Man in the Middle

Everything documented.”

“Did you book those other trades?”

“Other trades? You mean the ones losing all that money?”

“Yes. Those.” Sarah gave a subtle nod and the larger man began to clean up the shards of wood. The other moved a step closer to Drucker.

“Yeah, I booked them. Why anybody’d want to lose so much money over the course of a couple days beats me, but I do what I’m told.”

“Did you find those losses stressful?” Sarah looked down the deep corridors of fear in Drucker’s damp eyes.

“Uh, uh. Not my money.” Drucker took a half step back, but a hand pinched his shoulder. He froze.

“Have another drink, Mr. Drucker.” Sarah nodded in the direction of the open bottle resting on a table next to an armchair. As she did so, the thick man finished cleaning the pieces of door and switched off Drucker’s television.

“No thanks.”

Drucker swore at himself for panting like a dog and stuttering like a damn fool. In the middle of Drucker’s silent tirade, the scar-faced smaller man shoved the bottle to his lips. Drucker choked as expensive whisky flowed half down his throat and half down his shirt. He tried to scream, but the needle that struck his neck put him to sleep in half a breath. As if the bones had been yanked from his body, he folded and sprawled across the white carpet.

Where am I?

This was the first thought popping into Stanley Drucker’s battered head as he regained consciousness. Every bone ached. As he lay on his back, railroad tie rigid, glass shards dug into his skin. He looked up a sheer brick wall, while the smell of urine—some of it his own—hung in the fetid air. He’d awakened, he determined, shivering in an alley. Twenty inches above his face, the scarred man who had attacked him, who had stuck him with the long needle, looked down at him through gun barrel eyes. With flaring nostrils, the man resembled a baby bull, ready to attack. Drucker bent a weakened arm to his face, hoping to remove a pair of sunglasses blurring his vision. He pulled, and immediately tried and failed to scream.

“Time for a challenge, Senor Drucker.”

Drucker struggled to lift himself, but a vicious heel kicked his raised shoulders back down, causing his head to bounce off asphalt.

“Not yet, mi amigo. You must learn the rules first.”

Drucker flopped side to side like a dying fish on a dry dock. He struggled to focus on his tormentor’s expression, but the heavy tint of his glasses prevented that.

“Let me explain how we play this game.” The voice came across as a whisper, sounding almost intimate. “Your sunglasses have been attached to your head with epoxy, and your tongue, injected with a toxin, is swollen.”

I can take care of any investigation. I’m an asset. Drucker listened to his gurgled sounds and nearly choked over his thickened tongue and the saliva building inside his mouth.

From his jacket pocket, the male enforcer, Ferret-Face, removed two rectangular metal boxes, each fitting into a palm. He then reached down and yanked Drucker’s half-naked body to its feet, forcing a box into each of Drucker’s hands. Ferret-Face clamped Drucker’s right thumb onto a raised button on the first box.

More awkwardly, and never releasing the first hand, he did the same to Stanley Drucker’s left thumb. Tears dribbled down Drucker’s cheeks, and teetered on his upper lip until they built up and cascaded over, falling five empty feet to his blistered toes. With his gaze following that salty flow, he became aware of spider-webbing wires connecting several pounds of explosives strapped to his legs and hips. Barely visible across his naked chest were the words: Death Death. He recognized the building across the alley and street as the police station.

“Here are the rules,” the man said, his words sounding rehearsed. “If you take either thumb off either device, you will explode. If you try and disconnect any wire, you will explode. If anyone else presses either of these buttons, relieving you, you will explode—each button is sensitive to your thumbprint only. In thirty minutes, no matter what you do, you will explode. This should be challenging. Do you understand?”

Drucker understood all right. He clasped the detonators, putting maximum pressure on each of his thumbs.

“And by the way,” the man said with a smile, “I will have saved you mucho dinero. You are not going to require a casket, I think.”

Turning a corner, the well-dressed Mexican used a cell phone to call a local television station, alerting them that a suicide crackpot, lurking near the police station, had explosives strapped to his body. He even identified the man as one Stanley Drucker, violent alcoholic, divorced, unstable, and manager of a local fund that lost millions of dollars just this week.

Rancho Santa Fe estates average four acres of grounds and more than 10,000 square feet of house. Nearly every one has a tennis court, a pool, and a stable of horses. Ayers’ estate went beyond even these lofty averages.

Jason Ayers loved riding his favorite horse along the community trails. The aroma of Eucalyptus was soothing, and the tree’s shedding leaves and bark padded the trails and muffled the sounds of the outside world. In addition to these tall trees, Ayers’ property boasted close to a hundred lemon and orange trees—so many that he paid someone to harvest them twice a year and cart off the excess fruit.

In the past, at night, with an absence of street lamps and sidewalks, Ayers felt at the edge of the world, alone and at peace. He cherished his home and had come to reconcile himself with his wife, Anne, these last few years. After his son Curtis had died ten years ago, he grew even more devoted to his daughter. Kate became the center of his life, and he would do anything for her.

Longing for some of this former tranquility, but finding none, a diminished Jason Ayers spent Saturday afternoon slumped in a slip-covered chair, finishing a third scotch. “Oh . . . my . . . God,” he whispered. “How could I have let this happen? Hannah, why?”

Sounds of footsteps at the door startled him. Anne Ayers stood inside the door frame, her gray hair scattered like detached spider webs. She had aged right in front of her husband, grown heavy and wrinkled. Was that why he had sought Hannah? Ayers had asked himself this question a hundred times. Was it a shallow need for younger, more vibrant company? He knew the answer was no. Hannah represented much more. He needed to help her, love her, and take care of her and her son. If he had been able to do so, he would have made a first installment on his debt to Matthew Neil. Now, everything he had attempted had turned deadly. And surely things were bound to get worse before they got better, if they ever got better.

He looked at the wall clock. The hands blurred on their way to three o’clock.

Why, God, am I such a weakling?

“You shouldn’t drink so heavily,” his wife said.

“Yes. You are right, dear.” Ayers continued to sip.

“Come get something to eat, Jason.”

He couldn’t know how long Anne had stood in the library. Had they been talking? “No. No thank you. I, uh . . . I think I’ll watch some news. Take my mind off of . . .”

At three o’clock, you will turn on your television and wait. We have a message for you.

Carlos Nunoz had spoken those words to Ayers late last night. It was now five minutes before the appointed time. Suddenly, time slowed, then crawled. The television voices droned on—talking heads saying nothing important. Three o’clock came and went. Nothing. Five more minutes passed and still no news. He flipped channels. Could this be a cruel hoax? He prayed yes but believed no.

At 3:20, he felt hopeful. Then, in the middle of a boxing match, came a news flash. A reporter’s excited voice filled the room, but Ayers absorbed the images, not the sound.

TV crews captured live the frantic movements of a lunatic with explosives strapped to his body. As one camera focused on the word DEATH scrawled twice across his chest, the TV anchor