by Justin Bell
“Sounds like you’ve been through quite a bit,” Rhonda said. “Why don’t you crash here with us for a bit, okay?”
“That’s cool,” Tamar replied. “But I gotta get back soon, you know? Lonzo’s probably already sweating me being gone. I’m one of the older ones, and I help him out quite a bit. I can’t just run off on ‘em.”
“I get it,” Rebecca replied. “We’ll get you back there, soon as we can, okay?”
Tamar seemed to think about this for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
He started to walk away, heading down the aisle, navigating around the growing pile of boxed and canned goods.
Rhonda took a step forward. “Oh!” she said. “Before I forget!” She stepped toward him, her fingers fishing around in her jeans pocket. “You said you ran across a lot of kids in Chicago, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” he replied.
Rhonda showed him a folded photograph, a wallet-sized picture of Lydia, folds creasing her face and hair.
Tamar almost immediately drew back. “Where’d you get this?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
Tamar glowered at her. “Seriously, lady. Where did you get this? How do you know this girl?”
“She’s my daughter,” Rhonda said. “Max’s sister. Lydia Fraser. We’ve been looking for her… ever since the first bombs went off.” It felt like a lifetime ago. A glimmer of trust shifted across Tamar’s gray eyes and he bent over to look at the picture again.
“Dang,” he said. “Sure looks like her.”
“Where did you see her, Tamar?” Rhonda asked, clamping a hand around his shoulder. “Did you see her?”
“I… I think so, yeah,” Tamar replied. He looked back at Max who was unloading another armful of supplies. “I told Max about it. There was a girl. She joined up with us early on, but…”
“But what? But what?” Rhonda was almost shouting.
“During that Ironclad attack. That one that seemed to come from nowhere? The one that killed two of our Orphans…”
“What happened?”
“She vanished. Just ‘poof’,” Tamar said, making a motion like a cloud of smoke with his hands. “They swept in, started firing at us, killed two, and either she ran or they snapped her up, I don’t know which, but she was gone with the wind.”
Rhonda was breathing hard, her chest heaving. A molten rock formed in the pit of her stomach, fingers of stone clenching into a tight, thick fist. She could feel the pinch of tears at the corners of her eyes as her breath came out in hoarse, ragged gasps.
“I’m… I’m sorry, Rhonda,” Tamar said. “I don’t know where she is now.”
Rhonda looked at him. “Maybe you don’t. But I’m betting Ironclad does.” She looked over at Rebecca, who was already exchanging the determined gaze.
“Ironclad Security doesn’t mess around,” Rebecca replied. “You saw how they were equipped. If not for the helicopter…”
“I know,” Rhonda replied. “Trust me, I know. But we need to figure something out. We need to do something.”
Rebecca nodded. Now they had two objectives. Consolidated Tool & Die and Ironclad Security. Both global conglomerates. Both with reinforced security, and both with some strange role in this new world order.
Former FBI Agent Fields realized then and there that she needed to be careful what she wished for. Sometimes those wishes came true.
Chapter 5
Rebecca leaned back in the soft transport chair of the helicopter, pulling her arm over her sweat soaked face. Even through the growing cloud cover, the radiant heat of the early summer sun cooked down on the wide asphalt, creating a sauna inside the metal aircraft. Not for the first time, she wondered why she went out day after day, combing through the same useless paperwork trying to find that tiny needle in the haystack, a needle she was increasingly concerned did not exist. She had thought about moving the boxes inside, where their contents could be more easily spread out and poured over, but the helicopter was more than a dead hunk of metal. It felt like a sanctuary of sorts. A place to remember her fallen comrades, where she could disconnect from what was going on in the world and focus on trying to solve the mystery.
Two swift raps on the metal hide of the copter caught her attention, and she sat up, looking toward the open side door where Angel emerged, using the door as leverage to climb up inside.
“Everything all right with you?” Angel asked as he sat in a seat across the narrow aisle from her. Rebecca caught herself leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, looking at the floor rather than him.
She glanced over at him, looking out over mirrored aviator sunglasses. “It’s all good,” she replied a bit more curt than she intended.
“Don’t BS me,” Angel said. “What’s going on?”
Fields sat up, drawing in a breath, but once again looking away from him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a convict?”
Angel smiled and closed his eyes, nodding. “Ah,” he said. “So that’s it.”
“That’s it? Yeah, that’s it. In case you don’t remember, I’m with the FBI. I built my career around arresting criminals. Then I find out you are one?”
“What do you want me to say, Rebecca? I’m in a no-win situation here. I tell you what really happens, you tell me it’s bull and then I’m a liar as well as a convict.”
“What did happen?” Rebecca asked. “Talk to me, Angel.”
Angel crossed his arms, considering his next words. “Only thing I’m guilty of is not choosing a better crowd to hang out with. I ran with my brother’s boys back in the day, and yeah, my brother was a gang banger.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, I didn’t know he was a gang banger, and I ran with him and his crew, just doing some tagging, you know? A little spray-painting, no big thing. Only the cops chased us down. Not cops, actually, just one cop. I don’t know why he didn’t call for backup, but he didn’t, and he chased us into this warehouse.”
Rebecca turned in her seat to look at him, hands folded in her lap.
“So, my brother, the gang banger, the cop spots him and, well… my brother opened up on him. Shot him dead, right then and there.”
“My God,” Rebecca said, leaning back.
“I froze,” Angel continued. “I was in shock. My brother and his pals they all took off runnin’, left me holding the bag. I stood right there stunned up until more cops showed up and took me down.”
“And you never told the police any of this?”
Angel looked up from the grated floor. “What would I say? Half of the guys in my block were in a gang. I rat out my brother, I end up with a shiv in my neck. Besides, I already saw what me going to prison did to my mom, I couldn’t do that to her twice. Better just to take the fall.”
“That’s unbelievable, Angel,” Rebecca whispered. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“I don’t like talking about it,” he continued. “Most people, they don’t even believe me. Think I’m telling tales so I don’t look so guilty.” His eyes looked straight into hers. “But I swear, that’s not what I’m doing. I had nothing to do with that cop’s death. I’m not a criminal.”
Rebecca looked down, then looked back at him. “I believe you,” she mumbled. “When did you last talk to your mom? Does she know you’re alive?”
Angel shrugged. “My whole family’s from South Cali. Ain’t none of them still breathing right now. Nobody for me to talk to. Nobody except maybe you.”
Fields’ cheeks flushed, and she smiled again. “You can talk to me any time, Angel, okay? I’m sorry for what happened to you, and I’m sorry for not letting you explain before getting pissed.”
“Ah, it’s okay,” Angel said. “I get it.”
Rebecca pushed herself upright, turning to the rear of the helicopter where other boxes were stacked. Angel moved quickly, stepping into her and wrapping his arms around her in a tight embrace. She laughed playfully and returned the brief hug and then he pulled away, looking at her.
As he stepped away, his fingers clipped something on her belt and her flashlight snapped free and fell to the metal floor, hitting with an echoing clang, then rolling down onto the exit steps toward the left cargo door.
“Nice one, butterfingers,” she quipped, and he chuckled as she pulled away. “I can’t lose that flashlight, man!” Dropping to her knees, she reached down the exit steps, her fingers working around the metal, looking for the small, cylindrical device. As her fingers dug into the grates of the steps, she felt something.
“Huh,” she whispered, pressing down more closely to the floor.
“Whatcha got?” Angel asked, leaning forward to look down over her shoulder.
“Something funny about the grate here,” she replied. Twitching her fingers, a small click echoed in the still air inside the aircraft, and a metal panel came free in the stairs, sliding right out of twin grooves and coming free into her grasp. She lifted, the square panel coming away and Angel moved forward snatching it from her fingers and tossing it onto the seat.
“Oh my—” Fields said from down on the floor. “Oh, man. Oh, man!”
“What is it?” Angel asked, stepping forward. Fields looked back at him over her left shoulder.
“I think we hit the jackpot. There’s two more boxes down here! Boxes from DEA headquarters in Houston. Two of the boxes I snatched for Orosco!”
“What are they doing down there?” Angel asked.
Rebecca leaned to her left, pushing her arm deep into a hidden storage compartment underneath the floor and behind the exit stairs. Slowly she dragged one of the boxes free, then pushed herself up on her knees, pulling the box out, and Angel moved to lift it from her. She repeated the motion and moments later two white boxes sat on the floor between them, two boxes they hadn’t seen and she’d never gone through.
“Orosco probably still didn’t really know who to trust. He probably figured he’d stash the most sensitive stuff down there where he could poke and prod after we got up here.”
“Only he never lived long enough to do it.”
“Right.”
“But you did.”
“Oh, I did. And now we’re going to figure out what’s going on here.”
***
Once again her dreams were drenched in shades of gray. She clearly remembered her days at the cabin, the vibrant green grass, the sprawling pearlescent blue sky, scattered with thick clumps of white, cotton clouds. But in these memories, she didn’t see colors, everything just shifts of various shades of dark and light. The cabin was a flat, shapeless black, the sky a dull swath of pencil lead gray. Instead of white, the clouds were a muddy metal of brown, looking like blunt, broken chunks, and not the soft welcoming of cotton.
Even the grass was pale beige, a vast lawn well past its prime.
“In the car, Rhonda,” her father said, opening the passenger door and gesturing inside.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her shrill voice a stark reminder of just how young she had been when the training had started.
“Don’t worry about it, dear,” her mother said, looking at the two of them from the front porch of the cabin. She wore an apron, one that Rhonda remembered as being red and white, but in these memories it looked like mottled gray spattered with wet dirt. “Your father knows best.”
“Get in the car, Rhonda.”
She couldn’t remember how far they drove, just that the trees smeared past them into gray streaks one right after another, a constant wave of passing background noise, crowding over the truck, blocking out the sun and sky.
“Where are we going, dad?” she asked.
“Field trip,” her dad replied, flashing her a humorless wink.
“I don’t want to go on a field trip, dad.”
“We don’t always get what we want, do we Rhonda? The world is full of things none of us want.” His eyes stayed firm, pointing forward out the windshield, the truck rattling over the uneven surface of the dirt road. Trees blew past windows.
The truck turned left and seemed to be driving through the trees, jerking over bumpy terrain, lurching along the rough dirt road, slinking through rapidly encroaching trees on each side. It was almost like they were driving directly through the forest, and Rhonda expected them to run into a tree at any time now.
Turning again, the truck swung around a large tree and shuddered to a halt, surrounded by more of the same trees, the sun filtered through the crowding branches, casting strangely shaped shadows along the metal hide of the truck.
“Hop on out, chief,” her father said.
“Where are we, dad?”
“Be a good girl and hop on out.”
Rhonda opened the door and hopped out, feet hitting soft mud. Her father came around the hood of the truck, a small backpack looped around curled fingers.
“Everything you need is in here,” he said, tossing the backpack toward her. Rhonda caught it and slid the zipper, glancing inside. There was a knife, a small pistol, a flashlight, a lighter and a compass, but not much else.
“See you at home,” her father said, turning back to the truck.
“Daddy?” she asked, standing in the small clearing, trees curled over her, watching down on her from above.
“Eat what you kill. Drink what you find. Home is twenty miles north by northwest.”
“Don’t leave me out here, dad—”
He slid in the car and gunned the engine, sending it roaring as he shifted into reverse, then charged backwards, back along the same dirt road they’d entered on.
“Dad!”
The truck’s headlights faded, then the truck swerved around and slammed forward down the access road, its scant, rust-colored hide fading behind the thickening trees.
Rhonda looked around, the narrow trees growing together into a thickening forest, seeing nothing but woods on all sides, the silence consuming and deafening. She stood there, she wasn’t sure how long, her backpack dangling from her fingers, brown eyes scanning the surrounding trees. A light, sprinkling rain spat down on her from above, a chilled, sharp rain, pelting her bare arms and forehead. She could hear the faint thunder of the pickup truck driving off into the trees, leaving her there, alone, with only her backpack and her brain to get her home.
Twenty miles, north by northwest.
Rhonda could still feel the prick of tears sticking at the corners of her eyes, a thin pin poking her there, the narrow wetness coating the irises, threatening to spill out over her young cheeks. She drew in a hard sniffle, and dropped into a crouch, rummaging through the backpack, peeling out the compass and checking for north by northwest.
***
“She didn’t get much sleep last night,” the voice said, faded and distant, a vague, stuttering male tenor only at the bare fringe of Rhonda’s memory.
“None of us are getting much sleep,” another voice replied, and as Rhonda swam up from the depths of dozing, she thought it sounded like Rebecca Fields.
The other voice was Phil, she recognized it now. “I know, I get it. I’m just trying to keep her head in a good place, you know?”
“I understand, Phil,” Fields replied, far enough away that her voice was somewhat faint, but close enough that the waking Rhonda could make out all the words. “This is important, okay? Really important, I think she’ll want to know.”
“Phil, it’s all right,” Rhonda called out as she swung her legs off the mattress, sitting upright, holding herself there with her palms. The world still swarmed around her in an unfocused haze as she pulled herself, clawing and clutching, from the deepened sleep of the exhausted.
Phil walked over, stepping around a bed. “You’re okay?”
“Yeah, ‘m good,” Rhonda replied, her voice slurred. With the hubbub last night with Max, Brad, and Angel’s late arrival, she’d stayed up well past when everyone else had retired, electing to take a chunk of the watch so Winnie and Phil could get some rest. She’d gone to bed shortly after Rebecca had gone out to work on the helicopter, and had slept around two hours.
“Sorry to get you up,” Rebecca said as she approached, and Rhonda could vaguely make out a gathered group behind her. Angel was watching her closely, with Tamar and Max flanking him, Phil standing off to the side watching the whole exchange with a keenly honed irritance. “I saw you come in just a couple of hours ago.”
“It’s okay,” Rhonda replied, looking around and feeling exposed. Sleeping in a large, opened mattress store was bad enough, but crawling awake with your hair sprawled everywhere to find a group of four people watching you was downright frightening. “If it’s important, it’s important.”
“It has to do with what we discussed last night,” Fields said.
“Ironclad?”
The former FBI agent nodded. “And Consolidated Tool & Die.”
“Wait a minute,” a voice said from behind them, and Fields turned around. Tamar was stepping forward. “Did y’all say Consolidated Tool & Die?”
Fields nodded. “Yeah, what about it?”
“Ironclad works with ‘em. Or they’ve worked with them before.”
“What?” Rhonda asked, slipping off the bed.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Rebecca interjected, holding up a fistful of notebooks. “I found Orosco’s notes in the helicopter. Notes and boxes full of evidence backing them up. He had them stashed away in some secret compartment in there.”
“Yeah, man,” Tamar said, walking up to them. “We used to see Consolidated crates all the time at Ironclad’s building. And I’m pretty sure Ironclad dudes drove around in Consolidated trucks. We always thought it was kinda strange, but figured they had some kind of working relationship based on the stuff going down in Chicago.”
“What did you find out, Rebecca?”
“Oh this stuff goes much deeper than that,” she said. “I’ve got organizational charts in here. Reports of stock holdings, financial records. A few profit and loss statements. Ironclad and Consolidated don’t just work together, they’re practically sister companies. Shareholders with majority stakes in both companies. Like serious majority stakes.”