Friends In Spy Places

by Diane Henders

  But not necessarily uninjured…

  Blocking that thought out as best I could, I reviewed our plans again.

  So many ways this could go wrong…

  The drive took exactly seven minutes. In that blip of time I aged ten years.

  I couldn’t do this. I was only a middle-aged bookkeeper, for fucksakes, not James Fucking Bond. I should be sitting behind a desk bored out of my mind right now, looking forward to leaving my boring job and going home to my boring life-

  “The team just spotted a guy moving into place under the bridge on the north side,” Holt said as we coasted down the hill. “But we don’t have time to clear him out.”

  My heart rattled against my ribs. “That’s only about a hundred yards. No problem for a rifle. Does he have a clear shot?” I tried to crane my neck without taking my eyes off Grandin as we rolled onto the bridge.

  “We’ll park where he doesn’t.” Holt hesitated, listening to his earpiece. “No sign of a weapon and he’s scruffy. Might be a homeless guy just holing up…”

  As he listened again, my heart rose with momentary hope. Maybe that was Hellhound moving into place.

  “Okay, he’s curled up with his garbage bags,” Holt said. “Easy shot for our sniper. If he makes a move, he’s toast.”

  My guts froze. My mouth was already half open to tell Holt it might be Hellhound when I realized that if Holt and Dermott found out I’d involved Arnie, we’d both be up Shit Creek.

  But what if Hellhound didn’t know he was in the team’s crosshairs?

  Oh, God, what if he took out his rifle…

  Maybe it wasn’t Arnie. Maybe it was an enemy.

  Would that be worse or better?

  Shit, shit…

  Holt slowed for the turn, and my back prickled with the knowledge of eyes watching us.

  And eyes not watching. The fishermen were strung out along the riverbank in a loose group, their attention focused on the river and their unprotected backs turned toward our rendezvous point. Even through the closed car windows, I could hear the country music blaring. They must be deaf as posts. As I watched, one of the figures limped over to the campfire, red jacket bright and white hair almost invisible against the snowy backdrop. A whiff of wood smoke reached my nose, and I imagined them joking and laughing, enjoying their retirement, probably swigging a few beers kept frosty in a snowbank.

  Unaware that death was rolling up behind them.

  I lost sight of them as the car bounced down the twisting snow-rutted trail that descended to the river. Scrubby bushes surrounded us, their winter-bare branches dark against the snow and thick enough to completely obscure our view. The dead-white sky crowded down, creating an oppressive monochrome landscape far too much like the VR void.

  Suppressing a shiver, I glued my gaze on Grandin. One moment of my inattention was all he’d need to overpower me and grab my gun.

  My heart thumped in my ears.

  Around a bend the trail opened up into a wider section. Holt braked to a bumpy halt, then turned the car around to face back the way we’d come.

  “Good as it’s going to get,” he grunted, and shifted into Park.

  My hand was icy on my gun and shivers rolled through my belly. “Turn up the heat,” I croaked.

  “It’s already a fucking sauna in here,” Holt complained, but he complied. Sweat glistened on the back of his neck.

  Was he as scared as I was?

  Hell, he should be more scared. He was a lot more likely to be killed.

  But it probably wasn’t possible to be more scared than I was right now. Dammit, this was far worse than anything I’d ever been forced to do in my unwanted new career. Car chases; gunfights; hell, even getting beaten up; any of it was better than this ever-mounting pressure-cooker of suspense and dread.

  Run.

  Run now.

  Shut up. Shut up shut up shut-

  “Incoming.” Holt’s single word forced another spurt of adrenaline into my already-saturated bloodstream. A moment later he added, “One driver. Surely he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come alone. Maybe it’s not our guy…”

  A vintage cream-coloured Lincoln Continental wallowed around the corner and slid to a stop in front of us.

  Blocking the road.

  “It’s an ambush!” Grandin’s voice crackled with tension.

  “Probably,” Holt agreed. He pressed a finger against his earpiece. “Black Team?” After a listening moment, he said, “Okay, we’re on.”

  A phone rang, its sudden sharp tone making me jump.

  Holt pulled it out and toggled the speakerphone. “This is Mr. Grandin’s phone,” he said primly.

  “Let me talk to Grandin.”

  Holt passed the phone back to Grandin with a warning look.

  “Yeah?” Grandin snapped.

  “Bring her out where I can see her.”

  “Where’s my money?”

  “You’ll see your money when I see her.”

  Grandin let out an irritated sigh. “Fine.” He disconnected.

  “Let’s do it,” Holt said.

  Chapter 50

  Time slowed as Holt got out of the driver’s seat. Approximately an eternity later, he reached for the door handle on my side. The door swung open and his gun appeared in his hand, concealed between his body and the door panel.

  Staying out of his line of fire, I holstered my own weapon. My fingers didn’t want to release the Glock’s handgrip, and I struggled for an instant against the panicked urge to leap out of the car and open fire.

  “Come on, Kelly,” Holt gritted, and somehow I managed to let go of my Glock and slide out the door.

  Holt grabbed me roughly, his arm across my throat, and my hands flew up instinctively to loosen his grip. His other arm was jammed against the small of my back, and I knew the muzzle of his gun would be trained sideways on Grandin as we stepped away.

  “Out,” Holt growled, and Grandin slid across the seat and obeyed.

  His gaze flickered as he stood up. He was going to try something…

  Holt shoved me into Grandin, who staggered back, cracking his head on the roof of the car. In an instant Holt was behind him and Grandin stiffened as Holt jabbed the gun into his back.

  “Just give me an excuse,” Holt snarled.

  Grandin didn’t. He let out a resigned sigh and grabbed the back of my neck to steer me ahead of him as we stepped out from behind the car door.

  The buyer sat unmoving behind the wheel of the Continental, his face obscured by dark glasses. Standing there feeling as though I had a giant target glowing on my chest, I suppressed the hysterical urge to wave at him. My knees trembled so hard I could barely stand.

  Everything went silent in my mind except the godawful racket of the fishermen’s radios. Good Lord, they must have tuned every one of their truck radios to the same station and turned up the volume to maximum. They could probably hear the damn noise all the way to Calgary.

  After an interminable moment, the buyer gave a slow nod and reached for something on the seat beside him. Grandin tensed and yanked me closer.

  Thanks, asshole. I always wanted to be a human shield.

  The buyer raised a black case so we could see it through the windshield, then opened his door.

  As he slowly exited the car, Holt muttered, “Wait… wait…”, apparently instructing his team. The man straightened and rounded the car door, leaving it open with the motor running.

  The raucous country music bounced crazily in my head, creating an incongruous soundtrack as the buyer paced forward in slow motion.

  Holt’s tension-laden whisper came from behind me “…wait… wait… NOW!”

  Black-clad men rushed out of the bushes around us.

  Shouting. Guns trained on the buyer.

  Grandin’s fingers ground into the nerve cluster in my shoulder, yanking and spinning oh no you don’t you asshole…

  My right arm hung paralyzed by the momentary nerve disruption.

  Holt couldn’t shoot,
Grandin had jerked me into his line of fire.

  He was getting away…

  Going with Grandin’s spin, I hooked my left arm around his and dragged him down as I fell.

  “Bitch!” he roared.

  He was on top of me.

  Raw panic blinded me. Heaving and thrashing and straining with my one good arm…

  “I got him, Kelly, it’s o-” Holt’s shout of reassurance cut off abruptly as I bucked Grandin’s limp body off me.

  Holt fell beside me.

  Crazed panting whistling in my throat, I snapped my head first one way, then the other.

  Shitfuckdamn! The buyer had backup.

  Over a dozen men, all wearing snow-patterned camo. They must have been hiding in the bushes surrounding us and our team.

  Wrinkled faces grim, weathered hands steady on rifles and shotguns, they held their aim as the fishermen from the river roared up in quads. In moments they had trussed up Holt and Grandin and the security team with an economy of motion only achieved by men who’d spent their lives securing struggling calves with a twist of rope in less than eight seconds.

  All our weapons, all our preparation, useless.

  At least I had that locator in my wristwatch. But the whole team was down. Who would even know this had gone wrong?

  My Glock lay heavy in my ankle holster, but there were too many of them. They’d get me first.

  The ringleader paced toward me, his heavy boots at my eye level. Vicious treads tortured the squeaking snow.

  He crouched down beside me, removing his dark glasses.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I blinked.

  Blinked again.

  “Mr. Nielsen?” My voice cracked.

  Oh God, my childhood had been an even bigger lie than I had ever realized. Another frantic glance around the circle of men told me more than I’d ever wanted to know.

  Most of our old neighbours, plus a few men I knew from my teenage waitressing job at the coffee shop.

  The whole town had been in on it all along.

  Mr. Nielsen grinned, revealing the missing tooth I’d known since I was a child. “Yep. The one and only. But you can call me Lars now that you’re all growed up.”

  “But… but…”

  I couldn’t help it; a sob escaped me and I squirmed away from him even though I knew it was futile.

  “Calm down now, Punkinhead,” Mr. Nielsen soothed, the old pet name falling off his tongue with horrifying familiarity. “You’re okay. You’re safe now. We rescued you. We’ll have you back to yer mama in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “Rescued… What…?” My voice cracked again.

  “Yep.” His chest expanded with pride. “When yer mama called and said you’d been kidnapped and she needed me to pay these dogs…” He spat contemptuously on Grandin. “…to get you back, I just couldn’t hand over the money like a yella-bellied coward. And I knew all the boys would help out.” He grinned up at them.

  Shoulders straightened and chests puffed around the circle, along with murmurs of ‘yeah’ and ‘dang right’.

  I sat up, hoping the movement would somehow shake some sense into my head. Fear arrowed through me at the sight of the blood-darkened hair on the back of Holt’s scalp, but he seemed to be breathing all right. Alert steel-blue eyes glittered between those motionless lashes.

  Releasing my fear on a shaky breath, I was seized with a new fear before I could even inhale.

  Nora had told them I’d been kidnapped.

  Nora was the buyer.

  And if I blew our cover, there was no hope of containing it. Small-town gossip travels by telepathy. The instant these men found out the truth, the whole town would know. One day, rural Saskatchewan; the next day, the world.

  “Wh-what happened?” I stammered. “What did Mom tell you?”

  Thank goodness my ragtag band of heroes had no concept of securing a site and getting out fast. Mr. Nielsen grinned and hunkered down, preparing for a grand tale.

  “Welllll…” He paused, drawing out the drama. “Turns out yer mama didn’t die in that car wreck like we all thought. Turns out she got mixed up in some trouble and had to go into witness pertection. They finally let her out and she came straight back to Canada to find you, but the same dirty dogs were lyin’ for her and they grabbed you right up.”

  He stopped to spit on Grandin again, and a memory flash from my childhood almost made me smile. He’d always had deadly spitting aim through that gap from his missing tooth.

  “So yer mama called me in a flap last week,” Mr. Nielsen went on. “She was willin’ to pay whatever they asked but she couldn’t get the money in time, bein’ as her money was all tied up in England; and anyway she was afraid they’d grab her, too, when she showed up with the cash. She was fit to be tied. They said they’d kill you if she called the cops, and she didn’t know where else to turn.”

  I rubbed my right arm, flexing my fingers as the nerves tingled back to life. “So she asked you to pay the kidnappers and collect me,” I prompted.

  Smart, smart Nora. She had bribed Grandin to kidnap me last week instead of extraditing me to the U.S. beyond her reach; and our staunch well-meaning neighbour was her middleman and alibi.

  But after Grandin got arrested she must have altered her plans without updating Mr. Nielsen. After all, if Grandin couldn’t call him, who would?

  “Yep.” Mr. Nielsen beamed. “And I told her not to worry her head none. We take care of our own.” Pride glowed in his face as he nodded at the black suitcase lying beside his faithful Lincoln. “The whole dang town pitched in for the ransom, just in case these dogs…” Another blast of spittle landed on Grandin’s deserving head. “…counted it before they’d hand you over.”

  “The whole town donated the ransom money?” I suppressed a groan and pasted on an expression that I sincerely hoped would look grateful. “I can’t believe you did all this for me!”

  Maybe that’s why Nora hadn’t cancelled the kidnapping scenario. Maybe she was working on a Plan B that would let her walk away with a suitcase full of our friends’ and neighbours’ cash.

  “Yep. But we weren’t gonna let them get away with it. We figgered out a plan, and we were just waitin’ for the call. Soon as we got it, we convoyed up and hightailed it here.” Mr. Nielsen rose, his knees creaking and popping. Straightening painfully, he reached down to help me up. “And now it’s time to call yer mama and the cops.”

  “No!”

  They all stared at me.

  Shit! If they called Nora now, I’d lose the element of surprise. By the time I questioned her, she’d already have a slick new story manufactured. And if the RCMP showed up, it would be a total circus and my cover would be blown for sure.

  “Don’t call Nor- …um, Mom!” I snapped. “Or the cops!” As their puzzlement dissolved into frowns, I added hurriedly, “Mom could be in danger if we lead anybody to her. And we can’t call the cops because you threatened these men with guns and that’s illegal. I don’t want you to get in trouble with the law.”

  Muttering rose from the circle. “What kinda cockamamie law is that? Kidnappin’s illegal, it shouldn’t oughta be illegal to get somebody back.”

  Mr. Nielsen frowned. “Well, we ain’t gonna just let these dogs go.”

  I waited. Sure enough, another well-aimed gob struck Grandin in the same spot. If I kept Mr. Nielsen standing here long enough, Grandin would drown in spit. That thought probably shouldn’t have been as gratifying as it was.

  “No cops,” I repeated.

  The muttering increased in volume. Mr. Shepherd leaned over to Mr. Newsome. His confidential tone might have been more effective if he hadn’t been forced to half-shout into Mr. Newsome’s famously deaf left ear. “She got that Swedish Syndrome or somethin’?”

  “Swedish sin?” Mr. Newsome’s rheumy gaze scoured the landscape as though hoping to spot Nordic beauties cavorting naked in a snowbank.

  “Syndrome, you old fool! Swedish Syndrome!”

&
nbsp; “It’s Stockholm Syndrome,” old Mr. Evans contradicted. “You’re both dopes.”

  Mr. Nielsen was still frowning. “Wellll…” he said slowly. “I reckon maybe you’re right, Punkinhead. Nobody’s gonna miss a bunch of dogs…” Splat. “…like this.” He shot a significant look around his band of cronies. “Seems like we might be doin’ the world a favour if we just shoot, shovel, and shut up.”

  “NO!” I clutched his sleeve. “I don’t want you to be murderers!”

  Oh God, no. Eight good men lying helpless in the snow, depending on me to pull their asses out of this increasingly deadly fire…

  Mr. Engel stepped forward, his rifle at the ready and his dead eyes every bit as terrifying as when he used to drive our school bus. Nobody ever misbehaved on Mr. Engel’s bus.

  “I’ll do it,” he said flatly. “Won’t matter to me. I did two tours in ’Nam. I’m already a murderer.”

  I could only stare, open-mouthed. I had never known he was a veteran. That explained all those bus evacuation drills he made us do.

  Mr. Evans stepped up beside him, his firm gait belying his thin limbs. I had thought he was ancient when I was a kid, and he had to be in his high nineties now. Reduced to leathery sinew and unyielding bone by decades of harsh weather and harsher life, he stood straight and proud beside Mr. Engel.

  “World War Two.” Mr. Evans presented arms, then slapped the rifle back on his shoulder, his motions as precise as if he was still on parade all those years ago. “I’m in.”

  “No, no, this is a really bad idea!” My voice was lost in the rising mutters of ‘right, let’s do it’ and ‘heck, yeah’ as other friends and neighbours stepped forward, egging each other on.

  Shit, I had to tell them the truth.

  But how many innocent people would die as a result?

  Fuck, fuck…

  My phone vibrated and I yanked it out and checked the call display. Hellhound.

  Should I ignore him? The farmers were milling around, hands twitchy on their weapons, voices rising.

  But Arnie wouldn’t call me unless it was important…

  I punched the Talk button and snapped, “Hello?”

  “Tell ’em ya got a friend that’s an ex-cop,” Hellhound said urgently. “Tell ’em your cop friend can be here in a coupla minutes an’ he’ll round these fuckers up an’ get ’em to the cops. Quick, before they lynch our guys!”