Deception (14 page)

Everything that was in
the black duffel bag that Billy’s been carrying around is scattered across the lawn: a hand gun, steel bar, police badge, and the three gas masks, among other things. The wooden box that was unearthed from the dirt is now empty and the contents are in the bag. Billy sniffs the final stack of cash before placing it into the duffel bag. He zips it, throws it over his shoulder, and points in the direction of the scattered contents on the ground.

“Pick that stuff up, will you?”

Frank reacts immediately and gathers the items as Billy and I make our way back toward the van.

“What now?” I ask.

“Yeah, what now, boss?” Frank’s breath is heavy as he hustles to catch up to us.

“We’re done. I guess that’s it,” Billy says.

“So I can go home then?”

Billy nods.

“With Alicia?”

He hesitates. “With Alicia.”

“What about us, boss?” Frank interrupts.

“We’ll leave in the morning.”

“Where you guys going?” I ask.

Billy looks at me but doesn’t say anything. He’s made one mistake too many by letting me see where they’ve been keeping me, so he won’t make another.

“Mexico, baby!” Frank blurts out.

Billy snaps his head around at Frank and smacks him in the back of the head.

“What was that for?”

Billy pauses, smiles, then he wraps his arm around Frank. He pulls him ahead of me so they’re alone. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but Billy whispers something in Frank’s ear, which Frank seems to enjoy. They’re glowing as they walk the rest of the way to the van, Billy’s arm still casually dangling around Frank’s shoulder the entire time.

I can’t help but smile too.

---
 

The cash is bursting
out of the unzipped bag as it rests on the tabletop. The three of us are sitting around the table in one of the offices back at the old police station. Frank is falling asleep in the chair from physical exhaustion, and Billy is doing the same from mental. Billy holds a stack of hundreds in his hands while he fights his body’s urge to sleep. I’m wide awake, still high on an adrenaline rush, and ready to go home. The door behind me creaks open and Alicia enters the room. Her mouth drops and her pupils dilate when she sees the bag on the table.

“Oh my god,” she says, “you actually did it! I can’t believe it!”

Billy and Frank both startle at the sound of her voice and awaken from their trances. I pop up from my chair and run over to her. I grab her hand.

“It’s over,” I say. “We can go home now.” She musters a weak smile and almost starts to cry. I turn to Billy. “When are we leaving?”

“In the morning.”

“What? No, I want to leave now. You have your money.”

“In the morning I said.”

“We had a deal.”

Billy rolls his eyes. “Did you not hear me say, ‘in the fucking morning’?” His frustration is obvious.

“No, the hell with that. We had a deal and I did my part. You have you’re fucking money, so I’m leaving now whether you like it or not.” I put my hand on the base of Alicia’s back and lead her out the door. We’ll walk back to Josie’s and pick my car up from there.

She gasps before we can exit the room.

I turn around and look toward Billy, who’s suddenly standing next to us. His left hand is wrapped around Alicia’s wrist and his right hand holds a gun, which is pointed in my face. The barrel digs into the bone above my nose. Billy’s bloodshot eyes are locked in on mine and the vein in his forehead is pulsating.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

It’s almost 8:30 P.M. by
the time I arrive at the self-storage unit across town. The facility is outdoors and is open for twenty-four hours a day, so I’m able to weave through the narrow driving paths in the van. The posted speed limit is five miles per hour, and I can’t go much quicker than that anyway due to the sharp corners and wide vehicle frame. I rented the unit out four or five weeks ago now, and I’ve visited periodically since then with the new items that had arrived from overseas.

Inside the unit rests a single worn out plastic storage container without a lid. I had ordered a few masks online from a company in Sweden that specializes in zombie apocalypse survival goods, and a gas mask apparently is included in those supplies. There are companies all across the United States that offer the same type of products, but I was looking for a specific type of mask, one that I could only find outside of the country. The masks need to filter out carbon monoxide specifically, and that is something that is a bit difficult to find, I discovered. Carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless, which is perfect for what we’re trying to do, but it could be extremely dangerous for us if we’re not protected properly.

Also in the box are some short pieces of foam, each cut in lengths of exactly six inches, from which I had picked up at the local home improvement store. The foam is cut from a spool of weather stripping, so it’s made to block the outside air from going in and the air inside from going out.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, are two small rounded Tupperware containers, each enclosing a separate substance. The first is a small amount of a reddish black powder that looks like a mixture of paprika and cinnamon, but it’s far from it. It’s thermite, and it’s powerful. It won’t explode, which is critical, but it can and will burn through steel. The tricky part is that most igniters don’t get hot enough to light the thermite, so that’s where the magnesium comes into play; that’s what’s in the other container, a few thin metallic strips of magnesium.

Since thermite is not an explosive, it’s not illegal to own, but it was a bitch to find. I did some digging around and made some calls, and I did eventually find some locally. I found the guy online but never did find out his name. He got his hands on a big chunk of the material from somewhere, he wouldn’t say where, and I didn’t ask many questions. I met him after hours one night in street clothes, and we made the cash transaction quickly and seamlessly.

After fingering through the supplies in the box, I pick it up and load it into the back of the van. I leave the padlock hanging from the storage unit, unlocked, and make my way back around the rows of units and toward the exit. I leased the unit on a month-to-month basis, and I already paid for July, so I’ll just leave the lock for the next person. I have no use for it anymore.

---

I wait for the
garage door to open while the front tires of the van rest on the sensor. When it does, I pull into the empty garage and close the door behind me. With the box in hand, I struggle with the door handle of the old station, but I am eventually able to get it open. The hallway is empty and the lights are dim, and it’s silent. I peek in a couple of the old offices near the doorway, but Frank is nowhere to be found. At the other end of the hallway, I catch a glimpse of a shadowy figure weaving through the offices.

“Frank, is that you?” I yell out to the figure. My voice echoes in the emptiness.

No response.

I enter one of the offices and place the box of goods on the table before making my way down the hall. “Frank?”

There is some shuffling in the room adjacent to my position in the hallway, but still no response from Frank. I slide my hand down to my hip before entering the room, enabling myself for quick action if the gun is needed. To my delight, the racket is coming from Frank, who is shuffling furniture around the room. I allow myself to relax.

“What the hell are you doing?” I ask.

Frank is startled and quickly turns to me. “Jeez, you scared me.”

“I’ve been calling your name. What the hell are you doing in here?”

“I’m looking for something.”

“I can see that.” I wait, but he doesn’t seem too keen on offering more information voluntarily, so I press further. “What are you looking for?”

“Uh…well, not something. More like someone.”

My face drops and I’m instantly concerned. “What do you mean? Who?”

“Well…the girl may have got out.”

Concern is replaced with anger, and I walk toward Frank. I get in his face. “You better be messing around. Tell me you’re messing around.”

“Sorry, boss.”

Not knowing what else to do, I grab one of the many chairs that are scattered across the room and throw it. It smashes into a rusty file cabinet and one of the legs snaps off. Frank leaps back and covers his head as the metal on metal clashes.

“What the hell happened, Frank? I told you not to let her out until I got back.”

She was yelling, so I went in there, and she said she really had to pee. She said the baby was pushing on her bladder.”

I slide my hand down and retrieve the gun from my hip and begin to pace the room. I shake my head in disgust and try to decide whether to put a bullet in Frank’s head or not. He had one job, and he fucked it up, of course. How stupid can someone be? I take a moment to gather myself and put the gun back in the holster on my hip before I do something stupid. I will need Frank down the line, so I needn’t over react. How far could she have gone?

“Frank, my brother,” I speak slowly to keep myself relaxed, “Alicia is not really pregnant.”

Frank’s jaw drops as if this is news to him.

“It was just a trick to get George to play along. Now, I need you to think for me. Tell me exactly what happened.”

Frank pauses and looks to the ceiling, trying to retrace what happened in his mind. I move next to him and put my arm around his shoulders.

“Okay. I went in there, and she said she had to pee-”

“I got that part. What happened after that?”

“Right, okay. So I let her out and walked with her to the bathroom, then she said she needed some privacy, so I waited outside. She came out when she was done, and I started walking her back. She asked where you were and I said you’d be back soon. She told me she would go back to the room and wait for you because she wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Did she say what it was?”

“No. She wasn’t crying anymore though, she seemed happier than she was before.”

I nod. “Okay, so what happened after that?”

“She seemed better, so I went back into one of the other rooms to wait for you and she went back to where she was. Then I heard a door close. That’s it.”

“How did you find out she was missing?”

“I thought I heard her talking to someone, so I went to check it out. But when I got there she was gone.”

I ponder this for a moment, and that’s all it takes for me to figure out what happened. I’m relieved, and I smile at the realization. “Did you happen to look at the big two-way mirror on the wall when you went in there?”

Frank shrugs.

I continue, “I didn’t think so. There’s no way you could have heard that door close. You would have never heard it through the walls. That room is on the other side of the building. The sound would have been muffled by the surrounding rooms.”

“I heard a door close, I swear.”

“I believe you.”

Frank is shocked. “You do?”

“I believe you heard a door close, but not
that
door close.”

Frank just stares at me, dumbfounded.

“Did you check the room George is in?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s locked.”

I roll my eyes at his stupidity. Maybe he will be more of a liability than I thought. “Yeah, from the inside, you fucking idiot.”

Frank hangs his head, obviously embarrassed. I turn and leave the room. Frank follows. I make my way to the holding cell where George is being held and open the door. George and Alicia are both standing there, having a discussion, and they’re startled at the sound of the door. I turn to Frank, who avoids my eyes.

“Go get her,” I say. “Bring her to the room and close the door yourself. Make sure it’s closed. Then meet me in the first office next to the back door, I have some stuff to show you.”

Frank doesn’t say anything as he walks past me and approaches Alicia. He grabs her arm from behind and leads her out of the room. I give Frank a head start by having a staring contest with George. What were they talking about I wonder? He looks exhausted already, as his eyes are heavy and glazed over.

“Come with me,” I say, motioning for George to follow.

He does.

I lead him into the office where I put the box of supplies from the storage unit. Frank is already inside and has moved the box to the floor. He is playing with one of the gas masks in his lap, most certainly trying to figure out its purpose. I trust Alicia is in the same interrogation room as before, waiting to speak with me about something. It better be an apology.