Justified Means (Book One) (The Agency Files) (24 page)

As each hour passed, her fidgeting grew worse until even Jordan noticed and commented. “Do you miss cigarettes?”

“Cig—no! I don’t smoke. Never have. It’s a nasty habit.”

“My mom used to smoke and she got all jumpy like you when she was quitting. That’s all.”

“I’m just new at this. I have to learn to be patient and enjoy the quiet.”

“Well, I don’t have to like it, and I don’t. It’s stupid. If he wasn’t such a freak about work, he wouldn’t have gotten us into this.”

Even as the boy spoke, Claire saw the droop in John’s shoulders. “Hush. Your father is a hero. He’s going to help put a stop to criminals. Without him, people would get away with hurting lots of people. You should be proud.”

“We’re hiding out because of him,” the boy insisted, not even attempting to keep his voice quiet. “Mom and Katie are scared; we’re all stuck in this stupid little house in the middle of nowhere, and for what? Stupid computer stuff.”

At a loss for words, Claire struggled to speak, but couldn’t. She’d never heard such venom spewed toward anyone in family from such a small person. Just as she started to assure him he’d think differently as an adult, Keith’s voice from the corner interrupted. “Jordan, do you know any kids at school who don’t have a lot of money?”

“Yeah. There’s some.”

“What would you do if one of those kids hung their only jacket up on the hook in the classroom and another kid, a very wealthy one, took it knowing that it was the only thing keeping the kid warm?”

“I’d tell the teacher.”

“What if that meant you had to stay after school and tell the story to the principal. Wouldn’t your parents be mad that they had to wait?”

“No. They’d be proud of me because I—” He flushed. “Oh.”

“That’s right, Jordan. It’s an inconvenience, but your father is protecting innocent people from losing their money. He’s doing a very good thing that he couldn’t have done—he couldn’t have helped anyone—if he hadn’t been such a dedicated employee while trying to provide for his family. Remember what we talked about?”

The boy nodded, but still looked surly. Brian tossed his magazine and stood. “Want to take a walk with me? Maybe we’ll find a lizard or something.”

Claire’s eyes followed them out the door, across the short dirt drive, and into the scrubby brush that seemed to stretch endlessly. Her mind felt numbed by hours of inactivity, her body visibly twitching as if demanding action of some kind. Keith’s voice startled her again. “Do push-ups, wall push-ups, squats, stretches, or something. You have to keep fit, so you might as well take advantage of the time you have.”

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

“I’ll sleep. I know what I’m doing. Just move. You don’t have to sit there and stare at the door or the phone.”

So, whenever she was awake, she played tea party with Katie, helped Jordan with his thousand piece puzzle, and gave herself the best workout she could within the “four walls” of a thirteen hundred square foot house in the middle of nowhere.
Melissa Frielich held herself aloof, and no matter how much she tried, Claire couldn’t get the woman to relax and chat.  John, she ignored.

Day turned into night so slowly that she hardly noticed until Keith demanded that she try to sleep. As much as she thought it’d help, it didn’t. Every sound jarred her awake. Each snore, shuffle, howl of a nearby coyote, each gentle click of the lock in the door as Keith did a survey around the perimeter woke her from her fitful sleep. He’d promised that she’d adjust, but Claire didn’t think so.

By day three, all her theories seemed shattered. As she picked at scrambled eggs, again, she grumbled that every logical thing seemed overlooked by Mark and his team. “We’re wasting precious time here while they twiddle their thumbs. They have a hacker; we need him. Why are we just sitting here?”

Brian’s voice, clipped and short as always, answered her before Keith could say a word. “Logic equals death.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means,” Keith interrupted, sending a warning look at their colleague, “that if it is clearly logical, then it’s exactly what we’re expected to do. We have to think outside that box but no
t so much that our unexpected is expected too.”

“Deliberate randomness?” It made perfect sense, but didn’t at the same time.

“Exactly.” Brian nearly beamed as if she’d answered the million-dollar question rather than asked one.

“We’ve been here five days! All that time, the hacker—”

“Worked.” At her stunned expression, Brian rolled his eyes. “You thought otherwise? Come on.”

“Back down, Brian. She’s working it out just like we both did.”

“Sorry.”

“No you’re not, but thanks anyway.” Claire shot her cousin a grateful look and went to scrape the rest of her eggs into the garbage disposal. She couldn’t eat another egg—

At the buzz of Brian’s phone, Keith turned. One look at Brian’s face was all he needed. While Claire rushed to read the one word message on the screen, “GO,” Keith began throwing everything not in bags into them. “Children in the van with Melissa, John in the Jeep. Claire, you’ll go with Brian, I will take John, you two take the rest.”

The Frielichs all stared at the three “Agency” workers, terrified. “I want to go with my family.” John tried to sound assertive, but fear shook his hands and left the faintest tremor in his voice.

“Remember, this may be a drill. We have to take it seriously, but let’s go. You’ll go exactly as I’ve said. We have a contract. Go.”

Children whimpered, Jordan protesting as Brian swept his puzzle into the box without regard for the work he’d put into it. Claire dumped canned goods into boxes and piled the bread and chips on top. The refrigerated goods went into the oversized ice chest, and into the van. She barely had time to grab toothbrushes from the medicine cabinet before Brian pushed her out the door. “You’re taking too long.”

“But—”

“Get in the van now.”

A glance at Keith reassured her. Her cousin nodded and pointed at the van’s passenger’s seat as he climbed into the Jeep, seemingly alone. John, already hidden in the back seat, must be kept from view at all costs. Now that the excitement had arrived, even with adrenaline pumping and her eagerness to see the job finished, Claire’s heart filled with dread. She now understood what the men meant. Moving meant danger. As Brian drove down the driveway and turned left onto the dirt road that led to the highway, she shook with nervousness, feeling ridiculously exposed. The only thing that kept her from crying was knowing Keith followed right behind them.

And then Keith turned right.

“What is he doing? Where is he going? Brian!”

Her verbosity-challenged escort ignored her and bumped over the road as if
her banshee-like screams didn’t threaten to cause permanent hearing loss. When the children began to sniffle, he sent her a warning look and said, “Stuff it.”

“But why is he going that way! What—”

“Because it’s smart. Now quit freaking everyone out.”

She hadn’t heard him speak so many words at one time, but regardless, Claire was livid. Keith hadn’t even hinted that he wasn’t following them. What if the guy’s—she couldn’t remember John’s boss’
s name anymore—goons found him? He’d be all alone. They’d be dead! She started to remind Brian of the danger of being alone with the target when the man clamped is hand around her wrist. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

“Brian, are we safe?” Melissa Frielich sounded nearly as panicked as Claire felt.

“Ma’am, we’re professionals—well, Keith and I are—and we won’t do anything to jeopardize you or your family. Claire is a rookie in training and isn’t used to sleep deprivation.”

“Jeopardize? Deprivation? Rookie? What is this, expand your vocabulary day?”

Brian didn’t respond, but the look on his face clearly said, “If you consider those words an expansion of anyone’s vocabulary, you’re more pathetic than I assumed.” She ignored the exasperated expression on his face and turned to do her job. She could reassure this family even if she did think everyone around her was half-crazed and ridiculous.

“We’re fine. I’m just used to having a clearly defined work plan. Sorry for freaking out on you like that.”

Katie’s whimpers grew to decided wails. The baby, clearly angling for a career in singing barbershop style, sent up his own screech. Yeah, he’d be a tenor. Their driver, still visibly irritated with her, sent eloquent glances her way, but Claire chose to ignore them. If the guy couldn’t “use his words,” she wasn’t going to “listen.”

Once on the highway, they whizzed down the barren road, seeing few cars and even fewer signs of civilization. The road wound and curved, occasionally through towns that looked as barren and dead as the vegetation around them, until they came to another highway. Just as they neared some semblance of civilization, Jordan insisted he needed to use the bathroom.

Without blinking twice, Brian reached into the console, pulled out a zip-lock bag, and handed it to her. “Pass it back.”

She tried not to shudder as she turned to hand it to Melissa, and then winced as she heard him whisper, “But Mom, I need to go number two!”

“Um, he needs—”

“To use the bag. We can’t stop. If you need to go back to help him, crawl under or around—not over
—the seat.”

Claire stared at him as if he
were as much of a lunatic as she’d imagined, but kept her mouth shut. Even that drove her to distraction. He gloated over there under those ridiculous sunglasses; she could almost see it in the way he held his chin. As they pulled onto an interstate, Jordan began crying about the indignities he was forced to endure, and Claire cracked a window.

“What do I do with the bag?”

Brian dug through the console again, pulling out a plastic sack from a grocery store she couldn’t identify and handed it to Claire. “Zip it and put it in here. We’ll dump it when we stop for gas.”

“How long—”

He interrupted Melissa mid-sentence. “We’ll be driving all night.”

“I can’t keep the baby cooped up in that car seat that long! He’ll be screaming again if we don’t let him out soon.”

“Then he screams. Give him a cup, something to eat, whatever, but we don’t stop until we need gas. Even then, you don’t get out of the van. Period.”

“But—”

“Just wait.” Brian’s voice screamed a warning even though it was almost inaudible in the back seat. “Claire, write down why she isn’t getting out and pass it back.”

“Why—”

“Are you really that stupid? Why did Keith do what he had to with his last case?”

She didn’t want to do it. It seemed cruel to throw up reminders of how dangerous their trip was, but Claire didn’t have the inner strength to resist Brian’s stronger personality. She pulled out a notepad from her purse, her favorite orange pen, and wrote, “If you get out, you’re exposed. Exposure= dead. It’s going to be ok, but you have to do what Brian says.”

By the muffled “humph” from Brian’s side of the car, she imagined that he wasn’t pleased with the content, but he nodded and watched Melissa in the rearview mirror. Claire watched both. Melissa’s eyes grew wide and fearful again—exactly what Claire had been working to remove for the past few days—and Brian looked satisfied.

Maybe this job wasn’t such a good idea after all. Brian seemed to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in freaking out his clients, and even Keith had left her alone without warning. They had to weigh every action on the grounds of necessity versus danger. Danger nearly always won. She’d just forced a kid to poop in a plastic bag
, for heaven’s sake.

Disillusioned, she reconsidered her career choices. It had sounded so exciting—almost like
living
an action movie—to protect people. She’d imagined herself holed up in a rustic cabin somewhere, water spilling over rocks in a stream nearby, and a terrified woman, hiding from her abusive husband, cowering in the corner as Claire swept the area and took him down. She thought there’d be dull days when solitaire was more mind numbing than a reasonable pastime, but still, she expected a certain kind of romance to come with waiting for the approach of the enemy.

“Do you like your job?” Why she thought she’d get Mr. Silence to open up to her, Claire couldn’t imagine. The second she asked, she felt like a fool.

“Yes.”

“If someone offered you another one making the same amount of money or more, would you take it?”

“No.”

Well, he answered anyway. Since he didn’t seem prone to elaboration, she could work with asking yes or no questions. “Does it ever get tedious?”

“Yes.”

“Are you ever afraid?”

“No.” This time, he looked her way and after he answered, he mouthed, “yes.”

Interesting. Tell the people you’re not scared, but you are. If you wanted them to be scared, shouldn’t you show that you are too? Similar questions bombarded her mind, but Claire ignored them and kept going. “Who is the best agent you know?”

“Keith.”

Pride welled up in her heart in a way that reminded her of mothers and kids with scribbles on paper. Nauseating, but cool at the same time. Keith. She knew he was amazing—almost like it was the meaning of his name or something—but for someone else to admit it. Her eyes narrowed and Claire whipped her head to read his expression. Was he saying what he thought the family needed to hear?