by Joshua Guess
I saw frustrated expressions on a few of them, Francis included. They took a lot of pride in their work, even if it wasn’t very pretty, and hitting the sort of wall Caldwell existed behind was a low blow. “I think we have another angle to explore, though. I’m an idiot for not thinking of it before.” I nudged the stack of copied pages, then fanned several across the table.
“This is every person I know from the base. As you can see, I’ve written entries next to each with as much pertinent information as possible. You know your jobs better than I do, so I’m sure you can see where this is going.”
One of the two women, a youngish lady named Kendra, picked up one of the pages. “You want us to social engineer it, right? Make friends with people and get information that way.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Not just information. I want to go beyond gathering intelligence. I’m committed to a long-term project where you can get close enough to insert yourselves into lives so you’ll be able to do things like be invited onto the base to events. The weakest part of any secure system is the people running it. We were too focused on Caldwell before. This way we can approach him by going through layers, spreading roots through the people around him.”
The reactions varied. A few were blatantly doing the math in their heads, wondering how much they could add as hazard pay to their daily rates. I could see Kendra’s eyes light up with the challenge. Francis, past his prime and perfectly aware of how far off the rails this could go, looked wary. It was he who spoke next.
“Carter, you know this is gonna be crazy expensive, right? It’s dangerous as shit, and look at me. You think I can sell meeting up with one of these people at the gym or something?”
I bobbed my head. “I know it’s risky as hell. And I was actually planning on having you as the head of the operation. Everyone will run information through you, and you’ll have the last word on what steps everyone gets to take. You’ve got more years in than any other two put together, and I trust your judgment.”
There were unhappy smiles at this. These people knew their business and weren’t likely to react well to having a boss tell them what to do even if how to do it was left up to them. “I know some of you might not care for that, so here’s what I’m offering: double your daily rates for up to six weeks, and a ten grand bonus when it’s all said and done.”
“Ten thousand split six ways isn’t much,” Kendra noted.
I smiled, an unfamiliar expression that took a little effort. “Each, Kendra. Ten each.”
Andrew, an Asian man in his early middle years, met my eyes seriously. “This is pure information gathering? You’re going to pay us this much just to funnel information back to you?”
I nodded. “Sounds too good to be true, I know. But yes, that’s what it will be. To be clear, I don’t care about any of the military stuff on the base. That’s not what you’re after, so you won’t have to worry about treason charges or whatever. Your purpose is to befriend and analyze every person on that list who can give you even a whisper of information about Caldwell. I’ve marked ideal targets who are friends with others on the list. I want anything I can get my hands on that provides leverage. If he’s dating someone, or still being watched carefully after what happened with my family—anything. He comes to town so rarely it’s impossible to predict…”
I trailed off when I noticed everyone staring at me. “What?”
Andrew shook his head sadly. “I just don’t think I realized how obsessed with this you are. Don’t get me wrong, I can see why. But being willing to pay us this much just to weasel up his gym schedule? That’s…something, Carter.”
He said it cautiously, as if afraid I would react with shock and disbelief. “You’re completely right. I’m obsessed. This is everything to me. It’s just data to you, but for me it’s enemy movements. It’s how I build a strategy against him. How I devise tactics. I’m paying you to become a pipeline for every scrap of data to make that possible. To me, that’s priceless.”
I heard the intensity in my own words and cut myself off there. The room was deathly silent as the people gathered there absorbed and processed. Everyone there knew what my endgame was; none of them were idiots. I wasn’t either, which was why I didn’t say it out loud. That way none of them would ever have to testify that they knew what I was planning.
“Well, I’m in,” said Kendra. “It’s going to be interesting if nothing else.”
In the end, all of them signed on. If they had an inkling of exactly how I’d be using what they found, the steps I would take to turn Jacob Caldwell’s life into an endless nightmare, they showed no sign. As terrible a purpose as the entire job had, I think part of what drove at least some of them was empathy. A normal person will try to help a stranger when they find him in crisis. Basic human decency is often ignored or overlooked, mostly because the everyday examples don’t make the news. That’s not why people commit acts of kindness.
For these people, money was the primary driver. Yet I couldn’t shake the sense that they felt sorry for me, and sad for what I’d been through. Twisted as it was, this was their way of helping.
Which is my way of saying not to put the blame on them.
20
Now
“My parents think I’m missing,” Kate said as she woke me up. The cheap hotel room was on the outskirts of the county, and the plan was only to stay there for five or six hours while I napped. I probably had a minor concussion, which made sleep a terrible idea, but I needed it. The morning had been kind of rough.
“What?” I said blearily. “How? Why?”
She handed me the burner phone she’d used to get in touch with her mom and dad. I scanned the series of texts between them and softly cursed.
“This is really bad,” Kate said.
“You have a gift for understatement,” I replied.
The gist of the conversation was straightforward. Someone had contacted Kate’s parents on their trip, informing them that she was missing after the fire I’d set. Whoever tipped them off wasn’t with the police, or there would have been alerts all over the news. From the texts it was clear her parents thought this person was a cop, however.
“They think I’m being forced into writing to them. I even talked to mom for a few minutes, told her I had no idea what this was about. Lied through my teeth about being at the party. They’re coming home anyway.”
My head snapped away from the phone to look at her. “How long?”
“Five, six hours,” Kate said. “Mom was at the airport when she called.”
“Fuck,” I said. “This is Russey. I didn’t think he’d involve your parents. Too risky, since it’s almost guaranteed they’ll call the cops as soon as they get here. That’s way more heat than he’d normally want.” I chewed the inside of my lip, thinking furiously. “You need to call them back. Tell them not to go home. We’ll figure a place for them to meet you.”
Understanding lit her face. “Oh. They’re watching my house.”
“Of course,” I confirmed. “They’ll expect you to meet your parents there to reassure them you’re okay, and if you don’t, Russey’s people will take them as leverage against you.”
Kate snatched the phone and tried to make a call only to toss the phone on the bed in frustration. “She must have turned it off already. What do we do?”
I ran a hand over my face in a vain effort to rub away the bone-deep tiredness. “We figure out a good place to have them meet you, then text it to them. Though the airport might actually be the best bet. It’s public. Hard to pull off anything there. I’m positive they’ll have their phones back on the second they’re allowed, and that gives us a window.”
“Then what?” Kate asked. “If we go home, Russey will get us.”
I put a hand on her shoulder, leaning down so I could catch her eyes. She had been scared for her own life, but nothing like the terror she had for her parents. “When you see them, you tell them everything. All of it. You convince them to get in their car and drive until th
e gas runs out. You don’t stop for any reason.”
Kate stared at me. “And then what? When do we come home?”
“Watch the news,” I said. “You’ll know it’s safe because Russey will be dead.”
Kate pulled away. “What if you get killed, huh? Anything could happen to you.”
She was right.
Russey might kill me. Hell, it was likely. The odds were never in my favor. I’d gotten by with restraining and wounding a lot of Russey’s people so far, but the only way I could make sure Kate and her family was safe from the blowback was to win. To utterly and completely dominate from every angle.
“I guarantee you it will be okay, Kate,” I said. I raised a hand as she began to argue. “No, listen to me. You’re right. Anything could happen. I have some other options I didn’t really think of as valid, but now I see they’re the best backup plan I could hope for. They’ll take a little work, but once we split up, I’ll set things in motion. If I die, they’ll keep you safe from him.”
Kate’s face was disbelieving. “What are you going to do? Magic? How can you possibly make that promise?”
I sat up in the bed and took a drink of water from the glass on the nightstand. “I’m going to set the wheels in motion for him to be taken down. Legally.”
Kate’s eyebrows rose. “You can do that?”
I smiled. “Sure. Russey wasn’t wrong to mistrust me, not really. I was grateful to him for something he did for me, and I owed a debt. I’d have been loyal to the day I died if things hadn’t gone the way they did. But that doesn’t mean I trusted him. I would have been an idiot not to put a contingency in place. I have recordings, documents, everything I’d need to put him away for five or six lifetimes.”
Kate’s mouth dropped open. “Really? That’s great!” Her face clouded over. “Why didn’t you start with that?”
I sighed. “Because it will probably put me in prison with him. But, you know? Fuck it. I don’t really care at this point. It’s a necessary sacrifice, and I’m happy to make it.”
The trip to the airport was annoying. Mostly it involved driving while Kate demanded I find another way to destroy Russey, one that didn’t include me going to jail. In this I flatly denied her. Not only was it a powerful, functional weapon, but it was also fitting. I’d built his enterprise from a skeleton to a powerful beast of an operation.
It just made sense. Dumping all the incriminating evidence I’d saved would disrupt Russey in ways I couldn’t manage alone. Thinking about it gave me a wild sort of confidence that I could take him down. What I couldn’t do was convince the furious teenager next to me to chill the fuck out.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” I said, ignoring the rage on her face. “If Russey’s people know your parents are coming in, they’ll have people here watching. Posing as cops, probably. You were right about how effective that can be. I’m going to keep an eye on you and follow you out of the city.”
“Fine,” Kate said in resignation. “What if we’re followed? By someone other than you, I mean?”
I smiled grimly. “Then it won’t be for long.”
She flinched at the words, rubbed a hand along one arm. “How bad is it going to get?”
I didn’t have to ask what she meant. I could have chosen to interpret the question any number of ways, but Kate had shown incredible bravery and intelligence, and it would have been an insult to her not to answer truthfully.
“Other than at the party, I’ve gone pretty easy,” I said. “Broken bones and Tasers can get you a long way. I’ve damaged Russey badly by taking out his ability to gather information, but what I’m about to do is like firing both barrels of a shotgun at his knees. It’s going to cause a shitstorm you can’t even imagine. Which will make him desperate.”
“More desperate, you mean” Kate said. “And more dangerous.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure he’s going to tear up the city looking for me. So once I push the button on this, I’m going to make it really easy for him.”
Kate’s mouth dropped open. “What, let him find you?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s really the only way to be certain I have all his attention. Plus it’ll give me some advantages.”
Shaking her head like a mother giving up on an idiot child, Kate looked away. “So your choices are go to jail or get killed, and you decided to make the second a bunch easier. I can’t even explain how incredibly fucked up that is, man.”
“Who said those were my only choices?” I asked, a little confused. “I mean, sure, I’m definitely going to be implicated. I never said I would give myself up. If I have to, I’ll disappear.”
Kate relaxed somewhat. “Oh. I don’t know why, but I sorta thought you’d testify and all that. Self-sacrifice kind of thing.”
I resisted the urge to laugh, especially considering my next words. “Doesn’t really do any good to testify against a bunch of dead guys. Which they will be if I make it through this.”
Kate shifted uncomfortably in her seat, then sat a little straighter. “I just realized if that happens, you’ll be the one they charge with all the crimes you guys committed, right?”
“Along with a bunch of murders,” I said. The words came out too lightly, and I regretted them instantly. Kate tried to cover the gut reaction to it, the flashing memory of Robby’s death. I knew that was what happened to her because the same image surfaced in my own head.
It’s impossible to explain the complexities of knowing you’re a killer, living with that fact, to someone like Kate. Normal, sane, and with a good heart. I wanted to tell her that every one of those deaths followed me everywhere I go, never far enough away to truly forget even if they weren’t close enough to the surface to ruin my life.
I once had it explained to me by a hitman, who said that killing was just like any other sin. While the act itself is terrible, it’s similar in how it affects you as cheating on a spouse even if it’s far worse in intensity. The first time you’re wracked with guilt—assuming you aren’t a complete sociopath—to the point you wake up in a cold sweat on those nights you can manage sleep at all. You question your basic humanity, wonder if there is anything inside you but a shadowy monster.
Time does its thing and heals you, but it leaves that scar. The wound can open at random, catch you off guard. Then you do it again. It’s not as bad the second time, even less the third. And while people without severe personality disorders will always feel some guilt, eventually the act of killing and the life we lead changes how we look at life and death.
A soldier will kill to defend. They’ll feel the same guilt and awfulness, endure those spiritual wounds. Yet in the clutch, they’ll do it again and again because there are justifications.
Us crooks, the hitman told me, don’t have that same shield. We know we’re doing wrong, but most of the time we’re killing other people like us. Not innocents or decent people. Criminals, often as not.
Silence filled the car. I could have filled it with all those words instead, maybe even made Kate reconsider how she saw me. Part of me wanted to do it, but I resisted.
We were at a parting of the ways. I knew beyond doubt that Kate would carry her own scars. She would need help parsing out the traumas and experiences, and the last thing I wanted to do was make that harder. Casting doubt on the basic morality of what I was about to do wasn’t just unfair to the healing process for her, it also amounted to a cop-out on my part.
Because at the root, I was getting ready to murder people. Bad ones, folks who had earned it many times over, but murder all the same.
“We should go in,” I said. “I’m sure your mom and dad are losing their minds right now.”
Kate gazed distantly through the windshield, her eyes slightly unfocused. “Yeah. I don’t know how…it’s just gonna be weird, you know?”
Once again I was gripped by a powerful—so powerful—urge to comfort, to explain. I wanted to tell her this was normal. The conflict of real life, boring and predictable, crashing in
to the insanity of the last few days would require adjustment and decompression. Every fatherly urge built up over the last eight years with no outlet surged forward.
Instead I pulled the keys and unlocked the doors. I kept my response to a single word.
“Yeah.”
It only took us a few minutes to find the gate. When her parents appeared, I saw echoes of the girl Kate had once been as she dashed to them. I stayed back, watching from a distance as she spoke rapidly with them. The expressions on their faces were a study in slowly-growing horror. I knew the heartbreak and terror in those looks all too well.
Hadn’t I seen them in the mirror for years?
21
Two factors made my next step easy and effective. The first was my familiarity with the minute details of the Russey organization. While I didn’t have my contingency blackmail material in hand, I’d still kept a close eye on what police were investigating what crimes we’d been involved with. Not that the cops seemed to have any idea who we were, but it paid to have eyes on a detective tasked with finding a missing person, for example. Especially if you knew that person was dead.
Granted, we didn’t leave much in the way of overwhelming, obvious evidence, but that didn’t matter. The point was to hit Russey with scrutiny, not convict him with a slam-dunk. So all I had to do was alert a few cops who would be thrilled with the tip, and hand them some leads.
Which leads to the other factor, which are burner phones. Having an untraceable phone was incredibly handy. No deeper meaning there, just an observation.
I followed Kate and her family north, carefully watching for any vehicles tailing us. I knew she would keep an eye out, too. I saw nothing out of place from the airport through the city and on toward Indiana. It was possible Russey had someone waiting a lot further on, but even my paranoia could only stretch so far. If that was the case, I would just have to trust Kate to do what she had to. I’d warned her what to look for and given her ideas on how to react. At a certain point there was nothing more for me to do without giving up the fight against Russey to protect Kate’s family full-time.
