The Shop

by J. Carson Black

  The rain came down harder now, but Jolie barely heard it. She was numb.

  Cyril had said to her, I killed Brienne Cross.

  Any hope she’d had that they’d get off the island alive vanished.

  Cyril had told her, “Look for movement. Look for something different. If anything looks strange, unusual, let me know. Look at shadows, look at the vegetation, look at anything that would make a good hiding place.” Jolie watched the monitors. Concentrated on them, looking from one to another. An hour went by.

  The novelty of watching the cameras began to wear off. The recent hurt, which had been crouched outside her conscious mind while she studied the monitors, came closer. She pushed it away. The sky darkened outside the metal shed. The wind picked up. The air felt like electricity, and sure enough, soon she could hear thunder.

  I killed Brienne Cross.

  Something moved.

  She flicked her eyes to the screen—it was the camera outside the security center shed.

  The scrape of a shoe on concrete.

  It was Cyril. “Turn on the TV.” He nodded toward the corner of the room. The TV set rested in brackets like one you’d find in a motel. Jolie saw the remote on the desk and hit the power button.

  “Cable news,” he said.

  Jolie turned to CNN.

  As she did so, she caught movement on one of the screens. A figure in a suit and tie walked in the direction of the causeway.

  Franklin.

  She turned to tell Cyril, but he was gone.

  Jolie watched as Franklin walked across the lawn, his face resolute. A wind came up and blew his white hair around his face. He carried something in one hand. A piece of paper.

  Jolie could see the sky turning a mixture of gray and an aqueous blue-green. The storm was coming in fast now. Negative ions bounced around, an electric feeling. The smell of rain. And the sound of thunder. And the lightning.

  Franklin appeared on the monitor focused on the gatehouse, set on the small spit of land coming out from the peninsula. The news vans and satellite trucks were parked beyond the empty gatehouse and along the road. Franklin made a beeline for the sea of telephoto lenses, booms, microphones, cameras, and reporters. He passed through the gatehouse, walked around the parked Suburbans blocking the causeway, and stood before the cameras, holding the piece of paper out in front of him. Far out in front of him, as if he’d forgotten his reading glasses.

  “I’m here to give a statement regarding the death of my wife.” Frank’s hair feathered in the wind. “I will not be taking any questions.”

  He cleared his throat and launched into a rambling speech about his wife, the mother of his child, the love of his life. He asked the press to leave the family to share their grief in private.

  The wind grew stronger, almost pushing him off his feet. The air darkened as he opened his mouth to speak again. “As I said, I will not be taking questions. But as the former attorney general of the United States and a proud citizen of this country, I feel I have to follow my conscience. As you know, I lost a good friend in the vice president of the United States, Owen Pintek. Because of our friendship, and against the advice of my attorney, I wish to make an additional statement.”

  Jolie heard the cameras click—dozens of them.

  “As the attorney general of the United States, I sought to preserve the Constitution. I would be derelict in my duties to stay quiet, when I believe…” He stopped, and peered at the paper again. “When I’m convinced, that there must be a full and comprehensive investigation into the vice president’s death.”

  There was a collective gasp from the news crews, just as a blast of wind shoved through the ranks and knocked a microphone from the hands of a female reporter.

  Franklin continued speaking, his eyes never leaving the fluttering paper, his voice quavering. “Due to our long friendship, and the personal debt of gratitude I feel to my dear friend Owen Pintek, it is incumbent on me to state my belief that the possibility exists that his death was…unnatural.”

  The camera shutters started clicking again. He stared hard at the paper in his hands. “After certain legal issues have, er…been explored, I promise you I will call a press conference to fully answer your questions to the best of my ability. That is all I have to say at this time.”

  He turned, nearly bowled over by another gust of wind, and walked back through the gatehouse toward the main building. A chorus of reporters shouted questions.

  Then the skies emptied, and the rain came rolling out in billows. Everyone was soaked. Thunder cracked and boomed, and lightning split the sky. The former attorney general of the United States disappeared into the octagon house, and the reporters ran for cover.

  The rain blew in through the open doorway, and Jolie shivered.

  59

  Jolie’s captor brought in a box of weapons and a duffle crammed with gear. Two-way radios, the latest generation of walkie-talkies—with earpieces. Maglites and a first aid kit, including packets of antibiotics. There were large-caliber handguns, semi-automatics, and a couple of sound suppressors. Edged weapons—Jolie recognized a Ka-Bar knife. There was also a sniper rifle.

  Cyril checked the sight on the Heckler & Koch .45. “Question for you. Why are you here?”

  “Why?”

  “Family, or police business?”

  She told him about her role in the family drama. Her friendship with Kay and her daughter Zoe.

  “Is that it?”

  “I want to know for sure what happened to Nathan Dial.”

  “The kid the vice president killed.”

  “You know about it?”

  “Franklin told me.”

  “Why would he tell you that?”

  “He was under the influence at the time. Ever heard of scopolamine?”

  “What?”

  “It’s not important. So what are you going to do? Arrest your own uncle?”

  “I can’t arrest him now. I need evidence.”

  “The kid was gay, right?”

  “So?”

  “You his mother?”

  “No. But someone should have been.”

  “He was a throwaway.”

  “To them.”

  “You’ll never find him—Dial. He’s long gone.”

  “I know that.” She could have told him that you could convict someone without a body, but didn’t.

  He said, “The vice president’s dead. He’s out of it. Nobody’s going to prosecute him now. You think you can nail your uncle for covering it up?”

  “I have no idea.” She nodded to his arsenal. “You going to use all of those yourself?”

  He looked at her but said nothing.

  “If you let me go, I could protect my family.”

  “You’re more good to me here.”

  She tried again. “Can’t we get them off the island?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t know what you’re up against. A team of operatives is coming—killers.”

  “All the more reason to let us get out now.”

  His lips tightened in a thin line. “When Cardamone and his crew get here, I’ll let all of you go.”

  “If Cardamone comes. There’s no guarantee he’s coming.”

  “He’s coming.”

  “You’re going to leave me chained like this?”

  When he didn’t answer, she said, “I have to be able to protect myself.”

  Shadows from the raindrops on the window crawled down the side of his face like ants. His expression was unreadable. Dark in here, even though it was midday. Half his face was in shadow.

  “You were wrong when you said you didn’t need me,” she said. “I was a sharpshooter champion.”

  He motioned to the gear bag. “If you can get yourself out of here, you’ll have all the firepower you need.”

  And he left her there.

  It seemed as if hours went by, but when Jolie looked at her watch, it had only been forty-five minutes.

&nb
sp; Staring at the image on the monitor so long it was a blur.

  Trying not to think about Brienne Cross and those kids killed in Aspen. Hard to believe what Cyril had told her.

  But she did believe him.

  Her eye caught movement in the bay. She realized now that most of the boats were gone. Now there was just a steady curtain of rain and gray-green mist, the rain so thick it washed away the shadows. But she saw at least one boat out there. She couldn’t tell distance, but it was beyond the waves coming in on the little beach, just a smudge, a shadow. There one moment, and then the waves moved and she wondered if it was her imagination.

  She caught something else, the screen that showed the causeway. A man walking toward the mainland. It could be Cyril, or it could be someone else.

  She looked at the place where the boat was—what she thought was a boat.

  Couldn’t see it now.

  Then the room went dark.

  Staying under cover, Landry made his way toward the gatehouse. The media was gone. In just ten minutes, it had gone from dozens of cars and news vans to a couple of stragglers on Cape San Blas Road.

  He entered the gatehouse and, concealed from view, waited. It wasn’t long before an SUV on the mainland slowed down on Route 30, stopping less than an eighth of a mile away. The headlights shone through needles of rain as it pulled off onto a cleared space and engineered a K-turn. The vehicle moved slowly, as if the driver was worried about getting stuck in the mud. The SUV backed up almost to the water, blocking Landry’s view. Then it pulled back out onto the road, going in the other direction.

  Landry had gamed this scenario himself, with Jackson, Davis, and Green. They’d gone over the schematic showing the landline and utility power running along the causeway in a flexible conduit, connecting to the mainland, how they could cut the power at its source, a junction box just above the water line. The box was concealed by bushes for aesthetic effect.

  It would take a while for the op—possibly a former Navy SEAL like himself—to make it to the cable running along the causeway. Landry stayed in the gatehouse and scanned the water, looking for one of three things. Rising bubbles from SCUBA gear. He saw none; if the swimmer used SCUBA gear, he would have to ditch it before he reached the shallower water near the causeway. Landry looked for a snorkel, or perhaps a floating plastic bottle hiding a snorkel. He saw nothing like that. Then he looked for the man’s forehead and nose to come up very briefly in the wave troughs. There was a large expanse of water along the causeway, a continual pattern of wavelets cresting and disappearing, some dark, some white. All running together. Landry concentrated on the water and waited.

  He almost missed him—a small movement, disappearing almost instantly. His eye followed the trajectory, and after a very long time, he saw the tip of the man’s nose again. At the same moment he heard the whop-whop-whop of helicopter rotors in the distance. He wondered if the local news affiliate had a helicopter, or if the helo belonged to Cardamone.

  No time to wonder—here was his chance. He kept low to the other side of the causeway, walking along riprap, his eye on the water, and hid opposite the junction box behind the rocks at the edge of the causeway. The swimmer would have a cable cutter and a knife—possibly two. But Landry had surprise, and he also had a knife.

  His quarry came out of the water, hugging low to the rocks and slipping into the concealment of the bushes. Before he could hack all the way through the cable, Landry was on him. They toppled into the water and Landry piggy-backed on him, pinning the man’s back with his knee against the rocks beneath the surface. Holding the swimmer’s forehead with one hand and his chin with the other, Landry jerked the man’s head back with as much force as he could muster. But his bad hand slipped, losing purchase, and his quarry pried at his hands with strong fingers. Landry kept the swimmer’s head underwater, pushing him down into the silt and sharp rocks with his knee. This was incredibly hard to do—his legs felt as if heavy weights were tied to them. The swimmer’s legs scissored—aided by flippers—and he twisted like an eel in Landry’s grip—incredible strength driven by panic. One more time Landry took hold and jerked back, and this time he felt the neck go.

  Even though he was sure the swimmer was dead, Landry held him a little longer, to make sure. They had a saying in the SEALs: “Never assume a frogman is dead until you find his body.”

  Finally, he released him and kicked away along the causeway to the gatehouse, where the two black SUVs were parked cross-ways in front.

  Thinking: One down.

  The helo was overhead now, circling. A news copter after all? The Bell JetRanger had a big white “8” on the side with the call letters WFLA NEWS. But the letters didn’t look right—a rush job. The searchlight came on, blinding white and lighting up the ground around the gatehouse. Bursts of shot hit the water and came ever closer, smacking the pavement in a deadly pattern, smashing into the roof of the gatehouse.

  He knew it was diversionary, but even so, they could hit him. He made it to the Suburban closest to the compound and crouched by the right front tire, hoping the engine block would stay between him and the helo until he could get into the vehicle. He’d left the keys in both vehicles for just this purpose. The helo hovered, like an angry dog poking its snout through a cat door. Landry launched himself in through the passenger side into the driver’s seat. He floored the Suburban across the causeway, shot pellets shattering the back window. Jammed the brakes, shot forward again, slewing right and left like a slalom skier. At the boathouse he rolled out, rolled all the way into the brush. Crawled to the shelter of the boathouse and peered out the small back window, checking to see if anyone was around. That was when he saw the Carolina skiff pulled up into the reeds on the shoreline.

  The cameras were out. Everything was out. It was the storm. Jolie hoped it was the storm. She listened, waited for the generator to kick in. Twenty seconds. Everything was dark. It was gloomy outside, the rain coming down hard, but in this shed it was very, very dark. Jolie rummaged around for the walkie-talkie.

  A loud sputtering sound rent the heavily laden air. A cough, and the stench of gasoline. The lights flickered on. Automatically, she looked at the camera screens. Saw movement—two figures near the boathouse.

  Just before the lights went out for a second time.

  Jolie couldn’t find the walkie-talkie. It had to be right near her. Her hand scoured the desktop. She needed to be able to communicate with Cyril. She could see the shapes of things in the gloom. Her fingers landed on the walkie-talkie, but she knocked it to the floor.

  Reached down, feeling around her chair.

  Hands running down the heavy links of the chain to the padlock.

  Her fingers nudging the padlock as she fished around for the walkie-talkie.

  Something sharp protruded from the lock. The key.

  Relief poured over her, warm and welcoming. Followed by gratitude—Stockholm syndrome again. But the exhilaration of this moment was too great. Tears seeped from her eyes. He’d given her an out. He’d given her a chance to get away, or to go and protect her family.

  Protect her family. Whatever their flaws, whatever they had done in the past, they were her responsibility now. They belonged to her, and she would see them through.

  She held the chain, let it down to the floor quietly. She didn’t want to attract anyone to this building. Jolie debated turning on one of the flashlights, but decided against it. She felt around for the gear bag with the arsenal Cyril had brought with him. She took a knife along with its scabbard and hitched it to her belt. She strapped her own Walther PPK to her ankle. She pulled on a dark windbreaker, took another .45 and stuck it in one pocket, and put the walkie-talkie in the other. She emptied the gear bag of everything but the remaining weapons and added three Maglites. Took one of the sound suppressors and screwed it onto a Heckler & Koch .45 semiautomatic. Time to go.

  Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom. There was nobody in the doorway. Jolie wished she had power, wished she could watch th
e cameras, but they were useless to her now.

  She remained crouched—a smaller target—and followed the wall to the doorway. Worried. Wondered if the men coming for them had FLIR scopes. Any minute, she could be dead before she heard the crash of the bullet—

  Couldn’t think like that. And in fact, she encountered no one. The shifting wind blew the rain against her back and then into her face, needles that were warm but somehow chilling, water trickling down her neck, but the windbreaker was good. She kept to the sides of the buildings, concealing herself wherever she could by bushes or trees, duck-walking where there was empty space.

  She reached the octagon house and leaned against the side of the building away from the beach, away from the boat in the inlet. She’d have to work her way around to the basement entrance.

  She heard something coming from the kitchen area directly in front of her—chains jingling, a ticking sound on the brick.

  Small shapes, larger shapes, emerged from the gloom and into the blowing wind, coming through the mist toward her.

  The dogs. They didn’t bark. They wriggled, they panted, they surrounded her.

  They followed her as she made her slow half circuit of the octagon house.

  Worried they would attract attention, she moved faster.

  She reached the steps. Followed by the dogs, she went down into the darkness.

  60

  Maybe she should have used a flashlight. Creeping her way through the gloom, dogs at her heels, Jolie aimed for a slit of light ground-level in the approximate direction of her grandfather’s room. Their generator was still working. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly, and she made out the heavy piece of furniture—a dresser—barricading them in.

  She pushed away the dresser and opened the door.

  Five pairs of eyes stared at her. Like a snapshot. Four of Cyril’s captives sitting on the floor against the wall. Kay with Zoe, Riley next to her by a body’s-width distance and still snuggled up close to her father. All of them stunned, except for Granddad in his hospital bed, sheet pulled up to his chin. His expression was vague—Jolie got the strong impression he’d gone back to wherever he’d come from.