John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

The boy’s face appeared in the triangular opening of the tent. “Who is it?”

“Maybe it’s just a deer,” he hoped aloud.

“But I heard a car,” Jeremy said.

Harvey’s stomach fell. He hadn’t really believed that it was a deer, anyway.

Jeremy crawled out farther. “It’s them, isn’t it?”

Keep it together, Harvey told himself. Losing it now wouldn’t help a soul.

“Harvey?”

“Shh!” This time, the hiss was emphatic. More than anything else, they needed silence. Silence and invisibility. A trip back in time to undo his decision to get involved in this crap would be good, too.

“I’m scared, Harvey.”

What part of “Shh” did the kid find confusing?

Jeremy kept coming. He crawled all the way into the open, and then over to Harvey, where he crouched next to the camp chair. He clutched Harvey’s arm.

He expects me to protect him, Harvey thought. What a stupid move that was. Harvey Rodriguez had room for exactly one important person in his life, and that was Harvey Rodriguez himself. If Jeremy-a stranger-thought for an instant that he would risk even momentary discomfort for some larger, nobler cause, then he was woefully mistaken.

The sounds of movement grew steadily clearer. Within a minute, he could hear voices. A few seconds later, he could hear what the voices were saying.

“…no goddamn sense.”

“When was the last time this job made sense to anybody?”

“So I gotta pay for it? This shit just ain’t right.”

Both voices were male, and both sounded neither young nor old-a conclusion confirmed just a few seconds later when Harvey got his first glimpse of them. Thirty yards away, they both wore jeans and T-shirts, and as they waded toward the tall grass, they headed directly toward the spot where Harvey had discovered the unconscious boy.

Jeremy’s hand tightened on Harvey’s arm. “It really is them, isn’t it?” he squeaked.

“Don’t move,” Harvey said. With the sun rising over the tent, into the eyes of the visitors, there was a chance that they could remain unseen if they just didn’t move. These guys weren’t moving with any sense of danger, which meant that they were likely to accept their surroundings as is. It’s human nature to accept a first impression as normal-making it possible to literally hide in plain sight. But thousands of years of evolution still had not erased the instinctive alarm triggered by movement.

Both men had a wiry athletic look about them, a clear source of pride for the one closest to Harvey. His T-shirt was at least two sizes too small, straining the fabric at his biceps and pecs. He was also the one who carried the folded gray body bag under his arm. It bothered Harvey that he could recognize it for what it was.

“Lie down,” Harvey whispered. “Very, very slowly.” As he spoke, he wrested his arm free from the boy’s grasp and pressed down on his shoulder. Jeremy did not resist. He lay flat on his belly, his arms tucked under his chest.

With the kid stable on the ground, Harvey edged his own butt to the front of the camp chair and pressed his shoulder blades against the sling backing. The effect was to lie flat, his front to the sky, though his eyes never moved from the visitors. Warnings against movement notwithstanding, a smaller target was always better than a larger one.

“So where is he?” asked Body Beautiful.

“I know what you know,” the other one said. He was as powerful looking through his shoulders as the other one, but wore his T-shirt looser. And his hair was longer-over his ears but not over the top. “He’s here somewhere.”

“Sayin’ it don’t make it so. Jerry said to go to the end of the parking lot and then straight till you’re almost in the water. That’s what he said, and that’s where we are. Show me a dead kid.”

His butt on the ground now, Harvey could still see the tops of the visitors’ heads above the swaying grass.

“Then he’s got to be here somewhere.”

“Maybe somebody moved him,” Muscles said.

“No way. Somebody found him, this place would be lousy with cops. It’d be all over the news. They’re already ape shit over the shit at the school. Can you imagine the shit if one of the kids was found dead?”

Muscles nodded. “Have it your way. How’d a dead kid get up and walk away?”

A long silence followed as they continued their search. As the sun rose higher, the details of these men’s appearance grew clearer, and Harvey had the terrifying thought that they were cops. They looked like cops. It was the military bearing, the focus on the task at hand. His already-pounding heart picked up more speed. Cops trying to kill a kid, with him stuck in the middle. He was so screwed.

“Hey, Billy,” Long Hair said. “Look at this over here.” By Harvey’s calculation, he was standing at the exact spot where he’d found Jeremy. “Look at this grass. It’s all matted.”

Harvey tried to recall what he’d left behind, but he pulled up a blank. He’d been concentrating too hard on the kid.

Billy joined his partner. “And what fine matted grass it is. Where’s the body?”

“Christ, I don’t know. Maybe animals dragged it off.”

“And where’s the blood?”

For the first time, Harvey considered bolting off into the woods and taking his chances. The kid was the one they wanted. If he ran…

…they’d still hunt him down and kill him. Who was he kidding?

“I’m beginning to think maybe he was never killed,” Long Hair said.

A long pause. “You can’t just stop there.”

“Think about it. Explains a lot.”

Billy was genuinely lost. “You’re saying he was wounded and wandered off.”

“Maybe. Or maybe…” He shifted his gaze directly toward Harvey’s campsite. “What the fuck is that?”

In unison, they drew firearms from underneath their T-shirts and pointed them at Harvey.

“You there!” Long Hair shouted. “Don’t you fucking move.”

“Ah, shit,” Billy whined. “Who the hell is he?”

Singular, Harvey thought. I’m the only one they see.

“Stand up!” Long Hair said. “And be really fucking careful if you don’t want to die.”

Harvey’s head raced faster than his heart. Dying was nowhere on his list of things to do today.

“Harvey…” Jeremy whined.

He ignored the boy. As he stood, he pressed down on Jeremy’s head for leverage, as if it were a rock. It was important that the kid stay out of sight. If they saw him, they’d shoot him. And if they shot the kid, what incentive did they have to let Harvey go on breathing? Jeremy needed to disappear, and since that wasn’t possible, he needed to keep out of sight.

“Hello,” Harvey said, as brightly as he could. He recognized the pistols in the man’s hands as 9-millimeter Berettas, standard military issue. Police departments hadn’t gone to that particular weapon in most cases, certainly not here in Westmoreland County.

“What are you doing there listening to us?” Billy asked.

Harvey pegged him as the hothead of the two, the one to be talked down first. “It’s hard not to listen to a conversation in an open place,” he said. “It’s quiet out here.” As he spoke he took a couple of steps forward, hoping that if they couldn’t see the boy, they wouldn’t make the connection. He also moved to his left to break their sight line away from the kid in case he moved in the background.

“Why are you hiding there?” Billy asked.

Harvey forced a chuckle that he hoped sounded more genuine that it felt. “Y’all heard what you were sayin’, right?” he quipped. “Wouldn’t you think about stayin’ outta sight if that’s what you heard?”

Billy raised his arm perpendicular to his body and drew a bead on Harvey’s chest. Harvey recognized the look. It was over for him.