by Jen Blood
“And he’s the jackass who shot Einstein,” I said.
“And the jackass who shot you,” Diggs said. “Minor point, I know, but worth mentioning.”
“What about Jenny?” I asked. “Has she called? We were supposed to meet her. Kat—”
“Slow down,” he said. “There’s been no word yet. Maybe that’s a good thing. Either way, though, there’s nothing we can do until we hear from her. How do you feel?”
“Shitty. And sore. And I kept having these dreams…” I stopped, thinking of Allie Tate. Isaac, dragging me into the woods. My father, whispering those words to me. Things to remember; things to forget.
“I should get Sally,” he said. He brushed the hair back from my forehead. I took his hand.
“Just… wait one more minute. Don’t go.”
“Okay.” His eyes followed mine, a fear there that I had only seen once before—in Black Falls, when we’d both nearly died. When he hadn’t been able to protect me.
“Sit with me, please,” I said.
“Erin—”
“Please.”
He sat on the side of the bed. I lay the back of my hand on his stubbled, stubborn cheek. His eyes sank shut. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“That’s supposed to be my line.”
The attempt at humor fell flat, and he knew it. I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to come clean. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Painfully. “Now that you’re awake, yeah. I’m okay. But don’t do that again, huh?” He leaned in and kissed my nose, then rested his forehead against mine. “Please don’t do that again, Sol.”
Quips and smartass remarks would no doubt come later. For now, I very carefully wrapped my arms around him and we both stayed that way, quiet, for what seemed a very long time. Finally, he pulled away, kissed me again, and stood.
“I’ll get Sally. Be right back.”
I watched him go with all those dream images still flashing in my mind. Everything was a nonsensical mess—I couldn’t make out a timeline, figure out what was real and what I’d just imagined. I had no idea what had actually happened on Payson Isle anymore.
A fresh wave of pain washed over me then, driving that thought out of my mind. Intense pain will do that for you, sometimes: it’s hard to focus on much else when your body turns against you.
When I was a kid, I skinned my knee out on the island. My father told me then that pain was all in the mind—it was easy to move past it. Just breathe. Push it away. Pain can’t hurt you… it’s not real. Imagine that it’s gone and your knee is whole, and it will be gone.
Had he learned that from J-932? Or was his father the one who taught him his pain wasn’t important?
“How’s the patient?” Sally asked as she knocked on the door, opening it without waiting for my response. Einstein had resettled by my side on the bed. He thumped his tail at sight of the woman.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “It’s not that bad.” Sally looked at Diggs with a grimace and handed him a ten-dollar bill from her jeans pocket.
“Told you,” he said. “She’s impossible.”
“I’m not—it doesn’t hurt that much,” I insisted. “I’m all right.”
“Sure you are,” she said.
“What time is it?” I asked. I’d thought it was the middle of the night, but Sally looked fresh as a daisy, dressed in jeans and a man’s flannel shirt.
“Nine,” she said. “P.M. You’ve been out since you got here this morning. Glad to see your idiot boyfriend finally decided to wise up and join you,” she noted, looking at Diggs with clear disapproval.
She checked my vitals and changed my bandage and gave me painkillers that I tried to refuse, but the fire in my side had spread to every nerve ending. It was becoming very, very clear that dear old Dad didn’t know shit about pain if he thought something like this was all in my head. I was foggy by the time she said goodnight, and completely out seconds after Diggs crawled back into bed beside me.
At just past midnight that night, when I was lost in a hazy dream world all over again, our cell phone from hell rang. Diggs fumbled for it and eventually answered while I was still trying to pull myself out of my druggy delirium.
“What?” Diggs said into the phone. He usually reserves that kind of greeting for me. Clearly the stress was getting to him, too.
“Speaker,” I whispered to him. He pressed the magic button, and Jenny’s grating, tinny little voice filled the room.
“…understand you had some excitement last night,” she said.
“We’re fine,” I said. “I want to talk to Kat.”
“Wait,” Diggs said. “We’re not fine. Erin was shot, for Christ’s sake. I want this over—just tell us where you want the exchange made, we’ll do it, and then we’re done.”
Silence.
Three seconds passed, then four.
Then five.
“Do I need to remind you of our conversation the other night?” Jenny said coolly. “I’m in charge. This is my show, not yours—you keep forgetting that. I think maybe you could use a demonstration of just how little control you actually have here.”
“We don’t need a demonstration,” I said. The pain meds had worn off, leaving my thoughts blurred and the pain raging. “Trust me, we know who has the control. But Diggs is right: the longer you drag this out, the higher the chance that the whole operation will be discovered.”
“Discovered by who?” she said sharply.
“The cops, of course,” Diggs said, conveniently leaving Willett and my father out of the conversation. “Since the world’s decided we’re terrorists, it’s made it a little more difficult moving around.”
“Well, it’s almost over now,” she murmured, half to herself. “I trust that if Erin’s on the phone now, she survived the bullet.”
“I told you, I’m fine,” I said. “Where do you want us next?”
“I’ll send the coordinates—make sure you’re not followed this time.”
“Wait,” Diggs said immediately. “There’s no way Erin can travel yet—”
“Yes there is,” I said. “I’m all right. We’ll get there.”
“Excellent. It’s nice to hear we’re finally on the same page,” Jenny said.
“I want to talk to Kat,” I said before she could hang up. “Let me talk to my mother.”
There was a brief flurry of whispers and shuffling on the other end of the line, before Kat came on.
“You were hurt,” she said, first thing.
“It wasn’t bad,” I lied.
“Bullshit. Bullets are always bad.” Her voice sounded surprisingly clear. I wondered if she’d been sober this whole time. Maybe I should keep Jenny on retainer for the future. This could be her next career: Rapid detox at gunpoint, for the relapsed addict in your life.
“Did you get it out?” Kat persisted.
“The bullet? It was a through-and-through—Mom, I’m okay.” There was another long pause on the line. “Kat?” I prompted, when no one said anything.
“Don’t come,” she said suddenly, in a rush. “It’s not worth it—it’s not going to work, Erin. There’s no happily ever after in this—”
There was a struggle on the other end of the line as Jenny grabbed the phone away. I heard a sharp, solid sound like a palm hitting flesh, and the muffled sound of Kat’s cry.
“Don’t hurt her, damn it!” I shouted.
“You heard her: she’s alive,” Jenny said, her voice tight. “But in case you get the idea she’s at Club Med out here and you’re safe leaving her in our hands, I’ll send along a snapshot or two. Your mom’s seen better days. That only gets worse if I hear you’ve been trying to enlist anyone else’s help. Sally Woodruff—11 Hillcrest Drive, Justice Kentucky—is one thing, but I don’t want to hear anyone else is in on the act.”
And with that, she hung up. Seconds later, the text came through with our next meeting spot:
La Iglesia
Coba, Mexico
18:00, Friday April 15
“If we were going… yeah, we could get there. But there’s no way you’re up for a jaunt to Mexico right now. For Christ’s sake, Solomon—”
“I’m not standing by while they kill Kat. I don’t care how much of a pain in the ass she is, I’m not letting her think she doesn’t matter.”
“Then send me,” he said. “Let me go alone. I can do it.”
“You know Jenny won’t go for that. She wants me there—”
“Which begs the question: Why? If she’s not planning to hurt us, why is it so important that you be there for the exchange?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, so I chose to ignore it and move onto another pressing concern. There were so many right now, it was hard to keep track.
“How do you think Jenny knew where we are now?”
“They’re probably tracking the phone,” Diggs said. “It’s all right… They may know where we are, but I don’t think they have anyone following us. I’ve already checked for bugs, so I know they’re not listening in.”
“Then how did she know we ran into trouble last night?”
“I don’t know... Maybe something on the news. Or maybe she has an in with Willett, and he told her.” He set the phone back down and leaned over to touch his lips to my forehead. “You’re warm again. Just lie back, okay? If you’re dead set on this, you have to get some rest. We can leave tomorrow and still have time to get to Coba by Jenny’s deadline. But I won’t go if you don’t sleep the night.”
I didn’t fight him. He handed me a couple of pills Sally had left on the bedside table, and I sank back into the pillows. Diggs lay down beside me again with his arm resting carefully on my stomach, his body warm against mine. He kissed my temple.
“We’ll figure this out. Things will fall into place, one way or another.”
“Since when have you been so damned optimistic?” I asked.
He laughed a little. It was dark, and almost unnaturally peaceful. It occurred to me that somehow I’d gone from fighting like hell to avoid a relationship with Diggs to being pulled smack dab into the middle of one. He ran his finger along the worry wrinkle in my forehead.
“Always look on the bright side of life, right? If it makes you feel any better,” Diggs said, “Sally read me the riot act because I was ready to dump your friggin’ dog in the nearest river.”
“Why? You love Einstein—”
“No—you love Einstein. I like the dog just fine, right up until you start risking your life for him.”
My eyelids were getting heavy again, but I fought to keep them open. “You were scared,” I said quietly.
He smiled at me, just as quiet, and kissed me on the lips very lightly. “You’ve got no idea, sweetheart. Now… close your eyes, for Christ’s sake. Sleep. Apparently, we’re driving to Mexico tomorrow.”
“You’ll be here when I wake up?” My eyes drifted shut. My tongue was all twisted, my body warm and heavy. “You won’t go anywhere.”
“I’ll be here,” he said. Einstein shifted… or Diggs did, maybe. Someone did. I sank deeper under. “I’m not going anywhere, Sol.”
“Good,” I murmured. And then, I was out.
By ten the next morning, I was almost back to feeling human again. In deep, gut-rocking pain, but human. Sort of. After Sally had checked my bandages and helped me get washed up, I sat at the kitchen table downstairs with Diggs beside me and Einstein curled at my feet. Sally seemed to have a whole staff of wayward pubescent girls at her disposal. One of them set out a huge spread for us before we left town—eggs and homemade toast, bacon and grits and fresh fruit.
Despite everything we’d been through, Diggs looked better than he had since this whole nightmare had begun. Sixteen hours of sleep and a decent meal will do that for a body, I guess. He sat across from me with Cameron’s laptop out, nibbling at his food while he continued to work.
“What are you doing?” I asked, when we’d been sitting for half an hour and he still hadn’t volunteered the information.
“I’m working on the list,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “I think I cracked the code.”
“Seriously? When?”
“Yesterday. I wanted to wait until I knew for sure before I mentioned it.”
“And you’re sure now?”
He pushed the computer toward me and slid his chair to my side of the table so he could sit beside me. On the screen, he had duplicated the entries from the memory card on a spreadsheet, separating them into four columns: LOCATION; DATE; SS#. The fourth column was headed with two question marks in bold, with the initials at the end of each entry listed beneath. About a dozen rows were highlighted in yellow. My heart sped up as I stared at them:
CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 1969 – CHARLES MANSON
GUYANA – NOVEMBER 1978 – JIM JONES
MAINE – AUGUST 1990 – MITCH CAMERON
TEXAS – OCTOBER 1991 – GEORGE HENNARD
OKLAHOMA – APRIL 1995 – TIM MCVEIGH
COLORADO – APRIL 1999 – ERIC HARRIS
KENTUCKY – MARCH 2013 – JESUP BARNEL
“What is this?” I asked when I could speak again.
“I think it’s a list of the crimes committed by operatives of J-932,” he said. “Once I figured out where the dates are located in each entry, it was easy to put together some of the more significant events…”
“This is crazy, though,” I insisted. “George Hennard—that’s Luby’s Massacre, right? And the Oklahoma City bombing? Columbine? Diggs—”
“Trust me, I know how crazy it is. This whole thing is nuts. If you look at the numbers, though... Once you break it up, so you have the dates separated and the social security numbers in line...” He ran his finger down the column marked SS#. It only took a second before I understood what he was talking about.
“Several of the entries have the same social security number.”
“Because I think the same operative was responsible for whatever those entries represent.”
“You don’t know Timothy McVeigh’s social security number, though,” I pointed out. “And the initials at the end of that entry are JL. So how did you make the leap that McVeigh could have anything to do with this? Or Manson? Or any of them, for that matter.”
“It’s just a hunch,” he admitted. “I haven’t been able to figure out what the letters at the end of each entry stand for, but I’ll get there. But I know the entry dated March 2013 is right—that’s definitely Barnel’s social security number. And since we know at this point that Cameron was the one who struck the match on Payson Isle, it would make sense that the August 1990 entry would be him.”
I glanced down the list again. A dozen entries were marked with the social security number Diggs had assumed belonged to Cameron. Diggs and I had both seen firsthand what the operative was capable of when backed into a corner, but this was a sobering reminder.
The longer I looked at the spreadsheet, the more freaked out I became. Finally, I pushed the laptop away. “We have to get out of here. We have to get to Kat—”
“I know. We will—we already have everything set,” Diggs said. Now that he knew I wasn’t going to up and die on him today, he’d gotten considerably calmer. “We’ve got pain pills and clean bandages for you; we’ve traded the SUV for Sally’s truck so Willett won’t know what we’re driving… As long as we’re on the road by noon, we can get where we’re going by Jenny’s deadline.”
“I wish we’d hear something from my dad.”
“I know,” he agreed. “I’m not sure what happened there—you’re sure he wasn’t in the cabin when Willett showed up?”
“Positive,” I said. I snapped off half a piece of crispy bacon for Einstein and finished the rest myself. “He must have had some reason for leaving without us. I mean, he probably doesn’t even know I got hurt. Maybe he found out where the next checkpoint was, and he’ll catch up with us then.”
There was a
flash of something—annoyance, I thought—in Diggs’ eyes before he nodded. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Forget it, you’re probably right. Whatever happened, though, the bottom line is that we’re on our own again.”
I’d seen that look in his eye enough to know that if I kept pushing, there would be a fight. At this point, I didn’t think either of us had it in us to deal with that. Letting things slide isn’t exactly in my nature, but in this instance it seemed like the smartest route. Instead of pushing him, I pulled the laptop back toward me. Diggs didn’t actually sigh in relief, but he came pretty damned close.
“So—what you’re saying, essentially, is that all the lunatic conspiracy theorists in the world have been right all this time, and J-932 is behind it all. Is that what you’re telling me?” I asked.
“In a nutshell.”
“Good to know.””
“I haven’t found Jimmy Hoffa yet, but I’m sure he’s in here somewhere,” he said.
“Probably buried next to the Lindbergh baby and Amelia Earhart.”
“That’s my guess,” he agreed. He leaned in and kissed me. “You still ready to venture into the belly of the beast?”
“No. But I don’t know if we have a choice… I can’t just leave Kat out there to die. No matter how many times she tells me I should.”
“I know. Believe me, I know.” He didn’t look happy about it, but I knew this was one thing he wouldn’t fight me on. Whatever happened, I had to know beyond a reasonable doubt that I’d done everything I could to save my mother. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.
We were nearly finished with the meal, no one saying much of anything, when the dogs lost their minds and started barking like bandicoots outside. Maybe a minute later, one of Sally’s girls came crashing into the kitchen looking completely panicked.
“There’s someone at the gate, says he needs to see you,” she said, looking at Diggs.
“What? Who?” he demanded. “And… how? How the hell did they find us?”
“He says his name is Jack Juarez,” Keira said. I looked at Diggs, who looked utterly flabbergasted.