Nate Alvarez wanted to screen the call.

Actually, he wanted to throw the phone on the ground and stomp on it until it stopped ringing permanently. There were times in his life that he would have done exactly that, but Nate was thirty-seven years old, and in recent months there had been faint signs that he was starting to mature.

Caller ID told him that it was his partner and friend, Doug Brock, who was trying to reach him. They hadn’t talked for the past two days, and Nate had been hoping that Doug had seen the light and curtailed his actions. The ringing phone was a likely indication that the lack of communication was just a short break in an otherwise rapid descent.

Before the two-day pause, each conversation had been the same, and Nate had grown tired of it. Doug would tell him that he was making progress, that he was close to wrapping up the investigation triumphantly. He wouldn’t give details, just would say that Nate would be blown away by what Doug was unearthing. Nate would respond that Doug should not be investigating at all, and that he was jeopardizing what was left of his career, after having pretty much destroyed his personal life. That message had absolutely no chance of getting through.

But Doug wasn’t just Nate’s partner, he was also his best friend, and Nate knew that he was the only person who could calm him down during the frequent times that Doug’s frustration started to peak. More importantly, he was the only person with any chance to keep Doug from doing something he would regret for the rest of his life.

Doug was a loose cannon, always had been. Sometimes it helped him on the job, and sometimes it didn’t. What it did was thrust Nate, his partner, into the role of seasoned, level-headed veteran. It was not a role that Nate was particularly well suited for.

So the answering machine kicked into action, but then Nate relented and picked up the phone himself, because that’s what partners and friends do. The delay had the unintended effect of causing the remainder of the call to be recorded. “Hey, Doug. What’s going on?”

“I got him, Nate. This time I got him. You…”

Nate could hear the elevated stress level in Doug’s voice. He had become used to it, but this time it was more severe than usual. Once again he would have to talk him down off a ledge that was becoming higher and more precarious. He interrupted with, “Doug, come on, you can’t keep doing this.”

“Shut up, Nate, and listen. You’ve got to get down here with backup, and you need to notify the FBI.”

“FBI?” This was a new twist, and an unwelcome one. “Why?”

“It’s much bigger than we ever thought, Nate. And I’ve got it all.”

There was probably nothing Doug could have said that would have been more surprising. “Where the hell are you?”

“Find Congers and—”

“Hey!” was the next word that Nate heard through the phone, but it wasn’t Doug’s voice. After that there was a rattling, as if the phone were dropped, and then the unmistakable sound of two gunshots … then a few seconds later, two more.

And then the only sound Nate could hear was his own voice, screaming into a dead phone.



Copyright © 2015 by Tara Productions, Inc.