by Scott Blade
“Yes. We have work to do.”
“Why not your place?”
“I don’t have a place.”
“So, it’s true then. What they say about you now?”
“What do they say?”
“I’ve heard you go anywhere, that you live nowhere. Like a homeless drifter.”
Widow stayed quiet.
They drove on.
Thirty
In North Bethesda, on a quiet suburban street, a black Escalade was parked in front of a mailbox for a house with a For Sale sign out front.
Sathers sat in the driver’s seat, his usual post, and the guy with the forgettable face sat in the passenger seat. They watched through the windshield as a woman down the street gently pushed her two children into a minivan, parked in her own driveway.
She was loading up the kids so she could drop them off at school before heading to her own job.
She got them buckled in and paused a beat as a man came out of the house. He was dressed in a suit and tie, like he was going to head to work after. Dark circles were obvious under his eyes as if he had been awake all night, which he had been.
They watched as Michael Aker kissed his wife and children goodbye.
The wife kissed Aker back. After that, she got into the driver’s seat of her minivan and started the engine. She reversed it and backed onto the street. She looked both ways and drove off.
The guy in the Escalade watched her go.
“I guess he didn’t tell them,” the guy with the forgettable face said.
“Why do you think that?”
“They wouldn’t be going off to school. They’d be running away.”
“Maybe they’re stupid.”
“They are stupid.”
Sathers asked, “Should we go in now? Grab the lawyer before he heads to his office? It’ll be harder to get him there.”
The guy with the forgettable face leaned forward and peered through the tinted windshield.
“Hold on a second.”
He buzzed his window down a crack and leaned next to it. He put his ear out as if he was searching for a sound.
“What is it?”
“Quiet!”
They both listened hard. They heard tires on gravel. It was a car traveling fast through a neighborhood with children and families. It was a careless way of driving through a suburb. It was the kind of driving only a person who doesn’t care about consequences would do, like a criminal or a cop.
Suddenly, a navy blue Dodge Charger swung around the corner; it passed their Escalade and pulled right up to Aker’s house. He was still standing in the driveway after his wife and kids had gone.
Two people got out of the Charger. It was two men. Both had military haircuts. Both had military maneuvers. Only something was different. They were military. They were something else.
They were law enforcement. They were former military.
Sathers asked, “Who the hell is that?”
“NCIS.”
“Oh shit! Are they onto us?”
The guy with the forgettable face leaned forward in his seat and watched them through the windshield.
The two men parked half in Aker’s driveway and half in the street. They left their doors open and walked up to him.
Neither Sathers nor the guy with the forgettable face could hear what they were saying, but they saw the two agents take out badges and show them to Aker.
“Now, we got a problem,” Sathers said. “We should bail.”
The guy with the forgettable face sat back and breathed like he was completely relaxed.
He said, “No. There’s no problem. It just got interesting. That’s all.”
The guy with the forgettable face said nothing.
Sathers said, “NCIS is here. We take off, right? They’re here investigating us.”
“No they’re not.”
“What are they doing then?”
“It’s a protection detail. Nothing more.”
“What do we do?”
“Same as before. But we wait until nightfall. Late. Then, when the kids are back, and everyone is safe and sound in their beds, that’s when we make our move.”
Thirty-One
Less than twenty minutes from the base, Widow and Gray arrived at her house.
Gray lived in a small two-bedroom house that was painted gray. Pulling up in the driveway, she stopped Widow before he could make a crack about it. She made it clear that she had heard that before.
The yard was nicely landscaped. Love and care and skill had been put into it, and real talent was shown. It wasn’t overdone to show off. It was just right. There were trimmed bushes in the front and level grass and cared-for plants.
From the outside, Widow saw the answer to an unasked question, which was, what does Gray do in her spare time? The answer was right in front of him. She was more than an unproven NCIS agent. She had a real knack for gardening.
They parked the car and got out and walked the driveway, then transferred to a short walkway up to the front door.
Gray led the way and Widow followed.
At the door, she fished a set of keys out of her front pocket and unlocked the door. Widow noticed that she had only three keys on a ring. He liked that she didn’t have a lot of keys because the more keys someone had, the more doors they had to lock and unlock.
Widow lived a simple life. The fewer keys he had in his life, the better. No keys were the perfect number because more keys meant more locks and more closed doors. Widow liked the open road.
Before Gray opened the door, they heard a dog barking. Gray froze and glanced back at Widow.
“You like dogs?”
“I do. If I lived somewhere, I’d probably have a pair of dogs.”
“You’ll love Milo.”
She opened the door, and a small mutt escaped through the crack and ran up to her. He must’ve weighed ten pounds soaking wet. He was about the ugliest dog Widow had ever laid eyes on, but the kind of ugly mutt that made him unbearably adorable.
Widow was no dog expert. He didn’t even know what that kind of expert would be called. But he knew there were dog shows and experts on dogs.
This mutt’s breeding was a complete mystery to him. He imagined it would’ve been hard for anyone, even a dog show professional, to guess what kind of dog Milo was.
Like Gray and her house, Milo was also gray, with wisps of silver and white fur.
The wind blew through the front yard and moved his fur around in multiple directions like blades of tall grass.
The dog pushed out past Gray and yapped at Widow’s ankles. It got hold of his pant leg and started pulling with all its might.
“Milo! Stop!” Gray called to him.
But he kept on chomping at Widow’s pant leg.
“I’m sorry. He’s a little protective of the house.”
“That’s a good thing. He’s got a lot of heart. He’s lionhearted.”
Widow knelt on one knee and put out a hand, palm up to let the dog sniff him. It released his pant leg and sniffed his open palm. After several seconds of that, he attempted to pet its head. The dog let him do it only briefly. Then it turned and ran back into the house—stalemate.
“I think he likes me.”
“I think he’s afraid you’ll step on him.”
Gray led Widow into her house. She set her keys down on a table near the door. There was a bunch of unopened mail in a basket on the same table.
Gray unclipped her gun holster, pulled it out of her waistband, and laid it on the table, gun inside, next to the keys.
She said, “Make yourself at home.”
“Thank you.”
She went over to a corner in the room and slipped off her shoes.
“Take your shoes off, please.”
Widow nodded and stepped over to the corner. He kicked off his boots and walked in his socks to the living room, following Gray.
The house looked as small on the inside as it did on the outside. For one person, it was
perfect, maybe two, if both people were small to normal in stature. Widow’s stature wasn’t small or normal. He felt cramped. But he didn’t complain. He had been in tighter, more cramped spaces before, including submarines at sea for weeks on end. A cozy house with a beautiful NCIS agent wasn’t bad, not by any sensible measure.
The cramped feeling wasn’t a height thing. The main ceiling was pretty high. It was a square foot issue. The house didn’t have a lot of space. It was small, but it had many attractive fixtures and good woodwork and lots of little details. Long beams were exposed on the ceiling, and the floors were real hardwood. They were dark and polished to a deep shine.
Japanese décor was everywhere. He saw an extra bedroom off to the left of the main room. The door had been taken off. The hinges were still there, bolted into the frame. The bedroom was exposed and wide open. Widow saw it had been turned from a spare bedroom into a Japanese Zen tearoom. Possibly Gray mediated in there. The sounds of a low, relaxing music hummed out of the room as if she had used it in the morning and left the music playing.
The whole house was stylized with Japanese decorations on the walls, oriental rugs on the floors, and the smell of incense in the air.
Everything was painted white until they hit the living room. The furniture was the first thing with color, and it was a lot of color. There were two comfy sofas with pillows stacked all over them. They looked cozy, not as comfortable as the sofas in Haspman’s house, but Gray lived on an NCIS salary and wasn’t taking bribes from criminals. She had done well for herself.
The furniture pieces faced each other. There was no TV in sight. Widow liked that.
Widow said, “Nice place.”
“Thanks. It’s expensive, but I love it.”
“Expensive?”
“Yeah. Come on. I’ll show you why. Let’s go through the kitchen.”
“Okay.”
They walked through the main room into the dining room and kitchen. Both were small but efficient. There was no dining room table, just a rug where one would go.
Once in the kitchen, Widow saw why the house was expensive. Floor-to-ceiling picture windows lined the back of the house, next to a huge sliding glass door.
The view was the thing she was paying for. It hit Widow instantly. It overshadowed the empty dining room and the kitchen and the Japanese décor.
Through the slider and the picture windows, Widow stared at the Potomac River and a green Virginia vista beyond. She was right on the river. For the DC area, it was a spectacular spot to live.
Gray led him to the slider, glided the door open, and stepped out to her backyard. Widow followed. It was breathtaking. He walked past her and took in the sounds and the sights.
He heard the water current. It was rushed at a brisk and steady pace. He saw a group of rowers across the river, packed into a boat like an Olympic crew team. It was a group of Marines in shorts and tank tops, all matching. They rowed past in unison, like one hive mind.
Widow turned his attention from the view to the backyard. The landscaping there was even better than the front.
There were containers with gardens of bonsai trees, pruned and trimmed and snipped and cared for, as much as the greenery in the front yard.
“Wow!” he said.
“Yeah. It’s lovely out here, isn’t it?”
“It’s very nice,” Widow said and pointed at the bonsai trees. “Did you do those?”
“I did. It’s a hobby of mine.”
“They’re great. I bet they’re worth some money.”
“They can be quite expensive. But I don’t sell them. I enjoy raising them. It’s my place of Zen.”
“Can you fish back here?”
“You can with a gaming license, I suppose.”
“Do you ever fish?”
“Do I look like a fisherman?”
Widow wasn’t a dumb man—slow at times, maybe, but not dumb. He believed in seizing opportunity when it presented itself. When a beautiful woman with a badge gives you permission to check her out, you take it. He turned back and seized the day. He looked her over from top to bottom, not slowly, but not fast either.
She had nice eyes, skin softer than a feather, lips red as a rose, and smarts like she was brought up on the streets of Tokyo or LA or New York; Gray was a total package.
“Not a fisherman.”
She shook her head and smiled.
He asked, “What?”
“Nothing. We should get to work. You want coffee?”
“Does a duck fart in the woods?”
“What?”
“It’s an expression.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“I’ll take coffee. Black. No cream. No sugar.”
“I already knew you’d say that.”
She turned her back to him and headed into the kitchen. She sifted through cabinets and pulled out a pair of coffee mugs, both the same standard twelve-ounce size. Then she looked sideways at Widow and reassessed her tactics and returned one mug to the cabinet. She reached up to a higher shelf on tiptoes and pulled out a jumbo-sized coffee mug. It was big enough to bake a cake in.
Satisfied that she’d made the right choice, she went to a Keurig machine and slipped in a coffee pod. She set the large mug under the spout and tapped a button, and the machine started rumbling. She repeated the process in order to fill the cup.
Widow stared out the window in the dining room at a brown pelican flying over the river. He watched it go up and circle back and swoop down, gulping river water and a fish right out of the river.
Pelicans were among the dive-bombers of the bird world. Bird watching wasn’t a hobby of Widow’s, but he had grown to appreciate birds over the last several years. If anyone needed to know about danger ahead, learn about birds.
“Have a seat,” Gray said.
Widow turned to face her and hopped up on a stool at a bar top that merged into the kitchen counter on the other side. More Japanese knickknacks were scattered all over the kitchen.
Waiting for the coffee, Widow asked, “Were you born in Japan?”
“No. I was born in the Regency Room at UC San Diego. Thirty-one years ago. My parents were born in Japan. They came to the US before that.”
“They still alive?”
“They live in Florida. They’re what you call retired.”
After the coffee was made, Gray slid him the oversized cup. It was heavy and black like oil. Steam piped out of the top. He took a sip like putting a toe in the water. Then he decided to take full swigs from it. It was perfect.
“It’s good. Thank you. Tastes better than Starbucks.”
“It is Starbucks.”
Widow nodded and took another pull from it.
They sat and chitchatted for a long time, getting to know each other as newly minted partners do. At one point, Widow thought about his first day as a part of a SEAL platoon. It wasn’t nearly this nice.
His first day, four of the SEALs came at him in the middle of the night.
Widow was unarmed for his. They were unarmed. They told him they were going to beat his ass. It was all part of a hazing ritual that went back to the beginning of the SEALs. It was unofficial, off the books, and the practice was denied by the brass. But it existed.
The unexpected thing was the four guys who came after him ended up the ones in the dirt. One of them had to get stitches, which required him to lie about how he got them. The next day, five SEALs came at him. And five SEALs went down—two needed stitches.
The third day, six came at him. This time, they all went down, and he ended up needing two stitches, both on his fist right between the index and middle finger knuckles. His bone tore through the skin from three straight days of punching.
The seven of them, him included, decided to call it a draw. Rituals were rituals until they were broken.
Gray and Widow talked small talk for a while. Widow didn’t mention the SEAL hazing. After that first hour passed, they realized hour got away from them and decided to get to w
ork. They had a long day of research ahead of them.
Just then, Gray’s phone buzzed. She reached into her back pocket and pulled it out and checked the screen.
She said, “Text message. Your friend is safe.”
“Friend?”
“The lawyer.”
“Aker?”
Guess he didn’t leave town after all, Widow thought.
“Yeah. But the wife and kids went to school and work. But don’t worry. They’re all returning home.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
Gray put the phone on the bar top and left the room. She returned a few minutes later with a MacBook in hand. She set it on the bar in front of an empty stool next to Widow and climbed up and sat down.
Widow said, “Thanks for putting a team on Aker. What about Tunney?”
“We got a guy posted there too. Plus hospital security.”
Widow nodded.
Gray asked, “Tell me about these stocks.”
“All I know is the trading letters are SHG.”
“What does that stand for?”
“I have no idea. Been asking that all day. I can’t seem to find anyone who knows what it stands for.”
Gray looked at him sideways again. It was a look he thought he might get a lot from her. He was also starting to understand that it was the look she gave when someone did something stupid or, in his case, didn’t do something obvious.
She picked up her phone, unlocked it with her fingerprint, and tossed it to him, slower than a think-fast throw, but just as surprising. Widow caught it and stared at her.
Gray stared at him, waiting for him to catch on.
Finally, she said, “Widow, we have internet now. Everyone has it on their phones. When you don’t know the answer to something, google it.”
He looked at the phone screen. She stared and started giggling. It started like a low rumble and then turned into a full laugh, the kind that takes control and can’t be tamed.
He looked at her.
“What?”
She held up a hand as if she was telling him to wait a beat while she caught her breath. She slowed her laughed down to a more manageable thing. Her cheeks blushed from the laughing.
She said, “Have you ever seen one of those commercials with the Stone Age man trying to figure out a modern device? Like a computer?”