by Mike Ryan
“And of course you said you weren’t.”
“Hey, I got a record, we all know what kind of opportunities are out there for guys like me.”
“I assume the rest of his staff is like you.”
Jace shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess.”
“What else can you tell me?”
“Nothing, man. Can I please get to a doctor? My finger’s killing me.”
Vincent took a deep breath, considering his options, though he really felt he only had one. The man was never getting out of there alive, anyway. He wasn’t going to just let Sadko have another of his men back so he could use it against him later. No, there was only one thing Vincent could do in his mind.
“I guess we’re finished here,” Vincent said.
Vincent then nodded at Malloy to do what had to be done. Malloy tossed the bolt cutters onto the ground, then removed his pistol. He pointed it at the back of Jace’s head and instantly pulled the trigger. Jace’s head slumped forward, though his restraints were keeping him upright and bound to the chair. Malloy put his pistol away and picked up the bolt cutters again to cut the zip ties. Once the restraints were gone, Jace slumped to the floor, falling face down.
Vincent stood over the lifeless man and looked at the back of his head. “No, it doesn’t look like you’re making it to a doctor today.”
Malloy left the room to get the other two men, who came inside the room and dragged Jace’s body away.
Once they were gone, Malloy wondered about their next steps.
“What do we do from here? Where do we go?”
“We keep digging,” Vincent answered. “We keep digging until we strike gold.”
10
Recker came walking through the door, getting a quick stare from his partners. After the incident at the hospital, Recker waited there until Mia was done work, then drove her to Haley’s apartment, where they had been staying. Haley left to go back to the office. Jones was already aware of everything that went down.
“How is Mia?” Jones asked.
“She’s fine,” Recker answered. “She’s tough. You know how she is.”
“Yes, but, it still must be nerve-wracking for her.”
“Have you heard from Vincent or Malloy yet?” Haley asked.
Recker shook his head. “No.” He sighed. “Nope. Seems like they’re avoiding me at the moment.”
“Why do you think that is?” Jones asked.
“I don’t know. They either want to get a leg up on me for some reason or…”
“Or what?”
“Or they’re doing something they don’t want me to know about or be involved in.”
“What would that be?” Recker just looked at his partner, wondering if he really needed an answer to that softball of a question. Jones quickly realized his mistake. “Oh. Yeah. That.”
Recker took a seat at the desk, though he didn’t do anything initially. He just sat there, tapping his fingers down on the desk. One finger at a time. He kept staring at his fingers as they struck the desk, almost as if he were trying to keep them in rhythm as he played a tune with them. His partners could easily tell, though, that it was no tune that he was trying to play. Recker’s look, his stare, his focus, it all told them one thing. Anger was seething out of him. It was just a question of who was going to get the brunt of it. It was a look they’d seen before, though not often. As was often the case, though, Jones couldn’t help but inquire.
“At the risk of losing my head, to whom is your anger directed at the moment?” Recker leaned back in his chair as he continued tapping his fingers. “Is it the situation, Vincent, Malloy, something else?”
“Somebody out there is using her to get to me. Whether their plans were to kidnap her, or kill her, or god knows what else, they’re using her as a target to get to me. And I don’t like it.”
“I completely understand.”
“If someone wants me, then they should come after me. They shouldn’t bring in somebody who has nothing to do with anything.”
“I get it.”
“If they want to try and take me out, that’s fine. Just tell me where and when and I will meet them wherever they want to. And then we can settle this and move on. They can bring whoever they want, whatever they want, and then we can end this. If they wanna do this like the wild west, fine, bring it on. Let’s do it. But don’t target innocent people who have nothing to do with it.”
It was a lot of frustration talking, both Jones and Haley knew it, and they weren’t going to try to talk him down at that point. They knew he just needed to blow off some steam. But they also knew there was another very real possibility. And that was that Mia wasn’t out of danger.
“I hate to say this,” Haley said. “But she’s not out of the woods. They know where she works. That means they might try again. I’d even say it was likely.”
“But it would be suicide at this point,” Jones said, offering a contrary point of view. “By now they obviously know that she’s being watched and protected there. That very well may prevent them from trying again.”
“It won’t. It’ll just make them be more creative next time.”
Recker sat there quietly, listening to his two partners debate the subject. He was letting things become more clear in his own mind. He was trying to let some of the anger fade away so he could think more clearly and rationally. After a few more minutes, he finally interjected himself into the conversation.
“It won’t stop. If you try something once, the likelihood is that you’re willing to try it again.”
“Unless if fails miserably,” Jones said. “In which case you move on to something else that you think may work.”
“You’re right. They probably won’t try what they just did again. But it doesn’t mean they won’t try something else. If you want something bad enough, you’ll keep trying things until you get it.”
Recker picked up his phone and tried to call Malloy again. He still wasn’t answering, though.
“What’s our next move?” Haley asked.
“Well, it’d be nice if we knew what happened with the guy we just got at the hospital. If he sheds some light on stuff, we might have another direction to go in. Failing that, I guess it’s just more of the same and waiting for another shoe to drop.”
“Seems like we’ve been doing that a lot. Just waiting.”
“Yeah, it does.” Recker looked at Jones. “I guess you haven’t pulled up anything else either?”
“No, but it might be helpful if we knew the identity of the man now in Vincent’s possession. He didn’t give you a name or anything?”
Recker put his hand on his forehead. “No, I don’t think so. What about a picture?”
“What picture?”
“Can we go through pictures? Maybe I’ll recognize him?”
“The problem there is… Sadko’s group is so new that we don’t know who he’s associated with. The only thing we could do is look at pictures in police records, DMV files, things like that.”
“That’ll take years.”
The trio each continued working, taking separate computers as they all began digging up different things that they hoped would develop into leads. Most of it centered on Sadko’s background, hoping they could find the smallest nugget that they could turn to. Maybe an old girlfriend, a family member, anything that could give them an upper hand. After an hour of working, Recker’s phone rang.
“Well look who it is,” Recker said, seeing Vincent’s name pop up on the screen. “Hello?”
“Mike. First off, I want to give my apologies for Jimmy taking off on you at the hospital and leaving you behind and in the dark. Those were on my instructions.”
“I thought we were working together?”
“We are. But we all know we operate a little differently at times.”
“I take it this was one of those?”
“It was. You may not have approved of our… methods.”
“What methods were those?”
“It’s neither here
nor there.”
“Where’s the guy at now?”
“Honestly… he’s at the bottom of a hole.”
“Why?”
“Before you get huffy, we interrogated him first.”
“And?”
“We got nothing. Sadko’s being extremely careful at the moment. No base of operations, new meeting spot every week, doesn’t tell people their assignments until a couple hours beforehand, he’s being smart.”
“From everything everyone’s been telling me, this guy’s got a screw loose. How can he be operating like this? Doesn’t make sense.”
“Perhaps I trained him too well.”
“If he’s as crazy as people think he is, he shouldn’t be this hard to track down.”
“What can I say? I agree. I don’t know. Maybe he’s had a transformation.”
“Can you at least tell me the name of the guy that’s no longer with us?”
“His name was Jace Hubbard.”
“I’ll start running him down and seeing if there’s any connections.”
“We’ve already started that process. No hits so far.”
“No offense, but I’d put my money on our computer systems instead of yours.”
“Fair enough. And again, I do apologize for the trickery.”
“It’s fine.”
“And just so you know, I will keep my men there at the hospital to protect Mia for as long as it takes.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
After hanging up, Recker tossed the phone down on the desk and sighed. The others could tell that the conversation did not go as well as any of them would have hoped.
“I take it that things did not go well,” Jones said.
Recker took another deep breath. “You could say that.”
“What about the guy they took?” Haley asked.
“Dead.”
“What? How?”
Recker shrugged. “They probably beat out of him all the information that they could and then got rid of him when they were done.”
“That’s probably why they ducked out on us. Didn’t want us to be involved in that.”
Recker nodded. “Yeah.”
“Did they get anything?” Jones asked.
“He said no. Except for a name. Jace Hubbard.”
Jones immediately plugged the name into his database. Within a few seconds, they had everything they needed on him. His picture popped up, Jones turning toward Recker to make sure he was the one.
“That’s him,” Recker said.
Jace Hubbard was mostly a career criminal. He’d been arrested for robbery, assault, and kidnapping, though that wasn’t all that he dabbled in. At first glance, it wasn’t obvious as to how he would have known Sadko. They didn’t appear to cross paths in prison, and Hubbard was never part of Vincent’s crew. The connection wasn’t clear. But there had to be one. Somewhere along the line, they must have crossed paths.
“Maybe it’s not them themselves that knew each other,” Recker said.
“How do you mean?” Jones asked.
“Well maybe they never did cross paths. Maybe one of them knew one of their sister’s, or a friend, or a girlfriend, and that’s how they got introduced.”
“Possibly. I’ll go through their backgrounds now to see if I can find something.”
As Jones kept digging through their backgrounds, Recker sat there, staring at the screen. Something kept tugging at him. According to everyone that knew Sadko, though admittedly that was Vincent and Malloy, nothing suggested that he was the type of guy who could operate like this. And no matter what anyone thought of Vincent, he was an excellent judge of character in the men that he had, and the men he went up against. He had to be to survive as long as he had. He could read a man, or a situation, as well as anyone. And if men like Vincent and Malloy didn’t believe someone like Sadko was capable of something like this, then the odds were that he wasn’t. And that was the troubling part.
Haley glanced over at Recker several times. It was obvious there was something deeper on his friend’s mind. More than just Sadko and Hubbard’s background. There was something else.
“What else is bugging you?” Haley asked.
Recker snapped out of his daze and looked at his partner. He shook his head as he thought about it. “It’s just… this doesn’t seem right.”
“Well it’s not right.”
“No, I mean… Sadko. Everything we’ve been told is he’s unreliable, right?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s late, he’s unstable, a little crazy, can’t be counted on, all of that, right?”
“Yeah?”
“So Vincent said, according to Hubbard, that there’s no specific meeting place. No base of operations, jobs aren’t given out until a few hours before they have to do them, different spots for meetings, all of that… does that sound like the same guy to you?”
Haley shrugged. “Maybe he’s learned some tricks.”
“But this isn’t a guy who worked for Vincent five years ago and has had time to learn and perfect things. This is a guy that was just with him a few months ago. That’s not a long time to completely change who you are.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I find it hard to believe that he’s the guy pulling the strings.”
Jones stopped what he was typing and looked over at Recker. He then looked at Haley before putting his eyes back on Recker again.
“There’s no evidence to suggest there is someone else involved,” Jones said.
“Didn’t say there was,” Recker replied. “But I don’t need evidence to believe something.”
“You believe there’s someone else in play here,” Haley said. “Someone who pulled Sadko in.”
Recker nodded. “I do. I just can’t wrap my head around a guy like him calling all these shots and being able to avoid both me and Vincent. Doesn’t seem like he’s capable.”
“Who could it be then?”
“I don’t know. That’s the question.”
Jones put his hand up as he leaned his elbow on the desk, carefully measuring his words. “Just saying for a minute that you are correct and that Sadko is taking orders from someone else. What you are suggesting implies that it is someone from your past. Our past.”
“Why?” Haley asked.
“Because if it was just someone who wanted to overtake the city, I believe the best method would have been trying to take out Vincent by surprise. They probably could have done that very effectively.”
“Possible,” Recker said.
“Since they did not, and targeted you first, that makes me believe it is someone with an axe to grind against you.”
“Also possible.”
“And the fact that they have targeted Mia indicates to me that it is somewhat personal.”
Recker smiled. “Possible again.”
“Who would that be?” Haley asked.
“If it’s true, who knows? Could be anybody. I mean, we’ve literally dealt with hundreds of situations over the years.”
“But who is capable of making it this personal?” Jones asked. “That is the question. A friend, a family member of someone we took care of, perhaps?”
Recker nodded while rubbing his lip. “Yep. Who is the question?”
11
After exhausting himself for most of the day, Jones finally slapped his hand down on the desk in frustration.
“Something wrong?” Recker asked.
“Yes, I’m done with this.”
“With what?”
“Trying to find a connection between Hubbard and Sadko. There isn’t one. It’s just not there.”
“That you can find.”
“There isn’t one. I’ve done an exhaustive search on this, trying to find the tiniest straws of hay, and there just is not one to be found. It doesn’t exist.”
Recker looked at him with a doubtful eye. “Really?”
“You’re really going to doubt me?”
“I�
�m just saying… there has to be a connection somewhere. I mean, they didn’t just look each other up on the bad guys anonymous group on some website. Right?”
Jones shrugged and threw his hands up. “I don’t know. Perhaps they did. I cannot explain any other way they have found each other. I have dug into their backgrounds, their families backgrounds, friends, everyone they’ve known or come into contact with since they were fifteen years old. I have found nothing. No similar friends, no family members that know each other, they haven’t crossed paths in prison, didn’t go to similar schools, weren’t born near each other, nothing. I’ve checked and rechecked and triple checked. There is no connection.”
“You’re sure?”
“A hundred percent sure. Well, maybe ninety-nine percent. And a half.”
“If that’s true,” Haley said. “And I’m sure that it is, that gives more credence to the theory that someone else is pulling the strings here. That would explain why they don’t know each other. Because they didn’t put this together.”
Recker nodded. “I agree. Question is how these guys were targeted to work for whoever hired them.”
“What about Mia?” Jones asked.
“What about her?”
“I take it she’s being protected today?”
“Oh, she’s not at work. She has the next three days off, so she’s decorating.”
“What?”
“My apartment,” Haley replied. “She said it’s a little lifeless. So she’s… decorating.”
“Oh,” Jones said. “Well, at least that should keep her busy for a while.”
“At least until we find a new place,” Recker said.
“How is that coming along?”
Recker waved his hand in the air. “I dunno. She’s mostly taking care of that. I’ve had too much on my mind to think about it. She’s writing down a list of possibilities and then sometime next week we’ll take a look at a few of them and figure out which one works for us best.”
“So what’s our next move here?” Haley asked. “Without a connection between Hubbard and Sadko, what do we do?”
Recker sighed, not having an answer. At least no good ones. “I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anything to do other than hope something breaks for us. Hubbard’s dead, Sadko’s in the wind, we don’t know how they’re involved, don’t know where they are, don’t know what they’re planning, so we’re pretty much operating in the dark with them.”