Threshold

by G. M. Ford

  What good he thought jumping in front of a moving motor vehicle was going to do was anybody’s guess, but as the van closed in, he scrambled to his feet and stepped out into the street. Standing on the white line, waving his arms above his head, X-ing them back and forth as if to signal Stop.

  Apparently, Gus Bradley hadn’t quite mastered the Stop semaphore. Mickey had just nosed the cruiser all the way out onto West Collier Street when Gus ran the crazy bastard over like a speed bump. Mickey watched in horror as the driver disappeared beneath the van.

  What saved the guy’s life was that the van had a lot of clearance under it. That and the fact that Gus hit him dead center, making it so none of the tires rolled directly over his body, thus sparing him a bunch of pulverized bones and several months in traction.

  Other than the initial force of the impact, which, from Mickey’s vantage point, looked painful as hell, most of the damage to the guy happened when some article of his clothing caught on the undercarriage of the van and he was dragged for half a block.

  By the time he disengaged and slid out from under the back bumper, he’d collected a world-class case of road rash.

  He was up on his skinned knees, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, when Mickey swerved the cruiser around him. He’d left most of his forehead somewhere on the asphalt. A welling patch the size of a clutch purse now seeped crimson from the area his furrowed brow had formerly called home.

  Mickey was watching the van roll off down the street and weighing his options when the screech of tires hijacked his attention. He looked back over his shoulder. A cloud of tire smoke rose into the air. Apparently, the cavalry had arrived.

  The blackout Chevy SUV skidded to a stop next to the Mercedes. Another GI Joe type jumped from the rear passenger seat and double-timed it over to his fallen buddies.

  The guy Gus Bradley had coldcocked was still down on the grass. The new hero stopped there first, throwing an arm under the guy’s shoulders and sitting him up. He said something. Tried again. To zero avail. The guy was in never-never land. Hero laid his colleague back on the grass and made a dash for the street, where the driver of the Mercedes was still down on his hands and knees dripping blood all over the pavement.

  Mickey watched the van pulling away with one eye and the scene in the street with the other. Hero offered a handkerchief. Driver took it. Pressed it to his brow. Hero said something. Got small shake of the head. He pulled a handheld radio out of his pants pocket and brought it up to his face. Whatever message he sent roiling out over the airwaves seemed to have the desired effect, because whoever was driving the SUV immediately lit up the tires, sending another oily cloud of smoke spiraling skyward, as the vehicle fishtailed around the corner and screamed up West Collier in hot pursuit of the van.

  Mickey Dolan stayed put, turning his face the other way as the SUV roared by. Then he counted a slow three, dropped the cruiser into gear, and joined the parade.

  He sorted through the situation in his mind. First off, he was way out of his jurisdiction, and should have called the locals the minute he got into town. That was going to be a number-one Grade-A pain in the ass. Secondly, assuming the guys in the black SUV worked for Relentless Technology, which seemed like a pretty good bet, then figuring out who had the right to do what, to whom, and how was about to get real confusing.

  Cassie Royster was in contempt of court, which, as far as the law was concerned, was a serious game-changer. She was a custodial fugitive, in violation of a court order. Once a legal decision had been reached, and you decided you were going to ignore it, a number of your constitutional rights immediately flew south for the winter. You became one of them instead of one of us.

  Because the cops possessed neither the manpower nor the inclination to chase petty criminals over hill and dale, they outsourced the chore to the private sector. Meaning sleazeball bail agents and sketchy skip-tracers suddenly had the legal right to place you under citizen’s arrest, which, Mickey figured, might be about where things stood at the moment. All in all, not a good situation.

  The van made a leisurely right turn at Burger King. The black SUV was two blocks back and closing fast. Mickey put his foot in it. The cruiser got up and went.

  By the time Mickey made it to the intersection, the SUV had closed the distance on the van. The skin on Mickey Dolan’s face began to tighten and tingle, like that electric buzz you feel in the air right before the onset of a thunderstorm.

  Looked like Gus was trying to get everybody back to the friendly confines of the city. At least, that’s the direction he was rolling in when the SUV swerved over into the oncoming lane, roared past him, and then swerved back over in front of the van.

  Mickey held his breath.

  And then . . . bang, red lights and a cloud of smoke as the SUV locked up the brakes. Mickey gritted his teeth and waited for the impact. Only the perfect combination of luck and skill could have prevented the van from plowing into the back of the SUV.

  But somehow Gus pulled it off. The van dodged left and then, a second later, veered hard to the right, shuddering out onto the shoulder, spewing dust and gravel into the air as it scrambled for traction.

  Just as it seemed the van would surely lose control and slide down into the ditch, Gus somehow willed it back onto the pavement, and went screaming off down the road.

  Not for long, though. The SUV had lost the element of surprise, and, from the look of it, Gus Bradley was a quick thinker. He knew there was no way he could hope to outrun these guys. Another mile and they’d be out in the cow pastures, where there weren’t any witnesses and these guys could get all medieval on them. Whatever was going to happen needed to happen right now.

  The speedometer read eighty-seven. Gus was driving down the middle of the road, not leaving enough room on either side for the Chevy to creep up on him, sweeping back into the right-hand lane only when oncoming eighteen-wheelers threatened to vaporize all of them.

  “Okay,” Gus said. “This is what we’re gonna do.”

  Dead silence. Cassie and the girls huddled together in the rear seat, looking like they were carved out of stone. Grace was hanging on to the overhead handle for all she was worth, but seemed to be in touch with her faculties, so Gus directed himself to her. “We’re comin’ up on the mall here in a second. When I pull this thing to a stop, you guys open the slider and run like hell for the mall. Leave all the stuff here and just run. Lose yourselves in the crowd. Lock yourselves in the ladies’ room. Do whatever you gotta.”

  “What are you going to do?” Grace wanted to know.

  “I’m gonna buy you a little time,” Gus said.

  Grace opened her mouth just at the moment when Gus crimped the steering wheel hard right, sending the van into a full drift as it slid toward the entrance to the mall parking lot. The van screeched in a half circle before coming to rest, facing back the way they’d come. Gus grabbed the shift lever and backed the van across the entrance. “Go,” he yelled, when they finally bounced to a stop.

  Mickey Dolan skidded to a stop on the shoulder. A hundred feet ahead, up at the entrance to the mall, Gus had the van wedged between the Northhaven Mall sign and the rough stone pillar intended to give the entrance a touch of baronial splendor. Gus was leaning against the driver’s door as the Relentless Technology SUV jerked to a stop.

  A pair of GI Joe clones hopped out of the car, the driver pulling a bright yellow Taser from the pocket of his jacket and the other one flicking a telescoping metal baton out to its full length. They spread out to the edges of the pavement and began to inch toward Gus. Apparently, the beat-down that Gus had perpetrated on their colleagues had made quite an impression. These guys were taking no chances.

  The driver pointed the Taser at Gus and, without further ado, pulled the trigger. Mickey watched the pair of silver wires float through the air. Watched the darts hit Gus full in the chest. If they’d imagined that a mere
fifty thousand volts were going to reduce Gus Bradley to a simpering mass of protoplasm, they must have been sorely disappointed, because all he did was jerk once from the juice, and then pull the barbs out of his chest and hurl them to the ground. From where Mickey sat, it looked like all they’d accomplished was to make him mad.

  Just as the two of them started shuffling toward Gus, Mickey’s peripheral vision caught a familiar flash of white out in the enormous parking lot . . . Grace . . . Grace and the Royster family, dodging cars, making for the Northhaven Mall’s front doors.

  A trio of cars had stacked up behind the SUV now. One of the drivers began blowing his horn, and then a second joined in. These folks were ready to do a little retail grazing and didn’t much appreciate being kept from it.

  Baton rushed forward with his arm raised above his head. Would have been a good move too, except that Gus Bradley was way too quick for him. Gus reached out and grabbed the guy’s neck like he was going to embrace him.

  Instead, Gus head-butted the guy’s nose flatter than a pie plate. GI Joe was still trying to come to grips with a caved-in face when Gus grabbed hold of his wrist. Took Gus about a second and a half to pull the baton out of the guy’s hand and rake him across the chops with it a couple of times. That’s when things went directly to hell. Cue the sirens.

  A pair of local police units, blue light bars ablaze, came roaring past Mickey. Up in the entrance, baton man had both hands cradling his face as he walked in wobbly circles, spitting blood. If body language was any indication, his partner was having serious second thoughts about whether or not this Relentless job paid enough for this crap.

  Mickey didn’t hang around for the festivities. He dropped the unmarked cruiser into gear and went blasting up the road just as the trio of local cops jumped from their patrol cars and began sprinting toward the fray.

  He drove all the way up to the next traffic light, hooked a right, and began driving along the north end of the mall. The driveway was way down the end, even with the front of the building. Mickey banged the unmarked car over a series of bright orange speed bumps, stopping half a dozen times to avoid running over pedestrians before finally coming to a stop directly outside Northhaven Mall’s front doors.

  He left the car running, got out, and stepped up onto the sidewalk. Grace and the Royster clan were still swimming across the crowded lot toward the doors. Now two rows from him, Grace was moving in fits and starts as she shepherded the girls through the maze of parked cars. Mickey waited.

  They were breathing heavy when they popped out from between a pair of Dodge pickup trucks and started for the front doors. Grace took one look at Mickey Dolan, standing there next to his car, and slid to a stop. Her mouth hung open; eyes were like icicles. She held out her arms to hold back the girls. By the time Cassie Royster puffed into view about ten seconds later, an insistent siren had begun to assault the air.

  Mickey gestured back over their heads toward the mall entrance and the clamor of pulsing blue lights. Yet another siren was wailing now.

  “Cops got Gus by now,” Dolan said. “You better get in.”

  “You’re a damn cop,” Grace said.

  “Not today,” Mickey said. “Get in.”

  Mickey swung the Forest Service gate back into place, and snapped on the padlock. From here on, the road was little more than an overgrown track, cut into the earth by wagon wheels better than a century and a half ago.

  Mickey climbed back into the driver’s seat. Tessa had moved up front and was sitting in Grace’s lap. Cassie and Maddy held down the back seat.

  “What’s this place?” Tessa asked, as Mickey began to drive slowly along in the narrow ruts.

  “This is a homestead,” Mickey answered. “Only piece of private land in the whole National Forest.”

  Beneath the car, the overgrown vegetation slapped against the undercarriage as they crept along. “Is there a witch?” Tessa asked.

  “No witch,” Mickey said. “Just a cabin.”

  Maddy was up on her knees now, her face between the seats. “It’s like Grandma’s place,” she said. “Huh Mama?”

  Cassie hadn’t spoken a word since they’d left the mall. All that adrenaline coursing through her veins seemed to have doused her demons a bit. “My mother,” she said as she gazed out at the forest. “My dad brought her there when she was seventeen.” She sighed. “Going to carve a life out of the wilderness, he was. Ended up living there for the rest of her life.”

  “Where was that?” Mickey asked.

  “Idaho. Banks, Idaho.”

  “Never heard of Banks.”

  “Doesn’t show on maps,” she said. “You want to get mail, you got to go over to the Thomasville store. That’s the nearest post office.” Cassie coughed out a short bitter laugh. “I’d have done just about anything to get out of there.”

  “Funny how some people are just destined to live and die in one place,” Grace piped in, “and others . . . seems like . . . like they’re just born to run.”

  “Thank you Mr. Springsteen,” Mickey joked.

  Grace had a rich laugh. Not a giggle or a twitter, but a rich contralto that rattled around her chest for a bit before she spit it out.

  Mickey wheeled around the final bend and the cabin appeared in front of them.

  Varnished logs. Shake roof. Short and stout. Designed to withstand six feet of snow on the roof and seventy-mile-an-hour winds whipping in over the mountains.

  The girls were out of the car and running for Bluewater Creek. “Come see, Mama,” Tessa called over her shoulder.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Maddy said, grabbing her mother by the hand and dragging her along the leaf-covered path.

  “Help me with the shutters?” Mickey asked.

  Grace shrugged and followed him over to the cabin. She watched him unlatch and then fold back the first pair of storm shutters. “Got it,” she said and then disappeared around the south side of the cabin.

  Five minutes later, they met at the back of the house.

  “How’d you come to own a place like this?” Grace asked. “You don’t seem like the woodsy type to me.”

  “I’m not,” he assured her. “Far as I’m concerned, the only excuse for camping out is that your house burned down.” He pulled open the last pair of shutters. “My ex’s great-great-grandfather homesteaded this place back in the 1830s. When we split up, we didn’t have a prenup or anything like that, so I ended up with a half interest as community property.”

  “Why didn’t you sell it? Isn’t that what people do when they get a divorce?”

  “Because other than this ten acres right here, the rest of it got declared a National Forest, back in the 1930s, which means we can’t sell it to anybody except the US Forest Service, so we just decided to keep it for as long as we can.”

  “This is the wife who left you for Joanna Bloom?”

  “The very same,” Mickey said, dusting off his hands and starting around the corner of the cabin.

  “I’m sorry,” she said from behind him.

  “No need,” Mickey said. “It is what it is.”

  “I sounded like my mother there.”

  “I’ve met your mother,” Mickey joshed.

  “Then you know how scary that is.”

  She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. He stopped and turned in her direction, and then looked down at her hand. It was almost as if you could see through her skin, down into the inner workings of sinew and bone.

  “I didn’t mean to be hurtful,” she said.

  Mickey tried to seem nonchalant. “Comes with the territory,” he said. “Your lady leaves you for another lady . . . especially if you’re a cop . . . you’re going to take some static about it. It’s just the way of the world.”

  Grace wasn’t buying it. “I don’t know much about the ways of the world,” she said. “Sometimes I’m ru
de when I don’t mean to be.”

  “Love’s . . . love’s tough sometimes.”

  “I wouldn’t . . .” She stopped herself, but her face kept talking.

  “Never been in love?” Mickey asked.

  She shrugged. The muscles along her jaw rippled like snakes.

  The rustle of wind in the pine trees was swept aside by a sudden high-pitched squeal and the slap of shoes on winter leaves. Maddy and Tessa rounded the corner of the house at a full gallop. “Can we go inside?” they squealed in unison.

  “Sure,” Mickey said.

  The girls took off running. “Come on, Gracie,” Maddy shouted.

  Grace threw Mickey a smile and then took off running after them.

  Mickey had the urge to wax poetic about how quickly kids got over things, but managed to stifle it. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and started around the house.

  Out in the front yard, Cassie Royster was pumping the hand pump. A thick stream of water slopped onto the ground below. She looked up. “Just like my mom’s house,” she said, with a wistful smile. “Couple years after I left for good, they finally got electric power, but they never did get around to indoor plumbing.”

  “You should feel right at home then,” Mickey said.

  Whatever transient joy she’d derived from the pump faded in an instant.

  “This is all my fault,” she said. “If I’d just done what Gus told me.”

  “Spilt milk at this point,” Mickey said. “Hopefully we learn from our mistakes and do better the next time.” Apparently, that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She looked even more stricken.

  “Come on . . . take a look at the cabin. It’s pretty cool,” Mickey said.

  Grace and the girls waited impatiently on the porch as Mickey found the right key and pulled open the door, then stepped aside and let the girls go inside first. They found the bunk beds on the first try.

  Maddy wanted the top bunk, so naturally Tessa did too. Cassie followed them inside, just in case dispute resolution was required.