by Diane Capri
Michaels smiled out the window in misplaced gratitude; his eyes were glazed over from pain and it was obvious he did not yet recognize them.
Tony managed to pull open the damaged door. Broken glass littered the car’s interior, and a steady pulse of blood washed down the side of the man’s face. It wasn’t exactly streaming, but it was flowing steadily, and in addition, both of his legs seemed to have been swallowed up by the car. He looked exactly like a helpless bug being devoured by a Venus flytrap.
The injured man mumbled something Tony couldn’t make out. His breathing was labored and he seemed to be fading fast. As long as their luck held for a few more minutes and no nosy passing motorists stopped to investigate the scene, he and Brian would soon be out of the woods—literally—and on their way home.
Tony glanced at Brian and nodded slightly, and the younger man slipped behind the vehicle to approach it from the other side. Meanwhile, Tony hefted a half-full bottle of cheap whiskey in his right hand and splashed liberal doses of the amber liquid over the seats, the dashboard, the floor, and, of course, over Michaels. The crash victim was slipping in and out of consciousness and didn’t seem to notice what was happening.
As the sharp smell of whiskey filled the car’s smashed interior, Tony roughly pulled Michaels’s head back by his hair and poured some down the man’s gullet. He choked as he reflexively swallowed. Whiskey and spittle flew from his mouth in a fine mist, spraying Tony and everything else in its path. Michaels’s eyes flew wide with fear and panic, but in his weakened state he was utterly unable to defend himself.
The bottle now nearly empty, Tony pitched it hard against the dashboard. It smashed into a thousand glittering pieces, razor-sharp missiles shredding the air, and the brown glass from the liquor bottle mixed with the opaque greenish automobile safety glass scattered throughout the car.
#
On the other side of the ruined Sebring, Brian located the briefcase full of cash Tony had given Michaels earlier today. The case had flown off the seat with the force of the accident and gotten wedged under the ruined dashboard, much like Michaels’s legs, and Brian tugged it back and forth before it finally popped free, its battered leather shell ripping on an exposed jagged iron support bracket. He pulled the case out of the Sebring just as Tony smashed the whiskey bottle, peppering him with shards of glass. He wanted to tell the crazy bastard to be more careful but didn’t dare.
#
Tony studied the inside of the car thoughtfully, like an artist stepping back from his easel to get a better perspective on the canvas. Time was of the essence, but he wanted to be sure this was done properly. Satisfied, he nodded and returned to the driver’s side door for one last time. The whiskey stench was overwhelming and nearly made him gag.
Wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell, Tony leaned inside and gently, almost reverently, placed two gloved hands around Michaels’s flabby neck. The man had regained consciousness and was clearly terrified, but he gave Tony a look that was almost indignant, as if he couldn’t wrap his brain around the fact that he was being double-crossed.
“Don’t take it so hard,” Tony said with a brief smile, leaning into the wrecked car and putting his mouth next to Michaels’s ear so he was sure to be heard. “It’s nothing personal. This is just business. I’m sure you understand.” With that he began choking what little life remained out of Nelson Michaels, who tried to thrash and resist but was unable to do much of anything but shake his head like he disagreed with Tony’s plan, which undoubtedly he did.
Within seconds Michaels was gone. He had been breathing only with extreme difficulty anyway, and even in the short time Tony and Brian had been working at the car, his respiration had become noticeably more labored.
Tony again examined the inside of the car with a critical eye, pulling off his latex gloves and stuffing them into the back pocket of his trousers. Blood and glass were everywhere, giving the scene the look of some twisted surrealistic painting. Michaels was slumped in the driver’s seat, his indignant expression still framing his lifeless features.
“What do you think?” Brian asked, handing Tony the briefcase with the slashed leather front and removing his own gloves with a snap. “Does it look believable? Will the cops buy the idea that our guy croaked as a result of the accident?”
“Well, that whiskey I splashed all over the place will lead the investigators to believe he was drinking on his way home from work and lost control of the vehicle. And his legs being trapped under the smashed dashboard is very helpful to us. The investigators will initially assume he was alive after the accident but couldn’t move and died before help arrived.
“Of course, once the autopsy is performed, it will become clear that virtually none of the liquor actually made it to his stomach. The authorities will thus learn he wasn’t really drunk, and they will discover fine traces of powder from the latex gloves around his neck. They will piece it together and eventually reach the obvious and correct conclusion—that Mr. Michaels was murdered. But by the time they do, it will be irrelevant. At least to us.”
The two men had by now hiked almost all the way back to the truck. They peered out at the road through the thick brush. It would not do to be seen exiting the woods by a car driving past.
But there was nothing.
Tony and Brian clambered out of the woods and hurried back up the lonely road to the stolen F-150 in silence. The sun had sunk beneath the trees, and there was a very good possibility that Michaels wouldn’t be found until morning, which would suit their purposes perfectly. Placing the damaged briefcase on the bench seat between them, Tony slid into the beat-up Ford and fired up the truck’s tired engine. Then they chugged slowly away from the site of the ambush.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nick was exhausted. He had never realized until now just how much effort, both physical and emotional, went into burying a loved one. He had been to plenty of funerals before, but putting a grandparent in the ground after eighty-five years of life was a lot different than saying goodbye to your wife, especially when she had been just twenty-nine years old when she died, and had been taken from you without warning in a single violent instant.
“Honey, you need to get some rest.” His mother brushed his shaggy hair from his eyes, something she had been doing since he was a little kid and something he had always hated. “Lisa wouldn’t have wanted you to wear yourself down and get sick, I’m sure of that.”
“Yeah, I know.” Nick breathed deeply and looked at his watch. Two hours until he had to drive his parents to Logan Airport to catch their flight back to Dayton. Everyone else who had gathered to bury Lisa was already gone, and Nick was anxious to be alone so he could grieve the way he badly needed to. He was touched by the support of the throngs of friends and relatives, both his and Lisa’s, but Nick had not truly been alone since those first few horrible hours after the police officers had shown up five days ago with the news that his wife was gone. Irrevocably and permanently gone.
With everyone using his house as a staging area—people coming and going at all hours for days, and his parents staying with him—Nick felt as though his entire focus had been on remaining strong for everyone else, on keeping up some ridiculous charade where he tried to convince the onlookers who were watching him so closely that he was doing just fine.
The fact of the matter was that he was doing the opposite of just fine, whatever that might be. Just shitty? Just stunned? Just lost and rudderless and totally numb? He hadn’t yet had a chance to contemplate how he was going to continue without Lisa or whether he really wanted to, for that matter.
It wasn’t like he was contemplating suicide; he knew Lisa would never forgive him if he were to take his own life. But since the very first day he had met Lisa Harrison, way back in high school, Nick had never given one solitary thought to the possibility that he might not spend the rest of his life with her. Now that she was gone, Nick hadn’t the slightest idea what to do next.
“Listen, Mom, maybe getting som
e rest is a good idea. I think I will take a short nap. I’ll make sure I’m up in plenty of time to drive you and Dad to the airport. Don’t worry.”
“That’s fine,” she said, gliding out of the bedroom and pulling the door softly closed behind her. Moments later Nick heard the whine of the vacuum cleaner running at the other end of the house as his mother finished getting the home in tip-top shape before departing for Ohio.
Sleeping was out of the question, of course; Nick had simply used that excuse as a convenient way to carve out some time to himself. He felt a pang of guilt, knowing his parents were leaving soon and he wouldn’t see them again for months, but he needed to be alone. He rose and paced, walking from the bedroom door to the dresser filled with his dead wife’s clothes, behind the foot of their bed to the window, then back to the bedroom door, starting the cycle all over again. He couldn’t remember ever having been this wound up.
Nick threw a stick of gum into his mouth and wandered into the massive walk-in closet. Lisa had loved that closet. In fact, it had played a major role in their choosing this house over several others.
He stood quietly in the middle of the closet, inhaling Lisa’s scent. He wasn’t a guy who paid much attention to what he considered “girlie stuff,” so he hadn’t the slightest clue what she wore for perfume, but whatever it was, he could smell it here—something cinnamony—and it made his heart ache. He wondered how long it would take for the scent simply to fade away and then was gone forever, and he felt the tenuous control he had kept over his emotions beginning to crack.
Hanging in a far corner of the big closet was Lisa’s wedding gown, which had belonged to her great-grandmother. Lisa had absolutely adored it. She had been planning to put it in storage to save for her own children in case one of them wanted to get married in it but had never gotten around to accomplishing that task. The gown hung inside a clear plastic garment bag to protect the delicate silk and lace.
Nick walked over and slid the surrounding clothes out of the way. Lisa had owned a lot of stuff, and the heavy mass of clothing hanging on the rod moved slowly, reluctantly. He lifted the gown off the rod, planning to place it on the bed for no particular reason other than to run his hand over the smooth silk and think about Lisa.
When he lifted the dress, a bright blue notebook binder caught his eye. The binder was big, at least three inches thick, and had been placed behind the gown on the closet floor, wedged up against the back wall. It would have remained out of sight indefinitely had Nick not moved the dress. He stared at it in wonder. What the hell would a binder be doing amongst Lisa’s clothes? It looked new, too; it was completely free of dust. Nick had never seen it before.
He placed Lisa’s wedding gown back on the rod in the closet and lifted the binder off the floor, turning it over in his hands, as if he could learn its secrets through osmosis. When that didn’t work, he carried it over to their bed—his bed now—and sat down to examine it more closely.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The harsh white light generated by the fluorescent lamps shone down on Tony’s men as they worked. Tony was seated in his customary spot behind the battered desk. He couldn’t stop smiling. Not so much as one twenty dollar bill was missing out of the ten thousand in cash he had given Michaels in exchange for the map and personnel roster. Now he had not just the information he needed, but all the money it had cost him to procure—the best-case scenario as far as he was concerned.
Dimitrios Stavros, who despite the Greek-sounding name had been born and raised in the United States and was another of the American citizens working with Tony, saw him smiling and asked, “Why did we need to kill the guy? He gave you what you wanted.”
Tony shot Stavros a scornful look. “Why? Two reasons.” He held up a finger. “One, that idiot was a cog in the machinery of the corrupt United States government, a government I have devoted my life to destroying, and which, I remind you, every one of you in this room has committed to destroying as well. There was absolutely no good reason to allow him to live and continue making his small contribution to the oppression of my people in the Middle East when we had the means and the opportunity to rectify the situation.
“Two”—he held up another finger. “Even though ten thousand dollars is a small amount of money in the grand scheme of things, why should I allow it to go to an American and to the pigs I am trying to destroy when we could better use it to purchase more equipment and weaponry? In this manner, we can use the Americans’ own money not once but twice to contribute to their downfall. It is an unintended but not unappreciated bonus.
“Now …” Tony paused, searching the eyes of each of his soldiers in turn. “Does that make sense to you, or do we have a problem we need to iron out? If anyone here does not see the wisdom in what I am saying or disagrees with the direction our operation has taken, now would be the appropriate time to mention that fact. In order for us to be successful, we must all be on the same page, as you Americans like to say.”
He waited. The silence in the garage spoke volumes. “Well?”
No one answered. Each man averted his eyes when the laser gaze of Tony Andretti fell upon him. There was no doubt as to who was in charge. The only member of the team not an American citizen was Tony, a Syrian by birth. The others had graduated from an intense indoctrination program held in a remote training camp located deep in the mountains of Afghanistan. Run by resurgent Taliban and financed by various Middle Eastern governments through dummy organizations and generous individual donations, the camp specialized in training disaffected Westerners. They worked mostly with young white American males, teaching them guerilla tactics and warfare as well as providing an introduction to radical Muslim theology.
The days of using Middle Eastern men to fly airplanes into buildings were over. Forward-thinking terror organizations like the one Tony represented now recognized the value of employing homegrown citizens, who could blend seamlessly into the cultural landscape of the West, to accomplish their goals.
Although born and raised in the West, the graduates of this particular training camp were men who had developed a burning hatred of their countries, usually the United States or Great Britain, and to the guerillas providing the training, that was good enough. Being a true believer in radical Islam would be nice, but was not necessary. All that mattered was that the recruits be willing to sacrifice themselves to their leaders’ bidding at the time and place of their choosing.
The four men currently wilting under Tony’s smoldering glare had been recruited for the Afghanistan program from diverse locations all over the United States. Brian was a native Southern Californian who had attended Stanford University briefly before dropping out, unable to reconcile his anti-American beliefs with the benefits of an elite education.
Jackie Corrigan was a high school dropout and former gangbanger from Brooklyn. Dimitrios Stavros was a second-generation American from Las Vegas who had been born into casino wealth but wanted none of it. And Joe-Bob Warren was ex-military, out of Frankfurt, Kentucky, the recipient of a dishonorable discharge from the United States Army when he was busted for purchasing child pornography while stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.
All of the men were in their twenties, none possessed any loyalty to the ideals of the United States of America, and all had passed the Afghanistan training course with flying colors. They had been sent back to the States more than six months ago with instructions to report to Tony and live their lives in the D.C. area quietly and unobtrusively while awaiting their assignment.
That assignment had come just a few weeks ago, and with the information acquired yesterday from Michaels, the team was ready to proceed.
Tony snapped the briefcase containing the ten thousand dollars shut and smiled. “No one has a problem with my leadership. Very good. I will assume we are all rowing this boat in the same direction. Now, let us discuss the specifics of this operation.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nick hugged his mother tightly and shook his father’s hand as they sai
d their good-byes at the departure gate. Logan Airport was crowded as usual, and Nick was surprised to see that his parents’ plane was scheduled to depart on time. He knew he should be sorry to see them go, but he was still emotionally raw and wrung out.
After watching his mother and father disappear into the boarding area, Nick made his way to one of the airport lounges and ordered a scotch and soda. He knew having a drink before hitting the road for the hour-long drive back to his depressingly empty home wasn’t the best idea, but there wasn’t any point in being careful any more, was there? Nobody was left alive to worry about him. He was alone. Totally alone. That realization shook him more than he had realized until just now.
In a couple of hours, Nick was going to walk through the front door of their little Cape-style home, and Lisa would not be there to carp at him when he tossed his jacket over the kitchen chair or when he kicked off his sneakers and left them lying on the living room floor in front of the television. Sure, she had been gone four days every week during most of their marriage, but the absence had only served to make them appreciate each other that much more when they were together.
Now they never would be again. Nick didn’t know how he would be able to stand it.
He took a sip of his drink, savoring the warm bite of the scotch as it burned down his throat and splashed into his stomach, and let his mind wander to the strange discovery he had made in their walk-in closet. In his walk-in closet, he reminded himself. It was now his alone, not his and Lisa’s.
The blue binder had to have been stuffed behind the wedding gown intentionally; it wasn’t the sort of place the thing could have fallen by accident. Clearly it contained information Lisa had not wanted Nick to see.
But what information? Nick knew the binder had to be related somehow to Lisa’s auditing job at the Pentagon, as it contained names and dates and places, all of which seemed random and meant nothing to Nick. But Lisa had always been forthcoming about her work; as far as he knew, she had never kept anything from him. Most of the time—hell, just about all the time—the investigations she found herself involved in at the giant office building had been straightforward. Boring, even.