The Hostage

by Saul, Jonas

  Spencer raced down Queen Street and parked along the curb. Sarah’s stomach growled at the sight of the Korean restaurant on the left and Indian restaurant on the right.

  “We’ll leave the car here and walk to the studio. Parkman, we’ve got dozens of uniforms within one block waiting for me to give the okay to move in.” He turned to Sarah. “This is almost over. We’ll get Drake out. He’s my friend too.”

  They all got out and started down the busy street. Pedestrians clogged the sidewalk. The threesome had to separate and walk around people at times. It wasn’t until they turned down Duncan Street that they got away from the bustling activity on Queen Street.

  At the corner of the building that housed the photo studio, Spencer slowed and peeked around. He turned back to Parkman and Sarah.

  “No car in the lane.”

  He stepped out into the open and walked along the alley to the photo studio’s door, where he stood against the wall to the right. Parkman walked over and stood on the left. Sarah stayed back by the entrance to the alley.

  Spencer tried the door. It was locked. She was close enough to hear him radio someone who had been set up to watch the front of the building.

  “Nothing. No movement your way,” she heard through the small speaker.

  The two cops walked around to the front and tried two other doors. Everything locked up tight. No way in.

  “It doesn’t look like anybody’s here,” Spencer said. “Maybe they didn’t even come this way. Fuck.” He slammed his fist into his palm. He turned to Sarah. “Is there somewhere else you feel he could’ve taken Drake?”

  Sarah shook her head. “Nothing.”

  I could really use your help here, Vivian.

  “Maybe we need to get to the airport,” Spencer suggested.

  His radio crackled.

  “Spencer, go ahead.”

  “Elmore Ackerman’s vehicle has been located two blocks from your location.”

  “Okay, watch the vehicle and call me if anyone approaches it. Otherwise, wait for my call.”

  Spencer put the radio away.

  “He’s here,” he said to Parkman and Sarah. “I’d bet on it now. We’re going in.”

  Spencer knocked on the studio door. Parkman took up a position beside the door and waited. After no one answered, Spencer knocked again and shouted, “Police, open up!”

  No answer. Spencer stepped back, aimed his revolver at the locked door handle and fired twice. The knob shattered and the door popped an inch.

  Spencer pointed at Sarah to hang back. He motioned to Parkman to follow him and counted down to three with his fingers. Then he kicked the door and rushed in, his gun at the ready. Parkman followed.

  Two uniformed cops turned the corner behind Sarah.

  “They’re in there,” she said and pointed at the open door.

  “We know. He asked us to get you out of the alley.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Sarah asked. “Well then, we can wait until he comes out and asks me himself.”

  No way I’m just walking away with ‘cops’ anymore.

  “No, you’re to be moved to the end of the alley. Let’s go.”

  The cop grabbed her arm and started to lead her away. She snapped her arm out of his grip and stepped back.

  “Ever since I’ve been in Toronto,” Sarah said, the anger rising like a tide of boiling water. “Cops have been touching me and telling me what to do. Now I’m getting pissed.” She stared at each man and said, “Touch me again. I dare you. Just one more time.”

  The police had been ordered to stay back. If Spencer had brought her this far, he would’ve stepped out of the building to make a request of her. These guys were not who they said they were.

  The one who’d grabbed her arm pulled out a weapon so fast, she didn’t have time to call out Spencer or Parkman.

  He stepped into her, placed the weapon’s tip to the underside of her chin and said, “A bullet will enter your brain if you call out. Any wrong move and you’ll die. The only thing that’ll keep you breathing for the next few minutes is to start walking. Now go.”

  Chapter 36

  The two cops walked Sarah to the end of the alley toward Queen Street. The sweat beading on her face wasn’t because of the hot sun, but her anger. She was sick and tired of people having the attitude that they could do whatever they wanted. No one person owned the world and no one owned Sarah.

  She’d been lucky during the past five years, making it out of scrapes and staying alive with the help of her sister. But Vivian had told her nothing about Elmore or the two men on either side of her. She had no idea what to expect. She knew the men with her were more dangerous than average bad guys because of their carefree attitude. To wear Toronto police uniforms in public and snatch her not ten feet from Spencer and Parkman took balls. These two had no fear. She was sure if she had called out and Spencer or Parkman had stepped from the photo studio, one of the two men on each of her arms would’ve shot them.

  Just before they broke the cover of the alley, the uniform with the gun holstered it. A car idled on the curb, its back door open.

  She was out of options. She had to do something. Getting into that car meant death. Better to get shot outside the car, in public, than to enter the car and be executed miles away with no witnesses.

  They shoved her toward the door. The man on her left moved away to walk around the back of the car to get in on the other side.

  It was her last chance.

  She made to enter the backseat and then dropped to one knee in front of the open door. She pivoted fast and swung her other leg into the back of the knee of the guy still with her. His knee shot forward, bumped the car door, and he dropped.

  As he fell, Sarah lay down on her back and rolled under the car. She stopped rolling and slid her butt along until she was dead center of the chassis, the exhaust pipe two inches from her nose.

  How does this shit always seem to happen?

  Who were they? Did they work for Elmore? That couldn’t be possible. What Elmore did had to be kept to himself or he couldn’t have gotten away with it that long.

  She looked left and right, rolling her head back and forth on the cement, searching for her aggressors’ feet.

  The car jerked. Then the driver hit the gas. She turned her head sideways just in time. The edge of the muffler came within millimeters of tearing the top of her nose off.

  Both fake cops stepped up and stood over her, guns drawn. No one in the street would question their authority. They were in uniform. They had weapons. Their person of interest had tried to flee. She had assaulted one of them. It would look justified to arrest her with this kind of force. She was all out of ideas.

  She raised both hands and said, “Okay, take it easy. I’ll go quietly. Thought that might work. Who knew?”

  “Shoot her in the face,” the uniform on the left whispered.

  “Too many witnesses,” the other one said, frowning. “Just get her up and in the car.”

  Vehicles continued to meander by on the street beside her, oblivious that she was being kidnapped in broad daylight on the downtown streets of Toronto with a heavy police presence less than a block away.

  The last option she had was a bullet. She’d been shot before. She’d survive. Getting into that car was certain death. She felt it on every level of her soul. Being shot left options.

  She got up and ready to rush them.

  A small crowd of pedestrians walking by had stopped to watch the live action.

  A man stared at her. He was at least six feet tall and it was quite evident that he worked out religiously. She pointed at him and shouted, “Help! These men are not cops. They’re trying to kidnap me!”

  The man shook his head and started to walk away, just as Sarah had wanted. She would’ve been surprised if he stepped in to try to help.

  The fake uniforms turned to see if he would do anything. Instead of rushing them, she ran five feet to the right and stepped into traffic. A small Nissan swerved to miss he
r, turning toward oncoming traffic. The car going the other way, veered to avoid a collision, but swerved toward Sarah.

  She couldn’t get out of the way in time.

  All she could do was jump. Her jump wasn’t high enough to clear the hood.

  The vehicle had already slowed down. When her foot hit the top lip of the hood, her body rotated sideways as the windshield rushed up to make contact with her back. Four feet later the car stopped and Sarah flew off the hood and onto the sidewalk, rolling until she stopped face down.

  She breathed in and out in small gasps. Aches and pains came from everywhere, but she didn’t move. She did a mental inventory of her body and was pretty sure nothing got broken.

  People gathered around her. Someone said not to move her for fear of further damage. Someone shouted for an ambulance.

  There was too much attention. No way the uniforms would try to take her now. It would be routine to have an ambulance attend.

  She opened her eyes in time to see the uniforms getting into the car they had tried to force her into.

  I did it, but I have to find a new way to live. Jumping in front of cars, just to avoid getting killed is fucked up.

  She rolled onto her back and tried to get up, to the protests of everyone around her.

  “I’m okay, really, I’m okay—”

  The people around her were knocked sideways by a shockwave. Someone fell over her legs as she tried to right herself to see what had exploded.

  Four car lengths away sat the car the cops had tried to get her into, fully engulfed in flames. No way the driver or the two uniforms had gotten out.

  Her stomach clenched at the thought that not only was she almost in that car, she was under it moments ago.

  Her stomach wanted to release its meager contents. She rolled to the side and got to her feet, a hand on her abdomen. Most of the people who had surrounded her had moved toward the burning car. A tattoo shop had lost all its front windows in the explosion.

  Holy shit. I’d be dead right now. That was too close.

  Who were these people? Who would kill in the open like this? Definitely not people like Elmore. They did it in private and they preyed on the weak.

  A thought raced through her mind, like a power surge hit her. She jolted and stared, wide-eyed.

  Ferenci and people of Armond Stuart’s ilk. The immigration fraudsters. The people after Drake. They’re here and after her too because she stopped them at the baseball game. Cops on the payroll. She would be a target because she took out their leader in Montone, Italy.

  She cautiously stepped backwards until she was touching the wall of the nearest building. She felt exposed in the open and with no weapon.

  Her left knee ached too much to walk without a slight limp. She’d torn her jeans at the knee. Her elbow was bleeding.

  She edged along the building toward the alley’s entrance. As attentive to her surroundings as she could be, nothing or no one paid attention to her as far as she could tell. But she knew Ferenci was probably watching her. The bomb in the car was for when she got in. When the uniforms left without her, they ceased to be of any use to a man like Ferenci, so he disposed of them.

  Where was Elmore? Where was Drake? Could Ferenci already have Drake?

  She made it to the door of a restaurant called The Babur. A loud crack reverberated from across the street. People on the other sidewalk ducked as the window of the restaurant behind her shattered.

  Gun.

  That was enough to get her running, bad knee or not.

  She ran hard for the corner, turned around it and bumped into Parkman.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” he asked.

  “The car … it exploded … someone shot at me … Ferenci,” Sarah managed to get out between breaths.

  “What?” Spencer asked. “Slow down. What’s going on?”

  Sarah leaned on Parkman’s arm, her leg pain flaring up. It struck her as odd at that moment that she would notice Parkman didn’t have a toothpick in his mouth.

  “What happened to your toothpick?”

  Parkman frowned. He looked at Spencer. “Elmore is dead. We found his body. He was shot in each leg and a couple times in the face.”

  Sarah breathed easier. She pushed off Parkman’s arm, stood on her own and stepped away. “Good. Sounds like Ferenci did something right.” She turned to Spencer. “When I stood waiting for you two in the alley, two uniforms showed up. They escorted me at gunpoint to a car. If I hadn’t escaped, I would’ve died in that car. It just exploded on Queen Street. It was Ferenci. I’m assuming he has Drake. They just shot at me around that corner.” She pointed back to where she’d just come from, still trying to catch her breath.

  Spencer got on his radio. “Lock down a two-block radius. Roadblock on each route leaving this area.”

  He ran away from them, pulling his weapon, heading for the corner. A moment later he disappeared around the corner.

  “You doing okay?” Parkman asked. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  A gun went off, sounding like a firecracker. A woman screamed. It came from Queen Street, where Spencer had just run.

  Parkman pulled his weapon and jogged to the corner to take a look with Sarah close behind. A number of people had gathered around the burning car. What caught their eye was the old man standing over Spencer who now lay out on the sidewalk on his back. The old man aimed a gun at Spencer’s forehead.

  Parkman didn’t call out. He didn’t identify himself as a police officer. He just brought his gun up, aimed and fired. It was a clean shot. The old man’s head snapped sideways, a splatter of blood sprayed out the other side. The old man fell hard, as if he had been asleep on his feet.

  Sarah took in the entire scene. She looked at all the witnesses, all the stopped cars. Mothers covering their children’s faces. Teenagers, their mouths agape. What broke up the scene for her was the huge man in a long overcoat across the street. He had a weapon and he stared at them. As she watched, he lowered it and stuck it in the back of his pants.

  “Parkman,” she said as he came out of his shooter’s stance. “That big guy over there has a gun too.”

  Parkman snapped his attention to where Sarah pointed. “The guy in the navy blue overcoat? The one who just turned and started walking away?”

  “Yeah, him. He jammed it in the back of his pants.”

  “On it,” Parkman said and started across the street in pursuit.

  Sarah leaned up against the wall and watched everything as best she could, looking for a threat. Police and ambulance approached to attend to Spencer. She could check on him at any time, but if there was another shooter, she could be shot at any moment, so she kept watching the street.

  After a full minute of standing in the early afternoon sun and scanning the entire area, she felt confident no one else posed a threat unless a shooter was hunched down in an obscure spot in which case she couldn’t do anything about it.

  She needed to locate Drake.

  She watched as Parkman caught up with the guy in the trench coat just over a block away. Maybe he’d know where Drake was. The guy raised his hands and got down on one knee. Parkman applied handcuffs, got the man standing again and started back toward Sarah.

  The car the man had been standing beside when Sarah saw him, moved. She shaded her eyes from the sun and looked again. Sure enough, the car moved ever so slightly. She pushed off the wall and walked across Queen Street, weaving through the slow-moving vehicles that skirted the burning car.

  She neared the car. It was idling.

  This was their getaway car. They wanted to shoot me and drive away.

  The front door wasn’t locked. She opened it and saw the keys in the ignition.

  The car moved and shook a little again, this time accompanied by a moan.

  The trunk.

  She pushed the automatic release button by the bottom edge of the driver’s seat and walked back to the trunk.

  The lid lifted w
ithout resistance. A crowbar flew out at her. She dodged left, the steel bar missing her face by less than an inch.

  “Drake!”

  She was so happy to see him.

  “Sarah? Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  She grabbed his wrist and helped him out.

  “No problem … just don’t throw shit at me. Pisses me off.”

  “No problem. I didn’t know … shit … sorry.”

  The bullet wound in his leg had bled out more. His jeans were matted in blood and his face, pale.