Lisa Unger - Smoke

A squad car raced past the alleyway, lights flashing but siren off. He jumped and crouched behind the Dumpster, hitting his head on its metal side. He was shivering now from fear and from the cold and from pain. He could barely believe that his life had come to this, that he was squatting in an alley hiding from the police. He tried to think of the moment, the pivot on which his life had turned. He could pinpoint it exactly: when he’d threatened Trevor Rhames and The New Day. But no. Maybe it was earlier than that. Maybe it was the day he fell in love with Lily Samuels, a girl he’d never seen in the flesh until tonight. If the girl he’d seen had been her at all. If he’d even seen a girl. He couldn’t be sure now; the memory of her felt foggy and indistinct.

He tried to think about his options but the pain in his head was so bad he thought he might be having a stroke. He wished he were having a stroke, that he would drop dead right there-then at least he wouldn’t have to deal with the disaster his life had become. What was he supposed to do now?

He’d just wanted to talk to Clifford Stern, wanted to understand why this stranger had implicated him in a crime he didn’t commit. He’d believed he could convince the guy to go to the police with the truth: that The New Day had paid him or threatened him to be an eyewitness. There was no other explanation. But he should have known not to go there, should have known that they’d be waiting. Now the abyss he’d fallen into was deeper and darker than it had been hours earlier, and it had been pretty fucking deep and dark.

He had five hundred dollars in cash in his pocket and a five-shot Smith & Wesson. He was a fugitive, wanted now for two murders. Within hours, his face was going to be all over the television, in post offices, airports, bus and train stations. He looked at the cell phone in his pocket. Who could he call? Theo? Jesamyn? Lydia Strong? No. The first thing Bloom would do was subpoena his cell phone records; anyone he called could be accused of aiding and abetting. It struck him strangely, hard to the gut, that he was alone now. He’d been lonely before, maybe for most of his life; he was used to that. But he’d never been alone like this, never felt like every connection he had to his life had snapped and he was lofting away into the sky. He could feel himself getting farther and farther away from Earth.

He took a deep shuddering breath, stood. He figured there was only one thing left to do.

Basically, Grimm wanted to use them. Lydia had pretty much figured this the moment he pulled up a chair. Otherwise, rather than sitting and having a friendly little chat about Trevor Rhames and The New Day, he probably would have arrested them. He could easily do that and hold them for as long as he wanted under the Patriot Act.

“We can’t go in there,” Grimm told them. “They’ve got lawyers and political connections up the yin-yang. We’ve been in there before and found nothing.”

“After Rusty Klautz escaped,” said Lydia.

“That’s right.”

“So what makes you think there’s anything there now?” asked Jeffrey.

“These satellite photos,” he said, pointing to Jeffrey’s laptop screen, “which I’m not even going to ask how you got your hands on, reveal buildings that don’t exist on the property survey.”

“They weren’t there when you went in the first time?”

“No,” said Grimm with a shake of his head. “We also have new information. Are any of you familiar with the topography of Florida?”

Jeffrey nodded. “It’s karstic, meaning that it’s basically a porous limestone bedrock over a high water table.”

“Right. And beneath Florida is a system of caves formed by water running through the pores of that limestone, many of which are submerged. Cave-diving and spelunking heaven.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Lydia, not sure she liked where this was going.

“According to our source, they’re using some of the dry caves to hide weapons. Not just guns.”

“Who’s your source?” asked Lydia.

“Well, that’s the other thing,” said Grimm, shifting in his seat and putting his eyes on Lydia. “We’ve lost contact. We lost contact weeks ago.”

“You sent someone to infiltrate,” said Jeffrey, with a frown. “Because the kid we pulled out of there? He was fried, totally divorced from reality and from his personality.”

Grimm nodded. “In most cases, we train our people to resist those techniques.”

“In most cases?” asked Lydia.

“In this case, there was no time. It was a matter of opportunity.”

“So there’s an agent in the compound somewhere? Doesn’t that give you cause to go in?” asked Lydia.

“It’s more complicated than that. Let’s just say-” He paused as if searching for the right words. “ Rules have been broken. It comes from on high that it’s hands off The New Day. But some of us didn’t think that was such a good idea.”

“So now you’ve lost someone that you can’t get out without admitting that you’ve been investigating a group that was supposed to be immune to investigation,” said Jeffrey.

Grimm didn’t answer, just glanced back at the computer screen. Lydia watched Jeffrey; there was a muscle working in the side of his jaw and he had leaned forward, his forearms resting on his thighs. He had turned a hard look on Grimm. He didn’t believe what Grimm was telling them, or not all of it. Lydia felt the same edge of uncertainty. An uneasiness had burrowed its way into her gut. They both knew that with the new anti-terrorism laws the FBI didn’t really need cause to raid the New Day Farms. There was some other reason they didn’t want to go in there.

“You want us to find your agent and bring him out,” said Dax.

“Since you’re in the neighborhood and were planning a visit anyway.” There was a blankness to Grimm’s face and his voice, a strange nebulousness to his whole being, as if you might forget what he looked like shortly after you’d left him. Suddenly Lydia didn’t like him or what he was asking them to do. It seemed off , crooked even for the FBI. “And in return, we won’t arrest you for any of the variety of things we could arrest you for right now.” He smiled. It wasn’t pretty.

“So who’s your man?” asked Jeffrey.

“Our man is a woman,” said Grimm, looking down at his shoes. “I believe you all know her. Her name is Lily Samuels.”

Lydia drew in a sharp breath of surprise. “Oh my God,” she said, standing up with the shock of it; both Dax and Jeffrey turned their eyes to her. A thousand things that hadn’t made sense suddenly did. “You used her,” said Lydia. Her voice was quiet but her tone was white hot with anger. “She came to you for help, trying to understand what happened to her brother and you used her.”

She thought of the message Lily had left her. “I really need your help. I am out of my league. Big-time. I-I just really need to talk to you,” she’d said. Man, she wasn’t kidding.

“It wasn’t like that, Ms. Strong,” said Grimm, holding up a hand. “Not at all. Lily Samuels came to us with a proposition. We took her up on it. Otherwise, she would have gone in on her own. We thought we could offer her some protection while pursuing our own agenda. We were wrong.”

“What was her proposition?” asked Jeffrey.

“She was convinced that The New Day had something to gain through Mickey’s death. She wanted to know what that was. In return for our support, she would provide evidence against The New Day and write an exposé that would tear the lid off the organization and send its political supporters scattering like roaches.”

“Allowing you to go in and get Trevor Rhames,” said Dax.