by Vicki Tharp
“The one for the safe.”
She glanced at the office door again. “Show me.”
Slipping the phone into her back pocket, she turned back to the safe. Jack stood on his tiptoes and slid his hand between the safe and the cabinet surrounding it. There was a soft click, and a hidden drawer in the cabinet opened with a keypad attached.
She ghosted her fingers over the number pad as she glanced back at the old safe. Was this some sort of electronic upgrade? Was that even possible?
Apparently, it was.
Would she be locked out if she entered the incorrect numbers?
She glanced at her son, almost afraid to ask. “Do you know what the numbers are.”
He shook his head.
She let out a long breath. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Dad presses corner, corner, side, bottom, top, corner.”
No way. She gasped at her son. He had the biggest, brownest, most intelligent, innocent eyes. “Show me.”
He smiled and used his pointer finger to press the keys in sequence. She tried the handle. Nothing.
“Oh, wait.” Jack pressed another key. “I forgot the star.” Jack pressed the ‘star’ key, and Tessa heard a muffled click.
She placed her hand on the lever, and it turned. She smiled at Jack. “You did it.”
“No,” came the voice from behind them. “Now, you’ve done it.”
Tessa spun around, almost knocking Jack to the ground. She latched onto his arm and kept him from falling. “B-Bradley.” All the saliva evaporated from her mouth. The what are you doing here? stuck on her tongue.
With a hand on Jack’s shoulder, she eased her son behind her. Heat burned up Bradley’s neck, a deep crimson settling into his cheeks, a color she’d only seen on a lobster in a boiling pot.
Bradley strode across the room until he was mere inches from her. “Jack,” he said, “Go to your room.”
“M-Mom?” Jack’s voice was too fragile to hide the quiver.
“Go,” Tessa said, not daring to glance away from Bradley.
Jack didn’t move.
“Go!” Bradley roared, his eyes never leaving hers.
She flinched. Jack ran.
Bradley placed his hand around the base of her neck and pushed her back against the cabinet and held her there. He glanced away long enough to reach his hand into the safe and pull out the journal. He slapped it against her chest, and she caught it, holding it against herself like a leather-bound shield.
“Is this why you’re here, Tessa?” He actually sounded hurt.
“I’m here because you gave me no choice. Because you took my son.”
“No,” he said. “Why are you in my safe?”
“Money. What else.”
He shook his head, then leaned in close, his mouth by her ear, his breath hot, dangerous. “You had plenty of my money but refused to spend it. Try again.”
The encrypted phone in her back pocket vibrated, reverberating through the wood.
Bradley leaned back. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
It buzzed again, and Bradley reached toward Tessa’s back pocket. With the thick journal in her hand, Tessa cocked her arm and swung at Bradley’s head. He must have caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He shifted, the blow glancing off the side of his head.
Instead of knocking him unconscious, it just pissed him off.
He batted the journal out of her hand and slammed her against the cabinet. Her head smacked against the dense wood. Pain radiated around her skull, and stars skipped and danced across her vision. Her knees buckled. Only his hand around her throat kept her on her feet.
He reached for the phone again, and she let him. Her only focus now was making sure she got out of that office alive. Jack was the only thing that mattered.
His safety.
His life.
She would do whatever she had to do to make that happen.
Bradley touched the home button, and the lock screen appeared. “What’s the code?”
“I don’t—”
“What is the code?” Bradley shouted. His face went beet red, and spittle landed on her cheeks, her lips. His grip tightened around her neck.
Sloan popped his head around the edge of the door. “Can I help you, sir?”
Tessa had never seen Bradley’s eyes go that dark before, as if all reason, all humanity, had drained from them. Her pulse hammered at her temples as Bradley’s grip tightened and the pressure built in her head and behind her eyes.
“Get the master key,” Bradley said. “Lock the little brat in his room.”
“N-No.” Unable to swallow, the saliva pooled in her mouth making her cough. “This isn’t about him.”
She gripped Bradley’s wrist with both hands, but he was too strong, and the growing lack of oxygen in her system made her too weak to really fight. Bradley glanced over his shoulder, though his grip never loosened. “Did I stutter, Sloan?”
“No, sir.”
Sloan disappeared, taking Tessa’s hope with her. Her lungs burned, and her legs felt as heavy as concrete blocks. “F-five,” she managed, though the word was barely audible, even to herself.
Bradley released his grip, and Tessa gulped in air, her chest heaving, her body wracked with coughs. She braced her hands on her knees and pressed her butt against the cabinet to keep from falling to the ground.
“Five, what?”
She glared up at him. His color had returned to normal, and his eyes had lost most of the crazy. “Five, seven, four, four, one.”
Bradley punched in the numbers.
Tessa slid to the ground and held her head in her hands. The black dots cleared, and her breathing started returning to normal, but as Bradley began thumbing through her texts to Gil as well as Spinks, a chill swept through her body, settling deep into her marrow. Her hands started to shake.
What scared her most was she had no clue what Bradley was capable of, but she was afraid she was about to find out.
As Bradley skimmed through the texts on Tessa’s encrypted phone, it vibrated again. Bradley glanced down at it. “Awh, how sweet,” he said, the sarcasm dripping from his words as artificial as saccharine and potentially as deadly. “He’s worried about you.”
Bradley crossed his arms over his chest. “Was it him? Was he the guy you were screwing in the helo?”
Tessa didn’t answer, but then again, she didn’t have to, the way the blood drained from her face said it for her.
He didn’t outright call her a whore, but the disdain etched across his features said that whore would be putting it mildly. Never mind that it had been six years since she and Bradley had split.
Bradley read out his response as he typed. “I am safe. Don’t worry about me.” He glanced up, his words as flat as the luster in his eyes. “I added the kissy emoticon. Seemed appropriate considering you’re fucking him.”
Then he slipped the phone into the inside pocket of his suit. “I’ll be keeping this for now.”
She was fucked. Gil was fucked. The task force was fucked, and she didn’t know what she could do about it. But everyone’s safety paled in comparison to her son’s. She would do whatever she had to do to protect him.
He stepped to his desk and draped one leg over the corner, his focus on the safe as he fit all the pieces together. Tessa saw when it all clicked, that moment when his gaze refocused and landed on her with this calm detachment she hadn’t expected from a man who’d had his hands around her neck mere moments before.
Her thoughts pinged in her head, different scenarios of where Bradley would go from there. None of them good. That rolling boulder in her stomach gathered speed, she felt like a bowling pin, and this gargantuan ball was spinning, rolling, and sliding in for a strike. She couldn’t take the uncertainty any longer. Around the stricture in her throat, she said, “What are you going to do?”
He glanced at his watch, then stood and closed the gap between them. Tessa scrambled to her feet. She
wanted to fight, wanted to run, but that was impossible without Jack.
He stepped closer, crowding her personal space.
“It’s not what I’m going to do. It’s what you are going to do for me.”
“It’s not what you think.” Tessa’s denial was waaay too late. Like closing the barn doors after the horses had run out, jumped the fences, and high tailed it toward the mountains.
“It’s exactly what I think. You. Goodman, and that governmental alphabet soup you’re working for.”
She opened her mouth, but the words didn’t come. There was no doubt in her mind that Bradley didn’t possess an ounce of mercy or compassion or empathy. Maybe he never had. She wasn’t sure how to get the upper hand, but she knew cowering before him wasn’t the way.
She stood up straighter and swallowed down the thick, ropey saliva. “You’re selling military weapons slated for destruction to terrorist groups in third world countries. We can’t let you do that.”
“What do you care if the terrorists blow each other up? What does anyone care?”
“What about the civilians caught in the crossfire? What about the women, the children? If you supply the weapons, thousands of innocent people could die.”
“It’s business, Tessa. Big business. If they don’t buy from me, make no mistake, they’ll buy from someone else. I want my due, my piece of the pie.”
His due. If she had any say in it, he would get that.
“What are you going to do? Send your son’s father to prison?”
“Leave Jack out of this.”
The tips of his lips curved up—a semblance of a smile—one that he’d probably practiced in front of a mirror to make it look authentic.
“I have to go. You’re playing for my team now. You will do exactly what I say when I say it. That is if you ever want to see your son again.”
“You don’t want Jack. You never did.”
“No,” Bradley said, the most agreeable he’d been since he came back into her and Jack’s life. “But you do.”
14
Gil lay prone on the black tarred roof of one of the warehouse buildings at the abandoned mine, staring through the scope of the M-4, as he and the rest of Martin’s men waited for the shipment to arrive by train. Somewhere off to his left, an industrial-sized generator supplying power to the warehouse and surrounding buildings chugged away, the thick diesel exhaust drifting by him.
Which explained why Spinks couldn’t find any records from the power company going to the site.
Down below, a crane started up and inched toward the train tracks. A couple other men in forklifts drove out of the open doors of the warehouse below him. These guys had been at the facility when he and the rest of the men had arrived.
“Five minutes,” came Burton’s voice through Gil’s earpiece.
“Roger that,” Gil said into his mic.
Wu and Price checked in as well. Burton was leaning against one of the SUVs with his M-4 pointed down, but ready. Wu was laid out on top of a portable office trailer about fifty yards to Gil’s right, and Price was positioned behind a rock on the rise across the tracks midway between Gil’s and Wu’s position, like their own little choke point.
A cool breeze blew through, and the sun would set behind the mountains soon. The sweat beading on his brow had less to do with the fact he was lying atop a black roof, in black clothes, without any cover, and more to do with the fact that Tessa hadn’t texted him back yet.
By his calculation, Martin should be on his way back from the house by now. He shifted positions and pulled his phone from one of the side pockets of his pants. He typed in: U R worrying me. Let me know u got my text.
He set the phone down in front of him so he wouldn’t miss Tessa’s reply.
“One minute,” Burton reported.
In the distance, Gil heard the chug of an approaching train. One of the men below worked a manual switch on the track that would divert the train off the main line and onto one where they could offload the shipment.
Still nothing from Tessa. He unlocked his phone and typed in: ??!
Then the little moving dots showed up as Tessa started her response. The train rolled in, and Gil caught the incoming text before he placed his right eye back on the scope of the gun. I am safe. Don’t worry about me.
Followed by what looked like a kissing emoji. Tessa wasn’t the emoticon type, and it struck him as odd since she knew as well as he did that Spinks was monitoring their texts to stay in the loop. But he had more important things to worry about than the judicious use of emoticons.
The relief from receiving her response eased the tightness in his chest, and he blew out a breath. The train’s engine stopped in his crosshairs, a nagging sinking feeling burned in his gut like one-hundred-and-ninety-proof moonshine. What was he missing?
“Showtime, boys,” Burton said.
The air brakes hissed, the train groaned, and six armed men scrambled to the ground.
Gil scanned the train with his scope. The two men who had climbed down from the engine were at the wrong angle for him to cover, but the two from the caboose were a simple shot if need be. Into the mic, he said, “I’ve got the two at the rear.”
Wu piped in, “I’ve got the two at the front.”
Another man descended from the engine with only a sidearm at his hip. The two men in the middle flanked him on either side, their rifles ready, but aimed at the ground.
“I’ve got the three assholes in the middle.” That from Price.
Burton stood and approached the man in the middle. They shook hands. Without Burton’s mic button depressed, he couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the man in the middle crossed his arms over his chest, not looking pleased. His two goons settled the butts of their rifles into their shoulders but didn’t raise the barrel of their weapons. From their demeanor, Gil assumed Burton had told the man that the money and their boss hadn’t arrived yet.
One man was in the engine, though by his clothes, he looked like a civilian. The guys at the business end of Gil’s scope were dressed in fatigues, but these guys were not military. At least not active duty if the longer hair, scruffy faces, and disheveled clothes were anything to go by. The uniforms were likely Army surplus, like the rest of the shipment.
Tensions mounted on both sides as time ticked by, one slow second and then another as they waited on Martin, and more importantly, the money. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Thirty. Sweat pooled at the base of his spine. The longer the train waited, the more exposed everyone was, but unloading couldn’t begin until the cash arrived.
“The cocksuckers by the engine are getting antsy,” Wu said. “Where the hell is Martin anyway?”
“No, shit,” Price said, “I’m tired of laying out here with my dick in my hand.”
“Mark this day on the calendar boys, Price got tired of masturbation,” Wu shot back.
“Fuck you, Wu.” Price chuckled. “Listen to me, I sound like Dr. Fucking Seuss.”
Burton turned away from the three men and growled into the mic, “You girls need tampons and chocolate for this little slumber party? Or you do you think you can quit your bitching and do your jobs?”
A cloud of dust rose over the top of the scarred earth on the far side of the abandoned mining site. “Incoming,” Gil said.
Burton notified the three men in front of him. The head honcho called out to the other four men, who closed in, their hands going to the grips on their guns, their fingers indexed next to the triggers.
Not long after Martin arrived, the cash was counted and exchanged, and the men on the crane and the forklifts got to work. From his vantage point, Gil was able to get photographs with his phone. The quality from that distance wasn’t as good as he’d hoped, but at least with his phone working off satellites, he could send the photos in real time to Spinks instead of having to wait to upload them in secret back at Martin’s.
Tensions eased as the offloading continued. The two guys Gil was covering were leaning against the caboose,
their guns hanging from their neck tethers, their hands cupped to cut the breeze as they lit up a couple of cigarettes.
Nothing exciting happened. The men worked quickly, trying to finish before they lost the light. Containers were lowered, and the forklifts emptied the steel containers of unmarked, large wooden crates, and then the empty containers were reloaded onto the train’s flatcars.
Then it happened. On the last container, one of the hoist straps broke, and the steel container crashed into the dirt with the groaning of metal and reverberations that shook the ground beneath him. All the men on the ground dropped to the dirt and covered their heads as if they were expecting an explosion.
None came.
The men slowly stood, brushing dust from their clothes. The sounds of nervous laughter wafted up. Someone sputtered and coughed. The container lay bent and twisted, the rear doors ajar.
Burton shouted at the men, and they worked hard to pry the steel doors open. One by one, the men entered the wrecked container and one by one they came out with a steady supply of shoulder-fired SAM’s.
Surface to air missiles.
Christ. Gil shifted and swung his gun until the back of Martin’s head centered in his sights. He could end this all right here. Right now. His finger ghosted over the trigger.
In his head, he could hear the report of his rifle, feel the thump of the butt against his shoulder, smell the gunpowder in his nose, see the spray of blood and brain matter as he rid the world of Bradley Fucking Martin.
If he did that, the likelihood of Gil escaping unscathed was about as slim as the chances of his big mug ever gracing the cover of GQ. He could take a handful of them out before the guns were turned on him. But it wasn’t the thought of dying that stopped him, it was the thought of living with even more blood on his hands that did.
His time at the Lazy S had helped him see that there was a life on the other side of law enforcement waiting for him. A life with Tessa and Jack, and he was afraid to screw that up.
He’d do what he was sent in to do and get the three of them out of there as fast as he could. Then he’d give Spinks that letter of resignation and never look back.