Ghost Rendition Read online

  I reached for the knife, and he was on me. His hands wrapped around my neck. I shot my hands up between his arms and pushed outward trying to break his grip. The belt buckle was in one of my hands. The belt was wrapped around the other. If I could get the buckle set up to shoot before he strangled me, I had him.

  My vision started to go black. I had no choice. I dropped the buckle and grabbed his wrists. I hit the pressure points below where the hand meets the wrist. His grip released, and I twisted away.

  He rolled toward the knife. I hit him in the kidney. He flinched but still managed to get to the knife. I slid backward and scooped up the belt buckle as I regained my feet. I made a move toward the table of interrogation tools. The Suit cut me off. He tacked toward me, herding me toward a corner.

  It was interesting that he didn’t call Caroline for help. Had I put enough doubt in his mind that he didn’t trust her or was it pride, wanting to show he could finish me himself?

  I unfurled my belt and swung it like a whip to keep him at bay. Setting up the buckle was hard to do with one hand. I would have to try to modify its design if I lived through this.

  I let him corner me. I needed him to get close if my buckle gun was going to be effective. I only had one shot. I had to make sure it didn’t just wound him.

  “Look at the two of us? Fighting to the death over a piece of software. My father fought Arabs for the safety of his home. How did it come to this?” he said, trying to lull me in preparation for his charge.

  I hadn’t gotten the buckle set yet. “Old war horses. New times. I’m sorry about your partner. I never like to kill a fellow pro.”

  “We don’t choose the job. The job chooses us. It is only a matter of time. For all of us.” He rushed toward me, knife extended.

  He was quicker than I expected. He had saved an extra gear to finish me. I snapped the buckle in place. He stabbed upward trying to slice under my ribs and into my heart. I chopped down hard with my belt hand across his wrist. With the other hand I brought the buckle gun up to his forehead.

  I felt the knife slice through my skin. I pulled the trigger on the buckle gun. Blood spurted from my abdomen. A small red dot appeared on the Suit’s forehead. I saw the look of surprise on his face. He fell backward leaving the knife in my gut. How far had it penetrated? The med school student in me tried to assess if it had hit any vital organs, calculated how much blood I would lose, guessed how much time I had left to live. I needed to call for help before I lost consciousness. Would Caroline help me if I did? And then it was too late.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I dreamed that I was a little boy visiting my father’s office. Mrs. Levine was giving me her, “Why do you always show up at the worst times” glare. The patients in the waiting room were trying to disguise their stares, curious what the doctor’s kid looked like. And I thought how cool it was that they were all there to see my dad. He was going to make them better. It was a time before his distance and disappointment had overcome my hero worship. Was this heaven? It wasn’t where I thought I was ticketed to go. Maybe it was hell, caught forever in the fantasies of my youth knowing how misguided they would prove to be.

  Then I was back in the interrogation chair. The bright lights made my head hurt. But now it was my father’s voice that asked the questions. Maybe this was hell.

  “Can you hear me, Gibbons? Squeeze my finger if you can hear me.”

  The lights belonged to my father’s examining room and my hand was indeed wrapped around his finger. It was the way I used to hold his hand when I was a toddler, my tiny hand wrapped around one of his strong fingers. Now his finger felt small in my hand. His skin was drier than I remembered. I squeezed to see if I could.

  “That’s good, Gibbons. You lost a great deal of blood, but you’re going to be okay. It would have been much easier if your friend Caroline hadn’t forbade me to take you to the hospital, of course.”

  This wasn’t hell, but my stomach hurt like it. And my father looked more ragged than I had ever seen him. He had some stubble across his cheeks and chin. I couldn’t remember the last time he was anything but clean-shaven.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Sixty hours or so,” he said.

  “And you’ve been here the whole time?”

  “Where else would I be?”

  He hadn’t left my bedside. Was that a father’s love or the diligent doctor? I felt bad for wondering.

  “Caroline?”

  “She said to give you this.”

  He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a tiny metallic circle. It was the tracking microdot I had placed on Pratt’s computer. I laughed and felt like my stomach was going to fly out through my mouth.

  “She also left a backpack full of some unusual items. A gun, a bulletproof vest, a computer, a cell phone, among various other sundries. She asked if you would hold them for her,” he said.

  “Caroline is helping me with research for my Moron books. She works in counterterrorism. She let me come along with her on what were supposed to be routine surveillance missions, and things didn’t go the way they were expected to. That’s all I can say.”

  My father nodded as if I’d told him that I’d been injured in a fender bender. “I suggest that you don’t mention any of this to your mother. I told her I gave you an appendectomy. She’s a bit of a worrier.”

  “Why tell her anything?”

  “Because she’s going to wonder why your abdomen is bandaged when I bring you home.”

  “Home with you?”

  “Caroline made it clear that you could not be admitted to a hospital, given the nature of her work. And I don’t plan on spending another night here watching you.”

  “I have a home of my own. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

  “As a matter of fact you’re not. You were lucky that no internal organs were damaged, but you’re weak from loss of blood and you’re not out of danger of infection.”

  “I’ll stay with Suzanne,” I lied.

  “I called Suzanne. She was, shall we say, very amenable to our caring for you.”

  “I’ll have a friend stay with me,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Connor. My editor. He’s a great guy. He’ll take good care of me.” It was pathetic that I couldn’t come up with a single real friend.

  “You’ll stay with us until you are out of danger. After that you can do as you please. The alternative is that I will call an ambulance and certify that you’re delirious and need to be forcibly admitted.” My father stared me down, daring me to test him. If he had been the Suit, I would have shot him, but he was my father, so I lost. I hated to put my parents in danger, but assuming Westfield hadn’t cracked my identity yet, they should be safe. And he didn’t leave me any choice. I fully believed he would call the ambulance.

  He helped me out to the parking lot. My Camry was parked next to his Mercedes. He drove me home at exactly the speed limit. My mother was waiting in the dining room for us with a full meal set out on the table.

  “You know Gibbons can’t eat solid food yet,” was my father’s loving greeting to her.

  My mother pulled out a blender full of viscous orange liquid. “I have Gibbons’s meal right here,” she said. “Carrot juice with strained fruit.” I gave her immense credit for keeping a note of triumph out of her voice. My father gave her the smallest of nods.

  We sat down at the table as we used to when I still lived in this strange alternate universe. My father was at the head. My mother was to his right, and I was to his left. It hurt to sit up, but I wasn’t going to let my father see that. I sipped my orange dinner and thought that it was appropriate that I was back in my childhood home eating something that resembled baby food.

  “How is your writing coming?” my mother asked as if I were working on the Great American Novel.

  “Books that actually have ‘moron’ in the title can’t be called writing. They’re more like violent comic books,” my father replied as
if I were distributing porn.

  And that’s how the dinner went. My mother asked the most innocuous questions, and my father turned them into barbed wire. I wondered if they did this when they were alone or if I was the one who brought out this strange duet. How did Devon feel during all the dinners that Suzanne and I bickered through?

  After dinner, my mother escorted me up to my old bedroom and tucked me in. She sat on the side of the bed like she used to and waited for me to tell her what was on my mind. She had great patience, honed from years of living with my father. Or perhaps she had the patience from the start, and that was why she had been able to marry my father to begin with.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t called as much as I should. It’s been a bit hectic,” I said.

  “I know. Suzanne told me that Devon’s been having some problems.”

  Did everyone talk to Suzanne more than I did? “He’s too mature in some ways and still a little kid in others. But he’ll work it out. He has such a good heart. He’ll find his way.”

  “That’s exactly how I felt about you,” she said.

  “How did you end up taking me to Nachash?” The question came out seemingly of its own accord.

  “The school psychologist suggested it. You were having some trouble with the other kids. She said Nachash had worked with a few children in the area and heard that he had been very helpful.”

  It was a classic recruiting technique. You keep an eye out for troubled kids you could mold. That doesn’t mean that’s what it was. Maybe Nachash really did get his Zen off by helping kids.

  “I didn’t approve of all the fighting, but he told me that you were a special boy and that all you needed was a little confidence. And he was right,” my mother added.

  I wondered if she offered unconditional approval to balance my father’s unconditional disapproval? No, that wasn’t fair to her. She had a heart that gave itself without question. How else could she love my father for all these years?

  “Are you okay, Mom? I know it’s not easy with Dad sometimes.”

  “He’s hard on you, Gib, and I’m sorry for that. He doesn’t know how to tell you how much he loves you. That’s who he is. But your father takes good care of me. You never have to worry about that,” she said.

  I levered myself up and kissed her on the forehead. It cost me a slash of pain across my gut, but it was worth it.

  “It’s good to have you home, dear. I’m sorry it’s because you’re not feeling well, but it’s a treat to have you with us,” she said.

  I knew she meant it. Maybe she meant it enough for both of them. I washed down two Vicodin that my father had reluctantly given me. He was old school. He thought Tylenol was enough for any injury. I almost didn’t give him the satisfaction of asking, but my gut convinced me otherwise. I drifted off to sleep and dreamed of Caroline. We were high school versions of ourselves making out in the bed I was sleeping in. A cold draft woke me. And in my groggy state I thought I saw Caroline come through the bedroom window.

  “Nice room. Do they keep it as a shrine to your arrested adolescence?” she asked.

  I looked around the room and registered for the first time that it was almost untouched since my high school days. Movie posters, record collection, the all-in-one stereo system that had seemed state-of-the-art, they were all here.

  “This is actually my father’s room, he’s letting me sleep here,” I said.

  “Your father was never an adolescent. He was born an adult.”

  “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”

  “You see what happens when I’m not there to take a bullet for you?”

  “You were there.”

  “Nice move with the message to Pratt. You’re sorry you left him in the dark and apologizing for being inferior. He remembered what you had told him at that pet shop word for word,” she said.

  “Did you figure it out before or after you gave him the message?”

  “What’s your guess?” she said.

  “It would have been easier if you had shot your ex yourself.”

  “Why would I do that?” she said.

  “He kills me and you can rat him out to his superiors for killing an American agent in cold blood and end his career. I kill him and you’re rid of him for good. You’re scary.”

  “Or maybe I saved your life again,” she said.

  “So you’re either ice cold or warm and fuzzy, and I’ll never know.”

  “I could try to convince you.” She climbed on top of me and gave me a long slow kiss. It would have made me melt if my gut wasn’t on fire. I tried not to let on.

  “It’s okay. We’ll take a rain check,” she said and snuggled in beside me.

  “Your gear is in the closet. You don’t need to go through the motions.”

  “I’m not. I feel comfortable with you,” she said.

  “Irresistibly sexy would be a better compliment.”

  “In our work you have to be too many different people. Feeling comfortable to be yourself, that’s rare.”

  “You barely know me.”

  “If you’re good at this job, you size people up quickly. I know who you are.”

  “And who is that?” I said.

  “A good person who wants to do the right thing and is finding it harder and harder to figure out what that is.”

  “It’s the thought that counts?” I said.

  “Intentions matter. We try to do good things and we can’t help doing bad things. When you can no longer tell the difference, that’s when you’re in trouble.”

  “Or you can tell the difference and you don’t care,” I said.

  “Even worse.”

  “It’s okay to do terrible things as long as you mean well? That’s a little easy, isn’t it?” I said.

  “No, it isn’t. It isn’t at all,” she said.

  Curled up in a ball in my narrow high school bed, she seemed almost vulnerable. “I’m guessing you didn’t come here to cheer me up. What do you need?”

  “I have a plan.”

  It was one time I was absolutely sure I believed her. She always had a plan.

  • • • • • • • • • •

  I spent a little over forty-eight hours at my parents’ house and almost lost my mind. I spent most of the time looking at the webcams at the Big House. I was trapped in the past and I watched as my future went on without me. And worse, I couldn’t be there to protect them.

  Caroline had assured me that Pratt and the boys were still doing everything they could to keep my identity a secret, but as good as they were, they couldn’t erase every trace I’d ever left, and sooner or later Westfield would find one. The only saving grace was that I didn’t see Rowan around.

  By the second morning, I was determined to leave. My mother brought breakfast up to me as I was getting dressed. She had been bringing me three meals a day and trying to push snacks on me in between. My father had prescribed bed rest, and my mother was every bit as determined as Mrs. Levine when it came to following his directions. “Your father said you’d try to leave. He asked that you wait for him to see you at lunch.”

  “Since when does Dad come home for lunch?” My father wolfed a brown bag lunch my mother packed and got back to his patients. That was his routine.

  “He can’t work the same hours anymore. He’s not as young as he used to be.”

  The thought of my father as anything other than a human-like indestructible machine was hard for me to digest. I almost suggested that she check his fuel rods. “Please tell him I’ll take a rain check for lunch.”

  “He said you’d say that, too. He has to at least change your dressing. He’ll be here at one.”

  I couldn’t leave my mother to the mercy of my father’s disappointment, which he had counted on. At exactly one, I heard his measured tread up the stairs to my room. He got right to business. “You were always a fast healer,” he said as he examined the wound. “But be careful. You won’t be full strength for a while yet.”

  “I’ll be fin
e. It’s hard to hurt yourself writing.”

  “Gibbons, am I a smart man?”

  “I’m going to assume that’s rhetorical,” I said.

  “Given the nature of your injury, the scars from past wounds, your muscle tone, not to mention your new companion, I can be fairly certain that whatever you’re involved in does not involve penmanship.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, as usual.”

  “I’m not disappointed. I’m frightened. I knew no son of mine would waste his career on those guidebooks for martial masturbation. If you didn’t want to share what you were doing, it was none of my business, but your work is clearly dangerous and your ability to defend yourself is severely impaired.”

  My father actually felt concern for my welfare. It was wrapped in his usual mix of pride and egocentricity, but it was there nonetheless.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. I can’t. Staying here puts you and Mom at risk. And I can’t do that any longer.”

  “Tell me one thing,” he said, as he bandaged me up. “Are you good at what you do?”

  “One of the best.”

  He nodded to himself and handed me a bag full of antibiotics and pain meds. “Take care of yourself, Gibbons. It would kill your mother if something happened to you.”

  “But you’d get over it.”

  “Someone would have to take care of her.”

  How could I argue with his logic? I hugged him before I left. I don’t know if I did it because I wanted to or to see what he would do. He hugged me back.

  • • • • • • • • • •

  I parked in town and came at my house from the side. I wanted to be able to see the back and the front from a single vantage point. The front door and the bay window in the back were the easiest points of entry. That’s where any surveillance would be looking. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t have eyes on the sides of the house as well, but they would definitely watch the front and back.

  Half a block away from my house, one of the neighbors had built a tree house. Their sons were long grown, and it provided perfect visibility. With my binoculars, I could also see into a lot of my neighbors’ windows, which made me wonder if the parents who built the tree house hadn’t inadvertently turned their boys into Peeping Toms.