Agent with a History (4 page)

I threw the gun at him and then launched
myself toward him. Sickenly I saw him snatch the gun out of the air
and idly toss it to the side. I launched at him feet first in a
double legged kick, but he caught my feet and stole my
momentum.

My head and upper back should’ve crashed into
the floor hard, with my feet being held captive, but I felt him
grab my shoulder and pull my torso upwards, as he let my feet drop
and then he spun me around moments before we both crashed into the
floor, but he didn’t let his weight fall on me like he could
have.

Moments before impact with the floor I felt
his hand slide in front of my face, which helped absorb the force
of the connection of my head with the floor.

As I gathered in a quick breath, I realized
in anguish that it was already all over before I could even move.
My legs were twisted one way and my arms another so that I
literally couldn’t move at all. He could dislocate my shoulders,
pop my hip out, break my back, crush my windpipe; he could do
anything he wanted to me!

There was no overcoming either the strength
or skill that he held me with and I couldn’t help the little wail
of despair that escaped through my parted lips.

I was afraid.

I hadn’t been this powerless or helpless over
my own fate since I had been a little girl and had been forced to
watch my fathers’ brother rape and kill my own mother and then rape
me. I had never wanted this to happen again! I had worked so hard
to learn how to defend myself, but it was all useless to me
now!

I started to cry softly, as I let my forehead
down to rest against the floor. His voice against my ear stilled my
breathing.

“Fear is a terrible thing, but it can teach a
useful lesson. I know what the fear you are experiencing right now
feels like. I’ve felt it before too. You’re completely helpless,
and you can’t stop anything at all that I might attempt from
happening to you. I don’t enjoy giving you this fear. It’s not why
I came here, but it serves a point. Two men have died so far and
more are sure to follow and I don’t want you to be one of them.
You’re a good person and a good cop, a rare combination these days.
Those two men died feeling just what you are right now. Don’t be
the next victim to experience fear like this. Close your
investigation and walk away or this could be you in the near
future!”

His words ended and he let me go and got up.
Shakily I sat up rubbing the soreness from my arms, acutely aware
of my near naked status. I was cold and the tracks left by my tears
across my skin were freezing.

Where had he gotten to? I felt a blanket
drape around my shoulders and I latched onto it reflexively. His
big hands slid under my shoulders and he pulled me up to my feet
and moved me backward to sit me down on the edge of the bed. He
stood in front of me and I couldn’t bring myself to look up into
his eyes, not that much could be seen in the darkened room. But I
knew what he looked like from the sketch, which hadn’t lied about a
thing.

I saw my phone light up and he placed it back
on its charging station beside my bed. “Your shotgun and bullet
clips are on the kitchen table. You need better locks and you
should have a chair under the door handle as an extra
precaution.”

He stood there for a moment longer and then I
heard him sigh loudly. “You’re not going to give up your
investigation, are you Lisa?”

I shook my head no and he sighed again.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I watched him go into the bathroom and I
heard water run briefly and then he was back. He pushed me back
onto the pillows and swung my legs into the bed and then covered me
up with the sheet and coverlet. He placed a cold washcloth on my
head.

“Try to get some sleep; heaven knows you’re
going to need it. If you need to get a hold of me you can reach me
at this number.” He placed a white card on top of my phone. “It’s
in use for one call only. So make it good!”

He turned and walked to the door and pointed
to the handle. “Chair tomorrow night.”

Then the door was closing. My eyes drifted
from the closed door to the ceiling above my head. What had just
happened? I couldn’t think about it right now. I was just too
tired. The aftermath of all the adrenaline that had been going
through me made me drowsier than I had been all day.

Bright sun was poring through the half open
blinds and I starred at the sunny beams dreamily for a moment,
before abruptly jerking upright in the bed.

How late had I slept? I glanced at the clock.
It was after eleven! The captain is going to kill me! I reached for
my phone, which is when I saw the plain white card with a single
phone number laying on top of it.

So it hadn’t all been a dream. My strange
encounter with a murder suspect had really happened last night. He
wasn’t the murderer, I knew that, but he was involved in some way.
I needed to find out how.

The sun showed more writing on the card and I
turned it over and read in a bold cursive script, ‘PS, if you need
a safe place to run to for shelter go to this address. The door
locks automatically so don’t freak out when it does. Again, a
onetime only use.’ The address was listed below.

I got up feeling very much like a new person,
although my cheek was sore, as well as my rib cage, where I’d taken
an elbow. I went to the bathroom and lit a match to burn the card,
having already memorized its contents.

He’d said I was a good cop. I wasn’t so sure,
seeing as how I was currently destroying evidence. I watched the
cursive writing on the back burn to ash in the sink. Then it hit
me. He hadn’t mentioned anything about a safe house last night,
just a phone number. Which meant what?

I walked past my bed to the open living room
beyond. The pillow at the one end of my couch had a dent in it!
He’d come back, why? One of my kitchen chairs was missing and I
glanced over at the door to see it sitting beside it ready for use.
He hadn’t wanted me to be here alone without the chair in
place!

My stomach rumbled reminding me of how long
it had been since I had really eaten something. I went to my small
kitchen. The first thing I noticed were the dirty dishes in my
sink. He had eaten breakfast in my apartment!

I opened the refrigerator; there was a glass
of orange juice already poured sitting on the top rack with a
sticky note on it that had an arrow pointing toward the stove. I
picked up the glass and cautiously opened the stove. A small oven
dish sat there. I pulled it out. He’d made some kind of a breakfast
egg quiche it looked like. It was still warm.

I stood there looking at the baking dish in
my hand in a state of profound shock. Why? He’d come to warn me,
and I think he was entirely on the level when he had done that, but
why all of this? The answer was there even though I didn’t want to
acknowledge it. He must like me was the simplest answer. I wasn’t
sure I was ready for that kind of relationship, if I’d ever be
ready, and beyond that he was a suspect in a murder investigation.
Not exactly boyfriend material. Even if he wasn’t the murderer, he
was waist deep in something highly illegal. And yet why, even after
considering all the facts against the man, had I known yesterday
when I saw the sketch that this man was going to profoundly change
my life.

I glanced at the clock. It was going on
twelve. I had to get out of here! I sat down and ate, then got
ready for the day in a hurry.

As I stepped up to the door I saw that
cooking breakfast wasn’t the only thing he had done. He had
switched out my door lock and replaced the deadbolt. A key for each
sat on the chair by the door, which meant that he had the duplicate
keys. Somehow that didn’t bother me as much as it should have.

I picked the keys up and stepped outside and
locked the door. I let my head fall forward against the door. I had
burned a sample of his writing and he had no doubt left finger
prints all over my apartment, but was I calling anyone to report
it, no.

How would I explain why he’d spent the night
in my room anyway? It was too embarrassing to even contemplate. He
had been wrong. I was a terrible cop, at least where he was
concerned.

Old Mrs. Thachet came out of her apartment
two doors down and when she saw me her face lit up and she gave me
two thumbs up. My face completely flushed, she must have seen him!
I tried to hurry past, but she reached out and snagged my arm. What
must she be thinking?

“So nice to see you settling down dear, but
remember,” she tapped her wedding ring. “This first and then…...”
She patted my stomach with a knowing nod, as her voice trailed
off.

My face felt like it was about to become
molten lava. I managed to smile wanly and I pulled my arm free, as
I stepped away sideways toward the stairs.

Oh this was bad! Mrs. Thachet was the worst
gossip in the whole building bless her heart. It would be common
knowledge by tonight that I had a man. I groaned inwardly.

Of course, the first person I had to run into
when I entered the office was the Captain. Immediately I started to
stumble over myself, in my hurry to apologize for sleeping in late,
but he held up a hand.

“I’m just glad to see you rested, no apology
needed. You’ll want to check in with Sal and Rafferty. They found
out something interesting about our mystery man Flint.”

He patted me on the back and continued on
down the hall. I watched him go, all the while choking on what
needed to be said, but I just couldn’t tell him. Somehow the words
just didn’t come out. How could they? He’d think I was joking.

Rafferty and Sal looked up at my approach and
to my surprise neither mentioned my tardiness, which I was very
grateful for. “So, what did you find out about our mystery man?” I
asked, feeling like the worst sort of hypocrite and traitor there
could be.

Sal swiveled around in his chair, “Well, not
so much about the actual man. We’ve only been able to pull a few
vague references to a man that goes by the name of Flint. Mostly
third world countries. The name popped up in France in a big
international scandal a couple of years back. The Chinese have a
three million dollar bounty if captured alive and only a million if
he’s dead. Apparently somebody really wants to have the joy of
killing him all to themselves, it would appear. Besides that juicy
tid bit that’s all we can find out about him.”

Rafferty looking pleased as he stated with
authority, “But I thought the name sounded familiar to me so I
started trying to remember where I had heard it before. It is not a
common name at all. Only seven are listed in the entire country and
four of those are dead and the other three are in nursing homes. I
kept thinking about it and then it clicked, Louis L’Amour.”

I stared blankly at Rafferty and mimicked his
outspread hand motion after a moment. “What?”

“You don’t know him? Oh come on you too!”
Rafferty exclaimed throwing his hands up in the air.

“Should I?”

“You bet you should. He’s only the greatest
western writer that ever lived!” He exclaimed explosively.

I smiled, “Well that explains why I’ve never
heard of him. I’m not currently up on my western fiction reading
for the month you might say.”

Rafferty crossed his arms, looking offended.
Sal broke in, “Well, anyway this author wrote a lot of books. A lot
of books.” He underscored dryly at the last by pointing at the
multiple cardboard boxes on the table. I picked a book up out of a
box.

“There must be nearly a hundred books here!
These are all yours Rafferty?”

“Eighty six to be exact, and yes they are!”
He finished testily, still wounded over my rejection of his
favorite genre and author it would appear.

“What do any of these books have to do with
our case?”

Sal picked up a book and I read the cover
title, “Flint!”

“Got us to thinking about our mystery man a
little more. He seems to be something of an international fix it
man. While a lot of what we know doesn’t appear to be illegal
depending on your perspective, some of it most definitely appears
to be. Stranger than that he seems to have no connection with any
governing body here or elsewhere in the world, but rather seems to
act independently. Which got us to thinking, maybe he’s not alone.
We took all of the main character names from the books by this
author, both male and female, and this is what we got.”

Sal slid his chair to the side so I could see
his computer screen. It was a rough summary of thirty seven names.
“As far as we can tell characters started popping up in the
international scene in the mid 1970’s and have continued on to the
present. Some of the names don’t have any recent activity, while
others appear to still be active.”

I nodded “Somebody was a fan. You think this
is some kind of international firm specializing in problem
fixing?”

They both nodded. “Good work you two, now
what about our three killers?”

They both grimaced and Rafferty said,
“Nothing on them. They entered the country two days ago with forged
passports from France, but they had paperwork on them, which favors
an origin of West Africa. That’s all we got. We were able to dig up
a good bit on Philippe though. Three years ago he acted as a guide
for an archaeological expedition into the Congo area of East
Africa. Something happened and only two managed to escape the
expedition alive. One was Philippe Valo and the other as you might
have expected was Ahmed Sazzar. Philippe seem to have disappeared
for a while and Ahmed packed up his antiquities shop and moved to
New York and starting working for the museum.”

“A thief as a guide and an antiquities dealer
along on an archeological expedition?” I scoffed.