“I thought I had it in Hank Jellicoe. I worked night and day researching that guy. I had tons, bricks and bricks of stuff on him. Some of it good, most of it bad, I have to say that. It was my intention to write a story on him for the paper while I was working on a book about him. Hell, I’d even sent out a query to a publisher, and they were hot to see it. I even had a title for it. Man, Myth, Monster.
“At that point, all I had was my research. I hadn’t interviewed a soul. How the hell he found out about it is something that, to this day, I don’t know.”
“What did you find out that resulted in your sitting in that chair, Mr. Anders?”
“That he was in bed with just about everyone, the CIA, the FBI, terrorist groups—but they weren’t called terrorists back in my day. I almost had it nailed down, too, but then my snitch or my source took off on me. He’d told me that Jellicoe arranged security for high-profile contractors and the like. He was just getting his toes wet on the military stuff at that point in time. He actually arranged for kidnappings, then rode in on his white horse to rescue them. He got not two bites of the apple, he got three great big bites when they paid high dollars for his protection, then he had their companies pay the ransom, and after that, they were so grateful when he rescued them, they gave the son of a bitch a bonus.
“Headlines around the world. Three or four deals like that, and he was untouchable. Then he crawled into bed with all the different agencies and named his price. By the time the guy was forty, he was a billionaire.”
Annie laughed. “Not anymore. We have his money.”
“I’ll be damned. But he got away. I’m sure you know he has safe houses all over the world, don’t you?”
Myra shrugged. “For all the good they’re going to do him. We think he’s here, and by ‘here,’ I mean the Washington area. We’re waiting for him to come to us.”
“What happened to your book, Mr. Anders?” Annie asked.
“His people came to my apartment and took it. He didn’t dirty his hands. He had some of his goons work me over, and this is the result. I was in the hospital for eighteen long months. The day I was discharged, two men showed up and brought me here to this house. They parked me and this wheelchair right here where I’m sitting and left. Hank Jellicoe arrived about ten minutes later. It was the weirdest encounter I ever had in my life. He was actually chatty, inquired about my health. He explained that he had brought along a housekeeper who at that precise moment was making us coffee. And he told me he’d hired a nurse for me. He explained about the house, how it was now mine.
“It has everything. Every year a brand-new van with a hydraulic lift is delivered. He told me I would be paid a stipend … that was the word he used, ‘stipend,’ of ten thousand dollars. And all of this would continue,” Anders said, waving his arms about, “as long as I kept my mouth shut and lived out my days here in the splendor he had created for me. At the age of twenty-seven, as I was then, that was not what I wanted to hear, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew I was never going to be able to walk again, and back in those days handicapped people had no rights or benefits, so I had no alternative but to take the deal. Which brings me to my next question. What are you going to do with this information?”
“Is this place bugged?” Annie blurted.
“I don’t think so. I’ve looked but have never found anything. Doesn’t mean it isn’t, though. Maybe your people, the ones who are going to protect me, can sweep the joint.” Annie simply nodded.
“Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this lovely lanai is not bugged. Do you seriously want us to believe … and remember who you are talking to here … that you never worked on that book from that day on, a book that could have earned you a Pulitzer?”
“No, I’m not saying that at all. In fact, I’m still working on it. Actually, it’s finished up to the point where he escaped. I’m waiting to write the final chapter.”
“Where is it?”
“I can’t tell you that. At least not now.”
“But if Jellicoe knew you wrote it, and that you had given it to us, we could flush him out that much quicker. If you were so afraid of him, why did you write it?”
Anders looked down at his legs. “Because I had to. After twenty years, I thought he’d forget about me, the book, and all this crap. That’s when I started on it again. I remembered just about everything I’d written because I’d done it with a pencil. You know, notes, the way a reporter works. That’s how I could remember it. It’s taken me these past fifteen years to get to this point. I’m sure you know I can get out and about. I go to the gym twice a week for upper-body exercise. Then I go to the library, where I work on the book. No more than an hour and a half at a time. Usually I go to the library first, then to the gym. I keep the flash drive in a locker. I rented three lockers aside from the one I normally use. I paid cash for them so there’s no record that I rented them. I’m friendly enough with the owner that I think if anyone had come around asking questions, he would have alerted me.”
“Do you have any objections to letting us copy the flash drive and returning the original to its hiding place? Is it a key or a combination? What’s the locker number?”
Anders sighed. “Gold’s Gym. It’s right in town. The locker is seventeen, and the combination is four right, nine left, and six right. When are you going to do it?”
Myra smiled. “Right this very second. It will be back in place inside of an hour. Do not fret about it. I’m not understanding any of this. The man cripples you, then he comes here, acts like your new best friend, and sets you up like a king. Why?”
“Because the son of a bitch is crazy. Do you know what bothered him the most? Not the fact that I had ferreted out what he’d done and was still doing. No, that didn’t faze him at all. What got to him was the monster part. Man, Myth, Monster. I did the book in three parts: the Man part, the middle part was the Myth, and the ending, which I hadn’t written, was the Monster part. He did all this, set me up, gives me money, to prove to me he isn’t a monster. He liked the Man part because I depicted him as the tough bastard he is. The Myth part, he liked that, too, because he said everyone is a bit of a myth, and it keeps people guessing. It was the Monster part that ripped his guts, and my useless legs are the result. He’s crazy.”
“I think we all agree on that. I have one other question. Do you know if Jellicoe was married? We know he was, but we can’t pin down the time frame. And we don’t know what happened to his wife, and we understand they had a daughter,” Annie said.
“I can’t help you there. I never heard or saw anything to indicate a wife or child. Now what?” Anders asked uneasily.
Now what indeed, both women thought.
Chapter 16
Less than a mile away, the remaining Sisters entered Virgil Anders’s gym. A buff, ripped trainer walked up to them, a dentist’s delight, as he smiled and asked how he could be of help.
“We’d like to look around and see if this is the right gym for us,” Isabelle said.
“Well, we have everything. And we have personal trainers if you’re looking for one-on-one training. As you can see by the chart on the wall, we’re competitively priced. This is a state-of-the-art facility. Our membership is quite large.” The trainer waved his arm in all directions to show members working out in various sections of the gym. “We have Pilates, aerobics. The classes are full for this session, however. A new session is scheduled to start in two weeks.”
“Do you mind if we walk around, check out the equipment, and maybe talk to a few of your members?” Kathryn asked.
“Sure, take all the time you need.”
“Where are the locker rooms? Are the men separated from the women?”
“Yes, but there is a connecting door. In case of overflow. Right now we’re jamming, and some of the members have had to double up. By the way, we really don’t advertise this, but we have a small Internet café down the hall from the locker rooms. Sometimes we have people wandering in here who want to use it
or to get a quick bite to eat. We try to discourage that because it’s really intended just for members.”
“How convenient,” Alexis murmured as she moved off.
“Watch my back,” Nikki hissed to Kathryn as she headed toward the locker room.
“Got it,” Kathryn said, trailing behind Nikki.
“Isabelle, play up to the muscle boy, and I’ll watch the door,” Yoko hissed as she danced her way back the way she’d come. “I’ll sign the guest book for all of us.” She smiled to herself as she heard Isabelle asking how long it had taken the trainer, who said his name was Adrian, to acquire his perfect body.
Yoko was studying the snapshots of before-and-after members tacked to a large bulletin board near the front door. When it opened, she looked up and into the startled eyes of a tall, well-built man. Without batting an eye, she turned and fished out her phone. She sent a text to Nikki that simply said, Feds are here.
She looked toward Alexis, who nodded. She moved off toward Kathryn, who was offering encouragement to a balding man with a potbelly dripping sweat down his designer workout shirt. Her back to the newcomer, Alexis mouthed the word Feds.
Kathryn looked down at her watch as she opened the louvered door leading to the locker room. There was no sign of Nikki. She opened another door and was in a hallway. This had to be the way to the Internet café. Nikki was just coming through the door from the café and slipping the flash drive into her pocket when Kathryn said, “The Feds are here. No time to put that back. Grab a banana or something so it looks like you came in here for food.”
Both women sauntered down the hall and out to the main part of the gym. Isabelle was still cooing with Adrian, while another trainer was talking to the newcomer. Yoko was still by the door.
“We’ve been here sixteen minutes,” Kathryn muttered. “Time to get out of here.”
“He’s going to follow us. Are we sure he’s a Fed?” Nikki asked, looking across the room at the newcomer. Not bothering to wait for a response to her question, she said, “Yep, he’s a Fed all right. What do you think, Kathryn, should we take him out here or wait till he gets outside?”
“Either/or. Don’t they travel in pairs?”
“There is that. Okay, we take him out here and get the other one outside.” She nodded to Yoko, who was watching her intently.
Yoko walked over to Isabelle, who was inching her way toward the second trainer and the newcomer. “Hold still, hold still!” Yoko suddenly squealed. “You have a spider on your neck. Don’t move. Oooh, it looks like a black widow. I bet it has that little red dot on its stomach. If you don’t move, I can get it.”
The newcomer froze, as did the second trainer and Adrian, who managed to gasp, “We do not have spiders in this gym.”
“Well, you do now.” Yoko reached up, her fingers poised. She touched the newcomer’s neck, and he immediately slid to the floor, unconscious. “Oh, well, I tried. You better call nine-one-one right away. Black widows are deadly. I don’t think I want to join your gym. Come on, girls.”
The Sisters all gaped at the man sleeping peacefully on the floor. The members who saw what had happened crowded around, jabbering and gesturing at the sleeping man. “Someone really needs to call nine-one-one,” Kathryn shouted as she bolted through the door Nikki was holding open for her.
“Where’s the other one?” Isabelle shouted as the Sisters hit the parking lot at a dead run, all of them saying the same thing. “They now know about Virgil Anders.”
“I thought we were off-limits and untouchable,” Kathryn snarled as she raced to a black sedan that screamed FBI, the girls behind her. Kathryn ripped open the door as Nikki reached for the man’s arm and pulled him outside and onto the ground. Alexis stomped on his chest while Kathryn took his gun, his cell phone, his wallet, and his keys.
“That’s federal property. You can go to prison for this,” the agent said as he struggled to get up and speak.
“Obviously, you have me mixed up with someone who cares. I don’t. If anyone is going to prison, it’s going to be you. We’re off-limits and untouchable, and you damn well know it. In other words, your boss broke the rules, and now you’re going to pay for it.”
“Why are you taking his junk?” Isabelle asked curiously.
“Because I can.” Kathryn laughed.
“Well, that works for me.” Isabelle giggled. “Let’s handcuff him to the door just for fun.”
“Okay,” Kathryn trilled as she reached into the car for a set of cuffs in the console.
“Where’s my goddamn partner? What did you bitches do to him?”
“I don’t much care for your tone, Mr. Super Shit Agent. Alexis, do something.”
Alexis raised her foot and stomped down on the man’s nose. She winced as blood spurted in all directions. “Is that okay?”
“Just perfect. But we didn’t answer his question. Your partner is inside the gym. He got bitten by a black widow spider. Oh, I hear the ambulance now.” After handcuffing the Fed to the door, Kathryn dusted her hands dramatically, and observed, “Girls, I think our work here is done.”
“This was hard work. Let’s go get a nice cool drink,” Alexis said, as she removed her foot from the agent’s chest. The man’s arm snaked out, but Kathryn kicked him so hard in the side she heard a rib snap. She shrugged as she followed the girls to the van.
“Burn rubber, Nikki,” she shouted as she literally fell into the van, strong arms reaching to pull her to safety.
“How the hell did they find us?” Kathryn said, still in her snarling mood. “I didn’t spot a tail on our way here. There’s no way the FBI could know about Virgil. We have the files from Mitch Riley. Yantzy can’t have seen them, so like it or not, we screwed up, and those guys followed us. We’re slipping, girls!”
“Unless there’s a GPS bug on this van,” Nikki said. “We did not have a tail on the way up here. We need to get out of here. Kathryn, turn on the GPS and find an alternate route back home, just in case they have tails ready to pick us up on the route we took here.”
Annie stared at the wheelchair-bound man, a thoughtful expression on her face.
Virgil Anders finger-combed his hair as he stared up at the two women towering over him. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking?”
Annie sat down on one of the cushioned chairs at the table. “I was wondering how it is that you never tried to leave here. I understand your comfort level and zone, and I even understand your fear. You’re a prisoner, but then you already know that. Did you ever even try?”
Virgil Anders looked down at his legs and then up at Annie. “No. I never tried. The thought was always there in the back of my mind, but I never acted on it. What that meant was that I had to work extra hard not to get carried away with a possible escape. When it did happen, all I had to do was remember those two goons and the eighteen months I spent in the hospital. I knew if I tried, they’d kill me. It’s just that simple, and if you can’t understand it or won’t understand it, then it’s your problem. I’m alive. For all intents and purposes I have a good life. There is nothing I need or want except to be able to walk again, and that’s not going to happen. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m an old man.
“Maybe you can understand this. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t try to plan an escape, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t plan Hank Jellicoe’s death. It’s what has kept me going. I was engaged to be married when this all happened, did you know that?”
Annie and Myra shook their heads.
“Well, I was. I guess there’s no harm in telling you this. Her name was Margie Evans, and she came to see me every day in the hospital. Then when they brought me here, they told me I had to cut all ties. I knew they were watching me so I… buckled. I told myself I did it for Margie’s safety, but I was a coward. That’s the bottom line.”
Myra felt so sorry for the man sitting in front of her, she dropped to her knees and reached for his hands. “Do you want us to find her for you?”
“And have her see me like this? No! Not while Hank Jellicoe is still out there. No!”
“Mr. Anders, you said she stuck by you while you were in the hospital and came to see you every day. That has to mean she knew what your condition was, and she was okay with it. When you were at the library on the computer, didn’t you ever try?”
Anders shook his head. “I opted to let sleeping dogs lie. I would like to know that she’s okay. I think about her as much as I think about Hank Jellicoe and what might have been.”
If Anders was going to say anything else, he was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell.
The alarm on Anders’s face was so palpable that Myra and Annie were on their feet in a second. “No one called. How did they get past the guard? That guard carries a gun. You must have been followed!” This last sentence was almost a shriek of panic.
The French doors opened, and Avery Snowden stepped onto the lanai. He introduced himself and the men standing behind him.
Anders sagged in his wheelchair.
“Charles said an hour, and the hour is up right now, this minute,” Annie said happily.
Myra held out her hand. “You’re in good hands, Mr. Anders. Thank you for talking with us. We can see ourselves out.”
Annie held out her hand. Both women had turned to leave when Anders called out, “What about my book? What are you going to do with it?”
Annie laughed, a sound so strange even Avery Snowden looked startled. “Why, publish it, of course!”
Outside, Myra looked at Annie. “Oh, dear, we forgot we have to call for the golf cart to take us back to our car.”
“Not so, Miz Rutledge,” a deep voice said from the side of the house. “I’ll be more than happy to drive you to the gate.”
“I do love security, don’t you, Myra?” Annie said as she tripped along behind a burly man who was roughly the size of a tree.
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