When Danny heard the two names, his heart beat faster. Inching farther away from the screen, he pretended to be looking at some papers.
“Katrina…that’s the one, the blond,” said Luke. “But I never met her before that night.”
Sean turned to Danny and unleashed more orders. “I want to know how many times these two names have been scanned going into Papillon in the past three months. Can you do that?”
“Sure,” Danny mumbled as he rolled his chair back to his keyboard and typed away until he found the results. “Uh, looks like they were both only there that one night.”
Sean frowned as he stared at the screen, thinking. “Tell me when these two names were registered.”
“Okay.” Danny performed a few quick commands and silently thanked God that he had entered separate dates for all the names that Ben had requested. “Okay, Isabel was registered on May thirteenth and Katrina on June first.”
Sean looked away from the screen and turned to the window, briefly noting how unspectacular the view was on this floor. A minute later, he had a plan. “Follow me,” he barked at Luke without another word to Danny.
Once the two had left his office, Danny got up to switch off the light. “You’re welcome, asshole.” For a long while afterward, he stared out his window and wondered what Sean knew and whether or not he should do anything about it.
***
“God, I miss my truck.” Ben was staring at the fuel gauge. They were still eighty miles from the prison, and though they had filled the tank and threw a couple of full jerry cans in the trunk, he was still uneasy.
“We’ll be fine,” Andy reassured him, reading his mind.
“Yeah…”
“Hey, relax.” She gave him a lighthearted shove and a smirk to go with it. Except for the faintest of smiles, he barely reacted.
“I’ll relax tomorrow. I’d open a hundred bottles of champagne if we had any.”
“Well, I’m sure between the two of us, we can find something to celebrate with.”
This time, a genuine laugh escaped Ben’s mouth, and he took his eyes off the road to give Andy a proper smile. “Oh, really? And what exactly did you have in mind, aside from champagne?”
She looked down at her hands, hands that were now warm, and averted a coy smile from his view. “Maybe dance.”
“Dance?”
“Yeah, why not? People dance when they’re happy, don’t they?”
After a semi-shrug, he replied, “Yeah, sure.”
“So we’ll dance. You and me. But I get to pick the song.”
Ben looked hard at Andy. “That’s all? Just one song?”
She returned her gaze to her hands. She studied the crescents of her fingernails. “Well, one song to start with. Then…”
Gripping tightly on the steering wheel, Ben’s hands began to sweat. He looked over at Andy. “It’s a deal. Just wear that dress.”
She looked up. “What, the one I wore to Papillon?”
“Yeah. You looked…you look good in that.”
“I think I have it somewhere.” She smiled.
***
Back on the eighty-first floor, Sean rattled off orders to Luke.
“I want you to send five…no, ten…of your best guys up to Green Haven. I want them to ask the guards stationed there if they’ve seen anything unusual since early August. And I mean anything. Even if it’s some cow that got tipped over on a field a mile away, I want to know about it. Then have two of them come back and report what they find by…” Sean looked at his watch. “Seven o’clock. Got it?”
“Got it,” Luke said confidently before heading toward the door.
“And, Luke,” Sean called out, stopping him. “Don’t think I won’t forget that you’re the reason we’re in this mess right now.”
Like a scolded child, Luke swallowed hard. He merely nodded and silently left the room.
“Idiot,” Sean muttered as the door closed. He picked up the phone that sat on his desk and dialed a number. “Yeah, it’s me…I want all video from the night of the fourth of August sent to my apartment within the hour.” Without waiting for acknowledgement from the other end, he hung up and left his office.
Fifteen minutes later, he was back at his apartment after walking alone, something he normally wouldn’t do in broad daylight, but it gave him a chance to think without his bodyguards hovering around him. He locked his front door and went directly to his den. In the corner behind a desk stood an antique armoire with a safe inside. He opened the doors of the armoire and hastily spun off the combination. The safe clicked open, and he grabbed a large stack of stuffed folders from inside and placed them on his desk.
There was a file for every Director and nearly every Helen and Fixer: school files, medical records, juvenile detention records, and even notes from old therapy sessions with over-priced psychiatrists. Most of the files were kept in a standard filing cabinet on the other side of the desk, but Sean stored the most important ones inside the safe.
Organized alphabetically by last name, Luke’s file was on top, labeled “Luke Andrews” on the protruding tab. The contents of his file were underwhelming: a poor math student but decent in history and writing, several disciplinary infractions from grade school teachers but nothing out of the ordinary, and a mild case of childhood asthma that apparently had vanished over the years. The rest of the details were mundane. Handsome, popular, but nonetheless impressionable. Rich parents and an older sister who died with them. Large house in Westchester. The typical profile of an upper-class, white male survivor.
Sean sorted through several others, including Lily’s with scribbled notes dictated by her shrink detailing her history of sexual abuse by her stepfather, and Chad’s folder with graphic crime scene photos of his mother’s murder. Thousands of hours and miles travelled had been spent gathering the total sum of these files.
At the bottom of the pile and out of alphabetical order was Ben Kelly’s file. It was empty except for one small piece of paper. Sean had personally found it on the floor of the guidance counselor’s office at Ben’s elementary school in Virginia. The rest of the file was gone, as was his cousin’s, but Sean guessed that the single paper had accidentally been dropped when he and Jim attempted to erase all evidence of their past after fleeing New York the year before. Though cunning of Ben to destroy his files, it was bad luck for him that such a critical piece of information was left behind.
Sean held the paper up to the light and studied the ten individual fingerprints taken when Ben was ten-years old, as indicated by the date stamped on the top corner. The private Catholic school he and Jim had attended recorded students’ fingerprints in the event that a student was kidnapped or went missing. It was ironic that something once meant to protect Ben might now help to catch him ten years later.
There was a heavy knock at the front door. “You’re late,” Sean barked at the kid delivering a single envelope and slammed the door shut before the boy could squeak out an apology. He marched directly to his living room and turned on his large flat screen television. He removed the first of three disks from the envelope and inserted it into the DVD player beneath the screen.
Every single night at Papillon was captured on camera, though only rarely did Sean have time to watch any of the recordings. Still, he ordered the recordings to continue. Following more than half an hour of both real-time and scanned footage from six different cameras positioned throughout the club, he found what he was looking for.
The camera angle was not optimal, but it was still clear enough to see what went on. Looking at the blond, it was easy to understand how Luke had fallen prey. She was wearing an enticing black dress that left just a little to the imagination and high heels that showcased her slender yet muscular legs. Her wavy hair extended to the middle of her back, and every minute or so it would glide back and forth over her shoulders as she moved. Where had she concealed the gun Luke spoke of? Likely inside her thigh, he thought.
Sean watched and re-watched the fi
lm several times. He had never seen the girl before. He would have remembered. There was something different about her, and although he couldn’t hear a word that either she or Luke said, he could just barely identify the subtleties of the act she had put on for Luke: a slightly forced smile here, a tentative caress there. But would he have noticed had he not been looking for some clue, or if it had been him instead of Luke? Probably not, he admitted to himself.
Sean watched the video nine or ten times. The girl never looked directly at the camera, since there was no way that she would know where it was hidden. Still, her face was clearly visible from several angles. He paused the video on the clearest shot and leaned in closer to the screen. His cold, blue eyes soaked in the image, memorizing every pixel. “Pretty little thing, aren’t you?” he said aloud.
***
By the time they reached Stormville, the small town that surrounded the prison, it was pouring rain.
“Man, this sucks,” said Ben as he increased the speed of the windshield wipers.
“Just think of it as a strategic advantage. The guards will be cold, wet, and tired. They’ll be slow to react,” Andy offered, trying to sound positive.
“So will Jim and I. You and Charlie will be nice and warm inside the cars.”
“Not the entire time.”
“Oh, sorry…for like, five minutes you’ll be outside.” Though he was teasing her, there was an edge to his voice.
A few miles from the prison, he steered the car into a vacant gas station and waited. A half-minute later, Jim and Charlie pulled up beside them in the other vehicle. Charlie rolled down the passenger’s window.
“Smashing weather.”
“Terrific,” Ben called back. “Let’s check the radios.”
Andy fished in her backpack until she found the walkie-talkie that Charlie had encrypted weeks before.
Ben glanced at his watch. It was time. The sky was dark but not too dark. Any later and they would risk trying to slip past the guards using night vision goggles. He looked over at Andy. “You ready?”
She pursed her lips together and nodded.
Ben smiled thinly before turning to the others. “Jim?”
“Yeah, I’m coming.”
Both he and Charlie stepped out of their car. Jim slipped into the backseat behind Andy while Charlie got behind the wheel of the other vehicle.
“I’ll radio you just before I fire it off,” Charlie called out to Ben.
“Okay.”
“Good luck.” Charlie drove off in one direction while Ben, Jim, and Andy went another.
Once they got to the airport, Ben parked inside one of the hangars. Andy got out of the car first and opened the back of the truck. She retrieved three dark raincoats and two loaded rifles, followed by Jim and Ben who took out their large rucksacks. They slung the rucksacks over their coats, and Andy handed each of them a weapon.
“Here we go,” Jim said, trying to sound upbeat.
Together, they marched about half a mile from the hangar to the forest, crossing the runway along the way. As they descended underneath the canopy, Andy remarked favorably about the path they had cleared days earlier. “Where’s the rock?” she asked.
“Just up there,” Ben said pointing straight ahead.
Andy followed as he stepped off the main path to a narrower path on the left, around the rock. She looked down at it and saw the “X” marked with red duct tape. “Just don’t miss it,” she said.
“We won’t,” Jim promised.
They arrived at the opposite edge of the forest and knelt down behind some trees. All three withdrew their binoculars from their bags and scanned the area.
“Still three,” Ben muttered, referring to the guards, each in his own tower along the perimeter wall. “Damn, I was hoping they all wouldn’t be there.”
“And I bet they’re all miserable,” Andy grumbled. “I don’t know why they put up with it.”
“Three words,” he whispered. “Food, drugs, sex.”
Andy smirked. “I get the food, but drugs and sex? Come on…how much of that do people really need?”
“Well, you’re not an eighteen-year-old boy.”
“No, thankfully,” she said as Jim chuckled quietly at the exchange, welcoming the break in the tension.
Andy put down her binoculars and picked up the radio. She ensured the volume was on the lowest setting.
Meanwhile, Ben and Jim grabbed opposite ends of a large ladder they had hidden near the path during their last visit and awaited word from Charlie.
Moments later, a crackle was heard coming from the other end of the radio. “I’m here,” Charlie’s voice called out. “You all ready?”
Andy looked at the others; both nodded in reply. “Ready,” she whispered back.
A loud bang was heard in the distance seconds later, followed by the bright, red glow of a flare soaring vertically against dark, grey skies.
Through her binoculars, Andy watched as two guards scurried down from their towers and disappeared from view behind the prison wall. “There’s still one left,” she radioed Charlie. “Do it again.”
“Roger…”
Half a minute later, another shot erupted in the distance, followed by another flare. Through the lenses, she saw the remaining guard look around as though wondering what to do.
“Once more?” Charlie asked.
Andy and Ben looked at each other. She said, “Once more.”
A third flare went off, and the remaining guard finally descended the tower.
“All gone,” Andy said into the radio.
“Let’s go,” said Ben.
They scrambled to the perimeter wall of the prison between the third and fourth observation tower. When they reached the wall, Ben raised the ladder and skillfully adjusted its height until it reached the top while Andy pulled out a rope from Jim’s rucksack. It was thick with knots tied every two feet and had a large metal hook on the end. Then she grabbed a wire cutter and passed it to Ben. He climbed the ladder to the top. Keeping his head low, he cut away at the spiraling loops of barbed wire and created a space large enough to pass unhindered. Once finished, he descended the ladder.
At the same time, Jim made two trips back to the edge of the forest to retrieve two hidden fifty-pound weights. Using smaller pieces of rope, he and Andy tied both weights to the first rung of the ladder to weigh it down. When they finished, he and Ben grabbed their rucksacks and weapons. Jim went up the ladder and hooked the longer rope to the top rung and dropped it over the other side of the wall. Then he climbed over and landed safely inside the prison compound.
Before following his cousin, Ben gave Andy one last look as she handed him the radio. Without thinking, he hugged her fiercely and said, “I’ll see you soon.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she told him.
“I won’t.” Then he climbed the ladder and gave her a smile before disappearing over the wall.
Alone, Andy ran back to the airport beneath the fading daylight. She approached the rock with the red X and swerved around it to the right off the main path. Fifty or so meters later, she emerged from the forest and picked up speed. By the time she reached the hangar, she was out of breath. Charlie arrived moments later.
***
“So you can scan them in and compare them to every print on file?” Sean held out the paper containing the ten fingerprints to Danny. He had ripped off the top of the paper where Ben’s name had been labeled, however.
“Yeah, no problem.” Danny took the paper from Sean. “Give me a few minutes,” he added as he fired up the scanner.
“Be quick.”
Danny ignored the remark and did his best to appear bored. Sean stood impatiently as Danny scanned the paper into softcopy. He then separated each individual print and stored them as “Unknown 1” through “Unknown 10” before instructing the software to compare each unknown print to the more than one million prints on file, beginning with the left pinky and ending with the right. If the prints belonged to
either Ben or Jim, this would allow him as much time to stall as possible. Since neither had scanned a print from their left hand, Danny started with those.
“Anything yet?” Sean demanded.
“Not yet. It might take ten minutes. Each print takes about a minute.” Danny leaned back in his chair and squeezed a rubber stress ball with one hand, deciding his disinterested demeanor would likely anger Sean but also deflect any suspicion.
“Can’t you make it work faster?”
Danny looked up. “It’s a computer. It only listens to ones and zeros.”
Seemingly humbled by this remark, Sean backed away toward the window with his arms crossed. It was getting dark outside.
The first three prints came up negative, so Danny entered commands to crosscheck the left index finger followed by the left thumb. After both came up negative, he started on the right hand. Jim had registered his right middle finger while Ben had registered his right index. If Danny’s suspicions were correct, Ben’s finger would pop up first.
“Six down, four to go,” he muttered as he reached for the mouse.
Sean huffed in agitation and turned back to the window when a distinctive beep emitted from the computer speakers, followed by a second and then a third. He whirled around on his heels. “What was that?”
Danny closed his eyes tightly. He was afraid to look at the screen. Meanwhile, Sean sprang toward the computer screen and read off the first name. “John Simmons…” And the second. “Michael Wilkins…” And finally the third. “Matthew Thompson. Wait, three names for one set of prints…what the…?”
As Sean stared at the screen, Danny finally opened his eyes and improvised an explanation. “It’s probably just a glitch. I mean, I’m sure the guards at the checkpoints messed up…”
“Son of a bitch.” Sean had figured it out.
Stepping away from the desk to allow Danny room to work, he spouted off additional commands. “I want to see every single checkpoint entry for those two girls…Katrina Wilson and Isabel Torres…along with these three names. I want to see them all side by side.”
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