Marked Man (7 page)

Yawning and stretching, Jordan sat up in the bed and placed his feet on the carpet, digging his toes into the canyons and valleys in the fabric and savoring the feeling. He felt a slight stinging feeling on the back of his left leg. Without thinking he stood up to get a better look and immediately collapsed to the floor. The leg had simply refused to bear any of his weight.

“Agggh!” He groaned and grabbed at the stinging. Jordan turned his leg over and discovered a heavy gauze wrap covering most of his calf, a small red streak in the middle seeping through the bandage.

A short, skinny woman with auburn hair appeared and got down on the floor to help him.

“Oh shit. You must have fallen over when you tried to stand up. Come on. Up. I’ll help.”

Jordan let the tiny woman help lift him up and guide him over to the bed again. Sucking in deep breaths of relief, he thanked her, then looked at her curiously, blinking.

“I’m Shannon, I… I’m not sure if you remember me.”

“Shannon…”

Junior high, just before 8th grade he had dated a girl named Shannon for a brief week at summer camp. There was also a famous actress named Shannon, Jordan was pretty sure. But the name attached to this face didn’t mean anything to him.

“My girlfriend brought you here the other night. Leslie?”

Leslie was also drawing a blank. Jordan wondered if the symptoms of the concussion had returned.

“Bollier?”

“Oh! Right, the detective. You’re uh… you’re her girlfriend…” Jordan remembered the awkward entrance, finding the two women naked on the couch.

“Not sure anymore, but for now yes. She went out to get groceries for dinner, should be back soon.”

Shaking his head, Jordan tried to make sense of the time.

“Dinner?”

“Yeah. You were out cold for almost a full day. Are you hungry?”

The thought of food had not occurred to Jordan in some time and he realized that in fact he was, and moreover that he couldn’t even recall the last time he had eaten. Shannon took his hand and helped Jordan out into the living room and set him down in a plush club chair so soft it threatened to swallow him up. Jordan let h
imself sink into the cushions and took in the living room.

Comfortably furnished, all of the chairs were circled around legitimate old fashioned fireplace. Antlers from what must have been an enormous moose were featured above the
mantle. The hunting rifle that slew the animal was hanging underneath. The air was all fresh pine needles, mulberry, and rose. A short Christmas tree decorated lightly with tinsel and a gold star stood on a coffee table.

“Nice place.”

Jordan said behind him to Shannon, who was banging around in the kitchen.

“Thanks it was my dad’s, I inherited it a couple years back when he passed.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Oh don’t be, he was a miserly cunt. He’d been saying for years he couldn’t wait to go.”

“There are worse things I guess.”

A while later detective Bollier returned, bearing several bags of groceries. The mousy woman called Shannon whispered something to her when she came in.

“Mr. Ross?” She called from the kitchen.

“Yeah?”

“Glad you’re awake. Would you like some pork chops and mushrooms? Or maybe you’d prefer breakfast.”

“Pork chops for breakfast will be perfectly fine.”

The two women exchanged another few words in hushed tones and then went about their business preparing the meal, leaving Jordan to lounge in peace in the club chair. It had the feel of a chair that a large man had spent many hours kicking back with a cigar and a scotch in. The way the chair was situated it had a westerly view of rolling wooded hills, dusted with snow and bathing in the day’s last lazy rays of sunlight. While Bollier sizzled pork chops in a frying pan, she dispatched Shannon outside to collect firewood. Jordan watched the diminutive woman from his chair collecting bits and pieces of timber from the snow.

“Everything alright with you two?” he called to the detective.

“No, not that it’s any of your business Mr. Ross,” Bollier sighed and then quickly apologized. “Sorry I’m obviously dealing with a lot at the moment.”

Outside Shannon had a log set up on a trunk. With an impressive single swing of an axe, she split the log clean in two. From the kitchen Jordan heard the detective chopping at a plate of onions and mushrooms violently. Jordan swallowed a lump in his throat. When Shannon came in with a bundle of wood she stuffed them into the fireplace and in a minute had flames going. She glanced at Jordan.

“You look like you could use a drink.”

“What are you some kind of wizard?”

Shannon announced she was going downstairs to the bar to fetch a drink for her and Leslie’s friend and asked if she wanted one.

“No I’m good. Should he be drinking after all that aspirin?”

“He’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t drink a fifth.”

“Are you sure?”

“Remind me which one of us spent eight years in med school?”

Bollier didn’t respond to the provocation and set th
e table but Jordan thought he heard her say something like heinous preppy bitch under her breath. Shannon came back up, carrying a tray with two glasses and a decanter of amber liquid. She poured two fingers for Jordan and handed him the drink then watched him sip at it.

“That’s fantastic. What is it?”

“It’s a twenty year Macallan.”

Jordan almost choked.

“Jesus, that’s like what 300 dollars?”

Smiling playfully, Shannon answered him “more like 330.”

“I can’t. I can’t drink this, it’s too much. Any old whiskey will do you don’t have to give me this.”

From the kitchen Bollier sniped at her partner.

“Oh let her spoil you. Shannon loves nothing more than flaunting her socioeconomic status. Isn’t that right peachy doll?

Rolling her eyes, Shannon poured herself a glass and toasted Jordan, who decided that he might very well need it to get through dinner after all.

Following a delicious but awkward dinner where Jordan had to carry the conversation by rehashing basically his entire career in the Army, Bollier sat down with him and Shannon and told them what was going to happen next. Very quick Jordan learned that the detective wore the pants in this relationship, and probably in every relationship in her life.

“So. Here’s how this will work, Mr. Ross.
Until you are one hundred and twenty percent on your feet again and in shape to run a decathlon you’re going to stay here with Shannon who will function as your nurse and guardian. You are under no circumstances to leave this cabin for any reason. If you need anything at all, Shannon has gracefully offered to drive into town to buy it for you. Right?”

The high end scotch had clearly gone to the skinny woman’s head. As Bollier talked Shannon mouthed O-K
like a petulant teenager humoring her tragically unhip parents.

“Right. You are not to use the telephone or the internet. Luckily there is no internet connection here so I don’t foresee that becoming a problem. There is no television so I’m certain that you’ll get bored very quickly which is all the better because this is not a long term arrangement. Shannon can find you books and newspapers, magazines, whatever. There’s a treadmill and a bunch of free weights in the bedroom. And there’s a bar that I’m sure can keep even the two of you occupied for quite some time. Any questions?”

Jordan swished the ice and whiskey around in his glass.

“What are you going to do?”

“Well unlike certain parties in present company I actually have a job to do. I’m going to head back into the city on Monday to follow up a few leads on Shirokov and see what else I can find out. In my very spare down time I’m going to talk to a friend of mine at the Bureau. He’ll help me dig up all of the research there is out there on the Russians, and he’ll have some idea of what to do with you.”

When the detective left on Monday morning Jordan wished her good luck and told Bollier to be careful out there, which she found amusing enough to laugh at. She punched Jordan on the arm and thanked him for his touching concern. Detective Bollier would be just fine on her own.

…

It took a week before Jordan Ross could stand up straight on his own power. The Russian’s bullet had cut deep through the muscle, and Shannon estimated it would be several months before it fully recovered all of its former formidable strength.

Glumly Jordan lounged around the cabin those first seven days which felt more like seven years. Country living was not something he was cut out for, having grown up in Memphis and spent most of his adult life in New York. Things would have been easier if he had been completely mobile. Sitting on his ass, watching the shadows crawl across the walls, he felt as if time kept going everywhere else in the world except in the cabin, which was stuck in 1972. Jordan glared out at the woods, wanting to sprint out with an axe and chop every single one of the tress down. With each cut he would hiss a Russian name.

Every morning Shannon cooked him breakfast and then offered to drive into town to grab him anything he might want. Some days Jordan shook his head and replied he didn’t need anything, others he asked her to pick up a copy of the New York Times and a fifth of bourbon.
Jordan had refused Shannon’s overtures that he should deplete the remarkable collection of scotch in her father’s bar, it just didn’t seem right he told her.  If they didn’t have Zachariah Harris he would settle for Evan Williams.

Entertainment at the cabin
was limited to Monopoly, Uno, Checkers and cards. Neither Shannon nor Jordan could stand to sit through an entire game of Monopoly so more often than not they played with the deck of cards, which was missing an eight of hearts but they made due. Shannon’s father had been a professional gambler after retiring and had taught her everything he knew about Poker. Jordan could hold his own until he took a bad beat and then lost emotional control. Shannon never got emotional, never seemed to make a mistake, which infuriated Jordan to no end. The afternoons were reserved for their daily no-limit Texas Hold ‘em game, which more often than not ended with Shannon holding all of the Monopoly money. At five o’clock they began drinking as a rule. Dinner was at seven, and by ten both of them were usually too drunk to do anything but go to sleep.

Nine
days after Detective Bollier drove Jordan out to the cabin he read a disturbing news item in the Times. Shannon had retired early after their game and Jordan was holed up in the library, reading the Metro section when he came across a piece that said the FBI was looking for him in connection with the three violent deaths that occurred at his home the previous week. The article asked any readers with information on the whereabouts of Jordan Ross to contact the FBI field office in Kew Gardens.

When Jordan’s eyes reached the last period in the article he jumped up from his chair, the first time he was able to do so without enduring a blast of incredible pain.

“Shit!”

Jordan roused Shannon from bed and told her that he needed to talk to Bollier right away. Using the cabin’s ancient land line candlestick telephone, he dialed Bollier’s mobile number.

…

Detective Bollier pushed the manila folder full of crime scene photos off to the side of her desk. She picked up her cell phone and let out a protracted sigh when she read the number, then answered in a terse tone.

“I told you not to call. This better be an emergency.”

“Nice to hear from you too, detective.”

“Oh, I thought that it would be Shannon calling from the number. What’s going on, Mr. Ross?”

“They’ve got a manhunt going for me. Did you read the Times today?”

“
Sadly my hours here afford very little time for leisure reading, but I am aware. You’ve been all over the local TV news for the last couple of days here.”

“You sound very relaxed considering.”

“There’s no need to panic. I’m going to get it taken care of. I’ve been bogged down here so I haven’t had time to see my friend at the Bureau but tomorrow I have an appointment to see him in the afternoon.”

“So? What? He can call off the dogs?”

“He owes me favor. Don’t worry about it…” Bollier heard a knock at her office door. “I have to go. Don’t call me again unless it’s a real emergency.”

Bollier ran her fingers through her ha
ir, trying to work out the knots. She had been quite literally living at the precinct since returning from the cabin in Connecticut. Even though she was craving the luxurious queen sized mattress in her loft on the upper west side, Bollier thought it would be imprudent to go home when the Russians could still be after her. A cot and a sleeping bag were rolled up in the corner. Bollier was anything but vain, but she didn’t want to look like she was living out of her office. When she was finally ready she said come in.

Detective Morris Castillo walked in and Bollier instantly regretted even having bothered to shower that morning in the women’s locker room. Castillo had a familiar swaggering look about him that seemed to come out whenever he’d been out drinking with his
uniformed buddies still walking the beat.