Effective immediately, p.14
Effective Immediately, page 14
part #3 of The Agency Files Series
“I quit my job.”
“When do you start your new one?”
Keith shook his head, not understanding. “I don’t have a new one. I—”
“Now I understand. You are regretting your stupidity. I can’t blame you.” Despite his words, Mr. Moretti smiled.
“You’d think it was stupid, wouldn’t you?” Despite ordering himself to stop, Keith heard himself say, “I had to break the law to do my job. Would you have stayed until you got a new one or would you have quit?”
“That sounds like a trick question. If it were that easy, you wouldn’t be troubled.”
“You’re a smart man.” Keith laughed, but his laugh rang hollow and he knew it. “There is more to it than that, but isn’t that enough? I did quit as a matter of conscience.”
Mr. Moretti considered his words for a second or two before asking, “Conscience or pride?”
“I couldn’t believe it when he said that. I mean, what could I have said or done to make him think that?”
“If you’re asking me if I’ve been hinting that you have pride issues, the answer is no. However, I think he makes a good point.” Erika tried to soften her words with a smile. It failed.
“That I’m just an arrogant bodyguard who should go back to his old job or—”
“No…” She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “I just think that you did hear a lot about how you were the best. You had a perfect track record. Then you got beaten by an inside job. That wounded your pride and scared you a bit because it was Claire, and I think that’s when it really hit you that she could get seriously hurt doing this job. Am I right?”
He didn’t want to acknowledge it, but the longer her words burned into his heart, the more honesty forced him to admit she was. “Yeah… maybe.”
“Then,” Erika continued, without giving him time to add a caveat. “Then you lost a client right after that. I think if you’d had a success or two between assignments, you could have gotten past it—realized that Keith Auger isn’t invincible. But back-to-back…”
“So you do think I’m arrogant.”
“I think you’re human, Keith. I think you’re hurting and confused, but…” She swallowed a sip of water before meeting his eyes and saying, “I also think that you’ve gotten in the habit of relying on Keith Auger for your clients’ safety instead of the god you claim you trust to protect and help you.”
“So out there in the woods where people tried to blow you up, you would prefer that I rely on God rather than my training?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “I find that hard to believe.”
“No… but I think you would prefer that you do. Isn’t that what your faith is all about? Giving control over every aspect of your life to the god you claim can do all things and help you do all things with his help?”
A smile grew as she spoke. “You’re still reading—a lot.”
“Yeah, well. There’s this guy I know and he’s pretty cool. He’s into the thing—the Bible, I mean—so I figure I might as well understand why.”
“That’s a dangerous thing to do, Erika.” Keith waited for the question and smiled when she asked it. “Because Romans 10:17 says, ‘So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.’”
“Which is the Bible. Yeah. I read that. So?”
“So…” Keith drew out a pause until he knew she’d become truly intrigued before he added, “You’re infusing yourself with the ‘word of Christ.’ You’re practically begging God to give you faith.”
“He does that? Just gives it?”
“Well, yeah—”
She interrupted before he could continue. “So what, like praying or something? I could just ask for it?”
“That, you’ll find in James. ‘If any of you lacks wisdom—”
“But we were talking faith,” Erika protested.
“Could God think of anything wiser than to have faith in Him? C’mon. Just listen. First chapter, by the way—near the beginning. It says if you lack wisdom ask for it and it will be given to you—generously even. God won’t reproach you for asking. He’ll give it to you.”
“So all this time I’ve been reading that book, over and over, trying to understand what the heck it’s all about, and you’re telling me I could have just asked for help believing it?”
“Yeah… but where does that faith come from?”
Her forehead wrinkled and her nose scrunched up as she pondered the question for a moment. The answer deflated her faster than a popped balloon. “Oh. Still have to read. Faith and Bible. Got it.” She scrunched up her nose again. “You know, maybe you should go to seminary and become a preacher or missionary or something. You’re good at explaining things and you’re not pushy. People would like that.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, really, but he’d imagined more active employment. “I’ll think about it—maybe take a class or two online and see how it goes.”
“Meanwhile, why don’t you apply somewhere as a security guard. I bet you’d have no trouble getting a job, and you could even use the down time to figure out if you want to stay in security-slash-protection or if you want to branch out into something new.”
Keith had considered security and rejected it as beneath his skill level. After their discussion of pride, the thought that perhaps he might want to reconsider surfaced and hovered. “Okay. You’re right. It might be a good transitional job, if nothing else. I hate that kind of job hopping, but I guess it’s not unreasonable after my past jobs. I don’t know anything but military or protection detail. I might discover that I like flipping burgers or filling coffee cups.”
“Y’know what? If you hate security, I dare you to come work for me. I think you’ll discover that there’s a bit more to my job than punching a button to fill a coffee cup.”
Chapter Sixteen
Soap drizzled into the long scrape across Ernie’s stomach. “Aaaahhheeeeissooodead! Whew!” Cuts and scrapes covered him. How he’d missed them, he could only attribute to fear, no glasses, and an excess of adrenaline. By the time he dried himself off, got dressed, and put on his spare glasses, they were so fogged from shower steam he couldn’t see the damage even wearing them. “Blaming Keith for that, too. First he doesn’t show, then I nearly get killed, and now I’m cut, bruised, scraped, and generally battered. Not acceptable.”
Squeaking hinges announced someone’s arrival, and voices in the living room sent him to the doorway, listening. He heard nothing, but the rush of Brian toward his bedroom told him they’d have to leave again. The door burst open. “We’re outta here. Mark says you have to go to the bunker.”
“The—”
“Bunker.” Brian tossed the few things Ernie’d left out from his shower in the duffel bag they’d given him and beckoned him to follow. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t even have a shirt on!”
Brian rifled through the bag and pulled out a shirt and flip-flops. “You can put it on while we go. We need to get out of here now.”
“Why?”
“They’re out there—only in the front right now, so we’re going down the fire escape and into the back yard over there.” Brian pushed Ernie toward the kitchen balcony. “Hurry.”
“How can they—”
“Shh… not until we’re in the van,” Brian hissed.
The fire escape hung almost over the edge of the fence backing the property—something that would not be to code if done today. On the other side, a trampoline stood as if waiting for them. “Seriously? I have to—”
“Jump now or I’m pushing you.”
The words came in the most menacing whisper Ernie could have imagined. “Fine. Keith’s dead. Just in case you need to know who did it. I’m confessing before the fact.”
“Noted. Go!”
Ernie felt Brian’s fingers brush his back just a second after he jumped. Had he not leapt forward at that moment, he suspected he’d be falling flat on his face on the trampoline—courtesy of Brian. And adding a broken or bloody nose to my injury repertoire.
Lying on the trampoline, he stared back at the fire escape. The glare on Brian’s face startled him until Ernie realized what the unspoken order was. Move. He scrambled down from the contraption only seconds before Brian landed on what would have been an Ernie pancake had he not moved in time. “Go!”
“Where?” Are you nuts? I can’t read your mind.
“Through the side door and into the garage. Marty’s waiting.”
“No way. I want you.”
“Too bad. You get Marty. Now go!”
The drive to the “bunker” consisted of the equivalent of bodyguard Chinese fire drills. At nearly every fifth intersection, they shuffled Ernie out of one car and into another. “I didn’t ask for an obstacle course,” he grumbled as Brian shoved him into yet another vehicle.
“Yeah, well, we didn’t ask to have to protect a guy with a tracker in him either.”
“Tracker?”
Brian slammed the door behind him. “Go! Next stop, bunker, so we’ll talk there.”
As they pulled into the old mayor’s mansion, Ernie’s eyes grew wide. “This is your ‘bunker’? Are you nuts?”
“Basement under the garage is actually a fallout shelter. They can’t track you to there. By the time you get under there, they’ll think you’ve gone into the park across the street.” Claire pulled into what had once been a carriage house and punched a security code into a panel on the wall. Panels—covered in antique tack—slid open, revealing an elevator. “Get in.”
“Seriously?”
“Look, we could have taken you a lot of places, but this has the advantage of privacy. No one comes here on Sundays,” she said as she jerked him inside and punched the down button.
Mark greeted them as the doors opened. “I’ve got Dr. Brecham in there. He’s going to find the tracker and take it out.”
“How do you know there’s a tracker? I’ve got all new clothes.”
“It’s internal. That’s the only explanation. I don’t know how on earth they found the technology or the ability to do it without you knowing—” Mark stared at him. “What?”
“My fault,” Ernie groaned. “I was talking one night about how I thought that we should look into seeing if tattoo artists could put trackers into tattoos while they’re doing their needlework. I mean, the recipient wouldn’t be any the wiser. Then I got this about six months later.” He rolled up his shirt sleeve and high on his arm, almost to the shoulder, Sara’s name was tattooed in black and red.
They stepped into a room where a doctor had laid out a scanner, scalpel, syringe, and a bottle of what Ernie suspected was some kind of numbing agent. Mark introduced them and said, “Ernie thinks it’s in this tattoo.”
Dr. Brecham waved the scanner over it and nodded. “Yep. In the ‘ball’ at the end of the A there. See… it’s slightly raised.”
“I noticed that—just thought it was normal.” Ernie’s throat closed as he fully realized what it meant. “So I nearly got us killed? I’m sitting here waiting for them to—”
“They can’t track through steel and concrete. You’re safe here, and we’re going to take that thing out so you can be safe elsewhere.” Mark gestured toward the makeshift “operating table” and added, “You don’t have to lie down, but Dr. Brecham doesn’t have much time to spare, so we need to get this done.”
He hadn’t been seated for more than a couple of seconds when the doctor scrubbed his shoulder with an alcohol wipe and stabbed him with the needle. “Ooohh… why does it always hurt more than I expect?”
“Shouldn’t hurt at all in about thirty more seconds,” the doctor assured him. “We’ll just slice the skin a little bit right here, push through, and pull it out. Are you ready?”
“Get it over with. I want this done and gone.”
The expected pain never materialized, much to Ernie’s relief. The minuscule tracker—smaller than a grain of rice—dropped into a petri dish. “Mark, you should keep it in something dense until you get it to your techs.”
“You’re not going to smash it?” Ernie stared at the two men, and then swung his eyes to Claire, Marty, and Brian. “Seriously? You’re going to let them keep that thing? It’ll lead the Kasimirs right—where you want them. I see.” He sighed. “Look, as long as I’m far away where they can’t and won’t find me, I’ll be good.”
Six applications. Keith stared at the screen confirmation for the last one before closing out and flopping back on the couch. “It’s going to be torture—serious torture. At first, anyway. It might not be so bad once I get started. I mean, why should it be? It’s the same principle, without the worry of danger to people—more like to property. I can do that.”
Remembering the TSA listing, he hesitated. Was it wrong not to apply for something he knew he’d get in a heartbeat? He’d already gotten a stricter security clearance than the government would ever require. “Maybe…”
Someone pounded on the front door and jabbed his doorbell almost at the same time. As Keith opened the door, Claire stood there glaring at him. “Quitter.”
“Yeah…”
“No, seriously. You stupid quitter!” She shoved him back as she stormed into the apartment. “I can’t believe you just walked out on us. We need you!”
Though he’d expected an outburst from her eventually, Claire’s approach irritated him into reacting. “Like Lucy needed me? She needed to die? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Oh, get off your dramatic high horse. I’m new, and even I know that you can’t prevent every single one. You just can’t. We were ambushed because you and Karen didn’t notice a fifteen second tap on a phone screen because you were probably out strategizing!”
“It’s my job—”
“—to notice,” she finished for him. “I know. But it’s also your job to discuss situations and opportunities. Karen left her phone. Karen. If it had been your phone, maybe you’d have a bit more of an argument, but it wasn’t. It was hers, but you don’t see her quitting and leaving us floundering around and trying to keep Ernie alive.”
He ordered himself not to ask, but the words came before he could stop himself. “Is Ernie okay?”
“Barely! He did everything we said—changed clothes, dumped the old, got new money—everything. It all failed. Everywhere we went, they followed not far behind.”
“Then he had to have had a tracke—oh, do not tell me that he told them about his tattoo idea.”
Claire pounced on that so quickly that he knew what she’d say before she said it. “Yep! And if you had been where you were supposed to be, you would have figured it out. You were his handler. You were his confidant. You know stuff even Mark doesn’t—for a reason. You failed him and he almost died.” Her voice broke as she added in a whisper, “I almost died.”
Keith knew Claire thought she’d said all the right things to convince him to return with her, but she solidified something he’d been considering for days now. “Get out, Claire. Get out while you can. I should have refused to let Mark bring you into this. Please forgive me.”
“Forgive you? For the best job I’ve ever had? I don’t think so. I’m finding it hard to forgive you for abandoning us, though. Seriously, Keith, what were you thinking?”
He’d said the same words so often that it sounded trite, but Keith tried, once more, to explain why a job that required him to break the law was only palatable to him when he saved lives in the process. “If I can’t save a life, I can’t break the law. I can’t just do it because it fits our business model. That’s not enough for me.”
“You’re not really breaking the law. Mark told me—there’s unofficial approval for our company.”
“It’s still illegal. I am not military. I am not CIA, NSA, Homeland, or any other government agency that operates within other parameters. I’m a civilian who is willing to defy laws to save lives. I am. But if I can’t do that, I can’t live with myself. Can’t you see that?”
Keith thought she’d hug him. And maybe in past years or moments, she might have, but this time she stood, arms crossed over her chest, and glared at him. “I can see that you’re so full of crushed pride that you can’t see straight. Your girlfriend is alive because of you.” He started to protest, but she paced the room, her arms flailing in an attempt to emphasize her point. “Does the military quit trying to protect us because we lost Vietnam? Do we quit fighting terrorists when they win a skirmish, or do we keep going because if we don’t, they win them all?”
“We keep fighting,” Keith agreed.
Claire beamed. “I knew you’d—”
“And we remove soldiers who aren’t cut out for the job anymore so that they don’t get their comrades killed. That’s all I did. I removed myself from battle for the good of the unit.”
Frustrated—fuming, rather—Claire stood glaring at him, silent. At last she threw her arms up in the air and stormed to the door. “I can’t argue with you. I know you’re wrong, but you always have an answer for everything, and it always sounds good. But know this; just because I can’t argue it, doesn’t mean I’m wrong. It means you’re a better debater. That’s it. You’re wrong, and I’m going to prove it before we lose someone else because you’re not on the case.” The door slammed shut behind her.
Keith grinned. “Five… four… three… two…”
The door opened again as Claire raced across the room and flung her arms around him. “I love you—even if you are an idiot. Now go have your midlife crisis—”
“I’m hardly middle aged!” he protested.
“You’re acting like it. So just get past it so you can come back. I’m gonna go before I say something I regret.”
“Um… did you really think you’d come in and change my mind like that?” He tried to snap his fingers and failed—as he always did. You’d think, at my age, I could do something as simple as snap my fingers. It’s ridiculous.
Claire snapped her fingers. “You mean like that? Not quite, but I thought you’d listen to reason. I should have remembered who I was talking to.”
