Smooth Operator (Teddy Fay) (20 page)

T
hey’d made a mistake letting her hear her father’s voice. It came to her through the fog, cut through the fever and pain, awakened the sense of survival they’d nearly managed to kill. Even now, a day later, in her conscious moments between sleep and delirium, Karen struggled to make her escape.

The big man had done a poorer job than usual tying the ropes. She couldn’t use her mangled hand, couldn’t use her fingers to work on the knots, but she managed to wriggle her ankles free. Had she picked at the ropes with her toes? Or had one ankle merely slid out?

Karen had no idea. She struggled to her feet and stumbled against the wall, not taking her usual care to make sure the big man didn’t hear her. At any moment she expected him to rush in and throw her back down on the mattress and tie her feet.

There was a nail sticking out of the cabin wall. Karen could
feel it pressing into her back. She felt for it with her good hand. With her hands tied behind her back, the nail was too high for her to reach, but on tiptoes she could snag the rope around her wrists. She did, and nearly fell over, but the nail itself helped hold her up. She increased the pressure on the nail, trying hard not to squeal from the pain.

The rope wouldn’t give. Had she hooked it in the wrong place? Was she actually tightening the knot? Could she risk changing the rope’s position on the nail?

The rope gave.

Her hands slipped free.

The pain from the restored circulation was excruciating. She bit her lip hard. Her knees buckled and she slid down the wall, the nail raking her back. She barely noticed. She rolled over, pushed herself to her feet.

The window was open. It was small and high and there was nothing to stand on. It didn’t matter. Karen grabbed the sill with both hands, causing fresh spasms of pain, and pulled herself up, climbing the wall with her feet.

It was too much. She slid back to the floor and hung, clinging to the windowsill. Fatigue, delirium, and pain overwhelmed her. She swayed back and forth with her eyes closed and her head sagging forward on her chest.

She couldn’t remember what she was doing.

S
am Snyder’s car service pulled up in front of his house in Bethesda. It was a car, not a limo, simple and unpretentious. Still, even having a car and driver made Sam uncomfortable. His modest, two-story frame house sat in a development of similar structures. In all his years in Congress he had always been a man of the people, never given any indication of wealth, even though he had plenty. It was important to him, being a close family friend of the President, not to appear to be a member of some privileged class. His wife had thought it silly, always encouraged him to live better, said it couldn’t possibly matter. In later years she had wanted him to retire and travel, but his good friend Will Lee had been President then, and he felt he had to stay on. Then his wife had died, and nothing seemed to matter.

Up until her death two years ago, Sam had always driven to
work, a mid-range American car befitting his image. Since her death he hadn’t felt safe to drive. He’d space out at stoplights, need to be prompted by the honk of horns. Worse, he’d forget where he was going, set out for the Capitol and wind up at the mall. He’d once made a left-hand turn in heavy traffic, nearly causing a pileup. After that he’d hired the car service, at least for trips to Capitol Hill. But he was always conscious of his neighbors’ eyes.

Today there was no one looking, and he wouldn’t have noticed if they had been. The veterans aid bill had passed, and by a considerable margin. After the Speaker had voted for it, and after it became clear the bill was going to pass anyway, Republican congressmen had jumped on board just so as not to go on record as having voted against aid to wounded veterans in a generally popular bill that was about to become law.

All in all, it had been a pretty good day. The elderly congressman had a spring in his step as he went up the walk. He unlocked the front door, picked up the mail that had been shoved through the slot, and wandered into the kitchen to allow himself a celebratory drink.

He looked up from leafing through the mail and stopped dead.

Abdul-Hakim sat at the kitchen table holding a cup of coffee.

“Ah, Congressman,” he said. “Come in. Sit down. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Sam Snyder gawked at him. “Who are you?”

“That’s not important, at least not to you.” Abdul-Hakim set
the coffee cup on the table and stood up. He pulled a gun out of his pocket. “Please do me the favor of holding out your hands.”

Sam blinked. “What?”

Abdul-Hakim snapped open the briefcase on the table and took out a length of rope. “I’m tying you up. It’s for your own good, so it would be wise not to resist.”

Sam Snyder didn’t resist, but he protested mightily, and kept asking what was going on right up until Abdul-Hakim stuffed a gag in his mouth.

Abdul-Hakim marched him down the hall into the room the congressman had converted into his home office. He sat the old man behind his desk and tied him to his chair.

Sam Snyder struggled against the ropes.

Abdul-Hakim leveled a finger. “You can sit quietly, or I can knock you out. Your choice.”

Sam subsided.

Abdul-Hakim satisfied himself that the ropes would hold. Then he went back in the kitchen and retrieved his coffee. It had gotten cold. He was considering making another when his cell phone rang. He clicked it on. “Yes?”

“The bill passed.”

“I know. I have one of the congressmen here.”

“Ready for Phase Three?”

“Yes.”

“Kill the girl.”

T
he dull thud and muffled cry woke the big man from his nap. He sat up on the couch and listened for the girl. He heard nothing. He clambered to his feet, stumbled to the back room.

She was gone.

He ran to the window and looked out. He couldn’t see her, but he heard branches snapping in the woods.

He turned and ran out the front door.

On the coffee table, next to the deck of cards, his cell phone began to ring.

—

KAREN CRASHED
blindly through the bush. She bumped into a tree, knocked herself down. She struggled to her feet and
plunged ahead, taking no more care than before. She had no idea where she was going, she just kept running. She had to get away from something.

The cabin!

She had to get away from the cabin.

The thought jolted her memory, spurred her on.

She tripped over a log, rolled once, and came up running. Her feet were torn and bleeding from running barefoot, but she never noticed, just as she barely noticed the pain when she fell. Which she did again, a nosedive onto rocky ground. She got up slowly, rested a minute.

From off to the right came the sound of snapping branches.

She turned and ran full-tilt through the woods. She barely saw where she was going. She just wanted to get away. The sound of snapping branches was the big man closing in on her, and she couldn’t bear the thought. She was never going back.

She tripped and rolled down a hill, and hit the bottom with a thud.

—

THE NOISES
the big man was following faded before going silent. That she’d been able to get this far was unimaginable. She was injured, she was sick, she was delirious. And where could she even go? He hadn’t seen another cabin in the area. If he had, he might have broken in to steal some food. All he had was bread that was beginning to collect mold.

If he couldn’t find her, she was as good as dead in these woods. He’d be better off just leaving, the hell with getting paid. Except there was nowhere to go, and he had no way to leave. Abdul-Hakim had taken their only vehicle.

There was a crunching noise in the distance. The girl?

The big man’s head snapped up.

It wasn’t the girl, but a car coming up the driveway. If the girl got to the car and secured help, he’d lose her for good.

The big man turned and began to run.

—

KAREN HEARD
the car engine. It confused her. A car? The only car she associated with the cabin in the woods was the Arab’s. If it was his, she should run away. If it wasn’t, she should run toward it. A life-or-death choice. How could she possibly tell?

If she stayed out here, though, she would die for sure. She had no idea how far they were from another cabin, or from any form of civilization. It wasn’t in her nature to do nothing. She had to make a choice.

Karen climbed to her feet and limped in the direction in which she believed the car to be.

Q
uentin Phillips had a good feeling about the cabin. It had a rough-hewn, semi-finished appearance like the one in the photo, and the big guy on the front porch gave the impression he’d run out to sit there when he heard the car coming. There was something artificial about his casual pose. He seemed self-conscious, like it was an act. Like he was hiding something.

Quentin approached the cabin with caution, his hand surreptitiously touching his gun.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Is this your cabin?”

“Yeah,” the big man said. He didn’t ask Quentin why he was asking, like most people would.

“You had any trouble with prowlers lately?”

“Prowlers?”

“Yeah.”

“Nope.”

“You been here all morning?”

“Why?”

“If you were gone at all, someone could have gotten in.”

“I been here.”

“You got plumbing in there?”

“No.”

“Then you have to go in the woods.”

“What if I do?”

“Someone could have got in while you were taking a piss.”

He shook his head. “Only two rooms.”

“You checked ’em both?”

The man’s face darkened. “Yes, I checked them both.”

Quentin flashed his credentials. “Let’s check ’em again.”

The big man raised his voice. “You want to check out my cabin? You want to see what’s in the back room?”

“It’s for your own good.”

“Like hell.”

Quentin thought he heard a rustling noise from inside the cabin, but he might have imagined it. After that he heard nothing.

“All right,” the big man said. “Check it out.”

Quentin didn’t want to turn his back on him to enter the cabin, but the big man clearly wasn’t going first. Quentin reached into his jacket and pulled out his gun.

“Hey!” the big man said.

Quentin put up his hand. “The man we’re looking for might be dangerous.”

Quentin pushed his way into the cabin. It was a very primitive room. He tried to reconcile it with the one he’d seen in the photo, but he couldn’t. The girl had dominated everything. Take out the girl and you couldn’t tell.

The door to the back room was hung with a cloth. He stepped to one side, raised his gun, pulled the curtain back.

The room was empty, except for a mattress on the floor.

The back window was open. It was large enough for someone to fit through. Quentin stuck his head out, looked around. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw movement in the trees. A flash of color, like a lumberjack shirt.

Quentin turned to find the big man watching him.

“Nothing here,” Quentin said. “You might want to lock that window.”

Quentin was on his way out when the man’s cell phone rang. The big man answered, said, “Hi, honey,” in a totally self-conscious voice.

Quentin got in his car and drove away. A quarter of a mile down the road he pulled off into the brush, hopped out of his car, and started hightailing it through the woods.

He crept up on the cabin and peeked through the back window.

The first thing he spotted was the lumberjack shirt he’d seen through the trees. It was crumpled up on the floor of the cabin. The man who’d worn it was comforting the big man, who’d
also removed his shirt. The two were on the mattress, locked in each other’s arms.

They weren’t kidnappers, just two guys presumably trying to hide their relationship.

Quentin cursed the time he’d wasted. He hurried back to his car. Hoped it didn’t matter.

T
he car was long gone. It hadn’t been coming up the driveway. It had passed on the road, driving home from some remote cabin somewhere. It was gone, and with it her last hopes. Karen had run herself out. She couldn’t even muster the fear to spur herself on. She plodded along mechanically, one foot in front of the other, walking blindly with no idea why.

The house shocked her back to reality. It was the first one she’d seen, and she’d come a long way. She suddenly realized this was what she had been looking for.

Houses. People. Help.

There was no car out front and no sign of anyone. It was just a cabin, not a house, no one had to live there, but it never occurred to her it might not be occupied. That would be just too cruel.

Karen went up on the porch and knocked. There was no
answer, but the door was unlocked. She pushed it open, and called out, “Hello?”

There was no answer. The room was empty.

Karen pushed on into the back room.

The room was empty. The window was open. There was nothing but a mattress on the floor.

There was a rope on the mattress. Another rope hung off a nail on the wall.

Floods of memory washed over Karen. Her knees were suddenly weak. She turned and ran.

The big man stood in the doorway.

The last thing she saw was his fist in her face.

—

HOLLY BARKER CALLED
Teddy Fay. “The bill passed.”

“Shit. Call Millie and Quentin. Tell them to speed it up. Don’t search every cabin, skip all but the most likely.”

Teddy broke the connection and tossed the phone on the seat.

A cabin came up on the right. A gray SUV was parked out front. The tailgate was up. A fishing rod leaned against it. Real, or a useful prop? No time to find out.

Teddy gunned the engine and hurtled down the road.

K
aren heard the cell phone ring, but it was in a dream. It was a nice dream. The caller was her boyfriend back on campus, and even though she couldn’t reach the phone she could hear what he was saying. He was sweet and loving and stroking her hair and wiping the tears off her face as he leaned over the bed where she lay.

It was a confusing dream, what with him being on the phone and there in person, but somehow it made sense, perhaps because it was pleasant, something she wanted, something to be desired.

Also confusing was the fact that her boyfriend was speaking to her over the phone and it was still ringing.

The phone was ringing because the big man was peeing outside the cabin and he had left it on the coffee table. And why
shouldn’t he have left it there, he was right outside. He never went far, just walked out front and let fly.

—

OUTSIDE, THE BIG
MAN
zipped up his pants and went inside just as his phone stopped ringing.

He picked it up and called the number back.

Abdul-Hakim was angry. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Taking a piss.”

“For an hour?”

“No, just now.”

“Where were you before?”

“Before what?” the big man said. He wasn’t about to tell Abdul-Hakim he’d let the girl escape.

“Never mind. It’s all done. Wrap it up.”

“Wrap it up?”

“Kill the girl.”

“Okay.”

The big man hung up the phone, fished his backpack off the floor, pawed through it, took out his gun, checked again to see that it was loaded. He heaved himself up off the couch and went into the back room.

The girl stirred in her sleep. He should do it now, before she opened her eyes. He raised the gun.

The shot was deafening in the tiny cabin.