Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero

by T. Ellery Hodges

  “Whatever you think you’re on about,” Jonathan said in a low voice, “I doubt it’s wise for you to yell it so anyone listening can hear.”

  Grant’s eyes seemed to lose their assurance.

  “Maybe,” he said, only loud enough for Jonathan to hear, still wheezing a bit.

  Grant started to get to his feet and Jonathan rose off his knee as he stood. When they locked eyes again, Jonathan got the feeling that Grant was trying to read his thoughts.

  “What you’re involved in,” Grant said, spitting the words out. “They know you lied about what put you in that hospital.”

  Jonathan said nothing.

  “They’re smarter than you. They’re just waiting for you to slip up.”

  Jonathan felt like the man was baiting him, a desperate bluff to trick him into talking. It was the way the man made accusations without giving specifics.

  “They?” Jonathan asked. “Who’s they?”

  Grant’s glare contorted with angry incredulity.

  “Don’t play games with me,” he whispered.

  Jonathan wasn’t playing games though. Someone may know something, but it wasn’t Grant.

  “Good night, Grant.” Jonathan said, turning to leave him in the dark. “Leave Paige alone.”

  When he’d gotten about five steps away, Grant spoke again.

  “Uncle Sam,” he said, his voice beginning to betray desperation.

  Jonathan stopped and took a deep breath.

  “Make it easier on yourself, Tibbs,” Grant said. “Let me take you in, they’ll go easier on you if you surrender. Give up whoever you’re protecting.”

  Jonathan hesitated for a moment. Then he left Grant in the driveway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  SUNDAY | AUGUST 14, 2005 | 12:30 AM

  GRANT watched Jonathan’s back receding up the drive. The lying prick didn’t look back, and when the door shut, he felt the finality. It was sobering.

  He stood there another moment, unable to make a decision, before he saw there wasn’t anything left for him to do, no move left to make. He’d underestimated him; he’d been manipulated somehow.

  No! That stupid woman set me up to fail!

  Olivia, he should have expected it. Whatever game she had been playing, it had backfired. Jonathan hadn’t confessed to anything. All Grant had accomplished was to blow his cover.

  She didn’t know what the hell she’d done.

  As he turned and walked up the driveway, the night was darker than he remembered. There weren’t as many street lights illuminating the shadows. He’d followed her orders; well, maybe not exactly, not all of them. Jonathan knew now, but she was going to say he’d disobeyed. They weren’t going to trust him. They might kick him out of the investigation.

  What if she had him dealt with? He felt a sickening in his stomach as he realized that it might be much worse. The night suddenly had eyes. He had to explain it to someone. He had to make them see that he’d still made the right call.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets, turning out of the driveway. He started to shake, the weight of his miscalculation growing, the implications he imagined starting to give rise to paranoia. He was walking faster and faster, desperate to get somewhere populated, a busy street. Somewhere he could be in the safety of civilians.

  He made it a block and a half before he knew it wouldn’t be allowed. The man stood before him on the sidewalk, blocking his way. He wore a government issue suit: black tie, white shirt, black blazer. Grant stopped in his tracks. The man didn’t move, just stared at him like a snake waiting on a mouse.

  “It’s not my fault,” Grant said, his hushed voice betraying his panic.

  The man took a step forward, and Grant’s instincts took over. When he turned to flee, he only had a moment to realize that he’d done exactly as they had expected. The fist of the other man, the one he hadn’t realized was behind him, connected with his face. His legs buckled, his vision blurred, and he fell to the pavement.

  Before he knew what was happening, the two men were on each side of him, one arm under each shoulder, picking him up off the ground.

  He whimpered, “please, I can explain!”

  Neither man dragging him said a word. They didn’t even care what he’d done, probably didn’t even know. They were just obediently following orders. Then he heard the sound of her heels approaching on the sidewalk, and cowered inside. When they turned him around he saw Olivia, standing in the street in front of him.

  She was dressed as she always was, her tailored suit and heels, but now with a heavy coat on to keep out the cold. He couldn’t read her expression. As per usual, she wasn’t wearing one.

  “Please listen,” Grant said, “I figured it out. I—”

  She batted her eyes to one of the men holding him, and a fist hit him in the gut.

  “No,” she said, waiting for Grant to understand she didn’t care in the least what he had to say.

  “When,” Olivia asked, “did I ever order you to figure out anything?”

  A moment passed as the meaning of her statement was allowed to seep into the man.

  “When,” Olivia asked, “did you get the idea that you were to do anything other than what I ordered?”

  “What are you going to do?” Grant asked sheepishly, afraid to be hit again.

  She took in a slow deep breath and let it out.

  “If it were up to me,” she said, “you’d disappear.”

  Grant blinked.

  If it wasn’t up to her, then who was it up to?

  With her eyes, she signaled to the men restraining him and they began to drag him towards a car parked a few feet away. He didn’t struggle. There was no point and he didn’t want to be roughed up anymore. They opened the door for him. He looked to each man’s eyes. He didn’t see any mercy in them, just impatience, so he eased himself into the back seat, and they shut the door. The locks triggered a moment later.

  It was black leather interior. He was alone in the back seat. Next to him was a thick yellow envelope. There was an opaque black glass divider between the front and back seats.

  He was afraid to move. His legs shook, he tried to will them to stop but they refused to obey.

  “You’ve proven yourself to be a gross miscalculation, Mr. Morgan,” said a man through the car speakers, the mask of the voice modulator disguising its owner.

  Grant swallowed.

  “You were given three explicit instructions. One, reveal your role in our investigation to Mr. Tibbs exclusively. Two, offer him immunity in exchange for his cooperation, and three, remove yourself from contact with any of the household’s occupants,” the voice said.

  After a moment, Grant thought the voice was waiting for him to speak. When he dared to open his mouth he was immediately cut off.

  “You were not instructed to antagonize him in front of five of his associates, to raise suspicions of our operation to his entire household. You most certainly were not instructed to pick a fight with him in earshot of the entire neighborhood and request his surrender.”

  “I, I thought,” Grant stuttered.

  “My report informs me that you were upset and initially non-receptive when you received these instructions tonight, Mr. Morgan,” the voice stated. “Am I to understand, that despite the extreme care in which you were brought into this investigation, that you’re such a worthless soldier you’d let yourself endanger our entire operation?”

  “I figured it out,” Grant whimpered.

  “Oh? Please enlighten me, Mr. Morgan, to exactly what insight you believe you’ve uncovered,” the voice requested arrogantly.

  “I realized that,” Grant started, “we needed Tibbs to slip up. When I was instructed to blow my cover, I knew, you must be desperate, that you needed to rattle him. Get him to make a mistake, call one of his contacts.”

  “And exactly,” the voice asked, “who do you assume to be Mr. Tibbs’ ‘contacts’?”

  Grant looked around the car dejectedly.

  J
onathan Tibbs was a liar, a dangerous manipulative liar. He had everyone fooled. Grant knew it by the way they all seemed so protective of him. He’d been covering up something big with that bullshit story at the hospital. Why was this man still pretending it wasn’t obvious? Grant knew where Jonathan came from, this man behind the voice must know as well, so why were they still playing games like this?

  “He’s a terrorist,” Grant said, his voice betraying that he knew nothing more than what had been eluded to the day he’d been brought into the operation.

  This moment from his daydreams, where he showed them they underestimated his value, where Olivia saw that he had always been the real one in control, wasn’t going how he’d imagined it.

  He felt humiliated by his own words, by being forced to play their game. “I can stop—”

  “Mr. Morgan, I’ve heard quite enough,” the voice said. “May I remind you that your orders were to keep tabs on the girl? Yet, you ignored these orders and fixated on Mr. Tibbs. Do you care to explain yourself?”

  Grant stopped talking, staring down at his knees. He felt tears on his cheeks. He hadn’t been aware of them before. He couldn’t tell now, did they know all or nothing? Were they trying to trick him into confession, or manipulate him for information? His eyes and nose were running as the voice on the other side of the glass passed judgment on him, called him worthless. Grant said nothing, just waited.

  “The envelope on the seat next to you,” said the voice, “is the payment you were promised for your participation. Take these funds and do not come anywhere near this operation again. If you are so much as spotted in this neighborhood, near Jonathan or the girl, your already useless and expendable existence will end.”

  Grant let out a grateful breath and reached for the envelope. He didn’t like it, but at least he was going to live. The doors to the vehicle audibly unlocked, and he wasted no time exiting, fumbling with the door handle as he tried to leave.

  “Mr. Morgan, there will be no second chances,” said the voice.

  Grant stopped, then nodded to make sure the voice could see he understood the implication.

  Outside the car, he risked a glance at Olivia. Her thugs stood to each side of her. She took in his red eyes, the snot that had been running from his nose. Her face revealed no disdain, just blank disregard.

  Humiliation dug into him. He turned up the street and around the corner. When they could no longer see him, he ran.

  They don’t know.

  He felt it in his gut, they suspected but they didn’t know. That was why they played their game; that was why he was really still alive.

  Trying to pull himself together, he made promises to himself. One day, he would see that woman so powerless, that she’d cry out for his help. He wouldn’t help her though, not until she begged. Jonathan, that conniving bastard was going to find out that Grant Morgan wasn’t so easily cast aside.

  Grant was still alive, and it meant the world still wanted him to be the hero. The world wanted him to be the one who stopped the monster.

  Olivia sat down in the backseat of the Sedan.

  “Orders?” she asked.

  “Keep the house on surveillance. Make sure that the secondary protocol is adhered to. No men are to engage Jonathan Tibbs or the other house occupants under any circumstances,” the voice said.

  “The other civilians in the house weren’t meant to gain awareness of our operation, especially the girl,” she said.

  “Given Mr. Morgan’s theatrics leading up to the disclosure, it remains to be seen if plans will need to be adjusted,” said the voice.

  “And Mr. Morgan himself?” she asked.

  “Whatever he imagines is so far from reality that he poses little threat in and of himself. He’s certainly done damage to our credibility with the subject, but Mr. Tibbs’ cooperation was never a likely scenario. If the man has a sense of self-preservation, he’ll follow orders this time. Still, keep him under surveillance, see if he becomes a problem,” the voice said.

  “Understood,” she replied as she reached for the door.

  “Olivia,” the voice said, halting her exit.

  “Yes?” she inquired.

  “Mr. Morgan’s reaction to his removal and his fixation on Jonathan, it all supports your hypothesis regarding what the private investigators uncovered. The connection between them is no mere coincidence.”

  “Agreed,” she replied. “Do you wish me to pursue this?”

  “I’ve taken the liberty of doing so based on your initial hunch. I bring it to your attention now because of what we’ve uncovered.”

  “Please continue, Sir,” said Olivia.

  “Every electronic record and paper hard copy that could be used to follow up has been deleted or misplaced. There is only one being we know capable of breaching our security to such a level.”

  Olivia swelled with pride, but didn’t let it reach her face. None of her predecessors assigned to this investigation had come close to what this news might mean.

  “That such care was taken to remove the evidence reveals more than it hides,” she replied. “I’ll compile a list of all eye witnesses still living who can provide testimony.”

  “Start with Evelyn Tibbs,” said the voice. “Now that Jonathan is aware he is being watched, I advise you approach her with discretion.”

  Jonathan awoke.

  Surprised he’d been able to sleep at all, he tried not to cry out. His morning ritual began. He laid his head back down on the pillow and waited for his heart to slow, trying to think about something else. All that came to mind was Grant.

  When he’d come back into the house the night before, they’d given him his space. Collin had handed him an ice pack. Paige had looked to Jonathan, then the floor, like she couldn’t decide what to think, and because of it, didn’t know what to say. They hadn’t asked what Grant said, they had just let him go to sleep. Now, after what Collin had said to him on the bus, Jonathan wasn’t sure what he would be to them when he went down stairs.

  It had occurred to him before that someone out there had to know something. A being like Heyer couldn’t exist and Jonathan be the only one to know about it, but there hadn’t been a way to search out such a person. Now it was clear that some operation out there had known to watch him after he ended up in that hospital. The question was, what did they know? What did they want? More importantly, what did it mean for him?

  We’ll need to trust each other, Jonathan remembered.

  Some things made sense now that this was out in the open. This was why Heyer was so reluctant to give him a means to contact him, why he only gave Jonathan the little information he needed to survive. Regardless of what it revealed, it caused far more questions. Why Grant? Why make such a sideways maneuver to keep tabs on him? Why not listen in when he’d been out in the open with Heyer in the park? If he was being watched, the house must be bugged. Why hadn’t they done something when the alien was standing in his garage yesterday? Had Grant been planted before he’d even been assaulted by Heyer, was that possible? Had these people somehow known Heyer would come for him? How could that be possible?

  He wasn’t about to start fooling himself. Espionage, surveillance, and undercover activities were all outside his ability to deal with. He couldn’t hide anything from a surveillance team.

  Did he want to? He couldn’t help but wonder, if someone knew about what was happening, why hadn’t they revealed themselves to him sooner? After all, wouldn’t they know he was forced in this? Wouldn’t they know all he wanted was a way out?

  I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

  She poured pancake batter onto a griddle in the kitchen. It sizzled as it hit the pan. Cooking had never been Paige’s thing. No one had ever tried to teach her. She was fairly sure she was either going to burn the pancakes or that they would still be liquid batter in the middle. She pressed on anyway.

  Jonathan would be walking down the steps soon, no doubt with a black eye. She’d be thinking of Grant every time she
looked at him until it healed. She didn’t ever want to think about Grant again, but it wasn’t like she would need a bruise on Jonathan’s eye to remind her; the look on Grant’s face, the vitriol that had suddenly been bursting out of him. He’d been so hell bent on tearing Jonathan down, demeaning him, even if it meant humiliating her on her birthday. How could she have gone to bed with that monster and not have known what was writhing under the surface?

  It was what Grant reminded her of that made it all so disturbing. The way he’d been, too much like her father, all too familiar. She loathed herself, felt a fool that she could be blindsided by it.

  It had been years and she made efforts not to dwell on her childhood growing up with that man, yet how could she so glaringly make the same mistakes as her mother, without seeing the signs, the rage hidden underneath the façade. Had she fooled herself somehow, ignored it when it was right in front of her? Her blindness had now caused even more damage to Jonathan.

  Embarrassed by her own choices and angry at herself at the same time, one emotion fed the other in a vicious circle.

  Never make this mistake again, she thought. Every time you cringe, every time you remember, just repeat it, ‘Never make this mistake’.

  Some time passed, she eventually had a healthy looking stack of pancakes on the counter. She hadn’t tried one yet, she just kept going. It helped to keep her mind busy. At least until she ran out of batter.

  Hayden and Collin were up before Jonathan. They didn’t appear to have lost as much sleep over last night’s debacle as she had. For a moment, it reminded her of breakfast commercials where the entire family smells Mom cooking and slowly made their way to the table in pajamas with uncombed bed head. They were endearing in a way, like children.

  “This is new,” Collin said, watching her.

  She nodded but stayed focused on what she was doing. Hayden yawned, then gave a look like he’d remembered something important.