The Breaker

by Nick Petrie

  She couldn’t exactly blame him. June was the same way.

  The truly fucked-up thing was that part of her almost wanted Dean to ask questions. Her life was so strange, living with a man on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and she had almost nobody to talk to about it, certainly nobody objective.

  Dean would be thoughtful and patient and kind. He’d tease out each little thread to see where it might lead. Through that process, she’d begin to make new connections herself. She’d think about her life in a whole new way.

  She was more than a little afraid of where that might take her.

  * * *

  —

  She turned onto the bike path and the switchbacks that led up the tall hill above Commerce Street. As she stood on the pedals and pumped her legs hard, she thought about the reason she actually should have accepted Dean’s offer.

  It wasn’t the rain, which fell soft and fine and familiar as the mist from the waterfall behind her farmhouse back in Washington state. Nor was it the scrapes and aches that came from riding into a truck door and hitting the pavement just a few hours earlier. It definitely wasn’t the steep uphill climb and the sweat gathering between her shoulder blades. The exercise was the necessary antidote both to her injuries and her long day of hunting through dense databases, searching for Vince Holloway.

  No. The problem was Edgar, AKA Mr. Cheerful, and his impossible ghost van, still out there somewhere. Waiting.

  She didn’t want to think about why she hadn’t called Peter for a ride. Why she still hadn’t told him about the attack just a few hours ago.

  It was because she’d asked Peter to stand down after the market shooting. If she told him about Edgar, he’d go ballistic. He’d get very protective, and he’d start digging into things, and there was a strong possibility that he’d end up having a conversation with the police. There was no way that would end well.

  Plus, June would have to admit that she’d been looking into Mr. Cheerful herself, not to mention the victim from the market.

  She hadn’t promised not to, not exactly. She was a reporter, doing her job. More than a job, journalism was necessary for America to function, which is why a free press was guaranteed in the Constitution. And it was her calling, right?

  She sighed. No, she told herself. Face the truth. Not only are you shallow, you’re a goddamn hypocrite.

  Which was why she was riding home, alone, hoping the exercise would help her figure out how to tell Peter she’d lied to him.

  Good thing she had six or seven different ways to get there, including one long looping detour across the river, which would add a few miles and let her approach from the opposite direction as the paper.

  By the time she crossed the bridge back into Riverwest at Capitol Drive, the rain had stopped. The last of the sun gleamed through the clouds as she bounced, derailleur rattling, down the chunky limestone steps to the muddy trail that ran along the river’s edge. No cars could follow here. The far side of the ravine was still bright with daylight, but the west side where she rode was in deepening shadow.

  Breathing hard, she cranked along the narrow, rutted track, hopping rocks and roots and sliding through slop until she came to the stretch below the house she shared with Peter. Eighty feet above, their cantilevered deck projected out from the top of the slope, surrounded by trees. A quarter-mile ahead would be the steep, slender hiking path up to the street. There were no markers and she’d missed it several times before, so she kept her eyes ahead, looking for the turn.

  Which is why she didn’t see the dark figure standing partway up the hillside, half-hidden in the tangled brush.

  21

  At the hiking path, June tightened up her backpack, put the bike’s crossbar on her shoulder, and jogged up the slick dirt track to her street, her legs feeling the workout. She was no closer to figuring out the conversation with Peter than when she started the ride.

  It didn’t matter. Except for his trip to Iceland, they’d always told each other the truth, even when it hurt. She wasn’t going to start lying to him now. Not for more than a few hours, anyway.

  Because of her parents’ disastrous marriage, June hadn’t exactly had good role models. Before Peter, she’d either dated jerks or fun guys who were too dumb for her, or had no ambition, or were total stoners, which turned out to be shorthand for the previous two problems.

  Peter was certainly smart and he had plenty of drive. You didn’t become a Recon Marine officer without both of those qualities. Plus he was sexy as hell, could get her motor running just by looking at her a certain way.

  She really hoped that his renovation project with Lewis would work out.

  But she couldn’t stop herself from wondering whether Peter really could make the transition back to civilian life. If he could keep himself from stepping into other people’s problems the way he’d done so many times since he’d come home from war. If he wasn’t just addicted to the rush and the violence, cloaked in the disguise of being helpful.

  Or was June just being selfish? She’d needed serious help when they’d met, and he’d delivered. He’d helped others since then. Who was she to deny him, and the world, that work?

  The question was, could she live with him while he did it?

  * * *

  —

  She emerged from the ravine at an untended right-of-way at the corner, just a block from home. The horizon was red. She hung back in the shadows for a moment, looking ahead two blocks toward busy Humboldt Boulevard and to the right down her own short street, watching for the ghost van or its cheerful, homicidal driver. She saw nothing suspicious. The giant elm in the front yard shone like a fading yellow flame in the evening light.

  She climbed on her bike and began to ride.

  Almost immediately, she heard a big engine roar. She glanced over her shoulder and didn’t see anything. She pedaled faster.

  The engine changed, much louder now, with a familiar throaty, uneven rattle.

  She knew without looking that the ghost van had rounded the corner behind her.

  She stood on the pedals, pumping hard, thinking only of getting inside the house. Her keys were in the top of her pack. She had that softball bat in the kitchen. Oh, she’d teach that asshole a good lesson.

  She wanted to swerve onto the sidewalk, but now there were no parked cars to shield her. Lewis and Dinah’s place was closer, but their driveway was empty, no way to know if anyone was home. Peter’s junky Toyota was nowhere in sight. The house, get to the house.

  The engine roared closer. Her thighs burned, pushing her forward. Almost there, she hopped the curb and bounced across the parking strip. A tall figure stepped out from behind the big elm.

  Peter. His long arm caught her across the chest and his other hand grabbed her belt. He scooped her off the speeding bike and swung her behind the elm’s trunk, where he pulled her tight inside the rough shelter of his body.

  The world filled with an enormous rending crash. The ground shook. Chrome and glass flew into the air and the ghost van bounced past the tree and came to a stop at an angle to the curb. Engine dead, smoke rising, most of the front end smashed in like crumpled paper. The air stank of leaking chemicals.

  Peter stood her up and held her at arm’s length. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded numbly. Her hands were shaking. Her whole body was shaking.

  “Get inside the house,” he said. “Go now. Lock the door behind you. Call the police.”

  She heard a long creak and turned to see the van’s door open. Edgar climbed out from behind the wheel, a thin stream of blood trickling down his forehead. He swiped a forearm across his eyes, which just smeared a red film across his face. He still wore the same cheerful smile and white dress shirt tented over his belly, the mirrored sunglasses still folded into the open neck of his shirt.

  When he saw June, he reached back into the van and pulled out an
axe. Full-sized, for chopping down trees.

  “Hey.” She heard Lewis’s voice, sharp enough to cut, then a metallic snick-snack. She backed toward the house and saw him on the far side of the van, standing in the street with a shotgun raised to his shoulder. “Drop it, motherfucker. Or better yet, don’t.”

  Mr. Cheerful stared at Lewis, then turned back to Peter, who blocked his path to June. “Hi, my name is Edgar.” He smiled wider and took a step away from the van. Not a retreat, just giving himself room. “What are your names?”

  Peter had picked up a wicked-looking crowbar from the grass, and held it like a heavy hooked extension of his hand. He also had a pistol tucked into the back of his pants. “Drop the axe.”

  “I don’t think so,” Mr. Cheerful said. A fresh ooze of blood seeped from the wound at his hairline. He spread his arms wide, holding the axe in one hand as if it weighed nothing. It had a double-bladed head and a dirty yellow plastic handle.

  “I’m loaded with double-ought,” Lewis said. “Turn you into hamburger. Drop that damn axe.”

  Edgar looked from Peter back to Lewis, his broad grin a strange white slash in his blood-washed face. He took the black mirrored sunglasses from the neck of his shirt and put them on. “Well, come on, boys. If you’re gonna do me, then do me. I guess it’s just my time.”

  He took another step away from the van. Then another. He looked from Lewis back to Peter.

  “Really? You’re not gonna do anything? I’m disappointed.”

  And he turned and ran up the street, still carrying the axe.

  Peter dropped the crowbar, pulled the pistol from his belt, and raised it into a firing stance, all so quickly it was almost a blur. But he didn’t pull the trigger.

  “Do it.” Lewis’s voice was low. “Or we gonna see him again for sure.”

  “I’m not going to shoot him in the back,” Peter said. “And if he’s dead, we’re not going to learn anything.” He picked up the crowbar and started after Edgar.

  “June, honey,” he called over his shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Peter,” she shouted. “Goddamn it. Peter!”

  Lewis lowered the shotgun, and looked at June. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I got your boy.” Then tipped forward into a run, following Peter.

  “Goddamn it.” June turned away so she didn’t have to watch them go.

  Standing behind the van, she surveyed the wreck and wondered what was missing.

  Then she realized there were no skid marks on the pavement.

  Edgar had never hit the brakes.

  The crazy fuck hadn’t even tried to slow down.

  22

  PETER

  Crowbar in one hand and pistol in the other, Peter ran after the lunatic with the axe. Over the sound of his own breath, he heard the crunch of Lewis’s boots on the asphalt, closing up behind him. He never doubted his friend would have his back.

  The man with the axe, whose name apparently was Edgar, glanced over his shoulder, then faced forward and accelerated as if he hadn’t just smashed his van into a tree at high speed. He was far faster than any fat man had a right to be.

  Lewis pulled even with Peter, shotgun held at midpoint with one hand, and together they stepped on the gas.

  Peter said, “You couldn’t have grabbed a target pistol instead of that monster?”

  “How’m I s’posed to know the dude’s gonna be this crazy?”

  A small-caliber round in the thigh would have worked nicely to stop Edgar, or at least slow him down. The cut-down 10-gauge’s wide spray of double-ought would have broken half the windows on the block and injured or killed any number of neighbors, which was why Lewis hadn’t pulled the trigger. Peter’s vintage loaner Colt was not exactly a precision weapon, either. With a moving target past fifty feet, a leg shot would take more luck than skill.

  He was glad that Franny had called. From her post at her front window, she’d seen the same white van drive up and down the street three times. When it returned a fourth time, a man in a white dress shirt had gotten on a stepladder to attach something to the light posts at each end of the block. Franny was worried because it was a passenger van, not a work van. Also, there was no city seal on the door, and the windows were mirrored. She confessed that she hadn’t paid a nickel in taxes in the last eighty years and was afraid the government might be spying on her.

  Peter and Lewis had been pretty sure Fran was not the target.

  When they returned to Riverwest and cruised the block themselves, they’d seen the tiny cameras strapped high on the light posts. Who was this new player? The initial concern was that law enforcement was coming after Peter, but Franny’s description made this guy seem more like a freelancer. The cops or feds would have a realistic city truck and a guy in a safety vest and hard hat. Had their burglar returned?

  Next, they’d driven the neighborhood, looking for the van Franny had described, but found nothing. Double the search radius and the range expanded fourfold. With web-enabled cameras, he could be watching from anywhere. So they’d parked the Yukon a few blocks away and slipped sideways along the ravine to come up behind Peter’s back deck. And waited.

  Ahead of them, the fat man was really moving. Peter kicked into a higher gear and felt Lewis do the same beside him, but they weren’t gaining fast enough. When Edgar rounded the corner, heading back toward Humboldt, they were still three houses back.

  Twenty seconds later, they came to the intersection, leaning into the turn.

  The fat man and his axe were nowhere in sight.

  The daylight was almost gone. They sprinted the short block to the next intersection, but he wasn’t visible at either side of the cross street. Ahead, it was another short block to Humboldt, but there was no way he’d gotten that far without their seeing him.

  “Check the backyards,” Peter said. But Lewis had already peeled right, headed for the nearest driveway. The left side was all high fences and thick thorny hedges, no easy way in. Peter hung in the shadows at the corner, figuring Lewis would flush Edgar or he’d get impatient with his cover and break for the street. To do this right you needed a helicopter and a dozen cops with cars and radios, not two dipshits who had somehow lost a fat man in a single city block.

  What if Edgar had doubled back? Peter ran to the last intersection and looked down toward the wrecked van. June was standing in the open driver’s door, peering inside. He knew she wasn’t okay, not after almost getting run down, but she wasn’t a puddle on the ground, she was back at work. He admired the hell out of her.

  Lewis came up the farthest driveway, shotgun held low along his leg. His face was grim. “Nothing, not even a broken window. Like he went up in smoke.”

  Peter shook his head. “We’re fucking useless. First Spark, now Edgar.”

  “You want to knock on some doors?”

  Peter let out some air, then shook his head. “Would you open the door to a black man with a sawed-off?”

  “Why’s it always got to be the black man who scares the civilians,” Lewis said. “Why can’t it be the sweaty white dude with the crowbar and the pistol in his pants?”

  “Shit,” Peter said. “I wouldn’t open the door to me, either.”

  Any sane person would just call the cops, he thought. If they hadn’t already.

  Franny, he thought. She’d have seen the whole thing.

  23

  JUNE

  June shivered as she walked around the wreck, taking pictures with her phone.

  She’d already been inside the van, her sleeves carefully pulled over her hands. Mr. Cheerful had taken out the rear passenger seats and made himself a kind of nest in the back, a sleeping bag on a stained mattress beside a cooler full of lunch meat and cheap beer, along with a couple of gym bags, a clothes iron, and two gallon-size bottles of Clorox. The mirrored side windows had made it darker than outside. The smell of
bleach was still strong in her nose.

  Mingus barked from Lewis’s backyard.

  When Peter and Lewis jogged up the street, she said, “Please tell me you found him.”

  “Disappeared,” Lewis said. “Beamed up to the mother ship.” He pulled out his phone and stepped away to check on his family.

  Peter asked, “Anything useful inside the van?”

  She knew he was pissed by the set of his jaw. She shook her head. “I didn’t want to touch anything.” Peter stepped toward the open van but June put her hand on his chest. “We need fingerprints,” she said. “And not yours. Let the police do their job, okay? I even got his picture earlier today, which should help a lot.”

  “Earlier?”

  “Yeah.” June closed her eyes. She wasn’t looking forward to this. “Mr. Cheerful got me with his car door as I was riding to the paper after lunch. He tried to get me into the van but I smacked him with my bike and got away.”

  She wasn’t going to get into the time she’d spent finding the face she’d recognized at the market, the man whose phone was almost stolen.

  Peter looked at her, seeing her scrapes for the first time. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “I didn’t think it was a big thing,” she said. “Besides, I was on it. I got his picture and his plate number. What the fuck would you have done?”

  Okay, maybe she was being a little defensive.

  The muscles bunched in his arms. “For one thing, I’d have picked you up at work.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said.

  He took a deep breath. “I know you can,” he said. “Better than almost anyone. But clearly this guy is kinda special.” He told her about Fran’s call, and the cameras on the light posts.

  “I’m not worried,” she said. “The police will find him. But we don’t have time to talk all this through right now. You need to get out of here. Because the police will start looking at my life, too. That’s the way they work.”