Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (22 page)

It was so quiet on the streets that I heard the first sirens as a fleeting whine on the horizon as I lifted off. Orienting so that the helpful blue arrow was pointed the right way, I opened up, tearing across the sky. It took a full five minutes of flying before I saw the first emergency vehicle driving towards the carnage. There weren’t many, and I couldn’t imagine how they would deal with what they found. I saw the street in my mind’s eye, trying to pretend the burning in my eyes was from the wind.

The airport was spread below me, but it didn’t take much looking to find the small airstrip where the jet was parked. Stellian’s mouth hung agape as I landed next to the plane, clods of asphalt tearing up as I settled. “We’re going home,” I said, barely looking at him as I climbed the stairs.

Enjoying the palliative effect the plush leather seat had on my myriad of aches and pains, I checked the dead man’s phone, found the email app, and sent Bubu a quick message to let him know I was alright. My laptop was still open on the seat next to mine, though reaching for it felt like high level resistance training. Opening the web browser, I took the first steps towards finding my brother.

I found the first sign of him in an article from the Modesto Bee, just after he returned from the second Gulf War. He had earned the Purple Heart during a skirmish. The next sniff was on a tech blog linking him to a group of investors, which led to the founding of his first company, Falstaff-tech.

It was a call out to our dad, of nights long ago when he’d sit at the table after dinner, crack open the big Riverside Shakespeare and read to us. “The whole meaning of life is in here, boys,” he’d say. “One day I’ll find it.” Then he’d take us through the tales of old Hal, King of England, or the bloodshed of Coriolanus, or the madness of Macbeth. Jason and I would sit there, entranced as he brought the characters to life, altering his voice to differentiate between them, even feminizing his voice to portray the Ophelias and Desdemonas, wielding his fork like a sword when the protagonists fought.

Jason’s first company had focused on telephony, hardware for meeting rooms in particular, and he’d been bought out for a handsome amount; almost two billion dollars. He fell off the grid for a few years after that, marrying some woman, an Ohio girl named Luanne Andersson. An image popped up announcing the birth of a baby girl, and I found more pics on a Facebook page of what looked like a gender reveal party for a second child, also a girl.

He went dark again, probably enjoying his wealth and family. While I was testing arrows in the California desert, and subsequently getting thrown in prison, Jason was reentering the tech world with his battery initiative, working in conjunction with some of the Korean carmakers. I found him living in Connecticut with his main base of operations in Manhattan.

It was early afternoon in the Netherlands, which I think translated to sunrise on the East Coast. His home phone rang once, twice, before a female voice answered.

“I need to speak to Jason,” I said.

“He’s unavailable,” the woman said. She had an elegant voice, not what you’d expect from a housekeeper. It had to be his wife.

“It’s important,” I said.

I could sense her on the verge of hanging up, her frustration palpable across the miles between us.

“How did you get this number?”

“This is his brother,” I said. “I need to talk to Jason.”

The woman was silent.

“I know, you don’t believe me. How about you just humor me and put him on. Just for a second so he can tell me to go to Hell himself?”

“This is Dale?”

I realized I was nodding, though I didn’t know why.

“Yes,” I said and suddenly my voice broke. “Please, let me talk to my brother.”

As I fought off the tears, someone walked up to her. It was Jason, asking her who was calling.

“Please,” I said, but she was off the phone.

“Talk to him,” I heard her say in the distance.

I heard the phone change hands, suddenly terrified.

“Hullo?”

He sounded tired, nervous.

“Jason?”

He breathed as response.

“Jason, is that you?”

“Dale.”

I hung my head low, putting the phone on my lap a moment, unsure where to start.

“Dale?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Jason, you’re in troub-“

“They told me you were dead,” he said, his voice calmer than it should have been. “They said you tried to escape and a plane crashed.”

So that was the narrative. Big Bad Blackjack tried to escape and got all those good people killed. I wondered what they’d say about Amsterdam. Blackjack made a perfectly good villain all mad and made him kill a bunch of innocents.

“Then they came back and said you joined another group of villains. They said you were out there committing random acts of destruction.”

Scratch that, I hadn’t coerced Brutal into attacking those people. I used a high explosive arrow to try and murder him resulting in the loss of a city block and who knows how many lives. Goddamn you to Hell, Haha.

“It’s not true,” I said.

“Well, of course not,” he said. “Jesus, what a relief. Where are you? You know, they’re looking for you.”

“In more trouble,” I said.

I heard him cuff the phone and speak to someone in a muffled voice.

“Who is that?”

“Huh?”

“Who were you talking to?”

“That’s Luli,” he said. “She’s chastising me for giving you the third degree.”

I laughed, “I like her already.”

“You would,” he said. “She’s a good girl,” he added, for her favor. “Anyway, are you okay?”

“No,” I said. “And neither are you.”

Jason held the line a moment, muffling the phone while talking to someone.

“What happened,” he said.

I wanted to tell him everything, from the beginning, from the first day he had left, but there was no time. If Brutal was moving on him, it would happen fast.

“You’ll read about it in the morning papers. Basically, a psychopath threatened to kill you and your family if I didn’t meet him and-“

“Jesus,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s bad. I went to see this guy and then another...see, the guy they told you is me is actually another guy out there pretending to be me. There was this big fight, and the first guy – the one that threatened you, he kind of went postal. And the other guy…” I paused, realizing I sounded like a crazy person.

“What kind of crazy shit are you involved with, man?”

“It’s bad,” I repeated. “Have you heard of Brutal?”

He kept talking offline to his wife. I heard him tell her to go upstairs and wake the girls, and to get the bag. I could tell he was walking through the house because after a moment the phone call got fuzzy and almost dropped. The only sounds for a long couple of seconds were his footsteps on wooden stairs.

“You still there?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, going to the safe real quick, and reception’s shitty in the basement. Keep talking, though.”

“You have a safe place to go?”

He reached the bottom of the stairs and I heard him flip a light switch.

“I do,” he said and was about to continue.

“No, don’t tell me,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone that you don’t absolutely have to. And don’t bring your phones.”

“No phones?”

“They might track you,” I said.

“Geez, man. What the hell have you gotten us into?”

I swallowed hard, knowing that my stupidity was what started all of this, and now my brother’s innocent family was paying the price.

“Dale?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” I said.

He paused a moment and I heard him working on the safe tumblers and cracking the thing open.

“Why don’t you come to Connecticut? Let me help you, man.”

“Wherever I go, this craziness will follow. I don’t want you and your girls hurt.”

“Abby and Susy,” he said.

“Susy?”

He laughed, “After mom. Abby is Lu’s mother’s name.”

“Wow,” I said. “I can’t see you with kids.”

“I’m good at it,” he said. “Least that’s what my wife says. I basically think what dad would do and go with that. Or what Emmet wouldn’t do,” he said and we both laughed.

“Last I heard that fucker’s still alive,” I said.

“No, he died while you were away. She did too. I went back and bought our old house, plan on fixing it back up, maybe finding a nice couple to sell it to.”

Doreen, our stepmother, was a brutal old witch, and Emmet was her drunk, child-beating brother, who moved in soon after our father died. Hearing him dead did little to quell the anger I still felt for the man. I had always hoped to return and break his fucking neck.

“Dale, is there anything I can do to help,” he said, straining to pull the contents out of the safe. Something fell and he cursed aloud.

“What is it?”

“I dropped the gun,” he said. “Lucky I had the clip out.”

“You won’t need the gun, Jason. These guys are nasty. Just get out of there as fast as you can and find someplace they won’t think of. A friend’s house or whatever. I’m going to call someone I know – he’ll contact you. His name is Jeff.”

“I know where to go,” he said. “This guy Jeff is with Law Enforcement or something?”

I chuckled, “Something like that.”

“What about you? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to deal with it,” I said, and I felt him flinch at the edge in my voice. Dialing back my frustration, I said, “All of it. The stupid robot, the guy pretending to be me, Brutal, and anyone else that might come at us. I’m taking them all off the board.

“Brutal? That’s the guy who threatened my family.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty bad. He did something horrible when we were attacked.”

“The name is familiar,” Jason said, and I heard walking stairs again. “Do you have a plan?”

I sat back, feeling the pain across my jaw.

“I do, kind of,” I said. “If I pull it off, Haha and his people will be taken care of.”

“And this Brutal guy?”

I paused, not sure if I was even in the guy’s category.

“Him after,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Then be real careful, little brother.”

“I will,” I said, knowing he was about to end the call and jump in a car. I could hear a commotion around him, the whining of a young girl. Jason’s wife was telling the other to go get some books from the playroom.

“Jason?”

“I’m here,” he said. “It’s just a bit of a mess.”

“I’m real sorry about this.”

He stopped, parsing his words carefully. “You’re my brother, you don’t have to apologize for every little thing.”

“Little thing,” I laughed.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “The girls will look at it like a short vacation from school. They’ll love you for it.”

“How old?”

“Five and nine,” he said. “When this is all sorted out, you need to come by.”

“I don’t know how.”

Jason chuckled, “You get on a plane, you big dummy. You get on a plane and come visit and stay as long as you like.”

I was quiet; fighting back the tears. I knew his offer was honest, but there was no way to visit him. Even if the Haha business was ever settled, there was still Brutal to deal with, and after that, I’d have to face the music with the authorities. I was still a wanted felon, an escaped convict and once I was in their hands, they wouldn’t care about the reasons for my escape or the mitigating circumstances. They were going to blame me for the deaths of all those people in the plane, for everyone that Brutal killed in Amsterdam, and make me pay for it.

At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to see Jason, play with my nieces, toss them around the pool and play the monster chasing after them. I wanted a normal life, devoid of real monsters and villains and revenge, of alien beings threatening our planet. I wanted to have a beer with my brother and catch up.

“Still playing chess?” he said into the awkward silence.

“Kind of, while I was laid up awhile back. I’m terrible.”

“Dad would be disappointed,” he said with a playful tone. “He always said you had potential.”

“I think he was just winding my chain,” I said. “Besides, he never played with me. You got the benefit of all those awful beatings.”

Jason laughed, “You know, in all those years. All those games I played with him, I never beat him once. Even when he got sick, you know, at the very end. He wasn’t himself really, I figured I’d get my one win.”

“And he beat you?”

“Kicked my ass.”

“I wish I had played him,” I said.

“Well, you were a kid. You kind of liked to just watch and put the pieces in your mouth. And, anyway, he told me one time…” he trailed off. “Wow, this is hard. It’s been twenty-five years and I still can’t talk about it.”