Lisa Unger - Smoke

“Or it found him,” said Jeffrey.

Grimm nodded. “He was ripe for recruitment. Injured, likely depressed, no family or personal connections. Rhames was orphaned at the age of ten when his parents died in a house fire that he escaped; he went to live on a working farm belonging to his uncle and aunt.

“By all accounts, he was happy enough there. With a genius-level IQ, he did well in school, but was a bit of a loner. Unfortunately, a year after Rhames arrived, his aunt and uncle died in a house fire that the boy escaped.”

Jeffrey and Lydia exchanged a look. They knew too well the childhood signs of psychosis. Arson was a big one.

“Suspicious? Yes,” said Grimm, reading their faces. “But there was never any evidence that Rhames had started those fires. He had no other history of violent or aberrant behavior. He was sent to a state-run orphanage, the money and the land left to him by his parents and his uncle kept in a trust for him until he turned eighteen and was emancipated from the system. It was a fair amount of money for a young man, enough to go to college and start a life. But he chose to join the Marines.

“He excelled in the Corps. I mean, he was the best of the best. He became a part of an elite unit that doesn’t officially have a name. And his activities, until his honorable discharge in 1981, are classified. There aren’t many people who know what he did during that time.”

“Okay, so he went into the Marines, was discharged in 1981. He was off the radar for a while, you have no idea what he was doing until he showed up selling arms in 1994. He was arrested and went to prison for two years. After which point he went to work for Sandline. He was injured and almost killed but somehow recovered and wound up running The New Day?” asked Jeffrey.

Grimm shook his head. “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘runs’ it exactly,” he said, leaning forward. “It’s a big multinational organization, with tentacles reaching into a number of different business arenas, real estate, the entertainment industry, banking. Rhames isn’t a businessman. He’s a tactician, a security specialist, a soldier. We don’t know enough about his military career but we do know that he’s trained in what the military refers to as ‘psych ops,’ the ability to manipulate and control an enemy through brainwashing and mind games. What he does for the organization is unclear.”

“So who shot him in Kosovo?” asked Jeffrey.

“Who shot him, how he survived and got back to Florida are all unknowns. The unofficial word was that Sandline wanted to be rid of Rhames,” said Grimm. “He was unpredictable and becoming a liability; they doubted his loyalty. A couple of security breaches led the higherups to suspect someone was selling codes and information. But he knew too much to just serve him his walking papers.”

“So they arranged for his termination, but he survived?” asked Jeff.

Grimm nodded.

“Why haven’t they come after him again?” asked Lydia.

“Who says they haven’t? They just haven’t succeeded in getting to him. In fact, you three got closer to him than anyone ever has. As you know, his security is very tight.”

It was clear now why Rhames had spent so much money on his security system.

“I just walked in through the front door,” said Lydia.

“What did you see in there?” asked Grimm.

“A guy with a lot of personal power giving desperate people some hope, some spaced-out looking people in tunics, and a couple of big bald guys in leather.”

“On security monitors I saw people in five-point restraints, on feeding tubes, wide awake,” said Jeffrey.

Grimm didn’t seem surprised. “We’ve been on you since that night.”

“Why?” asked Jeffrey. “What do you want from us?”

“I’m glad you asked,” said Grimm.

I was sitting out here, waiting to go in when the van pulled up. Look. It’s still there.”

They’d parked the GTO on Fourteenth Avenue and walked up Sixty-Sixth Street, stopping at the corner across from Clifford Stern’s residence. Jesamyn looked at her watch.

“How long ago?” she asked.

Dylan shrugged. “Like five or six hours.”

“Just sitting there all this time. Why?”

“Maybe they’re trying to make sure he stays put. At first, I thought maybe they were going to head in there… kill him, take him, whatever. But then I thought, why? If what you say is true and The New Day is trying to frame Stenopolis, they need his testimony.”

“Right.”

“I waited here for hours and then I came to find you.”

“Why didn’t you just call me?”

He looked down at his feet. “I tried; you didn’t answer,” he said. “And I was afraid you wouldn’t come if I just left a message for you to meet me here.”

She looked at him, then back at the van. “You didn’t go across the street to see what was going on in there?”

He shook his head, turned his eyes on her. “I didn’t want to give myself up, in case they were looking to make some kind of a move.”

“And you didn’t see anyone exit the van?” Another shake of the head. She didn’t see anyone in the driver’s seat.

“You should have kept trying to call me and stayed with the van. Who knows what happened here in the hour or so you were gone?”

He didn’t say anything, just pulled his sheepish face. He’d used this as an excuse to spend time with her. He brought her here not to help Mount but to hold her in his thrall, create a drama they could share. If he’d called, she would have come but she would have had her own car, could have come and gone as she pleased without him. He was such a child.

“So what are we doing here?” she said. “I mean what are we going to accomplish here?”

“Let’s call it in, let’s call the van into 911. Suspicious vehicle.”

“What does that do?”

“It ties The New Day to Clifford Stern, gives some plausibility to the story you told Detective Bloom.”

She held his eyes for a second. It wasn’t a bad idea. It was effective and by the book. Or they could call Bloom directly; they weren’t breaking any laws by being there. They were both off duty, just passing through the neighborhood that just happened to be where Clifford Stern, the man who’d implicated her friend and partner, was probably watching television like he hadn’t just ruined somebody’s life.

“Why didn’t you do that before?”

He showed her his palms.

“Did you run the plate?”

He opened his mouth to answer when two flashes of light lit up Stern’s bay window. Two sharp pops followed; then another blue flash. Another pop.

“Oh, shit,” said Dylan, grabbing her arm hard and pulling her back from the corner. The sound of gunfire, even muffled, was unmistakable to both of them.

“Oh, my God,” said Jesamyn, reaching for the Glock at her waist as she instinctively dropped to a crouch. But no one exited the front door of the row house; there was no movement from the van. The street remained quiet, no one popping their heads out windows, no new lights coming on.

“Call 911,” said Dylan.

She hesitated, wanting to go up there herself. He put a hand on her arm.

“If you don’t, and someone just killed Clifford Stern, you’re the first person on the scene. Do you realize what that looks like?” he said, reaching into the pocket of her coat for her phone.

She looked at him. He was right. It would look like she shot him. She had no business being there, no legitimate reason for being in the vicinity. Something in her went stone cold.

“That’s crazy,” she said uncertainly. “My gun hasn’t been fired. Ballistics test would prove I hadn’t shot him.”

He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. There was something she hadn’t seen very often in his eyes. Fear. “Aren’t you the one insisting that The New Day framed Stenopolis, that somehow they managed to plant blood and fingerprint evidence to implicate him?” he whispered fiercely. “Protect yourself, Jesamyn. Protect both of us. For Ben.”