Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

“Get out!”

  We stared at each other across the bright and shiny kitchen—Sherri’s domain that the exterior of the house couldn’t match. I had to admire her righteous anger. But she was picking the wrong fight. I wasn’t the enemy.

  Krystal appeared in the doorway, armed with her own look of righteous fury.

  “What are you doing?”

  Mama bear. Now I knew where Sherri got it.

  “You need to leave right now,” she said.

  “No.” I approached her. “Your daughter and I need to finish this conversation.”

  Krystal stepped back a pace, and Sherri’s expression shifted from fury to astonishment. Quite possibly no one had ever stood up to her mother.

  Krystal tried to look over my shoulder. “Sherri?”

  We both looked at her daughter. Sherri’s face played like a flip-book, racing from one expression to another. Finally, her eyes showed the realization that what I offered was a thread she could pull. A thread that might provide answers her husband no longer could.

  Her face settled into a look half of grief, half of resolve.

  “It’s all right, Mother. She’s right. We have to talk.” She gently pushed her mother toward the stairs and watched while Krystal disappeared down the upstairs hall. She turned to me. “You really think Jeremy’s death wasn’t just . . . just bad luck?”

  “I do.”

  “Oh, fuck.” The words sounded all wrong coming from her refined lips.

  But grief breaks down all barriers. Death is the great equalizer.

  “Fuck,” she said again. “Tell me how I can help.”

  An hour later, I walked out to my truck carrying a large manila envelope. I let Clyde into the front, then got in with him and slid the key into the ignition.

  I hadn’t learned a lot from Sherri. I’d hoped to find information on Kane’s laptop, but it turned out Gorman had taken that as well as Kane’s phone.

  And I’d failed to learn anything about the people Kane might have been looking at on the platform just before he died. Sherri didn’t recognize any of the names.

  But what I had learned felt important.

  First—Kane had lost touch with Sarge, who’d disappeared. Gone underground was how Kane put it to his wife. He’d worried that his old friend might be up to no good. Since this was the same Sarge who claimed his orders to kill me came from a man with the CIA, I was inclined to agree. Kane had the key to Sarge’s apartment in a desk drawer. When I asked, Sherri gave it to me. This was a coup—the chance to go through Sarge’s apartment might turn up all kinds of interesting information. Maybe even the cell phone Malik had given him. The one with the video Malik had taken of men unloading weapons in Iraq.

  Second—although Kane loved his job with the RTD, he’d been looking for something with better benefits. Two weeks ago he’d scored an interview at a private, family-owned intelligence firm called Vigilant Resources. When Sherri mentioned that Vigilant was a subsidiary of a precision-weapons manufacturer named Valor, I recalled the business card Gorman had so elegantly used on his teeth. Valor Industries. And the number 100K.

  Presumably, Gorman had gone to talk to Valor as part of the investigation. Maybe the 100K was the salary Kane had been offered by their subsidiary, Vigilant. But when I asked Sherri if Kane’s job hunt had come up in her conversation with the detective, she said no. When I asked if any of Kane’s friends knew about it, she again said no, not to her knowledge.

  The news about Gorman wasn’t a five-alarm fire. He could have learned about Vigilant any number of ways. Maybe the business card in his pocket had nothing to do with Kane’s job hopes. Gorman was probably thinking of retirement. Could be he had job hopes of his own.

  Weapons companies hired former cops for security. I could be poking my stick at a nest of twigs, not vipers.

  Maybe.

  Sherri said her husband was especially excited about the job because the president and CEO of Vigilant, a man named James Osborne, had served in Iraq. He and Kane had been in-country at the same time. Osborne was with the State Department, not the military. But military and intelligence intermingled all the time in a war zone. We were all on the same team.

  Prior to the interview, Kane had collected information about Valor and Vigilant, mostly in the form of a couple of glossy brochures and some printouts of internet searches. That was what Sherri had given to me in an envelope. Jeremy, she said, had wanted to be fully prepared for his interview. What was strange was that he’d hidden the envelope, taped it inside a dresser drawer. She’d only found it when she was emptying everything into boxes.

  A magpie scolded from a nearby tree, popping me out of my reverie. I reached into the glove box for a cigarette, then stopped myself. Self-control begins at home.

  I thought about Sherri and Kane, and the end of their dream. We always say live for today and don’t waste time worrying about tomorrow. But what keeps us up at night is knowing that tomorrow is roaring down on us like a tsunami, and a lot of us don’t know how to swim.

  For a moment I let my mind wander into forbidden territory. How would I feel if something happened to Cohen? Or if, now that he knew what I was, he walked out of my life? Would I have the strength to pick up and go on again, the way I had after Dougie died?

  Of course you would, the Sir said in my mind. That’s what we do. We go on, no matter what.

  I looked out the window and saw him standing by the curb. He nodded.

  Of course we go on.

  Maybe even after we’re dead.

  I pulled away from the curb and headed north.

  CHAPTER 15

  Most of us—maybe all of us—are broken in some way. Depending on who we are, those cracks can either let in the darkness or the light.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  No one answered when I knocked on the door to Sarge’s second-floor apartment.

  I counted to twenty, then used the key Sherri had given me. Clyde and I slipped in, and I closed and locked the door behind us.

  Clyde gave no indication that anyone else was in the small apartment. But I signaled, and we went fast together through the space, clearing it. The apartment was deserted.

  It was also a wreck. Someone had gotten here first.

  The other time Clyde and I had been here, the place had been a misery of dirty clothes, dirty dishes, and takeout boxes. There had been a sense of desolation I found depressingly familiar. Maybe without the stabilizing influence of Grams, my childhood home would have looked like Sarge’s.

  Lonely knows lonely. And Sarge—Max Udell—seemed pretty damn lonely.

  But now that I knew a little about him, I had to wonder if the version of extreme bachelorhood he’d created was a mirage. A cover for this man who claimed to work for the CIA.

  The current wreckage of his home, though, wasn’t part of any cover. Someone had torn the place apart.

  Clyde and I did a second walk-through.

  The same kind of pizza boxes and empty beer bottles that had covered the kitchen counter on our last visit were on the floor, crushed and broken. The sofa had been gutted, the mattress and box springs dismantled, the contents of the closets rifled and tossed to the floor.

  Once again I had the sense that mysterious forces swirled around us. Invisible, but active and dangerous. If this were a chess match, Clyde and I were unquestionably the pawns. I wasn’t sure what piece Sarge played.

  I returned to the front room and signaled Clyde to guard the door. Then I went back through the rooms a third time, searching more slowly. I scrutinized the living room, kitchen, and the first bedroom before heading into the last room.

  This second bedroom served as Sarge’s office and a place to exhibit the artifacts he’d collected in Iraq. On my last visit, it had been the only clean and organized space in the apartment.

  Now it was a ruin. The bookshelves had been toppled, the clay pots and cuneiform tablets smashed. Copies of National Geographic and Archaeology Magazine covered the floor. I yanked ope
n the drawers to the filing cabinet, which had been packed full of folders. Now, all that remained were utility bills, a rental agreement for the apartment, and a few flyers. Sarge’s desk was likewise empty, the drawers wrenched out and thrown to the floor.

  Above the desk, where Sarge had pinned hundreds of photographs, rose a wall empty of everything except a constellation of pinprick-size holes. The wall of memories was now mute.

  My hope of finding Malik’s phone or a copy of the video vanished. In all the mess there were no phones, no media disks, no thumb drives. Not even an old VHS tape.

  But there wouldn’t be. Whoever had torn the place apart was probably after the same thing.

  On my way out, I stopped to scope out the bathroom.

  The linoleum floor was covered with broken bottles of cold medicine and mouthwash. The air reeked of cough syrup and hydrogen peroxide. But now that I was in the room, I detected something else beneath the medicinal odors. A sharp, familiar stench.

  I looked at the blue-plaid curtain hiding the bathtub.

  Unease slithered through my stomach. There was no one, living or dead, hiding behind the curtain. Clyde would have let me know.

  But there was something.

  My eyes went to a splash of reddish brown on the bottom corner of the curtain.

  Reluctantly, I reached out a hand and drew back the fabric.

  The tub was filled with an inch of dried blood. More blood spattered the tiles, halfway to the ceiling. Smears painted the inside of the curtain.

  I dropped the curtain and backed out of the room, my boots crunching over the debris.

  Unless Sarge had slaughtered an animal, someone had died in that bathtub. You could not bleed that much and live.

  But was Sarge the victim? Or the perpetrator?

  In light of that discovery, I decided Clyde and I should head to Joe’s Tavern in the Royer district.

  I told myself it wasn’t because I needed a drink. Clyde and I wanted a safe place to work, and I needed the company of normal.

  I kept an eye on the rearview mirror, but we appeared to be traveling solo.

  Joe’s was the kind of neighborhood bar where the regular clientele showed up year after year, aging quietly like books fading in the sun. The place had a soft patina, as if the patrons’ hopes and dreams and sometimes their ruin had rubbed into the tables and floors. I’d gone to Joe’s first as a child towed by my parents, then later with the kids I’d grown up with. Now Clyde and I were regulars.

  Paul Porter, a Royer local and the latest in a long line of owners, had kept the familiar wood paneling and red-vinyl booths when he took over five years earlier. But he’d brought in free Wi-Fi, replaced the felt on the pool tables, and introduced a pretzel-and-wasabi mix to go with the popcorn. The old guard groused about the changes until Paul hired a short-order cook and added a bar menu. With the addition of a grill and a prep line, the hard-liners didn’t even have to leave to eat, which made drinking all the easier.

  As Clyde and I walked in, Paul glanced up from his stool behind the bar. Hitting the far end of his fourth decade, he had kept the cool, casual hip of someone twenty years younger. Today he wore his trademark look—skinny jeans, an untucked button-down, a small earring in his left lobe, and a permanent five o’clock shadow. He looked like he belonged behind the mic at a poetry slam.

  Paul had hit on me a few times. Always in the southern way—with such careful politeness, I had to think twice to make sure I knew what was happening. I’d turned him down with a lot less polish. You can take the girl out of Royer . . .

  “Well, look who’s here.” Paul smiled and came out from behind the bar to give me a hug and silently appraise my wounded face. Then he dropped down to rub Clyde behind the ears.

  Clyde nosed Paul and closed his eyes with pleasure.

  Paul got back to his feet.

  “How you been?” I asked.

  “You hear my knees pop? Pain in the ass getting older. But I deal. Sit yourself down, and I’ll pour you something. Got an outstanding batch of green chili on in the back, too.”

  “Chili and a drink sounds great. But would you mind if I hide out in your office?”

  “Fighting with your old man?”

  “Who says old man anymore?”

  “He is older than you.”

  “So are you, Paul. Case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Sucker punch to the ego, Sydney.”

  “You can handle it. But it’s nothing like that. Cohen’s out of town. I need to get some work done, and I don’t feel like keeping my own company. Clyde’s a true friend, but when we’re home he mostly sleeps and snores. Farts a bit.”

  Clyde glanced up at me as if wondering what was wrong with sleeping and snoring. And the occasional gas.

  “Mi casa es tu casa,” Paul said. “Help yourself. You need internet?”

  “Depends. How secure is your router?”

  “Hey.” He thumped his chest. “You forget who you’re talking to? I got the best money can buy.”

  “What I forget is that you’re paranoid.”

  “What I am is smart. You see this crowd?”

  I glanced around. “There’s no one here under seventy.”

  “The old guys are the worst. They practically rioted when I bumped happy-hour drafts to a dollar. If I don’t watch them, they find their way online and buy all their tighty-whities at Walmart.com, then figure out how to charge them to the tavern and ship them here.”

  “Underwear in bulk in one easy click. Wait until they discover Amazon.”

  “Stop.”

  “So I can hop on your network for a while?”

  “Not a problem.” He grabbed a piece of paper from a stack at the end of the bar and wrote down a long string of numbers, letters, and assorted characters. “Just don’t share.”

  I took the paper. “Should I eat this when I’m done?”

  He handed me a bottle of a local brew. “I’d stick with the chili. Shredder is under the desk.”

  Paul’s office was located at the end of the hall that also held the bathrooms, a janitor’s closet, a storage room, and a door to the outside where Paul went to smoke when he wanted something other than the occasional illicit cigarette. While I settled at the desk with my personal laptop, Clyde sniffed around the ten-by-twenty office. When he was sure we were safe, he found a place to his liking beneath the window.

  “You doing okay, boy?”

  He rested his head on his paws and sighed. I was sure he missed Cohen. More exercise, better food, and some decent outdoor time. I checked my phone to see if I’d missed a call from Cohen, then shoved away the pain that thinking about him brought.

  “Sorry, boy. You’re stuck with me.”

  He yawned.

  “Very subtle. If you’re not sure I got the message, you could go to sleep.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Okay, boy,” I murmured, feeling guilty. “Point made.”

  I opened my duffel and pulled out a sealed bag with one of the dental bones I’d gotten from Clyde’s trainer. The things looked like real bones and—frankly—also stank the way I imagined fresh caribou must. But Clyde scrabbled to his feet, tail wagging. He waited until I offered the treat, then took it neatly from my hand and resumed his place under the window with a contented huff.

  No doubt the bone made him feel like he was one with the wolves again. And we could all use a little taste of the wild.

  While Clyde gnawed happily, I shook out the contents of Sherri’s envelope onto the desk—these were the items Kane had gathered as part of his background research before his interview.

  On top were two brochures, one for Valor Industries and another for its subsidiary, Vigilant Resources.

  The brochures promised potential recruits an exciting career with companies working at the leading edge of weapons and intelligence operations. Headquartered in Dallas, but with offices all around the globe, Valor had been founded by Sheldon Osborne after WWII, and was still owned and run by his descen
dants. They specialized in precision weapons, mainly missiles and torpedoes.

  Vigilant, with its clever open-eye logo, had opened its doors in 2005. It didn’t overtly state what it specialized in.

  Standard marketing—all fluff and no stuff.

  I unfolded the rest of the papers. Based on what Kane had told his wife, I was expecting printouts from internet searches. But these looked like downloads from a digital camera, printed on regular paper so that the quality was only so-so.

  The first was a daylight exterior shot of a strip joint.

  The place was abandoned. My first clue was the word on the marquee below a stylized drawing of a nude woman: Closed. And not just for the day. Weeds choked the parking lot, and a sheet of plywood had been nailed over the front door.

  I studied the photo, trying to come up with even one theory that could explain why a closed-for-business strip joint would help Kane in a job interview. Then, still clueless, I set the photo aside.

  The remaining pictures were even less forthcoming—multiple long-range shots of a building and a few smaller structures on a flat stretch of prairie, God knew where. The photos were almost identical, and were taken from such a distance that I had to stare at them for a while before I could see anything in them at all. Faint geometric forms, the same color as the prairie. When I squinted and used my imagination, I thought I could make out the wings of a small plane on the far side of one of the structures. Or maybe it was another building. Or a bit of fuzz on the camera lens.

  I leaned back and rested my clasped hands on my head, trying to imagine Kane’s interest in these places, and why he had hidden the photographs. Defeated, I set the pictures and brochures aside and decided to see what I could learn online.

  I powered up my laptop.

  The screen flashed, and a cartoon video of a beheaded woman appeared, blood pumping in spurts from her severed neck.

  Underneath were the words This could be you.

  I slammed the lid down.

  “Shit,” I said.

  Clyde opened one eye.

  I squeezed my own eyes shut. I saw Haifa’s and Resenko’s severed corpses in Habbaniyah. Saw Malik weeping in the front room, only feet away from his murdered mother. I saw Angelo’s body in the alleyway, his face a ruin.