Primary Valor, Jack Mars [black female authors .txt] 📗

The cameras down here were off. Thatwas what was promised, and he believed it. When someone told him the cameraswould be off, invariably they were. Just another mystery for the newspapers andthe blue ribbon investigation panels to puzzle out. Why were the cameras off? ForBrown, the important point was they said the cameras would be off, and so theywere off.

Who were they? Even he wasn’tsure anymore. At one time, he had been a Navy SEAL, highly trained, highly indemand. Later, he had been on loan to the Joint Special Operations Command, andeven later, the CIA. Now? Who knew? He was working for them. And theywere paying him.

They were the people who contactedhim, gave him his instructions, and gave him his money. The money, and it wasgood money, always came in cash. That’s how he wanted it, and that’s how itcame. In this case, it was in a large canvas Adidas bag, like a professionalbasketball player might be seen entering the bowels of the stadium carryingover his shoulder. The bag had been in the trunk of a car parked in the lot ofa busy suburban mall.

Tricky, that. The key to the carhad come in the mail, no return address. A real key that you put into a slot,not one of those fancy modern clickers. You never knew what might happen whenyou slipped a key into a lock and turned it.

So he’d had Mr. Clean do thatinstead. And it worked like a charm. The car didn’t explode. The bag was in thetrunk. The money was in the bag. And Mr. Clean was here with him now.

Mr. Clean was also wearing theuniform of a federal corrections officer. Clean was a young guy from a similarbackground to Brown. Former SEAL, big, good worker, very tough, no fear. Alsosmart, and good with new technology.

Right now, the technology Cleanwas carrying was a sheet from the prison laundry. Clean had that name becausehe suffered from early onset male pattern baldness. Not a good look, so heshaved his head instead. He resembled the cartoon muscle man from the oldcleaning product TV commercials more or less perfectly.

Brown glanced at Clean now. Cleanwas wearing black leather driving gloves. That was good. He looked at the nameon Clean’s left breast. Jones. It would have been funnier if it said Clean.

Footfalls echoed on the stonefloor as the two men passed the closed, windowless steel doors of empty cells. Eachcell door had a narrow opening near the bottom, like a mail slot, through whichthe guards could shove meals to the prisoners. But there were no prisoners. Theredidn’t seem to be anyone down here.

“This place is the pits,” Mr.Clean said.

Brown nodded. “Yeah.” It was likebeing in a tunnel deep beneath the surface of the Earth. There was an old jokethat Brown liked.

“Did they put him in jail? No. Theyput him under the jail.” This place was that joke come to life.

Somewhere on this hallway, just upahead, a man was screaming. It sounded like agony. It went on and on, no signof ending, becoming increasingly loud and desperate in tone as they approachedit.

“Guard! Guard! GUARD!”

Brown and Clean walked a bitfurther and came to a stop in front of a door, one among many. Clean slid alarge key into the lock. The tumblers echoed in the deep stillness. The doorwas on some kind of slider—rollers, in all likelihood. As the door slid away, atiny, dismal cell was revealed.

The prisoner stood in an orangejumpsuit, facing them. He was tall and had white hair, peppered with a bit ofbrown or black. He had a big jaw. A person would say he was very handsome,could have probably been a model in magazines when he was younger. Marlboroman, that kind of thing.

He could use a shave, though, andhis eyes seemed deep set and hollowed out. There were dark rings beneath them. Thepoor man hadn’t been sleeping well. In these surroundings, who could blame him?

“Hello, Darwin,” Brown said. “Howare you tonight? Are you ready?”

“You’re not my normal guards,”Darwin King said.

Brown shook his head. “No.”

Darwin’s eyes flitted to the sheetin Mr. Clean’s hands. Those eyes then came back to Brown’s. Darwin looked likehe was about to cry. His chest heaved as if he couldn’t get a full breath. Browndidn’t feel anything about this at all.

“Who are you?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’re thecleaning crew.”

“I have money,” Darwin said. “Alot of money. I can get it to you.”

Brown shook his head sadly. “We’vealready been paid. The people who paid us frown on double-dipping. I think youprobably understand.”

Clean moved into the cell with thesheet.

Darwin King’s body tensed as if hewas getting ready to resist.

Brown nearly laughed.

“You can make this hard or easy,”Clean said. “On yourself. Whatever you decide, you won’t move the needle for usan inch in either direction.”

Darwin King’s eyes were wide.

“If I were you,” Mr. Brown said tothose big frightened deer eyes, “I think I’d just try to relax. I’m not goingto say that it won’t hurt. It will. But look at the bright side.”

He glanced around at Darwin King’sdreary surroundings. The man, once so rich, so prominent, so high-flying, wasliving in a medieval dungeon.

“This will all be over soon.”

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

4:05 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Pine Valley

Wilmington, North Carolina

Charlotte woke with a start.

It was dark in her room, thedarkest time of night. She had been dreaming, something horrible, but shecouldn’t remember what it was.

She sat up in bed. Okay. Okay. Itwasn’t that bad, the darkness. The door was open, and there was a light on inthe hallway. She hadn’t slept with a light on since she was a little girl. Nowshe couldn’t sleep without one. She could barely sleep at all.

Everything was different now. Everything.

They had given her a physical examthat was more intrusive than being kidnapped. She didn’t like to think aboutthat, and could mostly block it out of her memory.

They would ask her a millionquestions over and over, and then a new person would come in, and ask her thesame questions again. Sometimes they did her the favor of phrasing thequestions a little bit differently, just to keep things interesting. Or maybeit