The Widow File

by S. G. Redling

  Booker’s breath caught in his throat. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead. But she could be close.

  “Dani?”

  She was in the cubby behind her father’s seat. She could feel the rumble of the road in her skull where it rested against the metal. She was warm and he was talking to someone and she didn’t want to open her eyes. “Dani?” her father called to her. She didn’t want to open her eyes but she wanted to see her father. “Dani? Come on. Wake up.”

  She peeled one eye open, then the other, blinking hard to bring them into focus. A wide, pale face smiled at her, pretty blue eyes with long lashes and deep wrinkles in the corner. Chapped lips smiling at her. Not her father—he had brown eyes like hers. This was…

  “Oh shit!”

  Dani banged her head on the fence, throwing herself backward where there was nowhere to go. The sudden rush of panic gave her strength to get her feet under her, hardly aware of the pain shooting up her right leg. Her heels slipped in the wetness and her hands grabbed at the stone and the railing to lift her up and away from the face, the man, Tom, the killer, who held his hands up, still smiling, letting her get up on her feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  He sighed and scratched his head. “Dani…”

  “Oh, oh.” She started to cry. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t do this.”

  “If there was any other way—”

  “Don’t. Don’t. You don’t have to do this.”

  He couldn’t bear to see her cry. He didn’t want her to cry.

  Crying usually enraged him. Too often, begging elicited savagery from Booker, but this time was different. This time it hurt him.

  He’d run her to ground. He’d pushed her too far and rather than feel pride in his prowess, he felt loss at breaking such a creature. All he could think to do was crowd up against her, to hide her tears in his body. He pressed in close, wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her up against the fencing. The wind off the water behind her blew her hair in a wild cloud around her head. She pushed at his shoulders but with no leverage she couldn’t budge him. Her hands burned where they touched the bunched muscles in his arms.

  “Dani. If there was any other way…”

  “There is. There is. You don’t have to. You don’t have to do this.”

  “I have to. I have to.”

  Their words poured over each other, their breaths mingling in the warm wet privacy between them. She trembled and jumped against him and he slid his left thigh between her knees, lifting her up on his leg, forcing her to lean on him. His fingers dug into the waistband of her jeans, finding the belt loops and dragging her closer to him.

  “If there was any other way, Dani, I would save you. I would.” He couldn’t bear it any longer. He would use the serrated blade. He would end this now and hold her until it was over. He would hold her as long as he could. He ground his hips against her to hold her in place and heard her cry as his hand slipped between them. The knife slid from the sheath and with a whispered “I’m sorry,” he pushed the blade into her stomach.

  The blade bounced back, twisting from his grip and nicking his hand before clattering to the ground.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  Dani felt as if she’d been punched. Cold air rushed in when he drew back swearing.

  His wide eyes stared down at her stomach where the blade had tried and failed to puncture the Rasmund pouch. The stunned look on his face and the loosening of his grip gave Dani the chance to shove hard with both hands, pushing him back far enough to get a knee up between them. It was a brief victory because Tom responded with a backhand that snapped her face to the side, cracking her teeth together. She couldn’t hear anything but a ringing in her ear but she felt him jerk her higher onto the fence. The top bar pressed painfully into her lower back.

  He jammed himself hard between her legs, forcing the air from her lungs. He chanted her name over and over in a low growl that sounded angry and relentless and something else she didn’t want to think of as she felt what she prayed was another knife hilt pressing against her through his pants. She felt his teeth and lips and tongue at the side of her neck and Dani thought she might be screaming even though she couldn’t hear anything but hard harsh breaths.

  She forced herself to go still. “Tom, please.”

  He stopped pressing forward but kept his lips against her neck. “Dani.”

  “You don’t have to do this. Nobody needs to know about you.”

  “They’re going to be here soon. They’re going to be everywhere. If it had been anyone but the government, Dani. If it had been anyone—the mob, Wal-Mart, anyone. But the CIA? They never stop. They’ll never stop.”

  “They won’t know about you.”

  “You’ll know about me. They’ll know what you know.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  He pulled back and pressed his forehead to hers. “You won’t have a choice.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “You have a choice.”

  He had no choice. He knew he had to hurry. Police would be flooding the area any minute. They would never stop looking for him and nobody, not even Dani, was worth going into a cage.

  “Listen to me, Dani.” He stroked his thumb along her chin. “It’s better this way. It is. If they take us, they’ll put us in the deepest darkest prison cells they can find. They’ll put us both in cages. You can’t live in a cage. You can’t. You wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “I know.” He did. Such a simple sentiment, one that he’d heard a hundred times in his career, but hearing it from Dani broke his heart. She should live. They should both live but the unholy truth was that only one of them could. He shifted his grip on her, lifting so her bottom rested on one of the rungs, her uninjured leg able to brace itself on the lowest rung. She took the position, her bad leg straight but not bearing her weight anymore. Her elbows hooked over the top rung. It didn’t look very comfortable but he could see her relax.

  “Why don’t you just run?”

  He smiled. “I’m going to. I’ll get away. Don’t worry.” He slid his hands up her collarbone, under the blue strap of the bag around her neck. He felt her pulse hammering hot beneath his thumbs and he couldn’t help but groan at the way her pupils widened. She knew what he was going to do.

  She knew what he was going to do and she couldn’t believe she had to stand there and let it happen. His soft hands and muscular arms were going to strangle her, crush her throat until she couldn’t breathe. She would crumple broken onto the ground like Ev and Mrs. O’Donnell.

  Fuck that.

  Before she could think it through, she grabbed the strap of the Rasmund pouch and whipped it like a jump rope out from behind her head and over and behind Tom’s. Using every ounce of strength she had, she pushed off the fence twisting her body to the right, jerking Tom by the neck. She roared as she lunged and Tom faltered one step, then two. He started to drop to his knee into the corner of the alcove and Dani knew she had to get over his back to clear the alcove and reach the open sidewalk. She pushed herself up and over his dropping shoulder, her arms rigid as they shoved the pouch down and away.

  She could see the space opening up before her. She felt him moving and felt herself getting distance from the fence. Fractions of seconds inched by as she forced her body to press past the muscular form pinning her in place and she was getting there. She was moving him. She twisted to the left, her arms straining to the right and she felt the balance shifting in her favor. Then she felt agony. A howl ripped from her throat as her body constricted to escape the pain that erupted from every cell in her body. She didn’t even understand it as pain. She didn’t know where she felt it. It was an agony as pure as anything in the universe and it threw her back against the fencing.

  Booker punched the bullet hole in her leg. He ground his knuckle into the sloppy wet hole until he felt her skin giving way b
eneath his hand. He pushed and twisted and heard her wail as her back arched and her muscles tensed. He shoved his shoulder hard against her chest, knocking the air from her lungs and silencing her scream. He pressed himself hard against her, every inch of his torso fitting against hers until he had her bent backward over the black water behind her.

  “Are you going to kill me, Dani? Huh? You going to be the sledgehammer?”

  He knew she couldn’t hear him, her body struggling to adjust to the trauma he’d inflicted on her leg. Her eyes rolled, whites showing bright and wide around her brown irises, and her mouth worked in a wordless cry. He watched her face, watched her blink rapidly, watched her mind come back to her body and he saw the moment she saw him. It was beautiful.

  “Dani, Dani, Dani. You are perfect. Do you know that? Perfect. You want to kill me? Tell me the truth. Do you want to kill me?”

  She stared at him, her mouth open, her teeth white in the dark.

  “Yes.”

  He grinned. “Do it.” He pulled her up so she could stabilize herself on the railing. When he was certain she wouldn’t collapse, he held her with one hand and with the other, he looped the strap of the pouch around his neck once more. He then took both of her hands from the railing and pressed them until they closed around either side of the strap. He felt the loop tighten slightly as the strap took the weight of her adjusted balance.

  When she’d settled in place, he reached behind him and pulled Nugget, the little silver knife, out from the small of his back. He held it up for her to see.

  “Who do you think is faster, Dani? Huh? Come on, pull.”

  She bowed her head.

  She knew what came next. Tension drained from her neck and shoulders and for the first time in her life, Dani understood why they called surrender sweet. It felt sweet. It felt inevitable. She knew what came next was going to hurt probably more than all of the hurt so far combined. But it was inevitable.

  She raised her head to look at Tom. It occurred to her that she knew a lot of very good-looking men and the absurdity of the realization made her smile. Tom smiled back. That knife looked unpleasant so she decided to look at his face instead. He really did have beautiful eyes. They glistened with tears and she had to lean forward to hear what he said.

  “If there was any other way, Dani, I would have saved you.”

  She smiled and raised her right hand to his face. He kept repeating himself even when she pressed her thumb against his warm lips.

  “Shh,” she said, sliding her left hand along the muscles in his chest, moving underneath the pouch strap, until her fingers played in the soft damp curls at his back of his head. “It’s okay.” His eyes widened in surprise and he leaned into her touch. She tucked the rough strap of the Rasmund pouch into the crook of her elbow and closed her eyes. “You are going to save me.”

  She threw herself backwards into the darkness of the Tidal Basin.

  If the pain in her leg had been an explosion, what happened in her shoulder was a supernova. She heard ripping and crunching as Tom’s head slammed into the railing, dragged down by the weight of her falling body caught in the unbreakable strap. The impact ripped her shoulder from its socket and she barely got her right hand up and onto the strap. Her body slammed into the stone wall of the basin, banging her head and scraping her skin.

  Above it all, she felt the familiar sensation of her mind separating her thoughts into manageable compartments. She knew she felt pain even as she knew her brain would not allow her to experience it in its fullness. Cotton batting separated her from her howling shoulder and the waterfall of her leg. She spun from the strap by her weakening fingers and she noticed the strap had stopped moving. She couldn’t remember why but she knew that was a very good thing.

  Thoughts came fast and moved through without sticking. Was the water cold? It was dirty. Her pinkie had slipped. Her boots were heavy. Were those geese? Bright light flooded the scene and the water below her became choppy. She was blind and a loud blender hovered over her head. Not a blender, a helicopter, and it shouted at her. It sounded like “Hitches for lease. Who’s got to poop?” but she was pretty sure that wasn’t what they said. Her ring finger slipped and her middle finger ached, the strap rolling in her grip. She wondered how far down the water was. The white light moved and she could see the glowing yellow lights of the dome across the water.

  “Jefferson,” she said. Jefferson was her favorite president.

  She was unconscious before her head broke the water.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Three months later

  Her leg ached. She knew she should have gotten out and stretched before this but it felt so good to be back behind the wheel.

  Rain poured over the windshield. Without the wipers on she couldn’t see the white eagle on the emblem on the side of the building. Not the Central Intelligence Agency emblem. She hoped she’d never see that again. This was the post office. She watched the man in uniform unlock the door, opening the station for the day.

  She rubbed the scar through her jeans. The wound had gotten infected badly and she’d gone through several rounds of antibiotics and painful injections. Her shoulder had required two operations. She still didn’t know where she’d been treated. It was a hospital of some sort but one with no windows, plenty of cameras, and numerous heavily armed guards. It was the type of hospital where interrogations interrupted sleep night after night until days and nights ran together in a wash of drugs and pain.

  Tom had been right. Or whatever his name was. She would have sold him out. Even if she had felt some kind of loyalty to him, she never would have been able to hold out against the onslaught of intimidation and interrogation. Pain meds were withheld, sleep interrupted, and a bewildering barrage of faces and badges and weapons and rankings marched before her. She’d have told them anything they wanted to know. She had told them things they couldn’t possibly have been interested in. More than a few times, she wished she’d died at the Tidal Basin.

  They didn’t tell her much. She still didn’t know which agency she had supposedly been working for or who had been behind the hit. She didn’t know who had hired Tom and she didn’t care. Through the haze of drugs and fear, she’d heard nothing but strings of letters and “chief director of this” and “deputy director of that.” At one point she’d overheard someone talking about the NEA. The National Endowment for the Arts? The National Education Association? She’d wondered if maybe that was where the woman whose laptop they’d borrowed had worked. It made more sense than thinking teachers and ballerinas were interrogating her. It didn’t matter. Nobody answered her anyway.

  She’d been there at least a month when they’d let her know that Choo-Choo had survived. She’d begged a thousand times to see him and on a thousand and one they led her to his room. The bullet had shattered ribs, collapsed his lung, nicked a vertebra, and caused massive internal hemorrhaging. He’d barely pulled through. The marine guard stood over her as she sat on the edge of his bed and wrapped her good hand around his long fingers.

  He blinked several times until he could focus on her and he smiled. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” She nodded toward the IV bag. ““Good drugs?”

  “I’ve had better.” He laughed and winced at the pain it caused.

  She’d wanted to see him so badly and now she couldn’t think of anything to say. When she’d learned he had survived, she’d felt herself come back to life. He was the only other person who knew what she knew, who knew their innocence of the crimes committed under Rasmund’s roof. His hair lay greasy and lank against his skull and his once beautiful skin looked rough and broken. She didn’t imagine she looked much better.

  He licked his dry lips. “It seems like the interrogations are slowing down.”

  “Maybe they believe us. Maybe they’ll let us go soon.”

  He squeezed her fingers. “Where will you go?”

  “Probably back to Oklahoma. You?”

  “They’re encouraging me to stick to the story
that Mrs. O’Donnell told Grandfather. Once I’m fully recovered they want to help me perform the prodigal son’s return.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “They’re very persuasive.” He sighed and stared up at the ceiling. “I’ll do my penance. It certainly isn’t the first time I’ve done the walk of shame back into the bosom of my family. Maybe I’ll go to our place on Martha’s Vineyard. You know, buy some pants with whales on them and pretend to love to sail.” Dani watched him stare at nothing. She saw the hard line of his lips and the thought occurred to her that Choo-Choo might decide to kill himself.

  They hadn’t been allowed to see each other much after that. Twice they’d passed on the way to physical therapy and once they’d stood outside the shower room together but there really wasn’t much they could say. Every word was recorded and not subtly. Guards watched every move they made. The nurses had even applied body monitors to read her reaction when they told her that Tom—Booker, they called him—had survived his injuries. They’d watched her eyes and listened to her pulse rate when they informed her he was being detained and treated in the same facility. She didn’t know what they wanted to see or if her lack of reaction worked in her favor or against it. She had told them she hoped they would keep him away from her but not much else. Maybe it was the drugs but Dani’s idea of “enemy” felt kind of blurry in that place.

  She had no way to measure the time at the time, but six weeks later a trio of men with briefcases had come into her room and taken her statement. She’d told them everything she knew, which amounted to very little. One of the men had mentioned an investigation but nobody answered her questions regarding its progress. Two weeks after that the same men reappeared with a thick binder of pages covered in dense type. They told her to read it, understand it, and sign where marked. She’d started reading, wanting to be certain she wasn’t being pressured to sign a confession, but after sixty pages of impenetrable government doublespeak, she’d begun to sign. It took her two hours to sign and initial the three hundred-plus page document and all she really understood of it was that it guaranteed her silence on the matter of Rasmund until the world came to an end. She didn’t need to read what the consequences might be.