Runaway

by Susan Sheehey

  Skye rolled her eyes. “Not that he’s bitter. Anyhoo, just typical small-town festival stuff. Bands playing, games and rides for kids, bobbing for apples of course, and enough funnel cake to send everyone into diabetic comas.”

  “Sounds delicious.” He opened several bags and started placing a bunch in the electric peeler.

  “It’s the social event of the year. Anyone who’s anyone will be there.” Skye jumped up and sat on the counter beside him, making sure the potatoes didn’t get stuck in the loader. “Care to mingle with the suspects, Mr. Secret Agent?”

  * * *

  Damn, the way Skye sat on the counter right beside him pulled her skirt up ever so slightly and revealed a little more thigh. Just teasing him. Almost begging him to stare, to wait for more skin, had him aching.

  Not that Reed was the ogling type, and it definitely wasn’t a good idea to make friends with anyone at this turbulent time in his life. But there was nothing wrong with a little subtle appreciation for this angelic fireball. Innocent enough in her position helping him with the potatoes, he couldn’t help appreciate all of her.

  His reply was cut off by the door jingling with their first customer.

  Skye jumped down and rushed to the front. “Good morning, Joan, Margaret.” Her jovial voice was a little high. “Is today the day you’ll share your secret peach cobbler recipe?”

  Reed went back to work, trying like hell to focus. He cast furtive glances in Skye’s direction more often than he intended. She was so lively, so animated with everyone. It was impossible not to like her. To be drawn to her like a bear to a honey trap.

  A steady stream of customers poured in for the next hour, and he cooked up more than a few dozen scrambled eggs and flipped pound after pound of pancakes. All the potatoes came in handy for the extra hash browns. Only right before the lunch rush did Skye take a break in the kitchen, bringing him another coffee and bottled water.

  “Rough weekend?” she asked. A tinge of pink graced her cheeks.

  He shoved a tray full of shepherd’s pies into the oven. “Why do you ask?”

  “Your cap is on backward. I’ve noticed you wear it that way when you act like a sourpuss.”

  He chuckled. “Me? A sourpuss?” He shrugged it off because Lord knew he couldn’t dare say a word about the frickin’ obstacles he ran into trying to break into Joe’s account the previous evenings. One step forward, two steps back.

  “Tell me about this asshole boyfriend,” he dared to press as he pulled out clean plates from the dishwasher. “The one that burned you.”

  Her sigh was heavy, and her gaze suddenly tired. “ Why do you want to break open that hornet’s nest?” she asked, sitting on a stool. Her skin glistened with a little sweat from the rush of the day. She sipped on her own bottled water. “You gonna go arrest him, Mr. Six-shooter? And don’t think for one second I didn’t notice the subject change.”

  He held up a kitchen knife to start chopping vegetables. “If he hurt you, I could go all Fried Green Tomatoes on him.”

  She scoffed. “Enticing as that idea may be, the food would taste awful. I don’t want to risk purging the customers.”

  He chuckled and kept working. Reed usually didn’t get close to civilians, but what could it hurt here? If things suddenly got dicey, he could leave at the drop of a few shell casings. He’d done it before. It wasn’t like he and Skye were in any kind of relationship. Hell, he only worked with the woman, nothing more. He had no interest in any entanglements, except maybe of a sexual nature. If she was interested, he wouldn’t rule that out. But aside from working together, there’d be nothing past casual encounters. Nothing even remotely permanent. So, getting to know a little more about Skye’s personal life was nothing more than passing the time and blending in with his surroundings, because that’s what civilians did. Enjoying his brief time here wouldn't hurt anything, right?

  At least that’s how he rationalized this new diversion. Something enjoyable to help pass the time. Make him feel like a human being. For however little time he had left there.

  He let the silence drag on between them as he sharpened the knife, waiting for her to continue. Because he knew she would. It was one of the many tactics he’d learned over the years: eventually, people will fill awkward silences. Especially Skye. She was good at that. Probably what made her a great waitress.

  “I wanted to live an urban life in college,” she started, throwing him a rag to wipe off the knife. “The big city lights, the noise, atmosphere, all of it. Education was the best way out of here, and I was lucky enough to get a scholarship that took care of the tuition. The first day, I was moving into my dorm, and Vance was there. Helping a friend move into their room. Wow, we hit it off. He was charming, knew everyone, had connections to all the best places—lots of dorm parties, dates downtown, even picnics in the park. The full-court press, as they say, which turned into late nights, and a few missed classes. My grades started to slip.”

  Reed kept his face straightforward as he continued to chop carrots, garlic, and tomatoes, not wanting to assume anything.

  “When I received my first D on a test, I pushed hard into my studies to make up for that—”

  “Which meant you didn’t spend as much time with him,” he filled in that blank easily. He could guess where this trainwreck was headed. He swept the diced vegetables into a pan. The sizzle filled the air with fresh garlic that made his mouth water.

  “Yep.” Skye grabbed a spatula and stirred it for him while he set the cutting board in the sink. “I didn’t see it then, but his possessive side turned dominant. He got really angry when he bought tickets for a concert, and I had to skip it to study for finals. It was the night before my hardest class; I couldn’t go. He yelled at me. Grabbed my arm and left a nasty bruise. He apologized so much after that. Filled my room with flowers the next day, even took me to a really fancy dinner after I’d gotten a C on that exam. Then it was just more anger after that point. He always wanted to know where I was every second, including waiting outside some of my classes. Got a little…”

  “Creepy?” He took the spatula and continued stirring.

  “To say the least. But a tiny part of my brain kept saying it was because he was just that into me. He had a lot of passion for the things he cared for. But then he didn’t like me being out with my friends. People I’d known longer than him. He said he didn’t trust them, thought they would try and steal me away from him. To this day, I have no idea why he thought that.”

  Reed tried hard not to let the obvious show on his face. Because the bastard was a controlling psychopath. Insecure about themselves, and believed that a show of force was the only way to exert control. He’d seen a lot of them in the cartel. Skye hadn’t even finished her story yet, and he knew where it was going. But he bit his tongue. It was important for him to be patient and kind. Real men never needed to use force for control. Control was nothing more than an illusion anyway. He looked at Skye, waiting for her to keep going.

  She resumed her seat on the stool. “Looking back, I can see it coming. I had a group research project for my environmental sciences class. A nice guy in my group, Lloyd…funny too.” She smiled. Then it vanished. “Needless to say, Vance didn’t like it. Didn’t like him. He must have spied on our group at the library. When I got back to my dorm room, he was waiting. He’d destroyed my laptop, along with most of my school papers. He’d thrown a bunch of my things down the stairwell.” A long moment passed before she continued. “When I went to pick them up, he shoved me down the stairs.”

  Reed inhaled sharply. His knuckles whitened around the spatula’s handle. He slowly set it down, then leaned against the counter. He crossed his arms to hide his fists. Any man who dared hurt a woman, let alone this woman, deserved to be tied to a concrete block and dropped in the ocean. Or some other violent, torturous means to an end, something of which Reed had seen many times from the cartel. He knew of a hundred different ways to make a man disappear. Himself included.

  “S
ome really bad bruises, including a pulled muscle in my back, but thank God I didn’t break anything.”

  “Like your neck.”

  She raised a single eyebrow at him. She downed the rest of her water. “After I got back from the emergency room, he had a brand new laptop waiting on my desk. With a huge vase of roses.”

  Please tell me you didn’t fall for that.

  “I tried to break up with him right there. He said, ‘You can’t leave. I won’t let you.’”

  Reed’s teeth ground together. “What happened then?”

  “I left. Dropped out of school completely. Came back here. Which broke my heart, because I knew an education would be my ticket out of here. But I needed my family.” She shrugged her shoulder. “Anyway, I got better. Thanks to my best friend, Lynée, she urged me to take a few self-defense classes and enroll at the local community college. And at least I don’t have to see Vance’s face again.”

  On a long sigh, he grabbed the spatula and finished stirring. “Any charges filed against asshole-man?”

  Skye chunked her empty water bottle in the recycle bin. “Nope. Not when he’s the Assistant D.A.’s son.”

  Shit. Reed shook his head and scraped the cooked vegetables into a casserole dish.

  The door jingled with more customers, signaling the start of the lunch rush. Skye stood and adjusted her uniform.

  Before she disappeared into the dining area, Reed called her back.

  She stopped.

  “I’d love to mingle with you at this apple festival. We can plot ways to make douchebags like Vance disappear.”

  She smiled. “Well, as a secret agent, I’ll let you figure that out. I’ll just eat some apple pie and be your alibi.” With a wink, she went back to work.

  An entire week of afternoons spent in an old wooden kitchen chair searching Joe’s old computer files strained Reed’s back nearly to the point of a herniated disc. Even sitting on a pillow didn’t alleviate the discomfort. How he missed his comfortable ergonomic chair with extra padding that molded to his ass. He’d been so spoiled early in his career with little luxuries like that, as well as state-of-the-art screens that were easier on the eyes. Not this old laptop that barely had enough RAM and storage to do the job.

  But at least now, he was grateful for a decent signal and the proper proxy server to disguise his location. He didn’t have to trek all the way out to Seattle nearly as often. Thanks to the additional funds he’d earned at the diner, he now had the means to purchase additional equipment. The remaining funds in his bailout bag had dwindled to precariously low levels.

  Of course, things would’ve gone faster if he hadn’t had to run off to his day job in the mornings. But he needed to earn a living somehow. And of course, seeing Skye at the diner made it well worth it.

  The clock neared twelve a.m. as Reed’s eyes drooped from the weight of the day. The lines started to blur on the screen, and when he shut his eyes, the image of the coding scan had been burned into the back of his eyeballs. He was desperate to find a way into Joe’s account with this Dark Inferno game. He was sure that was the key. They’d been his partner’s dying words; it had to be important.

  Reed jerked himself awake, slapping his cheeks to keep from falling asleep at the desk. He stretched his back and grabbed his empty coffee mug to start another pot of coffee.

  As it brewed, he checked all the outdoor cameras again. All his counter measures were still in place should anyone come for him in the dead of night.

  The scrolling screen was a jumble of file names and scripts, the numbers blurry. Somehow, between all the endless lines of code, a single file named caught his attention: Fire. He clicked on it.

  A notation made by Joe only a few weeks before his death was a simple string of random numbers and letters. Underneath that was a name: Gigaslave.

  Reed smiled at the obvious jab. Totally just like Joe.

  If you’re up there, buddy, help me out here.

  Reed switched over to the Dark Inferno internet game and plugged in the username and the string of characters. Which he prayed was the password.

  The game pulled up, along with all of Joe’s player information.

  “Yes!” Reed threw his fists into the air and plopped in front of the computer again. This time, he sat on the edge of the chair. This was the farthest he’d gotten in the investigation in months. One dead-end after another, all while trying to stay alive being chased after by ruthless targets. Finally, he had something to chase.

  The game was brutal. Mercenaries overran cities with demonic brutality, and the goal was for players to form alliances and take back neighborhoods through strategic battles and inventory runs. The impressive graphics left no amount of blood and gore to the imagination.

  The in-game chat feature popped up, with a few online players asking where Gigaslave had been. Joe hadn’t logged in for a year. Reed ignored them for now.

  He scrolled through the previous chat sessions. Tons of them. The last one was the evening before Joe’s death.

  His breath caught in his throat.

  Someone confirming the location of a drop point. All the previous interactions with this player were addresses, times, quantities, and money exchanges. Reed recognized a few of the places, all on the outer edges of El Paso, even out in the desert. The chat went back and back with more than ten drop times over two weeks.

  “Shit, he did all of this without telling me?”

  His mind whirled with all the new information. Everything his partner had done on his own, without any backup, without uttering a word to Reed. Had Joe gone rogue? Had he been on the take with the very cartel they were assigned to investigate?

  The revelation made him sick. All those years working together, side by side, and Reed had never known. Maybe that’s why he’d picked Reed as his partner all those years ago because he thought he was expendable. Just another black-hat-criminal kid on whom he could pin all these shady deals.

  He swallowed hard, the bitter taste too much to take. “Joe, you son of a bitch, please tell me I’m wrong.”

  He scrolled through more messages and found one from a contact only a few days before his death.

  “Business is good. One mil this time. Don’t worry about noise. Slugger has us covered.”

  One mil. A million-dollar drop. Shit. With the number of drops they’d done, there was a history here of over ten million dollars’ worth of inventory they were dealing with. That Joe was handling, without his partner.

  A ball of lead condensed in Reed’s stomach.

  This couldn’t be true. There had to be something else behind all these exchanges. Whatever plan Joe had, he hadn’t seen himself dead at the end of it. Not only that, but there was also no way Joe would ever sell out his partner. Despite what the screen in front of him read, Reed refused to believe it.

  Who the hell was Slugger? Cartels often used noise as code for law enforcement, or some other rival gang trying to interfere. Whoever Slugger was, he was definitely key. Maybe that was the guy who’d killed Joe. Perhaps he’d found out that Joe was DEA.

  Through searching the rest of the chat sessions, there was no other mention of a Slugger. Reed switched over to Joe’s offline files and found only one entry as well, on a deleted document titled Christmas List.

  “Suspect referenced ‘Slugger.’ New lead.”

  Reed scrolled up to the top of the file and continued to read.

  September 13: New drop point from game chat. 10k exchanged. First contact ‘Cesar,’ Hispanic male, 30-35 years, 200lbs, thick Northern Mexican accent, relatively uneducated in dialect. Report filed to enter new point of contact. Partner set up our new safe house.

  September 18: Second drop this week where suspect didn’t show. Waited more than three hours. Chat sessions with perps growing more suspicious and cautious. Checked in with my partner remotely, reportedly focusing on cartel digital footprint to find another lead.

  September 24: Successful drop tonight. Over 600k. New suspect in car with first
contact. Hispanic male, lighter skin, brown eyes, 20-25 years, 140lbs, formal Spanish. Spoke English fluently no accent. Possibly US citizen. No name given. Talked about next drop in a few days. Nothing firm. Seemed more focused on what I thought about the game. Report filed to enter new point of contact.

  October 2: First contact referenced an ‘inside man’ protecting them from law enforcement. New contact shut him up with a gut punch. Did not specify which law enforcement, Federale, US Border & Customs, or DEA. No name given. Didn’t give a new drop point/time. Said they’d see me on the game. Report filed.

  October 9: My previous reports on internal systems have disappeared. Intel is missing. Concerned someone inside DEA is tampering with investigation. Could be the ‘inside man’ they referenced before. Did not file report in case the system is compromised. Will watch my partner more closely since he’s the closest one with access to my files. I’m staying at a secondary safehouse for his safety and my confidentiality. Do not suspect he knows of my location.

  October 12: Suspect referenced ‘Slugger.’ New lead. May be ‘inside man.’ Setup test to rule out my partner as mole. Nothing back yet.

  October 15: Drop scheduled 24:00 at new location, El Paso warehouse on Doniphan Drive. Chatter on game quiet. Texting partner the drop location.

  The report ended there.

  Sitting there reading Joe’s last report hit him like a tidal wave. This was the last thing his partner had written. What had been going through his mind? Had he been scared? Did he have regrets about leaving Reed out of all this? He must’ve known how dangerous it was, having texted for backup. He could imagine the man reloading his weapons for this last drop, looking at his bulletproof vest in his closet and wondering if he should use it.

  He should’ve. Granted, it would’ve given away his law enforcement status, but he’d be alive. If only Reed had gotten to that warehouse sooner. Maybe they could’ve arrested those thugs, and Joe could’ve explained everything implied in this report.