Authors: Jon Land

Dead Simple (11 page)

BOOK: Dead Simple

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“
I
’ll be the only one in the place sitting in a chair on wheels,” Jay Don Reed, the man who had contacted the sheriff in Condor Key, advised McCracken before he came north.

Blaine met him later that day at a diner in the center of Preston, Virginia, across from the small police station. His wheelchair tucked beneath a table, Reed waved to Blaine as soon as he entered.

“Act like you know me,” he said when McCracken got there. “We’re old friends, maybe served together. Some shit like that. Don’t want the locals to think different right now.”

Blaine smiled and clapped Reed on the shoulder before sitting down across from him.

“Food’s not bad here, if you’re hungry,” Reed told him.

“I’m not.”

“You don’t order, you’re giving people more cause for notice.”

Blaine picked up a menu and opened it. “You serve with Buck?”

Reed closed both hands on his cup of coffee before raising it. “Gunnery school a thousand years ago. Different career paths after that.” He looked at his chair. “Different results.”

“You were checking on his daughter for him.”

“Keeping an eye on her is the way I prefer to put it. I called him when it became clear she was in trouble. Just like I called you.”

“Buck’s orders.”

“He gave me a number. First time he misses a six-hour check-in, I’m supposed to start dialing.” Reed gazed across the table, sizing Blaine up. “And here you are.”

Blaine caught the edge in his voice. “Something bother you about that?”

“I made some calls, asked around a little about you.”

“What’d you hear?”

“My sources musta been mistaken: told me Blaine McCracken was a memory.”

“Wishful thinking on their part.”

“You walk in that door, I’m looking at a ghost.”

“I was … until I went to see Buck.”

“He made a lot of men in his time.”

“And remade at least one.”

Reed gave his useless legs a long look. “I was a little beyond his help.”

“Where?”

“Nam. One tour too many.”

“You were a sniper.”

Reed’s cup of coffee clamored back to its saucer, spilling a little over the side. “How the hell you know that?”

The truth was Blaine couldn’t say exactly, but his eyes stayed focused on the way Reed’s finger looped through the coffee cup’s handle, treating it like a trigger.

“I think Buck may have mentioned your name,” he lied.

The waitress came and poured Blaine a cup of coffee, got her order pad ready. Reed told her to give them a little more time.

“What happened after you let him know his daughter was in trouble?” Blaine continued.

“He asked me to get the intel together on the opposition. Real estate developer named Maxwell Rentz, who’s planning to build the Disney World of the north up here. Trouble is he can’t do it without the Torrey family farm. The daughter—Liz—isn’t about to sell.”

“Sounds like a Torrey.”

“I made the call when Rentz brought in some hired hands, if you get my drift. I saw these boys nosing around, up to no good. Bad things start happening, I get Buck on the line. Asked if he wanted me to handle things myself.” Reed pulled his hand away from the cup. “Don’t need my legs to sight them in my crosshairs. He told me to stand down and wait for him. Put some supplies together for him in a duffel bag.”

“What happened yesterday?”

“He didn’t call in. I waited a few hours before making the call. I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

“But you don’t know what he was up to, why he figured there was a chance he might not be coming back.”

Reed shrugged.

“Then I better go introduce myself to his daughter. What can you tell me about her?”

Reed fixed his gaze through the diner’s plate-glass window, which bore a HOME COOKED MEALS sign. “For starters, that’s her just driving away now.”

B
laine had caught the Jeep in his sights again just before the blue truck riding its driver’s side shoved it over the guardrail. He watched it turn onto its side in the air, hitting the river with a thud that sent up plumes of water.

Blaine gunned the engine of his rental car, the Jeep long gone from the river’s surface by the time he tore down the bank and plunged into the water. When he reached the Jeep, Blaine blessed the long underwater swims beneath the stilt house. He pried a rock from the river bottom and slammed it through the window on the first blow. Smashed the glass aside and yanked Liz Halprin out of her seat.

She wasn’t breathing when he got her back to the surface, and Blaine struggled to remember how to apply CPR. Strangely, he had never performed it before. It was magical to watch, considerably more desperate to practice, especially on someone he feared might be beyond saving by his unpracticed technique.

But this was the daughter of Sergeant Major Buck Torrey, and if blood meant anything at all, she wouldn’t die without a fight. Blaine continued to push breath through Liz Halprin’s pursed blue lips, moving to compress her chest at regular intervals while hoping he recalled the counts correctly.

He was exhausted and almost out of breath himself when Liz finally twitched, stirred, and then coughed up a stream of water into his face. Hacking away as he held her by the shoulders.

Buck Torrey’s daughter stared into his dark eyes resiliently. “Just tell me I’m not dead.”

“You’re not dead.”

“That means you’re not the devil.”

“Close enough,” Blaine told her with a grin.

S
hortly after a pair of officers had pulled up, Chief Lanning arrived, looking disinterested as he joined them in walking about the scene. A tow truck with winch capacity was already in place, awaiting only a diver to hook the sunken Jeep up to haul it out of the water. Lanning followed the skid marks from the road to the smashed-in guardrail, measuring off the distance to the water in his mind.

“The nonexistent Cattleman’s Association again,” he heard Liz Halprin say from behind him.

Lanning turned to find her standing there, surprised since he was sure, based on initial reports from the scene, that a rescue squad would already
have carted her off to the hospital. She had a blanket draped around her shoulders, and there was a man standing next to her, whom Lanning didn’t recognize.

“You’ll find the blue paint from their truck all over my Jeep,” the woman continued, pestering him. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find it in town now, Chief, I imagine.”

But Lanning’s attention was rooted on McCracken. “I know you?” he asked finally.

“No,” replied Blaine McCracken. “You don’t.”

“Thanks for your help. You can be on your way, lemme take care of the lady here. She’s safe now.”

Blaine made no move to oblige or even acknowledge him, sliding a little closer to Liz. “That’s right. She is.”

“You hear what I just said?”

“You want to be writing this down,” Blaine told him. “Maybe take some pictures.”

“Her car will tell me everything I need to know, once we get it hauled up.”

“I don’t see anyone taking statements from the people who pulled over to help before they leave, in case they saw something.”

“Would that include you?”

“No. I got here late.”

“Just happened to be passing through?”

“Not at all,” Blaine told him.

“
I
told you,” Lanning repeated to Maxwell Rentz, “I don’t know who he is.”

“But he didn’t just happen to be driving by at the time.”

“No. He made that pretty plain.”

“A friend of Halprin’s father, you think?”

“I hope not.”

“So do I,” said Rentz.

“
W
here do you want me to take you?” McCracken asked Liz when she was seated next to him in the rental car’s passenger seat.

“Nowhere until I know who I’m riding with,” she said, still trembling from the shock of her ordeal.

Blaine started the engine, switched on the heat to keep her warm. “You sound like the chief.”

“You told him you didn’t just happen to be driving by.”

“I’m a friend of your father’s.”

She looked down. “How’d you find out he was missing?”

“Same guy who let him know you were in trouble called me when he disappeared yesterday.”

“Wheelchair?”

“That’s right.”

“I saw him watching me in town a few times. There’s a certain look … .”

Blaine stopped short of telling her he knew all about that.

“And what about you?” Liz asked.

“Your father and I go back a ways.”

“Operation Phoenix.”

“Nice guess.”

She glanced down at his ring. “Not a guess at all. He ever tell you what
DS
meant, Dead Simple?”

“Not in so many words. It seemed pretty straightforward. We were good at what we did over there. It came easy to us.”

“You’re talking about killing.”

“Mostly.”

“Dead Simple,” Liz repeated. “Pretty straightforward.”

“Except now I think I had it wrong. Buck told me as much in Condor Key. Made me think I’d missed the whole point.”

“But he didn’t elaborate.”

Blaine shook his head. “There are some things you’ve got to figure out for yourself. Buck knows that, and even a man like him can only take you so far. If you can’t get the rest of the way on your own, you picked the wrong ride.”

“And deep down, those who stay on it until the end are all the same. Don’t get me wrong, but I thought your kind, men like my father, had gone extinct with the dinosaurs.”

“Not all of us have yet.”

“What brought you to Condor Key, then?”

“Long story. It’s more important that I hear yours first.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not the one somebody’s trying to kill.”

B
ack at the farmhouse, Liz pulled out the bottle of whiskey she and her father had done their best to polish off a few nights before. She brought two glasses, filled hers and took a hearty sip, while Blaine’s remained empty when he declined a drink.

“I wish he’d never come up here,” she said, turning the glass around in her hand.

“He wanted to help.”

“He didn’t have the right. Five years he’s a stranger. Five years I don’t see him, and then he pops back in, out of nowhere.”

“Because you needed him.”

“I didn’t need something to happen to him!”

Blaine gazed across the table at the hard set of her jaw, the thrust of her chin, the way her eyes could ride way back in her head. The sight
almost chilled him. This wasn’t Buck Torrey’s daughter; this was Buck Torrey all over again.

“He leave you with a duffel?”

“How’d you know about … ?”

“You thinking about checking the contents yourself?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“After the swim?”

“Even before. I was going to look as soon as I got home. Like opening the presents on Christmas morning. See what Santa left behind.” She smiled mirthlessly and refilled her glass with the last of the whiskey.

“What would your father think?”

“Not very much, or he wouldn’t have had his friend ready to contact you.”

“Maybe you should trust his judgment.”

Liz held the whiskey but didn’t drink it. “It’s a shooting war now.”

“Meaning … ?”

“That maybe I’m glad to have you with me.”

“Maybe?”

“Relax, soldier. We can open Dad’s duffel together.”

“Let’s talk about where your father was going before he disappeared.”

“To meet Maxwell Rentz.”

“Friendly little chat?”

“I think he said something like that.”