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

by Dustin Stevens

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The first thing we had to do was change cars. Doing so was not optimal, especially on a tight timeframe in a city neither Skye nor I had ever been to, but it had to be done.

  Despite the fact that I do everything in my power to avoid technology at every possible turn, I knew that just about all other people on the planet had a phone or iPad or computer or something with video capability on it. Just because we had not been the ones doing any of the shooting at Northwestern didn’t mean somebody couldn’t have gotten us on camera.

  The mere sight of two people sprinting straight toward gunfire while everybody else was fleeing would be more than enough to raise suspicion.

  How Dawson and his men had managed to get away I didn’t bother spending much time on, knowing only that they had and that Rae was with them. Under the protective arm of Jacoby and whatever Armed Forces Committee business he had concocted, any questions concerning them were probably written off as training exercises or even filming a how-to video, the particulars not becoming real important if the person delivering them was powerful enough.

  Even without having yet gone anywhere near the Vice Presidency, Meyers Jacoby was more than powerful enough.

  Again we opted for a shopping center, the time of day dictating that most of the other places with ample selections – namely high school or college parking lots – would be too thinly populated. As in Springfield, we did have the option of going by the Milwaukee airport, but knowing that they would have cameras everywhere and somebody may have gotten a glimpse of the RAV4’s license plates, we opted for the mall.

  After hanging up with Jacoby, it had taken a while to calm Skye down. Still surging on no small amount of adrenaline from the incident at Northwestern, she had been practically turning cartwheels by the time I got off the phone. In quick order she had objected to just about every part of the conversation, from the choice of location to my promising to deliver her in exchange for Rae.

  More than once she had even threatened to walk away, to hop out the first chance she got once we started rolling and disappear. Time after time she reminded me how many times she had done just that in the past, acting as if the fact that she had spent the last couple of years on the run somehow made us comparably equipped combatants.

  The girl might be good on computers, and she might even be decent at hiding in first world locations, but she had no idea what I’d seen, even less about what we were up against.

  Still, I let her tirade continue until most of her steam was gone before telling her what the plan really was. In short order the remainder of whatever piss and venom she held had drifted away, replaced by a healthy amount of wariness.

  Given that I had at least as much, if not more, roiling through me as well, I assumed it was the best I could do.

  Placing the meeting just two hours away, especially given the drive we would have to make soon, was also not ideal. Knowing that Jacoby’s event was looming, I chose it because it would be difficult for him to get away, even more so for him to pull many security staff.

  That still left the problems of Celek and Dawson - along with others in their employ - but that was better than them coupled with however many rent-a-cops had been hired for the campaign as well.

  The car Skye had chosen this time was a Ford Taurus, the very definition of a bland family sedan, especially in the Midwest. Navy blue in color, the interior was surprisingly clean, even coming with a pine tree air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.

  Why she had chosen it or how she had managed to do so I again didn’t bother to ask, dropping her off and retreating back to the same place in the woods we had made the call from. Fifteen minutes later she had arrived, the two of us shifting our gear and wiping down the interior of the RAV4 in record time.

  The last thing we did before leaving was to again play a game of musical license plates, praying that nobody had managed to put out an alert on my original ones from Texas.

  If they had, we were already dead to rights.

  Given the circumstances, it still seemed better than running with the plates from either of the stolen cars.

  The combination of getting the new ride and heading south took just over an hour and a half, far more than I would have liked, but still less than I expected. There was no way of knowing ahead of time how long the journey would take, but I couldn’t be making plans based on the extreme unknown that was rush hour traffic.

  The point was to keep pressure on Jacoby.

  That was the only way I was going to get Rae back in one piece.

  “How’d you know about this place?” Skye asked, her hands shoved into the front pockets of her sweatshirt.

  With a pair of binoculars pressed to my face, I chose not to answer right away, merely sighting in on the park below. Rotating at the waist, I shifted my gaze in long sweeps as far as I could in either direction.

  “Two...three...four,” I muttered before completing a pass over the grounds and heading back in the opposite direction. “Four that I can easily see. Celek, the guy Rae laid out from Northwestern, and two others that are blatantly obvious.”

  Beside me Skye said nothing, waiting as I made another pass over the park, nobody new jumping out at me.

  Considering how many tourists were on hand, and the dense droves they tended to congregate in, that wasn’t terribly surprising.

  Best guess, there could be as many as ten lurking around the grounds. Any more than that would be sloppy, too difficult to coordinate.

  Feeling the seconds tick down in my head, I lowered the binoculars before me, the plastic implement gripped tight in both hands.

  “I parked here a couple days ago, when I first came to meet Celek,” I said, sensing Skye turn to look at me but not bothering to match her gaze. “Parked on the first floor then, but figured the sixth would give us a pretty decent eye line without being obvious.”

  Behind us, the blaring squeal of tires on a polished parking garage floor could be heard, the sound reverberating off of the concrete around us. Neither attempted to say a word as the front headlights passed over us, another working stiff trying like hell to get home, not even slowing as they descended.

  “You sure about this?” Skye asked.

  Below, daylight continued to wane, red taillights starting to line up on Michigan Avenue. In the distance we could hear the faint wail of a siren, make out a pair of honking horns.

  “Not even a little bit,” I confessed.

  And that was the truth. At the moment, my insides were twisted into a tight knot. Every inclination was for me to focus solely on getting Rae back safely. Doing so, though, would be foolhardy, something she would never forgive me for.

  Right now I also had someone else in my charge, a young woman standing just a couple feet away that was far less capable of taking care of herself than Rae was.

  Not only did I owe it to her to act as a guardian, I also had to keep in mind that as long as she was still breathing, Rae and I were assured of doing so as well.

  “Ask you something?”

  For a moment there was no response, Skye remaining rooted in place, before just her eyes flicked over to me. “Hmm?”

  “If Meyers Jacoby is your father, and your mother was Burmese, how did you end up with the last name Grant?”

  I could tell the question was not something she expected, her lips parting just slightly as she stared at me. One short breath at a time she pulled in oxygen before pressing her mouth into a tight line and glancing down to the ground.

  “I grew up in Burma with my mother until I was twelve, until things got too dangerous for me to remain there.”

  She scraped the toe of her shoe across the concrete before looking up, the uncertainty of before replaced by a hint of a blaze behind her eyes.

  “So my mom paid someone a lot of money she didn’t have to get me on a boat to America,” she said. “Obviously I fought like hell against it, didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave her, but in the end, she wouldn�
��t hear of it.

  “I was going, and that was that.”

  Releasing the grip of my left hand on the binoculars, I let my arms fall by my sides, my full attention aimed at her. I had no idea where this story was headed, but I had a feeling it was directly where I wanted it to, the very reason I had asked the question to begin with.

  “The trip over was miserable,” Skye said. “I mean, the worst thing I have ever been through, bar none. Worse even than opening that van door yesterday.”

  Having intercepted a few such transports in my day, I did not for one second doubt what she was telling me, nodding silently for her to continue.

  “When I got here, I stunk to high heaven. Piss, vomit, feces, you name it. I had two t-shirts, a pair of shorts, and sandals.”

  A bit of moisture formed along the bottoms of her eyes as she looked at me, her voice falling to just a whisper. “And folded up deep in my pocket was the last thing my mother ever gave me, a United States $50 bill.”

  Even without her continuing any further, I knew exactly where the story was headed.

  “With Ulysses S. Grant on it,” I said.

  “Seemed as good a name as any,” she whispered.

  The moved might have been off-sides, perhaps even a bit mean spirited, but it was exactly what I’d needed to do.

  For me, getting Rae back and bringing Jacoby down was personal.

  Now I had reminded my only form of support that the same was true for her.

  “Alright, let’s go.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Skye let me off beside the middle entrance to Millennium Park. Not wanting to box myself in any more than necessary by choosing one of the corner posts, knowing better than to think there was any way I could slip in undetected, I opted to go for the center of the place and walk straight through.

  Use the strength of knowing there was an enormous crowd to shield me to throw a giant middle finger at Jacoby and his team of goons.

  There was zero chance they would be foolish enough to incite open violence in such a venue, especially with the potential future VP sitting in the center of it. More than anything that was the best leverage I had, something I had to take full advantage of before darkness fell and the numbers around us started to thin.

  I didn’t wait for the car to even come to a complete stop as I stepped away from the passenger seat, the Taurus rolling forward, my hand just catching the door and swinging it closed.

  “Eight minutes,” I said, one final reminder to Skye of the plan, the only response being a single pulse on the accelerator as she pulled away, just making it past the light before it changed to red.

  The plan was for her to swing a quick loop around the park, coming up on the front corner we had just passed and idling the remainder of the time. Positioned there, she would be able to hopefully see Rae and I as we crossed the open expanse, pulling up alongside us the moment we exited and whisking us away.

  Any longer than that and we became subject to the city at large, the advantages of the park gone.

  That was a position I could not even feign to consider, the outcomes not boding well for us, especially with Rae hobbled by whatever injury had put her down in the parking lot outside of Northwestern.

  I could feel the skin around my eyes tighten as again I conjured that single mental image, thinking of her on the ground, of Dawson and his men moving in, weapons poised before them. Allowing it to linger, to fester, I ruminated on it as I passed through the concrete columns demarcating the entrance to the park, leaving it there until my face resembled Skye’s a few moments earlier.

  This, all of it, was personal. There was no need to pretend otherwise, to deny the body’s natural reaction to it.

  Just as I knew it would, my system responded in kind. Background noise fell away, my senses becoming heightened. I could see the crowds nearby, watched as children bandied about, but their noise and movement did nothing to distract me.

  Instead I focused on the footpath stretched out before me, on the bench I knew was just eighty yards ahead. Again I recalled the position of Dawson’s men I had witnessed from on high, knowing that I had by now been spotted, that they were working their way in, tightening the loop.

  I also knew by now that they had noticed I was alone, something that would send equal amounts of speculation and anger through the phone tree.

  Again, though, I had the momentary advantage of a large public venue and an opponent that could ill afford to let it become a scene.

  I had to work it to the fullest.

  On either side of me, my fingers began to twitch, a natural response to the heightened state of my nerves, to the pure adrenaline coursing through my system. One at a time they shifted in small, gyrating movements, veins bulging, sweat starting to form.

  Allowing the systemic change to flood through me, to raise me into another place, I walked forward, keeping my gaze aimed straight ahead.

  Thirty seconds after entering the park, I saw what – or rather, who – I was looking for.

  Seated side-by-side were Rae and Jacoby, the former staring straight at me, her gaze blazing, a look that I knew meant she was in pain and supremely pissed, a combination that made her a very lethal adversary. To her left was Jacoby, the man draped in a trench coat and the worst hat I’d ever seen, looking like he was either prepared for a downpour or about to go snooping through somebody’s underwear drawer.

  The only thing at all he shared with Rae was the fact that he was staring right at me, his head rocking slightly to let me see the look of disgust on his face.

  Clearly he had thought I would actually show up and hand Skye straight over to him.

  In my periphery I could see two men move into position, one on either side, both stopping twenty yards away, standing with their hands poised, making sure I knew they were armed and ready to intervene at any moment.

  Knowing that Jacoby would use any opening he could against me, even the slight chance of being able to call in the police and report spotting a man with a gun, I had left everything but the knife behind.

  If this became a shootout, if he had any thoughts of turning this into an American reenactment of Beirut, then we were done, and there was no need to pretend otherwise.

  Keeping my gait even, I covered the last bit of space separating us, also keeping my hands out where they could be seen, pulling up just a few yards short of the bench.

  “Where the hell is the girl?” Jacoby snapped, his voice the same one I had heard on the phone less than a week before, the same exact tenor I had heard in my nightmares for years on end.

  Somehow, just the sound of it caused my body to clench a little tighter.

  “YO?” I asked, ignoring him for the time being, focusing on Rae.

  For a moment there was no response, her eyes boring into mine, an infinite amount of data being shared between us without sharing a single word, before she blinked six times in quick succession.

  “Yeah.”

  Six. There were six men nearby, meaning I had missed two. Considering the crowd, and the vastness of the park, that was about as well as could be hoped for.

  “We had a deal, dammit,” Jacoby said, fighting to keep his voice down, each word dripping with bitterness. “The girl for the girl.”

  Hearing his words, I kept my attention on Rae another moment, if for no other reason than to piss Jacoby off, before turning to look at him for the first time.

  Up close, it was apparent how much of what we saw on TV was the effect of makeup and photo shop. Despite being just north of fifty, a myriad of fine lines were etched around his eyes, the kind of thing normally reserved for those that spent years laboring in the elements.

  I also knew for a fact that Meyers Jacoby was not, nor had he ever been, such a person.

  “Our deal,” I said, “was for Rae and I to walk out of here. We both know there’s no way that happens if you get everything you want now, not with a half dozen of your henchmen surrounding us.”

  There was a slight flinc
h on the last line, an unspoken tell that let me know he didn’t think I was aware of Dawson and his men, or at least not the full extent of them.

  “Yeah, I saw them,” I said, seizing on the chance to grind on the man a little more. “You really think you could drag a Delta operator into your little game and not have to deal with everything that comes with it?”

  It was obvious that he had believed just that, that his years in politics had insulated him so much from the front lines that he had forgotten just what we were capable of.

  A fact I was more than happy to point out for him.

  Looking out to either side, I raised my right hand, spreading my fingers wide. I paused there a moment, letting the goons standing by see that it was empty, before reaching into my back pocket and extracting a single device no larger than a pack of gum.

  “This is what you get instead,” I said, holding it out before me and taking a single step forward.

  Jacoby’s first reaction was to recoil, his eyes growing larger, before realization set in. “What the hell is that? Something incriminating you want me to be seen accepting from you?”

  The thought had never occurred to me, though that being his first response made it apparent the level of paranoia he was dealing with.

  Good. That was the general idea for the meeting.

  “It’s a thumb drive,” I said, “detailing everything Skye Grant has on you, including what she just pulled from that supercomputer over at Northwestern.”

  Another moment passed as Jacoby stared at me, flicking his gaze from me to the drive, incredulity spreading across his features.

  “Take it,” I said, wagging it once in his direction. “Mass graves, villages destroyed, untold death at the hands of a crusading Armed Forces Committee Chair. Trust me, it’s a fascinating read.”

  Continuing to stare as if the drive was a gun capable of firing on him at any moment, pretending he hadn’t heard a word, Jacoby said, “What the hell is this? I brought your woman here. I held up my end.”