Save You (Crave #2)

by Ryan Parker

“Something’s not right,” I said.

  “With…?

  I shook my head, trying to make sense of what I was feeling and what I was seeing. Feeling was fear. Seeing was facts. The usually bright and clear line between them was becoming blurred.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Just a feeling. I need to think, not talk.”

  “Fine with me.” He sat there for a moment not saying anything. I heard him rustling through the bag of food. “Do you mind if I eat these chips? Or, since we’re in America I should say fries, I guess. Either way, you’re not going to swipe them and throw them out the window, are you?”

  I let out a little laugh. “No.”

  “Good then,” he said. “I promise I’ll chew them very quietly, just for you.”

  . . . . .

  An hour passed, then two. Every member of the cell was still in the house. Spencer and I had been monitoring the cameras inside the house on the laptop, but had seen nothing. Unfortunately, they were all apparently gathered into one of the rooms where I hadn’t placed a camera.

  We didn’t talk much, just took turns watching the live feed from inside the house. During Spencer’s turns, I spent a lot of time thinking about Rachel.

  Or, more accurately, how I had changed because of her. There was some truth to the idea that I couldn’t get close to anyone because my life was dangerous, covert, and required a high degree of privacy. It would be difficult to argue against that.

  But I had long suspected that I was letting that reason overshadow another motivation for my detached lifestyle, and now it was becoming clearer and clearer.

  I simply didn’t want to let anyone become an important part of my life because I knew the world was a nasty, dangerous place, and that any of us can be taken from it in a matter of a single second ticking on the clock.

  I had lived that truth. Painfully. I was determined to never live through that again.

  The more I got to know Rachel, the more I realized just how much we were alike in that regard. We were living our lives in constant fear of loss, so the less we had to lose, the less likely we were to suffer.

  It was a perfectly understandable reaction to what we had been through, but that didn’t mean it was rational. In fact, it was so irrational that I had become thoroughly numb to the reality that deliberately having nothing to lose meant there was also nothing to live for.

  I didn’t question my decision to join Wilshire’s team, nor did I regret doing what I had done over the last decade to rid the world of cold-blooded murderers of the innocent. But things were changing now. Changing because of my feelings for Rachel.

  She was the first reason in ten years I’d had to make me rethink my life, re-evaluate my future, actually to see a future at all.

  My thinking was almost putting me in a trance, until I saw the trucks. I nudged Spencer with my elbow. “Wake up.”

  He stirred out of his slumber. “Are they moving?”

  “Someone is.”

  We watched as four pitch black vans moved up the street in a crawl, lights off. They stopped two doors down, facing in our direction. The house we were watching was three doors away, and we were on the other side of the street.

  Two of the four vans drove past the house and stopped.

  We crouched down in our seats, just enough to hide ourselves as much as we could while still being able to see out of the windshield.

  He started to lift the laptop lid, but I slammed it shut. “No light. They’ll see us.”

  “Who the fuck is that?” he said.

  At least two dozen people poured from the trucks, clad in all black, with matching helmets, gasmasks covering their faces, automatic weapons at their sides.

  “Cops,” Spencer said.

  “Not so sure about that.” I had picked up the binoculars. I saw no kind of insignia on the uniforms—not POLICE, not SWAT, not FBI, not ATF, none of the ones I would have expected.

  “That’s not another team like ours, is it?”

  “Definitely not,” I said.

  They ran toward the house, crossing lawns, running alongside the neighboring houses, taking up positions and surrounding the terrorists’ house.

  They held their positions for less than ten seconds, and then they swarmed the house, using a battering ram on the front door, others breaking windows, tossing in teargas grenades.

  “My fucking hell,” Spencer said.

  A firefight ensued. It lasted just a few seconds.

  Spencer sat forward in his seat. “They’re killing them.”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  Within a minute, the action had died down, but the neighborhood was waking up. Front porch lights were being turned on, people were opening their front doors just wide enough to peer outside.

  Two ambulances appeared at the end of the street, lights off, stopped, waiting for word if they were needed.

  I grabbed my prepaid phone and dialed a number. When he answered, I said, “Back off. Get as far away as fucking possible. I’ll be in touch later.” The guy said he got it and they were on the move.

  “How close was your team?” Spencer asked.

  “Three blocks away.” They’d been waiting there all night, just in case. We hadn’t planned on taking the cell down until Sunday night, but I had paid them a few grand extra to be in position Saturday night.

  Marked cars began to show up, flashing blue and white lights illuminating the neighborhood.

  “We have to get the hell out of here,” he said. “But…”

  “Right. We can’t.”

  It was just after 3:45 a.m. Starting up a satellite installation van at that hour, in the midst of what appeared to be a federal raid, would have been insanely foolish.

  We were stuck.

  Quite possibly on the verge of getting caught.

  “I wonder if they killed them all,” he whispered. “Wish we could look.”

  “Me, too, but no way are we turning that laptop on.”

  It wasn’t long before they started marching the terrorists out of the house, one by one, cuffed at the hands and chained by the ankles. We counted as they were brought out.

  “None killed,” I said.

  “Huh. Lucky for them. Too bad for us,” Spencer added.

  The ambulances turned on their lights and moved toward the house. Two of the suspects were brought out, put on stretchers, and loaded into the ambulances.

  None of the officers needed any medical attention, at least not that I saw.

  I wondered if my hired team of killers would have pulled that off so swiftly and without any harm to themselves. Moot point.

  The marked cars were from the Alexandria Police Department. Apparently they were there to provide security at each end of the street, most likely to keep the press away. As more unmarked cars showed up, I saw more windbreakers with FBI printed on the back in large, bold, white letters.

  And we were surrounded.

  Chapter Sixteen (Rachel)

  I woke up early Sunday morning after a night of very little sleep and a lot of tossing and turning. I also kept having those half-dreams, where you’re barely asleep and the dream is as vivid as real life.

  I kept having them about Finn.

  Finn getting caught.

  Finn getting injured.

  Finn getting killed.

  And me never hearing from him again, never knowing what happened to him.

  I finally gave up around 6:30 a.m. There was no way I was going to torture myself anymore. If I had to, I’d stay awake until I heard from him. In the meantime, I would find a way to take my mind off of my worries.

  I took a long shower, letting the hot water massage my back, which was stiff from a restless night. I decided to run a bubble bath, so I closed the drain and filled the tub. I soaked in it for an hour until my fingertips were pruned.

  It was 9 a.m. by the time I was dressed and ready to go anywhere. I figured I would take a Sunday drive somewhere. No specific destination. Just get on the road and go.

&nb
sp; It had been a while since I’d been to the beach, so I headed in that direction. I hadn’t felt the warm sand on my feet in a long time, hadn’t smelled the salt breeze off the ocean, hadn’t sat in a waterfront restaurant and eaten fried seafood and all kinds of other things that weren’t good for me.

  I thought about going to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, but that was two and a half hours away. The more I drove, the more I thought I should stay close to home in case Finn called or showed up. I hadn’t made it very far out of D.C., so I turned around and went back to the city to a familiar comfort spot for me. My bench on the National Mall.

  The food trucks were lined up, open, but not yet busy. One had a British flag on it. I’d never seen it there before and it made me think of Finn, so I checked out their menu and ordered fish and chips in a basket and went to my bench.

  I decided to text him. It read: I know you’re busy, but guess what I’m eating?

  Ten minutes passed as I ate and waited in vain for a response from Finn. Nothing.

  I decided to leave it be and when I’d spent enough time on the bench, I went to check in on Winnie.

  “Two days in a row?” Meg said as I walked in to the shelter. “We’re going to have to put you on the payroll.”

  I laughed. “I’d never let you pay me.”

  “Good,” she said, “because we’re strapped as it is.”

  “You’re not going to have to close, are you?”

  She waved it off. “Oh, no. We always have enough to stay open. Always will, I reckon. But anyway, I have some good news and bad news.”

  “What?”

  “It’s actually the same news. Good and bad. A retired couple came in yesterday looking for an older, calm dog. They applied to adopt Winnie.”

  Now I knew what she meant—it was good for Winnie, bad for me. If things had been different, if I could have given her a good home with a big fenced-in yard, I would have adopted her long ago. But it wasn’t to be.

  I nodded. “Okay, well, that’s great. She deserves a good home.”

  Meg frowned at me. “You don’t have to pretend you’re not sad. I always tell volunteers not to get attached to the dogs, but they always do. I do it myself. It’s just part of what we do.”

  I felt my eyes welling up. “I’m going to…” I pointed at the door, choking up.

  “Go ahead,” Meg said.

  . . . . .

  I didn’t spend very much time with Winnie. It was making me too sad, especially considering all the stress I was feeling as I waited for Finn to text back.

  Two hours and not a word from him.

  I pulled up in front of my apartment just before 3 p.m., dreading going inside and trying to find something to pass the time.

  When I got to the top of the steps, I found a surprise. One red rose. Just like the one that had been here the night Finn had left me in the hotel room. At the time, I had considered the slight possibility that it was a gesture of apology from him, but instead decided that someone had left it here by accident because people were always leaving things at the wrong door in this building.

  Now, though, as I picked up the rose and smelled it, I was sure they both had come from Finn. I knew he was working close by. Where, exactly, I didn’t know, but it was close enough for him to have done that drive-by check on me at the park the day before, close enough for him to have driven to my house in less than fifteen minutes on Friday.

  He was apologizing again, this time for being out of contact.

  I unlocked my door and went straight to the kitchen, where I got a vase, filled it with water, and stood my rose in it. I placed it on the coffee table, admiring it for a moment. It was a big rose, in full bloom and richly red. Finn had picked a gorgeous one for me.

  I’d been outside at the park only a short time, but the heat was enough to make me sweat a little and I had some of Winnie’s hair clinging to my legs and arms. She was shedding for the summer. I decided to take a quick shower.

  As I walked down my hallway, I wondered…if he’d had time to drop off a rose, why hadn’t he sent me a text back?

  The moment I stepped in my bedroom and opened my dresser drawer, I got my answer.

  Finn hadn’t left either of the roses.

  Chapter Seventeen (Finn)

  Spencer and I had turned our phones off and had been out of contact with everyone for the better part of seven hours as we waited in the back of the van.

  When the FBI started doing a sweep of the neighborhood, they brought the bomb-sniffing dogs out. We weren’t concerned about the dogs alerting on the van, but there was a good chance the FBI agents could have gotten a visual on us, so we had retreated to the back of the van and covered ourselves with the movers’ blankets that came with the van.

  They brought the dogs twice. I figured it was two different dogs. Each time, we kept very still. I held my breath and I was sure Spencer had too.

  I felt hunger and fatigue creeping up on me, but was able to fend both off. That’s where the training really came in handy. It served its purpose well, providing both Spencer and I the ability to hide out, stay safe, and stay alive.

  There were so many ways we could have been caught. The one I worried about the most was an FBI agent checking the name and phone number of the fake company on the magnet Spencer had placed on the side of the van.

  When we were relatively sure it was safe, we emerged from beneath the blankets and crawled to the front of the van. By then, the media had showed up. The street was filled with TV trucks, people walking around with big cameras, reporters crowded around various officials.

  I started the van, pulled away from the curb, and we were out of there unnoticed.

  . . . . .

  Back at the hotel in Alexandria, we watched all of the local major cable news channels covering the story of the terrorist cell that had been taken down in the early morning hours.

  One report said: “The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were tipped off by a neighbor who first called local police about an alleged noise ordinance violation. When police arrived, there was no noise coming from inside the house, so no ticket was issued. The neighbor kept a close eye on the house in the following days and became suspicious when he was taking the garbage out one night, heard a few of the suspects speaking in what he called ‘a foreign language’ and then observed them dry-firing weapons in the back yard.”

  “I still can’t fucking believe it,” Spencer said. “How did we not know they knew?”

  I’d been wondering the same. We had experienced holes in the intelligence reporting before, but nothing like this.

  “Maybe our time is up,” I said.

  Another reporter stated: “There are unconfirmed reports—I want to stress uncomfirmed—that federal investigators have linked two previous murder scenes to terrorists from the same region. Both of these scenes are in Maryland and are under active investigation. Back to you.”

  I stared at the TV as they played loops of video from the scene overnight and showed a map pinpointing the two previous scenes. Fuck.

  “Are those yours, Finn?” Spencer said.

  I nodded. “Like I said, I think our time is up.”

  He mumbled, “Yeah. Screw it. This was my last mission. I’m out anyway, so what better timing?”

  I was beginning to feel the same way.

  . . . . .

  Spencer went to his room just before noon. We agreed to sleep until we didn’t need to anymore and we would meet later that night and wrap things up.

  I turned on my personal phone for the first time since the night before and found a text from Rachel asking me to guess what she was eating. It had been sent a few hours earlier, and there were no follow-up texts or voicemails from her. I considered answering her, but I really needed to sleep. She was apparently fine, otherwise I would have heard from her.

  I looked at the clock. 12:03. I decided I would call her later.

  I collapsed on the bed, still fully clothed, shoes still on, exhausted. I don’t th
ink more than two minutes passed before I was asleep.

  My phone rang, jolting me out of a deep sleep. I looked at the screen and saw Rachel’s name. The time read 3:13 p.m. Shit, only three hours of sleep.

  I touched the screen to answer and before I could say anything she was saying, “Finn, Finn, oh my God.”

  I sat up. “What is it?”

  She was full-on crying now, stuttering out the words: “Th-they were in my apartment.”

  “Who was?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where are you?” I said, becoming fully awake now as adrenaline spiked in my blood.

  “Outside my building. My car. I’m in my car. I can’t go in there.”

  I grabbed the keys to my rental car and was heading out the door. “Drive to that gas station around the corner and wait for me. Park next to the front door where it’s busy. Go now.”

  I hung up.

  Spencer had apparently heard me talking loudly in the hallway. He opened his door. “I can’t get to sleep and your yelling isn’t going to help. Jesus, man, what’s wrong?”

  I blew past him, walking quickly. “I’ll be back here in thirty minutes.”

  “Need me to come along?”

  I swung open the door to the stairwell, said “No” to Spencer, and ran down the stairs.

  I replayed Rachel’s words in my mind as I sped toward her apartment building.

  They were in my apartment.

  Who? And what had happened? My mind raced with possibilities. Maybe she’d been robbed. Or maybe someone had trashed her place, making it look like a robbery to scare her, maybe one of McDowell’s strong-arms. But that didn’t make sense.

  Fucking wake up, Finn, and get your mind straight, I kept thinking.

  They were in my apartment.

  She was terrified. I couldn’t get to her fast enough, and while I was speeding, I realized the last thing I needed was to be held up by some cop.

  I made it to the gas station in under ten minutes. She had parked next to the doorway to the store just as I’d told her. I parked on the other side of the lot and walked toward her. I made sure to walk near the front of her car so I wouldn’t have to knock on her window and startle her.