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

by Dustin Stevens

Once more Celek took a moment, working through things, thinking of the various aspects that were at play.

  “No. That’s not what I said at all...”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hanging on to the phone was stupid, the kind of thing an amateur would do. At the time I had kept it because Celek told me to for the next forty-eight hours. My doing it had nothing to do with the fact that he said so and more to the point that multiple times already they had managed to track me down.

  Doing so again would hardly be a stretch for them. Having a phone in my possession might make it a little easier on them, but in the end it wouldn’t change the outcome at all.

  Pushing the truck hard, the red needle on the speedometer climbing fast, I set the cruise control at eighty mph the moment my tires touched back on the freeway. Steering with my left forearm, I held the phone open in one hand and copied down Celek's number with the other, scribbling it across the top of the Oregon arrest report for Skye Grant.

  As soon as I had it down, I snapped the phone in half, the thin metal hinges no match for the amount of concentrated venom stored with me. Rolling down the passenger window, I flung the pieces like miniature Frisbees out into the night, not particularly caring where they landed or who saw me.

  There was not a single doubt in my head that the vehicle I saw pulling into the parking lot in my wake was coming for me. The odds of anybody else showing up at half past 3:00 in the morning to that particular hotel were just too long to even consider any other possibility.

  The fact that they arrived with their lights off – the glare of the front lobby passing over their windshield the only way I even noticed them – just served to drive the point home.

  The entirety of that situation managed to piss me off beyond belief, everything coming together in an unholy union that I should have seen coming, which was the part that really, really had me agitated.

  I was better than this. Years had passed, but I was still Specialist Wynn of the 12th Unit. I had endured Delta training, had pulled tours in Burma, China, and a dozen other places I was supposedly forbidden from ever speaking of.

  Those sorts of skills, of senses, don’t just leave a man. Mine were still there, but I had allowed the edge to dull. I was now like a former athlete that had gained a few pounds, surviving on reputation and guile.

  No more.

  Pushing down both windows, I allowed the night air to wash over me. For the first few miles it managed to do little more than pull the moisture from my brow before eventually working to lower my body temperature.

  By the time I reached Davenport and turned south, setting a course into Nebraska, my skin was cold to the touch. The air helped my breathing level off, my heart rate to recede and my head to clear.

  Too much of the last few days had been predicated on emotion, on reacting to the situation, even hoping it would end quickly and I could soon be on my way.

  Never before had that been a viable battle strategy though, with little reason to think this was any different. It was time to find somewhere to regroup, to figure things out and set a course forward.

  By the time I had things straight in my head, had determined the next couple of steps, 5:00 was just minutes away. Still the better part of an hour from sunrise, I kept the windows down and continued moving south, signs pointing me on toward Omaha.

  Around me the first signs of daily life started to show up, the semi-trucks beginning to thin out, standard sedans showing up with increased frequency. At half past the hour I stopped and filled up the gas tank, grabbing coffee and candy bars for myself.

  Back behind the wheel, I continued to push south while forcing down every bit of the food I’d just picked up, fighting past the extreme indifference my body had for it, knowing I was now on the front end of what would likely be a very long day.

  By the time the standard clock that was inset into my dashboard stretched itself into a vertical line, things had begun to clear. The first rays of sunlight were just appearing along my left flank as I pushed the windows up and fished out my own cell phone from the bottom of the growing collection of papers and wrappers on the front seat.

  Just as I expected, the call was answered after a single ring.

  “YO?”

  It was the first time she had ever answered the phone in such a manner, a direct response to our previous conversation.

  Y-O. You okay?

  “Affirmative. YO?” I replied.

  “Affirmative.”

  At that we both paused a moment, each giving the other a chance to clear the room if needed, to step away so they could speak freely. In doing so, I switched the phone to speaker and dropped it onto my thigh, the sound of it filling the interior of the truck.

  The backdrop sound of the road was unmistakable as it filtered in over the line, combining with my own surroundings.

  “You’re driving,” Rae said after almost a full minute.

  “So are you.”

  “Where are you headed?” she asked.

  “At the moment, Omaha,” I replied. “You?”

  “I guess Omaha,” she said in return. “What’s in Nebraska?”

  Just as I’m sure she could tell from talking to me, there was a strain present in every word she said.

  Most people wouldn’t pick up on it, the hint just understated enough to be ignored, very few having ever heard her speak enough to know the difference.

  To me, it stood out as plain as a neon sign in the middle of the night.

  “What happened?” I asked, attempting to bypass her question.

  “What’s in Nebraska?” she repeated, letting me know that shit would not fly, just as it never did.

  Years before I might have gotten offended, or at least annoyed, by her approach. Now I knew it to be the closest she came to openly displaying affection.

  If she didn’t care she wouldn’t ask at all, let alone twice.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I had to get my ass out of Iowa, and it was the closest opportunity. What happened with you?”

  A moment passed, Rae’s image coming to mind as she sat in silence, processing what I’d just told her.

  “Oklahoma. Had to get mine out of Texas.”

  An hour ago, my internal functions would have sprang back into high gear, prickly bits of heat and animosity running through my core, causing me to get jumpy behind the wheel. Something from my past was now targeting Rae and our home, had caused her to take to the road in the middle of the night.

  Now, I simply nodded, the familiar old feeling beginning to take over.

  “How bad?” I asked.

  “The house is gone,” she replied. “Cameras picked up two men, dressed in black, carrying full auto’s. They made a pass through, didn’t take a thing, torched the joint on the way out.”

  I didn’t bother asking how she knew any of this. Together we had installed the cameras around the place, and I knew she had full access to the app that allowed her to watch over it while we were gone. If I hadn’t been so technology adverse, I could have seen everything just as she had.

  As it were, between the two of us, it was probably better I hadn’t watched.

  She was always better at keeping her cool than I was.

  For a moment I contemplated asking if anything had survived, but thought better of it. Rae never was one to exaggerate, always choosing her words carefully.

  If she said it was gone, it was gone.

  “You?” she asked.

  “Made it out just before they showed,” I said. “Got lucky.”

  A tick, allowing for her to again process, before, “Somehow, I doubt that.”

  “No,” I said, glancing at myself in the rearview and shaking my head just slightly as the high-beams of a big rig moving in the opposite direction passed over me. “I had help. Otherwise, I would have been dead to rights.”

  “Help?”

  Again, I had no way of knowing who my guardian angel had been. I knew her gender, who it most likely was, but nothing for certain.
/>   “Got an anonymous call a few minutes before they showed telling me to move my ass,” I said. “Not sure who it was, though I have my theories.”

  On the opposite end I could hear a blinker kick on, ticking by a half dozen times before falling silent, the sound of the road leveling out again.

  “Your instincts always were pretty good.”

  Again I glanced in the mirror. I knew she was telling me that whatever theory I had was probably correct, though all I could think was that my instincts had almost caused me to be lying on a hotel bed when my maker came calling for me.

  “I think it was the girl,” I said, leaving it at that.

  “Hmm,” Rae said, adding nothing more for a full minute before asking, “So what’s next?”

  The previous plan I’d had in mind was before the call. At that time my only thought was to make sure Rae was safe and to let her know I was on the move.

  Now I knew she too was driving my direction and that our home was gone. Whoever had come looking for me had felt the need to show up there as well, which told me a great deal.

  While Jacoby and Celek were the ones pulling the strings, they had a veritable army at their disposal. It was the only way to explain how they had come for me on a desolate stretch of road in Iowa and showed up at our ranch in Texas within minutes of each other, both only a short amount of time after Celek and I spoke.

  Why they hadn’t just used their own crew to nab Skye Grant I couldn’t be certain, though I had to figure it was because there was a direct line connecting them to whoever it was out there doing their dirty work.

  The fact that they clearly had a large national, if not international, network, and that there were visibility concerns, meant they were using professionals. Most likely people that had come from the same or similar places as Rae and I, cut from the same cloth.

  Definitely not the sort of window dressing some people snatched up, more concerned with looking the part than knowing what they were doing.

  More than that, it also meant whoever Skye Grant was and my having seen her name on the Cyber Terrorist Watch List were both very important for them to keep quiet.

  “How far into Oklahoma are you?” I asked.

  “Just crossed.”

  Running the map in my head, I figured she and I both had similar chunks of ground left to cover before reaching Kansas. Once there we would be equidistant apart, heading directly at each other like some sort of bizarre SAT question.

  Handfuls of questions still existed and it was obvious that whatever was about to happen, I would be infinitely better off with Rae by my side.

  “Meet you in Wichita in six hours?”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  There were certain perks that came with being a Vice Presidential candidate. Among them was the option of requesting most anything one could desire while out on the road, hotels and other organizations falling all over themselves to appease based on the related PR bump they are bound to receive from hosting what could potentially be the second most powerful person in the country.

  One of the things that Meyers Jacoby always requested was an exercise bike, an upright Aerodyne model to be placed in the corner of his room, out of the way enough to be unobtrusive but close enough to ensure he didn’t have to face the public gym and all the associated staring and questioning that came with it.

  A firm believer in the power of routine, he started every single day the same way, rising at 5:30 and pedaling hard for forty-five minutes before showering and sitting down to an egg white frittata with fresh pineapple juice.

  Like the bike, those things were non-negotiable, as was the spinach-mushroom-gruyere combination that was to go into the frittata.

  That very thing was resting at the forefront of Jacoby’s mind as he sat before the bank window in the corner of his room, staring out at Nashville, Tennessee. Perched just twenty yards back from the Cumberland River, he could see the early morning sun beginning to dance off the top of the mud brown water, watching as the morning traffic began to thicken up for the day.

  Already he had been through his notes for the morning, the list a close approximation to what both Charlotte and Atlanta had been. While each city had unique characteristics – racial profiles and gender ratios chief among them – that had to be accounted for, by and large things weren’t that different.

  They were, after all, still in the Deep South, a veritable bastion of Republican support everywhere that wasn’t a college campus.

  That was the main reason he was down there, pandering to the base voters, while the headliner on the ticket was off in the swing states trying to nail down the support that would ultimately get them elected.

  The last ten minutes of the ride, just as it was every morning, was a grueling climb that started on the level and went up at a thirty degree angle. There was a time not so long ago that Jacoby could have done the entire thing in the saddle, keeping his bottom pressed flat and letting his thighs work through the build of lactic acid.

  Now past his 50th birthday, that time was gone. He could hold it for a few minutes before having to raise himself to a standing position, using the advantages of his body weight and gravity to push out the remainder.

  It was in that position, with sweat streaming down his face and his lungs fighting for air, that Jacoby found himself as the cell phone propped on the ledge built into the display console of the bike sprang to life.

  His first reaction at seeing the device light up before him was that the call was coming from his wife. Just as fast that notion faded with the realization that there was no background image attached to the number, nothing but a black screen belying a string of digits.

  The second assumption was that the call was coming from Rummell, his Chief of Staff calling to let him know that shifts had been made to the schedule. It wouldn’t be the first time last second changes had been made since they’d taken to the road, flexibility a requirement for anybody that had ever campaigned before.

  In an instant that idea too faded away, Jacoby realizing that Rummell’s name would have appeared at the top of the screen, the number long since saved in the directory.

  Having checked those two names off the list, Jacoby slowed his pedaling and dropped himself down onto the seat. His legs continued to move for another few seconds out of pure muscle memory before coming to a stop, the digital readout before him beeping twice, letting him know that the machine was coming to a pause.

  There was only one other person that would be calling at such an hour, especially from an unlisted number. Grabbing at the left end of the towel draped around his neck, Jacoby passed it over his face, feeling his mood dampen.

  Just minutes after 6:00 a.m., and already things did not look good for the day.

  “Yeah?” he answered, remaining seated on the bike, hoping it would be quick and he could return to the final leg of his workout.

  “Sir,” Celek said, just a single word again telling Jacoby this would likely not be a conversation that was quick or painless.

  “How bad?” he asked, pushing right past the preamble, wanting to get to the heart of the matter.

  “Wynn is gone,” Celek said, responding in kind.

  Forcing air out through his nostrils, Jacoby felt his eyes slide shut.

  This was supposed to have been a simple operation. Laredo Wynn was one of the best soldiers he’d ever worked with. The decision to use him to go after the girl was deliberate, the favor owed held onto for so many years, waiting for a situation exactly like this one.

  “Define gone,” Jacoby said.

  “In the wind,” Celek replied. “He was able to evade Dawson and his men in Iowa last night, is currently working his way into Kansas.”

  The bike beeped twice more in front of Jacoby, letting him know the allotted time to begin pedaling again had passed. With a single flash of light the screen went dark, taking the results of his workout with it.

  So much for finishing up once they were
done.

  His mood darkening, Jacoby rose from the bike and walked over to the window, feeling the morning sun pass through it, warming his face.

  “So he’s not exactly gone, now is he?”

  “No,” Celek conceded, “but he’s on the move.”

  Piecing together what he was being told, what must have played out the previous evening, Jacoby asked, “How did he slip past Dawson? Fight his way through?”

  “No,” Celek said. “He got out just before they got there, they decided to fall back instead of giving chase.”

  Seeing just the shadow of his reflection in the window, Jacoby nodded. Unlike a lot of the people he was forced to rely on – Celek fast approaching being added to the list – Dawson was someone he could trust implicitly with whatever was thrown his way.

  Sometimes he just wished the man’s skillset was a little more robust so he could expand the number of tasks he sent over.

  “Good call,” Jacoby said. “The last thing anybody needs is a decorated veteran get chased down and executed on a public interstate.”

  “Agreed,” Celek said.

  “I mean, if he was good enough to know they were coming, he’d be good enough to put up a fight before going down.”

  The line had come out more as an afterthought, one of the only things Jacoby would say all day that wasn’t heavily scripted, intending to receive an expected result.

  Even if it did serve to earn a reaction.

  On the other end of the line, a heavy sigh could be heard. “The thing is, sir, we don’t think it was as simple as Wynn just getting lucky.”

  Again feeling a spark of something in his core, Jacoby shifted his focus from the reflection in the window to the world outside. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the timing of his getaway was a little too clean,” Celek said. “It wasn’t sitting right with me or Dawson, so I did some digging.”

  Feeling his grip tighten on the phone, Jacoby waited in silence for him to continue.

  “As it turns out, a call was placed to his room phone just minutes before he took off,” Celek said.