The Tears of Odessa (An Atlas Hargrove Thriller Book 1)

by Ryan Schow

  After a shameless romp in the bathroom, probably his last ever, he and Cira went back to their seats. An hour later, Atlas’s phone beeped. His heart took off like a whipped horse. He looked up, saw Cira watching him.

  “This is what you worked for,” she said, motioning to the phone. “Why don’t you see what he found?”

  He opened the first text message. It read: THIS IS A SMALL SAMPLING OF WHAT’S TO COME. There wasn’t a second text, though. He waited. Atlas finally glanced up at Cira, confused. But then the second message arrived. He opened the message, waited for it to download, then saw something he feared he’d never see again: a picture of his daughter.

  His heart skipped entire beats, a sob breaking loose. “Oh my God,” he said, his voice weak. He looked up at Cira, his eyes filling with tears. “He…he found her.”

  “Really?” she asked, getting up and coming to him. He handed her the phone. She studied the picture, her features softening. “My God, she’s beautiful.”

  He took the phone back, stared at her for the longest time. She was older, and she’d grown from a little girl into a young woman. Her blond hair was curly, streaked with pink highlights. Her clothes had that thrift store look, and she was with an older couple who looked like aging hippies.

  A third message came in, this time the text was abbreviated. It said: FOUND THIS PIC ON A LOCAL SECURITY CAM. IT’S FOUR DAYS OLD. TRAIL WENT COLD, BUT I’LL STAY ON IT.

  “This must be the detective’s message to Leopold,” he said to himself.

  He sat back for a long time, then he went back to the couch and laid down. Cira joined him a moment later, sitting on the floor next to him, holding his hand.

  “She’s alive,” he marveled aloud. “I can’t believe it, she’s alive.”

  “That’s the best news ever.”

  After a while, he sat up and dialed Leopold. The man answered on the second ring.

  “Atlas,” he said.

  “I got the picture you sent.”

  “You don’t know how relieved I was to send it,” he replied.

  “I want to thank you for keeping your word.”

  “I will always keep my word.”

  “You know this tracks all the way up to the secretary of state,” Atlas said.

  “Alabama’s case?”

  “Kaylee’s case. We can tie this thing off there.”

  Leopold seemed to consider this, but then he said, “It’s tied off as far as our client is concerned.”

  “It’s not tied off as far as I’m concerned.”

  “This mission is over, you succeeded,” Leopold said, taking a sterner tone. “Be happy with that for now.”

  He was about to say something when he heard a click. “Leo?” he asked. He was speaking to an empty phone line. “Leopold!”

  “If he’s gone, he’s gone,” Cira said softly.

  “What does this mean?” he asked, frantic. “Is this all I get? Just a picture?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, uncomfortable with his outburst, but not sure what to do about it. A few minutes later, Cira’s phone beeped.

  She opened the text. “Leo got cut off in a tunnel. He wants me to tell you he expected you to take longer with this op. He didn’t think you’d be so thorough.”

  “He could’ve called back and told me that himself.”

  “He said he won’t have a full report for you until the end of the month,” Cira said. “That’s how long he’s keeping the detective on your case. He says you earned it.”

  “Whether I earned it or not, that was our agreement,” he said. Then: “She talks, you know. Kiera.”

  “Not that I know of, unless you…”

  “She talked to me.”

  “Really?”

  “It was only a couple of words, but it was a nice surprise.”

  “That is a surprise,” she echoed.

  He forced a smile, but it was too heavy to hold. “When I go back into solitary,” he asked, “when will you come for me next?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “When, and if, Leopold needs you again.”

  “What about if he doesn’t need me?”

  “Then I probably won’t come to see you.”

  “Ouch,” he said.

  “If I promise you something like that, it will fill you with hope, and hope has a propensity to slow time. It’s best to assume you’ll never see me again.”

  “That’s depressing,” he mumbled.

  “For both of us,” she said, looking at him. “Before you went and messed your face up, and those knuckles of yours, I was starting to develop a convict fetish.”

  He broke into genuine laughter.

  “You know, for being a psycho ex-cop, you actually seem like a good guy.”

  “I’m not a good guy.”

  “Yet you did good things.”

  “So you say,” he grinned. “What about the former secretary of state? Russell Lumley?”

  “What about him?”

  “Did you know Leo was going to put the kibosh on him?”

  “Lumley is a vile man, the kind of creature no one in their right mind would want to get involved with, let alone cross.”

  “Is that why Leo’s so anxious to tie this off already?”

  “Who says he’s tying it off?”

  “He isn’t?”

  “The biggest fish to fry often have their hands in many pots. We need to see in those pots, find out what’s what.”

  “That’s the worst mixed metaphor I’ve ever heard,” he said with a laugh.

  She smiled. “Metaphors aren’t my strong suit.”

  “So what’s the deal, then?” he asked. “For real this time. No BS.”

  She seemed to think about this for a long time, then she said, “Russell Lumley and Leopold are loosely related.”

  He inhaled sharply, not expecting this. He was, in fact, so rocked by the revelation, his lips parted and for a moment, his jaw just hung there, slack.

  “So if it turns out Lumley is involved, is Leo going to call me in, or squeeze him for info?” Atlas asked.

  “Maybe both, but who knows for sure?”

  “That’s a cop-out,” he said.

  “That’s just the way things work. If you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re actually good people doing what honest, law-abiding people can’t do but wish they could.”

  “That’s not lost on me.”

  “If Leopold wants to pull this thread,” she said, waving her hand in an animated gesture, “I say we let him see what he sees.”

  “Meaning?”

  “What we did was solve a problem—two actually—but this op also answered a question.”

  “What was the question?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “All I know is he asks one question but gets three answers. Does that make sense?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Then for you, that’s where this story ends.”

  And with that, he acquiesced, unwilling to carry that burden back to prison.

  When they landed near San Francisco International, Atlas was rushed to a limousine, then taken back to NorCal State Prison. Inside the limo, he leaned in and kissed Cira on the mouth, long and lingering. “That should hold me over until I see you next.”

  “I warned you about the dangers of hope.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t tell me what to do,” he said with a wink. That said, he got out of the car and put his hands out for the warden and his number one to secure him. He glanced back at her one last time before one of the warden’s yard dogs slid a black bag over his face.

  “We’re moving now,” the brute said.

  Inside, the yard dog handed Atlas off to the C/O who promptly said, “I hope you enjoyed your time off.” Atlas kept his mouth shut. When they got to solitary confinement, the bag was taken off his head and the same C/O said, “Get inside, take off your clothes, hand them to me.”

  “Can I keep my sock?”

  “Of course.”

  With tha
t, he stripped down, then handed the man his folded clothes, minus one sock.

  “You look like Mr. Potato Head,” the guard joked.

  Atlas had no comeback, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a response. “I sort of missed you, too.”

  The man laughed. “Looks like you didn’t miss the beatings.”

  Atlas’s body was full of bruising, and his side ached where the bullet had cut the flesh. It was bound to get infected, but he could deal with that in the morning.

  “What you see is par for the course, sausage eater,” he said, lying down on the hard, cold concrete. The C/O laughed, then walked away, leaving him in complete darkness.

  Even though he was all alone, he didn’t feel lonely. He now had memories of the girls he saved, the scumbags he’d killed, his time with Cira. He also thought a lot about saving Kaylee, and of seeing Kiera move and fight. Most important, however, he had new memories of his daughter for the first time in four years. He couldn’t stop thinking of the alive version of her, the one he hadn’t known existed, the older version he had prayed about for years. In that sense, he was alone, but he now had so very, very much.

  When his month of solitary confinement was up, on the day he was to come back out into general population, Atlas was given a file as well as a lighter. Inside his dark cell, by the light of a small flame, he began reading the file on his daughter, grateful Leopold had come through for him.

  According to the file, Alabama had been spotted in St. Louis with an older hippie couple. She looked neither happy nor upset, but she was apparently walking with the two people of her own volition. The detective never put actual eyes on them; rather, he had used advanced face-scanning tech, and Codrin’s skill set, to track her down. The digital trail had run cold, though, and they hadn’t gotten it back.

  He sat the file down, dropped the lighter.

  This news left him despondent, even a bit angry with the letdown. When his mini-tantrum finally subsided, he found himself thinking about this new world he lived in. Would he get another job with Leopold? Would he see Cira again? Kiera? He didn’t know. One thing was clear, though. If he wanted to find Alabama, he’d have to do another job, maybe a few more jobs. Unfortunately, Cira proved to be right about hope—it lengthened time.

  Where she was wrong, however, was that hope also had the power to restore one’s faith in a more positive outcome. In the end, that was what he held on to when he finally got back to his cell. Before leaving him, the warden said, “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “I’d like to write a letter to my ex-wife, maybe mail her this file for safekeeping.”

  “It has to be supervised,” Warden Dicampli said.

  “I understand.”

  The next day, before showers, Atlas was allowed to write a letter to Jade. When he was done, he slid it in with the rest of the file, then asked the warden to make him a color copy of Alabama’s picture. Dicampli promised to mail the package, and to make the copy of Alabama, as requested.

  He then asked for three more blank sheets of paper, and something he’d been wanting since he’d stood outside Hotel Astoria in Saint Petersburg. The warden said, “That’s an interesting request, but not a surprising one.”

  When he got his sheets of paper, he began to write the words coming to him. They didn’t sound like they were from him, but they were. Maybe they were from the part of him that had realized the error of his ways. Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone else who didn’t deserve it. Either way, he wrote out three sincere apologies to the three families of the men he’d shot in Vacaville. He wasn’t ready to mail them out—maybe he’d never mail them out—but at least he’d written them. That had been a good start. When he was done, he handed the C/O presiding over him the pen and thanked him.

  A moment later, the mobile librarian arrived at his cell door—a lifer who seemed as harmless as a fly, even though he’d shot up his former workplace, killing seventeen of his peers and his boss.

  “You asked for this?” he said to Atlas.

  “Yeah,” he said, taking the book handed to him. “Thank you.”

  When he left and Atlas was once again alone, he lay back on his bed, cracked open the Bible, and began to read. Then, to himself, he said, “Come hell or high water, baby doll, I’m going to find you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  JADE HARGROVE

  Closer to the bay area, in her new home, Jade Hargrove was hand-delivered a package. She thanked the courier, then went to the kitchen table and finished doing the dishes. Every so often she looked at the package, not sure who it was from, not sure who would send her anything. Perhaps it was a mistake. Eventually, she wandered over and looked at the return address. NorCal State Prison. Atlas. She frowned and shook her head. What now?

  The minute Rocco got home, he walked inside, kissed her, told her how beautiful she was, then said he was going to take a shower. When her new boyfriend wasn’t auditioning for parts in TV shows or commercials in San Francisco, he was working at a start-up company that wasn’t really going anywhere. To her, it didn’t matter, though, because Rocco was kind, beautiful, and sensitive to her needs. Something Atlas had failed to accomplish.

  They had a nice dinner together, watched a movie about a guy looking for a girl who could erase his memories if she wanted to (because in the future, apparently, you’d be able to hack someone’s memories), and then they went to bed. The next morning, after he left for a half-day of work, she cleaned, submitted her resume to yet another San Francisco firm, then finally went back to the folder. By then it was lunchtime. Which meant she ate lunch, watched a little TV, then put her plate in the sink and stared at it one last time. Her curiosity had finally gotten the better of her.

  When she opened the folder, the first thing she saw was the letter from Atlas. Under the letter, however, was a picture of a beautiful blond girl.

  Her breath hitched in her throat. She found herself reaching for a seat, and then she started to cry. With wet eyes and trembling hands, she realized she was looking at Alabama, her missing daughter. She’d convinced herself Alabama had been dead this entire time. To be wrong about this one critical detail made an absolute mess of her heart.

  She didn’t read Atlas’s letter just then; rather, she curled up on the couch with the photo, letting the old rush of mania, fear, rage, despondency and hope flood in. A part of her wanted to know where the picture had come from, how Atlas had gotten it, if her daughter was still alive. But she couldn’t move. She was terrified of what she might learn. So she lay there for hours, stranded in the ebb and flow of her emotions, her body racked with pain, her eyes squeezing out an unending stream of tears. Only when she was completely exhausted did she return to the table.

  She saw Atlas’s familiar handwriting and decided to read his letter.

  Dearest Jade,

  I hesitated to send you this photo, for seeing her picture was like having a tornado tear right through me. I still can’t believe it, but her face is right here, in front of me, and now she is in front of yours. Even though everything has changed between us, I want to let you know I will not give up on our daughter. I am, however, giving up on you. You were right. It’s time. Before I let go, though, I owe you an apology. I’m sorry that I dragged you through the nightmare that was me. When I first learned of your boyfriend, Rocco, I felt like I deserved this pain. I can’t help thinking that somehow it’s my fault she’s gone. Regardless of the facts, I will bear that burden. But I also abandoned you and that burden has proven to be just as great. Nevertheless, Alabama is still alive, and I will do whatever I can to get her back to you. I love you, even though you love another, even though our love has died. That’s why I’m letting you go, but it’s also why I’m not going to forgive you. You do not need forgiveness because you did nothing wrong. Not with me, Alabama, or even Rocco. You needed someone to be there for you, love you in your pain, appreciate you, and be compassionate, but that wasn’t me. I’m so sorry, Jade. I’m so sorry for turning you awa
y, for becoming another black hole in your life. Will you ever forgive me? Can you? I hope you do, but if you can’t, that’s okay, too. I don’t need your decision. I just want you to know that I take full responsibility for my shortcomings, and that I’m sorry. —Atlas

  With tears streaming down her face, she returned to Alabama’s photo, saw how beautiful their daughter was. Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Rocco.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, looking at her.

  She nodded, wiping her eyes, and then halfway covered the photo and said, “I was just thinking about Alabama. When did you get home?”

  “Just now. Why don’t you let me hold you while you cry?” he asked. The perfect thing from the perfect gentleman. The complete opposite of Atlas.

  “I’m going to sit out here by myself for a while if that’s okay.”

  To that, he smiled, then nodded and said, “If you change your mind, let me know. I’m just going to take a quick shower.”

  She thanked him, then returned to Alabama’s photo. If I change my mind… With that thought, she put her daughter’s photo to her heart and realized her life had changed yet again. She loved Alabama more than ever, but a big, undeniable part of her still loved Atlas. Much to her dismay, she knew she would always love him.

  THE END

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