The younger man strode back to his office and sat down. Wade released his breath. That was too close. He skirted down a different aisle, dashing to the elevator. Before the doors closed, Wade made another mental note of exactly where the kid worked. Center aisle, four spots down on the left. It would go in his report. With any luck, Wade would come back here in a few days and catalog who took over Dublin’s spot once the lad no longer existed. Until then there were dossiers to write. He had what he needed.
The clock was ticking for Aaron Dublin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Aaron sneezed the moment he stepped into the teahouse. A wall of potpourri fragrance hit him like a slap in the face. White doilies and paintings of birds adorned every surface of the quaint, wooded home. Elderly women in busy patterned dresses strolled the grounds, pointing out various arrangements of flowers, and purchasing bric-a-brac for their cluttered mantles. He stood out like a sore thumb. His boots echoed on old wooden floors, announcing his presence as an intruder.
It was his only solid lead. She forced him to take it no matter how embarrassing.
Traci sat alone in a nook of the old house by the picture window. Aaron chose a tea bag and ordered hot water from a waitress in a pink apron. A pink apron. It'd take two baskets of hot wings at the sports bar to make up for this. He deserved it. Nobody at the office could ever know.
At least Traci called. Two weeks of work on “easy” files convinced him that he needed to bust Rollins soon or die of boredom. She said she'd meet him here. Fine. He’d go to China if it made her talk.
Still, this smelled of payback.
It was going to be a long day.
# # #
Wade lowered the camera. The telephoto lens worked wonders. It was like he was inside the teahouse with them instead of across the street sneaking a peek. The maple branch he sat on sagged with his weight. How strange—a fifty-four-year-old man wedged in a tree. Thankfully the couple was too busy staring at each other to notice.
The cafe sat on a slope, a two-story pink house with light cream shutters and a small parking lot to the right. That’s where he needed to be.
Wade crawled down from the tree limb, trotted across the road, and up the driveway of the teahouse. The two lovebirds sat near a window, making it easy to spy on them. They would never suspect what he was about to do.
It was all predestined, cold, calculated. Wade didn’t even sweat in the heat of the day. Instead, his brain marked off step after step of his plan.
He wore khaki pants and a tan windbreaker. The new walk and fake mustache worked their magic. The Slim Jim twirled between his fingers. He’d fashioned it from a pattern on an Internet lock picking forum. Aaron’s car sat in a far corner of the lot, hidden from sight by a large red conversion van. They made it too easy for him to go unnoticed.
Pulling back the black rubber on the driver’s side door, Wade slid the Slim Jim between the window and the exterior panel, and worked the bar back and forth. After a few attempts, he unlatched the lock. The cheap sedan didn’t have an alarm. Lucky him. Once the door popped open he jogged around the neighboring van. Through a series of side windows he detected the silhouettes of two people chatting.
Good. Still sitting.
Wade opened the car door and crawled inside. The contents of the vehicle spread out in disarray. Large stacks of paper rested on Aaron’s passenger seat held together by black binder clips. Wrappers from various prepackaged foods cluttered the foot wells. Scraps of rotting apples lay in a plastic bag. Dublin must have lived out of the thing. What a mess.
Wade popped the glove box open and rifled through the contents with the grace of a raccoon in a landfill. Nothing there but registration and insurance information. Useless. He already knew that stuff. The glove box closed with a loud click and Wade turned his attention to the bundles of paper on the passenger seat.
The stacks were indecipherable. Long lists of numbers ran up and down each page, detailing some sort of financial transactions. He dismissed the data and started his investigation of the back seat. It proved little more than a home for loose food containers and wadded balls of discarded paper. City maps lay strewn about along with an old pair of sneakers and a digital camera.
Wade darted behind the car again checking the action at the teahouse. Luck was with him. The two shadows remained in place, gesturing at each other. The rendezvous seemed stable enough. He needed another minute to look around. Over his shoulder, Wade spotted a small path through the woods that led to an adjoining shopping center. A perfect exit. Now there was no need to run back down the driveway.
Back at Aaron’s car, he was about to close the driver’s side door when he noticed something on the passenger seat. There, half buried under a napkin, sat a picture of himself outside his house. The image was photocopied several times, but it was his face looking back over his shoulder toward the garage. Wade leaned back inside the car and unwedged the photograph from under the bundles of paper. There, in crisp pigment, was his house, along with shots from every vantage point around his property. Pictures of him at the grocery store with Traci, Wade walking the streets of town, the pizza deliveryman. There were even images of the grass and trees around his property.
Wade’s heart burned. The guy was casing him. His knees gave out forcing him to sit down on the driver’s seat. Red circles marked the pictures. Labels highlighted scorch marks on the grass. The wrinkled, stained pages were obviously handled many times. Aaron spent a lot of time examining them, writing notes and comments in the margins, underlining his estimations.
They focused on Wade’s garage, including close ups of the locks and the exterior man door. One note read, “Suspect may have a weapon in the garage. Frequently remains at home for long periods of time.”
Sickness ripped through Wade's stomach. Tears gathered in his eyes. Not only did Traci leave him for another man, she betrayed him to the police.
Did she date Wade as part of an investigation? Had their relationship meant so little to her that she threw it away for this? Where did the real Traci end and the traitor begin?
He dug through stacks of financial data, page after page. It made no sense until he read the title of the document: “DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: PURCHASE REPORTS FOR ROLLINS, WADE.” Dates and times labeled the sheets. It was a list of every order that he made through the Department of Defense for the last dozen years. Several items were circled in red pen including one around the last date of purchase. Next to it was a question mark, underlined several times.
Aaron was more than a pencil pusher, more than a young man with an attraction to a beautiful woman––he was the agent hunting him down. Pictures of the garage ran chills down his back. How did he not notice Aaron following him? How careless. And now the cops were talking with Traci. She sat inside, not two hundred feet away, betraying him at that very moment.
That Judas. Jezebel. He shouldn’t have trusted her. He'd known not to love. At the first sign of unsteadiness in their relationship, she turned and ran.
What else did he miss? What if Tom and Linda were in on the operation, too? They hooked him up with Traci. They must have been in cahoots with the cops. They set a trap and he walked right into it.
Wade pulled himself out of the car. Time to flee. The coast was clear, at least, so it seemed. Any passing person, any calling bird, was an enemy after his secrets. He knelt down and flipped the Slim Jim around in his hands. With a mighty swing, he hit the sharp corner of the metal into the bald tire barely scarring the rubber. Again and again, he beat the tire until he ripped a massive hole in the sidewall. The car jerked and sank to the rim.
Foolish, Wade chided himself. Quick revenge fixes nothing. What if someone saw him? What if Aaron suspected him for destroying the tire? They would only come at him faster and with greater force. He had to get out of there before anybody saw him, if they hadn’t already.
He hurried down the wooded path toward the strip mall, forcing himself not to look over his shoulder. Aaron must have seen
him and would come running. Wade threw the Slim Jim into the bushes.
The police might have set up a camp at his house. Who knew how much time remained? He’d have to eliminate Aaron Dublin before they arrested him. Then he would go on the run. But where? Everything he knew, everything he thought he loved in the world, had betrayed him. They could snag him wherever he went. The curse of his sins would find him out and, some day, they'd unmask him before the world. Nobody would ever see the good he accomplished, the greed and corruption uncovered and done away with. Nobody would understand what he meant for humanity and the world. To them he was a crazy old man, beaten, torn, and weak.
Get back to the house. They were on his trail. He'd win this round no matter what it cost. Then he’d deal with Traci.
He rounded the corner of the market and disappeared, set on revenge.
# # #
Traci leaned back, sipping a cup of decaffeinated tea. She didn't acknowledge him as he walked in.
“Is this some kind of retaliation?” asked the accountant as he set his brief case down.
“Don't read into it. I needed to do this someplace familiar.” Traci avoided eye contact. The teahouse was safe, her turf. Still, she kept 911 on speed dial and her phone perched on her knee, in case she needed backup. Accountant-boy turned into a pest, leaving countless messages on her answering machine. She didn't know what was worse, being lied to by Wade or getting pestered by the Department of Defense. If the accounting thing didn't work out, Aaron showed great promise as a bill collector.
“I hope you will excuse my frequent phone calls.” Aaron settled in his chair. “They are putting the screws to me at the office. If I don't collect some serious evidence on the case by the end of the week—”
“I'll do it,” she blurted, relieved the decision was made.
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
He leaned forward on his elbows, bunching the tablecloth. “They are going to close the case on him if I don't get some solid information. This is our one shot. I know you probably don't care about the money and our national budget. Hey, I work in the accounting department and I don't care anymore. But if he's hiding something in that garage—”
“I said I'd do it.” The guy could really infuriate a gal. Didn’t he know how hard this was? “But not for you. I'm worried about Wade. He won't return phone calls from friends. He doesn't answer the door when they go over there. None of us have seen him. I'll get you what you want, but only because I think Wade needs help.”
Aaron’s voice softened. “We'll get him all the help he needs.”
“Good.” She relaxed a little. If Wade was in trouble, she must know, regardless of his bad attitude. She could not give up on him like that.
Aaron rolled his sleeves. “How do you plan to get inside?”
“I don't know. Talk to him, ask to come in for a few minutes.”
Aaron drew a map of Wade’s house on a legal pad. “Fine, but we need specifics. We could hold the lives of dozens, if not hundreds of innocent people in our hands. We need to see what Wade is doing. If he poses a threat to himself or to others, we need to step in.”
She swallowed hard and glared at him, “I told you I'd do it.”
“When can you see him?”
“Tonight. I think that’s our best chance. But I need you to promise me that you have his best interests in mind.”
He pulled at his collar. “I'll do whatever I can.”
No more fooling around. Tonight. She’d see Wade and put an end to this.
“You’d better.” She stood and walked out, ready for what lay ahead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Wade ditched his truck down a dirt road one mile from his house and ran through the woods. Before he got to his tree line he stopped and waited thirty minutes, peering through his camera for any sign of an intruder. Sitting still drove him mad. The police were certainly on their way, if they weren't already waiting for him.
No signs of an investigation, no indications that anyone slipped into the house in his absence. Wade dashed across the open lawn and ducked into the house through the back door. Even though heavy curtains blocked the windows, he hesitated to turn on any of the overhead lights. He opted for a few strategic lamps.
There was so much to do. Wade's emotions fluctuated between patient attention to detail and violent bursts of anger. He finally came unglued.
Betrayed again. This time by the woman he loved. He gave her a new life, a chance at a career. Worst of all, he gave her his heart. Now another man tried to end his perfect little world. Doubtless this investigator talked her into breaking things off in the first place. God only knew what the two of them had been doing and for how long. And him a married man.
A streak of acid burned Wade’s throat. She talked with the government about him, cooperated in their investigation. He was wrong to give his heart away, especially to a woman like her. She was too friendly, too easy to get along with. How foolish. He risked the whole mission in a moment of weakness. It could not happen again.
Wade paced back and forth across the living room rug surrounded by black and white images of Aaron. They dangled from clotheslines, drying in the stagnant air. He grabbed a letter opener from his desk and shoved it through the face of one of Aaron's pictures. Wade sawed at it, stabbing the photograph.
“See that? You don't mess with me. You don't mess with me!” Veins bulged on his neck. “Who’s big now? You want to dance with the old man?”
He pulled the letter opener out of the photograph and stabbed it into the table. “You don't know what you're dealing with, kid. You have no idea.”
Wade's heart raced, his brow dripped sweat on the carpet. He stared at the letter opener, then rammed it into the table a second time. It would be so easy for him to end it all, to take the knife and thrust it into his heart. Death lay inches from his hands, a mere flick of the wrist and a quick push into his chest.
Evil intentions invaded his system. He shoved off the notion of suicide, impossible while Dublin walked the earth. Suicide meant surrender. Aaron would have his man, laid out in a pool of his own blood. No, Wade would not go down without a fight. If he offed himself, the government would find the machine and use it in dishonorable ways. The Department of Defense would claim it as its own. Some scientist might crack his code, toy with the machine, and proclaim that they made time travel possible, that they were going to use the technology to make the world a better place. And then what? Then when times got tough, they’d sell the technology into the hands of their enemies.
The future of the world depended on his actions. Aaron forfeited his right to a second chance. This time it was revenge, plain and simple. Aaron forced his hand.
Wade ran through the house gathering piles of evidence, shoving them into containers, and loading them into the machine one armload at a time. He couldn’t take all of the photographs, there was not enough space. With a quick whip of his wrists, he tore several of them off the drying wire and threw them into the pile. He'd sort through the papers later. The setting sun cast bright light through the heavy curtains and filled the room with a vibrant orange hue, like the world was on fire.
A sharp pain dug into his side. His heart maintained a dull discomfort, as if in a vise. Each of the blue veins in his chest bulged under the white flesh near his sternum. The world threatened to come apart around him. He had to wait until dark. If he could launch before the feds got to him, all was not lost.
Wade gathered his things and waited for night to fall.
# # #
Aaron turned the lights off on the old car as they rounded the bend toward Wade’s house, driving up to the edge of the property. The car leaned to the left on its spare tire.
He cut the engine. Silence. Butterflies filled his stomach. His last opportunity to nab Wade. Aaron cradled his cell phone in his palm, checking the battery. Better to prepare for all possible outcomes. Adrianna sat next to him. She pulled out a small block of wood with a screw in it
and attached it to the video camera so they could mount it on the dash of the car for documentation.
“We're set,” she said once the video equipment was in place. “Are you ready for this?”
He grunted and reached for her hand. “Let’s hope we’re not putting her in danger.”
“She knows the risks. You’re doing the right thing.” She squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek. “Nothing will happen. We’ll get the tape and yank her out of there.”
Another vehicle pulled up behind theirs, lights out. It stopped inches from their rear bumper. Traci trotted over and knocked on the driver side window.
“Everything ready?” she asked, pulling her sweater around her.
Adrianna offered her extra jacket. “Are you cold?”
“I’m fine. Are you set?”
Cradle Robber Page 23