by Reid, Ruby
The driver obeyed, the tires on the black car squealing a bit as he rocketed through the red light and to the open road beyond. Alex placed the Glock under his left leg, trapping it between his leg and the seat. It was warm from where it had just spent two rounds.
Alex kicked the bike into gear, giving chase. He kept his head down as low as possible, certain that Marco would start popping off shots as soon as they established a good lead. Sure enough, the first shot came within ten seconds, the bullet missing wide right and pinging off of the road.
Alex brought the Glock up and fired back. He heard the metallic sound of his round tearing into the back of the car. He fired one more time, bringing the aim up a bit, and fired at the back glass. It splintered, but did not break.
He took careful aim once more—hard as hell to do while driving his bike at sixty miles per hour—but never got the chance to take the shot. Unexpectedly, the car took a harsh right turn. It struck and jumped a small concrete divider that separated a warehouse parking lot from the street. Alex knew that hitting the divider with his bike would be disastrous, so he had nothing to do other than speed ahead, looking for the entrance to the lot.
It came into view ten seconds later. Alex turned a hard right into the lot and sped in the direction he had seen the black car go. There were a few cars in the lot, but none with the passenger window blown out. The warehouse loomed ahead, offering a churning sound of machinery to the night. A few sparse overhead lamps shone down, but the light they cast was weak.
Alex made his way quickly to the edge of the lot where a small loading road wound around to the back of the building. It was the only place the car could have gone. He slowed his speed and crept down the road, finding that it emptied out behind the building where several loading trucks and empty pallets lay scattered along the side of the building.
Had it not been for the puttering of his bike’s engine, he would have heard the car revving up behind much sooner.
As it was, he heard it about three seconds too late. When he heard the sound of the car’s engine behind him, he wheeled around, bringing the Glock up and nearly spilling the bike.
Again, he didn’t have time to shoot. The car was coming straight for his bike and it wasn’t stopping. The headlights were on, glaring directly into his face and momentarily disorienting him. Alex was able to bail at the last minute, leaping from his bike awkwardly. His foot hung up on the seat as the car plowed into the bike, and he went spinning in an almost comical fashion to the pavement.
He sat up at once, bringing the Glock up with him, gasping for breath because the wind had been knocked out of him. The car was backing away from the bike, its front end dented and giving off a mist of steam from under the hood. Alex saw right away that the back of the bike was wrenched and almost obliterated completely. His heart sagged a bit at this, as he’d had that bike for almost five years and loved it more than he had loved some people in his life.
“Stop!” Alex screamed, the sights of the gun now aimed squarely at the passenger window. Rage boiled within him, begging to be let loose.
That’s when he saw that there was only one person behind the wheel. But he knew there had been two people in the car when it had come into the lot. So where in the hell was the other person and—?
Something dry exploded at the back his head. Following the pain that enveloped his head, he smelled wood and dust. One of those damned pallets, he thought, the idea spinning through and out of his head like a dust devil.
When he hit the ground, he saw fragments of one of the pallets all around him. The world went black and red for a moment as fireworks of pain flared in his head.
As he tried to collect his thoughts and senses, he felt a heavy foot come down hard on his back. He was planted firmly to the ground, his chin grinding against the pavement beneath him.
But the weight behind the foot was weak and with a single ferocious wrenching of his body, he was able to move. He shoved the foot away and rolled over just in time to catch a kick to the stomach. Above him, he saw a man that he had never seen before grinning down at him. “Marco figured it would be fun to not kill you outright,” this man said. “It’s time for payback first.”
That’s mistake Number One, asshole, Alex thought.
The thought was cut short by another boot to the gut. Behind him, he heard the car door of the car open and close. A set of feet came towards them, joining in on the beating. Alex looked around the vicinity for the Glock that he had dropped after being hit by the pallet, but couldn’t find it. He then looked up to the new attendant and saw that it was Marco.
“You broke my driving arm,” Marco said, indicating the cast on his right arm. “So I had to hire a driver.”
At the word driver, the other man delivered a hard kick into Alex’s back. It took the wind out of him, but he remained on the ground, trying to figure out his options. So far, the stooge hadn’t shown any real strength, although his attacks came pretty quickly. As for Marco, he moved with the speed of an injured turtle, so he wouldn’t be much of an issue.
“Alright, Larry,” Marco said to his partner in crime. “Stand him up.”
Idiots, Alex thought, amazed at how careless they were being. He sometimes forgot that not everyone was as skilled at fighting as he was. Yes. Please. Get me back on my feet, in an optimal fighting position.
He pretended that the two kicks and the attack with the pallet had hurt him more than they actually had (although, truth be told, his head was still aching and he felt blood trickling down around his ear). When he felt Larry’s hands fall roughly on his shoulders, Alex nonchalantly slid his hand over one of the fragments of the broken pallet that had rested near his head on the ground. He let Larry think that he was bringing him to his feet and then snapped fully alert and firing on all cylinders in a split second.
He tossed his head back hard, connecting squarely with Larry’s face. There was a thud as the back of Alex’s head collided with Larry’s forehead. Alex then lunged forward and brought the fragment of the pallet hard across Marco’s face. A sound like hamburger being dropped on the floor filled the back of the lot from the impact.
Marco screamed and tried raising the gun with his left hand but before he could get it up, Alex brought the fragment of board down on Marco’s casted right arm.
The wood exploded and Marco let out an explosive yell of pain. He then dropped the gun as he fell to his knees, still wailing in pain. Alex took advantage of this by slamming his knee into Marco’s face. With Marco on the ground, writhing in pain, Alex took the gun Marco had been using… a handgun that was almost identical to Jameson’s.
He then turned back to Larry who was just now coming to his senses. Larry was a brute of a man ,and since Alex didn’t see himself having time to have a respectable fight with the man, he did the only thing he knew to do. He ran up to him and delivered a devastatingly hard kick to Larry’s balls. Larry dropped to his knee,s and when he did, Alex delivered a hard right hand to his chin, knocking him out cold. Both attacks took less than two seconds.
Alex turned back around to Marco and leveled the gun at his head. It was all happening so fast, and he was reminded how good it felt to be in a fight. He had always been good in them, even from the playgrounds of his youth. He was always in control, always moving and thinking two or even three steps ahead. It was no different now as he approached Marco with the gun in his hand.
Earlier, as he had been haunted by thoughts of beating up Marco in Chicago, Alex had wondered if he would ever have the guts to kill the man if it came to that. Now, under the cover of night and with his bike having been badly damaged, he couldn’t wait to pull the trigger.
“How did you know we were here?” Alex asked.
“I’m not telling you shit,” Marco said.
Alex shrugged and brought a hard stomping motion down on Marco’s cast. Something cracked; whether it was the cast or Marco’s arm, Alex wasn’t sure. Nor did he care.
When Marco opened his mouth to scream out in pain, Alex placed t
he gun inside of it. Marco’s eyes went wide, and he started to tremble. Alex could hear the man’s teeth clattering against the barrel. A tear ran down his face, and Alex could tell by his expression that it embarrassed the hell out of Marco.
“How?”
“Found out from one of your boys,” Marco said, his tongue finding it hard to speak around the barrel of the gun. He sounded like a little kid that was trying to speak with a mouthful of food.
“Who?” Alex asked, pushing the barrel in even further.
That’s when a noise behind them sounded out—a hydraulic sound followed by a bang. Alex looked up and saw a man wearing a hard hat standing at the top of a set of steel stairs. Behind him, a door was opened revealing the murky light of the warehouse. The hum of machinery spilled out of it.
“What the fuck is going on?” the man said.
“Not your business,” Alex called, looking to the ground so the man wouldn’t have a clear description.
“This is a place of business,” the man said. The graveyard shift, Alex said. Of course. Shit.
“Then get back to your business,” Alex called out.
“I will, as soon as I call the police. Better get a good running start, buddy.”
“This does not concern you,” Alex screamed to him, looking to the ground so the guy couldn’t get a straight look at his face.
“Last chance,” the man said. “I’m calling the police.”
Shit, Alex thought, nearly pulling the trigger anyway.
Alex leaned down into Marco’s face, so close that their noses were touching. “You better give that nosy asshole a big hug,” Alex said. “He just saved your life.”
He then withdrew the gun from Marco’s mouth and clubbed him over the head with it. When Marco was on the ground, he looked back to the man on the stairs and saw that he was running back inside.
“Great,” Alex said.
He looked to his bike and saw that even if it would crank again (which was questionable), there was no way it would steer properly. He then considered the partially wrecked car that had nearly killed him but that was no good, either. He’d stick out like a sore thumb on the streets, and that was not something he needed — especially if the employee that had just interrupted him really was going to call the cops.
With no other option, Alex ran for the far edge of the parking lot where another lot joined it. Behind this one, there was a row of dumpsters and a chain link fence. On the other side of the fence, a small strip of grass led to what looked like a salvage yard of sorts. Beyond that, there was a fence and the welcoming lights of the city. It was one hell of an obstacle course, but it was better than walking down the street for a man that would likely have the police looking for him within a matter of seconds.
Alex ran along the dumpsters and scaled the fence. If the warehouse had any security guards, Alex never heard from them at all. He was over the fence and running across the salvage yard towards the lights of the city unobstructed. Being unfamiliar with the city did not bother him at all. Most larger cities were laid out the same way, the streets widening out and separating a bit further form one another as the downtown district faded away into the distance. He was able to find his way around easily enough, keeping his eyes and ears peeled for any sign of the police as he moved through the dark.
As he ran, he wondered if Jameson was in the back of an ambulance yet. And beyond that, he wondered how Amanda was. He thought about calling her, but remembered that he had left his phone with Jameson.
He came to the small wooden fence at the end of the salvage yard and climbed it with a boost from an old battered hood from an old abandoned work truck. When he hit the other side, he found himself in the parking lot of an abandoned retail store of some kind. Across from this was a two-way street. He followed this street for two blocks, looking for any landmarks that clue him to where he was.
As he walked, he got his first real break of the night. A city bus was parked along the side of the street, taking on two passengers. Alex rushed forward and got there just in time. He dropped his fare into the box at the front of the bus and took a seat in the back. He put his head down, making sure no one could get a clear look at him just in case things got bad.
As he bus started moving forward, Alex heard the sound of police sirens in the distance.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It took him a little over forty minutes to make it from the bus stop to the hospital. It had required the use of a cab which he didn’t mind as he used cash, and the driver was not the type to strike up conversation. When the cab dropped him off in front of the emergency room, it was 4:10 in the morning. He was tired, he was a little frightened, and there was a hatred for Marco swarming in him that intensified all of that.
He’d heard distant sirens on two more occasions, but here at the hospital, there was nothing. He didn’t dare want to make the foolish assumption that he was in the clear, but he felt pretty confident. There was no way the employee at the warehouse had clearly seen his face, and he had taken such a roundabout way to get back onto the streets that he was fairly certain no one had seen him within two miles of the warehouse immediately after the altercation with Marco and Larry.
Because of this, he walked into the hospital without the precautions of lowering his head or seeming rude by not speaking with anyone. He walked to the front desk just off of the emergency room exit to ask where he might go to check on someone that had just been admitted. As was usually the case with hospitals, it took him forever to get straight answers, and he ended up having to sit in the waiting room for half an hour.
In that time, he downed two cups of terrible coffee from the machine down the hall. He also found a relic of a payphone hiding in the far corner of the hallway that spanned off of the waiting room but he didn’t have a single bit of change on him—and even if he did, he didn’t know Amanda’s number by heart.
He spent that half an hour trying to find out how he had managed to get in the middle of such a complex situation… a situation that went somewhere beyond the realm of coincidence and into something much stranger. He was now mortal enemies with a man that was not only being hunted down by the leader of the Unknowns, but also the man that had pulled the trigger and killed Amanda’s husband.
Alex was not a religious man, nor did he give much thought or credence to things like fate, but this was too much to ignore; it seemed that he and Amanda had been destined to meet, their lives linked by a single murder and the man behind the gun. Of course, it had been Jameson that had ordered the hit, so that pinned some of the responsibility on him as well.
And here he was in the middle of it all. He felt that he had to come clean with Amanda. She mourned her husband long enough, and if he could help her find closure, then he felt he owed her that much. As for Jameson… well, he was unpredictable. If he were to tell Jameson the entire story, there was no telling how he might act.
These thoughts were bumping through his mind when a frazzled-looking nurse came into the waiting room and headed directly for him. She apparently noticed how exhausted he was and perhaps noticed some of the remaining dust from the broken pallet on his jacket. She stayed a good two feet away from him as she approached.
“Are you Mr. Dunning?”
“Yes. Alex.”
“Okay. And you’re here for an update on Jameson Cane?”
“I am. I was also hoping to speak with him.”
“He’s actually been asking to speak with you,” she said.
“Good,” Alex said. “Is he okay?”
“He lost a lot of blood, but the doctors are confident that he’s going to pull through.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, because he was shot, we can’t let him speak to anyone else until the police have questioned him, but there is an officer upstairs right now, about to go in with him. Once that’s done and the doctors check in on him, we’ll notify you right away.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
The nurse gave him a final skeptical look and
then turned away. Alex watched her go, disappointed. There was no way in hell he was going to stick around here if there were cops present. He knew how this worked. If a cop saw someone going in to speak with Jameson, they’d likely question him, too. It was bad enough that the nurse had known his name—but he had no choice. He’d had to give the woman at the desk his name, and he also wondered if Jameson had also been forced into a similar position.
Not wanting to stick out too badly, Alex waited another two minutes before getting up and walking back outside through the sliding doors. He walked slowly around the hospital’s front parking lot and found the bus stop on the corner. He sat down and when he allowed himself to relax against the bench, the weight of his exhaustion caught up with him. There was one other person on the bench, waiting for the bus. They were asleep, their head cocked to the side and resting awkwardly on their shoulder.
Not a bad idea, Alex thought. I can just shut my eyes for a few seconds and rest…