The Maya Bust

by E. Chris Ambrose

  “No, ma’am. Took me a little while, but I was able to oust him.”

  She raised an eyebrow, regarding him in a new light. “Do tell.”

  “Came back from leave this one time, absolutely on a tear.” He topped off her tumbler, then tipped to his own. “Riding my —” cleared his throat. “Even harder than before.”

  “Riding your ass? I’m not surprised.” She curled her feet under her, getting cozy and facing him. The golden light spilled over her face. She was a beautiful woman, no doubt about that. And she was interested. “You’re a soldier, Mr. Casey, I’m used to how soldiers talk. Though that’s one area where he goes overboard every other word for him is f-this and shitty that.”

  “For sure.” Grant bobbed his head. “I couldn’t stand it any more, just couldn’t deal with him. So I … set some things in motion.” He swirled the tumbler. “I’m not at liberty to say what, you understand.” He aimed the cup at her. “He ever tell you exactly what our job was over there?”

  She shook her head, her hair rustling. “Need to know basis, classified information, blah, blah, blah. Making himself sound important, I always assumed.” She, too, aimed her cup, her eyes twinkling at him over the rim. “Now that I’ve met you, I’m less sure about that.”

  Interested because she genuinely liked him, or because seducing him would be another slice to Gooney’s ego? With her, he’d never be able to tell. A slight incline of his head to the compliment. “Well. It’s good to know he had some discretion. Let’s just say, this group we were in, he was the CO — commanding officer — for a while anyway. it only took a few weeks before he was out, and I was taking his job.” Grant leaned his elbows on his knees, closer to her, noting the pink glow that underlay her pale skin. “What about you? Same thing, I’ll bet.”

  “Just about.” She dodged his glance, and took a swallow. He leaned a little closer to refill her glass.

  “I heard he went nuts in the courtroom during the divorce proceedings.” He fixed his eyes on her. “How bad was it? Seems like he really cares about Lexi, unless that’s new, whatever he did back then, it had to be quite a scene to get him to give up parental rights.”

  She giggled, then put her fingers to her lips to stop herself. “Oh, God, Casey. You think you put things in motion.” Another giggle escaped.

  “Oh, really? I figured it was just an asshole thing on his part.”

  “But I’ll never tell.” She wagged her finger at him.

  He chuckled as well. “What you and I have, it’s not quite attorney/client privilege, Ms. Dionne, but it’s pretty damn close.”

  She drew back from him, but in a way that flounced her hair, that suggested she wanted his pursuit. “You betrayed my confidence before, Mr. Casey, how can I trust you with another?”

  Grant performed a doubletake. “Wait a minute.” He pointed at her around his tumbler. “Are you telling me that you orchestrated his meltdown in the court? I mean D.A. said so — that’s my HR director, the one he had an affair with. I figured that’s just what he told her, trying to look good for the rebound.” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.” She offered a sly smile. “I’m used to being underestimated. It’s the blond hair. He certainly never understood me.” She toasted herself and drained the cup. “Mmm. That is good.”

  “Now you gotta tell me.”

  “How do I know you won’t let on?”

  After pouring for her, Grant concentrated on setting down the bottle between them, then offered his pinkie. “Pinkie swear. Whatever you say, I don’t repeat it. I understand —” he used his pinkie to emphasize the syllables — “that you are worried because Gooney saw some paperwork that spilled the beans about this op. Operation. I don’t see any paperwork around here. No microphones.” He outstretched his arms, as if offering an embrace. “Wanna frisk me to be sure?”

  “You’ve been rather … critical of me lately, Mr. Casey.” She tried to look arch and withdrawn, but without actually withdrawing.

  He let his arms fall into a shrug, then looked contrite. “The op didn’t go down the way I hoped. Killing people never goes down easy, even if they want killing. Him getting shot …” he ruffled back his hair with both hands. “I feel responsible. Somebody wants to take him out, fine, but not on my watch.” Again, he raised his pinkie. “So, what do you say? Do you trust me?”

  Her look turned speculative, and Grant watched her in minute detail. She wanted to tell him, wanted it so much she could taste it. Her lips moved subtly as she worked it over: to have someone else appreciate what she had done, and Grant had set himself up as the ideal audience. A partner in crime, someone who had orchestrated his own takedown of a man they both despised. She leaned in close and beckoned him nearer, looping her pinkie through his. “It was totally an op.” Her painted lips held the syllable, and she nodded.

  It took all of his will to keep that finger just as casual as hers. “You prodded him into a PTSD episode right there in the courtroom.”

  She released his pinkie and chuckled, a throaty sound that might, under other circumstances, have been appealing. “Nope. The plan started days earlier. I’ve got people, researchers, on my staff. They dug up all kinds of information — intel, that’s what you call it, right? About Afghanistan, PTSD triggers, all of that.” A broad, circular gesture that almost clipped his nose. “We never talked about the stuff he did over there, but I could make some guesses, given his passion for teaching my children how to kill.

  “Started with somebody walking in front of him or behind, or just outside his window, playing a concealed recording of gunfire or the call to prayer. People walking through that fleabag hotel he was crashing in after I threw him out of the house, talking in Arabic and some other languages while he was trying to sleep.” She had started out quiet, sharing a whisper, but her voice grew with the excitement of her story. “People with beards looking squirrelly, but not so anybody else would notice, cars that hesitated for too long in the wrong place, a pile of bricks on the sidewalk with wires sticking out. He was a detective by then, we just kept feeding him clues, stuff that nobody else would think twice about. My people haunted him, like something out of Scooby Doo, only he never even knew there was a monster outside himself. God, he was so jumpy, I thought he’d blow it early.”

  She chuckled again and took a swallow, then indicated that Grant should re-fill her tumbler. He relaxed his grip, relaxed his movements. Every muscle in his body felt tense, the way Gooney must’ve felt leading up to the hearing. He remembered too many days he twitched at a car backfiring, stared too long at some ordinary person just trying to catch a cab. He wanted her to stop. Wanted to bottle up the rest of her words and pitch them into the jungle, but it wouldn’t matter. She was just telling him what she already done. Confessing her very deliberate evil.

  “By the time he got to court, he was primed. I managed to slide a little dust onto the mouth of his water bottle — he’d come home on leave complaining how he couldn’t even make a cup of coffee without drinking grit. The pies de resistance was that one of my people borrowed a vial of something they use to train bomb-sniffing dogs. When they popped the cork on it, they didn’t even notice the smell, but he sat up so straight, like you could practically see his ears perk up.” She lifted her off-hand into a canine ear alongside her head and gave a little woof.

  She revolted him so thoroughly he thought it had to show, and he schooled himself to look impressed.

  “Then all it took was a couple of sounds, played soft, like somebody arming a weapon I guess, I don’t even know what they came up with.” She waved her hand around. “He just leapt up, jumped over the defense table and started shouting. ’Everybody down! Get down!’ threw the table over like he was in a barroom brawl. That would’ve been enough, right there, but he didn’t stop. He grabs the gun from the court officer and he aims it at the back, where the sound came from, y’know? And he starts shouting at everybody to clear the area. Oh. My. God.” She grabbed Grant’s wri
st to pull him toward her.

  “Can you picture it? He’s gone full-on Rambo, taken this guy’s gun, waving it around, and the judge starts shouting at him, of course, and the officer tries to get the gun back, but he’s so strong. He didn’t hurt the guy, just didn’t let him take it. So I start crying, and pleading, and he … He kind of woke up. There’s no bomb, no gun but the one he’s holding, no enemy. He practically collapsed right there. Gave the weapon back, started apologizing. By now, they want to arrest him, right? And I’m the one who steps in.”

  She shook back her hair and batted her eyes. “’Your Honor, my husband is a veteran. He’s a very sick man, Your Honor, please don’t arrest him — but you must see why I can’t have him in my house or around my children.’ All I wanted was for the court to see what I thought he was capable of. As usual, he went overboard, but that time it worked in my favor.” Again, that sly smile, and another sip. She released Grant who sank back into his slumped chair, wishing his cup weren’t empty. “He signed over his parental rights in exchange for keeping the whole thing quiet. If anybody knew, well, there goes his career, right? He’s already lost me and the children — he had to hang onto something.”

  She settled back. “How’s that for an op?”

  For a moment, Grant didn’t trust himself to speak. He could picture it, alright: his former CO convinced he had to defend everyone in that courtroom from an unknown assailant, then realizing he looked completely insane. He had felt a lot of things for Gooney prior to that moment, but pity had never been one of them.

  She watched him, waiting for his reaction. Grant raised his tumbler in her direction and said, “You’d make a helluva super-villain.”

  She gave in to all-out laughter. “Y’think? I could get one of those sexy catsuits. Mmm. I know a lot of people in Hollywood, I mean tons. I could be in the movies like that.” She tried to snap, but the gesture escaped her.

  She had gaslighted Gooney, and done it so well that he believed it was his fault.

  “So you know how this scene goes, right? Supervillain explanation.” He made his eyes big, his being focused on her. “Tell me why you did it.”

  “You know how we met up, right? That pageant thing, honoring the soldiers? When I kissed him, oh, God, the headlines! What a story! Suddenly, agents were returning my calls, all of that. We were good for a while, Anthony and me — great, even. And me having a hero in the war, then bravely raising our children on my own. At first I worried about taking time out for kids, but it turned out to be the perfect time, proving a woman could have it all.” She spread her palms, then her smile faded.

  “It’s a lot easier, and more fun, to be married to a hero who’s overseas, than one who’s under foot. My whole narrative was just … collapsing. Because of some stupid whim he got to suddenly be a family man. And he’s not an easy person to get along with — you know that — even if he’s not getting violent.” She rolled her eyes. “Why should I have to share my whole life, my kids, my house, the life I made without him? My freedom, for God’s sake! Why would I sacrifice all of that? So. I wrote him out of the story. It would’ve been easier if he died overseas, of course, but I found my own way. Big, dramatic finale, that left the tabloids guessing, and me looking damn good, if I do say so myself. I mean, I was pleading for him to be able to get help.” She pressed her hands together and gazed toward the heavens like a pre-Raphaelite Madonna. “You want to know the best part?”

  Good God — there was more? Grant managed a nod of encouragement.

  “There’s this myth that men get screwed in divorce cases, right? That women make out like bandits, when mostly it’s women whose standard of living drops. Even if he suspected, if he tried to claim I did it on purpose? He’d look like an ass, I mean, more than ever, right? Not that he ever suspected.” She drank a toast to herself, draining her tumbler. “Seven years now, and he never has. I was a little disappointed he never fought back.”

  If Grant had to spend five more minutes with her, right now, tonight, he couldn’t vouch for his own behavior. “I don’t know about you, but I have had enough.” Grant set down his cup decisively. “Or maybe too much. But don’t you worry, ma’am, I will be on the job tomorrow. I get over this stuff like that.” He managed the snap, but it took two tries, and they both laughed.

  He rose, put out his hand and drew her to her feet. “Thanks for trusting me.”

  “Thanks for all you’ve done.” She leaned into him, and he managed to turn so her kiss brushed his jaw instead of landing on his lips. “I mean it. Really. Let me know how I can show my gratitude.”

  “Just you get those kids home safe, okay?” He was stepping back, turning his hand to her lower back to nudge her on her way.

  “You really staying on? Going after the drugs? I hate to think of you dying for his crusade.”

  Grant said, “You think you can get back to your room?”

  She squinted and tilted her head. “I think I can.”

  “You and the little engine that could!” He turned her toward the far door and watched her wobble down the veranda. He raised the bottle in salute as she waved from the corner.

  The moment she disappeared around the corner, he stripped off his drunken attitude like an outfit ruined by the party he’d worn it for. He tugged open the door of the room behind him and closed it behind him with extreme precision. It was all he could do to breathe. He had suspected she triggered the episode, but he had never imagined such an elaborate plot to shred her ex, a man he had never liked, but had come to respect. His hand felt numb with the force of gripping the bottle, a helpless fury he dare not vent, at least, not at the person who deserved it.

  This whole case, from the very beginning, tore at his integrity, at every moment forcing him to see the compromise, the way he compromised himself to do his damn job. He’d been so busy trying to walk the line, to be the calm, cool professional his client needed, and still manage the ex-commander he’d always said he hated, giving him just enough to keep going until they achieved the objective, and still claiming the title of “friend.” He despised Pam for treating Gooney like he had no heart — what the hell had Grant himself been doing?

  He flung the empty bottle so hard into the base of the wall that shards flew back to strike his ankles.

  Mastering himself, he scanned for his audience. Empty bed, unused except for the bag sitting on top.

  Lit only by the dying sun, Gooney sat in a chair against the wall beside the window, his teeth clenched and eyes shut, his left hand wrapped over his right fist. He had been completely silent through it all, a tormented statue.

  “Jesus, man,” Grant whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Did you get what you wanted?” Gooney asked, his voice hollow. “What you wanted me to hear?”

  The story weighed down Grant’s shoulders like a nightmare, and he hadn’t been the one who lived through it. “Gooney.” He shook his head. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Then shut up.” Gooney sank his head into his hands. “Just shut the fuck up.”

  Silently, Grant departed, retreating to his own room next door, where the flaming sky cast everything into a blood-red light and it took a very long time to fall asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  Lexi sat cross-legged on the double bed, tapping out a cheerful note to Denise on her mother’s cell phone. Well, trying to. What do you say when you’ve been kidnapped, bound, gagged, watched a few men get blown to pieces to save you, watched your father pull the trigger? Now that she had a space of calm and relative safety, she wanted to just curl up into a ball and shut out the world. She’d been vigilant for forty-eight hours, tension wrapping her muscles, readiness for any attack or opportunity winding up her brain like a coiled spring. Was this what it felt like for him, being a cop? Being — whatever he’d been in the army. Could she even relax her vigilance before they got out of the country?

  Before, she had only Malcolm. Now she had her mother and Eleiua, Eleiua�
�s giant dogs, a fenced compound and two deadly allies, and one of them was her father. Kept circling back to that. Her counselor would tell her she needed processing time, and lord knew she had a lot to process from these last 48 hours.

  Her father’s coin still lay on the table in the other room, where it had winked in the light as he brought it from his pocket. He found her because of her sign, as if they’d been drawn together by the toss of some cosmic coin. What other than fate could have made it happen? At the same time, she knew it wasn’t. She’d been looking for chances and taking them, any chance that she might win the coin toss this time. On the other side, he was doing the same, methodically tracking, in search of her. They came together not by any fate or coincidence, but because, in spite of her anger and hurt, in spite of his absence, in spite of the years that divided them, Lexi Dionne was still her father’s daughter.

  The lights flicked off and back on, and she looked up. Malcolm stepped all the way inside and closed the door behind him, but he didn’t come any closer. At least his eyes looked clear and focused; she knew he had bruises yet to show, but he looked strong and handsome, in spite of everything they’d been through together. She found a smile for him, and beckoned him over.

  “I’m not sure I should be here,” he signed. “It feels — weird.”

  Her hand moved to her head, her fingers folding down. “Why?”

  “Your parents. Your mom doesn’t want us together, and your dad is —” he ducked his chin, then fingerspelled, “a badass.”

  She laughed. “He kind of is. But I don’t think he’d hurt you.” She beckoned him closer. “Besides, Ray is a badass and he likes you.”

  “I hope so. Or else —” he drew his finger across his throat, his lips making a sound she couldn’t read, one of those random noises hearing people enjoy. He came over and joined her on the bed, sharing a kiss before he flopped back. The old mattress sagged and shifted under his weight.