by Jace Killan
The two officers looked at each other, their faces reflecting pity for the young widower. One looked at the other and shrugged. “Jared, we’ll get him.”
An officer gave Jared a ride back to the suite. He found a note slid under the door, letting him know that he could stay as long as he needed and that they were very sorry for his loss.
By now, the shooting was all over the news.
Jared called Emma’s mom, Joanne, and could barely speak as he told her of her daughter, his wife. Joanne had seen the tragedy on her Facebook news feed, but hadn’t put it together that she’d already been mourning her own daughter’s death.
“Don’t tell the kids,” he said. “I’m on my way to get them.”
As nice as the hotel was for comping his suite, the last place he wanted to stay was there, a quarter mile down the road from where his wife had been slaughtered.
He packed up and drove to a local convenience store where, using cash, he purchased Salsa Verde Doritos and a Dr. Pepper along with three burner phones.
The thought crossed Jared’s mind that the minivan could be bugged and he wouldn’t take any chances. He let one of the phones charge as he drove then pulled into a park.
If there was a hit out on him, it probably still existed, so he thought it best to stay in public places. He walked a ways from the minivan to where a couple jogged around a cement pathway, not far from a jungle gym loaded with kids.
Jared sat on a bench, closer to the playground and started programing numbers into his phone, only the important ones he’d need. Then he tossed his iPhone into the grass for someone else to find. If they had bugged his house and phone, then they might also be able to triangulate his position.
On his way back to the car, Jared phoned Benjamin. “It’s me, but don’t say my name.”
“Dude, where have you been?”
“Call this number on another phone. Someone else’s. Got it?” Maybe Jared behaved too paranoid. But the thought of his dead wife told him he hadn’t been paranoid enough.
His phone rang. “What’s going on?”
Jared breathed deep, thinking of how to respond. “I’m into some deep crap, man. I need help. Are you where you can talk?”
“Yeah. I’m calling from the hotel lobby.”
“Okay. Listen, I think someone is trying to kill me. Maybe you, too.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Very. Listen, man. I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“Into what?”
“They killed Emma.”
“What? Oh, dude. No, no, no. Oh, dude.” Silence followed as Benjamin processed what’d been said. “Who’s they?”
“I’m not entirely sure. Listen, you should be careful. Head back to D.C. and I’ll find a way to get a hold of you. Just be careful. Okay?”
“You’re seriously freaking me out, man.”
“I know.” Jared’s eyes darted around the park. “Be careful. Make sure you’re not followed. If you can get a burner phone, I’ll text you. Write down this number.” Jared read the number to one of the other burners he had purchased. This would be his only call with this phone. For all he knew, they had bugged Benjamin’s phone too and already had this number.
“Alright,” Benjamin said. “I’ll text you in a little while.”
Jared hung up, chucked his burner phone in a nearby trashcan and got back into the minivan, starting the lonely drive to tell his children there mom had gone to live with God.
39
Mondays at the American Way Market were packed because on Monday they served a five-dollar pulled pork sandwich with slaw on top of meat and tangy sauce. Every other day the sandwich cost eight dollars, and never seemed to taste as good. It had become a weekly tradition for him and the others. This time, Mayhew said he was too busy and Jared had gone out of town to visit family.
Joaquin came just the same. Sure he liked the pulled pork, but Mondays had also become the day he’d make his drop for Spencer. In his weekly tip of ten or twenty dollars, Joaquin would include an encrypted SD card, taped inside a folded bill, loaded with files and correspondence from the office.
Only a few times did Marco ever let Joaquin jam on the guitar, but when he did, he’d offer a paper pick with a message that Joaquin would later decode.
This time, Joaquin took the pick, played a little ditty, then returned the guitar, making sure the pick stayed hidden from sight.
As usual, after retrieving a drop, he headed for the men’s room and settled onto a stall. The paper pick folded into a triangle held a message inside based on a code that Joaquin and Spencer had derived prior to his coming to New York.
Joaquin’s Rubik’s cube held 54 spaces—9 spaces on each of six colored sides. On the solved traditional cube, each side held a unique color, white considered the first, usually on bottom and yellow its opposite on top, and the others green, blue, orange, and red.
In making the code, Joaquin and Spencer assigned a letter to each space, white-one would be the letter A. The code was simple that way, written in sequence, a letter-number combo for each letter of the alphabet. There were other words assigned to the unused colors—names of places or people. The yellow spaces were assigned to numbers one through nine, opposite, so yellow-one would be a nine.
Then to jumble it up more, they converted the colors to Spanish, so yellow would be identified with an A for Amarillo, white a B for Blanco, and so on. Blue, Azul used the letter Z.
And sometimes, they would add other numbers to the sequence, like B1 for the letter A might also be written B17 or BC1 for inconsistency.
It had been a fun exercise setting up the code and mastering it, but Joaquin never quite believed all the secret spy stuff necessary. Until he read the note he’d just received from Marco.
In code, it read, “Guzman killed Jared wife. Be careful. Need to bring Jared in.”
Joaquin read the message again, taking time to study the code just to make sure he had deciphered it properly. Emma was dead?
Why had Guzman killed her? What did she have to do with anything? It reminded Joaquin that he wasn’t playing spy with his friends. This was real. He needed to get back into his office and act like business as usual.
He flushed the message down the toilet, making sure it disappeared, then headed back to the office. He tried to act as if nothing weighed his mind, avoiding especially the thought of Jared’s wife and their now motherless children.
Mayhew paced his office floor. Jared left a voicemail saying that he would be out of town visiting family. Mayhew suspected the timing. A few days earlier, Jared had been following the rabbit hole and ventured dangerously close to the truth of the cartel’s money making operation.
Jared wouldn’t let it go either. Surely, Mayhew’s words did little to dissuade his friend. He knew Jared too well. The guy was a righteous son of a bitch and he’d keep digging until he exposed all the darkness.
And now, Jared wouldn’t answer his phone.
Junior probably didn’t buy the B.S. that Jared only wanted to cover his own ass. What if they did something to Jared, like they had done to Mayhew? Only Jared the Righteous wouldn’t have any indiscretions to use as blackmail.
What else might they be capable of? Murder? Of course they would murder someone to protect their money making scheme. The cartel murdered people all the time over insignificant amounts of money and stupidities. Their Northern accounts were a matter of millions.
Jared was probably as good as dead.
Which meant that Mayhew could also be killed, or rather, would also be killed once he served no use to the cartel. Maybe he needed to consider his exit strategies.
His cell rang. He didn’t recognize the Pennsylvania number but answered it anyway. “Hello?”
“Owen, its Jared.”
Mayhew did his best to mask his worry. “Hey man, how’s it going?”
Muffled breathing returned.
“Everything okay?”
Silence followed, then a hard swallow. “Emma was killed this
morning in a drive by shooting.”
Emma? Mayhew sank into his leather chair. “Oh, Jared. I’m so...”
“Police think it was gang related.” The monotone had been the dam, withholding emotion. It broke into sobs. “Oh God.”
“I’m so sorry Jared. What can I do?” Mayhew returned to pacing the floor though he felt as though he might vomit.
The monotone returned after Jared cleared his throat. “I need a few days off. I’m staying at my mother-in-law’s place with the kids.”
What could he say? And the way that he’d blown Jared off, might make Jared suspect that Mayhew was involved in the conspiracy, too. He was of course but not to that level. Mayhew would have surrendered to his fate in prison for the statutory rape charges if it meant that Jared’s wife could’ve been spared. It was his fault after all. Mayhew’s greed. His infidelity. That had caused all of this mess. He’d lost his family, his agency, and now Jared, his right hand man had suffered an even greater loss at no fault of his own.
“Jared, name it. I’ll do anything.” Mayhew’s plea had guilt written all over it even though he tried to mask it.
“That’s okay,” Jared said. “I’m going to go now.”
Mayhew hated himself and that manifested in rage. He thought of introducing Junior to his glock. Or maybe Joaquin. Had he known about the hit? Obviously, the bullet was meant for Jared and found Emma instead.
Mayhew bent over, took one of the visitor chairs and threw it at the glass window that fell into millions of tiny pieces.
Joaquin chatted with Kristin who noticed his worry. A crash echoed through the halls. He raced down to Mayhew’s office to see the shattered glass spilt across the floor.
Mayhew stood in the middle of the hall, fists clenched.
“What happened?” Joaquin said.
Mayhew didn’t answer, instead he charged Joaquin through the fallen wall, grabbing his suit lapels. “Did you know?” Mayhew spat as he screamed.
“Know what?” Joaquin assumed Mayhew had just found out about Emma. “What the hell?”
“You killed her. You bastards killed her.”
Joaquin brushed Mayhew off when he loosened his grip. He shared Mayhew’s rage, but he had to play his part. Junior would be watching. “Killed who?”
“Oh God. What have I done?” Mayhew sunk to the floor amidst shattered glass and sobbed.
Joaquin sat down beside him. “What’s going on man? Who died?”
“Emma,” Mayhew said, barely audible now.
“Jared’s wife? Oh, no. Oh man. What happened?”
“Tu gente, pendejo.” The words cut Joaquin deeper than he could show. Your people.
40
Jared hung up the phone at his mother-in-law’s place. He swallowed his contempt for Mayhew who didn’t sound surprised when Jared told him of Emma’s death. The son of a bitch was as complicit as if he’d pulled the trigger himself.
“Can I get you anything, honey?” Joanne, Jared’s mother in law, asked.
Prior to Emma’s death, the two usually shared a cordial relationship filled with respect more than love. But now, Jared had been promoted. She treated him like her son. And he confided in her as a mother. Jared had avoided all contact with his actual mother. He thought of calling her, telling her of his loss, but she’d only find some way to point the finger back at him, and he just couldn’t handle that right now. Then she’d insist on taking a more active role in raising the kids. That would send Emma spinning in her grave. No. She’d find out through the grapevine and he’d rather deal with the fallout from not calling his mom directly than the fallout if he actually did.
Joanne would be his surrogate mother now. She’d be his kids’ mother, too. Emma would’ve preferred it that way.
Jared wrote on the pad of paper next to the kitchen phone, “Can you give me a ride?”
Joanne nodded. She had indulged his insistence that the house might be bugged.
Jared wrote, “I need to go out of town for a day or two.”
Joanne cocked her head. Jared read her eyes. The kids needed their father right now. And he needed them. She worried for his mental health. She hadn’t fully bought into the conspiracy theory that Jared had presented.
The kids did need him and he them, but his main priority was to provide for their safety and needs. He’d done a bang up job providing for their mother. Now, his eyes were wide open.
“I was thinking,” he said, “that maybe we get a few movies and just lounge around the house tomorrow.”
“That sounds lovely.” Joanne didn’t miss a beat. “Why don’t you go relax and I’ll run to the store. Be back in no time.”
“Sounds good.”
Jared folded the paper and put it in his pocket with the pen, in case he needed it again. He went upstairs, into a room belonging to Emma’s brother, who was away at college. He found a dark hoody and put it on. He also took the burner phones, a car charger, and a change of clothes. Then he ducked low and crawled to the garage, just in case anyone tried spying through any of the windows.
He climbed into the back seat of Joanne’s Cadillac and accosted across the floor. A moment later, Joanne got into the car and pressed the garage door opener. Her hand patted his side. He turned to see her giving him a thumbs-up. So much about that moment reminded him of Emma. He smiled thinking of her. Right then, there wasn’t sadness but gratitude. In his mind’s eye, she looked back at him, smiling, giving a heavenly thumbs-up to her husband the spy.
The car had been on the road for a few minutes when Joanne squeezed Jared’s side. She pointed behind her and appeared nervous. Then she turned the car wildly, and then again.
Jared pulled out the paper and wrote, “Followed?”
“Uh huh,” she said as if enjoying the view.
Jared wrote, “Carwash.”
She nodded and drove for a few more miles before pulling into a carwash. She paid for the works. As soon as suds covered the windows, Jared sat up. He gathered his things and kissed Joanne on the cheek. Then while the car soaked, Jared opened the door and got out quickly. He made his way to the corner near the carwash entrance and crouched low. He waited for ten minutes or so after Joanne left the wash, then crept through the building, out the back. He shrouded his face with the hoodie and hurried down the sidewalk, around a hedge and up into a hardware store. He hung out there pretending to examine a display of hand tools while really watching the doorway to see if he had been followed.
After fifteen minutes, he walked out of the hardware store and looked around while keeping to the shadows of the building. He had an hour of daylight left and Jared debated hiding until nightfall. Of course, he might be hiding from nothing, but his overanxious head told him that his paranoia was not ill placed.
A silver SUV slowed as it passed along the road flanking the hardware store. Jared switched directions, heading toward the convenience store on the corner, back by the car wash. He watched over his shoulder as the SUV disappeared out of sight. When it did, Jared bolted into a full out run, behind the convenience store and up the road into a residential neighborhood.
His plan had been to catch a local bus to the station, then a Greyhound to Washington D.C. where he could meet with Benjamin. He couldn’t see beyond that. That would depend on the SEC, he supposed. Maybe they’d end up in witness protection or something.
But now, he headed in the wrong direction if he wanted to catch a bus. He decided to cut through the neighborhood then back around to the bus stop down the street from the hardware store. That was until the same silver SUV turned the corner and gunned the accelerator right at him. He ran, though startled upon seeing the SUV again, his foot planted half on the sidewalk and half on an overgrown yard. He tripped and rolled. By the time he returned to his feet, the SUV screeched to a stop beside him with the window rolled down.
A blond man extended an FBI badge from the SUV window as he opened the car door and stepped out.
“It’s okay, Jared. We’re here to help.”
&n
bsp; Jared wanted to run. He couldn’t possibly handle these men by himself and he wasn’t about to take their word that they were going to help him. But where could he go? Up the street? Back where he came? He wouldn’t escape this. He already breathed heavily, and couldn’t outrun an SUV.
Jared took too long pondering his move. The passenger of the SUV exited and circled around—a scruffy Hispanic man. This only sent Jared into overdrive.
He’d seen this man somewhere before. It hit him. Outside the American Way Market. He played the guitar there, just about every day, and Joaquin would often tip the guy. They’d make small talk. This was one of them—one of those that killed Emma. He turned and bolted for the front door of a small, one-story slump block home. Luckily it gave way and he plowed into the house. He darted through a living room then kitchen and out the back door. He didn’t see anyone and didn’t wait around until he did, just sprinted through the backyard and over the fence.
He landed on his feet, adrenalin in full stream, and raced through a side yard to a low, metal gate, that he hopped, using his hands to help propel him over. He dodged left, hurrying over to an old Pontiac, lifted on blocks.
He hit his belly and crawled underneath. The Hispanic man appeared from the side yard then hurried across the street. The SUV arrived a moment later, making a pass up the road, then it spun and returned to meet the Hispanic man.
Jared lay still, holding his breath. The SUV parked and the driver exited, though he left the vehicle running. Jared wished he could see the man better. They appeared to be communicating by gesture. They had to know that he hadn’t left the area as he’d hoped they’d suspect.
The driver walked close by. He had a pistol strapped to his ankle. He paused and crouched low, meeting Jared’s eyes. “Listen, Jared. We know you’ve been through a lot. And you’re in this deeper than you know. We’re with the FBI...”
Terror filled his being, but Jared couldn’t run anymore. He just froze.
“C’mon out, Jared. Let’s get you safe.”
