“That’s why I’ve been looking for you. I’ve gotten them to sell you your policy back. It’s over, Josh.” Bob placed a heavy hand on Josh’s shoulder.
Slowly building in speed, the engines whined.
“Fuck you, Bob. My family is dead. Four other people are dead because of this insurance policy. It’s not going to put things right. It’s not going to bring Kate and Abby back.” Josh seethed. It had gone far beyond just getting the hit man off his back. He wasn’t about to let Pinnacle Investments off the hook. He needed someone to pay for killing his family.
“Trust me, Josh. We have nothing on these people.
We go to the cops once more and we’re screwed.
They’ve probably got enough on you to put you away for life. You have the blood of a murdered woman on your clothes and your fingerprints on the gun that killed a man. No, I can’t bring your wife and child back, but I can stop the killing. It’s the best I can do.”
Trent’s professional voice broke in through the intercom.
Josh and Bob both stared at the closed door of the cockpit.
“Gentlemen, we’ve started engines and should be departing in approximately ten minutes. Flight time
should be one hour and forty-five minutes. As I said, I’ll return to you once we are airborne. Thank you for listening,”
he said.
“What am I meant to do afterward, Bob? Once I’ve
bought my life back.”
Bob frowned. “Start again. Disappear somewhere.
Get away from all this shit.”
Josh looked away, out of the aircraft window into the darkness.
The engines rose in pitch and the aircraft trundled forward. The Lear jet rolled to the holding point, paused and finally taxied onto the runway. The plane roared down the runway and lifted into the night.
Once the plane reached cruising altitude, Martin
Trent came back to the passenger area as promised. He grabbed a duffle from a storage locker and removed a pair of jeans and a shirt for Josh. He showed both men where refreshments were kept.
Josh excused himself and squeezed into the bathroom.
He removed his T-shirt and washed himself in
the small stainless steel sink. He stared at himself in the mirror. He looked at the puffy bruising on his face and his singed hair. Lipstick colored bruises covered his chest and soot streaked his face. He looked like he’d been engaged in combat. Had it all been worth it? Was his survival worth the lives of his friends and family? It would be, if he lived their lives as well.
He finished washing by dunking his head into the
soapy, clouded water, soaking it for a moment, trying to wash the bad images from his mind. Water slopped out of the sink, splashing his jeans and feet. A watery, bloody pool formed on the rubber matted floor. He dried his hair with a towel and combed it into position with his fingers. He wasn’t pretty, but presentable.
Josh came out of the bathroom with his T-shirt in his hand. His bloody footprints were lost in the dark blue carpeting. Bob spoke on the onboard telephone. Trent was gone. Josh stripped out of his jeans and slipped into the young man’s clothes. The shirt fit fine, but the jeans were too tight in the waist and an inch too short in the leg. He would make do.
“Okay, Mr. Tyrell,” Bob said and hung up the
phone.
“Who’s that?”
“Dexter Tyrell. He’s the VP in charge of viatical settlements.”
“Are we meeting him?” Josh asked.
Bob nodded. “Do you want a drink?”
“Not if it’s paid for by Pinnacle Investments.”
Crashing into another of the ample seats, Josh tilted it back and swiftly fell into a deep sleep. Although deep, the sleep wasn’t peaceful. Images of Kate and Abby haunted him—their bodies ravaged by flames in the wreckage of their house, their clothes seared away, calling out to him while he watched them burn. Josh tried to help, but he was frozen to the spot. The conflagration took hold of their bodies and they melted into
the flames, although their dying screams didn’t. A fist struck him and he found himself pinned to the ground by a bullet-ridden John Kelso as Bell fired a gun into Josh’s limbs. As Bell fired a final round into his head, Josh found himself at the controls of the crippled Cessna with Mark Keegan. Keegan screamed obscenities and accused Josh of betraying him as Josh uselessly fought with the disobedient controls.
The jet touched down onto the runway, jerking Josh awake. He inhaled and rubbed his face. A thin veneer of sweat coated his body. He tilted the seat upright and stared out the window. An unknown landscape rushed past. The Lear jet shuddered to a stop before it taxied over to the apron.
“I thought I’d let you sleep,” Bob said.
“What time is it?”
“It’s eleven-fifteen.” Bob paused. “Are you ready for this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Josh thanked Trent for the clothes as they disembarked.
He promised to give them back on the return flight.
The airport was small. Not a soul wandered the terminal.
As they stepped out of the airport, the Pacific
Northwest chill bit into Josh. A taxi fired its engine and the lights came on. The sedan pulled up in front of Josh and Bob. The front passenger window retracted and the driver leaned over to address them.
“Bob Deuce?” the cabby asked.
“Yeah,” Bob said and got in.
“Pinnacle Investments, right?” the cabby asked.
The cabby was a white-haired man in his sixties. He looked like he’d been driving a taxi since he was a kid.
He hunched over the wheel with what seemed to be a permanent stoop. It looked doubtful he could stand upright.
He glanced back at his two passengers in the
rearview mirror.
“Yeah, as quick as you can,” Bob said.
“No hotel then?”
“No,” Bob said.
“Business is it?”
“Yeah,” Bob said.
“You must be pretty important people to be flown in at this hour for a business meeting. What’s the emergency?”
“That’s our business,” Josh said.
The cabby held Josh’s stare in the mirror, his old face wrinkled into a sneer. He mumbled a curse under his breath. He didn’t speak for the rest of the journey.
There was silence except for the occasional crackle from the CB radio transmissions.
The taxi pulled off the highway into a wooded area that swiftly opened up into a secluded business park. A portion of the woodland had been harvested to house three clinical-looking tinted glass and brick blocks.
Each three-story building was a clone of the other two, but each had different corporate logos glued to the outside.
Pinnacle Investments occupied the center building.
Floodlit parking lots capable of holding several
hundred cars surrounded each building. A few minutes before the witching hour on a Saturday night, the
