by Jack Hardin
Ellie brought her kicking leg down, ready to send her foot back out, this time into Garrett's face. But she didn’t get that far. As soon as her foot came down and her weight behind it, the floorboard cracked, and not unlike what had happened to Tyler's friend Buster all those years ago, it gave beneath her, and her foot plunged down toward the water. Her leg followed, making her torso lurch backward. As she dropped, her head whipped to the side and slammed hard into the compressor, knocking her out cold.
Garrett stood there, leering at Ellie. One of her legs was out of sight, dangling toward the water. Her other leg was at her side, crooked at the knee. Her head now lay limply over the side of the compressor.
Finally, he shrugged and, careful to avoid a bad section of wood as he stepped nearer, he grabbed the cuff dangling from her wrist and locked it onto the welded handle of the compressor.
Garrett had known his meeting with Quinton would turn out the way it had. He had come out here knowing full well that he would be leaving soon...and that his cousin would not. He reached back into his bag and pulled out the blowtorch and a lighter. As he tried to get the torch lit, he found that his hands were trembling. Finally, a flame shot out with a foosh. He shouldered his backpack and then kneeled down, running the torch against the bottom of the wall. Once hungry orange flames started to run up the corner, he stood up, turned off the torch. He grabbed a ball cap from his pack and set it low over his eyes. Before he walked out the door, Garrett paused and looked back at Ellie. “Sorry, old friend. You should have let me shoot you.” But his words were bracketed with a crooked smile. Then he stepped into his flat bottom skiff and put the shack behind him, driving away into the smudgy grayness of dusk.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chewy goosed the Jupiter’s throttle and steadied himself as the boat’s pair of Yamaha F350s gave it another fifteen knots.
He was late. He hated to be late. And if there was one thing Chewy knew had not changed about Quinton, it was that he hated people being late too.
He headed west where, an hour earlier, the sun had slithered into the horizon. As he sped past Cat Key, a soft orange glow appeared up ahead, glinting off the water. As he drew nearer, Chewy squinted into the apparent aberration and realized with a raw panic that Quinton’s shack was on fire. Dread rose in his chest when he saw Quinton’s boat, still docked.
He came in fast, nearly cutting the engines too late before jumping off the boat and running to the doorway. Indignant smoke was billowing out like he was standing at the gate of hell. He could feel the angry heat on his hands and forehead. He took in a deep breath of air and ducked low until the dark, billowing smoke burned his eyes and forced him to drop to his hands and knees. He crawled forward through a visibility of three or four feet out until he saw something that made him stop. It wasn’t Quinton, as he’d expected.
A blonde-haired woman was turned away from him, her torso erect, her head tilted unnaturally toward the floor like a broken doll. An air compressor sat on the floor behind her. He shuffled around her and stopped. Ellie. His shock caused him to stare a moment too long, and a flame drew near on his right. He rose up and tore off his trench coat, throwing it on the fire creeping toward him. The flames eagerly grabbed at it like a hungry pack of wolves.
Chewy turned back to Ellie and assessed her. Her right leg was out of sight, dangling towards the water, and her head was hanging limply towards her chest. He quickly felt for a pulse. Finding one, and with the heat growing more intense by the second, he slid his hands beneath her armpits, heaving her up. Her limp body followed, her leg ascending out of the rotten hole until she was suddenly jerked downward, making Chewy stumble forward. He crouched down and squinted through the hot smoke. Ellie’s leg was clear of the rotten hole. Her feet were bare and hadn't snagged on anything. Then he saw that one of her hands was hanging away from her body. A handcuff had her by the wrist and the other end was attached to the air compressor. Chewy cursed through the heat and in a moment of frantic desperation, pulled at the cuff on the machine. It didn't give. He let out a loud, frustrated yell and then hooked his arm beneath Ellie’s waist. With his free hand he grabbed the handle of the heavy compressor and started backward, careful where he stepped.
He retreated quickly, carefully, backing up until he was near the door. He laid Ellie down and went back for Quinton. He returned to his hands and knees, the smoke thickening, the heat rising by the moment. When his hand finally touched Quinton’s head, Chewy reached forward and checked for a pulse. Not feeling one, he moved his fingers and pressed harder. As he waited to feel a heartbeat, he looked down into a tacky pool of blood.
Quinton was dead.
Chewy lifted his head and saw that Quinton’s sneakers and lower legs were already being eaten by angry flames. Then, without warning, pieces of fiery lumber started to rain down on him, hitting him in the neck and head and falling into his beard. He brushed them away in panicked movements and as he backed up toward the door a flame grabbed at his right hand and singed the top of it. He cried out, releasing hard racking coughs as he crawled over Ellie and out to the dock. His eyes watering, he hitched in several breaths and went back to Ellie. He dragged her and the compressor out onto the small dock where, as yet, there was not smoke. He looked toward the boat and realized that it was gone. He hadn’t tied off. Cursing his stupidity, he stood and frantically looked around. He ran to the end of the dock and saw it, drifting thirty feet out. With a final look back to Ellie, he jumped into the salty water and swam hard for the boat.
It seemed intent on getting away, as though wanting to avoid the fire, and it took Chewy nearly a full minute to reach it. He grabbed at the gunwale, pulled up, and heaved himself onto the deck. Coming to his feet, he started the engines and guided the vessel back to the shack, the entire structure now engulfed in flames, some of them only a couple feet from Ellie’s left leg. Chewy drew near, killed the engine, reached out and grabbed the dock. As soon as he had tied off, he jumped off onto the dock and hurried back to Ellie. He reached under her waist again and grabbed the heavy compressor with his free hand. He groaned as he heaved up. He pivoted and was forced to take short steps to the boat. He reached the port side and paused briefly. He positioned Ellie higher onto his arm and then with unsteady movement, he brought a leg over the side of the boat and onto the deck. He leaned away from the shack, and Ellie’s legs followed him across the gunwale. He had to let her go in order to bring the compressor over. Her hand hung loosely in the air as Chewy yelled a final time and brought the heavy piece of equipment into the boat and safely onto the deck. He collapsed onto a seat as he coughed out uneven breaths and the shack burned like a dry Christmas tree.
After gaining a measure of control over his lungs, Chewy stood up and pulled on Ellie’s ankles, bringing her body to lay flat against the deck. He turned on the engines for a final time, and the orange glow of the fire lit his path through the darkness for the first mile. He throttled up and ran the boat hard towards Pineland. He looked back at Ringo’s niece, and his deep voice seemed to rise above the rushing sound of displaced water and the drone of the engines.
“Hang on, Ellie.”
Chapter Fifty
Garrett pulled his skiff up to his dock and turned off the engine. He tied off, then stepped off the boat and walked up the sandstone walkway that led to the rear of his home. He unlocked his back door and stepped into the cool air, wiping his feet on the mat per Angela’s wishes. He stopped in the kitchen and grabbed a glass from the cabinet. He filled it with water from the sink and drank it down before setting the glass in the sink and walking across the living room toward his bedroom. As he noticed something hanging from his ceiling he heard a—
“Hello.”
Garrett nearly left his skin on the floor as he whirled around. Across the room, sitting at the dining room table, was Ringo. A leg was crossed over the other and blue polypropylene covers encased his Birkenstocks. His hands wore blue latex gloves, and a bottle of Grey Goose vodka sat on a table, a low-ba
ll glass next to it. His white fedora was on his head.
“God, Ringo! You can’t let me know you’re coming? How did you get in here?”
“The same way I’m going to get out. Through the back door.”
Garrett gathered himself, but seeing the blue gloves and foot covers made his stomach knot up. “What are you doing here?”
“One would think that with you being a big dog with the DEA you would have some kind of security system. Please,” Ringo gestured toward a chair across from him, “have a seat.”
Garrett looked down on his shorts. “Let me change first. I’ve been on the water all night.”
Ringo closed his eyes and brought an exaggerated breath in through his nose. “Is that smoke I smell?”
Garrett tried to brush it off. He suddenly felt very nervous. “Yeah, I had a...little problem on the boat.”
Their eyes met. “Did you now?”
“Yeah.” Garrett broke away from Ringo’s frozen gaze. “So I’ll be right b—”
“Sit. Down.”
Garrett, frustrated and looking uneasy, took a seat. Ringo began to study his fingernails. “It’s funny, Aldrich, how fortuitous—providential if you prefer—life can be. Ask me where Chewy was a half hour ago.”
Garrett tossed his hands up. “I’m not playing games right now, okay? I’m tired. I’ve had a long day at the office.”
He looked up at Garrett. “The office? All right, fine. But ask me where Chewy was a half hour ago,” he repeated.
“Fine. Okay. Ringo, where was Chewy a half hour ago?”
“Chewy was braving the angry flames of a fishing shack, rescuing my niece from a Viking funeral.”
Color abandoned Garrett’s cheeks. He stared back at Ringo. “I have an explanation.”
“And fortunately for you, I do not require one.”
“Really, Ringo, she knew. She would have told—”
“So you thought that burning my niece—your old friend—alive was the best course of action? And you thought,”—his voice was getting high, stronger now—”that killing one of my best friends was the best course of action?” Ringo set a hand on the table and Garrett watched it slowly turn into a fist, watched as the knuckles turned white and it began to shake along with his thick forearm. “Did you?”
“Look, my gun fell—it doesn’t matter. I had to get out of there, okay?”
Suddenly Ringo’s face bloomed red. His voice held a growl like that of a lion after he’s caught his prey. “You murdered my friend.” His face was nigh on to shaking.
“Quinton was going to get us all caught,” Garrett said hurriedly, as if that settled the entire manner.
“He was my friend. The only old friend I had left. And you took him from me like you were swatting a fly from off your face.”
Garrett tossed his hands out. “What? You wanted us all to get exposed? He was making foolish decisions that were not going to end well. And Ellie, she would have ratted us all out. ”
“See,” Ringo shook his finger at him. “That is one thing I’m curious about. What do you mean by ‘all of us’? You told her about me?”
“No. No, certainly not.”
“You were going to kill her anyway. Why not just tip the pitcher, as it were?”
“I just didn’t think about it. It all happened so fast.”
“Why do you think I’m wearing these ridiculous covers on my feet? I’m not sure your lovely wife would think them very fashionable.”
Garrett huffed, the last self-assured action of his life. “I’m the local DEA SAIC. You’re not going to kill me. You’ll have every federal agency after you.”
“You’re absolutely right...Aldrich. And for the very reason you just mentioned, I’m not going to kill you. You are.”
Garrett felt a terrorizing chill run down his arms.
Ringo reached into his lap and brought a revolver into view. “This glass here, as you can probably deduce from the bottle sitting next to it, is half full of Grey Goose. Drink it.” Garrett hesitated and then reached for the glass. His eyes fixed on the rim. Ringo snapped his fingers. “Quickly, please. I don’t need you thinking right now. I need you responding.”
Garrett brought the glass to his lips and drank. It took him four gulps to get it all down. He returned the glass to the table and swallowed back the afterburn.
“While we wait for that to ‘kick in’ as it were, did I ever tell you why I chose Aldrich as your front name? Did I ever let you in on that little fact?”
Garrett now looked as if he was somehow experiencing both apathy and terror at the same time. “I don’t think you did,” he said blandly.
“And you never made the connection?”
Garrett shrugged like he didn’t care. Because he didn’t care. But he didn’t want Ringo thinking he didn’t care. So he offered a weak smile and shook his head.
“Aldrich Ames,” Ringo said slowly. “Certainly one of the most damaging spies this country has ever produced. Right up there with Robert Hanssen. Here you were in a high-profile position, with a federal agency, trusted by all. Trusted by me,” he added. “But meretricious men such as yourself lay waste the powers given to them.”
“And you think you’re any different?” Garrett growled.
“What sets you and I apart is that your schemes are fueled by selfishness. You chose not to learn the lesson I shared with you about Guyana’s Katowami people. You know, when Ted Koppel interviewed Oleg Gordievsky, he asked him what he thought, ten years after the fact, of Aldrich Ames. His response?” Ringo worked his voice into a mock Russian accent. “He was simply a greedy bastard.”
“Ringo, we can work this out.”
Ringo stared at him, almost through him. “I’m going to do away with the pleasantries now. Over the next five minutes, if you do not do exactly as I say, or, if I have to repeat myself for any reason, I will also kill your wife.” His eyes were unblinking.
“You wouldn’t.”
Ringo looked at his watch—his gold watch. “Your wife’s New York office is on 8th Avenue, where a half hour ago she finished up a meeting a with a Polynesian manufacturer. She’s just arrived at Listerly, a rooftop bar where she and her friend Lisa have gone for drinks and gossip.”
Garrett swallowed.
“However, for extra measure…” Ringo slipped a smartphone from his pocket and dialed a number. When the call connected it appeared as a live video. Ringo turned the screen so Garrett could see. The feed from the other end showed Angela Cage at a small table, lifting a glass of wine to her lips and drinking from it. She returned it to the table and said something to her friend that made them both laugh. Ringo tapped the red ‘End Call’ icon and returned the phone to his pocket.
“How did you...who—”
“If I have to end up doing what I’m asking you to do, Angela won’t make it home with her trachea in tact.”
“Ringo...please.”
Ringo motioned toward the bottle. “Have another drink.” Garrett obeyed and the bottle’s neck chattered along the rim of the glass. “Keep going...there. Now drink up.”
As Garrett tipped the glass up, Ringo slid the gun over to him. “I suppose you failed to see that the magazine wasn’t in there. Pick it up.”
Garrett picked it up.
“Put it in your mouth.”
Garrett's hand was still shaking, and the barrel clattered along his teeth as he slipped it between his lips.
“Relax your lips around it and turn it upward.”
He did.
“Good. Now, that end table over there in your living room. Go over and set the gun on it.” Garrett stood up, knees weak, and walked over to the small table near the arm of the couch. He set the gun down and came back to his previous spot, beads of sweat dampening his forehead, his fingers trembling, his eyes dilated as if the only thing now left inside him was a cold and darkening fear.
Ringo pulled something from beneath his leg and tossed it to Garrett. Garrett caught it. It was the gun’s magazine, fully
loaded. “Now set that next to the Grey Goose.”
“Who…” Garrett said shakily. “Just...who do you think you are?”
“And this question coming from a man who just murdered one and tried for a second. But if you must know...Aldrich, for you, tonight, I am the tenth plague of Egypt.” He smiled. That ominous smile that sent icy shivers into anyone on the receiving end of it. “You haven’t had dinner yet, have you? Feeling that vodka dancing in your blood yet?”
Garrett said nothing, only stared at the vase of fresh tulips in front of him.
“One last thing,” Ringo said. “That pad and pen there. I need you to write something. Just one thing. Please write, ‘I’m sorry.’”
“No...please.”
“‘I’m sorry.’ That’s all. Just, ‘I’m sorry.’”
Garrett picked up the pen and scribbled the words across the paper. “Very good,” Ringo said. “Off behind you—I think you saw it as you came in—is a scarf hanging from an eye bolt set into a rafter. Stand and walk over to it.” Garrett stood uneasily. “I really love that pattern. What do you think? It’s one of your wife’s. From her own line.” Ringo clicked his tongue and his smiled vanished. “I’ll need you to stand on the stool and reach up and just touch that eye bolt for me. After that, I think you know what to do.”
Garrett moved up the stepstool and reached up toward the rafter. He touched the metal and brought his hand down.
“The knot has already been tied. You only need slip into it.”
Garrett moved slowly, the vodka having begun to have its effects. A minute later the scarf was tied snuggly around his neck. His pupils were dilated, all color gone. He looked around like he didn’t know where he was.
“Aldrich, whenever you’re ready.”
“Don’t hurt...don’t hurt Angela, okay?”
“Now that depends on how quickly your feet move off that stool.”