by Davis Bunn
Finally Bert sighed and dragged out another chair and seated himself. Val kept to the same position. Waiting.
Dillon slipped past Gerald and joined Bert at the table. Bert said, “All right, mate. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
Gerald remained leaning against the kitchen door frame, arms crossed over chest, gaze heated. Val turned his attention to the men seated at the table. Given the circumstances, two out of three wasn’t bad.
“Terrance will be carrying the codes with him,” Val began.
“Codes,” Bert repeated.
“To access the bank funds,” Val explained.
“This is the money he stole we’re talking about,” Bert said. “Our pension money.”
“Right. The newspapers are onto this theft. Which means the SEC has been called in.”
“Official government investigators,” Gerald supplied from his position, speaking for the first time since Audrey departed.
“Right. Terrance wouldn’t dare go hunting for me without keeping tabs on his money. He would never trust his partners. And he’s definitely not in this alone.”
“How can you be sure of that, mate?”
“Because if he was, he wouldn’t be free to come over here now.
He’s needed back in the States to handle the inquiry into the disappearance of the funds. There’s someone else on the inside, someone high up enough to cover for Terrance.” Val rocked back in his seat. “Don Winslow.”
Bert asked, “That name’s supposed to mean something?”
“Executive vice president,” Gerald said. “I’ve seen his name on documents.”
Val explained, “Don backed Terrance’s hand when he stole a promotion from me.”
Gerald said, “I thought you had amnesia.”
“My memory was a total loss right after the accident.” Val forced himself to meet the man’s gaze. “Things are coming back.
But it’s patchy. And most of what I remember are things I’d just as soon forget.”
Gerald snorted quietly. But he subsided.
Bert refocused the discussion with, “So you’ve got a history with Audrey’s brother.”
“Six years.”
“Bit of bad blood there, I take it.”
“About a year and a half ago,” Val replied, “Terrance seduced my wife. Then he stole a promotion that should have been mine by falsifying documents, pinning a series of losses on my watch. That I know for certain. He bribed a lab or a doctor to alter a DNA test so he could steal my child as well.”
“You got proof?”
“No. No proof. But I’m sure it happened.”
Bert looked at Gerald, who said, “You have quite a way with the ladies.”
To that Val had no response.
Bert continued playing the moderator. “So Terrance is going to be carrying the codes with him.”
“These days, access to a numbered account can be as simple or as difficult as you want to make it,” Val said.
“Know this from personal experience, do you?” Gerald said.
Val lifted his gaze. “That’s right. I do.”
Gerald shook his head. Pushed off the doorjamb. Walked over to the window. Gave his attention to the green vista out back.
Val waited until the others’ gazes had returned to him. “Knowing Terrance, there will be a series of very complicated maneuvers required to access those funds. Something that has to be done in strict order. He’ll have part of it in his head. The other part will be in a computer. Terrance has always loved his toys.”
“You’re thinking he’s carrying this computer with him,” Bert said.
“That or something else.”
“Something we can lift.”
“Right.”
“Something we can use to renegotiate our position with.”
“That’s my thinking.”
The youngest of the trio spoke up. “They’ve taken the grandest suite in the hotel where I work. I could get in and out, no problem.”
“Not you,” Val said. “Me. There’s no need to get anybody else in trouble. And I’d have a better idea what to look for.”
“Just whose position would you be after saving here?” Gerald asked the window. “Yours or our pensions?”
Val decided he’d had enough. He rose from the table and walked outdoors. Clouds were piling in from the north. The afternoon sky contained a riot of tainted moods. The narrow strip of shadow between cloud and hill was shot with silver where sunlight struck the falling rain. Val futilely searched the horizon for a single shred of the confidence he had exhibited inside.
His mind returned to the same unanswered dilemma. Why had he forced Audrey away? The incident in New York might have scrambled his memory, but something far earlier had tainted his heart. How could he have felt something this powerful and still made her leave? Val pounded the post marking the boundary between city and verdant fields, convicted anew by all he could not remember. There was no escape. It was not the exterior that trapped him. It was everything inside. All the things he could never let go.
A siren sounded far in the distance, so faint it should have been possible to let it flow into all the other city noises and disappear. Yet this one rose and fell with the strident force of an alarm meant exclusively for him.
Then he heard the shouts rising from inside the house. One word was cried in anguish. A woman’s name.
Dillon said nothing as they walked down the alley leading to the hotel’s rear entrance. The lane held a sickly sweet odor of rubbish bins and coming rain. Dillon ducked inside the metal “Employees Only” entrance, then swiftly reappeared. “Ready?”
“You can wait out here if you want.”
“If I’d wanted to wait I’d still be in the van with the others.” Dillon led Val down a concrete hall painted a grim yellow. He pushed open the door to the gents’. “Stay put till I come for you.”
The room was cramped and lined with rusting metal lockers. A shower dripped. Machinery clanked overhead. Val moved to the sinks and pretended to wash his hands. The mirror revealed the same helpless fury that knotted his gut. It was no longer the past only that held a blank void. Audrey had been kidnapped by Terrance. That Terrance had gutted Val’s future once more was irony at its most vile.
After Arthur d’Arcy’s panic-stricken phone call, Bert and Gerald had gone into town and fetched Audrey’s father. The man had been so distraught his words had emerged only half formed. They had learned what they could, then tucked him into the bed last used by Val. Afterwards they had regathered in the kitchen and grimly run through Val’s strategy. Doing nothing was not an option.
Bert had toyed with the salt shaker, the glass pyramid tiny in his hands. “I know what the dear would be telling us just now.”
Val asked, “How do you know Audrey?”
“The lady managed to drag me and Dillon here out of one truly dark pit. You know she works as a prison counselor?”
“We don’t need to be going there. Audrey was there when our trouble was at its worst. That’s all you should be telling the bloke.” Dillon rounded on Val. “This plan of yours. Is it going to work?”
“You can use me as a trade if you think that has a better chance of success.”
“That’s not what I was asking, mate.”
“Yes it was.”
“All right, then,” Bert said. “Straight up. Tell us why that’s a nonstarter.”
“If you give me up, we’re empty handed. They have all they want. They have no reason to give Audrey up.”
The men studied him intently. “Know what I think, mate? There’s more to your plan than just stealing the bloke’s phone.”
“Computer.”
“Whatever. You’re after more, aren’t you?”
“I’m just thinking ahead.”
Bert’s gaze was hard as his tone. “You’re out to shut him down.”
“If I can.”
“And restore our pension fund?”
“I’d like to.”
Gerald remained against the doorway, arms crossed, voice an iron rod. “What about the bit where you stole some for yourself?”
Val had nothing for them but the truth. “I don’t understand why I did it. Money’s never been all that important to me. Before, I was working for a wife and the children I hoped we’d have. Now I don’t have either.”
Bert looked at the others. “I say let’s do the job.”
Dillon returned in uniform, bearing a second maroon-and-yellow outfit in a plastic cover. He was nervous but bearing up well. Clearly he had been in tight spaces before. The only real sign of his fear was the way his eyes tightened and his cheekbones pinched white against his skin. “I can tell you already this is too small. But it’s the only one I spotted.”
The uniform was scarcely better than a clown’s outfit on Val. The trousers were a full four inches too short, the waist impossible to fasten. The jacket’s wrists and shoulders were scarcely better. He did all of the jacket’s gold buttons up the front except the one at his collar, which would have fitted him like a noose.
Dillon set a matching maroon-and-gold pillbox hat on Val’s head and grimaced. “All you need is a tin cup, mate. You’d be ready for the monkey’s dance down the boardwalk.”
“If I bunched my shoulders I bet I could split this thing from top to toe.”
“We’ll move fast, hope nobody gets too good a look. Ready?”
They took the service lift up to the top floor. Over the clanking lift motor Val could hear the same sibilant noise he had been catching ever since news had arrived of Audrey’s abduction. The sound was somewhere between a drill and a very shrill scream. The fact that the sound had traveled with him left Val in no doubt of its origin. The day was being ground down to a raw and fiery edge.
They came out of the elevator and started down an empty corridor. Val was consumed by how little chance they had of succeeding. He should never have sent Audrey away. Val no longer cared what his justification might have been at the time. It was insignificant now. He followed Dillon into the pantry. His body was a shell encasing nothing more than a void. A fragmented past and no future. And it was all his fault.
Dillon piled his arms high with terrycloth robes and fresh towels. When he was done, Val was masked from his waist to his chin. Dillon looked down at Val’s exposed ankles and shook his head. “Nothing to be done about that.”
“Except move fast,” Val said. Forward motion of any kind gave him at least a shred of hope.
Dillon’s gaze tightened further, as close to a smile as the guy could manage just then. “You’re all right, mate.”
Val replied, “Let’s do it.”
THEY FINALLY LEFT AUDREY AT THE HOUSE RENTED FOR JOSEF’S thugs because Terrance grew tired of wasting his time. Audrey might know where Val was, but they could roast her over live coals, plug her with arrows, and she would give them nothing. Audrey would relish playing the martyr. Terrance ordered them to cuff her to the radiator in the smallest of the upstairs rooms. Her mouth was taped, but nothing could be done about the daggers in her gaze. As usual, his darling sister refused to let him have the last word. Even when she couldn’t speak.
The driver had already returned to the hotel, and Loupe’s men did not want to leave without word from the boss. Which was fine by Terrance. He felt enclosed within a cage the size of this proper little English town.
Wally spoke to him for the first time since their arrival. “I need to walk, get a little air.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
The muscle protested, “We can’t raise the boss.”
“Stay here,” Terrance replied, already moving for the door.
“The boss—”
“Your boss,” Terrance corrected.
The senior man said to one of his men, “Make sure they make it okay.”
“It can’t be more than ten blocks.” Terrance protested. “Hastings hardly looks like a dangerous place.”
Loupe’s man said nothing, merely walked a few paces behind them. Wally remained the silent wraith throughout. The sky was split so definitely in two they might have been witnessing a schism of the universe. To the west and south was an aching empty blue. To the north a storm approached, strong as night. Thunder rolled across the vacant reaches, bringing expressions of real fear to the scurrying tourists. Only Wally seemed unfazed by the squall. By the squall, by the day, and by the fact that they were walking down Hastings’ main street, six thousand miles from where they needed to be, and still minus Val Haines.
Terrance pulled out his cell phone and checked for messages. Nothing. The action had become reflexive, something he did every few minutes. He had tried Don repeatedly for hours with no results. Not even on what Don called his red line, the number only a few people knew and one that Don had promised would lift him from the grave. Terrance had left five messages there and still had not heard back. Being this far from his home turf and not being able to contact his chief ally left Terrance extremely unsettled.
He could sense Audrey’s helpless fury like smoke rising from a branding iron. He should be feeling some sense of vindication, having trapped her and isolated her and finally left her helpless and silent. But the day was not working out as it should. Terrance snapped his phone shut as the hotel doorman greeted them and held open the portal. They had to find Val. Find him and finish him. Fast.
When they entered the hotel lobby, Terrance realized that Wally was watching him. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Terrance turned to their shadow. “Go on up to the suite.”
The muscle glanced uncertainly around the reception area. Clearly there was nothing of danger. Still, he hesitated.
Terrance put as much weight as he could on the words. “I need a minute alone here. We’ll meet you upstairs.”
When Loupe’s man entered the elevator, Terrance turned back to Wally and hissed, “As a matter of fact, you haven’t said or done a thing.”
“You got a beef?”
“Of course not. What do I have to complain about? After all, you’ve contributed so very much to all that’s happened since our arrival. Offering suggestions and advice and wisdom at every turn, that’s our Wally.”
She gave a cop’s laugh, a quick huff of sound without humor. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Obviously not.”
Wally shook her head. “You’ve lost it.”
“On the contrary, I have everything under control.”
Wally huffed another laugh, a verbal pistol with a silencer attached.
“I asked you a question.”
She stepped over to where a pillar and a potted palm hid her from both the elevator and the reception desk. Having to follow Wally’s lead made Terrance even hotter. Which, given the other frustrations of this rather fractious day, was not altogether a bad thing. At least he could let off some steam. “Would it be too much to ask for you to try and help me out here?”
“You’re hopeless.”
The words and their flat tone stung. “I am paying you good money—”
“You’re paying me what I’ve already earned ten times over.”
“Since our arrival you have done absolutely nothing.”
Wally punched him in the chest with a finger of flesh-covered stone. “You think you’re going to collar your guy, pay this Loupe his change, and just waltz off to never-never land. Is that it?”
“Not collar.”
“Whatever.”
“And you’re the one paying Loupe, remember? It comes out of your share.”
“You just don’t get it.”
“You’ve said that before.”
Her every breath blasted him with heat and ashes. “Listen to me. The boss is not here because his guys goofed.”
“That’s what he said when—”
“Forget what he told you. This guy wouldn’t know the truth if it arrived on the business end of a thirty-eight hollow point. He’s here because he wants it all.”
A snak
e of fear found the weak spot just north of his navel. “All what?”
“What do you think? Everything.”
“He can’t have it.”
“Oh, is that so? And just who is going to stop him—you?”
“That’s your job.”
Her final huff carried very little force. “I may be good, Terry. But I’m just one gal.”
Terrance stared around the lobby, as though searching for a way out. A bellhop stared through the front window, watching the sky with a worried frown. “I told you not to call me that.”
Wally closed in on Terrance with her lips drawn back from her teeth. A feral beast smelling of cigarettes and fear. “Listen to what I’m telling you. You want to have one single shred of anything left, you get out.”
The snake just kept burrowing deeper, lodging itself with venomous ferocity, coiling around Terrance’s spine. “You mean leave? I can’t do that.”
She bit off each word in even little gasps. “You have got to. Now.”
“You’re running out on me, is that it?”
“Are you deaf? Do you not hear a word I’m saying?”
“All I hear is the woman who’s here to protect me saying she’s ready to run out on me.”
“Not me, Terry. Us.We leave, we live to play with what you’ve got.”
“But Val Haines is still out there!” The snake began dislodging oily drops of sweat that dribbled down his back. “One word from him and—”
She gripped his lapel and shook him. Punching his chest with the fist that held his jacket, while the snake fed on his guts. “Forget Val! You stay here and the man upstairs is going to take us down!”
“If I run now, Val will destroy us.” Terrance was jabbering now. He knew it but couldn’t stop. “Everything I’ve done to keep us safe will go up in flames.”
“Safe? You call this safe?” Her eyes held a manic gaze. “I’m sitting up there just waiting for Loupe to tell one of his men to take us out back and smoke us.”
“If they do that, they lose the money you promised to pay them.”
“He’s not after what we agreed on, Terry. This has gone way beyond that. We’re talking everything. Including your life.”