by Amy Faye
"Your husband's involved in gang activity that's been active across southern Michigan, ma'am. Like some kind of Godfather."
"That's absurd," the woman replied. "You've got the wrong man."
"So we wanted to make sure you were out of the house before we began our investigation. It's a measure for your safety. Do you understand?"
The woman seemed like she was ready to riot, but Brianna forced herself to stay calm. To keep her eyes on the road.
"I don't know what anyone told you but my husband, he's–he's a businessman. He runs a trading company. He's in Hong Kong for the weekend on business, but as soon as he gets back, I'm sure we can get this all sorted out."
"Well, as I said, we're taking you into protective custody. The people who we believe your husband works with–they're dangerous sort of people. If they thought that you might know anything, anything at all, then they wouldn't take too kindly to knowing that you knew."
"Well, I don't know anything."
"You might be able to convince them of that. Is that a risk you're willing to take?"
The woman went quiet. No, she wasn't, and Brianna hadn't much expected her to. Nick spoke up.
"We've got a tail," he said. Simple as that. Brianna looked in her rear-view again, adjusting it so that Mrs. Grant took up less space in it. And less of her attention, Brianna hoped. It was beyond distracting at this point. It was downright uncomfortable.
"I don't see anything."
"You're not looking in the right places," he said simply. "Step on it."
Brianna shot Nick a hard look. "I'm already stepping on it."
He took a deep breath. "Alright, then. If this is the best you can do, slow down a little. Don't wait up for me."
She took her foot off the gas. When the car had slowed to a crawl he opened the door, and as if they were stopped completely, stepped out at twenty miles an hour. His body made an awful thump as it hit the concrete, but to Brianna's surprise he was on his feet and moving before her tail lights pulled away. She stepped on the accelerator hard, the lights pulling away too slow to see anything but a blur in the darkness.
Another blur in the darkness moved, and stepped into the light. If the White Eyes were a 'kind-of gang' as Nick had put it, then she had certain expectations about what their membership looked like. Expectations that, by and large, hadn't been met by the guys she'd seen so far. The photos that lined Nick's cabin had been mostly normal-looking guys, if you could ignore their size.
This guy, on the other hand? He looked exactly like she'd have expected. Stringy and with an expression on his face approximately a thousand miles away, but he moved fast. Too fast for her to do anything but react on reflex. Brianna turned the wheel, pulled her foot off the gas, and felt the car lurch, threatening to do a barrel roll as she yanked the wheel the other way.
The little wiry son of a bitch was fast, but he wasn't fast enough to stop her. Not when she was doing ninety, and swerving like a lunatic. Hell, she wasn't even sure that what she was doing was the right thing. But it was the only option she had. A popping noise rang out, and then another. Glass shattered.
Mrs. Grant shrieked again. "Jesus!"
"Duck down, Mrs. Grant," she ordered. The woman did so. "We're going to be in a hurry for a little while."
She mashed the pedal into the floor and hoped to hell that didn't happen again. If it did, then she wasn't sure what she was going to do, because her only alternative to trying again would be running the guy down. Kidnapping was one thing. Murder was still a little advanced for her.
Brianna's teeth grit together. A little advanced, but she was apparently working her way up to it.
Twenty-Six
No matter where you live, there are a thousand places you probably don't even think about. Places where nobody ever goes. Abandoned buildings, closed restaurants. The windows covered to discourage vandals from smashing them in, just for the fun of it.
Brianna's job, in part if not in whole, was centered around those places. Nobody dumps a body in someplace obvious. Nobody's going to carry it into their local church or police station, unless–as unlikely as it is–they just don't know what they've got on their hands until it's dumped.
Those are the places where you find murdered people, if it's not in their house–another place nobody goes, unless they live there. But if you're avoiding attention, if you're avoiding getting yourself killed, then your house is a bad choice. It's an especially bad choice when the man you're hiding from has contacts in every level of government, from your Mayor all the way up to the President of the United States.
There's a certain assumption that you're not going to be at home, in that case, but it's never assumed so strongly that nobody checks. They'll just check quickly to get it out of the way. When they find you there, it's not as if they're going to ignore it because they assumed you weren't an idiot.
Well, Brianna was proud of one thing–she wasn't an idiot. In fact, she knew the city as well as anyone, because she'd been in all of those places. Places that normal folks, even ones that were looking for something, drive right by. The only people who come around are looking for a place to fuck or shoot up. Those were the sort of people you could pay off, and that was why Brianna had no trouble finding such a place almost as soon as she hit the Grand Rapids city line.
They pulled in around back and put the car in park, and then she guided Mrs. Grant inside. The woman was still every bit as gorgeous when she was scared shitless. She looked meek and obedient and all sorts of things, but the one thing she didn't look was ugly. Brianna tried the door. Of course it was locked. But not for long. She dropped to her knees, ignoring the grime on the steps, and twenty seconds later she had the lock open.
"Inside, come on. We'll hide here," she said, ignoring the questioning looks coming from the woman she'd kidnapped. "It's only temporary."
It wasn't dark inside. The light from outside shone through the grungy windows only slightly worse than expected, and lit up the whole place. Lit up the puddles and muck and dust that they seemed to have kicked up just by coming in through the door. Brianna coughed a little; Mrs. Grant coughed a lot.
"What are we waiting for?"
Brianna didn't really want to talk about that. There were other things that she had to worry about.
"Mrs. Grant, do you know who those men were?"
"The–the men who tried to kill me?"
"Those men," she said, leaving out the fact that they were almost certainly not trying to kill Mrs. Grant, and they'd come dangerously close to succeeding. Thirty minutes later and Brianna's heart still threatened to skip a beat every few moments. She clenched her fist and clicked her jaw and stayed on top of things as best she could.
"No–should I? Are those the men who you were talking about?"
"I'm afraid that's right."
"Your partner, is he–"
"I'm sure he's fine," she confirmed. "I need you to understand the gravity of the situation you're in right now. Those men were coming to kill you, and they could come at any moment."
Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled. Brianna hoped that was what it was. 'Leave the big guys to me' wasn't the sort of plan that worked when Nick had run off.
"But he jumped out of a moving car," the woman said, seeming to ignore the rest of what Brianna had said. "How could he possibly… He must be hurt. I can't imagine anyone–"
"Look at me," Brianna said. Her voice was harder than she'd intended for it to be, but Mrs. Grant's eyes snapped into hers. Brianna held the gaze longer than she'd intended before speaking.
"I need you to calm down. In a little bit, we're going to move on. I'm going to try to talk to the guys who are trying to kill you, set up some kind of… I don't know. Negotiation. If we can get them to come in of their own volition, that's the easiest way."
"Do they usually do that? Just turn themselves in?"
"No," Brianna said, tired. "They usually don't."
"So–"
"So we can't bring the full force of the governme
nt down on someone before we give them the chance to give up, can we?"
The woman blinked. "Oh. That makes sense."
Brianna wondered if the woman was stupid. That, or she was so used to being lied to that she didn't bother to question it any more. Whichever it was, Brianna was thankful that they'd picked up this woman specifically. If she had to try to think up a better cover story, or defend this one, she wasn't sure she could do it. It was flimsy as all hell and they were pretty much stuck with it at this point.
"Okay? So let's talk a bit. Can you do that? Will you help me out?"
"Okay. What do you need?"
"Let's start with your husband's business friends. Does he ever bring any around the house? Maybe a dinner or business parties or something like that?"
"Um–" Mrs. Grant's eyes fluttered and for a moment she almost looked like she was going to pass out. Brianna's arms started to move to catch her before she realized what she was doing, but then Mrs. Grant's eyes opened again. "A couple of times."
"Do you remember any of their names?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Okay."
"There was, um. A Ryan, he was good looking. Tall, thin."
Brianna pulled out a pen and a pad of paper. If the conversation continued like this, it wasn't likely to turn into much of anything. But sometimes, you have to take someone's testimony even if it's not going to turn into anything.
In the case of Frank Grant, she'd need all the information that she could get, because she was going to be fighting an uphill battle all the way. The sooner she could identify any of his friends, the better.
"Do you remember what color his hair was?"
"Uh. Short. Brown."
"Eye color?"
"Um. No, sorry."
"No, don't be sorry," Brianna said. She tried to make herself sound reassuring. "Just tell me what you can remember. Every little bit helps, okay?"
Brianna smiled and Mrs. Grant smiled back. Every little bit helped, Brianna repeated silently to herself. Eventually, if she was lucky, maybe she'd stand a chance.
Twenty-Seven
"Okay, I need you to be very quiet, now. Okay? If I hand the phone to you, I'll tell you what to say. Don't be afraid."
"O–okay."
Brianna took a deep breath. This was where things could go horribly, horribly wrong. Even if they didn't, there were a thousand things that might go sideways. Things that Brianna wasn't sure she could control. Even if the whole house of cards didn't come tumbling down, there were a thousand little moving parts to the plan, and if one of them went rogue, there was going to be a whole lot more trouble after that. She just had to hope she could hold off long enough.
Then it was time. It was always going to come down to doing it sooner or later, and sooner was always better than later. She dropped her thumb on the call button and waited. One ring. Two rings.
"What the fuck are you doing with my wife, you sick bitch?"
Brianna blinked, her expression purposefully blank for Mrs. Grant's benefit. She waited to see if the wife would respond, if she could hear the voice over the phone, but she just kept that same nervous expression on her face. Like she was terrified of something, not that Brianna could say what it was for certain.
"We've got her," Brianna said, her voice hard and firm and hopefully a lot more confident than she was feeling at that moment. "She's safe, and we're going to keep her safe. Is that clear?"
"You fucking bitch. You think, what? You think you can get away with this? I will–"
Brianna hung up the phone. The woman in front of her, fifteen years older with skin that Brianna would have killed for at any time during her twenty-seven years, gasped. "What was that for?"
"You ever had a dog, Mrs. Grant?"
"Yes, I have two–Grover's the big one, and Cleveland, he's just a cute little thing. Oh, you'd like Grover. He's shaggy, and he's so friendly, you wouldn't even–"
"Well, when you're training the dog, right?"
"Oh. I'm sorry, yes. You were saying."
"When you're training the dog, and it's barking at you, acting out and misbehaving, you punish them, right?"
"Right."
"Same principle."
Brianna pushed the button to redial. When the other line picked up it was silent. That was a good start. "We're not negotiating if you can't be polite," she said. Again: measured. Even. Firm. Don't say anything unless you're confident that you're saying the right thing.
"What do you want from me?"
"What I want from you?" she closed her eyes. "I want you to back off."
Again, Brianna took a moment to inspect her charge's face. To see if there was any hint of doubt in it. But she still saw nothing. Worry, fear, but not fear of her. Fear of something else, some deep, dark unknown that she couldn't explain and wasn't sure that she wanted to try.
"I don't think I want to do this any more. Can you call my husband, and just–" Brianna stopped listening when the man on the other end of the line spoke up.
"Do you really have her? Can you prove it?"
"What, your guys didn't find that out? Of course we can."
"Then put her on the phone."
That was the moment that Brianna had been expecting. Expecting, and at the same time, dreading. There was a lot that could go wrong in the plan. Mrs. Grant could figure out that the jig was up by noticing some slip-up. Brianna could get someone hurt, give away the location. She could tip either one of them off that there was something complicated going on.
But the fact was, proof of life was standard in these kidnapping type situations. And she'd have to give it eventually. A photo sent over text wasn't going to cut it, because that would reveal their location. She'd have to just let him talk to her.
Which meant that if she didn't frame things just right, she was going to let them both figure it out at the same time, and then she was going to have to juggle. Juggle dealing with a now-furious Mrs. Grant, while Frank tried to figure out where they were and of course his wife would want to tell him, and at the same time, wait for Nick to show up.
He wasn't supposed to just fuck off in the middle of a kidnapping. In fact, aside from that first call, she wasn't supposed to be any more involved than necessary. She'd scouted out a place on the roof where she could sit with a pair of binoculars and a radio. It was in the trunk and it was now useless.
"One moment," Brianna said. Calm, firm, professional. She covered the mouthpiece on the phone and spoke to Grant's wife.
"Mrs. Grant, I need you to stay very calm when I tell you this, alright?"
She blinked and nodded. "What's wrong?"
"They've got your husband, okay? Everything will be alright, and we're trying to negotiate everything, but understand this–anything you say to him, his kidnappers will hear. They'll be listening. So I need you to be very brave for me."
"Oh. Um." Mrs. Grant cringed hard and for a moment looked like she was going to lose her cool. To Brianna's surprise she pulled it together. "Yes. Okay. I can do this. Whoo. Whoo." The noise she made as she took deep, rapid breaths was almost cute. "Okay, I'm ready."
"Okay. I'm going to hold the phone up, and I want you to talk into it. Reassure him that everything is going to be fine, that you're not going to let anything happen to him, that I've got everything under control. We've got guys waiting to take everyone into custody as soon as we get this sorted out, so there's no danger. But I need you to be very brave for me until that happens, okay?"
The woman in front of her, who had up to this point been a wallflower, wilting visibly at the sign of any trouble, stiffened a little.
"I can do that."
"Good girl. Now, let's give it a shot."
She uncovered the microphone and held it up to Mrs. Grant's ear. She was surprised that she could hear the voice on the other end very clearly as they spoke.
"Honey?"
"Lana, are you alright?"
"Don't worry about me, are you alright? Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm not hurt
. I'm not worried about that. Did they take you? Did someone take you?"
"I'm with a policewoman now. I'm fine. Listen. Everything's going to be okay. They're going to work everything out, okay? She promises that she's going to make it so nobody gets hurt. I love you. Everything's okay."
Brianna took the phone away from Lana's ear. "Is that enough for you, you sick bastard?" She said it loud, as if she wanted someone whose ear wasn't right there at the handset to hear. And to her very great surprise… it worked.
Twenty-Eight
Brianna paced. She didn't have any other option than pacing. There certainly wasn't anything else she could do alone. Only time would tell if she was able to get everything sorted out. Only time would tell if she could make the trade. The one thing she did know, time or not, was that she couldn't do it all by herself. She needed at least one other person. More ideally, she'd be the other person, and Nick would be the one making the drop.
If he could keep his revenge in his pants, they might just be able to get something out of it. He might be able to have them stop chasing him, he might be able to live a real life. He might be able to make it out of this without having to kill anyone, which seemed like an advantage to her, but she doubted it mattered much where he was concerned.
Losing your family, losing everyone you've ever cared about… Brianna couldn't understand that, and she knew it. She'd never had a family to worry about. The closest thing she could imagine was if she'd lost everyone in her unit. If she woke up one day, and none of them were there to greet her. What if she was just stuck one day, outside of Baghdad, and she was the only one?
She didn't like that thought. But it was just a thought. That hadn't happened. She hadn't had to live it. That was more than she could say for Nick. Nick was living proof. The way he looked, it wasn't hard to imagine that he wanted revenge. It wasn't hard to imagine that he would get it, one way or another. But short of killing all the White Eyes one by one, there wasn't any way to get it.
Alone, she wasn't sure he could take more than one of theirs at a time. He seemed confident, but from the way he'd talked, it was hard to imagine that there was any way to kill them at all. Another howl. Closer, this time. They'd been repeating, over and over. Rhythmic and slow and every hour or so they were closer. Brianna shivered.