“I should call Skip and Bobby.”
Nicole shook her head. “Don’t do it.”
“They need to know.”
“Why? So they can be afraid? So they can argue with you? Would one of them go to the police behind your back? Right now, you need to save your strength. The fewer people who know the better.”
“Are you sure you’re right?”
“I know I’m right.” She looked at the laptop. “What are you doing?”
“This is Bell’s laptop.” The screen showed a map of the area. A green dot was traveling down a street. “She has the ‘Find My Phone’ app.”
“And that’s her phone?”
“Yeah.”
“Jimmy, this is a game-changer.”
“Because we know where she is?”
“Maybe. She hasn’t called, has she?”
Denison shook his head.
“So her phone is in a car.”
“Where are they taking her?”
“She probably doesn’t have the phone. Either one of the kidnappers has it or it’s lost in the car seat.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to chase it down. Maybe it will lead us to Bell. But we have to be very careful. If they spot us, it might make things worse for her. Really we should wait for Bryan, but we can’t take the chance on the battery going dead.”
Nicole reached across Denison to open Finder and look in Applications. “No cell service on this laptop, so we’ll need to link it to the ‘hotspot’ on my phone.”
Nicole’s phone rang. “Yeah?”
“This is Billy. Gunfighter’s name is Cohen. He’ll arrive on the Delta flight at one o’clock tomorrow. One of my guys will call about your packages before four p.m. That’s the best I could do.”
“Thanks.”
“Give my regards to your old man.” The line went dead.
“Who was that?” Denison asked.
“The guns and the hired help get here tomorrow afternoon.”
Denison sighed. “We really going to do this? Is this really the best way?”
“If the money is ready in the morning, we won’t be able to stall. We’ll have to trade for Bell and hope for the best. But if the timeline gets backed up, or something goes sideways, it’s better to have the help and the guns and not need them than the other way around,” Nicole said.
An hour later, Nicole and Denison were tracking the blue minivan as it drove through a rental neighborhood a few blocks from the public beach. When the minivan pulled into a driveway, they parked on the street about half a block down. They watched the blond guy and the black guy get out of the minivan and carry groceries up the stairs and into the house. “Our luck is holding up,” Nicole said. “What did the other guy call them?”
“Mr. White and Mr. Black.”
They sat watching for a while longer, but no one came out. “So this is their safe house,” Nicole said. “Either Bell’s in there, or one of those guys can tell us where she is.”
“So now the police could help us.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Yeah, if they believed us, they could roll up in there and get Bell shot. I’ve told you, if we want her back, we have to take her ourselves.”
“Are you sure? Are you really sure? I’m putting Bell’s life in your hands.”
“Trust me. It’s the only way. The cops will just screw it up.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Wait. We know everything we can know. Maybe we get lucky in the morning. If not, we’ve made our preparations. Cheer up, James. We know where Bell is. That’s the kind of information that’s going to make all the difference if we need to move fast.”
9
The Wild Cards
In the early evening, Bryan leaned on the bar in The Dugout sports bar, talking with Stanley. The front room was completely empty, and the overhead lights were turned off. “Cops ever come by to check why there are so many cars parked out front when you’re closed?”
“I pay a gratuity to the police union.”
“All the better. Everybody here?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the money count?”
“Forty-two five. Mainly hundreds, but some small bills mixed in.”
“I’ll be back.”
Bryan stood on the sidewalk in front of the bar, glancing around nonchalantly, satisfying himself that no one was watching him. He crossed the parking lot to his Camry, sat down in the back seat with a book bag containing the counterfeit money, and counted $7,500 into a grocery sack, which left $42,500 in the book bag. When he got back to The Dugout, a heavy-set bald man in gray slacks and a black sports coat was standing at the bar. The man looked over his shoulder at Bryan.
“No problem,” Stanley said to the man. “Just a friend of mine.” He set a mixed drink in front of the man.
“Thanks, Stan.” The man took his drink into the backroom.
Bryan watched him go. “I thought everyone was already here.”
“Needed a drink. Let’s get this done so I can get back there to keep an eye on things.”
“The counterfeit cost five grand, so I get that back, which leaves thirty-seven five profit. Divided by two, equals eighteen thousand, seven-hundred and fifty. Fair enough?”
Stanley nodded.
Bryan set the book bag on the bar. “Don’t get the money mixed up, ’cause you won’t be able to tell it apart.”
Bryan watched as Stanley unlocked the floor safe behind the bar, counted out $23,750 into a plastic grocery bag, counted out $18,750 into another bag, and put the counterfeit money into the safe. Then he slipped the $23,750 into the book bag and set it back up on the bar.
Bryan shifted the bag onto his shoulder. “It’s been great doing business with you.”
The sun was low behind the nearby apartments when Bryan came out of The Dugout and climbed into his Camry. If only every job went so smoothly. Since he’d only paid $4,000 for the counterfeit, he’d made $19,750 on the deal, plus the $7,500 in extra counterfeit. Hadn’t even broken a sweat or handled a gun. His suitcase was in the trunk. He’d already checked out of his motel, so now he was driving straight to the airport. He pulled out of the strip mall parking lot onto Simpson Boulevard and drove straight through the first intersection. Six blocks later, he took a left, circled around back onto Simpson, drove seven blocks to the next intersection and made a right turn onto Glendale Road. That’s when he noticed the tail.
An old gray utility van with a painted-over name on the side was following three cars behind. Two men in the front. How many in the back? And whose were they? Stanley didn’t know any hard guys, or he wouldn’t have reached out to Zeb. Bryan slowed; the van slowed. He timed the next traffic light to rush through it on orange, but the van sped through on the red, barely avoiding a collision.
Off to the right, Bryan saw cars streaming out of the parking lot of a baseball park. Traffic was getting heavier and slower. Bryan wormed his way up through the traffic, trying to get as many cars in between himself and the van as possible. Up ahead, the left-turn lane was empty. At the last minute, he veered into the left lane, took the left onto Morris Drive, and then floored the Camry. He shot through the first stop sign, stepped on the brakes and slid through a right turn on the second sign, and was driving at normal residential speed through a rundown neighborhood of small houses at the edge of town when he saw the gray van behind him again. They must have planted a tracker on the Camry. This definitely wasn’t Stanley.
He wasn’t going to outrun them. His only chance was to ditch the car in a place that was so public and crowded that they might not try to kidnap him or kill him. Where had they come from? He’d been completely in the clear when he came to town. Was the counterfeiter making a play for his money? Or had the drug thugs from Springville managed to find him? Up ahead, on the right, was an abandoned gas station. Lots of cover there. The counterfeiter would want the money. He’d be safe in a crowd. Spanish Mike’s guys, on the other
hand, might just spray the crowd if they thought they could kill him. He needed to know who was tracking him.
Bryan pulled to a stop at the far side of the gas station, jumped out with his Glock in his hand, and scrambled for cover behind an old, rusty, bagged-ice freezer with a polar bear painted on the front. The van screeched to a stop by the broken-down gas pumps. Two Latino men jumped out, bulletproof vests on over their T-shirts, shotguns in their hands. Bryan emptied his first magazine, firing low. The man wearing the green T-shirt fell to the pavement before he reached the cover of a gas pump. Bryan ducked. Buckshot punched into the freezer, obliterating the polar bear. Bryan scrambled backward, and then ran around behind the building into a junkyard of rusted car frames and broken equipment. There was no back door to the gas station.
Bryan ejected the empty magazine and inserted a fresh one. There was one guy left, the guy wearing the white T-shirt under his vest. Would he go for the money or come to kill him? And if so, which side of the building would he come from? A Lincoln Town Car with a crushed front end offered cover from both sides. Bryan shimmied under the Lincoln and waited. He heard the van start up. Was the guy leaving? The van careened around the corner of the gas station, plowing through debris until it came to a stop against a truck frame. Something heavy bounced off the Lincoln. Bryan had his answer. He stayed still, controlling his breathing, waiting for his chance. From under the Lincoln, he couldn’t see the windshield of the van; he could only see the bottom of the driver’s door. But that door didn’t open. The passenger’s door did.
Bryan slid around to get a view from the other side of the Lincoln. He could hear White T-shirt’s footsteps. He thought he saw a glimpse of a leg, but it wasn’t enough to shoot at. The shotgun boomed. Debris ricocheted up under the Lincoln, stinging Bryan’s face and arm. “Stop wasting my time,” a voice said in accented English. “You can’t escape. I’ll make it easy on you.”
White T-shirt’s footsteps seemed to be moving away. Bryan thought about the van. What was in it? A better gun than the Glock in his hand or the .38 in his ankle holster? Another shotgun, maybe? He slipped out from under the Lincoln, sprang up in a crouch, and ran. The shotgun boomed again. Buckshot smashed into a washing machine just to his right. He veered left, stooped behind the truck frame, and then rolled up into the van from the passenger’s side. He got up on his hands and knees. Behind the front seats, the inside of the van was configured for carrying equipment and materials, but the space was empty. The shotgun boomed and buckshot tore into the side of the van. Bryan lay on the floor. The shotgun boomed again, and Bryan could see daylight through a ragged hole. He jumped up and fired four shots through the hole, angling down as he fired. Then he dropped to the floor, waiting for the next load of buckshot. He held his breath, listening as hard as he could for footfalls or any noise that would tell him what was happening, but he couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of his pulse in his ears.
Finally, he rolled over onto his back, breathing slowly, waiting for his heart rate to come back down. Then he slipped out of the van from the opposite side of where the shots were fired, crept down the side of the van, and ran around to the front of the gas station. Green T-shirt was lying on the cracked concrete by the gas pumps. Bryan ran over to him, pointing his Glock as he ran, but Green T-shirt didn’t move. He picked up Green T-shirt’s shotgun and put his own pistol in his belt. Then he ran back around the building. White T-shirt was looking in the driver’s side door of the van when Bryan came around the corner and fired at his legs. He fell backward, clutching his shotgun to his chest. Bryan rushed him. Before White T-shirt could bring his shotgun to bear, Bryan had the barrel of his own shotgun shoved into White T-shirt’s neck. “Put it down.”
White T-shirt lay the shotgun down, and Bryan kicked it away. Bryan knelt down beside him. “You’re not walking away from here, but you’re not leaking too bad.”
White T-shirt gave him a prison-yard glare. “You are way too hard to kill.”
Bryan smiled. “Mi hermano, let me tell you how this bullshit works in real life, and you can decide if you’d like to participate. Do you want to die here, now, or do you want to die somewhere else at a later date?”
“Somewhere else.”
“Where’s the tracker on my car?”
“Right rear wheel well.”
“How long you been tracking me?”
“Found you at that bar.”
“Where are the rest of you?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Come on, Spanish Mike wouldn’t send just two of you. Where are you guys staying?”
He shook his head.
“Oh, well.” Bryan stood up and pressed the end of the shotgun barrel against White T-shirt’s forehead.
“Please, man.”
Bryan shrugged. “I got to know. Do you want to live?”
“It’s 611 Elm Avenue. Right off Washington.”
“You got a phone?”
He nodded. “Right pocket.”
Bryan dug the phone out of his pocket and input 9-1-1. “Abandoned gas station on Kendle Road out past Clancy. Gunshot victims.” He set the phone down on White T-shirt’s chest, picked up White T-shirt’s shotgun and carried both shotguns to his car. The tracker was where he said. Bryan tossed it into the bagged-ice freezer before he put the shotguns in the trunk.
He sat down in the driver’s seat and took a deep breath. He was worn out. He wanted to find a place to rest, but he knew that would be a mistake. He needed to keep moving if he was going to stay alive. He input the Elm Avenue address into the map app on his phone, turned around and drove back into town.
The streetlights were on by the time he found Elm Street. Six-eleven Elm was an interior row house in an old set of two-story row houses, eight across, each long ago painted and customized by the individual owners, now in various states of disrepair. Two tattooed men, obviously gang members, sat in a black Cadillac Escalade parked on the street. Three men with crew cuts sat on the porch of the exact address he’d been given, drinking beer and looking around as if they were waiting for someone.
He never would have expected Spanish Mike to devote so many out-of-town resources to killing him. Two more guys he could have dealt with, but five were too many to handle alone. Bryan drove to the nearest entrance ramp to the beltway and got off two exits later. He found a Dumpster behind a mom-and-pop grocery on a side street and pulled over. No one was in the alley. He popped the trunk, wiped off the shotguns and then his handguns, and tossed them all into the Dumpster. Then he got back on the beltway and drove to the airport.
At a nearby Sparkle Wash, he drove through the automatic car wash, and then vacuumed the interior and wiped it down for prints. He left the Camry in the airport long-term parking with the keys in it, glanced around carefully, and strolled into the terminal with his carry-on bag. The $19,750 in cash and the $7,500 in counterfeit from the Dugout job were in the bag. In his wallet was a notarized letter written by an attorney stating that he was a professional gambler who habitually carried large sums of money. Carrying that letter, he’d never had problems getting through security.
He sauntered up to the ticket counter. He was going to Chicago, where he’d decide on the best way to get to Cricket Bay. That way he’d leave no paper or electronic trail. He purchased his ticket and headed for the security checkpoint.
Jenny, one of Spanish Mike’s people, a young bleached blonde wearing high-heeled boots, tight jeans, and a cream-colored V-neck sweater, trailed Bryan through the security checkpoint and down the main hallway, talking on her phone as she walked. “You were right. The grifter made it to the airport. Shaved off his beard.”
She followed him through the food court, looked at a fashion magazine while he bought a bottle of water, and continued after him until he sat down in a chair at his gate. She got out her phone. “Buy a ticket to Chicago on United.”
She sat in a chair on the other side of the gate, playing a game on her phone and watching him. The g
ate agent announced boarding for the Chicago flight. People began crowding toward the gate in the usual assortment of business and vacation wear. A woman came into the gate area who could have been her sister: same boots, same jeans, collared shirt instead of the sweater. She took a seat as if she were waiting for a different flight. After Bryan started down the boarding ramp, she strolled over to Jenny. “Here’s your ticket.”
“Thanks,” Jenny said. “I’ll call from Chicago.”
“Someone will be waiting for you.”
Later, at Denison’s house, Nicole, dressed for bed in a large white T-shirt, stood in the doorway to the kitchen watching Denison putter about. He’d been avoiding her all evening, and she’d been giving him his space, hoping he might eventually come to her to say something about what he was feeling, but he hadn’t. While she stood there, he emptied the dishwasher, reloaded it, and wiped down the counters, all without acknowledging her presence.
“You coming to bed?” she asked.
He set the sponge on the edge of the sink. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”
“I know.”
He turned and looked at her.
She continued. “Your mind is churning. You’re trying to find the tiniest bit of hope to hang onto, and it’s nowhere to be found. You’ve convinced yourself that no matter what happens now Bell will be hurt or killed. So you start looking for the moment when it all went wrong. Not the moment when those guys came in here. Not the moment when Fred Stein yelled at us at Jerry’s Surf House. So when was it?”
He looked at the floor between them. “That morning I called you and asked you to come here.”
“Because?”
“Because I was so broken and lonely and feeling sorry for myself.”
She shook her head. “No. Because if that’s the moment where everything comes off the rails, then it’s all your fault.”
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