Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel

by S. A. Lelchuk

  I nodded, remembering the bloodstained crowbar Joseph had brought to my brother’s apartment. “So with the police right on my heels, I would have been found as a suicide, right next to the murder weapon, everything tied up nice and neat. And killing Karen, rather than…”

  I didn’t need to finish my sentence. “You were right,” he agreed readily. “We agonized over the decision. It was a radical new step for us, and it was the last thing we wanted. Well, almost the last thing,” he modified. “If there had been any other way to get her to be quiet or just go away, we would have gladly taken it. We were shocked by the woman’s stubbornness, her refusal to listen to reason. We couldn’t understand that—but of course, we didn’t know about her parents. That obviously left her less willing to compromise. Karen Li needed to be out of the picture, but we couldn’t just have the police pursuing an open-ended murder, especially with the FBI already suspicious. We needed a why, and most of all we needed a who.”

  I took that in. “That was why Gunn had me start following her on that particular day. You knew she was meeting the FBI. You didn’t need me to follow her. You needed them to see me following her. To set me up for later.”

  He nodded. “Surveillance, Nikki, was the last thing we needed you for.”

  “So why expose your company to this kind of risk? Why not just make money by selling your system to countries who would actually have used it to make their populations safer? Why deal with the worst of the worst?” Pulling the .357 from the file cabinet and killing Joseph would take less than a single second. If he tied his shoe. If he blew his nose. If he got an eyelash in his eye. None of those things happened. Joseph’s eyes never left me.

  Oliver drummed his hand against his thigh impatiently. “Don’t you get it? You practically answered your own question. Do you not understand that my company has made an extraordinary and unprecedented technological advance? Our system will fundamentally change the way we live. How can you not see that?” His normally forgettable voice had taken on a new quality and his eyes shone. “To know where people are, to be able to locate them anywhere—can you not see how limitless that power is? A child strays away from his mother—feed a photograph of his face into the system and he’s found, probably within seconds. A criminal goes on a rampage—police find him instantly. A child molester wanders near a playground, a convicted bank robber shows up near a bank, and real-time alerts are triggered. And the system keeps getting smarter, learns to recognize new things, teaches itself at an exponential rate. Eventually far faster than a human could ever learn. Crime can be virtually eradicated—but not just crime. Think of public health! Someone walking around with influenza, exhibiting symptoms of some highly contagious disease—they can be taken away for treatment or quarantine before they infect others. A drunk driver could be recognized and stopped before he ever gets in his car. All the chaos and unpleasantness of the world can be addressed and fixed.” He took a breath. “Are you starting to see what I mean, Nikki?”

  “What does that have to do with a dictatorship murdering a journalist?”

  Oliver’s voice smoothed out, became patient, as though he was explaining things to a child. “We’re addressing problems on a global scale. For this to work we can’t pick and choose. You can see that. We need our network to spread everywhere, all over the world. It’s useless if we can only see here and there. The more it sees, the more it learns, the faster it teaches itself. We don’t have the luxury of cherry-picking who we work with. You think we want clients to abuse our system? Of course not. But what we created has to be allowed to take root, and if you want to call a tiny handful of people growing pains, so be it.”

  “Innocent people,” I pointed out.

  “You know how many lives we’ve already saved?” Oliver retorted heatedly. “Far more than the number being threatened, I promise. And there are some very high-up officials in our own government and military who have shown themselves to be extremely receptive and supportive of what we are doing.”

  “Assholes in government, there’s a shocker,” I observed drily.

  “Come on, Nikki! We turn a blind eye to far worse every day! You know how many dictatorships, how many human rights abuses, our country looks away from, ignores, every day, in the interests of national security?”

  I leaned back comfortably and used the penknife to trim at a hangnail. “It feels so good being right.”

  He wasn’t done. “Like I said, you were too good. We never thought you’d find out so much so fast. That was the only thing that surprised us—well, that, and how personally you took the Li woman’s death. We didn’t understand that. You barely knew her. She didn’t matter—certainly not to you, of all people.”

  “She did, though. That’s the thing. She mattered a lot to me.”

  Oliver’s face lost its animation and grew disinterested. “No point in splitting hairs. We need to wrap things up. Actually, the biggest surprise to me was that you were foolish enough to get trapped here tonight. Such a basic mistake, and at such a crucial moment. I had grown fond of seeing your resourcefulness in action, truth be told. I expected more from you. I still can’t figure out why you allowed yourself to be so careless when it mattered most.”

  “Maybe you should have asked yourself that an hour ago.”

  “Huh?” He peered at me, bewildered. “It’s doesn’t matter. We’re here.”

  “Exactly. We’re here.” I slowly reached for the open book on the file cabinet. “Don’t worry, it’s a book,” I called to Joseph as his gun inched up. “It can’t hurt you.”

  I moved the book aside, revealing a little white object that looked like a golf ball.

  “Look familiar?”

  Oliver’s face changed. “That’s not—”

  “When Gunn gave it to me, the day he hired me, I didn’t know what to do with it. So I just left it sitting in my office. Then, later, I could never figure out one thing. When Joseph and his friends grabbed me at the bookstore, they didn’t walk in randomly. They waited until after I had gone upstairs and settled in. The timing seemed too perfect. But they didn’t know someone else was hiding in the store, downstairs. Like they could only see into my office on the second floor. And on the ferry, you seemed surprised that I had Karen’s photographs, but not that surprised. Not as much as I would have thought. Because I had looked at the photos in my office. I realized that this little sucker had been streaming live audio and video the whole time. Gunn gifted me a Trojan horse. The oldest trick in the book, and I fell for it.”

  His face was very pale. “Nikki, that hasn’t been—”

  “On? Recording? Now?” I shrugged carelessly. “You know me, Oliver, I don’t do tech. I doubt I would even know how to turn it off.” I held up the little camera and turned it idly in my hands. “I did have a friend take a look at it. Turns out it’s easy enough to point the live stream in a different direction. To somewhere safe, say, where people have access to everything we talked about no matter what happens to me tonight.”

  I pictured Charles Miller, probably a cup of coffee in one hand, hunched over his laptop, watching and listening intently. Given the many unhealthy things that might happen to the people in this room tonight, I wasn’t about to let Mr. Jade and Mr. Ruby watch me in real time. Not with my intentions. We were helping each other, but they were still sworn to uphold all laws. I wanted a bit more flexibility. Yet I had given Charles the contact information for the two agents just the same. If worse came to worst, he’d know where to send his recording of the night’s events. “If you two hadn’t been so busy today planning your boss’s murder,” I finished, “you might have noticed that you weren’t watching my office anymore.”

  Oliver looked around the room warily. “You brought me here to trick me?”

  I didn’t bother to answer.

  He flushed, thinking, then made up his mind. “I didn’t know I was being recorded. None of that’s admissible in court. Give me the camera. Now.”

  “No.”

  “Give it
to me,” he demanded.

  “Come and get it.”

  “Get the camera from her, Joseph,” he said.

  Joseph looked like he’d been hoping for exactly those words. Without hesitation he walked eagerly toward me, his pale eyes murderous. “I’m looking for an excuse,” he said, his gun pointed directly at me and the steel bolt cutters held loosely in his left hand like a hatchet.

  I picked up my penknife again. “What are you going to do with that besides cutting your pretty little nails?” he sneered.

  I didn’t bother to answer. Just reached across fast and slashed the yellow ropes nearest to me. The sharp little blade went through the taut nylon and the ropes slid away, limp with released tension. I was already on my feet, backing a safe distance away from the wall.

  Joseph shook his head. “Come on. No more games.”

  There was a single thud as a hardcover dropped off the top of a bookcase, bounced off Joseph’s shoulder, and landed at his feet.

  He looked down at the book curiously.

  Then he looked up to see where it had come from as the entire length of the bookcase lurched forward, hundreds of books toppling down all at once. He tried to get out of the way, tripped over a pile on the floor, fell, and then the lower half of his body disappeared as the long wooden shelf came down on top of him.

  By then I had the .357 in my hand. No more banter. I was all business.

  Oliver was watching me with the look of someone who’d just watched a tiger jump its fence at the zoo and was now wishing he hadn’t been poking it through the bars. He shrunk away from me, timid once again. I could see Joseph moving under the pile of books and kept my eyes focused on him. As I walked past Oliver, I threw a hard elbow into the bridge of his nose. Hitting him felt very satisfying. He’d had it coming for a long time.

  He clutched his nose and gasped in pain, then again as I kicked him hard in the side of the knee. I saw him fall in my peripheral vision, saw Joseph’s good arm bracing itself as he tried to push himself up. “Joseph,” I called. “Keep your hands empty or I’ll shoot them off your damn wrists. Stand up.”

  I watched Joseph struggle to his feet, disheveled. “Your stupid tricks,” he said furiously.

  Hitting Joseph across the face with the barrel of the .357 felt even more satisfying than hitting Oliver. He went down on one knee, a gash spilling blood down his forehead. The .357 barrel made a nice straight line between my hands and Joseph’s head. “Get up.”

  “Stop, Nikki, right there.”

  I turned my head for a quick glance, not wanting to take my eyes off Joseph. My elbow hadn’t done Oliver any favors in the beauty department. Blood had spread all over his lower face and chin and he was panting loudly through his mouth. But his hands, holding a semiautomatic pistol, were reasonably steady.

  “I wasn’t going to shoot you, Oliver,” I said, eyes still on Joseph. “I was going to make sure you were held accountable, but not shoot you.”

  “That’s easy to promise when I’m pointing a gun at you.”

  “You’re missing my point. You just changed things. I wasn’t. But now I might.”

  He picked up the little white camera and threw it on the ground as hard as he could, then ground his heel into the pieces for good measure. “Put your gun down, now.”

  I had to make a decision quickly. If I pivoted and shot him he probably wouldn’t have time to react. He hadn’t done this kind of thing before. There would be that fragment of shock, delaying his reaction, as he realized he had to pull a trigger with an actual person in front of him. But multiple guns in a small room meant almost anything could happen. And as soon as my gun shifted, Joseph would throw himself at me. He was already inching closer, reading my mind. He wouldn’t care if I shot Oliver. Not if that let him reach me. He hated me that much. I thought of Board Shorts, catching a ricochet in the garage. I pictured the three of us here, bullets bouncing randomly off concrete in a small enclosed space.

  I didn’t love the odds.

  “Put it down,” Oliver said again. There was more tension in his voice. The gun was shaking now, his hands clenched tightly around the grip. He looked like he was starting to panic. I imagined the pain from his nose mixing with stress and adrenaline. An unreliable combination.

  He might shoot me without even realizing he had pulled the trigger.

  I made up my mind.

  “Okay.”

  I put the .357 down on the ground.

  By the time I’d stood back up Joseph had his gun pointed back at me, just like before.

  Except this time, I didn’t have a plan.

  46

  We walked single file. I led, Joseph and Oliver behind me. Joseph was a professional. He stayed back far enough that I couldn’t reach him, but not far enough for me to duck around a corner and run. Oliver carried the envelope with the Care4 documents under one arm. Outside, the night was warm. A slice of moon in the sky, garnished with orange vapor thrown off by the Port lights.

  “Why’d Gunn have to die?” I asked.

  Oliver’s voice came from behind me. “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t. I’m curious. You two worked together for years. Why kill him?”

  “If you must know, the pressure of the FBI investigation was getting to Greggory. He lost his nerve at the worst possible time.”

  There was a beep as he unlocked his car. Headlights flared as if in greeting. On the other side of the gate I saw a nondescript dark sedan. It was parked with the bumper almost touching the gate, so that a person could step easily from the hood and scale the bars.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Shut up,” Joseph said. “Just get in the goddamn car. Up front, passenger side.”

  “Okay.” I opened the front door of Oliver’s car, then paused. “Almost forgot.” My keychain was extended in my hand. “To open the gate.”

  “Give it to me,” Joseph said.

  “Here you go.”

  I threw the keychain over his head as hard as I could.

  It sailed into the darkness of the empty lot and was gone.

  What I had done took a second to sink in. Neither one of them was happy. Joseph was all for shooting me on the spot. Partly out of personal animus, but another reason, too. Several times, now, I had done things he didn’t expect that resulted in outcomes he didn’t like. Joseph didn’t say it outright, but he was starting to feel that me being alive was a risk to his safety.

  Naturally, I felt the same about him.

  Oliver wouldn’t allow it. The last thing Oliver wanted was to end up with his car trapped on the wrong side of a gate, with a dead body right there for anyone to find. Finally, they reached the obvious conclusion: the only option was to go find my keys.

  “Where’d they fall?” Oliver asked.

  Joseph made a vague gesture that took up about two acres. “I was watching her.”

  “I think I saw,” I volunteered helpfully.

  They had me walk in front of them. A logical decision. They couldn’t leave me alone, they wouldn’t trust me anywhere behind them, and they weren’t willing to walk next to me. Joseph was adamant about that. He’d seen Victor walk into a room with me. I’d been the one to walk out. Joseph wouldn’t let me get within arm’s length if he could help it. We started walking, the high rows of shipping containers dwarfing us. “It’s not much good without a light,” I said, holding up the same LED flashlight I’d used in Silas Johnson’s office. “We’ll be out here all night.”

  “I hope you try to run,” Joseph said. “I really do.”

  “When have I ever done anything you wanted, Joseph?”

  Joseph cursed. I laughed. We walked.

  Oliver and Joseph had been watching me when I threw the keys. But I had been watching the keys. I had a pretty good idea where they’d landed. I had started off by heading intentionally too far to one side of the dark lot. No need to rush. Now I was easing us toward where I thought the keys actually were.

  Oliver wanted to know something. “Wh
en did you start to suspect me?”

  “I suspected you from the moment we first met. When you came up to me in the parking lot of the gym. Of course I did.”

  He sounded annoyed. “Such a Sherlock. Always a million steps ahead of everyone else.” His voice was sarcastic. “I’m sure you noticed a single hair out of place, or some miniscule paint fleck on my car, and then suddenly all the answers just instantly came together in your mind.”

  “Not what I meant. I didn’t just suspect you. From the moment Gunn hired me, any new person I met was suspect. That’s how these things work. Obviously, though, I wanted to find out for sure. So on the ferry I told you I might go to the police with Karen’s photographs.”

  “And?”

  “I couldn’t help noticing that no one tried to kill me until I told you that. Then the next day I had Joseph and company at my doorstep. If they were out there watching me, I wanted to flush them out, although I hadn’t figured they’d be mean enough to go for my brother. That was a mistake.” I was actively scanning the ground but continued talking. The more people talked and listened, the harder it was for them to think. “But I still didn’t really know until tonight.”

  “What happened tonight?”

  I threw a look over my shoulder. They were a few steps behind me, still carefully out of arm’s reach. “You showed up here.”

  “What does that have to do with anything? You told me to show up.”

  “Exactly. An innocent man wouldn’t have listened. Especially not after he’s told his life’s in danger. He might call the police, he might hide or lock himself up in his home. The one thing he doesn’t do? Show up to a strange warehouse in the middle of the night, all on the word of someone he barely knows.” I worked the beam of light back and forth over the ground. “You showed up because you needed to see what I had.”