My heart somersaulted. I looked at John, but he was staring out the windshield nodding his head.
“She’s been bid on already,” the voice said.
“Then go higher,” Griff answered.
“How much?”
“Another thousand.”
“As you wish,” the voice said and then, “The other bidder has upped you by five hundred dollars.”
“Another thousand,” Griff said. “No one else will do.”
John drew a deep breath. “C’mon, man.”
We sat in silence, waiting.
“She’s yours, sir,” the voice said.
John smacked the steering wheel with his hand and started the car. “We’re almost there, Callahan.”
“These are your directions to the pick-up location,” the man said. “There will be someone there to meet you. I’ll escort you outside, sir.”
A minute later Griff appeared from the side of the building and walked to the white Mercedes Sport parked at the curb. As soon as the car door closed his voice came over the wire. “The directions are to a place called “Lands End”.
John called LeBlanc and told him the meet was at a place called Lands End.
“It’s a motel just this side of Edmundston, ten miles, give or take,” LeBlanc said. “Detective Carver will lead you there. I’ll wait here for your go on the restaurant. Good luck.”
A nondescript sedan pulled out of the street beside us. Griff fell in behind it and John and I behind him. Two cruisers followed. LeBlanc wanted this as much as we did so there was no shortage of backup. He and the rest of the task force would seize the restaurant the moment we had Kira in hand. If they went in too soon whoever was with Kira could be tipped off and abort the meeting. The restaurant had to be secondary to getting Kira. I gave LeBlanc credit for agreeing to let it go down that way. He must have kids.
We left the lights of Main Street behind us and drove through a small suburban outlay, from there we moved steadily into nothing. Not a house or a streetlight, not even another car. We’d been driving about twenty minutes when the lead car dropped back and waved Griff past. Another mile and Griff put on his right blinker. I couldn’t see anything at first and then a solitary light appeared through the overhanging branches along the side of the road. Detective Carver in the unmarked cruiser ahead of us pulled over and doused his lights. We pulled in behind him. Up ahead, I watched Griff make a right turn into the parking lot.
John put down his window and Carver approached.
“Who the hell puts a motel out here in the middle of nowhere?” John asked.
“Used to draw tourists from the border crossing, but most folks head on toward Quebec now. I wondered how this place stayed afloat. Guess I have my answer.” Carver raised the zipper on his jacket and removed a pair of leather gloves from one pocket. We go on foot from here,” he said.
One of the cruisers was idling behind us. The other had stopped just beyond the motel’s entrance. We left the car and started through the trees coming up on the side of the building. It was a two-story structure with six windows on each floor. Two of the rooms were lit on the upper level, one on the first floor. The Mercedes Griff had been driving was parked in front of number 5. A lamp inside lit a gold semi-circle on the asphalt beside the car. Overhead, the moon drifted in and out from behind thick gray rain clouds, alternately showing us our surroundings and then casting us into darkness. I reached my hand around to the back of my jeans and felt my Pink Lady tucked in tight. Griff hadn’t asked and I hadn’t volunteered that I was carrying. Like he’d said, better safe than sorry.
Carver stuck out his hand slowing us down. Then motioned for me to come up beside him. We stoop walked across the parking lot and hugged the side of the building inching our way toward number 5. When we were outside the window Carver leaned his head to view the room then nodded for me to do the same. I could hear their voices and knew without looking who it was.
“You have my goods?” Griff asked.
Lucas laughed. “So that’s what Americans call this. Exchanging goods? I like it.” He held up a cell phone. “She’s all yours. Everything’s in order I’ve been told.” He smacked the back of his hand against the bathroom door. “Hurry up. I’m a busy man. You’re not the only delivery I have tonight.”
Kira stepped into the room.
I turned to LeBlanc. “Lucas,” I whispered.
“You’re sure?”
I nodded.
We ran silently back to the trees where John and the uniformed cops waited. Carver motioned for two of the cops to go with him back across the parking lot to the door. Two more went to the front of the building. It was hard to say if this place had interior doors or a lobby, but if it did we’d be covered. Stark and I broke to the right moving silently through the darkness under an umbrella of trees. Fire regulations would mean a back entrance. Whether or not the motel was up to code was another question.
Before we’d all reached our designated positions the door opened and Lucas stepped out. Griff and Kira were behind him. Lucas saw Carver coming halfway across the parking lot and broke to his left. Consumed by the shadows of the upper level walkway, he ran the length of the building. Griff pushed Kira back inside the room and took off after him, but he didn’t make it far. At the end of the building, before disappearing into the woods Lucas turned and got off one shot. Griff went down hard on the cement.
I ran for Griff. John was on my heels but diverted into room number 5. I hit the asphalt beside Griff as Carver and the rest disappeared into the trees after Lucas. I knelt beside Griff and lifted his head onto my lap, repeating his name over and over. His eyes were barely open, but they found my voice. He looked up and tried to speak. I covered the hole in the center of his chest with my hand. His blood was warm as it seeped through my fingers.
“Shhh,” I told him, kissing his face, my tears on his cheeks. “Don’t say anything.”
“Daddy, Daddy.” I could hear Kira crying and then John was beside me holding her against him. “Is he…?”
“He’s breathing,” I told him.
“Stay here with Britt,” John said to Kira and took off, following Carver into the darkness.
I could see waves of light splashing over the trees as the cops searched the surrounding woods for Lucas. Four shots rang out.
“Britt?” Kira knelt beside me. “How did you…how…”
I handed her my cell phone. “Call for an ambulance, hurry.” I gave her the address Griff had given us and listened as she relayed the information into the phone. Griff was motionless in my arms, but blood pulsed through my fingers so his heart was still beating.
Leaves rustled and twigs snapped to my left. I looked up expecting John or Carver as a figure broke from the trees and ran toward us. As it neared, I recognized the build and then the face as it came into view. It was Lucas.
“You fucking bitch,” he said, when he got closer. “I should have killed you a long time ago.” He pulled his car keys from his pants’ pocket.
“You’re surrounded by cops,” I said.
“Your cops are off chasing their shadows,” he laughed, coming closer. “Is he dead?” He was no more than three feet away.
“No.”
“Not yet.” He turned and started walking toward his car.
I watched him moving away from me and remembered how he’d called me trash the night we crossed the border and punched me in the face. I remembered Isaac raping me as he held me over the washing machine in the basement. I thought of Julia, Ruth, Elizabeth, Kira and the thousands of girls whose lives had been destroyed by men like him. I let Griff slip from my lap and rose to my knees. Reaching back, I drew out my Pink Lady and repeated Griff’s words. “It’s not so hard, just aim and shoot.”
He was almost to his car.
“Hey, Lucas,” I said.
He turned, looked surprised when he saw the gun and then laughed. “You? You’re just a whore.”
I stared into is eyes, hoped my aim was true and
pulled the trigger.
At first he didn’t move, just stared back at me like he couldn’t believe I’d done it. A thin line of blood ran from the hole in his forehead down his nose and chin. It splashed onto the front of his shirt. In slow motion with his eyes still on me, he dropped to his knees and then, after a second or two fell forward. His face bounced off the pavement once and then he was still.
Beneath me, Griff stirred. John and Carver burst out of the trees. They stopped about six feet away and took in the scene.
Before anyone spoke, Kira was on her feet running to John.
John looked from Lucas to me and nodded.
An ambulance screeched into the parking lot. It’s lights flashing. Two EMTs jumped from the truck.
“This one first.” John pointed to Griff and lifted me from the ground. He pried open my fingers and took the .38 out of my hand. “Jesus Christ, Callahan,” he said shaking his head and looking at the piece. “Pink?”
I was watching them load Griff into the ambulance and wanted to laugh at the absurdity of a pink gun, but couldn’t.
“That was one hell of a shot,” John said. “Now go.” He pushed me toward the ambulance.
I glanced at Lucas face down on the parking lot and felt nothing but satisfaction. Carver was talking fast into his cell phone to Chief LeBlanc at Bon Sejour. “It’s a go,” he said. “Now. Now.”
An EMT helped me inside the ambulance. I sat on a low bench beside Griff. The door slammed shut. “Gunshot wound to the chest,” the driver said into his radio. “Stable. We’re on our way.”
The siren came to life and we started to move. Out the back window I saw Kira rest her head on John’s shoulder. Their arms were securely around each other, neither one in any hurry to let go.
THREE WEEKS LATER
It was mid-February, but the temperature read forty-eight degrees. In Maine, a day like this is both a tease and a gift. And we were taking advantage of it. The window was open a crack, but it was enough for the breeze to cause Griff’s shirt to flutter. The skin on his chest was still tinted light purple. It had faded significantly from the deep plum it had been except at the site of the bullet hole where a scar was taking shape. Finding Kira had left quite a few of those on both of us.
We were heading to John’s to have dinner with him and Kira. Griff took a right, turning us toward downtown instead of staying straight on Forest Ave. to the interstate.
“Where are you going?”
“The office. There’s something I want to show you.”
We cruised Congress Street and took a right onto Temple to Middle. Griff slowed the car and pulled to the curb in front of the building that housed our office.
“What do you think of our new sign?”
A small white placard hung from an ornate rod iron post above the door. In old style black calligraphy it read, Cole and Callahan, Private Investigators.
My eyes filled, blurring the letters. “It’s beautiful. I love it.”
“The only change I’ll ever make to that sign is when it needs to read, Cole, Callahan and Sons.
I laughed. “What if we have a daughter?”
“We’ll name her Sam.”
“It’s just that simple?”
“It can be.”
I’d proven my worth as a PI and earned my name on the sign by taking a lot of risks, albeit some stupid, but they’d paid off. Maybe it was time to take a few in my personal life too. I leaned across the seat and kissed Griff. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was just that simple.
Thirty minutes later, we pulled into John’s driveway and stopped the car behind the black Suburban. Kira met us at the door. Though her face was still thin, you’d never know the hell she’d lived through from looking at her. Smiling in jeans and a turquoise sweater, her hair in a French braid, she looked like any other teenager. Only the wisdom in her eyes told us there was far more there than we could see.
John was on the back deck, flipping steaks on the grill. Only in Maine do people do outdoor grilling in forty-degree weather. You have to take it when you can get it.
“Wine and beer in the fridge,” John said. “Help yourself.”
Griff poured me a Chardonnay and took a Red Hook for himself. John raised his can of Diet Coke. “Cheers.”
Over dinner inside, the conversation inevitably turned to the pending trial. Myles had joined Clive in Grand Falls and was being held and charged along with a myriad of others that the Bon Sejour raid had uncovered. LeBlanc couldn’t have been happier with the outcome.
“Trial starts next month for Isaac,” John said. “Stebbins will follow.”
“Either of them talked?” Griff asked.
John shook his head. “They’re too loyal or too stupid. Either way, neither of them will see the light of day for a very long time.”
“I went to visit Ruth,” Kira said.
All eyes fell on her, but I wasn’t surprised. “How is she?” I asked.
“She was happy to see me.”
I smiled. “You were important to her.”
“If it hadn’t been for Ruth mailing that postcard, I’d, I’d still…” she stopped.
John laid his hand over hers. “I’ll make sure they know that at the trial. I don’t think she’ll fair too badly. She’s been completely forthcoming. I’ll do whatever I can for her.”
I sipped my Chardonnay and looked out the picture window over the frozen lake thinking how easily fathers can build or destroy a daughter’s sense of worth. Nurture a daughter’s self-esteem and you get someone like Kira or Griff’s daughter, Allie, survivors because they know they matter. Crush a daughter and you get Ruth or me, never quite good enough, but towing the line hoping someone will notice.
“….the real hero,” John said. “Britt?”
“Sorry, what? I was admiring the lake.”
“I said you were the real hero in all of this.” John raised his glass.
“I didn’t do anything but what I was told.” I felt Griff’s eyes on me and turned to look at him.
“Seems to me you did everything you weren’t told. Like go to Isaac’s in the first place, leave with Lucas, try to escape, give my phone number to the cop at Rusty’s and last but not least, take down Lucas.” I don’t remember telling you to do any of those things.”
Out of habit, I started to downplay my accomplishments, but then I realized he was right. I had done those things on my own. I couldn’t quite see myself as a hero though, since each of those decisions had almost paralyzed me with fear and aren’t heroes supposed to be fearless? But I raised my glass with the rest of them acknowledging that there had been a subtle shift along the fault line.
AUTHOR BIO
Patricia Hale received her MFA degree from Goddard College. Her essays have appeared in literary magazines and the anthology, My Heart’s First Steps. Her debut novel, In the Shadow of Revenge, was published in 2013. The Church of the Holy Child is the first book in her PI series featuring the team of Griff Cole and Britt Callahan. Patricia is a member of Sister’s in Crime, Mystery Writer’s of America, NH Writer’s Project and Maine Writer’s and Publisher’s Alliance. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two dogs.
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