The Tin Man

by Nina Mason

  He wasn’t about to shoot a cop. And he’d rather not give the cop a reason to shoot him.

  “But—”

  “Just do it,” he barked.

  She leaned in and plucked the Glock off his lap. The next moment, she had the window down and was leaning out. He heard the blast, then skidding tires. He checked the mirror. The cruiser was spinning. He watched as it jumped the shoulder and rolled.

  “Jesus wept,” he bellowed. “Are you mad?”

  “Shut up and drive.”

  What the bloody hell was she thinking? Now every state trooper in Pennsylvania would be looking for them—along with the Arabs in the Ford.

  “I’ve got a plan,” she told him.

  “Aye, well,” he said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “I’m glad to hear it. Because I thought you were just being rash.”

  He eased off the gas to a cruising speed of eighty. He could hear nothing but the drone of the engine. He desperately wanted a cigarette, but didn’t dare. He had to be ready for anything, which meant keeping both hands free.

  “Give me back my gun,” he demanded.

  When she set it on his lap, he caught a whiff of her hair, which had a pleasant honeysuckle smell that made him think of Kelsey. Rage reared up inside him like a wild stallion. He began to hope he would get another shot at the men in the Mustang. He wanted them dead in the worst way, wanted them to pay for what they had done.

  “Where are we going?” he demanded, tired of the games.

  “Intercourse.”

  He choked. Intercourse? Seriously? Was the universe trying to fuck with his head?

  “How much farther?”

  She consulted the map before saying, “About ten more miles.”

  “Keep an eye out,” he told her, “for the cops and that Mustang. And feel free to fill me in on that plan of yours anytime you’re ready.”

  “I think we should lose the car.”

  He nearly choked. “And do what?”

  “Walk, of course.”

  His knuckles whitened on the wheel. Walk? Ten miles? Was she mad? Just as he opened his mouth to say something disparaging, he saw what looked like lights on the horizon. Flashing lights. His heart jolted. Less than a mile ahead, a line of police cruisers was blocking the road.

  “Holy crap,” she cried, echoing his sentiments.

  There was a thicket of trees on the right. Tapping the brake, he flipped off the headlamps and veered toward it, praying they hadn’t been spotted. He drove blindly into the trees, holding fast to the wheel as he bounced hard in his seat. Brittle branches clawed the doors. He brought the car to a stop and shut off the engine.

  “We’re buggered,” he said, turning to her with a woeful expression. “Six ways to Sunday.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  He shook his head, then looked hard at her. “Go back to New York, Thea. Before you get hurt.”

  “Nice try,” she said. “But you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

  “Please,” he said. “There’s too much blood on my hands already.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Surely you don’t blame yourself for what happened to your staff.”

  He hung his head. How could he not? The truth was, guilt was twisting in his gut like a red-hot corkscrew. And he’d feel even worse if something equally bad were to happen to her.

  She pushed open the door and hopped out. As she snatched up her briefcase and purse, she said, “I didn’t get into journalism to play it safe.”

  She set off across an open field. Not knowing what else to do, he climbed out, slammed the door and, holding tight to his Glock, hobbled after her.

  * * * *

  It was well past nine o’clock in the evening and, as ever, Milo Osbourne was still at his desk, perched in front of his computer screen, scanning the day’s news—his way of keeping up with the competition. Not that there was all that much left, thanks to his growing empire.

  Typically, he spent his days flying from city to city in his private jet, patrolling the newsrooms of his vast media empire, mixing it up with all of his editors and producers. Brought up in a journalistic home (his father and grandfather both started out as reporters and editors), he’d been a news junkie for as long as he could remember and still got a charge out of being in the thick of things.

  One more news site and he would be heading home to his Eastside penthouse, where his wife would greet him in the foyer with a glass of Camus Cognac Cuvee 3.128—his nightcap of choice. As much as he hated the French in general, he couldn’t deny that they excelled at making cognac. And Cuvee 3.128 was the crème de la crème. Blended from three different eau de vie, it cost upwards of $2,500 a bottle.

  The night his wife wasn’t there to greet him—for whatever reason—was the night he started shopping for her replacement—a game plan he’d made abundantly clear to her from the outset of their relationship. He had made it equally clear to his first six wives. Was it his fault they all turned out to be hard of hearing? It was a damn good thing he’d made all of them sign pre-nuptial agreements. Well, all of them except the first one. But he’d learned his lesson from that financial flaying, hadn’t he?

  It wasn’t that he didn’t love his current spouse and the son she’d borne him; he did. It was just that he didn’t want to sit around at home with them day in and day out. He took them on safaris and things like that a couple of weeks every year, which he thoroughly enjoyed, but it wasn’t what fulfilled him. Not really. Work was the thing that gave meaning and purpose to his life. And he planned to keep at it as long as he still had all his faculties.

  He took a breath and let it out. It had been a long day of back-to-back meetings and he was exhausted. No one would know it, though, to look at him—sitting up straight at his desk, still donning his coat and tie. He always wore a suit while working, and owned more than a hundred of them—all custom made for him on London’s Saville Row—the “golden mile” of tailoring, where the term “bespoke” originated.

  He liked things just so. And why not? He had the money and not the least desire to live a miserly existence. Some people called him fastidious—as an insult. As far as he was concerned, they could all go to hell. He might be richer than God, but he was first and foremost a newspaperman. He was supposed to be fastidious, wasn’t he? Or would his critics prefer he played fast and loose with the facts?

  And those who called him a knee-jerk conservative (Alex Buchanan, for one) could go to the devil, too. He believed passionately in free markets and smaller government. And if his network happened to mirror his views, so what? Last time he checked, freedom of speech was still in force in his adopted country. (Although, some of the other first-amendment freedoms were clearly flagging.)

  He scrolled down his list of bookmarks, moving from The Capital Post, which he had recently acquired, to the formidable Gray Knight—the nickname given The News because of its type-heavy pages.

  The Gray Knight would be his White Knight, he thought with a wry grin. The smile faded the moment he saw the usual top story attacking the new president. He shook his head disapprovingly. It was almost as if the editors went out of their way to print stories to embarrass the new administration. Despite his promise to keep his hands out of editorial policy, he planned to put an end to that kind of reckless reporting the minute the merger was in place.

  Osbourne jolted when his Droid started rattling on the desk like a Tommy gun. Checking the caller ID, he saw it was Quinn Davidson. Speak of the devil, he thought, snatching it up.

  “Please tell me you’re not calling to postpone our meeting.”

  There was a pause before a man on the other end said, “Milo Osbourne?”

  Osbourne shuddered. The man had an English accent not unlike his own. It was definitely not Quinn Davidson’s voice.

  “Who’s this?” he demanded.

  “Black Knight takes White Knight,” the caller whispered. “And calls check.”

  * * * *

  “You never did te
ll me how you got that limp,” Thea said as they tromped through yet another damp, muddy field. For the past hour, they had been cutting through pastures and cornfields, doing their best to stay out of sight of the roads and farmhouses.

  “If you must know,” he replied rather curtly, “I injured my knee jumping out of a helicopter in Iraq.” He did not wish to dwell upon it. The last thing he needed right now was another bloody flashback.

  “Did you fight in the war?”

  “Nay,” he said. “I was a correspondent. For the Edinburgh Times.”

  He had worked his way up from copy boy—an entry-level position his father had secured for him. The job entailed running carbon copies of stories from one part of the newsroom to another. The dawn of the computer age had rendered the job obsolete.

  “Is that where you grew up? In Edinburgh?”

  “Aye,” he replied, saying as little as possible as he limped along, trying to avoid stepping in anything fecal. “In a suburb called Stockbridge.”

  Having chivalrously loaned her his sports coat, he was shivering from the cold and trembling from nervous exhaustion. His shoes were caked with mud, his trousers wet to the knees with dew, and his stomach a seething cauldron—an unpleasant reminder that he’d put nothing in it all day but coffee, scotch, and a stale Krispy Kreme he pilfered from a box in the break room. He prayed that, at the very least, when they got to the farm, they’d find her grandfather’s cottage equipped with a teakettle and fireplace.

  “What was it like?”

  He shrugged. “Like anywhere else, I suppose.”

  “Do you have any siblings?”

  “I had a twin brother, but he was killed last year in Iraq.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice softening. “I know what it’s like to lose a brother. My own brother—Robby was his name—died of an overdose when I was still in high school.”

  “Mine was Kenny,” he said, though he couldn’t say what compelled him to tell her.

  “Were you and he close?”

  “Aye,” he replied, feeling another stab of grief. “Growing up, we were inseparable.”

  “Was he killed in combat?”

  “Nay. In prison. Abu Ghraib, actually.”

  She rounded on him, eyes as wide as an owl’s. “Abu Ghraib! What in the name of God was he doing there?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” he replied, dropping his gaze. “The last I heard, he was arrested by the U.S. military on the flimsy charge of being a threat.”

  He could see her incredulous scowl, even in the dark.

  “A threat? How so?”

  “He was working for Newswire,” he started to explain. “Looking into something to do with crooked reconstruction contractors. The week before he was arrested, he wrote that he was close to landing a big fish.”

  “And you suspect that big fish was somehow involved?”

  He met her gaze. “Wouldn’t you?”

  She held his stare. “Did you look into it?”

  “Of course I did.” He could feel his deep frustration agitating even now. “But everywhere I turned, I ran into brick walls.” Pulling his gaze away, he heaved a sigh. “Let me tell you something, Thea: When it comes to covering their arses, the lads in the Pentagon don’t just circle wagons, they circle great bloody armored tanks. The experience gave me a whole new respect for Woodward and Bernstein. Not that they haven’t always been among my heroes.”

  Chapter 8

  Lumbering after Thea, shivering with cold and fatigue, Buchanan found himself thinking about his father, who’d worked all his life as a press operator for the Edinburgh Times, Scotland’s newspaper of record—until Milo Osbourne busted the printers’ union.

  After that, his da, too proud to go on the dole, went to work in the mines—something Donald Buchanan swore he’d never do. Every night, he’d come home, face black with coal dust, and drink himself into a stupor.

  “Go to university, lads,” he would tell his sons, slurring his words. “Or you’ll end up like your miserable auld da with nowhere to go but down the tubes.”

  Those were hard years. There was little money and little to eat. They had to give up their nice flat in Stockbridge and move to a dreary council house in West Pilton—one meager step above slum dwelling. Alex could remember lying in bed at night, eyes open in the dark, wondering if that was how it was to be down in the mines.

  “This must be the place,” Thea said, drawing him back.

  They were standing at the end of a gravel driveway. The hand-painted sign on top of the mailbox read: Schuler.

  He looked at her, surprised. “Your grandfather’s staying here?”

  “Sometimes the Amish rent rooms to tourists,” she explained with a nod, “but they don’t advertise the fact. You have to know someone.”

  Looking up the drive, he could see an old but well-kept white farmhouse. A covered porch stretched the length of the front. The downstairs windows were aglow with soft golden light. Candlelight, judging by the flickering.

  “Seems a wee bit rustic,” he observed. “Why here of all places?”

  She shrugged. “To avoid distractions, I guess.”

  They walked up the path, which curved past a split-rail corral that held a couple of dozen brown cows. They were Devonshires, he was almost certain. Rare in the States, but dead common back in Britain.

  He stepped up to the fence and held out his hand. One of the cows came over. As he stroked her velvet muzzle, he said, just because, “How now, brown cow.”

  Thea laughed and he glanced her way. She was standing there staring at him as if he’d completely lost his mind.

  “Be careful there, Buchanan,” she said with a grin. “You might get Anthrax or Mad Cow Disease.”

  Chuckling, he moved up the road. She followed him, hurrying to catch up. He waited until she was beside him before he said, “When was the last time you saw your grandfather?”

  “A couple of months ago. We met for coffee in the Village.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  He hoped to hear they’d talked about the book and that it might turn out she knew something she didn’t know she knew.

  “Personal things, mostly,” she said, shrugging. “He’s always haranguing me about when I’m going to settle down and have kids. It’s gotten worse since my mother died.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  She turned to him with a stunned expression. “Do you? How so?”

  “My mum’s the same way,” he told her. “With Kenny gone, I’m her last hope. And I don’t have the heart to tell her not to hold her breath.”

  “Don’t you want kids?”

  “Call me old-fashioned, but I’d like to find a wife first—and I don’t see that happening. Not in this lifetime, anyway.”

  Her pace slowed. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m the Tin Man, remember?”

  They had reached the porch. Taking the rail, he climbed the stairs. No sound was coming from inside the house, which struck him as odd. And unnerving. He knew that farmers turned in early, but did they leave the candles burning all night? Stopping halfway, he checked the time on his BlackBerry. It was after ten o’clock.

  “Maybe we should come back in the morning,” he told her.

  She was now on the step below him.

  “And where are we supposed to go in the meantime?”

  He didn’t answer, partly because he had no clue and partly because his gut told him something wasn’t right. He drew his Glock, keeping it low as he hobbled up the rest of the steps and across the plank porch. He drew a steeling breath before rapping on the screen-door frame. He waited for what felt like an eternity before leaning in to listen. He could hear nothing but the ticking of a clock. He waited a bit longer, then knocked again. Still nothing.

  “Hello?” he called once more before opening the screen. The hinges squealed, giving him chills. There was a small window on the oak front door. He peered in, but saw only candles, which, judging from their reduced stat
e, had been burning for some time. He knocked again, still watching for movement. Seeing nothing, he tried the knob. As it turned in his hand, he pushed open the door.

  Stepping inside, he called out, “Hello? Anybody home?”

  Thea, right behind him, grabbed hold of his shirt and yanked him back. “You can’t just walk in,” she hissed. “It’s breaking and entering.”

  Technically, it was only trespassing, since the door was unlocked, but this was no time to be splitting hairs. He kept moving. She followed, keeping hold of his shirt.

  “What if they’re only in bed?”

  “Then we’ll apologize for the intrusion and show ourselves out,” he said, keeping his voice low.

  Shadows danced eerily across the walls. A strange blend of odors filled the room. Burning wax, food, and something distasteful.

  “Stay here,” he said, attempting to dislodge her.

  “Not on your life,” she whispered, seizing a bigger clump of shirt.

  Raising his gun, he ducked around the edge of the door, calling, “Hello?” Given the smell, he didn’t expect an answer.

  “I’m scared,” she said behind him.

  So was he, but he saw no advantage in admitting it. He crept across the foyer and into the parlor. Thea remained hot on his heels, but was no longer hanging on. Up ahead, he could see candlelight washing honey-colored cabinets. He moved toward them, holding his breath.

  He stepped into the doorway, gaze darting around. The room was bursting with the aroma of roasted poultry and fresh-baked bread. There was a long pine table in one corner, set for a feast. Four plates, all clean. The food was untouched. Where were they? He shivered, feeling like he’d stepped into an episode of Twilight Zone.

  He grimaced when he saw a woman, sprawled on the floor, hole in her forehead, white cap askew, dead eyes staring at the ceiling. When he stopped, Thea bumped into him.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  He saw the others then, the husband in a blue shirt and suspenders, the two kids—a boy and a girl. His heart wrenched. They couldn’t have been more than six or seven.