ask me. But enough about that for a moment. Can you explain what’s going on here? Pretend like I don’t know anything.”

  “I’m not sure where to start,” Jenny said.

  “Okay, then start with this: Are you here under some kind of duress?”

  He struck Jenny as the kind of wise person who would ask a question even though he already knew the answer—just because he didn’t want to make the mistake of being too sure of himself.

  “Yes, sir, I am,” she said.

  “She’s confused, Mr. DeGange,” Rogers pleaded. “If you’ll just please let me—”

  “I said shut it, Lorton!” DeGange roared. “Now, Ms. Welker, I’m sorry. Has Lorton here been threatening you in some way?”

  “Yes, sir. Rogers tried to get me to kill my husband. Then, when he failed at that, he kidnapped my children from my parents’ house and—”

  “Kidnapped!”

  DeGange looked sharply down toward his left, where Rogers was still cowering out of Jenny’s line of vision.

  But she didn’t need to see him to know what was going to happen next. The thought arrived in her head almost simultaneously with the wave of nausea it caused.

  “Mr. DeGange, it’s not like that,” Rogers was mewling. “If you’ll just let me—”

  “No, sir, don’t!” Jenny yelled.

  It was too late. In one startlingly fast movement, DeGange raised the gun and fired four times in Rogers’ direction.

  The gunshots were deafening. The sounds echoed through the house, though they were soon replaced by a silence that, to Jenny, seemed every bit as loud.

  She couldn’t see where the bullets hit. She didn’t really want or need to. From that distance, the first bullet would have been more than enough to put Rogers down. The final three ensured he didn’t get back up.

  DeGange was still focused on Rogers—or what was left of him—in a way that seemed particularly unguarded, allowing Jenny a few heartbeats of time in which to study the old man candidly. He didn’t take any pleasure in killing. That was quite clear. His mouth was clenched in an odd sort of way, drawn up toward his cheeks, though not in a smile. He seemed to be struggling with something.

  Then she watched a solitary tear form in DeGange’s right eye and track briefly down his cheek before he wiped it away.

  It struck Jenny that Vanslow DeGange had long ago made the selfless decision to dedicate himself, his talents, and his fortune to saving the lives of others.

  And yet it had resulted in a long life during which he was constantly surrounded by death.

  Which was probably a lot of what made him so keenly look forward to his own.

  DeGange broke the silence by clearing his throat.

  “I wish you didn’t have to see that,” he said, his voice having gone slightly hoarse. “I always have had something of a blind spot when it came to the members of my little group, particularly Lorton. I trusted him. But it’s now clear to me he’s been abusing that trust. He violated the oath he had taken. And there’s only one punishment for people who violate the oath.”

  DeGange sighed noisily and tossed the pistol to the side.

  “And I’m sorry this seems to have involved you and your husband to the extent it has,” he said, strolling into the room. “I didn’t know exactly what Lorton was up to. But I’m afraid I’m still the one to blame.”

  Jenny became aware of Nate tensing, still unsure of whether to allow DeGange any closer, even though the old man was now unarmed.

  She reached out and gently seized Nate’s wrist, lowering his gunsights until they were trained on the floor.

  “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “We’re safe now.”

  Nate didn’t say anything. He also didn’t fight her.

  “I feel like I owe you both an explanation,” DeGange said. “But first, let’s get
all this junk off you and go someplace we can chat.”

  At DeGange’s orders, one of the men who had tackled Jenny earlier appeared with a handcuff key and unlocked her hands, while another untied her ankles.

  She could already feel the places that would turn into bruises later. Her muscles were starting to stiffen. And there was only so much longer she could stave off the utter exhaustion.

  But Jenny knew she had been fortunate. For all Rogers’ malice, the Praesidium had not done her any lasting harm.

  As DeGange arranged for “the cleanup”—as he so euphemistically put it—Jenny and Nate stole off to check on the girls.

  Both were still confused and agitated. But seeing Mommy and Daddy settled them down considerably. Jenny and Nate got them properly situated for sleep, with Parker in a canopy bed that she said made her feel like a princess; and Cate, who was still in a crib at home, on a king mattress they had dragged onto the floor, lest she roll off.

  Seeing them doze off, with her husband at her side, set Jenny at peace in some deep place. There was still so much uncertainty about what she would do with this gift of hers, about how it would or wouldn’t evolve as she became more sensitive to it, about how she’d live with the knowledge of it.

  But as long as she had Nate and the girls, she really felt like she could deal with whatever happened. There was nothing quite like almost losing them to sharpen her focus on what really mattered.

  Her family. The people she loved most.

  Wasn’t that what life was ultimately all about?

  Before too much longer, she and Nate had joined DeGange in his study. There, he invited them to take a seat.

  “Are your little ones comfortable?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” Jenny said.

  He smiled amiably; then his face took on a more serious cast.

  “I told you earlier I’m the one to blame, and I am,” he said. “As you know, I’m dying. Well, we’re all dying. It’s just a question of when. But unlike everyone else, I know exactly when it’s going to happen. And I’m guessing you do as well?”

  Jenny did. She had watched it happen.

  “This Friday,” she said. “A little after two in the morning.”

  “That’s right. Very good. I stopped taking my blood pressure medicine a while back, so this is overdue if you ask me. It looks to me like a massive stroke, which I’ll suffer in my sleep. I doubt I’ll feel a thing. Pretty good way to go, don’t you think?”

  Jenny didn’t answer. For whatever DeGange’s thoughts about it, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of tragedy about this incredible light being snuffed out.

  “Sorry,” DeGange added. “That was macabre. When you get to be my age, you stop worrying so much about dying and start worrying about having a good death instead.”

  He shook his head, then continued: “Anyhow, I didn’t want a little thing like my death to disturb anything too much, and I was trying to get my affairs in order. You see, I have no heirs.”

  Jenny looked at him uncertainly. “Why does that matter?”

  “To decent folks like you and your husband, it probably doesn’t,” DeGange said. “To Lorton Rogers? It mattered a lot. Life has been pretty fair to me, as you can probably tell, and now I’m worth a good little bit of money.”

  He said this like he hadn’t really been deserving of it, and therefore it embarrassed him. Jenny understood. She sometimes felt that way about her own salary.

  “You don’t have to apologize for being well off,” she said.

  “Well, maybe, maybe not,” DeGange said. “But I certainly have other things to apologize for. I had put Lorton in charge of the day-to-day around here. I’m too old and tired most of the time to be bothered. He knew I was going to be dying soon, and I may have inadvertently created an incentive for Rogers to do exactly what he did.”

  “How so?” Nate asked.

  “Long ago, I arranged two contingencies for when I died. In one, if my replacement had been identified—someone like your wife, who could sense the currents—the bulk of my fortune would be dedicated to creating a foundation whose mandate was to continue the work of the Praesidium, hopefully in perpetuity. My will dictated that Lorton would be the executive director of that foundation. He would have been reporting to a board of directors, of course, but he would still have had enormous authority to use my fortune as he saw fit.

  “If, on the other hand, the Praesidium hadn’t identified my replacement, all the money was to be given away. And not by some foundation that slowly got sucked dry. I wanted to go out with a bang. Everything you see around you and a whole lot you don’t see would have been sold. All of the proceeds would have been distributed to disadvantaged Romani all around the world, folks who really needed it.”

  “And Rogers would have gotten nothing,” Jenny said.

  “I assure you, he would have been fine. Like all members of the Praesidium, he had been receiving a generous stipend. He should have had enough saved up to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Just not quite this comfortably. Obviously, Rogers didn’t want to give that up. He wanted access to the money, the houses, the helicopters. He wanted it all to continue just as it was.”

  Jenny still felt confused. “But I never agreed to be the Praesidium’s new leader. How would the clause have been triggered with me being held captive?”

  “That’s why I said this was all my fault,” DeGange said. “The way the will is written, if someone who can sense the currents has taken up residence with the Praesidium at the time of my death, then the foundation is created. I should have probably figured out a more clever way to word it. I just thought that would be the most cut-and-dried way to delineate whether someone was really one of us.”

  Jenny finally understood Rogers’ desperation—why, even when she’d told him she wasn’t going to work for the Praesidium, he had persisted in his course of action.

  That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re staying here.

  Rogers was like a corrupted politician. Having grown addicted to the taste of his own influence—and to the trappings that came with it—he would do anything to stay in power.

  “And with Rogers gone, what happens now?” Jenny asked.

  “Nothing changes, actually,” DeGange said. “If you would like to move here with your family and continue the work of the Praesidium, you are welcome to do so. If that’s not the path you want for your life, I understand that too.

  “The choice, my dear, is yours.”

  EPILOGUE

  NATE

  It was an immutable and ever-present fact of stay-at-home caregiving, one I had come to learn altogether too well:

  The world could have its spasms and crises. Empires could rise, leaders could fall, the course of history could change, and it could all affect me mentally in whatever profound way it wanted to. Yet to some extent it wouldn’t change my life that much. First and foremost, I still had two little girls to take care of.

  And so, two days after the drama in White Stone, I was back in Richmond, catching up on dishes while the girls ate dinner, waiting for Jenny to get home.

  Embracing that timeworn cliché, we were taking life one day at a time, trying not to make any firm decisions about our future just yet.

  Jenny had spent most of Sunday and Monday deep in conference with Vanslow DeGange, downloading the sum of his wisdom, making the most of what little time he had left. During one of our brief conversations, I asked Jenny whether DeGange could be convinced to resume his medicine or consider some other intervention that might prolong his life.

  She said he had no interest in that. He was ready to go.

  Beyond that, I really hadn’t seen her much. What little time she was taking away from DeGange’s company, she was trying to spend with the girls.

  In the meantime, other matters were slowly being settled.

  The Richmond police had been notified about the murders that took place at our house. The Praesidium—which had cameras trained on both our fr
ont and back porches—had footage of the event. But the killers were now dead, victims of that tragic run-in with the train. And Lorton Rogers, the person who’d ordered the killing, was missing. Or at least that’s what the authorities believed. The Praesidium had seen to it he would never be found.

  So on the criminal side, there was really nothing more to worry about.

  On the civil side, one of DeGange’s lawyers had already reached out to the families of the slain bodyguards with a more-than-generous offer, far more than what they would have received in the cold calculations of a wrongful death suit.

  Jenny and I had only briefly discussed the trauma we felt over those innocent lives lost. I sensed it wouldn’t be the last time we had that conversation. Grief could be like that, I supposed. If it struck all at once, we’d probably be too incapacitated to deal with it. So it meted itself out slowly, to be dealt with in smaller—though still painful—doses over a longer time period.

  The fact was, in one way or another, we would be living with the fallout of this past week for the rest of our lives.

  In the shorter term, I had already begun taking care of some of the messes I had helped create. That began with calling Heather Matthews and apologizing for my bizarre visit. Without explaining the full circumstances, I told her I had been wildly wrong about a suspicion of mine. I think I at least convinced her I wasn’t an ongoing threat.

  Then I reached out to Buck McBride’s family, eventually speaking to his brother—his real brother, not the fictional one I had made up. I told him about the conversation Buck and I had shared, then asked if he wanted to see the video the hospital had sent me. He declined.

  The family was, of course, devastated by Buck’s passing—particularly Buck’s mother. But it was also coming around to accepting it. While cleaning out Buck’s room, hospital staff had found a note in which he admitted he had been contemplating suicide for some time. He wrote he was mostly just searching for peace.

  I truly hope he found it.

  As for the Welker Lovejoys, we returned to our house in Richmond on Monday evening. Whoever the Praesidium had hired to clean it had done a remarkable job. There was no sign of Friday night’s bloodbath.