Hell and Gone

INTERLUDE WITH A PARANOID FEDERAL AGENT (RETIRED)

DEKE CLARK HAD a knife in hand and raw chicken on the counter when he saw something moving in the bushes out back.

He did a double take, wondering if it was just an optical illusion in the early summer twilight. A shadow falling in an unexpected way. A crosswind. Or maybe that third beer goofing around with his mind, making him see things that weren’t really out there, in the backyard, where his teenaged girls were tossing a baseball around, waiting for their father to get dinner going already.

It was nothing, Deke told himself. Had to be nothing. But a little voice inside Deke’s head—the same voice that had been nagging at him for a long time now—told him maybe it could be something. After all, Deke had done something very naughty today.

He’d made a phone call.

Deke put the knife down and walked to the window, holding his hands in the air. He should wash them. But he needed to look first just to make sure. Deke squinted, trying to block out the sun and zero in on those bushes.

“DAAAAAAD,” his youngest cried. “I’m STARRRVING.”

“It’s coming, baby,” Deke said, still peering into the spaces between the branches and leaves, looking for movement, the gleam of metal, anything.

“Come on, DAAAAD,” his elder daughter yelled, joining her sister in the faux anguish.

Nothing…

Of course, if you were an assassin hiding in the bushes out behind a suburban home, you’d go perfectly still, too, knowing that your target was now sticking his stupid head in the perfect frame of a kitchen window. Deke imagined a blast of cold black—his brains splattered on the raw chicken behind him—and the look on his kids’ faces as their father’s already dead body dropped to the floor, out of view. Then the assassin expertly turning his gun on them, no matter how fast or where they ran…

Because he made a phone call.

Why did he make that damned call?

Deke stepped away from the window, nudged the kitchen tap with his wrists, stuck his hands under the hot water.

For the longest time he’d played everything cool. Served his time and had done what they wanted. He didn’t mention Hardie or the Hunters ever again. Not even to Ellie. He’d put the brakes on several investigations connected to activities in Eastern Europe. He’d received no resistance from Sarkissian, so it wasn’t difficult. If Deke or his boss wasn’t leading the charge into something, nothing got done. Their office was too scattered, the case load too great. Eventually Deke couldn’t take it anymore and he pulled the plug. Said he wanted to teach, spend more time with his family. Sarkissian didn’t say a word. He was probably thinking the same thing.

Still, the image of Hardie ate away at him. Deke had only seen it once—they felt no need to show it to him again—but once was enough. The pain on that man’s face. Goddamn it. You couldn’t see what kind of torture they were putting him through and that somehow made it worse. Deke tried to console himself with the thought that Hardie was dead; they wouldn’t keep him alive. They’d kept him alive just long enough to show his image to Deke so Deke would eagerly slip that dog collar around his own neck. He cursed his own cowardice.

What else could he do, though?

Play the tough guy and wait until they grabbed one of his kids and…

Deke couldn’t even think about it.

As time passed, though, he had this troubling gut feeling that Hardie was alive. Kept in some hellhole like a POW, brought out for beatings every so often. Meanwhile Deke drank his Yards Pale Ale and cut up chicken breast for the grill, watching his kids play in his backyard…

Finally Deke decided to do something about it.

He was careful. God, was he careful. Deke, a longtime FBI agent, knew how the bad guys could communicate in secret. He duplicated those techniques—laundering his own money, using disposable cell phones and dead drops, none of it (he prayed to God) traceable in any way back to himself.

What Deke did with that money was hire a professional investigator. Not just anyone—the best of the best. Someone he’d never met but had heard great things about. Whose track record spoke for itself. The contact was brief; the investigator seemed to understand Deke’s situation perfectly, which was a little unnerving. “The next time you hear from me, I’ll have found your man.” Which Deke would have considered bluster, if not for the investigator’s 98 percent success rate. (Confirmable, too, after a peek at FBI case files.)

But all this time later…and no word from the investigator.

Which was why Deke made that phone call this morning, just to check on progress, and had spent the rest of the day with a growing sense of unease, half convincing himself that trained killers were hiding in his backyard, ready to punish him for the transgression. Deke hadn’t even made contact with the investigator; just the answering service. Which made him worry even more that…

Oh, God.

He definitely saw something now, in the bushes. An arm. Had to be. What else could it be? Deke almost screamed the names of his girls before forcing his mouth shut. Don’t be an idiot and tip him off. Instead Deke took the knife and ran out the back door, putting himself between his children and the bushes and screaming at them to go inside the house, NOW, don’t ask questions, just GO GO GO and stabbing at the bushes with the knife and…

Whatever had been there—if anything had been there—was gone.

Back inside, Deke told the girls that he thought he saw a rabid dog out in the bushes and there wasn’t time to explain. His elder girl rolled her eyes, thinking her dad was kidding, but then she saw his ashen face and decided not to press it. Deke also announced that the chicken had spoiled, they won’t be grilling tonight, they should put some shoes on and pile into the car pronto and go out for something to eat.

Deke drove Ellie and the kids to their favorite pizza parlor, a few minutes away, his mind a jumble of contradictory emotions. Relief that nothing had happened. Regret at making that phone call. Cowardice for feeling that regret.

The entire drive, Deke couldn’t keep his eyes off the rearview and side-view mirrors.