“I heard you calling to me,” I said.
“It was a difficult problem,” Rake said. “I knew you were out there, but I only got scattered impressions overlaid with mental energy I couldn’t get through. But I found your signal line.”
“Sarah helped him,” Marcos said. “She took notes, ran the tape recorder, took care of him.”
Rake nodded and smiled at Sarah. “She’s a great monitor. Has the instinct and lots of native ability.”
Sarah blushed and busied her hands in her lap.
“Once I had a fix on you, I was able to rise up and see where you were,” Rake said. “Then I just found a main road and tracked backwards to here.”
“You’ve done this before,” I said.
“As have you,” Rake said.
“You saw everything?” I said.
Rake considered me for a long moment. “I got a lot of impressions.”
“So they know,” I said.
“Nothing to be ashamed of, bro,” Marcos said. “You were just off your meds for too long.”
Rake gave me a knowing look. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Any of it. You’re back on track now.”
“We went out there once Rake got his track on you,” Marcos said. “Rake was in trance the whole time. Calling to you, talking to himself. It was eerie shit, man. Ryan had the idea of smashing the cars to start some confusion. We sent him up the pole to cut the power to the parking area lights, and then we went to work. Then Rake said you were coming out and he guided you right to the car. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Where was Sarah?” I said.
“Here,” she said. “Just in case.”
“Don’t leave her alone again,” I said. “None of you can be alone till we’re to the end of this.”
“That’s the only way we’ll be safe,” Rake said. “When it’s done.”
“How are you holding up?” I said to Marcos.
“Better than you,” Marcos said. “Get some rest. We’ve got the watch. Morning will be here soon. We’ll figure out then what we’re going to do.”
Rake nodded in agreement. Ryan and Sarah watched me.
“I’m going to lay down,” I said. “Call me if you need to.”
I felt them watching me as I went to my bedroom. They knew I was crazy, and they were still with me.
Like family.
I lay down fully clothed and crossed my hands behind my head. I needed to think about what to do. An overwhelming fatigue came over me. Part of it was the adrenaline crash after the action of my escape; part of it accumulated fatigue from the days of confinement, part of it bone deep weariness about the decisions I had to make and the consequences I had to face. Sleep came on me like a hammer to a nail.
…Frank, we’re still here, and we’ll never go away…can you hear us calling you, Frank…look what you left behind, you pathetic coward, you left them all behind, see her face and the tears on it, gleaming in the light, you know what they’re doing to her right now, don’t you? And you could have stopped it, but you didn’t, you only thought of getting away…don’t try to rationalize it as the only thing to do, you could have gone back in for them, you’ve done it before, but you didn’t this time, you can flee anything except your conscience and us, Frank…Miss Emerald isn’t happy that she’s lost her toy, she had big plans for you, and she’s making other plans now, you’re not going to like what she’s going to do to your friends, your family as you call it, no, you’re not going to like that at all, come on down here in the dark with all of us, Frank, you’ll like it down here in the dark…
I woke with a start. “I have the elixir. I know where to go.”
Sarah looked down at me, a puzzled expression on her face. She rested one hand gently on my chest. She held a steaming mug of coffee in the other. “Frank? Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. Is that for me?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling shyly. “Just the way you like it.”
I sat up and she handed me the mug. Outside, the sun was shining.
“What time is it?” I said.
“Almost ten o’clock.”
“Has anything…”
“No,” she said. “Nothing.”
“Everybody still here?”
“Yes.”
I tasted the coffee. Perfect.
“Are you all right?” she said.
“I’m going to be fine, Sarah. You?”
She picked at her nails. “It was hard, when you were gone. We were all so worried…I’ve been scared a lot lately. More than I have ever been in my life. But Marcos and Rake, they’re great. They’re fighters. They got us all together to come get you. I was worried for Ryan…he looks up to you and Marcos and Rake, but he’s not a fighter. But he was willing to get in there and try, so maybe he is a fighter. I’m just so worried…”
“We’re going to get through this,” I said. “Try not to worry too much.”
She knotted her hands. “What did you mean when you said you had the elixir, Frank?”
“I was dreaming. I don’t know what that means. My dreams…my dreams are a real mess right now.”
“Rake told us…that they were…torturing you, that your mind was hurt, and that’s why he couldn’t find you…”
I sipped coffee. “Something like that.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”
“You’re not prying,” I said. “You’ve earned the right to know. I have a mental illness. Doctors call it psychotic disorder not otherwise specified. What that means is if I don’t take my medication, I see and hear things that aren’t there. Not like Rake. He sees things that are there, but far away or in the future or in the past. I’ve been sick for a long time. But as long as I take my medication, I’m okay. When they had me, I didn’t have my medication and when they…pressured me…it accelerated my episode. That’s what it was, an episode.”
Her clear blue eyes were older than her years. She looked down into the depths of me and saw what was there.
I looked away.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
“I could eat.”
“Let me fix you something, then.”
She left the room, and it seemed much emptier than it had before.
ii.
We all sat in the kitchen except for Ryan, who stood beside the big window in the front room and watched the street.
“Nothing?” I said.
“Not a creature was stirring. Nothing front or back or on the street,” Marcos said. He bit into an oversized bear claw pastry.
“What do you think they’re next move is going to be, Rake?” I said.
Rake idly stirred his coffee. His face was drawn, with big bags under his eyes. “I’m too worn out to see. It’s been a long time since I operated like that. I’m too old for this shit.”
“You can still deal,” Marcos said. “You are definitely down when push comes to shove, hermano.”
“What’s your best guess?” I said.
“They’re going to watch to see what you do,” Rake said wearily. “I thought they might make a move last night, but they were probably covering their tracks, getting people out of there, making it all seem straight. They don’t think you’ll go to the police. They’ve got big juice with law enforcement.”
“Do you have a sense for how far up the cops are in this?” I said.
“That was a supervisor’s car out there,” Rake said. “Couldn’t tell what PD, but you said Wollheim has connections with Plymouth PD, maybe even Minneapolis. They might be counting on the cops laughing off your story. Do you have any history of contact with the police because of your illness?”
“No.”
“Any involuntary commitment on record with the Department of Human Services?”
“No.”
“Then they won’t be able to use your disease against you. If you had history, they could dismiss you as a loony off his meds. They’re not going to go away. You kn
ow too much and you’re a huge risk to them. Miss Emerald has her teeth in you, Frank…something about you draws her and she’s not going to let you go.”
“We need to go forward,” I said.
Rake ran his finger around the rim of his coffee cup. “We can’t sit here and wait for the hammer to fall.”
“Damn right,” Marcos said.
I felt the weight of their attention on me. This was everything I was supposed to avoid. But I was glad for it all. I wanted a fight. And I wanted these people with me. I knew what to do.
“They opened with violence,” I said. “So we come back with speed, surprise and violence of action. We know where they are, we know how to get in, we know who’s in there. We go in and get the others out. Simple.”
Marcos was nervous. “We’re talking about killing people, Frank. That’s heavy shit. This isn’t a combat zone.”
Rake nodded in agreement. “This isn’t the time for the club. We need the scalpel. We need to be discreet.”
“Maybe we should talk to Spenser before we go in heavy,” Marcos said.
“Spenser might be clean and your friend, but if something goes down out there after he’s talked to us, he’ll have to do something. The man’s a cop and that’s what he does,” I said.
“He could do something,” Marcos said. “Get the real pros, the SWAT guys, to go out there.”
“Won’t happen,” I said. “He doesn’t have anything to make a move like that against somebody as connected as Wollheim. He might be able to start an investigation, but it’ll be too late for the ones we left behind.”
“Will they kill them?” Sarah said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’ll have to move them if they don’t. Who knows who might be buried out at that farm?”
“They might have moved them already,” Marcos said. “We go in there and come up dry, we’re home invaders. Criminals.”
“Someone’s coming,” Ryan said from the front room. “A car just pulled up.”
I went to the window and looked out. Joe Spenser got out of his unmarked car.
“It’s Spenser,” I said.
“What the fuck are we into now?” Marcos said.
“We don’t say anything about what happened,” I said. “If he asks, we were all here all night. Ryan, take the shotgun. You and Sarah go in the back bedroom and stay there.”
Ryan hurried away. “Okay, Frank.”
Spenser knocked on the front door. Rake and Marcos came into the front room. I opened the door.
“Lovelady,” Spenser said. “I need to talk to you.”
“Sure.”
“You going to let me in or are we going to talk about your business out here?”
“C’mon in,” I said. “Couple of your friends are here.”
Spenser came in.
“Hey, Joe,” Rake said. “How you doing?”
“Rake, Marcos. I didn’t know you knew these guys, Rake,” Spenser said.
“Oh, yeah,” Rake said.
“I need to ask you some questions, Lovelady,” Spenser said.
“Ask away,” I said.
He looked at Rake and Marcos. “You don’t care about having them around?”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Might be.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Here.”
“Anybody see you here?”
“Rake and Marcos both,” I said.
“They were both here?”
“All night.”
“They spent the night?”
“That’s right. We were up late, and everybody crashed here.”
Spenser looked at the other two. “Is that right?”
“Had too much to drink to drive, man,” Marcos said. “Frank put us up.”
“So you all were drinking here, then you crashed? What time?”
“Probably one or two,” I said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“So the three of you just happened to be here all night?”
“That’s right.”
“No. Something’s not right,” Spenser said.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” I said.
“I have eyewitnesses that place you at a farm outside of Hastings last night.”
“I was here.”
“These witnesses say you were vandalizing cars.”
“Who are these people?”
“People who know you, Lovelady. Your pal Miss Emerald.”
“She says she saw me?”
“Says she recognized you on a video monitor before they lost power to it.”
“Wasn’t me. I was here last night. Ask them,” I said, nodding at Rake and Marcos.
Spenser didn’t like what he was hearing. He turned towards the other two. “You guys know what you’re getting into?”
“We were just having drinks and bullshitting, Joe,” Rake said.
“I don’t believe that,” Spenser said. “I think the three of you were rattling cages.”
“Have you looked into Emerald and Wollheim since the last time?” I said.
I got a dose of hostile glare. “Those people are off limits for you, Lovelady.”
“How about for you?”
He sucked his lip as though he tasted something bad. “Out of bounds for me, too. Unless you got something you want to tell me? You want to fill me in?”
“What did you hear about them?” I said.
“I want better answers from you,” Spenser said. “I’ve got witnesses…”
“So do I. If you had something better, you’d have arrested me already. You know they’re no good. You know they’re into something, you said it to me yourself. So what are they into?”
Spenser shook his head in disgust. “What are you into, Lovelady? You playing at being the hero? Who’s going to get hurt this time?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Yeah, you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about. What about you two? Are you going down with this ship?”
Marcos and Rake were silent.
“So that’s the story?” Spenser said. “You were here all night with two witnesses. Very convenient. Lucky for somebody they didn’t have the tape running. All they’ve got is the word of somebody who might have seen you on a monitor. Luck doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“I’m not the one you should be looking at,” I said. “You’ve got those two who are as dirty as it gets…”
“You don’t know that,” Spenser said.
“…and you don’t have the balls to go out and front them. Don’t you wonder what they’re up to? Or maybe you know. What have you found out, Spenser?”
“What do you really do, Lovelady?” he said.
“I am what I am, Lieutenant. I’m a man looking for the missing daughter of a dead friend. Nothing more than that.”
“You’re something else, Lovelady. That’s what bothers me about you. You’re not straight with me, with anybody, maybe not even yourself. You’ve got a clean record, your military stuff is off limits even for cops, and you travel to some funny places for a middling travel writer. You stink of spook, Lovelady. And you’re off the reservation if you think you can play that here. This is my world and you don’t know the rules. Whatever you’re into, you’re out of it now. And you better keep your friends out of it. Marcos already took a beating that was intended for you. Who else is going to get hurt?”
“You should turn that eye on Emerald and Wollheim,” I said.
“I don’t answer to you,” he said. “I’ll find out about those two in my own good time. You’re aggravating things here, making it worse, and muddying the water I need to see through. You’re not helping anybody. You’re just making it worse. Stay out of it!”
“I’m not the cop, Spenser. You are. You got anything else you want to say?”
“Don’t come looking for help, Lovelady. You’re neck deep in hot shit.”
“Thanks fo
r coming by, Spenser.”
He turned to go and gave Rake and Marcos a final look. “The two of you better think about what you’re doing.”
“Don’t be like that, Joe,” Marcos said.
Spenser slammed the door behind him.
Marcos sighed. “So much for getting him on our side.”
“He’s got people to answer to,” Rake said. “He knows they’re dirty…he can’t do anything about it. He’s doing the best he can.”
“We don’t need him,” I said. “He’s a cop and we’re going to be working outside his envelope. He can’t go where we need to.”
“It would be good to have him in our corner,” Rake said. “But that’s not going to happen. He is what he is. We’re too far outside the line for him. Doesn’t make him a bad person. Just a good cop.”
“We don’t need cops,” I said. “We need operators.”
Rake and Marcos nodded.
“What about Ryan and Sarah?” Marcos said.
“I want them far from it,” I said. “It’s down to us three. Rake can take us in. Marcos and me on the guns. We go in and get them out.”
“It’s been a long time since I carried a gun,” Rake said. “But I haven’t forgotten how.”
Marcos was dubious. “Man, this is the civilian world. What we call running ops they call breaking the law. They call shooting people murder and busting down doors breaking and entering.”
“What else can we do?” I said.
He shrugged and raised his hands in surrender.
iii.
The first order of business was to see to our own security. Marcos and I roved the neighborhood, checked the street, the cafes, the shops, the parking lots for anyone or anything out of place.
Not a sign.
That worried me. Where were they? They’d launched a shot with the police report, but that was no serious attempt. They were waiting to see what I was going to do. But how would they know if they weren’t watching? They were waiting for me to come to them. That would fit with Miss Emerald. She knew I wouldn’t just leave the others there. She knew I’d be back. That angered me. And I wondered what else they’d expect me to do.
When we returned to the house, Ryan wasn’t happy. “I should go with you. You know I can drive, I can do that.”
“Your first line of duty is to Sarah,” I said. “You have to watch over her. And you’ll be watching our backs here. Somebody has to be here.”
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