Panic

6

S teven Jargo was killing mad. He hated failure. It was a rare occurrence, but it haunted him longer than most men, and he despised the sensation of panic that was a misstep’s inevitable partner in his world. Work went well or badly; a middle ground was only a theory. Panic was weakness, a lack of preparation and resolve, a poison for his heart. The last time he had been afraid was when he’d committed his first murder, but that terror soon dissipated, like smoke caught in a breeze.

But now he was scared and running, his hands scraped raw from sliding along the rooftop of the Casher house when all hell had broken loose in the kitchen while he was erasing the upstairs computer. He had dropped down to the cool of the yard, crashing into Donna Casher’s rosebushes, thorns ripping at his hands, and seen Dezz running out the back door, heard the shriek of the bullets, and they had both retreated to their car parked one street away. The noise meant police, and the police always drove fastest in wealthier areas.

Jargo had rented an empty apartment in Austin yesterday, under a different name and for cash, and perhaps it wasn’t safe but they had no other place to go.

‘At least one of them.’ Dezz breathed hard as Jargo drove twenty miles over the limit to a quiet, faded neighborhood on the east side of town. ‘Shaved head. Old like you. Mexican-looking. That’s all I saw.’ Dezz dabbed at his head, reassuring himself that a bullet hadn’t tweaked his skull. He jabbed a caramel in his mouth, chewed fast. ‘Didn’t recognize him. I saw a blue Ford on the street. License plate XXC, didn’t see the rest. Texas plates.’

‘Did Evan take a bullet?’

‘Unknown. The attacker fired in his direction. He was almost dead from the rope. You erased the files on her system?’

‘She’d overwritten her system already. She wasn’t leaving anything for us to find in case we showed up.’

Dezz leaned against the car window. ‘That fucker scared the piss out of me. I see him again, he’s dead.’ Then Dezz – small but wiry, with a look in his eyes as if he always had a fever – said, ‘What the hell do we do now, Dad?’

‘We fight back.’ Jargo parked at the condo, still watching the rearview to be sure they hadn’t been followed.

‘Evan didn’t see us.’

‘But he had the files on his computer,’ Jargo said. ‘He knows.’

They hurried upstairs and Jargo made two phone calls. In the first he gave no greeting, just brief directions on how to drive to the apartment, heard a confirmation, then hung up. Then he called a woman who used the code name Galadriel. He employed a group of computer experts on his payroll and he called them his elves, for the magic they could work against servers and databases and codes. Galadriel – the name came from Tolkien’s queen of the elves – was an ex-CIA computer expert. Jargo paid her ten times what the government had.

He fed Galadriel Dezz’s description of the attacker and the blue Ford’s plates, asked her to find a match in their databases. She said she’d call him back.

Jargo put antibacterial lotion on his scored hands and stood at the window, watching two young mothers walk in the sun, carrying their babies, indulging in idle gossip. Austin embraced this beautiful spring day, a day for watching pretty moms lift their faces to the sun, not a day for death and pain and everything in his world unraveling. He studied the street. No cars parked with occupants. Foot traffic heading to a local small grocery. He watched to see if anyone watched him.

He would have to call London in a moment. He had been lied to, and he wasn’t happy. Then he would make the most difficult decision of his life.

‘The files are gone,’ Dezz said. ‘If Evan’s alive, he can’t hurt us.’

‘If Evan had them on his computer, I assume he saw them,’ Jargo said. ‘He can name names. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take.’

Dezz sat on the couch in the condo, turning over his closed Game Boy in his hands. Not playing it. Three more caramels wadded in his cheek. Jargo saw Dezz was angry and nervous, the kill interrupted before it was done. Dezz would vent all that pent-up fury on the next weak person he encountered.

He sat next to Dezz. ‘Calm down. We were right to run. It was an ambush.’

‘I’m wondering who let Mr. Shotgun know we were there.’ Dezz slid the blob of caramel from one side of his mouth to the other.

Jargo went to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water. Evan resembled his mother, and that had made trying to kill him harder. Jargo thought about Donna Casher’s once-lovely face, how he shouldn’t have left her alone with Dezz for two minutes while he searched her computer, how he had said, I’m sorry, to her after she was dead. Dezz needed more self-control.

‘The suitcases make me believe his mother told him they had to run. The files being on his computer are the why they had to run. She had to light a fire under his ass, get him home fast. You should have taken his laptop.’

Dezz opened up the Game Boy, twiddled the controls. Jargo let him, although he found the ping-ping noise of the game annoying. The electronic opiate, the cheek full of candy, calmed the young man. ‘Sorry. It meant getting shot. It doesn’t matter, the files are gone.’

‘Evan talks to the police,’ Jargo said, ‘and we’re mortally wounded.’

‘He doesn’t have proof. He didn’t see our faces. They’ll think it’s a robbery interrupted.’

The radio, tuned to local news, began a story about two police officers attacked and a witness in a morning homicide abducted from their custody. Dezz folded the Game Boy shut. The reporter said two officers were beaten and injured and gave a description of Evan Casher and a bald-headed assailant.

Jargo drummed a finger against his glass. ‘Evan’s alive and our friend let him speak to the police before snatching him back. I wonder why.’

Dezz unwrapped another caramel.

Jargo slapped the candy from his hand. ‘My theory is Donna knew she was in danger, and she hired protection. That’s who attacked us.’ He gave Dezz a hard stare. ‘You’re sure she didn’t spot you trailing her?’

‘No way. I was extremely careful.’

‘I told you not to underestimate her.’

‘I didn’t. But if this guy’s just hired muscle, why does he grab Evan back? The job’s dead. No need for him to risk his neck.’

Jargo frowned. ‘That’s a very good and a rather unsettling question, Dezz. Clearly he thinks Evan has something he wants.’

Dezz blinked. ‘So what do we tell Mitchell about his wife? Or do you just kill him and not bother with explanations?’

‘We tell him that we were too late to save her. That a hired gun killed her, kidnapped his boy. Mitchell will be devastated – easy to manipulate.’

Dezz shrugged. ‘Fine. Next step?’

‘Consider who Donna might ask for help. That’s the kidnapper. Find him, we find Evan, tell him we can take him straight to his father. That’s the shortest distance between two points.’

A knock on the door. Three fast raps, then two slow. Dezz went to the door, his gun at the ready.

The pattern repeated itself, then a voice said, ‘Girl Scout cookies.’

Dezz opened the door. Broke into a smile. ‘Hey, Girl Scout.’

Carrie Lindstrom walked in, her face tired, her dark hair gathered into a ponytail, wearing jeans and an untucked T-shirt. She looked around the room. ‘Where’s Evan?’

Jargo sat her down, told her what had happened, described Bald based on the news report and Dezz’s fleeting glance. ‘You recognize the rescuer?’

‘No. Evan doesn’t know anyone who fits that description, at least in Houston.’

Jargo gave her a hard stare. ‘Carrie. You were supposed to find those files if Evan had them. They were on his computer. I saw them myself. You didn’t do your job.’

‘I swear… they weren’t there.’

He liked the shock and fear in her eyes. ‘When did you last look for them?’

‘Last night. I went to his place, we watched a movie, drank wine. I asked him if I could check my e-mail. He said yes. I looked, there were no new files on his system. I swear.’

‘You spent the night with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you fuck him good?’ Dezz asked. Amusement in his voice.

‘Shut up, Dezz,’ she said.

Jargo said, ‘So how did he get away from you in Houston?’

‘I went to go get us breakfast. I stopped by my place and I got caught in bad traffic coming back. When I got back to his house, he was gone. He left a message with my voice mail that he’d had an emergency, he’d gone home.’

‘I accessed your voice mail this morning. Heard his message to you.’

Carrie’s jaw trembled. ‘You accessed my messages. You don’t trust me to report to you.’

‘Carrie. I heard nothing from you this morning. For almost two hours. If I hadn’t tapped your voice mail, I wouldn’t have known Evan was heading to Austin and Donna might be running. Thank God I did, because otherwise we wouldn’t have known. Her street’s hard for surveillance and she apparently hired muscle to help her run. You cost me an hour of time today that I needed by not reporting his movements to me.’

‘I didn’t check my messages. I’m sorry. I-’

‘The files I found were placed on Evan’s system this morning,’ Jargo said. ‘So I believe you. Lucky for you.’

‘You said you would get Evan and his mom to safety,’ Carrie said.

‘You’re losing your perspective,’ Dezz said. ‘Sleeping with him wasn’t a good idea.’

‘Don’t be a dick.’ She turned to Jargo. ‘Where is he?’

‘Kidnapped.’

‘Did you kill his mother?’ Her voice was thin.

‘No. She was dead when we arrived. Evan came in and we subdued him and searched his laptop. Found the files and erased them. But then we were attacked, and I assume it was Donna’s killer, returning to the scene for some reason.’ Jargo watched her face, seeing if she bought the lie.

She crossed her arms. ‘Who would have taken him?’

‘Anyone who knew his mother had the files. She must have tried to cut a deal for them with the wrong people.’

‘Evan doesn’t know anything,’ she said.

‘I think he fooled you. His mother sent him those files this morning, he saw them, he knows you’re not really his sweet lover girl.’ Jargo fought down the urge to hit her, to ruin that porcelain-perfect face, to shove her right through that glass window. ‘He ditched you and ran, and you let him, because you’re dumb as shit, Carrie.’

She opened her mouth, as if to speak, then closed it.

‘Carrie. One chance. Are you telling me everything you know?’ Jargo asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you call him this morning?’ Asking as if he already knew.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Do we go hunting for him or not?’

Jargo watched her. Decided what to say. ‘Yes. Because the other possibility is that it’s the CIA who grabbed Evan. They have the most to lose. They had every reason to kill his mom.’ He let the words sink in. ‘Just like they killed your parents, Carrie.’

Carrie’s poker face didn’t change. ‘We have to get Evan back.’

‘Tall order,’ Dezz said. ‘If the CIA has him, we’ll never find him.’

‘The more worrisome angle is the Agency killed Donna,’ Jargo said. ‘And then the gentleman who grabbed Evan had another agenda entirely. Then we’re fighting on two fronts.’

Carrie opened her mouth, then shut it.

‘You’re worried about him,’ Dezz said.

‘In the way you worry about a dog that’s gotten lost,’ Carrie said. ‘A neighbor’s dog, not yours.’

‘We’ll see if Galadriel can get a trace on the bald man or Evan. See if they surface anywhere.’

‘If the CIA has the files, then we need to run,’ she said.

Dezz grabbed her by the throat, gave a cruel squeeze with his fingers that worked the flesh around the carotid and the jugular like dough. ‘If you’d done your job and kept him in Houston, this wouldn’t have happened.’

‘Let her go, Dezz,’ Jargo said.

Dezz released her and licked his lips. ‘Don’t worry, Carrie. All is forgiven.’

Jargo’s cell phone rang. He went into the other room to answer it, shut the door behind him.

Carrie sat huddled on the couch.

Dezz leaned down and massaged the feeling back into Carrie’s neck. ‘I’m watching you, sunshine. You messed up.’

She slapped his hand away. ‘That’s not necessary.’

‘He got under your skin, didn’t he?’ Dezz said. ‘I don’t get it. He’s not better-looking than I am. I’m gainfully employed. I share my candy. Granted, I was never an Oscar nominee, but, fuck, that’s just a piece of paper.’

‘He was an assignment.’ Carrie stood and walked to the kitchen bar and poured herself a glass of water.

‘You enjoyed playing house,’ Dezz said. ‘But playtime’s over. If he’s seen those files, then he’s a dead man, and you and I both know it.’

‘Not if he’s made to understand. If I can talk to him.’

‘Make him into you,’ Dezz said. ‘The amazing avengers of murdered parents. It could be a comic book.’

‘I can turn him to help us. I can.’

‘I hope so,’ Dezz said. ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll kill him.’