The Stranger Beside You (15 page)

I shook my head.  “That’s not why they arrested him.”

“What do you mean?”

“They arrested him for murder.”

Aaron didn’t blink. 

“A woman’s body was pulled out of a river.  Tom was having an affair with her,” I said.

He closed his eyes and bowed his head.  “Oh no.”

“What?”

He opened his eyes and pivoted to face me more directly.

“I knew about the woman,” he said.

“How is that possible?”

“I caught them together.”

I wanted to curl into a ball and die.  “When?”

“Remember our trip to Toronto?”

“Last month?”

He nodded.  “It was myself and Tom and Lee Jennings.  We were there for an international banking conference.  I saw Tom go into a room with a woman I’d never seen before.”

“Was she blonde?”

He nodded.  “Yeah,” he said, “She was.”

I considered the flow of events for a moment.

“When you called me earlier,” I said, “You didn’t know Tom had died.”

“That’s right.”

“Why did you call?”

“Two reasons.  I hadn’t seen Tom in two days, so I was worried.”

“And the second reason?”

He eased off the edge of the desk and circled around to a laser printer behind him.  He snatched a page from the tray. 

“This is an email I received today,” he said.  “It was sent from an anonymous Gmail account.  The address was [email protected].  I have no idea who sent it.”

He handed me the page.  I read the single line of text: 
TELL BRYNN NELSON ABOUT TORONTO.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, except that clearly someone else knows about what happened in Toronto.”

I felt sick to my stomach.

“Tom and the woman are both dead,” I said.

“Whoever sent the email wanted to make sure I told you about seeing them together in Canada.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I agree.”

“Do you have anymore surprises for me?”

He shook his head.  “I’m sorry, Brynn.”

“Me too,” I said.

He walked me out and said goodbye.

I waited for the elevator.  The key from Bob’s fish tank was on my key ring.  The flash drive with the encrypted file was on there also.  I dangled them in front of my face and thought about all the clues and added them up one by one.  It occurred to me that just maybe the email sent to Aaron was somehow connected to the key Tom had hidden and that the key fit into a lock somewhere in Canada.

24

The goon named Finch walked right up to the security desk and the guard in uniform behind the desk looked up from whatever he was working on and opened his mouth to speak.  The words never got out of his mouth.  Finch reached under his jacket and pulled a gun with a short silencer attached to the muzzle and fired two shots into the man’s face.  The move was quick and smooth.  The security guard’s head jerked as the bullets exploded inside his skull, and then his body slumped forward.  Two trickles of blood flowed from between his eyes.  Finch stepped around the counter, hauled the body out of the chair, and then folded it out of sight in the cramped space beneath the desk.  The entire episode took all of twenty seconds.

Ten seconds later, a second goon, named Woz, entered the lobby of the building and Finch nodded at him.  They entered an elevator together.  Neither of the two men had ever been in this building on Wall Street before, but they knew where to go because Mr. Z had told them, and he knew because had been there on a previous occasion to meet with Tom Nelson.

•  •  •

When I left Aaron’s office the corridor outside was mostly empty.  I hit the down button for the elevator and waited, then something in my gut told me all was not right.  A voice deep down inside started screaming at me to walk away from the elevator. 

•  •  •

Mr. Z was standing across the street.  He lit a cigarette and waited for his cell phone to ring.  They had listened to the call from Aaron McFadden to Brynn Nelson and had watched her go inside.  Mr. Z was convinced that Tom Nelson had hidden the money before he died.  Did McFadden know about the money?  That was a big question.  Had he summoned Brynn to tell her about it?  

Mr. Z blended into the scenery.  A thousand scenarios spun through his brain.  Time was running out.  If Tom had managed to put the money together and hide it, they needed a way to find it.  That was the best they could hope for, but if he had failed and hadn’t compiled the cash as promised, things would definitely get very ugly.  People would get hurt, and some people would have to die.  Either way, Mr. Z would get his way.  He always did.

•  •  •

Finch was the bigger of the two, but Woz was nastier.  Woz was small but explosively violent.  Finch kept a hand on the gun under his jacket.  Woz didn’t carry a gun.  His weapon of choice was a stiletto knife with a spring-loaded blade.  The man was a butcher with a long history of savagery.  On the ride up he looked forward to the opportunity to carve up his next victim. 

They had one floor to go.  Both men moved a step closer to the elevator door.

•  •  •

I turned from the elevator and headed down the corridor to the find the stairs.  Behind me I heard the elevator door open but kept walking.  Something bad was about to happen.  I could feel it. 

I glanced over my shoulder and saw two men – one tall, one short – stepping out of the elevator.  I didn’t recognize them, but they didn’t fit the stereotypical image of businessmen.  My pace quickened.  I could see the door to the stairs twenty feet ahead.  I didn’t know if the two men from the elevator had seen me, then I heard, “There she is!” and my stomach dropped.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw one of them coming after me.

•  •  •

Aaron McFadden was seated at his desk, staring out the window.  He was still bothered by his conversation with Brynn.  The thought of Tom being dead was unimaginable and he was overcome by guilt for not confronting him about the large sums of money Tom had been illegally manipulating over the past weeks and months. 

Aaron shook his head and slammed a fist down on his desk.  It angered him because Tom had been such a good guy.  What could have made him go bad?  What could have turned him?  Did it just boil down to common human greed?  Probably.

What a shame.

Aaron glanced at his watch.  He needed to get home to Julie and the kids because he had already missed his daughter’s soccer game by working late and Julie would kill him because he had promised this time.  That was a fight he didn’t feel like having.  He turned to his computer to log off and heard a sound outside his door.  An instant later the door opened.  Aaron looked up and saw a man walking toward him with a gun.

•  •  •

I turned and ran and could hear his footsteps behind me.  He seemed pretty small but I didn’t care.  I sprinted for the door to the stairs. 

 “Aaron!” I shouted.  “Aaron! Help!”  But I knew without question that Aaron had problems of his own.  When the short guy headed for me, the tall guy had headed for Aaron’s office. 

They will be watching
.

I wondered which of them had been the driver of the Plymouth with the bad paint job but there was no time to dwell on that right now because I had to focus on staying alive.  By the time I reached the metal door that opened to the stairs, I knew the short guy had to be closing the distance between us in hurry.  The door had a push bar and I slammed my body into it.  The door was heavy but I forced it open.  There was a flight of stairs leading up to the next level and a flight leading down.  I had a half a second to make a decision.  It’s startling how much can go through your brain in that tiny span of time.  It seemed stupid to go up because I could be trapped up there.  On the other hand, he would expect me to go down, so maybe by heading to the floor above where I stood I could fool him.  That gamble felt like too big of a risk, so I headed down instead.  I’d make much better time letting gravity do its job.  I grabbed the handrail and took the stairs three and four at a time.  My heart thundered in my chest.  I hit the landing hard and flung myself around and down, nearly toppling end over end and crashing down to the next level.  I was barely out of view when I heard the door open again and felt the pause as the short man processed through my same dilemma: up or down?

Then I heard his heavy footsteps following me down.

I reached the next landing, lunged for the metal door, and jerked on the handle.  It was locked.  So I sailed down and around to the next floor, grabbed at the door handle…and the door opened!  The clatter of his footsteps echoed off the walls.  He wasn’t far behind me.

 In the corridor was a custodian getting an early start on a long evening of emptying garbage and vacuuming acres of office space.  She was a woman of maybe sixty dressed in a gray service uniform.  I ran toward her.  She was pushing a cart loaded with supplies. 

“Call the police!” I shouted.  But even as the words flew out of my mouth I realized how futile that would be.  The cops would get never get there in time.  She stared at me like I was a nut.  I heard the door open behind me.  He was closing in.

I glanced back, then glanced at the woman and her cart.  I grabbed one side of the cart and pulled as hard as I could.  It tipped up on two wheels, and as the cleaning supplies quickly slid to the lower end, the cart’s balance shifted, and the entire thing went crashing over. 

The woman jumped aside, cursing, but I didn’t hang around to offer an apology or explanation.  I hadn’t created much of an obstacle, and it probably wouldn’t slow him down at all but it had to be better than nothing.

I tore around a corner in the corridor and spotted a pair of elevators.  One of them was standing open.  I sprinted.  Surely he had to be right behind me. 

I lunged into the elevator and slapped a button on the panel.  Instantly the door began to slide shut.  I pressed myself into one corner and held my breath.

The door was almost closed.

Right at the last possible second he thrust his hand inside and blocked the door.

25

The door opened.

At first I saw only his arm but then he stepped inside the elevator.  There was sweat on his face and he scowled at me.  Then the scowl transformed to a psychopathic grin as he took a step toward me.  He raised his hand and I noticed there was something held in his fist.  I heard a metallic flick and saw the blade of a knife.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said.

I had no way to defend myself.

“What do you want?” I said breathlessly.

“I want to cut you.”

“I don’t know who you are.  I’ve never seen you before.  Why would you want to hurt me?” 

“Because that’s what I do.  I hurt people.”

“What good does it do to kill me?”

“Oh, I won’t kill you yet, not until you’ve spoken to Mr. Z.”

“Who is Mr. Z?”

His face lit up as he approached.  He held the knife up in front of my face.

“You will meet him in a few minutes,” he said.

I could smell him.  His breath was horrendous.  His teeth were dark yellow and chipped.  I had never looked into eyes so empty.  I knew he could kill me without giving it a second thought.  He raised the knife and pressed the blade flat against my cheek.  I felt the cold steel.  His face was nearly touching mine and his breath was like a shroud of fog.  I could barely stand to breathe.

“Why does he want to meet me?”

“To talk about your husband.”

“My husband is dead.”

He pursed his lips as if to kiss me and tilted his head, his cold black eyes taking sick pleasure in searching my face.  “Yes, your husband got lucky.  I wanted to cut his throat.”

“Why?  How did you know Tom, and why are you threatening me?”

“Mr. Z will tell you all about it,” he promised, and then he flicked his tongue at me.

26

He stood behind me as the elevator started moving.  I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck.  The thought of him made me nauseous.  My mind was racing.  I could feel the knife held against the middle of my back.  He was small but I could tell he was strong.

We felt the elevator stop at the 7th floor.  Someone else was getting on. 

He whispered in my ear, “Don’t be stupid.  Be a good girl.”  I could feel him twisting a fistful of my shirt in his hand.

The elevator door opened and I prayed for a half-dozen strapping men to come aboard and rescue me.  No such luck.  What I got instead were three secretaries in skirts.  They were chatting as they scurried inside.  The man with the knife was standing against the back wall, a firm grip on my shirt.

The women gossiped all the way down.  It was a short ride.  Much too short, because I needed time to think and plan.  I had no idea who Mr. Z was, or what he wanted, but I knew I didn’t want to meet him face to face.  

We passed the 4
^th
floor, then the 3
^rd
.  My heart was racing.  I thought about Aaron and hoped he was okay.  The 2
^nd
floor came and went.  It would be just a matter of seconds now.  I could smell his breath.  I tried to make eye contact with any of the three secretaries but none of them glanced my way. 

If I let him get me outside and he hustled me into an alley or into a waiting car, I wouldn’t stand a chance.  I couldn’t imagine what they might want from me, but I was plenty certain it wasn’t good.  We would be at the lobby any second.  My tiny window of opportunity was closing.  I had to do something.

So I coughed.  I coughed like I was dying.

The three women shut up and glanced around at me.

I kept it going and coughed harder and louder, as if I had the Ebola virus or something.  I let my knees wobble, and then I swayed to one side like I could barely manage to stand.  It sounded like I was about to puke.