by D S Kane
She raised her head and saw the bed across the room where Cassie and Lee slept. She listened to the sound of their rhythmic breathing and found comfort there. She lay, forcing her breathing into the same pattern as theirs.
* * *
As he walked down the hall, Congressman Thomas Dillworthy, Republican from Indiana, felt the vibration of his cell phone. He pressed the Talk button and listened. “Yes, Ms. O’Toole, I understand completely, but what you think, it’s just plain wrong. I refuse to believe it unless you can supply hard evidence.” He entered his office suite on the second floor of the Senate Building and closed the door behind him.
The caller said something and Dillworthy’s expression changed. “You’re sure of this?” He listened carefully. “You want me to give you an exclusive comment? And you want to meet with me before we begin the hearings? Well, in return, I want to meet your source.” He walked to the window and looked out at the Capitol Building. Intense sunshine made him blink and he turned away.
He listened to her response. “How can I tell if it’s the truth if your source won’t meet with me?” He paused. “Then ask.” He listened again for a moment more. Then he hung up the phone, looking satisfied.
Democrats didn’t call him “Doubting Thomas” for nothing. The evidence would have to be shatterproof before he would even think of pulling the trigger.
The Congressman told his staff to leave for their lunch break. Once he was alone, he called the woman back and told her to send the intel via email within forty-five minutes.
It didn’t take more than four minutes before his cell phone buzzed.
Dillworthy read a few pages
His jaw fell open. He mumbled to himself. “Damn. That reporter was right.” He thought, how could POTUS be so stupid? If this is true, the Chicago explosions were funded from the West Wing of the White House. Right under the President’s nose. The Congressman shivered. Did the President know? Did he help plan it? He shook his head, reviewing the source of the intel. But it was no use. There was no way around it. The head of his party would be convicted of treason and murder. He forced himself to not think about the horrible deaths of thousands of innocents.
As Dillworthy considered his own options, the office door opened and one of his staff, a shy woman, returned from lunch. He turned away and walked into the private room of his office, closing the door behind him.
He sat down. As the Chair of the Congressional intelligence oversight committee, it was his duty to decide what matters were important enough to deal with in the light of day.
The question is, will I be a traitor to my party or a traitor to my country?
CHAPTER 4
September 15, 5:28 p.m.
Dr. Alvin Kantro’s office,
12720 Hawthorne Avenue,
Columbus, Ohio
In one of the examining rooms, Harry Aimes felt like a distant mirror of the late afternoon: gray and cold. He stood next to the examining table, certain the news his doctor had was bad. From the window he could see across the street to the students playing on the lawn outside the Champion Middle School. It was after school and he saw they were unsupervised. Cuts in the education budget. Angry teachers left school after their last class.
He sighed. Those youngsters had their entire lives in front of them. He suspected his was nearly at its end. He thought back to when he was as young as them, and grinned with the memory.
But then he scowled, the bitter taste of Medicare cuts the outgoing President had endorsed and turned into law having made his life a nightmare.
Dr. Alvin Kantro knocked on the door and reentered the examining room. “Mr. Aimes?”
Aimes nodded. “What can you tell me, doc?”
“How long have you felt the symptoms you reported to my nurse?”
“I told her. Four months.”
“And you didn’t think it was serious enough to come in and see me before?”
“The company I worked for before I retired, uh, doc they stopped paying medical. Cut my pension by over half. Didn’t have the money.”
The doctor shook his head. “It’s something I’ve heard a lot lately.” He paused and reset his stance. “Well, Mr. Aimes, it isn’t good news. Sorry. The tests show that you have stage four cancer of the esophagus. It’s untreatable, terminal. I wish you had come to me earlier. Even two months ago you might have had a chance.” Kantro pointed to the CAT scan. “As you can see, it’s metastasized. I think you might get two or three months, but this is a very aggressive cancer. I can’t promise you more than that.”
“Shit. I knew something was wrong. Damn. I’ve got to keep Nancy from finding this out.”
The doctor nodded and Harry pulled out a stack of cash. “I told your receptionist I can’t afford to pay your whole bill. This is all the money I have. She said I should talk to you.” The doctor nodded, smiled, took the cash and left the room. Aimes was alone. He paced the room before dressing.
On his way home, he passed the playground, stopping to watch the children playing games in the yard, again, then looked away. He and Nancy had never had any children.
Walking the three miles to his home, he remembered his first job, a bouncer at a nightclub, pounding drunks flat. Maybe he’d have been better off if he’d stuck to that.
As he turned onto his own block, he thought that his life had no meaning, so a meaningless death wasn’t so bad. He began to cry, wondering what would happen to Nancy. She’d never worked a day in her life. He worried she’d become homeless. Close to home, he could see their modest cottage, in need of painting. The lawn was brown and ragged. He couldn’t be bothered with working around the house anymore.
When he unlocked the front door and entered, Nancy was there, a bubbly smile on her lips. She closed the distance, her ample body pacing slow. She asked, “Where were you, Harry? It’s been hours.” He stared at her, frozen by a truth he dared not speak. She waited, then shrugged and walked toward the kitchen.
He watched her as she retreated into the kitchen. “I needed to walk about a bit. Exercise.” But he avoided talking to her after that, fearing that she might conclude something was wrong. Instead, he removed the manila folder of bills from the living room’s desk, sat at the dining room table, and reviewed their remaining cash. The worst outcome seemed more likely to him now and he cursed, full of anger. He cursed the union. But he knew it wouldn’t help him. He damned National Motors. The auto manufacturer had made his life a living hell and soon even that would end.
Nancy popped her head through the doorway, wearing an apron. “Dinner’s ready. Your favorite, spaghetti and meatballs.” He entered the kitchen.
She smiled, settling into a kitchen chair. “I remember, just a few years ago, when you’d come home after a hard day at the factory and see me at the stove, cooking. And every year a new car. You were so proud of your work on the assembly line.” She spooned sauce onto pasta and placed a bowl before him.
He sniffed but his stomach revolted. “Nance, don’t. What they did, it still leaves a bad taste. They forced my retirement. Gave us crumbs. A miniscule pension and lousy benefits program. I could have stayed, and waited to get laid off. Bad choice either way. Then the bastards reduced my pension to half. I can never forgive them. Now the scum have cut the medical benefits altogether. Like I should forget seeing a doctor.” He glared at her.
She shushed him. And he felt like a child being scolded.
He pushed the plate away. Maybe the dessert wouldn’t upset his stomach as much. As he ate a bite of cherry pie, he remembered the old days, when he could brawl in bars unconcerned it might cost him a weekend in jail. He’d even served a term in prison for wrongful death thirty-eight years ago. The labor union never found out about it or he’d have lost his job long before his forced retirement. It might have been better for him. After all, who knows what he might have done instead of sweating his life away at the factory.
Harry had also been a bail claims bounty hunter before his days at the factory. He thought about the money he’d m
ade finding escaped felons and returning them to justice. Too old for that now.
She talked as she washed the dishes, and he simply nodded saying, “yes dear,” when he thought she wanted a response. Where would she find the money she needed to survive after he was gone? What work could she do? He needed answers, but instead, after dinner he scraped together the few dollars Nancy had hid away and went out to the bar located at the corner of their block.
Harry’s intention: get drunk. Very seriously drunk.
Over his fifth beer, he saw one of the other corporate casualties. Aimes didn’t consider James Madlin a friend. But, when drunk, many people appeared to be his friends. “Hey, Madlin. How you doin’?”
Madlin looked to be in his early sixties and out of shape. He walked over and sat down at the next bar stool. He ordered a beer. “Not well. No money, and Ruth is sick. Can’t afford her medicine. What a crock the union sold us, negotiating our pensions down to shit.”
“Yeah. But what can we do?”
“Aimes, I found a way to fix it so Ruth gets some money, even if it kills me.”
“Huh?”
“Yup. I found this website that takes bets on any subject.”
Harry wondered what good that would do. He opened his mouth to say so, when Madlin leaned close to Harry’s ear and whispered. “I’m gonna kill John Cragmore. I don’t care if he is the friggin’ CEO of National Motors. What he did to us, shit, it’s all his fault. If he and his stockholders weren’t so fuckin’ greedy, we could all get by.”
Madlin took a swallow of the beer that the bartender brought him. He stayed close to Harry and kept his voice down. “Recently, folks have been betting that union leaders and manufacturing company CEO’s can’t be assassinated. So if you can bet they can, and then if they die, you win. And if you’re the one who kills ’em, there’s usually a bonus bounty from the bet’s initiator attached to proof of death. Bets with bounties are windfalls if you have proof that you’re the one that pulled the trigger. So, you use your cell to video the murder. It’s difficult and dangerous. But, all you need is a gun and a cell phone. There’s no bounty attached to the Cragmore bet, and that’s too bad. As far as killing that bastard is is concerned, I’ll just collect along with everyone else.”
The fog around Aimes’s head started to clear. “Huh? You’ve gonna do what?” Then he thought about what Madlin had just said. Even through his alcoholic haze, it made sense. “What’s the website’s name?”
“There’s a few. One’s GrayNet.com. Another’s Intrade. com. They call the folks that do these killings ‘zombie patriots.’ No one knows why. I guess it’s because many of the people taking out the country’s trash have terminal cancer. Almost everyone thinks with all his bodyguards Cragmore can’t be killed, so I’m gonna win this bet.”
Aimes eyes squared to Madlin’s. He took a sip from his mug and nodded. “How does it work?”
Madlin grinned. “With the odds on him surviving now at 200,000 to one, if I put up twenty-five bucks I stand to get five million dollars, even if I’m not the one pulls the trigger. The odds are coming back down fast as more people bet that he can be killed, but even if they come way, way down, it’ll keep Ruth in meds for a long time.”
Later that night Aimes sat down at the computer in the den. He could hear Nancy snoring in the bedroom down the hall. Just after 2 a.m., he visited both websites and was astounded at the sheer number of people who were hated enough for people to wish them dead.
He fantasized that he actually killed Cragmore and found that made him feel better. God knows, the asshole deserves it.
He decided to borrow some money from his brother to place the bet, and some more from his sister to buy a gun.
Harry Aimes was an instant convert.
* * *
When Lee awoke the morning after Cassie had reclaimed him, he found Ann in the kitchen looking toward their bed. He didn’t want her to see the mess of his body and dragged the duvet over his injuries. But he was awake now. He rose and grabbed a bathrobe.
Cassie stirred and her eyes opened to slits. The clock showed 5:47 a.m. She said, “Lemme just sleep a bit more,” and rolled over, covering her face with the pillow. Lee slipped the robe on and gently draped the duvet over her. Slowly, he moved off the bed, hissing with pain.
Ann smiled at him. “Can I get you something?”
“Not yet. Got to go brush my teeth,” Lee said. He closed the bathroom door and took off the robe. What a wreck he was. He finished washing and brushing his teeth and tried to smile in the mirror. He’d seen cadavers that looked better. But he remembered what he’d seen in the mirror last night. The open wounds had scabbed closed. Some of the red welts had gone black and blue. He thought of a life with Ann, Gizmo, and Cassie. Then he remembered Gitmo and stifled a scream. Too much, way too soon. I’m absolutely fucked.
He closed the robe, opened the door and tried walking casually into the living area of his studio.
* * *
Cassie sat at the kitchen table with Ann. As Lee hobbled toward them, Cassie handed him a cup of coffee. He both looked and acted more like the man she’d lived with for over six months. He walked more deliberately into the kitchen, was slower to sit, but drank the coffee she’d brewed with the enthusiasm of someone content and happy. Lee remained silent, probably encased within his own thoughts and feelings. When he flinched, trying to get up from the tiny kitchen table, she saw a glint of the anger he must be feeling.
Cassie spent her day following him around, trying to ease his journey back to bed, from bed to bathroom, and back again to the kitchen. She gave him more pain killers, helped him up, helped him sit, helped him lie down, and helped him get out of bed.
Lee didn’t sleep well and when he did drift off, his nightmare screams tortured her. She saw Ann flinch, listening in from the kitchen.
Ann asked, “What did they do to him?”
“They tortured him. Beat him. They—”
“Enough! I don’t want to know.”
His sleeping body kept twisting. Cassie felt helpless. She moved next to the bed and sat there watching him, wondering what he would be like when he’d recovered. If he recovers.
That evening, she ordered Chinese food delivered from a local take-out fast food restaurant, staying close to him, wanting to be there for him. As they ate, Lee reached into his bathrobe pocket and handed Cassie keys to the apartment. Cassie smiled and said, “Thanks, Lee.”
Another hurdle passed. She was sure they were becoming a family. Ann sat with Gizmo on her lap and watched the exchange, her expression flat.
But after dinner, Lee pointed his finger at Cassie. “So, you made all these decisions. Without even consulting me. It’s my life too. Doesn’t my opinion count?”
He paused, but even though her lips trembled, Cassie remained silent, and Lee continued on. “A bigger apartment? And this Swiftshadow Consulting? Why do you even want to work if you have so much money?”
“Why do you?”
“Dunno. Too young to retire.”
“Well I need to unwind the bad things I did working for the agency. The consulting corporation can do what I need done.” She glared back and he winced. “Why don’t you come to work for us?”
“I enjoy working for the agency. It’s the first job I found challenging. So, no.”
Lee’s stare bored into Ann’s eyes.
Cassie’s brows rose.
Very slowly, he continued on, with emphasis on every single word. “More important, though, parenthood is dangerous for spies. Ann will become a natural choke point for anyone looking to leverage us into danger.”
He pointed his finger at the teen. “And even more dangerous to you, Ann, than to us.” Lee took a deep breath, and in a more measured tone he said, “There’s less danger for you in those tunnels.”
Cassie’s jaw fell as the young woman’s face went red. Ann turned away.
Cassie could feel a tsunami of rage welling inside. “So, Lee, you’ve thought about this and th
ese are your conclusions? It’s bullshit. Your argument about raising a family doesn’t hold water. If it did, none of your fellow agents would have families. But many do. I know what your counter argument is: they’re all just analysts, none are operatives like I was.”
She shook her head. “But, the ops people are better hidden, use cover identities, and they’re trained to evade and fight. The analysts—like you—are easier to find, and they—like you—have no covert skills. I have the skills to keep us all safe.”
She paced the room. “So, your argument doesn’t follow.”
She jabbed her finger at him. “Listen, Lee, I’ll hand Swiftshadow over to Shimmel and let him run amok with it before I’ll forgo a family. I’m willing to, if it will satisfy your worried mind. If you still worry about danger, leave the goddamn agency. Where’s the danger then?”
Lee shook his head. “I just think it’s dangerous for people like us to have children.”
Cassie rose from her seat and paced the floor in front of the table, coming to a stop inches from where he sat. Her fists clenched. “That’s bullshit. Quit the fucking agency. We have enough money to disappear and live without working for the rest of several lifetimes.” Tears began to blur her eyes. She could see Ann’s head had fallen into her hands. Cassie found it difficult to speak.
Slowly, Cassie said, “I fought for half a year to regain my chance at a normal life.” She shook her finger at his face. “No one—not even you—is going to take that away.”
There was nothing more to say. And she knew there was nothing he could say that would change her next move. She ran to the bed and pulled a suitcase from under it. “I’m out of here. If you want me back, you’ll have to figure this out. And I want you gone from the agency. Gone, you hear?”
Cassie tossed clothes and other necessities into the suitcase, along with the clothes she’d bought for Ann. “Let’s go, Ann.” But Ann stood frozen where she was.
“If you change your mind, Lee, send an email to Swiftshadow. If you want me back, you’d better get a two-bedroom apartment for us to live in.” She grabbed Ann’s hand and dragged her out, slamming the door behind them before Lee had a chance to think of a reply.