Thriller Box Set One: The Subway-The Debt-Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  Epilogue

  Chapter 90

  I sensed her long before I saw her, though to be fair, the her I thought I heard coming my way turned out to be the wrong person.

  Standing on the edge of the small clearing not far from Uncle Jep’s cabin, well within the confines of the sprawling stretch of land I now owned, I could hear the sound of brittle leaves and tall grass crunching underfoot. Given that the footfalls were all I heard and not the loud thrashing of someone kicking their way through, I knew instantly that it was a woman.

  Even more so because there wasn’t a man alive that I could think of that might be approaching.

  With my hands thrust down into the front pockets of my jeans, I didn’t bother turning around, simply standing over the simple gravestone that had been placed the day before, a fresh mound of dirt rising before it.

  To the side rested the shovel I had just finished using a few minutes before, telltale smudges of dirt and sweat still outlining my exposed arms and face.

  Keeping a steady pace, the steps continued until they drew even with me, Lou showing up in my periphery, the stray beams of sun that managed to make it through the thick forest canopy above reflecting off her glossy black hair.

  “Nice place,” she opened, raising her attention to the trees, swinging it in a wide arc to take in our surroundings.

  The clearing was one Uncle Jep had made himself well before I was born. Legend told that it in another time it had held the hammock his wife loved to sit and read in, a final labor of love for his departed beloved.

  Knowing Uncle Jep the way I did, I found it hard to believe that he would be that sentimental.

  I also knew he despised hyperbole, would not stand for a story to be out there that wasn’t one hundred percent true.

  “Thanks for coming by,” I said.

  Nodding her head just slightly, she said, “I remember when my dad passed, damn near the entire reservation showed up. Must have been hundreds of people, but it seemed like thousands.”

  Falling short, she again glanced up, her eyes clouding slightly, as if she were in a different place.

  I knew the feeling.

  “Sounds miserable.”

  “It was,” she whispered.

  Looking down to the simple stone before me, to the man that had meant so much to me finally lying beside the woman that had meant so much to him, I could imagine he would have said the same exact thing.

  “How’s the arm?” I asked.

  Nudging her shoulder out slightly, Lou glanced down to it, a simple white bandage covering it, a lone pale outlier against her tan skin.

  “It’s healing. Not working out on the punching bag quite yet, but give me a couple of days.”

  Having seen what she could do with her fists in Baxter’s warehouse, I had no doubt it wouldn’t even take that long.

  Someone didn’t get that kind of skill without some serious dedication to their craft.

  “The leg?” she asked.

  “Healing,” I said, parroting the word she had used a moment before.

  To be honest, it ached like hell, and digging Uncle Jep’s plot was quite possibly the hardest thing I’d ever done, something that would not have been possible without my new friend codeine.

  But it wasn’t like I wasn’t going to give him that one final respect, even if it killed me.

  “How’d it go at the office?” I asked.

  Reaching behind her, Lou hooked her thumbs into the back pockets of her jeans, the posture thrusting her shoulders out, accentuating her collarbones beneath the black tank top she wore.

  Snorting, she raised her eyebrows, glancing my way. “Well, it went.”

  “Meaning?”

  Sighing, she said, “Meaning, Charbonneau rescinded firing me, what with the way everything played out and whatnot, but for the time being I’m on administrative leave.”

  Not even pretending to know what exactly the back end meant, I remained silent, letting her get to it in her own time.

  The first part, I was reasonably certain of already, the whole bringing-down-a-wanted-arms-dealer thing and the heaps of media exposure and federal agency presence that had followed in its wake making it pretty difficult for the department to fire the woman spearheading it.

  Especially since I had all but disappeared afterward, readily handing over every bit of attention that came along, my role in this incident almost mirroring what had happened in my first encounter with the Baxters.

  “Whether that means I’ll actually go back,” Lou said, “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Knowing exactly what she meant this time too, I responded only with a raising of my eyebrows.

  “What’s with the chess piece?” she asked, motioning with her chin toward the queen I had first found in Uncle Jep’s bedroom a few days earlier now resting atop his gravestone.

  “You still pissed at me?” I asked.

  Flicking her attention my way once more, the corner of Lou’s mouth moved upward, the closest thing to a genuine smile I’d seen since we were fifteen years old.

  “Naw,” she said, “that was just the adrenaline talking.”

  In the moment, the few seconds after I had finished the man we now knew to be Radney Creel, the adrenaline had done plenty of talking, accusing me of everything she could think of, lashing out with a venom I didn’t know she possessed.

  “I get it now,” she said, continuing to look my way, “why you did what you did.”

  The odds were, she would probably never know exactly why I did it. Just so long as she knew it wasn’t a lack of respect, or thinking she could handle it, or any of the other assorted cowboy shit she had warned me about before stepping out of the car that night.

  For years, she had been forced to live with what happened to her father, having that hang over her head, coloring everything she did – from the home she lived in to the job she now held.

  If she had ended that man, it would have never subsided for her.

  I had been carrying around a similar feeling for more than six years. I’d be damned if I was going to levy it on anybody else.

  “So what’s your plan from here?” she asked, nudging our conversation back on course, looking toward the fresh grave before us.

  Smirking slightly, just loud enough for her to hear me, I blew out a long sigh.

  “After I finish up here? I go back and shower, then take one extremely long and uncomfortable ride back to Portland with Deputy Marshal Lipski and her team on their private plane.”

  Wincing sharply, Lou’s first response was, “Eek.” Taking a moment, she added, “Yeah, I can see how that would be uncomfortable, literally and figuratively.”

  The leg would be the least of my concerns, though she wasn’t wrong about either.

  “After that?” I said. “Like you, haven’t quite decided yet.”

  “So you’re done with the Program?” she asked.

  Opening my mouth to respond, I paused, contemplating my answer a moment, one that had taken myriad forms over the last few days.

  The reason I had gone into hiding was still out there, but he and his brother were both in federal prison, their empire shattered. Who or what I would need to continue fearing, I wasn’t sure.

  Knew only that it couldn’t be as bad as continuing to live in Portland, going through the motions of a life I had no interest in.

  Forcing a bit of a smile, I said, “I think more the Program is done with me.”

  Coughing out a laugh, Lou managed, “Yeah, I would say that’s pretty accurate.”

  Having witnessed my interaction with Lipski and her team after their arrival at the warehouse, I’d say we both knew it was a wonder they hadn’t shot me down on the spot.

  “Then, probably take off,” I said. “I mean, I now own this land were standing on.”

  A bit of surprise on her face, Lou looked at me, clearly not expecting the response.

  “Really? Back to Tennessee?”

  To be truthful, I had no idea where I was goi
ng to end up next.

  “I don’t know, maybe. It is home, and I have been gone on awful long time.”

  Keeping the same look of surprise on her face, Lou stared at me a moment longer before letting it go with nothing more than a nod of her head.

  “Well, if you head back this way, you know where to find me.”

  Giving one last look down to the gravesite, she shifted her body sideways, a move indicating she was about to retreat, had come to pay her respects, say goodbye, and now that she had done that, it was time to be moving on.

  “Just, before you do, there is something you should probably know.”

  Bracing against my sore leg, I shifted slightly, facing her square as she drifted off.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nobody’s called me Lou since I graduated high school.”

  Feeling my eyebrows rise, I asked, “Really? Why?”

  “Because I hate that damn name.”

  Offering me a full smile, she glanced down to her feet, dark hair swinging in a curtain, framing her face, before she looked up to me. Raising her chin in farewell, she drifted off, blending between the trees, headed back the way she’d come.

  For my part, I matched the smile, wearing it until long after she’d disappeared from view.

  Chapter 91

  The engine on the plane was already running as the Uber driver dropped me off on the tarmac in a remote corner of the airfield at McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville. Parked outside a repurposed Quonset hut on a thin strip of concrete reserved for private planes like the one before me, the steps were lowered from the craft, the bottom couple of stairs blocked from view by the steady rise of heat waves emanating upward.

  Nodding my thanks to the old man with a bushy white beard, I stepped free from the back of his tiny hybrid vehicle to see Deputy Agent Abby Lipski standing at the top of the staircase, her hands on her hips, a frown already tugging at the corners of her lips.

  Hefting my bags onto a shoulder, I made my way across the narrow expanse of concrete between us, ignoring the blast of heat crawling over my body, the bright late afternoon sun reflecting off the shiny metal structure to the side.

  “You’re late,” Lipski said by way of a greeting, her tone letting me know she did not appreciate it.

  A tone I didn’t especially care for either, but knew better than to challenge her on at the moment.

  Clamping my jaw shut, I began a slow ascent up the stairs instead, taking them one at a time, my leg extended straight beside me. On a couple I even added a grunt, a wholly unnecessary gesture given the painkillers I’d popped after leaving Uncle Jep’s, but done in an effort to let her know why I was a whopping twelve minutes behind.

  Digging a damn grave on one leg wasn’t all that easy.

  Maintaining her pose at the top of the stairs, Lipski waited until I was within arm’s reach before retreating inside, keeping her hands on her hips, the disapproving look on her face.

  A look that was matched by almost half a dozen people crammed inside the cabin of the plane, all staring my way, none looking to be too impressed or enthused by my arrival.

  For an instant, I considered offering them a smile, or a mumbled apology, or some other form of acknowledgment, before opting against it. Returning their glare, I made it just a few steps down the aisle before depositing myself into a forward-facing seat, turning away, not even giving them the satisfaction of staring daggers at me for the next six hours.

  I might have put them through the mill the last couple of days, disrupted their lives, pulled them from their families, but it wasn’t like I had done it without cause.

  I had things that needed tending to as well, dammit.

  Raising my hips a few inches, I dug the chess piece I had first found in Uncle Jep’s bedroom from my front pocket. Sliding it out, I held it between my fingers, looking at the edges that had been rubbed smooth of stain by years of use.

  Just as it had for decades been a reminder to him of his wife, it would now go with me as a reminder of them both, of the legacy they handed down.

  And the reason I had done what I did, and would not be made to feel bad about it.

  Lowering herself into the seat beside me, Lipski lifted a phone receiver from the wall and said, “Okay, Captain, we’re now finally all here. We can take off whenever you’re ready.”

  Feeling a corner of my mouth turn up at the pointed barb aimed my direction, I settled my body down a little lower, resting my head against the seat behind me.

  “I saw the interview you gave the Atlanta news the other night. Read the one in the Washington Post. And The Oregonian. And who knows how many others.

  “This might have been a pain in your ass, but it also turned into the biggest bust in Marshal history and will strap a rocket to the career of every person present, so let’s not act like I’m the total asshole in here, okay?”

  Whipping her head my direction, I could feel her cold stare on my skin, the look confirmed as I rotated her way to see her eyes hard, glaring back at me.

  “It’s the biggest bust in Marshal history because it’s the only bust in Marshal history,” she said. “There’s a whole other organization tasked with chasing gun runners, you know.”

  “And a great job they’d done getting to Baxter,” I countered.

  Anger clouding her features, her jaw flexed, another retort was ready to be unloaded before she clamped it shut. Looking to the ground, she exhaled slowly before looking up, a faux grin on her face that looked closer to a grimace.

  “But, you are right. This is over, our time together is over, so let’s just get back, process your ass out of my hair, and go our separate ways. Deal?”

  Matching the look – or the closest approximation I could offer to it – I replied, “Sounds peachy.”

  Letting the smile grow a bit larger, Lipski extended a hand my way, resting it atop my thigh. Feeling the warmth of her palm through the thick gauze encasing my leg, I simply stared at her, even as she dug her thumb down against the wound, feeling pinpricks of pain roiling the length of my body.

  “Yes, it sure does.”

  At a glance, not a lot had changed in the previous two weeks. The interior of the room was still the exact same as it had been, all plain gray concrete block, one-way glass, and stainless steel fixtures.

  The smell of cleaning solution was still present, as was the taste of dust in the air, the heavy kind that seemed to find its way to the tongue, resting there, almost forming a thick paste over time.

  And just like before, the same three men sat around the table, Julian Rothman on the end, Vic and Eric Baxter to either side.

  In fact, the only two noticeable differences were the orange togs Vic now wore, the outfit a smaller version of his brother’s, and the general feeling hanging in the air.

  What had prior been one of optimism, a child-like glee bordering on hope, was now replaced by nothing but anger and bitterness.

  Two things that also seemed to land square on the tongue, tasting putrid to all that encountered it.

  “Well now,” Rothman opened, shifting his bulbous frame on his chair, wincing as he attempted to balance his weight atop it, “what a damn mess this is.”

  Understanding it as one of the larger understatements ever uttered – quite a feat considering the room they were seated in – Vic only managed a nod. Keeping his gaze aimed down at the table, he avoided eye contact, not needing to see either man to know how badly he had messed things up.

  Had he to do it over, he would have taken the Winchester and started firing from his office. He would have taken out the female Marshal that showed up to arrest him, same for the bumbling team she had behind her.

  Damned sure would have ended Tim Scarberry and that woman he was with, both people that had intruded into the Baxter business for far too long.

  In the moment, he’d recognized a losing proposition for what it was, had decided to take his chances, believing that if he stayed alive, the organization would as well.

&n
bsp; Now, seated across from Eric, he realized how foolish that was. Not only had he left the operation without anyone in charge, he had destroyed any chance his brother had at parole.

  Leaning forward slightly at the waist, his fingers hung down between his legs, laced together. Squeezing them tight, he kept his face free of response, merely sitting and staring, thinking on how different the previous meeting had been.

  It was the first time since then that he had been in the presence of his brother, the man wearing several days of facial hair, all of it looking to be completely silver. Gone was the jovial nature he’d bore before, replaced by a mask of anger, his eyes pinched so they were almost closed.

  All of the details of the incident had been relayed through Rothman, no doubt with heavy amounts of side commentary thrown in.

  Meaning every bit of anger, doubt, blame, stowed inside the room was aimed his direction.

  His lips parting slightly, Vic raised his gaze to his brother. Glancing over to Rothman, he pulled his focus back a moment later and managed, “Look, Eric-“

  He got not another syllable out, cut off by the raised hand of his brother. Silence fell for an instant, Vic feeling his core drawn tight, waiting for the explosion he was certain was coming.

  But never did.

  In its stead, all his brother managed was, “I don’t care what it takes, I want Scarberry dead.”

  Turn the page to read, The Debt, a standalone novel.

  The Debt

  There are some debts that can’t be paid with money.

  -Steven J. Carroll

  Whatever deity may guide my life,

  Dear Lord don't let me die tonight.

  But if I shall before I wake,

  I accept my fate.

  - Jay-Z

  Prologue

  “Are you in?”

  It’s been 16 years since I heard that voice, every last minute of them wishing I never would again. Every time the phone rang, each time someone would approach out of the blue to ask if I knew the time, whenever someone would sit down in the seat next to me on a bus or plane. Always, without fail, I felt the familiar clench deep within, that stab of uncertainty that maybe they would open their mouth and this voice would come spilling out.