by David Beers
Chapter Thirty
"Are you ready to come see me now?"
"You stole that woman out of her house, didn't you? Did you have to kill all those cops too?"
"There wasn't any other way."
"Then why didn't you simply leave her alone, Matt?"
"We all get what we deserve in the end. I'm believing that more and more. I used to think very few people got what they deserved, but the longer this goes on, the more I see how the chips were supposed to fall."
"What are you saying?" Rally asked.
"I couldn't complete this until I learned some kind of humility. That was my ten-year punishment. All the people who touched Hilman are just about dead or at the least understanding what was taken from us. He's close to coming back, Ral, and there isn't much that can stop it from happening. The F.B.I. is just now understanding how I took Lucent from her house. Everyone that was involved in Hilman's death, including us, is getting what they deserve. We'll be getting a son soon; it just took me time to learn how to deserve him again."
"Do you understand how insane you sound?"
Matthew was quiet for a second. "To you? To the police listening? Yes, I guess I do. Are you still coming to me?"
"Yes. I'm ready. One day, that's all you get."
"That's all I need."
* * *
Allison Moore listened to the phone call between Rally and Matthew Brand with a growing fear that she would never be able to stop this man. Like he was closer to a god than a human, and they were all just part of his plan. Even Rally's trip to him, orchestrated by her to find him, but he was somehow in control of that as well.
Four cops dead and her F.B.I. agents left sitting outside the house for six hours without a clue as to what Brand did inside. Allison had botched it, and if she continued, she was done, off the case and back at home with her daughter and her husband.
And would that be so horrible?
Her career would be over. They would give her a desk job somewhere, allow her to fill out paperwork and continue earning a paycheck, but no more cases like this. No more chasing criminals.
Giving that up isn't worth getting your family back? Allison couldn't think about that now, couldn't go back to Jerry and the things he was feeling. She had to be present, here and now, focusing on what she could do to stop Matthew Brand. If she let her mind travel to her family, then this was done. If she allowed Jerry's wants to infiltrate her thinking, she would never focus on this task. She was already at a disadvantage, and allowing her personal issues into it would completely handicap her.
Pushing Jerry from her mind, she found the other man in her life.
Allison had sat in the car with him, looked at his face and conversed with him. Two feet from Matthew Brand and not a clue. Just driving up and down the road, following Lucent. Barking out orders of ways they could make her safer, when all the time the spider spun its web around them all. Three more people died because she saw a cop instead of a killer. She hadn't even thought it possible, that he would come in as one of them. He wanted Lucent, but had known the cops that would be on duty, known where they lived, known what time they woke and arrived at work. Was there anything he didn't know? Was there anything Allison could keep from him?
He sounded like the world would simply open up for him, give him whatever treasures he wanted. The woman he loved was coming down to see him and the people he had wanted to find were all with him, locked away in whatever wooden cabin he kept now. Was Allison wrong, here? Was she setting Rally up to die or to be kidnapped? Was he in control and herself simply a bug caught in his web?
Allison forced herself from her own head and looked forward at Rally. The woman stared at the kitchen table in front of her, the phone pressed to her ear. Her husband sat beside her, holding her hand. Allison thought she must have been one of the strongest women to ever live, perhaps long lost kin to Joan of Arc, in order to bear Matthew Brand through all those years of marriage. To put up with everything that came after, and even now, instead of kicking Allison from her home, agreeing to somehow see this monster who talked about loving her son. Somehow trusting the F.B.I. that they could keep her safe even though they had been unable to keep anyone else safe in this whole ordeal.
* * *
"So how is this going to work?" Rally asked. Her eyes followed the wooden lines on the table, trying to see one all the way across but she kept losing it.
"I'm going to come get you and after a day, I'll let you go."
"When?"
"I'm just going to tell you with all those cops sitting around your house, huh? You think that's my plan, Ral?"
"Worth a shot, I guess. I'd see you one way or the other, either at your place or in jail."
She heard him laugh.
"I'm going to try and stay out of jail for the time being. I'll come get you soon though, before I take anyone else. I just need you to be ready when I move, but I don't think that'll be a problem. Freezing up was never your specialty, was it?"
Rally laughed next. "Not when it came to divorce."
"I suppose that's true. Okay, I'll see you soon. Agent Moore, are you there?"
Rally looked up to the F.B.I. agent staring at her. "She is."
"I'll have Rally home safe, I promise. It'll be easier for all of you though if you stay out of my way. I don't want to have to put more people down than necessary. You need to understand that if someone gets in my way, I'll kill them, and it won't be on me because I'm letting you know this now. Whoever dies at this pick-up and drop off, that blood covers your hands. Those cops in Durham, that's on me. The cops here, they're yours."
Rally looked at the woman who had been her contact throughout all of this. Her face didn't change, she just kept her hands pressed down on the earphones covering her head. There wasn't much to show that she had even heard Matt speak; a simple nod was all she gave as the silence stretched.
"She heard you, Matt. No one's going to get in the way. I'm going to come see you and maybe put a stop to all this."
"Or maybe join in, who knows?" He said and Rally could almost feel the smile he wore on his face.
"He's off the line," someone else in her house said, some other agent who didn't know where she kept the spoons or the sugar, some agent who was here for the month and then would leave as soon as they brought Matt down. Some agent who practically lived with her now though, monitoring all her calls and triangulating exactly where they came from. All the calls except for Matt's. The agent couldn't find where that call originated from no matter how many times Matt dialed her.
"Still no match," the agent said.
"It's fine," Moore spoke, standing up from her chair. "He'll be here soon. That could be tonight or it could be in a week. We've got a lot to do. I'm going to bring the techs in and let them have a look at you, Rally, to see where we can hide these wires. Time to get started."
Agent Moore pulled her phone from her pocket.
Rally looked to her husband who in turn looked simply frightened. This wasn't what he had signed up for, but he wasn't turning to run. No one else in the room was scared, or at least they didn't show it, besides Harold. He didn't want her doing this. Didn't want her going to meet Matt and didn't want these cops trying to make her do it. The rest of the people in this house held their fear at bay, or maybe they had none because it didn't really matter if this woman died. Outside of the media storm that her death would bring, there wasn't any reason for them to really want her to stay alive. To everyone in this room, she was bait the same as Lucent had been; only Harold was scared.
She leaned in and kissed him, and he kissed back, his hand on hers.
"Don't do this," he whispered.
"I have to," she told him.
Chapter Thirty One
We need to talk.
Email yourself.
-MB
Jeffrey looked at the letters that formed words and the words that formed sentences and the sentences that formed a single message. And it answered one question: Matthew ha
d his phone. He didn't know where Jeffrey was, but with the phone, he knew where the rest of Jeffrey's loved ones were. His niece and his nephew. His sister. Her husband. His Dad and the nursing home he resided in. His agent, his lawyer—although, to be honest, Jeffrey really didn't care too much what happened to him. Lawyers, according to Jeffrey, were whale shit, which fell to the bottom of the ocean, guaranteeing nothing lower on Earth. The rest of the people in the phone? Even drunk—which he definitely was now—Jeffrey couldn't deny he cared about them.
Did Matthew imply that he might hurt them? Was that in the note?
"Of course it is. What do you think he's going to do if you don't message him back? Fucking forget about you?"
Jeffrey's new hotel room was a hundred miles out of Daytona. There was no need to look at the warehouse or Matthew's hotel any longer. The only reason he hadn't kept driving north, driving all the way to Canada, was he was too drunk to drive. He had rushed down here at speeds approaching one-hundred-and-twenty, and only God's grace kept him from being arrested or dying. Looking in his rear view the whole time for that rusted car Brand drove. He got to his hotel, grabbed as much shit as he could as fast as he could, running it out to his car in the hundred degree heat and then left. No check out. No key return. Just fled the city.
He wasn't so drunk that he was seeing doubles, but staying between the lines was becoming a challenge. He pulled off I-75 and found a Holiday Inn. He brought his computer to his room, leaving everything from his clothes to the boxes of files in the car. He had no need for them anymore. What he needed was a gun or a bodyguard; he would have brought those things up if he owned them.
Allison's Moore number sat on his computer screen, using Google's database to look up his contacts, but how could he use it? How could he call her now? He could lie from here to heaven about how and when he had found Matthew Brand, that wasn't the issue. The cops' inability to do anything right so far, that's what kept him from simply finding a phone and dialing her up. If he told her where Brand was and they fucked that up too, well, Jeffrey felt confident that anyone important in his phone would end up dead. He could scream all he wanted about the F.B.I. protecting his relatives, but that wouldn't be their first concern, not until they failed to capture Brand. Then they would go to the one's Jeffrey cared about, but then it would be too late.
So he looked at Brand's email.
What should he say? What could he say? Lie? It would be pointless, like lying to God.
He typed one word: What?
The cursor blinked at the end of it, asking him if he wanted to continue.
"What the hell else am I going to say?"
The cursor had no answer.
Jeffrey hit send and put the computer on the bed, leaving it open so that he could see if a new email arrived. He lay down, the view of the blank television changing to the white ceiling. His drunk hadn't nearly worn off and he still had about three inches of vodka left in his bottle. If he closed his eyes, the room spun a bit but he could handle that. Hell, if he drank the rest of the vodka, it would probably force him to sleep. He threw his legs out of bed and went to the floor where the plastic bag holding the bottle of Absolut waited. He grabbed it, bringing it to eye level. Three inches and then sleep; this was his life. All his best thinking led him to this point, let him end up in this hotel in a town he didn't know holding a bottle of vodka and hoping to some higher power that he could find a way out of this. All of his brains had got him here.
He unscrewed the cap.
He would drink this and lie down. Maybe he would call his agent. Maybe he would tell her where he was and what he was doing and what trouble he'd gotten himself into. Maybe he would call his own cell phone and tell Brand where he was. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. The only thing certain, the only thing Jeffrey knew that was going to happen without any hesitation was that this liquor would end up inside him and the rest of the world could take care of itself.
"I'm an alcoholic," he said to the bottle.
The only answer that came back was: What else do you have anymore?
* * *
She sat outside on the patio. Her hair hung around her face as she studied the menu.
The man in front of her had to be her husband, Harold.
Matthew sat three tables to their left, his arms much hairier than they had ever been in his life, and that same hair growing out from the Polo shirt he wore. He wore a body suit, looking much more muscular that his hundred and forty pound frame could ever handle. The wig was a comb over type, and the glasses he wore gave him age that his muscular body seemed to be fighting.
Matthew leaned back in his chair, menu held in front of him, watching them without looking up. Federal agents littered the place, and a police car sat at the curb. He didn't plan on taking her, he just wanted to watch, to see her in person for a bit. He would only get a day with her and that wasn't enough. It would never, ever be enough. He should have been sitting in front of her, watching her order, watching her eat, watching her laugh as they talked. That should have been his place, but the entire world conspired against him to take it. So now he watched at a distance.
The pride rose up in him again, the same thing that put him in a cabin with bullets flying around him. The pride that would never drown no matter how long he held it under water. He couldn't suffocate it; he couldn't bury it. Here, in this restaurant where sizzling steak came out onto the patio every five minutes, people all around him enjoying their evening with family and friends, that pride was ready to boil up. Why couldn't he have her now? Why couldn't he take her away from her husband, who sat there and didn't even look at her, looking at his own menu instead? All the cops that surrounded this place, but if she and him were willing to leave, why couldn't they?
He looked around the restaurant, making calculations instead of observations. He thought he saw four cops in the restaurant, wearing street clothes and at a table together, blending in with the crowd. Plus the car outside. That made six, all of them most likely carrying nines, and maybe one forty-five caliber Glock between the six. Radios inside the car that would probably have another ten police here within two and half minutes. They had noticed Matthew, even if they'd dismissed him as an actual patron. No matter how hard the agents at that table laughed, no matter how obviously they refused to look around the restaurant, they were watching the people surrounding them. They knew who came, who went, and they probably communicated through wires on their person about all they saw. Somewhere, above everything, Allison Moore watched. Maybe a security camera they were tapped into here or maybe something else, but Matthew didn't think there was any way she didn't know exactly what was going on with Rally in public.
You need to leave.
The part of him that lived ten years in a cell spoke now. The part that understood his pride turned the most feared man in the entire country into a strange story of idiocy. Sitting there in jeans and a plaid shirt with a gas mask over his face, laughing at a hundred cops as if he had a chance in hell of doing what he set out to do. Saturday Night Live even ran skits on him, laughing at his stupidity. All because of the pride that wanted to show up now, and dare someone to stop him.
This was his wife just as it had been his son. These people, a part of the same organization that decided years ago he didn't need his son any longer, were now saying he couldn't be with his wife. If she agreed to that, if she said she didn't want to see him, then it wouldn't be a problem. He wouldn't be here. But she did want to see him. She did want to talk to him. These people were trying to keep that from happening, trying to keep her from him.
At the same time Jeffrey Dillan was drinking the last of his vodka, Matthew stood from his chair, taking a sip of water and placing his menu down. He pushed the chair under the table and walked from the patio, heading to the bathroom. In the war between brains and pride, with Matthew, his mind never really had a chance.
* * *
This would be no Godfather scene of quiet death and planning. There weren't any straight lines out of th
is place, no way to steal her when she came to the bathroom and simply walk out the front door. No way to kill those men and women sitting at the table ten feet from her and her husband. Matthew needed chaos for this, so much that they couldn't grab Rally if they tried because the world around them was burning down.
If he took too long, someone would notice that the burly man who had been about to order was taking too long in the restaurant. If he took too long, flags would raise.
He walked past the hostess booth and into the kitchen. A few heads looked up but no one said anything. There was food to cook and if someone wanted to look around the kitchen, it wasn't any of these Mexicans job to question the person. Matthew looked around, searching for what he needed. He had maybe three more minutes before he would be noticed, and then they would come looking for him. Someone, maybe two people at the table would go to the bathroom, would check in both the men and women's restrooms to see if the burly man was in there. He had three minutes to get this done.
His eyes searched for anything that would create the chaos, the pure damage he needed. Quickly.
And there they were, as if God himself had laid everything out for Matthew in a neat, little package.
He moved past the chef, who stood at a huge chopping block with a plate of food in front of him. Matthew grabbed the crème brulee torch currently discarded to the side, with no one noticing him. He stepped over to a grill, grabbing a can of spray oil, and finally went back to the chopping block—four feet tall and solid. He took the bag of powdered sugar and turned it over.
“What the hell are you doing?” Someone to his right asked.
Matthew blew into the powder, and like a massive dandelion, the powder rose into the air. Can of spray oil in his left hand, and torch in his right, Matthew pressed the respective buttons on both of them, and fire erupted through the air in answer, stretching six or seven feet out in front of him.
The powdered sugar caught fire, creating a cloud of flames just as the agents hunting for him entered the double, swinging doors to the kitchen. Matthew caught a glimpse of the first man, already reaching for his gun, but his eyes telling the world he knew it was too late. A sweaty smile appeared on Matthew’s face as he turned his torch to the rest of the powdered sugar lying on the chopping block, angling it towards the door where four agents now stood—each of them raising their weapons to eye level.