The Stranger Beside You (24 page)

“Slow down,” Tom said. 

She eased onto the shoulder. 

He squinted to read a street sign.  “This is it,” he said.

The pavement ended after a hundred yards and they drove on gravel for another half a mile.  Telephone lines ran alongside the road, weeds growing thick around the poles. 

She gestured at the map.  “Are we getting close?”

“Should be the next left.”

They approached a mailbox.

“518,” she said, reading the house number on the box.

Tom nodded, “That’s it.”

She turned onto a dirt drive.  A farmhouse sat among the trees.  There was a big circle drive in front.  A traditional red barn stood in the shade several hundred feet away.  There was a freestanding carport beside the house.  A pair of yellow Labradors launched off the porch and charged down to greet them.  They barked, but overall seemed unthreatening.  Daphne parked in the drive and red dust from the dirt carried past them on the breeze. 

They sat and stared.  The scene looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.

“Should we turn around now?” Tom said.

“What a monumental waste of time.”

“This is not what I expected.”

“When you heard the phrase ‘rural Maryland’, what exactly came to mind?”

He puffed out his lips and slowly shook his head.  “Doesn’t even look like anyone’s home,” he sighed.

“Well, we’re here.  Let’s at least go knock.”

“What about the dogs?”

“I’m great with dogs.”

He went up on the porch while Daphne waited at the bottom of the steps.  The sun was on her face.  She glanced around as the dogs sniffed at her ankles. 

Tom rang the bell.  When no one came to the door, he held down the button again and then knocked several times.  He turned and walked to the edge of the porch and looked down at her and shook his head.

“Answer this,” she said.  “Why would someone dial this number from a hair salon in Alexandria, Virginia?”

“Wrong number.”

She sighed.  “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

“But what if it wasn’t a wrong number?”

“Do you think this old country gal makes that drive in once a month to get her hair done?”

Tom shrugged.  “People have strange habits.”

She turned for the car.  “Let’s get out of here.”

Tom came down off the porch, glanced to his left, and paused with one foot still on the bottom step.  He stared across the freshly cut lawn at the tall barn set back amidst a scattering of walnut trees.  It had a fresh coat of red paint with bright white trim.  Daphne honked at him.  He took a few steps toward the car, then hesitated again before veering toward the barn. 

Daphne poked her head over the roof of the car.  She opened her mouth to call to him but heard a sound coming from behind her.  She was standing with her door open. 

A car pulled into the driveway.  It was a little Subaru Forester.  A cloud of red dust followed it to the side of the house where it parked under the carport.  A petite woman climbed out with plastic grocery bags hanging from each hand.  She wore a long sundress and sandals.  She was probably sixty, give or take.  She stopped at the edge of the drive, and glanced at the Civic, then eyed the two visitors skeptically.

“Did you take a wrong turn?” she asked.

“Basically, yeah,” Daphne said.

The lady smiled.  “Happens to the best of us.”  She took the steps up the porch cautiously.  Tom stepped off the grass and back onto the drive.

“Do you live alone out here?” he called after her.

She had the screen door propped against her hip while she juggled the keys and the bags.  “It’s just my husband and me.  Our girls are grown and gone.  Do you need directions back to the highway?”

“No, we can find our way.  Do you have neighbors close by?”

She shook her head.  “Out here we live kind of spread out.”  She went inside the house and the screen door clapped shut.

Tom gave Daphne a look and went up the stairs to the door.  Daphne wasn’t sure what he was thinking.  He knocked on the door.  The woman opened the screen with her forearm and frowned.

“Is there something I could help you with, sir?”

“Would it be possible to use your phone?”

She hesitated.  They could read the trepidation in her eyes, a woman alone at her rural home, approached by a couple of strangers.

“I’ll bring the cordless out to the porch.”

“Perfect,” he said.

She returned with the phone.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” she told him, and again disappeared inside.

When the door closed, Tom whispered to Daphne, “Dial the mystery number on your cell.”

“It’s ringing,” she said, holding the tiny disposable cell to her ear.

Tom stared at the cordless unit.  Nothing.  He looked across at her.

“Are you sure it’s ringing?”

She nodded.

Then he had another idea. 

“Give me your number,” he said.

She told him, and he dialed the cell’s number on the cordless.  Within seconds, the cell began ringing.  Daphne stared at the caller ID window.

“What’s it say?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “It’s not the number we’re looking for.”

Tom felt the air go out of him.  They had hit a dead-end.  They were an hour outside of D.C. and no further along than when they had started.  He knocked on the door to return the phone to the woman in the sundress.

She came out and he thanked her and apologized for the inconvenience.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“No.  No luck.  No answer.”

“Is it someone that lives out this way?”

“Well, we thought so.”

“What’s the name?”

“We aren’t exactly sure.  We were given a phone number and this address, and it looks like both are wrong.”

She twisted her mouth in empathy.  “What’s the phone number, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Tom hesitated then he told her.

The woman stiffened.  “That’s my husband’s number,” she said.  “He has a separate line out at the barn.”

44

 “Marcus?” I said.  “That’s crazy.”

Armstrong poured herself a glass of water.  She gave me a moment to process this latest bombshell.

“What do you mean Marcus took out a loan from Mr. Z?”

“It’s the economy.  Marcus’s company was hemorrhaging money.  He and his wife were going deeply into debt.  The company was in the red with no signs of a turnaround.  Apparently he had exhausted all traditional avenues for funding.  All of his resources were tapped out.”

“Marcus and Sadie are my best friends.  I know them better than anybody.  Don’t walk in here and tell me they are
broke
.”  I snorted with laughter.  “Those people are loaded.”

“Actually, the Jones’s are so far in the hole, they’ve forgotten what daylight looks like.”

I simply could not absorb that notion.  I was nearly speechless.  Surely Sadie couldn’t have hidden such a secret from me.  Why wouldn’t she have come to me?  I was her best friend, for goodness sake.

“They were on the verge of losing everything,” she continued.  “They had gone to every bank they could think of, but no one would touch them.  The company was too much of a risk to consider further investment, and without a major infusion of cash, bankruptcy was approaching hard and fast.  Marcus became a desperate man.  He couldn’t go to friends for help because he needed millions.  A few bucks here and there would be useless, just a drop in the bucket.  They were going under, and it was happening fast.”

“How did he find Mr. Z?”

“The Internet.  He found a website that advertised loans for desperate people like him.  They arranged a meeting.  Mr. Z offered him all the money he needed at an outrageous interest rate, but he insisted that Marcus understand that if he didn’t repay, and repay on time, that they would come after his family.  He said he would do terrible things to them.  To his wife, to his kids.  Marcus was so out of his mind with desperation that he actually agreed to those terms.  He was confident that he could turn the ship around.  He let his ego get the best of him and he put himself in an impossible situation.”

“He defaulted?”

“Yes,” she nodded.  She stood up and began to pace as she spoke.  “His business continued to sink.  There was no money.  His home was mortgaged to the hilt.  When he realized he could never possibly uphold his end of the contract, he knew he’d have to look for a miracle.”

“So he went to Tom?”

“That’s right.  He understood that Tom was not wealthy, but he also understood that Tom worked at a bank and had access to a whole world of money.”

“Oh no.”  I lowered my head, already foreseeing the inevitable.

“He told Tom that these people were going to kill him, and that they would hurt his family.  There was no way out.  He begged Tom for help.  Mr. Z had his home, his car, his phones – everything bugged.  He made it clear that Marcus couldn’t make a move without him knowing, and if Marcus went to the police, the family was dead.  He put Tom in a horrible position – break the law to help a friend, or turn his back and watch them die.  So Tom conceived a plan and carefully set it into motion.  His plan was brilliant and complicated, and very dangerous.”

“He’s going after Mr. Z.  That’s his plan, isn’t it?”

Armstrong folded her arms over her chest.  “It’s bigger than that.  He’s going after the shadow man that Mr. Z works for.”

My jaw dropped.  “There’s someone above Mr. Z?”

“We are convinced there has to be.  Tom believes that Mr. Z is simply an enforcer.  We are talking about a huge amount of money.  There has to be a very wealthy individual running the show.  He is the puppet master working behind the scenes.  He has to be wealthy enough to be able to risk the millions that a person like Marcus needed to borrow.”

“Who could it be?”

“We don’t know.  There are multiple theories.  It’s possible that Mr. Z is connected to the Russian mafia.  They have tons of drug money and those guys are cold-blooded killers.  Or it could be one of the cartels working out of South America because they are flush with cash and are ruthless and clever.  But, the truth is, we don’t have a single shred of evidence pointing one way or another, so Tom and Daphne have gone underground to try to come up with an answer.”

I stood slowly from my chair and approached her.

“My husband is going to get himself killed.”

“He’s a very smart man, and Special Agent Fleming is a skilled federal agent.  They can take care of themselves.”

“What if they don’t find anything?”

“They will.  They have to.”

Then my heart dropped.  “What about my children?  I left them with Marcus and Sadie!  What if Mr. Z goes after them?”

“Marcus and Sadie know nothing of Tom’s master plan.  Tom convinced Marcus that he was attempting to embezzle the money from his employer to repay Mr. Z. So right now Marcus and Sadie believe that Tom is dead.  We couldn’t afford to bring Marcus into the inner circle.  There is too much at stake for that.  Tom and Marcus put together a crude escape plan so that if Mr. Z and his people began to show signs of closing in, your families would go into hiding.”

“I have to call them!  I need to know that my boys are all right!”

“Please, Brynn, you have to trust the plan.  Marcus will get your children safely out of town.”

I was short of breath, the panic and anxiety rising once again.  I backed away from her until my legs hit the bed.  I sat there, staring at her until my eyes settled on a point on the floor between us.

She touched my arm.  “Brynn, you must carry on as before.  You and I were never here, and this meeting never happened.  You cannot let Mr. Z see that anything has changed.  We have to buy Tom and Daphne as much time as possible.”

“I’m going home.  I have to find my boys.”

She started to respond, but just then her cell phone rang.

 “I have to take this,” she said, and she stepped into another room.

I didn’t know what to feel anymore.  This was as close as I’d ever come to having an out-of-body experience.  I was just floating. 

Less than a minute later, she returned.  She looked pale.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Aaron McFadden has been murdered,” she told me.  “They found his body at your house.” 

45

The woods didn’t seem as ominous in daylight.  There were other cabins visible in the distance through the trees, though none closer than at least a hundred yards.  Marcus made sure Sadie and the children stayed inside.  He spent every waking hour walking the property, making certain they were secure.  His gun was tucked into the waistband of his pants. 

He walked up the narrow gravel lane and back again.  He still couldn’t grasp the turn his life had taken.  Somehow his burning ambition had spun out of control.  The debt had piled up, but instead of scaling back and making the sacrifices necessary for survival, they had pushed forward and lived in denial, certain that better times were just over the horizon. 

He still remembered the day he stumbled upon the website.  It promised no-hassle high-risk loans.  It seemed too good to be true.  A meeting was scheduled and he had gone to Virginia to meet with the man he’d spoken to on the phone.  He remembered sitting across the desk from Mr. Z in the tiny office space at the strip mall.

“Do you love your children?” Mr. Z had asked.

“Of course I do.”

“I will hurt them. I will find them at school and break their legs.  And I will hurt your wife.  I’ll break every bone in her face.  Do you understand what I am saying?”

“Yes.”

“There is no paperwork, nothing to sign.  You’ve come to me asking for money and I’m happy to loan it to you, but you will either repay as promised or your life will become a living hell.  It’s important that I make myself totally clear about this.  I will come into your home and wipe out your family.  Can you live with that?  If not, you need to walk away right now.”

Marcus stopped in the road.  He staggered over into the grass and leaned his weight against a tree.  Mr. Z’s words echoed in his ears
.  I will come into your home and wipe out your family
.