Home // Completed Stories // Short But Sweet // Poetry // Stories In Progress
Vigilante Angel
by F.A Behrend
Disclaimer: The characters of Frank Donovan, Jake Shaw, Alex Cross, Monica Davis, Cody and Paul Bloom were created by and are owned by Shane Salenrno and Don Wilson. No infringements intended. All other characters are owned by the author.
Rated: NC-17 - adult themes
Special Note from WOD: This story contains a scene of child abuse. It comes out in the form of a memory by the character and while it is not explicit, it is still disturbing and some of you may not wish to read it. If something of this nature does bother you, please skip over it, but understand that I am allowing this within the story because it is necessary to explain the actions of the character involved.
(Feedback welcomed via email to fran@completetrav.com or on the Message Board)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Friday! At last! Frank rode the elevator up to his apartment with his eyes closed, leaning heavily against the back wall. It had been a hell of a week. They had almost had her, but then, at the last second she had managed to slip out of their grasp by, of all things, parachuting from the top floor of the building. He had told everyone to go home. It was the end of the week, go home and do something normal, he had said, relax, come back on Monday and they would start all over again.
He was weary right to the bone. What he needed now more than anything was sleep, no, perhaps food first, then sleep. Tomorrow he would wash the car, maybe take a drive that sounded good. He fished out his keys, unlocked the door and flipped on the light. He hadn’t been home in days and there was a pile of mail on the floor inside the door, and something else...there...in the middle of the hallway...some kind of device...he froze. Then a voice he knew very well said, “Relax, Frank. It’s not a bomb. If I wanted you dead you wouldn’t even see it coming. This is just what it looks like, a tape recorder. It was activated when you turned on the light.”
He stepped carefully into the apartment and circled the recorder, gun drawn. What the hell was she pulling now?
The slightly metallic hiss of the recorder continued, “I felt really bad about the way things went this week and I wanted to do something nice for you to make up for it...”
Breaking and entering is your idea of an apology, he thought.
“...so I cooked you some dinner. There’s a casserole in the oven, that started too when the lights went on. It should heat up in about 20 minutes. There’s a bottle of wine on the counter in the kitchen. Open it up and let it breathe. It should be fine by the time the casserole is ready. Go take a shower, and for heaven’s sake, relax!”
The recorder clicked off and he put the gun away. He stepped over the little machine, still watching for booby traps, and went into the kitchen. The oven was on. He opened the door carefully. Nothing blew up. The casserole inside was already beginning to bubble slightly around the edges and it smelled wonderful. He shook his head, don’t tell me she can cook too. He looked at the wine bottle sitting on the counter and smiled appreciatively at the label, excellent vintage. He took the corkscrew out of the drawer and opened it up. What the hell, he thought, and went in to shower.
He stood under the steaming spray with his arms braced against the shower wall and just let the hot water stream down his back. It had all started so innocently about 3 months before. A videotape had come into the office in the mail. Jake opened it. It was unlabeled. He stuck it in the machine and within minutes was whooping at Frank’s office door, “you have GOT to see this,” he had cried. It was a surveillance video, and very good surveillance at that, on one of the top drug suppliers in the region. The tape was without sound, but was accompanied by a transcript. The transcript was the missing audio, making the tape, with no sound, perfectly admissible in court. They checked out the information, it appeared to be valid, and it had resulted in the arrest and conviction of not only the supplier, but most of his major customers as well.
The prosecutors were elated, Jake was ecstatic, but Frank was worried. The next piece of information was a computer disc. It had helped them unearth a money laundering scam at a local savings and loan. The forensic accountants had gone over it with a fine-toothed comb, given their blessing to the information it contained, and more arrests were the result. But, like the videotape, they had failed to uncover the origin of the information.
For the benefit of the prosecutor, they had claimed that the information had come from a “confidential informant,” and the prosecutors were content with that. But Frank was not content. If a clever defense attorney ever found out that the information was obtained illegally, which it probably was given their inability to trace its origin, all those lovely convictions would be overturned and some very bad people would be loose on the streets once more.
The information kept coming; sometimes videotapes, sometimes computer discs, and sometimes just an e-mail with a time, date and location. They had been unsuccessful at tracing any of it to its origin and Frank was getting very worried. Jake could not understand his reluctance to use the intelligence offered to them, “this is good stuff, boss, why look a gift horse in the mouth? Obviously we have an angel out there.”
“It scares me,” Frank had replied. “Whoever this is knows too much about our operations. Someone like that, running loose out there could put our own people in jeopardy. I don’t like it, convenient as it is to have all this handed to us on a platter, I just don’t like it.”
Frank turned off the shower and toweled dry. A delicious aroma was drifting in from the kitchen and his stomach growled in response. He dressed and went back down the hall, a good meal and a good night’s sleep were just what he needed. When he reached the kitchen he stopped. The table had been set, the wine poured, and a candle had been lit. There was a basket of fresh hot rolls on the table next to his plate. As soon as he stepped through the door, the tape recorder started up again. It had been moved to the table. “Sorry to startle you again, Frank, but I couldn’t figure out a way to get the rolls hot when the casserole was done, so I just had to bring them in at the last minute. Bon Appetite.”
He looked around carefully. Not a sign of her. He shook his head and sat down to eat. The casserole was beef, in a wine reduction sauce with tiny pearl onions. It was delicious and as he ate, his thoughts turned back to how all this had started. Over Jake’s protests, he had decided to dig their “angel” out of hiding. He consulted with a profiler. “Jake’s right,” the shrink had told him, “this ‘angel’ is probably a female. Someone well acquainted with police procedures and the law. Possibly a law enforcement or military background, and she has a definite problem with authority.”
“Any idea how we can catch her?”
“Provoke her. Make her angry. She’s very organized, so you have to shake her up, force her to make a mistake, force her out of her usual pattern. She has always been able to operate within her own comfort zone, so you have to force her to come to you, get her on your own turf where you have the advantage.”
So Frank decided that the way to make her angry was to ignore her, refuse to use the information she was feeding them. Over the next two weeks, they received several pieces of information on a pending arms deal. Frank ignored it. Jake was livid. “We’ve got to use this!” he cried, “if this stuff gets into the wrong hands, cops could die!”
Frank held firm. “Absolutely not,” he said. The office was bombarded with angry e-mails, taunting them to do their jobs and act on the information. Frank still held firm. “Not yet,” he told his fuming agents, “not yet.” Their own sources had told them of the same deal, and so they had set a trap. Last week, they sat in the van, waiting for the dealers to show, and also waiting to catch their angel lurking in the shadows. Frank had been right.
He had set up two teams, one to take down the arms dealer and one to capture their angel. Jake was scanning the area with night vision binoculars. “There,” he said, pointing to a large old warehouse down the street from where the arms exchange was to take place, “in the second floor window, I can see someone moving.” He turned and smiled at Frank, “and she’s got curves in all the right places.”
Frank trained his binoculars on the same area. Jake was right. They got out of the van carefully and moved towards the warehouse. It was pitch black inside, and they moved in a carefully coordinated pattern. If she was there, they would force her up to the roof and trap her there. Frank got to the roof first and there she was, running towards the edge of the building. “Freeze! Police!” he had cried.
She turned on him, blazing with anger. “Are you a complete idiot!? Or do you want them to get away with this!?” She continued to move closer to the edge of the building, backing away from him at a steady pace. In the dim light he was able to make out blonde hair and a trim figure clad entirely in black.
“Stay right where you are! All I want to do is talk! There’s another team down on the street cleaning up those guys. We’ve got them, now just talk to me!”
“Sorry, I don’t talk to guys with guns. You’ll just have to shoot me!”
“Look!” Frank holstered his gun. “No guns. Just talk. Please, just stop where you are. Nobody has to get hurt in this.” He walked towards her slowly, hands in the air to show he was unarmed.
“Bullshit! You don’t really want to talk. You want to throw me in the slammer for doing your job better than you can, and I am not going to jail!” She was at the edge of the roof now and she glanced over her shoulder at the ground, ten stories below.
Frank got a sinking feeling, she wouldn’t really kill herself would she? He had to think fast, this situation was spinning rapidly out of control.
She looked at him and said quietly, “Sorry, Frank, this is just not going to work out for me.” And she stepped off the edge.
“No!” he screamed and dove for her. When he got to the edge he looked down. He expected to see her smashed body crumpled on the pavement below. Instead he saw a small parachute, a base jumping rig, lying on the ground, ruffling in the night wind. She was just unbuckling the straps. She turned and gave him a salute and he could hear her laughter all the way up to the roof where he stood.
Jake came bursting out onto the roof and saw Frank standing at the edge and looking down. “My God! She didn’t jump, did she?”
Frank nodded. Jake looked over the edge and saw the parachute, he looked at Frank, speechless. “She planned this,” he said simply, “she played us like a symphony orchestra.”
That had been Wednesday. He and Jake had spent Thursday and Friday getting the most thorough ass-chewing he had ever experienced. The brass were more than just angry. Their “confidential informant” was nothing more than a dangerous vigilante. They had been ordered to review every case in which she had played a role, and all future cases would have to be scrutinized six ways to next Tuesday before any prosecutor would touch them.
He sat and picked up the last roll from the basket and used it to mop up the last of the gravy from his plate. He reached for the wine bottle and then he saw the candle flame and froze. The entire time he had been eating, the flame had stood steady and straight. Now it flickered ever so slightly. Perhaps the passage of his hand...? No. Nothing was moving and still, the flame flickered in a slight current of air. He glanced carefully to the right, his hand still poised over the wine bottle. The curtain over the window which led to the balcony moved gently. He smiled.
He thought for a moment and then went to the kitchen cupboard for a second wine glass. He filled both glasses and went to the balcony door and opened it. The night air was cold and crisp and there was no moon. He sat one glass on the balcony railing several feet to his right and then stepped away from it. He twirled his own glass in his fingers and stood looking out over the city, lights shining in the distance like jewels scattered over black velvet.
A dark shape detached itself from the deeper shadows and moved over to pick up the glass. “What the hell took you so long,” she said, “it’s freezing out here.” She sipped the wine and nodded, “I thought that looked like a good vintage.”
He laughed softly, “where did you learn to cook like that?”
“Around.”
“That’s a story I’d like to hear.” He turned to look at her. She was standing about six feet away, silhouetted in the dim starlight. Blonde, trim with, as Jake had said, curves in all the right places. When she faced him even in the dim light, he could see bone structure in her face that would have made a super model green with envy.
“You want to know where I learned to cook?” she asked quietly.
“Among other things. You’re right. It’s freezing out here. Let’s go inside.” She hesitated, so he added, “I’m off duty, my gun is unloaded, in the bedroom with my badge. I promise I won’t bite.” He gestured to the door and she move past him, carefully, into the apartment. She set her wine glass on the coffee table and went straight into the kitchen. She blew out the candle and began to gather up the dishes.
“I can take care of that myself,” he said
“I’ll do it. I cooked it, so I’ll clean it up.”
“Where did you learn to cook like that? It was wonderful.”
“Province.”
He raised an eyebrow and leaned against the archway into the kitchen, “you get around.”
She made no comment and continued to rinse the dishes. “I’m sorry you got in trouble with your boss,” she said at last.
“Nothing I can’t handle, but really, you’ve got to stop interfering with police work. Somebody will end up getting killed.”
She shook her head, “I would never let that happen.”
“But don’t you see, sometimes you can’t control everything. You might accidentally alert some bad guy, who’ll end up uncovering my people.” He paused, and then asked, “why do you do it?”
“Because I can. And most police agencies won’t...or can’t...or just don’t.” She finished with the dishes and carefully folded the towel she had used to dry them.
“So you’ve appointed yourself as a one-woman justice department to the whole country.”
“Something like that.” She fingered the towel and looked at the floor, refusing to meet his eyes.
“Why?”
She laughed, “because there’s too much corruption or politics or maybe just plain indifference in most law enforcement agencies. So I do it for them, or force them into a position where they have to do their jobs or be exposed for the idiots they are.”
He moved away from the kitchen doorway back to the living room and sat down. She followed, at a distance, and picked up her wine glass from the table. She sat on the end of the couch, as far away from him as she could get. “You really want to know why?” she asked quietly. She had never talked about this to another living soul, and wasn’t sure why she wanted to talk about it now.
“Yes, I really would.” Let her tell me in her own way, he thought, don’t push or you’ll lose her.
She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, “I really don’t know why I’m here, except that maybe I think you deserve an explanation, after the dressing down you got. And you do have a point about maybe my actions getting someone killed. That’s the last thing in the world I want.” She studied her glass carefully.
“When did you start your...crusade?”
“About three years ago. I was...let’s say ‘between things,’ and I saw a way to make some money and maybe put some people behind bars. I started a drug war in San Diego.”
“All by yourself?”
She nodded. “I ripped off some buyers and made it look like a rival gang. I kept the money and destroyed the drugs. A ‘win-win’ situation. When the dust settled, I gave the cops evidence to put quite a few people in jail and then left town. I’ve been moving around, doing pretty much the same thing for a while now. I’ve got a nice little nest egg in the bank, so I don’t do the rip offs anymore, I just gather evidence and turn it over. Most cops are glad to get it. If the locals don’t act on what I give them, I give it to the Feds. That’s how you got the first video I sent to your office.”
“That still doesn’t tell me why.” He watched her closely in the soft light coming from the kitchen. There seemed to be a sadness about her. She finished the wine in the glass and stood up. She started to pace, from the couch to the balcony door and back. Clearly, she wanted to talk to him, but maybe just didn’t know where to start, so he said, “why don’t you just start at the beginning, where do you come from, what was your family like?”
She went to the window, looked out at the city and ran her hands through her hair, “you sound like my shrink.” She swallowed hard and began. “My name is Jennifer Lake. I don’t use that name now. I was born in a little town just east of Spokane. I had a really nice life. When I was about 8, my dad died.” As she began, he watched and saw her shoulders relax. Some of the tension eased out of her voice, and the words began to come more easily, more quickly. “At first we were OK, just my mom and me, but there were a lot of debts and she just didn’t know how to cope. I must have been about 10 or 11 when she married a guy named Darrel. He seemed nice enough at first, but he drank a lot, and when he drank, he got mean. He was apparently under the impression that my mother was a wealthy widow, and boy, was he disappointed when he found out that all she, we, had were debts.” She came back to the couch and sat down, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking slightly in place. Frank could almost predict what was coming next, but he didn’t prod her, he just let her say it in her own good time. “I must have been, maybe 12 when he started in on me. At first it was just a lot of touching, but then he started coming into my room at night...the first time he raped me was my 13th birthday.” She was quiet for a long time. The way her shoulders shook, he knew she must have been crying.
He got up and got a glass of water from the kitchen and put it, without a word, on the table in front of her. She took a sip and continued. “I figured out how to cope with it. If I could just avoid it, stay away from him, especially when he was drinking, it wasn’t so bad.”
“What about your mother?” He asked the question quietly in the darkened room.
“She spent most of her time at the bottom of a bottle. I think she never got over losing my dad.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “He had the decency to take me to a clinic in Spokane, made me take birth control pills. Thank God for that. I don’t know what I would have done if I had gotten pregnant. Anyway...” She straightened up before going on. “We had this health class in high school. One of my teachers talked about abuse and told us that if anything like that ever happened, all we had to do was tell someone. So...I told. Next thing I knew, Darrel was getting a visit from Social Services. I thought, hurrah, it’s over, he won’t hurt me anymore.”
She was quiet for a long time, so he asked, “What happened?”
“He beat me so bad I almost died. Broken ribs, ruptured spleen, concussion. I was in the hospital for almost three weeks. When I got out, it was worse than ever. He told me that if I ran, or said anything to anybody ever again, he would kill my mother. I just started staying away from home as much as I could. I used to make sure the fridge was full of beer, that way he’d get drunk and pass out and I’d be safe.” She got up and started pacing again. “I was pretty good in school, hell, I was there so much I couldn’t help but get good grades. One of my teachers even started to talk about college. I started studying for my ACT’s, and coping as best I could at home, just sort of...enduring.”
“It’s remarkable that you survived at all.”
“Maybe.”
“What happened to Darrel?”
“Darrel’s dead.” She stood in the center of the room looking at her hands. “I killed him.”
“Tell me.”
She cleared her throat and took a deep breath, “you know, you’re the first person I ever told about any of this. It was my 16th birthday. Things were working out pretty good. I managed to avoid him most of the time, and when I couldn’t, well, I just blocked it out. My teachers at school were looking at scholarships and I was filling out applications. Over all I guess I was pretty happy. I let my guard down. I got home from school that day and Darrel was waiting. He and some of his buddies were playing cards at the house, and I knew, the minute I walked in, I was in trouble. Darrel said he had planned a little ‘sweet 16’ party for me. They had been playing poker for quite a while and it seems that I...was...the prize. They took me in the bedroom, one after another...”
“Jesus Christ,” he said softly.
“No,” she said turning to him, tears streaming down her face, “I prayed to Jesus, there is no Jesus, there is no God. Pretty soon the beer was gone and most of the drugs he had, so his buddies went home. He came back to the bedroom and just passed out on the bed next to me. I don’t know what I expected to happen. I think I was operating on some kind of autopilot...I remember reaching over to the drawer in the night stand. He kept a gun there.”
Her eyes looked distant as she remembered, and her hands went through the same motions from that night. She spoke very slowly, “he showed it to me, many times. He would take it out, and put just one bullet in the cylinder and then spin it. Then he would hold it to my head, ‘maybe this time,’ he would say as he pulled the trigger, and God how I prayed he was right.” She took a deep shuddering breath, “he was just laying there, passed out. So I took the gun from the drawer, and I loaded it, and I put the muzzle in his mouth, and I pulled the trigger and blew his brains all over the bedroom.” She sat down.
They were both quiet for a long time. She picked up the glass of water and took a sip. “I must have just sat there for a while. I don’t know what I thought would happen. Finally I got up, took a shower. I almost scrubbed my skin raw. I got dressed and packed some clothes in a backpack. He had some money in the house and I took that, a couple of hundred dollars. I left and walked to the highway. I caught a ride into Spokane. I was 16 years old and I had just killed a man.”
No wonder she rebels against authority, he thought, authority has never given her anything but trouble. He got up and got a box of tissues and handed it to her, then he went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. This is going to be a long night, he told himself. When he came back, he saw that she had gone out onto the balcony. He took the coffee out there and handed it to her. The wind was down but it was still cold. She took the coffee and sipped. She held the mug close, for the warmth. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“Pretty good, surprisingly good actually. Maybe they’re right, maybe just talking helps.”
“I understand that was a pretty rough beginning for anyone, but how did you get to where you are now?”
“That’s a pretty long story.”
He smiled down at her, “there’s plenty of coffee.”
After a few minutes, she began again. “I got to Spokane and found a room in a cheap motel. I just hung out for a few days,” she shook her head, “I must have taken a thousand showers, I just couldn’t seem to get clean. I think I was expecting to be arrested any minute. I called a friend from a pay phone and she told me that my mother had been hospitalized. The cops thought that she had done it, but she was too sick to tell them anything. I was wanted for questioning. I had a fake ID, I used it to get beer for dear old Darrel, so I wasn’t using my own name and I didn’t think that they would actually be able to find me. I left the motel and found a cheap rooming house. I got a break on the rent when I offered to do the cleaning for them. Then I got a job sacking groceries, slinging hash, whatever I could find. Ultimately, I answered an ad in the paper for a ‘girl Friday’ for a lady who sold real estate. I worked for her for over a year. Her name was Agnes Benson. I told her some story about running away from foster care, and I think she knew it was a lie, but she never let on. She encouraged me to go back and get my GED, which I did. By that time I had my own apartment, my own car, I was really moving up in the world.”
“So what changed?”
She put the mug down on the balcony railing, “I got this crazy notion. I thought that I had ‘fixed’ myself, that all my problems were over, so I wanted to go out and fix the world. I submitted an application to the county Sheriff’s Department.”
“You wanted to become a cop?”
She nodded and smiled, “Sure, save the world. I applied and I was accepted, and pretty soon I had a badge and a gun.”
“They must not have done the background check too carefully.”
“Apparently not,” she shrugged, “anyway, things went pretty well for a while. Until I ran into Sergeant Landers.” He waited for her to continue. The balcony was cold, but she didn’t seem to notice. “The Sarge told me I was a real up-and-comer, I had real potential. I had been with them for about two years and he asked me if I wanted to move up in grade. I said sure. He was going to help me study for the exam. Well, I found out that the kind of studying he had in mind had nothing to do with police work. I told him no.” She picked up her now-empty coffee mug and was studying it very carefully. He could see that her hands were shaking and it was not from the cold. “The very next day, I found two Internal Affairs cops going through my locker. They had found drugs. I could either resign quietly or be prosecuted. So I just packed up and left town. ”
“You didn’t try to fight it?”
“There was no point. And I promised myself that I would never, and I mean never, let anyone, man or woman, have that kind of power over me again.” Her voice was low and shaking, and she suddenly flung the coffee mug over the balcony with all her might. It smashed into a thousand pieces in the parking lot below. She stood clinging to the railing, rocking back and forth slightly. He could see that her knuckles were white she was holding on so hard.
Her outburst startled him and he said, “let’s go back inside.”
He got her another cup and filled it and she sat back down on the couch. “I drove south along the coast,” she said, “I stopped in LA and basically started over. I went to the want ads again and found a position working for a PI. He was good and I learned a lot from him. His name was Dan Prescott. I started just doing general office work for him, but gradually he showed me the ropes and pretty soon I was working right along side of him. He was older, he and his wife had been married forever, and they kind of took me under their wing, treated me like family. That really felt good.” She smiled at the memory and took a deep breath. “Three years ago, he had a heart attack and died. His wife moved in with her sister in Florida. I tried to keep the office going, but it seems like some folks just don’t want a female PI, or maybe its just me. My people skills aren’t the greatest.”
He laughed quietly. “So, you started working on your own, feeding information to legitimate law enforcement.”
She nodded and smiled ruefully at him, “and then I met you. Why the hell can’t you just take the information I dig up and go with it.”
“Because we have this little thing called a Constitution. Due Process? Assumption of innocence? You remember those?”
Bullshit,” she said quietly, “the people I go after are guilty as hell and we both know it. They meet in alleys for God’s sake, they sell drugs, weapons, whatever. They push poison into kids arms. These are guys that need to be in jail and the law is just too wrapped up in corruption or red tape or just plain apathy to do anything about it.”
He interrupted her tirade. “Let me ask you something...”
“Go ahead.”
“When you were accused of using or dealing drugs by your Sergeant, how did you feel?”
“What do you mean, how did I feel? I was angry! I wanted to blow his head off. The arrogant prick had all the power!”
“Exactly. He had all the power and he was using it for his own ends. And isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?” He had been sitting across from her perched on the edge of the coffee table and now leaned forward towards her, trying to make his point.
She took a deep breath, ready to argue and then let it out in a rush and sat back. “You are so damned logical,” she said quietly. She sat looking at her hands for a long time, and then she looked up at him. For the first time, he thought he saw a glimmer of hope in her eyes. “Any suggestions?” she asked.
“Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Oh sure, why not, I’ve just bared my soul to you. What’s a little more information going to cost.”
He got up from the edge of the table and walked over to the window, “did you ever go to college?”
“Yes. When I worked for Dan. I went part time for a while, just taking a few things at night. It was going pretty slow and I was getting frustrated. Finally he said, just take a year off and finish up, so I did. He and his wife helped me some financially.”
“What’s your degree?”
She laughed, “you’re not gonna believe this...my degree is in fine arts, with a minor in psychology.”
He smiled at her from the window, “fine arts fits you, I think, but psychology? There I’m not so sure. Do you speak any languages?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
She thought for a minute and ticked off on her fingers, “Spanish, of course. You can’t get along in LA without at least some Spanish, and French, pretty good German and Italian, and I can order a meal and get a hotel room in Chinese and Russian.” He looked surprised and so she continued, by way of explanation, “Dan had a pretty extensive clientele.”
He continued to question her about the type of work she had done when she was a PI, a smile growing on his face.
Finally she said, “this is beginning to sound like an interview.”
“Would that be so bad?”
She snorted, “Ha! Me? Work on the ‘right’ side of the law? Somehow I don’t think so.”
“Why not? You certainly seem to have the skills for it.”
“I think my fourth grade teacher put it pretty well, ‘does not play well with others.’”
“Granted, you’re a very independent person, but those kinds of ‘thinking outside the box’ traits can be very useful in this kind of work. You have a creativity that can’t be trained into someone. You might have to adjust to dealing with authority, but why not give it a try?”
She thought for a few minutes, sitting on the couch, staring at her hands. Why not, she thought, it might be better than getting killed or getting someone else killed. being on the outside, always looking in, always being alone, was beginning to get old, maybe...just maybe... it was time to try something new.
He watched her consider her options, and thought she just might go for it. She looked worn out. It had been an emotional night for her, probably something entirely unexpected. Where she had been planning on having a little fun, breaking into his apartment, she had ended up disclosing a very painful past. “Well,” he said, “think about it. It’s worth considering, a real career, with benefits,” he was trying to sound light, break the tension he could feel in her, even from across the room. “It’s getting late,” he said as he stood up, “you can sleep on it, think about what I said. Why don’t you plan on spending the night...”
She looked at him, her face had gone white with anger, “is that what this is all about?” Her voice was low and steady and very cold, “is that one of the ‘benefits’ you had in mind?” She stood up and faced him, “I came here tonight, feeling bad for being such a pain in the ass, you get me to drag up a bunch of stuff I’d rather not remember, so that you could what? Get me to sleep with you?! You manipulative little prick! You’re just as bad as good old Darrel or the Sarge or any of the rest of the control freaks I’ve met. Why don’t you just go screw yourself!” she shouted. She lunged for the door and was racing down the hall before he could get a word out.
“Wait!” He ran after her. “that’s not what I meant, for God’s sake!”
She had reached the stairwell and she turned on him, “you take one more step and I swear to God I will kill you.” Her face was a mask of fury.
He stopped and held up his hands, calling after her, “that’s not what I meant! Come back! Listen to me! I’ve got a guest room for heaven’s sake...”
She shook her head and disappeared through the door into the stairwell. He watched her go, helpless to stop her and cursing his own stupidity.
Monday morning, he was back in the office. He had not gotten a great deal of sleep over the weekend. He had hoped that somehow she would calm down and call or he would hear from her. It hadn’t happened, so the best that he could hope for was that she had left the area. It’s not my problem anymore, he told himself. He got himself a cup of coffee and headed in the direction of his desk.
Jake stopped him. “Good weekend?” he asked.
Frank just grunted, “unusual weekend,” was all he said.
The look on Frank’s face told him not to inquire further, so Jake said, “I’ve got a snitch who just called with some news. Looks like another arms deal going down.”
Frank was all ears, “good,” he said, “grab a cup and let’s hear what you’ve got.” He was glad for the distraction of work.
They went into Frank’s office. Jake sat down and swung his feet up on Frank’s desk, then quickly removed them as Frank shot him a look. “Looks like a whole heaping pile of C-4 is about to change hands,” he said, and then he gave details of the transaction.
They spent the rest of the day verifying sources and setting up an operation to intercept the explosives. It was happening quickly, that very night, and the pressure of getting the job done had wiped everything else from his mind.
He sat in a van around the corner and out of sight of the warehouse where the sale was to take place. A cold wind had sprung up, and even inside the van he shivered. Trash tumbled down the street, splashing through the oil-slicked puddles left from an earlier rain. Jake had gone into the warehouse wearing a wire. As soon as the deal was confirmed, they would move in and take all the participants. The cell phone in his pocket vibrated suddenly, and he looked at the display in the red light. It was a number he did not recognize, so he let it go. It went off again seconds later. Damn! he thought, he didn’t need the distraction of some telemarketer just now. It went off a third time and this time he answered it, “Yes!”
“Is Jake inside yet?” Her voice was urgent.
“Yes,” he said. “How did...”
“Get him out! It’s a trap!”
“What!?” She had his complete attention now.
“Get him out! This whole thing was a set-up! They’re going to blow the warehouse! You’ve got to believe me!”
“How...”
“Don’t ask how! And for God’s sake don’t go in after him! The plan was to wait until your whole team got inside and then blow the building! He’s wearing a wire, so get him out!”
“He’s just got a transmitter on, no receiver! We can’t contact him! I’ll have to go in...”
“No!” she shouted in his ear. “This is my fault! I’ll get him! Get your people clear!”
“Wait!” but it was too late, she had disconnected. He pushed re-dial to try and get her back, but she didn’t pick up.
On the radio he told all of his people to pull back and then he went tearing up to the side door of the warehouse. He pushed the door in, quietly now, and could see Jake and the three dealers at the center of the vast vacant space. There was a small table in front of them with an open suitcase containing the front money. He would have to think of a distraction, but something that wouldn’t get Jake gunned down instantly. Suddenly, beyond the gloom of the yellow overhead lights, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, slightly to his right and above. There was a figure coming slowly over the catwalk that spanned the warehouse. A voice boomed out from the darkness, “Freeze! FBI! Everyone put your hands where I can see them!”
In that instant, everything went into slow motion. Jake had not been expecting such an intervention, especially not from that direction. Smart man that he was, he went for his gun, tucked and rolled behind a stack of wooden palates and fired as he went down. His first shot took out the closest dealer. Next, a single shot came from above on the catwalk, killing number two. Frank move in on number three, but before he could bring him down, the man had pulled an automatic and began to spray the catwalk with bullets. The zing of ricochets bounced everywhere. Frank took him out before he could do any more damage, and then rushed to Jake.
“What the hell!” Jake swore.
“Get out! This whole thing was a set up! The building is wired to blow!’
Jake looked up at the catwalk, there was no motion and no sound coming from above them. “Then who...?”
Realization dawned as Frank ran for the ladder going up, “Make sure everyone’s clear, I’m going after her!”
Up on the catwalk, she moved slowly, groping along the wire treads in the darkness. He reached her within seconds. “Idiot,” she said, “just get out...I’ll be fine.”
“Bloody hell,” he said. She was leaning on the railing, and even in the dim light he could see the wet stain of blood, dark and spreading fast, soaking her shirt.
“I don’t know if the detonator is on a remote or a timer, just get out, pull your people back...”
“Shut up!” He grabbed her arm and ducked sown, swinging her up over his back, fireman style. She was surprisingly light.
She groaned and gritted her teeth as he began to move. “You are a complete fool,” she gasped. He sprinted down the length of the catwalk towards the far west end of the building. There was some kind of doorway there. He could just make out the faint outline of light coming beneath it. He reached the spot, gave it one kick and watched the rusted metal flex. A second kick and it swung open on rusting, screeching hinges. He went through and emerged on a flat roof.
He pressed the radio, “west end of the building!”
A voice came back in his ear. It was Jake, “we’ve got fire in the east end of the building, it will be a minute until we can get there! There’s a chopper in the air!”
Frank looked around for shelter, something, anything, to use for cover if the building went up. There was nothing. The roof was as flat and empty as a dessert. He lay her down at the edge of the roof. When he looked over he could see that they were about three stories up. He moved to pick her up again and make for the fire escape ladder.
“Just go,” she said, “quit trying to be a hero.” She was very pale, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Quit trying to be a martyr.” He looked over the side of the building. There was no way he could manage to carry her down the fire escape ladder, but, there, to the left, maybe that was a way out. A large dumpster, piled high with trash and cardboard boxes, sat perhaps five yards from the building. “We’re going for a little ride,” he said, “hang on and I hope this works.”
He picked her up and went to the side of the building just above the dumpster. Just as he jumped, the building seemed to shake under his feet. He gave a mighty heave and propelled both of them off the roof just as it went up in a rush of smoke and flame. They landed in the dumpster and were immediately showered with shards of glass and flaming debris. The concussion of the explosion momentarily stunned and deafened him. He was screaming into his radio, and began pulling cardboard, trash and bits of glass off of both of them. She had landed beneath him and now he dug frantically through the wastepaper to uncover her. The air was filled with choking smoke and the last thing he remembered was a blinding light from overhead, and hands reaching out to him.
He knew from the smell that he was in a hospital. He was lying, face down, and had what felt like a thousand bee-stings across his back and shoulders. He managed to open his eyes, and the first thing he saw was a side-ways Jake, grinning at him. “I guess it’s true, you really can fly.”
His head was pounding and his ears were still ringing. He groaned and tried to move, but hands pushed him firmly back down on the gurney. “Hold still while I stitch this up,” a voice ordered from behind his, distant and muffled.
“Here’s where we stand,” said Jake, pulling a chair up close to his face., “you have a concussion and multiple cuts from glass and debris. You also have a badly sprained knee, not broken, just wrenched. You must have hit something in the dumpster when you landed. You also smelled like shit so they hosed you down with antiseptic.”
“What about...”
“I was just getting to that. She’s still in surgery. It looks pretty bad. She took one in the chest and one in the leg. She lost a lot of blood. But she was mumbling vaguely about what a fool you are when they brought her in. My guess is that she’s going to make it. If you’re OK here for a few minutes, I’ll go find out more.”
Frank nodded and Jake left, and then Frank drifted out while they finished stitching him up.
From the pain, she guessed that she was either still alive, or dead and burning in hell. Whatever, she thought. When she opened her eyes, he was sitting in a wheelchair across the room. His leg was propped up on a pillow and he was looking out the window. The window had bars on it. Shit, she thought.
When she stirred, he turned and wheeled himself over to her. “Good morning,” he said. She took a breath to speak but he went on, “just listen for now. You are apparently not an easy person to kill. You had two bullets in you and you lost a lot of blood. A fall off a three story building didn’t do you much good either, but you will probably live to tell the tale to your grandchildren. Trust me when I tell you that you are in very deep trouble.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the bars on the window. “I also want you to trust that I am working to change that. Now get some sleep. We’ll talk more later.” Then he just turned and wheeled out, leaving her alone, looking out of a window covered by bars.
Two days passed. She was sitting up. She still had an IV, but most of the tubes were gone. Unfortunately, the bars were still there. Now they were making a striped pattern across the tray that held her lunch. She was debating between the green jello or the clear yellow broth, and she didn’t much like either of those choices. Choices, she thought bitterly, were beginning to get a little narrow.
He came in on crutches this time. “Nice to see you’re sitting up and taking nourishment. How do you feel about having a little talk?”
She felt like she was sitting in the principal’s office. “I don’t guess I have much choice,” she said quietly.
He maneuvered into a chair and sat down heavily. His back was itching mightily, but over all, he thought it was good to be alive. “I have good news and bad news. First, the good news. You will make a complete recovery. The rehab on your leg will be painful, but there’s no reason you can’t be up and about, with your usual ‘energy’ within a couple of months. Bad news is that the prosecutor wants to lock you up and throw away the key.”
She looked up at him and said, “give me about 6 hours head start and you won’t have to worry about it.”
He laughed, “not a chance. But I have more good news.”
“And that is...?”
He gave her a level look. “You are either one of the bravest or one of the stupidest people I have ever met. Your ‘interference’ resulted in the following...” he held up his fingers, “...6 highly skilled agents alive and kicking and not blown to smithereens, three very bad perps in the morgue, and a significant leak in my department exposed and plugged.”
“I don’t understand.” She looked puzzled.
“The set-up in that warehouse was not your fault.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course it was. If it wasn’t for me and my bumbling around, those guys would never have been tipped to Jake.” She tossed her spoon down and pushed the tray aside. “It’s just like you said, all good intentions aside, I nearly got some good people killed.”
“No you didn’t. Jake’s cover was blown before he even started. We had an insider with a gambling problem. He sold information to cover his markers. If it hadn’t been for you we would never have tumbled to it.” He paused and let her consider that for a minute. “As a result, I have a proposal for you, something to keep you out of jail. Interested?”
She looked at him, “of course I am. I don’t relish the thought of spending the rest of my life looking out from between bars.” She gestured at the window and the shadow the bars cast across the room.
He took a deep breath. Here goes, he thought. “Come to work for me.”
She blinked at him, not comprehending, and then said, “you have got to be joking.”
“No joke. You have skills I can use. So why not?”
She swallowed hard. “Just how, exactly, would that work?” she asked quietly.
Good, he thought, at least she didn’t blow me completely out of the water. “You would be registered with my team as a ‘confidential informer.’ You would be assigned a target, you would gather information on that target and turn it over to me. You get to go on living pretty much as you do now...”
“But under your control.”
“Yes. You will use standard police procedure. You will not step outside the rules of evidence and you will, under no circumstances, take independent action. If you go off the reservation, even once, you end up right back behind bars.”
She reached for the lunch tray again and toyed with the jello. “Doesn’t sound like a particularly attractive proposition. Free, but no real freedom. One mistake and I’m gone...”
“In this business, one mistake is all most of us get. Providing that you follow the rules, I might be inclined to lighten up at a later time if you can prove you’re worth it.”
“Prove I’m worth it! Of all the damned arrogant...” she stopped herself before she put her foot completely into her mouth.
He was watching her carefully, hoping she would take his offer. He leaned forward in the chair, straightening out and rubbing his aching knee. “Look at it this way. You get a chance for a normal life. Well, a life as close to normal as any of us will ever get, and one certainly closer than you’ve had in a long time.” He went on, “one of the great things about this job is knowing that you’re never alone in it. When Jake was in that warehouse, he knew that he had a whole team covering his back. You’ll always have a safety net.”
“What about...my...background? In case you forgot, I killed a man.”
“I’ve done some checking. Darrel was not a well-loved man back in your home town. At first, the police thought that your mother was the shooter, but there was no gun shot residue on her hands, and she was too sick to tell them what had actually happened. They wanted to talk to you, but figured that you were just another runaway. They closed the case, simply called it ‘death by misadventure.’” She sat in the bed, just looking at her hands, at the bruises caused by the IV. He went on, “your record with the sheriff’s department was exemplary, right up until the Sergeant pulled his little stunt. There were other complaints against him, from other female officers. But of course you didn’t know that. If you had fought the drug charge you might actually have won.” His voice was quiet and steady.
My God, she thought, all those years of running, all those years of being alone and afraid, none of that was ever necessary. She toyed with the half-melted jello, took a spoonful and swallowed. It was sticky sweet and cloying and she pushed the tray away again with shaking hands. Tears fell quietly on the sheet in front of her.
“I found Dan Prescott’s widow in Florida,” he said. “I don’t know if you knew it or not, but Dan was former FBI. He was well respected in the Bureau. Harriet sends her regards, told me to tell you she’d like you to visit sometime. If you learned from Dan, you learned from one of the best.”
“Did you find out anything about my mother?”
“Yes.” He looked at his hands. “She’s is currently in a mental institution in the state of Washington. She had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic. She barely knows her own name. Her illness was probably induced by the drugs Darrel fed her, so she was probably not even aware of what he was doing to you. What happened to you is not her fault and it is not your fault either. I really don’t know if that makes it easier to live with or harder.”
More tears hit the bedding and she just let them fall. “Why are you doing this? Making me this offer?” Her voice was shaking.
“I hate to see talent wasted. You have tremendous potential. You could do good work, legitimate work. But I won’t sugar-coat it for you. This will be difficult for you. It will be hard for you to trust anyone, and it will be hard for the others on my team to trust you. You’ll have to learn to curb your impulses, impose discipline on yourself and learn to act as an integral part of a group. But I think you can do it. You have the intelligence. You only have to determine if you have the will.” He paused. “You should know that none of the people on my team has come into this kind of work through what you would call ‘conventional’ means.” She waited for him to explain. “I came up from the military. I have a forensic accountant who got fired for being a whistle blower. I’ve got a tech guy who’d rather be hacking into the US Treasury, and we won’t even begin to go into Jake’s background. None of us came in through the front door, but we all learned how to work together. It’s what keeps us alive.”
“Can I think about it?”
“Of course. They want to move you out of here sometime tomorrow. Let me know if it will be to a private room or to the prison ward.” Then he was gone and she was alone with her thoughts.
They asked her if she wanted anything for the pain, anything to help her sleep, and she told them no. She needed to be clear, to think. Two voices were at war inside her head. One said, he’s just using you, trying to control you, like all the others. The other voice said, give it a chance, you’ve got nothing left to lose and no other options. The shadows played across the floor, and the bars from the window stood out, stark black and white in the moonlight. The first voice came back, take the offer, and then as soon as you get a chance, run like hell. The second voice was there again telling her, only cowards run. Of course you could run, that voice went on, you have the means, you have the skills, but what does that prove? You’ve taken bigger chances with your life before, why not take this one? “Yes,” she said softly in the darkness, “maybe...”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~