The Way I Die

by Derek Haas

  I scissor my legs with my torso to the floor, gun arm extended at the guards so my body moves in an arc, and I fire three more times. Two bullets catch the two guards, one in the chest, the other in the neck, and they flop to the linoleum, jerking like fish reeled into a boat. My third bullet embeds in the door next to Malek’s head, but he’s through it, unscathed, dashing to freedom. Shit.

  Six guards dropped in a mudroom on a rich man’s estate because the weak target the weak and the wounded attack the wounds in others. At least there’s a drain built into the floor for whoever has to come clean this mess.

  I leap to my feet and follow Malek out the door without breaking stride, and if he were experienced in gun fighting, he would have waited for me to move from inside to outside, waited for the moment when my eyes have to adjust to the light, waited to ambush me and put a bullet in my head. But Malek is a man who leads handcuffed prisoners into ovens, not a man who knows how to waylay his enemy in a firefight.

  I glimpse him as he dashes through the door of what must be the garage, and I sprint for it. The game will change completely if he escapes his property, if he can go to ground like a rodent burrowing in a hole, shore up his defenses, reload, rearm, recalculate.

  I kick open the door and ten panes of glass in its center shatter when it claps back against the wall. My irises have to dilate again because it is dark inside. There are four vehicles parked here, two sports cars plus a big SUV and an even bigger Suburban, eenie, meenie, minie, moe, but the garage door is closed.

  I spy a stairwell leading to my left and realize this is a two-story garage. If I were Malek, I would’ve gone for the Suburban, but maybe the keys are upstairs?

  Jostling above me, like furniture sliding across the floor; I don’t wait for more, I know what he’s doing, trying to barricade himself in until help arrives, so I bound up the stairs and hit the door at the top with my full impact, like a football blocker picking up a linebacker crossing over the middle, and I arrive in the nick of time.

  He is sliding a large dresser across the door but hasn’t gotten it in place. When I hit the door, the dresser pushes back on a pivot and I’m in the room, angry now, thirsty, letting all of it rise, front and center, the prisoners incinerated to death, the kidnapping of Matthew Boone’s son, all out and in front of me where I can see it.

  His lips tighten and pull back, revealing rows of tiny teeth, sharp little shards like gravel on a hot rooftop. His eyes are feral, the exertion of dashing to this room and trying to move the dresser too much for a murderous, snarling old man.

  The room is a caretaker’s quarters—a studio flat, kitchen, living room, bedroom, work bench all in one—a big open space above the master’s garage and here is the master in a room he probably hasn’t set foot in since it was built. He snatches up the gardening shears and holds the blades out in front of him like a knight’s apprentice trying to raise a sword too big for him.

  I show him my gun and he lowers the shears but keeps both hands on the handles so his arms dangle in front of him. “I have money. I . . .” he says, but stops, ashamed. This is the entreaty of cowards, and he realizes it as soon as the words are out of his mouth. “You. Who are you?”

  “The killer you should’ve hired.”

  He hangs his head, then looks back up at me.

  “I’m not going to grovel but I can pay you now if that’s what this is about. Pay you more than I paid him.”

  He drops the garden shears so they clatter on the floor. “No, no, I can see this is not about money for you so . . .”

  He waves a hand feebly in the air. His eyes search for a place to sit, but the sofa is too far away so even this dignity eludes him. “I’m old. I’ve lived my life. Get on with it.”

  “I refuse,” I say, and he looks at me, puzzled. I lower my gun because I like him off-balance. It’s an executioner’s play . . . give the condemned man a glimpse of freedom and he might give up his secrets before he’s marched to the noose.

  Malek looks past me to the door, back down at the garden shears, calculating probabilities, the old engineer’s mind revving to find a solution to a shifting problem. He was resigned to die, but now, a ray of sunlight.

  “If you don’t mean to kill me, then what’s all this about?”

  “You tell me.”

  He exaggerates a shoulder shrug, which would make me chuckle under different circumstances. As it stands, it fuels my disgust.

  “I mean I don’t know,” and his Polish accent kicks in thicker, like the words come from deep in his sternum. “I mean you say that I should have hired you, but I don’t know what this means. You couldn’t—”

  “Matthew Boone.”

  His eyes try to read my expression as a fresh wave of defeat washes over him.

  “Fine. Fine. I wanted him dead and he hired you to do the same to me, fine. I lost, he won . . . yes, I should’ve hired you.”

  Something is not right here, something that begins to ring like an alarm bell in my head.

  “Be done with it,” the old man continues. “If you’re going to shoot me, shoot me. Just be done with it.” He paces in two-step bursts, like a kite on the end of a string, twisting in the wind.

  “That’s it?” I say and lower the gun again, and I can tell it’s starting to get to him, the twists between certain death and glimmers of hope.

  “What do you want?” he gasps, to me or to God, I’m not sure, and then his legs give and he sits down heavily on the floor next to the garden shears, giving them no more than a feverish glance. Yes, something is definitely wrong.

  “You know I don’t want your money.”

  “Yes, I see that.”

  “Then don’t you have something you want to negotiate with?”

  He searches my face for meaning, trying to solve the riddle but the answer is hidden.

  “I have money, I have cars, I have things.” Then his mind seizes on an idea. “I have influence. I have friends in Poland, in Russia, yes? You have someone there who needs help. Yes, I can help your friend if he—”

  “I don’t have friends.”

  His mouth snaps shut and his lips tighten again. “You’re cruel,” he groans, studying his hands, turning them inside and out like kids used to do. “You’re cruel. You want something but you won’t say what it is. You’re going to kill me, you won’t do it. You say Matthew Boone hired you, but it doesn’t matter, a hundred people want me dead, and I outlived most of them so psssh, it’s all borrowed time.”

  “You have something I want,” I say, but I’m beginning to think he doesn’t.

  “Then name it, you bastard. You miserable son of a bitch, name it!” and spittle sprays from his mouth, no pretense of remaining calm, cool, collected.

  “Why did you want to kill Matthew Boone?”

  “He wouldn’t sell me his software.”

  “And killing him would—”

  “There are others in his company who are amenable.”

  “What do you need with facial recognition?”

  “I’m just a broker.”

  “Russia?”

  Malek nods. “Russia cannot match the technological advancements of the West. They never have. Have you seen a Russian power plant? Imagine that lack of innovation and apply it to all sectors of government. One thing Russia has always been good at is stealing. You don’t have to be technologically advanced if you steal the advances from others. So if I could facilitate such a theft, why should I not make profit?”

  I shake my head because nothing he’s saying adds up to why I’m here in the first place, why I didn’t just shoot Malek when I smashed through this door, and the fact that he can’t see it, that he didn’t even bring it up, means I’m the one who played this wrong.

  “Was it Ezra Loeb who arranged this? He collects money from me and from Matthew Boone, puts the two bets against each other and takes his cut whether he dies or I—”

  “Where’s Josh?”

  “Who?”

  “Matthew Boone’s son? Jos
h?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know.”

  It’s not a question. I understand now.

  He sees it at the same time. “Ahh, I understand. Matthew Boone’s son has been kidnapped and your charge is to get the boy back. It makes sense now, yes. Okay. Okay. I can help you if you’ll—”

  But I shoot him at close range, one shot through the middle of his head. He topples over like a yard sign caught in a gust of wind.

  He didn’t know, which means he didn’t order it, which means whoever took Josh did not get his strings pulled by Piotr Malek.

  This London trip is, literally and figuratively, a dead end.

  10

  The return flight is into the wind and thus longer, and since I need to stave off jet lag, I stay up for the duration, thinking.

  There are no coincidences in this business, none I’ve ever seen. Sure, you might get lucky and walk up on a mark as he’s changing a flat tire or you might expect an army of bodyguards and find your target alone, oblivious, taking a morning shower, completely vulnerable, but that’s not coincidence. Fortunate, yes, a gift from the heavens, oh yeah, but not a perfect concomitance of unrelated events.

  Therefore, Josh’s kidnapping and the hit on his father are related. The man who ordered the hit did not order the kidnapping. That is true. I saw it with my own eyes and need no outside confirmation. So who else is involved? The hit man Keith Watts, but he was drawing his last breath in a state park parking lot when Josh was taken. Ezra Loeb, but he insists he didn’t hire more than one shooter, and though he’s a practiced liar, I believe him. He had no reason to lie about it, didn’t mention it when he had the chance. Besides, Malek would’ve known about it and definitely didn’t.

  And if the kidnappers were using the abduction to draw out Matthew Boone, why no demands and why not kill Boone when they had him dead to rights?

  My head starts to throb and I remember to drink some water. The weak target the weak. The answer is here somewhere, but the pain in my head darkens and I close my eyes for a few seconds to decrease the stimuli, to ease the tension, and the next time I open them is as the captain dings the bell to let us know arrival is imminent.

  The house on Cedar Creek Road is as somber as a cemetery and it’s time to move. I was gone six days and still zero contact from the men holding Josh so there’s no reason to stay. Archie talked to Ezra Loeb and he swears on his life the kidnapping order didn’t come from any fence, hitter, or client in the known underworld. It’s a rogue job. His lack of answers squares with what I know.

  Archie, Matthew Boone, and Peyton searched the farmhouse top to bottom, inspected the surrounding woods too, making sure the kidnappers didn’t dump Josh at the scene. They came up empty, a blessing.

  Matthew Boone seems to have aged another decade since I left, lines around his mouth and eyes are wider, deeper, as though rivers have flowed through and eroded the bedrock.

  We use the dining room like a conference table, no fire in the fireplace. The room holds no warmth. Boone has his head lowered and keeps rubbing his hands over his pate like he’s trying to contain bad thoughts from escaping.

  “I keep listening and I keep listening to you and it gets us nothing,” he says in a perfectly reasonable voice, but I know what volcanic earthquakes sound like before an eruption.

  I keep my own volume level. “Who at your office would make decisions in your absence?”

  He looks up at me like the question came from another planet.

  “What?”

  “Who in your office is most likely to make decisions if you’re not there to make them?”

  “My CFO Donald Blake. I told you I trust him. What’s this have to—”

  “He sold you out.”

  “What?”

  “He sold you out,” I repeat.

  Boone shakes his head, a child not getting the answer he wants when he asks for a later bedtime or more ice cream. “Donald’s a good man. I’ve known him fifteen years.”

  “He made a deal with Piotr Malek. If you’re gone from the company, he’ll sell him the software. The Russians want it, Malek was their broker, only you wouldn’t play ball. They made a deal with your second-in-command.”

  “But he can’t—”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Can’t sell it without me.”

  “He did.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I’m the only one who knows the encryption key to unlock it. He can’t just sell it. It’s useless without the . . .” He stops, everything falling into place. “That’s why they took Josh. That’s what they want to exchange. The encryption codes to unlock the software for my son.”

  “Does Donald have a military history?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s an MBA from somewhere in the South.”

  “University of Texas,” Peyton inserts. “He wears a Longhorns golf shirt to work every now and then.”

  “He look military to you?”

  Peyton shrugs, scrunches up her nose. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?” Boone asks, but I’m turning to Archie.

  “Can you get us everything you can on Donald Blake while we switch safe houses?”

  Archie nods. “On it,” and he’s out the door.

  “Why?” Boone asks again. “Why do you keep asking if he’s military?”

  “I want to know if he hired someone directly to kidnap your son or if he did it himself.”

  “No way it was him—” then he stops suddenly, looking over my shoulder, and I turn to see Liam in the doorway, face ashen. Boone stands and gathers himself, though he looks as though he could blow apart at any moment. “Liam. Go to bed, son.”

  But Liam steps into the room, his chin out, defiant. “Why haven’t you found Josh?”

  He looks at the three adults, accusing. “He’s just a little kid. Why haven’t you . . .” and his voice catches in his throat and he lets out a heartbreaking, “God!” His lip quivers but he keeps his eyes dry.

  “Liam,” his dad repeats, tired.

  Liam jerks his eyes to his father.

  “What? What?! More nothing! More nothing! It’s a joke!” and he spins and dashes from the room, pounds up the stairs and from somewhere above, a door slams.

  Boone peers down at the table, his head a heavy weight. Peyton eyes me, then flicks her gaze up the stairs, silently asking me if she should go give the boy comfort. I don’t respond so she rolls her eyes, sick of me, sick of all of it, and I hear her feet following Liam’s up the stairs.

  I’m not going to comfort that kid. I’m not going to say a word to him. I’m not going to let this father off the hook. It’s his problem, not mine. If I can reunite him with his son, so be it, but if caring is part of the bargain, then cut me out now because caring died for me under a covered bridge in Massachusetts. Caring died for me at a roadside diner outside Chicago. I see clearly what Archie tried to do, see it as clearly as if he had written it in fifty-foot letters, see it for what it is: a misguided attempt to make me care about this family since I could not care for my own.

  I will not. I cannot.

  I am a killer not a protector, a sword not the armor, a goddamn gun not a bulletproof vest.

  I am Columbus.

  I am not Copeland.

  I cannot wear that suit. It doesn’t fit.

  I stand outside the room, silent in the hallway, eavesdropping for no reason I can reconcile. Peyton soothes, like a new mother calming an infant in the crib.

  “I’ll tell you something I read in a book once. You ever seen something that was so right you just wanted to take a picture of it and hold on to it. A flower? A bird? A pretty girl? Well, this quote was like that . . . it was so real, I knew I had to memorize it. You ready? It went like this: ‘Life is neither good nor evil, but only a place for good and evil.’ A guy named Marcus Aurelius wrote that a long time ago, and what he meant was you’re born into a world that isn’t black, isn’t white, it’s gray. Your parents can try to keep th
e evil out, they can try to protect you from it, keep the doors locked, keep the lights on, but this world is a place for good and evil. Sometime it’s inside the room with us, in us, and sometimes, it’s out there, waiting for us, and we have to deal with it when it comes. That’s what we’re doing now, we’re dealing with the evil of the world—me, your dad, Mr. Copeland, Archie, we’re dealing with it and you have to also. You didn’t do anything to bring about this evil. It just is. Life is a place for good and evil. You see?”

  “You fight it with good?”

  “Sometimes. Most of the time. You see someone doing evil, you fight it with good. That’s the answer I should tell you. That’s where I should stop. But you’re old enough to hear the truth, Liam. And the truth is, sometimes you fight evil with evil.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?”

  “Yes.”

  “My dad too?”

  “I can’t speak for him.”

  “But you’ll do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to help.”

  “I know you do. And I won’t tell you that you can’t. That’s for you to decide. And listen, since I’m speaking the truth, that’s not for your dad to decide, no matter what he tells you, that’s for you to decide. But I’ll be honest, the chances that you would hurt our chances of defeating this evil are high. You may mean to help, but you could end up hurting. And I don’t want that, but again, that’s for you to decide. The best thing you can do is to stay here, stay safe, and let us do the evil for you. Do you understand?”

  Liam nods and says something, but I can’t make out the words.

  I thought Peyton was a natural, but I didn’t know she was this wise. What I was taught about the nature of what I do she picked up innately. Hell, she can explain it better to an eleven-year-old than I explained it to her.