Desperate (26 page)

O
ne week later and still no word from Roy. No word from Lily, either. Anna had closed the Humboldt deal, so she could take maternity leave without causing any undue financial strain, but we were missing the one essential ingredient—a baby to mother. Anna continued to prep for the home study, believing Lily might still come back. Margret would show up and do her official thing and we’d be sanctioned to adopt the unborn child who had vanished along with Lily.

“She’s seventeen weeks along now,” Anna had said to me at dinner. “She’ll be showing even more. I hope she’s okay. I just wish I could talk to her.”

And I wished I had caught up to them before the pair vanished somewhere on the streets of Arlington. I had looked everywhere for them, in every nearby store, but to no avail. It was as if they were spirits who had disappeared into the ether.

While Anna kept busy with her job and getting our place ready for the home study, I was at work, trying to maintain the semblance of a normal routine. Peter George was extremely pleased with our efforts. Matt Simons was driving everybody crazy with his nutty demands, fiery e-mails, and unrealistic project expectations. Even so, we all fell into lockstep behind him, knowing full well the consequences for failure would be dire for our collective employment. Somehow I managed to concentrate on the work, even though every minute it seemed I was checking for messages from Roy.

I was in a standup meeting, doing the Agile project thing, when my phone buzzed. At the time, I was thinking about Anna, worried about her really, wondering when she’d accept the truth about Lily. I wasn’t paying attention to the status update as I should have been.

The phone buzzed again. I thought it was Anna because I was thinking of her, a little bit of the mysterious universe at work. But it wasn’t. It was a text message from Roy.

I got the money. Meet me at Nicky’s.

Two hours later I was back in East Boston, back at Nicky’s restaurant. I canceled my afternoon meetings and called Anna to tell her I’d be coming home a bit late. No questions asked. Roy was in the bar area, waiting for me at a round table, chewing on a toothpick. A captain’s case, the kind used by pilots and lawyers, stood on the floor beside him. I sat down.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

Roy nodded.

“You’re just hanging around here with a million dollars in cash?”

“Nobody is going to rob me while I’m in Nicky’s,” Roy said.

I nodded because it made sense.

“So what now?”

“Now we wait. Nicky is finishing up some business.”

I didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I just sat and watched Roy chew on a chip of ice in the Scotch he ordered. I looked around at the patrons, blue-collar types, probably locals, I’m guessing regulars, painters and electricians, and people who wear a uniform to work, enjoying a meal or a drink. Eventually, I broke the weighty silence.

“I saw you with Lily,” I said.

Roy returned a cryptic look.

“She needs to talk to Anna,” I said. “Tell Anna she’s not coming back. Tell her it’s time to forget this and move on.”

Roy leaned in.

“Listen to me carefully, Gage,” he said. His frosty eyes narrowed into slits, his gravelly voice sank an octave. “Are you listening?”

I nodded.

“Once this money exchanges hands, we are done. There’s no contacting us. There’s no looking for us. We don’t exist to you and you don’t exist to us. We’re gone. Whatever you need to tell Anna to make it all better is fine by me. That’s your life with your wife. But I want to be crystal clear about this: our connection ends today. When Nicky gets this money, you are dead to me. Understand?”

“What if Lucas comes looking for me?”

“Sucks to be you,” Roy said.

“Thanks. I feel so much better now.”

“Honestly, I don’t give a crap how you feel. I’m about to hand over the biggest score of my career to Nicky Stacks. A million friggin’ dollars, here one minute and gone the next. You know what that does to me? Do you know how that’s tearing me apart?”

“My heart is breaking for you, Roy.”

“At least I got enough from this sale, a little extra pocket change to cover my other debts.”

I knew it.
“
So the guy Nicky hooked you up with, who did he sell the plans to?”

“No clue,” Roy said. “I think they’re some Chinese guys. I’m just the middleman. He had no trouble moving what you gave me, that’s for sure. It’s big stuff what you do, huh?”

“Big,” I concurred.

“Okay, well, we got lucky here. Good thing you didn’t work for Applebee’s or something.”

“Yeah, good thing,” I repeated.

Roy looked past me, his gaze locked on something happening over my shoulder.

I turned and saw the massive silhouette of Nicky Stacks looming in the entranceway to the upper-level dining area. Stacks motioned with his finger before he vanished from our view. Roy and I walked to the back of the restaurant. My heart started to race, and each breath came with effort. I was having a PTSD reaction to the sight of Nicky Stacks. But as soon as I entered the dining area, my fear spiked tenfold.

Sitting at a table with Nicky Stacks was Lucas Moreno. He wore a different tailored suit, but I recognized the linebacker’s build and swarthy complexion right away. I’d seen people angry with me before—people at work, Anna, a whole host of them—but I’d never seen anybody whose only purpose in life was to kill me.

When he saw me, Lucas stood fast enough to knock over his chair. Stacks rose with him, moving surprisingly quick for such a big man, and set one of his massive hands on Lucas’s shoulder to hold him in place.

“Search them both,” Nicky instructed.

Lucas patted down Roy, found no weapons or wires. Then it was my turn. When he touched my body I could feel his desire to snap my ribs. His hands slapped hard against my back, my midsection, my legs and arms, more punch than pat.

“Bring me the case,” Stacks said to Roy in a commanding voice that could have stopped an angry dog.

Roy stepped forward, case in hand. I followed. Stacks cleared away the set of plates in front of him. It looked like he was eating spaghetti and chicken parm and enjoying a glass of wine, too, but I noticed only one place setting.

Nicky popped the latches on the case and looked inside. I got a glimpse of the stacks of bills, hundreds it seemed. Nicky took out several stacks of hundreds and examined them. Then he took out five stacks total—I’m guessing a hundred bills per stack—or what probably amounted to fifty thousand dollars. The case was still stuffed full of cash.

Nicky glared at me, then at Lucas.

“This is done,” he said, speaking to both of us. He stacked the money on the table into three towers. “Lucas, this is yours. It’s tribute for your brother. I’ve spoken with your boss and we’ve agreed you’re not to touch this man.” Stacks pointed at me. “Is that understood? He’s to be left alone. We are sorry for what happened to Jorge, but it’s done. There’s no going back. If you start shooting up people, questions will be asked and it will be bad for business. So this ends now. It’s done. Is that understood?”

I nodded, trying to quell the fear. Lucas glared at me, his unblinking eyes expressed deep hatred. He wanted to hurt me.

“Is that understood?” Stacks said to Lucas.

Finally, after what felt like eternity, Lucas gave a reluctant nod.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” I said. “I wish it could have been different.”

Lucas looked ready to pounce. Stacks took a step forward, putting himself in the middle but facing me.

“No, no,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “Don’t talk about his brother. You don’t get the right. It’s done. It’s over. Now you don’t mention it again.”

“So we’re good here, Nicky,” Roy said. “Right? Nobody gets hurt. I’m gone. I’m going someplace and that’s the end of it. Is that right, Nicky?”

Stacks stepped away from the table and approached Roy until the two men were standing toe to toe. Stacks dwarfed Roy, and it was surprising to see how mismatched they were as opponents. Stacks was the Kingpin to Roy’s Daredevil, both comic book characters that Max loved.

“You ever show your face around here, Roy, and I’ll take it off with a vegetable peeler. Is that understood? I’ll remove it piece by rotten piece in thin, long, and bloody strips. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Roy said, backing away a step.

I took a cue from Roy and moved toward the exit as well. I saw Roy take a glance at the captain’s case—a long glance. Every fiber of his being was probably screaming to take the money, but he knew better. Like the Kenny Rogers song, he knew when to walk away and when to run. Soon we were both retreating, neither of us comfortable turning our backs on Nicky or Lucas.

Before I knew it, we were standing outside of Nicky’s restaurant in this now-familiar East Boston neighborhood. Roy put in a fresh toothpick and slipped his sunglasses back on.

“Can’t say it’s been a pleasure knowing you,” Roy said.

“I could say the same.”

“Thanks, though.”

“For what?”

“For having five-point-five pounds of guts to save my life.” Roy extended his hand to me.

I stared incredulous at the tattoos and scars marring his skin, the wound to his face where Lucas had pistol-whipped him. I gazed at his hand as if it were a hydra’s head. But Roy held it out, strong and unwavering.

“No hard feelings,” Roy said.

I took Roy’s proffered hand and shook it. I think I did it for closure, because this part of my life needed to come to an end. I did it because a part of me really did have sympathy for the devil.

Roy gave me a crooked smile, turned his back to me, and began his slow march away. Thumbs hooked into the loops of his jeans. Feet scuffing along the broken concrete sidewalk, ambling in a thoughtful way, probably thinking about what he could have done with all that money.

I watched until he turned the corner, and just like that he was out of my pack.

But I wasn’t a lone wolf.

I still had Anna.

Brad was still my best friend.

And because of Matt Simons, I hadn’t betrayed my company. I wasn’t going to be responsible for thousands of lost jobs.

Nicky got his money, Roy got his life, Lily got her man, Lucas got compensation, and I got to keep together the pack I loved with all my heart and soul.

M
att Simons kept glancing over at me, his look begging for reassurance. Maybe he was wondering if I’d set him up the way he had Adam Wang. Or maybe I had engaged in some form of corporate entrapment? Something Patrice Skinner and Peter George were in on. Could I be trusted? Would I honor my side of this nefarious bargain? I’d had the same thoughts about Roy. I’d come full circle, from victim to blackmailer.

If I could have done it another way, I would have. But I was a QA guy. I knew how to test these batteries, not build them. Matt Simons had a different level of smarts. He knew how I could modify the design plans so that they’d be essentially useless to somebody who knew how to build a battery. He knew what key pieces of data needed to be stripped out of the plans like a Porsche in a LA chop shop.

With Matt’s help—blackmailing wasn’t a proud moment in my personal history—what I gave Roy was the equivalent of Olympian’s parts, without any conceivable way of using those plans to re-create the battery.

Everyone was gathered in the demo room once again. The mannequins were again spaced evenly about the room, their plastic hands gripping different real-world products powered by Olympian. I’m sure Matt wasn’t feeling entirely jubilant, though he had to be more confident about the demo’s chance for success this time than he was the last. This time we’d built the batteries using plans my QA team had tested and approved. There was no modifying the recipe to bake an unstable battery like before. No new Adam Wang stood in Matt’s way. He was the head honcho, the man in charge of Olympian, his dream gig, and I was the guy with irrefutable technical evidence that he, and he alone, was responsible for the spectacular flame-out of our last demo.

Sweat beaded up on Matt’s furrowed brow. It hadn’t been easy to coerce him into helping me, same as it wasn’t easy for Roy to get me involved in the Moreno deal. Funny, though: it was Roy who’d showed me how people could be pressured and manipulated. Thanks to Roy, I got a master’s class in the art of coercion. Be clear—what I wanted Matt to do. Be precise—what are my threats? Be confident—he needed to know I would take him down. Be committed—we were doing this, there wasn’t another choice.

I didn’t tell Matt why I needed his help to modify the design plans, why I needed them useless. I just told him to do it. Matt’s choice was clear.
Help me and I’ll keep quiet about your extracurricular efforts. Don’t help me and I’ll produce the evidence proving you intentionally sabotaged the initial Olympian demo
.

It ended up taking us many hours and a lot of effort to cover our tracks, but we eventually cobbled together a believable set of plans, sans the secret sauce, minus the revolutionary intellectual property that made Olympian such a technical marvel. It was like giving Roy a masterful forgery of some priceless work of art.

Peter George strode into the crowded room and took a quick survey of the engineers gathered for the big demo. He met up with Patrice in the center of the room and everybody circled around Amber II. Peter gave a quick but inspiring speech that would have motivated any sports team on the brink of defeat to a stunning comeback. The highlights were pretty straightforward:
this product is going to save the company and put Lithio Systems far ahead of the competition, you are responsible for this huge success, you should all feel very proud of what you’ve accomplished
.

Patrice spoke after Peter. This time no beer was being served. We were all still wounded by the memory of the battery fire, so the revelry was far more subdued. We just wanted the damn thing to work.

Peter had the honor of turning on the phone. Soon as it powered up, the timer marking battery life started ticking away. Everyone cheered.

Except for me.

Except for Matt.

The two of us stood in the back of the room and politely clapped.

“It’s going to be fine,” I whispered into Matt’s ear. “You stay cool and I’ll stay cool and we’ll just move on with our lives.”

We hung out for a while, chatting and back-patting. It was a jovial time, and the release of tension was palpable, as if we’d been holding our collective breaths underwater for far too long. At some point, Patrice whistled loudly and asked everyone to be quiet for a moment. The chatter quickly died down. Peter George came over to stand near Patrice. They were flanking Amber II and her tick-tock timer.

“I have in my hand,” Peter said, holding up a manila envelope, “a Certificate of Outstanding Achievement. You know as a company policy we always award this certificate to one individual at the end of every successful project. And this Olympian project is a major success. Now, I could give each of you this award, because you’re all outstanding achievers, but for those who don’t get a slip of paper today, just know that your reward for a job well done is that you’ll continue to stay employed.”

This was followed by some chuckles and a lot of nervous laughter because we all knew it was true.

Peter continued, “This time around, I would like to award the certificate to two individuals who best exemplify the culture and philosophy of Lithio Systems. These traits—perseverance, commitment, passion, intelligence, and teamwork—are present in each of you, but these two contributors preserved despite enormous challenges, both personal and professional, and through it all played important leadership roles in guiding this project to this major success. They are both deserving of special recognition, and I’m sure you’ll all agree.”

I was trying to guess who might get the reward. My money was on Girish, but it could have been any number of folks—Brenda, Mamatha, Larry, Jenitta, Kathleen. The list went on, as did Peter’s speech.

“One of these individuals I wish to acknowledge today deserves recognition as much for his accomplishments as for his strength of character. Facing unthinkable adversity, he came to work each day. And through it all, he showed tremendous professionalism, unsurpassed dedication, and true commitment to excellence. The other came into the project at a crucial time, and through his dedication, focus, and technical acumen led us to this very exciting milestone. So I’d like you all to take a moment to acknowledge the special work of these two special individuals as I present Gage Dekker and Matt Simons with these certificates of outstanding achievement and a two hundred dollar Amex gift card.”

My neck felt flush where a hot band of sweat appeared. My hands started to tingle. Every head in the room turned in my direction as the tingle crept up my arms and down into my legs. The round of applause was truly thunderous. Everyone from my quality assurance team came over to congratulate me. I smiled, doing my best to seem genuinely appreciative. I was squirming.

If Peter George knew the truth, he’d have put my certificate through the shredder. It wasn’t superhuman perseverance that got me through each workday—it was the damn Adderall. On top of that, I was a murderer, justified or not, and almost committed the ultimate act of treason against the company. At that moment, I felt about as worthy of honor as Bernie Madoff. Matt wasn’t any better—well, he wasn’t a killer. But he was even less deserving. He’d ruined Adam’s career and reputation for the sake of his own ego.

Without saying anything, Matt and I exchanged looks once again. Here we were, two outstanding achievers, both saddled with a terrible secret, but I felt sort of good inside. I had saved Anna and myself without crippling the company I loved or ruining the lives of these wonderful people. One day, maybe all of this would end. Maybe the police would come to my house to question me about the murder of a notorious and violent drug dealer named Jorge Moreno. Maybe I’d be let go from Lithio Systems, downsized in the wake of some new corporate financial crisis. Maybe in a wink of time, as unpredictable and unforeseen as meeting a crying woman on the curb by a Chinese restaurant, all this would come to a conclusion. It could happen tomorrow, or some far future date, but it wasn’t going to happen right now.

No, right now Lithio Systems was going to conquer the battery world, and nobody was going to find Jorge Moreno’s dead body, because Nicky Stacks was paid his share, so this was a moment I could live deeply and fully.

I was jawboning with Patrice when my phone started to buzz. I figured it was Anna trying to reach me. We’d spent the morning talking about next steps in our adoption journey once the home study concluded. The whole process was going to take four to six weeks, and we were in the middle of discussing our criminal and child abuse clearances when I had to leave for work. As for Lily, Anna remained hopeful because she had grown attached, but I also noticed a change. Like Brad reading auras, I got the sense that if the right situation came up, Anna would be ready and willing to move on from Lily. It was a sprig of hope like the first bud on a twig at the end of a long winter.

“Hi, babe,” I said. “What’s up? I’m just finishing the demo and it went well.”

People were still chatting and coming up to me, so I had to move to a quieter corner of the room to hear.

“It’s not your babe, Gage,” Roy said. “It’s me.”

“Roy?”

“You screwed me.” Roy’s voice was brimming with anger. “You screwed me and now I’m going to screw you because I’m in freakin’ deep.”

“Roy, what’s going on here? What are you talking about?” A flood of panic sent my blood rushing and quickened my breath.

“What did you give me? What the hell were those plans?”

“I gave you what you asked for.”

I left the room in a hurry and ran toward the building’s exit. The hallways were empty as everyone was still at the demo. Sweat poured down my face, and I felt a crushing pressure on my chest.

Anna . . . he’s in my home . . . he called me from my home . . . where is Anna?

“You gave me crap, Gage, and you know it. And now the guys who bought the plans know it, so we now have a big fucking problem.”

“Anna . . .” I managed to sputter out. “Where is Anna? Where is my wife?”

“I’m going to send you something,” Roy said. “You ready to scream?”

My vocal cords felt as if they’d been knotted. I didn’t think I could speak, let alone scream, but then I saw the picture. A low, warbling moan escaped my lips.

The picture he sent was of Anna. She was dressed as if she was at work but was sitting on the floor of a room that looked like an empty jail cell—a small space with imposing walls. The floorboards were wide wooden planks, each heavily varnished and scuffed. The walls were chipped and made of worn red bricks. Despite the dim lighting, I could see her hands were tied in front of her using several wrappings of a thick rope. A gag made of a white cloth, maybe a torn-up bedsheet, had been stuffed into her mouth and tied around her head. Her watery eyes were wide with terror, pleading for mercy. The look on her face conveyed fear and betrayal, and I knew why.

Lily was in the picture as well.

It was the same Lily from before: laced black boots, wearing a tight-fitting black T-shirt emblazoned with the label from a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle that showed the swell of her belly. She knelt beside Anna, holding a knife to her throat. Her other hand was extended out of the frame to take a “selfie,” a self-portrait using a cell phone camera.

I almost dropped the phone, my hand was shaking so hard. My eyes boiled with rage.

“Don’t you hurt her,” I managed to say. “You don’t touch her. Do you understand?”

“No, Gage, you need to understand something,” Roy said. “You messed everything up. I can’t have more people coming after me. A million dollars for shit in return buys somebody a lot of animosity. I’m not living my life looking over my shoulder. These guys who bought your crap files are not happy, not at all. And that makes me a target. No way. That’s not how this is going down. You give me the real deal this time around and she lives. I get it verified by my guy, get it checked out, and I’ll let her go. But you keep playing games and I’ll gut her like a pig. Are we clear, buddy? I’ll split her open from her throat to her belly.”

I was racing down the hallway at a sprinter’s pace. I knew two very disturbing facts in the same instant. Roy was never going to let Anna leave alive. He was going to kill me, too. And I wasn’t going to let either of those two things happen.

“When?” I asked.

“How long do you need?”

“To do it right, I need a day.”

“You have six hours.”

I checked my watch. It was two o’clock in the afternoon.

“Where?” I asked.

“I’ll call you with a place to meet.”

“Let me talk to Anna. Right now. I need to talk to her. I need to hear her voice and know that she’s all right.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Then you don’t get the files.”

Roy screamed, “I’M NOT FUCKING AROUND HERE, GAGE! I WILL GUT YOUR WIFE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? I WILL DO IT AND I WILL BOTTLE UP HER BLOOD AND FUCKING SHIP IT TO YOU UPS. NOW GET ME THOSE FUCKING FILES!”

The phone vibrated in my hand from the force of his bellow.

“Don’t you hurt her,” I said, paralyzed with fear.

“You go to the police and she dies,” Roy said, his voice calm again.

“I’m not going back to jail, so they can take me out in a body bag for all I care. And since I can’t get to you as easy as I can get to Anna, I’ll make sure you go down for Jorge’s murder. I’ve still got that over you. Everything has been arranged. Anything happens to me, something happens to you, and to Anna. And I promise, Gage, I’ll show her no mercy. It will be a long and painful death. Understood?”

“Understood,” I repeated.

The call disconnected. I looked at the picture of Anna again, tracing the contours of her face with my finger, wishing above all else I could hold her in my arms, take away the fear from her eyes.

Roy ended the call thinking I was going to follow his instructions to the letter. But I didn’t head to the server room to download the files. No, this was going to end once and for all. The only solution for me was to rescue Anna and get away from Roy, from Arlington, from Lithio Systems—and not for a little while, but for good.

I raced down the hall to the foyer. The receptionist at her desk said hello to me, but I didn’t even think to respond. Instead, I threw open the double doors leading to the outside and dashed across the parking lot to my car, all while dialing Brad’s cell.