by D. L. Wood
“Hey!” Chloe shouted, jabbing the gun at him.
He froze, holding up his hands again. “I just—look, grab one of the phones Manny got for us. Mine’s right over there,” he said, nodding his head towards another built-in shelf. “Just Google me. You can see for yourself that I’m telling the truth.”
He wasn’t lying. It only took a second for her to use the boat's Wi-Fi to pull up a handful of sites referencing Michael J. “Jack” Bartholomew, the former Navy SEAL, now a published N.Y.U. English professor and, sometimes, behind-the-scenes movie consultant. There were photos, too, and though they showed someone a little heavier and much paler, and most with that ridiculous hair and goatee, it was clearly Jack. A short but vitriolic post from some low-grade online gossip rag outlined the terms of the ugly ending of his divorce. It was just as he’d said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was noticeably unsteady.
“I told you why,” he said gently, and crossed to her. As he neared, she lowered the gun and he took it from her, tossing it onto the bed. He stood there waiting for what seemed like an eternity, their eyes searching one another out, until finally she gave in, letting him gather her up amidst her fierce sobs.
* * * * *
Once she managed to calm down, she slept. He held her tightly, promising safety, if only the little bit that was within his arms reach. For both of them, consciousness came and went with the lullaby-like rhythm of the ocean as the night spent itself. As dawn approached, her mind began spinning again.
“Tell me something, Jack,” she whispered, the feeble light of morning slipping through the porthole, painting the room a pinkish-gray.
“Mmmm?” he mumbled drowsily.
“Why English?”
Jack twisted towards her. “What?”
“English. The English thing? Just—why English?”
He sniffed and stretched his neck, giving the impression he was working on waking up. “I just, always liked it. Ever since I was a kid, I’d read anything I could get my hands on. When we had to settle on a major it just seemed like a natural fit.”
“It just seems an odd choice for somebody with your—skills.”
He pulled a face, and with an air of the dramatic, recited, “Oh, to be all that I am and to not be forsaken. To be held high, a banner of my own, in splendor and grace and to not be judged, and the words—oh the words—that they would be light and airy and full of promise—”
“Okay, you need to stop now.”
“I’m just saying,” he quipped. “Know who wrote it?”
“Umm . . . that poet that starts with an ‘S’—oh, what’s his name—”
“Okay, now you stop,” he sighed, pretending disgust. “Not even the right century. You really weren’t kidding about being bad in that class.”
She punched him lightly in the arm and rolled flat on her back. “Can I ask you something else?”
“’Course.”
She inhaled deeply through her nose as if gathering courage. After a second, she plunged ahead. “All that . . . God stuff. So that was for real?”
He eyed her carefully, warmth emanating from his words. “Yeah. That was all for real.”
“And what you said awhile ago about a bigger plan—about us meeting, I mean—you mean ‘bigger’ as in some kind of divine intervention or something?”
He sniffed again. “Something like that.”
She stared at the ceiling, not really seeing the mildewy shapes anymore, preoccupied solely with digesting his answer. Then she pressed on.
“Well,” she sighed exasperatedly, “if there is a God, and He has a plan for me, why does it have to be this one? I mean, I’m a good person. I don’t cause any trouble. I don’t cheat or steal. I stay away from bad people. Well, except when I’m being transported by drug smugglers—”
An amused smile spread across Jack’s sleepy face.
“But that was out of our control. So then why is all this happening to me? If this is part of a plan, it doesn’t seem like a very fair one.”
“You’re asking the ‘why do bad things happen to good people’ question?”
“I guess.”
He pressed a hand to his eyes, rubbing away the drowsiness. “Well, when you ask Him about it, what does He say?”
“Uhh,” she stalled, “I can’t say I’ve ever asked Him.”
“Well, maybe it’d be a good place to start. See where that gets you.”
“I told you. Prayer never did me any good. My dad still left. My mom still died. After that there didn’t seem to be much point.”
He gave her a warm squeeze. “I can understand that. But it couldn’t hurt to try.”
She let out a long, thoughtful exhale. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m not sure I can, Chloe,” he admitted, his words starkly honest. “This world can be a bad place. Bad things happen to good people all the time. Sometimes there’s no apparent explanation—you just have to trust that God has a reason for allowing it. And that can be really tough. Sometimes God allows the bad thing because He knows that in the end it’ll work out for the greater good, the eternal good, and even that person’s own good, although we can’t always see that good or understand it. Sometimes it’s testing, to show you who you really are. Sometimes, if the person is involved in something they shouldn’t be, it’s God’s way of disciplining His kids, the way we do ours. Other times, he allows it in order to grow us.” He paused, eyeing her meaningfully. “And then there are those times when He uses it to get our attention.”
“You think He’s trying to get my attention?” she asked perceptively.
He shrugged. “Just something to think about. I mean, when was the last time you gave God much thought?”
“Positive thoughts? Probably before Mom’s diagnosis.”
“And yet here you are, years later, finally talking about Him, but only after an insane round of nastiness has been injected into your life.”
“You’d think He could’ve gotten my attention another, less potentially fatal way,” she complained tersely.
“Maybe He tried that already.”
She chewed on that awhile. “I still didn’t deserve this.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“But none of that matters. It’s like in the end, I don’t really matter.”
“Of course, you matter. You matter enough to die for.”
“That’s ridiculous, Jack. You don’t have to die for me.”
“I’m not talking about me,” he replied.
His meaning took a few moments to register. “Oh,” she sighed, staring at nothing in particular on the opposite wall. “You’re talking about the whole Christ dying for me thing.”
“Uh-hmm,” he mumbled.
She turned to face him, exhaling heavily. “You know I’ve heard that a million times. Jesus dying for me.” Her words hung over them, daring a response from Jack, but getting none. “Never really meant anything to me, you know? Just some nice idea put out there by nice people who already had nice lives. Besides, even if it were true, I don’t see how I would deserve that, either.”
“You don’t. None of us do.” He brushed a short strand of hair away from her face. “But I’m pretty sure that when it comes to God, nothing is about getting what we deserve.”
“So what is it about?”
“Trust. Grace. Giving all the bad stuff in our lives up to Him and leaning on Him to help us through it.”
“And what if I can’t get through it? What if instead of getting my attention, it breaks me?”
“He hasn’t let you break yet.”
She thought about that for a minute, then rolled over to face the wall. He turned after her, gathering her up again. She relished the sense of his warm cheek on back of her head.
“I wish I could believe it, Jack,” she said, closing her eyes and fighting for sleep again. “I really do.”
THIRTY
The sun was hot and the wind whipped through the open wind
ows as they motored down the freeway towards the business district in which Rohrstadt’s building was located. Something distinctly Miami was playing over the radio, and neither of them had bothered to change it. It was cheerful, the heavy beat of the music and the glowing rays, and as Chloe stared out the window towards the soaring skyscrapers that made up downtown Miami, she could almost pretend they were just a couple out for a mid-afternoon cruise around town. Almost.
Unbelievably, everything over the last two days had gone off without a hitch. They’d had no problems with customs and immigration in either San Juan or Orlando. Jack said that meant that Sampson hadn’t put out any alerts to the States, which was good for them. They had spent the night in San Juan and flown into Orlando that morning. They’d both slept for the entire three hour flight, which was great because as soon as they landed, they’d rented a car and driven another three hours towards Miami—though not before meeting up with some “guys” Manny had arranged to rearm them, since they’d had to leave their weapons on the boat. The little midnight special felt wrong in her waistband, especially now that they were home and she had no permit. “That’ll be the least of your worries if we get ambushed by Sampson’s people,” Jack had told her when she’d confessed this.
They considered going straight to the Feds once they landed in Orlando. And if they’d had any evidence at all, it’s probably exactly what they would have done. But now, without the flash drive, it was their word against Sampson’s. On paper, they were fugitives from St. Gideon, evading interrogation relating to Ruby’s murder—the murder of a U.S. citizen. Maybe the Feds would hold them in the States, but maybe they’d send them back. And that would be the end of it. So instead, they stuck with their original plan to try to contact Herb Rohrstadt, hoping he had kept a copy of the file on the flash drive.
“How much farther till that turn?” Jack asked.
Chloe checked her smartphone. “Two more exits.”
Once they exited onto the downtown streets, they turned left and right a few times, until finally they reached it: 1919 Westwood Avenue. It was an office complex dubbed “The Grove,” that consisted of three, ten-story buildings arranged in a semi-circle around a paved courtyard. At the center was a sizable decorative fountain surrounded by a thick carpet of well-manicured grass.
“Let’s keep going,” Jack suggested, rolling past the buildings. “We’ll stop a block up just to give ourselves a little room.” He found a spot near a meter, fed it, and then set off down the street, Chloe at his side.
From what she could tell, they were in an area somewhere just north of the business district she had seen from the freeway. Most of the buildings were new, rising five to ten stories on average, flanked on all sides by dozens of assorted palms and mound after mound of brilliantly colored bougainvillea. They were arranged neatly, clearly planned rather than evolving over time. Maybe the result of a hurricane that passed through, she thought. Sandwiched amongst the larger buildings were smaller, stand-alone businesses. Directly across the street from Rohrstadt’s office was a row of shops encased in stucco painted every shade of pink known to man.
“Let’s cross here, before we get too close,” Jack whispered, nudging her as he checked the traffic. At the first opening, he hopped off the curb and dashed across four busy lanes. Chloe followed right behind. Once safely across, they continued on, now on the side of the street opposite The Grove.
Chloe fought the urge to look around her for anything or anyone out of place. She glanced at Jack and, although his head faced directly forward, she suspected his eyes were darting back and forth behind his dark, aviator sunglasses.
“See anyone?” she asked quietly.
“Not that I can tell,” he answered. “But we’ve got to assume they’re watching the area. They had to know we might come here.”
“Only if they know where the flash drive came from.”
“If we know, we have to assume they know.”
They kept walking until they were directly across the street from The Grove’s courtyard fountain, then stepped casually into the shadows of a green, logo-emblazoned awning above the entrance to a trendy coffee shop. Jack scanned the mirrored glass reaching several stories high on each of The Grove’s three buildings. “Somebody could be watching from any one of those and we’d never know it. This thing could be over before it starts.”
“It’s not like we have a choice,” Chloe said. Even knowing that Rohrstadt’s phone might be tapped, they had still tried to call his office. But every attempt to reach him had failed. No one had answered the phone, replied to their messages or responded to the emails they’d sent him requesting an appointment under a fake name.
Jack opened the door to the coffee shop and ushered her through, placing his hand on the small of her back and guiding her inside. Wooden tables and chairs filled the seating area and lined the large windows fronting the street. Half were occupied. A long counter with glass cases displaying sandwiches, salads, and muffins sat at the back of the room. There was a register at its end, and behind it, a clerk ringing up a sale.
“Sit down over there for a minute,” he told her, nodding towards a table against the wall furthest from the windows. “I’ll be right back.”
“You gonna tell me what you’re planning?”
“In a minute,” he said and strode away towards the counter. The clerk, a pimply-faced kid that looked to be in his early twenties, was busy cleaning one of the espresso machines. Chloe watched as Jack got his attention, then chatted quietly with him. The kid nodded responsively a couple of times, then moved to the swinging gate that separated the counter from the dining area. He waved Jack behind it, then took him through a door leading into the back of the store.
They weren’t gone long. When Jack emerged, he had on a blue apron and a baseball cap, both emblazoned with the shop’s logo. He came back through the swinging gate to the front of the counter and waited while the kid fixed three oversized coffees, then pressed them into a cardboard tray. The kid grabbed a couple of sandwiches out of the glass display case, tossed them in a paper bag also imprinted with the shop’s logo, and handed them to Jack. Jack paid him and returned to Chloe’s table.
“I gave the guy a twenty,” he said, sliding into the chair next to her. “Told him I was playing a joke on a friend. What do you think?”
“You really expect that to work?” she asked, raising her eyebrows skeptically.
“You have a better idea?”
“No. But I should be the one to go. It’s not right.”
“Uh-uh. You’re the one they really want. Chances are they’ll be watching the females more closely than the males. Besides, if something does happen, I’ll have a much better chance of fighting them off than you would.”
“I’d do okay. I handled you pretty well on the boat,” she argued. This little plan did not sit well with her. Sending him off alone into potential danger seemed wrong. At the very least she should be with him. It didn’t fix it, but at least she was sharing the risk.
“Yeah, well,” he started, “they won’t be asleep.”
She sighed. “Just be careful.”
He handed one of the cups to her. “I got you something. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He started to turn, then stopped. “Tell you what, if it’s safe for you to come up, I’ll call you and ask for,” he glanced at her shorn, ink-black hair, “Ms. Minnelli.”
Chloe glared at him good-naturedly. “Thanks.”
“Otherwise, stay put. Unless you haven’t heard from me in an hour. Then I want you go straight to the Feds.”
“I can’t do that. We’ve talked about this.”
“If something happens to me the safest thing for you will be to turn yourself in.”
She seemed to think about that and frowned. “How do we know that they don’t have a connection with the Miami police like they did on St. Gideon?”
“That’s why it has to be the Feds. Promise me.”
“How ‘bout you just come back.”
&n
bsp; He groaned and gave up. “See you in a few. Maybe say a prayer for me.”
She smiled thinly. “How about I just think really good thoughts, instead,” she called after him, as he walked out the front door looking every bit the part of a delivery boy. He darted across the busy traffic, leaping onto the sidewalk just in time to avoid being run over by a bunch of college kids whooping it up in a red convertible. Chloe watched as he started over the terracotta-colored stones that paved the courtyard of the complex. Fortunately there was a fairly steady flow of people in and out, so he wasn’t particularly noticeable. Add to that his altered appearance and the getup, and he had a decent chance of pulling it off, even if someone was watching. Maybe.
Chloe’s nerves tingled as her eyes followed him past the fountain, down a wide path nestled between bush-like palms. Building three was on the far right. She watched him enter its swiveling glass doors right behind a woman dressed in a pastel suit and a UPS guy. Chloe swallowed the lump in her throat, and settled back to wait.
* * * * *
Inside the brightly painted lobby, Jack waited in a group for one of two elevators. No one seemed to be watching the area, or interested in anything more than staring at their shoes or the elevator doors. The car on the right finally arrived and, after it emptied, he was the first one on. According to the marquee, Rohrstadt’s suite, J, was on the sixth floor. The others filed off on the lower floors, and by the time the elevator reached Rohrstadt’s floor, Jack was alone.
He stepped out onto a cream tiled hallway lined with potted ferns and bold, art deco prints. Three black lacquer doors, each marked with a brass placard bearing the suite letter and name of the tenant, were spaced along the length of the hall. Suite J was all the way down to his left. Like the elevator, the hallway was empty. Jack strode quickly to Suite J and read the doorplate. Law Offices of Herbert K. Rohrstadt, Esquire.
The doorknob was locked. He tried again, just to make sure, but it didn’t budge. He knocked. No answer. His gaze flicked to the doors of the neighboring suites, and he wondered if he should inquire about Rohrstadt’s hours. But showing his face around could be dangerous.