The Cage (16 page)

The cowboy reached into a pocket and revealed a switchblade knife.

This is going to be fun
.

Glenn charged with the knife. The cowboy made a quick stab but sliced only air as he moved clear. Glenn countered with an arcing slash that nearly sliced him across the abdomen, but he was able to jump backward and arch his back enough to avoid the blade.

Glenn attempted two more quick stabs, both unsuccessful. On the third thrust, he grabbed Glenn by the wrist and pulled as hard as he could. Propelled by his own weight, Glenn rocketed forward.

He caught Glenn with an outstretched arm, clotheslining the burly cowboy and slamming him to the ground. Glenn lost his grip on the knife, and it clattered down the alley. Glenn’s head thudded against the pavement, and he wheezed as the impact expelled all the air from his lungs.

Marcus looked down on his opponent. He had always been a huge fan of action movies and great one-liners. Although this wasn’t a movie and it would never go down in history with the catch phrases of
Dirty Harry
or
The Terminator
, he filled with great pride as he said, “Class dismissed.”

~~*~~

“Are you okay?” Maggie said, taking a cell phone from her purse and placing it against her ear. “You’re bleeding.”

Marcus reached up and wiped a trail of blood from his lip. He rubbed it between his fingers. “I’m—”

Maggie held up a finger to him, and he guessed that her call had connected. He had always found that you could tell a lot about a person by the way they reacted to a stressful or dangerous situation. As she spoke into the cell phone, he watched her mannerisms, cadence, pitch, tone, breathing, eyes. The words she spoke could have just as easily been issued from the mouth of a valley girl, but he looked beyond the words at the person underneath. Her voice was calm. Her tone was insistent yet professional. Her breathing was steady, and her body language exuded confidence. Her eyes scanned their unconscious attackers. At the edge of his perception, he detected a slight tremble, but that was to be expected. She reminded him of a cop calling in for backup.

“Glenn and some of his buddies just tried to jump me and a friend . . . We’re fine . . . My friend took care of them . . . Yes, Father, it’s a guy friend . . . No, you don’t know him. Now’s not the time. Just get over here. We’re in an alley next to the bar . . . Okay. Hurry.”

She closed the phone and placed it back in her purse.

Marcus watched as Glenn tried to get up but then fell back down and lay still. “Don’t you think we should call the cops?”

Maggie smiled. “My dad is the cops. He’s the Sheriff.”

“Oh, great.”

“That’s not a problem, is it? Lotta guys head for the hills when they hear my father’s the Sheriff. Guess they’re a little intimidated.”

“Not me. I’ve got a lot of respect for anyone who carries a badge. I’m a third-generation cop myself. Or . . . I was anyway.”

“But not anymore?”

“Not anymore.”

For the first time, it occurred to him that maybe he could be a cop again.
Maybe I can get a job as one of the Sheriff’s deputies, sitting next to the highway, issuing the occasional citation?
It would be a far cry from the world he had left behind. But calling his previous employer for a reference would pose a problem.

Not pressing the issue, Maggie sighed and brushed a strand of blonde hair from her face. A dark, bronze tan made her hair seem lighter than it actually was. She wasn’t wearing any make-up and didn’t need any. Her pink t-shirt bore the name of
The Asherton Tap
, the bar where she worked as a waitress and where they had met earlier in the evening. He had offered to walk her home.

“Sorry about all this,” she said. “I knew Glenn had a thing for me, but I never thought that he would take it this far.”

He smiled. He couldn’t believe that he had met someone like her on his first day in town. Although in his experience, things that seemed too good to be true usually were. “Don’t worry about it. I can take care of myself.”

“Kinda noticed.”

He shrugged. “Chuck Norris movies.”

Maggie chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong, you look like a man who can take care of himself, but that usually doesn’t mean anything.”

“I had some martial arts training and did some boxing when I was on the force. Plus, I was a pretty tough kid growing up. But to be honest, what happened here was one part ability and three parts luck.”

He had been lucky. Then again, he had always been lucky in similar situations. He always seemed to come out on top in a fight. When did luck become skill? When did a skill become a talent? In the end, he knew that he had a gift for hurting people, and it scared him. He wished it was only luck, but deep down, he knew better. He knew what he was capable of.

He saw flashing lights coming from around the corner. A moment later, a patrol car stopped in front of them. A middle-aged man with silver hair and goatee stepped out of the vehicle. Maggie relayed the situation to the man who Marcus assumed to be her father.

A crowd from the bar had gathered at one end of the alley. The sounds of a top-forty cover band echoed out of the Asherton Tap as more patrons walked from the bar to see what was happening. Many of the spectators looked disappointed that they had missed the action.

People always seemed to be in awe of the infliction of pain.
Why do we find it so interesting to see people beat each other’s brains in?
He wasn’t judging. He liked to watch a fight as much as anyone, but he wondered what it was in the nature of human beings that caused a fascination with violence and suffering.

After hearing the story, the Sheriff walked over to Glenn and hauled him up from the pavement while one of his deputies rounded up the cowboy’s friends. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Still dazed, Glenn said, “Sheriff, I didn’t do nothin’. We were just trying to welcome the new guy, and he got all smart with me. Next thing you know, he’s kickin’ and punchin’ people. It was craziness.”

The Sheriff nodded. “Right. I’ve always thought that you should be head of the welcoming committee. Plus, it was real nice of you and your boys to bring that baseball bat and tire iron as house-warming gifts.” The Sheriff shoved Glenn in the direction of his deputy. “Get him out of here.”

Her father pulled Maggie aside.

After a moment, they returned, and turning in Marcus’s direction, the Sheriff said, “Sorry about Glenn, son. Sharp like a spoon, that one. Anyway, it’s against my better judgment, but Maggie has convinced me to let you walk her home. That doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. I want you to come into my office tomorrow and give a formal statement. I’ll be gone in the morning, but you stop by in the afternoon. That’ll give us a chance to sit down and have a nice visit.”

Marcus didn’t like the sound of a “nice visit.” The con versation would probably revolve around Maggie and the removal of certain parts of his anatomy if she weren’t shown respect. “I’ll be there, sir.”

“See that you are.”

Maggie gave her father an awkward hug before she and Marcus continued on. After a moment of silence, Maggie spoke. “So why aren’t you a cop anymore?”

A dark alleyway, a scream, the blood, the tears
—the memories came rushing back and swirled through his mind like a tornado that leaves a house standing but uninhabitable.
What business is it of hers? Why don’t you ask about how my parents died, or maybe if I had a dog that was run over when I was a kid?

But she doesn’t know it’s a painful memory. She’s just trying to get to know you better, idiot. Maybe because she likes you, but now she probably thinks you’re some kind of burned-out psycho, since you’re taking an hour to respond to a simple question
.

“Well . . . ”

What do I tell her?

“I think that’s a question we should save for at least our second or third date.”

“How do you know there’ll even be a second or third date?”

“Because you want to learn all my secrets.”

She smiled. As he looked into her eyes, his painful memories slipped to the back of his mind and away from his immediate thoughts. For now, the pain had subsided. For now, his demons were sleeping.

“Thanks for walking with me,” she said. “You’re really a nice guy.”

He grimaced. “The kiss of death.”

She gave him a confused look.

“Nice guys get calls for advice on how to handle bad-boy boyfriends. They drive you to the airport and help you move. Nice guys finish last. And . . . I’m not all that nice.”

“I disagree. I think that you are a nice guy, and I also think that you haven’t been hanging around with the right kind of women. I happen to like nice guys.”

Their eyes met, and he felt a warmth in her gaze that made his heart race and his mind reel with possibilities. They held the connection for a few seconds. When her cheeks began to turn red, she looked away.

The warm smell of cinnamon rolls straight from the oven made his stomach rumble. The lights were on in the bakery. Maggie was so caught up in the moment that she almost passed by the entrance to her apartment, a small place above The Magnolia Bakery. He remembered a place with the same name on Bleecker Street back in New York. He had loved their red velvet cupcakes.

She stopped and removed a key from her purse. She hesitated, giving him the impression that she was waiting for him to make a move.

It had been a long time since he had done anything like this. “Dinner . . . tomorrow night?”

Maggie reached into her purse and produced a small pad of paper and pen. She jotted down her number and handed it to him. “Give me a call tomorrow.”

He took the piece of paper, folded it with care, and placed it in his pocket.

They stared at each other for a moment.

He leaned in.

She closed her eyes and appeared to be awaiting his lips.

He touched her on the shoulder, but instead of kissing her, he whispered in her ear. “I don’t kiss on the first date.”

Her eyes opened and narrowed at him. “You’re an odd man.”

He smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

~~*~~

“Are you sure that we’re doing the right thing?” the big man said as he thrummed his fingers upon the antique desk.

The smaller man chuckled. He stepped away from the window that overlooked the estate’s lush veranda and took a seat behind his ornate walnut desk. “I find that the older I get, the less I’m sure about anything.”

The big man smiled at his long-time friend, a man known as The Director. “I know what you mean, but I’m starting to have my doubts about this plan. There are a million things that could go wrong.”

“There are a million things that could go right as well. Such is the way of life.”

“I know that, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re taking unnecessary risks. We’re putting a lot of good people in danger, and this thing could get very messy. Do the ends really justify the means?”

“Do they ever?”

The big man ran a hand through his gray-white hair. His compatriot broke the silence first. “I think I’m going to fix myself a drink and get some fresh air. Would you like to join me?”

“Make mine a double.”

They exited the Director’s office and strolled the walk that encompassed the massive white house. After a moment, the big man said, “Does it have to be Ackerman?”

“We’ve been over this. You and I both know from past experience that it will take someone of his . . . his caliber to accomplish our goal. Plus, you know his connection to all of this. We need him. Hell, we’ve set the whole thing up around him. Besides, we’ve done things similar in the past.”

“Not with someone like Ackerman.” The big man shook his head. “He scares me.”

“I know. I feel the same way, but events were set in motion years ago that have led us to this day. It’s fate. Well, fate with a little help from us anyway. We both know that it sometimes takes extreme actions in order to radically change a person’s way of thinking. We’ve planned everything as best we can, and our people know their jobs. They’re the best. You trained most of them. We can pull this off.”

The big man tilted back his head and let the contents of the entire glass slide down his throat. “God help us if you’re wrong.”

The Director shrugged. “God help us, either way.”

Ethan Cross is the international bestselling author of
The Cage
and
The Shepherd
– a book that has been described as “
Silence of the Lambs
meets
The Bourne Identity
” and “A fast paced, all too real thriller with a villain right out of James Patterson and ‘Criminal Minds.’” – and the pen name of a thriller author living and writing in Illinois with his wife, two daughters, and two Shih Tzus.

VISIT HIM AT
ETHANCROSS.COM