by Carmen Faye
"So, you aren't going to be happy with him just in prison?" he asked. "Yes, he'll have contacts still, and have some pull with the club, but like I pointed out, he has few personal resources and none to throw at us from the club."
"I hate to put it like this Neil," she said sadly, "but are you willing to bet your sisters on that?"
Neil's eyebrows furrowed in deep worry, an expression she didn't like on his normal calm.
"No," he finally agreed. "No, you're right. We need to get to him before the cops. It'll be more difficult to deal with him once he's in jail." He lifted his eyes to her, "I'll be the first suspects if he turns up dead."
"I don't think so. We're much less involved than you think. I'll call Margaret and talk with her about it though."
"You trust her that much?"
"She'll tell me if she can't help, but she won't hurt."
At ten o'clock Neil walked her out to the cab, got her into the back, then leaned in to give her a kiss, while passing her a 9mm Beretta to slip into her purse.
"You good on the route?" he asked.
"I'll see you there. You be careful too," she told him.
Then he closed the door and she told the driver to take her to the airport.
At the airport she bought a ticket for the next flight to New York, paying cash. Then she skipped the Departures area and went straight to Arrivals. There she picked the first cab she came to and told the driver the address of the safe-house in North Miami.
On her way to the safe-house she called Amanda, and then called Sandy, chatting with both of them for most of the drive. After that she called Sydney and found that she was in a cab too, heading for the safe-house.
"I still don't like it," Sydney told her. "I mean, how did that guy, Simon, find us in the first place? Are you sure we can trust Fire and Swift? Or the others?"
"All he would have to do Syd," she explained, "is discover we changed our names, which is public record. Anyone can find that if they know the right question. From there, checking the County Recorder's Office would tell him that we bought the condo. It wouldn't be that hard to find us. We should have rented. That was my mistake. I didn't believe Anton would go this far."
"So, what do we do now?" she asked.
"I don't know Syd, I don't. Neil said he's not much of a tracker, and I'm even less of one. If you got any ideas, I'm open to hearing them."
Sydney asked, "What about hiring a detective to find him for us?"
"We could do that, but when Anton turns up dead, our detective will probably be smart enough to put it together, and turn us in or blackmail us."
"Yeah," Sydney agreed. "Shit. I hate this."
"I'll be there soon. You still have your key, right?" she asked.
"Yeah. I'll be there before you. I'm only a couple of blocks away now. See you there," Sydney told her and broke the connection.
Chapter 30
Neil was in deep thought when he left the parking garage at the hospital and headed for the freeway entrance two blocks away. Being hunted was not something he was used to, and he hoped that he wouldn't have this problem long enough to achieve a level of competence. Threats, in his experience, were generally in his face not hiding behind a bush somewhere. How to go from hunted to hunter he had no clue about either, not in this situation.
As he rode north he decided that hiding was not going to be in their best interest — at least not for him. Shayla needed rest and Sydney needed Shayla. So both of them needed to remain at the safe-house, but he needed to take the position of outrider.
After a few miles of pondering this idea he decided that he would make periodic trips to the club, and make himself available for attack. Getting back to the safe-house each day was going to be tricky, so he would not go there directly, and frequently use hotels rather than returning every night. Sydney wasn't going to like this idea, but he thought that Shayla would see the advantage of being out there as bait.
The tactic had merit because it played to his strengths. He didn't have the skills to hide them successfully, still maintaining a life. Sooner or later, they would be found. The ambush would likely succeed next time. If he could force an impromptu attack however, rather than a planned ambush, he would be on firmer ground; he could counter-attack rather than forced into a position of defense.
The idea of having West or one of the others ride with him was tempting, but he knew that wasn't going to be possible. Using them as protectors over his family was one thing, but this war with Anton was now personal — as far as the club was concerned this fell into the laws of duel, they were both on their own.
May the best man win.
Just as he was coming up on the 103rd Street exit, he spotted the blue 1969 Mercury Cougar Eliminator in his left mirror. It came out of the far left lane, swerved over two lanes and was now coming up fast behind him. It was a muscle car, so the driver could be just letting it run, but Neil's instincts, and the fact that it looked exactly like Jason's Cougar, told him this wasn't the case. The driver was making his move, and that move was on him.
Cursing himself for being so distracted by the problem that he allowed the problem to follow him home, he gunned the trike and took the 103rd street exit, going from 65 mph to over a hundred in the blink of an eye.
The Cougar swerved again, getting into the exit lane and gained speed, but not as quickly as the trike was able to. The trike had just as much horse power with its hot-rod V8 engine as the Cougar was apt to have, and all the torque, with much less weight to hinder its power. Neil knew he could lose the Cougar. He could out distance and out maneuver the Eliminator — but he didn't want to. Odds were, the driver was Anton.
It was too soon for Anton to have arranged another hitman and that car was Jason's, Anton's previous driver, who Neil killed when Jason made the bad choice of cornering Neil when he had his sisters with him on the trike. It wasn't Jason's fault. Jason was a prospect and had to do what the president of the club told him to do, but that didn't matter — he was just as dead. But it would have been just like Anton to claim the car out of impound. From what the doctor told Shayla this morning about her condition, if Anton was on enough pain pills and up on a few lines of coke, he could be driving himself.
Coming up the off-ramp there were three cars ahead of him at the red light. Neil ran the trike down the right shoulder and then jumped the curb into a traffic gap heading east on 103rd. He didn't want to lose the Cougar, but he didn't want the driver to think he wasn't trying.
The Cougar followed suit, and took out two sign posts doing so, but it made the corner and was only a block behind him as the flew through the next green-light, and swerved around a motor-home, past an SUV, to make a left, cutting off westbound traffic to get onto 2nd Ave heading north, into a residential area.
Praying that some kid wouldn't be running out into the street with the Cougar right behind him, he gunned his engine again and saw in his rear-view that the Cougar nearly collided with a white Mazda when he made the turn, but fishtailed out of the danger and roared up 2nd behind him.
A block and a half ahead the road became divided by grass covered sections for each block length. These green-belt mediums were as wide as the lanes themselves. Neil reached between his legs, and pushed the hidden panel, and retrieved one of his 9mm Berettas, slipping it under his leg on the seat, and then closed the panel. The setup was good. Not perfect but good. As long as some soccer mom didn't decide that right now was the perfect time to go to the grocery store in her mini-van, he might even survive.
At the next cross-street, he angled the front wheel for a turn, and pulled the handbrake, just like Dave taught him to do, giving the trike just enough fuel to send him into, what stunt drivers call, a bootlegger's turn around the green-belt median. The engine roared, the back end swung around in a tire-destroying arch complaining inside a building storm of rubber smoke. At middle arc he released the handbrake and gave the trike all the gas it could take to straighten out. The wheels spun, screamed then gripped and rocket
ed him back down the street heading south.
The Cougar roared up on the northbound side of the street. If he tried to come across the grass partition at the speed he was going, he would skid, and likely flip — so Neil was praying the driver was that stupid. Just in case he wasn't though, Neil pulled the 9mm out with his left hand and got ready to fire as they passed one another.
The driver of the Cougar was Anton. Neil met his eyes as he fired three shots as they passed. Anton, a predator and a survivor as well, had his shotgun pointed out the driver's side window. They fired together. Neil was certain he hit the Cougar, but just as certain he didn't hit anything valuable, like Anton for example — but then, Anton didn't score a hit either.
Now that he was confident of who was chasing him, Neil tried to come up with a plan of attack. They couldn't race around a residential area for long without colliding with some soccer mom's SUV or having the police show up in force.
He kept the trike moving fast but didn't speed up, waiting to see if Anton was going to make the turn. The Cougar made the U-turn, but not gracefully. It plowed up onto the sidewalk, crushed over a small palm tree and clipped a silver Toyota sitting in its driveway, then gunned the engine in an attempt to catch back up.
Neil made a right turn onto 103rd street heading west again, back to the freeway, going over the bridge and then back down onto I-95 south, making sure that Anton was able to follow him. Instead of going all the way down the on-ramp however, he jumped the curb and barreled down the embankment as soon as he was out of sight of the Cougar, coming down onto the freeway's shoulder, behind where the off-ramp emptied into the main flow of traffic. There he stopped.
Anton's Cougar skidded and shrieked its tires making the turn down the ramp, geared down to pick up power and speed, and shot out into the light traffic, swerving into the third freeway lane as soon as he could; hunting Neil. Neil throttled the trike and followed with as much power as the trike could offer, but kept cars between him and Anton's line of sight.
Anton was cruising at 85mph when Neil caught up to him, using a Kenworth truck-and-trailer as a blind between him and the Cougar. Neil picked up speed to 110 mph, got his 9mm back in his left hand and came around the front of the Kenworth firing into the rear area of the Cougar, aiming for a hit on the passenger-side rear tire.
His fifth shot caught the tire and it quite literally exploded into shreds of black rubber. Neil braked, and pulled the bike into a reckless lane change to get behind the Cougar in the third lane, while avoiding the oncoming Kenworth. Once there, he fired the rest of his clip into the back window of the Cougar. 60s safety glass shattered and holes as big as softballs appeared in the web-cracked rear window.
Reflexively, Anton jigged the Cougar right. The blown out rear tire rim caught and yanked him into a harder turn than expected, and the car went into a rigid slide, and then a spin, careening in front of the Kenworth. Neil rifled past as the Kenworth collided with the turned around Cougar, hitting Anton head on. The car crushed up the Kenworth nose, tipped over and was pile-driven back into the concrete with a thunderous sound of twisted metal.
Neil watched for a few moments in his rear-view mirror and then slowed down to 75 mph. Anton was dead. Neil needed to get off the street, hide the trike for a day or two, and get a cab back to the safe house. It was over.
Chapter 31
Thursday afternoon, just past four, Shayla sat on the love-seat in their condo, with a text book in her hands that she wasn't reading. The pain pills made it impossible to concentrate on anything more taxing than the back of a cereal box. Taking three lines of cocaine only made her more aware that she was stoned on pain pills.
She took only a half dose this morning for her interview with the detectives about the shooting. She wanted to be as clear headed as possible. They were still threatening to arrest her for obstruction, but hadn't done so yet. Margaret, her lawyer, told her on the outset not to worry about it; if they didn't do it today they weren't going to bother.
Neil, however, was now a prime suspect in the killing of Simon Grim. All she and Sydney admitted to was that Neil was there, and left the house when the shooting started, which was true. They didn't offer any information about an M-16 with a 40mm grenade launcher attachment, and denied ever seeing one around the house — also true.
Neil talked to the detectives right after they were done with her and Sydney. Neil told her not to wait because he had to go to the club right after, assuring her he would be home before three o'clock. Now, it was after four and he still wasn't home and hadn't called.
Looking over at Sydney on the couch she found her wife studying her.
"What?" Shayla asked.
"Nothing — but it's after four," Sydney pointed out weakly.
"He usually calls," she agreed.
"Think something happened at the club?" Sydney asked.
"I was more worried about the cops. Why the club?" she asked.
"Well, he did kill the president," Sydney offered.
"That was more or less a duel though, wasn't it? I mean, West said the club was wasn't involved. Right?"
"Not involved and forgiving are two different things, aren't they? We're not involved with the police but if they killed an innocent kid then we wouldn't be forgiving, would we?" Sydney explained.
"Anton was neither innocent nor a kid," she said with more certainty. "Aren't you stretching things just a little?"
"Well, why the cops? It was self-defense, wasn't it? You were shot first," Sydney told her.
"Then Neil ran him down and broke his neck," she offered. "The man was running, and unarmed at the time."
"So what? He shot you," Sydney repeated, putting more into the word 'shot' just in case the word itself wasn't enough.
She thought about that for a while and then shook her head. The drugs were fucking with her thinking. "I don't know," she admitted. "When is it self-defense and when is it murder? Is there a time limit? Can Neil kill that man six months from now and still claim self-defense? I don't know."
"Did Margaret stay with him? I didn't see," Sydney asked.
"No, he has his own lawyer. Someone he's worked with before. Someone tied to the club I think."
"Then maybe we can ask Margaret," Sydney offered.
"No, I don't want to bother her. She was good for us today. Let's just wait until five o'clock. Then we'll start making calls," she proposed.
Sydney looked at her book and then closed it, saying "Well, alright, but I've been looking at the same page for an hour now and couldn't tell you a fucking thing about what it says."
"I'm stoned," she said with a small smile. "I've flipped a few pages, but can't read a thing. Just looking at pictures."
"Want to snuggle?"
"I can't baby. My shoulder still hurts," she told her.
"How about nude sunbathing?"
"Now?"
"Why not?"
"Alright. Let's take some beers out there with us," she said. "This bandage though is ugly. You sure you won't mind?"
"Won't bother me at all. I'll be looking at your tits," Sydney said with a wry smile.
Just before five o'clock they heard the door open and they got up quickly and came back from sunbathing. Neil was hanging his leather jacket in the downstairs closet.
They dumped their warm beers and then got fresh ones, with Sydney grabbing one for Neil, who sat down on a stool at the counter and thanked her. He took a long drink and then nodded his head. "That's good," he said.
They waited for something else, and finally Sydney said, "Well?"
"Well what?" Neil asked.
"Well what? Neil, it's almost five. You said three. Fuck you alright? What happened?" Sydney said, her voice rising a little.
He smiled, "Sorry. No, everything is alright, just have some thinking to do, that's all."
"Alright? What does that mean?" Sydney pressed. "Are the cops after you for this murder or what?"
"No, no, they were never after me for that. They wanted to know about
the grenades," Neil answered.
"What did you tell them?" Sydney asked.
"What grenades?" He said with a grin. "I told them I didn't even have a gun. They didn't have any witnesses that saw me with a gun. They have two that saw me chase Simon down and break his neck, but both were clear that I didn't have any weapons on me."
"So, they aren't interested in your for anything?" Shayla asked.
"No, not really. I read in the newspaper today that the trucker is alive and only banged up. Nothing broken I guess. He's already out of the hospital. He said that it was a guy on a motorcycle, not a trike. I guess with everything going on, he just figured it was a motorcycle. No one poked their heads out at Anton's house while I was there, according to Selene, so no witnesses for that either. The place nearly burned to the ground, so now physical evidence for bullets or grenades at that place. So, basically I'm clear. They'll still harass me a bit, I'm sure, but there's no case."