by Zooey Smith
“What about Ecks. And Soren?”
“Your friend Ecks is currently fine. Who is this Soren?”
“You know damn well.”
“No matter. You have your instructions, where you go from here is up to you. Goodbye, Abby Melcer.”
Abby wasn’t sure if he was still on the line or if he had hung up, but she found herself unable to say anything, unable to remove the phone from her ear.
Fe mouthed, What?
Abby was suddenly sitting down, Fe was holding her, saying something. Abby couldn’t hear it.
Several minutes later, the two of them left Emily’s office. A new plan formed. With what ‘They’ just said, this might be the best opportunity they had to catch them, and save Ecks.
“Haven’t we been over this?” the lieutenant asked.
“But this is different. I’m not bait this time.”
“You may as well be,” Masterson said. He had actually gotten in an accident getting back to the station so quickly. Luckily he had only hit a parked car, and left a note—or so he claimed.
“They said this was the last time. Maybe they’re lying, but what if they aren’t? This could be your last chance.”
The lieutenant contemplated this. “If I agree, you have to do exactly as told.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“I’m serious. If we’re going to catch these guys, it’s not going to just happen, they are pros, clearly. So we need to be as well.”
Abby nodded. “I understand.”
Shortly after, Abby was in an evidence room, getting a wire taped to her person. “A vest, too? Again?”
“Safety precaution,” Fe said.
“Won’t they see that?”
“It will be dark, and you’ll have your coat on. You’re skinny enough that I doubt it.” She put it over Abby’s head.
“I have to start wearing it now? Let me put a shirt on first.”
“I just want to see how it fits.” She settled the vest over Abby’s head, then buckled it.”
“How’s that feel?”
“Shitty.”
“Too tight?”
Abby shook her head. “It’s fine. It fits as well as it’s going to. Can I take it off now?”
Fe nodded and Abby pulled the heavy thing off and tossed it on a nearby shelf. “You said we’re testing this?”
“Yeah. Almost done, I need to find an earpiece for you.” She went to another shelf.
“Won’t they see that?”
“If they’re even watching you, which we don’t know.” She grabbed something and handed it to Abby.
“Wow that’s small.”
“Yeah, it goes almost all the way in your ear. You’d have to stand right next to you to see it.”
Abby put it in. “It’s like an earplug.”
“But smaller.”
Abby shook her head. “Whoa, that’s weird. I can’t hear on that side.”
“It’s got a microphone, so when it’s on you’ll be able to.”
“What the hell’s this for then?” Abby gestured to the tape and wire crisscrossing her body.
“Transmitter and more mikes and a camera.”
“Oh.” Abby stared down at the electronics taped to her, then laughed. “They were right about hiding it.” She shook her head. “I wonder why they’re letting me go like this.”
“There’s a saying about gift horses.” Fe threw a shirt at Abby. “Let’s go test it.”
A few hours later, having confirmed the electronics worked as they should, Abby and Fe were sipping coffee in the kitchen across from the interrogation room in which Emily was currently ‘questioning’ the former FBI agent they suspected of being connected.
When they’d arrived, they were told Agent Vasquez had already been going at him for a couple of hours, so they were surprised when it was nearly another full hour before she came out, even more sweaty than when Abby had last seen her.
“Good cop, bad cop?” Abby asked.
“Bad cop and worse cop,” the agent who came out of the room with Emily said.
“What is she still doing here?”
“She got another call,” Fe said. “I’m guessing you’ve been out of communication for a while?”
“Don’t even start.”
“I wasn’t sure if she was trying to interrogate him or fuck him,” the agent said.
Emily scowled at him. “Don’t you have work to do?”
He chuckled. “It’s all on tape, all nothing of it. So, no.”
Emily wiped her face. “Let’s talk in my office.”
She shut the door once they were inside, removed her jacket then unbuttoned a few buttons of her shirt.
“You look exhausted.”
“You try interrogating an ex-FBI agent.”
“So?” Fe asked.
“So what?”
“What did you find out?”
Emily exhaled. “Nothing. It doesn’t look like it was him. His alibi is weak, we’re checking into it. But it looks like it will hold up.”
“Then you’ll be happy to know Abby got another call from our mystery man.”
Emily sat up in her seat. “What’d he say?”
“He wants me to pick up a folder for him, deliver it somewhere.”
Emily frowned. “That’s weird.”
“I know.”
“Um. Is there anything, you know…”
“I can keep my clothes this time.” Abby shrugged. “At least I think so. Maybe I’ll find out I have to pull a Lady Godiva and ride a unicycle to the drop-off location.”
Emily looked to Fe. “Do you guys want any help with this?”
“It’s probably technically the FBI’s case, so if you’re interested in finding out what happens…”
“Okay. When is this going down?”
“A few hours,” Fe said, checking her watch.
“Good. I’m going to shower and change. Give me ten minutes?”
“Ten minutes?”
“The showers are all the way on the ground floor, it takes time to get there.”
“No, I thought that was quick. That’s fine.”
Not fifteen minutes later, a wet-haired Emily came walking out of the elevator.
Fe and Abby stood from the bench.
“That was longer than ten minutes,” Fe said, looking at her watch.
“Blow me,” Emily said, and walked past them and through security, where the guard was trying not to laugh. Fe and Abby followed, and headed to the location of Abby’s final task.
The scene was a busy city street corner; men and woman carrying shopping bags or babies, pushing strollers and trailing the occasional suitcase, teenagers with backpacks and that rebellious look they always manage; these all passed by as, a block and a half away, Fe, Abby, and Emily staked out the scene.
There was nothing obviously or overtly wrong with it. There were lots of places that Abby could be watched from, which would be both good and bad. But at least the police would be able to keep an eye on her.
“Wanna grab a bite?” Fe asked.
They were all staring at the corner, as though something extraordinary was supposed to occur, any moment now.
“I could eat,” Emily said.
“Sure. We’ve seen all we can I think.”
Emily put the unmarked car into drive, merged into traffic, and disappeared.
They talked about things that didn’t matter as they ate, about topics like, but not exactly, the weather; about the people around them, the bartender, the waitress, things that were safe, in other words, nothing that would remind of what had happened, and of what was yet to come. When the topic of friends came up, and drifted precariously close to ones not seen for a time, it was swiftly dropped.
They killed more time, ordered drinks without any alcohol, drank them, got refills, used the restrooms, paid the bill. Left.
The sky was dim when they exited, and the lights of the street would soon turn on. But for now, it was just the dying rays of the sun set
ting behind buildings they walked under.
They walked back toward the corner where Abby was to be a few hours from now, and Fe and Emily split off to enter an apartment building, to take an elevator to a room on the eighth floor commandeered for just this purpose, while Abby headed to a Starbucks, where she would wait until that night had fully come.
When she left the coffee shop hours later, still wearing her coat, and under it the vest that might save her life, she was sweating—not just from the heavy layers—and the bite of the night air on her damp skin was welcome. But it held something else, too. Something menacing and dark, flashes of all the bad things we imagine as children lurk in the unseen corners of the night, waiting for us to come closer, and closer, until…
Abby approached the corner. The streets were nearly empty at this time of night. A breeze opposed her progress, and she wrapped her coat tighter around her body. The sounds of the city late at night seemed far away. Distant sounds that could be screams or could be laughter, the occasional blaring of a horn, the sound of sparse traffic. She looked around for signs of anyone, for a folder flapping in the breeze or hidden in a crevice. There was nothing.
“I don’t see anything,” she mumbled, pretending to breathe into her hands for warmth.
“Nothing here either,” came the voice in her earpiece. “This is exactly when they said to be here.”
“You sure?” Abby asked, scanning the area. But she knew it was: she was the one who’d gotten the call, been told the time, and it was exactly eleven hours and fifty-eight minutes later. She’d been watching the clock for the past twenty minutes, just waiting to leave. She might be a few seconds off, but she’d had a view of the corner, and no one had walked by in the five minutes before she walked out here.
“We double checked your phone logs. If we’re off, it’s by less than a minute.” There was a voice in the back, Abby couldn’t make out what it said. “Wait. Alvereze says to look at that sign.”
Abby looked up at the street signs.
“No, on— To your right. Yeah. See that poster?”
Abby started as she instantly recognized the face, a feeling of horror seeping through her armor as she stood transfixed by the missing person poster. A poster with her face large and drained of color, a photo that could have been taken at a DMV, but wasn’t, the length of the photo, and lack of a shirt collar at the bottom edge of the frame giving it away to anyone observant enough to take note.
It took several moments for her to notice the name below the photo was not her own.
Finally, she said, “Getting this?” She assumed the camera she wore faced the same way she did, but it was on her chest, not her head, so she couldn’t be certain the poster was visible to whoever was watching the feed. She let her jacket fall open a bit in case it was in the way.
“Yep, hold on.” There was a several second silence. “That looks like an address.”
Abby reached up and ripped the poster off the pole and shoved it into her pocket. She looked around, standing next to the pole, facing the street. She had to resist looking up at the building where her guardians were, resist trying to find the window with them in it. It would probably be dark anyway.
They told her to wait for a bit.
She did.
Ten minutes passed; nothing. Then fifteen, then twenty. At a half hour past the scheduled time, a voice in her head told her to go. She knew at once it was from the earpiece she wore, but that didn’t remove the sense that it came from somewhere deeper, and darker.
Trying for speed to warm her now chilled self, Abby walked quickly to the address on the poster, the voices in her head guiding her when she lost her way.
…
The building looked abandoned. Maybe at one time it was apartments, or some kind of shop. Now it was just the broken down hull of something that used to be.
There was a note on the door.
Abby, milk is gone. Folder is near.
She tried the door. Open. The smell she was assaulted with was much less potent than she had for some reason been expecting.
Now that she was inside, it wasn’t even that bad, just stale.
The floor creaked as she traversed it. The room she was in was almost too dark to see, but the light leaking in from the open door was just enough.
She ignored the stairs to her left, not least because a few were missing and she wasn’t eager to take out any more, and proceeded into the next room.
The shift in atmosphere was sudden and unexpected. Whereas the previous room had been old and more or less what she’d expected from the building’s exterior, this could be a newly-constructed room, the builders having left only hours ago.
She wanted to ask What now?, but was worried the place might be bugged.
“Is it just the camera, or does that area look much nicer?” Fe asked in the earpiece.
Abby didn’t respond. There were only three doors. She picked one and opened it.
It was empty. The walls were metal, like perhaps this had been a freezer. The door was normal, however. “Weird,” Abby said.
The next door was a kitchen that also looked empty.
The third and final door led into a downward sloping hallway. “What’s this?” she wondered aloud, hoping it sounded natural and knowing it didn’t.
“We’re trying to get blueprints for that place. We found it on a real estate agency’s site, but the website layout is confusing on a phone. Give us a few, Alvereze is tethering his laptop.”
Abby entered this descending hallway. There was a soft light coming from somewhere, though it was not obvious where.
Her footsteps were silent on the thick carpet lining the hall. Or maybe it was a wide rug, she couldn’t tell. This too was dark, and it made it hard to judge distance or height. When she turned around to look back the way she had come, she was surprised to see the door was no longer in sight, just what was now a clearly curving wall.
“Like a big spiral staircase.”
“What?”
“I—” Abby stopped herself. She was being paranoid, but that wasn’t unreasonable given all that had happened.
“Okay, we’ve got something. It looks like it’s a multilevel building. It has a few floors below ground. It used to be a club, then some kind of… I don’t know. In any case, where it looks like you are leads to a large open area.
“I don’t like this. We might lose connection with you if you go too deep. The lower level is completely below ground.”
“I’m fine,” Abby whispered.
“Abby, you need to come back up. They wouldn’t make the folder hard to find, it would be in plain sight.” There was someone else’s voice, then Fe said, “Exactly. Yeah, Abby, you haven’t even checked the kitchen, and the note mentioned milk.”
Abby made like she was wiping her nose, whispered, “Empty.” The truth was though, this was too interesting to not investigate. She’d been fascinated with urban exploration since moving to the city, and this was the closest she’d come in real life.
She reached a doorway. The barely there light of the hall tapered off into complete darkness. She only had the sense of a doorway, the empty space beyond, like her mind could recognize that there was no physical door there, just a hole. But she couldn’t actually see this. She held her hand out, and as expected it swiped through empty air.
She should have brought a flashlight. She dug out her phone. It had a flashlight. She flipped through the apps trying to find it.
A voice in her ear, telling her to go back.
Screw it. She faced the screen forward, the screen barely illuminating the doorway, and stepped through.
The quiet was odd. She had the sense that the space she just entered into was very large, yet there didn’t seem to be any echo. She felt along the wall for a light switch, but then recoiled. It was slimy. She rubbed her fingertips against one another. It felt like butter, but stringier. She wiped her hand on her coat, then regretted it. Dry clean only.
She was moving her phone
to shine on the wall when a voice startled her: “Abby —— out —— ow!”
It took her several milliseconds to register where the voice came from. “What?” she said, before she could stop herself.
The dark room suddenly seemed more menacing
She slowly backed out, phone forward, lighting her retreat. As she did, her footsteps seemed to echo. Her teeth began to feel like they were vibrating, and she quickened her pace, feeling along the wall for the gap that led to the hallway. The light from her phone went out. She couldn’t see anything at all. She moved her thumb to turn it on again, dropped it instead. Her other hand passed over dry and wet wall alternately. She bent down, running her hand across the floor to locate her phone, keeping her other on the wall for orientation. There! Her hand hit the phone and it skittered away. She lunged in that direction and her hand fell on it with a crack. She grabbed it and stood, turning it on. She shined the cracked screen around, finding the wall again and keeping both hands on it as she made her way out. The phone’s screen flickered once, twice, then would light no more. Suddenly her footsteps were quadrupled. Her pawing became more frantic. Where was the door? The hallway had been lit, even if it was dim, she should be able to see it.
Feeling like she’d somehow passed it, she went in the other direction. The echoes of her footsteps were louder now, but she didn’t think about whether that was because she was moving faster, or because they were closer.
She fell. A burning pain in her wrist, another crack from her phone, something sharp in her palm. Get up, she told herself, now! The vest weighed heavily on her, like it was anchoring her to the ground.
She may have screamed. She pushed with all she could, pushing on her bad wrist and hardly feeling it, but now she was up. She stumbled around, the echoes of her footsteps out of sync. She hit something, a wall, but soft. Then another wall. The footsteps again; not hers, she thought. Wall, wet, dry. Then the frame. She fell.
She was in the hallway.
She quickly glanced behind her to make sure she wasn’t pointed in the wrong direction, then got up and ran. The vest bounced up and down, grinding her shirt against the soft skin of her ribs, armpits. It burned as more sweat flowed. Her jacket threatened to trip her, a promise she didn’t want kept.