Authors: Kristi Lea
This was the last day of her life.
Jess rubbed her bare arms as a chill breeze wafted
from a duct on the ceiling. Tony had told her that the air conditioning was
kept extra cold to compensate for all of the computers. She wrapped shaky
fingers around a chipped mug of hot black coffee, which she had poured for the
warmth on her hands rather than to drink.
The small meeting room where she waited, deep
within the CIA office, was windowless and beige. The drab office chairs
surrounding a plastic laminate conference table looked like a cheap dining room
set. It was an odd counterpoint to the vast array of high-tech computing
equipment in the next room.
It was just another wait. Her life had been full
of them. Waiting for adulthood. Waiting for her big break. Waiting through
Charles’s illness. Waiting for the nightmare to be over. Then waiting for five
days to leave protective custody at the hospital, only to sit and wait for two
more at the CIA office while they extracted data and analyzed photos and video
recordings from her necklace. The last wait was the hardest. This time, she was
waiting for the end of her world, both hoping it would come quickly and
dreading the big unknown yet to come.
Her suitcase stood in one corner of the room,
containing a few changes of clothes, a minimum of toiletries, and a few hundred
bucks cash. Maybe this trip into anonymity would go smoother than her last
attempt.
The door to the meeting room opened, and Tony
walked in. His frame filled most of the doorway, but couldn’t block the hum of
the machinery behind him. He closed the door behind him, and did something she
had rarely seen him do. He smiled. It was a boyish grin for a man of his size
and made him look far kinder than his normal clench-jawed grimace.
“We got what we needed, Mrs. Kingsbury,” he said
softly.
She quirked her lips at his formality. “You don’t
work for me, Tony. Call me Jessica. Or whatever my new name is going to be.”
He pulled out a chair and sat down across from
her, opening a large envelope. “Keep your new identity between yourself and the
Federal Marshalls office. They will know how to find you if we need you before
the trial.”
She nodded. She had heard all of the rules and
procedures already.
“I brought you the photos that you had asked for.”
He pushed a small USB drive across the table. “The drive is empty, except for
the pictures of your paintings, just like you asked. Just don’t go loading them
onto the web, okay?”
She smiled and clutched it tightly. She wasn’t
supposed to take anything from her former life with her, but she had asked Tony
for that small favor. She knew there was no chance she could bring half a dozen
oversized canvases with her. But she wanted snapshots of her own paintings—the
ones the FBI still had in their evidence room.
“What is so important about those, if you don’t
mind my asking?”
Jessica’s fingers stiffened around the drive, and
she summoned a smile. “Sentimental value. They are all of places that Charles
and I had traveled.”
He returned her smile with the same blank face
that he customarily wore. She used to think of it as impassive. Given how long
he had concealed his undercover assignment, it struck her how much of her
personal life he had hidden behind that indifferent facade. Thankfully, he
didn’t ask any more questions about the pictures.
A knock sounded at the door. Tony spoke in hushed
tones to one of the officers from the computer room while Jessica stowed the
flash drive in a travel wallet that she wore wrapped around her waist. It also
held a very small amount of cash. This time, she would take no chance of
getting separated from her valuables.
The two men gave her a glance and then Tony shook
the other man’s hand. “It is done. Officers are on their way to arrest Wilson
now. Let’s get you out of town.”
They traveled the maze of hallways to an
underground parking garage where the woman from the Marshall’s office, Officer
Minnie, waited with a very homey-looking SUV. As she opened the rear door for
the suitcase, Jessica looked wistfully at the window sticker. It was a line of
stick figures in various heights, clearly meant to represent a family. Mother,
Father, three children, and a dog.
She hefted the suitcase in and slammed the door
shut with just the tiniest hitch to her breath.
“Do you mind if I ride along? I cleared it with
Minnie and Tony.” Noah’s voice washed over her like silk.
Jess whirled. His own bruises had faded the past
week, and he was freshly shaved. His eyes were bright but uncertain. Something
welled in her, some combination of hope and sadness that chipped away at the
detachment she had built around herself this past week.
“Just as far as your first stop. Then I’ll head
home. Only if you want me to.” His words sounded rushed, anxious.
Jessica looked from Noah to Tony to Minnie to the
pair of armed guards behind Tony. It was Minnie who spoke, who gave her
permission. “It’s a little unorthodox, but I understand. After today, there
can’t be any contact with people from your former life. Sometimes it helps to
make that last goodbye.”
“I would like that.” Jessica said. The words “last
goodbye,” whispered through her mind as she climbed silently into the passenger
seat of the SUV. To her surprise, Noah took the keys and sat behind the wheel,
setting out both a cell phone and what looked like a walkie-talkie on the
dashboard. “Minnie will follow in another unmarked car, in sight. And in constant
contact.”
Jessica just nodded again and sat quietly as the
tiny parade emerged from what turned out to be the parking garage beneath a
high-rise apartment building that obviously connected to the CIA’s underground
labyrinth of an office.
They headed north on 101, Minnie trailing behind
them in a dusty Civic. Santa Barbara was long behind them before either of them
attempted to speak.
“They say it could be years before this thing gets
brought to trial,” said Noah.
“Mmm.”
“Just find somewhere out of the spotlight. Don’t
try to be a star, and you’ll be safe.”
Jess huffed, irritation building in her chest. “Is
that what you think of me? I have some kind of complex where I’m constantly
seeking attention?”
“No, I just….” He let the words trail away into an
awkward silence.
“You just what?”
“Call me if there’s a problem, okay? I don’t care
what it is. I don’t care where you are. I will be there. Jessica, I…”
She leveled her gaze on his profile. He gripped
the steering wheel like a life raft and kept his eyes glued to the road as she
continued. “Because you’re the one with the complex. You have to be the hero
everywhere you go. Always trying to save people, even when they aren’t worth
saving.”
“Never say that.” He ripped his eyes from the
twisty coastal highway just long enough to pin her with an angry stare. “Never
say you aren’t worth saving. Your smile, your laugh, your art…If I had these
past few weeks to do over, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
She opened her mouth then closed it to bite down a
tart reply.
***
The setting sun glittered over the Pacific Ocean
as they headed north up the coast. Reds and gold, pink and amber. Traffic
wasn’t heavy, but the steady stream of trucks and tourists on the coastal
highway had separated Noah from Minnie and her Civic. Their planned rest stop
was maybe an hour ahead: a nondescript exit with a hotel, a diner, and a gas
station. They would rendezvous there.
Noah’s phone rang, piercing the silence that had
fallen over them. Noah glanced at the number. It was Thompson from the LAPD. He
made a silencing gesture to Jessica, then put it on speakerphone. “What’s up
lieutenant?”
“Sorry to bother you Noah. I have a heads up for
you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I can’t give details. But tonight’s pickup didn’t
go as planned. Be careful out there.”
The words sent a shiver down Noah’s spine, and he
tightened his grip on the wheel. The cars ahead of him all had on brake lights,
and he slowed down too.
“Right. Thanks Thompson.” Noah clicked off the
phone.
He glanced at his passenger.
Her eyes were wide with concern in the dimly lit
cabin, and her words were slow and measured. “Was that the LAPD officer who
searched my house?”
“Yes. He’s the one who got Lindsay to safety. Call
Minnie. She can’t be too far behind.”
The trail of brake lights slowed to a crawl as
highway approached an accident scene up ahead. Emergency vehicles swarmed
around a jackknifed tractor trailer that blocked parts of both sides of the
highway. Orange cones compressed the highway down to lane, and Noah put on his
blinker, trying to slowly merge.
Jessica muttered something.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t get through on the phone. Every time I
dial, it goes straight to a busy signal.”
Noah shook his head. “With all this traffic, there
must be a hundred people trying to make a phone call right now.” He stepped on
the brake as the cars in front of him halted again.
They were just coming up on the accident scene.
Highway patrol was diverting everyone off on the exit ramp.
Jessica pointed to a green exit sign. “Maybe the
phone signal will be better off the road away from all the other drivers? But
after this next exit, but the one after that isn’t for another twenty-three
miles.”
On the other side of it, the southbound traffic
was just as slow as the Northbound had been. It could take an hour or more for
them to work their way back.
They pulled into the parking lot of a convenience
store. The road was jammed with other drivers, some scrambling to find their
way back to the freeway and others melting into the cross streets. Jessica
handed the phone back to him. “Still no signal. Minnie was behind us, so she
must be caught in the same jam, and she will get diverted off right here too.
Right?”
“Maybe not. Did you hear that last radio report?
They are closing the highway back a couple of miles until they can clear that
wreck.” He pulled up his GPS app and scrolled through the maps.
Jessica’s hand drummed on the passenger door
armrest as she stared off into the distance.
“Are you okay?” He reached over to take her other
hand.
She jumped at his touch and her eyes flew to his,
looking slightly unfocused for a moment. Then her shoulders slumped. “Sorry. I just…with
the phone not working, and Thompson’s warning…I just…”
“You’re safe, Jessica. Safe with me. If we take
the state road, we should be able to make it to our meeting place.”
***
If it weren’t for the popping sound, Jessica would
not have opened her eyes to see the oncoming car. One moment, Jessica sat
watching the trees whoosh by the car and counting yellow stripes on the
pavement. The next thing she knew, she was wide awake, heart shocked into
action.
That was gunfire
Noah swore.
The car jerked, the back end spinning toward the
trees. Noah jerked the wheel hard, trying to correct, throwing her into the
door despite the snug seatbelt. Brakes screeched.
More gunfire.
“Hang on.”
Jess pressed herself back against her seat as
visions of the road spun around them.
Trees in the dusk, looming above. Rays of red and
purple, swirling. Deep shadows cast by the car headlights. A jerk as the car
hit a ditch.
They bumped down the ditch. Jess heard a voice
screaming as the car rolled, sending them head over heels, metal crunching and
glass shattering. She squeezed her eyes shut. The smell of smoke was the last
thing she remembered.
Noah woke to the metallic taste of blood and a
throbbing pain over one temple. Somewhere two people were arguing.
The scene around him made no sense. He was laying
down, yet not, in almost total darkness. From somewhere far off, a watery
yellow light illuminated the hood of his car. It all looked wrong. Tilted.
The sound of a car engine roaring away brought him
more fully awake.
The car lay at a precarious angle on its side, and
he was still strapped into the driver's seat in a pool of shattered glass. He
lay on his side with the bulk of the car looming above him.
Jessica.
He blinked, trying to focus on where she sat next
to him. Above him. Or should have been.
She was gone.
He somehow managed to free himself from the
seatbelt and climb out through where the windshield used to be. His hands were
cut and bleeding and his throbbing eye began to swell shut. He had to find her.
He reached back into the car to find the glove compartment. The angle was
awkward, painful, and the door to the box didn't give at first.
With a roar of frustration, he pounded it and the
box opened. Noah grabbed his gun and shoulder holster. His cell phone was
nowhere to be seen.
He scrambled back up the sloping ditch toward the
roadway, trying to figure out which way the other car—the one he had heard—had
gone.
The road wound back toward the highway where he'd
exited. If he went that way, he could call for help. But whoever had run them
off the road and kidnapped Jess would not have headed back to bright lights and
emergency vehicles. He turned away and began walking.
***
Jessica stifled a groan as she came to with a rag
in her mouth and the smell of Harry's sour cigarette breath wafting across her
nostrils.
“Welcome back.” He smiled, baring teeth that were
far too white for a guy with a crooked nose who reeked of boiled garlic.
Jessica shrank back. She was propped upright
against some sort of wall, her hands and feet tied together in front of her.
The floor seemed to tilt underneath her and her vision fuzzed into stars. He
stomach protested and she gagged over the cloth.
Harry stood up and took his stench with him. “I
don't believe our guest cares for your yacht.”
Jess blinked as the floor seemed to heave again.
“Shut up, Harry.”
Jess shrank from the familiar woman’s voice. Tallie.
She tried to turn her head to really see where she was. A lone yellowish light
shone from a table lamp, illuminating what looked like a small efficiency
apartment. A wood table and chairs sat against one wall near a stairwell
leading up. Next to that was a wall of cabinets with a sink and small stove.
High round windows showed a fleeting glimpse of more tepid light from a deck
above. The middle of the room held a large sectional couch patterned in a
cheery floral chintz. Tallie sat sprawled against one overstuffed arm, her
normally pristine hair mussed and her eye makeup dripping from the corners of
her eyes like black tears.
She smiled as she met Jessica’s gaze. The smile
bared her teeth and drew the skin taut across a wrinkle-free forehead and
cheekbones. Facelifts and eye jobs kept the woman looking young enough on
camera, but gave the feral gleam in her eyes a new menace.
Jessica shivered, a deep quaking shiver that she
couldn’t stifle.
“What, nothing to say? Where’s the surprise?
Where’s the indignation? Goodness, Harry, take off her gag and let’s hear what
she’s got.” Tallie let her mountain drawl slip into the words.
Jessica cringed as Harry reached over her and
yanked through her hair to loosen the knot that held the cloth tight against
her lips. She drew in a deep breath as it was removed.
He chucked her under the chin, pushing hard on a
tender spot along her jaw.
“Let’s hear it,” Tallie said expectantly.
Jessica tried to lick parched lips, but her tongue
felt dry and sticky like a slug.
Tallie uncrossed her legs, plunked her cocktail
down on a table and stood, venom spewing from her mouth. “Now’s your chance.
Ask me why you’re here. Beg me to let you go. Promise never to tell.”
Jessica knew the type. She’d glimpsed bits of this
madness before, in others. Tallie had long since traded love and happiness for
the power and financial security of her Senator husband. She hadn’t just
forgiven him his transgressions, she had abetted them. And now that the whole
scheme had unraveled, the woman needed someone to blame, someone to punish.
Harry kicked her Jessica in the hip, sending
shooting pains down her leg. “Answer the lady.”
She tried to swallow the sound, but a small
whimper escaped her lips.
“Go upstairs and get the boat ready, Harry. We
need to have a little girl talk.”
Jess watched as her old teacher and friend bore
down on her, one swaying step at a time. Tallie stopped just in front of her
and perched on the arm of the sectional.
When she started talking, her voice was softer
than Jess expected. Kind almost. “This must be how you felt when your Charles
died. They killed him today, you know. My husband. When they came to arrest
him. Oh, the papers will print that it was a suicide. But he would never have
pulled the trigger if they hadn’t backed him into a corner.”
Her voice trailed off and her eyes looked
unfocused. Bloodshot. And her words slurred.
“I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.
I always expected to outlive him, of course. But not like this. Not with the
scandal and the cops…” Tallie gave Jessica an assessing glance. “What would you
do in my shoes?”
Their gazes held for a long moment before Jessica
found her words. “I tried to run away.”
Tallie smiled, this time wistfully. She nodded her
head as though agreeing with a voice that only she could hear. “Yes. Go
someplace new. Somewhere that no one knows me. Where no one will whisper behind
my back. Or pity me.”
Jess knew. Knew the crushing despair that Tallie
must have felt when she heard the news. The sense of floating that would
follow. The weeks of agonizing over his last minutes, of questioning every
step, every decision. The wondering. The fake platitudes. The reporters. She
closed her eyes against the swell of emotions as she relived them. Every one of
them.
“Tallie,
I—“
Tallie’s eyes narrowed on Jess and came into sharp focus. “
You what?
”
Jessica shrank back at the snarl in the woman’s
voice.
“If it weren’t for
you
, my husband would be
alive. If it weren’t for
you
, I wouldn’t have to run away. If it weren’t
for
you
, my life would be perfect.” She punctuated each sentence with a
menacing prowl forward toward where Jessica lay, bound and helpless, against
the wall. “
You
are the cause of this. And
you
will pay.”
Abruptly, Tallie whirled on one heel and hurried
from the room, leaving Jessica to shiver alone and unguarded.
She pushed herself to her feet, looking
frantically for something, anything, to cut the bindings from her hands.
Kitchen. Kitchens had knives.
With her legs bound together she could barely
balance, so she leaned her back against the wall and inched along it toward the
cabinet drawers that might offer her freedom. The floor swayed again and
Jessica could make out the sounds of arguing coming from above. Harry and Tallie.
She wondered if anyone else was on board.
She was only about two feet from the corner of the
granite counter when the ship lurched to a halt, throwing her forward. She
brought her hands up to shield her face, knowing instinctively that she
couldn’t catch her fall. Only soften it.
She half-crawled, half-scooted the rest of the
distance on the floor and began opening drawers. On the third, she gave a small
prayer of thanksgiving. Steak knives. Jess sank to her butt on the floor and
sawed at the bindings between her feet. Above her, she heard a loud crack, and
shuffling noises.
Her heart raced and her hands sweated with fear,
not knowing what was happening.
When the plastic binding around her ankles hung by
a thread, she kicked her legs. The binding wrenched and burned as it cut into
her skin, but the plastic gave.
Another noise from outside. A buzzing, like a
chain saw. Her time was nearly up.
There was no good way to hold a knife and slice at
the plastic that held her wrists at the same time. She tucked the handle of the
knife between her knees and tried to saw the binding by moving her hands, but
the knife kept slipping. Finally, she laid her hands on the ground and
positioned the knife between them, serrated edge down. She wriggled until her
foot lay on the handle and then pulled upright, leveraging her body weight and
the knife edge against the binding.
Again and again she heaved. Her wrists ached. Her
fingers tingled. And the plastic barely gave.
She was maybe halfway through when the footsteps
descended the stairs.
Tallie’s voice floated down toward her. “You
should have run away when you had the chance. Hidden yourself where no one
could find you. But you didn’t. You contacted me. Too bad for you.”
Jessica heard a metallic click and felt the barrel
of a gun against the back of her head. She froze.
Tallie gave her a shove, slamming Jessica against
the wall. The knife tumbled from her hands and the other woman kicked it away.
“Stand up really slow, or this will go badly for
you.”
Jessica glanced at her wrists. The plastic was
only partially severed and still too strong for her to pull apart herself. She
tasted blood where her teeth had crashed into her cheek. She could try to run,
but the quarters were close enough that even a drunk Tallie would likely hit
her somewhere.
“I don’t think this could go any worse than it
already has.” Jess spit out a mouthful of blood.
“Don’t be so sure. Harry, bring the other one
down.”
Jess watched in horror as Harry shuffled down the
stairs with a dripping wet man. His face was bloodied, his arms wrenched behind
his back, and Harry’s gun at his temple.
Noah.
***
It hurt to breathe. Somewhere in the midst of
their struggle, one of the bastard’s steel toed boots had collided with Noah’s
ribcage.
The road from the car accident had led to a small
dock with slips for half a dozen boats. A strip of sandy beach and a bait shop,
closed for the night, completed the picture of a tidy vacation spot for
fishermen and vacationers. In the parking lot sat an SUV with Tennessee plates,
still warm. Two ships in for the night were closed up tight, but another was
maybe a few hundred yards from shore, heading out to sea.
The motorboat emblazoned with the bait shop’s
telephone number hadn’t been locked down for the night.
Hope and terror had swelled in Noah as he neared
the slow-moving yacht. He saw no signs of anyone on board. Maybe it wasn’t too
late. He killed the motor to his small vessel and swam for the edge, knowing
that his gun, wet, would be all but useless.
It was on the last rung of the side ladder where
Noah realized that he was wrong about there being no one on board. A beefy arm
punched him in the face, knocking his jaw sideways before hauling him the rest
of the way on the boat. The details of the fight were pretty fuzzy, but he was
pretty sure he had landed a few good punches before a particularly vicious
shove sent him sprawling on the deck, followed by that kick to his ribs.
Consciousness floated in and out as the senator’s
wife appeared from below decks to scream at her henchman. Then he was marched
down the stairs and back up again with Jessica. Tallie Wilson and a man she
called Harry tied Noah and Jess together, back-to-back onto a flagpole in the
center of the rear deck, next to a stack of wooden lounge chairs.
“Noah. Wake up damn you. You have to help me.
Please. You can’t die like this. I won’t let you die like this.” Jessica’s
voice sounded far away, like the gulls and the slurping of blood in his ears.
No, that wasn’t blood. It was water. Waves rocked the ship. The engine had been
shut off.
Noah shook his head trying to clear it, but the action
sent a fresh band of stars scurrying across his vision. He heard a familiar
buzzing sound, but couldn’t quite place it.
“Noah. Noah.”
Jessica’s elbow found the tender spot in Noah’s
ribs.
“Please. See if you can break my hands free. Keep
your eyes open, or we’re both going to die.”
Something in that last plea cleared some of the
fuzz from his brain. He tried to ignore the pains that came from various parts
of his body as he focused on where he was and what he was doing. She shoved her
elbow in his ribcage again.
“Ow. Stop. I’m awake.”
“Hurry, can you break these.” She shoved her hands
toward him again.
Tallie and Harry hadn’t taken the time to tie his
hands. Instead they had hurriedly wrapped a length of plastic-y rope around
their shoulders. “I think so. Hang on.”
He took her hands in his and felt for the plastic
ties. She cringed as he pulled and the plastic gave way with a snap. “Sorry”
“That’s OK. Don’t you dare black out again. We
have to get off this boat. Now.”
She shifted around and soon the ties that bound
their shoulders slackened as Jessica ducked out from under them. In a moment,
she was hauling him to his feet.
Something exploded behind them, knocking him back
to the deck. A wave of heat rushed overhead. Fire.
Noah scrambled to his hands and knees toward the
railing. There was a round life preserver tied there, the sort that folks used
as decoration on the walls of their homes. He freed the clips that held it, and
turned to take Jessica's hand.