I kept my expression neutral. “That gang leader, the one you tortured to get the safe combination. Did you enjoy hurting him?”
“Among his many sources of income was kiddie porn. Distributing and producing.”
“So he was a scumbag. My question was, did you enjoy making him suffer?”
Hammett withdrew the tweezers, which gripped some lead shot. She stared at it, as if it held the answer to the meaning of life.
“So what you’re saying, Chandler, is that torturing someone isn’t wrong. You’re saying it is only wrong if the torturer enjoys it. And you don’t think that’s hypocritical?”
“I think you’re sick in the head.”
Hammett tossed the BB over her shoulder, then went back to work on my leg. “The only difference between me, you, and Christopher Reeve up there in the driver’s seat is nurture. By nature, we’re just three copies of the same DNA. So if you want to judge me, walk a mile in my shoes and remember that there but for the grace of God, go you.”
She jabbed me with the tweezers again, and I squeezed my eyes closed and set my jaw and tensed until it was over.
I woke up in daylight, stretched across the backseat, a blanket over me and a pillow behind my neck. The vehicle smelled like coffee and bacon, and Hammett, in the passenger seat, was rattling off a string of numbers to Fleming, who still drove.
“One, six, four, two, zero, one, nine, eight, nine. Is that a thousand?”
“Yeah,” Fleming said. “Can you do the next thousand?”
“Never memorized it that far.”
Fleming laughed. “Puny mind. They’re three, eight, zero, nine, five, two—”
“I smell coffee,” I said.
“Oh, good morning, Chandler,” Fleming said. “I’m reciting pi to two thousand digits. Hammett has only memorized the first thousand. How many do you know?”
“I know three point one four. Is there coffee left?”
Hammett passed me a paper cup bearing the insignia of a fast-food joint. I sipped from the plastic lid. Still warm.
“That’s all you know?” Fleming asked.
“Pi doesn’t hold the same appeal to me as it apparently does to you two. I smell bacon.”
Hammett gave me a wrapped egg sandwich, then reached out to feel my head. I managed to avoid flinching.
“No fever. Your leg stiff?”
My whole body was stiff. But I said, “It’s fine. Where are we?”
“Just passed Syracuse. Gotta pee?”
I tuned in to my bladder. “Yeah.”
“You guys ever had to drink your own urine?” Hammett asked.
I frowned, my cheeks filled with bitter coffee.
“I built a solar still once, to desalinate seawater,” Fleming said.
“Chandler?”
“My own?” I asked, deadpan.
After a pause, Hammett and Fleming began to laugh. I also felt a smile threatening to break, and hid it with another sip off coffee.
“Three days,” Hammett said. “No water. Op went bad. Stuck in a desert. Hundred-and-five-degree heat.”
“So you drank your own pee?” Fleming asked.
“No. I drank snake blood.”
“Really? What did it taste like?”
Hammett hesitated, then said, “Pee.”
They laughed again, which annoyed me. Could have been a jealousy issue. I’d been bonding with Fleming over these past few days, and maybe I didn’t want to share her with Hammett. Could have been a trust issue, since I knew Hammett would kill both of us with zero provocation. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood because I hurt all over.
So I ate my sandwich and didn’t contribute to their conversation, which rambled on about all the gross things they’d eaten in the name of survival, and when we stopped at a gas station, I limped out of the vehicle with the first-aid kit and hobbled into a filthy stall where I cleaned and redressed all of my various injuries.
I was a mess. If I stayed in this business for the next five years without managing to get killed, I wouldn’t have an unscarred patch of skin on me.
Recently, I’d thought about quitting. I had money tucked away that would tide me over for a while. I’d have to find work eventually, but it could be legitimate work, not wet work. No more killing people. No more being shot. No more wondering what life would be like as a civilian.
Could be boring. But bored and alive surely trumped being tortured and killed, which was how things would likely end up for me.
Of course, I couldn’t quit until the current situation had been dealt with. I wasn’t sure how far up the chain of command it went, but at the very least The Instructor had to die. Until that happened, I’d be a target.
I swallowed some ibuprofen, looked at the beaten dog in the bathroom mirror, did a pathetic finger comb, then went back to the SUV.
Hammett had her hip on the fender. She was smoking a cigar, one of those cheroots that Clint Eastwood made popular in old westerns. Her gaze was someplace else. A big No Smoking sign was on the gas pump next to her.
“I can justify every single thing I’ve ever done,” she said without looking at me.
“Everyone can. That’s the problem. Lots of people justifying actions when they should be questioning them.”
“As if you’re any different.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing at all.
She took another puff, flicked the remainder into the parking lot, then looked at me. “Front seat or back?”
“Back.”
Hammett opened the car door, then paused. “You think I have no regrets. You’re wrong. I don’t regret killing anybody. I regret I didn’t start killing sooner.” She got into the passenger seat without explaining herself, and a big part of me was relieved she didn’t. Whatever Hammett’s story was, I had a good feeling I didn’t want to hear it.
I climbed into the backseat, stretched out, and promptly fell asleep. I slept until Fleming woke me up again, saying we’d arrived in Maine.
Years Ago…
Her codename was Hammett, but her adoptive parents had named her Betsy.
She lived in a middle-class house in a middle-class neighborhood with her dog, Max, and her sister, Rebecca. Rebecca was two years older, and everything Betsy wanted to be. Taller. Stronger. Fearless. Confident. Outgoing. Rebecca did well in school and was liked by her teachers and the other children. Betsy was the opposite. Shy, withdrawn, confused. She sometimes cried for no discernible reason. The only friends Betsy had were Rebecca’s, and Betsy knew they only played with her because Rebecca forced them to.
On Rebecca’s twelfth birthday, while Mother was at the store buying ingredients to make the cake, Father called the girls into his room and told them they were adopted.
“It’s OK,” he said. “I’m not your real dad, but I still love you very much. Don’t be afraid. It’s OK. I love you so much, Rebecca. It’s OK.”
He kept saying, “It’s OK,” over and over, as he took off his clothes and did things to Rebecca while Betsy watched.
Afterward, he gave them twenty dollars and told them not to tell Mother because it was their special secret.
Rebecca and Betsy kept that special secret, even though Father did it again and again. Eventually, the girls saved up $500, and after one of Father’s nightly visits, they snuck out of the house and rode their bikes to a bar that Father said was a bad place and they went inside and walked over to a mean-looking man who was in the corner drinking by himself. He had a tattoo of a devil on the back of his hand. Rebecca offered him all their money to kill Father.
The man agreed, but when they went out into the parking lot, he punched Rebecca in the face and took her money and rode off on his motorcycle, which had naked women painted on the gas tank.
It took another year for the girls to save up $500. When they did, they went to a boy in school named Mick. Mick was in a gang and had been arrested many times. He sold them a gun.
On Rebecca’s fourteenth birthday, Mother went to th
e store to buy ingredients for her birthday cake, and Rebecca shot Father twice in the back of the head while he was watching TV. She took the gun to the bad bar, and she and Betsy hid in the bushes until the man who stole their money showed up. They put the gun in the man’s saddlebag on his motorcycle. Then she and Betsy called the police.
The man with the devil tattoo was arrested for murder, abduction, and sexual assault. Rebecca described, in great detail, the things the man had done to her after she saw him kill Father.
A month later, Rebecca and Betsy joined Mick’s gang.
Fifteen years later, Betsy was killing people for Uncle Sam.
Chandler
“You don’t have to like someone to trust them,” said The Instructor. “And sometimes if the situation is dire enough, you don’t even have to trust them to trust them.”
I had a twenty-foot Maritime Challenger Classic on a trailer in a Portland, Maine, storage locker. It was registered under a name I used for nothing else, the rent paid in advance via money orders made out to cash. I’d kept this boat and the island we were headed to completely under the radar, and the only other people on earth who knew they existed were Fleming and a girl named Julie.
We put in at a dock near the mouth of the Kennebec River. After we loaded everything from the SUV into the boat, Fleming slipped behind its wheel and Hammett stripped to her undies. I backed the boat into the water, and Hammett waded into the frigid water after it, uncranking the winch and letting the craft float free.
I pulled the SUV into the parking lot near the launch site and unhitched the trailer, putting a lock on the wheel. Then I drove upriver until I found a remote area, not all that hard to come by in rural Maine. After wiping the vehicle down, inside and out, I hiked to the pier. My sisters had already docked the boat. As far as I could see, their only company was a flock of gulls and encroaching fog. I climbed into the vessel, released the mooring line, and settled behind Fleming on one of the built-in bench seats flanking the engine. As she motored down the river, I eyed Hammett, whose head was now covered by a reusable canvas grocery sack.
“I like the new look,” I said, directing the comment to Fleming more than Hammett.
“I found it in the back of the SUV,” Fleming said. “Thought it wise she didn’t know exactly where we were going.”
Apparently, despite their chumminess on the road trip from Wisconsin, Fleming still harbored reservations about trusting Hammett.
I had to admit I was relieved. “Good thinking. I’m also getting tired of seeing her face.”
Fleming turned, giving me a little smile.
“This bag smells like ass,” Hammett said, her voice muffled by the canvas. “Did you guys go shopping for ass somewhere?”
We didn’t answer, but my mood brightened a bit.
“If I’m seasick, will you take the damn bag off? Or do I have to wear my puke?”
“I vote for wearing it,” I said.
“Glad you think it’s funny. Also, you both are morons. I know where we left shore, know how fast this motor can go, can keep time in my head, and even in the fog, I can feel the sun on my skin so I know our direction. Wherever you’re taking me, I’ll be able to find it again, even if I’m still wearing this stupid sack.”
“Shit, she’s right.” Fleming patted her shoulder. “Go ahead and take it off, Hammett. It was a dumb idea.”
And our brief moment of anti-Hammett camaraderie was gone. Just that fast.
I stared at the back of Fleming’s head. I knew she was angry that I’d assassinated the president. I couldn’t blame her for that. But each time she played her bonding game with Hammett and cut me out, I couldn’t help feeling eleven years old. The new kid in a new school who once again thought she’d found a friend, a confidant, a sister, only to discover herself alone and despised in the end.
Hammett threw the bag onto the bottom of the boat and whipped her hair around. “So what is this place? A swanky vacation spot you want to keep for yourselves?”
I didn’t like Hammett asking about the island, and I wasn’t ready to tell her the whole truth. But saying nothing would just pique her interest. I needed to throw her something.
“A safe house The Instructor doesn’t know about.”
“Convenient.”
“No,” I said. “Prepared.”
Fog thickened the nearer we drew to the ocean, the still air carrying the type of dank chill that reached one’s bones and the strong scent of saltwater fish. The Demerol shots I’d had no longer held back the pain in my leg, although with every other inch of my body hurting, too, the aches blended until it was hard to tell one from another.
We reached the river’s mouth in silence, and after passing a Civil War–era fort and long sand beach, we motored out into the Atlantic. Waves churned under the boat, swaying us side to side. We moved past small islands dotting the steel-gray water, all uninhabited, the scrubby vegetation stunted by salt and cold. After fifteen minutes our destination loomed ahead like a boulder plopped into the surf. Larger than the other islands, it sported a lighthouse on its crest, idle and dark in the murk, more modern means of navigation having replaced the need for its beacon.
I’d always found the area beautiful, although today it was difficult to see much through the fog blanket. Seagulls screeched in the air, though all I could spot was a flash of white wings here and there. The roar of waves battering sheer rock faces on three of the island’s sides nearly drowned out the drone of our boat’s engine, and the distant moan of a foghorn made the air shudder.
Fleming guided the boat to the island’s minimal dock. Situated on the only sloping side of the island, the dock and shack of a boathouse were connected to the lighthouse by a tramway designed to transport cargo up the steep hill. Resembling those used in old coal mines, the tram system had been built by the lighthouse keeper a hundred years ago, and it looked its age. A diesel-powered hoisting engine pulled the simple car up the rust-covered tracks, a walkway following alongside. Today both tracks and walkway seemed to reach into the mist, as if they led nowhere at all.
While Fleming finished tying off to a salt-encrusted pylon, I started unloading, and Hammett smoothed her hair with a hand while taking in the scenery.
“This is it? I really have to introduce you two to some better vacation spots.”
“Start your vacation by helping unload the boat.”
She gave an eye-roll, but got to work.
I pulled Fleming’s wheelchair from the boat first. Heavier than any normal chair due to its many modifications, it strained my back and arms as I managed to wrestle it up a set of wooden steps and into the waiting tram car, which was basically a large wooden pallet on iron wheels. Hammett and I emptied the boat of food, ammo, and other supplies, Fleming handing us the bags. Then I took the weapons, Hammett gathered Fleming piggyback style, and the three of us trudged up the rickety wooden path.
A small engine house sat at the top of the tracks. A tiny framed structure, it held the tram’s hoisting engine as well as a small security camera I’d installed under one of the eaves. Focused on the top of the walkway, the camera was activated by a motion sensor at the boathouse. Since the lighthouse was surrounded by sheer cliffs on three sides and the only way up was the tram and walkway, the system ensured no visitors would arrive unseen.
I used the electric ignition switch to start the old diesel engine, and it began to wind the cable around its main pulley, sputtering and choking and threatening to explode at any moment. When the tram reached the top forty steep meters later, Hammett lowered Fleming into her wheelchair, and we all took a load of supplies and set out along the winding paved path for the lighthouse.
Perched on the highest point of the island, the classic white cylindrical tower with its attached redbrick keeper’s house looked as if it were straight from a postcard. Fifty feet off the ground and another fifty above the breakers, the beacon could be seen for miles on the open sea back when it was in use.
At our approach, a dog’s
bark pierced the ceaseless rhythm of the waves, and a dark brown mutt with oversize ears bounded down the shallow steps of the one-bedroom house. He ran to me first, jamming his face in my crotch and taking a good sniff.
I pushed him away and ruffled his ears. “Hiya, Kirk.”
As the dog went on to check out my sisters, I focused on the keeper’s place and the slender blonde standing in the doorway.
She looked good, if a bit pale, wearing a thick sweater, jeans, and the Adirondack jacket I had bought her a year ago. With blond hair reaching halfway down her back, she was beautiful enough to turn many a male head.
But around here there were no male heads to turn.
“Chandler?” she said, searching our three identical faces.
“Julie.” I closed the few feet between us and engulfed her in a hug.
She hugged me back, hard. “I didn’t think you were coming until winter.”
I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to tell Julie about our situation. With all she’d been through in her young life, I hesitated to add to her burden. “We thought we’d surprise you.”
She gave me a sideways look. Not quite buying it.
“It’s complicated. All I can tell you is that we need a place to stay for a while.”
Julie nodded, and glanced at Fleming and Hammett, the other two parts of the we.
“These are my sisters.” I made introductions.
Looking past me, she gave Fleming and Hammett a smile and they exchanged hellos.
“I didn’t know you had sisters,” Julie said, bringing her attention back to me.
“Last time I saw you, I didn’t know either.”
While Fleming had been my handler during the op when I’d met Julie, I’d only known her as Jacob, an electronically disguised voice on the phone. Back then I had no clue I had a sister, let alone six identical ones.
“Cool dog,” Hammett said.
“Chandler gave him to me when he was a puppy. His name is Kirk.”
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