by James Tucker
Buddy thought, They’re hiding their faces because they don’t want me to be able to identify them. Because they aren’t going to kill me.
Yet as he took in his surroundings—the white-painted building to his left seemed empty and devoid of activity—he realized the men were more likely hiding their faces from the numerous security cameras.
His breathing became more rapid. He tasted iron, maybe blood in his mouth, maybe the tang of adrenaline.
His trepidation increased. His eyes moved faster now, darting around him. He noticed the bulges on the outside of the men’s right ankles where they were carrying handguns. He also noticed the men weren’t talking or communicating, perhaps because they’d done this before.
Not that he could hear them well if they’d been talking. The strange sound resembling a fan grew louder and soon became overwhelming. The men were moving him toward it. He was disoriented and couldn’t place the sound. The noise assaulted him, and he blacked out briefly.
He woke a second time. Now he instantly recognized the sound.
It wasn’t a fan. Not at all.
He wondered where they were taking him. But only for a moment. And then everything made sense.
How death had come to holdouts of real estate projects in Chinatown.
How two of the bodies of the most recent holdouts had disappeared, found only because of Mack Berringer’s need to fish farther and farther from shore.
Sloan Richardson’s almost certain end.
His entire body tensed with alarm. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t move. The terror was unlike any he’d known. It was like watching a bullet in slow motion coming right for his face—and he couldn’t move, couldn’t avoid it. Now he was certain he had thirty minutes to live. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. But an hour more of life? He knew that was a dream.
74
Mei enjoyed being free. She was so happy to get out of the small house on the bluff. The fresh air felt great. Her winter clothes kept her warm, and the strain on her leg muscles invigorated her. She almost wanted to run toward the ridge above them.
“Jess? Ben? Let’s pick up the pace!” she called.
Jessica, leading the three of them, turned around. “I’m going as fast as I can. You in a hurry?”
Mei laughed. “Let’s push ourselves.”
Ben shouted, “We can run!”
Jessica held up the index finger of her right hand, and began jogging, then sprinting across the field toward the ridge that was a hundred fifty yards ahead of them and up a steep incline.
Ben kept close to her, although he was much shorter, although he limped slightly. His flexible legs pushed off and drew themselves upward for another push not much different from pistons in an engine. His boots kicked up flecks of snow. Mei watched for a moment, then took off after them.
A hundred yards and they’d stopped together, hands on their knees, catching their breath. Ben was the first to straighten and look at the ridge.
Panting heavily, he said, “Not much farther.”
Jessica coughed. “But it seems as far as the moon.”
Mei straightened. “We need to meet our goal.”
Jessica elbowed her playfully. “What goal? You’re on vacation.”
“A forced vacation.”
“What does it matter? Let’s stop here, go back down to the house, crack open some wine. Did you buy any wine?”
“If I’d known you were coming, I’d have bought more.”
“Is the vodka still in the freezer?”
Mei looked down at the house, now only a speck far below them across fields and stands of trees barren of leaves. “Still there.”
Jessica smiled. “Good. We’re covered.”
Mei turned and saw that Ben was already climbing toward the ridge. And their route was turning into a climb. Not to the extent they’d need ropes, but it was at least a challenging hike. Jessica noticed that Ben had left them, then groaned loudly but began to follow him.
Mei remained at the back of their line. Her limbs had warmed. She felt alive, not stuck in the house, not afraid, not hiding. Her nervous energy had gone and been replaced by natural energy, even optimism. She thought her worries about the person with whom Ben had exchanged texts about their location might be misplaced or overblown. Now she didn’t think Ben had given enough information for someone to discover the house’s location.
Looking up at him, she saw him get closer and closer to the ridge lined with evergreens. He was stronger, and had greater endurance, than she’d expected.
As if sensing her gaze, he turned around. Cheeks red with the cold and his efforts, he smiled.
75
Buddy sat inside a dual-engine propeller plane. It had been the sound of the turboprops he’d heard, not a fan or a boat or a helicopter or a jet engine.
Still tied with bungee cords to the wooden chair on the luggage trolley, he looked around the airfield. They appeared to be in an industrial area, with the back of a warehouse or a big-box store to the north. The airstrip seemed narrow and short. He saw no maintenance crew. He peered up at the air traffic control tower above the small and seemingly abandoned airport, and saw no movement, no sign of anyone.
Where the hell am I?
He knew it didn’t matter. He was on a small plane whose engines thrummed faster and faster as it began to move. To his right was a small window. To his left, the door the men had pushed him and the trolley through. They hadn’t shut the door. It was open, latched to the interior of the left fuselage with a metal cable through a steel ring on the floor.
The man in the seat in front of him had removed his mountaineering mask. It was Ponytail, from Henry Lee’s restaurant. Buddy wanted to grab the guy’s long hair and rip it off, but he couldn’t move. In front of Ponytail, in the cockpit, sat the pilot. Buddy could see only the back of the pilot’s head, but the pilot had broad shoulders and light-brown hair and wore a beard and a leather bomber jacket and a headset. Buddy heard a third man moving behind him, but he hadn’t seen him without his mask removed. He guessed it was Rat Eyes.
Over the engines’ deafening noise, Buddy said, “I know what you did. And I’ve told other people what you did. It’s over!”
The men ignored him.
The propellers spun faster and faster. The deafening noise cut through the small plane as it hurtled down the runway.
Buddy stared through the open door to his left. As the ground fell away and wind whipped through the cabin, Buddy feared the air pressure would suck him out.
76
Mei, Ben, and Jessica were standing on the ridge when they saw a single black Chevrolet Suburban coming up the long drive to the small house on the bluff. Its headlights had a blue tint. Mei’s recent feeling of optimism vanished.
Ben said, “Who you do think it is?”
“Someone who’s lost,” Jessica told him. “Who else would come up to the house?”
Despite the invigorating climb, Mei instantly felt cold. She wished she’d brought her revolver, but it was behind the Triscuit box on top of the refrigerator in the house below.
She watched as the Suburban stopped in front of the house. The two front doors opened and two men climbed out. They were dressed in black and each was carrying something.
A gun.
Mei breathed in sharply, but she didn’t move. She was frozen there on the ridge, unsure what to do. Maybe, she thought, the men will see that we’re gone, and leave.
The men stood for a moment by the front door. They stepped back. One of the men kicked at the front door until it swung open, the interior of the house dark from where they stood on the ridge. The men walked into the house.
Jessica said loudly, “What the fuck are they doing? They just broke into the house. Did you see that?”
Mei didn’t answer. She thought the scene below was like a silent film, because from the ridge they couldn’t hear anything.
She, Ben, and Jessica didn’t move.
Three minutes later the men eme
rged from the house. They looked down at the snow, then up in the direction of the ridge.
One of the men walked around to the back of the Suburban and opened the tailgate. He remained there briefly. Mei couldn’t see what he was doing. But then she saw two large German shepherds jump off the rear bumper and down onto the asphalt road.
Fear grasped at her throat, and she had to remember to breathe.
The dogs made rapid circles around the man who held their leads. The other man jogged into the house and emerged a moment later. He was holding white objects.
Mei squinted and realized the objects were the pillows on which she and Ben had slept.
The men held the pillows in front of the dogs’ snouts. The dogs began to bark.
Mei tried to tamp down the anxiety rising within her, to no avail. She bent over and tightened the laces of her boots, her gaze never leaving the men and the dogs below.
Call 911, she thought.
Standing, she took off her gloves and pulled her phone from her pocket. There was a signal.
The barks of the German shepherds echoed all the way up the incline to the ridge. The man holding the dogs’ leads pulled first one dog and then the other close. He unlatched their leads and issued a command with a shout. He pointed to the tracks in the snow and the ridge.
The dogs caught the scent immediately. At first they trotted along the footprints Mei, Ben, and Jessica had made. Then they broke into a run, followed quickly by the men, their guns drawn.
Mei knew there wasn’t time for help from the police. She put away her phone and took hold of Ben’s hand. “We need to run,” she told them, backing off the ridge. “They’re going to kill us. We need to run. Now! Hurry!”
Jessica hesitated, but then followed them as they rushed in the opposite direction, down the other side of the ridge into a winding, snow-filled ravine.
77
Buddy watched through the open door to his left. He saw no land, no evidence of human habitation. He saw no islands, boats, or birds. Instead he could see only clouds and, through gaps in the clouds, the Atlantic Ocean and its whitecaps and slate-colored swells. His mind recorded what he saw but was otherwise blank, except for the pain from having the baseball bat crash into his head. Vertigo crippled him. He was frozen.
He thought about the human response to danger that evolution had provided: fight or flight. He couldn’t run and hide. He certainly couldn’t fly. He wasn’t sure he could fight—not trussed up like an animal. But he’d watch and wait. The men hadn’t made a mistake. Not yet.
The air within the plane was frigid, the noise of the engines deafening. His hands shook with cold and nerves. His breath came in short bursts. He coughed twice. His feet were growing numb. He couldn’t hear much of anything. But it didn’t matter.
He thought it best that men and women didn’t know when or how they’d die. He wished they’d just shot him. That would have been instant blackness, forever. As the plane banked to the right, and through the open door he saw only featureless gray, he thought of Mei and Ben. The things he wished he could tell them, mostly how much he loved them. Even if he’d told them so many times, it wasn’t enough. He wished that he and Mei had married and had children of their own. But she knew his feelings. He hadn’t talked about them much, but he was certain she understood. In the end it seemed there wasn’t more to say. There was just more to do. With them. With life. He wanted to live. This was the strongest desire he had. He also wanted to seek justice for those who hadn’t been allowed to live, for Chen and Lily Sung, for Sloan Richardson.
As the plane leveled off, and he gazed down through a break in the clouds at the endless black water, he wondered if anyone would seek justice for him.
78
Jessica called forward to Mei. “Why are we running? We should stop. We should tell them there’s been a mistake.”
“Keep going!” Mei urged. She knew there was no mistake. She knew that if the dogs and men caught them, their odds of survival were low and probably zero.
Now at the floor of the ravine, they were heading west on a hiking path to the left of a frozen stream. The path was ten feet wide, the ice on the stream five.
Ben remained calm, intense, quiet. He kept his head down, sidestepping the snowdrifts over the path, the brambles, the rocks. He never slowed, even though his right leg must have burned with pain each time he pushed off. He surely felt the same urgency that she did. His life had been threatened before, and he knew to run from danger.
Jessica half shouted, “What do they want?”
Mei spoke between breaths, not turning back to her friend. “Us.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.”
Ben continued in the lead, following the path. Mei sensed Jessica slowing her pace, and she turned to check on her friend.
Jessica was bent over, hands on her thighs. Panting, she said, “This is ridiculous. We just look guilty, running away. What if they’re police or something? What if it has to do with Oliver’s investment business? What if they want to question him?”
Instantly, Mei considered and rejected this idea. Jessica’s boyfriend had nothing to do with the frightening man outside Porter Gallery. Or the conversation by text between Ben and someone posing as one of his classmates. She glanced forward at Ben, who hadn’t stopped, his navy-blue coat growing rapidly smaller the farther he went. Turning to Jessica, she said, “They’re after Ben and me. I don’t know why. You should come with us. They’ll think we told you something.”
Jessica turned as Mei ran past her. “Told me what?”
Mei faced forward as she called back to her friend. “I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Come on!”
Jessica said, “No, thanks. I’m going back to the house and calling Oliver.”
Mei was tempted to stop and return to her friend, to argue with her, to demand that Jessica follow them. But she wouldn’t stop. She had to protect Ben and herself. And it was true that maybe the men would ignore Jessica. But she and Ben had to push forward through the ravine, trying not to stumble on the rocks, knowing they’d lost ground and might lose more. She and Ben couldn’t outrun the German shepherds, whose barks were growing louder by the minute.
“Aghh!” Ben howled, tripping, pitching forward, tumbling into the snow-covered stones.
Mei caught up with him, stopped, and bent over. She took his arm and helped him up. “You okay?”
He didn’t answer, just pushed her hand away and started running, almost sprinting, continuing on the path through the ravine.
As she began to run behind him, she glanced backward. Jessica had turned and was walking east along the floor of the ravine, toward the German shepherds that were rapidly growing specks, and behind the dogs, the two men in black.
Mei kept running, following Ben. Her legs ached. Her lungs burned. She felt light-headed. But she kept on. Fear, determination, and adrenaline gave her ability and purpose.
The barks of the German shepherds grew louder.
Then she heard it.
A sound she recognized. Although she knew she wasn’t mistaken, that her worst fear had been realized, she still turned and looked behind her.
Jessica was no longer walking. Mei could see only a blue-and-white mass where her friend’s body lay. The white parka and blue jeans were now horizontal and motionless. Over the fallen form stood one of the men, while the dogs and the other man continued running toward Mei and Ben.
They were gaining on her, she could see it. And yet what could she do? She wouldn’t stop running, because she believed standing still would mean death. They’d do to her what they’d done to Jessica.
My God! She thought. They killed Jess. For no reason! She wouldn’t have hurt them, wouldn’t hurt anyone. Why?
Ben turned to look back at her. His eyes met hers, then searched behind her. His face grew red and he began to cry. He said, “They’ll get us, Mei. They’ll get us. We can’t get away!”
“Keep running!” she called up to him, even
though she believed he was right. They couldn’t get away. They’d be caught. And killed.
A few minutes later, the dogs caught up with them.
Mei stopped and turned, ready to kick the dogs, to keep them away from Ben. Yet the dogs didn’t attack, only barked loudly, their saliva spitting into the air as they circled her and Ben, who’d also stopped running. She moved closer to Ben. They stood back-to-back, the German shepherds’ long snouts and enormous teeth so close she could have touched them. The dogs’ barks were short, vicious, loud as machine-gun fire.
Mei reached back and put her arm around Ben’s chest in an awkward embrace. She said, “I love you.”
Ben looked up at her and said, “What are they going to do?”
She tried to smile at him. “It doesn’t matter. If we live, we’ll be together. And if we die, we’ll be together. But I want you to know that you’re the best boy in the world. You’re the best, Ben.”
He began sobbing. He wiped away his tears, but those were replaced by more tears. Her vision went blurry as she cried.
Soon the two men caught up with the German shepherds. With a command from one of the men, the dogs immediately ceased barking.
Mei waited, bracing herself for the shot that would kill her.
The men were large, with blunt, impassive faces. Each held a large black handgun.
79
Buddy moved his ankles, straining against the bungee cords. They were less tight than when he’d regained consciousness on the tarmac. He slumped forward, as if passing out, and glanced down at his feet. The hooks had slid near the floor, providing more slack in the cord.
Maybe, he thought. Just maybe.
The cords around his arms also were looser than they’d been. He might be able to get his wrists out of them if he had time.
He waited.
Ponytail stood, his large eyes watering in the frigid air rushing into the plane, but he didn’t blink. Buddy couldn’t see the man behind him, but he heard the man’s voice.