by R. J. Jagger
“You’re so protective,” Alabama said.
“Don’t read more into it than there is,” Wilde said. “All I’m trying to do is avoid having to decide whether to rescue you or not, if Raven takes you.”
“You would.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
Wilde was 99 percent sure that Nicole wasn’t in any of the buildings he’d searched last night, so he started with a new one.
It was empty.
They went through a second one.
It was equally empty.
They came out the back. Wilde took his hat off and wiped sweat off his forehead. “It’s going to bust a hundred again today, guaranteed.”
“We’ll go home later and take a cold shower together,” Alabama said.
“Do you ever think of anything besides sex?”
She pondered it.
“No.”
Wilde smiled.
“Where were you when I was seventeen?”
At the back of the building was a truck dock with an expansive, dirt turnaround area. A weed-infested, potholed road led from there to a shed of some sort a hundred yards away.
Wilde stared at it.
It would be a long, crumby walk.
Forget it.
He headed back towards the street then stopped and looked back at the shed.
“Let’s check it out,” he said.
Alabama sat down in the shade.
“I’ll wait here.”
Wilde looked around, saw no one and said, “I’ll be right back.”
He pulled out a book of matches and set it on fire as he walked.
74
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Morning
Durivage could twist or make a sudden move. That would give him an edge but not a good enough one. The woman would still be able to react fast enough to stick the blade into his back.
They walked in silence.
A hundred yards, that’s all he had before they’d be back at the house. Inside it would be two against one.
His veins pulsed.
Sweat rolled down his forehead.
As he reached up to wipe it off, the woman dug the point in deeper, on the verge of breaking through the skin.
“Don’t,” she said.
He put his hand back to his side.
Sweat dropped into his right eye.
He blinked to get it out.
Most of it squeezed out and rolled down his check. A part of it stayed in and blurred his vision.
He blinked again.
Then several times.
There.
Better.
He could see clearly again.
Fifty yards, that’s all he had left now. The woman must have sensed his tension because she stuck the point in with increased purpose and said, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am,” she said.
Suddenly something happened that he didn’t expect.
A police car came up the street. Durivage waited for the driver to look at him, then quickly waved him over.
He braced for the stab.
It didn’t come.
The point came away from his back.
Durivage broke away and stuck his head in the window as the car came to a stop. The woman was walking away, briskly, throwing a nervous glance over her shoulder.
“Hi,” Durivage said.
The cop had short hair, a thick neck and several prominent red veins on his nose.
“There was a green car racing down the street a few minutes ago at a thousand miles an hour,” Durivage said. “You might want to keep a lookout for him.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know the make,” Durivage said. “It was big and green. There were two people inside.”
The officer nodded.
“Thanks, I’ll watch out for it.”
“I just don’t want to see a kid getting run over,” Durivage said.
“Right.”
As the cop pulled away, Durivage looked up the street to see the Mediterranean woman walking into Night Neveraux’s house.
He headed the opposite way at a brisk pace.
75
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Morning
Back at the law office, Jina checked around just long enough to confirm that no one had broken in or left any dead animals inside to rattle her, then headed outside for a walk. Her whole life, she’d always done what was right, without question, without hesitation. Moral dilemmas were not things that kept her up at night.
Now, however, she had one.
She’d let herself stall this morning and no longer had the time to physically dig up the scroll and get it to Taylor by noon, even if she wanted to. That would have gotten the target off Taylor’s back, Jina’s too for that matter. Life would have defaulted to a pre-scroll time, boring but safe. The dilemma was that even now she didn’t want to give it up, though failing to do so might result in Taylor’s murder.
She was selfish.
She hated herself.
She had let herself stall too long so the decision would be made for her.
Is that why she went to the university this morning with Taylor, not to find out if Twister was the woman in the cab, but to kill time so she could avoid the decision of whether to dig up the scroll?
Noon would come.
Whatever was destined to happen would happen.
She rationalized that she wasn’t the one threatening to hurt Taylor, the so-called client was the one doing it. Although that was true, it didn’t make her feel any cleaner.
She’d given Taylor a warning that the man had her in his crosshairs.
Wasn’t that enough?
No it wasn’t.
But the scroll had a hold on her.
It made her stall.
Why?
How?
She ended up in the financial district, soaking up the buzz. The air smelled like a combination of diesel, bar carpet and French fries. Lots of people were around, a sea of safety. No one would try to kill her in a place like this. She passed a sporting goods store, made a split-second decision and stepped inside. Ten minutes later she came out. Inside her purse, sheathed in leather, was a razor-sharp survival knife with a six-inch serrated blade and a black handle wrapped in leather.
She expected it to make her feel safer.
It did to an extent.
It also did the opposite to an extent.
One wasn’t enough.
She went back and bought two more just like it, one to hide in her apartment and the other to conceal in her office.
If the man came for her, she’d defend herself.
If he forced her to kill him, that was his choice.
76
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Morning
The shed was farther away than Wilde thought and beyond it were undeveloped spaces. Just for grins, he called to Alabama with a medium loud voice to see if she could hear him.
She couldn’t.
The structure was cinderblock, windowless, the size of a half-house, with a grey shingle roof. There was a double door in the front, secured with a padlock conspicuously shinier than it should be.
“Nicole!”
No answer.
He pounded on the door.
“Nicole! Are you in there?”
Silence.
He pounded again, harder, and then put his ear to the door.
He heard nothing.
He felt no vibrations.
She either wasn’t there or was unconscious.
He needed to get inside.
Right now.
This second.
The padlock was of a high quality and the doors were solid. A quick walk around the perimeter showed no windows or mortar weaknesses. He muscled onto the roof and found it strong and intact. Alabama must have seen him fussing around because she was walking towards him
.
He sat down in the shade and took his hat off.
His suit was a mess.
He’d probably have to throw it away.
“You got something?” Alabama asked.
“This would be the perfect place to keep someone captive for a couple of days, don’t you think?”
Alabama eyed it.
“From inside, you could shout and nobody would hear you even ten feet away,” she said.
Wilde showed her the new lock.
“There’s no way in,” he said.
Alabama walked around the structure, returned to the front and said, “You could always take the door off the hinges.”
Damn.
She was right.
The hinges were on the outside.
All he had to do was pop the pins out.
He kissed her, smack on the lips.
Then he used a rock and stick to pop the pins. He pulled the hinge-side of the door far enough out to let his body pass through and entered. The flashlight showed the interior to be one large space.
Nicole wasn’t there.
A pungent odor of urine permeated the air.
“What was this, a bathroom or something?” Alabama said.
No.
There was no plumbing.
No sinks.
No toilets.
“What you’re smelling is the remnants of someone who was kept here,” Wilde said.
“Who?”
“My guess is Jessica Dent,” he said. “The smell’s been here a while. It’s not recent.”
Alabama wrinkled her forehead.
“You expect me to believe that you can tell new pee from old pee?”
Yes.
He did.
“What’s your experience, exactly?” she asked.
“Just trust me, I can tell.”
They examined every square inch with the flashlights. “Hey, I might have something,” Alabama said.
Wilde looked to where she indicated, on the back wall.
The letters JD had been smudged onto the cinderblock with some type of brown substance, probably blood.
“What do you think?” Alabama asked.
“I think JD stands for Jessica Dent,” he said.
His heart raced.
“Keep looking around,” he said. “Maybe she wrote the guy’s name in here somewhere. If we find the word Raven, we’re done.”
77
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Afternoon
Durivage shadowed Night Neveraux’s house for over two hours before the vehicle in the driveway, presumably Night’s, finally disappeared. He didn’t know if both women left but at least one had. He approached the house from the back alley.
The back door was locked.
So were the windows.
He stepped into the cover of a dilapidated wooden shed and threw a fist-sized rock through the window.
The noise was deafening but no faces appeared inside.
No neighbors craned their necks or shouted.
He took a deep breath, walked at a brisk pace to the window and slipped inside, finding himself inside a bedroom. He began searching, quickly, tearing things apart, not caring that the search would be evident. Within ten minutes he had scoured the whole house and found nothing.
Damn it.
He walked out the back door towards the alley, getting out while the getting was good, when the falling-down wooden shack caught his eye.
No one would hide anything valuable in there.
The door had a lock but it was nothing.
He knocked it off with a rock.
Inside was a rusty lawnmower, a rake with bent fingers, an old lawn chair, assorted junk, a shovel with half the handle broken off, and more junk.
He inspected the shovel.
The break was new, not discolored like the rest of the wood.
The spade was rusty, but lots of the rust had been scraped off, particularly at the tip, suggesting recent use. He pulled the junk to the side and found freshly dug dirt.
He dug.
A foot down, he found a black bag, the kind a doctor would use.
He opened it.
Inside were jewels and valuables.
“Bingo.”
He closed it up, shoved it under his arm and got the hell out of there.
The air was hot, especially after the digging.
He didn’t care.
He felt great.
His thoughts turned to Zongying and the drunken sex last night. That was something he could get used to. He’d played around and had his fun, still was having fun in fact. But it might not be a bad idea to settle down and see what the world looked like from the other side.
Denver wouldn’t be an option though.
There was already too much baggage here—Michael Spencer and Kent Dawson, for starters. If Zongying didn’t want to move to Paris, maybe they could settle in San Francisco.
Yeah, that was it.
San Francisco.
78
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Afternoon
Noon came and went. Jina paced up and down in her office with the door closed but not locked. She had a knife strategically hidden in the top drawer of her desk and another behind the planter by the window. So far, no one had shown up to kill her.
She dialed the law firm and asked for Taylor.
“She hasn’t come back yet from lunch.”
Jina looked at her watch—2:12 p.m.
“Are you sure?”
Yes.
She was.
It had started.
Damn it.
It had actually started.
Taylor was a time slave, absolutely insistent on clocking at least forty billables each and every week. She usually took only 45 minutes for lunch and almost never more than an hour.
“Is Stephen Zipp in?”
“Hold on.” A beat, then, “He’s out of the office this afternoon in meetings.”
“Okay, thanks.”
What to do?
Her heart raced.
She should have just gone and gotten the scroll the minute she had the chance.
Suddenly the phone rang.
Be Taylor.
“Hello?”
Silence.
“Is anyone there?”
No response.
Then the connection died.
79
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Afternoon
There had been hotter summers but not many. Wilde took his hat off, wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked around for one more building to search.
It wasn’t there.
They’d searched every nook and hideaway that this part of the world had to offer.
Nicole was nowhere to be found.
He looked at Alabama and said, “You’re dying of thirst.”
“Maybe a little,” she said. “But I can keep going.”
Wilde shook his head.
“We’ll stake out Raven tonight and let him lead us to her,” he said.
“So we’re leaving?”
Yes.
They were.
On the way to the car, Wilde did something he didn’t expect, namely swung by the cinderblock shack for one final look. He’d already put the door back on the hinges and wasn’t in the mood to mess with it again.
He walked around the structure, looking carefully at the ground, then sat down on a board on the shady side. Alabama sat next to him and put her arm around his shoulders.
They didn’t talk.
A bark came from up the way.
Three stray dogs were trotting their way.
Alabama stood up and eyed them with suspicion.
“I don’t like dogs.”
“They won’t hurt you.”
“You don’t know that,” she said.
“Yes I do.”
“They could be sick or something,” she said. “You don’t know.”
<
br /> “They look fine.”
“They look hungry,” she said. “Light one of your fireballs.”
Wilde smiled.
“Those are only for friendly purposes, not for fighting.”
Alabama wasn’t impressed.
She reached into Wilde’s front pocket, pulled out two books of matches and got ready to fire them up.
Wilde laughed then closed his eyes.
The darkness felt like water.
Cool water.
Ice water.
The dogs came straight at them. Alabama crouched behind Wilde and said, “They’re going to bite.”
“If they do, bite ’em back.”
They were mangier than Wilde expected, nor did they swing around as he expected. Instead they stopped a step away, in position for a handout if one was coming. Wilde held his hands up and said, “Got nothing. You can eat the girl though if you want.”
The dogs studied him with curious yellow eyes, then trotted away.
Alabama punched his arm.
“Not funny.”
Wilde smiled.
“A little funny.”
She stood up.
“Okay, I’ll admit, a little funny.” A beat then, “I’m going to swing around the corner and use the facilities. No peeking.”
A minute later Alabama came around the corner in the process of fastening her belt and said, “Our friends found some food.”
Wilde didn’t care.
He pictured himself in a café with a cheeseburger and an ice-cold cherry-coke.
“Good for them,” he said.
He stood up and looked into the field. The dogs were fifty yards away, gnawing on bones.
“They found bones,” he said.
“Right.”
“Bones of what?”
“I don’t know.”
Wilde headed that way.
“Let’s have a look.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Come on,” he said. “It’ll only take a second.”
“Don’t bother a dog while it’s eating,” Alabama said. “That’s rule one. Especially stray dogs.”
Wilde smiled.
“Actually, rule one is that if you’re in a position where animals might attack, always be with someone who runs slower than you.”
80
Day Three