End Game (11 page)

J
olain e paused as she approached the motel room. If Graham was awake, he had to be frightened. If she walked right up to the door and slipped the key into the lock, he might panic. Knocking seemed like the better way to go. She rapped with a single knuckle. Light and friendly. She hoped that Graham would hear the knock, look through the peephole, recognize her, and all would be right.

None of that happened.

After waiting fifteen or twenty seconds, she knocked again and said, “Graham, it’s me. It’s Jolaine. I’m coming in.”

As she slipped her key into the slot, she was struck with the possibility that things might not be normal on the other side of the door. As remote a possibility as it might be, she supposed that the bad guys might have found Graham while she was gone. She’d struggled with the decision whether to leave the M4 in the room as a hedge against a door-crashing invader, but as far as she knew, Graham didn’t know which end of the gun the bullet came out of. Any mistake made at 2,300 feet per second was as bad a mistake as could be made.

She laid her bags on the walkway to clear her hands, and poised her right hand on the grip of the pistol strapped to her chest. If it came to that, she could draw and fire in less than two seconds.

The lock turned and Jolaine paused before shoving the door open about 50 percent too hard. She’d intended it to float inward, when in fact it exploded open and bounced off the perpendicular wall.

In a single glance, she eliminated the possibility of a bad guy, but she sensed danger—from Graham. He stood between the beds, poised in a comical Bruce Lee–wannabe pose, his feet wide set, his fists clenched.

“Relax, Graham,” she said. “It’s me.”

He didn’t move.

“Graham?”

“Where have you been?” He looked younger than she’d last seen him—more vulnerable.

“Didn’t you find my note?” she asked.

“You left me.”

“You were asleep,” she said. “And I couldn’t exactly take you along half-naked.” If it were a normal day, she would have reminded him of her warning back in the house to get dressed.

“I thought you were gone,” he said. His chin muscles trembled.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” Jolaine said. “I thought I left it all in my note. I’m here now. I didn’t leave you. More importantly, I
wouldn’t
leave you. You have to believe that. You have to trust me.”

As Jolaine spoke, she removed the key from the lock and pocketed it. Keeping her right hand free, she picked up the bags and stepped inside. She pushed the door shut.

Graham’s eyes reddened. “Are my parents dead?”

“I don’t know.” Jolaine launched the words to get them out before she could show that she didn’t believe them. “But I think they may be. Hand to God, I don’t know anything more than you do. But what we both know leads mostly to bad conclusions. I’m sorry.”

Graham stared at her as he processed the words. He seemed to have found a neutral place in his mind, neither calm nor stressed. It reminded Jolaine of the mental space she sought when she was about to step into harm’s way. It was the spot you went to when you realized that tomorrow may never come, yet you were too old to cry.

“What’s happening, Jolaine?” Graham half sat, half fell back onto the bed.

Jolaine had learned a long time ago that hyper-stressed situations required hyper-fidelity to the truth. “I don’t know,” she said. “We’re under attack, and as far as I can tell, we can’t trust anyone.”

Graham’s eyes darkened.

“What?” Jolaine asked.

“How do I know I can trust
you
?”

Jolaine placed the shopping bags onto her bed, the one closest to the door. With both hands clear, she pointed to her eyes with both forefingers. “Look at me,” she said.

Graham rolled his eyes, dismissing the overkill.

“No, I’m serious,” Jolaine said. She’d modulated her voice to be serious and then some. “Look in my eyes.”

Graham’s entire face morphed into a scowl. But his eyes met hers.

“Think of the person that you trust more than anyone else in the world,” she said. “You can trust me fifty points more than that.”

Graham’s scowl deepened. “Why? You’re not even part of our family. If people are trying to kill Mitchells, why wouldn’t you just hand me over and go home safe?”

Jolaine wished that she had something lofty to say. Again, she defaulted to the rawest form of the truth. “Because that’s what I signed on for,” she said. “Keeping you safe is my job.”

Graham seemed unsatisfied. “Is that all of it?”

She knew what he was trolling for. He wanted to believe that her interest was personal—that she was motivated to protect him because she
cared.
With all that had transpired, she knew that he was in a dark place, that he needed affirmation that he wasn’t alone in the world. Believing that her mission was to protect Graham-the-individual as opposed to Graham-the-obligation would put him in a better place emotionally.

But preservation of his emotions was not on Jolaine’s priority list. Her focus was exclusive to his physical body. When the dust settled on all of this madness, she could claim victory if the boy still had a heartbeat.

“That’s most of it,” Jolaine confessed. Reading his eyes and the sagging of his shoulders, she added, “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care for you. This personal protection stuff is complicated.”

Graham took his time forming his next question. “Bottom line. Are you supposed to give up your life for mine?”

Emotion stirred in Jolaine’s gut. “My job is to see that you’re still breathing at the end of every day,” she said. “I have no intention of dying in the process.”

“Good,” Graham said. “I don’t think I could live with the thought that someone had gotten killed protecting me.”

Jolaine was thunderstruck. She’d never heard a selfless word from him before.

He gestured toward the bags on the bed. “So, what did you buy me?”

The Defiance County Memorial Airport offered precious little in the way of creature comforts, but it had a long, flat runway that was more than capable of handling the little Lear that a client named Mannix had made available for Security Solutions’ short-notice call. It was a nice thank-you present to acknowledge Jonathan’s safe return of Mannix’s daughter from a very unpleasant place.

Boxers flew the plane, as he always did—there were few machines with wings, wheels, or rotors that Boxers couldn’t pilot with the best—and Jonathan sat up in the cockpit with him. In the back, in the area where Mannix no doubt entertained his hotshot friends and clients while in flight, Jonathan and Boxers had stacked duffels filled with the tools of their trade. That translated to long guns, pistols, body armor, a few explosives, surveillance toys, and enough ammunition to launch an invasion.

Once on the ground, they needed a car, but they needed one without the traceability of a rental. Here’s where Venice’s command of the Internet came into play. While the guys were airborne, she’d worked the online ads and found an SUV for sale that would fit the bill. She’d contacted the owner and negotiated a figure that was ten percent above his asking price, on the condition that he have the vehicle at the airport in time to meet Jonathan’s flight.

You’d think that the spectacle of two men carrying a couple hundred pounds of equipment divided into four duffel bags would attract attention in an airport, but therein lay an important benefit of using the civil aviation terminals. People minded their own business. After parking the Lear in its assigned slot and locking it up, they just walked straight through the Spartan departure lounge and back out into the sunlight.

Boxers pointed to a ten-year-old blue Ford Expedition that was parked at the curb. “Is that it?” he asked.

As if to answer the question, the driver’s door opened and out stepped a guy in his sixties. Tall and trim, he wore all the accoutrements of a cowboy, from the jeans to the boots to the hat and the plate-size belt buckle. The man approached readily, yet warily. This was a guy who’d been around the block a few times, and from the lines etched into his face, Jonathan sensed that he’d seen as many bad times as good. Not a man to jerk around. He wore a sleeveless denim jacket covering a T-shirt, leading Jonathan to wonder if he, too, was concealing a firearm on his hip.

“Howdy,” the man said as he approached. He offered his hand. “Name’s Wortham. Are you Mr. Smith?” he asked Jonathan.

Actually, Jonathan had no idea what name Venice had given the guy. He chose to say nothing and just shook the man’s hand. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Are you the car guy?”

“I am,” Wortham said. “I knew you was the two I was supposed to meet when I saw this big fella here.” He offered his hand to Boxers as well. “The nice lady on the phone told me to look for him and I’d find you. That was your wife, was it? The lady, I mean.”

“A colleague,” Jonathan said. “That truck’s in good working order, right?” He started walking that direction. The longer they stood in one spot, the more likely a security camera would pick them up. Not that they were doing anything particularly camera-worthy, but he didn’t like to dawdle.

“I’d say it works pretty good, yeah,” Wortham said. “I’m the only owner, got all the scheduled maintenance done on time, and never missed an oil change. I got the receipts in the glove box if you want to see them.”

“Your word is good enough for me,” Jonathan said.

“Me, too,” Boxers growled in his deepest, scariest tone. Translation:
You don’t want us to find out you sold us a lemon.

“It’s just exactly as I say,” Wortham said. He darted around them to get to the back lift gate. “I’ll open this up for you,” he said. “All that stuff will fit in there with room to spare.”

They laid the bags on the bed and proved him to be right.

“Now I believe I owe you some money,” Jonathan said. In addition to duffels with weaponry, Jonathan also carried a soft briefcase with cash. Hundred-dollar bills were often even more persuasive than a firearm. For convenience, the bills were banded in stacks of $1,000, and Jonathan pulled out first four packs, and then another four. “There you go,” Jonathan said. “Eight thousand dollars.”

Wortham’s eyes flashed. As he accepted the cash, he said, “You know, I’ve been on this earth for quite a few years, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen eighty hundred-dollar bills all at one time. But I got to tell you, the actual price was only seventy-eight hundred.” He thumbed through a stack, isolated two bills, then peeled them off and handed them back.

Jonathan reminded himself where he was. In this part of the world, honest people took their honesty very seriously. Venice had told him that the negotiated price was exactly what Wortham said it was, but for Jonathan, that was a rounding error. To present it as such to a man who made his living the hard way could have been a huge insult.

“Thank you,” Jonathan said, accepting the two Franklins.

“Don’t you want the title?” Wortham asked.

Actually, he didn’t. Just as he didn’t want a receipt, a bill of sale, or any other paperwork. Still, he understood that some states took the transfer of personal property more seriously than others. “Sure,” he said. “I was just getting to that. Do you have it with you?”

Wortham pulled it out of an inside pocket of his jacket, and as he did, Jonathan caught a glimpse of the pistol he’d suspected was on the man’s hip. In Ohio, this was not necessarily a source of concern. “You just fill out your name and address right here,” he explained, pointing to the appropriate blocks on the title.

Jonathan made stuff up to fill in the blanks, random numbers and names for the street, but concluded with the real city, Coronado, California, 92118. The only way he was able to pull that zip code out of his ass was because of a Navy SEAL buddy who lived there. He listed his name as John Smith and signed accordingly.

As Jonathan handed the title back to Wortham, the other man hesitated. “I don’t believe you’re who you say you are,” the old guy said.

Jonathan felt a tug of something uncomfortable. “Is that so? Who do you think I am?”

“I think you’re a man who doesn’t ask nearly enough questions before handing over this kind of money.”

Jonathan shrugged. “What can I say? You look like a trustworthy guy.”

“Bullshit,” Wortham said. He looked at the title. “John Smith? Really? You don’t even have more imagination than that?”

Jonathan felt Boxers shifting behind him, growing uncomfortable. “Maybe you need to count that money again, Mr. Wortham. Those bills are all real. It’s more than anyone else will pay you, and I’ve filled out the form. You’ve done everything that the law requires. I think we should leave it at that.”

Wortham hesitated. “I don’t like this,” he said. “I think you two are heading for trouble. That doesn’t bother me so much, but if you get in trouble, that might pull me into trouble. I don’t need none of that.”

“You know what, Mr. Wortham?” Jonathan said. “I haven’t been navigating the planet for as long as you have, but I’ll share one of my big lessons with you. Sometimes, the best information comes from the questions that go unasked.”

Wortham thought about that.

Jonathan continued, “At this point, everything is completely legal. You’ve done what you need to do, and I’ve done what I need to do. If, hypothetically, I have lied in my paperwork, then that is my problem, not yours. Are you catching my drift?”

Wortham took a long time answering. “Where did you two serve?” he said, at length.

“Excuse me?” Jonathan asked. It was mostly a stall for time.

“You both have a military bearing about you,” Wortham said. “An awareness and a look in your eye. I know that sounds like romantic bullshit, but there you go. I trust romantic bullshit. Where did you serve?”

Jonathan cast a look back at Big Guy. How much dared they share?

“I only ask because I’m a vet myself,” Wortham continued. “Back-to-back gunship tours in Vietnam. Got the shrapnel to prove it.”

“Thank you for your service,” Jonathan said, and he cringed at his own words. “Jesus, that sounds clichéd and simple, but I really mean it. Thank you.”