Enemy Closer, page 21
His idea was simply to go alone to the pub where Alice and I worked later tonight to see if she was there. If she was, end of mystery. If not, we’d figure out where to go from there. He had me halfway convinced, until I found a hiccup in the plan.
“And if the brothers Marchand are there again, looking for me?” I asked. “They’ll recognize you and that’s that.”
“Oh yeah. Fuck. No, no. They’ll know you’re not dumb enough to go there. No way.”
“Maybe they’re keeping an eye on the pub in case I am dumb enough.”
“All right, fine. Let’s hear your next great suicidal idea.”
I stared into space for a few moments and then snapped my fingers. “Duh! I’m such an idiot. I’ll ask Jim to find out.”
“Whoa, what?” Luke protested as I found my coat and started digging my mangled phone out of the pocket. “You’re calling the FBI?”
“Not the whole FBI. Just Jim. And not right this instant. I have to get this stupid thing plugged in and see if it even still works.”
“I’m not crazy about you reporting back to him now that we’re together.”
I paused in my study of the cracked surface of my phone to look up at him. “You think I’m gonna tell him I’m with you?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m not! And even if I did, what could he do about it? He doesn’t have any authority here.”
“I’m sure he could work something out with MI5.”
“To do what, arrest you?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“I thought we established that’s not the FBI’s objective.”
“You said that, yes.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
He shrugged.
“This is all irrelevant,” I concluded. “If I don’t call him at three o’clock today, he’ll send in the cavalry. Since I already told him about what happened yesterday—before I ran into you,” I interjected in response to his raised eyebrows, “he’s probably already got some info for me about Alice. All we have to do is wait until this afternoon.”
I plugged my phone into the laptop and tried to turn it on, but either it was fully drained of batteries or I’d permanently broken it by dropping it onto frozen concrete. I left it alone for half an hour, busying myself with internet sleuthing once more, and then tried again. With relief I felt the phone buzz feebly and begin to power up; but I was soon disappointed. The entire top half of the screen was useless, a chaotic mosaic of colors and bright, white cracks. I stared at it, wondering if I could convince Luke to buy me a new phone, until a notification appeared on the phone app in the lower righthand corner. I opened the app.
“Hey, I have a voicemail,” I announced.
“From who?”
“I can’t tell… the top half of the screen is too mangled to make anything out.”
Luke came to look over my shoulder. He studied the screen for a few seconds and then carefully pressed on a green square of pixels near the top.
“What was that?” I asked.
“The speakerphone button, I think. You go through a lot of phones, don’t you?”
Interrupting my retort was a scratching, wordless noise issuing from the speaker. I turned up the volume in time to hear the first words of the message.
“Tegan… It’s Alice. You’ve got to go to the Parthenon exhibit at the British Museum at noon tomorrow. I’m—I’m supposed to tell you not to bring anyone with you, and not to tell the police. I think they’re—”
The message ended abruptly.
I met Luke’s eyes and saw my own confusion and shock mirrored in his expression. He found his voice first and asked, “Was that really her?”
“It sounded like her.”
“She didn’t sound very scared.”
“When is tomorrow? Is tomorrow today?” I asked him, staring at the ruined screen and willing it to show me when the voicemail had been left.
“If it’s today, you need to book it. It’s already eleven.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m gonna find out where they’re keeping her,” he said, his tone precluding any argument.
* * *
Alice’s brief message was stuck on repeat in my head for the entire journey on the Tube from Luke’s house to the British Museum. Predictably, the Saturday crowd was swollen due to the holidays; I could hardly squeeze my way into the Parthenon exhibit, let alone stand still and scan the crowd for familiar or otherwise notable faces.
The more I played her words over in my mind, the more fear was injected into her voice. I was at once thrilled to know she was alive and terrified I might not be able to save her. I doubted seriously whether I’d be able to comply with the demands of whoever had her.
My only hope, and hers, was that Luke would be able to track her down and snatch her away while the Marchand brothers—and we were both convinced that’s who we were dealing with—were distracted with me.
So, I milled around the exhibit, colliding with other tourists every few seconds, perpetually in someone’s way. Around ten minutes after noon, I saw a spot open up at the southern end of the room in the tiny space between a replica column and the wall, a perfect place to stand still without being pushed this way and that. I gained the spot ahead of another woman heading straight for it, shrugging apologetically at her as I leaned against the column. From my new vantage point, I could see the length of the room and was finally able to start people watching.
Another fifteen minutes passed uneventfully. Every person who paid me more than passing attention was carefully scrutinized; but I never spotted the brothers from the pub, and no one approached me. I’d been lost in the store enough as a child to know the best way to be found is to stand still, so I resisted the urge to wander around the exhibit.
The crowd began to thin at the bottom of the hour, but having fewer faces to scan didn’t help me at all. I was beginning to think I’d have to shell out another Tube fare to come back tomorrow when a tiny voice behind me made me jump.
“Etes-vous Anna?”
I turned, forgetting I was supposed to be Tegan, and saw a boy about nine years old on the other side of the column. Before I could answer, he pushed a piece of paper into my hand and dashed away, grinning triumphantly.
It was a carefully folded museum map, and tucked inside one of the folds was a key with the number 35 etched into it, presumably corresponding to a locker I’d have to find. Someone had drawn a line in pencil from the Cloak Room, around the Great Court, and into a grayed out area that was almost certainly off limits to the likes of me.
“Great, a scavenger hunt,” I muttered to myself, stuffing the key into my pocket and setting out for the Cloak Room.
I found locker 35 and opened it to find a black shopping bag containing a blue blazer and an ID badge belonging to someone named Marge Henry, an Administrative Assistant. Hoping against hope that I wasn’t about to make myself a suspect in her murder, I threw the blazer over my arm and pocketed the badge.
I followed the map as far as I could without the badge, which turned out to be a “Staff Admittance Only” door beyond which the penciled-in line continued into the bowels of the museum’s administrative area.
On went the blazer, which was way too big for me, and the door unlocked at a swipe from my stolen badge. Without the benefit of walls and doors marked on the map, I had to take my best guess at where to go from there. This led me to an exterior door labeled “Receiving Bay B.” No badge-swipe was needed to open it, so I let myself in and closed the door behind me.
I found myself at the top of a short flight of metal stairs overlooking a two-bay garage. Yellow emergency lights illuminated the space enough for me to make out another staircase leading to a matching door on the other side of the far bay. Even though this area was obviously not for tourists, it was clean and tidy. It was also completely devoid of life.
In each corner of the room facing the closed garage doors was a sleek, black security camera. I leaned back to look into the nearest one, wondering if anyone was looking back at me.
“Hello?” I called, my voice echoing back to me from the far wall. “Is anyone here?”
The only part of the room I couldn’t see was directly beneath my feet. In the opposite corner, I could see a space about five feet tall underneath the landing in front of the door; I assumed the same space was underneath my staircase. The stairs were treads only, no risers, which meant anyone standing in that space would be able to grab my feet as I walked down the stairs. The thought gave me a thrill of fear that nearly sent me scurrying back through the door; but, reminding myself I’d tumbled down a staircase before, and a much longer one at that, and lived to laugh about it, I steeled myself and stepped onto the first stair.
Nothing happened and I reached the concrete floor of the bay without incident, tension stiffening my movements. At least I’d been half-right: As soon as I turned to look under the stairs, a man emerged from beneath them gun-first, pointing it at my head. The light reflected off the barrel of a suppressor attached to a large handgun, but it was too dim for me to discern any more detail. I didn’t need any more light to recognize the man.
“Who was the candle for?” I asked in French, slowly raising my hands to show they were empty.
“My brother. Your little girlfriend stabbed him in the neck with a steak knife, and I had to leave him there.”
I couldn’t suppress a smile. “She is a handful. Where is she, by the way?”
“Shut up. Turn around.”
I half-obeyed, asking as I turned, “Can you at least tell me if she’s okay?
For that I received a heavy blow to the back of the head. Though I held on to consciousness, I was completely disoriented, sinking to my knees to keep from falling. He kicked me over the rest of the way, pressing his knee into my back while he zip tied my hands together.
A moment later, sunlight flooded into the bay as the garage door opened. I was hauled to my feet only to be tossed into the back of a van that pulled into the bay. My assailant climbed in after me, and I began to roll nauseatingly back and forth across the floor of the van as we sped away.
I labored onto my back and sat up, fighting to keep my grilled cheese down. From my angle, pressed against the driver’s side of the van, I couldn’t see who was at the wheel. I could, however, see the occupant of the passenger seat.
Though my vision was a bit blurry from the blow to the head, and he was studiously gazing through the windshield, there was no mistaking Luke’s profile.
▼
If you enjoyed Enemy Closer, please leave a review on Amazon so I can sell more books and keep writing novels instead of getting a real job.
You can also sign up for my email list on my website, which means you’ll get my newsletters on the rare occasions when I feel like creating one, and you’ll be among the first to know when new stories are about to drop. You’ll also receive a free copy of 2.15.2020, the prequel to Enemy Closer that explains how Anna found herself in that cabin in Colorado in the first place.
▼
Coming Soon from AK Weller
Thanks to her boss, shady FBI Agent Jim Camposanto, Analyst Anna Bowman finds herself the target of two different international criminal cabals. With no obvious way out of the mess she’s just beginning to understand, she’ll have to drag the truth out of her secretive boss and a hitman who just can’t seem to shake her. Will Anna ever get to relax and feel safe with her beloved German Shepherd, Dude, or will she become addicted to Camposanto’s dangerous games? Anna Bowman’s misadventures continue in House on Fire.
Anna Bowman and her older sister, Emily, just wanted a fun night out to celebrate Anna’s twenty-fifth birthday. While enjoying some much-needed time away from their significant others, the sisters accidentally pick up a new friend at a casino in Oklahoma. When a tongue-in-cheek plan to burn down each other’s houses and collect the insurance money falls into the wrong hands, Anna and Emily will have to band together to stop an arsonist… if they decide they want to. Find out who’s left standing on Friday the 14th.
▼
Also by AK Weller
The Institute: A Short Story
High school junior Miguel thought getting an underage drinking charge would derail his life at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, but when his new friends draw him into their world of pranks and mischief, he'll discover there's a lot more going on at NMMI than he ever imagined. Will Miguel maintain his hard-won GPA and graduate with a diploma that will open doors from him wherever he wants to go, all while learning how to mix a little fun into his busy life? Will his new friends have his back when things start to get spooky?
This story was written during the Women’s Thriller Writers Association™️ Short Storyathon™️
AK Weller, Enemy Closer
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“And if the brothers Marchand are there again, looking for me?” I asked. “They’ll recognize you and that’s that.”
“Oh yeah. Fuck. No, no. They’ll know you’re not dumb enough to go there. No way.”
“Maybe they’re keeping an eye on the pub in case I am dumb enough.”
“All right, fine. Let’s hear your next great suicidal idea.”
I stared into space for a few moments and then snapped my fingers. “Duh! I’m such an idiot. I’ll ask Jim to find out.”
“Whoa, what?” Luke protested as I found my coat and started digging my mangled phone out of the pocket. “You’re calling the FBI?”
“Not the whole FBI. Just Jim. And not right this instant. I have to get this stupid thing plugged in and see if it even still works.”
“I’m not crazy about you reporting back to him now that we’re together.”
I paused in my study of the cracked surface of my phone to look up at him. “You think I’m gonna tell him I’m with you?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m not! And even if I did, what could he do about it? He doesn’t have any authority here.”
“I’m sure he could work something out with MI5.”
“To do what, arrest you?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“I thought we established that’s not the FBI’s objective.”
“You said that, yes.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
He shrugged.
“This is all irrelevant,” I concluded. “If I don’t call him at three o’clock today, he’ll send in the cavalry. Since I already told him about what happened yesterday—before I ran into you,” I interjected in response to his raised eyebrows, “he’s probably already got some info for me about Alice. All we have to do is wait until this afternoon.”
I plugged my phone into the laptop and tried to turn it on, but either it was fully drained of batteries or I’d permanently broken it by dropping it onto frozen concrete. I left it alone for half an hour, busying myself with internet sleuthing once more, and then tried again. With relief I felt the phone buzz feebly and begin to power up; but I was soon disappointed. The entire top half of the screen was useless, a chaotic mosaic of colors and bright, white cracks. I stared at it, wondering if I could convince Luke to buy me a new phone, until a notification appeared on the phone app in the lower righthand corner. I opened the app.
“Hey, I have a voicemail,” I announced.
“From who?”
“I can’t tell… the top half of the screen is too mangled to make anything out.”
Luke came to look over my shoulder. He studied the screen for a few seconds and then carefully pressed on a green square of pixels near the top.
“What was that?” I asked.
“The speakerphone button, I think. You go through a lot of phones, don’t you?”
Interrupting my retort was a scratching, wordless noise issuing from the speaker. I turned up the volume in time to hear the first words of the message.
“Tegan… It’s Alice. You’ve got to go to the Parthenon exhibit at the British Museum at noon tomorrow. I’m—I’m supposed to tell you not to bring anyone with you, and not to tell the police. I think they’re—”
The message ended abruptly.
I met Luke’s eyes and saw my own confusion and shock mirrored in his expression. He found his voice first and asked, “Was that really her?”
“It sounded like her.”
“She didn’t sound very scared.”
“When is tomorrow? Is tomorrow today?” I asked him, staring at the ruined screen and willing it to show me when the voicemail had been left.
“If it’s today, you need to book it. It’s already eleven.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m gonna find out where they’re keeping her,” he said, his tone precluding any argument.
* * *
Alice’s brief message was stuck on repeat in my head for the entire journey on the Tube from Luke’s house to the British Museum. Predictably, the Saturday crowd was swollen due to the holidays; I could hardly squeeze my way into the Parthenon exhibit, let alone stand still and scan the crowd for familiar or otherwise notable faces.
The more I played her words over in my mind, the more fear was injected into her voice. I was at once thrilled to know she was alive and terrified I might not be able to save her. I doubted seriously whether I’d be able to comply with the demands of whoever had her.
My only hope, and hers, was that Luke would be able to track her down and snatch her away while the Marchand brothers—and we were both convinced that’s who we were dealing with—were distracted with me.
So, I milled around the exhibit, colliding with other tourists every few seconds, perpetually in someone’s way. Around ten minutes after noon, I saw a spot open up at the southern end of the room in the tiny space between a replica column and the wall, a perfect place to stand still without being pushed this way and that. I gained the spot ahead of another woman heading straight for it, shrugging apologetically at her as I leaned against the column. From my new vantage point, I could see the length of the room and was finally able to start people watching.
Another fifteen minutes passed uneventfully. Every person who paid me more than passing attention was carefully scrutinized; but I never spotted the brothers from the pub, and no one approached me. I’d been lost in the store enough as a child to know the best way to be found is to stand still, so I resisted the urge to wander around the exhibit.
The crowd began to thin at the bottom of the hour, but having fewer faces to scan didn’t help me at all. I was beginning to think I’d have to shell out another Tube fare to come back tomorrow when a tiny voice behind me made me jump.
“Etes-vous Anna?”
I turned, forgetting I was supposed to be Tegan, and saw a boy about nine years old on the other side of the column. Before I could answer, he pushed a piece of paper into my hand and dashed away, grinning triumphantly.
It was a carefully folded museum map, and tucked inside one of the folds was a key with the number 35 etched into it, presumably corresponding to a locker I’d have to find. Someone had drawn a line in pencil from the Cloak Room, around the Great Court, and into a grayed out area that was almost certainly off limits to the likes of me.
“Great, a scavenger hunt,” I muttered to myself, stuffing the key into my pocket and setting out for the Cloak Room.
I found locker 35 and opened it to find a black shopping bag containing a blue blazer and an ID badge belonging to someone named Marge Henry, an Administrative Assistant. Hoping against hope that I wasn’t about to make myself a suspect in her murder, I threw the blazer over my arm and pocketed the badge.
I followed the map as far as I could without the badge, which turned out to be a “Staff Admittance Only” door beyond which the penciled-in line continued into the bowels of the museum’s administrative area.
On went the blazer, which was way too big for me, and the door unlocked at a swipe from my stolen badge. Without the benefit of walls and doors marked on the map, I had to take my best guess at where to go from there. This led me to an exterior door labeled “Receiving Bay B.” No badge-swipe was needed to open it, so I let myself in and closed the door behind me.
I found myself at the top of a short flight of metal stairs overlooking a two-bay garage. Yellow emergency lights illuminated the space enough for me to make out another staircase leading to a matching door on the other side of the far bay. Even though this area was obviously not for tourists, it was clean and tidy. It was also completely devoid of life.
In each corner of the room facing the closed garage doors was a sleek, black security camera. I leaned back to look into the nearest one, wondering if anyone was looking back at me.
“Hello?” I called, my voice echoing back to me from the far wall. “Is anyone here?”
The only part of the room I couldn’t see was directly beneath my feet. In the opposite corner, I could see a space about five feet tall underneath the landing in front of the door; I assumed the same space was underneath my staircase. The stairs were treads only, no risers, which meant anyone standing in that space would be able to grab my feet as I walked down the stairs. The thought gave me a thrill of fear that nearly sent me scurrying back through the door; but, reminding myself I’d tumbled down a staircase before, and a much longer one at that, and lived to laugh about it, I steeled myself and stepped onto the first stair.
Nothing happened and I reached the concrete floor of the bay without incident, tension stiffening my movements. At least I’d been half-right: As soon as I turned to look under the stairs, a man emerged from beneath them gun-first, pointing it at my head. The light reflected off the barrel of a suppressor attached to a large handgun, but it was too dim for me to discern any more detail. I didn’t need any more light to recognize the man.
“Who was the candle for?” I asked in French, slowly raising my hands to show they were empty.
“My brother. Your little girlfriend stabbed him in the neck with a steak knife, and I had to leave him there.”
I couldn’t suppress a smile. “She is a handful. Where is she, by the way?”
“Shut up. Turn around.”
I half-obeyed, asking as I turned, “Can you at least tell me if she’s okay?
For that I received a heavy blow to the back of the head. Though I held on to consciousness, I was completely disoriented, sinking to my knees to keep from falling. He kicked me over the rest of the way, pressing his knee into my back while he zip tied my hands together.
A moment later, sunlight flooded into the bay as the garage door opened. I was hauled to my feet only to be tossed into the back of a van that pulled into the bay. My assailant climbed in after me, and I began to roll nauseatingly back and forth across the floor of the van as we sped away.
I labored onto my back and sat up, fighting to keep my grilled cheese down. From my angle, pressed against the driver’s side of the van, I couldn’t see who was at the wheel. I could, however, see the occupant of the passenger seat.
Though my vision was a bit blurry from the blow to the head, and he was studiously gazing through the windshield, there was no mistaking Luke’s profile.
▼
If you enjoyed Enemy Closer, please leave a review on Amazon so I can sell more books and keep writing novels instead of getting a real job.
You can also sign up for my email list on my website, which means you’ll get my newsletters on the rare occasions when I feel like creating one, and you’ll be among the first to know when new stories are about to drop. You’ll also receive a free copy of 2.15.2020, the prequel to Enemy Closer that explains how Anna found herself in that cabin in Colorado in the first place.
▼
Coming Soon from AK Weller
Thanks to her boss, shady FBI Agent Jim Camposanto, Analyst Anna Bowman finds herself the target of two different international criminal cabals. With no obvious way out of the mess she’s just beginning to understand, she’ll have to drag the truth out of her secretive boss and a hitman who just can’t seem to shake her. Will Anna ever get to relax and feel safe with her beloved German Shepherd, Dude, or will she become addicted to Camposanto’s dangerous games? Anna Bowman’s misadventures continue in House on Fire.
Anna Bowman and her older sister, Emily, just wanted a fun night out to celebrate Anna’s twenty-fifth birthday. While enjoying some much-needed time away from their significant others, the sisters accidentally pick up a new friend at a casino in Oklahoma. When a tongue-in-cheek plan to burn down each other’s houses and collect the insurance money falls into the wrong hands, Anna and Emily will have to band together to stop an arsonist… if they decide they want to. Find out who’s left standing on Friday the 14th.
▼
Also by AK Weller
The Institute: A Short Story
High school junior Miguel thought getting an underage drinking charge would derail his life at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, but when his new friends draw him into their world of pranks and mischief, he'll discover there's a lot more going on at NMMI than he ever imagined. Will Miguel maintain his hard-won GPA and graduate with a diploma that will open doors from him wherever he wants to go, all while learning how to mix a little fun into his busy life? Will his new friends have his back when things start to get spooky?
This story was written during the Women’s Thriller Writers Association™️ Short Storyathon™️
AK Weller, Enemy Closer
