CHAPTER FOUR-1
2025 Words
CHAPTER FOUR
Walking the streets of Paris felt like a dream—just not in the way that anyone would expect or even desire. Reid reached the intersection of Rue de Berri and Avenue des Champs-Élysées, ever the tourist hotspot despite the chilly weather. The Arc de Triomphe loomed several blocks away to the northwest, the centerpiece of Place Charles de Gaulle, but its grandeur was lost on Reid. A new vision flashed across his mind.
I’ve been here before. I’ve stood in this spot and looked up at this street sign. Wearing jeans and a black motorcycle jacket, the colors of the world muted by polarized sunglasses…
He turned right. He wasn’t sure what he would find this way, but he had the eerie suspicion that he would recognize it as he saw it. It was an incredibly bizarre sensation to not know where he was going until he got there.
It felt as if every new sight brought on some vignette of vague recollection, each disconnected from the next, yet still somehow congruent. He knew that the café on the corner served the best pastis he would ever taste. The sweet scent of the patisserie across the street made his mouth water for savory palmiers. He had never tasted palmiers before. Had he?
Even sounds jarred him. Passersby chattered idly to one another as they strolled the boulevard, occasionally stealing glances at his bandaged, bruised face.
“I would hate to see the other guy,” a young Frenchman muttered to his girlfriend. They both chuckled.
Okay, don’t panic, Reid thought. Apparently you know Arabic and French. The only other language that Professor Lawson spoke was German and a few phrases in Spanish.
There was something else too, something harder to define. Beneath his rattling nerves and instinct to run, to go home, to hide somewhere, beneath all of that there was a cold, steely reserve. It was like having the heavy hand of an older brother on his shoulder, a voice in the back of his mind saying, Relax. You know all of this.
While that voice ushered him softly from the back of his mind, on the forefront was his girls and their safety. Where were they? What were they thinking right then? What would it mean for them if they lost both parents?
He had never stopped thinking about them. Even as he was being beaten in the dingy basement prison, even as these flashes of visions were intruding on his mind, he had been thinking about the girls—particularly that last question. What would happen to them if he had died down there in that basement? Or if he died doing the very foolhardy thing that he was about to do?
He had to make sure. He had to reach out somehow.
But first, he needed a jacket, and not just to cover his bloodstained shirt. The February weather was approaching fifty degrees, but still too chilly for just a shirt. The boulevard acted as a wind tunnel and the breeze was brisk. He ducked into the next clothing boutique and chose the first coat that caught his eye—a dark brown bomber jacket, leather with a fleece lining. Strange, he thought. He would never have picked a jacket like this before, what with his tweed and plaid fashion sense, but he was drawn to it.
The bomber jacket was two hundred and forty euros. No matter; he had a pocketful of money. He picked out a new shirt as well, a slate-gray tee, and then a pair of jeans, new socks, and sturdy brown boots. He brought all his purchases up to the counter and paid in cash.
There was a thumbprint of blood on one of the bills. The thin-lipped clerk pretended not to notice. A strobe-like flash in his mind—
“A guy walks into a gas station covered in blood. He pays for his fuel and starts to leave. The bewildered attendant calls out, ‘Hey, man, are you okay?’ The guy smiles. ‘Oh yeah, I’m fine. It’s not my blood.’”
I’ve never heard that joke before.
“May I use your changing room?” Reid asked in French.
The clerk pointed toward the rear of the store. He hadn’t said a single word during the entire transaction.
Before changing, Reid examined himself for the first time in a clean mirror. Jesus, he looked awful. His right eye was swelling fiercely and blood was staining the bandages. He’d have to find a drug store and buy some decent first-aid supplies. He slid his now-filthy and somewhat bloody jeans down over his wounded thigh, wincing as he did. Something clattered to the floor, startling him. The Beretta. He’d nearly forgotten he had it.
The pistol was heavier than he would have imagined. Nine hundred forty-five grams, unloaded, he knew. Holding it was like embracing a former lover, familiar and foreign at the same time. He set it down and finished changing, stuffed his old clothes in the shopping bag, and tucked the pistol into the waistband of his new jeans, at the small of his back.
Out on the boulevard, Reid kept his head low and walked briskly, staring down at the sidewalk. He didn’t need more visions distracting him right now. He tossed the bag of old clothes in a trash can on a corner without missing a step.
“Oh! Excusez-moi,” he apologized as his shoulder bumped roughly into a passing woman in a business suit. She glared at him. “So sorry.” She huffed and stalked off. He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets—along with the cell phone he had swiped from her purse.
It was easy. Too easy.
Two blocks away, he ducked under a department store awning and took out the phone. He breathed a sigh of relief—he’d targeted the businesswoman for a reason, and his instinct paid off. She had Skype installed on her phone and an account linked to an American number.
He opened the phone’s Internet browser, looked up the number to Pap’s Deli in the Bronx, and called.
A young male voice answered quickly. “Pap’s, how can I help you?”
“Ronnie?” One of his students from the year prior worked part time at Reid’s favorite deli. “It’s Professor Lawson.”
“Hey, Professor!” the young man said brightly. “How’s it going? You want to put in a takeout order?”
“No. Yes… sort of. Listen, I need a really big favor, Ronnie.” Pap’s Deli was only six blocks from his house. On pleasant days, he would often walk the distance to pick up sandwiches. “Do you have Skype on your phone?”
“Yeah?” said Ronnie, a confused lilt in his voice.
“Good. Here’s what I need you to do. Write down this number…” He instructed the kid to make a quick run down to his house, see who, if anyone, was there, and call back the American number on the phone.
“Professor, are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No, Ronnie, I’m fine,” he lied. “I lost my phone and a nice woman is letting me use hers to let my kids know I’m okay. But I only have a few minutes. So if you could, please…”
“Say no more, Professor. Happy to help. I’ll hit you back in a few.” Ronnie hung up.
While he waited, Reid paced the short span of the awning, checking the phone every few seconds in case he missed the call. It felt like an hour passed before it rang again, though it had only been six minutes.
“Hello?” He answered the Skype call on the first ring. “Ronnie?”
“Reid, is that you?” A frantic female voice.
“Linda!” Reid said breathlessly. “I’m glad you’re there. Listen, I need to know—”
“Reid, what happened? Where are you?” she demanded.
“The girls, are they at the—”
“What’s happened?” Linda interrupted. “The girls woke up this morning, freaking out because you were gone, so they called me and I came right over…”
“Linda, please,” he tried to interject, “where are they?”
She talked over him, clearly distraught. Linda was a lot of things, but good in a crisis wasn’t one of them. “Maya said that sometimes you go for walks in the morning, but both the front and back doors were open, and she wanted to call the police because she said you never leave your phone at home, and now this boy shows up from the deli and hands me a phone—?”
“Linda!” Reid hissed sharply. Two elderly men passing by looked up at his outburst. “Where are the girls?”
“They’re here,” she panted. “They’re both here, at the house with me.”
“They’re safe?”
“Yes, of course. Reid, what’s going on?”
“Did you call the police?”
“Not yet, no… on TV they always say you have to wait twenty-four hours to report someone missing… Are you in some sort of trouble? Where are you calling me from? Whose account is this?”
“I can’t tell you that. Just listen to me. Have the girls pack a bag and take them to a hotel. Not anywhere close; go outside the city. Maybe to Jersey…”
“Reid, what?”
“My wallet is on my desk in the office. Don’t use the credit card directly. Get a cash advance on whatever cards are in there and use it to pay for the stay. Keep it open-ended.”
“Reid! I’m not going to do a thing until you tell me what’s… hang on a sec.” Linda’s voice became muffled and distant. “Yes, it’s him. He’s okay. I think. Wait, Maya!”
“Dad? Dad, is that you?” A new voice on the line. “What happened? Where are you?”
“Maya! I, uh, had something come up, extremely last minute. I didn’t want to wake you…”
“Are you kidding me?” Her voice was shrill, agitated and worried at the same time. “I’m not stupid, Dad. Tell me the truth.”
He sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you where I am, Maya. And I shouldn’t be on the phone long. Just do what your aunt says, okay? You’re going to leave the house for a little while. Don’t go to school. Don’t wander anywhere. Don’t talk about me on the phone or computer. Understand?”
“No, I don’t understand! Are you in some kind of trouble? Should we call the police?”
“No, don’t do that,” he said. “Not yet. Just… give me some time to sort something out.”
She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “Promise me that you’re okay.”
He winced.
“Dad?”
“Yeah,” he said a bit too forcefully. “I’m okay. Please, just do what I ask and go with your Aunt Linda. I love you both. Tell Sara I said so, and hug her for me. I’ll contact you as soon as I can—”
“Wait, wait!” Maya said. “How will you contact us if you don’t know where we are?”
He thought for a moment. He couldn’t ask Ronnie to get any further involved in this. He couldn’t call the girls directly. And he couldn’t risk knowing where they were, because that could be leverage against him…
“I’ll set up a fake account,” said Maya, “under another name. You’ll know it. I’ll only check it from the hotel computers. If you need to contact us, send a message.”
Reid understood immediately. He felt a swell of pride; she was so smart, and so much cooler under pressure than he could hope to be.
“Dad?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s good. Take care of your sister. I have to go…”
“I love you too,” said Maya.
He ended the call. Then he sniffed. Again it came, the stinging instinct to run home to them, to keep them safe, to pack up whatever they could and leave, go somewhere…
He couldn’t do that. Whatever this was, whoever was after him, had found him once. He had been supremely fortunate that they weren’t after his girls. Maybe they didn’t know about the kids. Next time, if there was a next time, maybe he wouldn’t be so lucky.
Reid opened the phone, pulled out the SIM card, and snapped it in half. He dropped the pieces into a sewer grate. As he walked down the street, he deposited the battery in one trash bin, and the two halves of the phone in others.
He knew he was walking in the general direction of Rue de Stalingrad, though he had no idea what he would do when he arrived there. His brain screamed at him to change direction, to go anywhere else. But that sangfroid in his subconscious compelled him to keep going.
His captors had asked him what he knew of their “plans.” The locations they had asked about, Zagreb and Madrid and Tehran, they had to be connected, and they were clearly linked to the men who had taken him. Whatever these visions were—he still refused to acknowledge them as anything but—there was knowledge in them about something that had either occurred or was going to occur. Knowledge he didn’t know. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that sense of urgency nag at his mind.
No, it was more than that. It felt like an obligation.
His captors had seemed willing to kill him slowly for what he knew. And he had the sensation that if he didn’t discover what this was and what he was supposed to know, more people would die.
- Writer
