Shelter From the Storm

by Peter Sexton

  Where the hell is he going? Miranda wondered. She yelled, “Larry! Get in the car!”

  He stopped and turned and seemed to be considering whether or not he should trust his own eyes, believe what he was seeing.

  “Come on!” Miranda screamed. “Hurry up.”

  She threw the passenger door open for him, as she picked up the gun resting on her seat. More gunshots rang out, as the gunman inside Your Postal Partner appeared at the entrance. Miranda heard the bullets slam into the side of the car. She told Lawrence to get in and stay low, and then returned fire.

  When he was upright once again, looking in Miranda’s direction, all the color suddenly drained from his face. He shouted: “Get down!”

  Though Lawrence had tried to pull her down and out of danger, Miranda instinctively turned to see what fate lay behind her.

  Less than twenty-five yards away, in the passen- ger seat of a light blue sedan, sat a man with a handgun aimed directly at her. Not an instant passed before Miranda realized she recognized the man. And though she had always suspected he was involved in all of this mess, she had tried hard not to let herself believe it. The power of denial had served her well up to this very moment. But she could deny it no longer. There he was. One of the men who was after her; one of the men who was now trying to kill her. She knew she could never bring herself to shoot this man, even if not shooting him would mean losing her own life. This she understood with absolute conviction. In- stead, she shifted the Town Car into gear and lifted her foot from the brake. The man fired two shots.

  Though she didn’t feel herself do it, Miranda heard the sound of her own scream.

  Lawrence said, “Oh, God!”

  Somehow, even at this relatively close range, the man had missed his target. Neither Miranda nor Lawrence had been shot.

  “You all right?” she asked Lawrence.

  “What are you waiting for?” he said in response. “GO!”

  The gunman was out of his car now, moving across the parking lot toward them, yelling. Through all the screaming and chaos, Miranda thought she heard him say, “Go. Get out of here.”

  When she turned to look back toward the first gunman, she saw that he had been shot. He was now scrambling around for cover. Injured, but not dead.

  “GO!” the gunman from the sedan shouted again.

  And Miranda stomped on the accelerator and peeled out as they maneuvered through the parking lot and sped away. Behind her she heard three more gunshots and simultaneous screams of metal hitting metal, as bullets penetrated the rear of the Town Car’s body.

  Forty-Two

  “Just explain to me how you managed to fuck this up,” Anderson said into the phone. “I really want to hear this.”

  The board meeting had concluded shortly after he had fielded additional concerns voiced by a small number of the company executives. Now he was in his office behind closed doors, trying to figure out how he was going to clean this mess up before it was too late. He had been hoping to hear good news when Puckett called in; hear that the package had been retrieved from Your Postal Partner; hear that Miranda August was dead and no longer a threat to the success of their operation.

  Anderson stood at the window, staring at the street below, listening as Puckett brought him up to speed.

  “But you did get the package out of the mailbox before the girl showed,” Anderson said, more a state- ment than a question.

  Puckett said nothing in response.

  “Jesus! Are you at least certain the girl didn’t get it?”

  “I’m definitely sure about that,” Puckett said. “She never actually made it into the building. I didn’t even see her until she drove up in the car.”

  “Well, someone had to have accessed the box. If not Miranda, then who?”

  “It might have been Lawrence Blackwell.”

  “Gillian’s husband?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure. But it didn’t look like he had anything with him, either.”

  Anderson chewed on this information as he con- templated his next move.

  “You said you were hit?”

  “Yeah. Took one in the arm.” Puckett hesitated. “Hit by a fuckin’ stray shot. Trammel was aiming at the girl, got me instead.” Another pause. “And some dumb little bitch blasted me with pepper-spray.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, man. I thought I was gonna go blind. I thought it was the August girl, but it wasn’t. Next thing I know this bitch is spraying me point-blank. If I hadn’t gotten my hand up as quick as I did I’d be completely fuckin’ blind right now.”

  Anderson shook his head. He couldn’t believe just how thoroughly incompetent Puckett was proving himself to be.

  “How about Trammel? Was he injured?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “And Lee?”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

  “Yesterday, before we called it a night,” Puckett said, “she got a call. Then she took off in my car.”

  “Where the hell to?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “And you said Trammel’s gone now, too?”

  “He took off after it all went down. I figured he went after the girl, but I haven’t been able to reach him on his cell.”

  “And the man with Miranda, you’re certain it was Lawrence Blackwell?”

  “Pretty sure. I didn’t get a very good look at him. But who else could it have been?”

  Anderson wondered how much Blackwell could possibly know, how much Miranda August might have told him. But he knew he was avoiding his real concern. What Miranda and Blackwell were trying to accomplish at this point took a backseat. What concerned Anderson now was the call Puckett said Lee had received moments before she aborted the surveillance of Your Postal Partner. He could no longer rely on Puckett and the rest of his people to take care of this. It was time he became more proactive. Taking out the girl still had to be accom- plished, but it could wait. He needed to shift his focus to self-preservation. He needed to find out what Lee was up to. And he needed to do it before it was too late.

  “Listen. Here’s what I want to do,” Anderson started. But before he could continue there was a knock at his door. Into the phone, he said, “I’ll call you right back,” and hung up. “Come in,” he said in a loud but pleasant voice.

  Anderson’s secretary stepped inside the door and announced the waiting visitor. Anderson instructed her to let the woman in.

  Laura, the short, female board member with the high-pitched voice, entered. She carried a newspaper with her.

  Anderson asked, “What can I do for you, Laura?”

  She approached Anderson’s desk and thrust the newspaper at him. “The afternoon edition. It just hit the newsstands.”

  Anderson took it into his hands and studied it. He followed the article from beginning to page four and continued reading.

  “Well?” Laura said

  He finished scanning the entire newspaper, not raising his head to make eye contact. Finally, he folded it in half and handed it back to her.

  The front-page article suggested that investi- gators from the FDA had performed an array of tests on Faber’s food taken from the homes of the dead children and, thus far, had discovered no signs of anything that might have contributed to their deaths.

  Anderson allowed a tight smile to surface on his face. Thanks to Edward, the FDA will never find what’s really in the food.

  Laura said, “I’ve just received word that several cases of our product have now been seized by the FDA. The article says they suspect Edward August may have been tampering with the food, though they’re not sure yet in what way or to what purpose.”

  “That’s interesting,” Anderson said.

  “Interesting? You assured us no one would learn of the intention to use caffeine in our own product. You assured us the plan was fool-proof.”

  He stared at her but refrained from comment.

  “The girl has probably already spok
en to the FDA,” she continued. “Why else would they be look- ing so closely at the food? Our food?”

  Anderson shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe she’d do that.”

  “You don’t believe she’d do that.” Laura paused. “And why is it you sound so confident about that?”

  “Trust me,” Anderson said. “If she goes to the authorities with what she knows right now, what she thinks she knows, she’ll look as guilty as her father. The only thing she will accomplish is to land herself in prison.”

  Laura stood her ground. “You say that with such authority. I hope you’re right.”

  She took the newspaper with her when she left.

  Anderson hoped he was right, too.

  For a long time he sat at his desk in silence. His office had fallen quiet following the woman’s retreat. Outside, he could hear his secretary telling Laura to have a nice day. A moment later, he phoned Puckett back.

  “I’m coming to California,” Anderson said.

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “We need to pay Gillian August a visit. But first I need you to meet me at the lab in Camarillo.”

  Forty-Three

  “Where are we going?” Lawrence asked.

  Miranda had the Town Car cruising at seventy-five miles per hour, glancing occasionally into the rear- view mirror. At first she thought they were being followed, but she hadn’t seen anyone behind them for several miles now.

  “I have a friend in Nevada,” Miranda said. “She’s helping me figure out what Earth’s Own is really up to.”

  “Can you trust her?”

  “With my life,” she said without hesitation.

  Lawrence relaxed into his seat. He appeared overly calm and content, very unlike someone who had, not more than an hour before, narrowly escaped death. Miranda threw him a quick glance and studied his face. She hoped he wasn’t in shock.

  “I’m sorry about your car,” she said.

  “What about it?”

  “The bullet holes, the hard driving.”

  “It’s just a car. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I still feel bad.”

  “Don’t,” Lawrence said. “I’m really not worried about it.”

  They drove in silence for several minutes.

  “Thanks again for meeting me in Oak Hill,” Miranda said.

  “You don’t have to thank me.”

  “It almost got you killed.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “No. But we might not be so lucky next time.”

  “Maybe we won’t,” Lawrence said, “but that doesn’t change anything. I’m in this with you now, no turning back.”

  “I’m afraid for you,” Miranda admitted. She heard the genuine fear and concern in her own voice. “I don’t know how deep we’re getting, or if we’ll be able to climb back out at the other end.”

  “Don’t worry about me. You’re not forcing me to be here. We’ll get through this just fine. You have to believe that.”

  Miranda took her eyes from the road just long enough to toss another glance at Lawrence. If they hadn’t been in a moving car traveling at such a high rate of speed, she would have reached over and hugged him.

  “Why are you here, Larry? Seriously. Why are you risking your life to help me?”

  “I don’t know,” Lawrence said. “Just feels like the right thing to do.”

  Neither spoke for a while as Miranda drove.

  Then Lawrence said, “Did you hear the shots back there? Is that how you knew I was in trouble?”

  “Yeah,” Miranda said. “I recognized the guy as he was going in, and then I heard the shots. I was gonna plow the car through the front window and come out shooting.”

  “Thankfully it didn’t come to that.”

  Miranda nodded. “Yeah, no shit.”

  It fell quiet in the car once again and remained that way for a time. Miranda noticed a little mom-and-pop café and suggested that they stop for a few minutes. Her mind was still racing and she wanted to take a little time to slow down and think.

  Trammel eased back a bit until the Town Car had fallen just out of sight. There was nowhere to branch off from this highway, so he wasn’t concerned about losing them.

  He thought about Miranda and wondered how much she really knew about what she was mixed up in. He wondered how much he really knew about what she was mixed up in.

  His cell phone hadn’t stopped ringing since the shooting in Oak Hill. Four voicemails had been left, all from Puckett. And though the thought of killing him had entered his mind, Trammel had decided to let Puckett live. He wanted to be able to use him for information later, if necessary.

  Trammel smiled, imagining Puckett trying to explain to Anderson what had happened back at Your Postal Partner. He was so lost in this thought that he almost sped past the Town Car, which was now parked alongside a small café.

  Miranda returned from the restroom and took the seat in the booth facing the door. She had decided that food (if either of them would even be able to eat) might help her to be able to relax a little. The waitress appeared with their drinks and took their food order.

  Miranda scanned the other patrons in the café, as she listened to Lawrence. It troubled her to realize how tense and apprehensive she had become in such a short time. She was always on guard now. In fact, Lawrence had commented on it when she brought her backpack into the cafe with them.

  They tried to make small talk for several minutes as they waited for their food to arrive. Then Lawrence frowned when Miranda reached into her backpack, pulled the Glock out under the table and racked a round into the chamber.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered, as he started to turn around.

  “Don’t,” Miranda instructed. “Just sit tight.”

  Miranda focused on the approaching man, the man from the sedan outside Your Postal Partner. She knew he was armed, so the fact that he didn’t currently have a weapon in his hands didn’t mean she wouldn’t be prepared. But when he reached their table, he spoke with a gentle, disarming voice.

  “Hello, Miranda.”

  Miranda eyed him suspiciously for a long time before bringing herself to reply. “What are you doing here, Steven? Were you following us?”

  He glanced down at Lawrence, as though noticing him for the first time. “Can we talk privately?” he asked Miranda.

  “I don’t think that would be wise,” Lawrence said.

  Steven Trammel waited for Miranda’s answer. “Please,” he said.

  Lawrence was repeating his disapproval, when Miranda said, “It’s okay, Larry. Give us a couple minutes.” Then she lowered her eyes toward the gun in her right hand, letting Lawrence know she would be okay. “I’ll be fine.”

  Lawrence slid from the booth with obvious reluctance, as he gave Trammel a hard look. He said, “You make a convincing FBI agent. You almost had me believing you.”

  “FBI?” Miranda said.

  Steven Trammel simply shrugged.

  Lawrence then moved several tables away and took a seat facing them. Trammel looked back to see where he had gone before lowering himself into the seat across from Miranda. He studied her hair, her face.

  “I’m not sure I like you as a brunette,” he said.

  Now it was Miranda’s turn to shrug.

  “Not that it looks bad,” he continued. “I don’t think anything could ever look bad on you.”

  “What do you want, Steven?”

  “You’re in trouble, Miranda. Serious trouble.”

  It had always bothered her, his insistence on using her full name instead of calling her Randi as nearly everyone else did. He had told her that he just loved the sound of her full name, the way the three syllables rolled off the tongue. But she believed there was another reason he preferred using it; she believed he used the full name because it made her sound older.

  “Serious trouble,” she said. “I didn’t know that. Thanks for the scoop.”

  “This isn’t a joking matter,
Miranda. At first we were just supposed to bring you in, try and figure out how much you know. Things have gotten signi- ficantly worse. As I understand it, the standing order now is for termination.”

  Miranda didn’t know what to say. She didn’t doubt that he was telling her the truth.

  “You need my help, Miranda. You’re in way over your head.”

  “So tell me what exactly it is I’m into?”

  Trammel’s face became a vast pool of uncer- tainty, as though perhaps he was hoping she could answer that question for him. Miranda looked into his eyes and saw worry and concern, perhaps even fear.

  “I don’t know anymore,” Trammel admitted. “I thought I did but I was wrong.”

  “Who’s behind it?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “Just tell me who’s calling the shots.”

  “I don’t know, Miranda,” Trammel insisted. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Okay,” Miranda said. “Okay.”

  And then Trammel asked, “Where’s Maren? Who’s taking care of her?”

  Miranda narrowed her eyes at Trammel, swal- lowed hard in an attempt to avoid crying. She wasn’t sure how she should say it, but decided just to tell him straight out. He deserved that much. “Maren’s dead.”

  The blood drained from Steven Trammel’s face, as tears rushed to his eyes.

  “What? How?” His hands were gripping the edge of the table so fiercely Miranda could hear it creaking under the stress.

  Miranda blinked back tears. Her mouth was dry and her throat tight, making it difficult for her to speak.

  “It was her heart, Steven. She went into convulsions.” Miranda took several moments to compose herself, find her voice again. “She died in my arms.”

  “But how?” he repeated. “She was perfectly healthy.”

  “It was the food,” Miranda told him. “My dad tested her blood after she died. There was tons of caffeine in her system.”

  “That can’t be possible,” Trammel insisted. “There was nothing wrong with the food I gave you.”