Wyland let his right hand rest on the front of his coat where the two halves came together as he turned the knob and opened the next door. He could feel the grip of the Glock beneath the material. It was ready, as was he. The door swung shut behind and he began to walk across the emptied-out dining room, large and long, thick plastic draped over every wall, the ceiling, and covering the stone floor beneath his feet. Just ahead was the last door he would have to pass through. Beyond it his master would be waiting, likely engaged in some mild upbraiding of his architect. Perhaps the progress was too slow on the renovations. Or, less likely, too costly. Damian Traeger could afford anything he wanted. Could buy anything he desired.
Except another day on this earth.
Andrew Wyland slipped his hand under his coat. Whoever was with his master would be spared. His only designs were on the man himself. Once he was gone, a single bullet in the head, identical to what had killed Jefferson, would spare Cecelia and Little Charles from having to live through an arrest, and a trial, and incarceration. Two lives would end in this house. Of that Andrew Wyland was certain.
He was also wrong.
Twenty feet into the dining room, not quite a third of the way across the long space, he felt his knees begin to weaken. It was as if they’d suddenly turned to gelatinous stumps incapable of supporting his weight. The hand that had placed itself nearer the pistol in his waistband slipped away, as did the other, until both dangled limp at his sides. His weakened legs began to buckle, and in an instant he collapsed to the floor, body folding backward upon the multiple layers of thick plastic.
What’s happening?
He could still think, and see, and hear, but other functions he was aware were becoming laborious, if not impossible. He could not move, and each rise and fall of his chest as breaths were drawn in and expelled seemed more difficult that the one before.
“The doorknob.”
The voice was more than familiar. But as Andrew Wyland strained and shifted his gaze toward the man who’d spoken, he did not find the same level of familiarity. Standing just inside the far door out of the dining room as it closed behind him, Damian Traeger smiled at his assistant, the expression seeming garish beneath his newly shaved head. Gone were the neatly coiffed ripples of brown hair, as were the thick eyebrows which had arced over each blue pupil.
To Andrew Wyland, his employer, his master, looked like a demon. Or maybe the devil himself.
“You’re clearly wondering what’s happening,” Traeger said as he approached his assistant, snapping on a pair of blue latex gloves. “It was a contact poison on the doorknob. The military would call it a nerve agent.”
No…
“Yes,” Traeger said, answering the doubt he saw flourish in the dying man’s gaze. He looked briefly around the space, then back to Wyland. “I hope you’ll pardon the mess. I did have to lay an extra two layers of plastic down for you. The human body does such disgusting things when a life ends.”
A shallow gasp burst past Wyland’s lips, his fading mind grasping the horror that lay before him.
“Andrew, your choice disappoints me,” Traeger said as he stood over the man. “Actually, the fact that you so clumsily concocted this attempt on my life is all the more pitiful.”
He crouched, looking into Wyland’s swimming gaze. There was life in it, still. Life frantically search for a way to sustain itself. Breaths pulsed arrhythmically past his bluing lips. The body was dying as the mind raced.
“A man does not work for me unless I know all,” Traeger said. “Constantly. Do you know what that means?”
Wyland’s eyes tracked toward his master’s. Yes, he was that. The dying man accepted that without doubt now, in his final moments.
My master… My master…
“Surveillance,” Traeger said. “Cameras. Microphones. In your car. In your home. In your bedroom.”
Traeger leaned toward Wyland’s face, until he was almost whispering in the man’s ear.
“Your wife pleasures herself face down on the bed when you leave for work,” he said, easing back just enough so that Wyland could see the leering smile on his face. “That sweet little ass pumping up and down on her own fingers.”
Wyland managed another gasp. Whether the reaction was voluntary, or just one raspy breath closer to his last, Traeger did not know. Nor did he care. He reached down and shifted the man’s coat aside and retrieved the pistol he’d tucked inside his belt.
“It’s highly illegal for you to possess this, Andrew.”
Traeger looked the Glock over, testing the ubiquitous weapon’s weight in his grip before pressing the barrel against Wyland’s temple and pulling the trigger. The dying man’s eyes ballooned as a surprising click sounded.
“It would appear that your weapon doesn’t function properly,” Traeger said. He cycled the slide and squeezed the trigger again with the muzzle against the man’s forehead now, aiming downward. But another unsatisfying click was all that came, no explosion of a bullet tearing into Andrew Wyland’s dying brain. “You couldn’t have killed me even if I’d allowed you the chance.” Traeger tossed the Glock aside and once again leaned close to the man’s face. “No one can.”
He eased back and stood, turning his back on his assistant, staring at the artwork on the wall obscured by layers of plastic. Gauzy masterpieces hung like glimpses to some foggy past. Hounds chasing foxes. Horsemen in pursuit. Prim maidens posing beneath trees.
“I came from filth,” Traeger said. “You didn’t know that, did you?”
He took a few steps toward the paintings and regarded them from close up now, through layers of foggy film.
“This world, the one I have mastered, is still an alien world to me,” he went on. “I had to fight for food. I had to fight to keep my father from beating me to death. I had to fight so that I could stop fighting.”
Further still he stepped, until he was staring at the snarling hounds from just a foot away.
“I began my climb to this position as a brute,” Traeger said. “I killed a man when I was sixteen because he refused to pay what he owed me. He was thirty-two. Twice my age, and there was fear in his eyes when I came at him. I took more lives after that, Andrew. Two more. Three counting the life I take this day.”
He turned and looked to his assistant again, the man still as stone now, not a hint of movement about him, eyes open and fixed at the shrouded ceiling above.
“When you are willing to do what I have done, the machination of business pale by any measure.”
Traeger approached the dead man and crouched next to him, fixing on his lifeless stare. He seemed to bathe in the absent gaze. Savoring it.
“Enjoy the darkness, Andrew.”
He stood and slipped the gloves off, tossing them onto the body before leaving the dining room. The mess would be cleaned up and disposed of, as would the man’s car, both ending up in the ocean as the result of a suicide. The call Traeger had listened in on, where Wyland had appeared distraught bidding his wife goodbye, would only cement the belief that his assistant had suffered some breakdown. A terrible tragedy it would be seen as. By the time the body was found, if it ever was, any trace of the poison which had killed the man would be gone.
Damian Traeger, though, was focused not on that future possibility, but on a certainty. He retrieved his phone from his coat pocket and strolled out onto the patio overlooking the back lawn. His call was answered on the first ring.
“Miss Pedwill, I’m going to be away from the office on an extended trip,” Traeger said, running a hand over his newly smooth head. “See that my schedule is cleared and give my apologies to those who will be inconvenienced.”
“Yes, sir,” his secretary replied. “Do you have an idea when you will be back in the office?”
“I don’t,” Traeger told his secretary.
He ended the call and drew a breath of the cool air. In an hour he’d be gone from England, jetting west over the ocean, to the place where his prize still eluded him. Simon Lynch was o
n the run. Taken by the new liaison, it appeared. That was the report he’d received from the team leader on site immediately after the events unfolded. Andrew Wyland had never quite grasped that he was little more than a convenient middleman. A person onto whom responsibility could be dumped, should that become necessary. Now, that man had met his fate due to failure in those responsibilities. His mistakes would not be made again.
“Oh, savant,” Damian Traeger said to the breeze. “I’m coming for you.”
Twenty Nine
The Blackhawk raced toward the rising sun.
They were more than an hour into their flight. They’d be crossing the Rocky Mountains now, Emily knew. That was based upon calculations she’d discussed with Kirby Gant before their last meeting had ended, where routes and timetables were suggested. A simple look past the co-pilot, though, was indication enough of their location.
Snow-capped peaks stabbed up from below, jagged and bleak. But also beautiful bathed in the light of dawn. Emily savored the view for a moment, then looked down to her left, Simon Lynch curled up against the side of the cabin, a jacket she’d taken from one of the crewmembers’ bags wrapping him against the chill.
“Simon…”
He wasn’t asleep. But he wasn’t much interested in the waking world at that moment, either. All that Simon Lynch could think about was Art. His friend, Art.
Why would you do that?
He was so used to having every answer, to every question, but that was in his old world. In his old life. In this life, not everything made sense. He was coming to understand that. But this?
“Simon,” Emily repeated. “Look.”
She gestured toward the front of the helicopter. Simon rose slowly, holding onto the back of the co-pilot’s seat. He looked first to Emily, and then out the windshield, gasping lightly at the grandeur he was witness to. A smile built slowly on his face, thin and tinged with uncertainty, but it was real.
“Not bad, right?” Emily asked him.
Simon couldn’t take his eyes from the view as he replied. “This is what it’s like.”
“What?”
“The world,” he answered.
Emily smiled now. “A lot of it is like this. Enough that you can forget the rest most of the—”
“I’m…”
The co-pilot interrupted the quiet, almost blissful exchange, turning his head to look at Emily, his face as white as a ghost.
“I’m…sorry.”
What the hell…
The man began to wobble in his seat, the Blackhawk mimicking his motion as the controls teetered in his grip. Emily tucked the pistol in the back of her waistband and reached to the man, steadying him as the aircraft rocked severely.
“Hey,” she said, and the co-pilot’s swimming gaze found hers. “What’s—”
She didn’t have to finish the question. What she felt on her hand, and what she saw when she pulled it back from where it had touched him on his chest, told her all she needed to know—blood. He’d been shot in the initial volley of sniper fire which had taken out his crewmates.
Dammit!
Why the man hadn’t said anything, she could only imagine. Maybe he’d been in shock. Possibly her forceful ordering of him to get airborne might have shifted his realization of his situation. Or maybe he’d just wanted to get out of there where it was certain they would all die.
Now, that might be the fate they all still faced.
Emily leaned into the cockpit, the dead pilot behind her now, and put a hand to the co-pilot’s face as he struggled to keep his aircraft under control.
“Put us down,” she told him. “Somewhere. As quickly as you can.”
He drew a few fast breaths and forced himself to straighten in his seat, nodding at her directive. An order which had been given not past the barrel of a gun, but out of a desire to live.
“I’ll set us down,” the co-pilot said, his attention out the windshield now, eyes scanning for a spot to land in the mountainous terrain.
Emily left him and grabbed Simon, pushing him into a seat designated for one of two crewmen behind the cockpit. In wartime, door gunners would occupy these stations, manning machineguns which would rain fire upon an enemy. Now, one would, hopefully, hold the man she’d saved securely through what would surely be a difficult landing.
“Buckle up,” she told him.
Simon fumbled with the unfamiliar fasteners, forcing Emily to strap him in. He watched her work with haste as the Blackhawk bucked and rolled, the co-pilot maneuvering between peaks that loomed prominent beyond the side windows.
“Twenty seconds…”
Emily heard the co-pilot’s warning, but only barely. He was fading from blood loss. She could see it in his eyes when she’d looked into them. There was the will to stay alive, but the reality of his situation was dragging him toward the inevitable.
“Simon,” Emily said. “If we crash, and I can’t help you…”
She stopped there, trying to imagine what direction she could give Simon which would keep him from being thrown back into the confined life the government had made for him. There weren’t many options. Maybe none.
“Find someone and tell them your story,” Emily finally said.
She pulled away from Simon, hating that those words were all she could offer him as she buckled herself into the seat facing him from across the cabin.
“Going down,” the co-pilot said.
The Blackhawk seemed to almost fall from the sky, its nose pitched severely forward. Emily strained for a glimpse past the co-pilot and his dead colleague and saw a mix of grey rock and white drifts before the helicopter’s nose came up again, almost too much, its forward momentum stopping dead as it settled hard onto an uneven patch of earth, tipping to the right. She heard the engines above slow, main and tail rotors spinning down. It was almost too anticlimactic. There had been no crunching of metal, no shattering of rotor blades against unforgiving granite. It was simply over.
They were down.
“Stay there,” Emily told Simon. She released her seatbelt and went to the cockpit, finding the co-pilot slumped forward now against his own safety harness. There was no question that she had to get Simon away from the landing site, but she couldn’t leave the wounded man there to die in the cold.
As it was, that was a concern she did not need to face.
She eased his body upright and tipped his head back, all about him still. Somehow he’d given the last measure of his life executing a landing in nearly impossible terrain. One glance out the windshield confirmed what he’d faced—walls of sheer rock surrounding an icy, uneven snowfield.
Jesus…
There was a momentary flourish of guilt. The man wouldn’t have been in a position to be shot if she hadn’t forced a meeting at The Ranch. But she couldn’t weigh his fate against what Simon Lynch faced—a lifetime of isolation and coerced servitude by people who were supposed to be his protectors. She’s done what she had to do. She’d done what was right. Blood had been spilled.
But Simon Lynch, for now, was free.
“Let’s go,” Emily said, unfastening Simon’s safety belts. As she finished she stopped cold, catching sight of his feet.
No shoes…
There’d been no time to prepare him for the escape. He’d simply followed her orders as they fled and boarded the chopper. But there was no way he could make his way through the freezing landscape in bare feet.
There was a macabre answer to that situation, though.
“Don’t move,” Emily told Simon.
He struggled to stay in his seat, which was pitched forward with the listing aircraft, watching as Emily leaned into the cockpit again and released the pilot’s safety harness. She dragged his limp body into the passenger cabin, blood smearing the floor, one side of his helmet blasted away from a direct headshot. In less than a minute she had the man’s boots and socks off, and slipped the footwear, two sizes too large, onto Simon’s feet, lacing them up quickly.
“Okay, li
sten,” she said, making the man focus on her. “I don’t know where we are, but we have to move damn fast.” She reached into another gear bag stowed by the crew and retrieved a jacket for herself. “This helicopter is going to stand out like a turd on a tablecloth. They’ll find it in no time.”
“Where are we going?”
Emily fished through the crews’ gear, taking a small survival kit and shoving it into a coat pocket. “We’ll get to that later. Come on.”
She moved to the side door and worked the manual release, sliding the door half open with difficulty. Something had been wrenched out of alignment when they came down hard, forcing her to hold the door open for Simon to exit. But he did not move.
“Simon, we can’t waste time. Please.”
He rose from his seat, crouching in the low confines of the cabin, and moved toward her, hesitating once more as he looked to the snowy world outside.
I remember snow…
“Simon…”
Simon Lynch looked to Emily LaGrange as she struggled to keep the damaged door from sliding shut. Her face revealed that struggle. And more. She was fighting for him, and, as much, for herself.
“Okay,” Simon said, then climbed from the Blackhawk and stepped down into the snow.
* * *
‘Daddy’s gonna push you…’
It was behind their blue house, in the small yard, with a skim of snow no deeper than the soles of his shoes, but, somehow, his father had pushed enough of the wintry white into a pile to create a small hill that his son could sled down.
‘Hold on tight…’
Simon Lynch could still feel the side rails of the old sled in his hands as he held on to them that day. That day when he was seven years old. That day deep in the lost moments of his old life.
He’d never thought of that brief, simple event since its occurrence. A son being gently pushed down an even gentler slope by his father in some attempt at normalcy. Simon knew that he’d expressed no joy at that moment. He hadn’t laughed or raised his mitten-covered hands into the air as the sled carried him twenty feet through the cold December air.
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