[2017] The Extraction

by Steven F Freeman

  “Is she alive? Trin, I mean.”

  My sister glances at a captain’s-wheel clock on the wall over the television. “For a few more minutes, yeah.”

  “Why, Dani? Why all this? The nasty comments, the taunting, the delay before killing her.”

  “I had to make it look like the criminals from your past, start to finish. Figured that was the only way I’d keep you stumped long enough to finish off Trin.”

  “That’s the how, not the why.”

  Her lower jaw twists sideways, like she’s fighting back tears. “Remember how you used to tell me everything about your job and about…well…life?” she whispers in a trembling voice. “All the things you loved? And the parts you hated?”

  “Of course. We’ve been doing that our whole lives.”

  “That ended when you married Sherri. You had someone new to share your dreams with.”

  “Not for long.”

  “Exactly. I knew you two wouldn’t last. She was too weak…too self-absorbed to lend you the kind of ear you needed. Did I miss our conversations when you were married to her? Yes, of course. But I knew it wouldn’t last. And sure enough, I was right. Ten months later, you all separated, and it was like old times.”

  Her voice catches again. “But then you met Trin. And I knew she was different. She’s not the self-centered bitch Sherri is.”

  I couldn’t argue with her there.

  “Trin knows how to listen,” continued Dani. “She knows what makes you you. Once you married her, I knew you’d cut me off again, like you did with Sherri. Only this time, there’d be no getting you back. She’d make you happy enough to stay away forever.” She raises her gaze to my eyes. “And I can’t allow that, not when it takes away the only person who truly understands me.”

  “But Dani,” I stammer. “It’s not like we never spoke when I was married before. And we’ll still talk when I marry Trin.”

  “Not like we used to. Not the deep stuff, the things weighing on your heart, the stuff that keeps you up at night. Maybe you don’t realize it, but that kind of talk, the kind we had when we were kids…it disappeared when you married the first time. After that, all you could talk about was weather and Mom and yardwork—all the banal bullshit neither of us likes from anyone else.” She pauses. “So I did what I had to do. I came up with a way to keep you single, like me.”

  In her statement, Dani confirms my earlier epiphany about my own blind spot. I’d always recognized in myself a tendency to become too immersed in the dark minds of the criminals I sought as a profiler. It’s why I left the Bureau—I felt myself slipping into the abyss of their twisted thoughts. Turns out Dani and I are more alike in this way than I ever realized, until an hour ago. She excels in tapping into the ominous side of her personality, too. She fed off the FBI stories I shared with her, vicariously living my career with me. Only she went too far…let this trait grow until it consumed her. Now she’s more like the criminals I pursued than the sister I grew up with.

  And she fits the profile I’ve been building to perfection: analytical…organized…patient. I erred only in identifying the motivation. She is driven not in anger over past convictions but rather in a selfish desire to live in the past, to cling to a childish reliance we’ve both outgrown…or should have.

  “So you’d kill my fiancée,” I tell her. “My first chance at being happy in twenty years, just to keep a good conversational partner? Who’s the selfish bitch now?”

  Her eyes register hurt. My words have wounded her. Well, tough shit. She’s not exactly on my favorites list at the moment.

  “Would you really be happy with her?” she says after a pause. “As happy as you were when it was just the two of us? C’mon, Dec. You know she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  “Oh, really?” I retort. “And you’ve figured out this key fact that I missed how?”

  “Love blinds you. Everybody knows that. Considering Trin’s a PI, she sure was easy to kidnap. Told her I had some ideas about the wedding reception, and she let me right in. And she never saw me dump ketamine into her coffee. She’s so gullible.”

  No, you’re so crazy I think. But with Trin still in danger, it’s best to keep this observation to myself.

  “Where is she?” I ask, my Glock still pointed at Dani’s chest.

  A determined look enters her eye. “You’re going to have to choose, Dec.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  She rises from the couch and takes a step forward. “Her or me. Decide.”

  My voice and hand tremble. “Love doesn’t work like that. You’ll always be my sister. But that doesn’t mean I can’t love a wife, too.”

  “It does for me. I’m not going back to being isolated again. It’ll kill me.”

  “Taking another step forward will kill you a lot sooner.”

  She takes a determined step towards me, and a smile tugs at the corners of her lips. Clearly, she expects my choice to favor her.

  I can’t let her get too close, not when she has six years of Taekwondo training to my hundred hours of basic hand-to-hand combat at Quantico, the FBI’s training facility. “This is the last time. Where’s Trin?”

  Dani’s eyes narrow in anger. She leaps forward, reaching for my Glock.

  I step back and fire a round into her thigh, sending her reeling sideways and crashing to the floor.

  “Jesus!” she cries, turning wide eyes on me with utter shock. She presses both hands over the wound, trying to staunch copious blood pouring from it.

  The violence releases my own inner demons. She would have attacked me rather than save Trin.

  I take a step forward and point the handgun at her chest from point-blank range. “I’m a pretty good shot from this distance. Tell me where Trin is, or I promise you, you and I will never have a conversation again.”

  Her eyes evaluate mine. Fear steals across her countenance. Looks like she realizes I’m serious.

  “She’s…” Pain forces her to gasp. “She’s in the back bedroom.”

  Keeping my eye on Dani, I scurry around her and retrieve the Sig Sauer off the floor. I then bolt from the room and careen down the long hallway, to the spare bedroom we haven’t used in years.

  My hand reaches for the doorknob.

  Locked.

  I pound on the door. “Trin! Can you hear me?”

  “Decimus! Yes, I’m in here!” The sound of her voice comes from the back of the room. She must be on the bed.

  “I’m coming. Hold on!”

  I heel kick the door, sending a spray of splinters arcing onto the hardwood floor as the door flies open.

  My disheveled fiancée lies sprawled on the bed, her wrists and ankles bound to its frame.

  I rush to her side. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, but hurry. The guy who kidnapped me said I had an hour before poisonous gas would flood the room. He said it’d be a timed release.”

  I pull out my trusty pocketknife and saw through the first cord. “How long ago was that?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Shit!” My adrenaline surges, providing the strength to slice through the remaining cords in a matter of seconds.

  I grab her hand and yank her off the bed…and nearly send her sprawling to the floor. Limbs stiff from a full day of immobility, she staggers across the hardwood, leaning on my shoulder for support.

  I snake my arm across her back and grasp her hip, half-pulling her towards the door.

  “Did your kidnapper say what kind of gas?” I ask.

  “Sarin.”

  Great—sarin, the deadliest of modern nerve agents. During my waning years as a profiler, some nut job in Raleigh tried but failed to repeat the success of a Japanese cult that deployed the gas on a Tokyo subway station back in the nineties. Even in the spacious volume of multiple subway cars, sarin killed thirteen people and injured thousands. In the confines of this small bedroom, a minuscule dose would be sufficient to kill us both.

  We exit the room. Rather than heading bac
k to the center of the house, I opt to avoid my wounded sister by leaving through the back door onto the deck.

  We push open the door and rush through.

  Glock at the ready, I scan the house while trotting alongside Trin. She’s as anxious to leave as I am, but her legs, weak from disuse, can carry her no faster than a trot.

  Paranoid thoughts race through my mind. Yes, I picked up Dani’s Sig Sauer. But does she have another weapon? If so, could she overcome the pain of her injury enough to use it?

  My head on a swivel, I lead Trin to the passenger side of the Camry and help her in, then load myself in beside her.

  Not bothering to turn the car around, I shift into reverse and accelerate back up the gravel driveway, sending a spray of rocks hammering against the sedan’s undercarriage.

  Once I swing off the driveway and onto the two-lane road, I jam the transmission into drive and squeal down the asphalt. Sampson’s cars fishtails into a mailbox before straightening out.

  Speaking of my ex-partner…

  I ring her on my borrowed cellphone, holding it in one hand while grasping the steering wheel with the other.

  “Grinder!” she begins. “I was so worried—”

  “No time to talk,” I yell. “It’s Dani! She’s behind all this!”

  “Your sister? Are you sure?”

  “Yes! I just rescued Trin from my parents’ lake house. Dani tried to stop me from reaching her, so I shot her in the leg.”

  “Jesus, Grinder.”

  Approaching a curve, I slow my headlong flight a bit and provide her with the cottage’s address. “Send agents, as many as you can gather. Dani’s hurt, but she’s crazy as a shithouse rat. There’s no telling what she could do, especially with her martial arts training.”

  “Will do.” She exhales. “You both okay?”

  I glance at Trin’s haggard face. “Yeah. Just tired and shaken up.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Oh, Sampson. One more thing…Dani told Trin she set a timed deployment of sarin to finish her off. Better have the agents suit up so no one’s poisoned.”

  “I’ll tell them to break out the haz mat suits.”

  “Good. Keep me informed, will you?”

  “Sure thing, Grinder. Make sure you keep the phone handy.” She clears her throat. “Um…I don’t want to say this, but we’ll need both of you to come into the office to give a statement.”

  “Yeah, I know. But tomorrow morning’s okay, right?” I know it isn’t but count on a little extra flexibility from my ex-partner.

  “Yeah, that’s fine. See you then.”

  “Thanks, Sampson—for everything.” I disconnect the call.

  Good old Sampson. Even as a former partner, she’s reliable. I feel a twinge of guilt about the beating I’ve put her car through. Don’t think I’ll tell her about that just yet.

  I steal a glance at Trin. Her eyes are closed. Can’t say that I blame her. I want to shut out this nightmare, too.

  My foot inches the accelerator down. There’s no good reason to keep exceeding the speed limit by such a healthy margin, but some combination of fear and loathing keep my flight reflex fully activated. We can’t distance ourselves from the lake cottage fast enough.

  The miles disappear behind us. If only the horror will fade as quickly.

  CHAPTER 50

  Arriving at my house a few minutes later, we stagger inside and embrace…long and hard and silent, Trin’s head nestled against my shoulder.

  Finally, she speaks. “I knew you’d find me.”

  “I almost didn’t,” I reply. “I cut it a helluva lot closer than I wanted.”

  “But you did. That’s what kept me from losing it…knowing I had to be ready when you showed up.”

  I nod. “Trin, I’m so sorry. I had no idea about Dani…”

  She places her fingers on my lips to silence me. “How could you? None of us saw that coming.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Dark circles appear under Trin’s eyes, and her clothes are rumpled and stained. “Are you hungry? You haven’t eaten since yesterday morning, have you?”

  “I’m not hungry. Not yet. But I’d love a bath.”

  “Rest here. I’ll get it ready.”

  I run the water, using my hand to ensure it’s the smoking-hot temperature she prefers, then summon her to the tub.

  With a grateful glance, she eases herself into the soothing water.

  I retreat to the silence of the den, ready to meet her whenever she’s done.

  She’s been soaking in the tub for half an hour when my borrowed cellphone rings. “Farr here.”

  “It’s Sampson. You wanted an update?”

  Honestly, I’m not sure that I do. But avoiding the truth won’t make it disappear. “Sure.”

  “Well, uh, the agents hit your parents’ lake house.” She falls silent.

  “And…?”

  “Grinder, I’m sorry. They found Dani…dead.”

  My head spins. “Are you sure? She wasn’t just wounded?”

  “I’m sure. Looks like she went to the bedroom where she kept Trin hostage. Her timing was bad. The sarin had just been heated and vaporized—wicked high concentration. She got a lungful and collapsed. Docs figure she didn’t last more than a few minutes.”

  The scenario made sense. Wounded…confused…angry…forgetting the time, Dani would rush to see if her hostage had escaped. And unwittingly fall prey to her own lethal device.

  “Dani…” I whisper. She may have gone off the deep end, but she is—she was—the sister I’d known my entire life. And I’d never guessed the extent to which our sibling bond and my criminal tales had come to rule her life—a blind spot to rule all others.

  Sampson waits a moment to let these words sink in before continuing. “We found a voice disguiser hooked up to a PA system. It was set to lower the user’s voice an octave.”

  “So a woman would sound like a man?”

  “Yep, exactly.”

  “Trin referred to her captor as ‘he.’ That explains why.”

  “But why disguise your voice if you’re going to kill her anyway?” asked Sampson.

  “Trin would have pled for mercy a lot more if she’d known Dani was behind it. Dani probably wanted to avoid that by keeping it impersonal.”

  “Sounds as plausible as anything, although we’ll never know for sure.”

  We both fell silent for a moment.

  “Thanks for the update,” I say at last. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay. See you then.”

  I end the call and lean my head back against the couch.

  I awake with Trin’s gentle hand on my shoulder.

  “Feel better?” she asks.

  “Yeah.” I sit up. “How long have I been out?”

  “Not long. Maybe forty minutes.”

  Trin has slipped into one of the many pairs of jeans and flannel shirts she keeps at my place. Fatigue shows in her countenance, but her eyes have begun to recapture a bit of their sparkle.

  I smile and pull her close. The road of life, seemingly cut so short for the past twenty-four hours, now opens before us once again—a future to build together: evenings of cooking on the grill and gazing at the nighttime sky and planning our next vacation…weekends packed with lazy Sundays and day trips to mountain trails and watching our favorite movies together.

  Of course, Dani’s death is a tragedy. But really, she already died when her sanity left her…when she became someone I no longer recognized. The grief of that loss, a long road on which I’ve taken only the first step, will live with me always.

  But thank God Dani’s transformation hasn’t robbed me of the person who will become my better half in the truest sense of the phrase…who—now that Dani has passed—will be the only person with whom I share my innermost thoughts.

  Trin seems to follow the current of my thoughts. “I’m sad about Dani, too. But I’m glad we still have each other. And I’m grateful to you for saving my life.” She leans onto my shoul
der.

  As I hold her close, my childhood aspirations appear before me. I’ve always dreamed of being someone’s hero. And now in the most profound sense of the word, I’ve fulfilled that role—in a way I never could have imagined.

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  CHAPTER 1

  Where the hell am I?

  This is my first thought when my eyes blink open.

  I sit up and look around. Everything—walls, floor, ceiling, even the toilet and sink—is constructed of dingy steel. The metallic surfaces reflect no light from a single bulb enshrouded in a heavy metallic shade hanging from the ceiling. A strange, oily smell permeates the room—an odor I’ve encountered before but can’t place where.

  This sure as hell isn’t my apartment.

  My heart starts to pound, and my palms break out in a cold sweat.

  I have a vague sense of waking a few times earlier, staying alert for only a moment before falling back into a dreamless sleep. I’m not sure how long I drifted in and out of consciousness. Hours, probably.

  I stand up, inducing a wave of lightheadedness. This isn’t a hangover. Even if I were into drugs or booze, which I’m not, I’d know this is something different. The only time I've experienced this kind of dizziness was a few years back when waking from an appendectomy. It was a strange, loopy sensation, different from garden-variety sleepiness.

  I’ve been drugged. It’s the only explanation for staying asleep during my transport here—wherever “here” is.

  Fighting the drugs’ lingering effects, I stagger to the room’s single door and pull on the handle. Locked. I’m trapped in some kind of windowless room.

  Pounding on the door and shouting brings no one.

  Working to calm myself, I try to think through my last memories before finding myself in this place, in case there’s some clue to my arrival here. Last night—I guess it was last night—I was on a late call fixing an HVAC system on the roof of the Lexington building. I made sure the client was happy, then dragged my sleepy ass back to bed back in my apartment in the suburbs north of Indianapolis. Nothing out of the ordinary.