About Henry Fellows (Added Content)

Post 804:

On Killing and Innocence: The Chronicles of Henry Fellows

Added Content

Chapter 1: Identity

I’m sitting in a stolen car with expired tags in the parking lot of a police station. Downtown Fort Worth, Texas. There’s nothing special about this station. I’ve been to many, sitting in stolen cars or atop purloined motorbikes. Funny thing about police station parking lots—the cops that pass you by, going in and out to do whatever it is cops do, they never suspect there’s a criminal whiling away out there.

            It’s the perfect hiding place.

            I discovered this by happy accident. Happy accident—maybe that’s the story of my life.

            Happy probably isn’t the word you would use; neither would I.

            Either way. Here I sit.

            My name—well, I’ll get to that, cause you’ve all heard of me, and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Before you say anything, I know. A conventional human being wouldn’t need to think about giving out his name.

            Conventions. Conventional wisdom says I shouldn’t be alive. For a spell, conventional wisdom said I was dead. Maybe conventions aren’t worth what they used to be.

            “Hello,” I say to the officers walking by. They look bulky and authentic, nodding their heads at me with a polite seriousness. I myself am a fraud. The whole package. Even my hello. Just said hello, because… there’s some weird reason I’m sure, some little siding in my brain that believes it makes sense to draw attention to myself.

Maybe part of me considers it a game. Always good at games. I remember being the best at hearts, or Monopoly, or darts, even chess. And so it goes. A 38-year-old man still playing.

            “Hello,” I say to another pair of officers. These fellas seem to be in a hurry. Must be a pressing matter. Something of import. Perhaps one of Tarrant County’s fine banking establishments has just been robbed. Perhaps someone’s child has been abducted. Perhaps somebody ran the wrong red light and his picture got flagged and now he’s got to go back to Mexico where he belongs.

            Doubt it. Pretty sure I know what’s wrong.

            The world is a twisted place. In my travels, I found that Mexico was particularly twisted. Particular like every person you meet is particular: they have certain tendencies, qualities, foibles, imperfections, quirks. The United States is extremely particular about its twistedness. That’s probably why I always came back. Love it here. Not that it’s better or worse than any other twisted place. Not judging. Not judging Mexico, either. If Mexico was all that bad, Americans wouldn’t flee there for their two weeks of sun, tequila and whatever other twists they might encounter.

            Who am I to say? I’m a criminal, after all.

            Turning on the car radio, I dial up the news. There’s a manhunt on. Yeah, they’re looking for me. It’s interesting to be the subject of a manhunt. Not the good kind of interesting. That’s why I’m here, but only in a way. We’ll revisit that momentarily. Right now I have to decide whether or not to walk into that building of brick and forms and little rooms and law. It won’t be pleasant, what with all the shouting and the handcuffs and the questions and the disbelief and the testosterone. Who knows? I turn up the radio.

            The man can’t spit the over-annunciated words out fast enough. Some local somebody has informed on me; now the Long Arm is hip to my presence in the North Texas area. That’s why cops were running. Dudes were probably amped up to catch me. Notorious criminals get police amped up. It’s understandable. Having to walk by the same notorious pictures on the wall everyday has to get annoying. The photos themselves; it’s rare to find a flattering likeness, if ever. It must leave them with an insatiable desire to catch the guy so they can tear down the picture and replace it with somebody else just as notorious.

            Round and round we go.

            The man on the radio says that I’m “armed and dangerous.” To “be on the lookout.” He says it like he’s announcing the winner of concert tickets, like he’s introducing the next crappy pop song. Annoying. Anyway, apparently I have two numbers now. One if you want to talk to me, which nobody knows, another if you want to talk about seeing me. I turn the dial off. I’ve heard this all before. For a while now. It’s all so unfulfilling. I used to be a fairly normal guy—now I have two numbers and they talk about my misdeeds on the radio.

            Here I sit. I feel like it’s time for confession, but I don’t think I’m going into the station, yet again. God knows the desire is there. I’m weak, enervating under the high Texas sun. The pavement is baking, radiating off heat. Everything real looks like a mirage. My hands are starting to quiver, but that’s nothing new.

“Hi there,” I say, waving to more running officers. It would be a shame to spoil all their fun. Maybe with all the hullaballoo, the guy from Mexico will get away and back to his loving family. It’s a small comfort, completely fabricated. The things you do when you’re alone for too long.

            I want nothing more than to walk into that drab cop shop and drink their stale coffee, watching a public defender squirm under the weight of counseling me. The guy would probably be terrified. I want nothing more than my one phone call. Likely I’d use it to call my other number, or maybe call the radio station to tell the guy that the search was over.

            I’m a criminal. Think I already let that out of the bag. Fifteen months ago I escaped from the highest level maximum security prison in America, and ever since it’s been nothing but work.

My name is Henry Fellows. It used to be a moderately well-known name. Certain circles anyway. Business circles. Former heir to the Fellows Security Corporation. Now it’s the name of the FBI’s number one Most Wanted.

            There goes the mystery.

Chapter 2: Motive

            They don’t know I’m Henry Fellows because I don’t have Henry Fellows’ face anymore. A doctor in the Caribbean made sure of that. A doctor in Europe made sure the work done in the Caribbean wasn’t so aesthetically upsetting. Not that I blame the first doctor. He wasn’t exactly starting with a pristine palette. At that point my face was winded, cracked, bruised and bloody. Escaping from prison can take a toll. I’m sure you weep for me.

            After all, I did bad things.

            I’m wanted for murder, corporate malfeasance, bank fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, any other fraud I can’t think of right now. God knows what else. Well, escaping from prison, for one. Guess that’s technically a crime, but it’s not like when you’re caught they send you to a courtroom. Just back behind the walls. They don’t want to do any of that, I’m sure. A bullet is the only sane conclusion to my story, says the average lawman. The average lawman wants to put me down, the menacing goblin that I am, the threat to who knows what and who knows where. Not that it really matters. You go out one way or another. A felon on the run with a plan for the future is the definition of hubris.

             This is the fifth time I’ve sat outside a police station, deciding. Been all over the world. Walked up the steps to Scotland Yard, fumbled over words with desk sergeants in San Francisco and New York and Sydney. The truth just won’t come out. They won’t believe it. I’m not the guy they’re looking for. Yeah, I could make a fuss, blow out into some histrionics and they’d pull me in, slap some stainless steel on my wrists, but then what? A DNA test, if I’m lucky. More likely, they’ll ship the wish-he-was Henry off to some place with white coats and large black men.

I know about those places. Prison’s not so terrible next to those places. Had a tussle with depression years back, said some things to a friend on a phone, next thing I knew, there they were: white coats and large black men. I’ll admit, there are times when insanity breeches the ramparts of my mind. Not important. Not when white coats and large black men are in the offing. Guessing the coats are white so they can tell when the crazies have urinated on themselves or bludgeoned their bodies or whatever. The black men are there because they are strong, imposing, and know how to put a crazy down. Not that I’m a racist. There were some white guys too. They just don’t stand out in a sea of white coats. I was grateful for the big black guys. When they weren’t pulling some super-strong, meth-fried lunatic to the ground, they would talk to me. I just sat there. It was too scary to do anything else, not to mention dirty. I’ll never forget what one of them said to me. His name was Chris. The dude had arms that could strangle a water buffalo and a voice as calm as the afterward of a lobotomy.

“Why here? Why now?” he asked me. I was sitting as rigid as the furniture, watching the crazies, minding everyone’s business.

“Don’t know,” I said, not really wanting to get into it. “Just counting the minutes until I can get out of this place.” It was a lie. I remember counting the seconds.

“Yeah, you need to get your mess in order. You one of these?” He turned and pointed to poor souls manifesting poor behavior: schizophrenics throwing food, bipolar beasts banging their heads into the walls. As they do.

“No, sir,” I said. “I’m not one of these.” It was maybe one of a handful of times when I unequivocally knew what I was and what I wasn’t. If you’re feeling a little sad, lost in the cosmos, whatever, go and take a field trip to the place with white coats and large black men. It’ll sort you right out.

Just an observation.

Back to the present. I’m pulling out of the station now. Can’t turn myself in just yet. Oh yeah, guess I should have mentioned, I didn’t do it. But that’s what they all say, right? Still, I didn’t. Not what they put me in for. No way. Chris was right that day, and afterward for a long stretch I really did get my mess together. Then came the event. The day of reckoning. Look, I don’t want to be dramatic either, but when you find out that your famous parents were hacked up and that you were the one that did it, dramatic seems appropriate. My motive was apparently jealousy. My prints were apparently at the scene of the crime. Apparently I had a history of belligerence with the victims. Not to mention being institutionalized for a brief spell. A cap full of feathers.

            All that was true. If you were the heir to a true mogul, the owner of one of the biggest companies in the world, you’d have a chip on your shoulder, too. Oh yeah, they were my parents, so I’d been to their mansion a time or two, touched whatever, the way you do when you don’t anticipate being accused of a gruesome double homicide. And the belligerence? Guilty! My father was a brilliant but aging man and had no want of his ungrateful son’s advice when it concerned the future of the company. By then I was basically running things anyway, taking Fellows Security to heights and depths he never could’ve dreamed. So we’d argue. Emails, eyewitness accounts a-many all confirmed what everyone suspected. No other suspects. Just Henry Fellows. They filmed the trial. The trial of the century, they called it, but they call every trial that until a better one comes along. Think there’s been five trials of the century since mine.

            It wasn’t just my high profile or my parents’ fame that made the case so captivating to the masses. That might have been brushed aside after a few days, what with all the wars and the poverty and the famine in the world. What struck a chord was the nature of the crime. Did I say hacked? Think I did. That’s putting it lightly. You probably know most of the details, but I know every single one. The whole thing’s seared into my memory. Massive brain trauma couldn’t wipe that slate clean. Body parts all over the house. It turned into a macabre Easter egg hunt for police. For days they were pulling a kidney from this nook, teeth from this cranny. Disgusting. I was guilty for jealousy, guilty for having visited, guilty for being recalcitrant with my father, but not the rest. My service record should’ve helped. Didn’t matter. They had their man. Henry Fellows. They didn’t care about me heeding the words of Chris at the nuthouse. Only that I was at the nuthouse. My wife? Oh yeah, my precious prep-school sweetheart. We’d been having problems. Convenient. She’d been sleeping around due to my “distance,” not to mention building a trumped-up case for a divorce I had no knowledge was coming until the day of my arrest.

            So much for a character witness.

            Poor Henry Fellows. For a while, life was cloud nine: money, pictures in magazines, press conferences, all the accoutrements of excess and esteem. Then nothing. You don’t believe me, probably never will. That’s why I’m turning around, pulling out of this police station. I mean, have you asked the question yet? Who the hell is informing on a guy that can’t be found? Let’s see, best guess, the people who killed my folks and left me to rot in a dungeon. I’ll probably die first, they’re probably watching me at this moment, but I need to find out who really did it. Throwing myself to the wolves would be nice. Finally relax. But I can’t do it, not without… what do they call it—closure?

            Eh. What a bunch of crap.

Chapter 3: BMW

            I’ve been accused of everything, mostly by people that don’t have a clue. Can’t blame those people. As far as they know, I’m the worst person on the planet, a planet already chock full of assholes. Maybe it was my appearance. The media termed it “all-American,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Makes what I did that much creepier. The old face, that is. Old Henry Fellows. Have to say, not a bad looking guy, old Henry. That’s how I got the prettiest girl in school. My sweetheart. Somebody told me her name and I walked right up to her in history class and introduced myself like somebody she needed to know. Worked great. Emma married me before we finished college. It was that sure of a thing. Henry and Emma. Emma and Henry. Sounded good either way, perfect for towels and Christmas cards.

            Sure things.

            I remember asking Emma why she was taken by me. You know what she said? She said I was handsome. I’m not tooting the horn right here, just trying to make a point. The question came after many conversations, dates, events, socials, the whole thing. We’d talked about everything from family to gravity to Thomas Aquinas and she’d followed right along, giving as well as she got. You’d think after diving those depths she would’ve come up with something better than “You were handsome.” Struck me funny then. Still does. You don’t explore the reefs and the wonders of the deep and look over at your partner and blurt out, “You’re handsome.” Whatever. Metaphors aren’t my forte.

            Hell.

            Over it and over it I go. She was going to leave me, and before I could really find out why, it was too late. The mess had started. I was up the creek; she was back on shore with the paddle.

            I suck at metaphors.

            In truth, the sucking doesn’t stop there. I’m willing to own that. I love my kids fiercely, but I wasn’t around enough, given to caprice, etc. I’d make a more comprehensive list but I want to get through this before I die.

            There’s a few people reliable people out there, a few individuals that presently need to be engaged. What? You think I survived this long completely on my own? That would truly be a talent. As I make my way southward on I-35, I call Floyd. I can use his name because it’s not his name. Not about to throw anyone under the bus. Besides, nobody knows Floyd’s real name. I can tell you that he has snowy hair and that his robust forearms hint at the physique he once had. Can tell you he drinks only good scotch and how many times he’s been shot. A lot more, too. Just not the name his mama gave him.

            “Yeah?” His voice is gravel but nevertheless a welcome sound. He doesn’t know this number; I’ve probably thrown away fifty phones since the last time we talked.

            “Floyd. It’s me. You drunk or asleep?”

            “Well, I was both. Now I’m just the one. What’s going on, Deer?” Floyd knows my name is Henry but he calls me Deer. There’s a story behind that. “You staying underground?” he asks. “Don’t tell me you’re doing that police station bit again? Crazy kid.”

            “Not a kid, Floyd.”

            “But you are crazy.” I feel around my right jean pocket for my pills but pull out the wrong bottle. Not those. Not right now. There’s a method to staving off madness. It’s all about timing.

“Kid?”

            “Yeah,” I say, turning my attention back to the call and the road. Have to be cautious, stay between the lines. I can’t get clipped for some traffic violation, even with the fake face and the fake papers. Inconvenient. “Look. I’m back in my hometown. Just heard on the radio that someone spotted me.”

            “It’s bogus.”

            “Yeah, just hold on.”

            “No it’s bogus.” I can picture him through the phone, hand over heavy eyes, still trying to teach me right from left.

            “Just let me finish.”

            “You have the floor,” he grumbles. “Thirty seconds to make sense or I’m hanging up.”

            “The news report. It said where I was staying last night. Even knew the car I was driving.”

            “Impossible.”

            “And yet it happened all the same. Not making this up for kicks.”

            “You ditched the car?”

            “Like I do every morning.”

            “Well,” he says, obviously more awake to the situation. “Change rides twice a day now. Until we know what’s going on.”

            I check my mirrors and frame a shot in my head of the cars behind just in case. “Floyd?”

            “Yeah, yeah. Thinking. So someone who knows your new face put out a tip, but didn’t bother until you were where?”

            “Just like before.”

            “You mean…?”

            “Yeah. I mean I was sitting outside the frigging Fort Worth PD building ten minutes ago. They didn’t have a clue.”

            “You’re a nutbar. These little experiments are gonna get you shot.”

            “Chastise me later.”

            A few more grumbles. “Okay. I’m up. Let me get back to you in twenty. Just keep moving. You know the drill.”           

            “I’ll call you. Changing phones.”

            “That’s my boy. Got it.”

            As he hangs up I put my knee under the steering wheel, freeing my hands to crack the now useless burner cell.

            Mysteries. Never a good thing for a man in my situation. Somebody out there is on to me, has been for a while, and neither Floyd nor I have a clue who it might be. My head is hurting. Like a bell pealing in my brain. The pills. I reach for the other pocket and pull out the right ones.

            If this were your morning, you’d probably need them too.

            It doesn’t bother me that Floyd calls me crazy all the time. He’s a grizzled old man, seen it all, and I’m not talking front porch wisdom. World wisdom. Lived in a hundred places, touched the parts of life normal people wouldn’t go near with a ten-foot pole wisdom. He knew me before the pills, before the headaches and the shakes and all the rest. I think that’s why he still answers my calls. In his own way he feels responsible for my erratic tendencies. Maybe he is.

            I look back at a police car cruising up toward me in the left lane. Can tell by his speed that he’s going to pass and I relax. As much as a guy like me can, anyway. I’m trained for this. That’s what they didn’t know when they locked me up. You didn’t know it either. Blame Floyd. He’s the one who recruited me. For what, you ask?

            A lot’s happened since then, but if memory serves, I was in some sandbox in one of the world’s orifices, trying to take a nap. Had gone over to fight after school at the insistence of dear old dad. He had his mind on having a politician for a son. Nothing like a war record. Figure it was a win-win for him. Either I serve with distinction or die. No telling the outcome he would’ve preferred. To my surprise, I was a pretty good soldier, though I never made it past Lieutenant. Had a bit of a knack for pissing off the higher-ups. Anyway, there was some mission, blah blah blah, and here comes this guy from Agency X saying he needed a couple guys from my unit to sort it out. We were a squad of about ten, used to the rough and tumble, but he only needed three. I was in charge, so of course I volunteered.

            It wasn’t bravery. Not even close.

            It was insecurity. Most of the guys doing the fighting are insecure. Bravery, cowardice, selflessness, endurance, it all comes from pretty much the same place. An indictment? Hell no. You try getting shot at by people that mean it, then tell me how secure you feel. Maybe it’s happened, but in the cacophony of mag checks and radio cues preceding a true firefight I’ve never looked over and seen the face of a guy relaxing at the beach.

            So anyhow, I volunteered for a suicide mission because I didn’t want to look bad.

            There’s no way to know, but by then I’m fairly sure I was starting to go a little crazy. Tremulous hands. I’d get cold when it was 130 degrees for no reason. Symptoms? Nah. Rub some dirt on it.

            Somehow or another, we pulled it off. Killed a couple guys, one of mine took a slug in the shoulder, but not too bad. Apparently the jerk from Agency whatever had come up with a pretty good plan for getting us in and out. That was Floyd. I was impressed, and to be honest, a little mystified to still be above ground. He never told me exactly what it was, but apparently I had done something to impress him as well. I was out of the sandbox and working for him and a few others 24 hours later. This is why my service record wasn’t part of the defense proceedings in the trial you people watched with such glee. Redacted. Expunged. Never happened. Life’s a real stitch. Seems like the good things go to some incinerator in subbasement who gives a shit. The bad feels like it all gets put on tape. In my case, this is not a metaphor.

            I pull out another burner phone to call Floyd and figure out some sort of plan going forward. Do another check of the mirrors to see if any trailing cars match the picture I took earlier. There’s one—a black BMW. Something about it doesn’t sit right. Still about a hundred yards back, still one lane over. It could be a tail. Could be the people that sent in the tip. Like I said, I was trained for this, so I pull the wheel right for the next exit to see if they follow. No matter what you see in the movies, it’s not that easy to spot a tail. Movies. It’s always two guys talking about their wives or the electric bill, and all of a sudden one of them says, “we picked up a tail.” Rare. Unless you’re working against real morons. One, I’m on a highway. It could just be a guy going south to Austin or San Antonio set on cruise control. Two, any decent follow job requires multiple vehicles to pass you off as you go along. In this case it’s unlikely, however. Nobody knows where I’m going, including me. Having somebody stationed around this exit ready to pick up the follow would be prophetic.

            Damn. I see the BMW swerving just in time to catch the exit. My headache is going away. It’s been a while since I’ve been this close to getting caught. I know what you’re thinking. This, coming from a fugitive whose favorite hobby is sitting outside police stations. I do the math. They aren’t cops. Cops don’t drive BMWs, and with a guy like me, they’d have a freaking helicopter overhead by now. Roadblocks, flares and all the rest of that nonsense.       

            The exit is outside the Fort Worth city limits and just south of the surrounding suburban areas. A large hill separates the highway from the frontage road now. I assess. They’re pretty close behind. I’d love to slam on the breaks and let them ram me but that might render both vehicles inoperable. That wouldn’t be good at all. It’s too hot to be walking along a feeder road for miles. I opt for the crazy choice. Off to the right there’s a fairly steep embankment, so I start to slow down, checking my jacket pockets for my fake papers, phone, pills, and pull my 9 mm from the glove compartment.

I hit the gas hard as the right front tire goes off the road and then slam the breaks, turning the wheel left. Fishtailing the back end, the car goes over, then the hard part. The car rolls two or three times before coming to violent stop, upside down at the bottom of the embankment. There’s glass everywhere, and I can smell fuel leaking. I wiggle everything. It all hurts but nothing is broken as far as I can tell.

            My head is ringing and probably concussed, but thankfully the driver’s side window is broken. Lucky break. Crawling out I pick up a few new cuts from the glass but hardly notice because I hear the BMW stop at the place where the car went over. Just like I wanted. They can’t see me behind the car. I peek out from behind the inverted left rear tire and see two guys coming down the slope. There’s a thicket of woods behind me, pretty dense. Figure they’re thinking I’m either dead or unconscious in the car or fleeing through the trees.

            Truthfully, it’s anybody’s guess what they’re thinking. Probably trying to understand why I lost control so suddenly. Hopefully it looked real, but it’s not something to bet on. What I don’t have to guess or doubt over is that they are both armed. They look like guys from somewhere else. One older, one younger, both dressed wrong. It’s Texas—everybody wears jeans. These mopes are sporting black cargo pants and form-fitting jackets. Combat boots.

Then I hear it; the sound of a cocked pistol is unmistakable.

Don’t like what I’m about to do, but when you hear that snap you better do something. Still crouched behind the rear wheel, I reach out a foot and crunch down some glass still in the car. Thankfully the older one takes the bait. As he bends down to see my broken body there’s nothing. He’s a fish in a barrel, half in and half out of the car. Bad for him. I lean down and fire one round right above his eyes, returning to my wheel knowing it did the trick.

            I can hear the younger one slam himself up against the opposite side of the overturned car. He doesn’t know if his partner was shot by someone inside or out—at least I hope not. Sweat is seeping through my shirt. I too have a jacket on, not because I want to—because I needed a lot of pockets for all the crap I carry when careening off of roads. “Hey,” I call out.

            Nothing but labored breathing.

            “Hey. Your buddy’s dead. Didn’t want that. Don’t want to kill you either. Give it up. Any chance you tell me who you are?”

More breathing.

“Come on. It’d be a big help.”

            More nothing. His nervousness is starting to catch. I’m starting to realize the gravity of what’s happening and it does kind of suck. Perhaps it’s just my strange ways, but I always found that in the pitched heat of life or death there are small ponderous moments where everything slows down. I don’t mean respite. Moments when there’s a choice, to deny instinct and slump into cravenness, give up the fight. I’ve been running and fighting for so long. I let that weakness flow through me and then let it out, like spitting up bad medicine. It’s getting to him. It’s in his breathing. Can’t let it get to me.

            “Throw down your gun, Fellows,” I hear. Okay, so the guy knows my name. Something I could assume, but hearing a stranger say it out loud is arresting all the same. I press the clip release on my 9mm and see I’m nearly full. Thirteen rounds. One in the chamber. Might as well use them. Dropping down I fire at an angle through the broken windows of the car. I don’t have a clear shot but the bullets are enough to make him move just enough from behind the front right wheel. He’s stuck his foot out. I take a breath and catch him through the heel. There’s screaming, but mostly now he’s just firing into the car as I roll back around the side and the front where he’s squirming. I hear the desperate sound of his empty chamber and get to my feet, walking slowly toward him.

            “Enough, kid.” He’s sitting up, writhing in agony as I approach. My gun is aimed center mast.

“Throw it,” I say. His weapon’s empty but there’s nothing comforting about a guy waving a pistol around. Take your peace of mind where you can get it. “Who are you? How do you know I’m here?” The hope is that he’ll talk. Dude doesn’t have a lot of options, braying like a mule and reaching for his heel.

            “Traitor” is the only reply offered. Strange. It’s spit more than spoken. Only about six feet away I get a better look at his face. Damn. Just a kid. Either he was too impetuous for the job or he wasn’t given the right intelligence concerning his target. My guess is both.

            “Don’t want to talk, huh?” I ask. It’s hot and this kind of scene attracts attention; need to get moving.

            “You and your family are dead,” he says, reaching once again for his heel. It’s not the wound he’s groping for; I can see that now. He’s got a backup on his lower leg and it’s in his hand. The chrome of a small revolver catches in the sun. I want to yell stop but act on instinct, firing two rounds into his chest.

            No time. I remember the fuel leaking into the car and pull both bodies fully inside through the broken windows. Taking out their wallets and keys I light a match. It feels a bit Viking to burn the dead, but there was blood in the car, some of it mine. With modern forensics they’d probably find some remnants of me. I can’t have the official authorities closing in tighter, not yet. Ascending the hill toward the BMW, I hear the car going up in flames. The heat behind me is like a kick in the pants, telling me to hustle. Time to switch cars again and regroup. Driving down the feeder road I look for the nearest entrance back onto the freeway. My hands are shaking. More than usual. Two men dead. Two men I’d never seen or met. Don’t like what the last one said about my family. Not good.

            I’m still a killer. The idea of turning myself in floods back into my brain. Still a killer.

Henry Fellows, wrongfully accused. And not an innocent bone in my body.

Chapter 4: Travelodge

            Two cars later. Four hours later. I’m in Austin now, feeling aimless. The airport seems like a good idea, but I decide to sit tight. That was Floyd’s advice. There’s a cheap motel on the north end of town, so I check in, use my fake ID and cash to rent the room, then fall on to the bed. Smell a year’s worth of sadness on the comforter, probably people running away from something, like me.

            Wish I was like one of those losers, the people that make up an imaginary world that is coming after them. That, or they’re running for something just over the mean horizon. For most people, nobody’s coming and they’re not going anywhere. They don’t realize the horizon just stays the same, no matter where you run or how long you sit.

            Hey, I get it. I used to live under the same delusions. I’m still seeking the pot of gold, despite what I tell myself. As far as running, in my case, afraid it’s a matter of necessity.

            Trying to slip off into a nap, the phone rings. Figure it’s Floyd, has to be Floyd, so I answer.

            It’s not Floyd.

“Hank, you there?”

It’s a woman. The voice is familiar.

            “How’d you get this number?”

            “How you think?” Dammit Floyd. Too trusting. I silently curse and smile at my old handler. The person who taught me that trust will get you killed and that trusting no one is just plain crazy. A man of contradictions, an impossible man. Always figured his obtuseness was a deliberate ploy to separate teacher from student. Whatever. Most of the time it was just annoying. I always felt like one of those neophytes in a martial arts movie, constantly chastised for asking a question, or asking the wrong question, or asking too many questions. Etc. You know what I’m talking about. Just get to the point already, you know?

            Still, part of me bends to his sagacity, the prudence that kept me alive more than once. “So Floyd gave you this number, I take it?”

            “How else would I get it? Where are you now?”

            My mouth opens but nothing wants to slip out. I give a little bit. “I’m back in Texas, Nina.” Nina’s my lawyer, or was. Don’t really know anymore. We started speaking a while ago, maybe five or six months. Before that she was left out. Didn’t want her reputation to be dragged further down. Finally reached out in a moment of weakness, at a point when talking to nobody was starting to turn me certifiable. But I never give her my number. Don’t want her in compromising situations. I hired her at the behest of my dad’s oldest friend and my closest mentor, Mr. Jensen. Made sense. She’s rated as top ten in the country, according to “get my rich ass out of prison” magazine. Of course I know what you’re thinking: If she’s so good, how come I’m on the lam, laying in a Travelodge on a comforter from twenty years ago? You saw the trial. She made sound arguments, but the preponderance of evidence against me was too much. I was a terrible client. She wanted to tell tales to counteract the prosecution’s lies, but I wasn’t into it. The jury could see. I was annoyed and scared, but to the twelve retards in the box, it came off as aloof and uncaring. Like my parents being dead wasn’t a big deal to me. Plus, a rich white guy can’t play many sympathy cards. We could’ve brought up my abusive father, but wait, I chopped him up. See what I’m getting at? Probably not. The jury certainly didn’t.

            “Floyd told me you did your thing again today.”

            “The police station thing?

            “Yeah, Henry. That’s the one.”

            “Well, I have to do something. That’s five times now. I reach for the gallows and someone goes out of their way to let me know they’re watching.”

            “Are you any closer to finding out who they are?” she asks. There’s something in her voice, maybe skepticism. It’s hard to get a read. She’s a smart, complicated woman. I imagine her sitting at her big mahogany desk in her big office building, surrounded by a billion books and a billion other things she’d rather be doing.

            “Well,” I say, turning on my side to examine the wallets of the two thugs from the BMW. “Do we still have the confidential thing going on?”

            “I’m your lawyer. To this day. Though you could pay me once in a while. It might serve to strengthen what I know is already a tight and heartfelt bond.”

            “Cute. So—I killed two guys today.”

            There’s a pause. The kind of pause you expect when you’ve just told someone you killed two guys.

            “Perfect. Any reason?”

            “Yeah. They were coming at me with guns. Frigging mopes knew who I was.”

            “How can that be?”

            “What have I been telling you? Someone’s playing me. Been telling you guys. Guess it takes actual gunplay to convince you.” More silence on the other end of the line. “Do you believe I’m innocent, or am I just talking to a lawyer here?”

            She storms back. “I’ve always believed. You know that. Do you think I would’ve—never mind. Do you still believe?”

            I reach for the pills stashed in my right pants pocket. Three times a day for these. Her question has me squirming; why she asked it, the fact that she needed to, that the way I am leads her inexorably to the fact that she needs to.

            “I believe. But I don’t like having to kill guys. Even ones who deserve it. Makes me think of what I did, what I might have done.”

            “Stop it. Enough with the soldier’s remorse. I get it, but there’s no shame in serving, Hank. You put your life on the line for the country.”

            She doesn’t know all the things I did for my country.

            “Nina, it doesn’t make sense.” I pause to do a cursory inspection of the thugs’ identification and papers and tell straightaway that they’re fake. My fake face makes a real smirk.

            “I was getting ready to say that,” she says. “But which part? There’s a lot going on here.”

            “How long since I escaped?”

            “Over a year.”

            “Right. Fifteen months. Most of that time, nothing. Not a guy following me on the street, not a car tailing me, not a bug in my hotel room.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Yet the last few months, every time I think about turning myself in, boom, they blast it out over everywhere. Radio, TV, all of a sudden I’m a murderous phoenix rising from the ashes to shower your local neighborhood with blood.”

            “Decent summation. I get it.” Nina’s always saying words like summation in real life. She’s like a carpenter who brings a hammer to a friend’s house on the off chance anything needs to be nailed down. Far as habits go, it’s half annoying and half adorable. If she wasn’t a gorgeous, professional woman, it’d probably be 80/20 on the annoying side.

            “Tell me how you get it? What’s the real million-dollar question?”

            She wastes no time. “Somebody knows you’re out there, could be ten people, could be a thousand. They know what you look like. Most important, they don’t want you to turn yourself in.”

            “And?”

            “Give me a second to breathe, Henry. AND—if they don’t want you talking to the police they could just kill you. But they haven’t killed you. They want you alive for something. Wait, did you really need to kill those guys today?”

            The question turns me pale as the Travelodge drapes. It’s the question I was asking myself the whole way down to Austin. I heard the guy’s gun click. I thought that was the signal to go into pure self-defense mode, but nothing’s a total certainty. As Nina reasons out the situation with me it becomes more apparent that they may have just approached the car being cautious. There’s no way to know, not for sure, but deep down my crazy conscience wants me to think I needlessly killed two guys who meant me no harm.

            I slowly begin to hear Nina again. She’s saying my name a lot, trying to get my attention. I get lost in thought very easily. It drives her up the wall. One of the reasons I haven’t bothered her for a while. “Hank? You still there?”

            I tell her yes as I sit up on the bed. I feel dirty and dead. As dirty as the comforter, as dead as the mortuary that is the rest of the room. “Still here. So what do you think? I’ve heard of mysteries, but this one goes over my head.” My breathing is becoming stunted, like all the unknowns are a wet rag down my throat. “It could be the crazy, Nina. Maybe I was sane before, I don’t know, but the running, the paranoia—it’s getting to me.”

            Nina doesn’t say anything. Nothing but breath through the phone, full and rough. “Henry, what you’ve been through… it would get to anybody. Besides, you sound perfectly reasonable to me.”

            “How’s that?”

            “I just got a text from an unknown number. It says STOP TALKING TO HENRY FELLOWS.”

Chapter 5: Balls

            Since escaping from the clink, my only tangible thought was to stay alive. Yeah, now and again I’d find myself ready to give up, but I can’t be sure how serious I took all that. Maybe you can understand the existential crisis though, how everyday it’s on the news that I’m a patricidal/matricidal maniac, how I look in the mirror and see somebody else’s face. Literally. Put that together with PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and you’ve got one ailing puppy. As a sentient being, the cold unfeeling universe can be off-putting enough, even on the best of days. We have our beliefs, our constructs, little boilerplate epistemologies cradling us, patting us on the back as we lean forward into the hard world. They used to work for me. I see people every day. They seem to be working for them. Picking up the kids, taking them to practice so they can have little identities of their own, I get it. Not everybody in the world can be Kant.

            I read a couple of his books while I was waiting to be sentenced to death. Not bad, I guess. The layman assessment goes that he was able to synthesize the various theories on the way people think. He took a little from column A, a little from column B, then wrapped it up in a bow that nobody could possibly understand. It’s quite possible that I’m simply too dense to ingest his truth, but if I had to critique his critique on reason, have to say it was too boring. Little advice from Uncle Henry: If you need philosophy and you’re waiting on the gas chamber, stick to Socrates. At least he had a sense of humor.

            The old story is that Socrates died the way he lived, verbally punching everybody in the balls. The guy had fun. The speech he gave to save his own life was just another ball-busting attack on his accusers. I remember wanting to stand up in court and bust some balls, but I’m no Socrates. I didn’t have the balls.

            Enough about balls.

            This thing with Nina’s got me fired up. There are things to protect besides myself. Nina. My family. Sometimes priorities get obscured. But it’s clear now. She’s obviously being tapped, watched, violated in who knows how many ways. Then there’s my family. They’ve been violating themselves for the news media, but that doesn’t mean they deserve to have their lives threatened or to live in fear. My son’s only eight, the daughter thirteen. They don’t know any better. As for the ex-wife, what do you want me to say?

            My hands are starting to shake again. It’s time for more anxiety medicine. I say it’s anxiety medicine, but I can’t exactly get a prescription these days. Smuggled prescriptions are a roll of the dice. Could be downing XTC. Whatever it is, it helps.

            Time to make a plan. First, get the hell out of Texas. My family’s in Texas, and I figure the farther away I am, the safer they are. It’ll take calling in a few more favors to make sure they’re watched and safe, but whatever it takes. I make a list of what I know in my head, then start repeating, packing up pills and the few items with me in the hotel room.

1.     Someone has eyes on me and knows what I look like.

2.     They could’ve killed me or at least tried at any point in the last fifteen months.

3.     Every time I want to turn myself in, they tip off the authorities.

4.     This time they had somebody following close. Now those guys are dead.

5.     My lawyer’s being surveilled, how intrusively I don’t know.

            Walking outside into waning sunlight, it takes a minute to spot my car in the lot. Lot of stolen cars today. There. I see the innocuous jalopy, make another call to Floyd.

            “Hey old man. Thanks for reaching out to Nina.”

            “Look, I knew you’d be pissed, but—”

            “Floyd. Seriously. I’m glad. Can you meet?”

            “Wow. Okay. When?”

            I look at my watch. “I figure twenty-four hours with the time change should be plenty.”

            “You got it, Deer.”

            “See you soon. Hey. One more thing. Important. Get back in touch with Nina. Tell her to have someone sit on my family’s house. Hell, two or three guys if need be. She knows people in the protection racket. Tell her to do the same for herself, if she hasn’t already. Insist on it. Can’t be too safe.”

            “Maybe the guys…”

            “Out with it, Floyd.”

            “Maybe the guys you shot—they were the only ones after you.”

            “No. Someone just threatened her while we were talking. She’s being tapped.”

            “Shit. How do I get a hold of her without—whoever it is, hearing?”

            “You’re a professional. Think of something. I’m low on time. Can I trust you to get this done?”

            The old man does his grumbling thing but eventually gives in. “Of course. You didn’t say anything about your next move, tip off whoever was listening?”

            “No. Thankfully I’m not that stupid. Soon as I heard it was a party line, I hung up. Cracked the cell. Called you on this one.”

            “So you’re—”

            “Burned.”

            “Okay. Sorry. Get moving.”

            As I break down another phone I wipe it down, just in case. Nothing is too cautious at this point. Separate the pieces of each burner into different bags. I’ll dump them randomly between here and the next destination.

            The joys of being me.

            I spot an old plastic bin, no trash bag. Throw my old shirt and some chip wrappers in it. The insects flying patterns around it go with the whole vibe of the place. I take one last look for cameras, but see none. I stay at crapholes all the time for this very reason. Big Brother rarely visits these joints. In a crazy world, the cheap motel can be an oasis of freedom.

            Walking to the car I do a quick scan around the parking lot. Can’t see anybody watching, but if they were any good, I wouldn’t be able to. By now I’ve gone over the list of what I know ad nauseam, so I start on another list, one of deductions.

1.     Somebody could’ve ratted me out. The doctors, anyone who helped along the way. Unlikely, considering how much I pay.

2.     They are keeping me alive and on the run for some purpose. Probably not a good one. Something new. I’ve been out over a year but this other thing is new.

3.     Have to assume everyone in my tiny circle is being watched. Can only trust meeting people with experience in being anonymous, like Floyd.

4.     After killing the two thugs, the they might be more apt to precipitate an encounter with me.

            Not exactly Sherlock Holmes. Check my watch again, mumbling my deductions and pulling back out onto the freeway. Call ahead for departure times and ticket availabilities. I’m going to the airport, after all. Hate the airport. Most people say that. Used to hear it all the time. Folks in the neighborhood, acquaintances at work, I’d always hear the same thing. One of those complaints everyone has in their back pocket. I hate the airport.

            Try it when you’re wanted by the FBI, Texas Rangers, U.S. Marshals, Homeland Security and Interpol. Then tell me how inconvenient baggage claim is.

Chapter 6: Escape

            It’s twelve hours later and I’m in London. Love London, except for two things. First, the hour spent going through customs almost gave me a heart attack. Smelled people from at least forty countries whilst pushing my bag forward one inch at a time. Nobody smells great getting off of an international flight, but I have to say, some countries smell better than others. Not saying anyone’s better than the next—just an observation. Like airplanes and airports are a terrible place for babies. Nobody’s fault, we all need babies, we all were babies, but there it is. Babies suck. Plus, they smell worse than most any country I’ve ever smelled.

            I hate the airport. Pretty sure Heathrow is the most used hub in the world. It’s right up there, anyway. Used is a good word for it. I was tense the whole time. Not because they would find anything on me. All my prescriptions look the part. My papers are so good I can’t even tell that they’re bogus. Plus I ditched my gun in a lake by the airport.

            A general tenseness, I’d say. Not that I’m being hunted, or that I’m coming off two fresh kills, or that I’m in a foreign country. None of that. Just the din of countless muttered languages, the drabness of the walls and the paint and the metallic view outside walking down to the customs mousetrap. Whatever. It’s London. The guy looked at me and looked at my little nylon bag and back down at my passport and gave it a smug stamp. In truth, not sure he looked at anything. Can’t really blame him. Having to work with the smell and all.

            The train into the heart of town was a breeze. Less noise, less people, a good twenty minutes to catch a nap. Much needed. I don’t enjoy flying and I didn’t rest much, despite taking more than my usual dosage. As we sped into the station I woke with a sharp snap. There was an Arab man half staring at me. So I thought. I’d only been awake for one and a half seconds. Immediately my mind drifted to dark places: maybe this is the guy, the one who’s after me, or one of his henchman.

            Two long seconds later, the man’s two little children jumped over the seat and onto his lap. Laughing. Embracing. The way families do.

            Probably not an assassin.

            But one can never be too careful on trains. Really, if something’s wrong, where you gonna go?

            Guess I shouldn’t say that. You probably think a guy like me could get out of anywhere; after all, Henry Fellows is the most notorious escape artist in the world today.

            Fine. Let’s get it on the table. Escape I did, though that probably isn’t the best word for it. You might call it an unofficial release. Kind of feels like a magician revealing his big secret, and like a magic trick, once you know, you’re going to be let down. Here it is: Before sentencing, Nina pulled a few strings to figure out exactly where I was to be remanded for the remainder of my days. Don’t ask me how she did it, but I told you she was good.

            Having ascertained my destination, I learned everything about the place. Procured files on the entire staff, warden on down. Information and security were my trade, after all. Other than a very specific skillset, the one thing I still had access to was money. A lot of money. Really rich people know how to hide it, and if you’re really good, you know how to let a lot of it be found. That’ll make sense in a second. Anyway, I found out exactly who could be bribed, right down to the last guy. Basically that’s it. There was a tall guy paid to accidentally dismantle the locking mechanism on my cell, an alcoholic guy who looked the other way while I walked by him on my cell block. Another guy, actually he was a girl, to unlock the door to the loading dock at the rear of the prison, and one more to smuggle me out in a truck that hauled industrial size cleaners in and out of the place. I paid the tired guy checking people in and out of the south gate and the two stiff guards that stood sentry on either side of it. There was one guy I didn’t pay, some unplanned-for newbie smoking a cigarette on the loading dock. Didn’t pay him. He went to sleep, but I swear, no harm done. Slipped up behind and choked him gently to rest. The kid had a neck like pencil. No more than a bad headache the next day.

            You’re calling B.S., right? I’d agree, except that I forgot to mention paying off the guys in the surveillance room to have a temporary “gap” in their security footage. Yeah, I had to walk in some shadows to avoid a few other guards, be on my toes, but it really wasn’t that difficult.

            It was obvious the next day that it had been some kind of inside job, but they all knew the risk. The whole thing cost me 20 million bucks. I know. Can’t put a price on freedom. From there I hitched another ride in a semi down to the coast and hopped a freighter to a little Caribbean island where my new face was waiting for me. It was needed. My face had been pummeled by the Aryan Nation, the Nation of Islam, and the Mexican Nation the first three days in there. One more nation would have killed me.

            As a little insurance policy for the people that helped me, I set them up with untraceable offshore numbered accounts. Banks that deal in anonymity. You know, banks for criminals. No way I deal with regular, criminal banks. As an extra insurance policy I had a very traceable million dollars wired into the accounts of the warden, the head of corrections, and the head of the U.S. Marshal Service. None of them were complicit in my escape, but I figured they’d be a little less inclined to poke around if they had to explain that one.

            Believe it? Well, either way, I’m in London, home of my ancestors. What’d you think, I Shawshanked my way out of there in less than a week? Nope.

            I get off at Paddington Station and take this tube and that tube to Covent Garden. Floyd’s got a flat right near the station, a bit central for my taste but if I was just a guy on a visit it would be ideal. Cosmopolitan. Big for fashion types, stage actors and dancers that have cash. Busy. He likes it for the reasons I don’t, hiding in plain sight and all that nonsense. See his place up ahead, one flat in a row of dozens. It’s not an opulent or large place, but it must be expensive. Shoulders scrape shoulders through the hustle and bustle of the London scene; tourists maneuvering their way down the little streets while buses plow by and people drive on the wrong side of the street. It’s raining, but only slightly. Nobody seems to notice. It’s England, after all. Suddenly my person and my locale are in focus. I’ve spent a lot of time in this town, but I’m every bit a man from the New World.

            Finally, I arrive and buzz for his flat. Wave to the security camera angled at my face and the door pops open just enough to let me know I’m welcome. There’s a lift but I take the stairs, still needing to stretch my legs. On the landing of the third floor I’m met by my old mentor. It’s been too long. There’s a pause, something in the air, the need for an embrace. I go in for a hug but am met with a handshake. Floyd looks rugged and lean like always, just a little grayer. Two or three inches shorter than me, shorter than I remember. He’s still good looking for a guy his age. Tight, strong jaw. Thick salt and pepper mustache, the kind that works for hipsters or guys in westerns.

            “You frigging codger,” I say.

            “Well you know,” he grumbles, smiling and slapping me on the back in a way that reminds me of my grandfather. He’s wearing worn out jeans, clod in black biker boots. I wonder if that was his Triumph I saw parked out on the street.

            As we go inside I see there’s still sheets covering some of the furniture. He didn’t beat me here by much.

            “So how’s it going, Deer? Let me see that face. Still in shape I see,” he says, sizing me up with a few touches on the chin and shoulders.

            “Well, I left my ‘I paid twenty million dollars to break out of jail and got a new identity’ shirt in my other bag, but other than that, fairly good, boss.”

            “Boss,” he laughs.

            “Sorry. Habit.”

            Like a shot it occurred to me. This is Floyd’s first time to behold the new visage. Me waving to the camera must’ve been the dumbest thing… Thus the truncated laugh. Thus the arrested hug. How could he not be circumspect in manner? He had to adjust to my shorter, flatter nose; my new, thinner, green eyes. The slightly raised hairline. The dimpled chin. He knew it was me, but clearly that wasn’t making it any easier for him. I stop talking and watch Floyd watching me. His probing blue eyes are refusing to yield.

            While trying to comprehend Floyd’s state of mind, I feel someone grab me from behind. Forearm around the throat, brutally tight squeeze. My old handler’s just watching, right there in his living room. Weird. I’m starting to get lightheaded, to go all foggy. Can’t exactly ask questions, so I figure it’s time to try to not die. Throwing my head back told me that my attacker was short—strong and short—that’s about all I know. Reaching with my free arm behind won’t get me any leverage so I decide to crash into the wall behind, throwing all the weight I have in order to sandwich the assailant between me and the drywall. A grunt accompanies the concussion; the grip is finally loose enough for me to turn out of the choke.

            My eyes are cloudy, but I know who this is.

            There’s about half a second to wonder what the hell is going on before receiving a vicious kick to the liver. Everything from God to gravity tells me to go down, but somehow I come back, grabbing the attacker’s jacket and hurling two dirty uppercuts into his gut. He drops, but an attempted knee across the face is blocked and suddenly my feet are out from underneath me. I’m flying, crashing on my back—he’s already on me, reigning partially blocked punches down. This is a bad place to be. My forearms are turning to pounded meat and my wind is gone and I was never really that good at this crap anyway—

            “Alright,” I hear. Suddenly the punches stop. I look up and see a sardonic smile coming down. “You satisfied?” It’s Floyd doing the talking. I think he’s actually sitting in a chair. I’m receiving a world-class beat down and he’s positively recumbent.      Gracious.

            “I’m satisfied. It’s ‘bout what I remember,” the man says, dismounting from the precarious position he had me in.

            “What the hell, Billy?” I moan, rolling around on Floyd’s hardwood. Feels like I just got taken by my little brother.

            “Sorry, Deer. Billy just wanted to make sure it was you. Called him in to help.”

            “Help what?” I ask, trying to sit up. “You know that hurts, right?”

            Billy offers a hand to get up. “Come on. You’re just out of practice. But you never could close out. Get you on the ground, it was always over.” He’s right. I got out of the game when all that ninja leg-lock ankle twisting crap was coming into vogue. Never really went in for it. Depended on my quickness and my head. And weapons. Which is why Billy remembers kicking the crap out of me when we used to spar.

            I take a minute, walking little circles in the flat with my arms akimbo, trying not to look at either of them.

            I’m bloody and pissed.

            “So I called Billy in,” Floyd says, feet up on a glass coffee table in the middle of the room.

            “Yeah, you said that.” Still wincing, I try to find a cruel rejoinder but the pain is beating back any semblance of wit. It’s a shame. The moment deserves some.

            I gather myself and get a proper look at Billy. William Kaftan, to be more accurate. Back in the day we did a lot of jobs together. It’s been years, but he looks about the same. Slight beard, a few grays starting to creep in. He’s still got the same wrestler’s build and the same pug face. A permanent who gives a crap expression. He takes a spot on the corner of the table between me and Floyd and I can see a few new scars over and around his eyes.

“Whatcha been up to, Bill?” I ask, half sarcastically.

            “Same as you, moving around a lot, doing my own thing.”

            “Yeah. Same as me.” I know he’s taking a piss, but he’s also alerting me to the fact that he’s still in the game—a freelancer. “Too many of you guys floating around these days.”

            “Well, sometimes things need getting done, Hank. Hear you’re in a bit of a spot.”

            “So you’ve watched a TV in the last two years. Good for you.”

            “What’s with the animosity, brother? Thought you’d be happy to see me. I’m happy to see you, even with that douchebag mug you got going on.”

            All the jabbering is starting to annoy. Billy’s making me feel uncomfortable, the way he likes to, so I move over to the sofa and a little more space. There’s no doubt that Floyd called him in for good reasons. Kaftan’s a top-level operator, born killer, highly proficient with tech, bombs, the works. “Yeah,” I mutter. I can see Floyd putting his hands up, looking over at Billy.

            “What’s that?” It’s Floyd. I guess he caught me mumbling.

            “Nothing,” I say. I really don’t feel like talking. Not a lie.

            “What’s the deal? You don’t want Billy?”

            I can’t take it anymore. “Billy’s fine. He’s great. Can he help? Almost certainly. The guy’s a pro. Did we need him to give me a field test to authenticate my identity? Could’ve done without that. Pretty sure I’ve been through enough shit lately. I mean the pile is mile-high. You want to keep stacking it, fine.” I reach for my pocket, my pills. I’m really getting worked up. I want a mirror to see how red my stupid face is getting. “But Billy’s only here for money, correct?”

            “That’s affirmative, big guy,” Billy says, standing up. “Floyd said you’d pay a million to each of us if we helped.” I scoff at his bulky little body. He’s got one of those shiny loud t-shirts on, the kind cage fighters wear. What a tool.

            “Floyd? Help with what? We don’t even know what’s going on here. Who’s chasing me? Why? Who killed my parents? Again, why? What’s the link? Is there a link? Can anyone in this apartment answer any of those questions?” I bury my head in my hands. I sound really over the edge. Probably need to conjure up some forced apology; Floyd’s used to this nonsense, but Billy’s probably thinking he just tussled with a full blown nutter.

            “Geez, Floyd. You didn’t say he was this bad.”

            We all look toward the source of the comment. It’s new. Female. Slight European accent.

            “Oh no,” I say.

            “Hey buddy. Nice to see the new you. Heard you shmucks might need a brain around here?”

            Great. Her.

Chapter 7: Security!

            “I need a gun,” I say. She’s entering the flat like she owns the place, like she enters every place. The gun isn’t for her, but my mind is so discomposed it’s the first thought and the only thing that comes out of my stupid mouth.

            “You’re probably going to need more than that,” she says, dropping bags by her side, setting a laptop on the coffee table so that all may huddle around and see. Plopping down on the couch she punches up a video clip circulating on the web. I see it has millions of views. That’s all I see. She’s right next to me and I have to close my eyes. No time to prepare, no warning at all that I might be in her presence. I think our legs are actually touching.

            Her name is Marie Vigier. Not her real name. She’s like Floyd, like Billy, like I used to be. Claimed to be from France, and with her slight accent, guess nobody ever had reason to doubt it. She’s not exactly the type you question. Everybody just called her Marie V. Doesn’t matter. She’s full of crap. A spy. A rogue. Most important, she’s someone I came close to being involved with. Kind of. Way back in the day. It never went all the way, though for a spell I thought it was going to ruin my marriage; you know, before I knew my wife was boning other dudes.

            Warning: Never try your hand at romance with trained killers. Especially women. First, they’re moody, secretive, and given to wild turns of emotion. And that’s just the woman part.

            The incredulity scale is redlining. What have you done, Floyd?

            “Million bucks, right?” She presses play and motions everyone over with her index fingers. It annoys me. Like saying “gather around” would be putting her out. God knows she couldn’t actually use a whole arm to signal her request. My left pocket pills are beckoning, but they’re so close to her leg they almost seem contaminated. The only recourse is to watch the screen with one eye open and fix in the fetal position.

            “What is this?” Floyd asks, leaning in. Billy’s on my right, trying to position his bulk comfortably on the armrest of the couch. I could move over, but then again, no.

            “It’s the guy that’s after the whimpering fugitive here,” she says. I open my other eye. The video is rough, like it was shot from one of those little cameras people wear on their bodies to make themselves feel important. Yeah. There’s two men in the picture, one chasing the other through a dingy urban alleyway. The man being chased turns and fires two wild shots. Amazingly, one of the bullets hits the man in pursuit.

            It’s crazy. Somebody in the background screams, “deputy’s been hit!” but the guy keeps running, rabidly, insanely. The camerawork is fitful, adding to the tension of the scene.

            “Probably had a vest on,” Billy says, trying not to be impressed.

            “Yes. But he didn’t even stop to catch his breath,” Floyd says, stroking at his mustache.

            The prey is clearly running toward a chain-link fence at the far end of the shot. As he jumps for it, the chaser throws something that connects with the guy’s head, crumpling him to the ground.

            “What just happened?” I ask.

            “Keep watching,” Marie says. There’s a note of ironic humor under her voice.

            Standing over his splayed out game, the hunter gives the body two dirty kicks to the ribs before checking for a pulse. Finally, he looks up into the camera. I’m almost surprised it’s not the face of the devil. Nope. Just a normal looking black guy, mid-thirties, shiny bald head. Handsome I guess, save the snarl on his face.

            “He alive?” asks a voice from off-camera.

            “Living. For now,” he says, applying handcuffs to the runner.

            “What’d he throw?” Billy asks.

            “His gun,” Marie says.

            “That’s idiotic,” I say. “Who throws their gun in a gunfight?”

            Before I can even get the words out, the black man is pushing his face right up into the camera’s lens. “You see that, Fellows? You’re next. I’m coming for you. Hide, run, whatever. See him?” the guy asks the camera, pointing down at the sad sack in the cuffs. It feels like we’re having a frigging conversation all of a sudden. Honestly, can the pile get any higher? “He was number two. Just a warm-up. Hope you’re watching. Get a good night’s sleep, Henry. You sick bastard.”

            The clip stops. The green in my eyes is giving way to red. “That’s not who’s been after me,” I say, trying to control my breathing. It’s self-evident—the need to seem collected and vacantly inscrutable. The room’s full of spies and cutthroats, after all.

            “So who is he?” Floyd asks, sitting up a little, peering right at Marie.

            “Yeah. That’s Deputy Trevor Hawker,” she says, patting me on the leg. “U.S. Marshals.” I recoil from the touch. “And if he wasn’t after you before, I’d say the game is officially afoot.”

            “You’re kidding me,” I say. “Hawker. Great name. Why does it sound familiar?”

            “I think you know his older brother. Former Director of the U.S. Marshals Service. James Hawker. Forced retirement after some nefarious allegations came up concerning his bank records.”

            “Wonderful.”

            “What do you mean?” It’s Floyd again, standing up now.

            “I slipped some dirty money to the guy, made it look like he was on the take.”

            “No wonder his brother’s pissed,” Billy says, ever the poignant one.

            “There’s five or six of these videos on the internet. Hundreds of millions of views. Films all his recent arrests, big time fugitives, drug traffickers, hit men. Always finishes with the same post script. He’s coming after you.” I give Marie a tacit acknowledgment, still trying to gather my wits.

            “So he’s good,” Floyd says, crossing his arms.

            “And clean,” Marie adds, closing the laptop. “As in not corrupt. I did a hard press on his background. Masters in criminology. Went to LSU undergrad on a baseball scholarship.”

            “Lemme guess,” I say. “Pitcher?”

            “No. Right fielder, I think.” Marie didn’t get my joke. She’s French, after all. “He’s about the best there is, Henry. Pushes the line of what’s legal, but as far as I can tell, this is the one guy you don’t want on your ass.”

            It’s more ominous news, but suddenly I get why the old man brought Marie here. At least she’s done some research. Not like anybody else in the room has a clue what’s going on. I get up from my seat on the couch and take a few steps toward the fireplace on the opposite side of the room. Need the separation. Need to breathe.

            Floyd’s face is heavier now. “Sorry I didn’t talk about bringing people in—look, I knew you could afford it. And you don’t have to pay me a dime.”

            “It’s okay,” I mumble, staring at the mantle. There’s three highly trained professionals behind me. Apparently a million bucks each for their services. Fine. Time to start making them earn it. “We know Hawker here is gunning for me, but let’s assume he has no idea what I look like.”

            “Cause you’d already be in chains,” Floyd says.

            “Right. Let’s assume he’s the best, eventually he catches up to me.”

            “Law of averages,” Marie says.

            I’m not looking but I can feel Billy wanting to say something. He does. “We could always just take him out.”

            “Shut up, Billy.” The three of us say it at the same time.

            After shaking my head, I continue. “Hawker here is a problem, but he didn’t kill my parents. And his guys weren’t the ones I shot in Texas. He’s law. He’s got rules. Some, anyway. Best guess, who’s been watching me, watching my lawyer, all the rest?”

            “Oh, so you get to kill guys—”

            “Shut up, Billy.” Again, three-part unison.

            “Henry, it has to do with your business.” There it is. Marie’s making sense. It’s the only thing that ever made sense. The Fellows Security Company. You can still buy the stock, though the name’s been changed. After Vietnam, my dad got married and went into the personal protection racket. Started the company with his old war buddy, Clifton Jansen. A few years go by, about the time I was born, he diversifies into armored cars. Making sure people’s valuables move discreetly from one place to another. A few more years go by, he hires a gaggle of fresh-faced nerds from the Valley to design web protection programs; before you ever the heard the term “identity theft,” our company was all over it. That end started as a luxury for the ultra-rich but before long everybody and their grandmother was looking for security. But we were ahead of the game. Grandmothers didn’t make Fellows Security a multibillion-dollar supranational.

            By the time I came aboard, our main clients were Fortune 500 companies, banks, currency exchanges, even governments. A lot has come out in the papers since my parents’ murder and my arrest, but the published information surrounding the company is spotty at best. See, there are giant corporations that have public faces, i.e. cellphone manufacturers, wholesale chains, media companies, etc. You know about them because that’s what they depend on. They tell you who they are because there’s an inherent dependency on the everyday guy. If Joe Sixer doesn’t know you make TV’s, then Joe Sixer won’t buy your TV.

            Then there’s the other kind. Like the company that has the market cornered on pesticides. Billions of dollars in revenue, but who advertises pesticides? Sure, an exposé comes out every now and then, but it all gets lost in the minutiae. Think some do-gooder and his documentary are anything next to something like that? There are multi-billion dollar companies that just make pipelines. They don’t get the gas out of the ground, don’t put their little label on it, so why would you ever know they exist? Most of time, you wouldn’t. People get their tanks filled and their houses heated and go their merry way. Just how things work. Basically that’s it. You never had your ballgame interrupted by a pipeline manufacturing commercial or a mass pesticide commercial or a commercial for Fellows Security Company. Some businesses, your clients find you. The job of our company was to be good, perfect, beyond reproach. Yeah, advertising isn’t job one, but screw up, and you’re finished. Word gets around when multi-million dollar contracts are a matter of course.

            I smile a little, thinking about joking around with some of the less uptight people at our corporate headquarters. Fellows Security, making sure your cell phone conversations never, ever, ever go away. Fellows Security, storing all your personal financial information on a server you didn’t pay for, free of charge! Fellows Security, screw with us, and we’ll open your country’s commodities markets to the hackers of the world! I even made up jingles. It really pissed my dad off. He had no idea how the company worked, in the end. The man was born in a time when a computer filled an entire room. He covered himself with the mantra, privacy and discretion is a basic human right. Really, dear old dad didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. We were way past privacy. Fellows Security was the gatekeeper for secrets. For some reason, scary people trusted us with their terabytes. Let’s just put it this way: Fellows had to help out the NSA on more than one occasion. We had government and military liaisons working right alongside. Ostensibly, we were a defense contractor. Governments worked for us as much as we worked for them. My responsibilities centered around information protection and secure data storage; hence the skills at surreptitious money manipulation. Perks.

            I know what you’re saying. Sounds crazy. Agreed. But there are pills for that.

            “But impossible,” I say, coming out of my little trance. Everyone’s staring, wondering where my mind has been.  

            “What is?” Floyd asks.

            “What Marie said. We went over this during the trial. If the murders were about getting information, we will never find them. It could literally be anybody. Anybody with secrets needing to be erased, someone who wanted access to data. Don’t you think it was my first thought? None of that crap could even come out. It’s all locked behind thousands of pages of confidentiality agreements and lawyer shit I can’t even pronounce.”

            “But it’s our best guess,” Marie says, holding a hand up, like she’s anticipating being interrupted. “Hold on. I get it. Needle in a haystack. But someone killed your parents, someone who knows things.”

            “That may well be true, but—”

            “But they didn’t get it, whatever it is they were after.”

            “You guys probably heard all this. My father wasn’t schooled in the day-to-day. He couldn’t have provided access if he wanted to.”

            “Were they tortured?” Billy asks. I’m about to tell him to shut up, but the look in his eyes stays my ire.

            “Yes, Billy. Cut up into hundreds of pieces. It was on the news.”

            “I know. But in the trial, did you ever find out if they were tortured? A cow is butchered, but it doesn’t necessarily imply torture. Get me?”

            We all look fixedly at Billy, past the vestures of a tool, blocking out the spiked up greasy hair and the shiny shirt. “Hearing you out,” I say. “But again, we thought of all this. If anyone wanted to get information they could figure out in two seconds that he was incapable of providing it.”

            “Right. But he could tell them who could. A person uniquely equipped with both the know-how and the access to get at the deep and the dark. You were COO.”

            “That’s a plausible theory. But it’s one that Nina and I explored. Again, nothing.” Annoyance is seeping into my speech. Going over old frustrations can be quite frustrating. They were terrible times, times when I still had enough hope to soldier on. Made coming up empty all the worse. My “chemical dependencies” really ramped up during those dark days.      

            “Take us through one more time, Hank.” I can see my old handler is fully engaged; might as well humor him.

            “Some real nasty guys show up. They case my parents’ estate, find a way past the guards, or pay them to take a break. This makes it look like the killer was somebody they knew, since none of the guards were touched and apparently none of them heard a damn thing.”

            “Right. And they were vetted? Thoroughly?”

            “Yeah. They were vetted. What do I look like?” Realizing I don’t want an answer to the question, I hold my hand up. “So they drill down on my folks for information, literally, God only knows what, and they can’t provide it.” My lungs reach for air. It’s easy to forget that in all the mystery and strangeness these were still the people who raised me. “So they torture them. Maybe they hurt my mom. That’d be about the only way to get that old cuss to talk. Loved her like nothing else.”

            “And he gives you up,” Marie says. “You were privy to most operations of the company at that point, correct?”

            “Yeah. I was hands-on with the programmers, in as many places as I could be at once. So operating off of Billy’s line—only thing that makes sense—they go all Nightmare on Elm Street to obfuscate any signs of interrogation. They take nothing. Leave millions in art and jewelry. Make it look very, very personal.”

            “But they screw up,” Floyd says. “Don’t realize quite the job they’re doing. Before they can get to you the police already have you in custody.”

            “Yeah. Cops had their man from the jump.” I sit back down on the stool in the corner. “If this is the way it went down—and I’m not saying it is—it’s pretty ironic. Getting pinched for their crime, the guy that they did the whole thing for.”

            “Which they didn’t know going in. Can’t assume anything, really. Could be they just blew it. Found out you were the guy they needed right then and there. The media made a big deal about your dad being the brains behind the tech. You were relatively obscure, you know. Shit happens on a job. Maybe they just got it wrong,” Marie says. She’s looking up at me now, big brown eyes. She’s changed in a few spots but I think age has made her even prettier. Shorter hair, less of that youthful weight around her jaws. All of a sudden I have the crazy notion of sitting down with her in a café around the corner, talking about the old days, watching normal people walking by. This, after going over my parents’ butchering.

            I’m a nutbar.

            “It’s a black hole,” I mutter, surveying all the thinking going on in the room. Terrains I’ve plotted time and time again.  

            “It is all very strange,” Marie says. “But I don’t know… maybe you should reach out to what’s his name—Jansen. Weren’t the two of you close?”

            “Yeah, we were close. But he doesn’t know anything, didn’t know anything.” I put a pillow over my head and think of Mr. Jansen. He was more a father to me than my actual father. A very smart guy; he used to say things in weird little ways. Taught me people skills, the way to get around people just by using words. But in the end, smarts weren’t enough for good Mr. Jansen. My dad seized more and more of the company, leaving him out in the cold. Don’t think I ever heard him say a thing during a board meeting those last few years. It bothered me, watching a great man, a founder of the company, basically marginalized. It was one of those things I used to argue with my father about. Mr. Jansen would advise me to keep my wits, don’t get overruled by emotion, that kind of thing.  Had some weird expression for it: Illegitimi non carborundum. Some bastardized Latin thing he said he picked up from a commanding officer during the war. Guess it was another way of telling a overwrought son not to get beaten down by an overstepping father. Not sure. I suck at languages. “Let’s leave Jansen out of this,” I say. “Much as I miss the old guy.”

            Marie’s not satisfied. Again she says, “I don’t know.”

            “Oh, you don’t? What we’ve got here is a nice theory, a theory that ends with the people of interest being most of the free world. That, and now you’re telling me that Captain America is on my ass—a guy who if he doesn’t shoot me will throw a ninety mile-an-hour Beretta at my head.”

            “That was pretty cool, now that I think about it,” Billy says.

            “I appreciate it, guys. Take any payment you want, but I’m out of here. Nobody else is getting caught up in this.”

            I stand up to go. Really don’t see what good any of this is. Marie hops up and blocks my way. I stop out of respect for her… you know.

“Hold it. Think I’ve got an idea—actually it’s your idea. How about you turn yourself in?”

            My shoulders slink so low I think I hear one of them hit the floor. From behind, Billy’s sounding off as well. “Something else. If we can’t kill this Trevor Hawker guy, maybe we should just kidnap him.” There goes the other shoulder.

            “Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Floyd says. It sounds like he’s serious. I’ve run out of shoulders.

            Yes. This is my life.

Chapter 8: Fishing

            Can’t believe I’m doing this. Once more, sitting outside a police station. It’s Scotland Yard again, crowded as hell, right in the middle of everything. The Prime Meridian for retarded ideas. Cramped. There’s no space in London. Texas feels a planet away now. I think about my kids. They’re being watched by some decent people. I checked in with Nina earlier using a proxy, but still. Doesn’t seem like enough.

            Traffic is swishing by, throwing the wet from the street against my jacket and jeans. I’m on a motorbike I pinched about an hour ago. Two earpieces, one listening over the police channels, one listening to local radio news. Floyd’s inside one of those big white vans across the street, the kind that makes me think of trapezoids. You know, European. Ugly. It fits right in. Billy’s on some nearby roof looking down on me, checking the surrounding streets and alleys for signs of anything interesting. No idea where Marie is. I’m starting to forget the whole plan.

Plan. What a joke. This is the best that three million of my money and a team of trained agents can come up with?

            There’s a walkie in my leather coat pocket. I turn it on. “Anybody hear anything yet?” There’s nothing but silence. “Maybe I lost the tail? Or they’re not coming today? Maybe when I killed the last two—”

            “Would you shut up, Henry?” It’s Marie. Now I remember. She’s across the street, parked in a tight spot between a Bentley and an area marked for construction. Everything’s under construction over here. “We’ve only been in position for three minutes.”

            “Okay. Good point.” Yeah, probably give it a little more time. I’m just not comfortable. There’s the big box sign up ahead, the one that says New Scotland Yard. And the weird looking cops with the neon yellow coats. Guess it’s to let everyone know who they are. Mission accomplished. More women than men. Too many women cops in England. Not enough guns. Lacks a bit of teeth. Not that I would mention that to Marie. Just when I’m about to ask myself why Scotland Yard is in England, my walkie cracks. It’s Floyd.

            “Everyone, turn your radios up. Civilian.”

            I push the left earpiece in and listen to the news. It’s weird to hear a lady with a proper British accent talking about me. Can’t believe this plan is working: “According to police, there is credible evidence and eyewitness reports that the notorious American fugitive Henry Fellows is in the central London area. Please call 999 if you see or hear anything suspicious. In case you have forgotten, Fellows was convicted of brutally murdering his parents fifteen months ago. Most of you will recall that his father was the CEO of the Fellows Security Corporation and one of the world’s preeminent  philanthropists. He is also suspected of two more murders committed just outside his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, two days ago. Fellows is an extraordinarily despicable, dangerous man.”

            That last part was a bit harsh. Anyway, I take the earpiece out before the follow-up guy chimes in. The one that follows dances on a stage of facts with fear mongering and sensationalist imagery. I can’t stomach that guy right now. He’s a real asshole.

            “Go now?” I ask, clamping hard down on the walkie. My hands are stony, turning stiff in the unrelenting London rain.

            “Do it,” I hear Floyd say. Everyone’s in position. Billy’s playing spotter. Floyd’s running the play. I’m the bait. Marie V. will be the chaser. My starting point is a curb on the right side of the road, just in front of the big office building on Broadway. I plug the headphones into the walkie and fire up the bike with a sharp kick start. Here we go.

            On a good day, driving the roads in London makes me want to kill myself. The coordination is difficult for anyone. That’s why I chose the bike. Can’t be driving with the wheel on the wrong side. Anyone who tells you the adjustment is easy is a liar. And we’ve got a possible high-speed chase in the offing. The bike will help. That, and the fact that I’m going to drive down the right side of the road. Today I will be the obstinate contrarian jerkoff every Brit pictures when they think of Americans.

            Sure, it’s idiotic. But we want to make a splash, to be noticed, to bring the wolves to the sheep. Might as well be conspicuous.

            The bike almost flies out from under as I yank the gas. Switching gears, I see a line of cars coming right for me. No free hands. All I can do is listen and wait for news of a follower—whilst trying not to die. Cars are beeping and careening every which way. The rain is coming down hard, moving down Victoria against a tide of onrushing metal.

            “Floyd, Marie. Gray Audi, A6. They’re going with him.” It’s Billy.

            I hear them confirm over the radio but can’t answer, can’t look back.

            “Okay, you know the way, right?” Billy asks, as if I can respond. “Never mind, I’m coming down off the roof. En route. See you there in ten if you’re still alive.”

            Lovely.

            Up ahead it’s going to get a bit tricky. The going is getting slow and I’m having to drive between lanes and on curbs. Profanity is in the air all around me. It almost helps. The limeys really know how to hurl the imprecations. I’m finding it strangely motivating.

            Here it comes. The roundabout around Parliament Square, only the wrong way. Give a quick nod to Churchill’s statue and skid out into the back of a red sightseer bus, downshifting the gears to get the bike going again.

            “Okay Hank, we’re on the Audi. I’m three cars back and Floyd is two cars behind me. You can get back on the right—the left side of the road anytime you want.”

            Something like spit and sarcasm is blowing through my squeezed lips as I avoid another series of life-threatening situations. Up ahead I jump over to the regular flow of traffic and cross the Thames on the Westminster Bridge. Tourists. Politicians. Regular folks. They have no idea who the maniac on the motorcycle is, and I have no intention of getting caught. Not today. There’s a slight fading din of that whiny noise European police sirens make. The sound only gets softer. No way they’re catching up.

            Slowing down, I’m able to free a hand and hit the radio. “You guys still got the tail car?”

            Marie chimes in. “Henry. You’re a crazy son of a bitch. You caused ten accidents back there, minimum.”

            Good to know. “They still with me?”

            “Yep. They’re on the bridge now. We’re not far behind.”

            “Good. See you there in a few.”

            There’s a place we’ve picked out on the south side that’s perfect. Apparently Marie used it in the past for a safe house and whatever else the job required. A little dodgy, the kind of area where people look the other way. No statues of Churchill. I can see the Audi peeking out every now and then in my little side mirror. The one that didn’t break off.

            I’m starting to put my mind to the next task now. The logic of acting like a maniac back there was to convince my pursuers that I believed I had lost them. That, and to give them no time to suspect that they themselves were the prey.

            Yeah. Well, it’s some kind of logic.

Chapter 9: Memories

            Believe it or not, the ridiculous plan to capture my pursuers was a huge success. It was great. I turned into a dead-end street that felt like Jack the Ripper’s home away from home. Dark. Smelly. Rainwater and foulness collecting in little pools of broken concrete. A mixture of stone and brick walls rising up on both sides.

             Took off my helmet and shook out my hair, playing like I had triumphantly eluded the bad guys. Then made a show at throwing myself up against a sheet metal door as they turned down the alley to box me in.

            Then the enjoyment of watching my compatriots box in the boxers.

            I was surprised at how good I was at faking. Kind of stupid for a person that’s been pretending to be another person. A person who used to be a freaking covert operative.  

            Everything should be copacetic. It’s answer time, get to the bottom of things time, but once again I’m clutching for pills.

            I can see Floyd, Marie and Billy tying up a man and woman to chairs in the middle of a room that has the feel of a medieval dungeon.

            I can see them, but things are getting hazy. It’s hard to tell if it happens fast or slow, but my world is different all of sudden. It’s hotter. Like an oven. The sweat is pouring off my chin and the tips of my burnt fingers and the ends of my hair. I’m in a chair. Unable to move. Somebody is hurling questions; they seem to be coming in my direction. I can feel the urging cries, like the next thing I say will determine the fate of the human race. It’s a scene straight out of hell. Imagined or real, I can’t say for sure.  

            Then I’m back. Looking at Floyd, who’s looking at down at me with a face that says, what the hell Henry?

            “What happened?” I ask, moving fingers and toes. They’re kind of numb, like my brain. “What’s with the third degree?”

            “What third degree?” he asks.

            “The questions and the yelling? Not cool, man.”

            Floyd’s face is doing an epiphany thing. Like he’s figured out how to turn water into wine. “Oh. I get it,” he says.

            “Obvious you’re getting something. Why don’t you curl your mustache and dance a jig while you’re at it? I’m freaking out over here.” Behind Floyd the noises of a full-on interrogation are firing off. It’s starting to get ugly. My eyes squint down as the sound of flesh and bone being pounded reverberates around the room. “Have they given us anything?”

            “It’s just starting—Deer, you know how these things go. Let’s go upstairs. Marie’s got an apartment up there. Beats the hell out of this pit.”

            They’re starting to scream. Part of me wants to join in, but the other part is following my old mentor up creaky wooden stairs and into a drastically different environment. Fancy. Loft style, I guess. Modern kitchen and amenities, intentionally scuffed up hardwood. Turning around I see Floyd closing a heavy cast iron door that’s flush with the floor. A carpet and couch has been moved, obviously there for concealment. “How’d we get into the cellar?” I’m trying to decide if I’m waking up from a nightmare or just plain losing it… again.

            “You were just in this room, Henry. For God’s sake, it was less than five minutes ago.”

            To another person this might elicit shock. I answer with a casual nod.

            “This is Marie’s place… one of them,” Floyd says. “You know—the plan?”

            It’s all still wearing off. Like I was dosed with drugs. Different than the ones I’m dosed on. “Lost time or something.”

            “No, kid. I’m thinking you went back for a minute or two.”

            “Back to—” My mouth stops moving as the realization comes home. Floyd’s in front of me, clear as day, but he’s not Floyd. He’s the shrink from the agency. Not the good one my family endowment paid for. The onsite shrink, some 28-year-old captain with too little experience and too many freaked out soldiers on his docket. I’d been fifty days inside some bunker when they finally got me out. That was their estimate, anyway. Beaten. Starved. Beaten some more. Used a cheese grater to grind layers of skin off. After it was over, they made me talk about it. I heard some poor bastards going on about waterboarding being the worst of it. Nah. The electrocution was worse. You could smell the hair on your balls as it singed. And the trunk. Metal. Like an oven. Not big enough for even a small guy to fit in. Nothing left of the skin of your knees and elbows. Then they’d lift you up and drop you while you were still in it. The concussions. Like nothing I’ve ever felt since or after. The questions. As if I knew anything. Can’t remember. Whatever. They drugged the hell out of me—amphetamines to keep me awake in the box, pentothal to ask me questions—pretty sure they even dosed me with LSD-25 and mescaline one time or another just to make it interesting. Hard to really say. Time wasn’t exactly a “thing” in there. And they didn’t use labels.  

            “You with me, Deer? Come on, kid.”

            “Hey, Floyd.” It’s him and the present again. The young overwrought doctor’s evaporated. I’m back, as much as I can be. “I’m with you. That was weird.”

            “Guess taking prisoners triggered one of your bad times.”

            “Guess it did.” I shake my head and stomp my feet out. Gravity seems a more pressing thing but I’m fighting through it. Bad times. Nice way to put it.

            “Maybe let us do the questioning,” Floyd says, putting a hand to my shoulder. It feels equal parts fatherly and condescending. “Not like we haven’t done this kind of thing before.” He’s a good man in his own way, I suppose. Trying to protect me, doing the best he can to, anyway. Afraid it’s a little late for that.

            “True,” I say, gathering momentum. “But I want it done quick, and I’m the only one that’s been on both sides of the equation.” Check my watch. Reach for my left—my right pocket. Down a couple pills. Floyd’s eyebrows are almost touching his hairline from doubt-face. “Mind getting me some water to wash these down?”

            “Sure.” He goes toward the kitchen. “What about a beer?”

            “Even better.” It sucks that he had to see me like that. I make a mental note to pay him a little more. Money. Nothing it can’t buy.

            Right.

            After Floyd lifts the big basement door we descend back into Marie’s underground chamber. The beer is shaking in my hand but my senses have mostly recovered. I notice a long workbench on the wall to my left, a vice and other tools used for fashioning bullets. The right wall is covered with weapons. Pistols, shotguns of every type, fully automatic assault rifles and even a couple of handheld rocket launchers. It’s all pretty cliché. Next to the heavy stuff is what makes Marie somewhat unique in the business. Knives. There must be hundreds: small, long, serrated, hooked, Chinese, American military. Antiques. It’s an encyclopedia as much as a display case. Almost forgot how much she loved her blades, how good she is at using them.

            The room is bigger than I thought; the cage they’ve got the two captives in only takes up a small portion of the space. Behind it I see two great looking cars, one being a vintage Aston Martin.

            “Never got over your James Bond thing, did you, Marie?” I ask it like we’re not in a torture chamber, like she hadn’t just hit a guy with a telephone book across the dome.

            To anybody but her, the question might’ve seemed ill-timed. She rolls with it. “Only Englishman ever worth a damn.”

            “Connery?” I ask.

            “Are you kidding?” she says, slamming the guy harder this time. Insulting question, I suppose.

            “Connery is Scottish,” Billy says, surprising us. He’s working on the woman. It’s on purpose. Women are more easily intimidated by men, no matter what the torture pamphlet says. Either that or irritated. Especially by a professional chauvinist like Billy. Marie’s working the guy, because men have an ego thing about getting tuned up by women—again, no matter what the pamphlet says.

            There’s a small table and chair in the corner of the cage. I set my beer down momentarily and hop up on the table. Floyd sits down in the chair, just to my right. Everything seems to stop for a moment. Suddenly I realize this is my operation. Marie and Billy are waiting for my cues; I am writing the checks, after all. The two captives are looking at me because I was their objective.

            “How we doing so far?”

            “Their papers are right next to you on the table,” Billy says. “No radios. The car was clean. Forms in the glove box say it’s a rental.”

            “Prints?” Floyd asks.

            “They were wearing gloves when we nabbed them,” Marie says, shrugging.

            “Don’t bother dusting,” I say. It’s just for the captives to hear. “We have their hands right here. If we don’t get ID, then we’ll just cut them off. Can do that later.”

            Mr. and Mrs. chase car are still upright in their chairs, defiant, pretending to enjoy themselves. Everybody in the room knows they’re not enjoying themselves, but I understand. That’s what you do when you get caught. Act like the world’s biggest badass. Standard Operating Procedure.

            It’s easy to be stoic when you’ve only been hit ten or twenty times. Hopelessness hasn’t had time to sink in, to start asking its gnawing little questions of you.

            I look at the floor and then into the woman’s eyes. She’s pretty, or was, five minutes ago. There’s hardly any blood on her blouse or under the chair. She’s got a ways to go. “We’re not going to kill you,” I say. There’s really no way to be original in these situations. “But we will let you die. Blood loss. Dehydration. Whatever. Come on. You guys are professionals, not very good ones, but professionals. Just tell me who it is that’s got you running around after me and we’ll let you go. Hell, name your price. I’ll double it.” I slide off the table and kneel down just make sure I’ve never seen either of these mutts before. They’re young. Cardboard cut-outs. Little toy soldiers. Can’t say I have.

            Nothing but defiant eyes, piss-off expressions. “Okay then,” I say. “Loosen them up a little for me, Billy.”

            Walking out of the room I grab my beer and stride as nonchalantly as I can, like I could walk in and out of this cage a million times and it would never get old. Like a machine just off the assembly line and my only function is to walk in, get answers, and leave. It’s all theater. My insides are churning over from snapshot memories and phantom pain.

            As the pummeling recommences, I take a few steps from the cage. Marie’s screaming questions, Billy’s using the girl’s body for a punching bag. Suddenly it all goes wrong again. I’m hearing the sounds, but it’s like before. Like I’ve stepped through one of those worm holes and entered another plane—this one has me being questioned in a cage.

            I can still hear Billy, still smell the fresh blood of the interrogation, but I can’t tell if it’s my blood or the two toy soldiers’.

            My beer drops. I can barely tell, but the sound of broken glass is unmistakable. I’m seeing even more now, though I don’t know why. My time in the box, the time spent being throttled and drugged and hung on a meat rack.

            This is not some metaphysical journey into a parallel universe. No Einstein Bridge. It ain’t that interesting. Just recovering memories, memories taken away once by plain old trauma or plain old guilt. Plain old drugs.

            “Stop,” I say, turning back toward the cage. Billy and Marie can see the epiphany face I’m wearing, probably about the same as the one Floyd was wearing earlier. “Pretty sure I know who’s after me.”

            “Really?” Billy says. There’s a bit of disappointment in his voice, like I just filched his last token at the batting cages. What a tool.

            “You know who killed your folks, then?” Marie asks.

            For the first time in a while all is quiet. Everyone’s looking at me, pining for the punch line. Even the two kids seem interested.

            “Yeah. It was me.”

Chapter 10: Therapy

            Remember Chris? You know, the guy who asked me what was what back at the nuthouse. Guess I forgot to mention that the nuthouse wasn’t the end of our relationship. He ended up working for me, actually. Figured he was owed something after shaking a suicidal back to a garden-variety depressive. Maybe it was obligation, maybe there’s no good thing in me, but right now I think my mind’s searching its archives to find anything clean or decent in the past.

            So a rich kid gives a guy a job? Yeah, I’m not exactly Santa Claus, but in the end it was a good thing to do. Weeks after my release, I went back to the hospital and offered him a security position at our corporate headquarters in Dallas. Initially he said no, thinking (not unwisely) he had a crazy stalker on his hands. Threw out a figure anyway— hundred thousand bucks a year. As before, he told me to “get my mess together.” Didn’t believe a thing, not about the job, not about who I was. I nodded and put my hands up, told him to check me out.

            Three days later, he traded in the hospital garb for a suit and tie, helping handle security for one of the largest downtown office buildings in the state. After a year of passing polite hellos he was moved up the ladder, taking charge of my personal security. It was then that we became close. Chris had been in the service too, falling into the army after a troubled youth. He “got his mess together” in the military, the same place mine was made. We never again spoke about the nuthouse, but we did talk; Chris knew a little about the things I did, the little I could tell him. He had his own tales of blood and guts but he was too dignified to share anything but humble vagaries.

            One night on a business trip in Chicago we went out and got hammered, listening to good blues in some basement bar until four in the morning. We swapped inflated woman stories and fish stories and I said thank you and he said thank you and the next day we woke up hung over and pretended that our night of bonding didn’t mean anything.

            As you do.

            Guess I’m thinking about him right now because he was one of the only people that believed in my innocence. The image of his pained face watching me in cuffs is a mainstay in my memory shanty. The authorities made it a spectacle. Came up to my office on the top floor with all kinds of guys. Like they were hauling in frigging Al Capone or something. Instinctively, Chris tried to stop them, barring the door to the conference room with his massive body while some blue-jacketed grandstander yelled “warrant!” from the other side of the glass. The whole thing was ridiculous. It’s not like I was making a dash for it. It was a frigging budget meeting. My arrest came between quarterlies and coffee. I urged Chris to let them through; the police were going to do what they do. Read me my rights and everything. I told him to call my loving wife while a gaggle of imperious drones escorted me to the elevators and down to the front of the building. Of course, the cops had the integrity to alert the media that I was getting taken in; a truly dizzying amount of cameras and reporters greeted me on the forced walk to the cars. I can still hear the chorus of questions, feel the anxiety and stress, see the look of my friend Chris when they took me away.

            Chris would be nice to have around at the moment, but he’s on the other side of the ocean. Hope he’s doing well. Hope he still has a job with whatever it is they call Fellows Security Company now.

            I’m not doing well. Still waffling from post-epiphany shock. Then there’s the two captives in the basement and the question of what to do with them. They’re down there stewing in the what’s next, probably imagining all the different kinds of impending horrors yet to be visited on them from the baleful Henry Fellows. That’s all they know about me, my name. My vicious, checkered past. That’s what I’m trying to explain to Marie, Floyd and Billy. They’re having a hard time understanding me.

            “So why aren’t we tuning these pricks up, again?” Billy asks. He’s standing in between Marie and Floyd, arms crossed. We’re all packed into the little kitchen space of the loft. They want answers. Another beer is the only thing on my mind. Sometimes booze mixes well with the pills.

            “Because,” I say, cracking open another Newcastle. “He wouldn’t have told them anything. He’s too good. They won’t even know who they’re working for.”

            Floyd’s carrying himself cautiously, but he’s clearly agitated. “Who we talking about here?” he asks, fiddling with his mustache again. “You’re freaking me out, Deer. A minute ago you said you killed your folks. Are we dealing with some kinda schizoid type situation here?” He takes a second to look me up and down, leaning away, like I’m a brand of wild animal needing to be tagged and tranquilized. “You aren’t saying that you’re He, right?”

            “They never found his body.” I’m mumbling now, head down, dangling by the neck.

            “What body?” Marie asks.

            “Never found his body.”

            “Okay, if I can’t beat it out of you, I’m gonna go back downstairs and beat on somebody. They may be stupid but at least they’re sane,” Billy says, striding over to the door in the floor.

            “Never found his bo—”

            A slap across my drooping fake face brings me back. Sometimes the booze really screws with the pills. Floyd delivered the blow. He’s got a hold of each of my shoulders. I can smell the Old Spice wafting from his old man-ness. “Whose body?”

            “Marks.” One name. One syllable. It’s all that needs saying. For a while now I can go over to the couch and check out. Taking a seat and another pill and another sip of beer. The sound of a debate thickens. The others can see the no vacancy sign pinned on my head. On and on they talk.

            “Marks is dead.” Don’t think so.

            “Stover Marks?” Yep.

            “I thought he lost it in that big bombing in Lebanon? Or was it Syria?” Iraq.

            “Think it was Iraq.” Yep.

            “Yeah. That was a bad one. He was good agent. Kinda nuts though.” Yeah.

            “He ran a couple ops I was on back in the day. Ran it hard. But his people trusted him. Not the friendliest sort, really cut and dry. But his family and all. Bad stuff.” Yes it was.

            “Who was he with?” Does it matter anymore?

            “Does it make a difference? Remember which outfit you were with at the time?” Thank you.

            “They found the remains of his wife. The two little girls.” Indeed they did.

            “Closed casket.” They’d pretty much been cremated by the blast.

            “And Marks? His casket?”

            “It was empty,” I say, checking back in. “That’s what I heard, anyway. That’s what they told me after I got out.”

            “Was he running you, there at the end, Hank?” Floyd asks.

            There’s nothing left but to spill it. “Never met him, never actually shook hands or whatever, but he was in charge of the operation to capture—I don’t know, Muhammad al—can’t remember. I had the follow. Thirty yards from that radical psycho, and then nothing. Somebody had me. It was amateur. Me, I mean. Should’ve killed myself, bit my tongue off and choked on it the second it happened. Would’ve been the honorable thing.”

            The room feels colder now. The three around me are all hiding, covering up, trying not to imagine what they would’ve done in the same scenario. Denial is a prerequisite for the types I used to run with, the ones I’m running with now. Deny it could ever happen to you. Deny that you’re in danger, deny that you can be killed or captured because you’re just so good. Deny the enemy could ever break you, no matter what, no matter how long.

            “I broke. Gave up his name.” I can feel the judgment, watch countenances falling around me.

            Coughing to stifle his disappointment, my old handler puts his hairy arms up in a manner that commands me to explain.

            So I do. I tell them about the things that were done to me, the constant barrage of physical and psychological torture, the broken English spat my way, the screaming tirades in Arabic flying back and forth across whatever room I was in. As I give an accounting of my time in captivity, more and more comes back. Baseball day. Five hours straight of being nailed in the good part of my thighs with a wooden bat. The psychos loved it, using American things to torture Americans. That day sucked, but it wasn’t atypical or anything. Hands hung from a hook, one turban counting down the seconds, then another delivering the blow. That was the program; a swing every minute for five hours. The torture was in the monotony of it, knowing it was coming every sixty seconds, not knowing it would be five hours. Every now and then they’d lower the apparatus holding me up so that my feet could touch the ground. It wasn’t for relief. The addition of weight to all those frayed nerves and capillaries caused them to singe with a whole new type of pain. Gotta give it to the turbans; they were pretty colorful with their sadism. Some like to label it religious extremism, but I think it all comes down to enjoying your work. Worst part was listening them try to say Louisville Slugger with their rapid-fire Bronze Age accents. Yeah I know. Racist. Torture can make an ass out of you.

            The waterboarding. Days or weeks with no sleep. The box. The flaying. Usual stuff. It wasn’t a special case. Maybe I held out longer than most, maybe not. Are there statistics for that kinda thing? Actually, forget I said that. There is a department that comes up with statistics for that kinda thing. A department comprised entirely of people that have never had so much as a fingernail yanked out.

            When the extraction team came, there wasn’t much left of my body. It had taken Floyd and every resource at his disposal to locate me. As I tell them the rest of the story I remember him looking, seeing what they’d done. It was the more disheartening than the torture. Pity in his eyes. I’m pitiful all over again.

            “Afterward, you said you hadn’t given them anything,” he says.

            “I know. I didn’t remember it. Swear to God I didn’t remember.”

            “And now?”

            “Being down there, watching those two kids about to get the same business…”

            “It came back,” Marie says. Her expression is complicated, contorted by a mix of understanding and disgust. She’s seeing me as a talker. Nobody’s proud of a talker.

            “You told them, then? Where they could find Marks?” Billy asks.  

            “Must’ve.”

            “Meaning?”

            “They’d been asking, weeks and weeks, the same damn questions. Who’s running the operation, who’s in charge?”

            “So you told them?”

            I want things to be simple, to shut Billy up, but it’s not simple. “Must’ve,” I repeat. “Don’t remember talking, but I must’ve. They came in, threw a picture of Marks and his and family at my feet and pissed all over it. Thanked me. Fed me for the first time in days. That, I do remember.”

            “How the hell you forget all that?” Billy asks.

            There’s a million rejoinders to Billy’s question, but none are complete, none are whole. It’s an inscrutable situation; all of it. “Don’t know how I forgot. Only that I did. And now I remember.”

            “But you don’t recall talking?” Marie asks. She doesn’t want to admit to my defeat. Marie’s not a complex animal. She needs things simple so she can know what to do next. This simply ain’t.

            “No—it’s just a fog of beatings and smells, hell without end, amen.”

            Floyd sits down, still stroking his mustache. He’s got a beer of his own now. “It explains a lot, your current mental state.”

            “What are you, a shrink now?” I ask, realizing I’m on a couch and he’s in a chair opposite me.

            “It computes, is all. Like you been carrying the weight of something around, not knowing what it is, not knowing how to face it. All the therapy and pills in the world aren’t gonna treat something if you can’t even remember it. It’s like you had a tiny little knife scraping the walls of a secret room in your brain. For some reason we just found the key.”

            “Wonder how many other secret rooms there are,” I say, reaching for more pills. “And if there’s a knife up there, it ain’t out yet.”

            “So what about the rest?” Billy asks, pushing my feet off the end of the couch to make room. What a tool. “The rest, Henry? How can you be sure this is Marks?”

            Having stumbled over very few absolutes in my time, I’m reticent to use the word sure.

            But I’m sure.

            “It all just came together. Those pushed down memories. And then the guys from the BMW. One said I was a traitor. The other said that me and my whole family were dead. Didn’t make sense at the time.”

            “How’s that?” Billy asks, looking over at Floyd and Marie. Looking like he’s sitting next to the most inept human on the planet.

            “It happened fast,” I say. “They seemed like henchmen. Average at best. You ever put hard stock in the last words of henchmen?”

            They all look at each other, shrugging. I can see their acquiescence. Last words are usually crap. Henchmen’s last words are absolute trifles. Except now, it would seem.

            “Okay, Deer. From now on you gotta start communicating. Like, everything. No matter how innocuous, no matter how fatuous it may sound.”

            “Yep.”

            “It plays,” Marie says, taking an old frumpy chair next to Floyd. “Wanting to keep you from turning yourself in, to kill you himself. The revenge plot. It’s simpler. Have to say I hadn’t thought of it.”

            The more turns it takes in my head the more it starts to stick. Thought figuring out who was after me would give me some relief. Not so.

            “Stover Marks. He might literally be the worst person in the world you want on your ass. Heard some weird stuff about that dude,” Billy says. I chuckle and feel a tear leak out of my right eye. So many things. Me and Billy having the exact thought at the exact moment. Having to admit my failure as a man, my complete and utter failure. Inept is right. The kind of ineptitude that got innocent people killed. An assassin, no—a trainer of assassins—exacting slow and horrifying vengeance on me and my family. My family.

            “Right now I need to make a call,” I say, getting up to fish a new burner from my bag on the kitchen counter. No more time to sit around ruminating on my inadequacies as a warrior or a man.

            “Call? Who?” Marie asks, coming up behind me, gently. Have to say I’m surprised by her manner. She’s being pretty understanding through all this. Never could figure her out.

            As the SIM card snaps into place, I look at her and then the rest of my compatriots. “Just want you guys to know, if you stay in, I’ll pay double. If not, I’ll wire you what I owe right now.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” Billy says, standing up from the couch. “Who you calling there, big guy?”

            “Deputy Hawker. Captain YouTube. We need his help.”

Chapter 11: Astronaut

            “Hello?”

            “Deputy Trevor Hawker?”

            “Who in hell is this?”

            “This is Henry Fellows. The murderer. Please don’t hang up.”

            “Who?”

            “You know… number one?”

            “Look creep, I don’t know how you got this number, but stick it.”

            “Wouldn’t you like to know how I got this number? You are kind of a cop, aren’t you?”

            “You could’ve got it from a card I handed out at one of a million places. Call again and I’ll bust your ass.”

            I hear nothing. That was brief.

            My three cohorts are standing around me, all manifesting particular brands of nervousness. Floyd, as usual, is letting his fingers dance through his mustache. Billy’s doing that neck-rolling thing guys with too many muscles do. Marie V’s biting her fingernails. I think they’re scared of Hawker. Even spooks get spooked.

            “That didn’t sound good,” she says.

            “How’d he come off?” Billy asks.

            “Really well, actually,” I say. “Pretty sure he’ll be phoning real soon to invite me to dinner with his family.”

            “Did the press ever find out—you know, ‘bout you dumping that money into his brother’s account?” Floyd asks.

            “Nope.”

            “Go there.”

            I nod at the old man, hitting redial on the burner. Sweat is pouring from my face; I can’t blow this.

            “Alright, you son-of-a-b—”

            “Deputy Hawker. I know you want to know how I screwed your brother over. Let’s make a deal.”

            The line falls silent. I can hear him breathing, calculating what to say, whether he should say anything at all.

            I don’t wait. “Look superstar, I’m sure you’re getting all kinds of whack-jobs calling up the office, messing with you at home. What’d you expect? Frigging internet shenanigans.”

            More breathing.

            “Trying to be a hero, Hawker?”

            It isn’t going well. But it was never going to. I’ve just got to convince him to stall his rage for enough time to think.

            “What do you know about my brother?”

            Progress. “I know him and a bunch of the others lit out of the DOJ about as fast they could. There was an account, a bunch of money. My money. Congress was bound to pick up on the scent. He made the smart play.”

            “When I find you—”

            “Look. I’m gonna find you. Turn myself in.”

            “Is that right?”

            “And when I do, I’m going to admit to screwing with those bank accounts. Clear your brother, or whatever you guys want. Sorry about the whole thing. Not like I wasn’t up against it.”

            “What’s the catch?” He’s gone from pissed to bored. Like making deals isn’t his thing. Probably isn’t. The guy takes bullets in the chest for fun. Maybe he’s in the bathroom, on the road, trying to get some with his wife. I don’t where he is or what time of the day he’s living in. We’re in frigging England.

            “I need you to get my family. They’re in danger. Don’t know where you are, but call the Texas field office and put them in protective custody. Is there a Texas office?”

            “Oh so now you want to protect the family.”

            Yeah, I get the jab. I’m a butcher, a menace. It’ll take more than a phone call’s convincing to get him off that tack.

            “Fellows, are you saying you’re coming after your family? What is this, like an irresistible impulse you’re begging me to stop?”

            “There’s no time for this, Hawker.”

            “Hey!”

            “Just look up the name Stover Marks. You’ll probably get nothing, but if you have any real connections, you may find something at the bottom of the rabbit hole.”

            “And who is he?”

            “He’s the guy who killed my parents. I mean, I’m close to positive, anyway. Lately he’s the guy who’s been trying to kill me. His attempts aren’t going well. The next move will be for my family. And you, bright eyes, since you made yourself an internet sensation, he’s probably gonna kill you just to make sure you don’t get in his way. Amazed you’re not dead already.”

            A bit of a scoff forces its way through the line. Can’t say I blame the guy. “What the hell is going on, Fellows? I honestly can’t tell if you’re crazy or something else entirely.”

            “Makes two of us, pal. Sending you an email. All I have on Marks. It’s not much. Get to my family, Hawker.”

            “Hey when do you—”

            “You’ll be contacted soon. Don’t waste time, and watch your ass. Sorry to involve you, but you shouldn’t have made those videos. Kinda dumb. Fellows out.”

            The tail-end bravado was done out of instinct. Something tells me this guy wants nothing more than someone to challenge the fact that he’s the best, he’s the smartest guy in the room, whatever. Men and their egos. I get it. Used to have one myself.

            Sometimes men’s egos move mountains. Think of the sack it took to sally forth to the moon. They say it was rocket propulsion and math, but all of that crap played second fiddle to ego. On the other hand, ego can make men do nothing. Make a guy discard everything he just heard because he’s too clever or too full of pride.

            “Hope he’s an astronaut,” I say. Not like I got a lot of other options.

            “What?” Marie asks.

I reach down into my pockets for you-know-what.

            “So what’s next?” Billy asks. He looks like he’s ready to do something. Pretty sure I know what it is. Pretty sure I’m not okay with it.

            “We’re not gonna kill the youngsters.” I can see Marie starting to hold her hands out in exasperation. She stops herself. Let’s me talk. “You know anyone in town you trust enough to watch over them?”

            “I’ll make some calls. But not cool, Hank. This is a nice out-of-the-way spot for me. You know how long it takes to get set up in a city. Now it’s blown.”

            “Marie. Get a cabin on a lake. Without a dungeon. Paying you enough.”

            She walks off to the bedroom while I sit back down, looking at Billy and Floyd. “Thinking we need to bring Al in on this one. In case Hawker doesn’t get the job done. You still know how to get in touch, Boss?”

            The day’s events seem have taken a toll on the old guy. He looks ragged, years stolen in a day. “I suppose. Question is, should we? You know how Al can be.”

            “Exactly. Kinda the point. This is my family. No chances. Marks could be on them already.” The thought makes the shakes run down my arms and legs. Pills. “Make the call. Billy, come with me. Need to shore up some transport.”

            “Okay. Where we going?”

            “You’re going to Switzerland to kidnap a doctor for me. We’ll meet up in the Caribbean.”

            “What?”

            “I’ll tell you where to find him. And be nice. He’s a good guy.”

            “What am I doing this for again?”

            “Need to get my face back.”

Chapter 12: Awake

            How long’s it been? No freaking clue. It’s different now, that much is clear. It seemed like an eternity, all the memories, the unconscious consciousness that you call sleep, but further down, darker. Nebulous visions of my childhood, innocence mixed with so-called traumas that are really just part of being a kid. The re-creation of my parents’ crime scene, stepping over plastic bags and little evidence markers on that bloody stage of some psycho’s performance, men floating around in blue uniforms asking me questions, me not having any answers, images all twisted and wrapped around each other.

            Strange. Laying down, bright lights raging overhead, buzzing fluorescence burning off the slime, that sticky substance that chokes thought. I get it. I’ll parcel that all up, shove it to the back, try and forget what needs forgetting.

            Crap, my face hurts.

            “How you doing, son?”

            Thank God. It’s old Floyd, but I can barely see him. It’s like coming out of the womb, or how I imagine that would be.

            “You’ve been out for eight hours.”

            Eight hours? What about the eternity I was just talking about? He can’t be right. No. I was away for a long time, down in the dark—

            “You remember, right? You told the doc to put you out just enough. Your orders.”

            Stupid orders. What’s going on? Are my kids okay? The ex? Why can’t I get anything out of—

            “Don’t try to talk. They got you bandaged up like a damn mummy. Gotta say, it looks like hell. Couple days, maybe, but you can’t go around like that for a while.”

            He’s right. About the talking. My lips and every muscle that would make them function seem to be paralyzed by drugs, reset bones, cuts, or pure pain. Still, gotta try and communicate. Shake your right hand. Sack up, Henry. There you go. Keep shaking.

            “I don’t understand.”

            Keep shaking.

            “Kid, what do you need?”

            Floyd. Use your thinking cap. It’s starting to cramp.

            “You want pills?”

            Finally.

            “We’ll get you fixed up, but this doc says they won’t react well with the drugs you’re already on.”

            I make a fist. Shake it as menacingly as I know how.

            “Okay. I’ll tell him to figure it out.”

            They should’ve made us learn sign language. I open up my hand and wave it in little circles, like you do when you want someone to spill.

            “So apparently that deputy character got to your family. He’s with them now. Our man is watching over the protective detail, keeping his distance, says they’re decent but not the best he’s ever seen. You want to keep him on it?

            My hand makes a thumbs up. Damn right I want to keep him on it. It makes sense that Floyd is apprehensive about using his name. He’s talking about Al, a specialist amongst specialists in our line of work. The kind of guy op runners like Floyd try to stay away from. Guess you could call him a wild card. Don’t want to paint him with the crazy brush, but overly-zealous might be a fitting description. One could generously refer to folks like myself and Al as idiosyncrasy collectors. If we were characters, he’d be Patton and I’d be the dude in Johnny Got His Gun.

            Floyd’s also got some history with Al to draw from. There was one deal, think it was the extraction of a political dissident being held hostage by a radical Islamic group. They needed this mug to lead the moderates, you know, prop up some wannabe government over there that had little to no chance of survival. Dude was a sheikh or imam, whatever it’s called. The place he was being held in was a veritable fortress. Fifteen turbans had this guy under lock and key, probably to chop his head off or some such. Floyd and his people couldn’t get the okay to go in. No reliable intelligence. No decent points of ingress or egress. In our business, that’s when you say abort.

            Al didn’t care.

            He just waded on in. Alone. Five grenades, a machine-gun, and a really big knife was all he needed.

            The rescue ended in success, kind of. Al picked up the guy, frazzled as heck, threw him over his shoulder and handed him off to the extract team. Problem was, after witnessing the complete and total carnage left in the wake of one sole American, the moderate was radicalized and ended up becoming one of our biggest enemies in the region. Pissed off the brass something fierce.

            Always thought that assessment was a little unfair.

            When asked to recount his actions, Al replied simply, “I killed the bad guys.”

            Always thought that his assessment was fair.

            I have to admit to some inherent bias. Like the sheikh, Al threw me over his shoulder and rescued me from the torture bunker I was in. Kind of puts me irrevocably in his corner. Floyd on the other hand—just a bit too much bureaucrat in him to appreciate the bluntness of an instrument like Al.

            I’m not done. I use my left hand to simulate a notepad and my right to signal for a pen to write down some more questions. He looks annoyed but leaves the room to look around. God knows what out-of-the-way dump we’re in. Too much pain to remember.

            Moments go by before he comes back in. I try to see through the gauze and shakily pen my queries.

            Where are we?

            “Montserrat. Caribbean. Like you said. There’s nobody around, no problems.”

            Volcano.

            “Yeah, we’re in the exclusion zone. Can’t say it’s the most comforting thought, but we’re definitely off-the-grid. Only you would pick an active disaster area for a safe house. We talked about this before, Deer.” Not sure what he’s braying about. Seems like a half-abandoned island is a perfect out of the way destination. Assuming lava doesn’t come seeping through the walls.

            Drugs.

            “Yeah, they got you on some serious stuff.”

            NO. DRUGS.

            “The doc’s coming. The poor guy needed a break. Billy has a bag over his head at all times so he can’t see any of us. Only takes it off so he can work on you. Most of the time he mutters in Swiss.”

            French. You guys are assholes.

            “Eh, it’s for the best. Billy would want to kill him otherwise.”

            Where exactly are the kids?

            “Little ranch outside of Fort Worth, southwest of the city.”

            How many acres? Approaches?

            “I don’t know all the details. I mean, it’s a frigging ranch or whatever. Probably approach it from damn near anywhere.”

            Is Hawker there?

            “Al says no. Zero signs of danger. Some other deputies are keeping an eye out, sounds like. Important thing is the kids are there, with your ex and that husband of hers.”

            I’m done laying around. Yanking out the needle from my left arm causes an eruption of noises from the little machine next to me. Floyd tries to hold me down but even his meaty hands and forearms aren’t enough to get it done. Shoving him off, I point to the door of the makeshift operating room. He gets the picture. It’s the picture of a mummy in a half-cinched hospital gown with his junk hanging out.

            We’re leaving. It doesn’t sound like Hawker knows what he’s doing; either that, or he just doesn’t care enough. If he did he would be onsite to nail the thing down. It’s possible he doesn’t believe it was me calling. That was the idea behind getting my face back. It was a precaution. Now it seems my fears were justified. I look in the mirror, expecting to see my old self. Nothing. Just puss and blood covered with layers and layers of gauze and bandages. Good lord. So much for recognizing me. Doctor!

Chapter 13: Asshat

            Back in Texas. Got to say, never would’ve predicted having to come home so soon. I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Fear and chemicals are sloshing around. Tried to eat, but it made me sick. How do you eat when your kids are in danger? No matter how crazy, regardless of the escaping and running and wigging out, my children can’t see the real bad side of this thing. I’ve screwed up their lives enough. There was a time when I thought I’d never look on them again. Now it’s all I want in the world. Billy says we’re still working on a hunch. Floyd’s still worried about my sanity, Al’s sanity. Real team unity.

            Have to say, Marie V’s been good. While I was being turned back into the old Henry, she’d been looking into the Stover Marks thing. True, she said, they never found the body. She was clever enough to hack into some agency report following the death of his family. Most of it was redacted, but it did explain that a prominent western businessman (Marks’ cover) in the middle east was targeted at random by a local independent terrorist group. Several news websites picked up on it, just for a moment in time, just another tragedy in a sandy sea of violence and degradation. There were a few pictures of the scene, a few little parts of a few little innocent bodies. Made my stomach turn again. My fault.

            “It’s suspicious,” she admitted. “You know, how much this thing doesn’t tell us.”

            Yeah. Spy shit. Sucks like that.

            We’re landing at a little airport in Cleburne, Texas after one stop in Cancun. I had a Raytheon Premier 1A jet sitting in Montserrat for emergencies. It’s a thing. If you’re rich and on the run, you need different types of planes in different types of places. This one’s small enough to get into Cleburne, the closest 5000 ft. plus runway near the safe house. It’s not far from my old hometown, and luckily I know a guy who keeps a few cars in a hangar at the airport. Yeah, I’m not gonna ask, but I’ll leave some money. He’d understand, you know, if he didn’t think I’d gone insane and killed a bunch of people.

            It’s late. Nobody around, really. Little airstrips tend to be ghost towns during the night. Good thing. We’ve gone a bit overboard with the equipment, and it would look slightly suspicious unloading stacks of arms that would make most third-world countries jealous.

            Billy insisted that we raid Marie’s basement arsenal before leaving for the western hemisphere. For once, I was in total agreement. No telling what’s over the next hill.

            “Ah!”

            “What is it?” Marie asks.

            “Hit my frigging head on something.”

            “It’s a wing. This dude’s hanger is crowded.”

            “Thanks for the warning, Bill. Turn the frigging lights on.”

            “They are on, big guy. Still having trouble seeing?”

            I tug at the layers of gauze covering every inch of my head. I must look like a papier-mâché cyborg. Ridiculous. “What happened to the doc?”

            “Let him go, bro. You don’t remember? Dude, you suck.” 

            “Oh yeah. Sorry, I’m a little loopy.”

            “You don’t say.”

            It’s not possible to see, but I know it’s there. Billy and his bull-crap bleached grin. What a tool. “We ready? Someone check in with Al, let’s get moving.”

            On cue I hear the side door to the hangar slam open and the trudging footfalls of Floyd. “That was Al.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Apparently the ranch house is under attack. Said they came out of nowhere.”

            “Wasn’t he watchi—let’s move!”

            There’s no more discussion. At once we’re in the old stolen suburban and off to the scene. Everybody’s gearing up. It’s crowded and hot. I fish for a handle and roll down the window. The round sounds of silencers being applied to barrels and the clanking sounds of clips locking into place fill the interior of the vehicle.

            “What’s the last thing you heard?” I ask Floyd. He’s driving up in the front seat. Marie’s in the back with me, trying to slide a vest over my stupid mummy head. “Floyd?”          

            “He saw a few agents drop, like they were hit by a sniper. Coordinated attack, sounds like.”

            “Hawker down?” I ask.

            “That’s another thing. He actually showed up about the time we were landing. He was inside with your family. Al couldn’t see what happened. Hawker and two other agents were inside. Apparently a flash bang grenade went off when they breeched and the line went dead.”

            “You try him back?”

            “I think we all know what he was off to do.”

            God I hope so. God tell me Al waded in like he did when he rescued the sheikh, when he rescued me. God help that crazy, maladjusted merchant of death.

            “ETA? Marie asks, finishing dressing me.

            “Four minutes.” Floyd says. He hasn’t been in a fight for a spell. It’s in his voice.

            “We don’t have time to set up. Just roll right in, yah?” It sounds like a question, but Billy’s stating the obvious. Suddenly I feel the old SUV hit a dirt road, ancient shocks taking each bump and rut with a thud. My head hits the collapsing roof, serving to wake me up. No time for pills. No time for anything. Just another plea to God.

            Crashing through a metal gate, the vehicle bottoms out, heading downward.

            “There it is. Lit up still,” Floyd says.

            To hell with the soundtrack. I’m tired of getting a play-by-play. With both hands I tear at the pads covering my eyes. Things are murky, but I’ll figure it out. The first thing I see is Marie. Looks like she’s witnessing Frankenstein becoming self-aware. Whatever.         

            Floyd slams on the breaks and the suburban skids to a dusty stop on the dirt road about fifty yards from the ranch house. It’s nothing big, nothing fancy. Clapboard. No way to hole up in there. Even with my severely impaired vision it’s apparent that the front door’s been smashed in and three fed-type bodies are laying lifeless around the porch. I can faintly see Marie and Billy fanning out to the right and left respectfully. Somehow they know I’m to be first through the front. Floyd’s just behind, on my left. “You okay, old-timer?”

            “Don’t worry about me,” he says, gruff and defiant. It’s clear he’s scared, but good on him; doing his best and all. Making our way slowly up to the first body, submachine guns tucked tight, I hear him say, “this ain’t no fed.”

            “What?”         

            “Those other two, yeah. But not this fella. He’s got full tactical on. Come here.”   

            Though I’m miles from fully coherent, it’s obvious Floyd’s right. Broken neck. Al’s work.

            Voices. Not Billy, not Marie. Children’s voices. My children. “Go,” I say, watching Floyd run up to the left of the door. Stopping in position for a brief moment, I swivel around, frenetically training my weapon across the entryway and front rooms, checking for any signs of movement. Problem is I’m desperate, those little voices have me moving too fast, too loose, and dammit, my face hurts like a mother—

            “Ugh.”

            I feel the slug slap against my vest, the concussion reverberating through my body, feel blood warming the left side of my chest and beginning to work its way around my torso. The things that happen when you get shot.

            “Stay down, asshat!” I hear. I want to respond, but the wind’s been knocked out of me. That, and my jaws have been reset. That, and there’s seven thousand stitches in my face. That, and I’ve been shot, currently spread eagle in the entranceway. I’ll need a moment.

            “You’re surrounded,” I hear Floyd say.

            My ears are ringing, but the sound of children is still there. The rustling little footsteps of Billy and Marie are barely detectable. Heavy shoes are moving about in one of the other rooms, shaking the entire structure. Still flat on my back, I rotate my head to the left. It’s the dining area, an area I already checked when I plodded in toward the firing squad. What I failed to see the first time was the body laid out halfway underneath the table. Dead eyes staring at me through goggles. Creepy. Again, a dude in full tactical. Again, I was sloppy to have missed it.

            “Floyd,” I gasp, bending my head awkwardly backward toward the door where he’s planted. “It’s Hawker. He said asshat. Sounds like something he’d say.” It’s more than a hunch. I’d watched his greatest hits on the internet enough to know the tenor of his voice. As soon as the words sputter from my lips my body collapses back down; the entirety of my anatomy had been commissioned to utter those few simple phrases.

            “Agent Hawker? I’m with Henry Fellows. You just shot him, by the way. Hope it was an accident. Mind explaining the situation?”

            “Who the hell are you?!”

            “Name’s Floyd. I’m here along with some friends of Henry’s. They’re outside. Armed. Are the kids okay?”

            Finally, old man.

            “They’re good. All my men are down. I guess—so is everybody else.”

            “I’m coming out,” Floyd says, hands up, gun still in hand. “Al, you there?”

            “Yes.”

            The destroyed and ill-used thing that is my body is starting to find its equilibrium, there on the floor, a sort of humanoid place-setting in between a conversation of people with automatic weapons. With my left hand I reach under the vest. Another happy accident. The hollow-point pierced the vest but caught a piece of a Leatherman tool. A few little shards broke the skin but nothing life-threatening. For a guy with more battered limbs than Evel Knievel, not all that dramatic.

            Floyd asks me if I’m okay as he helps me to my feet. The gun I so expertly used is dragging behind by the strap; it looks ridiculous, though it’s a little late in the game to go striving for dignity. “Give me your shoulder,” I say as we advance toward the back of the house. Billy and Marie are in the house now trailing us, walking tentatively behind. Once again I’m blind. The wrap on from my forehead has fallen down over my eyes. Whatever.

            “Who are you?” I hear. The voice is unmistakable. My beloved ex-wife. A shame she couldn’t have taken one in the chest during the firefight. Eh. I don’t mean that. Not really, anyway.

            I pull the gauze up over my eyebrows as Floyd sets me down in an old frumpy chair filled with bullet holes. It’s in the corner of what used to be a modest living room. Now it looks like Beirut come to Texas. There’s blood, shell casings, drywall, a few dead bodies, more shell casings, and yeah, my family. I nod at them, like that’s supposed to mean something. The mindless things you do after being on the run, undergoing two facial reconstructions, and being shot. It’s obvious that they have no idea what they’re looking at. It’ll be days before I can de-mummify, so my voice is essential.

            “Hey, Al,” I mumble. He’s in the room too, sat up against a wall painted in blood with a knife stuck in his shoulder. It feels more comfortable to address him first.

            “Hank?” he asks. “You look like hell. Always do, it seems.”

            “You catch me on bad days,” I mutter. The words come out like wet concrete. “Ah!” I scream. “What the hell, Billy?”

            “My watch went off. I’m supposed to inject you with this every three hours. It’s adrenaline mixed with some kind of tissue-building catalyst. I don’t know, Swiss shit. You paid two-hundred grand for it. Doc’s orders.”

            I don’t bother to argue. Every syllable is uttered on credit at this point. Waste not, you know.

            “So. Here we are,” I say, still smarting from the injection. Can’t decide what hurts most, can’t decide on anything decent or apropos to say. It’s all a bit awkward. You know the type of situation I’m talking about. The one where you’re in a room with the family you haven’t seen in over a year, a federal agent who wants to put you in jail, an assassin extraordinaire with a knife protruding from his chest, and three other people that are only on your side because you’re paying them seven figures. Standard issue stuff.

            It’s all smoke and bitter blood and silence. Hawker’s at the far corner of the room, poking up from behind a couch where he was obviously covering my family. Astronaut.

            “How’d it go down?” I ask, ignoring the fact that my wife’s new husband and the kids are crying.

            “What?” Hawker asks. My words are still mush. I repeat myself through dry lips. Al answers.

            “Four-man team. Just after the fed here arrived. They took out the two agents in the front and the one guarding the back door like they were nothing. No security at the gate. Pretty sad set up,” he says, pausing to glare at Hawker. “They didn’t know I was coming so I managed to slip in behind. Snapped one’s neck. Shot two more. Fairly simple. Think our hero behind the couch took one out, then threw this frigging knife at me. Nice way of saying thank you.”

            I give a thumbs up to Al. He deserves more, for saving my family, and for giving me the rundown through an unending tirade from my ex-wife. I wish she would just shut up and tweet about it or whatever. Somebody should tell her to pipe down. Someone other than me.

            Hawker’s still clutching his Beretta in his muscular right hand. Breathing heavy. Clearly not used to being cornered. I’m pissed that he hurt Al and shot me, but it’s understandable. Probably felt like the Alamo before we showed up. He didn’t abandon the kids. Something I won’t forget.

            “Checked the bodies,” Marie says, reentering the living room, stopping somewhere between my family and me. She’s all business and calm, smiles at the kids and puts a hand up in the air to silence my yapping ex. “Ma’am. Please. Give it a rest. Deputy. Your people are all dead. Sorry.”

            “The others?” Floyd asks.

            “Never seen them before. Eastern European, if I had to guess. Marks definitely isn’t here.”

            “He wouldn’t be,” I mumble.

            “Why’s that?” It’s the first time Hawker’s spoken since asshat. I point at Al to give him the answer. He may be a blunt merchant of mortality, but he’s no dummy. Far from it.

            “Because,” he says, pulling the blade from his chest and tossing it aside. “This was a kidnapping. If it was a simple murder, I wouldn’t’ve had time. They could’ve blown the whole house up from the road, for God sake. Come on, Marshal. Frigging cops.”

            Half listening to Al, I realize what’s most important. “Billy, Marie. Take the kids out to the cars.” I put a hand over my eyes. They get what it means. They’ve been through enough trauma; no sense in making them see any more. I’d do it myself, want to do it myself. Just a hug. Some kind of embrace. But it’s too much too soon. Have to get them out. If any semblance of a fence remains, I’ll focus on mending it later. It’s a wound that hurts more than my wound.

            Watching them getting carried out to the front allows me a second of reflection before the coming deluge. Rising from behind the couch are the figures of Emma and—

            “What’s your name again, chief?”

            Guy can barely speak. Sounds worse than I do. But I know his name. Just want to embarrass him. Little victories. Frigging cardigan-wearing pantywaist. The wife definitely went the other way with the next guy.

            Then my precious sweetheart. She’s starting up again—hurling all kinds of insults and bile in my direction. If she could, she’d probably pick up the dead body in the middle of the room and launch it at my face. Never mind the white knight job we just pulled. It’s emotional seeing her, complicated—hell, I almost want to say something nice, but that too will have to keep. Floyd swoops in to guide her and her new beloved out in front of the house, leaving me, the Deputy, and Al all alone. In a life comprised primarily of strange situations, this one pokes out a bit. Nobody wants to speak. I give it a go.

            “How you been, Al?”

            “Better than you. Holding up ok? Besides the face? Bullet hurt?” His tone and manner bring back a lot of memories. Same old Al. Talking fast, like talking is some annoying thing the world has forced on him. It’s oddly comforting.

            “Not bad. The old right leg never really healed. Couple vertebrae that’ll never be the same. I took up chess.”

            “Really? I was always terrible at chess.”

            “Well, it’s a different way of playing with yourself. Lotta long nights lately. How’s the knife wound?”

            “Ah, it’ll mend. Spare some gauze from your head?”

            “Sure.” I unwrap a few layers from the upper hemisphere and rip it off for him as he swipes it from my hand. He looks pretty much the same. Square shouldered, bearded, toothy and truly enormous. Indefatigability wrapped in muscle. Low hair line, slightly graying and cropped short. Hawker is watching us, mouth agape. No masters in criminology could prepare him for a couple of guys like us.

            “Who the hell are you, Fellows?”

            “Pretty much who you suspect I am. Pretty much not the person you suspected I was. You do any research on Marks?”

            “A little. Got a few friends at FBI who hooked me up with a file. Rumors. Another guy working outside the chain. Kind of a freelancer. He might be on to something. Is this Marks CIA? Give me something to go on.”

            “He wasn’t CIA.”

            “And what… you guys were?”

            No time for a meal, so I feed him some scraps. “There were some things needed doing back in the day, before I became the murdering trust-fund baby you heard all about. CIA, military intelligence, there are places on this earth where all that organizational crap runs together and atop itself. Guys like us could tell you who we were working for, but even we can’t be sure.” Yeah, it sounds ridiculous and conspiratorial, but it’ll have to do for now. “Your little file on Marks say he was dead?”

            “The official one did, matter of fact. But I’m beginning to think official doesn’t have a damn thing to do with any of this mess.”

            “Al, get me one of those radios. Cell if he has one.” I can see the big man knows what I’m thinking as he fishes through the blood-soaked pockets of the dead mercenary in our midst. Hawker appears to be disarmed, figuratively at least. The Beretta is down by his side. My vision is still blurry enough to be surprised when Al hits me on the lap with the walkie and phone. I turn the nob to on. Long shot. Why not. “Come in. Anyone on this channel? Marks, your men are dead. Should’ve sent better guys. Hey. Jerkoff. Respond.” Hawker is standing over me with a look like nothing’s going to happen. It’d be great if something did. Reach for my pills. The nerves are biting. A trying bit of business, earning the trust of someone sworn to find and even kill you if need be. The Deputy is everything advertised. Over six feet, ripped, hard cheeks and peering, intelligent eyes. The kind of person that seems perpetually held back until the spring is released. I have to assume ambivalence was the reason for the weak protection detail. Simply put, he’s not convinced of anything I say. If there’s any way to disabuse him of that notion, gotta see it done. “Stover Marks? I know it’s you, asshat.” I give the Deputy a little wink as he watches me. Can’t even tell if he saw it with all the gauze flung about my head. Can’t get a read on the guy. He’s not exactly garrulous. Frigging sphinx.

            Floyd reenters the room. “They’re all packed in the suburban. Marie’s doing another check of the property and Billy’s watching over them.”

            I nod. It’s only the four of us in the living room, waiting for something to happen.

            “You hear that?” Hawker asks. I look down at the radio and phone in my lap, thinking that’s what he’s talking about. He’s not.

            “I hear it too,” Al says. “Chopper.”

            As he darts about the house I get up, but in doing so I fumble the phone and the radio. Henry Fellows. All thumbs and barely any eyes. Shit’s getting old. Suddenly the cell on the floor starts to vibrate as the noise from helicopter crescendos. The men around me are in various stages of action while I slide my thumb across the face of the screen.

            “Hello? Who is this?”

            The voice coming through the other end of the line is calm but obscured by a hell of a lot of background noise. “It’s me, Fellows. You wanted to speak? I figured it’d be rude not to respond.”

            “Marks.” Floyd, Hawker, and Al all stop what they’re doing momentarily to turn and look at me. I cover the phone and motion for Floyd to get out to the cars. My body is chilled to the core. I was 99% sure about Stover Marks, but that last percentage of certainty is an emotional Grand Canyon.

            We all rush out toward the front door but it’s too late. The unmistakable sound of a minigun firing an insanely high volume of rounds rips through our ears and tears the front porch into pieces, forcing us to back off. The chopper lands, still firing, just over the suburban and my family. I want to fire back, all the good it’ll do, but it’s too dangerous. I hear the tiny sound of Marks’ voice emanating through the cell phone. “Henry? Henry? You know you can’t fire. Yes, I know there’s four of you in the house.” There’s a sardonic satisfaction in his tone. It’s detectable even though the world is exploding around me.

            “You’ve got infrared,” I say. What else can I say? Some idle threat, I suppose. Al taps me on the shoulder like he wants to make a move to the car. I nod and rise back to my feet. We’re met by another barrage from the minigun. The choices are suicide or backing down, coughing on acrylic paint particles and wood chips.

            “Yes, we have you on infrared. Now those men you see coming out of the helicopter are going to take your family. I believe your two little friends out here are already dead. Brave. Hope all that money you paid was worth it.”

            It’s hard to hear every word but I get the thrust. I’m sitting ass to floor, gun in hand, watching some vendetta-obsessed psycho take my kids. My feet move under me but Floyd sits me back down with a strong pull. There’s nothing to do but look on and suffer. It’s too much. I try rising again. Finally, Al has to punch me in the stomach. That puts me down for good and keeps me from having to see the writhing little bodies of a teenage girl and 8-year-old boy behind hauled away by emotionless cretins. It keeps me from seeing the woman I used to love forced from the clutches of a pansy to a madman.

“Don’t worry, Henry,” I hear. “They’ll be safe. I know it’s frustrating to be so close to me and yet be so helpless. I’ll do you a favor.”

            I hear gunfire, not the whoosh of the minigun but distinctive staccato rounds. Having recovered from Al’s punch, I see the last bullet of a clip being emptied into my wife’s new husband. Oh shit. The pansy.

            “How about that? Figured you didn’t much like him, right Henry?” The shakes are coming hard, the heavy breathing, all the normal stuff amplified to a whole new level.

            Pouring down pills I put my mouth right up the phone, like that does anything. “What do you want, Marks? Just let me walk out and you can shoot me right now. Take me and make it slow. Just let them go. This is crazy. End it!”

            “Later.” I see the call end and watch the helicopter ascend abruptly, taking with it my mortal enemy and my family. As they disappear into the night sky, Marks offers a final thought. “And don’t try finding me. Any whiff of you or one of your lackeys and I’ll start taking pieces from your family.”

            Lovely.

            “What the hell was that?” Hawker asks. It barely registers. I’m punch drunk.

            Floyd answers for me. “That was a Blackhawk, high-rate weaponry, and some guys that know what they’re doing.” The old man is right. But where did Marks get the gear and the men, the balls to go full military operational on United States soil? Either he’s become the new master of the universe or something else is going on. I can’t figure it.

            As the wind from the chopper’s rotors dies down, I follow Al to where the Suburban was parked. It’s almost completely dark but there’s enough moonlight to see Billy’s body. He’s in pieces, a gelatinous mess. “7.62 rounds,” Al says. “Shredded him up.” I’m finding it hard to breathe. Billy’s obnoxious flaws are disappearing into the ether. Suddenly all I recall are the things that made him a good fighter and loyal soldier.

            “You see Marie anywhere?” I ask, struggling to form the words. Grabbing a few flashlights from the suburban, we do a quick scan with our lights. Before we can venture out deeper into the property, I hear a voice calling from beneath the car. A startling hand grabs me by the leg. Marie. She’s alive.

            Pulling her out is a struggle. The barrage from the minigun blew the tires on the SUV, causing it to sag near to the dirt. Once free and afoot, her first thought is not of herself. The soupy wreckage of Billy is sitting right there by the car. “He covered me while I hit the deck,” she says. Her voice is charged with the expected guilt and sadness of a normal person, plus the pure underlying rage of a trained killer/spy/soldier. We’re all in a sort of circle around the remains, eyes fixed downward. To look away would be a disservice somehow. Poor Billy. He’s seeping into the soil, leaking onto our boots.

            Deputy Hawker is the first to move back. A man with too much hard sense for this senselessness. His head is swirling about: there’s the collapsing house, the dead marshals, the fugitive standing right in front of him. I get it. All a bit thick. Expected. What he says next is just as expected. “Who are you people?”

Chapter 14: Road

            Ever have your eyes on the prize? No really, it’s a legitimate question. Out of the gate, it sounds like the type of thing a pedantic pill-popping sophist would ask, but for real? How many times in life are you put in that scenario? Most of it is just running away, keeping your head down, trying not to think about the inane crap you’re doing along the wire. Then comes a moment when there it is, the thing you want, right in front, just out of reaching distance. Your eyes are on the prize. Could be anything, a new job, the girl or guy of your dreams, house you’ve always wanted. Moments like that are precious, and if precious is too maudlin a word, at least admit they’re rare. If the word prize is to mean anything, it can’t be something you win every frigging week. I don’t know.

            The expression just keeps popping up, like a hand choking out any other thoughts or ideas in my head. That my life has been nothing but a protracted evasive maneuver is plain enough, but seeing my daughter and son and their mother suddenly slapped me still: there was my prize, eyes on.

            Where my story differs is that I’m still a fugitive of the federal government and that my prize was whisked away by a psycho in a helicopter.

            We all have our stories.

            They could be anywhere, my kids. A cocktail of pills grind down my gullet as I hear a question from the back of the SUV. It’s a new one—the vehicle, not the question. I’m in the passenger seat. Al’s driving. Floyd and Marie are in the back. Weapons and supplies are in the way back, piled alongside what’s left of our fallen friend. I can hear his bits and pieces sloshing around like stew. He’s beginning to smell. Before the rest of the feds could come down on us we lit out of the scene, zipping up poor Billy so they wouldn’t find him. The rest of the place we torched. No DNA, like before, this time for my friends. Think I’m blown. Calling the authorities and asking for protective custody for my family will do that.

            Hawker’s tentatively on our side. He tentatively let us take one of the dead agent’s cars back to another stash house of mine, tentatively agreed to let us go and find some answers. It’s hard for a guy like that, going along without understanding all the facts. We could all see it. We could all get it. Not like we haven’t been there before, looking at a picture that only makes sense in scattered pieces, a frigging Picasso painting of a situation. You know, there’s a fact over there, here’s another one, only they’re not exactly where they should be. Incongruous. Frustrating. Like getting shot frustrating. Like getting knifed frustrating. Like losing a colleague. Hawker was feeling the loss of his people, just like we were mourning poor Billy.