by Joshua Guess
I stared at Jen. “Wait, what?”
“Not a lot of time, Carter,” Jen said. “We need to get you free and make it look good for Russey, or he’s gonna kill me.” She hurried over and began freeing my legs, glancing over her shoulder at Kate. “What did you do with Stephen?”
Kate walked in the room, flushed with excitement. “I had a bunch of those plastic ties from the bag. Tied him up with them after I hit him with the Taser.”
Jen chuckled. “Twice in one day. He’s gonna be fucking pissed when he comes around.”
I shook my head, trying to come to terms with what was happening. “Kate, what are you doing here? How did you find me? Where’d you get a Taser? What—”
Jen thumped me on the leg fairly hard. “You’ll have time for questions once you’re out of here. You’re gonna have to rough me up before you drag Stephen in here, and make it convincing.”
I frowned. “Jesus, Jen. You sure?”
She rolled her eyes at me as she worked, flashing a bemused smile. “Obviously I’m not looking forward to it, but I’ll take a black eye and split lip over being killed. Russey has to think I got my ass handed to me.”
“No,” I said, the word coming out harshly. “I’m not just talking about that. This is a big risk you’re taking.”
Jen’s hands, delicate in appearance but strong and skilled, stopped moving. “I owe you, Carter. You know it.”
I could have argued the point, but thought better of it. “Okay, okay. Let’s haul ass.”
Once I was loose, I carefully stood. To my surprise, there wasn’t any numbness in my leg. I gave it an experimental shake and found it in good working order. “How long until the drugs kick in?”
Jen chuckled. “Since I injected you with saline, I’d say it’s already doing whatever it’s going to.”
Then we were standing there looking at each other.
Jen scrunched up her face, tightening her jaw as she closed her eyes. “I don’t want to see it coming. Just make sure it looks good.”
After ten seconds of nothing, she cracked an eye open. “Dude. Come on.”
A hand pushed me away. “For the love of god, move,” Kate said. Then she drew back her arm and drove her fist into Jen’s face. Once, twice, the third time a roundhouse instead of a jab.
“Jesus Christ,” Jen said as she bent over, putting up a warding hand. “Where’d you learn to hit like that? Prison?”
“Lots of cousins who like to play rough,” Kate replied, shaking her hand. “That enough?”
Jen nodded, careful not to wipe any of the blood away. Smart, since we didn’t want the smallest scrap of evidence to betray this as anything but the quick brawl and take down it needed to look like. “You’re gonna have to hit me with that Taser, if there’s another cartridge in it.”
Kate nodded. “I only had to use one on the douche outside.”
I grimaced in discomfort watching Jen take the hit, then helped Kate secure her to the back of the chair with my discarded cuffs. It was easier on her than sitting in it, and I wanted to save that place of honor for Stephen. Much as I wanted to do more than thank Jen for helping, we only had time for a few words.
Hurting and tired, Kate and I dragged the struggling and incandescently furious Stephen inside and lashed him in place. It took most of what was left in my tank to do it, but Kate was thankfully still fresh, not complaining as she shouldered some of my load.
I ignored Stephen’s ranting as I emptied his and Jen’s pockets. It was hard to feign quiet anger when Jen joined in, tired as I was, but I somehow managed.
“I have questions,” I said as we drove away in Jen’s car. Stephen’s had broken windows.
Kate might have smiled at me as she watched the road, hands on the wheel, and if she had I might have been angry. It would have been a sign that she was treating this as a game, the sort of consequence-free attitude you would expect from someone her age. Instead she nodded somberly. “I figured you would.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked. “You were safe.”
At this, Kate shook her head violently. “No, I wasn’t. I mean, I might have been when you left, but from the second you told me you were leaving, I was thinking about being on my own. It wasn’t until you showed me that badge you had hidden in your bag that I realized you were wrong.”
This caught me by surprise. “Wrong how, exactly?”
She paused as if gathering her thoughts. “You said Russey wouldn’t have the manpower to search all through southern Indiana for us, and maybe that’s true. But you also said he wouldn’t stop coming after either of us. The badge made me realize he wouldn’t have to send people to look, not the way criminals would. You said it yourself, you trained his people. They’d think like you.”
Realization dawned on me. “You think he’d have outfitted them like cops.”
“Yep,” Kate said. “If you could do it, so could they. Strangers asking questions will draw attention, but if someone with a badge saying he’s a state investigator or something shows up with a picture asking if you’ve seen anything odd, you’re going to answer. Plus we had to steal cars. I thought that would give them a lead.”
I mulled it over for a minute. She wasn’t wrong. It was a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to, even if it seemed a lot scarier and more likely to happen than it actually was. “Okay. I get it. You probably weren’t actually in any danger, but I see how you got there. So why don’t you tell me how you found me, and follow up with why Jen said you ‘pulled it off’ when you came in the door.”
Now she did smile, a curve of the lips no parent could misinterpret. It was an expression of pure smugness. “I didn’t find you, actually. I just waited for you.”
I frowned at her. “Cut the cryptic bullshit and spill it.”
“Fine,” Kate said with a twitch of the mouth approaching a grin. “When you left, I followed you. I stayed back a long way and had to duck away a couple times, but you were in disguise and didn’t want to look nervous, so you weren’t checking to see if you were being followed. I watched you steal that shitty car. Once I knew what you were driving, I ran back to the cabin, grabbed our shit, and got ahead of you. Took a side road so you wouldn’t see me and drove like hell for Louisville since I knew you were coming this way.”
Her fingers tightened on the wheel. “I figured you’d take the first exit into the city, so that’s what I did. I parked where I could watch it, then followed you. I was watching when they hit your car and took you.”
“Seeing this, you decided the best thing for you to do was follow,” I said flatly. “Not just follow, but insert yourself into the situation.”
Kate’s mouth dropped open to argue. I saw the flash of anger ripple across her features only to vanish. “You’re right. I mean, it was scary as shit. You saw how far away I parked when we stopped to get the bag. It took me ten minutes just to walk to that building once I knew where they’d taken you. Jen came outside and saw me.”
All the cockiness was gone from Kate’s voice, which came out in barely more than a whisper. “I thought I was dead. But she recognized me. I guess Russey has pictures from my phone or something. She just looked at me for a second and asked why I was there. I told her I wanted to help you, and when she asked why, I said it was because you were trying to keep me safe.”
“Well, that makes sense,” I said with a smile. “That was probably the one thing you could have said to Jen to get her to take that kind of risk. She told you to draw Stephen out and surprise him, I’m guessing?”
Kate nodded. “Why did she say she owed you?”
“Because of how we met,” I said. “I heard about her through a contact of mine, and we’re always looking for a good doctor who can keep their mouth shut. Usually those types do the job, get the cash, and slip away so they don’t have to learn more than they want. Jen was different. She knew our rep for getting things done with a minimum of fuss, so she made a deal.”
I shook my head at the memory. “Her sister had
a stalker. An ex who wouldn’t leave her alone. He was escalating, even assaulted her once. If we agreed to take care of the problem, Jen would work with us.”
Kate glanced over at me, eyebrows raised. “Don’t keep me in suspense, man. Did you…you know? Take care of him?”
“Kill him, you mean?” I asked. “No. God knows the world would have been a little better if I had, but he’s still alive. Or was, last I heard. Javi and I followed him for a day, cased his apartment, and snagged him on his way home from work. We put a hood on him, tied him to a chair, and explained very patiently that unless he changed his ways, we were going to cut things off him until he died.”
Kate blanched, looking a little green. “I don’t really know how to feel about that. He sounds like a bad guy, but still.”
I nodded in understanding. “You should feel however you want. Most decent people get a little sick at the idea of hurting another person that way. Deliberately, I mean. It might have bothered me a decade ago, but I’ve long since lost my capacity to feel bad for what sacks of shit like him suffer through.”
“So it worked?” Kate asked, clearly wanting to move on.
I seesawed my hand. “Yes and no. He definitely pissed himself—Javi had to clean the chair and was not happy about it—and kept away from Jen’s sister for about a month. We all thought it was over.” The memory of the terrified phone call, Jen furiously relaying what had happened, played in my head. “Turns out the guy thought we weren’t willing to do more than scare him. He starts up again, this time he kills the sister’s dog as a warning of what will happen if she sends thugs after him again.”
“What the fuck,” Kate hissed. “Who does something like that?”
“People with something wrong in their brains,” I said. “Anyway, I tailed the guy, waited until he was alone, and Tased him within an inch of his life.” I heard the coldness in my voice, felt it creeping into my mind. “I took him to a field in handcuffs and broke his arms and legs with a baseball bat. Called in an anonymous tip, and when the cops show up they find him beat half to death with a stolen pistol and just enough crystal meth to prove intent to sell tucked into his sock. Cops called it a drug deal gone bad.”
Kate stared at me hard for a few seconds, then snapped her attention back to the road. “Jesus, Carter.”
It was a trait about myself I had understood since childhood, that coldness. I had lived a life full of little joys and general happiness, one where the dark and brutal thing crouching in the back of my head didn’t have a need to appear. It was what let me see the necessity of taking the abuser out in a long-term way, just as it had done the mechanical work of guiding my swings with the baseball bat. I watched it all happen from a distance. Not happily, perhaps, but with at least some satisfaction that the job got done without another death on my hands.
Since losing my family, the cold thing had come forward much more often.
“I know it’s terrible,” I said, thinking about the morning’s events. “Sometimes you have to make the hard call and end a threat for good.”
The dark, cold thing wasn’t a voice I heard any more than anger was. I suspected it was a dissociative disorder. I’d read up on them a fair amount. It didn’t speak to me more than any other emotion did, yet I could still understand it perfectly. Those moments when I felt it creeping in at the edges were a warning as clear as a shout.
I had been too soft. Too kind. Leaving too many pieces on the board.
It was time to play for keeps.
19
Then
“Your guy is too hot,” said Francis, the burly, graying investigator I had hired. “I mean, he isn’t on any police radar or anything, but he’s pretty much untouchable.”
I didn’t show my frustration. In the year since Jacob Caldwell had taken my family from me, I’d come at him from as many angles as I could. The first step is always information, but I couldn’t get any. I had followed him as much as possible considering how rarely he left the base. Hired people like Francis, who was a private investigator specializing in operating within a morally gray zone. Hell, I went so far as to befriend the mailman who delivered to the apartment he never used in town and the owner of the nearby gas station Caldwell only visited a few times a month.
“He’s gotta be high up,” Francis continued, ignorant of the litany of failures scrolling behind my eyes. “I’ve seen it before. Guys like him get a good online scrubbing by some agency with three letters in its name. Only real basic stuff left in government databases. And he’s good, too. You expect that, him being in intelligence, but he’s almost paranoid. Chased down the trash from that place he keeps in town, and even his utility bills are cross-cut shredded to confetti.”
“It’s fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “Half the time he’s out of the country anyway. At least, I think he is. He’s married to his job since the accident. Doesn’t have a life, much less something I can exploit.”
“Doesn’t look like you got much of a life, either,” Francis said. “Don’t mean that as an insult, Carter. Can’t imagine what you’ve been through. What I’m saying is, with you obsessing like this you’re bound to stumble onto something eventually. No one is perfect. One thing this job’s taught me is that everyone fucks up eventually.”
I closed the thin file he’d handed me and tossed it on my desk. I pulled an envelope out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Thanks anyway, Francis. I’ll let you know if I need you again.”
The older man hesitated. “Look, normally I’ll take the money and tip my hat to you, but I don’t feel right about it. I know what this guy did, and I didn’t find anything you didn’t already know.”
I shook my head and pushed the money toward him. “You did the work, even if it didn’t bear fruit. Take it, man. I have shit to do.”
Francis took the envelope, but without the pleased expression I’d always seen on his face when getting paid. “You let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, Carter. No charge.”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate the gesture.”
And the surprising thing? I really did.
A year was a long time to focus on revenge. True, much of it was spent occupying myself with work—a small fraction—and learning new skills and trades—the majority—but even so, there were hours every day when I had nothing to do but stew. Try as I might to fight against it, the wounds had begun to close. They would never truly scar over. I would never get past that loss. I for damn sure hadn’t worked through my grief.
Yet I was healing. No denying it. The sense of utter, complete loss was being dulled by the passing of days. The pain was fading, and I didn’t want that.
Why? Not because I wanted to feel it. Who would? There was no joy in the experience, but the pain compelled. It was a driving force. As it began to dwindle, I felt the burning desire to destroy Caldwell bank down to embers. My resolve began to falter. I didn’t feel he deserved it any less, but I was just so damn tired.
That’s what happens when the hurt fades. Your body, or in this case mind, can no longer run on the high octane caused by trauma. You have to gear down and rest as a consequence.
Had I made any progress, momentum would have carried me forward. Instead it was one wall or dead end after another.
When the door closed behind Francis, I looked around the tiny space I lived in. I didn’t wonder how I’d gotten to this point—I knew every detail with terrible intimacy—but I did ask myself whether it was worth even carrying on for. Pouring myself into the work was a survival mechanism, and I was good at it, but I was no Bond villain. I enjoyed success for the drug it was, a means of keeping going. The crime itself held no appeal. If anything I tried to minimize the damage I inflicted.
I shambled to my room. I should have taken a shower or worked out. A year had melted away the softness in my body, replaced with flat, workman’s muscle. So much time and effort put into making myself as capable as possible. Rather than adhere to the routine, I flopped onto the narrow bed. Before my eyes d
rifted shut in the throes of purely defensive sleep, I took in the room as I always did. Home gym. Heavy bag. Same old things, never changing.
Then darkness.
I woke up with a new perspective, an idea fully-formed. It was as if the kindling for a fire had been set before sleep but the act itself ignited the flame. I couldn’t even put the credit on a dream; I simply regained consciousness and recognized I’d missed an angle.
I went to my desk and searched through it. In seconds I came up with a small black book, containing the contact information for every person I knew on the base. Everyone from my military days who had been more than a casual acquaintance was in there.
Not once in the last year had I considered approaching Caldwell from the inside. I was essentially thrown out, the bitterness and failure of that abrupt divorce walling off what had to be the most likely means of gathering information.
The next few hours were spent scanning and making copies of the pages. I knew from first principles that I wouldn’t be able to use many of the contacts myself. That would be too obvious, too easy to trace. Instead I thought about my bank account and the cash I’d been piling up from job after job.
At dawn I called a surprised Francis and asked him to come over, warning him that we wouldn’t be alone. By noon I’d gone out and come back before admitting half a dozen people into the tiny apartment.
It was too large a crowd for the space, but they were happy to snack on the party sub I’d picked up and listen to my pitch. Francis wasn’t the only PI from the shady side of the street in attendance. Every person in that room had flexible morals at best. Ironically, they were the only ones I could trust with a job like this.
“I’ve hired each of you at some point, all for the same job,” I said. The gathered faces, four men and two women, exchanged appraising looks. “You’re all very good at what you do, but our target is exceptionally difficult to dig up dirt on.”
