Brett Battles - The Collected

It took him a moment, but finally he got it to pop free. It wasn’t the only thing he suddenly felt in his hand. He pulled it up so he could take a look. In addition to the bolt was a black piece of plastic that looked very much like part of the button that activated his emergency beacon.

He slipped his finger back into the container. It was part of the button, all right. He could feel where the bolt had pressed against it and broken it off. He wiggled his finger around and found that the entire button felt loose.

Was the beacon still on?

He cursed under his breath. He knew the container had been a tight fit for the bolt, but he hadn’t had a choice. He played with the button for a moment, hoped the beacon was still active, and closed his leg again.

Clenching the bolt in his fingers, he lay back down and closed his eyes.

It’s fine , he told himself. It still works.

Whether that was true or not, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it, so he focused on trying to figure out why he was here. Once more, he was unable to come up with a satisfying answer.

At some point he drifted off, and found himself standing on the beach in Santa Monica, Liz beside him.

“Don’t leave,” she told him.

“I’m just going for a swim.”

“Stay here.”

“Liz, I’ll be right there,” he said, pointing at the water. “You can watch me the whole time.”

He swam out through the waves and stopped just past where the swells began. He treaded water in a circle, turning back to the shore, intending to give Liz a wave.

Only the shore wasn’t there. Just more ocean.

“Liz?” he called out. “Liz?”

There was no answer.

“Hey, new guy. You awake yet?”

Nate shook off his sleep and rose on an elbow.

“New guy. Can you hear me? Hey!”

For a few seconds, Nate thought Lanier was talking to him. Then he remembered the person who’d been escorted in that morning.

He moved over to the door and leaned down by the vent.

“I think it’s a trick,” Berkeley said. “No one’s down there.”

“There is someone,” Lanier said. “I heard the door.”

“You’re right,” Nate said. “They put him in a room down here by me.”

“Have you heard him?” Lanier asked.

“No. Nothing since he arrived.”

“I still think it’s a trick,” Berkeley said.

“New guy,” Lanier whispered loudly. “Can you hear us?”

No answer.

“New guy.”

Silence.

Harris entered the suite and found Romero sitting in his wheelchair behind his desk, writing.

“Well?” his employer asked, without looking up.

“The shooter has arrived. He’s a little banged up.”

Romero’s head shot up. “Why?”

“He apparently wasn’t in a cooperative mood when he was taken.”

Romero thought for a moment, then waved a hand in the air. “As long as he’s alive, that’s all that matters. So, they’re all here now.”

“Yes, sir,” Harris said.

“And the schedule?”

“Set. Tonight I’ll have dinner with Curson, and first thing tomorrow morning we begin.”

“The camera? You haven’t forgotten?”

“It will all be recorded as you requested.”

“Good.” A smile appeared on Romero’s face. “I want to see everything immediately after the session.”

“Of course. That won’t be a problem.”

The day before, as Liz listened to her brother’s message telling her he and Orlando would be heading back to L.A. that evening, an idea began to form in her mind. She’d been feeling frustrated just sitting there alone, waiting for others to find Nate. That wasn’t the way she operated. She was far from helpless and was used to tackling problems head on. Not that this was the normal kind of complication that usually came up in her life, but if she and Nate were going to have a future together, she needed to learn how to deal with it.

The problem was that when Jake and Orlando returned, she knew her brother would tell her as little as he could afford to. He may have seen it as a way to protect her, but to Liz it was unacceptable.

She needed to be looking for Nate, too. To do that, she needed to know the same things her brother did. Then the idea hit her-a way of putting herself firmly in the loop. She thought it through as thoroughly as she could, and when she was ready, she wrote her brother a note and left the house.

The first part of the plan was deception. She had to make sure Jake thought she was out of the way. Nate had once shown her how easy it was to lock on a cell phone signal and track its location. She had no doubt her brother would do just that when he realized she was gone. So to convince him that she had left, she drove all the way to San Diego, and spent the night in a small motel called The Otter House.

Early the next morning, she spotted a delivery truck behind the building. While the driver was filling a vending machine, she put her phone on silent mode, and tucked it into the truck’s glove compartment. Though she didn’t have the training her brother and her boyfriend had, she was the smartest of the three, and remembered everything she’d heard them talk about. Putting the phone in the truck meant that during the day, her location would seem to be moving around, like she was driving aimlessly through the city, thinking.

Her location deception set, she headed back north, arriving in Jake’s neighborhood at a quarter after two. Since she was driving his car, she parked on a side street not too far away, then snuck back and input her code into the gate security pad. She eased the gate open and peeked inside.

No cars in the driveway.

She walked quietly over to the house and looked through the windows as best she could, but the ones along the front were not designed to provide much of a view inside.

I’m sure it worked , she told herself. It had to.

She thought for a moment. If they were already gone, she was wasting valuable time. But if they were still here?

Just say you forgot something, and keep the conversation to a minimum.

She took a deep breath, put on her best distressed face, and let herself in the front door.

The house was as quiet as it had been the day she’d first arrived.

“Hello?” she called out. “Anyone here? It’s Liz.”

Dead silence.

As she walked through the living room, she began to worry that maybe Jake and Orlando hadn’t come back yet. If that were true, she wasn’t any better off than she’d been the day before. She scanned the living room. Everything looked exactly like it had been when she’d walked out the door. She glanced over at the dining room table. Even the note was still there.

Hold on.

She walked over to take a closer look. She had left the note facing up, and near the center of the table. Now it was flipped down, and a bit off to the side.

Someone had been here.

Moving into the kitchen, she checked the trash can. There were food wrappers and a couple of takeout boxes.

So not just one person. At least two.

Jake and Orlando.

Her hopes began to rise.

She all but ran through the living room, and down the hall to the linen closet on the other side of the bathroom.

Please, please…

Inside on the left was a hidden moveable panel. She had seen Nate open it only once. It had been on her first visit as he’d shown off the house to her. He’d let her in on quite a few secrets that day, probably more than he realized.

She opened the panel, activated the touch screen, and navigated to the sound recording control window. The presets she’d checked off were still in place: VOICE ACTIVATED,COMPLETE HOUSE. She opened the log of recordings. There were dozens, some brief, some considerably longer.