by J P Barnaby
Thomas propped his phone next to the monitor and typed in the command to reverse and allow transactions through the software. His finger hovered over the Enter key, waiting for the minute to turn. Any second now and the nightmare would be over for two weeks. He and Aleks could go back to their lives.
The clock turned, and Thomas slammed his finger onto the Enter key with such force he thought maybe the keyboard would crack, but it held. Apparently it was stronger than he was, because the crack ripped open inside him, and he put his head down on the table.
Aleks’s phone rang.
“Quiet. Quiet!” Gerry yelled over the din of twenty people in a confined space. On the third ring, he nodded to Aleks, who had merely been staring at the phone. Thomas bumped his arm and Aleks click the green button. Take the red pill or the blue pill, Thomas thought, a tangible moment in their surreal adventure.
“Hello?”
Thomas couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation and couldn’t even guess what horrible things were coming across the line.
“We’ve done what you wanted. Is Wes alive?”
More silence as evil rode the cellular waves.
“We’ll do what you want, every time. Please just let him go. He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
A heartbeat, and then two.
“Please just let him go, he’s not going to—”
Aleks put the phone down slowly, a haunted look in his eyes. Everyone in the room waited, silent but for the steady hum of servers. Thomas squeezed his hand, and he seemed to find his words.
“I heard a gunshot, and then he hung up. They killed Wes.”
“You don’t know that,” Gerry said, but the words had no meaning. Thomas could think of nothing except those golden curls, that shy, easy smile, and the way Wes had told him that he had mad coding skills. He wondered how he would tell Hannah that her hero was dead.
“I want you to go home and pack one small bag of essentials each. Leave everything else. We’re going to get you out of here.” Gerry put a hand on his shoulder, and he wanted to shrug it off, but he didn’t. The agent hadn’t brought this down on them. He didn’t kill Wes. It started because of Thomas’s mistake.
“Where are Hannah and my mother?” Thomas asked as he stood up.
“They’re in a safe house in Marietta. Once you have what you need, we’ll take you there. Kurt and Simon will escort you to the house covertly. We don’t want anyone aware that you’re not alone.” Gerry stepped aside and let two agents pass. They were older than the tech kids and looked far more seasoned.
“And then what?”
“Aleks sells his shares in the company and steps down, and the four of you disappear.”
“Where the hell are we going to go? You have a billionaire Greek mogul, his husband, and their daughter with leukemia. We’re not exactly inconspicuous.”
“Usually when people go into witness protection, they leave everything—including their savings. I’m trying to give you a way out.”
“We have a location,” Taylor said, interrupting him.
“Where?”
“Beta team is standing by.” The young tech glanced at him, and Thomas realized he didn’t want to say the location aloud.
“Where are they?” Thomas asked, his voice no louder than a whisper.
“They’re here,” Gerry said, then got on a walkie-talkie the size of a brick and began to bark orders to alpha team, beta team, and the whole damned Greek alphabet. “Do a sweep, floor by floor. Find the office they’re camping in.”
“Wait, they broke into someone’s office?” Aleks asked.
“No. More likely they rented an office here in the building so they could be close and keep tabs on you.”
Aleks pulled out his phone and flipped to a picture. “They’re on the third floor.”
“How do you know that?”
“Each floor in this building has a different color theme. It’s coded in the elevator. The wall behind Wes is… is green. That’s the third floor.”
Gerry barked more orders into the walkie-talkie, and then the frosted glass of the server room front wall exploded into shards as shots rang through it.
Thomas flung himself on top of Aleks and pulled them both under the workstation desk. Taylor’s body hit the floor in front of them, lifeless eyes staring past them at the wall beyond, blood soaking through his shirt.
Thomas had never been one for prayer. He’d had a few conversations with God, mostly angry ones, over Hannah’s condition, but he had never asked for a thing. This time, he didn’t ask, he begged. With Aleks’s head just inches from his as they hid from the sound of rapid gunfire, Thomas Aberthol begged for the life of his husband. He begged for the lives of his daughter and his mother. He begged for the singular privilege of seeing them again.
“They’re on the stairs. Delta team, bring them up top.”
Gerry strode to the door, opened it, and left them cowering on the floor. Several of the agents went with him, but the two assigned to take them home to pack stayed with them. They swept the room over and over, looking for signs of assailants, but apparently found nothing, because they just kept searching.
It seemed like hours that they lay on the cold floor watching the perfect cuffs and polished shoes of the agents left behind to guard them. Neither agent spoke; they simply kept vigilant guard on the door and the blown-out window. Thomas and Aleks didn’t speak either; there didn’t seem to be anything to say. They were huddling in the middle of a shootout between the mob and the FBI. It seemed like something out of a bad spy novel.
And then it was over.
“Hey, the team has them in custody downstairs. We need to bring you down to Agent Sorenson.” Thomas couldn’t tell which had spoken, but a hand appeared under the desk to help him to his feet. He grabbed it and waited for Aleks to follow. It took a minute, but his husband found the courage to stand.
And then he found the courage to fling himself into Thomas’s arms.
“Are you okay?” he whispered against the soft cotton of Thomas’s T-shirt.
“Yeah. Are you?”
“I don’t know,” Aleks admitted. Thomas looked him over and saw that he didn’t have any injuries. Physically, at least, he was fine.
“Let’s go downstairs and see what’s happening. One step at a time, okay?” Thomas wrapped an arm around Aleks, and the agents led them to the front elevator, where two more agents were waiting with blankets. He didn’t understand why, but he did feel cold, colder than he should, so he took one. The agent wrapped the other blanket around Aleks, who didn’t even move to take it, and they huddled in the corner of the elevator. No one said a word.
When the door opened again, they stepped out into a lobby full of chaos. Red and blue lights slashed across the walls in a dizzying strobe. Agents in FBI vests pushed a group of seven men toward the side door. Five more were lying on the ground to the left of it. As he looked closer at them, he recognized the guy who had punched him in the face. God, was that just a few days ago? It seemed like they’d been at this game for so much longer than that.
Gerry broke free of the crowd of agents and emergency personnel to stand in front of them. He seemed taller than he had in the cramped room upstairs, more in his element among the insanity.
“I don’t see Cash,” Thomas observed.
“No, it looks like we got his right-hand guy and about a dozen foot soldiers, but the big guy was gone when agents went to pick him up at his place in Midtown. We did find your assistant, though. He’s on his way to Emory.”
“Wes is alive?”
“He must have struggled, because the shot went clear through his shoulder. But he’s alive.”
Thomas closed his eyes and said a quiet thank-you to God. Not only had he brought Thomas and Aleks out safely, he’d spared Wes. That required further reflection when they weren’t in a room with bodies on the floor.
“What happens now?” Thomas asked, eyeing a pair of sneakers peeking out from under a blood
ied sheet. He wondered how old the guy who still wore those shoes was. What drew someone to a life like that, only to be gunned down in a random lobby by federal agents?
“Same plan. Go home, grab your stuff, connect with your mother and daughter, and then get the hell out of the country.”
“But Hannah’s treatment?”
“When your mother called me about the men she’d seen in your house, I did make a call about that. Your best option is France. They have excellent cancer survival rates. So does Finland. Her medication is available in both countries.”
“You want us to move to France?” Aleks asked.
“I want you to disappear, at least until we can cut off the head here. You just dealt a major blow to them, and they’re not going to take kindly to that. I’d put you in witness protection, but with your resources, you have a better shot without it. We’ll set all four of you up with new identities, and you should live modestly. Don’t let people know the kind of fortune you have. Do you get me?”
“My mom lost her house anyway,” Thomas said with a sigh that came from the bottom of his soul.
“Better a house than a son or a granddaughter,” Gerry observed.
“I don’t think we have an option here.” Aleks turned to Thomas and took both his hands. “I’m not going to let you or Hannah or anyone share the same fate as my father. I can’t take losing you. Any of you.”
“Before this turns into an episode of As the World Turns,” Gerry put in, “let’s get you out of here so you can get packed.”
κγ͵
THOMAS TOOK Aleks’s hand and they followed the agents out the back doors and into a waiting car in the parking garage. The Prius would just sit there till someone towed it, he imagined. They traveled in the back, surrounded by tinted windows, and Thomas wondered if they were bulletproof as well.
“What are we going to do?” Thomas asked. “Gerry said we can take your money—”
“Our money.”
“Our money, then. How do we take it without leading them to me?”
“I don’t know. Any transaction like that can be traced. If we sell my holdings and move everything to a bank in France, or even just withdraw money from France, they’ll know where we are.”
“There are ways to cover your tracks,” the guy from the passenger seat said. “Sorenson will get you set up. You’ll have to die, of course. So your money will move into a trust accessible by a long-lost relative, I’m guessing.”
“From Greece.”
“Most likely. Think about what you want to take from the house. You can’t make it look like you’ve packed up. Remember, you can buy what you need slowly once you’re settled. Nothing that can identify you, like pictures or family heirlooms. Normally people don’t get that luxury when they enter WITSEC.”
“What would you take?” Thomas asked.
“I’d already be gone by now.”
“Is there anything in the house you need?” Aleks asked quietly.
“When we get to where my mother and daughter are, I’ll have everything I need. Anything else we can buy.” Thomas squeezed Aleks’s hand.
“Could you just take us to the safe house?” Aleks asked.
“I think that’s a wise choice,” the driver said and checked the mirror. He moved into the left lane and got off the highway headed north.
“Gerry said they’re in Marietta?” Thomas asked.
“Not quite,” he said. “We’re about ten minutes out.”
“You were never taking us to our house, were you?” Thomas asked and looked outside the car for the first time. Even though he grew up in the sticks, he recognized they were nowhere near where they should have been.
“We were just waiting for you to work it out for yourselves so you didn’t argue about it.”
A couple of turns later, they pulled up behind a row of buildings. The two agents scrambled out of the car, on high alert now that they’d reached their destination. They checked behind dumpsters and even in a truck left abandoned at the end of the block. Then the guy from the passenger side opened the door and ushered them toward a building. Thomas saw the word laundromat before they jogged inside.
“Daddy!” Hannah cried and flung herself into his arms. Thomas swung her in a circle and held her close. He looked up to see his mother in tears next to him.
“Mom, I—”
“You did what you had to do. The agents explained it to us.” She put her arms around Thomas and Hannah and held them close. Then she turned and pulled Aleks closer as well.
“Daddy, the men said we were going on a trip. Aleks is coming too, right?” Hannah unhooked her arms from Thomas’s neck to put one around Aleks’s.
“Yes, honey, I’m coming too,” Aleks said, ruffling her short hair.
“What about Wes? Can he come too?”
Aleks looked at Thomas, but neither of them had an answer.
Thomas saw Gerry stride past the washing machines and dryers in the deserted room. The lights were off near the floor-to-ceiling windows covered in a large metal gate. He looked tired, almost haggard. Something had torn the bottom of his shirt, and his sleeve was covered in blood.
“Wes can’t come, sweetheart. He’s sick,” Gerry told her. “I think you dropped your alligator over by the dryers. You should grab her before we go.” He gave Thomas’s mother a meaningful look, and she took Hannah from Thomas. They wandered off in search of Lizzy.
Gerry watched them go until they were out of earshot.
“How is Wes? Have you seen him?” Aleks asked and reached down to take Thomas’s hand.
“He’s going to survive, but….” Gerry broke off. He rubbed the back of his head with his hand. Then he seemed to notice the blood on his sleeve.
“But what?” Aleks prompted.
“He’s going into witness protection. They’ve already started the process. He’ll be moved as soon as he’s medically cleared.”
“But he should come with—”
“He doesn’t want to.” Gerry looked away, and his shoulders tightened as he peered beyond the big glass windows at the world outside.
“He blames Aleks for what happened,” Thomas said. It wasn’t a question.
“He does. Wesley James Dawlick died after breaching the Polytech office with an AR-15 assault rifle with the intent of killing the man who fired him after so many loyal years of service. He killed Aleksander Sanna and his new husband, Thomas Aberthol, who had come into the office on a Saturday so that Mr. Sanna could catch Thomas up on the project he had been hired to complete. Thomas Aberthol was a top-notch programmer with an expunged record,” Gerry explained. Aleks had been shaking his head from the moment Gerry mentioned Wes.
“You can’t do that. You can’t defame Wes like that. He’s a good person. He doesn’t deserve—”
“What he deserves is a new life,” Gerry said. “We can give that to him once Wes Dawlick is dead. Cash and his men will torture and kill him to find you. Even feeding out the story that you’re dead, they probably won’t buy it. They’ll search for you, tracing the funds from your accounts. We’ve transferred everything into the name of your grandmother; you can pick it up in Greece and take the cash with you to France. Remember what I said—live modestly.”
“This is all too much,” Aleks said. Thomas saw his legs start to go out from under him. He caught Aleks as one of the agents slid a folding chair under him.
“Aleks, it’s going to be okay. We’re safe. We have the money to support our family. We’re lucky. It could have been so much worse.”
“I know. I just… I don’t know what to do, and I’ve never not known what to do.”
“You’re going to take your family to Paris. There’s a suitcase there near Thomas’s feet with $50,000; that should get you started. In a month or two you can take your new passport and go to Greece to pick up the rest of your money. What you do after that is up to you,” Gerry said and put a hand on his shoulder. “You survived something most people would not have. They’d have been tor
tured and slaughtered. We’ve seen it time and time again from these guys. Consider yourself lucky, and run.”
Aleks looked from Hannah to Thomas, then to Thomas’s mother, and finally to Gerry and nodded.
“You found out what happened to your father, you helped Hannah get medicine that may save her life, and we survived. It’s time to start over again,” Thomas said, tracing Aleks’s cheek.
“And we have each other. Did you mean it when you said you loved me?” he whispered against Thomas’s cheek.
“Yeah,” Thomas said with a breathless laugh, ignoring the eyes of the agents on them. “I do love you.”
“Then let’s take our family and go to Paris.”
κδ͵
THOMAS STOWED their suitcases—one apiece—in the overhead bin and took his seat next to Aleks on the nearly full aircraft. First class was the one concession Gerry allowed Aleks on their flight to Paris. They had a single suitcase each, so they looked like tourists, not fugitives. Each suitcase contained a load of money and a new fictitious passport. Though first-class passengers usually boarded first, the family boarded the plane last so that they weren’t sitting there as a show for the rest of the passengers. Late, they’d told the flight attendant, but in reality, Gerry just didn’t want them caught on camera photobombing anything. They needed to blend in and disappear.
Hannah fidgeted with her black pixie wig, and her grandmother put a hand over her hands.
“Wait until we take off, honey,” she whispered. Thomas could hear because they were the only ones in first class. The other—fictitious—first-class passengers had decided to be elsewhere. Apparently the FBI has no trouble making up imaginary people for them to fly with.
“Mr. Parker, would you like a drink before we take off?”
It took him a minute to figure out that the flight attendant was speaking to him. The government had made him, Aleks, and Hannah, Parkers. His mother had taken the surname Carpenter. They were all different people now, forever changed by the events at Polytech.