Deadly News: A Thriller

by Zooey Smith

  “Hello?” Abby grunted. “Fuck!”

  The woman’s cell phone rang. She recoiled and stared at it in fear.

  Abby reached over the counter and grabbed it. “Hello?” she said in as normal of voice as she could manage. It could just be coincidence. She didn’t know why she cared about freaking someone out, but she did.

  But it wasn’t a coincidence.

  “Yes, you’re there. Good. Now walk outside.” It was a woman this time. It sounded like the same one she’d talked to before, the snippy tone standing out as much as the tone of the voice itself. Abby wondered why they kept switching.

  “I can’t—”

  “I will not say it again. If you question anything else I say, our business will be terminated.”

  Abby left. The FedEx clerk didn’t even try to stop her, just watched her go.

  Abby was about to say she was outside, but the woman on the phone went on. “There is a gas station. No, other way. Yes. Enter it. I’ll wait.”

  Abby did. It didn’t even surprise her anymore that they could see her.

  The few people in the store stared at her. The clerk, who looked like a boy to Abby, grinned widely at her from under his long hair. “Hey there.”

  Abby ignored him and waited for further instructions.

  “There is a man in a hat, he’s wearing red. Do you see him?”

  Abby looked around and spotted someone in a red plaid shirt. “Yes.”

  “Approach him, he will take it from there. Oh, and Abby? Leave the phone with that boy behind the counter, he’ll know what to do with it.” She hung up.

  Abby reappraised the boy, was he involved? She approached, and his smile seemed to grow. She held out the phone for him. “You know what to do with this?”

  He looked at it, still smiling. “I could find a use, if that’s what you’re into.”

  “What?” She shook her head. “Do you know who it belongs to?”

  “Um.”

  “She works at the printing shop. She’s there now.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He took the phone. “She put you up to this? Technically my birthday’s not till tomorrow, but I’m not—” He stopped and looked behind her.

  There was a tap at Abby’s back. It was the man in the red plaid shirt.

  “Can we get this over with? Come on.”

  Abby followed him out of the store. The boy behind the counter said something, but she didn’t really hear it. She was focused on the man in front of her, the red plaid of his shirt.

  He led them toward a truck parked by one of the pumps. The screen in the pump was playing ads. Life insurance. Abby laughed. She wondered why ads were playing when the pump wasn’t in use. This somehow seemed more important than anything else.

  A door clicked, distracting her from the talking head telling her how important it was to leave something for your loved ones. The man in plaid had opened the passenger door. Abby could smell stale cigar smoke drift out.

  She didn’t know what she expected, blood? Tools of torture? But the inside of the cab looked normal. There was a jacket on the seat, a coffee from somewhere that wasn’t Starbucks in the cupholder. The ashtray was open, but it was currently empty.

  The man in plaid crawling partway in, and came out with a flash drive and some tape. Abby had gotten close to look inside, and he bumped into her as turned around. He let out a little cry, and almost fell back into the cab. He caught himself before going all the way down. “Sorry. Can you back up?”

  Abby did. He seemed very uncomfortable with the proximity.

  He bent and picked up the tape he’d dropped, then said, “Sorry about this.”

  “About what?” Abby said. Her voice wavered, and she took a deep breath to prevent it from happening again.

  “I have to tape this to you.”

  “Oh,” Abby said. That was weird, but at least she wouldn’t lose it.

  He licked his lips. “And…” He looked away, then back at her face, which he fixated on. “Your hands too.”

  “Just get it over with. I’m freezing.”

  “Yeah, sure, okay.”

  He placed the flash drive against the hollow of her throat, then asked her to hold up her hair. She hesitated, but remembered the woman’s words and did as asked.

  He wrapped the tape around her neck loosely, securing the drive in place. Then he told her to sit down and hold out her hands, which he secured at the wrists.

  “I have to cover your mouth now. I’m sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing and just do it. The sooner you do, the sooner this will be over.” Then she couldn’t speak.

  He went to the back of his truck and got a chain and two large locks. He wrapped this once around the gas pump—life insurance ad still playing, the talking head still dumbly going on—then around one of her ankles. “You, uh,” he swallowed. “Jesus, I’m sorry. You need to—” He looked away. When he looked back, Abby saw tears in his eyes. “You need to spread your legs apart.”

  The cold became her. Starting in her chest, it spread through her whole body, and for some reason the air she was breathing wasn’t enough to satisfy her lungs.

  She must have done as she was asked though, because she found herself lying on the ground, the smell of duct tape and gasoline—two very useful things, she thought—competing in her nostrils.

  She only vaguely felt the burning of her gracilis muscles as her legs were abducted to their limit.

  She heard sobbing, and felt something even colder, though this seemed impossible, touch her. It was all very distant, like it was touching someone else, and she was being notified of it over a bad connection.

  The cold seeped inside her, liquid nitrogen being sprayed on a snowman.

  She wondered who was crying.

  Vision faded away, and the night grew darker still. That was okay, she was having a hard time making sense of the things she saw.

  There was a sense of falling, of resting, of time passing.

  She blinked several times, a rapid succession of images. The different images she saw each time confused her. There were taillights, heading off into the dark. Then long dark hair, with a loud voice coming from beyond it. Then a person, and some kind of roof, and she was warm. Then a blast of cold. Automatic doors. Emily holding a hand—was it hers? And then darkness again.

  …

  Before she’d even fully come to, she already knew she was in a hospital room. She didn’t know how, but opening her eyes confirmed she was right. There was someone else in the room, she could tell, right over there. She couldn’t make her head turn that way, though.

  The figure stood, emanated noise.

  Speech, she realized.

  Abby blinked, and the figure was hovering over her. It was like an insect.

  “Abby? Abby Melcer? Are you there?”

  “Of course she’s there, she’s not a telephone.”

  Another figure approached.

  Abby rubbed her eyes. She was in a hospital bed—that made sense. Fe and Emily were in the room with her. Somehow that did too. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Fe said. “How you feel?”

  “Tired. What—” But then she remembered, the bridge. Walking into… Where had she walked into?

  She took a few breaths. “I did something crazy. I don’t remember what, but I hope it was worth it.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Emily said. “It— I mean— That wasn’t supposed to happen. They didn’t say anything about that.”

  “God,” Fe said. She wiped at her eyes. “You must think we’re horrible. Both times you get put into protective custody you are—” her words choked off.

  She had gone to a gas station, she remembered. She had been tied up outside it. “Yeah, it’s becoming a thing. Maybe if there are drugs, the DEA can get involved. I’m sure some drug lords could come up with some inventive ways to fuck me.”

  Fe put a hand to her mouth, but didn’t take her eyes off Abby.

  Emily looked away. After a moment, she said, “I don’t know a
bout worth it, but we did get our guy back, and his family’s very happy about that, especially his two kids. Five and seven,” she added absently.

  “I don’t need your stoking,” Abby said. “I need Ecks back, alive.” There was silence at this. After a moment, she said, “I’m glad your guy’s okay.”

  “Me too,” Emily said. “Thank you.”

  “Wait, wasn’t—” Abby felt her neck. “What about the drive?”

  “If they told the truth? Less than a week to brute-force a password of that length.”

  “Password?”

  “You don’t remember?” Emily asked.

  Abby shook her head.

  “Something to stall for time,” Fe said. “Bullshit.”

  “That wouldn’t make sense,” Emily said.

  “Nothing they do makes sense,” Fe said.

  “We have some very good analysts telling us otherwise.”

  Abby closed her eyes and interrupted: “If they didn’t?”

  “If they didn’t?” Emily asked.

  “They,” Abby said, looking at Emily. “Didn’t tell the truth about the drive. They lied about Ecks, they could have lied about that too.”

  “Then we won’t crack it, or if we do it won’t have what we expect.”

  “What was on it?” Abby asked.

  “That’s classified.”

  Abby found she didn’t really care. “Was there anything else?”

  “Evidence wise? No. Oh, Quantico got some results back to us on the samples from your boyfriend’s apartment.”

  “Already?” Fe asked.

  Emily nodded without looking at her.

  “And?” Abby asked.

  “And we know what brand shoes they were wearing, and in the stuff we vacuumed up they found hair that doesn’t match yours or his. So we’ll see if there’s a match on that today or tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Abby said.

  “Yeah.”

  Emily pulled one of the chairs closer to the bed and sat in it. She was below Abby’s eye level now. “I’m really sorry, I can’t even imagine…” she shook her head.

  Abby, with great effort, got herself sat up. It was only after she did, that she noticed the bed’s control in the arm rail. She had meant to respond, but instead asked, “Why am I so tired?”

  “Temazepam,” Emily said, leaning back, her tone changing. “Brand name Restoril. It’s a sleeping aid, often used in date rape. He injected you with a pretty high dose.”

  “Bastards,” Fe said.

  “That guy,” Abby asked. “Did you catch him?”

  Emily nodded. “Don’t know that catch is the right word, but we have a full twenty minutes of his truck on multiple security cameras, front and rear plates. So, yeah. We talked to him, but, well…”

  “What?” Abby asked.

  Emily gestured toward Fe, who walked to the window before answering.

  She stared out as she spoke. “She’s right, sick bastards. That man, the one who—” The side of her face Abby could see scrunched up in a grimace. “He was put up to it also, they threatened him—”

  “Jesus! Who are these people? They just go around threatening people, bossing around police and FBI. What happened to not negotiating with terrorists?”

  Emily shrugged. “We haven’t negotiated with anyone. What private citizens do among themselves…” She shrugged again.

  Abby shook her head, but kept her mouth shut. Maybe she could use this in her story if she didn’t draw too much attention to it. FBI negotiating for their agents—and how had ‘They’ taken an FBI agent hostage anyway?—involving civilians, knowingly taking false testimony, or at least a confession of a crime they knew wasn’t committed. Abby wondered if a terrorism conviction would go on her record. She somehow doubted it.

  “The man,” Fe said, not looking away from the window. There’s more.”

  Emily sighed. She put her face in her hands. “I don’t think you need to hear this.”

  “She deserves to know.” Fe turned to Abby. “If you want to, I mean. It’s up to you.”

  Everything was up to her, she thought. All her choices, no one forcing her. She said, “Well, great, of course now I want to know. What is it?”

  “The sick part”—Fe shook her head—“not really because of threatening his family, but because of why—at least why we think—they chose him.”

  ‘They’, Abby thought. That word would forever haunt her, she was sure.

  “His daughter—his oldest, he has two—his oldest daughter was raped.” She paused, went on, “He found her.”

  “I guess what he did wasn’t easy for him,” Abby said. She was having trouble remembering what he did. She wondered if that was a good sign or bad. It was probably the drug, that would make sense. She didn’t remember taking anything though. She frowned. Someone had drugged her. A man. The man they were talking about.

  She rubbed at her face. Jesus, she was out of it.

  “That’s not all,” Fe said. “She was restrained exactly as you were. Drugged exactly as you were, dose exactly the same. She was your age. They made him recreate the way he found her, recreate it exactly.”

  “Not quite exactly, it wasn’t a gas station.”

  Fe waved this away.

  “Fuck,” was all Abby could think to say.

  “Yeah.”

  “Now that you know, I’m hoping you won’t press charges?”

  “Press charges? For a felony?”

  “It’s only a crime if it was against your will.”

  Abby stared down the length of her legs, the white blanket covering them. She focused on the footboard, its fauxwood finish, the black strip around the edge. She wondered if it was there for safety, or some other reason.

  She shook her head. “Everything we did, I agreed to.”

  Fe pressed her lips together and nodded.

  “Okay,” Emily said. She smiled. “I’d say we’ll let you get some rest, but…”

  “Yeah, I’ve had enough of rest.”

  “How ‘bout we get out of here?”

  “I can leave?”

  “Well, technically I think you can leave when you like. But I mean down to the cafeteria. It’s been almost a day since you ate.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “It was pretty much an overdose. They had to pump your stomach.”

  “Pump my stomach?” Was her memory really that screwed? she wondered. “Am I imagining it, or did you say he injected me?”

  “Eh, figure of speech. I don’t know what they actually did. Charcoal? I don’t know.”

  “Antidote,” Fe added absently.

  Emily got up, went to a wardrobe and removed a pair of fuzzy blue slippers, with grippy rubber on their bottoms. She handed them to Abby.

  “Thanks,” Abby said, and got out of bed.

  After checking with a nurse that it was okay for Abby to leave her room, they headed down to the hospital’s cafeteria.

  “So what happened while I was out?” Abby asked, sitting down with her tray of food. Walking down here had woken her up enough to think clearly. At least she thought she was thinking clearly. Though how could she really know?

  She flexed her eyes wide, focused on the outside world; she didn’t want to fall into that spiral of meta thoughts.

  Fe and Emily were across from her, and already eating.

  Emily shook her head, mouth filled with food. “Told you everything,” she managed.

  “You still don’t have any idea who they are?”

  This caused both Fe and Emily to pause and look at each other.

  Abby halted the ascent of her fork to her mouth. “What? What is it?”

  Emily set down the bagel she had been about to bite into. “Um, okay. This is off the record, not in your story, tell no one.”

  Abby waited.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes, yes, go on.”

  “Nothing is confirmed, but there is evidence, circumstantial, shaky evidence, that one of the people involved is—�
�� She shook her head. “Let’s just say he used to work for us.”

  “The FBI?”

  “I can’t say. And no, and I won’t elaborate on that at this time.”

  Abby almost laughed. “Fine, whatever. But you know who he is?”

  Emily spread more cream cheese on her bagel. She then took a bite and nodded.

  “That’s it?” Abby said giving her head a little shake and briefly flashing her hands in front of her. “That’s all you have.”

  Emily swallowed. “We’re picking him up.” She gestured between her and Fe. “Our respective agencies, anyway, not us specifically.”

  “Well that’s good. Do you think— I don’t know, do you think something will come of it?”

  “I fucking well hope so.”

  An ex-FBI agent, Abby thought as she ate. That would almost explain how ‘They’ knew so much, were able to get away with so much. If she could stick with this story—and not get killed, don’t forget that, she reminded herself—it could make her career. This was big, Soren had been right about that.

  She just needed to live long enough to tell it, and get Ecks, and Soren, and revenge. Anything beyond that would be a bonus.

  …

  Abby was made to stay in the hospital until after dark, though no one would tell her why. The doctors suggested it was for her safety, and Fe and Emily suggested it was for her heath, and Abby suspected it was for the benefit of someone else entirely.

  Fe had had the clothes some kind officer had bought Abby the last time she was in a hospital washed, and so she changed into these as Emily explained how they were going to leave.

  “And then Agent, uh”—she gestured to the closed door—“the big guy out there, you’ll fall in behind him until we reach the vehicle.”

  Abby pulled the bulletproof vest over her head. “So you think I’m going to be assassinated?”

  “You want to take that risk?” Fe asked.

  Abby sighed and shook her head. She tugged at the vest, trying to get it comfortably situated.

  “Let me help,” Fe said, coming over and somehow making the thing tolerable. It was still heavy, though.