Hidden Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure Page 18

  “Thanks for the insight. I’ll send you the mailing info for the stuff I need you send.”

  I give him some of the details and provide the rest in my email. He thanks me for my trust, quotes me a ridiculous price he knows I’ll pay, and hangs up.

  “Was that your Ukrainian bromance?” Bella looks up from a blueprint, her finger marking a spot on the drawing. “Wolodymyr?”

  “Yep. He’s going to be a big help.”

  “What do you think?” Mack asks me, holding up an odd-looking device. It’s a clear Tic-Tac case with a couple of batteries inside.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a homemade taser.” He smiles. “We don’t want to kill these people at Brookhaven, right? But we might need to defend ourselves.”

  “How’d you do that?” Bella asks, intrigued. “Let me see that.”

  Mack tosses it to her. “There is a piece of metal inside the lid of the candy case. I ripped the circuit board out of a disposable camera. It’s connected to the batteries and can deliver right at six hundred volts. It’s not enough to kill or knock unconscious. But it’s enough of a shock to give you time to get the upper hand or get away.”

  Bella presses a small red button protruding from a cut in the plastic. There’s a click and a low hum. “Is that it?”

  “Touch the screws,” Mack tells her. There is a pair of screws extending from the top of the case.

  Bella touches them, while keeping the button depressed, and jumps. “Ouch!” She drops the stun gun onto the bed. “That does hurt.” She shakes the sting from her hand. “It’s more surprising than painful, but still…”

  “That one’s yours,” Mack says. “I made three of them. Here’s yours, Jackson.” He tosses me an identical looking weapon. “There are easy to hide. Just keep them in your pockets. The batteries are new, so they should deliver a nice, steady current.”

  “Do they have to charge?” I ask, moving to the window and turning the device over in my hand, admiring its simplicity.

  “Nope. There’s no capacitor. It doesn’t need a charge. Of course, that lessens the jolt, but we’re not trying to hurt anyone with these. Like I said, a nice non-lethal complement to the weapons you’re toting in that bag.”

  From the window of our crappy hotel room I can see into at least a dozen other rooms across a courtyard from us. I call it a courtyard, though it’s more of a concrete weed factory with a bench and a large standup ashtray.

  There’s a couple sitting in deck chairs outside of their ground floor room. The sliding glass door is open. He’s reading a magazine. She’s on her iPad. I’m guessing, from the way the rooms are laid out in the place, they’re in room 104.

  Above them and one room to the left is a child with thick, curly hair, pressing his face against the glass. The curtains are drawn, and he’s hiding from whoever is in the room with him. The kid is probably three of four. Room 206.

  Directly above the curly haired tot, on the third floor, there’s a man sitting on the edge of his bed. The curtains are halfway open. The television is on, as is a lamp on the desk next to the T.V. He’s talking on the phone, his free hand moving wildly when he’s not running it through his hair. Room 306.

  “I found him,” I say, my eyes on the desperate man at the edge of his bed.

  “Who?” Bella asks.

  “Blogis.”

  “Where?” Mack joins me at the window, Bella follows.

  “Room 306.” I nod in the direction of the third floor room. Blogis is standing now, pacing back and forth. He’s rubbing his temples as he talks.

  Bella puts her hand around the back of my neck and squeezes, rubbing her thumb back and forth. “Now what are you going to do?”

  “Good question,” I answer. “I guess I better figure that out.”

  ***

  There’s only one exit to the hotel, so as long as Blogis remains in his room, we’re in good shape. If he leaves, we can follow him.

  Mack is downstairs in the rental car, awaiting the word. Bella is keeping watch at the window. I’m on George’s laptop, connected to the internet through an ethernet cable. This hotel is a piece of junk, but it has a super-fast connection.

  With the camera on the laptop, I take photos of the Brookhaven identification cards we found in the reporter’s apartment. Then I save them to the desktop and go to my Gmail account.

  I long ago learned the benefits of encrypted email. This was certainly a prime opportunity to employ its secrecy. I hit COMPOSE and open a new email window. At the bottom right of the screen is a downward pointing arrow. I click it and open MORE OPTIONS to switch back to an older COMPOSE function. Once the message to Wolodymyr is finished and the photos are attached, I look under the SUBJECT line and check a box to encrypt.

  The system then asks for me to fill out a question and answer form. I make sure it’s something Wolodymyr will be able to figure out. I click on SEND + ENCRYPT and send the email.

  Easy as pie.

  “He’s on the move,” Bella says as the SENT confirmation pops up at the top of the screen. “We need to go.”

  I flip the laptop closed and slide it into a backpack. Inside the pack are my favorite six-shooter, the Kel-Tec PMR-30 handgun, and some ammo. I pull out the loaded revolver and slip in the small of my back. I follow Bella out of the room and into the hallway. She sends a text to Mack, letting him know we’re on our way.

  “So what exactly is the plan?” she asks me as we round the corner to the stairwell. She swings the door open and we race down the flights of steps toward the first floor, the echo of our steps loud in the metal and concrete of the enclosed well.

  “Mack follows him. We follow Mack.”

  “You called the cab?”

  “It’s across the street at a gas station waiting right now. Mack will tell us what direction he’s heading, and we’ll follow. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’ve been so focused on finding him, I never really pieced together what I’d do when we did.”

  “Oh, Jackson,” she sighs, tugging open the heavy exit door on the ground floor. “You’re too much.”

  The stairwell opens into the end of a first floor hallway. We walk quickly across the carpeted floor, trying not to announce our arrival as we near the lobby and the bank of elevators.

  Bella slows and we turn the corner into the lobby at the same time, just as Blogis passes through the automatic doors leading to the street. There’s an SUV awaiting him just past the doors, and he slides into the back passenger’s seat. The SUV speeds off.

  Bella stops in the middle of the lobby and texts a message to Mack, who we see turning right onto the street as we pass through the automatic doors ourselves. The weight of the humidity almost knocks me back into the hotel.

  “It got hot out here,” Bella says, checking her buzzing phone. “Mack sees him. He’s about two cars back, heading east on I Street Northwest.”

  Our taxi is sitting across the street, the driver reading a newspaper, his left arm hanging out of an open window. Bella and I sprint across 25th Street, just beating a Volvo riding its horn as it speeds behind us. The cabbie looks up at the commotion and sees us coming. He drops his paper and waves at us.

  “Head to I Street and go east, please,” orders Bella once we’re in the back of the cab.

  “Where are we going?” the cabbie questions, looking at us through the rearview mirror.

  “We don’t know, exactly,” Bella tells him between heavy breaths. “Just head east on I for now.”

  The cabbie grips the wheel, accelerating into traffic. Neither Mack nor the black Cadillac SUV carrying Blogis are visible. Bella’s sitting behind the cabbie, my backpack between us. She leans into me.

  “Any idea where he’s going?” she whispers into my ear.

  “The driver or Blogis?”

  “Blogis.”

  “I’m not sure, but
Sir Spencer did say he was in trouble with some of his investors. He looked distressed in the hotel room. My guess is he’s on his way to meet with those investors.”

  Bella’s phone vibrates and she checks the text from Mack. “They’re on New Hampshire, passing GW Hospital. Driver, please make a left on New Hampshire.”

  The cabbie nods.

  Washington D.C. is a city laid out in grids. In this part of the city, between K Street and Constitution Avenue, the east and west streets are identified by letters. The streets running north and south are numbered. Then there are intersecting diagonal streets that meet at traffic circles. They’re named after states.

  The cabbie turns left onto New Hampshire, toward Washington Circle Park, and drives northeast. We pass the hospital and the George Washington University Medical Center and enter the traffic circle.

  Bella’s phone vibrates again. “Exit onto K Street,” she tells the driver. “Head east and then turn right onto 21st.”

  The cabbie exits the circle onto K Street before he immediately steers south onto 21st. He glances in the rearview mirror, maybe looking for more instructions from his navigator.

  Bella’s phone buzzes as if on cue, telling us to turn right onto H Street. The cabbie nods at Bella’s request and turns back west.

  “We are going in a big circle,” he says, driving his car into the heart of the GWU campus. Almost immediately the phone vibrates again.

  “We need to get out,” Bella says. “Can you drop us off at the corner of 23rd and H?”

  The driver passes 22nd and slows at 23rd. He pulls up behind Mack in the rented Ford Taurus. “You need me to wait?” he asks, punching a button on the front of the meter.

  “No thanks,” Bella says, opening her door and passing forward a pair of twenty dollar bills “We’re good.”

  I slide out behind Bella, flip the pack onto my back, and meet her at Mack’s driver’s side window. He’s already talking to her when I join them.

  “… out of the car here and walked north on 23rd,” Mack is saying. “I’m pretty sure he went into the Metro Station up there.”

  “Was he alone?” I ask.

  From street level the station is just a pair of escalators rising and dropping to the sidewalk. The only distinguishing feature is banks of newspaper machines flanking either side of the entrance.

  “He got out of the SUV right here and immediately went into the station,” says Mack. “I’m pretty sure he got onto the escalator to the right and went down to the station.”

  “Let’s go,” Bella says. “We’re not stopping now.”

  “I don’t know,” says Mack. “I don’t trust it.”

  “What’s not to trust?” asks Bella. “If he’s meeting with some dangerous investors, it’s probably a precaution to make sure he’s not followed to their location.”

  “You watch too many spy movies,” I say.

  “I don’t watch any spy movies,” she counters before realizing I’m joking. She smirks. “We don’t have time for this. I’m going.” She slaps her hands on the doorframe of Mack’s open window and starts jogging north toward the station. I shrug and follow her.

  “Tell me where to meet you,” Mack calls after us and I wave to acknowledge him.

  It’s a block to the escalators and I’ve caught up with Bella by the time we descend underground. It’s crowded and we politely push our way past commuters to reach the bottom. The space opens up into a wide lobby area, lined with automated fare card machines.

  “What do we do?” Bella looks at me. “Where do we go?”

  “Just buy two fare cards to anywhere. We’ll figure it out once we get past the gates.”

  Bella navigates the machine and purchases two cards, hands me one, and leads me past the tollgate. There’s a narrow hallway to the left and another set of stairs leading down to the tracks. We quickly make our way down, hoping to spot Blogis.

  The crowds are flowing like rush hour traffic on and off the trains as they squeal in and out of the station. It’s hard to tell one dark suited businessman from another, with their cell phones in one hand, computer bags in another.

  Bella’s straining to look for him, standing on her tiptoes. “There are so many people.”

  I take her hand and wedge us into the crowd, fighting against the throngs exiting the train on the left side of the platform. Groups of people push past us, a couple of them glaring at us for swimming upstream. Within a minute or so, the crowd evaporates up the stairs behind us. To our right, there’s another swell beginning to pool as the next train approaches.

  We work our way into the crowd, and the rumble of the train intensifies. A bright light glows from the tunnel. More people stream down the steps, rushing to make it in time. The train screeches past us, slowing as it nears the tunnel on the opposite end of the tracks. It stops and the doors whoosh open on the opposite side, allowing passengers to exit.

  A moment later the doors in facing us slide open and Bella gets pushed toward the track from the wave of people surging onto the train. She fights her way against the push and tightens her grip. Then, as the wave subsides, and we relax our hold, hands grip my sides just beneath the bottom of my backpack.

  Before I react, I am shoved forcefully onto the train. I lose hold of Bella’s hand and trip into the cabin of the train car. Grabbing a floor to ceiling pole to brace myself, I turn around in time to see the doors shutting closed behind me. Bella’s standing on the platform, mouth agape, unable to speak. Her eyes aren’t on me, though. She’s staring in disbelief at the man between the door and me.

  Liho Blogis smiles at me, winks, and grabs the pole just above my hand. As the train jolts forward and accelerates, he turns to the window and blows a kiss to Bella.

  “She’s a pretty girl, Jackson,” he says. “You’re clearly out of your league in every sense of the word.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Memories are funny things. They’re either there or they’re not. A memory to me is what tells me I’m alive. My memories are the sum of me. They dictate, to varying degrees, who I am and how I got here.

  If I’m missing one, if there’s a part of my past I’ve blocked out, it’s as if part of me is missing. Given the number of memories my shrink suggested I’ve handled with a “suppression mechanism,” it’s not inconceivable that the Jackson Quick walking around today isn’t the Jackson Quick I was supposed to be.

  Every day since this violent odyssey began, since I delivered that first iPod an eternity ago, snapshots have flashed back into my consciousness, filling a missing puzzle piece.

  Maybe they don’t flash. It’s more they pop to the surface, like that dead body in the lake. My memories sank to the bottom of my mind, drifting among the black muck of things I don’t want to remember. And then, suddenly filled with air, they found their way back. Now I expect to find memories around every corner: a loud sound, a familiar odor, a building or street sign, a spot on a map—all of them are triggers.

  I don’t know what it was that made the memory of my mother and Liho Blogis find its way to the surface, but it did. She called him Frank. He looked sad and she looked angry.

  My dad and I were back from an outing. I can’t remember if it was the lake or the gun range or just a quick trip to the hardware store. My dad parked the car in the driveway and told me to go ahead, that he had something to do in the garage.

  I remember running inside the house, bolting through the front to back family room to the wall of windows facing the backyard. I reached for the handle to back door and stopped cold.

  A man had his hands on my mother’s shoulders. She was cross-armed, her hands in gardening gloves. They were standing next to the tomatoes. He was talking, she was listening. I could tell, even without the ability to read lips, he was pleading with her.

  She wasn’t buying what he was selling, despite his efforts. More than wondering what he mi
ght be saying to her, I was more interested, more bothered by the way he touched her. It was obvious he’d had his hands on her before.

  My mom shook her head, trying not to look at him as she did. He made himself smaller, attempting to face her at eye level. The more I looked at this stranger, the more I recognized him.

  He was the man who’d pulled up in front of our house months earlier. He drove a black BMW and, when I last saw him, wore reflective aviators. His voice sounded like he gargled with gravel. We’d talked about him at dinner. He’d offered dad a job he didn’t want.

  There was something comforting and, at the same time, terrifying in that recognition. When he’d last visited us, showing up unannounced, upsetting my dad, my mother had acted as though she had no idea who he was. Not until dinner that night had she admitted she knew him, pretending his age and a different haircut had fooled her.

  What was she hiding from me?

  I turned the handle and walked out back. The sound of the door creaking open spun both of them on their heels. My mother looked worried about what I might have seen or heard.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, trying to pretend like nothing was wrong, though my eyes probably gave away my confusion.

  “Hi, Jackson.” She extended her arms to me, pulling me to her side as I approached. “I didn’t know you were home. Jackson this is Frank. He’s a—”

  “College friend of Dad’s, I know. And he works with him, too. He was here before, right?”

  Frank’s eyes centered on mine, his head tilted. He was studying me. He extended his hand. “You were playing in the front yard,” he said. “I remember.”

  “I remember too,” said my dad. He was standing at the back of the house, his frame filling the open doorway. “Frank, I thought I told you unequivocally you were never to come to my house again. I was clear, right?”

  Frank moved his head back and forth, pouting like Robert DeNiro about to deliver judgment as Al Capone in The Untouchables. “Perhaps.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets.