One
AKRON, OHIO. 9 P.M
Ren knew the woman would be dead from the moment she sat at the table across from him. It’s in the way they approach, he thought to himself, as he watched her enter the diner through the glass door. The way they move and turn. Two steps forward, one back, always hesitating, always thinking. The one’s who run, the ones who survive, they don’t rely on thought. They live on muscle memory. They live on momentum. They never look back.
“Ren?” she asks, sliding into the booth and removing her hands from thick, wool mittens. The woman is slight, with big eyes and thick red hair, mid-forties but looks older.
Ren nods, sliding a thick envelope across the table in front of her. “10K, circulated. Passport, stamped and circulated. Denver driver’s license renewed three times, 6 points against. Two credit cards, $700 each. One burner cell, sealed.”
“Are you sure these will pass for real documents?” she asks.
“Ma’am,” Ren says. “These are real documents.”
The woman sighs and puts both hands around the coffee cup in front of her. “So that’s it? You take me now?”
“No,” Ren says. “There’s a blue mustang parked out front. You passed it when you walked in. Your first address is on a typed note inside the passport. Drive the mustang there tonight, and then leave it at the airport in the morning. After you land in Montreal eat what you need to inside the airport, and use the automated check-in at the hotel directly to the south of the international terminal, using the blue credit card. Turn on the phone at 6 a.m. the following morning. A text message will be waiting; confirmation for either another flight, or a car rental. Memorize the confirmation number, destroy the phone, and leave immediately.”
Ren sips his coffee as the woman leafs through the items in the envelope.
“Where am I going after Montreal?”
“I don’t know that,” Ren says. “I’d be either dead or out of business if I did. Did you bring the items I requested?”
The woman hands over a white purse and goes back to sipping her coffee. Ren looks inside, noting the phone, wallet, makeup kit, and other items a woman would normally carry on a short drive.”
“My children?” the woman asks.
“Second stop,” Ren says, staring at her face. “And change your appearance as soon as you leave this diner. Walmart. Different clothes, scissors for your hair, dye, cosmetic contacts. You should have done this already. Lucky for you Halloween is coming.”
“How do you know I didn’t already?” She asks, a shy, nervous smile on her face. “Change my appearance, I mean.”
Ren stares at her, his expression blank. “If you did, you’d be touching your hair, glancing at the mirror behind me, getting used to your new self.”
“They said you were good.”
“I’m alive,” Ren says, finishing his coffee and standing up to leave.
“Wait,” she says, putting her hand on his forearm. “Please, just for five minutes.”
Ren hesitates for a second, looking around the empty diner, and then settles his weight back into the vinyl booth.
He motions to the waitress, two fingers, asking for more coffee. They say nothing until their cups are refilled and the waitress returns to the front counter.
“What about my car?” She asks?
“There will be an accident by the time your flight lands in Canada,” he says.
“With a body?” She asks, staring straight at him.
“Three,” he says. “Burned. Takes a few days to identify dental records.”
“Everyone told me not to fly,” she says, staring at the cup on the table in front of her. “Said it was the worst thing I could do.”
Ren stares at her for a moment. “If you ever have the law after you, then yes. But not here. Not the people looking for you. After 9/11 it’s a lot harder to get live flight records. These guys are good, but not technical enough. They’ll keep looking for you, though.”
“For how long?”
“Forever.”
The woman considers this for a moment, and then nods.
“You can never look back,” he says, reading her mind.
“I know,” she says. “Believe me.”
“I don’t believe anyone,” Ren says. No contact at all. No old friends. No new friends. No Facebook, email, nothing, not even the Internet itself. Don’t become somebody else. Become no one. If anyone from your past contacts you, and I mean anyone, be ready to run in 5 minutes. And that $10K in the envelope? Make sure that’s always replenished. Always ready. That’s your lifeline. From now on, that money is as important to you as air.”
“You’ve done this before?” she asks?
“Many times,” he says.
“No, I mean…once.”
Ren hesitates, not wanting to answer, but the expression on her face weakens his resolve. “Yes,” he says. “Once. Long ago.”
“And the people looking for you? They never caught up?”
“No,” he says, standing up to leave. “The people who were looking for me are all dead.”
She grabs his arm as he stands. “Wait,” she says. “Can you do that for me?”
“No,” he says, leaving eight dollars on the table for the coffee and tip. “But ten thousand dollars can buy you a lot of things.”
“OK,” she says, setting her jaw and staring up at him. “OK. Any last advice?”
“Yes,” he says. “When you reach the second stop, and the termination of our arrangement, you’ll feel safe. You’ll be tempted to stay. To rest. Don’t. Get as far away as you can. Keep running.”
Two
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA. 8 A.M.
“He’s not involved,” agent Victoria Wilson says, cutting off the man standing in front of the conference table with his back to her.
Special Agent Vince Mark, her direct superior, stares at the glass wall of the quiet room, waiting for Wilson to continue.
“Sir, he does one, maybe two jobs a year, low-level disappearances. Lives in a trailer with three wheels in the mountains of upstate New York,” she said. “He works alone, takes jobs based on some weird personal criteria.”
“You’ve seen this trailer?” Mark asks, sitting across the conference table.
“Photo, once,” Wilson says. “He moves it around.”
“On three wheels?”
“He jacks it up high, Sir,” Wilson says. “He’s handy, what can I tell you.”
“So, he was contacted.”
“Yes,” Wilson says. “Single phone contact. Less than one minute. And even if that was long enough, he won’t go for it. He doesn’t do retrievals. Doesn’t interact with military. And detests Homeland Security.”
“Sounds like a wonderful guy,” Mark says, raising one of his trademark gray eyebrows. “But a man like that has some sort of honor code. They all do. An old friend needs help, for all you know he’s already on the job.”
Mark leafs through the papers in a folder on the table in front of him, chewing on the back end of a pen. “Leverage?”
“Sir, he won’t do it,” she says. “Definitely not with Homeland Security attached. And if he was on it, there would be no press, no kidnapping, nothing. Not his style.”
Mark takes a sip of water from a plastic bottle on the table in front of him, taking the extra time to screw the cap back on. “So we don’t tell him,” he says, replacing the plastic bottle on the table. “Put him on the girl’s trail. Say she’s one of his projects getting repossessed.”
“Sir,” Victoria says. “He’ll know. And even if he doesn’t, he won’t care.”
The third man in the room, Joe Barber, also the most junior, speaks for the first time. “He has a niece in New York. Same school as our vic.”
“He’s worked for us before?” Mark asks, ignoring the interruption.
“Not directly,” Wilson says, glaring across the table at Barber.
“Explain?”
“Wit-sec has specific protocols,” Wilson says. “Very few people qualify. So his name is made available through intermediaries. Citizens avail themselves. Outside of our purview.”
“Agent Barber,” Mark says, looking directly at the junior agent for the first time. “You’ll accompany Wilson to New York. Get on the niece. Same school, maybe they know each other. Use that. If he refuses to get involved, involve him.”
“Yes Sir,” Barber says, avoiding eye contact with his partner as their boss stands up.
Mark pauses at the door and addresses Wilson, ignoring the junior agent again. “No H.S. for now. You two will report only to me.”
“Sir,” Wilson says. “You don’t want to do this. He’s unpredictable at best. We can’t control him.”
He answers without turning. “We don’t have to, Victoria. You’ve said it before; he already works for us. It’s just another job to him.”
She answers as the door closes behind her boss. “No, Sir. It isn’t.”
Three
WEST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN, NY. 1 A.M.
The concert begins at 12 a.m. in a small, crowded lounge on Bleeker Street. The sole performer wears a simple white dress, sitting upright behind a scratched grand piano, her strong vocals alone filling the dark room before the piano begins. Ren stands at a bar at the opposite end of the room, sipping a draft beer and watching the young woman sing.
He watches her often, more frequently than she knows. And she’s good. The room remains still and silent as she performs her music, songs she’s been composing for as far back as Ren can remember. The room watches her, entranced. Ren watches the room, wary.
In Ren’s world, life can explode at any moment, but this particular routine has been going on for years. During the break Ruby Stone talks to everyone, working the room, as Ren adjusts his position to avoid her. There’s little reason to; Ren is always cautious, but old habits die hard.
Ruby has long, curly blond hair. Smart, ambitious, but also humble in a strange way that both touches and impresses him. He watches as people gather around her, drawn by her quiet presence.
An hour into the second set, she makes eye contact and mouths the word wait. Sometimes she catches him, sometimes she doesn’t. Ren nods slightly and takes a sip of his beer. 20 minutes later, after a steady escalating of volume, the set ends, and the woman stands up from behind the piano, bows, and walks straight to where Ren is standing. “Drinking from glass, I see,” she says. “Classy.” She hesitates for a moment longer and then leans forward into Ren, hugging him hard around the chest.
“They didn’t have any white wine spritzers,” he says, smiling for the first time in weeks. “Your mom?”
“Good,” Ruby says, smiling back. “Very good. You need to come by more often.” She has huge brown eyes that dominate her face. Intelligent, aware eyes.
“New number,” he says. “You ready?”
“Go,” she says.
“7685551156.”
“Got it?”
“Of course,” I’m not a retard, Ren,” she says. She takes a sip of his beer and then recites the number backwards.
“Anything else going on?” Ren asks, his tone turning serious.
“It’s Manhattan, Ren. “There’s always something going on.”
He looks down at her face. Even leaning on the bar at an angle, he’s still a foot taller than her.
“No hang-ups, no follows, no serious stalkers, no one shooting at me. Anyone ever tell you you’re paranoid?”
“Julia Kenner?”
“I heard the name, but I don’t really know her. Why do you ask?”
“I served with her father. Said she had some trouble. Asked me to look in.”
“Is it ever just social with you?”
Ren shrugs. “He thinks she’s in trouble. And I’ve never known him to be wrong.”
“You big-ass stupid grunts are all the same,” she says, faking a small smile.
“Yes,” he says. “Recognize anyone odd hanging around or asking about her recently?”
“No. I’d barely even recognize her. Different circles. I was never really accepted into the ‘OMG’ set,” she says, taking a deep pull from his beer.
When he doesn’t respond, her smile fades instantly. “What is it, Ren. I know that face.”
“Just be careful,” he says. “I mean it.”
“Are you staying in the city? Want to get a coffee?”
“Something I’ve got to do,” he says. “Sorry.”
“I miss you,” she says, looking down at the counter of the bar.
“Be careful, Ruby. Remember that number.”
Ren kisses her on the cheek and leaves the room, saying the ritual goodbye in his mind. Avoiding the small tears forming in the corner of her big eyes. Only truly sad people can sing that well.
He exits the bar and walks directly to a blue sedan idling across the street, half a block away. He’d spotted the car on the way in and watched from inside the bar, hoping it was just a coincidence. But Ren doesn’t believe in coincidences. Or luck. Or accidents. Whatever happens is always someone’s fault, and when it comes to his family, he was that someone.
He enters the sedan through the back door, sitting on the edge of the seat and pushing his matte black Desert Eagle .50 automatic against the back of the head occupying the passenger seat.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot your partner in the back of the head, Agent Wilson,” he says, staring at her in the rear view mirror. “Make it quick.”
“We have a job for you, Ren,” she says, making sure to keep her hands on the steering wheel.
“You’re following my niece, Ms. Wilson.”
“No,” the man in the passenger seat says. “We’re intercepting-“
Ren clubs the man in the back of his head with the butt of the heavy pistol before he completes the sentence. The man slumps forward and goes limp against the dashboard as Ren swivels the gun towards the driver’s seat.
“You know where I live, Wilson, and yet you come here.”
“Closer to the airport,” she says, staring at his face in the mirror.”
“Bullshit, Victoria,” he says. “What’s the job.”
Wilson looks over at her partner slumped against the dashboard in the passenger seat. “Daughter of an H.S. resource, someone you know,” she says, having decided on the flight to tell at least part of the truth.
“You don’t make personal contact for a placement.”
“It’s not a placement,” Wilson says, staring at the mirror and keeping her body upright and still. “It’s a retrieval.”
“I don’t do that,” he says, the gun pressed against the back of her neck. “You know better.”
“Following orders, Ren. Washington has changed. You know that.”
Ren settles back into his seat, keeping the gun aimed at the back of her head. “Your orders can get you killed, Victoria. Learned that well enough on my first tour. Taught it to others on my third.
“What do you want with Ruby?”
“Knows the vic, possibly.”
“Drive, Wilson. You can keep your two guns, but understand; I’m faster. And you threatened my family just by coming here. The bullet will enter your brain and exit your forehead before the message even reaches your fingers. Clear?”
Wilson nods and starts the engine. “Where to?” She asks, putting the car in Drive.
“East,” he says.
When they reach the river, he directs her to handcuff her partner to the wheel, and retrieves his two guns, cell phone, keys and handcuff spare that all Feds carry, often in creative places.
“He’ll be out for hours,” she says.
Ren opens the car door and turns his body towards the street, keeping the gun centered on Wilson’s head. “Get out of the car, slowly, with your hands high in the air. Walk in front of me to the rear of the car. Leave your gun, phone, and wallet in the trunk.”
“Yes Sir,” she says under her breath as she walks around to the back of the car and deposits her equipment in the trunk. Ren adds the other agent’s guns, wallet, phone and keys.
Four
EAST RIVER PROMENADE, MANHATTAN, NY. 2 A.M.
“Talk.”
Wilson turns around and leans her back against the railing. “Gun in New York City,” she says, staring at the weapon in Ren’s hand. “Risky, even for you.”
“I won’t ask again, Victoria.”
“Jack Kenner.”
“What about him.”
“You served with him, two tours. We know he contacted you.”
“You also know that I broke his arm. That he testified against me. That I don’t do retrievals. That I don’t do military. And that Homeland Security is a thousand angry teenagers with advanced weaponry.”
“Kenner’s daughter, kidnapped 12 hours ago. Goes to the same college as Ruby,” Wilson says. “We can’t ignore the coincidence.”
“Casual contact. I already relayed this information to Kenner,” Ren says, lowering the gun as a jogger passes by. Only in New York, he thinks to himself, do people jog in the middle of the night.
“You spoke with him?” She asks.
“I met with him,” Ren says, raising the gun again. “As I said, coincidence. Ruby’s never even spoken with his daughter. Kenner’s a piece of shit, lied to me to force me to help.”
“Today?” Wilson asks, confused.
“Three days ago.”
“Before the kidnapping, then.”
“There is no kidnapping, Wilson.”
“Of course there’s a kidnapping. We’ve had Kenner under a microscope since the beginning,” Wilson says, annoyed with his cryptic answers.
“Not from the beginning. From when the locals called you in. Think, Wilson,” Ren says, finally lowering the gun. “They would have been walled off in the house – correction – the compound, five minutes after the threat he came to me for, three days ago. H.S is the biggest gang in the world. Nothing larger than a mosquito would have gotten within 1000 yards of the girl. Yet she’s taken from school. Amateur move. Kidnapping’s a fake, Wilson.”
“You looked into it?”
“I look into everything that affects my family.”
“What was the hook?”
“Afghanistan. Said they’re circling back to me to find a placement. He was my C.O. Said they couldn’t find me, so they got to him. Convincing, but a lie. Designed to involve me from the start.”
Wilson turns around slowly, leaning her arms on the river railing and watching a barge pass by. “You don’t know that.”
“Kenner’s a bureaucrat now,” Ren says. “Easy enough for him to push this through.
Wilson considers this for a moment.
Ren lowers the gun and leans against the railing beside her. “Every halfway decent lie makes sense, Victoria.”
“You’re reaching.”
“But you’re not sure, are you? The question you need to be asking yourself is not where the girl is, but whether this is an operation, or a father panicking.”
Wilson looks sideways, staring at Ren’s profile. He might have been handsome, once, she thinks to herself. “So help on background then.”
“No,” Ren says. “Not my problem. And it’s old. Whatever price he’d pay for anything I’d be a part of, he’d have paid it 12 years ago.”
“From you?” She asks, pulling her coat tightly around her chest.
“No,” he says.
“They won’t stop.”
“Who won’t stop, Victoria?”
“Us,” she says, looking back at the water. “H.S.”
“Kenner gave you Ruby?”
Wilson doesn’t move, answering slowly. “We never knew much about her, little more than her name, until 12 hours ago,” she says. “No reason to dig that deeply.”
“Your second lie, Victoria,” Ren says, turning to face her. “Who else knows?”
“Besides me? Partner, in the car. Vince Mark, Quantico. Kenner, and whoever he’s told.”
“Is she in the system?”
“What?” She says, turning towards him.
“Is she in the fucking system!” He yells, his mouth inches from her face.
“I’m sorry, Ren,” she says. “Wasn’t my call.”
“Go fuck yourself, Wilson,” Ren says quietly, walking away and leaving her leaning against the railing.
He stops several feet away and turns back towards the agent. “One more thing, Victoria. If I have to pull Ruby for this, you will all pay a very dear price.”
Wilson remains still against the railing as Ren walks away.
Six
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA. 10 A.M.
“Did he go for it?” Special Agent Vince Mark asks the two agents seated in front of his desk.
Wilson doesn’t answer immediately, unsure how much to tell her boss, which unnerves her.
“He says he met with Kenner three days prior. He agrees with your assessment.”
Mark considers this for a moment, standing by the tall window and looking at the woods adjacent to the building. “Gone dark?”
“Not yet, Sir,” Wilson says to his back.
“But he’s in?”
“Gut feeling; no,” she says.
“Any insight to their conversation?”
“Two mil, in cash, to disappear the three of them. This from Kenner. Not Ren.”
“Didn’t take it, I presume?” Mark says.
Wilson doesn’t answer.
“You sure he’s legit? He didn’t disappear the daughter first and stage the kidnapping as smoke?” Mark says.
“No, Sir,” Wilson says quickly. “Kenner is still in play. Unnecessary drama otherwise.”
“I don’t get it, Wilson. Why the warning in the first place?”
“Kenner wanted him involved, there’s something he wanted from Ren, something that two mil couldn’t buy.”
“No other communications?” Mark asks, walking back towards his desk.
“None that we can find, but he’s good, sir. Very good.”
“So Kenner disappears his daughter. But why the public kidnapping? The drama, as you say. Easier ways to protect his family,” Mark says.
“Proactive, sir. Protects his daughter, and the publicity takes him out of the game, at least for a few days. Gets his enemies looking at each other instead of him.”
“I’m sorry, Agent Wilson, I’m not buying any of this,” Mark says, flopping into his desk chair. “No record on Kenner. Not a single blemish. He’ll do serious time for this.”
“But by giving us the niece, he gets what he couldn’t buy. He gets Ren.”
“So what, Wilson? He’s got a hundred agents just as good as Ren, and with better resources.”
“He gets nothing, sir,” Agent Barber says. “He’d have to know that Ren would just ignore him.”
“Maybe, but there’s another angle.”
“Sir?”
“Stay on the niece, Wilson. She’s our best lead now. Comms, full team, tracking, 24-7.”
“He’ll know, sir. Like I said, he’s good.”
“That’s the point,” he says. Kenner wanted to involve him, we wanted to involve him, and now he’s in. Full team. Visible. Doesn’t matter. You think he’ll try to run?”
“Ren?” Wilson says. “No. He’ll go for Kenner first.”
“We’re all over Kenner. But the clock’s running us here. No kidnapping, no crime, and we’re off budget in a matter of hours Stay on the niece, maybe we’ll catch a break.” Mark says, dismissing her.
Seven
LEESBURG, VIRGINIA. 1 P.M.
Ren stops his truck at the base of the long, arching driveway, shutting the engine and exiting slowly, leaving the driver’s door wide open. He walks ten feet in front of the truck and then stops with his hands held up and his arms bent 90 degrees, so his palms are level with his head and facing towards the house. When no one shoots and no guard appears, he lowers his right hand, very slowly, to his torso and lifts his shirt high in the air, turning around in a 360-degree circle.
30 seconds later he begins walking up the inclined driveway towards the gate with his arms still raised next to his head. When he is within 20 feet of the gate, the tall iron barrier swings inward. When he reaches the base of the walkway leading up to the two matched oak doors of the house, he raises his shirt again and repeats the slow circle. After nearly a minute, the right hand door swings open and two men step out, frisking him, first with hands, then with electronic wands, and finally with frequency scanners.
As he enters the house, two black Humvees appear in front of the gate, idling. The two men escort him past several more agents standing around the island in the center kitchen to a large den at the rear of the house. They leave Ren standing at the arched entryway of the den and walk out of the room backwards.
“Jack,” he says to the man seated in an armchair underneath a mounted bear head.
“Ren,” the man says, looking much older than when they’d met in a diner in D.C four days earlier.
“Where’s the girl?” Ren asks, circling around a massive stone table.
“Upstairs reading.”
“Risky,” Ren says.
“Having her here?” Jack says. “Safest place in the world.”
“No, Jack. Having me here.”
Kenner stands up, using the arms of the chair for support. “Gout,” he says.
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“Listen, I appreciate you covering for me those years ago. And the higher I rose, the more I insulated you,” he says, standing at his full height but still looking up at Ren. “H.S., Feds, Justice, hell, even CIA don’t touch you. I gave you that.”
“Feds are on me. They’ll uncover the ruse soon enough,” Ren says.
“Who, the FBI? They couldn’t find their own dicks in the shower, let alone an entire person,” Kenner says, chuckling at his own joke.
“What do you want, Jack,” Ren says, looking down at the smaller man. “Be precise.”
“Julia got herself pregnant,” Kenner says, walking towards a window overlooking a wooded area below, and the Potomac River in the distance beyond.
“So get her some condoms,” Ren says, anger creeping into his voice. “I already told you, there’s nothing there. You guys read way too much into chatter concentration.”
“No, Ren. I don’t think so.” Kenner retrieves a tablet from the counter of a wet bar next to the fireplace mantle, swipes to a photo and swings the tablet towards Ren. “Recognize the guy?”
Ren looks at the photo for several seconds. “No,” he says.
Kenner swipes again. “Him?” he says.
“Jack of Spades,” Ren answers instantly. “Retired, last I heard.”
“Dead, actually,” Kenner says, replacing the tablet on the counter. “You’ve been out a long time, he says. ”Anyway…kid’s uncle.
“Not my problem,” Ren says, walking towards the older man.
“It is, Ren.” The two men who escorted Ren into the house appear through a side door with guns drawn, having watched his approach on the closed circuit cameras, probably mounted in the bear’s eyes, but Kenner waves them off. He picks up the tablet from the counter again, swipes several more times, and hands the tablet once again to Ren.
Ren looks at the photo for several minutes, Julia Kenner with a bull’s-eye circumscribed over her abdomen. He reads both the Pashto script and the English translation before dropping the tablet back on the counter a minute later. Kenner picks it up again and swipes for several more seconds before handing the device back to Ren.
The message on screen reads: 7 of Hearts.
“They can’t know that, Jack,” Ren says. “No fucking way.”
“I tried contacting you as soon as I received this, Ren. They’re closing in. I couldn’t tell you without first protecting my family. I can bring you both in,” he says, grabbing the bigger man’s forearm.
Ren doesn’t move, staring into Kenner’s eyes, looking for tells but finding none.
“I swear on my daughter’s life, Ren, this didn’t come from me. “Look,” he says, grabbing the tablet once more and navigating to a side-by-side view of his wife and daughter. “Kuwaiti,” he says softly. “Similar features. Look, Ren.”
“They can’t know,” Ren says. “No way they could know.”
“They’ve been looking all this time. They know she’s still alive.”
“No way, Kenner,” Ren says, his voice fading as he turns back towards the window.
Kenner responds slowly, talking to Ren’s back. “They know, Ren. This kid targeted Julia. Because of you. Because of Afghanistan. Got her pregnant just to sweeten the target.”
“Is this an op?” Ren asks.
“You know I can’t answer that.”
“So Julia reappears in a few days, full press coverage, and you visibly don’t run. All this, Jack, is it to draw them out or me in?”
Kenner doesn’t answer directly, staring across the room at Ren. “It’s a game to them, Ren. They’re sick. We always knew that.”
“We’re all sick, Jack. All of us.”
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