by A. J. Mayall
“No signal.” He grunted. He looked up to see Maxwell holding his hand out for the phone. “Hey, I might get a signal, give me some credit, I promise you, I’ll get you it back by the time we get close to the Zig, okay?”
Maxwell grunted and headed back to the driver’s seat, starting the car back up and driving. “If you say so, just…there’s nothing I can do right now for ya. I don’t like this, boss.”
“You drive and I’ll do the thinking, okay? Fuck’s sake, gotta get better reception out.” He paused and looked at the phone, shaking it as if it would help. He looked at Sam, and then to the center console.
“You said the car is connected to a GPS?” Basseri asked as he grinned, wide and malicious.
“Yeah. Dunno how it works.”
“Pull over real quick; let me in the front for two minutes.”
Maxwell groaned and shook his head. “Not right now. I’m due to gas up soon. I’ll pull into one of the truck stops and see what they have in the way of clothing for you. You can ride in the front until we’re about 15 minutes away and then you’ll have to go back to the jumpsuit. If you can organize an escape, you’ll need to be able to blend in fast.”
“I can see why they made you detective; you’re smarter than you let on.”
The idle chat lasted about twenty minutes. Sam pulled into one of the large stops with a restaurant, showering facility, and was dotted with small shops with basic needs for someone who lived on the road. Sam pulled the car into a gas pump far from the others, opened Basseri’s door and tossed him keys for the shackles.
“Sizes?”
“I wear a thirty six in waist in pants, large for a shirt.”
“It’s not gonna be high-class.”
“All the better.”
Sam walked in and looked through the few items of clothing. He spotted a black shirt with the sleeves removed that showed a bald eagle superimposed over an American flag. A pair of denim shorts, a hat that simply said “ARMY”, and a pair of oversized sunglasses joined the pile.
Maxwell moved to the register, glancing out the window toward the lot with the gas pumps. Mostly families were in the area designated for cars, and he heard the bellowing horn of large semis pulling into their spots on the other side of the stop. He scanned the cars once more, seeing a tour bus pull out and speed off into the distance.
He set the bundle of clothing down and looked to the attendant, a young Latina with a bright smile, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her name badge read “Janet”. Sam had to give her credit, most people he ran into at truck stops didn’t put in much effort into their appearance.
“Will the clothes be all for you sir?” Janet spoke, in crisp syllables. It exuded friendliness, but wasn’t forced.
“Nah I’ll be filling up number nine.”
She looked him up and down, seeing the uniform. “I’ll put you down for the serviceman discount.”
“Very kind of you,” he said, pulling out a credit card used by the department for covering re-fuels. “Just put it all on this.”
“Even the clothes?”
“I’ll reimburse them.”
“All right!” She beamed and placed the items in a paper bag, “You’re ready to fuel up.”
“Thank ya kindly,” Maxwell rumbled and tipped his cap to her, stepping out into the dry desert heat once more. He walked to the car and when he was certain no one would see it, he opened the back door long enough to toss in the bag. “Lay back and get dressed, I’ll be about four minutes to fuel.”
Basseri lay back on the hot faux leather of the seat, the chains and manacles on a pile on the passenger side of the backseat floor. Soon he was out of the orange jumpsuit, struggling to dress himself with the bandages on his face and hands. Maxwell was almost finished fueling when he saw a bandaged hand pop out with a raised thumb.
Sam opened his passenger side door and popped open the one behind it, Basseri hopping into the front.
“Okay, I’m going to try a few tricks, see if I can piggyback onto the signal for the GPS.” He said, swiping the screen of the device with his few good fingers. He looked into the deeper options of the phone, and messed with the onboard computer in the console.
Sam looked askance at the digital criminal. “Listen, Dominic, I know a secondary path we sometimes use for higher-profile criminals. I’ll take the scenic route. If you can get a signal out and get a pickup somehow, it’ll be a better place for someone to meet us. It’ll add another thirty minutes to the transit time, but if they track me, it won’t seem out of the ordinary, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, I’m about in…” he said, having booted the phone into a developer mode, “Almost got this thing up and…”
He laughed as the center console made a beep, and the phone came back online.
“I gotta learn how you do that, one of these days.”
Basseri was silent, already beginning to send out a text message.
“Who you writing to? Anyone I know?”
“Me.”
“What?”
“I have a backup of my contact lists in case of emergencies. Just send a text and…” He grinned as the phone beeped. “Incoming file.”
“You really do think of everything.”
“A healthy dose of paranoia is needed with what I want to accomplish.”
“Still,” Maxwell said as he turned onto a side road, the pavement becoming gravelly as he did so, soon leaving the more populated interstate behind them.
Basseri looked at the list and texted furiously, message after message, the phone becoming a constant source of electronic noises as he received messages back. After a few minutes, the phone rang, Basseri snapping it to his face.
“Yeah. It’s me, I got limited time. I need a chopper and I need it five minutes ago. Yes. Two passengers. Hot meal if you can.”
Basseri chuckled and leaned back.
“Good news?” Maxwell inquired, giving the criminal a sideways glace.
“They’ve got the phone on their system tracker; we’ll be getting an intercept in about thirty minutes. Hope you like Brazil, my friend.”
“Wait, I’m coming too?” Maxwell looked over.
“I’m going to need a bodyguard and you need a new job, right?” Basseri’s words dripped like honey. “Got my assets set aside and moved to dummy accounts. Everything is prepared for.”
“God damn.”
“What can I say? It’s good to work globally,” Dominic Basseri said as he reclined in his seat.
The sun was setting when they noticed the cloud of smoke ahead of them. It was the tour bus from before, a few young people blocking the road and waving at him to stop. The bus itself overheated and was blocking the path, pulled slightly into the oncoming lane.
“Just ditch them, Sam,” Basseri said as Maxwell approached.
“They’re in the middle of the road, and we’re in a cop car. I’ll be just a second.”
Maxwell pulled the car off to the side of the road and stepped out.
“Officer!”
The woman was young and fit, her skin tanned from being outside, and not just the beach. Her hair was blonde, further bleached by exposure to the sun. Her face, Sam thought, was just the kind of girl next door that he liked, a hint of playfulness underneath the pleasantness.
“Yes, ma’am. How can I help?”
“It’s the engine, I think. Can you take a look? Maybe call for help? We’re behind schedule so much and our driver thought this would be a good shortcut. I’m gonna kill him, I swear.”
“No need for that,” Sam said, embracing this one last time to be a cop, a good cop. “I’m pretty handy, maybe I can see what the matter is.”
Basseri watched as Sam walked off into the distance, groaning and making sure his contacts knew where he was, that the signal tracker was working.
He grunted, Sam out of sight, probably up to his elbows in co-eds as he gently strummed his sore fingers on the dash. Soon, he got a beep signaling a message.
&nb
sp; Mr. Basseri, did you think it would be that easy?
Basseri blinked at the message and looked up; figures barely visible from the tinting on the bus windows moved from the back as one. He struggled with the door, gripping the handle and pulling it out, the center console beeping as the doors locked.
Sam Maxwell didn’t see it coming. One moment, he was smiling to the young woman, looking over the smoking engine. He waved a hand over the machinery to clear out the steam and billowing smoke. When he did enough to see what he was doing, he saw a fist-sized canister tucked on the side of the engine block.
“What the hell?” he said, recognizing a smoke grenade when he saw one. As he turned, he found himself face-to-face with three cattle prods that stabbed into his neck. He lost control of his legs, his arms, and his bladder as he fell. His head hit the gravel as he looked up to men and women dressed in black suits wearing sunglasses. He tried to shift into his hybrid form, but one of the batons found purchase on his lower back, and a rag went over his mouth. He breathed it in and knew what it was immediately.
Wolfsbane.
He coughed, his strength leaving him as he inhaled the substance repeatedly before a fresh dose was fit over his mouth. The world went fuzzy and then black.
Dominic Basseri stared in horror as the suited men formed a line, looking at him before a figure stood ahead of them all. The woman from his trial. The blonde.
Guess Levicia nodded to the security officers, as she regarded Basseri trapped in the car.
“The rocket launcher, I think.”
It was hours before Sam Maxwell awoke to the smell of charred chemicals and the biting feel of the cold desert in the middle of the night. There was a faint glow in the background of his blurry vision. He tried to recall everything that had led to him being there and when his mind returned to him, he realized the bus was long gone.
His vehicle…
The officer’s vehicle was a pile of burning wreckage, the entire engine block exploded outwards. Flames, red and orange became thick rolls of black billowing smoke.
He was still weak from the wolfsbane. Maxwell stumbled toward the car and as he approached he shook his head, rejecting the image before him.
The image of the charred skeleton, the flesh burned and melted off of it in the middle of the inferno. The jaw hung open, grease stains on the half melted windows. He had tried to get out and not been able to.
Dominic “The Bastard” Basseri had been burned alive. He reached for his phone and then his heart fell into his stomach, seeing a black puddle of melted plastic fused into the bones of the skeleton’s right hand.
Phoenix McGee hadn’t noticed the sun going down, locked in the headspace to solve a mystery once and for all. The inspiration made him want to kick himself. Why hadn’t he seen it before?
Something was amiss, and one of the first things he had learned all those years ago was now and then you had to reestablish your foundation. It was the first rule of learning how to re-write history, in fact. You had to know where you started, before you could solve how to make everything fit. It was like solving the edge of a jigsaw puzzle first, instead of starting with the butts of the girls on the beach. This was why Suzette no longer allowed him to work on puzzles in the main waiting areas of the offices.
He wrote all the events in the investigation. At what point did things go bad? Things weren’t adding up. Bellacino was set up with the startup of Second Dawn. It also made it where he couldn’t investigate the house. He knew Basseri wouldn’t have a problem with corrupting a crime site, but his was a more “scorched earth” approach.
Could it be the video? He played the various cut footage, showcasing the household, doing his best to not focus on the more explicit content. Details. What was he missing? Something in that house was the key to it all. However, he did turn Bouncer away from the screen, Phoenix telling himself he was better for hearing things.
He popped open a couple bottles of cherry cola, taking a sip from one and setting the other by the plush raccoon. Every time he did another pass of the video, he clinked the bottles together.
“I’m not seeing anything, buddy.”
The raccoon continued to be remarkably quiet.
“Don’t be like that; we’ll figure this out.”
Suzette DiMarco never thought she’d see the safe house where she had nearly killed Basseri again. After the impact of the truck, she was happy to see anything. She was sore, but she could tell she didn’t have any broken bones, though heavy bruises might make her miss her martial arts classes for a week. She tugged on her wrists, hearing the jingle of cuffs, and as she pulled with her feet, she realized she was chained as Phoenix has been.
It was then the growl behind her started. “You aren’t getting out of those for a while, do you understand me?” Dorian hissed in her ear.
She felt over the cuffs, the chain, and under the chair with her fingertips and slowly nodded. “Yeah, these aren’t coming off for a bit.”
“Now, my Pack is going to be coming in here soon. Jack has them under orders not to kill you, or maim you too terribly, but MacKenzie…he’s a little ball of crazy. That’s why his nickname’s Frenzy.”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“Not at all,” he chuckled. “You got us all figured out, have you?”
“Most of you, the rest aren’t interesting enough to solve.” she said, groaning as he tugged on the chains, testing them.
“I’m going to leave you to them now. I trust you’ll be smart enough to give every detail you can.”
“Will I be let go after this is over?”
“I don’t think it’ll get there, Ms. DiMarco.”
Dorian stepped in front of her and licked his thumb, cleaning off a bit of grime on her left cheek. “Got your purse on the work station over there. I’m leaving now, can’t have me bearing witness to the beatdown that’s about to happen.”
Suzette gritted her teeth as he touched her, turning her face away from the huge mountain of muscle and sinew.
“You tell them I’m ready for whatever they can dish.”
Dorian laughed and made a “call me later” gesture to her. “I’ll make sure they get the message.”
“Dorian,” Suzette said, spitting on the floor as she did so, “I’m not going to tell them anything.”
He grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Dorian left. Suzette touched the chain once more, pulling up the lock and hearing the jingle as she moved her fingers over the underside of the chair. This was going to hurt and she’d need to let The Pack think she was helpless, but there might be a chance for her to get out. The brunette blew a puff of air alongside her nose to blast a few stray strands of hair from her face when she heard the door open again.
Jack and MacKenzie walked in. She paused, curling up her lip as she met Jack’s gaze, and noticed he couldn’t keep it.
The Beta patted MacKenzie on the shoulder and pushed him forward. “She knows things about me; I need to know who she’d told and what they know. Just, don’t get too rough, Stuart. For me, okay?”
Stuart MacKenzie growled and looked at the woman, chained and heavily bruised, and chuckled. “Sure, Jack, anything you say, but I think she’s been tenderized already. I’m certain I can get to the truth with minimal effort.”
Suzette sat there, shooting daggers with her gaze at both of them. “Can’t do your own dirty work, Jack? Gotta send your bitch to do it for you?” she grunted with a half-hearted laugh.
Jack shook his head and turned in silence, head lowered, before unlocking the door and stepping out. Stuart MacKenzie smirked, “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask, how the hell did you manage to set up a trap for Basseri so fast? I’ve been turning it over and over in my head, ran a background check on the both of you and neither of you are in the system for having powers of any type.”
“Maybe I’m just that good,” Suzette muttered as MacKenzie inspected the various tools.
“Thirty seconds to make his
cigarettes a bomb and cut through all those chains? Either someone set you up, or someone’s been very, very sneaky.”
“If you did your research, you’d know Phoenix has powers. He kicked Maxwell’s ass and healed up.”
“Yeah, yeah, but ain’t no such thing as a man with powers who don’t show up on a scan. So, what’s his trick?”
“Hell if I know. I barely tolerate him,” she murmured as he took out a rubber mallet. He tossed it in the air, letting it tumble head over handle and caught it, repeating the action a few times.
“Well, how about I start beating you and you tell me whatever comes to mind?”
“Seriously, listen to yourself. You’re doing this all wrong,” Suzette spat.
Stuart grinned and took a step back. “Oh, really? Do enlighten me.”
“Phoenix said you’re the smart one, and your approach to this is stupid. I’ve been threatened by experts, you dumbass. Mallet or not, at least do a good job.”
“What do you suggest, then?”
Suzette struggled, grunting as she tugged on her chains, wincing.
“I inspected those chains before Dorian insisted on giving them a second look; there ain’t no way you’re getting out.” He grinned as he raised the mallet over his head and began to swing it downward.
“WAIT!” she said, a look of horror on her face, a clang of metal ringing as she cried out. MacKenzie’s smile grew wider as he smelled her scent, sweat and a hint of blood, her heart pounding making endorphins rush.
“Oh, ready to talk? I knew you were all talk.”
“Talk? No. Your grip is all wrong, you wanna hold it a bit lower, gives the wrist a bit more flail action.” She grinned as Stuart howled out and brought the mallet down on her left shoulder.
Suzette grunted and winced. “Yeah, that did nothing for me.”
MacKenzie hit her on the neck on the back swing, turning her head to the side.