The Widow File

by S. G. Redling

  “Think, Dani. Think.”

  She had to get onto the gable. The problem was that the cables felt so solid, so dependable, every survival instinct in her body screamed at her to stay there, to cling and wait and stop taking so many ridiculous chances with her safety. She knew that if she let those voices take a vote, she’d wind up clinging to the side of the house all night or until she lost feeling in her hands or dozed off or got dizzy and plunged to her death. But those options seemed so far in the future compared to the very likely event of her not having the strength or coordination to finagle the climb.

  She studied the brackets containing the cables. A hand span wide and maybe three inches thick, the brackets were attached to the rough brick with screw bolts as thick as her middle finger. Dani glanced down to the bracket near the ledge, prodding the bolt with the toe of her boot. They weren’t long enough to work as reliable toeholds. She risked getting on tiptoe to better see the bracket above her head.

  The gap was small, not much more than half a fingertip’s width, but it might be enough. It was certainly more than she had just standing there clinging to cables waiting to learn to fly.

  Dani carefully lifted the Rasmund pouch strap from her right shoulder. The rough strap scratched her nose as she lifted the bag over her head. Forcing herself to focus and relax, Dani pinned the pouch between her chest and the wall, taking the bulk of the weight off of her exhausted arms. Working only by touch, she pushed and twisted the strap of the pouch into the gap between the brackets and the brick, forcing the thick canvas into the small space. When the strap no longer felt free to move, she risked tilting her head back to see her handiwork.

  The canvas strap pressed against the cables, wedged behind the brackets. She tugged gently at first, more to force the fabric down than to test the strength. When the bag didn’t budge and the brick didn’t crumble and the bracket didn’t wiggle, she tugged harder, going so far as to yank the bag away from the facade. Still nothing budged.

  This is a miserable escape plan, she thought. She comforted herself with the grim fact that if it didn’t work, she wouldn’t have long to worry about it.

  Like the distance between the windows and the gable, the gap between having a plan and executing it yawned before her. Dani’s hands shook hard enough that it looked like she was drumming on the brick when she let go of the cable, alternating hands to restore her grip.

  Reaching as high up as she could, she gripped the cables overhead and pressed off her right toes. The bolt cut into her sole and she didn’t have much leverage but it was enough to lift herself high enough to wrangle her left knee onto the top of the pouch. The fabric bent beneath her, the straps straining closer together, as she shifted her weight to her left leg, using the pouch like a stirrup.

  She scraped her forehead against the brick, every inch of her trembling as she lifted her right foot from the stability of the narrow ledge. If the ledge had felt dangerous, this felt suicidal, and she knew she had to work quickly or her nerves and her muscles would fail her.

  With the pouch bending nearly in two beneath her weight, she started to panic when she couldn’t get her right foot into the narrow space between the straps. She kicked at the canvas and finally her toe found the gap and she felt herself shift with a nauseating lurch as her right foot pressed down on the bag. She tried not to listen to her high-pitched panting as she pulled herself up to a standing position, her entire body weight relying on a canvas pouch, two metal bolts, and a steel bracket.

  It might have been a minute, it felt like a week, but Dani clung to the cables and found her balance on the straining canvas of the Rasmund pouch. The thought of taking even one more step did things to her stomach she could never express. She was going to have to move almost a foot to the right into open space with nothing to grab onto.

  “It could be worse,” she whispered to herself, fighting back tears. “It could be raining.”

  At that moment, it wouldn’t have surprised her to feel the heavens open over her. Instead, she felt a pattering of fine dust and gravel bouncing over her cheeks and lips. She didn’t dare look up and risk getting grit in her eyes, much less seeing the brackets pulling loose from the building. She had to move immediately. Leaning as far to the right as she could, she let the pouch swing out to the left so she lay almost horizontally above the ledge. Her right hand clutched at the rough shingles and she felt a wiggle of hope move through her that she might actually be able to keep her grip.

  Digging in with her nails and pulling her body with her abdominal muscles, Dani shifted her balance toward the roof. Her body and her mind flew through weight and balance calculations and Dani knew she had to act. She had to grip the roof as tightly as possible, push off with her feet, and throw as much of her torso as she could onto the sloped surface. If luck was on her side, her feet would find something to kick off from beneath the gable and she’d be able to haul herself onto the surface.

  She gripped.

  She kicked.

  Her fingers held as her body twisted and her legs slammed hard against the underside of the roof. Her stomach cramped as she fought to clamp herself against the sloped roof, and for two or three seconds, Dani hung suspended. Sheer will struggled with gravity.

  The balance between supported and unsupported weight tipped out of her favor. She kicked and clawed and even dragged her teeth against the filthy tarred shingle and then wondered what it was going to feel like when her hands gave way and she floated through space before hitting the ground. She wondered if it was going to hurt a lot.

  “Ow!” Her left wrist burst into a flame of pain and a shingle folded up and dug into her neck, confusing her. She felt weightless and weighted down at the same time as her body slid along the roof. She was falling. But she was falling up. Her boots and the button fly of her jeans and the buckle of her purse caught on the raised edges of shingles as her body inexplicably moved up and onto the roof.

  “Dani!” The voice came from above her and it took a concentrated effort for her to understand how to raise her head, how to focus on the sight before her. A pale hand clamped around her wrist, dragging her from the precipice. She followed the pale hand up a pale arm to a red face framed with pale hair.

  “Choo-Choo?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Choo-Choo dragged Dani high enough to get a leg over the peak of the gable. Even once he was certain she wouldn’t slide, he kept his grip on her arms, releasing them only when she broke free to throw her own arms around him in a bear hug.

  “How did you get out? Who are these people? What’s going on?” The questions poured out of her as Choo-Choo squeezed her against his chest.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. There was screaming from downstairs and Phelps had his gun,” Choo-Choo talked over her questions, his breath warm in her hair. “He told us to stay down, to stay quiet. He said to watch for him but the monitors, they didn’t… someone had cut the recording, cut into the feed.” He finally let her go, pulling back only far enough to rest his flushed forehead against her sweaty one. “We could see them, saw them storming the foyer, and Hickman, oh God, Hickman never had a chance. I tried to zoom in, to move the cameras, but they had taken control of the video. I couldn’t move it or record it or—”

  “They were watching,” Dani said. “From outside. In those trucks. They took the phones too. I tried to call nine-one-one and I got an operator. Their operator. That’s how I got out. They’re looking for me in the basement. I lied and said I was down there.”

  Choo-Choo risked a glance over the edge. “That must be why they’re still here. They’re looking for you. They know they’re missing someone.”

  “What about you? How did you get out?”

  He pressed the heel of his palm against his eye as if he had the world’s worst headache. “I don’t know. It was panic. Fay came in and told me to get the feed out to the police, to alert Rasmund, and I kept telling her I couldn’t control it. Then I remembered the window and I thought, I don’t know, I t
hought maybe I could see what they had done to block the signal. I wasn’t thinking. And then doors started breaking and I just climbed out. I called back for Fay but she told me to run and I did. I just dropped out the window and crouched on the ledge for, like, hours I think. I heard them shooting. I heard Fay—”

  Dani squeezed his hand to make him stop talking. She didn’t want to hear this, she didn’t want to hear any more about Fay than she already knew. “Who are they? Do you know? Did you hear anything? What are they looking for?”

  “It all happened so fast. They were in and up, just like that. They took all the Swan materials in the foyer. Two men took them all and the rest just poured up the steps. It was like something from a movie.” Choo-Choo pulled a crumpled cigarette box and a lighter from the pocket of his jeans. His hands shook so badly Dani had to help him get the flame of his lighter to the tip.

  “Phelps and Eddie.” Dani watched him gulp down smoke, wishing she had a habit like that to fall back on for comfort. “Why were they there? When did they get in?”

  “Down!” Choo-Choo folded his spine, grabbing Dani and lowering them both closer to the roof. “They’re searching the grounds.” Two men jogged through the back gardens, poking into hedges and heading for the ring of young poplars near the koi pond.

  “We’ve got to move,” she said.

  Choo-Choo crab-walked back along the peak of the gable, holding his hand out to keep Dani steady until they climbed up to a flatter expanse of roof that ran the length of the building.

  “The pouch. They’re going to see the pouch.” She pointed where she knew the dark blue Rasmund pouch hung from the bolts. It would stand out clearly against the pale red brick and it wouldn’t take a great leap of logic to figure out how it had gotten there.

  “I’ll get it.” Without waiting for her to agree, Choo-Choo climbed back out on the gable, slid on his butt and heels down to the edge of the sloped roof. Dani clamped her hands over her mouth, certain he was going to pitch over the edge, but he stopped himself with a twist of his ankle. A quick flip and he slid forward on his belly, his long arm easily grabbing the pouch and yanking it free from its hook. Slinging the bag over his neck, he spun himself around and ran back up to her, barely grazing his fingertips along the shingles.

  “What the hell, Choo-Choo?” She gaped as he ran past her to a shaded spot behind a turret. “Are you part goat?”

  “Close,” he smiled, holding out his hand to pull her up with him. “Boarding schools since I was seven. You get really good at sneaking out.”

  “Good to know,” Dani said, grabbing him. “I don’t suppose any of your schools shot students for sneaking out, huh? Any experience dodging bullets and snipers?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” His smile faded and he squeezed his eyes shut tight again. Dani leaned against him, reminding herself that unlike her, Choo-Choo had actually seen people getting shot. Not just their bodies and not just on film, but real live shootings before his eyes.

  “We’re going to get out of this, Choo-Choo.” She put as much conviction into the words as she could muster. “We’re going to get to the police.”

  He nodded. “Just as soon as we get off this third-story roof.”

  “Yep. Just as soon as we do that.”

  They stood that way silently, listening to voices shouting below, people moving in and out of the building. The metallic sound of truck doors slamming rang out but they heard no signs of the trucks pulling out. Choo-Choo sighed. “What do you suppose the odds are that they’ll just give up and go away?”

  “They don’t really seem the type, do they?”

  He grunted his assent. “Well we can’t stay here all night. I think it’s safe to assume the police aren’t coming and process of elimination is going to eventually lead them up to this roof.”

  “Should we try to find an access panel and get back inside?”

  “And do what?” He shook his head. “Sneak past them?”

  “There aren’t any cameras in the back of the house, right? There’s no surveillance of the employees. If we could drop down and do like they did in the Dixon case. Remember? They got behind the shooters and followed them out the front?”

  Choo-Choo kept shaking his head. “The Dixon shooters were madmen on a killing spree. They were just cutting a line through the building, killing everyone. They were crazy. These guys? They’re pros. For all we know they could be sweeping the building with infrared looking for your heat signature, making sure nobody is alive.”

  “Yeah but this is a huge building. They’ve been sweeping it but they can’t watch it all at the same time. If we listen and we stay low and quiet we could make our way down at least to a window we could jump from. We could make it down to the tunnel to the airstrip.”

  “First thing they sealed. Heard them report it.”

  “Then we go off the west end of the building, closest to the rose gardens. We find a window low enough to lower ourselves onto the hedges—”

  “Where the guards are watching the back gate.”

  She gripped his arm tightly enough to make him wince. “Then what the hell do you want to do, Choo-Choo? You want to stay up here and wait for them to find us?”

  “I don’t want to get shot!” Tears brimmed over his lower lashes, the pale blue of his eyes disappearing behind the flood. “I don’t want to get a bullet in my skull and just land on the ground like a heap of garbage. I don’t want—” His voice broke. She loosened her grip and rubbed his arm.

  She needed to think. Choo-Choo was understandably terrified. Her father used to tell her that everybody handled fear in their own way. “When it comes to danger,” he’d say, “everybody’s chicken. But there are two kinds of chickens—chicken hawks and chicken shits. And it doesn’t matter how high up you throw chicken shit, it ain’t never going to fly.” He’d laugh and squeeze her knee and no matter how bad the storm they’d be driving through got, she’d feel her fear melt right out of her. It didn’t matter that she was nearly a foot shorter than the man beside her, she had to accept facts.

  “Looks like I’m the chicken hawk.”

  “What?” Choo-Choo looked at her, confused. “You’re a what?”

  “I’m going to get us off this roof. We can find a way down and do it now while they’re still distracted by their search in the basement. My car is parked on the back service road. They don’t even know it’s there. We just get to the ground, make a beeline for the trees, and then head to the cops.”

  “They’re going to shoot us, Dani.”

  “Choo-Choo, there is that possibility.” She held his gaze with her own, trying to keep her voice steady. “But if we sit here and do nothing, that possibility becomes a guarantee. Probability and odds, it’s what I do, remember? Analyze a situation.”

  “From a beanbag chair.” He didn’t manage to get quite the level of snark she suspected he was aiming for.

  “Hey.” She wagged her finger in his face. “When we get out of here and we’re sitting in some cush Capitol Hill bar drinking expensive vodka and collecting our citations of bravery from the D.C. police, I’m going to tell you just how important that beanbag chair was.”

  He huffed out a reluctant laugh. “Virginia. We’re in Virginia. We’ll get our citations from the Virginia police.”

  She pulled him to his feet. “After our daring escape, we’ll get our citations from the freaking FBI. Let’s go.”

  They headed west, toward the rose gardens, a thick cluster of rosemary shrubs, and the wide flagstone path that led to the umbrella-shaded patio behind the garden room. It also came closest to the road accessed by the rear gate.

  The ground rose higher at this end of the house and it seemed to Dani that if they could get to the second floor, they might find a spot slightly less likely to break their legs upon jumping. It was far from ideal but the ticking clock in her head demanded action.

  “Do you see a way down?” She turned to Choo-Choo but found him wandering over the highest part of the central roof, cra
wling along on his hands and knees, trying to spy the front of the estate.

  “Isn’t that more open?” she asked, climbing up behind him. “Won’t we be easier to see?”

  “Something’s happening.” Choo-Choo slid farther over the slope, craning his long neck as the sounds of voices and radios rose from the portico below them. “They’re coming out.” He held up his hand to shush her, turning his head to listen more carefully. Dani knew the analyst had scary accurate hearing, and so tried to quiet even her own breath. He closed his eyes, tilting his head more, and whispered, “They keep saying that they’ve got the bird. They’ve got to get the bird in the cage.”

  “They called me a rabbit. Who’s attacking us? Jack Hanna?”

  Choo-Choo shot her a questioning look. “Who?”

  “Jack Hanna? You know, he does all that animal stuff on TV?” She shook her head. “Never mind. Trivia.”

  “Yeah, well unless that trivia contains blueprints for building a hang glider out of whatever you’ve got in your purse—” He pointed down to a cluster of men moving in a tight knot toward the front truck. Their movement seemed awkward, tiny steps setting them off balance, and Dani watched as they kept their gazes moving in all directions while each keeping one hand on something in the middle of the pack. A person shorter than all the men bounced between their crowding bodies, stumbling and unsteady since a black hood cut off any chance of the person seeing their way.

  “Who is that?” Choo-Choo leaned up on his elbows. “I thought they shot everyone.”

  Dani just shook her head, watching the awkward race to the now-open truck. The men in the back of the huddle, their own faces covered in ski masks, turned with weapons drawn to face away from the truck. The men in the front weren’t gentle as they bundled the bound hostage up to the waiting arms of men within the truck. Only when the victim rose above the shoulders of the escort team did Dani understand.