by Alan Marble
There was a brief twinge of something like regret in the young woman’s face, but it passed quickly and she nodded in the affirmative. “So it would seem.”
“Well. Looks like there is going to be a change in plans, then.” The big man resumed his seat behind his desk, resting his hands on the edge and turning his gaze back up to Rebekah. “It’s not safe for you to stay here. I want you to take my car, yours is probably being watched. Use the service elevator, down to the basement. It’s parked down there.” Pulling a drawer open, he fished out a set of keys and placed them on the edge of the table.
Gathering the keys up obediently, Rebekah nodded gravely. “The meeting, then?”
The course of the brief conversation was rapidly evading Jonah’s understanding, and the fact was beginning to irritate him. He wanted to interrupt and ask who the company was, what this meeting was, and what was going on, but for the moment he held is tongue and watched as Abe nodded as well. “Yes. But I want you to make a stop on the way. Pick up Jeffress. We haven’t been able to inform him, you know how he is.”
“Of course. Anything else?”
“Keep him safe. Do what you can to convince him of the truth, but remember. He’s got to discover it for himself, ” the big man replied with a renewed grin, turning his attention back to Jonah. “Oh, and you. I believe this is yours.”
Jonah looked down to see a crisp $100 bill being slid across the desk. “What … what’s that for?”
The grin on Abe’s face only seemed to widen. “I lost the bet. Now, the two of you get going. Stay close to Rebekah, she knows what she’s doing. She’ll keep you safe. You’ll have another chance to figure yourself out, kid, soon enough, but we need you to be kept safe until then. I’m just sorry we didn’t have the time tonight. We’ll do our best here to keep our company occupied while you two slip out. Now get out of here!”
The man’s statement ended more in the form of a command, one which Rebekah obeyed without hesitation. Before Jonah had a chance to object, she clutched him by the wrist and dragged him right on out of the office, down the hall, and back through the waiting area where the plump woman in the vestibule smiled and waved at them. “Don’t worry about us, Bekah. We’ll take care of things here, you just take care of yourselves!”
Rebekah acknowledged with a hasty wave, continuing to drag the rather befuddled Jonah right back out into the relative dark of the hallway. Finally he shook off the sense of surprise and confusion, yanking his arm away hard enough to extricate himself from her grip, frowning into the darkness. “What the hell is going on here?”
When she turned back to him her gaze was surprisingly sharp, enough that he flinched just at the sight of it. “Weren’t you listening back there? Come on, we don’t have time to wait around.”
He followed behind as she took off down the hall again, but he continued to grumble quietly. “Something about company following us.”
“Try your homicidal friend, and maybe some of his friends, too. I don’t really know, but it doesn’t really matter. Don’t want them getting their hands on you, now, do you?”
“And just what do they want with me?” They had rounded a corner, passed the main elevators and stepped through a door marked “Restricted Access” that was nonetheless unlocked. It was, apparently, a service area, where there was access to a number of electrical, utility closets, and, their destination, the wide doors of the service elevator.
“Same thing they want with all of us,” she finally responded, a little breathlessly, mashing the button to summon the elevator. A quiet, sluggish creaking sound filtered up through the elevator shaft, seeming to be in no hurry to reach them. “Use you for their own purposes. Kill you. Maybe both, just depends. Try not to think about that too much - at least I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
Jonah closed his eyes and shook his head. The entire situation seemed to go a little beyond simply surreal; people claiming to be dragons, asking him to leap from a balcony two hundred feet in the air, punching through bulletproof glass. If he had not seen it happen with his own eyes he would have thought it a fanciful tale. “Just … just tell me this isn’t happening,” he groaned, rubbing his temples.
“Wish I could, but it is. Now, come on,” came the reply, coinciding with the sound of the elevator doors sliding open.
Opening his eyes just enough to follow her inside the oversized service elevator, watching her press the button for the basement, he backed himself into a corner and slumped back against the cool metal walls. “And what about you? What do you people want from me?”
Turning to look at him over her shoulder, Rebekah cast a quizzical frown in his direction. “What?”
“You. The bald guy upstairs. Whoever else you happen to be working with, the whole insane lot of you. What do you want with me?”
She blinked before answering. “To keep you safe. Protect you from…”
Jonah shook his head, cutting her off with a little wave of the hand. “Right. So you’ve been saying. But there’s more to it than that, you aren’t doing it out of the vast goodness of your hearts. There’s something you want from me.”
For a moment he was answered only with the slow creak and groan of the elevator descending down its shaft. Frowning, Rebekah turned away from him, facing the doorway and speaking a little more quietly. “I’ll explain later.”
“Explain now,” he shot back, stepping forward and reaching for the button to stop the elevator in its tracks.
His attempt was cut short by a swift swing of her arm, batting his hand away, while she turned again to look back at him rather harshly. “I’ll explain later. We have a long drive ahead of us, and I sure as hell don’t want to spend it in silence like the last one. Besides,” she said, punctuated by a little shudder as the elevator car reached its destination and bobbed to a stop. “The longer we stay here, the more danger we are in. Let’s go.”
The doors languidly opened to a largely darkened basement, lit only with exit lighting and whatever light made its way in through a large roll-up door that was open to the exterior. The elevator dumped them out onto a raised concrete platform, part of a dock that was built to handle large freight trucks. Beyond the dock were a few parking stalls for larger vehicles, and then a sort of small parking garage, presumably for the employees of the various offices in the building above.
It seemed to be their destination. Rebekah led him down a small flight of stairs and across the truck loading area, their footfalls echoing against the oil stained concrete, disturbingly loud in the quiet of the night. There were relatively few vehicles that were parked overnight, mostly cars that he guessed were to be used for business purposes only, and a few smaller delivery vans nestled up against concrete pillars. Something about the way they scowled at him from the darkness of their little parking stalls made them seem strangely sinister, a thought he tried to banish by shaking his head.
To his surprise, they stopped right in the middle of the garage, Rebekah coming to an abrupt halt and holding up a hand to indicate that he follow suit. In confusion he glanced around, watching as she seemed to listen before speaking up quietly. “Something isn’t right.”
“What do you mean?”
For another moment she seemed to be listening intently to the silence, the look on her face one of serious concentration. “I don’t think we’re alone.”
The sinister feeling in the dark silence around him suddenly seemed so much more validated, and Jonah found himself glancing around a little wide-eyed, as if he might spot some kind of danger, as if he expected the dark-haired man to jump out from one of the shadows. “What? Where? Do you hear something?”
“Shh!” She brought her finger up to her lips, narrowing her eyes as she glanced around, her voice dropping to a mere whisper. “They’ve been here. Might still be here. More of them than we thought …”
The quiet of the night was shattered rather abruptly by the roar of an engine coming to life. The two of them jerked their heads in the direction of the sound just
in time to see a pair of headlights flick on, pointed directly at them, blinding them both. A loud, angry squeal echoed against concrete, the vehicle’s engine roaring all the more loudly. In confusion Jonah hunched himself downward, near the ground, arms thrown instinctively in front of his face when he was struck solidly on the shoulder, something bowling him to the ground and rolling him out of the way.
A rush of air reeking of burned rubber and exhaust wafted past him, and before he could get his bearings he felt a firm grip on his shoulder hauling him back up to his feet. Opening his eyes, looking about in a bewildered fashion, he could see an unmarked white van coming to a hard stop, tires squealing, shuddering as it was being turned back in his direction. The grip on his shoulder was Rebekah, her green eyes flashing at him wildly as she shouted a simple command : “Run!”
The command did not need to be repeated. He followed as she took off, his legs pumping as quickly as they would go, feet pounding against the oil-stained concrete beneath them. The angry sound of tires squealing and the engine revving behind them suddenly grew frightfully close. Just in time she ducked between a pair of parked vans in their stalls and he followed without question or thought, diving in the little space between the vans just as the one pursuing them caught up, screeching to a halt, boxing them in.
“Shit,” Rebekah hissed breathlessly, fishing around in her pockets. “Black SUV. End of the row,” she said, shoving something in his hand before pulling him further into the stall.
“What?” Bewildered, he glanced down to see a set of keys in his hand. He looked back to see her squeezing behind one of the parked vans, a tiny little space that was too narrow for him to follow. “Wait, where are you going … don’t leave me here?”
The sound of a door sliding open and latching in to place caught his attention. Turning on his heels he stared as he saw a man climbing out of the van, blocking his only route of escape. The man was not tall but thickly built, his head topped with inky dark hair, and a pair of black eyes to match. It was the same man from the coin store, the same one who had torn down the door to his apartment. Jonah felt his blood go cold in his veins as he stepped backward and began to shake. “Oooh, no, no, no …”
The man’s face did not betray any emotion, but Jonah could not help but to imagine that the loud crackle of his knuckles as his hands balled up into fists was something like grim satisfaction. He winced as the man took a menacing step forward, but the both of them were caught off guard by a loud and sudden shout from the right. “Now! Go!”
Before either of them could react there was a sudden blur of motion that crashed into the man hard enough to send him sprawling. It was the same sort of thing that he had seen back in his apartment just the day before, and instinctively he knew what it meant. Clutching the keys in one hand, Jonah darted out from between the parked vans, gaping at the sight of the sinister mountain of a man laid out flat on his back, briefly stunned, Rebekah’s considerably smaller from holding him down. “I said go!”
With a nod, he ran right past them and glanced wildly along the row of parking spaces, trying to guess which car would be the right one. Fumbling with the key fob he mashed one of the buttons and was rewarded with a quiet beep, a black BMW at the end of the row of stalls flashing its lights on and off for him. Grunting, he sprinted off in the direction of the vehicle as fast as he could.
The sound of a struggle behind him caught his attention, though, and before he reached the car he stopped and turned around to look. The big man had gotten back up to his feet and was busy trying to peel Rebekah away from him, while she was busy grappling at him and writhing, trying to knock him back down by the looks of it. “Get in the damned car and start it up, we’ve got to get out of here,” she cried out loud when she noticed him watching.
Just as he was about to turn back to the car, the small mountain of a man succeeded in peeling Rebekah off of him, holding her out at arm’s length like one might hold an uncooperative cat. Jonah could only watch with a sense of creeping horror as the man sneered, growled, and then threw her against a nearby van with enough force to collapse the door inward, sending a shower of glass spraying in every direction while Rebekah’s body simply disappeared into the gaping hole that had been left behind.
“Holy shit,” he whispered breathlessly, eyes widening. Then he realized that the man was advancing on him anew, unwavering and determined. “Holy shit,” he repeated, taking a few unsteady steps backward before turning and breaking into a sprint, crossing the distance to the car, tugging the door open and climbing into the driver’s seat.
He fished around for the key, trying to find the right one, trying to find the ignition and coming up empty. A furtive glance upward showed the big man closing the gap much too quickly for comfort. “Shit, which one is it?” Jonah’s hands shook as he fumbled through the keys, groping at the neck of the steering column, his heart racing as he tried to figure out how to start the damned car. All while watching his doom approach with unrelenting steps.
At last he found the key that fit in the slot, but to his dismay it would not turn. Before he pulled it out and tried again, his eyes finally lit on the big button marked “Start Engine.” Jamming his thumb into the button the engine at last roared to life. Reaching for the gearshift he pulled it into gear and stepped on the gas, the vehicle jerking forward, tires squealing against the concrete.
It was not a moment too soon. The big man was standing where the car had been only seconds before, fists flexing at his sides, a menacing and impatient look on his face. Jonah watched the man with a panicked expression before remembering that he was driving. Turning his attention back in front of him, he yanked the steering wheel to the side just in time to avoid crashing into a thick concrete pillar, the tires again squealing beneath the car, his own voice crying out in a startled yelp before he finally pointed it in the direction that he thought the exit was.
Then, to his surprise, someone stepped out from behind another parked vehicle to stand right in the way of his escape path. It was Rebekah. Her clothes were a little torn, her hair disheveled and wild looking, filled with little shards of glass, a line of blood running down the side of her face, but otherwise whole. Jonah was so shocked by the sight that he almost forgot to stop, slamming his foot on the brake and coming to a stop only inches from where she stood, unwavering.
As soon as the car stopped, however, she was in motion. “Go,” she shouted, rounding the front of the SUV and pulling the passenger door open, launching herself rather unceremoniously into the car and tugging the door shut behind her, shouting again before she even had a chance to sit up. “Go, go, go!”
In the rear view mirror Jonah could see the van whipping back around to point in their direction again, and he needed no other motivation than that. Mashing his foot on the accelerator, the car jerked forward once again, and he turned the wheel sharply to aim right for the exit door, whipping around again and finally exiting onto the road. “Where?”
“Back to the highway,” she responded a little gruffly, finally getting properly seated and pulling the seat belt on. “Bastard Abe had better make sure my truck is taken care of,” she grumbled, turning to look out the window as they passed where it was still parked.
It seemed an odd sort of thing to be concerned with, given the circumstances. Jonah could see the van rounding the corner and getting on the street behind them, following in close pursuit. The freeway was still a few blocks away, and, to his dismay, the light at the intersection ahead had just turned red. Somewhat hesitantly, he started to apply the brake.
Rebekah immediately hit him in the shoulder. “What the hell do you think you are doing?”
“The light is red,” he objected, gesturing ahead of him.
“And do you think your friend back there cares? Go, dammit, go!’
Cringing, Jonah let off on the brake and punched the gas once again, urging the car forward and through the intersection. There was fortunately no traffic at this hour and they cruised through without incid
ent, but he somehow could not help but to feel a little chagrined at the infraction.
Sure enough, the van behind them did not so much as hesitate. He realized it was moving faster than they were, closing the distance. Cringing once more he sped up, way too fast for these roads. “Which way,” he asked, seeing that they were fast approaching the highway intersection.
“Not this one,” she responded, after a moment of thought.
He turned to give her a confused and somewhat panicked look. “What?”
“Not this one,” she repeated, pointing ahead of them. “Next highway. It’s only right up there a few more blocks.”
The van behind them was continuing to catch up, and Jonah was forced to continue increasing his speed. Luck was on their side and the next few intersections beyond the highway were all green and traffic was all but nonexistent, but at this rate all it would take was one person crossing the road at the wrong time to spell disaster.
It was only a moment before he realized that they were coming up to the next highway intersection. “Which way, then?”
She paused a moment. “West.”
“West?”
“West. Right. To the right,” she clarified
He nodded, peeking back in the mirror to see the van growing uncomfortably close. Looking forward again, his blood suddenly ran cold again when he realized that, just before the turnoff to the highway there was another intersection, a fairly broad and complicated intersection with more than one road crossing his path. This time the light was red, and this time there was some traffic. “Oh, shit,” he cursed.
Rebekah only frowned. “Keep going.”
“But it’s red. There’s traffic …”
“Don’t stop.”
Jonah felt himself tensing as they neared the intersection. “We’re gonna crash. We’re gonna get killed.”
“And what do you think happens if he catches up to us?”
There was no time left to argue. Screaming involuntarily, Jonah simply mashed on the gas and tensed up. He wanted to close his eyes, didn’t want to see what was about to happen but he could not. It all seemed to go in slow motion for a second, even the sound of his own voice becoming strangely detached in his ears as they sailed through the intersection, headlights glaring at them from either side. Tires squealed as vehicles in the cross traffic slammed on their brakes, beeped their horns furiously at him.