J. Huss - PANIC

Ford looks down at the drives I handed him and then grabs a bag on the floor near his feet and fishes out his laptop. He looks at me for a second as he pushes the flash drive in a USB port and waits for the files to appear. He studies it as Spence and I wait in silence. I’m not sure I want to know what’s on that drive and Spencer is navigating his way through a nearby town looking for a drugstore, so we sit quietly.

“What’s on the iPhone?” Ford asks after Spencer parks and gets out to go buy me some aloe vera sunburn spray.

“A video of that Abelli guy admitting he was gonna kidnap me and sell me to a guy in Columbia for half a million dollars.”

Ford’s eyes squint down into killer asshole mode.

“And Jon getting the life beat out of him and getting shot in the head.”

His eyes soften at this. “Did you see it?”

I nod.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “No one should have to see that.” He watches me struggle with the tears and then leans down a little. “It’s OK to feel bad about it, Rook. Even if he was evil. It’s still OK to feel bad.”

“Jon saved me at the end. He saw me hiding down in the grate hole. He pretended like he was talking to those guys, but he was really talking to me. He apologized.”

Ford stares at me for several silent seconds and then shakes his head and lets out a long breath. “Is it over? Can you let go now?”

I nod. “Even though he’s not here to witness it, I’ve decided to accept his apology.” I shrug my shoulders and start to cry. “I don’t want to hang on to that stuff anymore, Ford.”

Ford scoots around to the edge of the seat and pulls my head into his lap. “You’re allowed to do that, you know. It’s OK to forgive him and let it go.”

Spencer opens the door and jumps in the van, handing Ford the bag of spray. “You OK, Blackbird?”

“No, not yet,” I say as I sniffle my nose back under control. “But I will be if we can use that stuff to get Ronin out.”

“Lie back, Rook,” Ford says quietly as Spencer hands him a bag.

“I got you some shorts, too, Rook. Just cheap drugstore leftovers from summer, but it’ s better than sitting in your panties.” He winks down at me. “Not that we mind, you know, but I’m sure Ronin would not appreciate us driving you all over the Midwest in your panties.”

Ford hands me the shorts as Spencer takes us back on the road. I wiggle into them, which is not easy considering I’m sitting on the floor of a van behind some seats and my legs are burning like hell, but I manage after several embarrassing seconds of Ford watching.

“Put your foot up here,” he says, pointing to his lap.

I do.

He shakes the can of aloe vera and I wince as the fine mist hits my skin and then the cold spray settles and relief washes over me. “Ohhhhhhh,” I moan. ‘That feels so much better I can’t even tell you.”

Ford smiles and lifts my leg up to spray the underside. “Give me the other foot, Rook.”

We repeat the whole procedure and I moan again. “Thank you, Ford. You’re a genius.”

He shrugs and then he and Spencer exchange a conspiratorial look.

I’ve seen that look before. Back when they started thinking about taking Jon out.

“What are you guys doing? You have a plan I need to know about or something?”

“Rook—” Spencer talks this time. Which means this is a delicate subject. I know them all pretty well by now. And whenever they need to give or get information to or from me, they take turns based on what kind of conversation it needs to be. When bluntness is needed, Ford takes the lead. When the talk involves personal things it’s supposed to be Ronin. And when someone needs to keep things light because I might freak out, that’s Spencer’s cue to do the talking.

But Ronin’s not here, so I guess Spencer is the personal guy now too.

“—we really need to know the whole story before we can do anything with this information, OK?”

I just lie down on the puffy sleeping bags, enjoying the relief from the spray and the coolness of the synthetic fabric. “What exactly do you need to know?”

“Everything,” he says. “We need for you to start at the beginning. Like Rook’s story, day one. And we especially need to know why your ex-husband had this shit in his possession, what his role was…” He hesitates and lets out a long breath. “What your role was. And how all these people are connected. If we get Ronin out, you have to understand, we’re missing a pretty important part of the team, OK? He’s the cleanup, he’s the whole reason we get away with this stuff. Yeah, I make good plans, and yeah, Ford’s good at covering his tracks. But this is the FBI, Rook. They do not take kindly to being fucked with and they ask a shitload of fucking questions, no matter how good the plan is. A shitload of questions. And our front man is incarcerated. You understand this?”

I swallow hard. “I do, Spencer.”

“So, here’s what we’re gonna do.” He stops to look at Ford and Ford nods at him to continue. I guess Spencer really is the logistics guy. “We’re gonna go to Ogallala, Nebraska, lie low and get your story from beginning to end, and then figure it out. Sound good?”

“What’s in Nebraska?” I ask.

“The safe house. And we definitely need it because these guys will pick us up as soon as we go home. We talked to Clare before we left and she said the guy who came to talk to Ronin twice before he was arrested was named Abelli. This Abelli guy is our main problem, because it looks like he was involved in this trafficking stuff and this means he’s desperate to keep his name out of things. Desperate men are very dangerous.”

I wait for him to finish it, but the seconds tick off and he keeps silent, so I have to ask. “What do you mean by that?”

He lets out another long breath. “We could all end up in prison or dead, Rook. Those are the facts we’re dealing with now.”

I stretch my legs out on the sleeping bags and close my eyes. “I’m not gonna think about that, Spencer. Ronin’s in jail because of me and I told him I’d fight for us. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m done running, these people are all guilty, there are dozens of women I know of personally who are wrapped up in this trafficking stuff. And I talked myself into leaving without them the first time. I rationalized it. I’m just one single tragic girl, what can I do? And that was probably the right decision back then because I was all alone.”

I stop for a moment and Ford turns to look at me.

“But now I’m on the team, so I’m out of excuses.”

Ford and Spence take turns driving through the night and by mid-morning the next day we’re at Lake McConaughy in Nebraska pulling into a campground.

“The safe house is in a campground?” I ask Spencer as I strain to see out the window. It’s pretty boring sitting in the makeshift back of a van on the floor, not even able to gaze out at the passing countryside.

“Not just any campground, Rook. My campground.” He swings the van around a circular driveway that allows him to pull up next to the main office and parks the van. “Wait here.”

I jump up into Spencer’s seat so I can at least sit in a real chair for a few minutes. “Spencer sure does own a lot of businesses.”

“Yeah,” Ford replies. “He’s not into holding onto money. He spends it as fast as he makes it.” And then he stops to look up at me. “He likes to own property and businesses. Some grand scheme of his.” Then he absently looks out at the campground. “He tried to get me to come deer-hunting with him out here a few years back.” I try to picture Ford deer-hunting and then we both burst out laughing. “It’s like he had a mental breakdown that day. I dunno.” And then he looks at me again and gets serious. “I do not hunt .”