by Joshua Guess
Now that we had a place to crash where no one could possibly find us, the adrenaline would wear off and she would feel it again. I held no doubt on that score. Coping mechanisms are just that; they let us get through the day. It’s when we’re alone in the silence that the freshest of our personal hells flares from embers into flames.
I wanted to sleep, but I wanted her to even more. If she saw I was comfortable enough to do it, she would try. She might even manage it.
“You hungry?” I asked. “I can make us something. If you want to grab a shower, I can cook while you’re cleaning up.”
Kate still paced the room, her new backpack full of essentials over one shoulder, the strap clutched tightly in a hand. She had the restless curiosity of a cat examining a new space, mapping it out for hiding spots and exits. “How do you know this place is safe? Are you sure they can’t track us?”
“Because I picked it at random,” I said gently. “The sign for the cabin rental was on a deep back road, and you saw the old man take it down after I paid him. I have no connection to him for Amanda to dig up. We paid cash.” I paused, looking to see if the words had any effect. They didn’t. “We searched through all the gear before coming this way. Even my shoes.” We had, in fact, stopped at a tiny, old strip mall and purchased new ones for me just in case. I knew my clothes weren’t bugged after searching them thoroughly, but the shoes were too much a risk. It was paranoia of the highest order to think someone had managed to hide a tracking device in them at some point without me taking note, but the situation demanded absolute caution.
“We ditched the Blazer, so even if they know to look for it, it’s a dead end.” In point of fact we’d left it parked in the lot surrounding a big box store and proceeded to wander for a quarter mile on foot until I spotted a smaller parking lot packed with cars back from the main road. It was one of those buy here, pay here car dealerships. The portly guy manning the desk in the single-wide trailer acting as its office was, according to Kate, disturbingly interested in every word she said to him.
While she kept his attention in the barely air-conditioned trailer, I picked an old sedan without a security system, switched its license plate with that of the Blazer, which I’d brought with me, and stole it. Breaking in was easy, hot-wiring it slightly more difficult, and easing it away without drawing the attention of the owner or manager or whatever he was the hardest part of all. Which is a relative statement not to be taken as a brag, because it was cake. Brought back a lot of memories.
Kate stopped in the middle of the small living room/kitchen area and looked at me for a part of a second before glancing away. “I don’t know if I can get to sleep.”
I nodded, understanding. “Then take a shower. When you get out, I’ll have food ready. Maybe a full stomach will help you drift off. Usually works for me.”
She tilted her head numbly, the kind of agreement people do automatically rather than argue the point. I watched her go and marveled that it had taken this long for the hormones to drain away and expose her once again to the harsh reality we both faced.
I set about unpacking the food picked from the meager offerings at the local grocery, little more than an overgrown convenience store, and got to work on a meal. As I heated the pan and took down a pot, I did the math. The worst case was Kate shutting down. Excitement numbs you to trauma, but all of it is damaging. Being on the run is the emotional equivalent of not realizing you’ve broken a bone while playing a rough sport. You feel the ache, but it’s distant and thus seems less severe.
When you stop, it can be debilitating. I might have to leave Kate here for her own good.
12
Then
Three months. They had been gone three months.
The number of days had no significance in and of itself. Ninety days had passed and I noted it, that was all. It wasn’t a conscious act. I didn’t mark off the passage of time on a calendar. My brain was by nature and training highly analytical. It tracked certain pieces of data, like the number of days since my world ended, the way other people wake up knowing what day of the week it is without a shred of doubt.
They were gone three months. The sky was blue. The pope was Catholic.
“Never seen anyone study for a job the way you do,” my uncle Marcus said, breaking the repetition of facts flowing through my head.
I was hunched over the sole table in the tiny apartment I’d moved into a month earlier, stacks of textbooks and manuals piled high. The one in front of me was a repair guide for a particular model of car, one I would be driving during the job. I’d never been a wheelman before, and just in case things changed I wanted to be up on the rest of the information I’d need if I had to switch to being one of the team inside.
“I like to be prepared,” I said flatly. “Why are you still here? I thought you were going back to Chicago?”
Marcus, a stout man in his early fifties, shook his head of short iron-colored hair. “You asked me to put out the word to locals and get you an in, and I did that. But you’re my nephew. Not leaving ’til I know you made it through this first one okay.”
I nodded, understanding the words if not feeling anything at them. Marcus outlived his only brother, my dad, both of them lifelong crooks. Decades of minimal contact on my part hadn’t stopped the guy from uprooting his entire life to come take care of me, even if it turned out I didn’t need much looking after. The only thing I had asked him for was this job.
Marcus maybe thought I needed the money, an assumption I let him go on with. It was wrong, as both the insurance provided by my military benefits and a private policy added up to half a million dollars. The idea had been to ensure Hannah was taken care of if something happened to me or Rosa. I also had the income from Rosa’s investments. I was flush even if I didn’t give a shit about money. Its value to me began and ended in its ability to fund my own small needs.
“I still think they shouldn’t have kicked you out, son,” Marcus said, trying once again to start that conversation. Marcus was helpful, kind, and infinitely loyal to his family. But he didn’t understand why his straight-arrow nephew suddenly wanted an introduction to life on the other side of the law.
“They didn’t kick me out,” I said. “It’s complicated.”
That word didn’t really do the situation justice. When I had learned that almost nothing would be done about the man whose drunken idiocy had killed my family, I’d lost it. When the dust settled I was discharged in an administrative sleight of hand that didn’t include disability even though it was on mental health grounds.
I could have fought it, but by then the fundamental truths of the world had reoriented for me. It was as if someone had taken the frame of my vision and suddenly rotated it at right angles. The idea of spending the money, time, and effort required to battle an organization as large as the Army was ludicrous to me. That would require working within a system. The system had made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that it could beat me at its own game every time.
Hard logic told me that the best chance I had to get any kind of closure—or revenge, since I wasn’t lying to myself—meant working outside that system. Like the man said: when you’re faced with a knot of sufficient complexity that unraveling it is impossible, cut the damn thing.
In one last gambit, Marcus put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “If it’s money, you know I can help you. No strings attached, Carter.”
The softness of his tone stopped me in a way the anger of Ash men never could. I looked up from my book and met his eyes. “Why do you care? After all this time, all the years of me shunning everyone on your side of the family?”
Marcus smiled sadly. “You’re family, kid. You’re all I got left of my own brother. I never held it against you that you hated what we did. Civilians like you, good guys, they usually do. I been in the life for a long time and I know how hard it can be. I don’t want that for you if I can help it.”
He moved his hand, used it to pull out the other chair and sit. “You’re stil
l hurting, and I can’t even imagine how bad. It’s maybe leading you down the wrong road. So if you’re doing this for money, I can give you that.”
I knew what my face looked like as I studied him, having had many people describe it to me over the years. Calm and cool, full of intelligence but also a little unnerving in how tightly I could focus my attention on the thing in front of me. It made me an excellent administrator. Now it was making me a talented criminal.
Marcus had moved here as soon as he got news of what happened. Without hesitation or doubt, not bothering to even wonder if I wanted him here. To him, I was a kid at twenty-six who’d suffered a tragedy of unspeakable depth and breadth. There wasn’t a question in his mind that I would need someone.
And he’d been right. Whatever else Marcus was, part of him was genuinely good.
So I told him.
“The officer who killed my wife and little girl is sleeping in his own bed tonight,” I said. “You know that. You know his goddamn blood test was conveniently misplaced.”
Marcus nodded. “Some important intelligence guy, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I echoed. “I don’t know the details. I don’t even care at this point. They don’t matter. What does is that he’s slapped on the wrist and my girls are rotting in the ground.”
I delivered the words without a trace of emotion. It was my default setting these days. The only way I could function was by forcing myself to exist in a state of mind devoid of strong feelings. I managed it through a combination of powerful mental focus by fixating on my end goal, and equally powerful drugs used in moderation because they sometimes dulled my mind.
Marcus flinched as I spoke, devout Catholic that he was. If there was a higher power, Marcus firmly believed that what we lowered into the earth was nothing more than empty clay, the essence of my wife and daughter gone on to join with the spirit in the sky. I wasn’t so sure. Even if the bible was perfectly accurate, I knew St. Peter would tuck away his key when I showed up. I had plans for Jacob Caldwell, my family’s killer, that would guarantee a hot eternity for me.
“You’re going after him?” Marcus asked, though it was barely a question. “You think you can just take a man’s life?”
I met his eyes with a level gaze. “Could I kill him? You can’t be serious. Of course I can. I could slowly drive an ice pick up his nostril and into his brain and feel nothing but deep satisfaction. The question isn’t whether I have the will to do it, but the opportunity. If he’d been in front of me that first week, I would have put a bullet through his brain in front of a judge. Things are different now. I’m more concerned about consequences.”
Marcus frowned appreciatively. As a crook himself, consequences were as natural a consideration as breathing. It was why I’d used that particular lie. I knew he’d believe it.
I had no long-term plans. My overall desire to live existed as a function of my need to punish Caldwell. Once I did that, I could die or live in prison or whatever the universe decided to do with me. There was no difference.
But I wanted to hurt the man. I had a plan. The problem was that Caldwell was a valuable intelligence asset, far better trained and more experienced than I was. He had the skills to silently infiltrate; I was ace at creating filing systems. We were not on even terms. And of course if anything happened to him, I would be the prime suspect in no time. If I abducted him, for example, the clock would begin running almost at once and every avenue of investigation would be aimed at me.
Which meant I would have to be patient and plan. Teach myself what I could, learn as much as possible from others. It was without doubt overkill, the things I listed out as necessary skills and knowledge needed to guarantee success, but I wanted to be certain. I’d only get one shot.
Until then I would do jobs, make contacts, and absorb information. Maybe take time to make Caldwell’s life uncomfortable in small ways. I wanted to be the rock in his shoe, the grains of sand between his teeth. I could satisfy myself in being an unseen and constant irritation slowly robbing him of any joy until I finally made the last move.
I didn’t just want to checkmate the guy. I wanted to utterly destroy any hope of joy he had, and let him know it was me before I killed him.
“If this is what you want to do, I won’t try to stop you,” Marcus said. “I know I can’t talk you out of it. Don’t mean I have to watch it happen, either.”
I bobbed my head in understanding. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t like seeing it happen to me, either, but I wasn’t able to stop it. It was as if my grief had condensed into singularity, the gravity of it slowly tearing me apart with tidal forces as it dragged me inexorably toward itself. My plans for Caldwell were just the mechanical aspects of that goal, while the goal itself was as inescapable as any black hole. Without that motivation I would simply slow down and stop. I’d stop eating—something I only did now as a necessary act—and eventually starve to death.
What else could I do? Every ounce of purpose and hope was gone. There would be no more lazy Saturdays or surprise trips. No more arguments over report cards or being yelled at for blowing a little too much money at the riverboat casino. Isn’t it strange how we can miss even the negative things, like the way my girls could both make me feel like the dumbest guy alive with a single look, once we know they’ll never happen again?
The framework of my life was gone, and all I could do before I crashed to the ground without that support was this one last thing.
Rosa would have been strong enough to carry on. She would have grieved as deeply, probably more so, but the basic fiber of her was more resilient. I knew myself to be weak matter.
“Go, if you need to,” I said to Marcus. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. Really.” I forced a little warmth into the words, because the man deserved that much.
He watched me with serious gray eyes for a long few seconds. “I’ll stay a few more days. We can talk about this some more. This isn’t something you can take back, Carter. Dead is dead.”
I could have laughed. Probably should have laughed. As if I of all people didn’t know that fact down to my bones. Dead is dead, yessir, it surely is. Dead wife, dead daughter, the zero state in a binary universe.
I even suspected that he was right. It would probably change me in ways I couldn’t anticipate. I for damn sure knew killing Caldwell wasn’t what either of them would have wanted. But then they weren’t here to have a say. That was the whole point. The need to hurt him, punish him, was as real as my need for food or water.
Ninety days, and tomorrow would be ninety-one. I wondered if I’d remind Caldwell of exactly how long it had been once I finally had him.
I sort of thought I would.
13
Now
Kate was quiet all through dinner, which at a conservative estimate took her three minutes to plow through. She wasn’t sullen or angry that I could see, just a thoughtful sort of silent I understood well. At some point during the day the relatively huge changes in her life piling up behind her mental defenses had finally burst the dam, and now she was sorting the wreckage.
After the meal was over, we sat across the tiny dinette table. Not sure how to approach the idea of leaving her here, I decided to tumble headfirst into it. “I’ll need to run out and grab a few things. You should stay here just in case. Maybe stay while I’m handling the rest of this business, too.”
The words didn’t have any effect at first. Kate was staring at her hands, clasped loosely together where her plate had been, and frowning slightly. With the ponderous, slow grace of a rising submarine, her head came up. “You’re going to leave me here?”
“At least for the shopping trip,” I said. “It’s safer. If someone spots me out there, they won’t know where you are. I’m gonna have to head back to the city and handle this, which requires some prep work and supplies.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And when you go to ‘handle’ it, I’m stuck here knowing nothing? I don’t have my cell phone, no way to let my parents know I’m
okay if they happen to call. You want to abandon me without a way to escape if I have to?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m going to leave the car here. I’ll find another one. When I go out I’ll pick up burner phones. You can tell your parents you lost yours and text them from it. Amanda is good, but she isn’t going to be able to trace a text from a random number on your parent’s phones back to here, if she can even access them.”
“You don’t think I can keep up,” Kate said.
Ah, there it was. I spread my hands. “I know you can’t, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I have years of training and experience doing this kind of thing. You’re a teenager. Honestly, you’ve done amazingly well so far, but this is about to get bloody. You have a level head and you’re much tougher than any teenage girl has a right to be, but this is way beyond you.”
There was no trace of rebellious arrogance in her that I could see—maybe the circumstances had wrung that out of Kate. “You don’t know. You can’t. I don’t want to be alone. What if they find me?”
“They might,” I conceded. “I can’t see the future. What I do know is that coming with me will increase the chance you’re caught by a hell of a lot. Remember, I put together this whole operation. I know what lengths they’ll travel to get information. Do you think you could withstand torture? Or watching me be tortured? Have you ever fired a gun at another human being? I’m not trying to make you feel shitty about this, but I need you to understand that even if it isn’t your fault, you’re just not prepared for the kinds of things I’ll be facing.”
