Authors: Jason Austin
“
Beaumont
must’ve been awfully desperate to blow up a school.”
“
MIT
was a mistake. No one was supposed to get killed. The last list he
sent me had three Boston firms on it, all contracted by the D.O.D.
All but one silently partnered with Millenitech, so I didn’t
bother to add anything.”
“
They
were all contributors to the recently finished lab, too, weren’t
they?”
“
Yes.
Thanks to Ross’s previous successes, they’d all beefed up
their security, so Ross demanded more money for the job.
Unfortunately for him, I had a company that was already losing money
and a workforce that was just hours from a full-scale walkout. Ross
didn’t want to wait for anything to change in his favor. He was
desperate to make a hit that PHANTOM—that
he
—
could
take credit for. He wanted the biotechs to know that wherever their
money went so did he. Beaumont was a fool to think he could control
Ross.”
Xavier
shook his head.
“
You
sure can pick ‘em,” he said to Glenda. “Your ex is
a terrorist, and not even a good one.”
“
Peter,”
Glenda sighed. She was positively exhausted from listening to the
confession. She was right—she didn’t know who Peter
Simonton was. She never did. The man she’d known had seen the
world through a child’s eyes—generous, but scared,
whimsical, but vulnerable, and constantly crying for attention. He
was also successful and thirty years older. She could lovingly bestow
all the TLC she wanted, yet, not worry about him making his way home
at night. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“
Look,
we haven’t got a lot of time,” Xavier said, equally
exhausted. “Deal or no deal, it’s obvious Wallace has
changed his plans. That last odd couple back in Seattle tried to buck
blast the lot of us. They weren’t just trying to pick off
pieces.”
“
That’s
why I came back,” Simonton said. “I’d heard the
news about the dead cops and all. I knew Glen was in trouble. I knew
Wallace had double-crossed me and I had to get her out of danger.”
He strained to look at her. “I wouldn’t blame you if you
hated me.” He took inventory of her expression. “Do you?”
Glenda
blinked. She was astounded he had the stones to ask.
“
No,
Peter. I don’t hate you,” she said. She folded the damp
bloodstained handkerchief in her lap. “I’m just extremely
pissed at you.”
“
You
have every right to be.”
“
I
know,” she said sourly.
“
I
just wanted to be with you, Glen. I love you.”
Xavier’s
blood curdled and he bit hard into his lip.
Glenda
shook her head. “Peter, you can't just turn around and declare
your love, after you do something so...horribly
unloving
.
My God, you’re
responsible for the death of an innocent man. And your wife may have
hated you, but to let her think you’re
dead
.
And what about your daughter? She thinks she’s lost her
father.”
“
Marcia
couldn’t be happier,” Simonton said. “I had a
seven-figure life insurance policy. And the last thing Amanda told me
was that she wished I were never her father. She hasn’t spoken
to me in four months. You really were all I had left, Glen. You were
the only reason I could find to go on.”
Glenda
finally forced one of her hands to cover Simonton's. The effort made
it seem like she was trying to uproot a tree with one arm.
Xavier
just stood there, the gun at his side. He felt another twinge of
sympathy for Simonton. No man could take
that
level of pity
from the woman he loved and feel good about it. And that's exactly
where Glenda's gesture had come from—not out of sympathy or
loving understanding...but pity. Pure...unadulterated...pity.
“
Have
they
been chasing us, too?”
Xavier asked Simonton. “Goddamn terrorists?”
“
What
are you talking about?” Simonton replied. “What would
they have to gain by hurting you? They’re not in league with
Wallace.”
Xavier's
eyes narrowed. Simonton was probably right. Breaking bread with
PHANTOM wouldn’t win Wallace any favor by a long shot. Still,
the fact that a terrorist group, no matter how disorganized, was
indirectly involved, only made things worse from any perspective.
“
What
are we going to do?” Glenda asked, Xavier.
Xavier
just looked down his nose at Simonton. “What do you have on
Beaumont?”
“
E-mails,
money transfers, everything,” Simonton answered.
“
All
of which incriminate you, too.”
“
I
wasn’t planning on being around for the welcoming committee.”
“
What
did you do with the evidence?”
“
I
encrypted it onto two data-pins and placed them in a safe deposit box
at the Federal Reserve downtown.”
“
Where’s
the key?”
Simonton
sneered. “You don’t honestly expect me to tell you?”
Xavier
reached down and snatched the asshole by the top of the shirt, along
with a few chest hairs for good measure. He had had enough of
Peter
Simonton.
“
I
expect
you to do exactly what you
pampered rich pricks have always done,” Xavier fumed. “You’re
going to cover your ass as well as you possibly can without the
slightest consideration to what or whom you use to do it.” He
bared his teeth like a rabid dog. “And right now,
I
am your cover. I am the
only thing standing between you and Wallace. Not to mention the FBI,
IRS, and a very long stay in a federal prison with a very horny
cellmate.” He paused, letting the notion take hold on Simonton.
“However, if that's all too subtle for you, you could always
fall back on the fact that I could just shoot you in the head.”
Simonton
looked past Xavier as if he were watching his pride leap out the
nearest window. “I put it in one of the salt bins in case I was
tracked here.”
Xavier
waited. This idiot was not going to make him ask again.
“
The
middle stack outside, fourth row from the bottom, third from the
right,” Simonton said. “The bin has a divot near the top
shaped like a lighting bolt.”
****
Xavier realigned the safety on
his MAG and stuck it in the rear of his waistband. The first few bins
of the fourth row had no others stacked on top, so he would be able
to reach right in and retrieve the key.
It's
over
, he thought. Once he got the key it would all be
over. He and Glenda would take the evidence to the feds and they'd be
in the clear.
But
then what about Simonton?
he thought.
The
craven coward would most certainly put up a fight if Xavier tried to
haul
him
in. And he wanted
that asshole present and accounted for if the evidence didn't pan
out.
I'll just have to
...A
sudden draft of air gave Xavier pause as it skimmed over his right
side. They
were
at
the Lake Erie shoreline, he thought; a brisk and sudden breeze was no
surprise; although it did require an open window. Or perhaps an open
door.
****
“
I understand you not
wanting Mr. Bad-ass Tough Guy out there to think less of you, but
just say yes,” Simonton pined. “Say yes, Glen, and we can
be on the first plane out of here. We can leave all this behind.”
“
You
don’t understand, Peter,” Glenda said. “This isn’t
about me being afraid of what other people think of me. It’s
about what
I
think of me. The reason I broke
it off was because I didn’t like who I was becoming with you.”
Simonton
frowned like he’d taken a swallow of year-old milk. “What’s
that supposed to mean? Didn’t I do everything for you? Didn’t
you always want to feel like a queen?”
“
That’s
exactly my point, Peter,” she said, offended. “I never
should have needed
anything
from you. I should have been able
to feel like a queen because of
me
,
not because of you.” She calmed, realizing that there was truly
no victim in their relationship—there never had been. “I
was wrong, Peter. Wrong for getting involved with you, no matter how
strained your marriage was. Wrong for letting myself get lost in
being valued by someone in a way that wasn’t real, and wrong
for letting it continue as long as it did.” She paused,
squaring her chest. “I guess I’m the one who should be
apologizing, Peter. I never was the woman I allowed you to believe I
was. Never.”
Simonton
suddenly didn’t look sad, anymore. Sad wouldn’t have
covered it. The whole world,
his
world, was now bleaker than he’d ever imagined. He might as
well have stayed in the Cayman’s where he could let the sun
bake him to dust and sweep him out to sea with the sands. “It
looks like I should’ve stayed dead, huh? Ian was right. I
shouldn’t have come back.”
Glenda
looked at him, piqued. “Someone else knows you’re here?”
****
If Xavier weren’t standing
outside the shadows, he would have never seen that club hammering
down at him. It caught a piece of his coat just before it thronged
into the salt bins. He reached for his gun, but before he could get
it anywhere near perpendicular, he’d caught the next swing in
his right arm. His gun was knocked to the ground and the pipe smashed
into it. The gun sparked and crackled as the shattered power supply
surged through the leads, rendering it useless. A drawback of MAG
guns was that their more intricate design made them slightly more
fragile than old-fashioned firearms. The extra parts meant there was
more to break.
Xavier
backed away from one swing after another. Head, gut, head, gut. The
guy was big, but slow. Xavier waited for another swing, and then dove
for the big man’s mid-section. The attacker absorbed Xavier's
flimsy 170 pounds and spun him to the ground. He then dropped to one
knee, drew up the pipe and thrust it at Xavier’s head like a
stake. Xavier turned at the neck and it missed him by millimeters.
With the pipe’s ends plumb beside both their heads, Xavier
gripped the end by his own head and thrust his other hand, hard as he
could, against the top of the pipe. The other end smacked the goon
square on the temple. The goon reflexively loosed the pipe and Xavier
took reign of it. In one fluid motion, Xavier thrust upward, and
smashed it across the goon’s nose. Trumpets of pain thrummed
throughout the dusty loft. Xavier was ecstatic. The big ones always
screamed like little girls when you hit their soft spots. Xavier then
dealt out an uppercut and the goon's oversized, uncoordinated ass
fell aside, allowing Xavier to hustle to his feet. Once he was up,
Xavier went street-style on the goon, stomping the holy hell out of
him. As Xavier raised the pipe for a fitting finish, he heard a
scream from the direction of the office that could have only been
Glenda. He then sprinted for the office hoping to find his gun on the
way.
As
he rounded the corner of the pyramid, Xavier saw that two other men
had joined the party and were leading Glenda and Simonton out into
the warehouse. In front, was an arrogant-looking prick in a trench
coat. The other a mean-looking watchdog, standing behind Glenda and
Simonton aiming a MAG at their spines.
“
You
didn’t,” said the trench coat. The big goony one's
absence addled him. When a bestial groan wafted from somewhere behind
the bins, he nearly pulled his jaw out of place with one hand. “Let’s
not make this difficult. I couldn’t stand to see something
happen to such an attractive woman. Waste not, want not.”
Xavier
looked at Glenda, his eyes percolating with the acrid awareness of
failure.
In
a comically non-precise move—and probably not without
motivation to impress Glenda as well as save his ass—Simonton
threw himself backward at the little watchdog, catching him off
guard. The watchdog collapsed backward and his gun hand cracked
against a stack of pallets. The MAG fell to the floor and slid off
into the shadows.
Playing
to Simonton’s poorly devised cue, Xavier dead-aimed the trench
coat and tackled him under the cloak of distraction. They both went
to the floor trading body shots.
Glenda
watched in panic as the dual fights played out in the dim light of
the warehouse.
The gun
,
she thought instantly. She hadn’t seen where the watchdog lost
it, but it had to be around somewhere. She quickly began fumbling
around in the shadows, almost giddy with the notion of getting the
drop on somebody else for a change.
Off
in another corner, Peter Simonton was getting mopped. The watchdog
slugged him hard in the face, knocking him backwards into a pile of
splintered pallets. Simonton recovered quickly and then grabbed one
of the larger shards, pulling it into batting fashion. The watchdog
was now back on his feet, but was bent over and away from Simonton,
with his head in the shadows. Simonton held the wooden club aloft and
galloped toward the man full throttle. His eyes went wide just a
nanosecond before the henchman fired. The watchdog had retrieved his
gun, just short of Glenda’s reach, then spun and blasted
Simonton, center mass. Simonton slid into a corner, oozing blood and
entrails all over the salt-stained floor. Glenda’s screams
ripped through the warehouse and the watchdog enjoyed knocking her
unconscious.