Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  “Brian, are we safe?” Melissa Frielich sounded nearly as panicked as Claire felt.

  “Ma’am, we’re professionals—well, Keith and I are—and we won’t do anything to jeopardize you or your family. Claire is a rookie in training and isn’t used to sleep deprivation.”

  “Jeopardize? Deprivation? Rookie? What is this, expand your vocabulary day?”

  Brian didn’t respond, but the look on his face clearly said, “If you consider those words an expansion of anyone’s vocabulary, you’re more pathetic than I assumed.” She ignored the exasperated expression on his face and turned to do her job. She could reassure this family even if she did think everyone around her was half-crazed and ridiculous.

  “We’re fine. I’m just used to having a clearly defined work plan. Sorry for freaking out on you like that.”

  Katie’s whimpers grew to decided wails. The baby, clearly angling for a career in singing barbershop style, sent up his own screech. Yeah, he’d be a tenor. Their driver, still visibly irritated with her, sent eloquent glances her way, but Claire chose to ignore them. If the guy couldn’t “use his words,” she wasn’t going to “listen.”

  Once on the highway, they whizzed down the barren road, seeing few cars and even fewer signs of civilization. The road wound and curved, occasionally through towns that looked as barren and dead as the vegetation around them, until they came to another highway. Just as they neared some semblance of civilization, Jordan insisted he needed to use the bathroom.

  Without blinking twice, Brian reached into the console, pulled out a zip-lock bag, and handed it to her. “Pass it back.”

  She tried not to shudder as she turned to hand it to Melissa, and then winced as she heard him whisper, “But Mom, I need to go number two!”

  “Um, he needs—”

  “To use the bag. We can’t stop. If you need to go back to help him, crawl under or around—not over—the seat.”

  Claire stared at him as if he were as much of a lunatic as she’d imagined, but kept her mouth shut. Even that drove her to distraction. He gloated over there under those ridiculous sunglasses; she could almost see it in the way he held his chin. As they pulled onto an interstate, Jordan began crying about the indignities he was forced to endure, and Claire cracked a window.

  “What do I do with the bag?”

  Brian dug through the console again, pulling out a plastic sack from a grocery store she couldn’t identify and handed it to Claire. “Zip it and put it in here. We’ll dump it when we stop for gas.”

  “How long—”

  He interrupted Melissa mid-sentence. “We’ll be driving all night.”

  “I can’t keep the baby cooped up in that car seat that long! He’ll be screaming again if we don’t let him out soon.”

  “Then he screams. Give him a cup, something to eat, whatever, but we don’t stop until we need gas. Even then, you don’t get out of the van. Period.”

  “But—”

  “Just wait.” Brian’s voice screamed a warning even though it was almost inaudible in the back seat. “Claire, write down why she isn’t getting out and pass it back.”

  “Why—”

  “Are you really that stupid? Why did Keith do what he had to with his last case?”

  She didn’t want to do it. It seemed cruel to throw up reminders of how dangerous their trip was, but Claire didn’t have the inner strength to resist Brian’s stronger personality. She pulled out a notepad from her purse, her favorite orange pen, and wrote, If you get out, you’re exposed. Exposure= dead. It’s going to be okay, but you have to do what Brian says.

  By the muffled “humph” from Brian’s side of the car, she imagined that he wasn’t pleased with the content, but he nodded and watched Melissa in the rearview mirror. Claire watched both. Melissa’s eyes grew wide and fearful again—exactly what Claire had been working to remove for the past few days—and Brian looked satisfied.

  Maybe this job wasn’t such a good idea after all. Brian seemed to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in freaking out his clients, and even Keith had left her alone without warning. They had to weigh every action on the grounds of necessity versus danger. Danger nearly always won. I just forced a kid to poop in a plastic bag, for heaven’s sake.

  Disillusioned, she reconsidered her recent career choice. It had sounded so exciting—almost like living an action movie—to protect people. She’d imagined herself holed up in a rustic cabin somewhere, water spilling over rocks in a stream nearby, and a terrified woman, hiding from her abusive husband, cowering in the corner as Claire swept the area and took him down. She thought there’d be dull days when solitaire was more mind numbing than a reasonable pastime, but still, she expected a certain kind of romance to come with waiting for the approach of the enemy.

  “Do you like your job?” Why she thought she’d get Mr. Silence to open up to her, Claire couldn’t imagine. The second she asked, she felt like a fool.

  “Yes.”

  “If someone offered you another one making the same amount of money or more, would you take it?”

  “No.”

  Well, he answered anyway. Since he didn’t seem prone to elaboration, she could work with asking yes or no questions. “Does it ever get tedious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you ever afraid?”

  “No.” This time, he looked her way and after he answered, he mouthed, “yes.”

  Interesting. Tell the people you’re not scared, but you are. If you wanted them to be scared, shouldn’t you show that you are too? Similar questions bombarded her mind, but Claire ignored them and kept going. “Who is the best agent you know?”

  “Keith.”

  Pride welled up in her heart in a way that reminded her of mothers and kids with scribbles on paper. Nauseating, but cool at the same time. Keith. She knew he was amazing—almost like it was the meaning of his name or something—but for someone else to admit it. Her eyes narrowed, and Claire whipped her head to read his expression. Was he saying what he thought the family needed to hear?

  “You’re catching on. No, Keith is the best. Hands down. Karen’s a close second, though.”

  “Where are you?”

  “You don’t evaluate yourself. You listen to others’ evaluations and learn from them.”

  She thought about that before asking, “Best part of the job.”

  “Saying goodbye.”

  “Gee, you’re pleasant.” Keeping her disgust hidden—impossible.

  “Think about it.”

  He was worse than her mother during homework sessions. Every question had been answered by another question or an admonition to figure it out on her own. What was there to think about? His favorite part was getting away from the people. Something niggled at the back of her mind, but she was still too agitated and nervous to think it through. Her brain refused to cooperate.

  Jordan did it for her. “He likes saying goodbye because the good guys win. If the bad guys win, there’s no one to say goodbye to. They’re dead.”

  “SORRY ABOUT THE ROAD.”

  “Never mind that. Is this a drill?”

  “We don’t know, John. Sorry. They don’t tell us because lives are at stake. We can’t ever assume anything but threat.”

  “My family is safe, though, right?” John’s voice shook with the jostling of the Jeep over the washboard masquerading as a road.

  “Brian is one of the best. He’s going to get them to the next place safely.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know what the next place was until you were on the road.”

  “They’ll text instructions at irregular intervals—just enough time usually to make a change in direction. Mark knows what he’s doing. You’ve got to trust him.”

  The shake in John’s voice seemed to have less to do with the road and more to do with his mental state. “It’s hard when you can’t see them.”

  “Claire is there—”

  “No offense, she’s a nice girl and I know she’s your cousin or
sister or niece or something, but she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  “She has good instincts when she’s put on the spot. She saved our lives recently and without any training. Give her a break.”

  “Are they behind us or ahead of us?”

  Keith took a deep breath. John would not be happy about this—much like Claire was probably fuming. “They’re headed in another direction.”

  “What! I specifically stated that I wanted us kept together.”

  “And you signed papers giving us the right to rescind that request if it meant protecting your family.”

  The blanket behind the driver’s seat shifted, but before Keith could remind him to stay down, John’s voice, still muffled and sounding very weary, asked the question Keith dreaded. “What changed?”

  “I’m really sorry, John. They don’t tell us. While we’re under threat, whether real or drill, we don’t get communications like that. We just follow orders, so people stay alive.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Five years—three months in this branch.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Love it.” Keith always felt so callous saying that. Everyone asked. Everyone. However, saying he loved hiding people, making decisions that terrified them, and living on a dangerous edge just sounded a little insane.

  “Be truthful with me, Keith. How many people have you lost?”

  “Me personally?”

  “Yeah.”

  “None.” It felt good to be able to say that. He’d come close a few times, and he’d been backup that arrived too late on a watch, but the fault, so far anyway, hadn’t been his.

  “And the Agency?”

  “We have a much higher success rate than the US Marshalls, FBI, CIA, NSA combined.”

  “That doesn’t tell me much.”

  “Well, I’m not allowed to give specific numbers, but I can tell you that Mark has promised to close the doors if we ever reach ten percent. We’re nowhere close.”

  “That makes me feel a lot better.”

  The miles seemed to crawl by, and twice John asked to crawl out from beneath the blanket, but Keith insisted that he remain there. “It’s about your safety. They’d be looking for a car with at least two people.”

  John finally fell asleep—most likely due to the oppressive heat under the blanket—and Keith drove. The intermittent directions made less sense than usual; until, hours later, he realized where he was going. As he drove, he thought of Claire, wondering if she was freaking out over being separated. She’d expect to meet him when she arrived at the next house. Yeah, that wouldn’t happen.

  So far, she’d forgotten, most of the time anyway, that she was as much a client as an agent. From what Mark had discovered, the few remaining members of Anastas’ syndicate had been approached by another trafficker and were now looking for him and for Claire. In Keith’s opinion, the Columbus trip had bungled everything. It was almost a miracle that he, Erika, and Claire were still alive.

  As he reached the turnoff, Keith prepared for John to wake up again. This wasn’t going to be pleasant. Sure enough, the moment the Jeep bounced along the dirt road leading to their destination, John’s voice, sounding confused and lost, muttered from under the blanket, “Do they really look for the worst roads in the country and then send us there?”

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea, but no, they don’t.”

  “Can I come out yet?”

  Keith glanced around him, trying to see how long it’d be before it was just too late, and then said no. “Sorry, it’s best to wait until we get there. I’m going to pull up really close to the door and you run inside.”

  “It’ll be unlocked?”

  “Yes.”

  Keith’s phone buzzed just as a helicopter rose from the ground a quarter mile away. A text flashed. All clear. Mike is inside.

  The Jeep pulled up in front of the house, and John opened the door, flinging back the blanket. He blinked twice and gave Keith an odd look. “We’re back here again?”

  “Get inside!” Keith peeled away from the house, letting the door slam shut on its own, and hid the Jeep inside the detached garage.

  As he walked back to the house they’d left well over twelve hours earlier, Keith prayed that John and Mike got the info they needed quickly so they could all leave. A shout followed by the sound of breaking glass sent him flying over the last yards to the front door. He pulled out his gun as he kicked open the door, “Let him go.”

  The man, Mike, hesitated a second too long, and Keith fired four darts into him. Gasping and choking, John tried to speak, but Keith ignored him. With zip ties, he bound the man’s hands and feet, and then pulled his phone from his pocket. “Karen, get back here. Now.”

  Chapter 21

  “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, Karen? You left him in there alone! What if he’d gotten a knife—?”

  “We cleared the house of anything that could be used as a weapon.”

  “Except his hands!” Keith glared at the woman as he refilled John’s water glass.

  “You were here. There was no danger.”

  Words that usually made him wince nearly erupted from him as he exploded with frustration. “Oh, come on! What if I’d made an outside sweep first? What if John hadn’t broken that lamp! What if—”

  Karen’s calm demeanor infuriated him further, but he clamped his mouth shut as she shook her head and said, “Look, Keith. You wouldn’t do that because your instincts are good. Check out the guy. That’s the first rule. You did it. He’s fine. Everything’s okay. And we got him.”

  “Did you get Mark’s okay on this?”

  “This was Mark’s plan, Keith. Not mine.”

  Keith glanced at John as he coughed again, holding his throat and then sipping more water in hopes of soothing the damaged airways. “Mark decided it was a good idea to toss John in here with a stranger and no protection? Where is Jill? I thought Jill was coming.”

  “Mark tested him. He failed.”

  “Testing how?” Keith glared at the man on the couch. Mike lay there—still sleeping off the effects of the tranquilizer. “I think I gave him too much.”

  “Well, he’s fine. That’s what counts. Mark knew he was a plant; he just didn’t know if it was from Anastas’ successor or if he was after John. Now we know.”

  “We know nothing, Karen. The man attacked the first person to come in. If I’d taken a bit longer, he could have had John out long enough to attack me when I got in. This whole thing is a nightmare. I can’t believe you guys pulled this.” Keith slammed his fist onto the counter, rattling the empty plastic serving bowl that, just half a day earlier, had held fruit.

  He didn’t wait for Karen’s response. With adrenaline still pumping, he stormed out of the house, into the garage, and slammed the door shut behind him. Sliding open his phone, he called his boss. This was unacceptable. “Mark. What is going on?”

  “I think he’s with Anastas—or was. I don’t think he was after John.”

  “Why do you say that?” Mark’s words made sense, but Keith wasn’t willing to make any assumptions. He’d already endangered one person.

  “If he was after John, he would have waited to take you down first. He couldn’t risk you coming in like you did. He took out backup and was prepared to take you next. Now, you have to get John out of there.”

  “Wha—” Realization hit. “Oh man, I lost focus. Bye.”

  When Keith backed the Jeep out of the garage, he found the helicopter rising from the ground, and his phone buzzed. House clear.

  “Great,” he muttered as he took off down the road in the direction he’d just come. They had John. Great. He was a decoy. The only thing worse than protecting someone—hidden from everything and everyone—was being a sitting target.

  Target. The word tumbled in his mind as he bounced over ruts that seemed determined to destroy his suspension or break the axle. How many would come? Cars? ‘Copter? Did Mike have a phone on him?


  Foolishly, Keith rammed on the brakes, spinning the vehicle and creating a cloud of dust that could be seen for miles. He fumbled for his phone, and hesitated. Text or voice. Text had less chance of being traced, but voice was sometimes faster if you didn’t get the question right.

  Text. He’d risk it. As his mind reviewed the situation, he considered his words carefully. Did target have access to a phone? Was it enough? Frustrated, he hit send and waited. If it wasn’t enough, he’d call.

  The reply wasn’t satisfactory. Assuming no mole access, no.

  The mole. He’d assumed that Claire was the mole, albeit an unintentional one. If she wasn’t, and someone else was, a phone could have been planted. His phone buzzed with a message from Karen. Get out of there.

  Keith powered off his phone, backed up, and turned around. The Jeep, despite its design, fishtailed several times as he whipped around corners and flew over the rutted road. He drove into the garage, closed the door, and reached under the seat. His Glock was strapped to the undercarriage. He couldn’t risk a tranquilizer this time. Not this time.

  With the gun out and ready, he ran for the house. Nothing indicated anyone had arrived. The tire tracks, ‘copter markings, footprints. There was too much to be sure, but he did take a cleansing breath as instinct took over; the house would be empty. Even so, he took every precaution as he opened the door, crossed to the other side, listened, and then swept the house. Empty.

  He had to work quickly. As much as Keith wanted to call and see how long Mike had been alone, he couldn’t risk it. His disregard for orders already put him at risk for being fired. If he failed, there was no doubt. He’d be out. Regardless, he had to do it. His job required that he make rogue decisions if the situation warranted it, but if he botched it, the Agency couldn’t support him.

  Just as he decided to give up and leave, he found it. A basic pre-paid cell phone, sprayed a bland tan, had been velcroed to the back of the ancient fiberglass drapes, up near the hooks. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d never find it. As it was, even with his thorough search, he nearly missed it.