by Kara Parker
Once out of the shower, he dressed, putting on his jeans, a t-shirt, and shoes, and he sat down at his kitchen table, phone in hand. He needed to dial the phone. He had her number memorized, not stored. He was still worried that a member of the Reapers would see them together and think that the two of them were colluding to do the Reapers in. He didn’t want anyone getting hold of his phone and seeing Olivia’s number in there.
How had this happened? How had this group gone from brothers to enemies? It was the drugs; he knew it. Getting mixed up in the drug trade would never give anyone a simple life. They could have made enough working as mechanics, good money there too. They lived in a desert, and few things messed up a car more than sand. It got in the intakes and tanks and pumps, grit collected and wore things down. David had always liked fixing broken things; he liked the simple nature of it. Something broke, you simply took it apart found the broken thing and either fixed it or replaced it. It was good honest work. It kept a man’s hands busy. It’s what he was trying to do with God’s Reapers. He had pulled the gang apart to find the broken piece, now that piece that needed to be removed.
He was about to dial when he heard a clattering from out back; he turned his head to the side and listened. Was someone out there, a raccoon or a coyote in the trash? Then, he remembered his own actions the other night, hiding behind the dumpster at the drop-off site. Better safe than sorry.
David put his phone in his pocket and walked to the hall closet and grabbed his pistol. He turned the safety off and the outside lights on. From the safety of his house, he peered into the backyard. Sure enough, the trashcans were turned over and a trash bag was half ripped open. Damn coyotes, but it was that time of year. Things were lean and they were getting hungry.
Gun drawn he stepped out into the twilight. He waited for a moment, but heard nothing. He allowed himself to relax; there was nowhere for a fully-grown person to hide in the little rocky square that made up his backyard. David holstered his gun and picked up the ripped bag, putting the trash back in the can. He secured the lid and walked back inside through his back door when suddenly he was grabbed from behind and someone was holding something over his mouth. It tasted and smelled terribly, and then he realized it must be chloroform.
He held his breath, but it was too late. His head had already begun to pound and swim. Using all of his strength, he pushed back on the man who was holding him. Using both of his legs as leverage, he kicked off the wall and two men went sprawling. David’s fall was softened by the bulk of the man underneath him.
The man shouted and the cloth was removed. David gasped for air and stumbled to his feet. He grabbed his phone, ready to dial nine-one-one, but it was knocked from his hand. He swung around wildly with his fists, trying to fight off the attacker, but the man wasn’t alone. And after the phone was knocked away, David felt a strong fist barrel into his stomach. He doubled over, as the wind was knocked from him.
Woozy and out of breath, David looked up and through his foggy vision he could see Rick standing above him, shaking his head.
“Oh, David,” Rick said. “Why must you make everything so hard?” David struggled to his knees, but Rick just leaned down and punched David right where he had last cracked his ribs. David cried out in pain, as the chloroform covered cloth descended again. He tried to fight, but his arms grew weak and his vision dark and finally unconsciousness fell on him.
Rick looked down at his old friend, David Creely, and shook his head. Poor David, he thought, always trying so hard and yet never succeeding. “Tie him up and put him in the trunk,” he said to the man with the chloroform. The large man nodded and rolled David over onto a white sheet, with his gloved hand he checked the unconscious man’s pockets, removing a wallet. He proceeded to wrap David up in the sheet, and then hefting him over his shoulder, he carried him outside.
Rick looked around David’s sparse home and made sure that everything was in place, that there was nothing suspicious that would indicate a break-in. David Creely was a runner; everyone knew that and that would be the explanation. Things must have become too messy in Marina’s Crest and so David had taken off. Rick was just closing the back door when the cell phone on the floor began to ring. He picked it up, but whoever it was wasn't saved as a contact. He looked at the phone number and committed it to memory, just in case. Rick, his hands encased in sterile gloves, lifted the phone, looking at the number one last time before placing the phone on the kitchen table. Rick left the house quietly, leaving David’s cell phone on the table and locking the door behind him.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Olivia was focused on not thinking about Lance’s betrayal. Because every time she did a sort of red hot rage would build up inside of her. It felt like magma was sitting in her stomach, roiling and churning. Every time she thought about Lance, about his miserable face, that magma would bubble and she would want to scream and break something or hit someone. It was like there was a feral beast inside of her waiting to get out. That worried her.
She needed to stay calm. She needed to think and plan. There was a tactic in interrogation where the arresting officer pounds the perp with questions, each one coming in a hurried rush after the other. You don’t give the perp a chance to speak or explain themselves, you pile on question after question. You assume things, and all the while the perp begs for a chance to explain, but you just keep going. Eventually, one of two things happens; the first is that perp loses his temper and loses track of the questions and they shout something out, usually something they don’t want to say. The other is the perp gets wise to what the officer is doing and they clam up and demand a lawyer. The second was smarter than the first in that they kept their cool, kept their head, and made thoughtful decisions.
Olivia needed to be smart now. The dumbest thing in the world she could do was something rash. Something ill thought out and driven by rage that could get her fired, or worse—killed. No, she was smarter than Lance, and she needed to act like it. She kept her phone next to her, sitting in the empty cup holder of her Jeep. She was waiting for David to call her and tell her what Mike had said.
The waiting wasn’t helping. It was all she was doing at the moment. She was waiting for David to call and for Lance to make a mistake. She was sitting in her car, which was parked in the shade of a tall building with the air conditioner on full blast. She was staring at her iPad and the little red dot on the map that was about three blocks from where car was parked.
It was the cruiser. Trackers were easy enough to buy online. Olivia had purchased a few herself, but hadn’t found a use for them until now. She had kept one in the trunk of her Jeep for emergencies. And on her way out, when she had grabbed a few of her things from the cruiser, she had left the tracker in the trunk. Now, she was watching Lance do his job without his partner. That meant that he was currently seated outside of their usual café, presumably jamming his second or third sandwich into his mouth.
Olivia had a police scanner in her Jeep, and she shook her head as two, three, and then four calls came in from the vicinity and Lance ignored them all. She waited, turning her car off at intervals to not overheat the engine. She listened to the scanner, to her fellow officers out doing their jobs. She checked her phone endlessly to see if David had called. But for hours upon hours, there was nothing. Lance moved his car a few blocks, and then he would just sit for hours.
Finally, at six forty-five in the afternoon, Lance’s car began to move. It headed north traveling at a steady speed. He was clearly going somewhere specific. No calls had come in, and there was no way that Lance, without Olivia forcing him to, would actual patrol the north side of town. She checked her phone one last time. She had saved David’s number under a fake name, Kid Curry, the wildest member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch. But there was nothing there. She looked at his number and was desperate to call him. But she knew that convincing Mike of Rick’s guilt would be a difficult thing. If she interrupted the explanation, it could ruin everything.
So she drove
. Keeping a distance of a few blocks, she followed Lance’s car as it traveled farther north than she had ever seen Lance go. Finally, he stopped. The cruiser was stopped in the parking lot of a produce warehouse. Olivia parked her car two blocks away and set out on foot to see just what exactly Lance was up to.
She called David. She needed to. She couldn't wait any longer. She didn’t want to have to follow Lance alone, and she didn’t know where he was going or what he might be leading her into. She dialed David’s number, and the phone rang and rang, and then finally went to voicemail. Disappointed Olivia hung up the phone. She would have to follow Lance on her own.
The twilight was upon them. The daylight fought to linger as long as possible, but the darkness of night was swallowing it whole, and every passing second brought more darkness with it. Olivia hurried towards the location where she knew Lance was parked. She hurried down back alleys, between tall buildings that showed only a sliver of stars above her when she dared to look up.
Finally, the street opened up and she saw the parking lot of the produce depot. There was a scattering of cars in the lot that presumably belonged to the night crew. Olivia brought her binoculars up to her eyes and scanned the lot, and then she saw it, tucked away back in the corner and almost out of site was a police cruiser.
Olivia ran across the street and crouched down behind a car. Slowly, car by car she made her way to the cruiser, walking as silently as she could. She was about twenty yards away when she saw another car enter the parking lot. It was a sleek, new black car, and the driver turned his lights off when he entered the lot, a sign of guilt if she had ever seen one.
She watched as the car pulled into the lot and then went over to the cruiser. Olivia hurried between the cars, her feet sliding on loose pebbles as she scurried to get close enough to hear what was happening. Ten yards away, she stopped, and through her binoculars, she noted the license plate, make, and model of the black car. The black car pulled up alongside the cruiser until the black car’s backseat was aligned with the driver’s side of the cruiser.
The car idled for a moment and Olivia strained her ears and struggled to hear, but the voices were too low. She couldn’t hear anything, but through her binoculars she watched as a hand holding a white envelope emerged from the black car. Lance’s own hand, still in uniform emerged from his car and reached out, quickly snatching the envelope and pulling it through his window. The car lingered for only a moment before quietly and slowly leaving the lot, as the car drove, she saw something white come floating out of the car, and after a moment it fell gently to the street.
Lance started his cruiser and took off in the opposite direction. Then, only Olivia was left. She stood up, as there was no one left to hide from. For a moment, she just stood in the middle of the desolate parking lot. She felt numb, the magma of rage inside of her had been quenched. She had always known Lance was a bad cop, but she had thought it had been limited to laziness. She had never thought that Lance would take a bribe; it would be too dangerous. If he were caught, well, there were few things more dangerous than being a cop in jail. The money must have been good. No, it must have been amazing for Lance to risk so much.
Who was in the car, Rick? It must have been. Slowly, Olivia walked over to the place where the black car had pulled out into the street. Something had fallen from it, or been tossed from the window. It took her only a moment to spot it. It was a small, white towel, like something they would give away at the gym. It stood out in stark contrast to the dark pavement underneath it. Olivia bent down and picked the cloth up, but there was no writing on it and no hint of where it came from. It was just a plain white towel, but when she lifted it closer, there was a dangerous, foul-smelling odor to it, and she instinctively moved her face away.
Olivia let the small white towel fall from her hand and back down to the pavement. She pulled her phone from her pocket, but there was still no news from David. Then, even though she had fought it all day, tears formed in her eyes. She hadn’t heard from David all day, not one call, no texts, nothing. He had gone to confront the leader of a biker gang about the second-in-command being a traitor alone. What if Mike hadn’t like what David had to tell him? What if Rick had got to Mike first?
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Olivia watched as the clock in her apartment went from eight fifty-nine to nine o’clock. It had officially been twenty-four hours since she had last seen David. Her bed still smelled like him. She had called him six times in the night and had received no answer. She told herself that she would give him until the morning to get in contact with her. The morning was here, and she was still alone.
Olivia thought of the last time she had seen David. She had been sitting in her bed, still warm and half asleep, struggling to wake up. She remembered David rolling out of bed and moving away from her, putting on his clothes and his shoes. There had been one final goodbye over his shoulder as he left. She never should have let him go. She should have kept him there with her; they should have confronted Mike together—except they couldn’t have. Olivia had still been a cop, was still a cop. If David had brought a cop to a God’s Reapers safe house, there was a chance neither of them would have been allowed to leave.
She kept following the path farther and farther back. There had been a moment where they had gone off-course. They had made a fatal error somewhere, and if she could only find it, she could fix everything. Maybe it had been their first meeting in Sweetie’s disgusting trailer when they had stood so close to each other. Maybe it was that night when he had followed her to The Gray Lamp and she had brought him home. But no matter how far back she reached, there was only one answer. They never should have met.
However, she couldn’t believe that. She couldn’t believe that her life would have been better without David in it. The more she searched their history together the more Olivia realized that things might have actually been worse had they never met. The Reapers still would have been raided and Rick would still be building his drug empire—only no one would know about it. Olivia would still have been in danger—only it would have been a danger she didn’t see coming.
She had often heard, in the poems and books they had made her read in school, of lovers throwing everything away for only each other. Couples that met and set fire to the rest of the world, claiming they only needed each other. Olivia had always thought that such a foolish notion to throw everything away for some person you had just met, but she understood it now. Those lovers hadn’t set fire to the rest of the world, the rest of the world had always been burning and the two lovers had decided that they would rather cling to each other than face the blaze alone. The world was a dark and dangerous place; it was better to have someone beside you when it came time to walk through it.
For the first time in a long time, Olivia had nothing to do. For the last week, she had been running double duty—cop by day, and doing her own unofficial investigations by night. She had been run ragged and exhausted only yesterday. But now here she was, well rested and ready to go with no destination in sight.
How would she ever get hold of David? It seemed insane that all she had on him was a cell phone. But it was David’s own doing. He had strived to live off the grid, owning no property, using a burner phone. He was a man who didn’t want to be found, which made searching for him hard. Without her police resources, it made searching for him impossible. She had spent the last night living off of hope. Hope that he would call with some good reason…his phone had died, he had lost it, the Reaper’s had confiscated it, but now they had given it back. Those hopes had kept her alive, but it had been over a day, and hope was no longer enough.
There was also the simple and embarrassing fact that she had no idea where he lived. He mentioned a house somewhere north, but he had been quick to change the subject. She had the feeling that he didn’t want to talk about it, like maybe he was embarrassed about the state of his house, or where it was located. She always figured she would see it sometime, and she preferred her apartment to anyone
else’s. However, now it was too late. She hadn’t asked where he lived and now he was missing and she didn’t even know where to start looking.
Anything could have happened to him. He could have angered Mike and been killed. He could have angered Mike and been taken away by the rest of God’s Reapers. He could have tried to confront Rick himself and been captured. He could have tried to confront Rick and been killed. Olivia wiped away a tear and shook her head. Sitting on her couch and imagining all of the terrible things that might have happened to David wasn’t going to save him. It was only going to drive her mad.
Think, think, Olivia, she thought, standing up and pacing the apartment, hoping moving around would help her. You don’t know where David is, she thought, so the next step is to find out where he was last. He was last with Mike, but Olivia didn’t know where Mike was being held. The God’s Reapers headquarters, the garage that had been raided had been re-opened, but she couldn’t go there. The bikers still hated Olivia; they still thought that she was responsible for what had happened. She scoffed as she thought about how the members would have been thrilled to learn about her suspension.