Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel

by S. A. Lelchuk

  “Don’t tell me that’s still a thing? In California?”

  She took a swallow of scotch. “With Newport Beach Republicans? Very much so. Especially when they’re convinced that the loving partner is only in it to inherit their millions. That’s the thing about people with money. If you don’t have it, they’re convinced you must want it. And the more you protest, the more convinced they become.”

  I picked up the mouse and threw it. Watched the cat sprint across the floor, gray legs a blur. No doubt in his mind about what he was pursuing, I thought jealously. “You can’t skip the visit?”

  “Nope. Thanksgiving, every year. Part of the deal we made. Even though her father still won’t have me at his damn golf course. One of those old-boys clubs that would rather choke to death than have to choke down some diversity.”

  “Well, let them choke.” I finished my drink. The ZEBRAS were packing up their books and food. The store was empty. “You should get out of here. I can close up.”

  “In a few,” Jess agreed. “Finishing some paperwork.”

  Upstairs, I looked up Brenda Johnson’s number. If her husband had been at Care4 I wanted to learn why. But I dialed a different number first.

  “Hey, stranger,” I said.

  “Nikki?”

  “Vietnamese food,” I answered. “How did you know it’s a favorite?”

  Ethan’s voice brightened. “Some random girl once told me that everyone makes assumptions. Something about how the only question is if they’re right or not.”

  “A random girl? From what I understand that’s generally a very trustworthy type.”

  “So … I was right?”

  I answered with a question. “You free tonight?”

  “Sure,” he said, surprised. “I mean, I’ll have to ditch my friends for trivia, which means they’ll probably lose, but they’ll get over it. We usually lose anyway, to be honest. I tend to blame the questions. They’re way too superficial.”

  “Tell me where,” I said, “and I’ll see you in an hour.”

  As I hung up I felt better. I wanted to see him again. I wanted to talk books or laugh or lean against his shoulder, feel an arm around me and not say a word. Not make decisions. I didn’t even want to see a menu. I picked up the phone again, dialed Brenda Johnson’s number. No answer. I’d try her later.

  Meet me there at ten o’clock tonight.

  I’ll tell you everything I know.

  But ten o’clock had been too late. Too late for Karen to tell me.

  Too late for me to save her.

  That afternoon. The look of fear on her delicate face. Her eyes showing frustration and helplessness all at once. Frustration, because there was so much I didn’t understand. Helplessness, because there was so much that she did understand.

  And I had sent her off to die.

  I poured a new drink and started going through the photographs again. I’d stared at the faces so many times I felt like I knew each person. Who were they? Why did they want to do evil things to innocents? A handsome man with tousled hair walking out of a mosque. A woman with sad eyes and a haunted face, mid-step, black hair swinging in a frozen ponytail. A skinny man kicking a soccer ball in an asphalt lot. A woman with a round, determined face and high forehead, seated in a restaurant, fork halfway to her mouth. A tough-looking man in an overcoat, hurrying somewhere, a satchel clutched in one hand.

  I stopped at one picture. A man with a missing tooth. The same man who had smiled out from the blurry newspaper photo. Someone who was now, according to the newspapers, a dead man. What did that mean? How did it connect? I stared at the photograph, feeling that there was something just out of reach. I pushed my frustration away, forcing myself to think logically through the possibilities.

  One: he was an anticorruption blogger, just as it seemed, and he had committed suicide for whatever reason, just as they said. Which was completely possible. Families were notoriously unwilling to accept a loved one’s suicide. Fairly or not, a suicide forced people to ask all kinds of unpleasant questions of themselves. Far easier to think of death as something involuntary, even unavoidable.

  Two: he was indeed a journalist of some kind but his widow was right and he had been killed. Which could have happened for any number of reasons. Maybe he’d simply written the wrong piece that stirred up some unrelated trouble. Or just run afoul of some local gangsters, maybe had a bad debt, a gambling problem. Blogging about corruption didn’t automatically confer sainthood.

  Three: he wasn’t a blogger at all, but something more sinister. If he’d been part of some kind of cell, it wasn’t stretching the imagination to think that he could have gotten cold feet and been killed after trying to back out. Or government security forces had gotten to him. Egypt’s security forces were notoriously violent, even for the Middle East. In recent years, they’d killed thousands, often for little or no reason. If they suspected a blogger or anyone else had even the most tenuous jihadist connections, his life would be worth nothing once they found him.

  People will die.

  Karen Li had told me that whatever I thought, it was worse. If there was a plot, and the people in these photos were involved, what was the target? The final week of October and I still didn’t know who was being targeted, what milestone Care4 was approaching, or what these pictures had to do with it. And why did I have the unsettling feeling that I was missing something?

  I flipped through the pictures, noting the foreign backgrounds and different languages. Arabic, Spanish, English, Cyrillic. What was being planned? What was I not seeing?

  Feeling more than ever that I was missing something important.

  * * *

  The office had grown dark. The days were shorter, approaching daylight savings. I tried Brenda again, once again reached her voice mail. Mentally running through what I wanted to wear to the restaurant, I decided I’d just get in touch tomorrow. I wanted time to shower and put on a little makeup before dinner. I hadn’t seen Ethan in a while. I wanted to look nice. Outside, Telegraph Avenue was busy with traffic and pedestrians. A black van with impenetrably tinted windows pulled up across the street and double-parked. One of the big Mercedes Sprinters used for airport pickups or to ferry around private school tennis teams.

  Three men in suits got out of the van.

  Not a tennis team.

  The three of them approached the crosswalk.

  One of them pressed the Walk button.

  They waited.

  I watched.

  The flashing orange figurine froze white.

  The three men crossed the street.

  They paused in front of my motorcycle. I had parked it on the sidewalk near the bookstore. One of the men nodded toward it. As though expecting to see something, and then seeing it.

  They continued toward the bookstore.

  My ears vaguely registered a cracking sound. The mug I’d been holding had fallen to the floor. I hit the intercom button in a rush, my voice urgent. “Jess? Are you there?” Praying for no response. Silence would mean she had already gone home.

  The men had almost reached the door.

  I heard Jess’s voice in the intercom. Casual, unconcerned. “Yeah, what’s up?”

  My heart was hammering. Danger. Not arbitrary. Not distant. Right on top of me. “When I hired you,” I said. “You made me promise. No micromanaging. You remember?”

  She was confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Have I ever told you to do anything?”

  She was more confused. “Nikki, what is this—”

  “I’m telling you now. You need to hide. Get out of sight. And no matter what you hear or see, don’t move.”

  Even through the cheap intercom speaker I could hear the sudden fear in her voice. “Nikki, what are you talking about? Is this a joke? You’re scaring me.”

  “Do it,” I hissed. The three men were huddled around the entrance to the bookstore. One of them stepped forward. He tried the door. It was unlocked.

  They walke
d inside.

  I climbed onto my desk, holding the envelope full of photographs. A ceiling panel was loose. I slid the envelope underneath, got down from the desk, and unlocked my safe.

  The monitors showed the three men dispersing into the store.

  I pulled a customized pump-action Remington shotgun out of the safe. I’d removed the standard walnut stock and replaced it with a stainless-steel folding stock and pistol grip. More portable. Better for close range. I worked quickly, loading the shotgun from two different boxes of shells, back and forth. I glanced at the monitors. The biggest of the three men stood at the door to the downstairs office, which was now closed. The other two had fanned out in the store. The man by the door tried the handle. Locked.

  He started to turn away.

  I breathed out in relief.

  He turned and delivered a savage kick. I watched. Trying not to think about the bedroom door of the Narwhal Cottages, forced open with that same strength. The man walked into the office. I couldn’t see Jess but my eyes moved from a desk in the back of the small room, to a couch set against the wall opposite the door, to a Japanese-style hinged, three-panel screen accenting a corner. Jess would be under or behind one of the three.

  She had to be. There was nowhere else to hide.

  The big man’s eyes were on the Japanese screen. His feet took him a step closer to it. Couch, desk, or screen. A one-out-of-three chance she had chosen wrong. Like a card game, except the stakes were indescribably higher than in any casino.

  Another step moved him within arm’s range.

  His hand shot out and ripped the screen away.

  Blank wall.

  Two places left.

  The big guy’s eyes turned to the couch. The couch, maroon upholstery on short cylindrical legs, was just high enough to fit a body under it, but low enough to the ground that someone standing would have to duck down to see all the way underneath.

  The big guy stepped toward the couch, squatted down.

  One gone, two possible places remaining. Down to a fifty-fifty chance.

  With despair I saw movement from under the couch, like an arm shifting to pull back out of sight. She was there. The man saw the motion, too. He leaned forward on one hand for a better look, his big frame visibly tensing.

  More movement.

  Bartleby the cat emerged sleepily from under the couch, his gray tail unfurling.

  Frustrated, the big guy reached a hand out and shoved Bartleby out of the way, hard.

  Bartleby had been a shelter cat before Jess had adopted him. There was no telling what he’d been through early in his life. He was sociable by nature, but he valued his own space, too, especially fresh from a nap. And no one liked being shoved. He answered the intrusion by raking his claws hard across the extended hand with a motion so fast I could barely see it. Deep tracks of blood appeared instantly. The big guy leapt up, cursing silently on the monitor. He aimed a tremendous kick at Bartleby, who was already halfway to the door. The man chased after him, holding his hand, and launched another kick that had even less of a chance of landing than the first. He reappeared back on the previous monitor, in between the shelves, shaking his head in pain or disgust and rubbing his bleeding hand. The cat had vanished. Bartleby probably knew the bookstore’s space better than I did. If he didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be.

  The big guy kicked a table over in frustration. Books scattered across the floor. The office search forgotten.

  I pushed my relief aside as I saw the men regroup and eye the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign on the door leading upstairs. I had left it unlocked. On the next monitor the three men climbed the stairs. Their pace purposeful but unhurried.

  Now each of the men held a gun.

  My turn.

  Shotgun braced against my shoulder, I knelt behind the open door of the safe, the steel blocking most of my body. I had a clear line of fire straight through to the door.

  The first of the three men reached the top of the stairs.

  When loading the shotgun, I had alternated between buckshot and metal slugs. Six in total. The buckshot would punch a circular, twelve-inch pattern through inch-and-a-half-thick plywood. The solid metal slugs could take fist-size chunks out of hardwood trees or stop a thousand-pound charging grizzly. The pump action would fire as fast as I could work the slide and pull the trigger. I could get off six rounds in less than three seconds if I wanted.

  I breathed evenly. In and out. Trying to slow my pulse.

  Time slowed, sharpened.

  The first man who walked through the door would die.

  That was a certainty. I’d put a two-and-a-half-inch steel slug traveling at 1,500 feet per second through him before he took a step. Didn’t matter if he wore Kevlar under his jacket. Bulletproof was always relative. The metal slugs would go through a bulletproof vest like cheap denim.

  The question was the next two men. It would be a firefight. Chaos. Bullets going everywhere. A lot would depend on their experience. How they’d react after their friend crashed backward toward them with a hole in his chest big enough to fit a softball. Whether they’d panic. A lot more would depend on dumb luck. The random geometry of which bullets happened to go where. There were three of them. But I had a shotgun and a defensive position. I figured that gave me an even chance of surviving the next two minutes.

  The lead man was at the door. I racked the shotgun. Took a breath in. Let it out.

  It was time.

  Then he did something strange.

  He knelt like he was tying a shoe. He was putting his gun on the floor, I realized. He stood and reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. For an unsettling moment, I wondered if he had some kind of explosive he planned to use. Something I hadn’t considered.

  He looked up into the camera above the door. I saw a hardened face, a sharp jaw, and pale eyes. He raised whatever he held toward the camera. A piece of glossy paper. A Polaroid. He stretched his arm up. Slowly, the picture filled the monitor. And then I understood. The lighting wasn’t great and the picture quality was only decent. But the face was one I would have recognized anywhere, regardless of bad lighting or fuzzy detail. A face as familiar as my own.

  I was looking at my brother.

  34

  Shotgun at hip level, I walked across the room, opened the door, and stepped back. The three men stood in front of me without bothering to move out of the way of the shotgun barrel. Guns barely pointed at me. I wasn’t going to shoot. Worse, they knew it.

  “Nikki,” the lead man said, stepping into the room. The other two moved in behind him. “We’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

  I held the shotgun barrel less than two feet from his chest. “Where is he?”

  “May we come in?” His accent sounded Eastern European.

  I backed up. “Where is he?” I repeated.

  “All in due time. May we?”

  “Don’t play cute,” I snapped. “Don’t act like you waltzed in looking for a first edition. You have him. Where is he?”

  “You seem anxious. I hope you will not accidentally shoot me.”

  “When I shoot you, I promise it will be on purpose. Where is he?”

  “Your brother is somewhere safe.”

  One of the other two guys grinned. “He says hello to his big sister.” The speaker was the one who had kicked in the door downstairs. With satisfaction I saw Bartleby’s claw marks, lurid against his hand. He was the youngest and largest of the three, in his twenties, maybe six foot three or four, and the weight to match. He had the build and bearing of a hockey enforcer. The kind of guy who comes along for a fight and goes home disappointed if he doesn’t find one. His face was pockmarked by old acne scars and his hair was long and greasy with some kind of product.

  I ignored him and addressed the lead man. He was running the show. “What do you want?”

  “We want to talk to you.”

  “Talk. Right.”

  He shrugged, his eyes pale and expressionless. “We have to ask some qu
estions about what you know. Call it due diligence. Then, if the answers are okay, we all go home happy.”

  “I don’t do a thing until I see my brother.”

  He smiled. “We would expect nothing less.”

  Expect. With a helpless feeling, I realized that everything I was doing and saying was playing into their hands. “Fine. Go get him.”

  “We go to him,” the man corrected. “Put your gun down. You can ride with us.”

  “Not a chance.”

  His eyes were an unnaturally pale color and conveyed a reptilian disinterest. “You misunderstand. Maybe I’ve been too polite,” he said. His smile was gone and his words, lightly coated by the accent, were clipped and careful. “Let me try again. Put that shotgun down and come with us, or our friend, who is babysitting your little brother, will use a hacksaw to remove his feet below the ankles.”

  I thought hard. Trying to see a way out.

  There wasn’t one. They knew it and I knew it. I could pretend I had choices, but I didn’t.

  I shrugged. There was no point in stalling. The sooner I could get to Brandon, the better. I placed the shotgun on the floor. “Let’s go, then.”

  “First we check you,” said the big one. Even as he spoke his hands were all over me. Unlike Mr. Ruby’s, his search wasn’t civil at all. I felt his hands rubbing against all the places where I didn’t want to feel a strange man’s hands. He took his time, finding the Derringer, the sap, the brass knuckles. Tossed the handful onto a chair and grinned up at me. “What’s a sweet little bitch like you doing with the fun stuff? You like to play?” His breath was sour in my face. Between his manners and his looks, he couldn’t have had an easy time getting dates growing up.

  The third man, short and thickly built with a shaved head, was tearing through my office. There was a crash as he knocked over the file cabinet. He came back after a few minutes, holding my purse. “Nothing we want.” The small measure of relief that he hadn’t found the photographs was mitigated by wondering if it mattered; if I’d ever see the photographs again, ever learn what Karen Li had been trying to tell me.