part0094

S avage scowled at the phone. He didn’t want to make this call. It was a part of the life he had put away in the closet, and over this past week, he’d been forced to bring it out and display it like dirty laundry. It wasn’t a good look on him. He liked having the mystique of someone who had no earthly attachments. It made people think he was somehow invulnerable, which in turn made it difficult for them to read him. Even the likes of Anderson and Monroe seemed to hold him in a little awe. Anja was the only one to whom his secrets weren’t secret, and he’d made peace with himself over her particular kind of irreverence.

Despite his reluctance, he knew it was something he had to do. He dialed the number into his phone and held it gently to his ear. They were supposed to leave the police station at any moment now, so they would have their personal effects. Anja had made sure there would be a police detail on their house and with them at all times for another couple of weeks at least. It would be a little inconvenient for them, but it was better than being temporarily relocated, and certainly better than staying at the police station until they found the man or men who had survived to drive the van away.

The line took a few seconds to connect as Anja patched him through a couple of secure channels, but eventually, it rang on the other end.

“The phone is on the move, so he might be driving,” she said. “If he puts it on speaker, you’ll know to hang up.”

“How am I supposed to tell if it’s on speaker?” he asked.

“I’ll know if you don’t and I’ll kill the connection.” The phone continued to ring.

“Hello?” Andy finally answered. Savage wasn’t sure what he could say to make sure the line wasn’t being shared with anyone else, but the fact that it remained open for another few seconds said that Anja hadn’t killed the connection yet. “Hello?”

“Do you know who this is?” Savage asked and masked his voice in case anyone else might overhear.

“Yes,” the man said and a slight change in his voice indicated recognition.

“Am I on speakerphone?”

“No,” Anja grumbled and sounded impatient.

“No, you’re only talking to me, don’t worry,” Andy said. “We’re in the car at the moment. It’s nice to hear from you again Steve. It’s been a while.”

He tried to remember if they had agreed on a name or any codes, but by the sounds of it, he was on the line with Andy and Abby and Jules were close by, probably in a car with him.

“Is everyone all right?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s been a tough night, but we’re leaving the police station now.” The man managed to keep his voice upbeat. “They’re driving us home in the back of a police car, something that’s been on Abby’s bucket list forever—right, sweetie?”

Savage nearly cracked when he heard Abby cheer in the background. So much of him wanted to at least hear her voice again. He didn’t even need to talk. If he could simply listen to a recording of her reading the phone book, he was sure he would find it fascinating.

He cleared his throat quickly.

“Is everything all right with you?” Andy continued. “How’s Sally?”

Savage had no idea who Sally was, but he assumed her addition to the conversation was for the benefit of the other people listening in. He could roll with that.

“Sally is…great, dude.” He shook his head and focused on the reason for the call. “Anyway, we’ve cornered the people responsible for what happened, and we’ve isolated the attackers. While you should probably stick with your police protectors, you should be clear to go. If all goes well, by the time the police pull the protection detail off you guys, the whole situation will be resolved, one way or another.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked. “And how did you know…about that?”

Clearly, the lawyer was no professional in this and had almost let slip what they were actually talking about. He realized he would need to cut the conversation short.

“You’ll receive a text message a few minutes after I hang up. There will be a phone number on it. If you see anything odd or anyone following you, or even if you feel particularly paranoid and need to be reassured, call that number. Let it ring three times and hang up. I’ll call you back as quickly as I can, you got it?”

“Yeah, I’ll let you know about that softball game,” Andy replied. “Look, we’re pulling up at my place. I’ll give you a call about it later, all right?”

“Yeah, stay safe,” Savage replied. “Oh, and I already gave you the whole hurt them and I’ll kill you speech, but I want to make sure it’s still fresh in your mind, you hear?”

“I’ll let them know you said hi.” The man chuckled. Savage nodded and hung up, then stared at his phone for a few long seconds. He wouldn’t let them know he said hi. Well, not him-him. He’d simply say that Steve, their family friend, said hi, which would sustain the narrative they tried to sell but didn’t help how he felt.

“How’re you feeling?” Anja asked after he had stared at the phone for a little longer than he would have cared to admit. “Oh, wait, let me guess. You don’t want to talk about it?”

“You’re getting good at this.” Savage set his phone on the nightstand and lay on the bed. “If you couldn’t make your money with computers, I would suggest being a fortune-teller.”

“I know you don’t mean that, so I’ll let it slide,” she replied with a hint of warning in her tone. “But don’t try me, bitch.”

He couldn’t help a small smirk as he stared up at the ceiling. No, he really didn’t mean to get snippy with Anja. Despite everything, she was the closest friend he had after his death, and he didn’t know what he would do without her, both on and off the job. It was annoying that she was halfway across the world at this point since he would have liked to buy her a beer at some point.

Although her being distant was probably for the best. He knew himself well enough to know he would say or do something stupid before too long that would simply make everything so much worse. Maybe it was better that their friendship remained long-distance.

“It’s been a while since anyone’s called me a bitch,” he said softly and folded his arms behind his head.

“Well, you earned it, buddy. I’m only trying to keep it real. You can push everyone around you away all you want, but we’re stuck together. Mostly because I’ll still be working for Monroe and with you and Anderson anyway, so we might as well stay cordial with each other.”

“Agreed.” He pushed up quickly. “So, before we start braiding each other’s hair and talking about boys, what say you we go over what the plan is to eliminate this Banks character once and for all?”

“Well, Sam and Terry are running point on that operation, and they’re taking their sweet time reporting in this morning,” she advised him. “Considering that it’s already midday in New York, they’re very late in getting back to me about Banks’ movements yesterday. So, either they’re in trouble and need bailing out, or—”

“Or they’re so wrapped up in bickering that it must have slipped their minds.” He knelt beside the bed to pull his weapons out and began to prepare for his trip back. He still had time before his checkout, of course. That would be at midday for him, three hours away. Still, there was no point in lollygagging around there when the work in this part of the country was resolved, for the most part. He packed his few belongings, tucked the pistol into his underarm holster, and stowed everything else safely in the duffel. After one final survey of the room, he snatched his jacket off the chair and headed to the door.

“Aren’t you supposed to do something like wipe your fingerprints from the room before you leave or something?” Anja asked as he pulled the door shut and locked it behind him.

“That would be necessary if someone was specifically tracking and targeting me,” Savage explained as he strolled to the elevator. He was leaving so didn’t really give a shit if any of the other hotel patrons heard him talking to himself. They would probably do what normal, sane people did and assume he was talking into a Bluetooth headset or something. “The whole point would be to cover up the fact that I was in there in the first place. But considering that most hotel rooms aren’t cleaned very well between guests, there will be at least a hundred or so different fingerprint partials in there, overlapping each other and obfuscating any evidence of me having been there. If I ran a wipe of the room to clean my fingerprints, I would also clear the hundred or so others there too. That would be a more obvious indicator of my presence than if I had simply left everything as it was.”

“Huh. You learn something new every day.”

He nodded and made the sound effect of a rainbow coming across a TV screen as he entered the elevator.

“What the hell was that sound?” the hacker asked.

“It’s the The More You Know rainbow,” he explained. “Didn’t you see the PSAs while you were growing up?”

“I grew up in St. Petersburg, remember?” she reminded him. “I…well, there’s probably some kind of joke about how the PSA’s saw us, but I didn’t grow up in Soviet Russia. Things were tough but not really that different for regular folk like my parents while I was growing up than it would have been for the people in most of Eastern Europe.”

“Fair enough. And that’s an opportunity for another The More You Know rainbow right there.”

“I know about that. I didn’t know what the hell that sound was. I’ve only ever seen the visuals.”

“Oh, right.” The elevator opened to let him out at the lobby, and he made his way to the front desk to check himself out.

It had been a long night—not the first one he’d spent in the office this week, and he doubted it would be the last. Having to keep track of what was happening in Seattle had been stressful enough and realizing there were fires that needed to be put out on that front had been annoying. The entire debacle had left him to make calls and try to obtain action reports from people who weren’t exactly careful in their note-taking, another added stress he could do without. A combination of pills and coffee were the only things keeping Banks awake at this point, and as he watched the situation devolve on the news and online, he knew he needed to cut his losses.

He didn’t really need to worry about the fact that it appeared some members of the team had survived. That was what he had thought at first. Everything had been done away from his location by a third party, courtesy of the client, which allowed him to keep his hands clean and clear of the whole process. For all anyone who could run online tracking knew, his IP was simply one that had viewed the details of the contract which had been cleverly disguised as an antique nobody would think to actually buy.

The problems started a couple of hours after the mission had effectively failed. It had been all over the local news, but the story seemed to be focused on the involvement of gang ties, something that had been on the rise in the country over the past few months. The failure was annoying, of course, but the fact that nothing about it led back to him wasn’t a bad thing. They could simply find another team that could get it done and perhaps add a little extra cash to gain access to those that didn’t mind going through a couple of levels of police to reach the targets. The whole situation could be solved relatively easily.

His complacency faltered when one of the surviving team members had added a comment to ask about the security surrounding the family. It was well-masked enough to make sure anyone who wasn’t directly involved in the operation wouldn’t know what was discussed. On its own, it was a minor detail. But less than five minutes later, someone with the screen name of PainDianaJones entered the conversation and asked outright why the first attempt failed so spectacularly. They also gave anyone who had questions about the kind of security assigned to the family knowledge about someone called The Savage.

Banks immediately followed up on the link. He couldn’t verify the man’s resume, but he remembered some of the jobs listed as being in the file the congressman had sent, which meant that at least some of the kills and operations were true. He had no idea if all were, but at this point, it didn’t really matter. No comments followed the link, but the lack of responses during the night—even though he upped the price on the contract three times to the tune of seven figures—clearly indicated that nothing was happening. He could always bring a foreign team in, a group of real pros. There were special forces belonging to some despot in central America or another that could be flown in, but it would take them too long to get there.

The contract obviously would no longer get any nibbles. That harsh truth effectively meant his plan to use the family to draw the operative into a trap was dead in the water. That plus the fact that the man now knew his name and probably everything else about him was a worrying thought. In fact, it had caused a handful of panic attacks as the night wore on and turned into morning, and all Banks could really think about doing was telling the client he’d failed in his task.

He was starting to realize what Carlson had meant when he said he was more afraid of Savage than he was of the client. At the time, he had thought the man foolish but that hasty judgment had definitely been amended.

There really was no other option, he realized. He picked his phone up, punched in a number he had found during one of his panic attacks during the night, and closed his eyes and rubbed some sensation back into them as the line started ringing.

“Hello?” The voice wasn’t one he was familiar with, even though he knew the name of the man behind it.

“James Anderson?” Banks asked.

“Speaking,” the man replied.

“This is Mason Banks,” he said. A slightly uncomfortable pause ensued, although the sound of breathing on the other end told him the line was still open. “I take it you know who I am.”

“The name does ring a couple of bells, yeah,” Anderson said, a hint of tension in his voice.

“I’d like to open discussions,” the lawyer said. “A parley, if you will. I’m working at the behest of someone who has targeted you and Dr. Monroe and I can tell you everything you need to know about them. In exchange for this information, I want an assurance that Savage will not act on any plans he might have to seek revenge against me.”

An odd sound was the only response. It took him a couple of seconds to realize it was Anderson laughing—an angry, disbelieving kind of laugh that did little to build confidence.

“You’ve gone and fucked yourself,” the man said once he was capable of speech again. “Do you think you can go after someone like Savage and try to talk your way out of it? Like some kind of witness protection deal?”

“It worked for Carlson,” Banks said and immediately regretted it.

“We know where Carlson is,” the former colonel retorted. “Savage gave him a warning, and so far, there’s been no real evidence to suggest he’s ignored it. Until now, of course.”

He nodded and took some comfort in knowing that if he went down, he would take the ex-CEO with him.

“Do you want my suggestion?” Anderson asked, and Banks nodded, although he gave no verbal indication. “I would suggest a nightcap of .45s to the head. Now you know what it will take for you to avoid having Savage come over and ruin every facet of your life before he kills you. You were dead the moment you targeted his family.”