Never Go Home

by L. T. Ryan

  I knew what he was talking about, the incident on the water with April’s mother. I let it go. It was between him and his family now.

  The medics came in a few minutes later. It didn’t take long for them to figure out everyone but the former sheriff and I were the only ones alive. They led me out of the office, leaving April’s father alone with her corpse. I wanted to look back as we left. I couldn’t, though. There was a part of me that wanted to remember that goofy little girl, with teeth that stuck out too far, and freckles on her nose, asking me to dance with her one more time before I left.

  That image was ruined, though. In time I’d replace it with the woman I almost spent a night with.

  Chapter 49

  The ambulance transported me to Clearwater. It was the closest hospital prepared to deal with a gunshot wound. I insisted that it was only a scratch. The paramedics appreciated my bravado, but decided against letting me walk.

  Probably for the better. Infections and all.

  Sean left Deb, Kelly and Dad behind and met me at the hospital. He’d taken them to Santa Rosa Beach. They’d bought a condo there recently. No one knew about it. Not his office. Not even Dad.

  “So the threat’s over?” Sean said.

  “Yeah, for you it is.”

  “What about you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, Sean. My life is…complicated. There’s so much in my past. There are people out there who might never stop trying to find me.”

  “So what’ll you do?”

  I ignored the question. I didn’t have an answer for it.

  The doctor entered the room with my discharge papers. There had been no substantial damage to my arm. The stitches would need to come out in a couple weeks, but that could be done anywhere.

  Stares were cast my way as we walked through the hospital. I glanced down. My shirt was half white, half crimson. My arm was bandaged. They wanted to check my head, but I refused. They noted that on the paperwork. Did it matter? Not really.

  “Where to?” Sean said when we got inside the Suburban.

  “I need a shower and a change of clothes. I suppose the airport after that.”

  “Not planning on staying around?”

  “I think it’s best that I don’t.”

  Thirty minutes later, we approached Crystal River. Sean bypassed the downtown area. He’d heard that the Tampa Bay media had found its way up the coast and they were reporting on all of the recent carnage.

  Fifteen minutes later Sean put on a pot of coffee and I was in the shower. The amount of information I had to process was too great to deal with at that moment. The lives that had been taken would haunt me. The worst part of it was that I had no idea what I had done to Marcia, or whatever her name was, to draw her ire. How had she gone from wanting me to protect her, to trying to kill me? Had it been planned from the beginning? Or was it all one big coincidence?

  I had a hard time believing that anything in my life could be classified as such.

  The water in the shower turned from red to pink to clear over the course of ten minutes. I cut the water, toweled off and put on a pair of Sean’s khaki cargo pants and a t-shirt. Flip-flops completed the ensemble. It’d make me look like a tourist later on, but at least I’d be comfortable on the plane.

  Downstairs, we each drank a cup of coffee. I took mine black. Sean added cream and a sugar substitute. I tried to tell him those things were poison. He wouldn’t listen.

  After that, we left. He turned onto Suncoast, headed south. We neared town. Sean looked at me.

  “Want to go visit mom?”

  “Sure.” There were others there, too.

  The church lot was empty. Services had ended for the day. We got out of the Suburban and headed toward the graveyard.

  “You go ahead, Sean. I’ll catch up.”

  He walked one way, and I another. I found Jessie’s freshly dug grave. Hers was the only grave in the row. That’d change soon.

  I knelt next to the turned earth.

  “Jessie, I don’t know if you’re around or can hear this. If you are, you’re probably laughing because you of all people know I’m the least likely to do something like this. I want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving when we were kids. I’m sorry for not sticking it out when things got tough. I’m sorry for dragging you into the Keller situation. I’m sorry for letting you go again. There’s so much I would change if I could go back.”

  A breeze blew in from the gulf. It felt cool and tasted salty. I glanced up, out over the water.

  “You were one of the most amazing women I ever knew, Jess. I guess I’ll see you around, someday.”

  I rose and brushed the grass and dirt off my pants. Sean stood at the other end of the cemetery. I headed his way, walking in between two rows of graves.

  We stood next to each other, staring at Mom’s grave.

  “When’s the last time you visited her?” he said.

  “The day of her funeral,” I said.

  He nodded. We both knew he was aware of that.

  “Miss her?” he said.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “What do you miss most?”

  “The homemade pizza she used to make. It was better than any of that crap we used to get in Clearwater and Tampa.”

  Sean smiled, nodded. “Very true.” We were silent for a moment, then he added, “Want to go visit her?”

  I followed his gaze toward Molly’s grave. It had been over a decade since I stood before it. The guilt ate away at me. Not for failing to visit, but for coming up short when she needed me most. I watched the man take her way and did nothing to stop her.

  Perhaps Sean read my thoughts, because he said, “It’s not your fault, Jack. It never was. You were twelve for Christ’s sake. What could you have done?”

  “I could have stopped him, Sean. I could have taken a knife and plunged it into the guy’s stomach and yanked it up until he split into two.”

  Sean took a step back and turned toward me. “Is that why you live the life you do? Is it some kind of way of avenging her death?”

  I hadn’t ever thought of it in those terms. I didn’t want to start now. “Come on, let’s go say hi.”

  We stood at Molly’s grave for five minutes. Neither of us spoke. I said a lot in my head, though. I recounted my life up to this point, and I asked her to be with me until I returned.

  It was a somber walk back to the Suburban. The mood didn’t lighten during the drive to Tampa. I had him stop at a bank in Clearwater. I had a safe deposit box there with an identity I had never used.

  When we reached the airport, the path forked in two directions.

  “Want me to come in with you?” Sean said.

  I pointed toward the drop-off lane. “Go back to your family, Sean.”

  He pulled up to the curb and placed the shifter in park.

  “Jack, do you think it’s…” He looked up at the ceiling, then back at me. “Safe?”

  “Stay out of town for a few days. Hell, a week. If you don’t hear from me by then, go home.”

  I opened the door and slid off the leather seat. My feet hit the ground. I took a step away, flicked the door shut, and didn’t look back.

  Inside the airport, I used my cell to purchase a plane ticket. I had nothing to check in, so I found my way to the gate, scanned the code on my phone and went through security. I ordered a double espresso at the Starbucks placed at the entrance to the terminal where my flight would later depart from. The girl behind the counter lifted an eyebrow and asked if I was sure. I smiled politely and nodded.

  I finished my coffee, then located my gate. I didn’t stop there, instead continuing on until I reached an empty stretch of seats. Using the phone Sasha had given me, I gave her a call.

  “Jack,” she said. “I’ve been wondering when you would call.”

  “I had a few people to visit before I left town.”

  “Oh, are they doing OK?”

  “You could say that.”

  She
said nothing for a moment. Neither did I. We both tried to speak at the same time.

  “You go ahead,” I said.

  “You’re on a secure line?” she said.

  “The phone you gave me.”

  “Good enough. OK, where to start? Marcia was not Marcia at all. She wasn’t Vera either. We’re not sure who she really is, or was, yet. She never worked in MI5. We think she might have been CIA at one time. Again, that’s something we’re chasing down. We have our friends over there working on that now.”

  “Any idea what this has to do with me?”

  “Well, perhaps. We did a lot of digging, tracing her cell phone records. Most of the calls were to me, or other legitimate numbers. But there were a ton of texts and calls that went to a, I don’t know, I guess some kind of server. This server basically squashes the trace. She then rerouted her calls to their destination. That’s how it has been explained to me, at least. I’m guessing those calls went to the guy in the sheriff’s office.”

  An old contact of mine had a similar system. He had explained it in a similar fashion.

  “OK, makes sense. But that has nothing to do with me.”

  “Tell me what she told you, Jack.”

  I leaned back. My head touched the window. The glass felt cold. I stared at the plain ceiling and recalled everything I could remember.

  “She said she worked undercover. One of her investigations brought her in touch with Jessie. It was around that time her cover was blown. She returned to England, started a law practice, started going after bigwigs and built a name for herself. Politics, so forth, you know that.”

  “Right,” Sasha said. “And that’s about the time we pick up on her. Nothing before, though. Obviously, outside of the contacts required, she had the education. Who knows from where, though?”

  I took a deep breath, exhaled, said, “So, again, what’s—”

  “I know, I know. This is tricky, because I don’t want to worry you too much. There’s a threat, but it’s not enough for us to deem it credible. At least, not anymore.”

  “Against me?”

  “In a roundabout way, Jack. Your friend, Jessie, she saw Marcia on the tele or in the paper or online, whatever, right? She recognized her and knew that the woman was not who she claimed to be. She saw that as her chance to break free. She reached out, said she could offer the woman up, plus a handful of documents in exchange for whoever controlled her letting her go from their grasp.”

  “Does this have something to do with that FATF task force?”

  “That’s irrelevant, actually. Your name on that piece of paper wasn’t.”

  “Why was it there?”

  She sighed. “I hate to say this, but we can’t be one hundred percent sure. That truth behind that died with Jessie and possibly Marcia.”

  “So how did Marcia find out about Jessie’s plan to out her?”

  “We can only presume the answer to that. Currently, we think that—”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, we think that whoever Jessie told notified Marcia. It’s very much a possibility that Marcia and that person still worked together.”

  “Still? As in this person might be out there?”

  “Yes.” Sasha exhaled heavily. “Again, this is all based on presumption.”

  “So, what you’re telling me is we don’t know anything.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “How did this woman fool every intelligence agency out there? Think about it, Sasha. She worked for someone over here and managed to escape from them. She builds a reputation over there, including a top-secret persona within MI5, but prior to five years ago Marcia Stanton didn’t exist.”

  Sasha said nothing.

  “So either she or the person she still worked with had some high-level contacts or the ability to hack into and manipulate what should be the most encrypted databases in the world.”

  “See, lots of presumptions.”

  “Am I crazy in saying that this sounds like one huge coincidence? I don’t know, a big web that we were all drawn into somehow? This woman wants Jessie dead. Makes it happen. I go down there. She pieces it together, realizes that I have to go because I’m too close to figuring it out. In the end, it’s me or her.”

  “Jack, that’s about as plausible as anything we’ve come up with. Like I said, we’ll continue to work on it. If we come up with something, you’ll be the first to know.”

  I said nothing. Someone who could make things happen was out there. They might know my name, and they might have reason to make something happen to me. I studied the faces that passed by. Any one of them could be a murderer. Most people had no idea how close they came to a stone cold killer on a daily basis.

  “Anyway,” Sasha said. “I can get you out on a flight this evening. I’ll pick you up and get you back to your flat.”

  “I’m not going back,” I said.

  “What are you talking about, Jack?”

  “I quit.”

  “You can’t quit.”

  “Then I’m taking leave.”

  “You…why?”

  “Personal reasons.”

  “What about Mia?”

  “Erin is understanding. She’ll work something out.”

  A voice came over the intercom and announced boarding had commenced for my flight. Since I had a first-class ticket, I rose and walked toward the gate.

  “Jack, think this through please.”

  “I have. I’m done.”

  “Are you at the airport?”

  “I am.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going home, Sasha.”

  I hung up and tossed both phones in the first trashcan I came across.

  Chapter 50

  Neon lights reflected in pools of water that gathered in the middle of the street. The storm hit hard and fast. By the time I found cover, the rain had soaked me. At that point, I had no reason to seek shelter. I walked through the rain and let it wash over me.

  The cab could have dropped me off in front of the apartment building. Something about the night air in the city made me want to walk. After all, it’s hard to pass up a gorgeous night in New York City.

  When the rain stopped, I stared up at the sky. City lights bounced off low, racing clouds. Thunder rumbled, but it headed away. Although, it could have been a truck running over a pothole.

  My apartment building loomed up ahead. I turned my eye to the street. The wet sidewalk shimmered from a combination of oil runoff and overhead lights. Since I couldn’t look up and see a sky full of stars, the illuminated concrete would have to do.

  I looked up when the entrance was a dozen steps away. I hadn’t been there in months, but I knew the moment my left foot hit how many more I had to go.

  The old man who worked the door at night watched me. It appeared that he failed to recognize me. Then his eyes lit up, he smiled, and nodded.

  “What do ya say, Mr. Jack? Haven’t seen you around here in quite some time.”

  I had never heard him talk to anyone else like that. Perhaps I didn’t come off as stiff as the rest of the building’s inhabitants.

  “How’s it going, Willie?” I said. “Anyone been by to see me?”

  At least a half-dozen people knew I lived here. A couple were friends. A couple weren’t. I never knew when someone showed up what the outcome would be.

  “Nah, you haven’t had a visitor in months. Shoot, at least since before you went and disappeared. Where you been, anyway?”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets and shrugged. “Here and there. You know how it is.”

  “That’s the truth. All right, get yourself out of this muggy New York air.”

  I smiled. This was nothing compared to Florida. I pulled my hand from my pocket with a twenty tucked in my palm. I reached out. Willie met me halfway. He winked after the exchange.

  They’d done away with the carpet and installed tile while I’d been gone. It looked like marble. I doubted it was. Probably something cheaper, abl
e to withstand another seventy years. The furniture was the same. Someone had told me it was the original from way back in the forties. The rest of the building had been remodeled over the years, but they kept a few things original, like the furniture and some of the light fixtures and mirrors. My apartment was modern. That was one of the things I liked about the place. Old and new at the same time.

  Gold-plated doors parted in the middle. I stepped onto the elevator and pressed the button labeled twenty-eight. Second from the top. After a minute or so, the doors reopened. I stepped into the hall. The lights were always on, never too bright. The carpet on the floor was muted. There were four apartments on the floor. I’d been there seven years and had never spoken with one of my neighbors. It was rare any of us were in the hallway at the same time. If I encountered them in the elevator, I pretended to get a phone call, or looked at a newspaper or a magazine if I had one.

  My apartment had an electronic access panel. They weren’t crazy about me installing it, but in the end they let me. I reached out and entered the eight-digit code. I held my breath while opening the door. Anticipation built. I half expected an explosion.

  But nothing happened.

  A puff of fragranced air blew out. I never canceled the cleaning service. Apparently, they’d been coming the entire time.

  The door swung open quietly and effortlessly. I stepped inside. I had expected an inch or two of dust to coat everything. There was none. The place was clean and organized. I went into the kitchen, pulled open the refrigerator door. They had dumped all the expired food. The only thing in there was a twelve pack.

  Of water.

  I shrugged and turned and grabbed the phone off the wall. A three-tone beep greeted me. Messages were waiting. I dialed into the mailbox. Turned out at least ten people thought I was worthy of receiving a message. Half of those were solicitors. Four others were wrong numbers.

  The last message had been left from a Florida area code. I straightened up. My finger hovered over the play button before pressing.

  “Jack, hi. It’s Jessie. I know it must be strange that I’m calling you after all these years. I’m not trying to reenter your life or anything like that. It’s just, well, I’m in trouble. The big kind. And I have reason to believe you are, too. Look, I need you to call me. We need to meet. This woman, she’s a politician in England. She’s not who she says she is, though. I know her secret. She’s gone crazy. I think she’s trying to have me killed. There’s more to it than that. A lot more. On top of that, I have some information that has to do with you, Jack, and it’s not good. I’m sorry I’m telling you all this in a voicemail. We need to meet. Take down my number and call me as soon as you can.”