The Intern -- Chapter 5

Links to previous chapters are below.

Morris waited around Sullivan's throughout Courtneys' shift. He had a couple of drinks, and the two friends ate dinner during her break. While Courtney was busy serving drinks and wings to the locals, Morris quietly worked from behind Courtneys' computer screen as he kept a watchful eye over his surrogate daughter. He cringed as he watched her working the males for all they were worth. Courtney was attractive, had stayed in shape, and knew how to play to a captive audience. Morris knew she was a student of psychology, something that worked in favor of waitresses as they slung drinks and flirted their way to better tips. From the looks of things, she would do fine when it came to tips.

Courtney hit the bar with a list of drinks for one of the tables. It was getting near the end of the night, and she was ready to get out of the bar and into something more comfortable. After calling off the six drinks she needed, sitting her tray on the end of the bar, she looked over her shoulder at Morris. Courtney threw him a wave as Bo set her drinks up.

"Who's the geezer?" asked Bo.

Courtney hesitated before telling Bo, "A family friend."

"Is everything alright?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "He just came into town to visit me. He'll probably leave tomorrow. He never stays long."

"Alright," Bo smiled from beneath his thick white mustache. "If you want to get the old-timer out of here and back to his hotel, go ahead and get out of here. I'll close up."

Courtney smiled, relieved that she could get out of closing tonight. Morris and Courtney had a chore in front of them and one she couldn't wait to put behind them. After delivering her last round of orders she collected their money and settled with the bar. Courtney dropped her apron and went over to Morris's table, telling Morris they could get a head start. Morris slammed the last of his beer before folding up the laptop and accompanying her out to a car. As Morris pulled a set of keys out, he caught Courtney staring at him.

"What?"

"Where did you get this old fossil?" she laughed.

"Well, I'm driving a rental, and I am sure you aren't going to want a decomposing corpse stinking up the Impala. So while you were working the boys in the bar I picked the pockets of an old-timer across the street," explained Agent Morris. "Get in, you're navigating."

Morris had stolen a car. It wasn't particularly unlike him since the bureau's corrupt revealed themselves. Morris developed a mentality that he'd do whatever he needed to do. Courtney wasn't sure how far that would take them. She was certain that she didn't want to know. Courtney was just glad that he was there to help her cover her tracks. As they were driving to the park to commit yet another unthinkable act, dig up a body; Courtney was distracted.

"What is kiddo?" Morris asked, watching his former protege' as she steered their way toward the park.

Courtney hesitated, struggling to hold it all inside her. Morris taught her that the things they would see, the horrors they would be exposed to, would test their psyches. He spoke of young agents, agents that were committed, that were ambitious and had promising futures. Even the toughest would crack at times, and Courtney was afraid that she was starting to show that weakness.

"How many men have you killed?"

"I didn't keep count," Morris sighed, realizing she was still in the moment.

"How could you not keep track?" she asked. "I can't get his face out of my mind."

Morris was in the moment many times. After a thirty-year career, Morris knew that there were plenty of graves out there in the world because of his actions. He made his first kill shot at just twenty-three years old. Since that time, before being relegated to a desk, he lost track of the number of men and women he sent to meet their makers. Morris knew the moment in time, the one that often held a grip on a person. Somethings were never to be forgotten. He just chose to forget.

"Why would I want to remember?" he asked her. "It's different for me. You defended yourself, plain and simple. Some of the things I've done have been far less simplistic. In your case, your first kill was someone that was going to torture you and put an end to your existence in this world."

She looked over at Morris, still unsure why it mattered. Courtney knew there were things she never learned. She'd tried to find out about Morris, but even with his clearance level ran into hurdles. The biggest of those hurdles, that his file was classified.

"My first, I was twenty yards away. It was a hostage situation and I was assigned as a counter-sniper with HRT," he told her.

"So," Courtney wondered about what happened.

Morris sighed, "He was an eighteen-year-old kid."

Morris explained his first kill shot as a sniper with the HRT unit. It was a day like any other, and he was going to visit his folks when his cellphone rang. There was a hostage situation at a school. He reported in, got suited up, and the team all boarded an armored swat-style vehicle that followed two teams of agents in suburbans. They were there twenty minutes later and Morris, with an assigned scout, took a position on the building across the street.

"After six hours the kid came out the front door with a bomb strapped to his chest. He was holding a switch. The bomb squad identified it as a manual switch device. The kid wasn't even that good at constructing the device," Morris told Courtney.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"He could have used a dead man's switch. Anyway, once the device was identified they gave the order for any team to take the shot. I was the only one that had a clean shot at him."

"And?"

Morris was somber. "The bomb was fake. The kid was from the middle east, but the bomb was fake. He was just a lonely kid that nobody noticed, determined to get noticed, one way or another."

"We're here," sighed Courtney.

Good, thought Morris. He didn't want to tell the rest of that story. It wouldn't paint him in the best light. Morris never wanted to see the faces of the dead. Instead, he preferred to remain focused on the living. In time, he was certain that he would face his demons, as he was sure that at the end of his story he would end up suffering in the fires of hell. Until then, he couldn't help the living if he was consumed by his past.

Courtney carried the lantern, leading the way into the wooded area where she'd buried the hunter. The two didn't talk much more about Morris's past. Courtney sensed that he'd done enough reminiscing for one day. The path curved and Courtney cut into the woods more, looking for the small sign she left to find the grave. She knew they were getting closer when she saw they passed the old, dead, oak. As Morris came up behind her, she looked around the area, until she noticed the mound of dirt where there should be leaves.

"I think it's over here," she said as she slowly walked toward an area with a tree in the center.

Courtney stopped as she got to the grave. Animals had been there. Something had been digging away at the dirt. She turned and looked at Morris, who put his arm around her, giving her reassurance that they would take care of everything. Courtney believed in Morris, no matter what he'd done in his past. She believed with every fiber of her being that she could trust Morris with her life.

"Here," said Morris, handing Courtney a shovel. "I am an old man. I'll need your help getting him dug up."

"Right," she exhaled, preparing to dig up her first body.

After digging slowly across the top of the area, Morris felt the shovel hit something that wasn't dirt. He told Courtney to stop digging and shine a light where his shovel was pointing. Morris put on gloves, knelt down, and moved dirt out of the shallowly dug grave. He found the body and gingerly swiped the dirt away. As he saw the corpse, he rifled around inside his jacket.

"I looked, there was no identification."

Morris continued until he stood up, holding a pair of dog tags in his hand. He told Courtney that even mercenaries would keep their dog tags while in their home country. It was the only way their bodies would make it home to their loved ones should they fall. Looking at the tags, Morris shined a light on his hand so he could read them in the dark of night. As he did, his heart skipped a beat.

"I knew this man," said Morris. "He was a team's guy, a lifetime ago."

"I'm sorry," she sighed, looking at the expression on his face.

"Nevermind that," ordered Morris. "Let's wrap him up so we can get him out of here."

They wrapped up the body in a black tarp, tied a rope around the body, and then began the walk back. Morris was in shock that the man that tried to kill Courtney was Cal Watson. He remembered Cal from a sniper training class at Quantico. Cal was a good kid, a bit rebellious, but always good-natured. The fact that he was working outside the establishment saddened him as Cal had plenty of promise a decade ago. Morris wondered how the group managed to get their hooks into him.

When they got back to the parking lot, Morris lifted the body and threw it into the trunk of the old beater he had stolen. Courtney's demeanor told him that she'd been through enough for one night. He needed to get her back to the hotel and get the body as far away from there as possible.

"Come on kid, I'll drive."

"Where to now?"

"You're done. I'm taking you home. I'll clean this up, take the body a few hundred miles from here and bury it in a way befitting someone that was once a good man. Then I'll make my way back here," he explained his plan.

"How can I ever thank you for this?" she asked, hugging Morris.

"You're like a daughter to me. And, if I had done a better job discouraging you from joining the bureau that first day you'd never have gotten mixed up in this life," he told her. "Besides, you saved my life in Chicago. We're more than even."

The sun was rising and Courtney was exhausted when Morris dropped her off at the McLaren. Morris promised to contact her through the usual channels when the job was done. She hugged him before climbing out of the car and hurrying into the building. She hoped that she could avoid Helen. Coming in at five in the morning was bound to catch the eye of the well-meaning elder.

Her worry was for nothing. Courtney managed to make it all the way up to her room before anybody knew the difference. Keying her way into her room, she quickly vanished from the hallway and locked her door. She felt so dirty after digging up the former seals' body so Courtney immediately began stripping out of her clothing as she walked toward the shower. Turning on the water, she stood there, almost in a trance as the steam rose around her. She couldn't imagine this was it, that this was how things were going to be for the rest of her life.

Stepping in and beneath the warm waters cascading down and over her body, Courtney broke down in tears. There had to be a way to get clear of the group. If she couldn't get clear of them, then maybe, she could figure out what their agenda was and why they were so desperate to keep her from talking about the records she found. As she sobbed, she realized, the answer might be in the records themself.

"What did you miss?"

Morris was out of Lancaster and onto the highway. He knew how to evade being noticed so he slid in between two truckers in the early morning hours. As he hummed tunes to the oldies station, the only one he could get in the not yet reported stolen car he was driving, he was at ease with how things were going so far. He knew getting the body away from Lancaster would keep the area from being flagged again. If he dropped it in a way that it would be found it might even send the group's minions in the wrong direction.

As he turned a bend in the road, his phone rang. Morris reached in his pocket and put it to his ear.

"Hello," he answered.

Morris listened to the caller as they spoke. He wasn't surprised by the call, only that they'd found the number so quickly.

"No," Morris was becoming insistent. "I've got no interest in helping you guys, and as far as the girl goes, I'm on my way to see her now. When I'm done, you'll never find her."

Morris listened to the caller, his face growing more worried. He didn't want to relent to the people that were making his life hell. He would never turn on the young lady that looked at him like he was a hero, even if he was far from being one.

"I don't care what you think you can use to hurt me, if anything happens to her, you should remember I've got chips to play to, you son of a bitch!"

Morris continued driving, getting impatient with the interruptions. He was angry and trying to watch the timer on his phone at the same time. His focus was split and he nearly rear-ended the tractor-trailer in front of him.

"It means, Manfred, if you touch the girl I'll put a bullet through your skull and I won't for a second think twice about it, old friend."

Morris disconnected the call. He was done talking. He knew the group would make a move soon, he just needed to direct that move away from them to give them a better chance at surviving. Morris reached over, grabbed a ziplock bag out of his bag, and put the phone inside. He knew there was an overpass coming. Pulling off to the side he blew into the bag, putting air inside it before sealing the top. Morris got out, walked over to the side of the overpass, and stared down the thirty feet to the waters of the river below. He dropped the bag and watched it float downstream. He knew, by the time they located the phone, it would be a hundred miles away.

Knock, Knock, Knock,

Courtney heard the sound at her door. She crawled out of bed, the light rays of sun through the blinds, striking her skin as she fumbled for her robe. She looked at the clock, it was almost noon. Courtney wondered, what fresh hell would this be?

Opening her door she was treated to the sight of young Jeffrey McNally. Today he had his notepad out and at the ready. Oh god, she thought. What could he possibly know?

"Deputy," Courtney said. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, there's been a car theft from the area of Sullivan's. I wondered if you remember anything unusual last night? Perhaps noticed a new face."

"Um...no. I really can't say I did. But, I am still getting used to the people around here."

"It was worth a shot," said the young deputy. "Sorry to bother you miss."

"It's Courtney," she smiled.

"I know. Ms. Helen told me you're name."

As Deputy McNally walked toward the stairs down to the lobby Courtney slapped herself on the forehead, asking herself what was wrong with her. That was the best she could come up with, her name. She flopped back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of something better to say if she got the chance to speak to the deputy again.