by S.J. Finch
***
There had never been much doubt in his mind. The moment Ryan had pocketed the business card, he had known deep down he was always going to follow it up.
It was late Saturday afternoon, and Ryan had spent much of the day mending fences. He and Vanessa had enjoyed a lazy breakfast, talking about anything other than the night before, and then Ryan had made his way home. He had stopped at a thrift store on the way and bought some clothes. He didn’t want to arouse suspicion by walking into his house shirtless and in sweatpants. Thankfully, no one at the store had given him too much of a second look.
Ryan had spent most of the rest of the day with his family. He hadn’t seen them in days, and those days in particular had felt like years. The awful truth never fully left his mind, but being around people who knew nothing about it was comforting.
He and Vanessa had been dodging Eli’s calls for two days, and Ryan felt terrible about it. He knew he was going to have to tell Eli eventually, in fact he was looking forward to having another perspective on everything, but today was not the day. Instead he had placed a brief call to his friend and apologized. Ryan said he was sorry, but that something had happened that he needed to deal with. Ryan took it as a true sign of their friendship that Eli didn’t pry into what was going on. All he had said was that he would cover for Ryan as needed, and that he’d be there when it was all over. What Ryan didn’t tell him was that it would never be over, not really. That was something that would have to wait for the real conversation.
Ryan figured that he had at least an hour, maybe two, before moonrise and the final night of the full moon. Ryan was relying on the hope that whatever this address held, it would be something or someone that could help him, at least through tonight. He had told his parents that tonight would be spent at Eli’s, and though his mother wasn’t thrilled at the idea, she did not protest.
Vanessa had begged him not to go, but just like the argument about the sedative, she relented quickly. It wasn’t in her nature to back down in an argument, not if she could help it, but Ryan was determined to do this, and she saw it in his eyes. Then she had changed tactics and tried to convince Ryan to let her go with him to the address. He shot this notion down even faster.
The address had taken him to the outskirts of downtown, into an industrial district surrounded by low-income neighborhoods. Mockingbird Road ran parallel to the waterfront, and in between the street and the sea stood a long line of large industrial warehouses.
Many of the warehouses were affixed with corporate logos or names of businesses. Some, like 4197, had only their numbers stenciled in large print on the sides of the buildings.
4197 stood halfway down the long street that was Mockingbird. There were over a dozen other warehouses, all around the same size, but in varying conditions. Some showed obvious signs of rust or weather damage, and Ryan even thought he saw a few of what might be bullet holes poked in the brick or metal walls. Others, those with recognizable corporate logos, were in much better shape, with fresh paint and intact windows. 4197 was somewhere in the middle: its brick walls looked old and neglected, but there were no obvious signs of decay. The windows, set high up on the building, also looked as though they had seen better days, but they all seemed to be intact. There was also an over-sized garage door that faced the street. The door itself was windowless and bland, but carefully maintained. The only personnel entrance that Ryan could see was a single door tucked a quarter of the way back on the side of the building. The entrance was lit by a single bulb fastened to the end of a rusty fixture with a down-facing shade.
Ryan drove back and forth past the warehouse four times before he stopped. He was trying to collect as much data about the place as possible, since in his mind it was looking more and more like a place where he was likely to be killed, stuffed into a canvas bag, and dropped in the ocean. When he finally parked the Cherokee, it was under the only street light nearby, located at the far end of Mockingbird. Ryan wasn’t fooling himself into thinking that a street light and slight public exposure might deter any car thieves, but he figured it was better than deliberately parking in the shadows. He hoped it wouldn’t matter anyway, since he figured no thief in their right mind would want to steal a clunker like his.
Ryan cut the engine and debated with himself for the last time if he should even get out of the car. The sun was creeping lower in the sky and the shadows cast by the buildings around him grew longer.
He took a deep breath in a futile attempt to calm his nerves about whatever lay beyond that single, steel door of 4197 Mockingbird Rd. Ryan stepped out of the Jeep and swung the door closed behind him.
As he did, his key ring flew off his finger, fell to the pavement with a short clang, and skidded somewhere behind the rear tire. Ryan cursed his own clumsiness and stepped over to pick them up. He crouched down and felt around behind the tire for a moment before his fingers closed around his small quarry. He retracted his hand and stood up.
Ryan’s heart leapt in his chest and adrenaline exploded through his veins. A man stood on the opposite side of the car, where a split second before there had been nothing. Ryan peered at him through the windows of the Jeep and stepped around to the front of the car. The man took the same steps until they were eye-to-eye with only the front of Ryan’s car between them.
The man was in his mid twenties, but his face gave off a cruel sort of smirk that Ryan thought made him seem much older. Unlike the ragged clothes and combat boots of Daniel, this man wore designer jeans and an expensive-looking black leather jacket. His hair was styled like something out of a magazine, but it was partially hidden behind the name-brand sunglasses perched high on his forehead.
“You must be Ryan.” The man said.
“You must be…really creepy.” Ryan replied.
His smirk turned into a thin, lipless sneer. “What can I say, I enjoy a bit of theatricality.” And Ryan thought he detected a slight hint of an accent, possibly English. “What do you enjoy, Ryan?”
“Answers.” Ryan said shortly.
The face itself was long and thin, and the features were harsh and angular with a particularly straight, prominent nose. His narrow eyes twinkled with a strange air of amusement. He wore a carefully-manicured beard of close-cropped, fashionable stubble that went a long way toward hiding a rather weak chin.
“I see. Straight to business. I suppose I can accommodate that. After all, I am a businessman.”
“What line of work is that, sneaking up on people in bad neighborhoods?” Ryan asked.
“Generally whichever line requires the least amount of work. But today, it’s mergers and acquisitions.”
“Uh huh, and why the change?”
“My sometimes-employer heard about your handiwork in the suburbs the other night, he was very impressed. He sent me to look into you, perhaps arrange a meeting. A man with your particular talents is very valuable to a man like him.” The stranger finished.
“You call eviscerating a man in the street a ‘talent’?” Ryan demanded.
“Oh, not me. I haven’t decided what to call it. My employer, however, yes, I believe he sees such a thing as an asset. Why, what do you call it?”
“Murder.” Ryan said flatly.
“Then it appears we’re using very different dictionaries, which is unfortunate.” The man replied. “Though if that’s the case, I suppose you’re in the right place.” He tilted his head towards 4197. “Those…interlopers happen to share your rather antiquated, and if I do say so, quite unprofitable, sentimentalities. It’s probably just as well that they got to you first.”
“If you’re not from the warehouse, who the hell are you?”
“Call me Isaac.” He extended his hand, but Ryan kept his own hands balled into fists at his side. “And if you ever need anything…procured, acquired, extracted…I am your man.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Ryan said and returned the man’s smirk. “Who sent you? Who wants me?”
“I’m sorry, but
I am still a professional. That information, I’m not allowed to give. You have a pleasant evening.”
Ryan opened his mouth to demand more information, but the man called Isaac turned on his heel and walked back within the shadow of the building. He pressed his hand to the building and as Ryan watched, the hand went into the wall. It was as though his hand had become one with the shadow on the wall and his body was merging with it. Isaac turned around and gave Ryan a smile as the rest of him melded into shadow and was gone.
Ryan felt like he should have been shocked, like what he had just seen should be enough to sent him right back to the Cherokee and then home. Now however, his curiosity burned within him like a wildfire. Ryan wanted answers now more than ever, and he knew those answers were only a few hundred feet away.
He began to walk down the worn sidewalk and each footfall echoed sharply off the buildings that loomed around him. 4197 grew closer with every step and, as it did, Ryan felt his courage begin to dwindle. He wasn’t worried about being physically hurt so much as he was about being disappointed. Ryan had no idea what he was expecting, but he couldn’t help but hope he would find an answer to all his questions. He knew Daniel had made no such promise, Ryan had just filled in the gaps with his own assumptions, and that’s what worried him now: that he had assumed too much.
As he approached the large warehouse stenciled 4197, Ryan tried to push the thoughts out of his head. He wanted to focus, because as anxious as he was, he couldn’t shake the feeling, the hope, that whatever lay beyond that door was going to change his life even more drastically than had that night in the forest.
The door that stood between Ryan and these hopes was not much to look at. It was set a ways back against the side wall of the brick building, closer to the street and garage door end of the rectangle than the waterfront end. As Ryan had suspected, it was the only entrance. At one point it looked as though the door had been painted an unpleasant shade of industrial olive green, but it was now just bare, weathered steel. The downturned shade that held the flickering light bulb also bore signs of an ancient paint job of the same color. Nature, however, had decided on a different color and the whole shade was corroded with reddish rust.
The doorknob was the only feature of this entrance that looked like it was in good repair: it was heavy and brushed steel, and though still weather-beaten and aged, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the door on which it was mounted.
He had been so preoccupied with getting to the door that Ryan wasn’t sure how to proceed now that he was there. The idea of knocking at a door like this, under circumstances like these, seemed ridiculous. Still, he saw no other option so Ryan raised his hand to knock. His fist was mere inches from the metal when a stern, electronic voice cut through the silence of the approaching night.
“It’s unlocked.” It was a woman’s voice, heard over some hidden intercom. Ryan looked all around the doorframe but couldn’t see one. Nor could he see any camera or window through which the mysterious woman could have seen him coming. Regardless, he knew he was in it now.
Ryan lowered his hand to the knob, turned, and pushed. At first the door didn’t do anything and Ryan felt sure it was locked. He pushed again however, much harder, and the door gave way with a loud creak. He stumbled across the threshold and into a small, brightly-lit room.
The space was tiny, no more than ten feet square with perhaps eight foot ceilings. It had worn industrial carpeting and stark white walls without any décor. On the wall opposite Ryan was another large steel door, identical to the one he had just come through, though in much better condition. To his left was a large potted plant that was actually many plants all sharing the same pot, with some of the shoots nearly reaching the ceiling. In the right corner, beside the far door, stood a large reception desk that dwarfed the rest of the room and obscured most of the elderly woman seated behind it.
She was in her early seventies, Ryan guessed, with silvery hair teased high. She peered into a paperback novel through gold-rimmed bifocals that perched on the edge of her long, beak of a nose. The rounded desk behind which she sat reminded Ryan of a hospital reception desk: one surface at the ordinary level for computers, and then a second, raised level on which the patient could sign paperwork. Because of this second level, Ryan could only see the woman from the neck up, but given what he could see of her, he guessed she was wearing a sweatshirt featuring kittens playing with balls of yarn.
Ryan didn’t have the faintest clue of what to say, but he opened his mouth just the same and hoped something sensible would come out. He never got the chance however, as the woman pressed an intercom button on her desk. She leaned over slightly to speak into it, but had never once taken her eyes off the pages of her book.
“Did someone order a civvie?”
Her question was answered almost immediately, but not by the other end of the intercom. Instead, a man strode through the opposite door.
Dr. Webster extended his hand to Ryan who, still not comprehending, shook it automatically. He wore a burgundy Polo shirt tucked smartly into a pair of crisp khakis and ending in dark brown, leather shoes. He looked as if he’d just come from the country club.
“Thank you, Mrs. White.” The doctor said. He stopped, looked Ryan up and down, and flashed his movie-star smile. “Ryan. It is truly great to see you again. You’re looking very well. I’m sorry to surprise you like this, but we needed to gather a little more information before I could speak to you directly again. At the hospital there were still things that needed to be sorted out, questions that needed to be answered. We weren’t sure if you were the kind of person…well the kind of man we could trust.”
Ryan had recovered enough to regain his power of speech. “How do you know you can trust me now?”
“Well, I suppose we don’t.” Dr. Webster replied. “But we’re hopeful.” He smiled again. “You’re here, and that’s a good start. And you took the sedative last night, that’s also a good sign. And Daniel spoke rather highly of you, and that’s more than good enough for me. He’d been watching you for quite a while, as I’m sure he told you. He’s a very good judge of character.”
Ryan could feel the anger rising again. After all this he was still getting yanked around. “You still haven’t told me why I’m here.”
“You’re absolutely right.” Dr. Webster spun around and rested his hand on the knob of the door he’d just come through. “Mrs. White, we’re not expecting anyone else tonight.”
“Understood, Robert.” The old woman replied, and Ryan heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being pumped behind the desk.
Dr. Webster motioned for Ryan to come across the tiny room. As he did, Ryan got a look behind Mrs. White’s high desk. He saw security monitors for the cameras he had been unable to spot, an office telephone, small computer, and the intercom receiver. And there, slung casually across the aging woman’s lap, was a long, double-barreled shotgun. Mrs. White was so small and looked so frail that Ryan imagined the recoil from a gun like that would send her sprawling to the floor. Still, something in the way she held it told Ryan this was a woman he shouldn’t be quite so quick to judge.
Dr. Webster turned the knob and pushed open the large door, and Ryan made a quick mental note never to come through the front door of this place unannounced.