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

by Dustin Stevens

  Handfuls of questions sprang instantly to mind, starting with how she knew I was at the library and running clear through to how she had managed to access the webcam to look at me.

  One at a time I pushed them back.

  There would potentially be time for such discussions later. Now, there were far more pressing matters to tend to.

  At least I did now know how they managed to vacate the house in Elk Grove as quickly as they did.

  “Skye Grant, I presume?”

  There was no verbal response as she nodded slightly, her hair swinging on either side of her face.

  “Thanks for saving my life the other night.” I paused a moment to see if the compliment would loosen her stance before extending a hand toward the bench in front of her. “Have a seat.”

  I could see uncertainty pass over her before she ultimately decided to accept the offer. With slow, stilted movements she perched herself on the edge of the metal bleacher, no more than a few inches of her backside resting on it.

  Rotating her focus out toward the field, she scanned the empty expanse, the field now painted with soccer lines, most likely to be switched over to football in the fall.

  “Interesting choice of venues,” she said. “You know the area, I take it?”

  Why or how this spot had been chosen was completely inconsequential, but I had to play along at least a little bit. She was talking, and even if it was off-point at the moment, I wanted to keep it going.

  “Never been here before in my life, but it was public, and it let us both see the other one coming from a long way off.”

  The comment pulled her focus back my way, just as I hoped it would. Never once had I been worried about her seeing my approach, but making her think so couldn’t help but aid with thawing her out.

  “Makes sense,” she said. “I saw your file, your background in the service.”

  She left it at that, again letting me know that she had done her homework on me before asking to meet.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I saw yours too. The arrests, the placement on the Cyber Terrorist list.”

  A series of faint lines formed around her eyes at the mention of the list. It was clear the topic struck a bit of a nerve, though there was no further reaction at all.

  “Jacoby?” she asked.

  “Celek,” I said, “as an offshoot of Jacoby.”

  “Right,” she said, her tone giving me the impression she already knew that. “Is that why you were trying to kill me?”

  The question surprised me, a fact I made no effort to hide. No mention had ever been made of killing the girl. The supplies Celek had left for me at Union Station I had assumed were for my own protection, to help with the girl’s extraction, not her execution.

  “The deal was never to kill you,” I replied. As I spoke, I made sure my voice did not go above neutral. We were just two people having a discussion, still feeling each other out. “I was told to pick you up, bring you in.”

  A small snort lifted her head a half inch. “And then what? Everybody was going to sit down and have a friendly chat?”

  In truth, I had never considered what came next. So caught up in ridding myself of Jacoby, of finally clearing the debt I knew would eventually be called, I hadn’t stopped to think of what would happen to Skye.

  I just wanted to find her and be on my way.

  “Hadn’t much thought about it,” I admitted.

  For a moment I could feel her gaze on me before she shifted to look back out at the field. “At least you’re honest.”

  To that I could say nothing, sensing she needed to pause and process.

  Nearly a full minute passed before she looked back my way and said, “Dawson – the team Celek usually hires to do his dirty work – wasn’t nearly so discerning.”

  Again I met her gaze, not responding in any way, waiting for her to continue.

  “After we left the house, we just found someplace out in the middle of nowhere to park for the night. There were three of us – myself and my friends Raz and Jazmine.”

  She glanced over my way, her eyes just barely wet at the corners, and said, “I had left to go find high ground so I could track you. I ended up falling asleep under a tree, and by the time I came back this morning, Dawson and his men had been by.”

  Her face crumpled just slightly with the final words, her head becoming too heavy for her neck as she dropped it to stare straight down at the bleachers. Whether any of that was meant to make me feel guilty I couldn’t be sure, though in a way it was a bit liberating.

  Just as she had saved my life, I had, in effect, saved hers.

  One less debt to be carrying around.

  “Your friends?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  Her only response was a shake of her head, her hair hanging down, covering most of her face. “Our gear, too. Everything but my laptop.”

  Our gear.

  The words resonated deep within, lights beginning to flash as things were lining up.

  “That’s why he sent me to get you in the first place,” I said. “You have information he wants.”

  Again she shook her head before raising her face up to look at me, her cheeks wet.

  “No. I have information he wants to get rid of.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Senator Jacoby, what do you think of the recent federal court decision that states are not required to provide benefits to COFA migrants?”

  The question came in from far afield, something that was not in the morning file, was certainly not on the list of approved topics that had been distributed before the meeting.

  As with most stops on the campaign tour, the visit in Fayetteville was supposed to be little more than a perfunctory meet-and-greet before climbing back in the car and heading on to Little Rock that evening. There, he would sit down with the real power in the state, people that called the shots at companies such as Tyson and Wal-Mart.

  People with deep pockets and a strong interest in returning a fiscally conservative regime to power.

  This visit was slated to be a photo opportunity, gathering images of Jacoby sitting in an intimate town hall style setting, really connecting with the average American.

  All the usual rhetoric that campaigns tried to throw at people, as if voters actually bought a word of it.

  Forcing his face to remain neutral, Jacoby wracked his brain in short order, trying to find something resembling a coherent response. Only once in his life could he ever remember hearing the acronym COFA, what the various letters even stood for eluding him.

  The fact that there had apparently been a court decision, and it was important enough to be spawning questions, was completely lost on him.

  “Well,” he began, pausing to force a small smile he hoped wasn’t out of place.

  “I mean,” the interviewer persisted, “they are lawfully present migrants, and now the court decides that states don’t have to provide the exact benefits that were laid out in a federal compact? As chair of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, how does that make you feel?”

  Just as fast, the smile fled from Jacoby’s face, the persistence of the interviewer helping things to click into place in his mind.

  “Well,” he began again, “I think what you said is exactly correct. We made a promise to those nations to provide defense and to allow them entry into this country to receive health benefits. If the federal government is not going to help the states do that, then it has in fact created an unfunded mandate.”

  “But aren’t you the federal government?” the young woman asked, her voice rising, a flush of color bringing her cheeks to the same color as the hair on her head. “And as a former physician yourself...”

  Feeling a similar reaction begin to paint his own face, Jacoby pressed his fingertips down against the top of his thighs. He held them firmly in place, seeing them flash white from the pressure, before flicking his gaze to Rummell off to the side.

  Catching the signal they had agreed to months before, Rummell s
tepped from the edge of the room. In one hand he held a cell phone, the other raised with his palm out toward the crowd.

  “I am so very sorry to do this,” he said, “but as you all know, Senator Jacoby is still a working congressman, and duty calls.”

  At that the room seemed to rise in unison, voices blending together into one large cacophony. Maintaining his pose, Rummell continued speaking to the group, nobody able to hear him, as Jacoby slid from the stage and out the side of the room.

  In the hallway outside he paused and waited for Rummell to join him, a pair of security guards flanking him in silence.

  “My apologies, sir,” Rummell said, stepping in a few moments later. As he did so, a guard shut the door in his wake, cutting off the continued chatter of the room. “I should have prepped you on the COFA issue.”

  “COFA,” Jacoby said, the single word tasting bitter on his tongue as they descended the hallway. “Damn college towns and their idealism, like we’re supposed to provide everything for everybody.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rummell replied, his stock response every time Jacoby vented to him.

  For a few paces they moved on in silence, renewed venom welling in Jacoby, about to be released, when his phone began to vibrate against his hip. With his jaw open he dug out the device, checking the screen once before closing his mouth, whatever previous thought he had fading to the background.

  Coming to a stop, he glanced through the closest doorway of the church they were standing in, the space appearing to be a Sunday school classroom, rows of miniature desks all sitting undisturbed in the darkened room.

  “Gentlemen, it would appear Mr. Rummell is clairvoyant and that duty really is calling. Will you excuse me a moment?”

  Without waiting for a response, he closed the door behind him, not bothering to flip the lights on as he stepped inside.

  “This better be good.”

  “Nope,” Celek said back to him, his voice carrying a hint of bitterness with it. “Pretty damn bad, in fact.”

  Raising a hand to his brow, Jacoby realized he was still sweating from the previous encounter out in the main hall.

  “What now?”

  “I met with Dawson and his team this morning,” Celek said. “Collected all the hardware they picked up.”

  “Yeah, and?” Jacoby asked.

  There was a moment’s pause, followed by a lengthy sigh. “The kid’s good, Meyers, I’ll give her that.”

  Appreciating neither the message nor the fact that Celek had used his first name, Jacoby felt his ire begin to spike.

  “Meaning what, Bret?”

  “Meaning they had a whole lot more than we realized,” Celek replied. “I’ve had our guys digging through these things for a few hours now, and we’re just starting to scratch the surface. We’re talking high-end encryption here.”

  “The files!” Jacoby snapped, his peaking disdain keeping him from playing the waiting game any longer. “What’s in the damn files?”

  “Burma.”

  With just one word, the entirety of the emotion within Jacoby swung. For the longest time he had been under the delusion that Skye Grant was after one thing in particular, that alone being enough to submarine his budding campaign.

  This, though, was something on an entirely different level. It would take down not only his campaign, but his career, and the careers of many others as well.

  Might very well even influence the process of military spending in the country.

  “Holy shit,” Jacoby whispered, the irony of what he was saying and where he was standing not lost on him.

  “Yeah,” Celek said, his voice taking on the same tone.

  “Okay,” Jacoby said, “stay on it, make sure to clean up everything there is. If this got out...”

  “Wait,” Celek said, his voice taking on a tone that Jacoby had heard before, making him reasonably certain he did not want to know whatever was about to be said next.

  “What?”

  “Dawson sent pictures of the interior of the van so he could collect payment,” Celek said, reciting information that Jacoby already knew, the practice standard in that line of work.

  “Right.”

  “Well, the girl wasn’t Skye Grant.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I didn’t bother calling Rae out to join us. So far Skye’s performance had been convincing, but it could have been just that. A charade to get my guard down, wanting me to tip my hand so she or whoever she was working with could get close enough to do some damage.

  For the time being, I couldn’t forget that those men had showed up at the hotel the night before only after I had been to her house.

  I also had to bear in mind the entire thing could have been a ruse, her calling to “save my life” and earn my trust. Not once had I actually seen the men that were coming, nor had they given chase.

  It seemed unlikely, but I still had to consider the possibility.

  As such, I left Rae to roam, knowing she would have taken over the task of surveying the entire stadium while we sat and talked. Also, with the phone still connected in my back pocket, the top half extended up over the waistband of my jeans, I knew she could hear every word being said.

  Not like she would be contributing a whole lot to the conversation anyway.

  “Okay,” I said, “you have information he wants, stuff that is so bad he is willing to call in favors to track you down to get it.”

  “Yes,” Skye replied, her gaze tracking toward me, “and no. It’s complicated.”

  Based on what little I knew for certain thus far, that seemed a pretty gross understatement. This time I didn’t bother pressing for details, letting the expectant look on my face do the asking for me.

  To my surprise though, her next words didn’t answer the question I was thinking.

  “Let me guess,” she said, “you served with Jacoby, didn’t you? Back before he was Senator, just plain old Doctor?”

  “Actually, we knew him as Captain,” I said, unsure where she was going, but curious enough to keep it going. “Doctor isn’t a rank in the military.”

  “Right,” she replied, the statement and its accompanying smirk stripping away just a bit of the sadness that had seemed to weigh on her since arriving.

  There also seemed to be a smart comment aching to follow up the statement, though she refrained from voicing it, presumably because of my presence.

  A nice gesture, but entirely unnecessary. There was nothing she could come up with about the military that Rae or I hadn’t already said twice before.

  “For a while we rotated through together,” I said. “Docs were in demand, especially in the part of the world where we were. Very rarely does a Delta unit have one assigned full-time in the field.”

  “So they’d come and go,” she said, more of a statement than a question.

  “Right,” I said. “He wasn’t anything special. If not for what happened, I probably wouldn’t remember him at all.”

  I didn’t provide any further detail, though I could feel her searching gaze wanting me to go further.

  When I added nothing more, she said, “Most of your file was redacted, but I’m guessing you mean that.”

  As she spoke, she motioned to the underside of her chin, alluding to the thick knot of scar tissue that traced down my neck and over my jugular.

  “Right.”

  “How did it happen?”

  For a moment I debated whether or not to answer. Rarely, if ever, have I spoken of it, only talking to Rae about it a time or two in the past. Often I have noticed people openly staring, never quite knowing how to inquire, the looks on their faces making me clam up even tighter about the entire thing.

  Before it happened, never had I worn a beard, or had even a slight desire to. Damn things are hot and itchy, very impractical, especially some place like Texas.

  If the extra fur was enough to keep even a few curious looks or questions away though, it was worth it.

  Something about the way Skye asked her que
stion was different. It didn’t seem to be borne of curiosity, the look on her face intimating she already had an answer in mind, was seeking confirmation.

  “Fragged,” I said, the word coming out naturally before my mind caught up, telling me she likely didn’t speak military slang. “Fragment grenade. We were clearing a cluster of huts in a known hot zone and one had been left behind as part of an IED.”

  Just as it had a few nights before when Jacoby called, every part of that day rushed back to me, a wave of sensory response that was all encompassing. Instantly I could feel sweat begin to ooze from my pores, my body thinking it was back in the oppressive heat of that damn jungle.

  “And Jacoby was there,” she said.

  “Saved my life,” I whispered. “Would have bled out if not for him.”

  For a moment neither side said anything, Skye simply staring at me, her eyes blazing in a way that hinted I was about to discover much more to this story than I had ever realized.

  “What if I told you you weren’t the only one?” she asked. “What if you knew that during the period Jacoby was in the army there were a ton of similar situations, almost all involving non-hostile injuries.”

  All saliva evaporated from my mouth as I sat and stared at her, waiting for her to continue. In my neck I could feel a single muscle bulge, the only reactive sign to the news she had clearly waited to heft on me, hoping it to be a bombshell.

  “And that of those injured, you aren’t the first person to have come looking for me?”

  It took a moment for the enormity of what she was saying to set in, for my mind to work past the initial surprise, to brush past the natural reaction of blowing off what she was telling me. For so long I had labored under the delusion that what had happened was the result of some rogue rebels, that Jacoby had saved me, that I really did owe him.

  That was the sole reason I had left the ranch to begin with. There was red in my ledger that I wanted cleared.

  Turning my head to the side so Skye couldn’t see the fire flashing in my eyes, couldn’t see the set of my jaw, I stared down at the bare metal bench beside me. Keeping my mouth clenched tight, I drew in long breaths through my nose, feeling my nostrils bulge with each one.