SURVIVORS (crime thriller books)

by T. J. Brearton

  “Like what you just attempted with me.”

  Jennifer ignored the comment. “At first, I believe Rebecca was a huge liability for Heilshorn. He needed some very serious leverage over her. Her own child. Her eyes then opened to the whole operation – she knew what happened if a pro like her took a baby to term. In some cases, that child was then taken from them, used to blackmail them to keep working and quiet.

  “I’ve been researching human trafficking for two years now. When the average person thinks of human trafficking, they imagine a container full of Asians coming in on some boat. That happens. But human trafficking is an umbrella term for the sale and distribution of people for any reason – prostitutes and escorts among them. We have the best agents in the world cracking the online black markets, and field agents going out there and physically dismantling the operations, with the sharpest prosecutors sending everyone to prison, for life.”

  She took a moment to gauge his reaction. This little threat at the end of her speech hadn’t come out as confidently as she’d hoped – it sounded more like she was trying to convince him, or herself, of the efficacy of her department. After all, here she was, in her yoga pants and running shoes, dying in this godforsaken room.

  “Back to Heilshorn,” she said, trying to outrun her own doubts. “When he knows his daughter is taking things into her own hands – not only trying to get out, but to expose the whole operation, talking to her brother, gradually bringing others in – maybe even someone like Seamus Argon – Alexander Heilshorn calls in Reginald Forrester. He’s pure psychopath, a killer for hire. But the whole thing goes to shit when Brendan Healy tracks him down and stops him.”

  “Tell me about Healy.”

  “My guess is that Healy was totally green, and fell into this thing. From what I’ve seen, it nearly killed him. He was removed from the case for a while, but in the end, his superior let him keep going.”

  “Why? Wouldn’t the Sheriff, Taber, want someone more capable on such a high-profile case?”

  She blinked at him. She suddenly felt like he was testing her. Why? What were they worried that she knew? Or maybe they just wanted to know what others knew.

  “Because Taber was under pressure.”

  “What kind of pressure?”

  “He had his own past wrapped up in the situation.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, exactly.” It was the truth. She squinted at Apollo. “What I do know is that Healy opened the whole thing up. And my guess is that Alexander Heilshorn tried to stop him at some point. To warn him to stay away from Reginald Forrester. But Healy is stubborn. He kept going anyway. No matter what anyone said, despite getting shot at, nearly run over, beaten, threatened, he kept going.”

  Apollo dropped his hands to his sides. He seemed to be considering this. His eyebrows lifted. “Why?”

  Jennifer recalled the conversations with Agent Petrino and later with Olivia Jane, who both presented Healy as frequently reckless, unprofessional, barely able to call himself a detective. Even as a man of science, he seemed to fail. He hadn’t finished school. He’d picked a field which had attracted a whole new wave of neuroscience converts, in her opinion – people who thought that everything could be explained by the chemicals in the brain. She’d spent half of her life in libraries, in classrooms, and online, and nothing she’d found indicated a simple way of explaining human behavior. We were the product of an assortment of genetic, epigenetic, cultural, and familial influences. We were hardwired at birth, and yet our genes could switch on and off given environmental cues. Our brains retained plasticity well into old age – there was no end to learning and changing.

  Yet, there was something about him.

  She liked him. She’d never met the man, and now feared maybe she never would, but, she liked Healy.

  She felt a pang of self-pity. She pushed the sadness away by focusing on the present. She answered Apollo’s question.

  “Why? Because unlike whatever twisted ideology drives you, whatever corrupted logic you use to justify torturing and killing people, enslaving women and children, basically perpetuating evil – when it really needs no help, if you don’t mind me saying – Healy keeps fighting despite it all, survives, keeps trying.”

  She looked to see if this had any impact. Apollo’s dark face was inscrutable.

  “The world’s gotten very complex. Sometimes the best weapon is simplicity. A woman is dead, you find her killer. A child is in danger, you rescue it. There’s no complexity there, no muddling or morals or bullshit philosophies about ‘getting yours’ while the whole thing burns. People like him just put their boots on.”

  Apollo smiled again. He seemed to have two expressions – flat and unreadable, or wearing this hyena’s leer.

  He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and started poking at it. He was texting someone.

  And Jennifer felt a fresh current of fear ripple through her. Apollo’s demeanor now suggested that whatever he’d been looking to get out of her, whatever information Staryles or someone else had tasked him to elicit from her – he had. But surely Staryles and his organization – Titan – already knew everything she’d said. The interview was over. She had an idea what would happen next.

  She was ready. Already he was sliding his gun out of his holster, checking for a round in the chamber.

  She would have one chance.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE / Monday 4:08 PM

  Staryles sat in the Cutlass. The afternoon sunlight dappled the parking lot at Westchester Medical Center, glinting off the chrome and glass of the other vehicles. The day was going fast. He was ahead of it, he thought – everything on schedule.

  His phone buzzed. It was a text from Specialist Ewon Parnell a.k.a. Agent Apollo, who he’d tasked to question Aiken. Parnell had sent two words: all clear.

  Staryles put the phone aside and sat back. This was satisfying news. Unless she was lying – and who the hell would lie in her situation – Jennifer Aiken was still missing a critical connection.

  He punched in a reply: Lebenslüge. As he sent the text, his prepaid phone buzzed with an incoming call.

  Parnell must be getting desperate, calling him on the heels of a text like that. Staryles looked at the phone and saw that the incoming number didn’t belong to Parnell, however.

  It was a call originating from Manhattan. Staryles knew the number.

  Staryles picked up the call. “Yes, sir.”

  “Are they there?” The voice was cold.

  “Waiting, sir.”

  There was the briefest of pauses. “When they get there, you know what to do.”

  “Sir?” Staryles felt his calm rippled by the words of the caller. The man on the other end of the line had been granted exceptional powers by the organization. Staryles, who never questioned a direct order, was at an impasse. The caller was telling him to kill Healy and the girl right there, in broad daylight, and that was a risky move. He didn’t even have a sniper rifle with him. His sidearm did not feature a silencer. It would be loud. The only appropriate weapon would be his knife, and it would have to be at very close range.

  “That’s all. Contact me when it’s done.”

  Staryles felt the initial shock dissolve as he adjusted to his new order. His boss wanted zero loose ends. But he was also capricious. And sometimes he made mistakes – that was the whole reason Staryles had this mess to clean up in the first place, wasn’t it?

  “I will, sir. I . . .”

  “What?” he snarled.

  “Nothing, sir. It’ll be a clean sweep.”

  The caller hung up.

  Staryles sat thinking for a moment and thumbed through his recent texts. He looked at one from just an hour ago. Westchester Med. BH / SD.

  He had a lot of eyes and ears on the ground. It was better than in Yemen. He was privy to Healy’s little lunch date at the diner with the girl after their trip to see the dead cop’s sister. His rental vehicle was en route now to Westchester Medical, no doubt to verify her rel
ationship to Taber.

  The following and the waiting was over. Staryles and the organization had learned what they needed to, and now Healy was about to step over the line, the final one he would cross.

  It was one thing having Healy out there, another having the Justice Department pulling together their little task force – they could be obstructed for years. But dammit if DNA evidence didn’t just tip things too far. Proof of Taber’s paternity out in the open would cause too much of a stir. Exposed, Taber would come out of hiding. Then he would have to be dealt with, along with anyone he might speak to. You couldn’t argue with DNA. It would all require more tampering on Staryles’ part, more cleaning up, and it ran too great a risk of setting a chain of events in motion before the organization was ready.

  Staryles wondered if he was ready for it all, and that tiny shred of doubt reverberated through his being.

  He ran a hand through his wavy hair. He reminded himself that he loved his job. Few people could say that. Mostly the world fed the aristocracy. You either did that unwittingly, and too bad for those suckers; or you bent it to your advantage.

  He had first seen behind the veil many years before. When he was fourteen, his father had presented him with a copy of Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. He was an iconoclast. His father, William Staryles, had lived in a fig tree for a year, going native after a decade of service in the U.S. Army, and then done another about-face and gone to work for the pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb. He had raised his three sons in Montana on his own, after his wife, their mother, had died tragically. Jeremy’s brother, Jason, had become what people called an economic hitman, helping to install several dictators over his career, and assisting in the unfortunate deaths of other more socially-minded elected leaders. Jonah was a top executive in the pharmaceutical industry. And Jeremy himself had been a special operative with JSOC for eight years before he was drafted into the organization he now served.

  But Aiken knew none of that. At least, if she did, she hadn’t come out with any of it. Her knowledge probably amounted to about the same as the rest of them – a bit of truth, but a bit more confusion.

  It was all as it should be. He just needed to excise this one small tumor before it became malignant. Healy and the girl and this whole vexing paternity thing.

  He felt better.

  Staryles waited, watching the entrance to the parking lot. He allowed himself to relish the anticipation. He let his mind wander back to the desert, and imagined himself on a strategic ridge. From his position he watched the landscape of the Old City, or Wadi Hadhramaut, along the edge of the Empty Quarter. Here the working town of mud-brick buildings, there a thicket of medieval towers etched with white filigree and crowned with stained glass windows. The bands and crescents of Yemeni architecture, bejeweled radiant in the evening sun, the spangles of sunlight like breath that expanded his heart, that opened something deep within him, ancient as the Sabaean rulers and the palace of Ghumdan, his soul wound with a turban of gold, like the sun; he became timeless, he was all the love and strength of death on the hill watching over, ready to kill.

  Staryles inhaled slowly and deeply. Moments passed. Then at last Healy’s rental car pulled into the lot.

  Staryles felt a rush of excitement. He saw the two shapes in the front of the vehicle. He waited for them to park.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR / Monday 4:15 PM

  Brendan’s hip was throbbing from all the time spent driving. He parked, eager to get out and relieve the pressure.

  He killed the engine and stepped out of the car, wincing with pain. Sloane got out and looked up at the impressive hospital built from red brick and turquoise panels behind a glass facade. Looking at her, he thought of what a pair they made – he with his bad hip and scars; she with her peculiar diction and that particular set to her eyes. A woman who had survived an attempted abortion, together with a man who had lost his wife and child and failed to kill himself.

  He scanned the parking lot. Not far away, just a few rows over, sat a dark blue car that looked like it could be a Cutlass or a Town Car.

  He felt his pulse rate rising. His hand instinctively went to his coat, where his gun was holstered against his ribs.

  * * *

  Staryles got out of his car and walked through the rows of parked vehicles outside of Westchester County Medical. He cut in between two SUVs and breathed deeply through his nostrils. He’d come to view the task at hand as a positive, even if it went against his own better judgment; the job didn’t always afford these opportunities. The thallium was one thing, and he was no dummy – he knew his affinity for the poison had to do with deep-seated issues about his father and mother, and how his mother had met her untimely end. He was some therapist’s wet dream, a shrink like Olivia Jane would be all over his childhood.

  But these moments were what he lived for. To take someone out right here in the open, forget the risk; it was thrilling, when you came right down to it. Argon was one thing, but that had been at night, and was not so hands-on. This was broad daylight, with no wiles or stratagems. He’d come to see it as a rare opportunity.

  The Argon hit hadn’t played out according to plan anyway. Staryles ended up having to get the medical examiner to do a little touch up work on the body, and that cost time, and time was money. The medical examiner then wound up as one more body to deal with. The dead were starting to pile up. In Afghanistan, in Yemen, the dead took care of themselves. There was zero clean-up. You came in in the dark, you left in the dark. On the domestic side, things weren’t so easy. It had gotten messy, and the organization was angry, their constituency ruffled, and Staryles had to go in and fix things, and that stung his pride.

  There were a few people coming and going from the hospital, but they would never suspect anything. He was highly trained, skilled, and efficient.

  His only regret was that he couldn’t take his time with the civilian girl, Sloane Dewan, the way he was with the Justice Department agent. As appealing as a quick strike could be, there was satisfaction in a protracted death, like his father with his mother, the twisted psychopath doubtlessly savoring every moment of it.

  He neared the rental car, a boring Toyota – no style at all – which had been parked near a line of trees at the back end of the lot. He pulled the long blade from the sheath on his belt and pressed the length of it against his thigh as he walked.

  The doors to the car opened just as he reached the back of the vehicle. There was a danger the girl would scream when he pounced on Healy and opened him up, but he was prepared for that contingency. He’d wrap his gloved hand around her mouth and squeeze until she got the message. He’d put the knife to the small of her back. Then he would drag the knife up through her insides, along her spine, canceling the nerves, eviscerating the organs.

  * * *

  “Why come all the way down here?”

  Brendan glanced over at Sloane, still standing next to the car and looking up at the huge hospital. Hearing her voice broke the spell. He turned and looked up.

  “I was born here, you know.”

  Roosevelt Hospital was located on 10th Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan, two blocks to the west of Columbus circle.

  “Oh yeah?”

  He heard a slight edge in her voice. He had purposely not told her where they were going. Now Brendan owed Sloane an explanation.

  * * *

  Staryles waited, crouched at the back of the car, his blood surging through his veins, his eyes wide, every sense alert, every muscle coiled. He heard the two of them walking towards the back of the car. He was facing the driver’s side.

  “I just called 911,” someone said.

  It was a voice he didn’t recognize. Staryles considered the possibilities. A muscle twitched in his cheek. Fight and flight fought for control.

  But he never ran.

  “You better get the fuck out of here,” said the voice.

  Staryles could take it no longer. It wasn’t Brendan Healy – he’d monitored Healy’
s calls himself for the past two days. Who the hell could it be? He should just get away. Whoever it was needed to suffer for this, but if the threat was real and the police were on the way, retaliation would only make things worse. There were plenty of cops who were on board in one way or another, but some weren’t. Like Seamus Argon and Leonard Dutko.

  The suspense was crushing him. Did it matter now if he was seen? Obviously something had gotten screwed. This wasn’t Healy. Ergo Healy knew he was being tracked, and he’d thrown the surveillance.

  No . . .

  In an impetuous move, Staryles got to his feet. He came face-to-face with a tall man in a tracksuit holding a SIG pistol. The gun was pointed directly at Staryles. On the other side of the car was an even bigger man, darker-skinned, with eyes that betrayed the violence of a torrid past.

  “What I say?” said the tall man in the tracksuit. He looked like an emotional type, a live-wire.

  Russell Gide.

  He was the man who had taken Brendan out to some AA meeting the night before. The other man was probably one of the drunks from the meeting. Santos, if Staryles remembered the report.

  “You’re both dead. Your families, your livelihoods, everything you know,” Staryles snarled at them.

  The black man exchanged a glance with Gide. Then he looked back at Staryles. “We lost all that already,” he said.

  * * *

  Since the evening with Russell Gide, Brendan had been careful about everything he said and did. Telling Colinas that he was taking the girl to Westchester Medical Center had been a ruse. And then there had been the device switch – in the end he’d decided that getting a new rental was too risky and obvious – he’d be tracked to the rental shop and his pursuers could easily obtain information and pick up the trail of his new vehicle. Gide and Santos not only had been willing to act as decoy when he called them from the pay phone at the diner, they had practically leapt at the chance. This had bought him some much-needed time.