Saving the World

by Ponzo, Gary

  Meltzer tapped his finger on the table. “He used technology to aid his search for you, including large payments to some of his law enforcement friends to do his dirty deeds.”

  “So he still believes I’m an alien?”

  “Apparently.”

  “But,” Margo stared at the table, “what if he’s right? What if I really am an alien and just don’t know it?”

  Bryant had to grin at that one. “You only see the best in people, don’t you?”

  Margo shrugged.

  They went back to gazing out the window. Bryant yawned hard, then briskly shook his head. How long had it been since he’d last slept?

  “Is Abbey going to be all right?” Margo asked in a quiet voice.

  “She’ll be fine,” Meltzer said, stirring his ice tea. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Bryant looked at the frown on her face and said, “The question is, are you okay?”

  Margo developed a sudden fascination with her chocolate milk. She swirled the straw around and seemed to search for the right words.

  The waitress dropped a grilled cheese sandwich with French fries in front of Margo and asked if they needed anything else. Bryant and Meltzer waved her off.

  “Starving,” Margo said, as she bit into her sandwich.

  While staring out the window, Meltzer said, “You know how this is going to go down, right?”

  “Yeah,” Bryant said.

  Margo looked up at them. “What are you talking about?”

  “FBI agent Ron Turkle will want to trade Jeff for you,” Bryant explained.

  Margo put her sandwich down and looked at Bryant with Bambi eyes. “You’re not going to do that, are you?”

  Bryant frowned. “Of course not.”

  With a big smile, she reached over and touched his hand. Bryant felt the touch linger long after she returned to her sandwich. He was getting too close to the girl, treating her like she was his surrogate daughter. If she were his patient that would be considered inappropriate. But at this stage of the game . . .

  Margo looked outside and said what they were all thinking. “How are we going to get Jeff?”

  Meltzer tapped the table with his index finger. “I have a plan.”

  Just then Bryant’s phone vibrated. He looked at the number which wasn’t in his contact list and felt a tinge of apprehension as he answered. “This is Dr. Bryant.”

  The man’s voice was suave and unyielding, “You think the green SUV can protect you?”

  Bryant licked a pair of dry lips. Ron Turkle sounded swankier than he’d ever sounded.

  When Bryant didn’t respond, Turkle added, “One of the guys in that vehicle is named Tom Braken. Something which might interest you about Tom—he was in my wedding party.”

  Bryant’s face went pale.

  Meltzer whispered, “Is it him?”

  Bryant managed to nod as Turkle continued. “You ever want to see Jeff again, you take that alien girl and walk out that back door right now. There’s a black Honda Accord sitting in the back parking lot with the key in the ignition. You begin driving east on the Superstition Freeway until I call you and tell you where to go. If I see another police car or unmarked car or Federal SUV come within a mile of your vehicle, I’ll put a bullet in Jeff’s head. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds like the words of a very unhealthy mind,” Bryant said, trying to gather himself.

  “You might use words to accomplish your goals, Doctor Bryant, but I’m trained to use bullets in mine. Let’s see whose method works best, huh?”

  And then it dawned on him. Turkle tried to intimidate Bryant at every opportunity. It was almost as if the agent was feeding on his fear, like a plant sucking up carbon dioxide. Bryant considered the antidote to such tactics.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Bryant said.

  “Are you out the door yet?”

  “No. I’m still sitting here.”

  There was a pause. At first Bryant thought the agent was thinking of what to say, but Turkle coughed and he seemed to be struggling to breathe.

  “What’s going on over there?” Bryant asked.

  Another long pause, then he heard Turkle taking deep breaths. “Nothing,” Turkle gasped. “Nothing.”

  A thought went through Bryant’s mind. “Are you having chest pains?”

  “I’m fine,” Turkle barked, seeming to gain momentum.

  “You’re not fine. You have a bad heart. You need to get help.”

  When Turkle spoke again, he’d already recovered from whatever episode he might’ve had and his voice was now sharp and sinister. “You get in that car and drive, or I promise, you’ll have Jeff Davenport’s death to add to your conscience. And I don’t think you could afford another blow like that.”

  Turkle’s demeanor took another step up, assailing Bryant’s psyche with an image he couldn’t handle.

  “Okay,” Bryant said, trying to muster some inner courage. “I can’t wait to see you face to face.”

  Turkle chuckled. “Are you trying to intimidate me, Doctor? Because if you are, you’re failing miserably.” Turkle continued to chuckle right up until the line went dead.

  Bryant put the phone back on the table and looked over at Meltzer. “Boy, this plan of yours better be good.”

  Chapter 35

  They headed east on the Superstition Freeway. Bryant drove the Accord while Margo stared out the window at the storm system brewing ahead of them. The road pinched down into just two lanes winding its way through the desert landscape toward the base of the Superstition Mountains. Occasionally, Bryant would glance at his phone on the console to see if he’d missed a call somehow.

  “This is all my fault,” Margo said.

  “Really? How?”

  “This FBI agent. He’s trying to get back at me as punishment.”

  Bryant said nothing. He knew to stay out of the way of Margo’s brilliant mind.

  “When I was twelve,” Margo said, rubbing her hands together in anxiousness. “My mom wouldn’t let me go see a movie I wanted to see. She thought it was too racy. So the night my friends went to the movie, I told her I was going to babysit for a few hours. But I lied. I went to the movie instead.”

  Bryant glanced over at her, watching the girl stare out the window, reliving the past like it was a movie playing out on the windshield.

  “You feel guilty about that,” Bryant said. “That’s normal. You were just twelve. You want to hear some of the stuff I did when I was twelve?”

  “No,” Margo shook her head, “you don’t understand. It was more wicked than that. When my mom asked who I was babysitting for, I told her it was someone with the FBI and he couldn’t give us his phone number because it was too dangerous. And I was the only one allowed to know where he lived. So she couldn’t check up on me.”

  “What did your mother say?”

  Margo’s eyes began to glisten. “Nothing. She just accepted it. She never even asked me anything more about it.”

  “And how did that make you feel?”

  “Bad.”

  “Did you enjoy the movie?”

  Margo twisted to face him. “Of course not.”

  Bryant let time pass before he said, “Just out of curiosity, do you think there’s any chance your mom believed that story of yours without questioning it any further?”

  Margo returned her gaze out the windshield. With a faraway look, she said, “No.”

  “That’s right,” Bryant confirmed. “She knew you were telling her a story.”

  “You mean lying?”

  “At twelve, I’d call it telling a story. She probably knew you’d feel guilty about it and figured that would be enough punishment on its own. I mean look all these years later and you still feel remorse about it.”

  “So you don’t think this FBI agent is penance for my sin?”

  Bryant shook his head slowly. “Penance? I don’t think so. You’ve overpaid as it is.”

  They drove on for a while without either of them speak
ing. Just the windshield wipers and the rain pelting the hood of the car. Both of them kept rapt attention to Bryant’s cell phone.

  After a few minutes, Margo said, “I miss my mom.”

  “Yeah,” Bryant agreed. “I know what you mean.”

  He could feel her staring at him, but she never spoke. They began climbing a hill, reaching the base of the Superstitions, and Bryant wondered where they could possibly be headed.

  “When this is over,” Margo asked, “will you still be my doctor?”

  It was a good question. A fair question.

  “Margo, I think I’m a little more than your doctor, don’t you?”

  He glanced over at her and saw her smile. It seemed to be the answer she was hoping for. And maybe for the first time in months, it was the answer he was looking for as well. She had saved him. Because of her, he’d become attached to the world once again, and he would never allow anything to change that.

  As they headed down the foreboding road with the thick clouds and lightning storm ahead of them, Bryant realized that he now had something to lose. It was an unsettling thought.

  “Will this work?” Margo asked.

  “Yes,” Bryant said. “I have no doubts about that.” He faked a smile and hoped it stuck.

  The road was full of potholes and the low points were accumulating pools of water.

  Next to him, he could sense Margo tensing up.

  “What’s the matter?” Bryant asked.

  “The voices,” she said, with a distant expression, like she was intercepting a wireless transmission.

  “What’re they saying?”

  Bryant kept swiveling his head from the road to Margo and back.

  “One of them wants me to turn around,” she said, staring straight ahead. “The other one keeps telling me to go ahead. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Okay,” Bryant said, putting together his thoughts. “This makes sense. You’re having conflicted feelings about our plan. You’re not sure it will work, so your subconscious wants you to go back. It’s there to protect you.”

  This seemed to work. Margo nodded, almost to herself, and said, “I used to think they were aliens, but they’re not aliens, right, Doctor Bryant?”

  “No,” Bryant assured her. “They’re not aliens. Auditory hallucinations? Probably. Aliens? Definitely not.”

  “You think you can help me get rid of them?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Without having to take medicine?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Psychotherapy is a proven biological treatment. It produces lasting physical changes to the brain much like learning does. I’ll get to the bottom of this. I always do.”

  Margo’s shoulders relaxed as she leaned back in her seat. After a long moment, she said, “You could probably help lots of kids, couldn’t you?”

  He shot her a look. “You selling something?”

  Margo grinned. “Just wondering if you’d keep your practice open to other kids like me.”

  He grinned. “You sound just like—”

  “Megan?”

  Bryant smiled at the sound of his daughter’s name coming from Margo’s mouth. There was something pure about her tone. Something almost comforting.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She was the champion of the neglected. The uncool ones. She would—”

  Bryant’s cell phone blinked and the default ringtone sprung to life. They both stared at it like it was a stick of dynamite.

  “I think you should answer it,” Margo said.

  Bryant touched the screen, then put the phone to his ear. “Yes.”

  “In fifty yards you’ll see a yellow sign warning drivers of an upcoming curve in the road. Ten yards past that sign there’s an opening in the desert. It’s a dirt road. Turn right down that path and drive another three miles.”

  The line went dead.

  Bryant placed the phone down, then spotted the yellow sign.

  “Him?” Margo squeaked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, squinting through the haze of the rain shower. He slowed the car, then carefully turned into the dirt road. As the front wheels dropped onto the desert floor, the tires sagged into the softened dirt, making it even harder to maintain control.

  “I don’t like this,” Margo said, a tremble in her voice.

  Bryant grabbed her hand and gave her a quick glance. “It’s okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “I’m not worried about me.”

  And the way she looked at him, he believed her. It made him wonder whether he’d made a mistake by taking her.

  As he drove between large cacti and Texas sagebrush, the path was clearly sloping down. Up ahead a large depressed area of the desert became visible. Normally desert washes were vacant gullies of loose debris and river rocks. Now, however, because of all the rain, the wash had turned into a flowing river. It didn’t seem they would be able to cross the deep expanse of flowing water, until a pair of headlights flashed at them from across the waterway. Something artificial came into view. Something manmade.

  “What is that?” Margo asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  As they inched closer, a wooden structure full of plywood and angular trestles lay across the river creating a makeshift bridge for them to cross. Maybe twenty feet in length.

  “No,” Bryant murmured. “That can’t possibly be strong enough.”

  The headlights flashed again and by now Bryant could see that it came from a white Sherriff’s SUV, urging him to cross the manmade structure.

  Bryant didn’t move. He tried to see who was driving the vehicle.

  The driver’s side door opened, and a thick man with a handlebar mustache rose from the front seat and leveled a shotgun to his shoulder. He aimed it straight at Bryant.

  Instinctively, Bryant placed a hand on Margo’s arm. “Get down.”

  Margo scrunched down in her seat, but she was too curious to go all the way.

  “He’s not going to shoot,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes . . . no . . . I don’t know.” She crouched even lower as she tried to understand the thoughts she was reading. “He doesn’t want to . . . but there’s too much money at stake.”

  “That’s Mrs. Bryant’s IRA going to a good cause.”

  “What?”

  “We can’t stop now,” Bryant said, gently depressing the accelerator. “We need to stop this maniac for good.”

  As the car crept forward, the platform moaned from the weight of the vehicle, slowly imbedding itself into the bank of the wash.

  “Take off your seatbelt,” Bryant said, unbuckling his own.

  “Why?”

  “Because if we go in, I want us to be able to escape.”

  She obeyed him.

  The front end of the car crawled up the temporary bridge and the only thing they could see through the windshield was the gray sky above them. Bryant used a gentle touch on the gas to ease up on the structure until they were completely on top of the bridge.

  Margo had her nose against the passenger window watching the water flow under them at a frantic pace. As the car began to descend the other side, Bryant kept his foot on the brake, managing to keep control until it jerked forward from the structure and sank down onto the saturated desert floor once again.

  The handlebar-mustache man pointed them down the sloppy path. Bryant wasn’t sure how much deeper he could go without getting stuck in a patch of mud.

  “Look,” Margo said as they moved away from the wash. She was twisted around in her seat now and craning her neck over the headrest to see out the back window.

  Bryant glanced in his rearview mirror and saw a chain tied from the bridge to the bumper of the Sheriff’s SUV which then dragged the bridge through the wash until the entire platform was on their side of the flowing water.

  “Now what?” Margo asked in her small voice.

  “It’s okay,” Bry
ant said, pulling out his phone and tapping the screen a couple of times. It opened up to a message he’d already had typed in for Detective Meltzer. One simple word: Now.

  Bryant handed Margo the phone and said, “When I tell you, go ahead and hit send.”

  She stared at the phone. “Can’t I just do it now?”

  “No. We need to make sure he’s here.”

  “Oh, he’s here,” she said with certainty.

  Bryant glanced at her. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we need to be certain he has Jeff.”

  This didn’t seem to trigger any feelings from her, so Bryant took that as an ambiguous question lingering out there in the desert ahead of them.

  The path curved around mesquite trees and low-lying bushes. Bryant crept the car forward and tried to avoid puddles. Margo had her legs tucked under her and was curled over the phone, her thumb hovering over the send button.

  “You okay?” Bryant asked.

  “I’m trying.”

  He examined the road ahead of them with both his hands clutching the steering wheel. Turkle said three miles, but they probably hadn’t gone a half mile yet.

  “Doctor Bryant,” Margo uttered, staring down at the phone. “We have no signal out here.”

  Bryant stopped the car. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Doubt dripped down the back of his mind. This was why Turkle had taken so long to contact them after kidnapping Jeff. He was eliminating every possible way that Bryant could be followed or call for help.

  There was a loud thump as the car jolted forward.

  Margo screeched.

  They turned around and saw a thin man with a potbelly sticking out from under his tight T-shirt. He banged a rifle against the trunk of the car to encourage Bryant to keep the car moving.

  Bryant eased off the brake and let the car roll forward. The potbelly guy walked behind them with his rifle held out as a constant reminder of what might happen should he stop.

  Margo was twisted around on her knees, peering over the backrest at the guy with the gun.

  As calmly as he could, Bryant said, “Please turn around.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re making me nervous”

  “I’m making you nervous? What about him?”