The Gambit (32 page)

Luke’s words struck a chord inside of me. The thought resonated in my mind.
‘Why don’t you go with him?’
The idea was alluring, Rachel coming with me. Part of me was excited to hear her answer. The slightest possibility of Rachel still being in my life gave me butterflies. I knew, though. I knew she couldn’t. The story meant more to her than remaining by my side.

“I—um. I can’t,” the words tore away at me, even though I already knew them before she spoke. “I have to get the truth out to people before it’s too late. Before the election.”

“And how are you going to do that?” Luke countered.

“Uncle Ian.”

“Damn, that’s right. I forgot all about him. I’m still lost, though. What proof do you have besides Owen? I know you, Rachel, and if you had a story you wouldn’t be here right now asking us to get involved in this crazy mess.”

Rachel huffed and her lower lip began to tremble. Luke asked a valid question, one which frightened me. I knew she wanted this story more than anything, but how would she get it? My words and experiences were just one voice in a sea of lies. Who would believe her story?

“You know what?” her voice was heated. “We can’t think about the end yet. Right now, we have to keep everybody safe. That means we have to get Owen on a non-stop flight to Moscow, where the United States Government will have no chance of extraditing him for the crime he didn’t commit.”

“And?” Vinny split the silence. Rachel shook her head, and I thought I saw tears forming in the corners of her eyes. Vinny and Luke were making Rachel face something that she couldn’t face. The fact that her plan had gaps. It had loose ends that didn’t work. She had no
real
story.

“There is no
and!”
she shouted. “Give me a break! Let’s just focus on what we have to do here and now. I will worry about the story after Owen is safe again. Like I told him when we first met, Ian has information bombarding him twenty-four seven. What if someone else knows something that we don’t? Maybe there are more pieces to the puzzle than what we have to offer.”

“You know what, fuck this…” Vinny stood up and looked at all of us, but mainly at Rachel. “We haven’t seen you in years,
prima
, and you think you’re just going to walk on into the shop like you are still the old Rachel we used to know? You got all your fancy degrees and forgot about your old life back in the
barrio
with us. You didn’t even call us after the Confinement! So
fuck
you, and
fuck
your friends! You are risking everything we have worked for by just being here! Who knows? The fucking FBI could barge in at any minute, all thanks to you being so damn inconsiderate and just like always making everything about you!”

Vinny was fuming. Part of me was about to defend her, but something kept me seated. This was a family matter, and I wasn’t family.

“Calm down, man.” Luke stood up and tried to get him to sit down. He shrugged off Luke’s grasp and kept pacing around. “No, hell no! It just blows my mind she expects us to risk our freedom, our garage, our whole lives for nothing!” I heard Rachel crying. Grey rubbed her back gently, and Briana sat beside me glancing at Vinny and Luke.

“Three…three hundred…” Rachel hiccupped in tears. “And fifty…fifty thousand dollars.”

Vinny and Luke froze. The air was tense and Vinny’s angry expression didn’t lessen.

“What did you say?” Vinny asked.

“She said, three-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars,” Briana announced matter-of-factly.

“We…we will give it to you…for helping us.”

Vinny glanced around at all of us as if we were hiding some secret or lying. “Rachel, stop crying,” he said. “What are you talking about,
prima
? How in the hell would you get that kind of money?”

“I stole it,” Grey answered nonchalantly.

“Stole it?” Luke asked, bewildered and wide-eyed. “Well,” Vinny began, “don’t you think the person you stole it from will want it back?” Grey shook his head no as if it was nothing. “I stole 1.4 million dollars from someone else who stole it. It was my job to stop grand larceny from occurring at my bank, and I failed. So, I stole the money that was stolen in order to help Owen.”

Vinny and Luke digested Grey’s words. They didn’t respond, just glanced around at the ground in front of them.

“If you help us,” Rachel composed herself enough to speak, “we will give you three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. We will give the same to Briana.”

“Seriously?” Luke questioned with disbelief.

“Yes. Owen needs to get out of this country alive. We plan to do that with Briana and Grey’s help.” Vinny’s forehead scrunched up as Rachel finished her statement. “Then what do you want from me and Luke?”

I was curious to hear this answer myself. Rachel had yet to tell any of us why we came to see her cousins in the first place. Obviously, it was partly because of protection. This loft on top of the garage allowed us to hide in plain sight.

“We want your muscle. We need a backup plan, and that’s the role you will serve.”

“You’d give us 350K just to be a
backup
plan?”

“Of course. It is the least we can do for agreeing to be a part of this. Your involvement is a major risk to take, especially if we fail.”

“We won’t fail,” Grey spoke up.

“And if we do?” Luke asked, nervously.

“Then we are all fucked,” Briana replied. “At least, that’s what they told me when I asked them the same question.” She chuckled.

“So, it’s that simple,” Luke retorted. “If we fail, we are fucked.”

“Indeed,” Grey said. “We aren’t going to fail, though.”

“And how can you be so damn sure?” Vinny pressed with a skeptical glare.

“Because. Briana and I have discussed the plan of action, and if we follow it—it will actually work, quite well if I might add.” Briana suppressed a smug smile that tugged at her lips.

“What’s your role in all of this?” Luke nodded to Briana. She glanced around at all of us before answering. “Well, I have to get in touch with my old contact on the Darkweb. I used to work with Silk Road, but that was shut down by the feds. Given our time frame, I highly doubt a rush delivery from Sweden would work. I should be able to find someone who can give it to me in person. Then, getting Owen’s photo on the passport once we get him an adequate disguise will be the hard part. It has to look real enough to fool the security agents.”

“What about you, Grey?” Grey flinched from Luke’s sudden question. I had yet to hear his plan either. “I would assume, that with as badly as they want to catch Owen, they are using facial recognition to find him. Once he is seen on the airport security cameras, we could believe with good reason that they will swarm the airport as soon as they can. I will have to create a diversion.”

“What kind of diversion?” Luke continued barraging them with questions.

“That’s what I still have to figure out,” Grey answered. “I have the idea. It’s just, I still have to work out the logistics of it.”

I had stayed quiet this entire time. I was just listening to them discuss how they were going to get
me
out of the country. I tried to stay relaxed, but I felt unsettled in my gut. It hadn’t even been five days, and I was the polar opposite of being free. I couldn’t make any of my own decisions. Now, I went along with Rachel’s plan because it was the only chance I had. The morning after Cole died, I knew I would need a miracle to get me out of this, and I met her. That
had
to have meant something. She said it was fate…

“So what about you, Rachel?” Vinny’s deep voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Where do you fall in all of this? What is your role?”

“I don’t have a role. I will say goodbye to Owen before he walks in. I can’t risk getting caught because I must be able to communicate with Ian. The country has to find out what is really going on.”

“And what is
really
going on?”

Vinny’s tone caused Rachel’s normal glow to fade away. The passion I first saw in her eyes when I met her wasn’t as visible. She was reluctant to answer. She didn’t want to have to face the truth.

“I don’t know yet,” she stammered. Vinny huffed and didn’t let up. “And what makes you believe you ever will?”

This time, even his words hurt me.

“I have this feeling…” She mumbled. “That Ian might know more than we do. I have a feeling that it will all work out.”

“Well, I hope your little
feeling
is right,” he scoffed, “and it doesn’t land all of us in prison for the rest of our lives.”

Rachel swallowed and nodded in acknowledgment. She brushed her hair behind her shoulder and looked at the ground.

“Here’s the deal,” Vinny continued. “The moment we are done at the airport, whether you needed our help or not, that 350K will be ours. Are we clear about that?” He glanced at Grey.

“Crystal,” he replied.

“Good. Now, it seems like we have some work to do.” He stood up and Luke followed suit.

“I’ll go get my laptop out of the car,” Briana said. Grey began to open up his backpack. “I have to make whatever wireless you have here secure before we do anything. It won’t take long,” he added. I didn’t have anything to do. Anyone connected to me would be in deep shit. I was helpless.

“Vinny,” Rachel began. “I need you to go buy me a pre-paid phone. I have to call Ian.”

The sun that slipped through the blinds warmed my face. The Weather Channel said it was a record-breaking cold temperature today. It was not like I would know. I’d been stuck in my apartment, being held hostage by the FBI.

I peered out the window, just as I had countless times in the past twenty-four hours. Like I expected, there it was—the black Yukon Denali sitting in the parking lot of a gas station just across the street. I knew they were listening, monitoring my every waking move.

It felt like the only time I was free was in my sleep. Although, I hadn’t done much of that either. I got maybe an hour or two of
real
sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I was plotting how I could get to Manhattan to see my dad. Everything was ready to go. I was just trapped and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t talk to anyone. It would be pointless. I did text Emily a simple
‘how are you?’
To which she replied,
‘I’m okay.’

She wasn’t stupid. She knew we couldn’t talk.

CNN was on TV across the living room. Although Owen and the girl, Rachel, hadn’t been seen since the 14
th
—three days—they were still giving it all of their airtime. The most important thing in the media at the moment was to find Owen Marina. Even more evidence to back up my newfound revelation. The bombs were a sham, Owen was framed, and
someone
was trying to slant the election in their favor.

I stood up and paced around my apartment. The transition from the carpet to the cold tile of the kitchen caused a chill to race up my spine. I wanted to brew a cup of coffee, but I knew that wouldn’t be smart. My heart was racing as it is. Eating was another option, but I was also nauseous. This whole situation had my stomach in knots. I felt like I was running out of time.

My dad was only four hours away. Four hours and that godforsaken FBI agent outside my apartment complex were all that kept me from getting my father the truth. I could almost taste the satisfaction, knowing that I would have finally disassembled their lie told so long ago. But how? How could I get there without being followed?

I would have to wait. A thought plagued me, though. What if they never left? I had to find another way. Time was
not
on my side. It was only three weeks till the election and the polls were plummeting day by day. They were watching. They were listening. How would I?

That
was it. I had an idea.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen Grey smoke a cigarette. The tobacco odor intermingled with the smell of coffee. He was drinking it non-stop, as was everyone else. Briana was out with Vinny. Apparently, they were going to meet the contact for the passport at some Cuban restaurant in Downtown Miami. Grey, on the other hand, had purchased my ticket to Moscow. The flight left the day after tomorrow, and I still wasn’t all that convinced Grey and Briana could pull it off in time. When he printed off my ticket, I almost got sick. It had hit me like a train in the gut, harsh and swift—it was really happening. In forty-eight hours, I would be on a plane headed to Moscow. That was if we even made it that far.

A couple ashes fell onto Grey’s beard.

“You better watch out, Grey. If you’re not careful you’ll catch your beard on fire.”

He chuckled. “That’s the least of my worries.”

The deep grooves along Grey’s forehead spoke louder than his words. He was very confident our plan would work, and that was why he was working so hard to make it perfect. He also bought a ticket, a one-way from Miami to Atlanta. A relatively cheap flight, and he told me that was for a reason. Apparently, with the help of some wacky Chinese module and his plane ticket, he could create this
‘diversion’
he spoke of. Something about the fact the ticketing system used a common SQL database, helped him. The system scans the ticket, queries the database for the correct flight and passenger information, and prints out the correct boarding pass. When the ticket is scanned, it was basically a comparison of the data from the database to the encoded information on the ticket, or so Grey said.

Grey’s idea was to encode a piece of information on the ticket with the Chinese module that would infiltrate the database and perform an execution, instead of just comparing the data off of the ticket to the data in the system. He called it an
‘SQL injection’
. He said it would cause something in the mainframe to mess up. How he knew it would work was beyond me, but Grey was an incredibly talented individual. If he was working for the CIA, they probably would have already caught me by now. I was glad he was on my side.

Rachel was on the sofa taking a nap. Grey had convinced her to wait to call Ian. He insisted that we didn’t use the pre-paid phone at all, because of the potential risk of Ian’s landline being monitored. They could triangulate our location and then all of our effort would be wasted. He proposed we call through a computer and heavily encrypt the connection to ensure no one could trace it back to us. Not being able to call him, Rachel felt useless, and so she had gone to rest. Her long hair was put up into a bun, and her caramel skin looked so flawless, even after all the stress we had been under lately. Her chest gently moved up and down. I wondered what she was dreaming about, or if she was dreaming at all. Maybe it was a nightmare…

I saw a flash of the mother and daughter, holding hands in the snow in front of the Capitol. The mother whispering,
‘Thank you’.

I shook my head quickly to forget about my reoccurring nightmare. I tried to forget, but I had come to accept it would haunt me forever.

.

“What is all of this shit?” I asked, setting it back down on the pool table. Briana wasn’t amused. “It isn’t
shit
, Owen. It’s your disguise. Believe it or not, your hair is already growing. The sandy-brown is coming through.” I walked over to a nearby mirror to confirm her claim. She was right. The bleach-blond was already beginning to fade, the culprit being how short my hair was. “And this?” I held up the plastic packaging. “You trying to give me a Hitler mustache?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, it’s a fake goatee. A blond one. And you better damn appreciate it because it took half the day to find. By the way, your cash is getting low.”

“How low?” I asked.

“Thirty-five thousand.”

I laughed at Briana’s statement. Our cash might have been getting low, but Grey had seven hundred thousand dollars at our expense, and that was including what we owed Briana, Vinny, and Luke. All he had to do was wire it into an account or a pre-paid card. I heard Grey chuckle as he processed Briana’s words. He was hunched over his laptop, sitting at a desk in the corner of the room. There was a table-lamp he had tilted down, shining it on the papers and ticket beneath it. An ink pen between his fingers zipped around the paper and the scraping noise was constant. I sat up a little farther and could barely make out what he was drawing—it almost looked like a QR code.

“You said you have a printer, right?” Grey asked.

“For the last time, yes! It’s downstairs at the reception desk, just like I told you.” Vinny’s tone escalated. Grey didn’t react, just continued working and took a sip of his coffee. “I’m just making sure. It’s important.”

“Why?” Rachel asked from her seat on the couch. Grey spun around in the desk chair. “Well, I’m drawing a rough sketch based on some designs on how the code is formed. Once I get the execution code written in, I will have to design it on the computer and print it off. A drawing wouldn’t work on a ticket.”

“What kind of diversion are you trying to make?” she questioned further. Grey seemed nervous. He chewed on the bottom corner of his lip and tapped his pen against the arm of the chair. “I’d rather not say. I just don’t want to jinx it, you know?” Rachel shrugged off her curiosity and turned to me. It was honestly the first time our eyes had met since she woke up. Staring into her warm brown eyes made me melt inside. As difficult as it was to acknowledge given my circumstances, it was still happening. I was falling for Rachel—
hard
.

“All right, it’s time I get to work,” Briana announced. Her ringlet curls bounced around like rubber bands that sprung out of her ponytail. I was amazed she never complained of headaches as tightly as her hair was slicked back. She threw me the plastic container with the goatee hair and adhesive. It landed on my crotch and I winced from the pain.

“Sorry,” she said, nonchalantly. “Go take a shower.”

“Excuse me?”

She pursed her lips. “Once the goatee is on, you won’t want to shower because it might mess with the glue. I would say wait until tomorrow, but I need time to get your passport ready. So I have to take the picture as soon as possible.” She pulled out a camera I hadn’t seen before. “Where’d you get that?” I asked. “Wal-Mart. It was on sale.”

I had the sudden sensation of Déjà vu. Briana’s purchase of the camera reminded me of when Laura bought one for herself back in Raleigh. I wondered if she was doing well…

“Nice,” I muttered.

I heard Grey’s chair squeak and he stood between Rachel and me.

“Rachel,” he began. “I’ve got the line secured. Are you ready to call Ian?”

I scratched the back of my head, troubled by the front page story of tomorrow’s paper in front of me that I had to approve. Never in my life would I have imagined that I would be looking at the face of my goddaughter as the headline article for my paper.

Emilio was probably rolling over in his grave right now. I shook my head, distressed at what to do. It was killing me, having all of these baby-faced journalists fresh out of college, who didn’t know shit about what
real
journalism was, putting this garbage on my desk. How could I allow us to publish another day of this tabloid nonsense? Just because that was what USA Today, The Washington Post, and every other major newspaper was spewing out as fact.

Emilio was a real journalist, and he was my greatest friend in life. Even after almost twenty years he was still on my mind. Although he was in Rachel’s life for such a short amount of time, he instilled a lot of wisdom in her. Rachel was just as good as her father, perhaps even better. She just hadn’t had her moment to shine. I wanted her to get a few years under her belt in a smaller paper before I brought her up here.

I set the papers down. Frustrated, I let out a long sigh. Something didn’t feel right. I knew it had been a year since I had seen Rachel, but she wasn’t the type to befriend a bad person, let alone a terrorist. I knew her. I watched the girl grow up for Christ’s sake. I was dubious to say the least when Owen was first wanted for the bombings. As genuine as he seemed in all of his public appearances and interviews, I saw it as a rumor at most. Once Rachel became involved, that rumor seemed more like a blatant lie. Rachel had to be with him for a reason, because there was
no
other
logical reason. Their combined talents must have done them well because they had been off of the fed’s radar for four days now.

Police sirens echoed in the streets far below me. After living my entire life in New York, you would have thought I would have been used to them by now…but they always bothered me. This city never slept, and that was the truth. I glanced over at my faint reflection in the floor to ceiling glass that encircled my office. Damn, did time sure do its toll. My hair was almost entirely gray.

I signed my name on the black line at the bottom of the final draft, putting my seal of approval on tomorrow’s cover story. My gut panged as I did so. It hurt to have to publish these hideous articles about Rachel, but I had nothing else. I had no other leads. Part of me wanted to use some of my sick days just so someone else would have to make my decisions.

I picked up my briefcase and stood up. I winced as my lower back trembled—the pain just became worse as the years passed. I rubbed it and headed toward the door.

Ring
…
Ring
…

I had taken two steps before it rang. My jaw clenched up, and my exhale shuddered. It was the final straw to an already hectic day. Normally, I would have just ignored it…but with everything going on, it was necessary. I didn’t get this far in life by dodging calls just because of my status.