Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  “She’s probably busy,” I said, stroking the sponge down a length of rein. “Grooms work hard.”

  “She would have called me,” Molly insisted. “I went to the show grounds myself the next day—yesterday. A man at Don Jade’s barn told me Erin doesn’t work there anymore.”

  Grooms quit. Grooms get fired. Grooms decide one day to become florists and decide the next day they’d rather be brain surgeons. On the flip side, there are trainers with reputations as slave masters, temperamental prima donnas who go through grooms like disposable razors. I’ve known trainers who demanded a groom sleep every night in a stall with a psychotic stallion, valuing the horse far more than the person. I’ve known trainers who fired five grooms in a week.

  “Sounds to me like Erin has a life of her own. Maybe she just doesn’t have time for a kid sister right now.”

  Molly Seabright’s expression darkened. “I told you Erin’s not like that. She wouldn’t just leave.”

  “She left home.”

  “But she didn’t leave me. She wouldn’t.”

  Finally she sounded like a child instead of a forty-nine-year-old CPA. An uncertain, frightened little girl. Looking to me for help.

  “People change. People grow up,” I said bluntly, taking the bridle down from the hook. “Maybe it’s your turn.”

  The words hit their mark like bullets. Tears rose behind the Harry Potter glasses. I didn’t allow myself to feel guilt or pity. I didn’t want a job or a client. I didn’t want people coming into my life with expectations.

  “I thought you would be different,” she said.

  “Why would you think that? I’m nobody’s hero, Molly. I’m sorry you got that impression. I’m sure if your parents aren’t worried and the cops aren’t worried about your sister, then there’s nothing to be worried about. You don’t need me, and believe me, you’d be sorry if you did.”

  She didn’t look at me. She stood there for a moment, composing herself, then pulled a small red wallet from the carrying pouch strapped around her waist. She took out a ten-dollar bill and placed it on the magazine.

  “Thank you for your time,” she said politely, then turned and walked away.

  I didn’t chase after her. I didn’t try to give her her ten dollars back. I watched her walk away and thought she was more of an adult than I was.

  Irina appeared in my peripheral vision, propping herself against the archway as if she hadn’t the strength to stand on her own. “You want I should saddle Feliki?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Saddle Feliki.”

  She started toward the mare’s stall, then I asked a question for which I would have been far better off not having an answer.

  “Irina, do you know anything about a jumper trainer named Don Jade?”

  “Yes,” she said casually, not even looking back at me. “He is a murderer.”

  KILL THE MESSENGER

  by TAMI HOAG

  On sale July 2004

  LOWELL HANDED HIM a 5”x7” padded manila envelope. He hung a cigarette on his lip and it bobbed up and down as he spoke while he fished in his baggy pants pocket for a lighter. “I appreciate you dropping this for me, kid. You’ve got the address?”

  Jace repeated it from memory.

  “Keep it dry,” Lowell said, blowing smoke at the ceiling.

  “Like my life depends on it.”

  FAMOUS LAST WORDS, Jace would think later when he looked back on this night. But he didn’t think anything as he went out into the rain and pulled the U-lock off his bike.

  Instead of putting the package in his bag, he slipped it up under his T-shirt and tucked the shirt inside the waistband of his bike shorts. Warm and dry.

  He would leave his paperwork ’til morning. Drop this package, go home, and crawl into a hot shower. His mind distracted, he rode on autopilot. Past the 76 station, take a right. Down two blocks, take a left. The side streets were empty, dark. Nobody hung around in this part of town at this time of night for any good reason. The businesses in the dirty, low, flat-roofed buildings closed up at six.

  He might have thought it was a strange destination for a package from a lawyer, except that the lawyer was Lenny Lowell, and Lenny’s clients were what Jace’s mother would have naively described as “colorful.”

  The drop would be the first place on the right on the next block. Except that the first place on the right on the next block was a vacant lot.

  Headlights flashed on, blinding him for a second.

  What the hell kind of drop was this? Drugs? A payoff? Whatever it was, Jace wasn’t making it. Only a fool would ride into this and ask for a signature on a manifest.

  Now he was pissed. Pissed and scared. Sent to a vacant lot in the dead of fucking night. Fuck that. Fuck Lenny Lowell. He could take his package and shove it up his ass.

  Jace stood on his pedals and started to go.

  The car lurched forward, engine roaring like a charging beast as it made straight for him.

  For a split second it seemed Jace didn’t—couldn’t—move. Then he was going, legs pumping like pistons, the bike’s tires slipping on the wet street. If he ran straightaway, the car would be on him like a cat on a mouse. He turned hard left instead. The bike’s back end skated sideways on the slick pavement. He stuck a foot down to keep from falling, pulled the bike back under himself. Then he was charging the car.

  Heart in his throat, he juked right, nearly too late, jumped the curb back into the vacant lot, shooting past the car—big, dark, domestic. He heard the grind of metal on pavement as the car went off the curb and bottomed out. Tires squealed on the wet street as it swung a wide, awkward, skidding turn.

  Jace made for the alley as hard as he could go, praying it wouldn’t dead-end. In the heart of downtown he was like a street rat that knew every sewer pipe, every Dumpster, every crack in a wall that could offer a shortcut, escape, shelter, hiding place. Here he was vulnerable, a rabbit caught in the open. Prey.

  The car was coming after him. The predator. The headlights bucked up and down as the car banged back up over the curb.

  If he could get to the end of the alley before the car turned down the alley and spotlit him, he had a fifty-fifty shot at ditching them. The end of the alley looked nine miles away.

  And it was already too late.

  The high beams slapped at his back like a paw reaching out to tag him. The car came, as loud as a train, sending trash cans scattering like bowling pins.

  His luck was running out faster than the alley was. He couldn’t outrun the car. He couldn’t turn and ditch the car. To his left: buildings shoulder to shoulder, backed with Dumpsters and boxes and discarded junk—an obstacle course. To his right: a chain-link fence crowned with razor wire. On his ass: the angel of death.

  Jace reached back with one hand and jerked his U-lock out of his messenger bag. The bumper kissed his back tire. The bike jerked. He nearly came off, nearly fell onto the hood of the car. Moving as close as he could against the fence, Jace touched his brakes, dropped just behind the predator’s bumper, and swung the heavy U-lock left-handed into the windshield. A spiderweb of cracks exploded across the span of glass. The car swerved into him, drove him sideways into the fence. Jace turned and grabbed hold of the chain-link fence with both hands, hanging on hard as the bike was yanked out from under him. The toe of his right shoe got hung up in the pedal clip and his body jerked wildly sideways as the car pushed the bike forward.

  The fence bit into his fingers as the bike tried to drag him. It felt like his arms were being torn out of their sockets, that his foot was being wrenched off at the ankle—then suddenly he was free and falling.

  He landed on his back on the cracked asphalt, rolled, and scrambled up onto his knees, his eyes on the car as his bike went under the back tire and died a terrible death.

  His only transportation. His livelihood. Gone.

  He was on his own. On foot. And one foot was missing a shoe. Pain burned through his wrenched ankle as Jace pushed himself to his feet and ran fo
r the buildings before the car could come to a complete stop.

  The voice of his survival instinct screamed through his brain. Go go go!!!

  He was young, he was fast, he was highly motivated. He set his sights on a half wall blocking the space between two buildings. He would hit it running, vault over the side, and be gone. Bum ankle or no, he could damn well outrun the asshole driving that car. But he couldn’t outrun a bullet.

  The shot hit the Dumpster a foot to Jace’s left almost simultaneously as he heard the report.

  Fuck! He had to get over that wall. He had to get over it. Get over it and run like hell. Footfalls were coming hard behind him.

  The second shot went wide right and hit a Dumpster.

  Jace launched himself at the wall and was summarily yanked backward as his pursuer grabbed hold of the messenger bag he wore strapped across his back.

  He fell back into the man, and momentum carried them both backward, their feet tangling. The predator’s body cushioned the fall as they went down. Jace scrambled to get his feet under him, to wriggle away. Predator hung tight to the messenger bag.

  “Fucking little shit!”

  Jace swung an elbow back, connected hard with some part of the guy’s face. A bone cracked nearly as loudly as the gunshot had, and for a split second the bastard’s hold let loose and he cursed a blue streak. Jace ducked down and twisted out of the bag’s strap and lunged again toward the wall.

  Predator grabbed hold of the back of Jace’s rain slicker with one hand and swung at him with the other. The Dollar Store rain poncho tore away like wet tissue. The butt of the gun glanced off the back of Jace’s helmet. Stars burst bright before his eyes, but he kept moving.

  He hit the wall running, scrambled up and over, and tumbled ass over teakettle as he landed, rolling through mud and muck and garbage and water.

  The canyon between the buildings was pitch black, the only light at the end of the tunnel the dim silver glow of a distant sodium vapor lamp. He ran toward it, never expecting to reach it.

  He broke out of the alley, turned left, and raced along the fronts of the dark buildings, jumping shrubbery and low walls of tired landscaping. As he landed on the other side of a row of scrubby juniper bushes, the bad ankle buckled beneath him and he fell, gravel tearing at his hands as he tried to break the impact. He expected footfalls coming behind him, another shot aimed at his back, but no one was coming yet.

  Panting, dizzy, Jace struggled once again to his feet and stumbled forward. At the next break between buildings, he ducked back into the cover of darkness to hide like a wounded animal. Halfway down the side of the building he stopped and fell against the rough concrete wall, wanting to puke, afraid the sound would draw his predator and get him killed.

  He was shaking violently, suddenly cold, suddenly aware of the winter rain pouring down on him, soaking his clothes. Pain throbbed and burned in his ankle. A sharper pain pierced his foot. He felt along the bottom of his wet sock and pulled out a sliver of broken glass. He sank down into a squat, hugged his arms around his legs as he leaned against the wall.

  The two-way was still strapped to his thigh. He could try to call Base, but Eta was long gone home to her kids by now. If he had a cell phone, he could call the cops. But he couldn’t afford a cell phone, and he had no faith in the police. He had no real faith in anyone but himself. He never had.

  The dizziness was swept away by a wave of weakness, the wake of the initial adrenaline rush. He strained to hear past his own breathing, past the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears. He tried to listen for the sounds of pursuit. He tried to think what to do next.

  Best to stay where he was. He was out of sight and had an escape route if his assailant did flush him out. Unless there were two of them—assailants, plural. One on either end of this tunnel and he was cooked.

  He thought of Ty, who would by now be wondering where he was. Not that the kid was sitting alone somewhere, waiting. Tyler was never alone. A brainiac little white kid living in Chinatown and speaking fluent Mandarin sort of stood out. Ty was a novelty. People liked him and were bemused by him at the same time. The Chens treated him like some kind of golden child sent to them for good fortune.

  Still, the only true family the Damon brothers had were each other. And that bond of family to Ty was the strongest thing Jace had ever known. It was the thing he lived for, the motivation behind everything he did, every goal he had.

  Footfalls slapped on pavement. Jace couldn’t tell from where. The alley? The street? He made himself as small as he could, a tight human ball tucked against the side of the building, and counted his heartbeats as he waited.

  A dark figure stopped at the end of the building, street side, and stood there, arms slightly out to his sides, his movements hesitant as he turned one way and then the other.

  Jace pressed his hand against his belly, against the envelope he had tucked inside his shirt for safekeeping. What the hell had Lenny Lowell gotten him into?

  The dark figure at the end of the tunnel went back the way he had come. Jace waited, counting silently until he decided that the predator wasn’t coming back. Then he crept along the wall through scraps of trash and puddles and broken glass to the alley, and cautiously peered out. A Dumpster blocked his view.

  His bike lay crumpled on the ground somewhere behind the car. Jace hoped against hope the frame wasn’t bent, that maybe only a wheel had been mangled. He could fix that.

  Jace had inherited the bike, in a manner of speaking. That was to say, no one else would touch it when it had suddenly become available two years before. Its previous owner, a guy who called himself King and worked nights as an Elvis-impersonating stripper, had lost control dodging street traffic and had ended up under the wheels of a garbage truck. The bike had survived. King had not.

  Messengers were a superstitious bunch. King died in the line. Nobody wanted a dead guy’s bike if he died in the line. It sat in the back hall at dispatch for a week, waiting to be claimed by King’s next of kin—only he turned out not to have any, at least none that gave a shit about him.

  Jace didn’t believe in susperstitions. He believed you make your own luck. King went under the wheels because he was cranked up on speed most of the time and had poor judgment. Jace believed in focus and hustle. He had looked at the bike and seen a strong Cannondale frame, two good wheels, and a gel-cushioned seat. He saw himself cutting his delivery times, making more runs, making more money. He waved off all warnings, left the piece of shit he’d been riding leaning against an LA Times box for anyone who wanted to steal it, and rode home on the Cannondale.

  The car’s engine revved, and the taillight disappeared from view. Predator was going home, calling it after a hard day of fucking trying to kill people, Jace thought. Chills shook his body, from the rain and from relief. This time when he thought he was going to puke, he did.

  Jace went back to the scene where his fallen mount lay, the rear wheel mangled beyond saving. If it had been a horse, someone would have shot it, put it out of its misery. But it was a bike, and the frame was still intact.

  He looked around for his bag, but it was gone. Taken as a trophy by Predator, a consolation prize. Or maybe he thought he’d accomplished his true mission. Someone wanted whatever the hell was in Lenny Lowell’s packet, held tight against his belly by his shirt.

  Whatever the hell it was, Jace was going to find out. Lenny had a lot to answer for.

  He picked up the bike, tilted it up onto the front wheel only, and started walking.

  DUST TO DUST

  A Bantam Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam hardcover edition published September 2000

  Bantam mass market edition published April 2002

  Bantam reissue edition / January 2004

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are th
e product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2000 by Diva Hoag, Inc.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-39786

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  For information address: Bantam Books, New York, New York.

  Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  eISBN: 978-0-553-89848-4

  v3.0