Muffled Echoes

by G. K. Parks

  “So I should disavow any knowledge?”

  “Precisely.” He winked. “Now get some rest. You look terrible.”

  “Screw you, Lucca.” I opened my car door and got inside. It was time to go home.

  * * *

  Upon entering the house, I was met with the bright glare of the living room light. It was nearly midnight, but Martin was holed up in his office. After trudging up another three flights of stairs, I headed straight for the bathroom. I locked the door, turned the water on full blast, climbed into the shower, and at some point, began to sob. It wasn’t one of my finest moments, but it was all I could do. People died today for no reason. I killed at least two men, adding more tallies to my sheet. And the only thing I could do was cry. It was a joke, a sick, pathetic expulsion of empathy and remorse. It didn’t serve any purpose. It wouldn’t change things or bring back any of those lost souls. My mind ran straight to the pity party and self-flagellation, but I knew that I couldn’t do this right now. Right now, I had to be strong and focused. Our job wasn’t done yet.

  After a few steadying breaths, I forced my mind to compartmentalize today’s tragedy. Tomorrow was already here. I needed to eat and sleep, so I’d be ready for whatever challenges were to come next. Stepping out of the shower, I towel-dried my hair, changed into one of Martin’s t-shirts and a pair of pajama shorts, and returned to the kitchen for dinner.

  Martin had cooked, so I reheated whatever was in the container and wolfed it down. Then I knocked gently on his office door. He turned around and smiled.

  “When did you get home?” he asked.

  “A few minutes ago.” I picked up his phone from the corner of the desk, knowing that he received local news alerts, but nothing about the attack from today had been mentioned. “Can I turn off your phone for the rest of the night?”

  “If you want. Are you afraid some early morning calls are going to wake you up?” he teased.

  “Something like that.” I waited for the phone to power off before placing it back on the desk.

  “Sweetheart, is everything all right? You look exhausted. I know it’s been eleven days since the surgery, and you aren’t on forced bed rest anymore. But you shouldn’t be running yourself ragged either.”

  “So I’ve been told.” I moved across the room at his beckoning and curled up on his lap. Martin wrapped me in a tight embrace and kissed me. “You shouldn’t do that. I’m likely to stay here all night.”

  “I’m not complaining.” He loosened his grip slightly, keeping one hand on my back while picking up the financial statement he’d been reading before my entrance.

  The silence was nice. It allowed my mind to shut off, and I rested my eyes. Martin was rubbing random patterns against my skin while he worked, but I barely noticed, too numb from the day to feel much of anything. The chair swiveled again, and I pressed my cheek more firmly against his shoulder to keep my head from lolling.

  “How was your day?” I finally asked.

  “Busy,” he replied, and I snorted. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something’s wrong.” He leaned away, so he could see my face. “What is it? What happened?”

  “I can’t go into it.” He continued to stare as if he could see into my soul. “Please, get the hell out of my head, just for tonight.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Worse.” I was torn between disentangling myself and going into another room to hide and staying where I was. Frankly, I was too spent to move, but talking would be far more taxing in the long run. “A lot of people died today.” I swallowed. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Alexis.” He reached for me, but I had already left my perch and headed for the bedroom. He didn’t say another word. Instead, the chair swiveled again while he went back to making notes for his morning meetings.

  I tossed and turned, dozing occasionally while my mind remained blank. Normally, thoughts and questions would race through my skull, but my circuits were fried. Too much had happened. Eventually, Martin came to bed, and I blindly reached for his arm, wrapping it around me. Normally, I didn’t like feeling confined or suffocated, but tonight was a different story. I needed the comfort of another human being.

  Morning came, bringing with it bright sunshine. Obviously, the weather didn’t get the memo that the forecast should be doom and gloom. The crushing reality of yesterday weighed heavily on my heart, but my mind took issue processing and coping. It needed to get with the program.

  “Martin,” I croaked, my throat was dry and sore from the hysterics in the shower last night, “are you awake?”

  “Uh-huh,” he mumbled.

  “Yesterday, the police department was attacked.”

  “Is Nick okay?”

  “Yeah, as far as I know, his precinct wasn’t hit. There might be more attacks. More targets. I just really need you to be careful today. There’s no indication that businesses or the business district is a target, but shit happens.”

  “I’m glad you’re not a cop,” he whispered, snuggling against me. “At least I don’t have to worry about you being caught up in the middle of this.”

  “Sure,” I replied sadly. His breathing deepened, and I knew he had gone back to sleep. “There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.” The blatant lie somehow made the direness of the situation more obvious. It jumpstarted my brain, and yesterday played out in my mind’s eye in extreme detail. New questions were raised, and I glanced across at the nightstand to check the time. I ought to be back at the office by now.

  Shrugging out of Martin’s grasp, I grabbed my clothes and went to get ready. When I opened the bathroom door a few minutes later, Martin was gone. Incorrectly assuming that he had gone downstairs to get a jump on his morning workout, I put on my shoes and strapped on my shoulder holster with my back-up nine millimeter. There wasn’t a chance in hell that I wouldn’t be packing today, regardless of whether or not I was cleared to carry on duty. I doubted anyone would give me shit about it, and if they did, I’d direct them to Jablonsky. Mark owed me.

  Going down the stairs, I was stunned to find two federal agents waiting in the living room. Martin was wearing a robe, bewildered and confused.

  “Alexis Parker, we need you to come with us,” one of them said.

  I shifted my gaze from Martin back to the two of them. “Who the hell are you? And what is this about?”

  They flashed their badges, and I immediately recognized the Homeland Security insignia. “This is about yesterday’s attack. Please, Agent Parker, time is of the essence. We’ll brief you on the way.”

  Thirty-four

  I wasn’t a fan of undisclosed locations. The process of being taken to one was akin to being kidnapped, or so I imagined. It didn’t help matters that these DHS agents had found me at Martin’s house. How the hell did they know where I was? Obviously, they’d tracked my phone or gotten the information from Jablonsky, but their abrupt appearance didn’t sit well. Of course, time was of the essence. It sounded like a clichéd line from every bad action movie I’d ever seen, but in truth, the possibility of another attack remained extremely real.

  “Agent Parker,” Behr smiled tightly, “nice to see you this morning.”

  “Sorry, I can’t say the same.” I stared at him, glancing around the room. “Is anyone else joining us?”

  “SSA Jablonsky is in the other room. I trust that you’re up-to-date.” He shifted his focus to the agents that had brought me into the building, and they nodded. “Since you discovered most of our current usable intel, it’s only fair to include you in the interrogation.”

  “What happened this morning in the Balkans?” I asked. The DHS agents told me a raid had been conducted, and air support had been called in. The likelihood anyone survived was slim, but then again, an airstrike was a great way to cover our tracks and disseminate misinformation if it furthered our agenda. “Did we nab any HVTs before fire rained down?”

  “Aren’t you poetic?” He smirked. “All that matters is Horv
at’s in custody.”

  “Civilian casualties?”

  “Who the hell are you? The Congressional oversight committee?”

  “I’m someone with a conscience, and even more than that, I know that the more we fuck with them, the more they’re gonna want to fuck with us. And yesterday, we took it up the ass. We didn’t expect it or see it coming.” I clenched my one good fist and fought to keep the anger contained. “Isn’t this over, Assistant Director Behr? Who’s left to orchestrate another attack?”

  “It’s not over yet.” He picked up a folder marked confidential and leafed through the pages. “No reported collateral damage. However, Shade’s hierarchy has been wiped out. Niko Horvat is in custody and is being interrogated as we speak.”

  “Then why am I here? It sounds like you’ve dismantled a terrorist cell. What aren’t you saying?”

  “I’ll get to that.” Behr’s eyes burned with a passion I hadn’t seen before. “This is what I do. Dismantling a cell isn’t atypical for me or my people. What is unusual is the fact that our intel was so far off. We turned over the intelligence gathering to you because Shade didn’t pose an immediate threat, but something happened that moved up their plans. They slipped through the cracks, and we lost American lives on American soil. That is unacceptable, and I want an explanation.” He slammed the folder down on the desk. “You determined they were planning something. You took action. Maybe it moved up their timetable. Maybe it didn’t.” He pressed a button, turning the conference table into a computer display. “How did you find Niko inside that restaurant?”

  “Jakov,” I corrected. “He was employed at Pepper. When I started digging into Shade’s leadership, it led me to the local Croatian community and to Detective Donaldson, and you know the rest.”

  “No, Agent Parker, the man you believe to be Jakov is actually Niko Horvat.”

  “That’s not possible. You just said Niko was taken into custody.” My head was spinning.

  “He was. We arrested him at the airport. You spoke to him. The OIO questioned him. Niko Horvat is in the next room.”

  “He said he was Jakov,” I protested. “He was fingerprinted. His identity matches the records we have on file.”

  “Does it?” Behr tapped on the glass, shifting the images and files around. “These prints passed muster through the local database but not through the international one. What does that say?” He pointed to a side by side comparison.

  “They’re a match. How did Niko trick the fingerprint database?”

  “He probably hired hackers, or he’s been planning this for far longer than any of us realized. Perhaps the juvie record was actually Niko’s. It’s possible he was here on a visit, and when he was arrested, he decided to impersonate Jakov.”

  “That was ten years ago. How is that possible? Who runs a long game for that length of time?”

  Behr stared at me. “Have you watched the news in the last two decades? People hold grudges.”

  “So when did Niko and Jakov switch places?”

  “It’s hard to say. Based on passport usage, I’d say that it was a couple of months ago. Niko probably had his subordinates continue to post the rhetoric online using his computer and location. Meanwhile, he was here. He made the cargo pick up, and he enlisted the help of the private military contractors. They aren’t local either, but it’s harder to track movements if seemingly unconnected parties meet at a neutral location. It might also explain the fake work documents for Jacob House on file at Pepper.”

  “So Niko shipped over the weapons and the men he hired to use them.” I watched the video feed of the man I thought was Jakov being questioned. “Horvat kept saying we had the wrong man. Finally, he slipped and said his family would come for him. That they would make us pay. Does that mean cousin Jakov is planning his own attack?”

  “Niko didn’t slip, Parker. You pushed his buttons. It seems you have a tendency to do that. That’s why I wanted you here. We’ve issued an alert for Jakov. Everyone is scouring the city for the bastard, especially the police. We’re hoping to bring him in alive and use the Horvats against one another.”

  “If the police get a hold of him, he won’t be taken alive.”

  “They’ll keep him breathing if it means saving one of their own from the same fate that so many met yesterday,” Behr declared. “In the meantime, we need to rehash the night Detective Donaldson was murdered. You don’t remember much about the assailant, but I want you to watch some footage.”

  He scrolled through some files, selecting a video. Hitting play, I watched the silhouette of a man move through a small, enclosed space. At the other end of the room was another man. I couldn’t tell what provoked it, but the first guy hauled off and hit the man. The movement was a bit jerky, but he kept going. One, two, one. The same combination over and over. Then he stopped, jerking his chin upward, like he’d just bested his opponent. He shuffled to the right and hit the man again.

  “A lot of people probably use that same combination,” I said. He rewound, and I watched the footage again, wondering if I’d seen that somewhere else. It was the odd jerky movement that got me. Most fighters moved fluidly. This guy wasn’t a fighter. He was a bully. A hitter. It could have been Donaldson’s killer, but I wasn’t willing to jump to conclusions.

  Behr dialed up the audio file, and I heard the voice. My blood ran cold. It felt like the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

  “I know that voice. He killed Donaldson and Ivan. He nearly killed me. Who the hell is that?” I pointed to the man on the screen.

  “Niko Horvat.”

  “That’s bullshit. We questioned Niko. He doesn’t sound anything like that,” I argued.

  “Maybe he does when he isn’t pretending to be Jakov,” Behr said smugly, opening a file containing Niko’s psych profile and splaying it across the table. Niko had dissociative tendencies, was borderline bipolar, and a sociopath. “I want you to conduct his interrogation. You’ve been briefed on what occurred in the last twenty-four hours. Hell, you were at ground zero yesterday, and you know what happened a few weeks ago at Pepper. Use it to your advantage to push his buttons and get answers. He made this personal, so you deserve the chance to do the same.” Behr turned off the computer display and led the way to the holding cell where Niko was being questioned. “The only stipulation is I need your firearm before you go inside.” He held out his hand, and I stared at his palm, not comprehending what was happening.

  “I want to speak to Jablonsky first.”

  “Go right ahead. He’s already inside,” Behr replied, disarming me and unlatching the heavy door.

  At the sound of the metal grinding as the door opened, Jablonsky glanced at me. His eyes darted to the wall in the corner, and I understood the unspoken meaning. Without saying a word, I slunk into the darkened corner of the room.

  Niko noticed my presence immediately. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look pleased. That made two of us. I gave the terrorist my death stare, finding it increasingly difficult not to cross the room, rip out his tongue, and strangle him with it.

  “Why?” Jablonsky asked.

  Niko smiled. “Now they know how it feels. I wanted them to hurt.” His eyes shot to me briefly. “Did they hurt like that detective?”

  It took every ounce of restraint not to react. Instead, I remained completely impassive. Jablonsky scratched his neck, somehow keeping himself just as emotionally detached.

  “No one told you?” I asked. Stepping away from the wall, I made an amused snort. “We found your ancient weapons in the freezer. We tracked down the delivery source and followed the breadcrumbs.” I shrugged and closed my mouth, waiting. Horvat didn’t say a thing. He studied me, searching for the lie. “Soviet era weaponry is a joke. Newsflash, Niko, the United States won the Cold War. You should have armed your men better or, I don’t know, paid for the upgraded package when hiring mercenaries to carry out your dirty work. It would have been smarter to have them buy their own weapons. Then they might have actual
ly kept them from being confiscated.”

  “If my plan failed, you wouldn’t be here now,” Niko rationalized. “Were they all killed?”

  “The only people who were killed yesterday were your people,” Jablonsky said. He went to the table and opened the folder, carefully picking up each photograph from the destroyed Shade HQ and placing them on the table facing Niko.

  Niko paled, staring at the destruction. “This isn’t true. You’re liars,” he screamed. “You’re liars, just like the soldiers that invaded my country. You Americans do nothing but lie. You claim to help. That you’re humanitarians, but you killed my family.” He looked up with anger and tears in his eyes. “You killed my family.” Then he let out a rage-filled scream and violently began thrashing in an effort to free himself from the restraints. “You’ll pay. I will enact vengeance. You’ll all be dead. Dead.” The shrieking threats reverted to his native tongue, so Jablonsky and I waited. “This isn’t over,” Niko hissed, spittle running down the side of his mouth while sweat covered his face from the exertion of attempting to free himself from the restraints. “You won’t be able to stop what’s in store next.”

  “More outdated weaponry?” I asked, casually taking a seat across the table from him. “More hired hands that owe loyalty to the highest bidder?” He stared with venom in his eyes. “Let me ask you a question, not about any of this,” I waved my hand at the disturbing photographs, “but about your little act. You see me at Pepper, and you run like a little bitch. And then you hide like a little bitch. But you get stupid, and you get arrested.”

  “Like a little bitch,” Jablonsky muttered, joining in with the annoying commentary that would probably elicit a response since Niko had shown a sensitivity to irritations in the past.

  “And then you lie like a motherfucking coward,” I concluded. In a whiny, high-pitched voice I said, “I’m Jakov. You have the wrong man. I’m a good guy. I would never do any of the things that you say.” My expression hardened. “You’re a chicken shit. You hide behind your computer screen like an internet troll, thinking that you can say and do anything, but once you’re out in the real world, you don’t care to send others to do your bidding just as long as you’re safe, right?” He continued to glare. “Fucking coward.”