Chapter 14: Traveling

Present Day

Days 1 - 4

Midwest, America

Sean and Janice slept late the next morning. Both were tired from the previous day’s travel and by their lack of decent sleep later. After they woke, however, Sean said, “We need to get a move on. I want to get to Kansas City today. It’s going to be a long drive, so we can’t be dicking around. I’ll get us started, but at some point, you’ll need to drive. If we can alternate every few hours, it will go faster.”

“Eat on the road?” she asked.

“If we can. We’ll need to gas up first, but then it’s Egg McMuffins and off we go.”

Janice nodded and headed into the bathroom. When she was finished, it was Sean’s turn to clean up. He got out of the shower to find Janice had already thrown everything into the gym bag she had bought at the Walmart. Now that she had gotten used to the idea, she was adjusting well. They got on the road by ten.

“What’s in Kansas City?” she asked.

“Anonymity. You need a new license at a minimum, maybe some other stuff.”

“And I can get that in Kansas City?”

“I would be very surprised if I couldn’t”

“Legally?” Janice asked. Sean simply laughed at that, which made Janice groan.

They had been on the road about half an hour when Janice asked, “So why did you quit? And how did you quit? James Bond never quits.”

“James Bond has been around for fifty-some years. If he was real, he’d be killing people with his wheelchair.”

“So?”

“So. Okay, this is where things get messy. Remember, outside of that little issue with my ex-wife and the guys she was messing around with, I was a real Boy Scout. Removing traitors and spies was not something I had any real issues with.”

“Okay. I’m following you.”

Sean continued, “There’s a big push to privatize government. I’m sure you’ve seen this sort of thing on the news. Anyway, government is bad; the private market is good. Don’t have government do something because private industry is so much better and more efficient, that sort of thing.”

“Sure, I’ve heard of that. What does that have to do with you?” asked Janice.

“Everything. This is in everything. Don’t have state or federal prisons; have a prison company take care of your prisoners. Don’t fix the roads, hire a private company to fill the potholes. All sorts of things, big and small. Get rid of Social Security and let people invest in the stock market instead. Get rid of Medicare and Medicaid and let people buy their own health insurance.”

“What does that have to do with you? Are you saying the government is hiring assassins by contract?”

He smiled. “Don’t look so surprised. There’s a lot of that stuff already. Remember Eric Snowden? Back in 2013 he was an employee of a CIA subcontractor when he stole a bunch of files on a thumb drive and ran off to Russia.”

“Huh.”

“So, a few years ago, my boss came to me and informed me that my job was being privatized. I was joining the market economy, not that I had anything to say about it. They still had me on three counts of second-degree murder, so I didn’t get a lot of choice in the decision. I was now employed by a company called the Balustre Group. They were based out of Alexandria and had a bunch of federal contracts already. They mostly did security and military work but were looking to expand. I was now part of their Executive Action division.”

“Executive action? Is that what they call it?” she asked, an amazed look on her face.

“Right. I wasn’t killing anybody; I was subjecting them to executive action. Lots of euphemisms in the business. Supposedly, they got targets from the government and then did the job, billing them for the work. Very clean and efficient and businesslike. Total bullshit, of course. If anything, costs went up, a lot.”

“So, what happened?”

“The Balustre Group decided that, like anything else they did, they needed to expand the market! They needed more customers! They needed to bring their services to more people and businesses,” replied Sean.

“You mean they began selling assassinations?”

“Bingo!”

“Holy shit!”

Sean nodded. “That was it for me. I got an order to kill a family of five. Husband, wife, all three kids. I was to send a message. It was the woman who was the target, and she wasn’t even a spy. She was a potential whistleblower, a lawyer who had learned something that somebody else wanted kept quiet. That was when I had enough. I told my boss to give me three days to take care of it and took off. I used every trick I ever learned and managed to lose myself.”

“And they couldn’t find you? I guess that’s pretty impressive. Not quite sure if that’s good or not.”

Sean snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, well it’s not that they didn’t try. They were pissed, really pissed. The one thing I had going for them was that they didn’t really know who I was. When I got out of Leavenworth and went to work for the Feds, I was given a new name by my boss, and he never gave them my real name. It seems to have gotten crazy, too.”

“How so?”

“When I moved back to Everest, I had no idea Marty Haskell was still in town. He had gone into the Army like I had, but as an MP, military police, and after getting out had become a cop in his hometown. He saw me and figured out who I was, and when he sneakily ran my prints, my old boss in the government learned about it and came out to see me. He told me that he was still in the clear and that Balustre had found an old girlfriend of mine to question. She was tortured to death.”

Janice stared at him. “So, when you said I had to come with you...”

“Right. If they figured out that we were involved, you would be target number one. If they had gotten their hands on you, trust me, you would have sold your soul to Satan begging them to kill you,” he said.

“Jesus!”

“Yeah.” Sean drove a few miles further and then said, “In a way, this is a good thing.”

“How so? This is nuts, Sean!”

“Janice, if I was just plain old Travis Scott, everyday asshole, I would have asked you to marry me months ago. I’ve been worried for years about getting too close to somebody just in case somebody found me. Well, it’s happened. One way or another, I can be honest now. I love you and want to marry you.”

“You can put that thought on hold, buster! That ain’t happening until we can do this legally, at home, in front of friends and family. It’s one thing to fool around on a weird road trip. Marriage is a whole different thing!” Sean simply laughed and nodded. “How did they find you?”

Sean shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s one of the questions I need to answer.”

“So, the Undersheriff found you only by your fingerprints? You had changed so much in your appearance?”

Sean laughed at that. “When I got pulled out of prison and given a new identity, they sent me to a plastic surgeon. I got a new nose, a new chin ... you’ll love this, they gave me new ears!”

“New ears?”

Sean took his hands off the steering wheel for an instant and pulled his ears forward. “Back in the day, I looked like Dumbo!”

Janice just started laughing at that. “And you think you can fix this in three months?”

“Three months. Maybe less. I hope so anyway. If you haven’t seen me or heard from me at the end of three months, you probably never will. Just go home at that point. You’ll be safe once they kill me.”

Janice didn’t know what to say to that. She just looked out the windshield as the prairie rolled past.

They didn’t make it to Kansas City that evening. They had started too late in the morning. They stopped at a cheap motel in Lincoln, Nebraska, and had a quiet night. Janice wanted to know if they needed to rush down to Kansas City as soon as they woke, but Sean simply shook his head. “No, don’t sweat it. I need to be in KC on my own early in the morning. It’s got to be at least a three-hour drive from Lincoln to KC. So, we drive down today, take it easy, and do some shopping or laundry or whatever. Tomorrow morning, I will be up and out early.”

Janice shrugged. She wasn’t sure just what Sean was up to, but he seemed to know what he was doing. That wasn’t all that pleasant a thought, though, considering how he had learned to do what he was doing.

They arrived at the outskirts of Kansas City about three hours after leaving Lincoln. An hour later they were checked into an inexpensive motel and unpacking their possessions, meager as they were. “So, what is the plan for today?” asked Janice.

“Today? Not much. Tomorrow I leave early and find you some identification, but I can’t do that until then. Today, maybe sort out some clothes, do some laundry, buy a couple of phones. Not much, really. If you’re interested, we can play hide the salami all day.”