Dead Simple

by Jon Land

  He finally wrote back, giving her a post office box address, to which she wrote frequently. She told him about the dissolution of her marriage, certain he took some pleasure in the fact that he had insisted from the beginning that her ex was a bastard. She kept him up-to-date on Justin’s progress in school and sports and on the travails of her own career, centering on her pursuit of a long-sought-after position on the Hostage and Rescue Team.

  Liz didn’t stop writing, even if his infrequent replies were cursory at best. Every time she was ready to give up, memories flooded back: rich, warm, and uniquely Buck. Liz was his only child. She never once thought he would have been happier to have a son, because Buck was nothing if not totally fair about such things. Boy or girl—it mattered not at all to one of his upbringing. Buck wanted to raise a person, not a girl or a boy, the rituals for either not varying.

  They did everything together, even after the divorce. Liz knew he had given up the farm in the money settlement because she loved it so much; her first thought upon returning to find it so run-down was of him. They played catch, went to movies, fished, and hunted. Well, not hunted exactly, because they never actually killed anything. Just slid through the woods tracking animals and seeing how close they could get before the animals scampered away.

  Sometimes Buck would take her deep into the woods, where he would find and destroy traps laid by poachers. The only time he had ever killed anything was when they came upon a fox caught in one. Buck hadn’t let her watch.

  He taught her to shoot, and Liz loved that best of all. Her twelfthbirthday present was a camping trip to the mountains, where Buck lay in wait for some hunters who were illegally killing bears, leaving a trail of orphaned cubs in their wake. They had come upon the hunters’ camp at night, and this time Buck did let Liz watch as he dealt with them. It had been the defining experience of their relationship, the moment in her life when Liz loved her father most, at the same time she found herself as terrified of him as were the men she was certain would never hurt an animal again.

  Buck Torrey loved people in his own unique way, but he didn’t believe you could love someone you didn’t respect too. Liz could look back on those days now and see not only how important it was that she respect him, but also that he show how much he respected her. That was why he had let her watch him that night with the hunters. She was old enough at that point to be initiated into his world, see her father for what he really was.

  It was strange how she had chosen to marry a man who was the exact opposite of Buck. Liz wondered if she had been overreacting to the fear that she would never be able to find a man who could measure up to her father, so why bother trying? Instead she had settled, perhaps worried she would grow consumed by her career down the road and wake up one morning in her forties with the realization that there would be no kid to take on overnights to the mountains. Teach how to spring traps and what to do to hunters who orphaned bear cubs.

  Justin was almost nine now, and they hadn’t done much of that. And if the return of Buck into her life was cause for any regret, it was how much her son had lost these last five years by his grandfather’s withdrawal. Maybe she hadn’t felt unequivocally happy to see her father because she feared that once this problem was resolved, he’d be gone again. More years sliding by as she checked the mail eagerly every day, only to be disappointed.

  The Jeep coasted along at sixty, the road black and empty before her. A river blossomed on her right, making her think of the lake that kept the secrets of her property. The old law was vague but plain on this subject: if Maxwell Rentz could prove she had no claim to the lake, thus denying her water rights, his county contacts could order her land condemned and quit-deed it over to him.

  She drove on, making out a wish list of what she would need if the county decided to condemn her land. Some claymore mines would be nice, a few fragmentation grenades, an M-16 with plenty of ammo. Maybe find them in the duffel her father had stowed in the front hall closet before he left. Hunker down and hold Rentz off long enough to make the press aware of his tactics, maybe take him out with her.

  Liz didn’t see the truck until it loomed as a huge shape in her rearview mirror, drawing up so fast it seemed to swallow the Jeep. She braced for impact, then realized the truck had sliced across the center line at the last instant, speeding up alongside her. She recognized its royal-blue color from the visit paid her by John Redding’s nonexistent local Cattleman’s Association.

  The blue truck swerved suddenly and sideswiped her Jeep. Liz felt the passenger side grating against the guardrail, powerless to do anything but hold tight to the wheel. Slam the brakes and she’d be sent into a wild spin across the road, causing a horrific accident almost certain to take more lives than her own.

  Thump!

  The truck smashed her Jeep again, Redding’s two cohorts from the other morning recognizable in the raised cab, sneering down at her. The barrel-chested one was driving, the fat one strapped into the passenger seat.

  Liz shot them the finger, continued to battle the truck, the guardrail, and her own steering wheel. A trail of sparks flew in her wake. Cars whizzed by through the impossibly narrow gap left beyond the tandem width of her Jeep and the blue truck. It seemed to shoot out ahead of her, tiring of this game, she thought, then it slowed and swerved back, clipping her front fender on an angle that sent her up and over the guardrail toward the river below.

  The Jeep struck the surface hard on an angle that turned it onto its side. The air bag did not deploy, and Liz’s skull cracked against the roof in spite of her shoulder harness.

  The world darkened before her. Her eyes fluttered, then closed. Liz felt only an immense weariness. A few minutes’ rest and then she’d wake up, tend to her chores. She had never felt more relaxed.

  The thud of the Jeep settling on the river bottom jarred her alert again. Around her, cold water was rushing in. The Jeep had landed on its passenger side, and she could see the surface shimmering thirty feet above through the window. Easy to reach it, but first she had to extricate herself from the vehicle. For the moment she had air, but the water would swallow it before much longer.

  Fighting back panic, Liz pressed the emergency release button on her harness, freeing her to try to escape. But the Jeep had no sunroof and the closed windows were electric. That meant her only hope of escaping was to break one of them.

  The water had reached her chest, leaving Liz still enough time to hammer at the glass of her window with an elbow. But her angle was all wrong and the water already covered too much of the glass. Before she could consider an alternative, the water swept over her face and left panic reaching for her as she tried the door latch, sucking in a final deep breath. Liz felt the latch give and pushed her shoulder against the door. But the water pressure outside refused to let it budge, and she had lost valuable seconds in the process. No, the window held her only hope for survival.

  Feeling the breath beginning to burn in her lungs, Liz yanked off a boot and used its heel as a ram. Again, though, her angle and the water betrayed her, and she failed to even crack the glass. She didn’t actually feel herself weaken until the boot slipped from her grasp. She was left holding only water, knowing it was going to pour into her lungs any second and consume her just as it had consumed the Jeep. But she turned back to the window, determined to give escape one last try.

  The devil looked down through the glass at her. With black eyes, hair whipped crazy by the swirling waters, and a short beard that made his flesh look black too, he had to be the devil. Liz looked hopelessly into those eyes in the instant before the glass shattered behind his thrust.

  Why the devil? How did I go that wrong?

  She felt something jabbing at her, grabbing hold, and then she was being dragged upward. The world brightened briefly before she slipped into an even deeper void, where she forgot how to breathe and everything turned as cold as the devil’s black eyes.

  EIGHTEEN

  “I’ll be the only one in the place sitting in a chair
on wheels,” Jay Don Reed, the man who had contacted the sheriff in Condor Key, advised McCracken before he came north.

  Blaine met him later that day at a diner in the center of Preston, Virginia, across from the small police station. His wheelchair tucked beneath a table, Reed waved to Blaine as soon as he entered.

  “Act like you know me,” he said when McCracken got there. “We’re old friends, maybe served together. Some shit like that. Don’t want the locals to think different right now.”

  Blaine smiled and clapped Reed on the shoulder before sitting down across from him.

  “Food’s not bad here, if you’re hungry,” Reed told him.

  “I’m not.”

  “You don’t order, you’re giving people more cause for notice.”

  Blaine picked up a menu and opened it. “You serve with Buck?”

  Reed closed both hands on his cup of coffee before raising it. “Gunnery school a thousand years ago. Different career paths after that.” He looked at his chair. “Different results.”

  “You were checking on his daughter for him.”

  “Keeping an eye on her is the way I prefer to put it. I called him when it became clear she was in trouble. Just like I called you.”

  “Buck’s orders.”

  “He gave me a number. First time he misses a six-hour check-in, I’m supposed to start dialing.” Reed gazed across the table, sizing Blaine up. “And here you are.”

  Blaine caught the edge in his voice. “Something bother you about that?”

  “I made some calls, asked around a little about you.”

  “What’d you hear?”

  “My sources musta been mistaken: told me Blaine McCracken was a memory.”

  “Wishful thinking on their part.”

  “You walk in that door, I’m looking at a ghost.”

  “I was … until I went to see Buck.”

  “He made a lot of men in his time.”

  “And remade at least one.”

  Reed gave his useless legs a long look. “I was a little beyond his help.”

  “Where?”

  “Nam. One tour too many.”

  “You were a sniper.”

  Reed’s cup of coffee clamored back to its saucer, spilling a little over the side. “How the hell you know that?”

  The truth was Blaine couldn’t say exactly, but his eyes stayed focused on the way Reed’s finger looped through the coffee cup’s handle, treating it like a trigger.

  “I think Buck may have mentioned your name,” he lied.

  The waitress came and poured Blaine a cup of coffee, got her order pad ready. Reed told her to give them a little more time.

  “What happened after you let him know his daughter was in trouble?” Blaine continued.

  “He asked me to get the intel together on the opposition. Real estate developer named Maxwell Rentz, who’s planning to build the Disney World of the north up here. Trouble is he can’t do it without the Torrey family farm. The daughter—Liz—isn’t about to sell.”

  “Sounds like a Torrey.”

  “I made the call when Rentz brought in some hired hands, if you get my drift. I saw these boys nosing around, up to no good. Bad things start happening, I get Buck on the line. Asked if he wanted me to handle things myself.” Reed pulled his hand away from the cup. “Don’t need my legs to sight them in my crosshairs. He told me to stand down and wait for him. Put some supplies together for him in a duffel bag.”

  “What happened yesterday?”

  “He didn’t call in. I waited a few hours before making the call. I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

  “But you don’t know what he was up to, why he figured there was a chance he might not be coming back.”

  Reed shrugged.

  “Then I better go introduce myself to his daughter. What can you tell me about her?”

  Reed fixed his gaze through the diner’s plate-glass window, which bore a HOME COOKED MEALS sign. “For starters, that’s her just driving away now.”

  Blaine had caught the Jeep in his sights again just before the blue truck riding its driver’s side shoved it over the guardrail. He watched it turn onto its side in the air, hitting the river with a thud that sent up plumes of water.

  Blaine gunned the engine of his rental car, the Jeep long gone from the river’s surface by the time he tore down the bank and plunged into the water. When he reached the Jeep, Blaine blessed the long underwater swims beneath the stilt house. He pried a rock from the river bottom and slammed it through the window on the first blow. Smashed the glass aside and yanked Liz Halprin out of her seat.

  She wasn’t breathing when he got her back to the surface, and Blaine struggled to remember how to apply CPR. Strangely, he had never performed it before. It was magical to watch, considerably more desperate to practice, especially on someone he feared might be beyond saving by his unpracticed technique.

  But this was the daughter of Sergeant Major Buck Torrey, and if blood meant anything at all, she wouldn’t die without a fight. Blaine continued to push breath through Liz Halprin’s pursed blue lips, moving to compress her chest at regular intervals while hoping he recalled the counts correctly.

  He was exhausted and almost out of breath himself when Liz finally twitched, stirred, and then coughed up a stream of water into his face. Hacking away as he held her by the shoulders.

  Buck Torrey’s daughter stared into his dark eyes resiliently. “Just tell me I’m not dead.”

  “You’re not dead.”

  “That means you’re not the devil.”

  “Close enough,” Blaine told her with a grin.

  Shortly after a pair of officers had pulled up, Chief Lanning arrived, looking disinterested as he joined them in walking about the scene. A tow truck with winch capacity was already in place, awaiting only a diver to hook the sunken Jeep up to haul it out of the water. Lanning followed the skid marks from the road to the smashed-in guardrail, measuring off the distance to the water in his mind.

  “The nonexistent Cattleman’s Association again,” he heard Liz Halprin say from behind him.

  Lanning turned to find her standing there, surprised since he was sure, based on initial reports from the scene, that a rescue squad would already have carted her off to the hospital. She had a blanket draped around her shoulders, and there was a man standing next to her, whom Lanning didn’t recognize.

  “You’ll find the blue paint from their truck all over my Jeep,” the woman continued, pestering him. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find it in town now, Chief, I imagine.”

  But Lanning’s attention was rooted on McCracken. “I know you?” he asked finally.

  “No,” replied Blaine McCracken. “You don’t.”

  “Thanks for your help. You can be on your way, lemme take care of the lady here. She’s safe now.”

  Blaine made no move to oblige or even acknowledge him, sliding a little closer to Liz. “That’s right. She is.”

  “You hear what I just said?”

  “You want to be writing this down,” Blaine told him. “Maybe take some pictures.”

  “Her car will tell me everything I need to know, once we get it hauled up.”

  “I don’t see anyone taking statements from the people who pulled over to help before they leave, in case they saw something.”

  “Would that include you?”

  “No. I got here late.”

  “Just happened to be passing through?”

  “Not at all,” Blaine told him.

  “I told you,” Lanning repeated to Maxwell Rentz, “I don’t know who he is.”

  “But he didn’t just happen to be driving by at the time.”

  “No. He made that pretty plain.”

  “A friend of Halprin’s father, you think?”

  “I hope not.”

  “So do I,” said Rentz.

  “Where do you want me to take you?” McCracken asked Liz when she was seated next to him in the rental car’s passenger seat.

  “Nowhere
until I know who I’m riding with,” she said, still trembling from the shock of her ordeal.

  Blaine started the engine, switched on the heat to keep her warm. “You sound like the chief.”

  “You told him you didn’t just happen to be driving by.”

  “I’m a friend of your father’s.”

  She looked down. “How’d you find out he was missing?”

  “Same guy who let him know you were in trouble called me when he disappeared yesterday.”

  “Wheelchair?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I saw him watching me in town a few times. There’s a certain look … .”

  Blaine stopped short of telling her he knew all about that.

  “And what about you?” Liz asked.

  “Your father and I go back a ways.”

  “Operation Phoenix.”

  “Nice guess.”

  She glanced down at his ring. “Not a guess at all. He ever tell you what DS meant, Dead Simple?”

  “Not in so many words. It seemed pretty straightforward. We were good at what we did over there. It came easy to us.”

  “You’re talking about killing.”

  “Mostly.”

  “Dead Simple,” Liz repeated. “Pretty straightforward.”

  “Except now I think I had it wrong. Buck told me as much in Condor Key. Made me think I’d missed the whole point.”

  “But he didn’t elaborate.”

  Blaine shook his head. “There are some things you’ve got to figure out for yourself. Buck knows that, and even a man like him can only take you so far. If you can’t get the rest of the way on your own, you picked the wrong ride.”

  “And deep down, those who stay on it until the end are all the same. Don’t get me wrong, but I thought your kind, men like my father, had gone extinct with the dinosaurs.”