Chapter 22

As soon as the interrogation door closed, Evan Gold looked at the datesheet Amnon had given him.  It read SAY NOTHING TO ANYONE UNTIL I GET BACK.

“What is happening?” Katherine asked.  “How did we get here?  Where is here?”

Evan slid the datasheet to his wife, who read it, and gave him a cold stare.  

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He leaned over to his wife’s ear.  “We need to be careful of what we say.  The room could be bugged.  Let’s just – “

Katherine cut him off, “Bugged?  Like, what, like The Manchurian Cadidate?  Honestly, Evan, what is going on?”

Evan pursed his lips together in the hopes she would play it cool.  He leaned over again.  “That guy, the guy who was just here, he was the one from the office, from just before we got here.  I think we should trust him.”

“Really?”

“What would you do?”

Katherine massaged her lips together and gave Evan a curt grin.  “I would go home is what I would do.  I didn’t ask to be here.  I didn’t want to come here.  This is your great mid-life crisis, not mine.  And, I don’t see how this is going so well.  We’re locked up.  Whatever you hoped to accomplish here, I don’t see that happening.  You galloping in on your white steed to rescue the damsel in distress?  How are you going to do that while you’re locked up in some alien prison.”  Katherine let out a helpless laugh, “I can’t believe those are the words coming out of my mouth right now.  You really are a piece of work, Evan Gold.”

“Listen,” Evan hissed, “this isn’t what I pictured either.  I don’t know what I pictured but landing in a lockup was not it.  I agree you shouldn’t be here.” At this Katherine gave a grunt of agreement.  “Because I’m concerned for your safety.  There’s no reason you should be in danger just so I can… do what I came to do.”

“Do what you came to do? You can’t even say it out loud to me?”

Evan showed her the datasheet again and bugged his eyes to implore her to watch what she said.  “I don’t know much about prisons, but what I do know it seems like this place has its systems in place.  It’s going to take a moment to notice any weaknesses let alone ways to exploit them.  I need you to be – 

“Didn’t I say you should get out of detective work?  Didn’t I try a thousand ways to tell you that working all these cases was going to get you harmed?  Evan after you see your own partner gunned down you just couldn’t let it go.  Now we’re, we don’t even know where we are, and you’re looking for ways to break out of jail?  That’s rich.  That’s real rich, Evan.  Okay, we breakout, we’re on the lam, we’re out saving your precious -”

Evan bumped his shoulder into Katherine.  “Hey!”  He mouthed the words “stop talking.”

She mouthed back, “Fine,” and stared at the blank wall in front of her.

“Katherine, I got you into this mess.  I promise I’ll get you out.”  His eyes scanned the room again.  “I’m not sure how at just this moment.”  His words drifted off and the two sat like that in silence for a while.

Evan’s mind immediately went to Lillian and how he would go about rescuing her. He knew his drive to tie up this loose end was killing his marriage. At the same time, he had to admit he didn’t know if he was too late. He’d met with Amnon Saxe, which was a step in the right direction, he hoped, but what next?  Evan shifted his gaze to look at his fuming wife.  How was he going to carry her through this?  On her best day, she was a liability.  Katherine, like most of the salt of the earth people of Athens, Kansas lived out her days in the belief that she was in relative safety.  One thing he’d picked up from his years of detective work, that no one is totally safe, that disasters could come at any moment, and that it took a certain chess-like skill to think out several exit strategies for every situation.  He figured he stood a fifty-fifty chance of success by himself.  Adding Katherine to the equation, reduced that by a significant number.

Now that Katherine’s ire was up, the chances were in the basement.  Unless he learned how to encourage her, or she decided that playing ball with him was her best chance of survival, this whole operation was dead in the water.  Still Lillian had asked him to promise.  Would she have asked that of him if she’d known this is how it would play out?  Probably not, he concluded.  She probably was going to meet her end long before he was able to figure out how to escape.  And if that was true, what would be the point of breaking out?

Evan matched Katherine’s stare at the wall.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I promise you,” he began before Katherine cut him off.

“I don’t want your promises.  I want to go home.”

Evan took a breath to steady himself.  “That was what I was going to say.  I promise, as long as I have strength in my bones, I will get you home.”

Katherine panned her head to look at Evan.  “I want you to realize how absurd that sounds while we’re trapped in this room.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, “and I’d like to say I’ve been in worse scrapes than this, but -”  Evan gave up.  He meant every word, but he could tell it wasn’t making a difference.  If anything, it was making things worse.  Evan humored himself with the knowledge that one of the reasons he was in the present predicament was becasue he kept his promises.  Hopefully, one day Katherine would see that if he would go to these lengths to keep this commitment, how much more would he strive to keep his promises to her.  

His promises to her.  At this thought, all of Evan’s confidence fell into his gut.  He’d also promised her that he would leave the detective world behind and he’d broken that promise at the first opportunity.  Evan closed his eyes in personal shame.  It seemed like he was honorable about his promises only when it was a promise he wanted to keep.  If they made it through this, he told himself, he would do better by Katherine.

But, he reminded himself, he’d said that before.  He was incapable of changing his spots.  What needed to change was not what he did, but why he did it.  Evan kept telling himself that he was born to be a detective, that if he didn’t do it he would wither into a hollow man.  But would he?  Weren’t there many people all over the world doing things just to survive and not hollow at all?  Were they just born scavengers and farmers?  Or were some of them born detectives or electricians but circumstances didn’t allow for that?  Was it possible he could do a job and happily not find satisfaction in it, but instead in the life the job created?  That was certainly true of is father.

Evan rememberd the picture of his dad heading off to work as a railroad brakeman.  When Evan had been younger, he’d seen the way that job and worn down his dad’s body and decided he would do something that used his mind instead.  Still, he never heard his dad complain, and they’d had a good enough life growing up.  Was he different from his father?  Could he give up his calling to be a better husband?

The door to the interrogation room opened, and two hard-faced guards stepped in and gathered up the Golds.  Katherine struggled a little against being manhandled.  Evan knew he should speak to distract the guards from frustration against her.

“Where are you taking us?” Evan asked.

“What does it matter?” a guard said.  “If it’s here or somewhere else, you’re still a prisoner.”

Evan couldn’t fault the logic.

“Get your hands off me,” Katherine’s voice sounded squeezed and tired.

“We’ll go easily,” Evan said to the guards.  “We won’t fight you.”

The guard who had spoken to Evan looked into his eyes for a second.  Then looked at his partner.  The two guards seemed to have a whole conversation between two brief looks and the second one eased his treatment of Katherine Gold.

The Golds were walked down the same corridors in which they’d arrived.  At the end of the hallway, they turned to the left when they had entered from the right.  This passage led to a loading area where a strange floating vehicle awaited them.  The first guard banged on the back of the transport and a third guard opened the hatch.  The Golds were escorted inside, pushed onto a long bench and hooked in.

Moments later, the vehichle zoomed away.  Evan turned to Katherine, hoping to say some words of comfort, but what he saw stopped his words.  He saw Katherine, still looking forward, now at the opposite wall of the transport.  Her jaw was clenched, and a tear rolled down her face.  Evan turned back.  If it was the last thing he did, we would make this right for her.  He would rescue her from the prison of his own making.