by Sable Jordan
Navigating Green Lightning into one of the six spots available to truckers, Harold put her in PARK and went about his ritual shutdown for the night. Daily logs complete, he maneuvered to the head for much needed relief, double-checked the locks and remote-started the generator, and then peeled off the jeans and t-shirt he’d been wearing since Wyoming.
A TV-dinner and a show later, he was ready for bed. With a storm approaching, he needed to get as many miles in as possible before the roads became clogged by accidents like the one earlier today. Leaving the tube on for noise—sometimes it just got plain lonely on the road—he climbed into bed and dropped his head on the pillow.
Just as he reached sleep, a loud knocking brought him back from the edge. Generator? It was only a couple months old. Couldn’t be a problem already. He ignored it and drifted again, and then two hard thuds bolted him upright.
What in the world?
Harold pushed out of bed and dragged on his jeans, reached for where he kept his weapon. Louisville slugger. The meaty wooden bat didn’t need a license like a gun would. And he could still swing it like he did in college. It’d crack a head just as loud and far as it would a ball over the center-field fence.
Baseball. American as apple-pie and the best time of his life. The majors never came calling, but it didn’t make him love the game any less. When he was done with this drop he’d find some batting cages, get the blood pumping. Maybe he’d double back and catch that Royals game over in Kansas City.
Another series of bangs sounded against his door. From his post between the two captain’s chairs, he peered cautiously out the passenger window. A check to each side-view mirror revealed no immediate threats and he finally glanced out the glass on the driver’s side.
Well, what do we have here? And what was she doing out here this late? Had to be near 3AM. A woman as beautiful and young as her? No way she would be traveling alone.
She huddled into her coat; he tightened his grip on the bat. She could be running a con. Her buddies might be waiting out there to rob him. Wouldn’t be the first time someone tried something stupid.
“What?” he asked, knowing his mother wouldn’t approve of him barking at a lady in such a manner. But then, his mother had never been a long-hauler.
The woman pantomimed through the glass. What he could see of her face was distraught, her arms turning in a circular motion as he read her lips. “…a flat….help?”
He didn’t see a car. Then again, he wasn’t in the general parking area. She couldn’t have just materialized from nowhere, and his mother wouldn’t approve of him leaving a lady stranded. So Harold did the only thing he could.
“How ‘bout it, Jackrabbit,” he said into his CB radio, eyes still on the lady outside. “Gotcha ears on?”
A handful of seconds passed before the response came back. “Jackrabbit here, Green Lightning. Kick it in.”
Trucker lingo. Gotta love it.
Harold depressed the button again and started in with a man whose path he’d crossed many times before. Apart from his bat, his second line of defense was often another trucker.
“Any chance your ninety-nine brings you through Mizzou? Checked my eyelids for pinholes and got a bogie at my door.”: Your final destination come through Missouri? Was headed for bed, now facing a possible threat.
“What kind of bogie? Lot lizard?”
He peered out the window again. Apart from her shivering, the woman hadn’t moved. She didn’t look like a prostitute, but if she were she was at the wrong stop.
“Maybe a Bubblegummer, says she got trouble with a doughnut. But if she ain’t flyin’ solo and this turns into a 10-33, wanted you to know.”: Teenager, maybe, problem with her tire. But if she’s not alone and this turns into an emergency…
Harold relayed his location, held up his palm to the woman who, now that he thought about it, really didn’t look like a threat at all. Probably not a teenager but in her early twenties. Sort of short and thin. Pretty face, from what he could see.
“Flip-flopping in Nebraska going back toward Ohio. Fleabag had a drop in Mizzou this afternoon and no other prospects. Want me to check his 20?”
Outside, the woman tucked her chin a little deeper into her coat and Harold felt ridiculous for thinking she could possibly do him any harm. “Negatory, Jackrabbit.”
Between his size and his bat, he could handle her, and any of her friends too.
“Hit me when you’re through, Green Lightning. I’m gone.”
The transmission ended and Harold dragged on a coat, jammed his feet into a pair of boots before he opened the door to his rig. She stood there alone, and a quick sweep revealed her SUV in the standard lot.
“Got a flat you say?”
She nodded quickly and flashed a smile. “I must have picked up a nail or something. I’m so lucky it didn’t blow out.”
Her gaze went to the bat and she backed up, eyes going wide.
Harold grimaced. “Sorry. Can never be too sure on the road.” He hopped down and locked the door, sliding the keys into his pocket. Then he motioned with the bat. “After you.”
She went by him with the same caution that he approached the SUV. Once they’d crossed the lot, he checked out the vehicle to better assess the situation, the grip on his bat unwavering. On the passenger side he peeked through the rear windows. The slight tint made it even harder to see through them in the dark, but there were no silhouettes to indicate people. In fact, it appeared the woman was moving. Boxes were stored in the cargo hold and on the back bench, and he groaned at the thought of having to unload everything to access the spare.
He moved forward, checked the front passenger area. Empty.
Except for the gun resting on the seat.
He glanced at the woman but she rounded the front bumper.
“It’s over here. The rear one on the driver’s side.”
Harold frowned at the weapon but followed her to the tire that needed to be replaced, surprised to see the spare tire leaning against the driver’s door, a small jack beside it. The lug wrench was already secured to a nut on the wheel of the deflated rear tire, pointing straight out as though levitating over the concrete.
The woman pushed her hair behind her ears. “I wasn’t strong enough to get the nuts off,” she said apologetically. She chafed her tiny hands together. “Started getting cold and I couldn’t get a good grip.”
Harold chuckled, pointing the bat at the jack. “First you have to get the back end lifted up.”
She eyed the unused tool and frowned. “Oh.”
Smiling, he handed her the bat, noting how she trembled when she took it. The cold was seeping through his coat, too, so he needed to make this quick. “This won’t take but a minute and you can be on your way.”
Back end of the SUV raised, Harold bent and started torquing the lug wrench. The first nut wiggled free and he got to work on the next. The second was on tighter. Much too tight, actually, as if it’d been secured by an impact wrench.
Still hunched low, Harold gripped the metal tool with all his might, braced himself and twisted. It felt like it was loosening, just a quarter turn, and he dug deeper to get it free. He strained so hard he barely heard her soft “I’m so sorry.”
Something hard crashed down on the back of his head, over and over again, each strike bringing with it a familiar crack followed by a roar of the crowd so loud it deafened.
His knee hit the concrete.
The batter kept swinging.
Confusion filled his foggy thoughts. He’d never left home plate but he was sliding into the dirt, staring at the white ball as it soared away, over the wall, and then disappeared into the blackness.
Going…
Going…
Gone.
* * * *
Julie looked down at the bat’s bulbous barrel, the end spattered red and sprinkled with bits of gore and hair. Her fingers wrapped the handle so hard they cramped, and she could still feel the reverberations snake up her arms from each strike
of wood on skull.
She forced her gaze from the club to where the man, in a half crouch, had crumpled against the flat rear tire and the still-connected lug wrench. He was big, far too big for Julie to have fought outright, and he wasn’t moving. Or was he? Her heart pounded too hard to tell if his chest expanded and shrank, or if her eyes were playing tricks.
The gun would have been easier. But it would have been loud too. Julie wasn’t used to the bang, even with the sound suppressor on it.
She’d never killed a man before. Woman, either. Fay had; said when it came down to his life or hers, it was no more difficult than squishing a beetle beneath her boot.
Having done it now, Julie decided there was nothing easy about it. Her armpits tingled with a mix of adrenaline and fear, and by the way her stomach felt she was going to be sick.
A stiff breeze shook the few trees near the empty rest stop, and the eerie songs of crickets and other creepy-crawlies filled the silence. The feeling someone watched crept over her, but she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the body against her SUV. She had to be sure he was dead, or at least get him off her tire so she could inflate it and take off.
Please be dead...please be dead….
She couldn’t stomach any more of the noisy wet crunches hitting him made.
Julie nudged the trucker’s shoulder with the bloodied tip of the bat, the brush so soft his heavy body didn’t shift an inch. She sucked down a deep breath, mustered enough nerve to push again. The force wiggled the lug wrench loose and it clanged to the ground. Without it, the man rocked forward, a slow slide that wedged his mangled head into the well between the tire and the fender.
He groaned.
“Ahh!” Julie raised the bat with both hands and brought it down, over and over, beating him wherever she could until his face mashed freezing asphalt.
Quick bursts of air rushed out, seared her lungs on the way back in. Her frenzied mind tried to puzzle out how he was now positioned at such an angle that his face, neck, inside shoulder and outstretched outer arm were in the path of the rear tire. She’d have to move him.
Was he dead now?
Just grab his arm and drag.
The acid in her stomach churned; the locket hung heavy at her throat, a commanding weight. She clutched the heart-shaped pendant and drew a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she recalled the last words Fay had whispered to her as she stood before the cenotaph in Hiroshima:
“Over, under, or through. If the river wishes to kiss the ocean, it does not stop for the dam.”
Over, under, or through… Over, under, or through… A glance at the body. Neither of those seemed a palatable option at the moment.
Julie paced; went to the rear gate and opened the cargo hold. Brown boxes canted precariously against the window, and she yanked out several of the empty containers to reveal the small air compressor. She traded the bat out for the little machine.
First things first, inflate the tire.
Right after she lowered the car.
She was a trembling mess. Any minute now someone would come bumbling along and find out what she was up to, and then everything would be ruined.
A dam. Just a dam.
Get to the ocean.
The SUV came to rest on the ground once more, and Julie snatched the jack clear of the vehicle. Working over the trucker’s limp leg, she made the necessary connections and switched the compressor on, cringing at the noise. Not much she could do about it.
Now for the hard part. She stooped to take hold of the man’s arm. Instead, her shoulders lurched and she dry heaved, head pounding even more wildly from the loud, obnoxious put put put of the machine near her ear. In terms of decibels, it rivaled the generator running the Mac truck at the other end of the rest station.
The truck. Julie still had that to contend with. She let the tire fill to capacity and shut down the compressor, thankful for the silence. Then she took a crowbar from her SUV and crossed the lot to the black and purple cab with the green lightning bolt on the side.
And the rust colored shipping container she’d been tracking from California.
Using a sliver of the exposed trailer for a foothold, Julie hoisted her short frame up to reach the security keypad; recalled the code Akari sent days before via text message and entered it from memory. Lock rod and catches released, she swung open the rear door and hauled herself inside. A penlight helped her navigate crate after crate of fireworks. All the same, each one bearing the Hanabi, Inc. stamp and the company’s logo, a campy, five-petalled flower with sparklers shooting out from it. The late Mr. Hall’s version of an exploding cherry blossom, she supposed.
Julie needed the one that was different.
Toward the center of the container, she found what she was looking for. A box, like the others, stamped with Hanabi, Inc. across its wooden slats. Yet the flower was not the same. Instead of five short, rounded petals, these were longer, broader, the pink a deeper hue. Nerium oleander. She knew the flower well.
“I can hold the flowers, Matushka?”
…Puffs of dark pink filled her vision, and she took the bouquet, inhaling deeply.
Further proof of this being her intended box, Akari had scribbled a messy In-Yo symbol just beside the flower with a black sharpie. It wouldn’t look like much to someone unfamiliar, but it was tantamount to the X on a treasure map for Julie. She grinned.
This part she could handle.
A couple of pulls with the crowbar and the crate exploded, sending bits of packing straw all over. She cleared the rest away, locating the small tracking device in the process. Reaching into the near-empty container, she slid out a rectangular box. A little bigger than a portable metal cash drawer, it was much heavier, the lead-lined titanium protecting the precious cargo inside. With effort, she set it near the open rear door and went back inside to ransack the rest of the crates.
At her SUV, she secured the heavy box in a special container built into the floor of the cargo hold. She gathered up the tools from her ruse with the tire—minus the lug wrench and stray nut tucked beneath the trucker—and tossed them into the hold. Then she replaced the empty boxes, stacking them so she would once again be just another person making a long-distance move over the open American highways.
Hands on her hips, Julie stared at the dead body. One final bump in the road. She’d come too far to get squeamish now.
Newly determined, she dropped into a crouch and reached for the man’s arm, but couldn’t bring herself to touch him. What if he hopped up like in those horror movies Fay always tortured her with? That would creep her out.
The thought of those movies made her smile. She couldn’t wait for them to be together again.
Julie climbed into the driver’s seat and locked the doors; drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and huffed.
“Over, under, or through…” she muttered.
She turned the key in the ignition and shifted to DRIVE. One more huge breath and she slammed her foot down on the gas.
Over it would have to be.
Langley, VA
The office door flew open, smacking the wall so hard framed pictures and certificates danced a little jig, and the draft fluttered the papers covering the desk. Fletcher’s head snapped up; Agent Hayford stood in the frame, files in hand. Her navy pants and white blouse were immaculate, as always, but her hair was piled on her head in a sloppy chignon. Red-rimmed eyes looked ready to drop into the bags beneath them.
Since this business started with the kid, Rachel had been giving Fletcher the cold shoulder. Looking at her now, all tired and unkempt, he wondered what, or who, was keeping her up at night.
She lifted her chin and pushed back her shoulders. She shut the door and marched to the desk, slapping a file down directly on top of the expanding Ellerson report Fletcher was involved in. He frowned at her blatant disregard, not to mention her insolence in entering without knocking. No agent—previously screwing him or not—would think to do that to Fletcher. Before he could give voice
to her error, she pulled back the manila jacket, revealing a page with a series of pictures.
“These,” she stabbed down a manicured nail, “are all of the photos that have come in on Galletti’s phone from that untraceable sender.” Rachel leaned forward on his desk, brows drawn together over stormy violet-blues. “What do you see?”
Fletcher inhaled a breath and calmly lifted a pencil. Rocking back in the chair, he worked the length of wood around his fingers. “I see somewhere between breakfast and clocking in this morning, you obviously lost your mind, Hayford. Allow me to help you find it. Pick up your files, go out my door, and then—”
“Look at them.”
“You’re on thin ice here, agent,” he warned. “If you value your position with this department, you’ll do well to remember who you answer to.”
“And if you want to stay at the helm of this ship, you’ll get your head out your ass and look at the goddamned pictures, Dougie.” Her arms trembled slightly but, much like her heels, the crease between her brows dug in further. She tapped her finger on the page.
Fletcher glared a moment longer; dropped his view to the photos. Six in all, each wallet-sized so they fit on just the one page. Little boys. All of them smiling. Ages 7 to 13, if he had to guess, and every shot had been taken in the daytime, the backdrops bright and whimsical. One kid eating ice cream, another holding a soccer ball up to his face as though mesmerized by the single red pentagon amongst the rest of the black and white pattern.