Double Danger

by Trilby Plants

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Unlike Wolf, Hunter never rushed. Impatience caused mistakes.

  “Today,” Wolf said. “Text the code to this number when you’re ready to take off.”

  “Today,” Hunter echoed softly. He pressed the End button. “Perhaps.”

  He licked his lips in anticipation. A tranquilizer dart could knock a person out for hours. The Mallory woman was small and lovely. There were things he could do to her that did not involve his knife, although they weren’t as satisfying. Perhaps a slightly lesser dose in her dart while the other one slept. It would be a long flight, and he would enjoy her more if she were awake.

  He put the phone in his pocket and motioned to his partner. “We’re going hunting, Charlie. The zoo needs a pig and a fox.”

  Charlie grunted and ran his fingers through his dark hair, then turned and ambled around the car. Hunter got behind the wheel. Charlie needed a haircut, and he had gained weight lately, ten or fifteen pounds. Hunter never allowed his weight to fluctuate more than a pound or two. It was a matter of self-control. Charlie’s job tenure was wearing thin. Hunter mentally went over his options as he waited for Charlie to situate himself in the car. There were always options. Perhaps an accident. With Charlie out of the way Hunter would get more money. Yes, an accident would do. He would have to think on it.

  Chapter 6

  Alyssa stared at Nick in disbelief. “You work for the government?”

  Nick nodded with a rueful smile and pointed to his torn shirt. “You mind if I change? You did a job on this. And you’re staring.”

  Alyssa’s cheeks felt warm. He did have a nice chest with defined muscles. She looked away. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  He picked up the pistol and headed for the bedroom. “You won’t leave, will you?”

  How could she leave? He’d locked the deadbolt, and he had the key. “No,” she said. “I’m staying put until the police come.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder at her as he left the living room.

  Undercover for the government? Should she laugh? It seemed too incredible, but after the events of the previous twelve hours, she no longer knew what seemed reasonable.

  “Who?” Alyssa said.

  “What, who?” Nick’s voice, muffled by the partially closed bedroom door, drifted out to her.

  “Who do you work for? What department, what group?”

  “Just a minute,” he said. “I’m calling.”

  The police, Alyssa thought. This would all soon be resolved.

  ***

  Nick took the phone from his jeans pocket and tapped the numbers of his handler, US Marshal Eric Miller. Oddly, the phone rang a long time before someone answered.

  “Hello?” A woman’s tentative voice.

  “I’m trying to reach Eric,” he said.

  Silence.

  “Eric Miller,” he said. Something in the woman’s voice put him off.

  “I’m sorry. Marshal Miller was shot and killed two days ago in the line of duty. How may I help you?”

  Dead? How could that happen? He ended the call and tapped a Google search into his phone. US Marshal Eric Miller had been gunned down on the streets of Detroit while serving a federal warrant. It appeared to be a botched robbery attempt. The other Marshal was uninjured and was quoted as saying Miller was targeted.

  Training kicked in. Nick pulled the battery from the phone and tossed them both on the bed. Useless. He had others.

  ***

  Alyssa forgot the question she had asked when Nick reappeared in the doorway shirtless. He carried a small messenger bag and the holstered gun in one hand and a white polo shirt in the other. Alyssa’s gaze strayed to his chest. Hard muscles rippled as he set the case and the holster on the back of the couch. A scar, white against his tan skin, ran across the left side of his chest to his shoulder. Tiny white puckers showed where many sutures had been placed.

  “How did you ‒”

  Nick followed her gaze. “It looks worse than it is.” He shrugged. “An accident.” He pulled his shirt over his head.

  Alyssa touched the tiny stitches just below her eyebrow and wondered if her scar would show.

  “I got careless,” he said. “There was a fire, I got hurt – it’s not important, and I’ve told you too much already. The less you know, the less you’re involved.”

  She bit her lip and glared at him. “I am involved. If I’m in danger, I have a right to know.”

  He gazed at her, a cool, measured look. She met his eyes deliberately.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I can. Right now we’ve got to get out of here.” He adjusted the holster straps over his shoulders. Then he grabbed a worn denim shirt from a hook beside the door and shrugged into it, adjusting it to cover the holstered gun. He picked up the messenger bag and, holding Alyssa’s arm firmly, he unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door a crack.

  Alyssa planted her feet. “Wait a minute, we can’t go. We have to wait for the police.” Nick’s eyes flickered, and cold fingers of doubt crept up Alyssa’s spine. “You didn’t call them, did you?”

  Nick licked his lips. “No. Sorry, I can’t involve the cops.”

  “Sorry?” Alyssa put her hands on her hips. “Sorry?” Anger burned her cheeks. “My home is wrecked, I could have been killed by … by those men, and you’re sorry, but you can’t involve the police?” She turned and stomped toward the door. “Well, I can involve them, and that’s just what I intend to do.”

  “Don’t, Alyssa.” Nick strode close behind her. She expected to feel a strong grip on her arm, but he didn’t touch her. “Please,” he said, his voice softer. “The stakes here are high. There are many in jeopardy. There’s a great deal you don’t know. Give me a chance to explain. If I can’t convince you, I promise I won’t stand in your way.”

  Alyssa turned back and glared at him. If he had wanted to harm her, she reasoned, he could easily have done so already. He didn’t scare her as much as the two men in dark suits.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll give you half an hour.”

  “Not here,” Nick said. ”We need to get gone.” He opened the door, guided her out, relocked the door and followed her down the stairs to the driveway.

  He glanced around. “We’ll have to take your van.”

  “What’s wrong with your car?”

  He pointed to a dark puddle of liquid under the front end. “I blew a hose or something. I limped home, but I don’t think I’ll get any further in it.”

  She shrugged. “So, hop in.” Good. If she drove, she would be in control.

  Once out of the driveway and onto the street, Nick stopped looking both ways. He settled back and kept glancing at the mirror on his side of the van.

  “How about we get some lunch?” he said. “Someplace quiet and relatively private with an out-of-the-way spot to park.”

  And trees, she thought. Shade for Bella. She looked down. A downy paw stuck out from under her seat. The cat batted at her heel but made no sound.

  “I know a place,” Alyssa said. She made a left turn and then a right.

  In less than ten minutes, they were settled on a bench in Riverside Park munching on Halo Burgers and sipping Pepsi. The van was shaded by a large spreading willow and screened from street view by an enormous hedge.

  Nick glanced around. “This isn’t what I expected.”

  “It has everything you asked for,” Alyssa said. “It’s quiet, private and out of the way. People do come here to picnic, so we’re not totally alone.” She glanced toward a group of children swinging while their mothers supervised on a nearby bench. “Or were you expecting a cute little Italian place with wine and violins, someplace that would charm me senseless while I listen to your story?”

  He sighed. “Just hear me out.”

  “Okay.” She punched 9-1 on her phone and waited, thumb poised over the 1 button. “In ten minutes, I stop listening and call the police.” If he let her. The thought flitted through her mind.
She glared at him, hoping her face projected courage.

  He swallowed his last bite. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to go to the police. It’s that I can’t prove my story. Yet. If they take me into custody, I’ll never get the proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t exactly know.”

  She gazed at him in disbelief. “Oh, come on. That sounds like bad dialogue from a stupid movie. In real life, you go to the cops, show them your ID and everything works out.”

  Nick looked down at his hands and then up at her. “No,” he said. “I really don’t know what’s going on. And I only have a drivers’ license and nothing that tells who I really am.”

  Alyssa sat still, waiting for an answer that made sense.

  He took a long sip of his Pepsi. “I’m telling you things you probably shouldn’t know, and this could mean big trouble, but it looks like trouble is already here. So ....” He paused. “I told you I work for the government.” Again he paused, and Alyssa gazed at him. Finally, he sighed. “That’s not exactly correct. Worked, past tense. I’m supposed to be retired.”

  He took a deep breath. “God, it seems so long ago. I was raised by my grandma after my mom died when I was in high school. Grandma bought me a computer. It fascinated me. I spent a lot of time studying it. And I had an innate understanding of how they worked. I got caught trying to hack into a government computer. It was easier for them to recruit me than to prosecute me.”

  “Is this going somewhere?” Alyssa finished the last fry and wiped her mouth on her napkin.

  “Yeah. I thought you should know where it all started. After I got caught, they offered me a full ride through college as long as I committed to five years working for them. I was a cryptographer ‒ codes. I have this ability to understand how computers work and how to encode and decode information. I see patterns where most people see chaos. I can reprogram software and fix glitches. I’m sure you’ve read about computer failures. Remember that massive one that happened with the telephones a few years ago? Well, I’m the expert they sent to fix it. Mostly I did government work, some private. Other countries. Nothing dangerous.

  “I wasn’t a spy or anything like that.” He must have thought she would say something, because he paused a long moment. Alyssa just looked at him. Unlike kindergartners who didn’t filter what they said so she could always tell if they were truthful, she couldn’t tell if he was lying or not.

  “I fixed computers,” he went on. “I retrieved information from fried hard drives, fixed big servers, that sort of thing.”

  Alyssa brushed her hair back from her face. “You didn’t answer the question I asked you earlier,” she said. “Who do you, did you, work for? The CIA?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing so glamorous. National Security Agency. It’s an information gathering group. They monitor radio transmissions and phone calls and data sent over the Internet. Because of my computer knowledge I went out in the field. My public job was working for a paper company in the Upper Peninsula. It was the cover I needed to travel. I went to various European cities to sell paper ‒ legitimate business. On my trips I fixed cybersecurity for banks and governments. I coded software, that sort of thing.”

  “Then what’s going on now?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I worked on something a little more important once. Or I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see. Or maybe somebody thought I did. Apparently, they don’t know I retired.”

  Alyssa turned sideways to stare at him. “Can you prove any of this?”

  “Well, if you mean, can I show you a badge, no.”

  He reached into his back pocket and Alyssa tensed, remembering the gun. “What are you doing?”

  “Relax.” He drew out his wallet and opened it to a State of Michigan driver’s license. “All I have is this.” The license identified Nicholas Edward Trammel. “But that doesn’t tell you much. All I can do is hope you believe me.”

  Alyssa slumped. “God, what a nightmare. How did I ever get involved in this?”

  Nick closed his wallet and shoved it back in his pocket. “More to the point, how do I get you out?”

  “Exactly. Get me out.”

  “I will, but I need your help to do it. I don’t think you’ll be in any danger once I’m gone.”

  “No danger?” she said. “Someone shot at me ‒”

  “I don’t think so,” Nick said. “I think they were after me. You just got in the way.”

  “Well, that may be true,” Alyssa said. “You’re forgetting one thing. Someone trashed my house. They didn’t take any of the antiques. They didn’t take my diamond earrings, and they didn’t take my hundred dollars in emergency money. They took my laptop.”

  “I’m really sorry, Alyssa. I don’t know what they’re after. I think the easiest thing to do is for me to get lost. I really need a couple of favors.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to give me a head start of a couple of hours ‒ go shopping or to the library or something ‒ and then go home, ‘discover’ the damage to your home and call the police. You can tell them about me. I’ll be long gone by then.”

  Alyssa shook her head. “I can’t wait that long.” She took a deep breath as she wrestled with her thoughts. She didn’t trust him, but she didn’t think he meant her harm. “Maybe I could leave you out of it. Or at least not tell them anything you’ve told me. If they ask me a direct question, I’ll have to answer. I’m a terrible liar. They’ll know. If that’ll help, I can do it.”

  He kept still, brows knit in thought. “Okay ….”

  “So, what’s the other thing?” She cleared the emergency number from her phone, locked it and put it back in her pocket.

  “I need to get out of town. Lend me your Suburban. I’ll rent a car in Lansing at the airport and leave yours there. Someone can drive you over to get it.”

  “Oh no, not the van. It belongs to the shop, and we have deliveries to make and ….” Wait. This could be the quickest way to get him out of her life and get herself out of trouble. “Okay, you can borrow it. Promise me you won’t wreck it or anything.”

  “I promise to be very careful with it. Well, great, thanks.” He cleared his throat. “Look, I’m really sorry you got mixed up in this, Alyssa.” He looked genuinely sorry. Or he was an accomplished liar.

  She sighed. “Yeah, me too. Wrong place at the right time, I guess. But it’s not your fault.”

  Nick rubbed his hands together and rose from the picnic table bench, glancing around as he did. “So what’ll it be? Shall I drop you at the mall, take you to the library? Do you have a friend you could visit?”

  Alyssa shook her head. “I could go to my own apartment. But the key’s back at the shop.”

  Nick said, “I imagine your burglars are gone by now. We’ll go pick it up.”

  Alyssa nodded. “Then I’ll call the police from the apartment. I’ll tell them the burglars chased me in their car and I just drove until I didn’t see them anymore and then called them. They’ll accept that, don’t you think?”

  Nick nodded and gathered up the remnants of their impromptu picnic and put the trash in a garbage container. He opened the van door for her. Alyssa peeked under the seat as she climbed in. Bella’s green eyes stared back at her. After Nick settled in the passenger seat, Alyssa started the vehicle and headed toward the shop.

  Nick’s story was fantastic, and so was everything else that had happened to her since yesterday. Her head hurt, and she dreaded seeing Ellen’s house in its demolished condition.

  Within a few minutes Alyssa turned onto the cross street to her neighborhood. As she slowed to turn onto Stockbridge, she jammed on the brakes.

  “Oh no.” Blocking her driveway were two police cars with lights flashing. A crowd was gathered across the street.

  “Keep driving,” Nick snapped. “Your neighbors might recognize you.” Alyssa put her foot on the accelerator and the van lurched forward. “Easy,” he said. “Turn at the next
corner.”

  He touched her arm. Unable to look at him while she negotiated the turn, she dumbly followed his order and headed toward downtown.

  “Now what?” she said.

  “We need to find out what’s going on and who called the cops.”

  “Carl,” she said.

  “Carl?”

  “He has my car. He’s back from an estate sale. When he found the mess and me nowhere to be found, he’d naturally call the police. Wouldn’t you?” Alyssa paused. “Lord, I bet he’s frantic.”

  “Husband?” Nick said.

  “What?”

  “Is Carl your husband?”

  Alyssa laughed. “No. He’s my partner.”

  Nick’s face conveyed questions.

  She turned slightly and glared at him. “My business partner.”

  She pulled into the 7-11, parked on the side and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Nick reached over, turned off the ignition and took the keys.

  “Look,” he said, “it’s probably not a good idea for me to get too close to the police right now and ‒ “

  “I’m not calling them. I know what to do.” Alyssa waved him to silence and dialed. She tapped the speakerphone on. As soon as the connection was made she said, “Carl, don’t say anything. It’s me. I’m fine. Don’t let on. Pretend you’re talking to a customer. I know my place was trashed. I’m okay. Trust me. I can explain.”

  There was a pause while Alyssa imagined Carl standing there running his long fingers through his sandy hair, deciding what to do. Then he said, “Why yes, Mrs. Smythe. Sorry I can’t help you right now. I’m in the middle of something here. I’m afraid we’ve had a break-in, but nothing in the shop was damaged or taken. How are you?”

  Alyssa breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Carl. I really am fine, but I have a … friend who’s in trouble. I’m loaning him the van for a few days.”

  “What? I mean, do you think that’s wise, Mrs. Smythe?”

  “The police are still there, and they’re listening to you, right, Carl?”