Chapter 30
The SUV rips out of the driveway. Something savage in the way he turns the wheel. Jams the accelerator. His body all tense, veins on his arms rippling, pulse banging like a war drum on the side of his neck.
He slept late. Still half under even now. But this is his chance. He’s watched this target for weeks, got a feel for the schedule, balancing his ease of access with the ebb and flow of the traffic, the best day of the week, etc. Right now measures out as his best window of opportunity, and he slept through half of it.
Reminding himself this fact makes his mouth clench involuntarily. Jaw jutting back and forth whilst fully clamped down, teeth gritting out little sounds — bone grinding against bone.
He can’t lose focus like that. Can’t let up. Can’t lose his edge.
Unless he wants to be no one forever, that is. Irrelevant. Never was. Forgotten. Then he’s doing it just fucking right.
He fishes for his sunglasses in the center console as he drives. Fingers scuttling like crab legs, clambering over loose change, Kleenex, some ancient hair scrunchies, a bag of menthol cough drops that he can smell faintly at all times in here. At last they find the shape they seek, smooth plastic curves.
He slides the sunglasses on. Watches reality dim a few notches. Better. He’s loath to admit it, but he’s never fully Jim until he has these things covering his eyes, bending that harsh reality out there to better suit what he wants.
He takes a hard left, tires squealing, barely makes it. Almost missed the damn intersection because of the stupid sunglasses.
Get a grip, fuckhead. You’re being very un-Jim.
He takes a few deep breaths. Needs to focus. For real.
You get one shot at this. Make it count.
At the next stoplight, he reaches under the sunglasses to scrub the sleep from his eyes with his knuckles. Wills the drowsiness to flee his body. Harnesses some kind of hate like a cramp in the center of his torso — a knot of discomfort just beneath his sternum. Focusing on it, he can channel that energy elsewhere. A warmth. A tingle. He directs the feeling to his hands, concentrating on them. Then to his feet.
Closing his eyes he sees this energy as a ball of orange light spreading outward from the center of his being to touch the rest of him, to brighten every cell. Light it the hell up. Make the whole thing glow with life.
He opens his eyes just as the light turns green.
And he can feel it as the SUV picks up speed again, as he takes in the bustling street around him. The energy persists, that roiling warmth still occupying one part of his mind as he moves on.
Now he’s focused. Now he’s ready.
A few blocks down, he takes a right, and a little shimmer in the rearview catches his eye. Light reflects from a windshield that just traced his path around the corner. A dark sedan hovering a few car lengths back.
He scans his memory. Tries to remember how long the vehicle has been behind him, if he’s ever seen it before today. He’s not sure.
It could be a tail. Could be. But it could also be paranoia, which Jim seems quite prone to. That might be the Achilles heel of old Jimbo now that he considers it — delusions of dread, his anxiety getting out of hand.
Better safe than sorry, no?
Yeah. Yep. He can’t disagree with this particular voice. Paranoid or not, Jim is sure right about this one, the son of a bitch.
He scans the area. Ponders his options.
Pedestrians swamp this little shopping district. The mindless hoards carrying bags of fresh junk back to their cars, others setting off on missions to shop their hearts out.
Yes. A crowd. That will work.
He pulls over. Squeezes the SUV into a parking spot in front of a smoothie place. Kills the engine.
Waits. Holds still. Watches the mirror. Holds his breath.
The black sedan grows bigger and bigger in the rearview. Then it zooms past. Doesn’t even hesitate.
He chuckles to himself. Shakes his head as he eyes Jim laughing along in the mirror. Just paranoia then. Good.
Still. Better to head in the rest of the way on foot. Just to be absolutely certain. The few minutes difference won’t matter now.
He waits for a dead spot in the traffic and climbs out into the throng of shoppers. Head still swiveling to seek out that dark sedan and not finding it.
Maybe it doesn’t matter either way. Five paces onto the sidewalk, the crowd swallows him up.
Chapter 31
Sablatsky’s Mariner was not in sight as they sped down the road after him. Darger couldn’t stop gritting her teeth, terrified that he was going to get away from them. If he managed to slip through surveillance and start another fire in that time, she was going to be furious with herself.
Beck slowed at the next intersection, and Darger spotted the silver-blue SUV heading east.
“There,” she pointed and grabbed the radio from the dash. “We’ve got eyes. He’s eastbound on Hawthorne Street.”
Luck’s voice came over the radio. “Copy. This is Timber Wolf. We’re running parallel to you on Eastmont.”
“Unicorn, this is Manta Ray,” the other car said. “We are tailing you at a distance.”
“Copy that,” Darger said.
She glanced over at Beck, whose knuckles seemed wrapped around the steering wheel like claws.
“You good?”
Beck nodded.
“You think he’s up to something?” the other woman asked. “He sure flew out of there like he has somewhere to be.”
There was a part of Darger — likely fueled by adrenaline — that said this had to be it. They were about to catch him in the act and end this whole thing. Another part said it would be a while before they got that lucky.
“We’ll see,” she said.
As they kept pace with Sablatsky, Darger periodically glanced at the speedometer. He drove aggressively, weaving in between cars to get ahead where he could, but he rarely went more than a few miles-per-hour over the speed limit. Still, the constant shifting of lanes made it more difficult to tail him from a discreet distance.
Darger continued to give updates over the radio as they drove through the streets of Los Angeles. They entered a residential area with stately Spanish Colonial homes lining both sides of the road. The white stucco and red roof tile went by in a blur.
After they’d been following Sablatsky for a few minutes, Beck let out a nervous laugh.
“Well, I hope he’s not going far. I got quite the burst of adrenaline back there, and now I have to pee again.”
Sablatsky continued to weaving in and out of traffic, gaining a car-length here and there. They watched him switch lanes ahead, cutting in front of a white pick-up truck. The driver of the truck honked and threw his hands up angrily.
The traffic light at the intersection ahead flipped from green to yellow. The mass of cars slowed, anticipating the red light. Darger leaned back in her seat, relishing that they’d have a few seconds to breathe before the chase began again.
They came to a standstill as the light turned red. Sablatsky was ahead of them and one lane over. Darger could only really see a sliver of his face in the side mirror, but that didn’t stop her from staring. Her eyes roamed the length of the vehicle, noting the Volunteer Fire Dept. sticker on his rear windshield.
There was a man standing in the grass median, selling roses out of a five-gallon bucket.
Darger could hear him saying, “A pretty flower for the pretty lady in your life. Let your wife know how much you love her.”
A sudden thought occurred to Darger. Something she’d forgotten in all of the frenzy.
“Did you happen to notice his car making a noise?”
“Sablatsky?”
“Yeah. Like a high-pitched chirping.”
“No,” Beck said. “Why?”
“It’s nothing, really. Just that we have a witness and surveillance video of an SUV with a squeaky serpentine belt. We thought it might be him.”
Beck’s eyes wandered to th
e Mariner.
“Could have had it fixed.”
“Yeah,” Darger agreed. “Maybe.”
Squinting up at the traffic signal, Beck said, “Well this might just be the longest light in history.”
She had barely finished speaking when Sablatsky’s vehicle veered into a break in the cross-traffic. With no warning, he’d taken a hard right despite the fact that he hadn’t been in the turn lane.
“Damn it,” Darger said, swiveling in her seat to peer at the cars surrounding them.
They were boxed in on all sides. There was no way they could follow until the light turned, and even then, they’d have to go to the next intersection before they’d be able to take a right.
She mashed the button on the radio.
“This is Unicorn. He just threw us at a traffic light. He’s headed south on Highland Avenue.”
“This is Manta Ray. We’re in the same clot. Not moving.”
“Copy. This is Timber Wolf. We’ll try to head him off.”
Ten or fifteen seconds passed, each one feeling like an eternity. When the light finally turned green, Beck wheeled into the far right lane as swiftly as she could and took the next right. Darger crossed her fingers that Sablatsky hadn’t gotten too far.
Luck’s voice came over the radio.
“OK, we spotted him. He’s still going south on Highland, but we’re stuck in traffic and not able to pursue.”
“Fuck,” Darger said. “We’re going to lose him.”
Beck slammed her open palm against the wheel.
“I should have been following closer.”
“No. We were doing everything right.” Darger shook her head. “The guy drives like a lunatic.”
Beck turned right again and then made a quick left on Highland, stepping on the gas.
“Ahoy, Unicorn. This is Timber Wolf on your six.”
In her side mirror, Darger spotted Luck’s Lexus directly behind them. She waved before returning to scanning the cross streets for Sablatsky. A moment later, Beck was braking. The traffic ahead was moving at a crawl.
“Fucking traffic in this town,” Darger said. “It never lets up.”
She spotted a park with booths and tents set up in rows. Some sort of festival from the looks of it. People milled about on the sidewalks and crossed between the cars stuck in traffic, further slowing things down.
“Hopefully he got stuck in this mess, too,” Beck said.
And then she spotted it. The silvery-blue Mercury SUV with the volunteer fireman decal. It was parked down a side street that ran along one side of the park. Better yet, Sablatsky stood only a few feet away, swiping his credit card at a parking meter.
“I see him.” Darger said. “Stop here.”
Beck brought the car to a stop, and Darger hopped out, signaling to Luck to pull over.
“Stay on his car,” Darger said, turning back to Beck. “I’ll try to track him on foot.”
A horn blared from behind them.
“Move, bitch!” the driver shouted.
Darger was sorely tempted to move as slowly as possible just to spite the impatient woman, but she didn’t want to lose Sablatsky again. Thankfully, he was still fiddling with the parking meter. She closed the car door and moved to the sidewalk where Luck and his Lexus were now stationed in a No Parking zone. He and the LAPD officers he’d teamed up with were climbing out.
“He’s at 10 o’clock,” Darger said. “Bright blue Dodgers t-shirt.”
They formulated a quick plan. With the two cops positioned deeper within the park, Darger and Luck would fan out on either side of Sablatsky and follow at a short distance.
“Remember that he hasn’t done anything yet. We’re just watching,” Luck reminded them. “Obviously, if we can catch him in the act, we’ll take him down, but short of that we have nothing to arrest him on.”
“Not even the shitty driving?” one of the men joked.
“If only,” Luck said.
Just then, Sablatsky pocketed his wallet and hustled into the throng.
“Here we go,” Darger said. “He’s moving.”
Chapter 32
Jim cuts across a landscaped yard in front of a real estate office — raised beds of tall exotic grass and a pair of magnolia trees manicured like fussy facial hair. His feet slip a little in the wood chips still moist from the sprinkler, and he kicks up little clusters of the wet mulch, but he doesn’t slow.
He hustles. Focused. His body gone taut with anticipation. That glowing energy still pulsating inside.
The shortcut takes him to the next block where the foot traffic dies back considerably. This particular block won’t really come to life until after dark. He knows this from watching, sitting off to the side in his SUV, letting the prey come to him. The lack of pedestrians is part of the plan.
He pulls the baseball cap down so it covers his brow. He knows from practicing in the mirror that this greatly changes his appearance, the angles of his cheekbones and jaw somehow appearing quite a bit more chiseled and angular with his big forehead covered up. He’d read quite a bit about manipulating these kinds of things in blog posts by various con men trying to sell losers the secret to getting girls. They all preach the same bullshit, too. Just act “cocky and funny,” they say, and these girls will be falling all over each other to get to you.
Yeah? Not so much in his experience, but that’s OK. Better to give them fire. All of them.
Tonight his target will go another direction, though, won’t it? He snickers a little just thinking about it, a wicked chill reaching up to touch his shoulder blades, make him squirm a little.
The destination takes shape before him. A corner building. Brick facade on the front.
Now he picks up speed. Almost jogging. Sliding the little bottle out of the cargo pocket in his pants.
He stands in the shadow of the open doorway. Steps inside. A wood-paneled foyer comes to view as his eyes adjust, a flight of wooden steps leading up to the main floor of the bar. Chipped black paint covers both the wall and floors.
Yes.
This small passage serves as the bottleneck of this business operation, the one little chute where everyone must go in and out. It’s a perfect target.
Despite the lack of foot traffic up and down the street, the bar itself sounds packed. Voices and music competing with each other inside, glasses clinking and thumping down on bars and tables. Happy hour on Tuesday afternoon always draws the regulars in a few hours early.
He licks his lips. Tastes the salt of his sweat once more.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He dumps the gasoline over the steps. Slooshes it all out of the wide mouth bottle in one motion. The liquid almost slapping the wood more than splashing.
And no longer can he hear the voices nor the driving bass of the music through the door beyond. These sounds fade. Filter out of his perception. In their place, he hears only the thud of his own heart, the swishing patter of the blood roaring in his ears.
His hand shakes as he flicks the lighter. Trembling so badly it takes three tries to light. But the sight of the flickering flame itself seems to calm him. Soothe him. A balm applied directly to his troubled thoughts.
His arm steadies as he lowers the flame to the stairway, those strange waves of energy in his chest once again finding strength, finding reassurance now that the star of the show is alight center stage. The smell of gas is everywhere now, bright and acrid. He tastes it. Feels it in the wet of his eyes, on the roof of his mouth, in the back of his throat.
The fire leaps to life, all of the steps going up at once, and whooshing further after a second, some draft catching and exciting the blaze. He stumbles backward, off-balance, eyes watering to blur everything. The flames are quickly waist high and climbing, an indistinct brightness reaching for him, hungry for him, seemingly unaware that they are on the same side.
But he evades the orange coils, stands in the doorway, blinks the tears from his eyes, and right away he sees big patches of paint peel off
the wall from the heat, the fire already having its way with the wood paneling there. Chewing into the building.
The wood veneer glows already, the orange of it swelling and waning and swelling again like the fire is breathing, living.
Catching. Growing. Becoming.
Yes.
He watches it for two ragged breaths, his whole body slick and throbbing and alive, tongue gliding back and forth over wet lips, arms once more embracing each other, kneading at the meat of himself.
And then he darts back the way he came.
Chapter 33
The crowd in the park was a blessing and a curse. The sea of people gave Darger plenty of cover — she doubted Sablatsky would ever notice he was being followed in this mess — but part of her attention was required to keep her from plowing into people. That meant taking her eyes off of Sablatsky every few seconds and running the risk of losing him amongst the horde, especially if he made a sudden change in direction.
She had to hope that between her and Luck, he wouldn’t get away.
Sablatsky wove through the mob much the way he’d driven here. Shifting and zipping around anyone moving too slowly, an endless zig-zag pattern. Always trying to find the fastest way around an obstacle.
It spoke to his impulsiveness, this inability to wait even a moment, to slow down for a half-second. Anything to reach his destination as quickly as possible.
Was he planning to start a fire here, in the park? It didn’t really make sense. With so many people around, he’d be easy to spot, for one. Not to mention the fact that it would be too easy for people to flee the fire, if he was looking for casualties.
So what then? He didn’t appear to be interested in any of the tents. He hadn’t even so much as glanced at any of the wares or food stands as far as she could tell.
Darger tried to peer ahead to determine where he might be headed, but all she saw were more people and trees.
He ducked around a booth selling an array of tie-dyed merchandise, and she momentarily lost sight of him. She hurried along the other side of the booths, watching in the gaps for the blue shirt. He was there, still moving roughly in the same direction as before.
Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Page 16