Airbag Scars

by Jim Heskett

  “I was in Oklahoma. Flunked out of college. I was looking for work, and a friend of mine…” he paused, unable to say the friend’s name. Micah wouldn’t say his name, not after what had happened to him. The story of the friend would wait for another day. “He got me work in Luis Velasquez’s organization.”

  “El Lobo,” Frank said.

  “At first, it was driving, taking packages here and there. I had no idea who I was working for, in the beginning. Then it was stuff like going along with guys to beat up people, or worse. After a few years, I got arrested, and they turned me against everyone. I was the government’s star witness against Velasquez and most of his top people.”

  “That’s a big responsibility. And I’ll bet you’ve been carrying around some heavy guilt because of it.”

  Micah nodded, but didn’t reply.

  “But I have to ask: how did a white boy like you get in with a Mexican cartel?”

  Micah shrugged. “I just kept showing up and doing what they told me to do, no matter how much I knew it was wrong. But it’s not as if Velasquez and I were buddies. It was all segmented, like I had the guys I worked with, and they kept me apart from the main guys most of the time. Protecting the people at the top.”

  “They must not have done a good job, since your testimony took them down, though.”

  Micah nodded. “Yeah, most of them. There are still some of those people left, mostly back in Mexico.”

  “So then the trial, then a new identity?”

  Micah didn’t feel the need to describe all the crazy things that had happened when he’d first moved to Denver. “More or less. I had to do some time, in this special WitSec wing of a prison. But once all that was done, they told me I could go here, or Wyoming, or Idaho, so I picked here. I was one of a few they relocated here.”

  Frank switched the water from cold to hot and ran his hand under it a few times to test it. “And why did you pick Denver?”

  “I have a sister that lives up in the mountains, but I’m not supposed to contact her.”

  “What’s the point of living near your sister if you can’t contact her?”

  Micah shrugged. “I just like being close to her.”

  Frank wiped his hands on a dishrag. “How do you feel now that you told me all that?”

  Micah took a deep breath and realized the tension in his shoulders was gone. “A little lighter, actually.”

  Frank put a hand on Micah’s back. “Good. Because you’re going to have to feel light to do what you need to get yourself out of this mess.”

  Part III

  Where Am I

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  DONOVAN LUGGED Hayden’s limp body across the dusty floor of the warehouse into a back office room. He didn’t worry that putting her out in the main part of the warehouse might get them caught, but there was no sense in taking chances. He’d set up the back room with chairs, and plenty of rope and duct tape.

  A single gas lantern lit the room, throwing shadows on the walls while he went about his business.

  She was still unconscious as he set her on the chair and then bound her hands and feet. When he took the duct tape out of the bag, she stirred, so he had to hurry. He wrapped her legs several times, then around her midsection, and a few times around her chest and arms. This bitch wasn’t going anywhere.

  When she opened her eyes, she tried to scream, but he’d put duct tape over her mouth. He stood off to the side, out of her peripheral, to see if she’d struggle against her bonds, so he could test them. She squirmed, but wasn’t able to get out of the chair.

  He popped into her field of view, and her eyes ballooned as she wriggled against the duct tape, but it held her in place with no trouble.

  “I can take this tape off your mouth, or I can leave it. It’s your choice. If I take it off and you scream, I’m going to make you hurt. Bad. But I’m not warning you because your scream might bring someone running… no, we’re far away from anyone that might hear you. I don’t want my eardrums assaulted. Do you get it?”

  She nodded, so he ripped the tape from her mouth.

  She winced, then tears dribbled down her cheeks. “Please, I’m so sorry. Don’t do this to me. I’m so sorry I cut you yesterday.”

  Donovan’s hand instinctively touched the tender slit along his cheek. “Oh, Hayden, you think this is about you? No, dear, this has nothing to do with you. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He paused, then he realized how funny that was. “Wrong place at the wrong time… have you figured out yet how you and Micah first met?”

  She cocked her head a little and sank back in the chair, as much as her duct tape shackles would allow. The look of confusion on her face tickled him, and he let out a chuckle.

  “Please,” she said, “untie me. We can forget this happened, and I’ll leave here. I won’t call the cops or anything.”

  He sighed. “Looks like I made a mistake.”

  He ripped off six more inches of tape, and as he bent to put it on her mouth, her expression changed, and she started bucking in the chair.

  “You son of a bitch! You can’t do this to—”

  And then the rest of the sentence was lost to mumbling after he’d silenced her with the tape.

  He left Hayden there in the little room, and went back out into the main part of the warehouse to think. This place was a dump. Little rat squeaks came from every direction and dust particles danced in the light from the windows.

  He took out his phone to call Micah, but then he decided to give it some thought. What he was about to do was a dangerous undertaking, and Micah had proven himself to be unpredictable. No more impulsive mistakes like the panty-dropping incident outside the gun range.

  Maybe what was needed here was a little good cop, bad cop. Give Micah something he wanted before he hit him with the bad news.

  A new plan formed, and Donovan dialed the phone number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Michael. I mean Micah.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  Donovan smiled. “Come on, Micah. That was the easy part.” He could hear Micah struggling to speak on the other end of the line. “Before you say anything else, I wanted to apologize for how I acted the other day.”

  “Okay,” Micah said.

  “When I drink, sometimes I do things I wish I hadn’t later. So I want to give you a peace offering, to show there’s no bad blood.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’ve been looking for Roland Templeton, right? I know where he is.”

  Donovan waited while Micah processed this information.

  “And why would you tell me that?”

  “Because,” Donovan said, “it’s like I said: an olive branch. To let you know I’m not all bad and maybe we can find a way to work things out.”

  “So why should I trust anything you tell me?”

  For a second, Donovan felt hurt by this. But, he supposed he deserved it. Micah had probably figured out that the note telling him to go to the boxing gym had been his doing. “It’s not a setup, but I get your hesitation. Tell you what: I’m going to say where Roland is hiding, and you can do whatever you want with it. Call the cops, go there yourself; I don’t care.”

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “The guy who owns the strip club, Tyson Darby? He also owns a lawnmower repair store in Broomfield, just off Highway 36. There’s a building behind it, like a grain silo or something. Last I heard, Templeton is still camped out there, waiting for his passport.”

  Micah said nothing, so Donovan continued. “Alright, then, I’ve done my part. Now, it’s up to you. Goodbye, Micah, and we’ll talk again real soon. I promise.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  MICAH AND Frank sat in Frank’s car across from A1 Lawnmower Repair in Broomfield as the sun began to set behind the mountains to the west. They’d been watching the store and the steel silo behind it for twenty minutes and hadn’t seen anything strange. The store was closed today.

&
nbsp; “I don’t like this,” Micah said. “I don’t have any reason to trust what Donovan told me about this place.”

  “Does seem strange that he would help us out.”

  “The last time we got a tip on Roland, they nearly killed us at that motel room. Maybe this is when we call the cops.”

  “We’ll be prepared this time,” Frank said. “We call the police, we lose the bounty. I need that money.”

  Micah blew out a sigh and rubbed his sweaty hands on his jeans. This time, he wasn’t going to let Frank put himself in a position where he might get stabbed. That was the only thing on his mind. “So how does this work?”

  “There’s one way in or out of that silo at ground level. I thought about climbing up that ladder on the side and jumping down, but they’ll hear us coming. So here’s what we do. You’re going to hide behind that pile of lumber there.” Frank pointed at a triangular stack of logs about fifty feet from the silo entrance. “And I’m going to toss some tear gas into the building. When Roland and whoever else comes running out, you’re going to blast them with the rubber bullets. Then I slap the zip ties on them. Then we go out for burgers.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “If we do this right, it should be. I did this exact same thing five years ago outside of Boise. Guy holed up in a barn out in the middle of BFE. Since there’s only one way in or out of that silo, we can’t miss.”

  “Will Tyson Darby be here?”

  “I doubt it,” Frank said. “That slippery son of a bitch is damn-near impossible to bring down. Maybe the cops can get Templeton to roll over on him, but I doubt it. Much as I hate to say it, he’s not our problem.”

  Frank smacked Micah on the thigh as some kind of motivator, then they exited the car and retrieved their gear from the trunk: guns, bullet-proof vests, tear gas canisters. They put the vests on under their shirts and then stuffed the rest into backpacks, then they crossed the street and approached the silo.

  “Something goes wrong with that tear gas,” Frank said, “you steer clear. It’ll put you on the ground in a bad way if you get one whiff.”

  Frank waved Micah toward the lumber, and Micah found a spot to lean over the lower part of the stack. Elbows supported, forearms resting on the cold dead trees.

  He flipped off the gun’s safety. Rubber bullets wouldn’t kill anyone, but he couldn’t imagine they’d feel too good, either.

  Frank kept low and crept toward the silo entrance at an angle, stopping at the side of the door. He pulled the pin on the canister and clutched the lever to keep it from activating. Then he reached out and yanked the silo door open.

  A flash of color entered Micah’s vision as a man rounded the silo right behind Frank, gun out and pointed at Frank’s head.

  “And what do you think you’re doing?” the man said.

  Micah’s first thought was that Donovan had betrayed him, which he should have seen coming, but it was also reasonable that they’d have backup guys watching the silo.

  Either way, it didn’t matter. He had to stop the man from hurting Frank.

  Micah lifted his pistol and stared down the sights. He lined up the forward sight with the rear sights, but his hand was shaking, so he had trouble settling on the man behind Frank. His eyes blurred trying to focus on his target.

  “Just checking out the construction,” Frank said. “I was in the neighborhood.”

  Now Micah could hear people inside the silo talking. He couldn’t see much through the open door, but little shadows of motion wavered through the darkness inside.

  “Checking it out, huh?”

  Micah knew he was running out of time. He took a deep breath, steadied his hand, and squeezed the trigger. The blast wasn’t as loud as an ordinary gunshot, but it still rattled his ears. He hit the man square in the chest, and he stumbled, then Frank spun and pushed the man up against the side of the silo.

  But Frank had dropped the tear gas, and in less than a second, a cloud of gray billowed out from the top of the can.

  Micah sprinted across the yard, his eyes on the tear gas. As the two men above it grappled, Micah dove for the canister. Billowing plumes of poison shot out from the tip. He wrapped his hands around it, and his lungs were already burning and his eyes filled with tears. He could barely see the open door of the silo, but he whipped the canister inside, then he jumped up and slammed his foot down on the knee of Frank’s attacker.

  The man screamed as he hit the ground, and Frank drove a knee into his chest, knocking him back into the silo wall again. Micah made a move toward that man, but Frank shook his head and shouted, “no! Get Roland!”

  Micah raised his weapon, and through tear-streaked and burning eyes, saw a lanky form trundling through the open door. Micah put a rubber bullet in his head, which sent the man flying back, arms pinwheeling. He landed in a heap in the doorway. The next man came running and tripped over the body of the first man.

  Roland Templeton.

  Micah squeezed the trigger and a rubber bullet bounced off Roland’s back and made him yelp. Micah glanced at Frank, who had just finished putting a zip tie handcuff on the man who’d attacked him, and he took out two more zip ties, then tossed one to Micah.

  Roland and the other man were in a pile in front of the silo. Micah snatched the first man out the door and put the loop over his hands, then cinched the zip tie tight. But as he reached for Roland, a foot shot out and smacked Micah in the face, then Roland scrambled to his feet and sprinted around the back to the silo.

  Micah and Frank shared a look as Roland disappeared. Micah knew what the look meant. He was to go right around the silo, and Frank would go left.

  Micah snatched the gun he’d dropped and dashed around the back, raising his weapon as he got his feet underneath him. He circled the back just in time to see Frank and Roland grappling. Frank slugged Roland in the stomach, then Roland swiped up with an open palm, sending Frank sprawling to the ground.

  Micah rushed forward as Roland jumped over Frank and headed toward the lawnmower store. There was a chain link fence ahead, and the store’s back porch beyond that. Roland might find a stray lawnmower blade back there.

  Micah raised his gun, but couldn’t get a clean shot while he was running. He squeezed the trigger a couple times anyway, and the rubber bullets bounced harmlessly off the back of the store.

  Now ten feet from the chain link fence, Roland craned his neck around to meet Micah’s eyes, and that was his undoing. His feet tangled and he stumbled all the way into the fence, smacking his head against it. The chain links rattled as Roland fell to his knees.

  Micah led with his fist, and he reached Roland before he was able to get to his feet. He smacked the bail jumper on the side of the head, which knocked him to the ground. Roland latched on to the fence and tried to stand.

  Micah grabbed his feet and yanked him back, dragging him into the dirt. He lifted one hand to reach for his zip tie as Frank appeared over his left shoulder.

  Frank sat on Roland’s back to immobilize him, then forced his hands behind. “Hey there,” Frank shouted as he slipped a zip tie over his wrists. “You don’t seem happy to see me, Roland.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  WHEN DONOVAN was positive that Hayden was secure and not going anywhere, he left her there in the warehouse to let Patton out to piss. But he decided to have a drink first. What could it hurt?

  At a nearby bar, he knocked back a shot and followed it with a beer chaser. The beer the bartender had recommended, Ten Pin Porter, was so thick and brown that it was like a meal. That was fine with Donovan, because he had no plans for anything other than a liquid dinner tonight. Easier this way.

  But no getting drunk, he told himself, because what was coming next was too important to screw up. He would not repeat the panty-dropping incident ever again.

  The bar had low lighting and no street noise, with old-style spinning stools like a 1950s drug store. A biker sat two seats down, but aside from him and the bartender, Donovan had the place to
himself. Muted classic rock dribbled from the jukebox in the corner, but he didn’t mind, as long as it wasn’t jazz.

  He slipped his wallet from his back pocket and removed the one picture he had of Caitlin, standing at San Antonio’s Riverwalk. She wore a sundress, and the wind had blown her hair in her face. Necklace hanging at the slight curve of her cleavage. So goddamn beautiful.

  His eyes burned a little at the memory of pepper spray to the face, but he’d convinced himself she hadn’t meant to do that. She couldn’t have meant to hurt him.

  He sighed and tipped his glass toward the bartender, but the man shook his head. “Excuse me?” Donovan said. “Don’t even tell me you’re cutting me off.”

  “Buddy, I don’t take no great pleasure from the fact, but I gotta. You’ve had five drinks in the last hour.” The bartender’s nasally East Coast accent grated like claws against Donovan’s ears.

  He stood up and spread his arms out wide. “I am in full control of my shit, which I’m happy to demonstrate.” Maintaining his gaze with the bartender, he touched each middle finger to his nose. “Impressive, right? Can a drunk guy do that?”

  The bartender squinted. The man’s jowls drooped below his chin. “I don’t know. That ain’t my point. You can finish that beer, then you gotta find your way out the door. I don’t care where you go, but I can’t serve you no more alcohol this evening.”

  Donovan swayed, which wasn’t helping his point, so he sat back down. “C’mon, guy. I’ve got a big night ahead of me and I need to take the edge off.”

  The bartender wrinkled his forehead, but filled Donovan’s glass anyway. “One more drink, then you’re out of here. I don’t want no trouble.”

  “I don’t intend to give you any,” Donovan said as he held the glass up to the light. He decided this drink would be for Caitlin, because no matter what she said or did, he would cling to the hope he could get her back. Had to. He tilted the glass and let the whiskey slide down his throat. The sweet burn rushed through his chest and stomach, and he wallowed in the few seconds of peace the drink provided. He would stay here and drink for as long as he pleased, New Yawk bartender be damned.