A Man Overboard Read online

  “Did you check your vacuum?”

  Jack snorted under his breath and leaned back in his chair, lifting the cup to his lips again while setting his gaze on the rain.

  Ivan leaned forward. “You have no idea what’s going on. What these letters are. Where they came from. Who they’re to. What the books mean. Why you were thrown overboard. What happened to Stacey. Why Viktoriya would take Joseph somewhere…” He trailed off, sitting back himself. “And if I can be honest, you didn’t really know who Stacey was before you married her.”

  Jack squinted. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that those letters, regardless of who they’re from and for, suggest something…big.”

  “You think Stacey is—”

  “Not who you think she is,” he stated bluntly. “Or maybe was.”

  Jack was so shocked by the statement that he couldn’t respond.

  “You don’t know what she used to be involved in, who her old friends were. We’ve talked about this before, Jack. When it comes to Stacey’s past, you know next to nothing.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That for now you concentrate on finding Joseph. If these letters belong to Stacey, then she has them for a reason. Maybe she’s involved somehow, at least in that she’s aware of what’s going on. Maybe whatever Vadim was involved in has run its course, and now he’s cleaning up.”

  “You mean…”

  “I don’t know what I mean. Just…find your son.”

  But before Jack could think of another response, his phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and accepted the call, irritated at the untimely interruption. He knew that Ivan wasn’t telling him everything, that his Russian friend had a theory he wasn’t sharing. “Hello?” And then his eyes swung down, dropping away from his friend. His face turned ashen, and his mouth opened with a silent gasp. “What?” He listened to the voice on the other end and then, “I’ll be right there.”

  Concern flooded Ivan’s face. “What is it?”

  “My house is on fire.”

  17

  For two miles, Jack could only stare at the pillar of smoke rising above the earth—a dark beacon signaling a disaster that he was powerless to quell. He beeped his horn, swerved around slow traffic, and pushed the Hyundai harder than it had ever been pushed before. But in the end, parked alongside the curb a few houses down, rescue vehicles littering the street with flashing lights shining through the rain and groups of people standing around under umbrellas, he could only watch his house—their house—fall apart beneath an ominous, bright-orange flame. The firemen were sending streams of arching water into the dancing blaze, but even with the falling rain, it was a lost cause.

  He watched, unable to truly believe what he was seeing. Joseph’s room. His and Stacey’s things. The photo albums. Their life.

  A knock on the glass startled him, snapping him out of the fire’s pitiless trance.

  “Jack?”

  His cop friend was peering down through the window. At first, Jack thought he was some murky apparition sent to usher him into the next world, his form ghostly and veiled beneath the downpour. When Jack finally acknowledged him by lowering the window, he muttered, “Hey, Don.”

  Donny leaned closer, the falling water splashing off his rain jacket and spraying the car’s interior. “Jack, your neighbor’s telling people that you were shooting at someone…” There was worry in his voice, though his eyes were too busy blinking away waterfalls to get a read on those telling windows. “What the hell is going on?” He was whispering, his eyes darting through the gathered audience as if at any moment someone might discover his friend’s presence and lead a charge toward the car.

  “Wanna take a ride?”

  “You know I can’t. Tell me what’s going on. First Stacey’s missing, and then you’re shooting at people and your house is on fire…”

  Jack stared straight ahead, not really wanting to rehash the entire string of disjointed events again. So instead, he asked, “Is Agent Johnson here?”

  Donny frowned. “Yeah, he’s over there.” He pointed into the flashing chaos. “Listen, Jack, I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Do me a favor, Don?” Jack cut him off. He reached into the backpack and took out the picture he’d found in Seventeen Moments of Spring. “See if you can find out who this guy is. I think his name is Vadim. He’s Russian.”

  Donny stared at him a second. “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “Later. I promise.”

  His high school friend took the picture and slid it into the dry safety of a zippered pocket. “Why don’t you give it to Johnson?”

  After a moment of consideration, Jack shrugged. “Do you trust him?”

  Snickering, Donny asked, “You mean do I think he’s into illegal wiretaps, hunting down income tax protestors, and labeling anyone capable of independent thought a terrorist?”

  Jack shot him an impatiently bored look.

  “Yeah, I trust him.”

  “Okay. But still,” he motioned toward the pocket the picture had disappeared into. “Can you find out for me?”

  He sighed. “I’ll see what I can do, Jack. You better tell me what the hell is going on though. And soon.”

  “I’ll call you once this is all cleared up.”

  “All right. But go talk to Johnson now before local snatches you up.” Then, before turning to leave, he asked, “Hey, you’re not in trouble are you? I mean—”

  “With the law?” He shook his head, watching as a section of his house collapsed into a violent pile of sparks. “Not yet.”

  “Not yet?”

  “Don, I’ll call you later.” He put the window up, blocking the splashing rain from further soaking his car. When he joined Detective Rickards in the rain, he slapped him reassuringly on the back. “I don’t know what’s going on, Don. But I think it’s big. And somehow Stacey was—is—in the middle of it.” He turned away from him in pursuit of the FBI man. “I’ll call you later. Find out who that guy is.”

  Jack found Johnson standing alone, leaning against a fire truck and observing the inferno that was converting all of his possessions to ash, lifting them to the air like a sacrifice offered to some wicked, celestial god. It seemed to Jack that the agent was searching the pluming clouds for clues.

  “Agent Johnson,” Jack said.

  Without turning toward him, Johnson quietly asked, “Would you like to explain why your house is on fire? And what you thought I should see in your garage?”

  “I shot an intruder last night,” he said.

  Johnson’s gaze swept away from the bonfire and rested, suspiciously, on Jack’s face. “Excuse me?”

  Trusting Donny’s friendship with the federal agent, Jack told him everything. The incident in the garage, the backpack, Viktoriya’s house, the drive-by…

  Johnson shook his head. “You should’ve reported it. It doesn’t look good, you killing a guy in your house and not calling it in. No matter how you spin it.”

  “I know. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “We could’ve found out who the guy was.” He nodded toward the house. “Now we have nothing.” He put his hands on his hips and exhaled. “Let me have the letters and books.”

  Jack handed over the backpack.

  After taking it, Johnson said, “I talked to the cruise line this morning. They’re checking on the tapes. I also checked all your internet accounts. Someone was on MapQuest getting driving directions north.”

  “Yeah, I saw that.”

  They both stood silent for a moment. “Jack,” Johnson started, “I don’t know who’s going to be getting involved with this or what they’ll uncover. There are witnesses that saw you shooting at a passing vehicle, your house is on fire, your wife is missing, your son and mother-in-law are missing…” He turned and looked him in the eye. “People are going to have some questions for you. If they find a corpse in there with bullet holes in it, those questions are going to be coming sooner rathe
r than later. I won’t be able to help you the way that I am once that happens. Official channels will have to be opened and protocol followed. Everything will slow down, and you’ll be the first suspect to be investigated.”

  “If they’re burning the house to cover something up, then they wouldn’t take the van and leave the body.”

  Johnson nodded. “Do you even have a license to carry that pistol?”

  “Of course.”

  “If you want to find your family, then you have to be smart about this. Either that or you can spend your time phoning lawyers. Do you have anywhere you can stay? Family?”

  “No family.”

  “Talk to Donny, then. You’ll be safer with him anyway, and he can keep you out of trouble.” He started walking away, the backpack hanging from his grasp. “I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”

  “Hey,” Jack called after him.

  Johnson turned.

  “Why are you doing this? Helping me, I mean?”

  “Let’s just say I owe Donny a couple favors.” And then he pointed a finger at him. “But that only goes so far, Mr. Green. If you want my help, you have to observe the boundaries. If you start going Rambo, then I’ll have to step away and let the bureau take over.”

  Jack nodded his understanding and watched him walk away. He let the rainwater drip off his face as he turned his attention back to the house he and Stacey had bought four years ago, right before Joseph was born. Thirsty flames were dancing through the broken windows, licking cool droplets out of the sky, smoke continuing to rise like that pagan offering, his family the sacrifice required for appeasement. But why?

  Anger began to boil in Jack’s veins, the heat of the fire chasing away all other feeling. Someone had thrown him overboard. Someone had taken his wife. Someone had shot at him. Someone just burnt down his house…

  One way or another, regardless of Johnson’s warning, someone was surely going to pay.

  The orange-red fire that was reflecting off his hypnotized eyes reached down and ignited something inside of him that he’d only recently felt while beating the man’s face in with the butt of his gun.

  Rage.

  18

  Jack opened the door to the doctor’s office and stepped in, quickly observing the waiting room as he strode purposefully to the reception counter. Only one elderly woman with her face stuck in a magazine was present in the small room, a talk show sounding softly from a TV hanging on the wall.

  “Can I help you?” a voice from behind the counter asked.

  As Jack came closer to the source of the voice, he saw a young blonde woman looking up from a computer.

  “Yeah. I’d actually like to speak to Dr. Timonen, my wife’s primary.”

  “What’s your wife’s name, sir?”

  “Stacey Green.”

  “And you are?”

  “Jack.”

  “Are you a patient here as well, Mr. Green?” Her fingers were clicking away over the keyboard.

  “I’ve been here a few times.”

  She looked up at him again, questions dancing through her blue eyes. “May I ask what this is about?”

  “I just have some questions about her cancer.”

  His statement seemed to startle her, and all the questions floating through those blue irises scattered instantly. “Uh…” She squinted, looking back over her shoulder and to a female doctor that had just stepped into the office. “Michelle, this is Mr. Green. Stacey’s husband,” the receptionist said.

  The woman named Michelle lifted her eyes and smiled. “Jack.”

  He nodded and managed a polite smile of his own.

  The doctor stepped up to the counter and extended her hand. “Michelle Kelly. I’ve heard a lot about you. Your wife is a wonderful woman. You’re lucky to have her.” She shook his hand.

  A lump formed in Jack’s throat. “Yeah…”

  She sensed his unease and tilted her head, her eyebrows pinching. “Is everything okay?”

  The receptionist said, “He’s here to talk to Dr. Timonen. About Stacey’s cancer.”

  Dr. Kelly looked like she’d been slapped in the face. “Cancer?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Uh,” she looked around before lowering her voice. “Dr. Timonen isn’t in today. Hasn’t been in for a couple days, actually. No one can seem to get a hold of him.”

  “He’s missing?”

  She studied him quizzically for a second. “Why don’t you come on back, Mr. Green.” She indicated that he walk through the door positioned beside the counter.

  He followed her into a room and sat down in a chair beside the single desk. Pictures of the human body and some of its specific ailments decorated the walls from beneath framed glass, the bed with the paper lining stretching out from the room’s opposite corner.

  Dr. Kelly crossed her legs. “How is Stacey?”

  “Uh…” And he found himself reaching for some kind of an answer that wouldn’t require repeating the whole story again. “I’m not exactly sure.”

  Alarm crossed the soft features of her face. “Did something happen?”

  “We were on a cruise.”

  She uncrossed her legs and stiffened, some sense of what was coming gripping her.

  “I was thrown overboard.”

  “What?” she blurted out.

  “Obviously, they saved me. But Stacey’s missing.”

  “Oh my God.” Her hand flew to her mouth, and the pleasant softness of her face fell away like a melting mask.

  “We just wanted to have a good time, you know, before the cancer took over our lives.”

  She wagged her head, her red ponytail swaying back and forth as tears formed in her eyes. After taking a few moments to compose herself, she said, “I don’t understand. Who told you she had cancer?”

  “She did. Timonen did. Check her file. Her mammogram came back positive.”

  “She had the hospital send the results here?”

  He shrugged.

  “Hold on a sec, will you?” She sniffled, rubbing her swollen eyes as she stood and left the room.

  Jack sat waiting for almost ten minutes, spending the time pondering his conversation with Johnson and questioning his own theory that his house was burnt down to cover something up. But what would someone want to cover up? The picture and the novels? Who would they threaten? How? And then there were the letters and whatever Ivan wasn’t telling him. Something to do with the SVR and FSB. Something that made even less sense.

  When Dr. Kelly came back in the room, she had a bunch of files and big envelopes tucked under her arm, and she didn’t apologize for making him wait. Instead, she wordlessly extracted one of two white envelopes and handed it to him. Setting the remainder of the pile down on the desk, she crossed her arms and watched Jack pull the glossy films from the packet.

  Jack held them up to the light. “These hers?”

  “Her name is on it. They were in her file.” She wiped a teardrop from one of her eyes. “At least that’s what it says.”

  Jack looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  She handed him the other envelope. “Has she had a biopsy yet?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Then you don’t know for certain that the mass is malignant.”

  He shook his head again, the look on his face growing more and more uncertain. “I don’t understand.”

  “What exactly did Stacey tell you?”

  He thought back, the new envelope still sitting unopened on his lap. “Uh… She got a phone call from Dr. Timonen one day. I guess instead of the letter she usually gets when the results are normal.”

  She nodded for him to continue.

  “He told her the mammogram showed a mass and that she should have a biopsy right away. She thought it was strange because he hadn’t detected anything during the physical exam. Apparently, from what he told her, the mass was pretty significant.”

  She pointed to the images he’d already removed, at a large white circle that
looked like some lunar lake in an old satellite photo. “It’s very big,” she confirmed.

  He stared at it for a while. It was, after all, the very reason they were on the ship in the first place. “She went to pick up the images, to drop them off at the biopsy place and schedule her appointment. I think she had to sign for them. They told her not to open the envelope, that it was for the doctor’s eyes only. Of course she opened it as soon as she got in the car. Who wouldn’t? There was a piece of paper along with the images. It said, ‘Biopsy ordered to confirm malignancy.’”

  “But she never actually had the biopsy?”

  “No. She never even dropped the images off. They’re still in her closet…” He trailed off, remembering that there was no such place anymore.

  “I don’t understand,” Dr. Kelly said. “Why was she so certain she had cancer?”

  “Because Timonen told her she did. The radiologist was ninety-five percent sure. Thus the note.”

  “I didn’t know anything about this,” she stated, suspiciously.

  “Were you supposed to?” Jack asked.

  “No. But I’m pretty close to your wife. Dr. Timonen is her primary, but she’s seen me just as much as she’s seen him over the years. And I would think Dr. Timonen would’ve told me if he was sure she had cancer.”

  “Well, I guess he didn’t.”

  She nodded toward the contents in his hands. “Open the other one.”

  Without question, he dumped more black and white film into his lap. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at here.”

  “Your wife’s breasts, Jack.”

  His eyes met hers. “I know. What about them?”

  “How big are they?”

  Her use of the present tense seemed forced, but Jack was able to circumnavigate the insinuation. “Her breasts?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shrugged. Under any other circumstances, he might have blushed, and he remembered the verses from Song of Solomon that he quoted over dinner the last night he’d been with her. “Big enough.”

  Pointing at the images, Dr. Kelly asked, “You see any evidence of a mass in those?”

  He sighed, holding it up. There was definitely no moon lake on this planet’s topography. “When were these from?”