Authors: Jack Shadows
Tags: #Fiction, #Legal, #Mystery, #Retail, #Thrillers
“I didn’t ask,” she said.
“Tomorrow find out,” Drift said. “If she was decked out and the restaurant was on the expensive side, I’m guessing she’s a lawyer, particularly if she was with other people dressed like lawyers—ask the waitress about that tomorrow. If all those pieces fit then start concentrating on law firms but here’s the important part, don’t let her know anyone’s looking for her. I don’t want her tipping off Northway. In fact, the more I think about it, Northway might even be in the same firm.”
“Practicing law?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s not possible,” she said. “His license was revoked.”
“He still has the skills,” Drift said. “A license is a piece of paper. Just don’t let them see you coming, that’s the point I’m making.”
“Fine, I’ll wear my invisible suit. Anything else?”
“Yes,” he said. “Did the—?”
“Drift that was a rhetorical question.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m giving you the rhetorical answer. Did the waitress actually wait on the woman? Is that why she remembers her?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
“Several months ago, six, seven, eight, something like that. She wasn’t real clear with dates.”
“Okay, contact the manager, use your best charms and see if he’ll give you the credit card runs for that time period.”
“Okay, good night.”
“Aren’t you going to ask if there’s anything else?”
“I already made that mistake once,” she said. “Where are you, in your truck?”
Yes.
He was.
“What’s that song?”
“Jan and Dean, ‘Little Deuce Coupe.’”
“It sounds like a cartoon. When I get back remind me to show you where the real stations are.”
72
Day Four
July 21
Thursday Night
Thursday evening
Yardley took the elevator from her loft down to the parking garage, fired up her silver 3-series BMW and merged into the Denver twilight. From the trendy buzzing streets of LoDo she wove over to Santa Fe and headed south. Six o’clock had come and gone. She hadn’t called Cave with the name of the person at the top.
He hadn’t called to give her one final chance.
As she headed out of the guts of the city the lights got less bright, the traffic lights got farther apart and the taillights thinned.
Cave was behind her somewhere.
She could feel his breath on her neck.
The miles clicked off.
The city gave way to less city.
The buildings got shorter and fewer.
The streetlights disappeared.
The speed limit increased.
Still, even this far south, traffic existed.
She kept going.
Headlights were behind her, not right on her ass, but definitely there. A large green sign indicated to exit here for the Chatfield Reservoir. In a couple of miles the road would cut left into I-25.
She was in no-man’s land.
She kept her eyes peeled on the road and both hands tight on the wheel.
Then she saw what she was looking for, namely a 2x4 with nails sticking out, near the centerline.
She pointed her left front tire at it and held her breath.
The wheel hit it.
The tire exploded.
The vehicle jerked to the left.
She got it under control, pulled over to the shoulder, stopped and put the hazard lights on.
If everything went as planned, Cave was behind her somewhere. He’d see her at the side of the road and pull over to take his kill. That’s when the man from out of town would take him down.
She got out
and opened the trunk, ostensibly looking for the spare.
The night was coffin quiet, broken only by a faint chatter of crickets and a slight twist of wind. A low blanket of clouds hid whatever stars and moon might be above.
“Are you out there?”
No response.
She kept her cool.
Of course he was there.
He was the one who placed the two-by-four.
Headlights came up the road, only one pair now with no more behind, a couple of hundred yards away.
A chill ran up her spine.
When she was being instructed earlier this evening as to what to do, it seemed simple. Now the night played with her. Cave might simply slow down, shoot her through the passenger window, and keep going.
Bam.
One shot.
Game over.
The car approached.
It slowed as it got closer.
She shouted into the darkness, “This could be him. Are you ready?”
No one responded.
The silence forced a terrible thought upon her.
What if the man who called her earlier wasn’t the person Marabella brought in to do the work? What if he was actually a friend of Cave’s?
What if this whole thing was a setup?
What if Cave was the one who placed the two-by-four?
73
Day Four
July 21
Thursday Night
Pantage and Renn-Jaa
stared up at the gladiator’s loft from the same parking space as last night. This time the lights were on. Also this time no drunken woman staggered down the sidewalk. Pantage had her window open with her arm dangled out. A cigarette hung from her fingers. She took a puff then parked it back outside.
“What do you think?”
“I think I saw a shadow shift,” Renn-Jaa said. “I’m about 90 percent sure he’s home.”
Pantage checked the time.
It was 11:12 on a Thursday night.
“He’s in for the night,” she said. “We’re wasting our time.”
“Ten more minutes.”
Pantage took another puff, flicked the butt to the sidewalk and closed her eyes.
Drift.
Drift.
Drift.
No one had ever taken her the way he did.
Not even the gladiator.
A scene
sprang into her head, as if she was sitting in a dark theater and the screen suddenly sprang to life, flickering at first with a jagged surrealism and then becoming vividly focused.
She was in a desperate fight.
Chiara had a fistful of her hair.
She was trying with all her might to rip it out of Pantage’s head.
Pantage twisted and dropped to the carpet.
Chiara fell with her but kept her grip.
Pantage punched her in the face, again and again, getting only glancing blows, unable to strike a direct hit.
Chiara kneed her in the gut.
Vomit shot into her mouth.
Then hands came to her throat.
They tightened with deadly intent.
She twisted, desperate, but the woman was on top of her. There was too much weight to shift off. She flailed her arms and got a hand on a wine bottle. She brought it upside the woman’s head with a terrible thud.
The woman fell to the side.
She groaned for a heartbeat then went limp.
She wasn’t dead.
Her chest moved.
Breath came in and out of her mouth.
Pantage watched her for a moment while dark thoughts filled her brain. Then she walked into the kitchen and looked for a knife.
“Are you okay?”
The words came from Renn-Jaa.
The image vanished.
The screen went black.
“Yes.”
“Look,” the woman said, pointing.
Pantage followed the woman’s finger to the gladiator’s loft. The lights were going out.
“Either he’s going to bed or stepping out,” Renn-Jaa said.
Two minutes later the gladiator emerged at ground level, walked half a block to a car and took off.
“We’re up,” Renn-Jaa said.
74
Day Four
July 21
Thursday Night
When Drift got home
the house was an oven. He opened the windows, charged up the ceiling fans and sat on the front steps with a cold one.
The night was black.
A light breeze rustled the leaves.
Dry lightning flashed to the east somewhere over Denver.
Bugs sucked up to a streetlight. A bat swooped in with jagged flight and snatched one out of the air. Survival; it was everywhere, all the time. Drift always envisioned himself with kids.
Kelly would be a good mother.
Pantage was a lot wilder than Kelly but that didn’t necessarily mean she’d be selfish. It wouldn’t hurt a kid to have a little wildness in his blood. That would increase the chances of not being snatched out of the air by a bat.
His street dead-ended at a turnaround as far up into Green Mountain as civilization went. His house was third from the end on the left side. Coyotes, deer, fox and rabbits were rampant; rattlesnakes, too. In fact Drift almost stepped on a four-footer on the back patio last month.
He was caught between Kelly and Pantage, dead center, smack in the middle, a helpless piece of metal between two equally powerful magnets.
He’d made no promises to either but still he felt like he was cheating on both of them. He needed to make a choice but neither of them was letting go. If he had the time to concentrate on nothing else, things would probably get pretty clear pretty fast.
He didn’t have that time though.
That was the problem, that was
always
the problem, not just with this but with everything.
He pulled a quarter out of his pocket.
“Heads Kelly, tails Pantage.”
He tossed it up and missed the catch.
It bounced on the concrete and rolled into the grass.
“I’ll take that as an omen.”
He swallowed
what was left of the beer, crushed the can in his hand and headed inside. In the kitchen something sticking out from behind the toaster caught his eye.
It was a piece of paper.
It was one of the pages he copied from September’s file on Van Gogh.
“What’d you do, blow back then when I wasn’t looking?”
He debated, wondering if he should read it or not.
Then he decided that even though he was getting the blame, the moral concepts were the same now than they were before. He burned it and washed the ashes down the sink.
75
Day Four
July 21
Thursday Night
The solitary headlights
approached with a whining of tires and the blare of a radio. Yardley stood on the shoulder side of her car, not knowing if Cave was coming down the road or sneaking up behind her or somewhere else altogether.
The headlights slowed as they came alongside.
It became clearer that the vehicle was a convertible.
Voices shouted louder than the radio.
As it got alongside, the voices took shape as belonging to teenagers, a bunch of them. Two were standing up, waving their arms, and one of them shouted, “Bottle bomb!”
Bottles flew at Yardley’s car.
Glass shattered.
Pow!
Pow!
Pow!
Then the vehicle sped up and the taillights receded up the road.
Suddenly Yardley heard a noise behind her.
She turned.
A shadow was there.
She ran up the road.
“Get back here!”
She ran harder.
Footsteps closed in.
The gap shortened.
Then a fist punched the back of her head. Her feet gave out and her body went down, landing with a terrible blow to her chest before she could get her arms in front.
The oxygen slapped out of her lungs.
Colors spun in her head.
Then everything went black.
She retained consciousness
at some point thereafter in a confined space with her hands tied behind her back and a rope gagged around her mouth.
She was in the trunk of a car.
She had one thought and one thought only, namely that this was the exact position Deven had been in before she was yanked out and stabbed with a screwdriver.
Cave had tricked her.
She’d underestimated him.
Now she’d die for being stupid.
First Cave would have his fun with her.
He’d take his time.