Run, Girl, Run: A Thriller

by Alex C. Franklin

  Twenty-four hours ago, I’d been quietly giggling to myself, half asleep, half awake, as I imagined how Dromel would try to dance to the fast-paced calypso music, missing the rhythm entirely. I’d planned to grab hold of his hips in order to train him to dance like an islander, gyrating in a slow, sensuous motion.

  How could it be that now I was sitting on a germ-laden public toilet, scared for my life as I hid from God alone knew who, after I’d left Dromel bleeding in a lonely, cold, smelly canal?

  My head fell forward then snapped back in a reflex motion. The hiss of the faucet filled my ears, and I suddenly realized I had dozed off. I checked my watch. Only half an hour had passed. This was interminable. I covered my nose with both hands to block out the awful odors.

  I was to blame for this horrible mess. Dromel would have been safe and happy in Canada if I hadn’t tempted him to come down here.

  Ah, but he’d confessed that he’d lied to me. He hadn’t recused himself as he’d promised he would have.

  The thing I’d most feared, the scandal I’d tried to avoid, was sure to come now.

  Or maybe not. Maybe if he said nothing about meeting me to the police or anyone else, our relationship would never come up.

  He was a man who had his wits about him. Perhaps he would make up some story that locals shot him while trying to steal his wallet.

  Yes, it would be bad for the island’s reputation, but a story like that would be perfect for covering up the truth. Robberies happened all the time during Carnival; people would buy that story.

  Bang!

  The noise made me jump. I’d fallen asleep again. Now my eyes were wide open and my heart raced. A squeaking sound filled my ears, and then came the voice, humming a tune. Through the crack in the door of the stall, I saw the cleaning lady wheel her cart into the bathroom.

  Still humming, the woman bent down and pulled a bottle from the cart. She held it to her ear and shook it.

  “You mean to say this finish already?” She left the cart and exited the restroom.

  So much for my refuge. There was still an hour to go before the other ticket counter opened.

  I abandoned the stall and poked my head out the washroom door. Apart from the guards and one or two new local stragglers who chatted standing close to a huge pile of luggage, the place looked empty.

  The cleaning lady emerged from a black door a few feet away and passed me on her way into the washroom. She had left door slightly ajar.

  There was keyed lock on the outside, but a simple knob on the inside. I slipped into the tiny supply room, curled up on the floor behind a stack of boxes and soon went dead to this world.

  When I awoke again, the room was in total darkness; the door was closed shut. Apparently the cleaning lady had been back and hadn’t noticed me.

  The reflectors on my watch told me that in a few minutes, the Liat ticket counter would open.

  The airline had two cancellations on the next flight out to Grenada, where I could catch a plane to St Vincent, and then fly on to Antigua. From there, I needed to switch airlines but should have no problem getting a flight to Jamaica and then to Florida, the ticket agent said. It was unlikely, though, that I’d set foot in the States anytime before the next morning.

  “I’ll take anything you’ve got.”

  The flight was not scheduled to leave for another three hours.

  My head was spinning at the amount I had to shell out for the ticket. But, in the situation, I couldn’t quibble about cost.

  The airport was somewhat busier. At the Caribbean Air counter, the brusk woman now glowed as she chatted with what looked like a foreigner in a white short-sleeved shirt, who sported a dark buzz cut.

  The door to the supply room was just slightly open as I’d left it, and I slipped in to try to catch a bit more sleep. Twenty minutes before my flight, I re-emerged, groggy and bleary-eyed.

  Sprinting for the customs area, I remembered Parker. I’d have to tell him where to meet me the next morning. I walked briskly to the bank of telephones with my head down.

  I’d punched the first few numbers when I had a strong sensation that I was being watched. I turned around and saw a man walking with an air of determination. He seemed to be walking directly toward me. My mind clicked with a sense of recognition; and then I realized it was the man who’d been chatting with the brusk ticket agent from earlier.

  I dropped the receiver and sprinted toward security. The man didn’t continue on toward the phones. He swerved toward security, too.

  I picked up the pace. The man doubled his steps. With his long legs, he was quickly gaining on me.

  I burst into a full, panicked dash, almost tripping as my feet tried to move faster than humanly possible. The security gate was just ahead. Panting hard, I gave it my all to make it.

  As I neared the glass doors to the security area, I slowed down a trifle and waved my ticket at the female airport officer who stood at the entrance chatting with a guard.

  “No luggage?” she said.

  I shook my head, exaggerating the look of desperation on my face.

  “Hold on a minute!” She grabbed my ticket, eyed it, then stuffed it back into my hands.

  “Your flight leaving right now, girl. Hurry, hurry, hurry!” The woman laughed. “Run, run, run.”

  I blasted through the doors. But my feet couldn’t keep up and I went crashing to the floor.

  On the other side of the glass doors, I saw the man in white short-sleeves come pelting toward to security entrance. The guard who’d been chatting with the female officer flung out his arm, forcing my pursuer to stop dead in his tracks. I scrambled to my feet and shot down the corridor toward the scanning machines.

  Chapter 82

  “Where’s your ticket, sir?”

  The female official had been amused by the oddly dressed young woman who’d come waving her ticket in a mad rush to catch her flight. She’d been lenient on the girl and had allowed her to hustle the ticket check. Now, she suspected this thick-necked foreigner had seen the whole thing and was looking to pull a stunt by trying to dash past her without a ticket.

  She would have none of it.

  “Your ticket, sir.” She raised her voice. “I need to see your ticket.”

  The man doubled over, catching his breath. He stood up, pulled out a badge holder, and splayed it open.

  The security guard, who was at least five inches taller than the foreigner, stooped and squinted as he inspected the credentials.

  “FBI? Is that for real?” the guard said.

  The man slapped the flaps of the badge holder back together. “I need to speak with someone before she gets on a plane.”

  He threw back his shoulders and stepped toward the entrance to security.

  The guard immediately shifted to place himself between the foreigner and the doors. He was no fool. Sure he’d failed the written police entrance exam, but he had loads of friends who were policemen and he discussed law enforcement with them whenever they met up at the rumshop, which was almost every weekend. He would show this foreigner he knew how things really worked.

  “Listen here, man, even if that badge’s not fake, this is Trinidad, not the US. The FBI have no jurisdiction here.”

  The foreigner glowered.

  The guard stuck out his chest and snorted. “You hear what the lady say? She say she want to see a ticket. If you have no ticket, you not going nowhere.”

  The foreigner stared daggers at the guard.

  Finally, he shoved the badge back into his pocket, grunted, and walked away.

  Chapter 83

  The small, turboprop plane land
ed in Antigua, and I disembarked with my head bent as I followed closely behind a middle-aged couple who fussed over an elderly woman. Occasionally, the couple threw frowning glances at me, but I kept up the pretense of being part of their group all the way across the tarmac until they entered the terminal building and arrived at the ticketing area. They proceeded toward the exit with suspicious backward glances at me, and I slipped behind a tall, potted palm to scan the scene.

  The man with the long hair was nowhere in sight. Nor was the one in short-sleeves. But being chased up to the security gate in Trinidad had left me spooked. I decided to ditch my flight plans just in case either of them had talked to the Liat attendant at the Trinidad airport.

  “There’s no direct flight to Florida,” the young woman at the Caribbean Air counter said, “but you can go up the islands to Jamaica and get a connecting flight there.”

  “No, I can’t go that way,” I leaned in toward her and whispered. I sensed a line forming behind me and I swung my head around to scope out the newcomers.

  The ticket agent narrowed her eyes and studied my clothes and then my face. The shake of her head and the shrug were subtle. Some crazy woman, she must have thought.

  “Well, you could go across to Barbados and get a direct flight from there to the States, and that would actually get you into Ft Lauderdale early in the evening. But you’d have to hurry to catch the plane to Barbados. It leaves in twenty minutes.”

  Ticket in hand, I headed for the phone booth. After one ring, he picked up.

  “Parker here.”

  “Detective, it’s me, Stella Jacob.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Antigua.”

  “You’re alright?”

  “No, I’m not sure I’m alright. Somebody else came after me in Trinidad.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe an agent sent by the prime minister. I don’t know. I’m scared out of my mind now.”

  “This is sounding even more serious than I thought.”

  “It’s serious, alright.”

  “But, listen, you’ve got to stay calm, okay?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “You’ve got to keep your wits about you.”

  “I just dropped all the travel plans a ticket agent worked out for me in Trinidad, just in case she snitches on me.”

  “So what are you doing now?”

  “It works out better, actually. I’m going to Barbados to get a direct flight to Ft Lauderdale. I should land around six this evening.”

  “Okay. I’m heading into Ottawa as we speak. As soon as I pick up that tape and the address for Jacques, I’ll fly down there to meet you.”

  On the plane, I squeezed past two long legs encased in a hideous checkered fabric and settled into my window seat. Beside me, a deeply tanned man with a sharp, rat-like face smiled broadly.

  “Beautiful island, just beautiful,” he said.

  I gave a slight nod and looked out at the tarmac.

  “My first time down here,” the man continued. “The golfing was incredible. Four days on the most immaculate course. Unbelievable. And you know the best part of it?”

  He leaned over to me and whispered, even though I continued to face out the window.

  “Here’s the best part: It cost me nothing. Not a cent!”

  He slapped his knee and cackled.

  Good grief. I’d been placed next to one of those overly friendly travelers.

  “The whole shindig was sponsored by the company,” the man said. “They called it employee development or some kind of corporate mumbo jumbo. I figure it was really an excuse for the big wigs to live it up large. They stayed at the top hotel on the island, but the rest of us didn’t have it too shabby, mind you. We had a couple of hours of seminars and stuff every day, but mostly, we had a free pass for the links. Best job I’ve ever had. Started with them five months ago and I still can’t believe my luck.”

  The flight attendant began her safety spiel. I pointed my chin toward her to shut the man up.

  I was not in the mood to chit-chat. I wanted to think only about getting Jacques Tremblay to entrust Parker and me with the video his uncle had made. And I wanted to figure out just what we would do once we had all the evidence and had ensured Jacques was safe.

  Perhaps by then Dromel would have recovered sufficiently and I’d be able to get back in touch with him. Would he remain in the hospital on the island? Or would he try to get himself air-lifted out of there? Where would he go? I didn’t imagine that he would want to return to Canada, not in the vulnerable condition he was in.

  The plane rumbled down the runway and I felt my body slam into the back of the seat with the thrust of the take-off.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Get better quickly, Ben. God, keep him safe.

  “And you know what?” The man at my side started up, again, as if there had been no break in his monologue. “The wife can’t believe our luck either. I’m headed over to Barbados where I told her to come meet me. Twenty-three years together and it’s the first time we’re having a getaway outside the States since our honeymoon.”

  “Good for you.” My tone didn’t match my words. I made sure my expression didn’t either.

  The man stared back, apparently surprised. He looked about at the passengers in the other aisle, then stared straight ahead. In silence.

  After a while, he leaned forward and pulled a duffel bag from under the seat in front of him. He searched through the bag, which was emblazoned with a logo of an anchor. Some of the garments spilled out onto my lap. I felt my annoyance rising as the man continued his search, unconcerned about the invasion of my personal space. Then I realize the clothes also bore the anchor logo, and a thought struck me.

  The man pulled out a thick book from the bottom of the bag and began stuffing the garments back in.

  “Swag from the trip?” I tried to inject sweetness into my voice.

  “Uh huh.” My seatmate had crawled into himself and had closed up now, it seemed.

  “I don’t imagine you’re too particularly attached to that stuff, huh?”

  “Not particularly.” Glancing from the corner of his eyes, he surveyed me from head to toe, taking in the too-tight, monogrammed shirt and the bareness of my legs beyond the short, pleated school skirt. Then, as if something clicked inside him, he added, “But, maybe, somewhat attached. It’s from my first big trip with the company, you know. The stuff kinda has sentimental value.”

  The shark! He had caught on that his trash would be my treasure.

  I turned to my side and shifted my weight as I zipped open the fanny pack to see what I had left. I flipped through the bills. Just one hundred and seventy. I would offer forty…sixty tops. It was a lot for some stranger’s probably unwashed duds, but it would be worth it to change my appearance.

  “But I suppose you could be persuaded to part ways with at least a t-shirt and a pair of pants, right?”

  “Well, I’m not really interested in pulling out a shirt here and some pants there. But for, maybe…for two hundred I could just get rid of the entire lot and be done with it.”

  The rat! He must have peered over and seen me count my money.

  We stared at each other in silence. Then he leaned over as if to place the bag back under the seat.

  “I have one-seventy,” I said.

  “Sold!”

  The man plopped the bag into my lap.

  I pulled out the last of my holiday money and placed it into his grubby hands.

  “Thank you very much.” Smiling broadly, he shoved the c
ash into his shirt pocket, then opened his book and acted as if I wasn’t there.

  It was merely paper, I told to myself. What was mere paper when lives were at stake, my own included.

  Chapter 84

  Parker drove slowly down the snow-covered Hull street on which he expected to find Benoit Dromel’s house. He glanced at the address that he’d scribbled into his notebook, then checked the street signs again.

  Yes, he was on the correct road, but Dromel’s house didn’t appear as he had expected.

  First, it seemed too tiny to be the abode of such a high official. Second, the front door was slightly ajar. And third, on the street, right in front of the house, sat a brown sedan with a thick-set driver at the wheel who kept a close eye on the door.

  Parker pulled into a driveway, a couple of doors down, on the opposite side of the street. Before he had finished adjusting his mirrors to survey the scene, a figure appeared in Dromel’s doorway.

  This second, burly man, who looked very similar to the driver of the sedan, stepped out onto the small porch and pulled the door shut behind him. Metal creaked as the man raised the lid on the mailbox. He then walked briskly to the waiting car, stuffing a handful of envelopes into his jacket pocket. He got in and the car took off, slipping and sliding through ruts in the snow.

  “Great.” Parker slapped his steering wheel. “Someone’s got there before me.”

  Stella’s story had sounded bizarre when he’d heard it after being jolted out of sleep by his ringing phone at four in the morning. Now things had just gotten much worse.

  People were following her, and one had chased her as far as the entrance to security. Now someone was snooping around the house of a high government official, stealing his mail, while the man lay wounded and bleeding in a far-off country.