Fourth to Run

by Carys Jones

  The car rolled forward and joined the road once again. Aiden stared out of the window, watching the sky darken as the moon came out and greedily devoured what was left of the natural light. Now it felt like they were just moving through an impossible tunnel of darkness. The land which stretched away to the sides of the road was hidden from them. All they could see was the strip of Tarmac ahead which was illuminated by the headlights.

  “Connelly!”

  Aiden’s eyes snapped open as he heard his own name. Had he drifted off to sleep? He didn’t remember doing so. Groggily he blinked and shifted his gaze around the dark interior of the car. The navigation system released an eerie glow from the dashboard. Aiden noticed that they were now only seven hours outside of San Migeno.

  “Was I sleeping?” Aiden mumbled as he straightened in the chair and massaged his neck which felt stiff and awkward.

  “You were,” Buck replied flatly. Aiden looked over and noticed how ill at ease the sheriff appeared behind the wheel of the modern car. His back was poker straight and his hands were permanently at ten and two on the wheel. Normally when driving the patrol car he slid down in his chair, draped one arm across the passenger seat and kept one hand loosely on the wheel.

  “Why did you wake me?” Aiden wanted to sleep again. When he was sleeping he wasn’t worrying, he was briefly released from the constant torment of knowing he had failed Brandy, that she was being tortured because of him.

  “I asked about that contact of yours,” Buck explained in his slow, Southern drawl.

  “Contact?”

  “The fella you went down there to see, the one your FBI faux friend told you to seek out.”

  Aiden rolled his eyes. Javier Santo. The cop who Aiden was starting to suspect had never been a lead for the FBI.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s a dead end,” Aiden sighed.

  “And what if he isn’t?” Buck countered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if the lead was legit? What if he’d just been too scared to talk?”

  Aiden pondered on this and eventually gave a loose shrug.

  “You said so yourself; the fact that I got followed back to Avalon by two guns for hire means the lead was never legit. It was all a set-up.”

  “But what if it wasn’t?” Buck’s voice remained slow and calm. Aiden exhaled in frustration and turned away from the old man.

  “It was a set-up,” he concluded sadly. “The cop in San Migeno is a dead end.”

  “Let’s pretend for a moment that he isn’t a dead end,” Buck suggested as he drove the car deeper into the darkness of the night.

  Aiden kept his gaze beyond the window.

  “This lead, it’s all we’ve got, Connelly. Maybe your friend did set you up, but right now we need to work on the theory that he didn’t else we’ve got nothing. We go down thinking this guy is a lead, we’ve got somewhere to go, someone we can lean on, someone who might have answers.”

  Aiden thought of Javier Santo’s missing eye. How exactly had he lost it? Had he perhaps been an informant for the FBI before? If so, it meant he’d been disloyal to the Caulerone brothers before and perhaps could be convinced to do so again.

  “Okay, let’s say he’s not a dead end.” Aiden entertained the possibility. “We find him and what then?”

  “We get answers, we find out where the girl is.”

  “What if he won’t talk?”

  “We use any means necessary,” Buck stated simply.

  The words made Aiden’s stomach churn uneasily. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to be as brutal as the situation might require. But he needed to be, for Brandy. Would Javier talk if Aiden threatened to rid him of his one remaining eye? Could Aiden even make such a threat sound convincing?

  “You watch many cop shows?” Buck asked lightly as though they were sat in a bar chatting over a few beers rather than driving down to Mexico to release a hostage from the clutches of a notorious cartel.

  “Cop shows?” Aiden turned in confusion to look at the old man, bewildered by the question. In the darkness Buck’s cheeks seemed even more hollowed than normal, his eyes hidden in shadow. With his thin fingers tightly gripping the wheel, he looked like a ghost.

  “Cop shows,” Buck repeated. “In cop shows, there’s always a good cop, bad cop routine. The good cop gets the answers while the bad cop applies the pressure.”

  Aiden nodded.

  “Good cop, bad cop, I know what you mean.”

  “Okay,” Buck gave a stiff nod. “Then when we meet this contact of yours, just think of us like that. I’m the bad cop, I’ll make the tough choices so long as you get the answers.”

  Aiden watched him with a mixture of fear and relief, wondering how far he would take his bad cop routine.

  “You can’t be sentimental in my job,” Buck explained as if sensing Aiden’s misgivings. “Sometimes you’ve got to be willing to break a few bones.”

  *

  A blood-red sky greeted them as they approached San Migeno. Aiden was back behind the wheel. Buck was silent beside him though he wasn’t sleeping.

  They’d made a stop an hour ago at a gas station to fuel up and stretch their legs. Aiden had glanced along the road ahead and felt something wither and die within him. Whatever happened in San Migeno, he knew that it would change him.

  He remembered what Father West had said to him in the prison. How he’d stated that Aiden had set himself on a dark path. As Aiden climbed back into the car, he felt like he could see that dark path stretching before him, leading him directly to the small Mexican town where Brandy was probably being held.

  He paused before starting the engine, considering turning back, resisting the lure of the way ahead. He didn’t have to go down the dark path, he was choosing to. But he had to do it. Brandy was the love of his life. His heart bloomed with the certainty of it. If he let her die at the hands of these vindictive men he’d be sentencing himself to a cursed existence. If he lost her he’d never be the same, would never recover.

  “Welcome to San Migeno”. Aiden read the rusted sign as they drove past it with a sense of irony. San Migeno didn’t offer welcome to anyone. In that sense it wasn’t all that dissimilar to Avalon.

  Buck looked out of the car windows as he straightened with interest.

  “Looks to be a small town,” he observed.

  “Small town with big secrets,” Aiden mused. “Sound familiar?”

  Buck released a dry laugh but said nothing.

  Aiden drove further into town, no longer relaying on his navigation system but on memory to guide him to the small police station.

  “That where your contact is?” Buck nodded towards the station as Aiden pulled up outside it.

  “Yeah.” Aiden was still gripping the steering wheel, afraid to release it. It was suddenly an anchor holding him in place. Once he let go of it and stepped out of the car everything was liable to change.

  “What’s his name?” Buck asked as his hand moved to his hip, patting the pistol which was holstered there. Despite choosing to leave his patrol car back in Avalon, Buck had insisted on wearing his uniform.

  “People respect the uniform,” he’d explained when Aiden queried his choice of attire.

  “Javier Santo,” Aiden relayed. The old man pressed his lips into a thoughtful line.

  “He won’t be eager to talk,” Aiden added apprehensively.

  “They never are,” Buck raised a grey eyebrow before opening the car door and stepping out into the already blistering heat of the day.

  Aiden forced himself to release the wheel and joined Avalon’s sheriff on the street outside the police station.

  “Time is now of the essence,” Buck explained, his gaze focused on the doors to the police station ahead.

  “Okay.”

  “I need you back in the car behind the wheel.” Buck kept his eyes on the station but gestured with his hand at Aiden as a plan formulated in his mind.

  “Buck?”

  “Do as I say,” Buc
k hissed, his voice low and irritable. “We need to act fast.” Buck placed one hand close to his pistol and began approaching the station.

  “Get back in the car!”

  Aiden obeyed, wondering what the old man had planned.

  Chapter Twelve

  Forced to Run

  The doors to the San Migeno police station were thrown open. A wave of hysterical cries tumbled down to where Aiden was sat poised behind the wheel of the car. He didn’t have time to wonder what was happening as, seconds later, Buck was approaching the vehicle, one arm wrapped around the neck of Javier Santo, his pistol pressed firmly against the frightened man’s head.

  Buck briefly released Javier to open the door to the car and direct him inside. Nervously, Javier scrambled into the back as Buck followed.

  “Drive!” Buck barked the order at Aiden. With adrenalin throbbing through his veins, Aiden started the car and pulled away from the station with such nervous speed that the acrid smell of burned rubber lingered in their wake.

  “You!” Javier’s eyes widened as he clocked the identity of the car’s driver.

  “Jesus, Buck, what the hell are you doing?” Aiden demanded desperately as he continued to drive recklessly out of town. Where was he even going? He had no idea, he just knew that he needed to get out of San Migeno and fast.

  “There’s a girl being held by the Caulerone brothers.” Buck ignored Aiden and focused on interrogating Javier. “Where is she?”

  Javier shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Buck raised his pistol and flung it across Javier’s face with sickening force. Aiden flinched in the driver’s seat as he heard the snap of something breaking.

  “Fuck!” Javier panted. “I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  This time Buck didn’t pistol whip Javier, instead he placed the barrel of the gun against the other man’s knee. Javier squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw in anticipation of the shot which was coming.

  “Okay, enough!” Aiden swerved the car up onto the side of the road and killed the engine. They were outside of San Migeno, far enough away to be afforded a few moments’ privacy before the authorities were able to catch up with them.

  “Connelly, keep driving!” Buck snapped sharply, not removing his gun from Javier’s knee cap.

  “You tell us what you know,” Buck ordered, “or you’ll never walk again,” he added with a sinister smirk.

  “Buck, please, enough!” Aiden spun around in his seat so that he was facing the two men in the back of the car. Javier shot him a desperate look.

  “Javier, please,” Aiden reached for his wallet as he spoke and pulled out a small passport-sized photograph of Brandy. She’d given it to him some time ago and he’d kept it on him ever since. The ends of the photograph were curled and frayed, but the image retained its original magic. Javier passed the picture to Javier who eyed Buck fearfully before accepting it with a trembling hand.

  “This is my girlfriend, Brandy,” Aiden explained. Just saying her name made his whole body tingle with adoration, but the pleasant sensation was tainted by the knowledge that she was currently in great danger and in terrible pain. Aiden cleared his throat and forced himself to be hard.

  “The Caulerone brothers abducted her from our home. They’ve since sent me one of her fingers. Javier, they are going to kill her. Please tell me where she is, where they take people. I have to save her.”

  In the picture Brandy was smiling widely as though she didn’t have a care in the world. Her brown eyes sparkled as if amused by a secret only she knew and her hair fell on her shoulders in golden waves.

  Aiden choked as he suddenly remembered why she’d taken the picture. It was when she was in Chicago, eager to achieve some sort of normality and she applied for her very first passport. The first time they’d met in the city was the same day she’d had the picture done. She’d been gushing with excitement about it and couldn’t wait to show Aiden. She proudly pulled the neat row of pictures from her purse, grinning from ear to ear. Aiden told how beautiful she was in the photograph and her cheeks bloomed red. When she shyly offered him one of the pictures he immediately accepted, knowing that he’d treasure her image for ever.

  “She is very beautiful. But I don’t know where she is.” Javier handed the picture back to Aiden.

  Buck pressed the barrel of his gun harder against Javier’s knee.

  “You tell us where this little girl is or I blow your knee off right here right now.”

  Javier swallowed hard, he could tell by Buck’s steely gaze that the old sheriff wasn’t bluffing.

  “Whatever shit you’ve got going on with the Caulerone brothers, she doesn’t deserve to die for it! Don’t you take any pride in protecting your home? In protecting your town? What if the next person they come for is your wife? Your daughter?” Buck delivered each word with venom.

  “If I talk they kill me,” Javier stated simply.

  “If you don’t talk I’ll kill you!” Buck retorted.

  “Javier, just tell us where she is and you can get out of the car and walk away,” Aiden hurriedly offered. “You’ll never see or hear from me again. You can tell the Caulerone brothers you killed me yourself when I tried to leave town.”

  “Aren’t you tired of letting these bastards run your town?” Buck snarled. “They tried it in my home once and I sent them running like the dogs they are.”

  Aiden wasn’t sure if paying off the brothers was essentially sending them off running but he kept the thought to himself. It was better that Javier think Buck was capable of instilling fear into the infamous Caulerone brothers.

  “That little girl in the picture, she’s no one to you but she’s everything to him,” Buck nodded towards Aiden in the driver’s seat.

  “At least give him a chance to save her.”

  Javier exhaled slowly. Sweat beaded down his forehead and dripped from the end of his nose.

  “There’s an old warehouse four miles east of town.” As he uttered the location, he lowered his head in defeat.

  “They will be holding her there if they have her. There are only ever five guards, no more, no less.”

  Buck narrowed his eyes as he took the information in.

  “Why are you helping us?” Aiden asked suspiciously, fearing he might be giving them bogus information.

  “I used to have a picture like that,” Javier admitted sadly. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. I used to think I could defend this town, make it a better place.”

  “You can!” Buck insisted.

  “No,” Javier sighed in resignation. “That ship has long since sailed. But I can help you, that will have to be enough.”

  Buck glanced up at Aiden and both men nodded.

  “Okay, get out of here.”

  Javier didn’t wait to be told twice. He threw open the door and ran out into the bright morning sunshine.

  “You think he’s telling the truth?” Aiden asked skeptically as Buck also exited the car through the back door and came round to the front passenger seat. As Buck strapped himself in, he shrugged lightly.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “Five guards.” Aiden repeated the information Javier had given them. “Only two of us.”

  “But we have the element of surprise.”

  “We do?” Aiden wasn’t so convinced. They’d caused quite the spectacle over at the police station. News of their presence in town would soon filter up to the Caulerone brothers who would either move Brandy to another location or kill her.

  “He’s not going to talk,” Buck noted with confidence.

  “He’s not?” Aiden frowned as he started the car and pulled into the road. “He might be back there right now on the phone to the Caulerones, telling them everything!”

  “He won’t be.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I know how to root out the good guys. They’re the weak ones, Connelly, the ones incapa
ble of taking secrets to their graves.”

  Aiden shuddered as he thought of the grave he had dug on the outskirts of Avalon. That was certainly one secret he intended to take to his own grave, but did keeping it mean he wasn’t a good guy?

  “Sadly, time isn’t on our side right now,” Buck declared despondently.

  “How’d you figure that out?”

  “We can’t very well drive up the warehouse in the bright light of day. We need to keep hidden until night, then drive up there under the cover of darkness.”

  Aiden knew he was right but the thought of leaving Brandy at the mercy of the Caulerones for another entire day sickened him. His hands tensed against the wheel, exposing the whites of his knuckles.

  “We’ve no choice but to wait,” Buck stated. “We bide our time and then we go in and get her out.”

  Aiden nodded. It all sounded so simple but he knew it wasn’t. There were five armed men who stood between him and Brandy, five men who he would potentially have to kill. The thought made his entire body shiver as though he had just been plunged in to a sea of ice.

  “Are you ready for this?” Buck asked. “Because once we do this, there’s no going back.”

  “Yes,” Aiden gritted his teeth. “I’m ready.”

  *

  Javier shut the door to his office, grateful to be finally be alone. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, who the hardfaced white man was who had roughly dragged him from the station at gun point. Javier had convinced them it was just a case of mistaken identity. He had pointed the disgruntled old man in the direction of the man who actually owed him money in a town a few miles south.

  And the lie seemed to hold enough weight to be gleamed reasonable as Javier’s phone had yet to ring, the Caulerone brothers weren’t calling him to ask questions, to pry. Satisfied that he’d deterred his colleagues from the scent of what had really happened, he reached into the top drawer of his desk, shifted aside a few faded files and pulled out a heavily creased photograph.

  Smoothing it out, Javier smiled at the image looking back at him. He was standing beside a beautiful brunette with eyes the color of a sapphire sky. They both wore identical smiles and clung to one another. Tenderly he traced a finger over the woman’s image. His other hand pressed against his chest, to where her name was tattooed across his chest.