by Kim Oh
This was going to be so cool.
FOUR
Somebody was following me.
I knew that, even though I couldn’t be exactly sure who it was.
You know how you can just tell about things like that? You’re walking down the street, maybe one of those neighborhoods where you’re being there isn’t exactly the smartest idea you’ve ever had. In my line of work, I’ve gone to places like that more than the average person – but everybody winds up doing it, at least once or twice. That’s how people learn to be a lot more careful.
But you know the feeling. The skin tingles across your shoulders and down your arms, and the hair stands on end, along the back of your neck. All the shadows around the corners of the buildings you pass grow darker –
Of course, that’s how it is at night, when you’re all by yourself, except for whoever or whatever it is you think is tailing you. But you can get the exact same feeling in the bright daylight, in the middle lane of a crowded freeway. I know, because that’s what I was getting now.
I leaned forward, closer to the Ninja’s gas tank, bringing my helmet’s face shield below the top edge of the windscreen. These sportbikes, you have to lay yourself just about flat to get out of the airstream’s rush. I peered into the mirrors, first the right and then the left, to see if I could spot anything suspicious behind me –
Nothing.
Nothing except the usual sort of traffic you’d expect, filling all the lanes of the Ventura Freeway, heading north out of Santa Barbara. Just a mix of cars and trucks, some of them coming in from one on-ramp after another, others working their way over to the right and exiting, curving down the off-ramps to the surface streets. There had been at least a couple dozen or so vehicles that’d stayed with me the whole time since I’d left Los Angeles, taking the San Diego Freeway out from the city – a couple of SUVs, big double-trailered eighteen-wheelers barreling down the middle lane like freight trains, all sorts of sedans, from beaters to glistening Mercedes. Some of them were probably heading all the way up to San Francisco, same as I was, and other points along the way. When you’re talking that many miles, there are going to be a lot of different destinations.
Just about every time I figured some other vehicle had been pacing alongside of me for a while, or had been close on my tail for ten, twenty miles or so, I’d work my way over to the right-hand lane and start slowing down a little bit. That way, I could check ’em out, or let them travel ahead, until I was reasonably convinced they weren’t interested in me. So far, nada.
Which was fine by me. Hanging on to the handlebar grips, I kept the throttle rolled on. I flexed my leather-jacketed shoulders up and down, trying to work out a minor kink in my spine, before it became a major one. I don’t particularly care for Harleys or anything like them – just too big for me; every time I’ve tried one, I’ve felt like a mosquito balancing on a tennis ball – but after a couple hours on the Ninja, the attraction for them becomes apparent. Instead of having to keep going fast enough that the wind holds you up as you’re leaning over the tank, on those cruisers you can just lean back like you’re at home, with your feet up in your recliner chair. Must be nice.
That was the main reason I was glad the backpack I’d gotten from Dalby – and that I’d be delivering in San Francisco – was so light. As a general rule, I don’t care for having anything actually strapped onto me – even a small pack can really cramp your mobility, and if it weighs much at all, then your balance while riding is thrown off. If you wind up having to slam through a tight curve, that extra mass can be the difference between pulling it out and taking what bikers call a low-sider, going down with one leg between the machine and the asphalt grinding away at you. I’ve done that before, and it’s not fun.
Traffic started to slow, the cars and trucks packing closer together. My right hand instinctively eased back on the throttle, and I downshifted a gear to keep the high-revving engine from lugging. That gave me a chance to raise my head higher over the bike’s windscreen and scan my surroundings more thoroughly. I wasn’t interested in the palm trees lining the streets past the freeway’s edge, or the banks of ice plant that sloped alongside the off-ramps – my focus was on the vehicles around me.
Still just the usual mix – about the only thing unusual was a paramedics van, over in the left-hand lane, closest to the center divider. It had its siren and lights off, just keeping pace with the vehicles around – maybe the guys inside were just heading back to their dispatch station.
I let a little bit of tension ease out of my shoulders. Maybe – just maybe – this wasn’t going to be a bad job after all. I checked both my mirrors, left side and right – nothing but regular freeway traffic, cruising along, none of the cars or trucks or vans doing anything crazy. So maybe that creepy Dalby guy I’d talked to, and gotten the job from, back at that run-down office building in L.A. – maybe he was just another paranoid one-percenter, all cranked up in his own mind about how people were out to get him. I mused about that, as I rolled on the throttle a fraction to keep up with traffic. It was probably just something that came with the psychological territory, when you’re that rich – you start thinking that everybody’s out to get you and steal all your candy. I’d seen it before – one of the drawbacks to this line of work is that you wind up dealing with a lot of people, with a lot of money. They’re the ones who can afford to pay people like me for what we do. Your average steamfitter or truck driver – or housewife – usually is going to settle his or her problems on their own, rather than hiring a professional hitman. That’s the kind of do-it-yourself attitude I admire about average people. Shows initiative. Fortunately – I guess – I’ve never had to deal with the issues of having too much money – though I’d be willing to try.
The freeway traffic started to speed up again, just a little. We were getting past the city’s off-ramps, and a good number of vehicles had peeled off and headed down to the surface streets. The space between the remaining cars spread out a little, which I liked – when you’re on a motorcycle, the last thing you want is somebody right on your tail. I can stop a lot faster than they can, especially if they’re futzing around with their stereo, or worse, their cell phone. A little extra room might just be the half-second I’d need to zip out of the way, to one side or the other, before some moron could climb up my exhaust pipe.
So that was the real reason I didn’t dial my tension level all the way down. Even if I’d managed to convince myself that this job actually was turning out to be a piece of cake, with the bad guys who were supposedly going to knock me off and steal the backpack just being bits and pieces rolling around inside my client Dalby’s imagination . . . even if that were the case, there was still just the simple reality that I was on a motorcycle, on the freeway. Any one of the surrounding cars or trucks or vans could kill me in a second, without even intending to. Just the facts of life – or at least the end of it.
Plus . . . I still couldn’t shake the feeling, that creepy-crawly uneasiness, that somebody was watching me. And they had been, since I’d first climbed on the bike, started it up, and headed out of Los Angeles. Maybe Dalby’s rich-guy paranoia had rubbed off on me. I didn’t have anything to lose – or get stolen from me – the way he did, but somehow I’d started thinking like that.
Screw it. I decided not to waste any more time trying to shake it off. I’d learned a long time ago, head trips like that just came with this territory. The trick was to not let them get out of hand and swell up so big inside your skull that you wound up frozen on the spot, unable to move, because you just knew that everything you saw was out to get you. That’s how people like me, in my line of work, wind up sweating and wide-eyed in a little room in a fleabag hotel with the door barricaded and an arsenal laid out on the bed. And a SWAT team with flashing lights on their patrol vehicles down in the street below, and a police psychologist with a bullhorn negotiating with you while a department sniper draws a bead on your skull from the roof of the next building over . . .
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nbsp; It was something Cole had warned me about. You didn’t want to stay in this business too long – get in, build up your bankroll, then get out. Or you’d wind up crazy as he’d been. And he was dead now.
The same way I’d be dead, too, if I didn’t start paying attention to what I was doing. I’d gotten a little too far into my head, thinking about stuff, the way you can get when you’re just cruising in traffic. Going with the flow – that’s when you get into trouble.
Which I nearly did. I had to grab a handful of the bike’s front brake when the truck in front of me suddenly slowed down. The bright red of his taillights cut through all my deep musing, pulling me back up into the real world. I came within a couple yards of his rear bumper, which is way closer than I like to cut it.
Something else was going on, and I didn’t like that, either.
When you’re on the freeway, you get used to the constant noise surrounding you – like you’re at the beach, and sometimes you’re listening to the waves rolling in and crashing on the sand, and other times you don’t even hear that at all. But even on a sportbike like this Ninja, sitting right above the whine of the high-revving engine and with your ears covered by a full-face helmet, you know that traffic sound – the overlapping roar of all the other vehicles filling the lanes – is just a constant part of the environment. And you know when something in it changes, even just a little bit –
I heard, somewhere behind me, some other engine suddenly snarl louder. Sounded like a big one, too, something with a lot of torque – a real muscle car, cylinders bored out to the limit and a barely legal straight-cut exhaust system. Whoever was behind the wheel downshifted hard, flooring the gas at the same time for some serious drag-race acceleration.
Glancing at my left mirror, I caught a glimpse of something sleek and red, with an old-school black manifold intake sticking up through the hood, and the windshield tinted shadowy dark. The car shoved its way into the middle lane, whipping around some SUV’s right rear fender with only a couple inches for clearance.
I generally give morons like that a wide berth. Some guy with more testosterone than brains, who’s seen way too many Fast & Furious movies and has mistaken all those high-speed special effects for actual reality – I don’t need the trouble of dealing with him. Especially if he’s coming up right behind me – sometimes those guys have a real hostility toward motorcycles, like they have a simmering grievance against anything that’s faster off the line than they are, and they’re just looking to hand out some kind of payback. I flicked my signal on with my thumb, then eased from the middle lane and over to the right, slowing down behind a Honda Civic with a child seat in back and a BABY ON BOARD sticker in the rear window. I’d just as soon have Mister Rocketman zoom on by me – I don’t have an ego thing about getting passed – and have his accident a dozen car lengths or so ahead, where I could just roll by it and keep on going.
That was the plan, at least – but it didn’t work out that way, this time. Another downshift, and the muscle car powered back into the left lane, skimming past the center divider and around another couple cars that had blocked it. Then a yank on the wheel – sharp enough to get a blaring horn-blast from the sedan it barely squeezed past – and it was in the center lane again, right next to me. Turning my head, I could see now that the speed demon was a shiny new 700-plus horsepower Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat with the HEMI engine. Not cheap, but everything you need to get yourself and a whole bunch of other people killed real fast.
Which seemed to be the driver’s agenda today. Through the dark tint of the passenger-side window, I could just make out the driver’s silhouette – and then he was on me.
Literally – I heard the sharp machine-gun rattle of the Challenger’s right front wheel across the white plastic dots between the lanes, then the gleaming red flank of his fender piled toward me.
Thank God I’d paid Julie for the anti-lock brakes on the new bike. My gloved right hand grabbed the front brake and squeezed it hard enough to smoke the tire. The sudden deceleration lifted me off the bike’s seat, along the tank, and toward the windshield, while I jammed my boot down on the rear brake pedal.
When you slam to a halt like that on a motorcycle, the real danger is the back wheel breaking loose from its traction on the pavement, and the machine whipping around and slingshotting you ahead of it. I’ve done that, and it’s not fun. The side of the Challenger was looming up ahead of me, inches away now, and my heart jumped into my throat as I felt that tiny shudder underneath me, of the rear tire fighting to keep its grip –
If I’d hit an oil patch at the side of the freeway, I would’ve gone down – I know it. But the little side-to-side motion of the Ninja’s rear wheel died as fast as it started, and the traction held. I kept piling on the brakes, flattening myself against the tank, and hoping to hang onto the bike, no matter what happened next.
I saw the Challenger’s rear fender, taillight flaring, swerve toward my front wheel. I leaned the bike over to the right, just as I heard the thwack and crunch of the car’s bumper making contact. That was enough to push me over against the guardrail, cracking the bike’s fairing and scraping my leg along the bolt-studded metal. But I’d scrubbed off enough speed by then, that I was able to keep the bike upright as it finally came to a halt.
That’s the kind of action, over in a couple seconds, which gets your pulse racing fast enough to make you dizzy. There isn’t time to see your whole life flash in front of your eyes, even when you’re as young as I am. With the side of the bike resting against the guardrail, I sucked in a deep breath, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
“You all right?”
Check this – the Challenger’s driver actually had slammed the car to a halt, just in front of me. The freeway traffic streamed past as he pushed open his side door and slid out from behind the steering wheel.
“Me? Oh, I’m just fine –” I confess, I was pissed. “But what the hell’s wrong with you?” I’d already yanked off my helmet and held it by the strap as I leaned the bike onto its kickstand. “You could’ve killed me –”
Already, you can probably tell the mistakes I was making here.
Don’t get mad. More good advice Cole had given me. Survival’s a cold thing.
That was my first screw-up. Something that comes with the motorcycle territory – some idiot driver just about leaves you as a bloody smear on the asphalt, usually from just sheer carelessness, it tends to jack up your pulse rate.
The second screw-up was related to the first. More Cole: Something that doesn’t usually happen? It’s happening for a reason. And it’s never a good one.
I should’ve remembered that. When a car driver nearly kills a motorcyclist, he always hits the gas and drives on – he gets away from the scene ASAP. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. Especially if the guy is already in motion, like on the freeway. Unless there’s actual metal-to-metal contact, something that leaves real evidence, like a crumpled fender with blood on it, so he might wind up in court on a hit-and-run charge – he’s gone, and the last he sees of you is a crumpled heap in his rearview mirror.
So there should’ve been an alarm bell ringing in my head – that this guy had actually pulled over to the side of the freeway and gotten out of his muscle car to see if I was okay. Somebody does something like that maybe once in a million times, and when they do, it’s a retired schoolteacher with an activated moral sense, not some testosterone case with a souped-up Dodge Challenger.
I mean, I could tell the guy was a typical moneyed meathead just from the way he looked as he came striding past his car’s rear fender and toward me and the Ninja. Way taller than me, but would’ve been just about as skinny if he hadn’t been bulked up with the kind of biceps and pecs that come from too much CrossFit and designer steroids. Expensive jeans, artfully faded and ripped at one knee, black T-shirt one size too tight, and those Nikes you have to make a reservation six months ahead to buy. He pushed his European shades up on top of his head as he approached.
“Really?” A smirk formed on his sharp-angled features. “I could’ve killed you? And that’d be a problem?”
“Yeah –” I glared back at him, as the traffic in the right-hand land kept whizzing past us. “For me –”
“No.” The guy shook his head. “This is your problem.”
He was quick, I gotta admit – I didn’t even see the blow coming. And it wasn’t just because I’d let myself get angry and off my game. Somewhere along the line, this guy had gotten professional coaching, so he didn’t signal his moves. One rapid-fire snap, and his fist hit the side of my jaw hard enough to lift me off my feet and send me flying backward.
I wasn’t thinking much when I landed on the pavement, alongside the guardrail. The sneak punch hadn’t knocked me out completely, but I wasn’t going anywhere soon. I was vaguely aware of the clear blue sky in my field of vision, but I couldn’t tell if it was above me or if I was falling down it like a hole in the ground. Maybe there was a tiny room inside my head, where part of me was thinking that this was all a little extreme for a case of road rage – usually there’s some shouting and arguing before a driver actually fires on you for what he believes is the crime of getting in his way.