Internal Threat Read online

  Just then, a rumpled man bounded in front of the car. Ashley slammed on the brakes. “Matt!” she shouted.

  Matt’s head whipped up to see the man holding a gun in one hand and a badge in the other.

  “Weatherly! Get out of the car!” the man shouted.

  “What do I do?” Ashley yelled at Matt.

  “I’m thinking! Hold on.” Before he could utter another word, Ashley rammed the gear shift into second and stepped down on the gas pedal.

  With the roar of a lion, the Porsche ploughed into the detective, who slammed forward on to the car’s hood as his gun clattered to the side.

  “I said, hold on!” Matt screamed at Ashley.

  “I’m sorry! I had to do something!”

  The detective rolled off the car and on to the ground in a daze.

  “Is he okay?” asked Ashley.

  “I think so.” Matt saw her reach for the shifter again. “Just stop,” he commanded.

  He threw open the side door and grabbed the man by his shirt. Weakened arms put up a feeble defense before Matt tossed him into the back seat.

  “Go!” he told Ashley.

  The Porsche streaked out of the alley, headlights flipping on to illuminate its flight.

  The man groaned in the back seat. Matt grabbed the badge that had flopped out of his hand. “Detective David Larsen,” he read the ID accompanying it.

  “Matt Weatherly,” answered the detective woozily, touching his forehead to find it bleeding. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Well, Detective, it looks like you found me.”

  Twenty-Three

  John had, of course, seen and heard everything. The button camera and microphone on Matt Weatherly’s shirt continued to feed him video but he was forced to glance up from the palm-sized monitor resting in his hand and shove it into his backpack.

  It was time to move again.

  Hurrying down the back stairs of the warehouse he had been perched atop, he exited into a back alley and hopped on to the Hayabusa. Keying the ignition switch, the bike’s engine purred to life. John planted his feet and rammed the accelerator.

  By his calculations, he had about eleven minutes to get to the next destination. With three servers down, he was getting closer to his goal. A beep on his Bluetooth earpiece informed him that a text message had come in from his employer. He ignored it.

  He, or she, could wait.

  “Weatherly,” John said into the mouthpiece beneath his chin. He gave Matt a street address before commanding, “Maintain radio silence until you reach your destination.”

  The quiet was not really necessary, except to give John a few minutes to think. Although the framework of his plan had remained intact, large pieces of it had already been sheared away. First the Kane woman, although she seemed to be proving her use as Weatherly said she would. And now this detective. In John’s experience, more people usually equaled more problems.

  He felt anger boiling in his belly and tamped it down. Emotions were useless. It was a lesson he had learned long ago.

  As a young child in the creaking confines of an East Dallas tract home, he had entered the world as a helpless, crying infant. He was determined not to leave it the same way.

  His mind shot back for a moment to his shabby boyhood bedroom, with its stark bare walls and the uncomfortable bed he would spend his nights lying in, quaking with fear. Soft footfalls in the hallway would be followed by the deep creek that indicated his father’s weight outside the door. When the knob turned, music would switch on downstairs. It was his mother raising the stereo to drown out the sounds of the beatings. John’s father was a man defeated by his limitations who compensated for his lack of success by attacking those who were weak around him. When the first round with John’s mother was done, leaving her broken and crying, his anger would then turn to his son.

  “You worthless sack of shit,” the man would say, punctuating the sentence with a slap to John’s face. “I been out there humping all day and what do you do? Nothin’.”

  “Yes, sir,” John would mumble. He had learned early on that it was futile to point out that the scant economic contribution a young child could make to the household. Once, when he had dared to, it had earned him a broken collarbone.

  These were the only memories of his first nine years. Finally, when he was ten years old, John discovered the secret to his future success.

  Hungry from a lack of dinner, John made the mistake of entering the kitchen while his father rummaged through the refrigerator after a particularly bad day at work.

  “Sorry,” John offered quietly and tried to back out of the room.

  “The hell you doin’ down here?” the man roared.

  “Nothing,” the boy mumbled.

  His father pounced on him, grabbing John by his frayed shirt collar. “Nothin’,” he said, smacking John’s shoulder. “That’s what you is – nothin’. That’s all you’ll ever be.” He shoved the boy back into the cabinets.

  Inside of John, a wall that had been built inch by inch over the past decade suddenly rose to its full height. There were no tears, no whimpering, only his ice cold stare. His father noticed it and decided to beat some sense into him. “Cry like the little baby you are, son,” he ordered.

  “No,” John replied in a voice stronger than any he had used before.

  After an hour, John lay broken and bleeding but had uttered no sound and shown absolutely no emotion. His father at last gave up and stumbled out of the room in frustration.

  It was a performance repeated many times over John’s teen years. However, the boy had learned that there was strength in numbness. It allowed him to never become attached to anything, never let things that distracted other people keep him from his goals.

  Unexpectedly, John discovered another world that seemed to follow his increasingly strict internal rules; that of grammar. After spending most of his life listening to the uneducated babble of his father, he came upon a dog-eared copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk & White in the school library. Other students considered the book only a reference guide to gain better grades. To John, however, it became like a Bible. Its clear rules on the English language showed him a way to rise above his upbringing. The principles of grammar opened the doorway to a path of self-worth.

  When he met with a young military recruiter in his senior year of high school and learned of its regimented lifestyle, John sensed he had found a place where his personality would serve him well.

  He left without bothering to say goodbye to the parents who would be glad to be rid of him and began his basic training. His superiors quickly noted the young man’s skills with a sniper rifle and assigned him to active duty. Within a year, he was being dropped into classified hot zones as a dependable killing machine. He slaughtered without hesitation or remorse, and it was this utter coldness that sustained him where others had been broken from the horrors of duty.

  Deep in the Congo jungle, he had received word from his command post that his mother had died. The funeral was being held in three days.

  “I would like to go,” John told his surprised commander.

  When he arrived back in the States, John headed straight for the Wal-Mart at the center of his town. He collected his necessary supplies and then walked to his old home. Gazing upon it with fresh eyes, it seemed more depressing and rundown than he even remembered. Picking the lock with ease, he entered into the living room and sat down on the faded yellow couch which had resided there his whole life.

  It was four hours before his father stumbled through the front door. When he snapped on the light, he gasped in surprise.

  “John,” he whispered.

  “Hello, father,” John said, keeping his hands folded in his lap.

  “I didn’t think you would come,” the man said, reaching for a nearby chair to steady himself. “The funeral was this afternoon. You missed it.”

  “I know,” John replied cryptically.

  His father studied him and nodded. “I, uh, wou
ld offer you a drink but I ain’t got nothin’.”

  John said quietly, “There is no such word as ain’t. The correct sentence would have been, ‘I do not have anything’.”

  “I actually don’t drink anymore. Or even get angry much,” his father continued, oblivious to John’s correction. “Been going to a church group for almost six months now. Seeing your mother get sick…” he stammered, wiping at his eyes. “Well, John, I’ve found the Lord. Or maybe he found me at long last. Ain’t that wonderful? That’s where I been just now – prayin’.” Silence filled the room. He walked over to John and placed his hand gently on the young man’s shoulder. John stared at it as if it were an insect. “Can you forgive me, son?”

  John looked up into his father’s pleading eyes for a long moment. At last, he simply said, “No.”

  In a lightning flash movement, John grabbed his father’s wrist and snapped it. A knife materialized in his hands, winking light as it sliced an arc across the old man’s throat. Blood gushed as his father’s legs buckled beneath him and he slid to the floor.

  “You are going to die here,” John told his father. He glanced at his digital watch. “In about six minutes, you will bleed out.” He knelt down until he was level with the man’s face. “I have become quite adept at hiding bodies, not that anyone will really miss yours.” His father’s mouth worked in a silent scream. John watched until the last trace of the man’s life drained away.

  The rest of the work was efficient and easy; nothing John had not executed before. When he was finished, and the final scrap of his father had disappeared from the planet, John paused to sit on his childhood bed. It was there that he heard something he had not heard in nearly fifteen years.

  The sound of his own laughter.

  The Hayabusa swung around a tight corner and John kicked it to a stop. He had reached his destination quicker than he had anticipated. His ears picked up the rhythmic thumping of music. Shaking his head in annoyance, he gazed at the building housing the next server with distaste.

  Another thing that was not going according to plan. He just hoped Weatherly would be able to handle it.

  Twenty-Four

  Detective Larsen blinked open his eyes. The world swirled just out of reach, then disappeared and was replaced with glittering blackness. Somewhere in the part of his brain that was still functioning normally, he understood that his head had knocked the blacktop painfully hard and was likely suffering from a concussion. “Get up!” the sensible voice there urged, concerned that his brain was bleeding internally. He powered himself to the top of his subconscious but was yanked back down again.

  Here, in the soft warmth of the darkness, memories flickered.

  Larsen was carrying something bulky and pliant in both of his hands. He looked up to see that it was a beautiful woman. Sweet, wonderful Julie, cheeks still flushed with excitement from their wedding ceremony.

  “Isn’t this breaking and entering, Officer Larsen?” she was teasing him.

  “Technically. But I figure we can get away with it,” his smile was instantly covered in a kiss.

  They were at the front door of his house. Not the home as he knew it now with its cracked walls and cobwebbed corners, but fresh and new, the week before they moved in. He carried Julie effortlessly across the threshold and placed her down gently on to the hardwood floors.

  “It’s really ours?” she marveled, turning in a circle to admire the architecture.

  “Yup, we close escrow tomorrow.”

  “Two bedrooms,” she smiled, stepping towards him.

  He nodded in agreement. “One for us, one for my baseball card collection.”

  She tapped him playfully in the chest. “It’s perfect for a growing family.”

  “Growing?” he feigned surprise. And there were her lips again. He could taste the faint trace of mint that seemed to forever linger on them. If he could, he would live in this moment forever.

  The world snapped harshly to black.

  The living room faded back into focus. The sparkle of newness was gone, replaced by the clutter of a home that had been lived in for a few years. Larsen was standing by the fireplace, a highball glass in his hand. He drained the last of the bourbon swirling around the ice cubes, the comfortable numbness starting to take its hold.

  “I just want you to know I’m always here for you,” Julie was saying tenderly behind him.

  “How could you be?” he was snapping, the alcohol already starting to slur his words. “You don’t know what I saw today. Every day. What I lock away so I don’t blow my head off.”

  “You can’t keep drinking like this. It’s not healthy. Especially with us trying…”

  Larsen sighed. “So it’s about that now, huh?”

  “The doctor said-”

  “I know what he said,” Larsen growled. “And the doctor before him. And the doctor before him, too. It’s my fault. I get it. Maybe nature has been telling us something these past couple of years. Did you ever think of that, Julie?”

  “What are you saying?” Her face flushed with anger.

  “I’m saying who would want to even bring a kid into this world, anyway?”

  “I would,” she said firmly.

  She stalked out of the room, leaving Larsen to reach for the bottle he had hidden in a nearby cabinet.

  The world was shifting again and Larsen had a sick sense of where it would end up. He begged his subconscious not to take him there, yet he knew it would not comply. It was the same scene that haunted his dreams when he managed to find the time to sleep.

  It was during Larsen’s first year working Homicide after making detective grade, a time when lesser men had been broken by the cruelty they witnessed. His drinking was at a fever pitch. A shot of whiskey in his morning coffee. A surreptitious sip from a water bottle filled with vodka at the crime scene. The twelve pack of Coors Lite when he finally reached home after a fourteen hour shift.

  His marriage had become a hollow shell of what it once was. Julie had gotten a job at a health insurance company and spent her days detailing and filing a never-ending document avalanche of people’s maladies and misery. In the rare times when they found themselves at the dinner table together, the conversation was strained and the smiles were few. His wife had long since given up the hope of them having a child together. Their salaries did not allow for the costly fertilization treatments. Their lovemaking, when it occurred, was more about briefly escaping the gloom that each dragged with them through the door each night.

  The day that Larsen dwelled on now had been particularly difficult. He had come from a hovel deep in Echo Park where a father had slaughtered his entire family with an electric knife, then took the blade to his own throat. Larsen tried to obscure the blood-soaked images from his mind by stopping at his favorite bar before coming home. He stumbled in at nearly midnight to find Julie in the kitchen. Her arms were crossed and her eyes lethal. On the table in front of her were a small cake and a cream-colored envelope next to a tiny bundle in gift wrap.

  “Is it my birthday?” Larsen asked in confusion.

  “No. Not that you would remember if it was.”

  “Then what is all this?”

  “It was a celebration. Or so I tried to convince myself.”

  Larsen moved towards the table, flipping up the lip of the envelope. The word “Congratulations!” stared up at him in gold cursive. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “I know that now,” she replied. It was then that Larsen noticed the pair of bulging suitcases at her feet.

  “What are those?” he demanded.

  “I’m leaving you, David.” She reached into her pocket, pulling out her car keys. “I’m not coming back. Ever.”

  “Just stop, okay? I don’t know what this is but you’re making too big of a deal out of it. Maybe if you would just take some time-”

  “Time?” she shouted, startling him. “I’ve waited years! Years for you to crawl out of that bottle and you just can’t do it.” Tears appeared at
the corner of her eyes. “Or you won’t do it. I don’t know which and, frankly, I don’t care anymore. I have other things to think about now.”

  “Julie, wait. I-” he fumbled for the right words but his head was slow and clunky. “I can change,” he finally offered. “I promise.”

  “I’ve heard that before. But I can’t hear it again.” She picked up the suitcase. “I don’t want to see you. Do you understand me? Wherever we go, you are not invited.”

  She turned on her heels and exited the back door, slamming it behind her. The car engine started and coughed before pulling out of the driveway. Yet, Larsen did not really hear it. Instead, something else echoed in his ears.

  Julie had said, “we.”

  He reached for the envelope, ripping it open this time. His heart sank as he read the front again – “Congratulations!” Picking up the carefully wrapped gift, he pulled wildly at the paper to reveal a white coffee mug.

  He turned it around and found the writing that shattered his soul into a thousand tiny fragments:

  “#1 Dad!”

  The inside of Weatherly’s Porsche was suddenly materializing in front of him again. He could feel the blood crusting on his forehead. The pain was receding, however, and Larsen finally began to grasp his surroundings. He groaned, then looked to his left.

  Weatherly’s son met his eyes and gave him a wan smile. Larsen recalled his name was Luke. “You’re gonna be okay,” Luke said. “My dad’s good at taking care of people.”

  Larsen bit back the retort that was at the end of his tongue. There was something about the kindness in the child’s eyes that instead made him say, “I’ve got a kid around your age.”

  “Oh yeah? Where do they go to school?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked away. The instinct that had plagued Larsen the whole night was back again. Something was not right about this entire situation. And he knew that his night was far from over.

  Twenty-Five

  “This can’t be right,” Matt said, staring through the windshield.