Airbag Scars

by Jim Heskett

  He snatched the shoe and ran to Micah’s car, then paused to watch him. Micah was slumped over the steering wheel, but still breathing.

  Donovan inserted the shoe underneath the bumper of Micah’s car, pushing hard to wedge it into place. He ran back to his own car, started it, and pulled to the opposite end of the intersection. He took out his phone, typed 9-1-1, but hesitated before pressing send to consider his strategy. Call the cops, then exit. Micah will be blamed for the accident, and rot in jail for manslaughter. Donovan could have Micah killed in prison, easily.

  Then the jogger stirred.

  Donovan lowered his phone, astonished. The woman, although bruised and delirious, was not dead, and not even terribly injured. She slowly pushed herself to a wobbly standing position, faltering as she tried to place each foot on the ground to walk.

  She represented a curious new variable, and the demonstration of her struggle inspired a moment of clarity. Donovan’s anger subsided. He decided to forget Micah and see what the jogger would do. He waited to observe her as she hobbled in confused circles in the parking lot.

  A plan started to form.

  This could work. She hasn’t seen me.

  She picked a direction away from the intersection and limped along the sidewalk back toward downtown. Donovan started his car and slowly followed her.

  Micah would have his day… Donovan would make sure of that.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Micah woke up and looked down at the steering wheel pressing into his chest. Why hadn’t the airbag deployed?

  He pushed himself back into his seat, the dull thump in his ribcage barely outweighing the sound of his own wheezing. The dashboard danced in front of his eyes for a few seconds while he processed what had happened. There was an accident. He’d been in an accident.

  Danger. Go. Must leave now.

  Surprisingly, the car started when he turned the key.

  Micah put the car in gear and reversed from the telephone pole, metal and plastic of his car’s hood screeching and wailing as it separated from the splintered wood.

  Tears streaked his bruised face. He saw himself as he was a few years ago, invincible, loving the adrenaline he got from the dangerous activities he pursued in the employ of Luis Velasquez. But that was all gone. There was no denying alcohol was the root of all this evil. It had robbed him of his talent and his humanity, and at that moment, he knew it.

  But he also knew there was no way out from underneath its boot. Nothing left to do but go home and crack open a new bottle.

  Two blocks away, Micah changed his mind. Instead of home, he would drive north, to get away from this. To run away and start over, once again. No Witness Protection, no fake name, no bullshit lying to people about who he was and what he’d done.

  He sped through downtown and onto I-25, then connected with Highway 287. With a watchful eye for cops, he focused on keeping the dashed white center lines of the road equidistant to the car. He couldn’t encounter any police tonight.

  Micah drove along 287. A panic welled up inside his chest. The steering wheel became cold in his hands.

  He didn’t know if he could go through with it. He had a job and a life here, however shabby and fake it all was.

  He allowed his eyes to leave the road and focus on a nearby radio tower, its blinking lights beckoning him to come and see them. And he was still staring at those flashing decorations in the sky when his sweaty hands slipped from the wheel and the car drifted onto the shoulder and crashed into the ditch at the side of the road.

  As the airbag deployed, the force of the cushion against his face knocked him out. Before he went into a forced sleep, a final thought appeared in his drunken brain.

  There’s the airbag.

  A Note to Readers

  If this is your first Micah Reed book, continue the story with Nailgun Messiah. Micah’s adventures become more fast-paced and thrilling from here on out…

  Check out a sample of this book and its sequel on the next few pages…

  If you’ve already read Nailgun Messiah, click here to get the next book in the series, Sallow City. Or skip ahead a few pages to read samples of each.

  __________

  * * *

  Thank you for reading my book. Seriously, thank you. I hope you loved it and it helped you escape for a little while.

  * * *

  Are you interested in joining a community of Jim Heskett fiction fans? Join for free at

  www.jimheskett.com/bookophile

  * * *

  I have a website where you can learn more about me and my other projects. Check me out at www.jimheskett.com

  Nailgun Messiah Preview

  21 Days Left

  THE PILLOWCASE OVER Micah Reed’s head smelled of sweat and some kind of facial cleanser. Acne product, maybe. He couldn’t tell for sure, and it didn’t matter, because he had more pressing problems. The ropes binding his hands and feet were problem number one, since his top priority was leaving this room alive.

  The man who’d put him here had other plans. The jerk had snatched Micah off the street as he was about to walk into an AA meeting.

  “Micah,” the man said, and Micah could see a vague outline through the white fabric of the pillowcase. “Are you ready to talk yet?”

  The back of Micah’s head throbbed. He’d been knocked down with something, but he hadn’t seen it coming. Only a thwack, and then a sudden pair of arms wrapping around his stomach.

  He decided to play tough. “Take this pillowcase off my head and we’ll see. It stinks like sweat.”

  The man ripped off the pillowcase, and it took Micah a few blinks to adjust to the light in the room. He was in a garage with a single bulb hanging from a cord on the ceiling. Big oil stain on the floor under the man’s feet. The light swung gently back and forth, casting the man’s shadows left and then right. Cork boards decorated the walls, with tools arranged on pegs. Standard suburban Denver garage, with typical scarred-up snowboard hanging from wall hooks.

  “I’m Seth.”

  This person standing before Micah was a little younger than him, maybe mid-twenties. Big spacer earrings making his lobes dangle as his head moved. And his head moved a lot, because he was fuming, like he’d never been this pissed off before. Micah couldn’t say for sure because he’d only met the guy today.

  “Where is my cocaine?” Seth said, and his eyes darted to his left. Nose ring glinted in the light.

  Micah followed the look to a portable workbench, where Seth had laid out a collection of instruments such as screwdrivers and hammers. “Are you going to poke my eyes out or smash my hand if I don’t tell you? It’ll be easier if you can set my hand on the bench. You might want to think about how you’re going to undo these ropes.” Micah lifted his hands, and realized they weren’t bound with ropes, but orange extension cords tied in knots. Same with his feet.

  Extension cords? Wasn’t the most professional kidnapping he’d ever seen. This Seth kid either didn’t know what he was doing, or he’d acquired Micah through some impulsive snatch and grab. Regardless, Micah could get out of these easily, if he could find a way to distract the pierced cyborg.

  But as Micah was thinking of ways to divert Seth’s attention, the kid snatched a screwdriver, flipped it so the point faced down, then jammed it into Micah’s thigh. Searing pain burst from the two-inch hole halfway between his knee and his hip. Seth twisted the screwdriver on the way out, and an arc of blood squirted into the air as he withdrew it.

  “You think I’m fucking around?” Seth said.

  Micah took a couple seconds to catch his breath as stars dotted his vision. His leg vibrated while the pain radiated through his thigh. A trickle of blood darkened his jeans and slowly grew from a spot to a circle, and pain throbbed up and down his leg like cars on a track. “No, I can see you’re serious.”

  Seth hunkered down in front of Micah, fiddling with the screwdriver, spinning it in his hands. He licked his lips, and Micah heard a tongue stud clink
against Seth’s teeth. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  Micah took in a deep breath. The true story went like this: Micah met some girl at the grocery store. Her name was Allison. Allison was adorable in that misfit/hipster kind of way, with her shabby chic clothes and sculpted hair. Eyelashes a mile long. They bonded while standing in a long checkout line because she rolled her eyes at the cover of a trashy magazine with an exposé describing one celebrity cheating on her husband with another celebrity. Micah and Allison discussed the trappings of fame, and he liked the way she wrinkled her nose while she was thinking. He got her phone number. Later, he called her, and they went out on a couple of dates, which was a bad idea for several reasons. One of them was that Micah was only four months sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, and dating early in recovery is generally frowned upon. Another reason was that Allison was a drug mule for some dangerous organization, and she usually kept a few bricks of cocaine near her at all times. Micah didn’t know this second fact, of course. He’d been too dumbfounded by the prospect of making a real, human connection, something he hadn’t done in years. Those initial dates led to sleepovers, and one evening last week, some cops decided to raid her house in the middle of the night. Allison flushed all of the cocaine, barely in time. Micah slipped out the back window before they found him because he had a dicey history with cops. To prevent making his present and future dicey, he avoided police contact like bee stings. But then it started going around certain circles that Allison’s dealer was going to execute her for losing such a ginormous amount of cocaine, so Micah told some key people that he was the one who had flushed it. He didn’t want to see cute hipster Allison take a bullet in the back of the head.

  And that’s how Micah found himself in Seth’s garage, with a screwdriver hole in his thigh.

  “I’m waiting,” Seth said.

  Micah shrugged. “Cops came. I dumped it like a teenager caught masturbating. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

  Seth sighed as he dropped the screwdriver on the workbench and picked up a hammer. “I think you’re full of shit. I’ve been straight up with you, and you can’t do the same for me, so now we’re moving on to stage two.”

  “I’ll save you some time. There’s not anything else to tell. You can cut on me and jab me with more of your Home Depot collection, but it’s not going to change my story.”

  Micah glanced at the spreading circle of blood on his jeans. He didn’t think he would bleed out anytime soon, but he needed to close up that wound somehow within a few minutes. There had to be a way to hurry this along.

  “Allison has always been a good runner,” Seth said. “Getting mixed up with you is a mistake that doesn’t make any sense. You, Micah Reed, are something of a mystery. It was hard to dig up info on you. Why is that?”

  Micah made sure that Seth’s eyes were on his face so he could test the extension cords binding his legs. They were a little loose, so he started working his feet back and forth. “I don’t know. I don’t live on the internet like most people, I guess.”

  Seth held the hammer above Micah’s head and gave it a couple of test taps. Micah held firm.

  Seth frowned. “So maybe dissecting you into little pieces won’t make you tell me what I want to know. So how about this? I’ll go to where you work for that bounty hunter Mueller…”

  Micah’s ears perked up at the mention of his boss and AA sponsor Frank. He tried to seem disinterested, but the fact that Seth could find this out about him was a problem.

  “…And I’ll smash up his office, then get my boys to string up Mueller and bleed him like a pig. Would that help you remember where my cocaine is?”

  Seemed Micah now had a choice of either sacrificing Frank, or giving up Allison. Frank could take care of himself, but Micah didn’t want to involve him in something so dumb.

  Seth seemed to be growing impatient with Micah’s silent treatment, so he raised his weapon. As he was about to bring it down, Micah burst from the chair and wrapped his bound hands around the hammer, just above Seth’s. He used all of his inertia to push the butt of the hammer at Seth’s face, which smashed his nose and drove him back into the wall as tools clattered to the ground around them.

  Micah kicked off the extension cords around his feet but his hands were too tightly bound to free them right now. Instead, he set his sights on a door leading out of the garage into a backyard, and got a grip on the doorknob as Seth lurched to his feet.

  As Micah threw open the door and rushed for the yard’s back fence, Seth appeared in the doorway. “Run, you piece of shit!” Seth said. “If I catch you, I’ll kill your whole family!”

  Micah had wriggled out of the extension cord binding his hands by the time he was halfway to the back fence. The remnants of crunchy February snow churned under his feet as he trundled through grass and shrubs toward that chain link divider.

  He hopped the fence and found himself in an alley, disoriented and aimless. Seth’s voice carried across the yard, a fever-pitch of angry threats and promises. The voice moved, and so Micah moved.

  He snatched his phone from his pocket and tried to look at a maps app while not tripping, which was a challenge since he was running with a bad and bleeding leg. Each step plucked his muscles like guitar strings. When he figured out his location, he changed direction. He was only a few blocks from where he’d parked his car to go to the AA meeting before he’d been snatched off the street corner.

  He arrived at his battered Honda Accord a few minutes later, panting and covered in sweat. Slid into the driver’s seat and caught his breath over the next couple minutes as he drove to the next block and parked behind a convenience store. Peeling yellow paint and missing bricks. A homeless man sipping from a bottle in a paper bag, leaning against the dumpster in the parking lot.

  When he was sure that Seth wasn’t going to come sprinting around a corner, Micah reached into his pocket and removed the severed head of a Boba Fett action figure, which he set on the dashboard. Boba’s pointy helmet stared back at him.

  “Shit, Boba, we’re in a bad situation here.”

  Micah popped the glove box and gripped a roll of duct tape, then slid down his jeans to examine the puncture wound. It had stopped bleeding, but he’d lost a good amount of blood over the last ten minutes. Leg hair adhered to his skin in black splotches. He wrapped the duct tape around it, then slid his jeans back on. That wouldn’t be fun to rip off later, but better than bleeding to death.

  He dialed Allison’s number, but she didn’t pick up. “Hey,” he said to her voicemail, “it’s me. I know we didn’t leave things too well, but this is important. I met a friend of yours today, and he wasn’t happy to see me. Maybe you already knew this, but I think you’re in danger and you need to get out of town.”

  He ended the call and stared at his phone until the screen darkened and auto-locked. A phone call wasn’t good enough. He left the convenience store to drive over to her house, a tiny one bedroom in the Denver suburb of Westminster. On the way, he considered calling Frank, but decided to hold off on that. He needed a plan first before involving anyone else.

  Frank would be disappointed. Micah needed to ready himself for that reaction. Frank had been kind to take Micah on as an assistant/skip tracer, but there had to be limits to the old man’s kindness.

  In Westminster, he approached Allison’s street slowly, checking into the windows of cars parked along the curb for the telltale signs of glow from phone screens or red cigarette cherries floating inside. Maybe Seth had people working for him, maybe not.

  Micah didn’t see anything, so he stopped in front of her house, shoved Boba Fett in his pocket, then limped up and banged on the heavy screen door. No answer. He banged again and it rattled back at him.

  Starting to get worried, he peeked through the curtains, and got a shock when he discovered all of her furniture was gone. Allison had already gotten the hint and had taken off. Probably.

  “If they were going to kill her, Boba, I doubt they’
d pack up her couch and tv.”

  Made sense. If she were smart enough to dump the cocaine when the cops showed up, she’d be smart enough to know Seth would come looking for payment for his product. Maybe she could have done him the kindness of letting him know she was going to flee, but whatever. Micah had proven he didn’t know people as well as he liked to think.

  With no Allison to speak to, Micah had to make the phone call. At this hour, Frank would probably be asleep, but this was important enough to wake the old man.

  He dialed. Frank picked up right away, but spent the first few seconds of the call coughing and clearing his throat.

  “Micah? Why the hell are you calling me so late?” Frank’s grumbly and familiar voice was like the comfort of sandpaper on an itch.

  Micah shifted the phone to between his ear and shoulder so he could slide back into his car and start it up. “Frank, I landed myself in a bit of trouble.”

  “Not surprised.”

  Micah’s pulse inched upward. “Yeah, I know. I pissed somebody off, and it’s the kind of thing this guy won’t let go.”

  Micah listened to bed springs creak and jangle as Frank shifted around in his bed. “What was your part in this?”

  Micah hesitated. What he was about to say was the truth, but that old alcoholic thinking plagued him for a second; the paranoid fear that people would assume he was lying, no matter what he said. Frank would believe him, though. Frank was on his side.

  “This girl I was seeing lost a bunch of coke, and I took the blame because I didn’t want to see her get shot over it.”

  “Uh-huh. So, you’d rather get shot over it? And what are you doing messing around with some cokehead?”

  “Long story, boss. The short version is that I didn’t know she was into it and by the time I figured it out, there wasn’t a way to back out. It’d been so long since I met a woman I could actually talk to, and she’s really cute, and—”