The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  The air smelled loamy and damp. It was thick and alive with sounds I hadn’t noticed before. Clicking and twittering and rustling down in the bushes and overhead in the branches. I still heard the music, but from the new angle also heard loud banging—the sound of metal on metal, heavy objects coming together with force. Power tools, too, like drills.

  It took four steps to cross the road, but I had to hike a long way through a dark, close thicket. I made my way by moonlight that came and went, wished I had thought to bring a flashlight, and kept an eye on the stadium lights ahead. I hiked as fast as I could, trying not to trip over the roots and vines and brittle, cracked branches that grabbed at my feet and slapped at my bare arms. My jeans protected my legs, but my shirt had no sleeves. I knew I had reached the property line when I found a chain link fence that cut straight through the thick collar of trees. I tried to see beyond it, but the growth was too heavy and extended too far.

  Time to redefine my goals. More information would be instructive—like who was in that warehouse with Bobby and what they were doing. The banging or sawing or drilling or sanding was still going on. The sound of men’s voices was now part of the soundtrack, drifting toward me on the night air whenever there was a pause.

  What I really needed was to find a perch and it needed to be high enough to see over the fence and the trees. I began to move laterally. Every now and then the moon would appear as I came to a place where the brush thinned enough that I could see something of what was on the property. It looked like machines, and lots of them. Some kind of mechanical equipment. It was too far away to see what kind, and they were down in a depression. They didn’t look like cars, but they were lined up that way, dim shapes in rows among the weeds, and I wondered what it was exactly that JZ Salvage salvaged.

  As I moved, the mosquitoes and gnats that orbited my head came with me. I was breathing hard, but tried to remember to do so with my mouth closed. Eventually, I found my spot. It was a tree, a good one for climbing, with a thick and gnarly trunk, and tall enough that I could see what I needed to see. It had one serious drawback. It was inside the fence line about a hundred feet onto the property. I did another quick rationalization and decided it was far enough outside the range of the stadium lights that I would still be in the dark.

  Scrambling under the chain link was an option—the fencing job was not that enthusiastic—but I didn’t want to crawl through whatever felt slick and vegetal on the ground. I went over the top, came down on the other side, and waited at the bottom to see that all was still quiet. This time when I began to move, it was into the field and away from the fence and the only thing to hide in was the darkness. My skin tingled under my damp clothes.

  I stayed low, moved fast, and when I got to the tree, dried my palms on my pants, and started climbing. The coarse and peeling bark scored my palms and made them burn, especially with the profuse sweating I was doing. My foot slipped once and I dangled until I could latch back on. Running shoes are not ideal for tree climbing. I was already winded from the dash through the jungle, so I hoped the first branch that I came to that could hold my weight would be high enough for me to see what I wanted to see. I climbed up, threw my leg over, turned around, braced myself with my back against the trunk. I sat for a moment, looking out across the field, listening to myself breathe, and trying to comprehend the sight in front of me.

  It looked like a giant garden of airplanes, a rich bounty of Cessnas, Bonanzas, Piper Cubs, Learjets, and Beeches. Most were small aircraft and most bone white, or at least looked that way under the glow of the moon. Every now and then a painted fuselage stood out. But the dusty light turned what probably had been bright reds and yellows and greens into dim shades of brown and beige and gray. On some that were closest to me, I could make out the corporate logos still on the tails.

  JZ Salvage salvaged airplanes, which meant they had been pulled from trees, dredged from the bottoms of lakes, and scraped from gouges in the earth. Their wings had been detached, either from the force of the collision or after, and were stacked, mismatched and upright, in large racks at the ends of each long row. With missing or mangled landing gear, most rested on their bellies in the weeds. The rows and rows of upright tails looked like tombstones, which was fitting since all these airplanes were dead.

  The men’s voices continued to drift up from the warehouse and out over the field. It was easy to imagine them as the voices of ghosts that might linger in these hollowed-out echo chambers. It was easy to imagine the harsh, strident strains of the electric guitars as the cries of the people who had spent their last moments on earth hurtling toward it.

  The first sign of movement from the warehouse caught me by surprise. I pulled my legs up under me and crouched on the branch, holding steady with my hands on the trunk behind me. The back doors were open, allowing brighter light to spill out from the interior work space. A man walked into the light. He was too far away for me to make out anything but a lanky build. I crouched lower in the tree as if that would help me see better. What I wouldn’t have given for a pair of binoculars.

  And then I saw something that made my stomach try to squeeze up through my throat. There was a dog. A big, guard-dog kind of dog with a dark, shorthaired coat, a thick square head, and a wide chest. He may not have been one, but he was certainly built like a rottweiler. The sign on the front gate had said nothing about a dog. BEWARE OF DOG would have given me pause, BEWARE OF ATTACK DOG would have turned me around for sure. And now I was thinking that this was not fair. And I was thinking it was too late.

  The dog had shot out of the hangar behind the lanky one, and now pranced and spun as the man walked with him through the airplane graveyard… toward me. He hadn’t… surely he hadn’t seen me. I was much too far away. And besides, they weren’t moving very fast. If that dog had sensed me, he would have shown it. So what were they doing?

  They kept walking until they were a ways beyond the graveyard, but still on the other side of the field separating the airplanes from my tree and me. The dog danced and crooned until the man reared back and heaved something. It went high into the air, and into the field. The dog took off, kicking up grass and dirt and dust as he launched himself toward the object that fell just at the edge of the light. It was a tennis ball. I could tell by how far it went and the height of its bounce. The dog ran it down like a fuzz-seeking missile, snatched it out of the air, squeezed it in his pincer jaws of death—and did not run right back. He stopped. He dropped the ball. When he raised his great head to sniff the air, I pressed against the trunk of the tree so hard, the bark was going to leave an imprint on my back. I prayed the strong odor of rotten fish was in my head and not out in the air around me. The ball tosser yelled. After one last skeptical snuffle, the dog picked up his ball and hauled ass back to the hangar. I blew out a long breath and peeled my back off the tree trunk.

  Jump down? Hang in? Wait for the game to be over? I bit off the sliver of thumbnail I’d been chewing. Go. Now.

  I twisted down out of the tree, dropping at least six feet to the ground, and started to move, slowly at first. The ball was in the air again. With one eye on the charging animal, I moved faster, hoping my new running shoes still had Mercury’s wings.

  When I got to the fence, I stopped, leaned down to look through a couple of low branches at the progress of the game, and panicked. I couldn’t see the dog. The man must have thrown the ball farther this time. I scanned the field, trying to will my eyes to see in the dark. Couldn’t. Jesus, he could have been steaming for me right then. The man yelled. “Bull” was what he was calling out. I went down lower until my ear was almost flush against the moist ground, and strained to hear any sound at all that wasn’t guitar strains or insects. Nothing.

  I waited, so tense that if he had leapt upon me at that moment, I might have shattered into pieces. When Bull finally reappeared, ball in his mouth, I felt so much tension release I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough energy left to stand up.

  No problem. With Bull dashing in
the opposite direction, I crawled up the fence, swung over, jumped down, and landed in a hole. My foot collapsed, my left ankle took all of my weight, and should have snapped in two. I had one numb moment to anticipate how much it was going to hurt. A charge of pain ripped up my leg, jumped to my spine, and would have come out of my mouth if I hadn’t clamped my jaw. Instead it emerged through my eyes, which immediately sprouted tears. A wave of nausea rolled through.

  I sank to the ground, sat in a heap among the dead palm fronds, and waited for my heart rate to stabilize. When it did—at about two hundred beats a minute—I got up and started moving again. The ankle was swollen and angry, but mechanically it worked. Every time I stepped on the foot, I got the sharp needles. Bad enough, but what if it gave out? Get back to the road and into the car. I hobbled along the fence, looking for the place to turn, the opening, the way I had come in, but… I didn’t know where I’d come in. I couldn’t figure out where I had come over the fence. Stupid, stupid, stupid to have wandered so far away. Insane not to have identified a landmark.

  The cold blanket of panic started to descend. Which way? Couldn’t decide. Searching for a familiar branch or leaf. A footprint. And then the air exploded. A metallic roar ripped through the humid night and sent me to the ground. I looked up in time to see Bull as he launched himself against the fence, a barrier that hadn’t seemed substantial to begin with. It swayed out on impact and strained against the posts that were supposed to keep it upright.

  He stopped and I saw him spot me. The sound that came out of his throat was like nothing I’d ever heard, vicious and guttural and wild.

  I jerked to my feet, pushed off with the bad foot, fell down, scrambled up, and thrashed along the fence line. He was right there, step for step, on the other side. I could smell his frenzy.

  The man was on the move now, his yelling getting closer. I veered into what looked like a solid wall of prickly, thorny trees and brush, and crashed a new trail.

  Boom. The fence rattled and shook behind me. And then it was quiet. The sound of my own gasping filled my ears. Get to the road, was all I could think. Get to the road and into the car. Wrap that steel and glass around me.

  And then he was coming again. I heard him. He’d crawled under or crashed through or chewed through the steel mesh, but he was on my side now and coming fast, choking on his own drool, announcing himself with a low, rumbling, murderous fury. I pushed ahead, tripped into plants and brush, scraped off of trees, ripped through leaves and hanging vines.

  And then a surge of energy. I’d found the road. But which way? Which direction was the car? Dammit. I started right and heard Bull charging toward me. I turned and ran the other way. I could feel him on my ass. I could feel him closing the gap. And then I saw the car and I felt a stab of hope and I pushed toward it, arms pumping, heart thumping, feet barely touching the gravel. Almost there when… when…

  A bright, cold light shot through my eyes and into my brain. I froze, caught in the high beams of my own car. Someone was in my car. I raised a hand to shield my eyes. Bobby? There was yelling. The dog was closing. I could hear his nails on the gravel road. There was more yelling from behind me, and now ahead of me.

  “Keep moving. Hurry up.” A voice from the car. “Get in. Get in!”

  Jesus Christ. A split second to decide. Dog will shred me without a doubt. I sprinted toward the car.

  “Other side, dammit. Other side.”

  Too late. I was headed toward the driver’s side. The dog was coming fast. The backseat window was coming down. Just as I pitched through, I heard a door open and a heavy thud, almost at once, and yelping. The driver’s door had swung open and the dog… the dog must have… the driver had opened the door and the dog had run into it, and somewhere in the back of my brain I wondered how I was going to pay for the damage. I hadn’t taken the optional insurance.

  The car rocketed forward and slammed me against the backseat. Dust billowed. Stones flew. There was bumping and fishtailing. The dog’s hysterical frustration.

  I lay facedown with my eyes closed and my nose buried in the upholstery. My ankle screamed, every painful throb a rebuke for having abused it so completely.

  “Are you all right?”

  It was a man’s voice. I turned over on my back. I wanted to sit up, but I couldn’t will myself to do it. I had to he flat and breathe. From there I could see only his hands on the wheel, hands in black gloves. He wore a dark ball cap. He seemed tall in the seat.

  “Hey!” He turned and I could see his profile. Roman nose. Strong chin. I couldn’t see his eyes. Understandably, he kept them on the road. “What’s going on back there?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Get up and see if there’s anyone behind us.” There was urgency, but no panic.

  The blood drained from my head when I sat up, but I steadied myself long enough to squint through the back window, trying to see through the cloud of dust. “It’s too dark to see very far, but no one is there right now.”

  He let out a long sigh that seemed to tighten the tension, not relieve it. “That doesn’t mean they won’t be coming.”

  Chapter Twelve

  He looked like a commando. The black gloves had only been the beginning. His jeans were black, as were his socks and running shoes. Despite the heat, he wore a long-sleeved black pullover. Any skin that showed, including his face, was smeared with black camouflage paint. When he glanced over, what stood out most in a dark car on a dark road were the strands of silver laced through brown hair. His hair was long enough to poke out from under the black ball cap he wore pulled down low over his eyes.

  And there was the gun. A pistol. It looked like an automatic, and it had been resting on the seat next to him until I’d crawled over to join him in the front, at which point he picked it up and tucked it back into a hip holster.

  “Put your seat belt on,” was the first thing he said.

  I did, and then I looked at him again, but all I saw was that big gun. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the one asking the questions,” he said. His voice sounded like a well traveled back road—dusty, littered with rocks and stones, and pitted with potholes. “Who the hell are you?”

  I hadn’t totally calmed down and I wasn’t thinking completely straight, but I was clear enough on a few facts. I had a sprained ankle, scratched and bloodied arms, sore ribs and pelvic bone where I’d slammed around going through the window, and a complete stranger behind the wheel of my car, which he had apparently hot-wired because the keys were still tucked in the pocket of my jeans. He was armed and I wasn’t. He was bigger than I was, and if I’d had to guess, I would have said it wasn’t the first time he’d been in a scrape like that.

  The dynamics of the situation didn’t favor me.

  “I’m… my name is Alex Shanahan.”

  “That doesn’t tell me what I need to know, Alex Shanahan. What were you doing back there?”

  “I was following someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone who went into that warehouse.” I was stalling, trying to figure out what to reveal.

  He was having none of it. “What is the guy’s name?”

  “Bobby Avidor.”

  He checked the rearview mirror, which he had done every thirty seconds since we’d turned back onto a real road. “What kind of car?”

  “A black Trans Am.”

  “Yeah, I saw him.” He nodded. “Why did you follow him?”

  He looked at me sternly, and I suddenly felt that no answer I gave would be good enough. I wasn’t sure there was a reason good enough to do what I had just done. No need to share that with him. “I’m not telling you any more,” I said, “unless you tell me who you are.”

  He reacted as if I’d reached over and tapped him on the nose. His neck stiffened, which had the effect of pulling his chin toward his backbone.

  “I’m the one who just saved your ass. Remember?” Obviously the dynamics of the situation weren’t lost on him, either.

&nbs
p; “You did, and I’m grateful. But I don’t think it’s a lot to ask for you to tell me who you are. I told you who I am.”

  “You told me your name. My name is Jack Dolan. What does that tell you?”

  “Not much.”

  “How about this?” he asked. “Me first, and then you.”

  “Deal.”

  “The guy your buddy went in to see, the guy who owns the salvage yard, I’m watching him. And you walked right into the middle of my modest little stakeout.”

  “Oh.” I felt mildly guilty, but mostly inept. “Are you a cop?”

  “Private.”

  He must have finally felt that we were clear of the dog and whoever else was back there. He slowed down and took time to adjust the seat. He pushed it all the way back.

  “Why are you watching him?” I asked.

  “Someone paid me to do it. And the target is not someone you’d want to be introduced to under any circumstances, but especially not sneaking around his property. That was his dog, Bull.”

  The target. Annoying that he’d gotten me to reveal Bobby’s name, yet was clever enough not to come across with the name of his guy. “Is ‘the target’ a drug runner?”

  “That’s not his business.” He glanced over as he took a right turn. I was so glad to see that he knew where he was going. “Why?”

  “Bobby Avidor is rumored to be running drugs out of Miami. He works for Majestic Airlines, and people who know him there—”

  “This one works for an airline? This Avidor?”

  “He’s a maintenance supervisor.”

  He nodded as if that made perfect sense.

  “What? Does that mean something to you?”

  “Maybe.” He took in a long breath, checked the mirror, took off his gloves, and relaxed a little more. He seemed to be coming down from high alert in stages. “Your turn. Why are you following Avidor?”