by Matt Lincoln
“What was the purpose of your visit?” Laura looked up in confusion at the voice. It took her a moment to realize she’d made it to the front of the line and that the customs agent was asking her what she had been doing in Japan.
For the second time, an intense desire to spill everything and beg for help seized her. Then she thought back to the last time she’d gone to the police and told them she’d been kidnapped and held against her will. The officer had told her that everything would be fine. He’d loaded her into his police car, and then he’d driven her straight back to that building. She thought about how she’d seen that same police officer and multiple others, each time dragging a new girl into that place. She couldn’t bring herself to admit anything.
“Vacation,” Laura mumbled weakly, but she hoped that the agent would dig deeper. She hoped that he would prod and pry until the truth came out. He didn’t, though, and only nodded and handed back her passport before waving her through. She hurried past him, feeling as though she’d missed an important opportunity. She walked quickly down a long hallway that led toward baggage claim. Beyond the carousels, she could see the row of doors lined along the entrance of the airport, and beyond that, she could see the Chicago skyline. She rushed forward, eager to get out of the airport and into a taxi.
It was only then that Laura realized she didn’t have any money. Not American money, at least. She dug into her pockets and pulled out the contents. In her hands, she held the stolen credit card, her passport, her crumpled flight ticket, and two five-thousand yen notes. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to contain the panic that was rapidly rising in her. She couldn’t remember how much five-thousand yen was in US currency, and it wouldn’t matter anyway if she couldn’t figure out how to exchange it.
She turned back toward the interior of the airport, trying to ignore the way the edges of her vision were beginning to turn fuzzy as her breathing became more erratic. At the end of a hall to the right, she spotted a large red banner hanging over a storefront. She couldn’t make out what the banner said, but she could see a large dollar sign printed on one end. She hurried toward the store, hoping she was right.
As she approached, she realized that there was a small crowd gathered around the store. She felt all the tension in her body drain away as she realized she was right about the store being a currency exchange location. The other people gathered around must have just gotten off the same flight, as most of them seemed to be exchanging currency as well. Laura was grateful for the crowd, as she felt more comfortable being able to blend in with the rest doing their exchanges. The shopkeeper was moving through customers quickly, so it was only a few minutes before Laura had a small stack of dollar bills in her hand. She wasn’t sure if he’d given her the correct amount, but she didn’t care. As soon as the cash was in her hand, she was hurrying down the hallway again and rushing out the door toward the line of waiting taxis.
“Do you need a taxi?” A woman with blonde hair asked Laura as she approached. She was the only female taxi driver outside the airport, and Laura had gravitated to her without even thinking about it. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and Laura could see flecks of gray at her hairline.
“Um, yes. I do,” Laura mumbled quietly, clearing her throat as she did. She still hadn’t gotten used to speaking again, and her throat felt dry.
“Well, hop on in, honey,” the woman smiled, tossing her cigarette onto the ground and snuffing it out under her shoe.
“Okay,” Laura responded, obeying immediately. She paused as she realized how quickly she’d moved to respond to the command, and she suppressed the urge to cry. That was all over now. She didn’t have to listen to anyone anymore. Still, she needed to get home, so she climbed into the back of the cab.
“Where to, hon?” The woman asked.
Laura wanted to let herself relax at the warm sound of the woman’s voice, but she kept her guard up. She gave the woman the address to her apartment and folded her hands in her lap as she turned to look out the window. The familiar streets of Chicago passed outside the window, but it still didn’t feel real. Once she was back in her apartment, she’d know for sure that this nightmare was over.
The taxi pulled up to the building just a half-hour later, and Laura thrust all the money she had into the driver’s hands. The woman called for her to come back for her change, but Laura merely yelled at her to keep it before rushing up the stairs and to the door. She heard the taxi pull away behind her and her hands began to shake as she tried the front door. Of course, it didn’t budge, and she didn’t have her key card with her.
She glanced up at the intercom nameplate. Her name had been removed, but at least it hadn’t been replaced yet. For some reason, that thought gave her comfort. Her eyes drifted down to the apartment below hers, where her elderly neighbor Mrs. Crawford’s name was still listed. She pressed the button incessantly, hoping that Mrs. Crawford would answer. If she could just buzz Laura into the building, she’d be able to get up to her apartment. Maybe her things would still be there if no one else had rented it yet.
Just as the intercom clicked into life, Laura felt an intense pain in the back of her head. Her vision flashed white, and the ground began to tilt up toward her. She didn’t feel it when her body hit the ground, and the last thing she heard as her vision began to go black was Mrs. Crawford’s voice coming through the speaker.
2
Charlie
I laughed as Esther cracked another joke. We’d been seeing each other for about two months now, and ever since our first date at a restaurant that had turned out to just be a small room attached to a gas station, we’d made a game of finding the most unusual or ridiculous locations we could. Today, we were at a minimalist-themed restaurant that only served deconstructed foods on found materials. What this meant in practice was that instead of serving a salad in a bowl, they gave us a raw tomato and a chunk of lettuce on an unfinished slab of wood.
“You think maybe they just couldn’t afford actual plates or cooks, so they just threw a bunch of raw ingredients on whatever they had lying around and decided to call it modern?” Esther asked as she sliced apart her tomato.
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I chortled, hiding my laugh with a cough as a server passed by.
Over the past few months, dates like this with Esther had become increasingly more frequent. Ever since my first case with MBLIS a few months ago, things at work had been pretty slow. We still had a steady stream of cases, but most were fairly simple and didn’t even involve international travel. We’d handled things like arms smuggling, drug trafficking, or even the odd counterfeiting case that was still under MBLIS’s purview, but that didn’t exactly require a lot of investigation. As a result, I’d had a lot more free time lately.
Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for Chrys, who was still as busy as ever. If anything, she had become busier ever since she had become an attending surgeon. For a while, I’d tried to pick up the slack by going to her more often than I expected her to come to me, but even then, she’d cancel on me more often than not. Ironically, it was because of a canceled date that Esther and I were even able to meet each other.
On that night, I’d made plans with Chrys and had gone to pick her up from the hospital. After twenty minutes had gone by without any sign of Chrys, I’d called her. She told me that she had forgotten all about our date and that she wouldn’t be able to make it after all. I’d told her it was fine, but internally, I’d felt irritated. I understood that her work kept her busy. Hell, there were times when my own work took me out of the country for days at a time. But surely she could have called earlier, instead of waiting until twenty minutes after we had agreed to meet to notify me that she couldn’t make it.
I sighed as I leaned against the wall of the hospital. Getting upset wouldn’t change anything, but it wasn’t like I wanted to go to the movies alone, either. I wondered, not for the first time, if dating Chrys was more trouble than it was worth.
“Are you alright?” I looked
up at the voice. In front of me was a short woman with pale skin and long red hair. Her hazel eyes carried a hint of concern, and I wondered how pathetic I must look if strangers on the street were checking up on me. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry. You just looked so upset. I thought maybe you’d gotten some bad news, being outside a hospital and all.”
Normally, I would have responded to such a nosy question with some kind of sarcastic remark, but something about how genuine the woman seemed spoke to me. She sounded like she really wanted to help, and not like she was just looking for gossip.
“I’m fine. It’s nothing,” I sighed, offering her a small smile. “Just got stood up, is all.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” the woman frowned, and it didn’t just sound like an empty platitude.
“Eh, it’s a pretty common occurrence, actually,” I shrugged, surprised I was so open and honest with a total stranger. Something about the woman just made me feel at ease. “You wouldn’t be interested in seeing a movie, would you? Since I have an extra ticket now.” I scoffed to myself as I pulled the tickets out of my pocket and fiddled with them.
“What movie?” The woman asked, and I looked up in surprise. I’d been joking, but the woman sounded serious.
“Um, Dark Whispers, that new vampire one that just came out,” I responded, still a little confused at the unexpected turn of events.
“Yeah, I’ve wanted to see that,” the woman smiled excitedly.
“Wait, really?” I asked.
“Um, yes?” The woman’s smile began to fall. “Were you not being serious?”
“No,” I answered honestly before I could think better of it. “Well, I was just kidding. But no, yeah, if you want to go, then sure. Sorry, I’m Charlie.” I held out the hand that wasn’t holding the tickets.
“Esther,” the woman said. “And yeah, why not? I don’t have anything else to do today.” The woman smiled as she shrugged.
Things had progressed smoothly after that, and Esther and I began to meet regularly while I saw less and less of Chrys. If I was completely honest, Esther wasn’t really the kind of woman I normally felt drawn to. She was shy and quiet and a little eccentric. She didn’t like public displays of affection, and we hadn’t even kissed until after our first month of dating. Women like Chrys, who were passionate and energetic and unpredictable, were much more my type. That being said, something about Esther just clicked with me, and we ended up meshing well together. It was also nice being with someone who was actually reliably and consistently available.
I could tell Esther was trying not to laugh as they placed our main course on the table. We’d ordered burgers, and the server made a big show of presenting all the different parts of the meal. The vegetables were chopped into tiny pieces and placed in individual bowls, and the beef patties were served separately and, for some reason, were rare on one side and charred on the other. Finally, there were the french fries, which were served to us in coffee mugs, which was especially unusual considering our actual drinks had been served to us in a mason jar and measuring cup, respectively.
She fell into a fit of giggles as the server moved away, and even I smiled as I looked at the spread in front of me.
“Why?” Esther asked as her giggles abated. “Just why? They’re basically just giving us all the ingredients separately and also throwing fries in a cup for some reason. I don’t understand.”
“I think that’s the idea,” I snickered as I mixed the beef into the bowl of vegetables and began to eat it like a salad. They hadn’t given us any buns, so I wasn’t sure how else I should eat it.
“It’s not bad, actually,” I shrugged, which caused Esther to smile. I loved being able to do that.
The rest of the evening passed in much the same way, with Esther making jokes about this restaurant being the perfect scam and wondering where we should go next time. Before we knew it, it was already time to go. Even if things at work had been more relaxed lately, I still had to be there pretty early in the morning.
“When do you want to get together again?” I asked, wrapping my arms around her slim waist as we stood on her front steps.
“Hm, how about next weekend?” she offered, pretending she had to think about it first.
“That sounds good to me,” I said before leaning down to kiss her. After a few moments, she gently pushed me away.
“You have work tomorrow,” she said as she stepped away from me. “And I don’t want to be held responsible if some big scary criminal gets away because you were too sleepy to chase them.”
I’d told Esther a little about my job. Not much, of course, but she knew the basics of being a federal agent who worked on international crimes.
“Yeah, yeah, alright,” I agreed.
I waited until I was sure Esther was safely inside before heading back to my car. It had been a nice night, and I felt happy. Even so, I couldn’t help but feel a tiny hint of dissatisfaction somewhere in the back of my mind as I drove home. Try as I might, I couldn’t place where the feeling was coming from. I had settled into a nice groove at work and got along with all my coworkers, especially my partner, Junior. I made regular trips to visit Harry and my adoptive niece, Amber. I was dating a nice girl who I got to see at least once a week. On the surface, everything was good.
As I unlocked the door to my apartment and stepped inside, I wondered if maybe that was the problem. It probably sounded whiny and ungrateful, but I felt bored. I’d left Elko because I was unsatisfied with the easy, slow life I had. I craved adventure and excitement, and as nice as it was knowing exactly what the next day would bring, it made me restless.
I locked the door behind me and stepped further into my apartment. I fell heavily onto the couch, which was adorned with a bright blue throw blanket. I smiled as I remembered how I’d gotten it.
Harry and Amber had come down to Las Vegas to see my new apartment and had been appalled by the state of it. By then, I’d at least gotten it furnished, although everything in it I had either picked up off the side of the road or purchased at a thrift shop. As long as it was functional, I didn’t really care if everything was mismatched or old. Harry had refused to come in, though. He said he wasn’t going to sit in squalor and demanded I carry his wheelchair back down the stairs so we could go shopping for furniture. It wasn’t until then that I realized how inaccessible a lot of buildings in Las Vegas were, and I made a mental note to contact whichever government entity was responsible for overseeing that at some point soon.
Amber had been thrilled at the prospect and had run around the store, picking out whatever caught her eye. Harry thought the entire thing was adorable and was willing to humor her, for the most part. Originally, she’d chosen a hot pink throw blanket, and Harry had suggested the blue one as a compromise. I wouldn’t have cared, either way, to be honest, but now that I was dating Esther, I was grateful that Harry had reined Amber in a little.
In the end, Harry had bought me a new couch, coffee table, TV stand, and dining table, despite my protests. He’d insisted, saying he at least wanted the public areas of my apartment to look nice and to consider it a late housewarming gift. I knew there was no point in arguing. Harry was even more stubborn than I was. He’d told me once that the reason he’d taken me in was that I reminded him of himself when he was young. We weren’t biologically related, but our personalities were so similar that people who didn’t know that often assumed he was my father.
“I can’t have my only precious granddaughter sitting in some bachelor pad dump,” Harry had said as we’d gone to check out. Even though he made it seem like he was doing this for his or Amber’s comfort, I knew he was really just doing it for me.
After I’d finished hauling everything up the stairs and into my apartment, Amber had insisted we all watch the new movie she’d brought with her, and we spent the rest of the afternoon watching the animated film. It was a Japanese cartoon about little girls who use magic stones to become crime-fighting princesses, and they all had some sort of
cute monster sidekick. It was a little difficult for me to follow, especially since it seemed like there was a lot of lore they expected the viewers to know already. Amber revealed that this was actually the third movie in the series and paused the movie midway through to give me a detailed explanation of everything that had happened in the first two installments.
I smiled at the memory. Nights like that had become more frequent in the past few months. On the surface, it seemed like an ideal life, but this wasn’t what I had moved to Las Vegas for. My first mission with MBLIS had taken me across the ocean to Greece. I’d been stabbed, nearly drowned, and shot at, and then I faced down a leopard in the course of just a few days. That was the adrenaline I craved. Regular dates with Esther and family nights with Harry and Amber were lovely, but I was beginning to feel stir-crazy.
I got up and moved into the bedroom to get ready for bed. I went through the motions of getting changed, throwing on a pair of sweatpants before crawling under the covers. I felt guilty for not being satisfied with what I had, but as I closed my eyes, I still hoped that the next day would bring a new adventure.
3
Junior
“See, right here?” Agent Patel asked, pointing at one of the straps on the leather bag. “You can see that the stitches on this side are longer than the ones on the other side. It’s a tiny detail, but a bag this expensive would never have such poor quality control.” I couldn’t actually see what she was talking about, but I decided to trust her judgment on this.
We were on the Las Vegas Strip, across from the Bellagio, where a woman had set up a stall selling fake designer bags. We’d been called in because they suspected that the woman was importing over ten thousand dollars' worth of merchandise into the US from China every week. The amount was high enough that it warranted an investigation. Originally, Charlie and I had been assigned to investigate since we partnered together on virtually every mission. Agent Patel had offered to go, though, since apparently she was familiar with designer bags and thought she might be able to gauge the severity of the situation better.