Every Day Above Ground

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “Jimmy must have told them how to open it,” I said.

  “He would never help—”

  “He would if they threatened Nakri or their kids,” I said. “He’d give up the money in an instant.”

  Hollis’s scowling face shifted rapidly to regret. “Then they made Jimmy send me that text, asking me to come to the boat. But he wouldn’t allow them to lure me in. Ah, Jimmy.”

  The hunters. It had to be. Fekkete was out of the picture. The Sledge City fighters were vicious, but not clever. How had they found Corcoran?

  O’Hasson. They had held him for a week. He’d told me himself that Marshall and the others had squeezed him for any information about the gold every day he was captive. That they had threatened Cyndra. They could have broken him. Maybe the little burglar would do whatever he was told, even after he was out of their hands, just to protect himself and his daughter. We might all be compromised.

  Hollis had replaced the blanket over Corcoran. He looked dazedly at the starboard side of the cabin and the gaping compartment.

  “Why would they have left him like this?” he said. “Why go to all the trouble?”

  “A message, I suppose. ‘Take what belongs to us, and this is what you get.’” There was a dark whimsy to the act of hiding Corcoran, like his corpse was some prank.

  “I mean like this.” He motioned to the lump under the blanket. “Rolled up. How could he fit?”

  “That was my doing.”

  Hollis didn’t need to voice his question.

  “We have to move him,” I explained. “Soon.”

  “Move him?”

  I kicked myself for not seeing it earlier. Hollis was in shock. Mild, maybe, but still not firing on all his cylinders.

  “Come on.” I walked outside, and after a moment Hollis followed. I slid the door closed and we sat down across from one another.

  “The quicker Jimmy is found,” I said, “the sooner we can help Nakri. She’ll have to know. Which means either we call 911 now and bring them here, or we move Jimmy somewhere the cops will discover him quickly. You know which choice is smarter.”

  “And you—you shifted him. For what? To fit into a sail bag or some horrible thing?”

  I bit my tongue. Logic wasn’t going to help my case here.

  Hollis looked through the glass door. The wretched lump of the blanket seemed to draw his gaze as surely as his thoughts. When he turned back to me, his eyes had a sheen of tears.

  “Your soul needs help, Van,” he said. “I know your road hasn’t been easy. I know your grandfather, for whatever love he held for you, could be a cold unbending bastard. But even he would have given our man a moment. Just one.”

  “Hollis—”

  “You leave now. I’ll look after Jimmy.”

  I went.

  Thirty-Two

  I reached Addy on her phone on the third try, just as I was cresting the hill.

  “What on earth—” she started.

  “Where’s O’Hasson?”

  “I was resting. Has that been you calling?”

  “Addy.”

  “Calm yourself. He and Cyndra went down to the arboretum. I told them to. It’ll do them—”

  “Driving or walking? How long have they been gone?”

  “Walking, of course.”

  “Did O’Hasson go anywhere this morning? Did he take your car?”

  “I’ve been asleep, Van. I was up most of the night with one or both of them. Now tell me what’s happening.”

  I hung up.

  Walking, they wouldn’t have gone far. Not in the kind of condition O’Hasson was in. If the little son of a bitch hadn’t been faking his weakness. Right now, I couldn’t trust anything.

  I entered the park off of Madison and slowed, trying to spot them on the footpaths I could see from the road. The arboretum was extensive. Gardens and shelters and small forests. There were a lot more walking trails hidden from view. If they had decided to go for a hike—

  There. A flash of Cyndra’s raven hair, through the trees just off to my right. I sped past and ignored the do not enter signs to leave the truck in the nearest lot by the Japanese garden, and ran back.

  “Hey,” Cyndra said as I came pounding across the road. She was kneeling on the dirt path in front of a pond left by the rains, as the waterbugs skipped over the surface. I brushed past her. O’Hasson was forty feet farther along, checking out the little stone caretaker’s cottage that had stood on the grounds for most of a century.

  I grabbed him by his arm, my hand going almost all the way around his thin bicep.

  “Move,” I said, steering him around the cottage, where we would be out of view.

  “Van?” Cyndra said.

  “The fuck?” O’Hasson tripped, and I dragged him along without pausing.

  “Jimmy Corcoran is dead,” I said so the kid wouldn’t hear. “Somebody murdered him this morning.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” said Cyndra, running to catch up.

  “It was the same men who kidnapped you, and you’re the only link between them and Corcoran.” I pressed O’Hasson against the gray stone wall. “So you’re going to tell me what you know, or I’ll put you in a sack and drop you in front of Pacific Pearl with a sign around your neck.”

  O’Hasson went white.

  “Van, stop it,” Cyndra said.

  “Tell me, Mickey.”

  “I been here,” O’Hasson said. “With the old lady, all the time.”

  “It’s true!” Cyndra said.

  “Phone calls,” I said.

  “Nothing.” He tried to twist away.

  People had always told me I reminded them of my grandfather. Today I felt like him. I looked at O’Hasson, and he shrank back against the rough stones.

  “Don’t lie to me,” I said.

  “I swear.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Cyndra said. She pulled at my arm that was holding O’Hasson. She weighed about as much as one of the skipper bugs.

  “They killed Jimmy,” I said, “and they took the gold. All of it.”

  O’Hasson’s knees buckled. His body stayed where I had pinned it to the wall.

  “Did you tell them where it was?” I said.

  He shook his head, as if trying to wake up.

  “What did they promise you, Mickey?”

  His bright eyes were wide with shock. But he didn’t look away. Was he telling me the truth? Or too terrified to talk?

  Cyndra pulled harder.

  “Please,” she said. “Please don’t hurt him.”

  I let O’Hasson go. He crumpled to the ground, and Cyndra followed, catching him. I left them there, huddled together against the fairytale cottage.

  Thirty-Three

  I hadn’t been at my house in a week. The wooden frame looked frailer than before, as if neglect had starved it. Some kids had been flinging rocks. Dents and splinters marked the street-side boards. I sat at the top of the stone steps, legs dangling into the space between the remnants and the yet-to-be, and thought about what the hell to do next.

  Nothing could fix what had happened. The gold was gone. Jimmy Corcoran was gone. My options were down to zero.

  I reached out to grab a rock myself. Maybe I could bounce it off the second-story window frame. Stuck firmly to the underside of my sleeve was a bit of curled white paper. I peeled it off.

  It was round and shiny, and it took me a moment to place it. It was the back side of one of Corcoran’s little GPS trackers for Cyndra, the paper you peeled away to expose the adhesive.

  The bit of paper hadn’t been on my sleeve before I was at the boat. It must have stuck there while I was moving—

  Jimmy. I had reached under his body to lift him away from the hull. The paper had been underneath him.

  But where was the tracker?

  I grabbed my phone and pulled up the app Corcoran had installed for me, the one that could ask the trackers to send a signal. Turned it on. It showed one tracker curre
ntly active. I hit the key to have it give me its coordinates. A Google map appeared, with one bright orange dot blinking on it.

  East. Way east, almost out of the county. A long long way from Hollis’s boat.

  Jimmy, you brilliant, brave son of a bitch.

  You tagged the bastards.

  Corcoran must have known they were likely to kill him. He’d done his best to warn Hollis away from the Francesca. And amazingly, he’d kept his head enough to palm a tracker and slap it on one of the cases.

  Would they spot it? The tracker was covered in black rubber. Unobtrusive. Nobody was going to move a hundred-pound suitcase around more than they had to. I told myself all these things during the next half-hour of frantic driving, holding on to hope.

  The orange dot blinked. I wouldn’t ask it for another signal until I was right on top of the last coordinates. Jimmy had said the tracker had enough juice for two, maybe three signals at the most. If the hunters were in motion, driving out of town, I was fucked.

  The roads grew narrower and the clusters of businesses spread farther apart. I was headed for cow country, the valley around Carnation or Fall City. My tires sang as I pressed the accelerator harder, the Dodge soaring past every citizen making their way home on Route 202.

  I followed the map southeast, off the highway onto a country road. The broad expanse of the valley slowly revealed itself through the trees. On the floodplain, roads and buildings were built on man-made earthworks, four or more yards above the valley floor. The road I was driving on would become a causeway surrounded by marsh in the wet season. Now, at the height of summer, it was like an elevated track, almost as tall as the light rail running above Pacific Pearl.

  A half-mile farther along, the road had deteriorated to a single lane made of cheap recycled asphalt. I passed what looked like a half-finished drainage project. A wide ditch ran parallel to the lane. A white Hino hauling truck was parked on the far side of the ditch, its flatbed loaded with a pyramid of long concrete pipes, each two feet in diameter.

  I was very close to the tracker coordinates on the map. I stopped the truck. Would the tracker give me one more signal?

  There. The coordinates hadn’t moved. Barely a quarter-mile away, directly across a field of grasses and scrub. I pulled into the drainage site to leave the Dodge behind the big Hino truck with its cargo of pipes. The Smith & Wesson came with me.

  I climbed down the embankment from the road and began to pick my way through the brush. The tips of the tallest rushes caught in my hair, every step creating a tiny avalanche of seeds. My head filled with the weighty hot smell of pollen and the tangible buzz of a hundred insects.

  A farmhouse and barn came into view, a hundred yards off. I bent low. When I had closed half the distance, I began crawling.

  The farmhouse, once white, was now a grayish ivory. The barn had always been brown. Elements had bleached its color and beaten it down until was a few degrees off true from any direction. The Chevy Impala parked in front of the barn was so clean by comparison that its crimson paint shined like a ruby in the middle of a cowpat. I’d seen that Impala before, when Boule and his men had come after me at the train station.

  The hunters were home tonight.

  There was another small square building, almost a shed, behind the farmhouse. Smooth concrete on a similar base, with a flat roof and a metal door. It might have been intended as a waterproof storage space in the event of flooding. Keep the lawnmower and the power tools safe and dry.

  More recently, I would bet that the shed had held Mickey O’Hasson. A good, isolated spot for Ekby’s team to hide their victim.

  The sun had dipped halfway behind the far hills. Shadows stretched, tentatively at first. No lights on in the house.

  Maybe I had been wrong about Ekby’s team being here now. If they were away, it might mean a chance to find the suitcases in the house. But if they returned while I was tossing the place, it would be a long and dangerous run from the house to the nearest cover.

  I had just decided to wait until full dark, when the front door opened and Marshall came out.

  He was dressed in the hunters’ usual business attire, white dress shirt and sand-colored sport coat and trousers. In his left hand he held a garment bag, and a carryall was tucked under that same arm. He pointed keys toward the crimson Impala. It beeped obediently. He opened the backseat, tossed the luggage inside, and returned to the house.

  They were moving out. Now that Ekby had Fekkete and the gold, her hired guns were closing up shop.

  Five minutes passed. The buzzing of the bugs increased in volume as darkness took hold. A light clicked on upstairs in the farmhouse. Someone in a blue shirt passed it. Two of them inside, then. At least.

  Take them at the house? I had the advantage of surprise. They had home turf and numbers. There might be more than two of them.

  You know the smart thing to do, Corcoran snarled in my mind.

  Wait by the door for them to come out. If it was just Marshall alone, loaded down with more luggage, then I could choke him out, and take the other in the house before he missed his buddy. If more than one emerged—

  Just shoot the fuckers.

  Part of me wanted to. An unforgiving part, as ruthless in its way as Ingrid Ekby or any of her men. It wasn’t like I hadn’t killed before. And what was this if not another kind of war?

  Then do them, and that crazy bitch.

  Can’t do it, Jimmy. I’ll make sure your family is taken care of. I’ll make their whole crew sorry they ever set foot in my city. But I can’t murder them.

  Idiot.

  Yeah. Probably.

  The porch light clicked on as the door opened again and Marshall came out carrying another two bags. Apparently that thick neck made him the bellhop of the team. He loaded them with the others into the backseat. Not the trunk.

  Because the trunk was full of something else, I realized.

  Gotcha, you bastards.

  They had almost certainly left the cases in the car after fleeing from the marina. Why bother lugging the heavy things into the house if you were skipping town as soon as possible? Marshall went back inside, as if in a hurry to get on the road.

  Now. It was dark enough. A half-mile past the farm, I could see the lights of the highway. That would be my way out of the valley.

  I moved across the open ground to the Impala, grateful with every step that the farm drive was soft dirt. The car windows were down and the door unlocked. I softly pulled the trunk release and eased the lid up.

  One blue metallic suitcase. I popped it open. The plain canvas duffels with their gold were still inside.

  Half. A whole lot better than nothing. But what had they done with the red case in the hours since they’d left the Francesca? Was it inside the house?

  Movement to my right, in the doorway.

  I ducked behind the car. There was a shout and a bullet ripped metal from the open trunk lid. The crack of the shot echoed through the valley. I drew and returned fire through the doorway, half aiming, half giving myself cover as I dove into the driver’s seat.

  Another shot splintered the rear window. The angle of the Impala put the rear of the car between me and the house, but it wouldn’t be long before they flanked me, or fired from the second story right through the car roof, or any number of tactics that could finish me fast. I jammed the awl point of my multi-tool into the ignition and smacked it with the heel of my hand. Pulled it out and did it again. More shouts outside. I glanced over the seat, to see Marshall running off the passenger side, headed for the cover of the shed. I let him go. The other hunter would be moving left, and that would give him a clear shot at me through the open car door.

  There. He glanced around the corner of the house and ducked back. I aimed this time and blew off a jagged chunk of the wood trim at head level, just to keep him honest.

  I smacked the awl one last time and pulled it out of the ignition. The lock pins would have fallen into place. Should have. Insert screwdriver. Turn. And ga
ve thanks when the engine roared in answer.

  A shot cracked off the hood, and a second went wide as I hit the gas and the Impala leapt forward, dirt flying behind it. More shots. The back window took another hole, and then I was onto the cracked and bumpy lane flying south, feeling like it was the road to heaven. Bye-bye, assholes.

  The hunters still knew about the Francesca. I’d call Hollis, convince him to take it offshore for a while. Then we’d figure out how to set Ekby and her team up for a hard fall. Maybe find a way to plant evidence linking them to Jimmy’s murder. That would be fitting.

  O’Hasson and Cyndra would need protecting, too. I wasn’t convinced that O’Hasson didn’t have something to do with the hunters finding Corcoran so quickly. But that didn’t mean I would let the vengeful—

  The road was blocked.

  There had been no detour or warning signs. But a giant Caterpillar bulldozer was parked across the narrow lane, its treads nearly draped over either side of the embankment. No way around it.

  Oh shit. I would have to go back.

  I hauled the Impala around so fast that the open trunk lid bounced and slammed itself shut.

  I’d driven at least two miles from the farmhouse. The hunters must know the road was closed in this direction. That I would have to turn around and come back. Could they block the road at their end? I hadn’t seen another vehicle at the farmhouse. Maybe they’d just wait and blow my tires to shreds. Followed immediately by me.

  In another thirty seconds, the lights of the farmhouse in view, I got my answer.

  Headlights. Big headlights, on an equally big truck with a white square face. The Hino flatbed. Two hundred and thirty horsepower and hauling six tons of concrete pipe. Far off but coming fast. Head-on.

  Thirty-Four

  Nowhere to run. I slammed on the Impala’s brakes and sent it skidding sideways. For an instant I thought it might jitter off the road into the deep ditch, but the treads held. I shifted into reverse and spun the car around, and when I hit the gas again, the Hino was only fifty yards behind me, coming down like a hammer on a nail.