Deadly News: A Thriller (12 page)

When they arrived at the station, it was crazy. Many, many more people than the last time Abby had visited. This is what she always expected, how it was on television shows. Despite everything, she felt a little thrill of excitement. This still was, by default, her story. If she had to suffer though all of this, she might as well get something out of it.

They met the lieutenant, who looked frazzled, in her office.

“Shut the door! Shut the door,” she said, waving at them. “The noise is bad enough with it closed.”

Masterson leaned in one corner, slightly behind the lieutenant.

The lieutenant sat behind her desk, eyes closed once more. As Fe closed the door, the lieutenant rested the bridge of her nose on her fingers, elbows on desk.

“LT?” Fe asked, taking a seat.

She sighed and looked up, then leaned back in her chair. She looked at Abby. “Melcer. You know, I think you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

“It’s not like I wanted this to happen.”

The lieutenant made a dismissive gesture. “I’m just tired.” She let out a slow sigh. “Someone from the FBI wants to talk to you. Then Immigration.”

“ICE?” Delano asked.

“I don’t know. Foreign something. I’m just too deep in everything else to give a fuck.”

“Then what?” Abby asked.

“Then, Ms Melcer, you go back in protective custody, the FBI’s, and you cease to be my problem.”

“You’re just going to let them take her?” Fe said.

“We dropped the ball letting her go back to that hotel.” She shrugged. “And it’s the FBI, not terrorists. Which, unless I’ve gone over the edge, she actually did want us to give her over to.”

“I thought you were watching the building where Ecks was?”

The lieutenant looked between Delano, and Fe, then cast a glance behind her at Masterson. “Which one of you told her that?”

They all started to speak.

She put up both her hands. “Never mind, I don’t actually want to know.” She rested her head in her hands, the joint in an elbow popping, the sound being amplified by the desk. “Yes, Ms Melcer, they are. Our SWAT guys, and the FBI. But this is more serious than it was the last time you graced this office with your presence.” She looked up. “I don’t know if you have been watching the news lately, but that was a pretty serious attack. Several people died, almost everyone in the area was seriously injured.” She fixed her gaze on Abby. “You’re the only one who escaped unharmed.”

“Unharmed?”

“Compared to everyone else around you.”

“Lieutenant,” Fe said. “What are you saying?” She looked at Delano and Masterson, as if for support.

“Nothing.” She exhaled. “Now, there’s someone from the FBI waiting for you. Don’t make them wait long. You wouldn’t like them when they’re kept waiting”

Abby was taken to another conference slash interrogation room, though this one leaned more toward the former. A man was sitting on the table, one gray-suited leg hanging off the edge, watching a video. He turned it off when she entered.

She was alone now, Fe having pushed her through the door then shut it.

“Abby, right?”

It was obvious he already knew the answer, but Abby nodded anyway.

“Before we begin, do you need anything? Drink? I don’t know, donuts?” He chuckled.

Abby smiled and shook her head.

“Quiet one. All right, let’s get started.”

And so Abby once more told everything she knew. She was very careful to keep her story the same as the one she’d told Masterson.

After an hour, maybe two, of this, the agent—whose name Abby still didn’t know—was clearly disappointed at this consistency. He took a deep breath, released it as a sigh. It smelled like menthol cigarettes. “That’s all? Nothing you’ve left out?”

Abby shrugged. “It’s all I remember.”

“Okay then.” He looked up toward the ceiling, made a come here gesture with his fingers.

Abby followed the motion and spotted the camera under a tinted dome. She wondered what reason the installers had had for not just having it in the open. It also made her reconsider her earlier assessment that this was a conference room.

Shortly, the door opened, and another suited man entered. “Ready?”

The agent interviewing Abby shook his head. “We’ve got it all, see if you can’t get them to just use what we have. Let’s let her get some rest.” He smiled at Abby. “How’s that sound?”

What did he think she was, she thought, a little girl? She just smiled though, said, “Sounds great.”

She was taken to an undisclosed location. Undisclosed, “Since you’re a reporter,” someone had told her. This same person said they were blindfolding her for the same reason. They didn’t actually use a blindfold though, but one of those sleeping masks. It allowed light to seep in by her nose, but otherwise blinded her.

The combination of the rocking of the vehicle and the near blackness the mask afforded, and Abby was asleep before she realized she was drifting off.

She awoke to fingers on her neck. “What?” she said, looking around into blackness. She reached up and removed the mask. A woman, very young—a teenager Abby would guess, but probably at least twenty-one, given the way she was dressed, and that she was probably an agent—was straddling her. “She’s alive.”

There was laughter from outside the vehicle.

“Of course I’m alive,” Abby mumbled. She groaned. “Uh, can you, get off.”

“Sorry.” The agent got out, reached atop the vehicle where her glasses apparently were, and put them on. “Assholes,” she said turning back to the small group, who were all laughing.

One man was literally in tears, resting his hands on his knees. “Again!” he managed. “Oh, God! I can’t believe—” He cut himself off with laughter.

“Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, you ain’t gonna fool me again.”

This caused more laughter.

The woman turned back to Abby. “Come on, let’s leave these jackasses to their menial tasks. I’ll show you your quarters.”

“Huh?”

“Your room. Sorry, I was in the navy.”

She seemed insistent on helping Abby out, so Abby let her, despite being perfectly capable of stepping out of a vehicle unassisted.

They were in something like a warehouse, or a factory without the machines. It was all a dusty gray, and the dirty windows let in just enough light to illuminate the dust in the air.

Abby followed the woman up a flight of metal stairs, down a dimly lit hall, and to a steel door.

The agent removed keys from her pocket and opened the door. Then, turning to Abby, she reached into her other pocket, and removed a key. “Here,” she said, holding it out to Abby.

Abby took it, then entered her new home. There was a bed, but that was about all she could say for it. “How long am I going to be here?”

The door shut.

“Hey!” She walked up to the door. She could hear someone locking it. She jiggled the handle, then put her key in the lock and turned it. She yanked the door open.

“Ow!” the woman said, sucking her finger. “That hurt.”

“Why are you locking me in?”

“You have a key. You’re not locked in.”

“Then why lock it?”

“For your safety.”

“We’re not safe here?”

“Look, they tell me to lock the door, I lock the door.”

“They tell you to check my vitals, you jump me and check them.”

“Yeah, well. I meant it. I’m not falling for that crap again. You just looked dead.”

“Thanks.”

There was a silence.

“So what did you rip open my finger for?” She asked, looking at her finger. She lifted her head toward the door. “Hand me those?”

Abby looked at the door whose handle she was still griping. Keys dangled from the opposite knob. She removed them and gave them over.

“Thanks.”

“I wanted to know what’s going on. How long am I going to be here? And Ecks, where is he?”

“X? Is that a codename?”

Abby raised an eyebrow.

“You know, Men in Black, letters for names.”

Abby frowned. “Uh, no. It’s his name.”

“Hm. Well, I don’t know anything about that.”

“You guys had some place under surveillance,” she prodded.

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Still nothing there. We’re watching it downstairs if you want to come.”

Abby stared for moments. “Are you fucking with me?”

“No.”

Abby frowned, then shook her head. “Okay, let’s go then.”

The woman sighed, as if this was a big hassle. “You could have said that before we came all the way up here. Now they’re gonna be like, Oh, look who’s back, what were
you
up to?”

“They sound like little children.”

The woman nodded. “Come on then. No, lock the door.”

Back through the hall they went, down the stairs, and down some more to something like a basement, where several people were gathered, talking quietly or observing a large screen against the wall opposite the door Abby and her escort had just entered through.

There were boxes of pizza, bags of chips, and bottles of soda everywhere. Scattered throughout this, Abby spotted cans of Red Bull and generic coffee cups. It reminded her of some of the startups she’d covered, their LAN parties, or even their regular parties.

Everyone looked at the two arrivals, then went back to what they were doing without comment.

The woman leaned over to Abby, whispered in her ear. “Don’t trust it.”

“What?”

“Shh! They’re acting all normal, like they don’t care. That’s when you gotta watch out.”

This poor girl, Abby thought. She wondered how much crap she’d had to put up with. Downside to looking so young.

On the screen was a building. None of the lights were on inside it, and nothing seemed to be going on.

The woman saw Abby watching and said, in a normal voice, “Nothing’s happened recently.”

“Ecks is in there?”

“Like I said, I don’t know who that is. But the bad guys are in there. Some of them.”

“What will you do when they come out?”

“Depends.”

“What on?”

“On,” a man nearby interjected, “how they come out. Guns blazin’? Party time boys.” He sighed, as though this was entirely too unlikely for his liking. “Otherwise, we’ll just follow ‘em, see what they do. Then apprehend them at an opportune moment.”

“My friend’s in there—Ecks—do you know about him?”

“I—” he began, but the woman interrupted him.

“Ohhh,” she said, drawing it out, “The guy you’re with. Why didn’t you say that’s who you meant? Yeah, we think he’s in there. Boyfriend, right?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, we— Wait, which are you asking about?”

Abby frowned. Now she did kind of wonder if the girl was guessing or actually knew. “Both.”

“Okay. Actually, I guess video is the answer to both.”

“What!”

The seated man stood. “Agent Vasquez! Stop antagonizing her.” He turned to Abby. “She’s just joking.”

“Uh, yeah,” Agent Vasquez said. “Sorry. I… Um…”

“Your friend,” the man said, “we think he’s in there. A message was left with your voicemail service, that Ecks had a job to do. So we think he’s still alive.”

“Unless it’s a job he could do just as well dead.”

The man opened his mouth, but no words left it. He took in a breath. “I’m Agent Scott, by the way.” He shook her hand.

“What else did they say?”

“Nothing.”

“They just were checking in, letting me know what Ecks was up to?”

He shrugged. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. If you need anything, no matter what it is,” he smiled, “you just let Emily here know, and she’ll get it just as fast as she can.”

Agent Vasquez—Emily—smiled vapidly. “I’m your official bitch. I live to please you.”

Abby flattened her lips together to avoid smiling.

After a while it was clear no one expected anything to happen any time soon. However, it was better than being alone in a room—for now—so Abby stayed. She also wanted to be here just in case anything did happen.

Hours passed, people mostly left Abby alone. Emily eventually excused herself, and Agent Scott took her place.

“How you hanging in there?”

Abby turned her attention away from the screen to look at him. “I’m okay.”

He nodded. “That’s good.”

Silence.

Abby looked back toward the screen.

“So,” he offered.

She once more looked at him.

“How are you handling things?”

Abby laughed. “Did you just rephrase your question?”

He smiled. “Ah, I might have. Habit. Just trying to make you feel at ease.”

“Thanks. But I’m as at ease as I’m going to get for now.”

He nodded. “Yeah, of course. Okay then. I’ll just”—he looked around—“well, I’ll just sit here.”

Abby laughed again. “Okay, that sounds good.”

At some point, she must have put her head down on the table, because this was how she awoke. Not so much to commotion, as to the lack of one. She lifted her head from the table. The pain this caused in her neck was an efficient reminder not to fall asleep like a little kid. She rubbed at her neck as she tried to get her eyes to open.

When they did, she peered around the empty room. She rubbed her eyes, yawned, then stared at the screen for a few moments before realizing what she was seeing. Or what she wasn’t seeing. No longer could she see the building, but instead what looked like gravel, and what looked like a wall.

She stood suddenly. She exited the room, got turned around trying to find the stairs, but eventually did. On the main floor, there were a few vehicles still parked inside, but most of the ones she’d seen when she had arrived were gone.

“Hello?”

No reply came.

No way they just left her here. Wasn’t she supposed to be in protective custody? Her stomach dropped as her mind offered up the unwelcome possibility that this was another game ‘They’, were playing on her. But once her rational mind had time to process this thought, she dismissed at as impossible.

“Is anyone—” she stopped herself. Too many horror movies went this way, she thought. Instead of calling out again, she wandered around, looking for signs of anyone. She tried to check in one of the vehicles, but all the doors were locked. The only one that was unlocked was a sporty car. She flipped the sun visor down, but there were no keys. They wasn’t even an ignition. This prompted her to check the armrest, center console, and glove box, but all were entirely barren.