“Look,” Billingsly said, “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“No, you don’t,” the man replied. “Unless you want to get out of this room.”
“And what?” Billingsly said. “You’re just going to keep me here?” The man continued to stare at him. “Am I under arrest?” The man didn’t answer. Billingsly got up and went to the door. He grabbed the door handle only to find it was locked. Billingsly took a step toward the man.
The man shook his head. “Not advisable,” he said as he pointed the thumb on his right hand back toward the window. “Besides, I might enjoy hurting you too much before they got in here to rescue you.” Billingsly’s hand shook slightly. He looked at the man’s body. It was trim and slightly muscular. Billingsly had seen enough men on the SEAL teams who looked just like him, only this man was older. At this point, it probably didn’t make much difference. This guy was probably well trained and more than experienced. He looked at what had to be one-way glass and slowly sat back down.
“How long am I going to be in this room?” Billingsly asked.
“Until I am satisfied you have told me the truth. All of the truth,” the man replied.
“And if I don’t?”
The man shrugged. “You will, if not now, then tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year. It really doesn’t matter to me. I get to go home every night, and spend weekends with my grandchildren. You, on the other hand, will get out of this room only to use the restroom, and then only in shackles. You will eat here, in shackles. You will sleep here on the tile floor, in shackles. No one will ever know where you are.”
“You can’t do that,” Billingsly said. “I have rights.”
The man shook his head and returned to staring at him.
Billingsly tapped his fingers on the table and carefully considered his options. He realized the longer he held out, the less leverage he had to make a deal. He knew his career was over and he was on his way to federal prison, probably Leavenworth. His deepest regret was what this would do to his wife. Several more minutes passed. The man continued to stare at him.
“I have a substantial pension built up,” Billingsly said. “If I cooperate fully can that go to my wife? She doesn’t know anything about this. It isn’t right that she should suffer for something she wasn’t involved in.”
“You help me, and I help you,” the man said. “No promises up front, but it seems like something that can be done.”
Billingsly breathed out heavily. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
CHAPTER 56
The sound of the emergency siren quickened the beat of her heart. Before she could respond, her cell phone chirped. Willa looked at the screen: Chief Dolan. This couldn’t be good, not at this hour of the morning, and not with the emergency siren blaring. She answered and listened to the words she never wanted to hear. FEMA had called and issued an immediate evacuation order for Dolphin Beach. A massive rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone was imminent. A 9.0+ earthquake was on its way.
Adrenalin flooded her system and her mind raced, clearing the cobwebs away in a matter of seconds. Her beloved Dolphin Beach was again in danger. The threat from the hurricane had passed just days before. Now this. She left her coffee on the table and rushed out the front door of her bungalow.
Chief Dolan’s voice boomed from the loudspeaker of Dolphin Beach’s only police car. “Earthquake. Follow the blue arrows. Walk. Do not use your vehicle. Earthquake. Follow the blue arrows. Walk. Do not use your vehicle.”
She glanced to her right and to the left. People emerged from their homes carrying their packages of most valuable items and flooded into the street. Chief Dolan’s police car, with its red and blue flashers strobing, slowly made its way through the bewildered crowd. He stopped as he saw Willa and got out of the car. “Get in,” he shouted.
“How soon?” she asked as she swiveled into the front seat next to the Chief.
“FEMA said imminent,” he replied. “The order was to evacuate now.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “All this time I couldn’t shake the feeling that something would happen. Now…”
“Now you know,” Chief Dolan answered.
They made their way slowly against the flow of the crowd as they headed north on Main Street toward the Ocean Grand Hotel. The guests remaining in the Ocean Grand had arrived well after the evacuation practice and wouldn’t have had the experience of following the blue arrows. As they arrived, the crowd of people stood outside the hotel with bewildered expressions etched on their faces. Chief Dolan and Willa got out of the police car, pointed down the street and shouted, “Follow the blue arrows painted on the street. Walk. Now!” As the crowd saw the first blue arrow in the middle of the street they started moving. Chief Dolan moved among the people exiting the hotel and pointed at the blue arrow, “Follow the blue arrows. Follow the blue arrows.”
Willa searched the crowd for any sign of Frank Gillis. Either he had already left, leaving his guests behind, or he was being his usual stubborn self, defiantly staying in his building. As the flow of guests coming out of the Ocean Grand tapered off to nothing, Willa made her way around the back of the hotel to where Frank’s residence was located. There he was, leaning against the door jamb with his front door open, arms folded across his chest smiling at her.
“Frank, we have to evacuate!” she shouted.
He chuckled. “I’ve had all the hysterics from you that I’m going to take,” he said. “Even if there is an earthquake, this building was constructed to the latest earthquake codes. I keep telling you, nothing is going to happen.”
The rumbling and shaking hit Dolphin Beach with a violence that knocked Willa to the ground, hard. Being hit by a car would have been easier, and less painful, she thought. Jason had said you wouldn’t be able to stand, that you would have to crawl on your hands and knees. That proved to be impossible. The ground was moving so violently that Willa couldn’t even lift herself up at all. Even lying flat on the ground didn’t work. The pavement under her cracked and broke, pieces were ejected into the air and bounced around like ping-pong balls. The ground beneath her dropped suddenly, leaving her falling to the pavement, now three feet below her, only to be knocked sideways when she landed. She rolled, amid being hit by chunks of concrete and flying pieces of wood, glass and shingles from the Ocean Grand. She yelled for help but the rumbling sound overpowered her. She couldn’t even hear her own voice.
She thought this level of catastrophic violence couldn’t last much longer, but instead of ending, it only got worse. The ground dropped another four feet leaving her to fall to the pavement again. Her knees and elbows slammed into the pavement repeatedly, breaking her skin and bruising her bones. Her head was struck again and again by flying debris as was every inch of her body. Dust and small stones swirled in the air making it almost impossible to breath without inhaling the small objects.
Willa covered her face with her hands as she continued to be battered by the pounding ground and careening pieces of the Ocean Grand Hotel. She prayed in vain for it all to stop as the earthquake continued unabated. In all of her imaginings of what hell might be like, nothing came close to what she now endured. She became convinced the torture in which she found herself would never end. She cried out in pain as the rising terror within her took over. Still the cataclysm continued. Visions of Jason and his prolonged demonstration in the Dolphin Beach Theater flashed through her mind. What he had showed them wasn’t anything even remotely close to what was currently taking place.
Eventually the shaking and rumbling stopped. Willa stood, wobbly and shaky, and looked around at the devastation. The dust hung in the air like thick ocean fog, with macabre shapes emerging from the shadows in every direction. Broken sections of 2x4’s and fractured pieces of plywood, mixed with twisted and mangled lengths of aluminum siding, glass and vinyl window frames jutted from the mountainous heap of wreckage that was once the most popular and well known structure in Dolphin Beach. It was also the pride and joy of Frank Gillis, now reduced to nothing but a disgusting pile of rubble. Frank, Willa thought, where the hell was Frank?