Sliver of Truth

14

I felt frozen in the sound of the helicopter all around us. Jake pulled me and we kept running along the wall, staying close to the stone. The ground beside us spit and splintered with the shots fired from above. They were shooting at us; I couldn’t believe it. I glanced behind us. The men I’d heard were nowhere in sight. Where were they? The fact that I couldn’t see them made me more nervous than if they’d been at our heels. What if they were corralling us like sheep, if they turned up ahead of us somehow?

“It can’t follow us into the trees!” Jake screamed back at me, pointing to where the wall ended and a thick wooded area began and ran all the way down to the highway. We could move through the sloping tree cover all the way down to the Henry Hudson. His voice sounded like a whisper in the deafening sound of the helicopter, but I heard him and nodded. We ran balls out toward what I prayed would be safety. When we reached the corner where the south wall hit the east wall, he climbed it quickly and then helped me up.

Not easy. I fell once and tried again, finally made it over the top. I think if it hadn’t been for the sheer adrenaline of terror, I never would have made it over at all. I kind of climbed and then fell off the wall on the other side. Jake dropped down more gracefully beside me. We heard the copter retreat but stay close by. We listened. No voices, no footfalls.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m sorry I brought us here.”

“No, Ridley. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for? You were just trying to protect me,” I said, looking up at him. He dropped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. I turned and wrapped my arms around him, rested my face against his neck.

“I’ve realized something in the last few days,” he said. His voice sounded so grave and serious. “Ridley, I can walk away. It’s nothing more than a single choice. We can both do it. We don’t need all the answers to live our lives. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

He put his mouth to mine and he tasted so good. I could taste all the delicious possibilities of our life together. In that moment, I believed him. I believed he was right.

“If we get out of this,” he whispered in my ear, “I promise you everything is going to be different. I swear to you, Ridley. I swear it.”

We held each other like that until something started to slice the air around us like a razor through fabric. We stood to run but I watched as Jake’s shoulder jerked and red seeped through his jacket, then through his pants leg. He reached out to me as he fell backward. I screamed his name and stretched for his hand. Then I felt a searing heat in my side, fell forward with as much force as if someone had shoved me hard from behind. I saw his face grow pale and still. I tasted blood and dirt in my mouth.

I AWOKE WITH a start and a sob in my throat. The car was moving fast; we were on a highway.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“Who?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the road. The road was surrounded by blackness. We must have left the city far behind.

“Jake.”

“I don’t know, Ridley,” he said softly.

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not. I really don’t know.”

THERE ARE ALL kinds of death in this world. The death of the body is the least of them. The death of self, the death of hope—now, that’s the hard stuff.

I’ve never been one to fear my own death. Not that I want to die, of course. I’ve just always seen death as a lights-out proposition. You’re gone. Either it’s the end of you…or it’s a beginning. Either way, I don’t imagine there’s much looking back. I’ve never bought the whole fire-and-brimstone thing, the concept of reward or punishment at death. The idea that a tally has been kept of our good or evil or mediocre deeds, and that the soul is filed away accordingly for all eternity, just doesn’t ring true. Humans judge that way. I tend to think that God probably doesn’t. He or She just keeps doling out the lessons with endless patience until you finally “get it” in this life or the next.

I suspect that grief is worse than death. When someone you love has died, it’s almost impossible to get your head around it. The totality of it, your utter helplessness against it, makes you feel as if you could burst into flames from sheer emotional agony. When Max died, I hurt so much that I couldn’t believe I was still walking around, going through the motions of my life. I actually found myself wishing that a car would hit me or that I would fall from some medium height. It’s not that I wanted to die. I just wanted to be in traction. I wanted my body to be as wrecked as my spirit so I could just lie down and heal.

I’m not afraid to die. I know there are far worse fates.

I was thinking this as Dylan drove on the dark highway and I lay in the backseat.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Someplace where we’ll be safe for a while until we figure out what to do. I need to think.”

“You’re going to tell me what’s going on. Right now,” I said.

No answer. He turned off the highway and pulled onto a small road. There was nothing for miles but darkness, punctuated by the yellow lights of house windows, few and far between and off in the distance. I could smell grass and manure. He made a right onto a narrow dirt road and we drove slowly down a drive edged with tall trees. At the end, there was a dark stone structure. A house. It had the look of emptiness, of abandonment.

“This was my family’s summer house.”

“Was?”

“I don’t have much family left. I guess it’s mine.”

“What about your murdered mother, Agent Grace? All that bullshit you told me in the park. Did Max kill the rest of your family, too?”

He flinched as if I’d slapped him.

“That was the truth,” he said as he got out of the car. “Not the whole truth, but I didn’t lie.”

He opened the door for me and helped me out. I hated having to lean on him. I was dirty and wet and cold. My feet squished in the wet ground. When I lost the strength in my legs, he lifted me off the ground, which isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies.

“Put me down, you asshole,” I said, feeling annoyed and embarrassed.

“That’s the second time you’ve called me that tonight,” he observed, moving quickly toward the house.

He set me down on the stoop and unlocked a heavy wooden door with a key he took from above the doorjamb. Inside the air was musty and cold, like the breath of a grave. I hobbled over to a couch I saw. It was red and dusty, sat beside a matching chair and ottoman. It was stiff and uncomfortable but it was better than standing. There was a simple wood coffee table and a fireplace. A stack of wood sat ready for lighting. I curled up against the cold, stared at Dylan Grace with unabashed hatred as he started a fire, covered me with an ugly beige, stinky blanket. He left my sight and set about clanking around in what I assumed was the kitchen. I drifted off again.

When I woke, he was sitting in the chair with his feet up on the ottoman. The fire lit half his face. He was a handsome man in the rough way I mentioned. Even exhausted looking, pale with dark circles beneath his eyes, he had a hard sexuality to him. I could almost imagine being attracted to him if he wasn’t a liar and a killer. Not that such things had stopped me before.

“No one is who you think they are,” he said, somehow sensing that I was awake. “Not me, not Max Smiley, not even Jacobsen.”

He didn’t look at me, just kept his eyes on the flames. This seemed like such a pointless statement of the obvious that I didn’t even bother to respond.

“Who’s the ghost?” I asked. He turned to look at me sharply.

“Where’d you hear that?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I just keep hearing it when I fall asleep. I hear a man asking me, ‘Where’s the ghost?’”

“A lot of people want the answer to that question,” he said, keeping his eyes on me.

“Including you?”

He shrugged. “First you eat, then we talk.” He got up and left the room quickly. I didn’t bother to call after him to try to stop him. I was starting to get used to my own helplessness in all of this. I didn’t have any clothes, any strength. I was in trouble with the police in two countries, not to mention the FBI. I was learning to be more patient. I just sat there for a while staring into the fire, trying to fit together all the million pieces I had, coming up with nothing except the usual headache.

He returned with tomato soup and some tea on a wooden tray. Based on the condition of the place, I didn’t want to think about how long these things had been sitting in a cupboard. I was amazed at my own hunger, though, and couldn’t remember the last time I ate. I tried to eat slowly, not wanting to make myself sick. But I couldn’t keep myself from sucking down the soup in minutes. My stomach cramped but I didn’t throw up, thankfully. When I was done, Dylan made me another bowl of soup, which I ate as well. Then he handed me some pills and a big glass of water.

I looked up at him.

“I’m not taking any pills from you.”

He nodded toward the tray.

“You took the soup—and the tea. I could have drugged you that way, if that was my intention.” The British accent again. It faded in and out. “They’re antibiotics. Without them, you’ll just get worse and worse.”

They looked as if they could be antibiotics, little two-toned caplets. Against my better judgment, I took them. It seemed like a fair enough gamble.

“Where’d you get antibiotics?”

“I keep some around for emergencies.”

I couldn’t tell if he was making some kind of a joke, but I didn’t ask.

He sat down across from me, rested his elbows on his knees. He didn’t say anything as I sipped my water. I felt stronger, less light-headed. I was about to start prodding when he said, “Max Smiley picked a good time to die.”

I looked at him, didn’t say anything. He looked sad, exhausted on a level beyond physical. I almost felt bad for him.

“After a lifetime of evil, he made his exit just before some of the ugly came back at him. Death was too good for Max Smiley. People felt robbed.”

“What kind of evil? You mean Project Rescue?”

“Project Rescue was the least of it.”

I’d heard this before, from Jake. Almost those exact same words.

“I think you need to be more specific. I keep hearing what a monster Max was, how evil he was, but no one’s told me a single thing to make me believe it. I know he wasn’t the man I thought he was. I get that. But evil is kind of a strong word, you know. You need to back it up.”

He stood up so quickly that he startled me. He walked past me and I turned to see him take a brown folder off a dining table that stood behind the couch. He sat back down with the file in his hand.

“This is as complete a dossier on Maxwell Allen Smiley as exists,” he said.

“Compiled by whom?”

“Mostly by me, piecing together what I’ve found through various domestic and international law agencies.”

The file was thick in his hand. It looked like something you’d see in the movies, ominous and top secret. I fought the urge to shrink from it, all my instincts for denial kicking in. I knew one thing: Nothing in a file like that could be good.

“How do I know this is not just more bullshit on your part?” I said, feeling suddenly angry and defensive. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me since the day we met. I know you’re not an FBI agent. I don’t even know if the name you gave me is real—I don’t even know what to call you. One of my most recent memories is of you jabbing a needle into my arm. I’m sitting here in some cabin with you in the middle of fucking nowhere. Your accent keeps changing. For all I know, you’re some psycho that’s kidnapped me and is planning to eat my liver for dinner. For the last time, who the hell are you?”

That smile, that annoying smile he got, crept onto his face. If I weren’t such a wreck, I would have leapt for his throat. Instead I had to settle for an angry glare, which we all know isn’t nearly as effective.

“I do work for the FBI. Not many people know it, including your friend Agent Sorro. But I do.”

“What is it, like some Black Ops thing?” I said with a little laugh. I wanted to sound sarcastic, as if I was making fun of him, but the way he sat there in the semidark, Dylan Grace was all mystery. I would have believed anything about him at that moment.

“Not exactly, no.”

I waited for him to go on but, of course, he didn’t.

“What, then?”

“It’s not really important. The important thing is that I want to help you, not hurt you. You need to understand that.”

I shook my head. “Why does everything have to be a riddle with you? Anyway, why should I believe a word you say about anything?”

“Because I just saved your ass,” he said with predictable arrogance.

“Well, where’s the backup, the cavalry? Are they coming to the rescue, coming to take us home? Why are we here, so you can ‘figure out what to do next’?” I lifted my fingers obnoxiously as quotation marks. “If you don’t mind me saying so, it seems to me like you’re a little out of your league. And it doesn’t seem like anyone’s rushing to bail you out.”

“You’re right,” he said, his smile fading just a little. “I’m unsupported at the moment.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what to think about this man. “What does that even mean?”

He held my eyes but didn’t say anything.

“It means we’re on our own, right?”

He shrugged again and gave a single nod of his head.

“And your accent. You’re British?”

“My father was American; my mother was British. My family lived in England from about a year after I was born until I was sixteen. Then I moved back to the States. The accent comes back when I’m stressed or drunk or exhausted.”

I shook my head at him. “Why should I believe a word you say?”

“I haven’t lied to you. Not once.”

“You’ve just omitted significant details—is that more like it?”

More of that pregnant silence he’d mastered.

“God, you’re really despicable,” I said.

He held up the file. “It’s all in here. Everything I know about Max—about your father.”

He put the file on the couch beside me and left the room. I heard a door shut and I was alone with the fire. I was alone with Max. The Ghost.