“I’m sorry Mags, I’m sorry. We will get out of this. Everything will be OK.”
Maggie looked Bobby dead in the eyes, her rage re-surfacing once more.
“BLAKE WON’T GET OUT OF THIS – YOU STUPID LITTLE CHILD!!!” She ran past Bobby, who was standing shaking in the hallway. She ran out of the front door and into the front garden, needing to get some air. She stood, bent over with her hands on her knees, and vomited onto the grass. When she had finished, she stepped back a few paces, and sat on the lawn with her arms wrapped around her legs, sobbing.
She was aware of Bobby sitting down next to her. She chose to ignore him for a moment, instead wanting to enjoy the silence.
The peace was broken when Maggie’s phone rang in her back pocket. She reached in to grab it and looked at the display. It showed a picture of Blake with his name underneath it. Her heart jumped as she swiped the screen to answer it. “Blake?!” Her voice full of hope. She and Bobby both jumped to their feet.
“Sorry to disappoint you Maggie.” The voice on the other end of the phone was a man’s voice, probably a lot older than her, and with a Marlborough raspiness that gave it a sinister edge.
“You bastard.” Her voice level and calm.
“Now, now there is no need for unpleasantness. What’s done is done. Now I am sorry about your boyfriend, but he was no good for you darling, that one, no sir.”
“Don’t you even...”
“Now I do apologise for the mess at your Aunt and Uncle’s house. It’s not the team of guys I usually like to work with. So thuggish, so unprofessional if you ask me. You know what I mean? No? Anyway, sorry, I digress. What I am calling you for young lady is to explain what is going to happen next. You see I don’t normally get asked to chase teenagers down the street. I am more of a jungle warfare man – ex-army, you see. Anyway – I only took this job because it seemed like easy money. Something quick to help pay the bills. Truth be told, I didn’t really believe the mumbo jumbo the guys back at HSICC were spinning me. Kids with super powers? Give me a break I thought. So anyway, I thought it would be easy to come in, grab the boy, deliver him back to the client and be back home with my pay check in time for bed. You know what I mean? Easy money you see? Well, let me tell you something, you surprised me. Now don’t worry about the car, insurances cover that sort of thing. That sort of thing happens quite a lot in my line of work. But you see it has been a long time, and I mean a long time since I was taken by surprise. Not since I was in the jungle, actually. Anyway, here’s the thing, and I do apologise for rambling by the way, I get that sometimes. I want your brother. I want to work with him.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Maggie? Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I want to ‘cut a deal’ as they say.”
“A deal?” Bobby was staring at Maggie intently, desperate to hear the other end of the conversation.
“I see that you have two options. Option 1. We work together. I can provide you with protection from HSICC and the authorities. I’ll tell them you were killed in an accident or something. We’ll change your identities - they will never find you if you don’t want to be found. Man, we could do great things together. Your brother had the right idea with the computer store and the bank. That was a good start, but he lacked the ambition – the resources to really make a killing – if you pardon the expression. You’re not still angry about that earlier today, are you Maggie? I assure you it was just business.”
Maggie stood in stunned silence for a while. Could this monster really be suggesting that they team up? Become business partners of some sort? Go on the run with the man who murdered her beloved in cold blood as if nothing happened? As if it was ‘just business’? She felt sick to her core.
“And option 2?” She said.
Winter sighed. “Then we proceed as planned. I find you, capture you both and turn you in to HSICC. Trust me; your brother will be a lab rat for the rest of his life. They will spend years making him do things with his skills. They will send him to the front line and make him change the face of modern warfare.”
“And what if he refuses?”
“Ah, my dear, that’s the beauty of it. That’s where you come in.” Maggie stiffened. “You see you are an insurance policy. They will keep you, use you to convince him to do their bidding. Torture you if necessary. Having his twin as leverage? See they love twins, twins have a special connection. See they don’t want to hurt him too much. Don’t want to damage the valuable merchandise, if you get my drift. And besides. We still have your Aunt and Uncle as extra insurance.”
“You’re a monster.”
“Now, now, come on Maggie. I thought we were starting to get along. So I’ll give you an hour to think about it. Talk it over with your brother.”
“No need. I have made a decision.”
“Oh good. Good. And what decision have you arrived at? Option 1 or option 2?”
“Option 3.”
Forty one
Maggie put the phone in her back pocket and surveyed the scene. “Bobby.” Her brother jumped to attention. “We are leaving.”
“Wh... where are we going?”
“Far away from here. Uncle Frank’s place.”
Frank was Steve’s older brother. They used to live on the same street until Frank took early retirement from the police force due to a knee injury. Frank now spent his days tending to his garden, and sometimes the golf course. And he was the only person who Maggie could trust that would be able to help.
“Uncle Frank? OK, we can be there in half an hour if we...”
“No, Bobby, not his house here. He has a holiday home. Come on.”
“But wait. Mags? Holiday home? But isn’t that...”
“Yes. It’s in Mexico.”
“But….”
“He has a boat, remember? And he knows how to help us.”
Maggie led Bobby straight into the kitchen. She knew exactly what she was looking for, she just prayed that it would still be there.
Forty two
Frank Cunningham enjoyed the retired man’s life. He wasn’t strictly retired – Still worked as a part time adviser to the special ops unit, but it was more of an honorary role nowadays, and they demanded very little of his time. Now he spent a lot of his time playing golf, and tending to his garden.
Frank was also a keen vegetable grower. He started growing his organic plot just over five years ago and took pride in the fact that he used no chemicals, no pesticides and no grow formula. His neighbour would go on at him for trying to be organic, saying that he was losing half of his crop to vermin. But Frank knew that the proof was in the taste. You see he could tell when something was truly organic, or just made out to be. And so could his customers. Over the last five years Frank had grown his little vegetable growing project into a much larger vegetable growing project, and turned the fruits (or vegetables) of his labour into a profitable business.
The money that he brought in was modest, compared to the work that he had to put in, but coupled with his disability payout from the force, and his generous pension plan, he was doing alright thank you very much.
Hell, he even bought a new sail boat. Beautiful twenty-footer. Had it docked a few miles away so he could take it out on weekends. Although the business was picking up more recently, so he didn’t go out on the water as often as he would like.
Frank was sitting in a deck chair surveying his work this year. It was going to be a good year, too. He had just bought the next patch of land over, and was already making plans to expand further. The local restaurant was sniffing around too – looking to source produce from him. Sure, profits wouldn’t be as high, but they would buy in bulk. And customers were customers.
The only problem in Mexico was irrigation. It didn’t rain nearly enough to keep the ground nourished and allow his crops to grow, so he had invested in a fairly expensive water system. The net result was he was looking out onto his own green and pleasant land, but t
he surrounding area was just a dust bowl.
His ever-ready-to-offer-an-opinion neighbour told him he was crazy for spending so much money on such expensive equipment. But over time Frank proved that the locals would want locally sourced produced, rather than importing it from elsewhere.
As Frank surveyed the scene, the phone began to ring inside the house.
*
Inside he picked up the handset and greeted the called in his usual style. “Evergreen Foods.”
The voice on the end of the line was familiar too him, but yet sounded like he had never heard it before.
“Maggie? How are... Slow down a little honey I can’t get what you’re saying.”
There was a long silence as Frank listened. He didn’t interrupt apart from the occasional “Yes” and “I see.”
When he had thought long enough he spoke slowly and calmly to his adopted niece.
“Darling I’m so sorry. I know it’s not what you want to hear right now, but I need you to stay composed and focus. Can you do that for me? Good girl. Now listen carefully. I am truly sorry to hear what you have been through, and especially about poor Blake. But I’m afraid you are going to have to stay strong for your brother, and try to think clearly. I know a little about this group of people and enough to know who they are. They call themselves the Homeland Special Investigations Command Centre and operate outside the government. They do have some jurisdiction, but largely are a bunch of hired goons nowadays. I can certainly help, and you do have the law on your side, but I think it is best you come to me for safety, and we can formulate a proper plan. Now you say Karen and Steven are being questioned – Don’t worry about them for now. I can pull a few strings and get them out. The most important thing is your safety.
Now first things first. Were you followed, or did you tell anyone else about your plans and where you were going? No? Good. OK. OK, don’t worry about that, it’s just a car.
So here is what I need you to do. Drive out to the border and I will meet you there. I can get you safe passage across to Mexico, and once inside the country we can discuss our options. It’s best you go now rather than me come to you in the interests of time.
Maggie? Are you OK? Still with me? Good girl. Now get going and call me when you get close. I’ll see you in a couple of hours. Hey – you’re family, and we stick together, just like the Don Corleone’s eh? It will all be OK, now get going.”
He hung up the phone and went straight to the back room of his house. He opened the drawer of his desk and got out his badge and his gun.
Forty three
Maggie and Bobby had spent the best part of fifteen minutes searching through the mess of the kitchen floor. It had to be here somewhere. They can’t have taken it. If they had, then all hope was gone.
Bobby leapt to his feet. “Got it!” He said, holding a small address book in his hands.
“Thank god. The number will be under Cunningham.”
As Bobby flipped through the address book, Maggie unlocked her phone and dialled the number Bobby was holding up to her.
The phone seemed to ring for ages. Just as she was about to give up, a familiar voice picked up, with a familiar greeting.
“Oh god, Uncle Frank, I need help. Me and Bobby are in so much trouble, we are at the house and some men broke in... Sorry, I’m sorry, yes, OK.” Maggie took a deep breath and composed herself. “Bobby found something. I, I can’t – don’t want to really say too much over the phone, but it is something this group of guys from the government, or some group working for the government want from him. They arrested him but Bobby managed to get away and found me. But they found us, and they...” She trailed off. “This man came to the house... and... he had a gun... and... Blake. He was laying there... but we had to run. He was coming after us...” She broke down in tears again.
“Yes, OK, I’ll try.”
She listened intently for a while, occasionally making noises to confirm she understood. Once she had listened she spoke again. “No, I only just thought about calling you. That man who...” She sniffed away more tears. “That man we ran from chased us, but crashed his car. Oh god, we’re in so much trouble Uncle Frank.”
As her Uncle talked in a calm reassuring voice, she started to feel more relaxed. Safer knowing someone knew what to do. In a way, taking the pressure off her.
“Yes I’ll be OK – been a horrible day so far, and I just need to rest. OK. And thank you for doing this Uncle Frank. Haha – as long as I’m not Fredo. OK we are right now, bye Uncle Frank.”
She ended the call and turned to Bobby. “Right – grab anything you need, and get our passports. We are going to Uncle Frank’s place. He is going to meet us just outside the Mexican border and get us across. Then he will help us sort this out.”
Bobby seemed relived at this news. “Thanks Maggie. And sorry. Sorry for everything.”
Maggie smiled. “Come on. If we leave now, we can be there by dusk.”
*
Back inside his sea view apartment, John Winter disconnected his listening device form his laptop and smiled. Got you now, he thought. Got you now.
Forty four
The road to San Diego from Fresno was at least five hours, with good traffic. The I-5 was a road that Maggie and Bobby knew well through previous trips to see Uncle Frank. But normally these were happier times, in the back of Steve’s car, either playing video games (for Bobby) or reading magazines (for Maggie), or dozing and gazing out of the window (for Karen).
Stevie would try and keep the kids entertained by playing I-spy, or getting them to count how many red cars there were. This was fun when they were under ten or eleven years old, but as teenagers these games suddenly became boring and embarrassing as most parents (adopted or otherwise) become to their own children as the little darlings hit adolescence.
After the hormones hit, Maggie and Bobby were more interested in their mobile phones than what was going on around them. Steve would often marvel that they could be sitting next to one friend, but be talking online to another at the same time. He wouldn’t be surprised if one day he would walk in the house and see either of them texting the person they were sitting next to, rather than actually conversing. He often wondered what would happen to teenagers if Facebook or Twitter suddenly was turned off. The people working in the offices of these social media behemoths one Friday afternoon saying something like “Shall we just turn it all off and go outside instead?” But of course they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. There would probably be a riot. Or maybe not. That would actually involve them going outside and talking to each other.
See that’s the problem, Steve would think to himself on these long family car journeys. That’s the problem with the world today. Nobody just goes outside and talks to each other anymore. We are all so reliant on technology, so bound by the draw of the keyboard and the screen, that we are in danger of losing touch with our social skills. I mean, jeez – look at Bobby – hardly ever leaves his bedroom. Hardly ever is he not playing video games. Kid is getting bullied at school. Tried to talk to him about it, but he just shuts down. He needs to realise that kids prey on the weak, the shy and the un-confident. Why? Because they don’t fight back. Sure, jocks and tough guys get picked on too, but the difference is, the thing that nips it in the bud before it even blossoms is that they fight back, and they fight back twice as hard. Or better still; turn it into banter, or a jocular slanging match. Christ if you ever witnessed a locker room before a game – it can be brutal. Or at least, it would seem so from the outside, but it’s just a way of guys trying to claim their place as the dominant one, just like Lions in the wild, if you back down when all the rest are standing up to be counted, you get left behind.
The road ahead would sometimes be clear, and sometimes be congested. Most of the time it moved along until they got close to the Mexican border controls and then you would have to pick which line of cars you would queue up in. It would always seem to be that they picked the slowest line. “People always trying to smuggle
things over the border.” Karen would say. “You both promise me you will never get involved in drugs, or stealing. ‘cause if you do, they will send you to prison. Now you both promise me.”
“Yes Aunt Karen” they would both say in unison, without even looking up from their phones.
It was the unison chant of “Yes Aunt Karen” that was haunting Maggie now, as she drove a technically stolen car, aiding and abetting a criminal trying to jump the country.
It will all be OK she thought. Just get to Uncle Frank. One step at a time.
The road was long and straight and the sound of the tyres pulsating over the tarmac was trance like, almost hypnotic. She was aware of how tired she was becoming, but also the need to press on, to not stop in case a crazed killer was following them down the freeway. She knew that he had been slowed down with the car crash, but guessed that he would find new transportation without too much trouble, and be on their scent soon enough. The problem was now of course, that she didn’t know what car he was now in, so she kept scanning the traffic in her rear view mirror for signs of him behind the wheel. There was a blue two seater sports car that seemed to change lanes with her for about twenty minutes, but eventually it overtook her, and when it did, she could see that it was a young woman, probably in her twenties, singing along at the top of her voice to the radio. She reached forward and turned on her radio.
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