Lost in Middle America

by Colin Conway

  Here is a preview from Losing Streak by Jim Wilsky, A Grifter’s Song Season One Episode 6.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  Chapter 1

  Sam signed off with David Bloom and looked over at Rachel. His mind raced back over the short conversation with the developer just now. He crossed his arms and started to pace back and forth, something he hardly ever did.

  “What?” Rachel was dressed for the meeting, laptop satchel in one hand and car keys in the other.

  Sam didn’t answer, just walked to the third-floor window and looked down. He felt her hand on his shoulder.

  Shaking his head slowly, he thought it might just be his nerves. Maybe it’s being overly cautious because of the losing streak they were on. Started with them fumbling the ball so badly with the high-grade comic book in Wisconsin, making only a fraction of what they could have. Forced to sell too quick. Madison had been a close call with Little Vincent’s man. Too close.

  “Sam, what?” She pressed against his back lightly and he could smell her perfume. “We need to get going, babe. What is it?”

  Then Joliet he thought, which failed even before it got started but not until they had already spent their dwindling money on a shopping center strip storefront. On the second day, the mark had been arrested on forgery charges.

  This one though, this job is perfect. It’d been a long one, taking almost a month and a half. But worth it. Real Estate. Big con. They were going to cover all the expenses to set it up and clear at least a seventy-five thousand. Hell, maybe twice that before it’s over. Except it isn’t perfect, is it, Sammy boy? his inner voice chided.

  He finally turned to her. “Pack.” He walked to the bathroom to get his shaving bag. “Got to go.”

  “Wait. What…What are you talking about? We can’t, we…” She stopped mid-sentence.

  “Pack, Rachel,” he called. “Pack right now. It’s done, we’re out.”

  He came out of the bathroom and grabbed his bag out of the small closet. He threw it on the bed and started grabbing shirts and pants.

  “What did Bloom say? I mean, today is the day. This is it. I don’t understand.” Her voice was confused and had a touch of anger to it.

  Sam didn’t look up, “I felt it at yesterday’s meeting. You felt it too. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”

  “He was nervous and a little shaky yeah, but that doesn’t mean this is over. We’re right there on this.” She held her fingers an inch apart. “He’s ready to do this.”

  “Bloom said he couldn’t meet at his office just now. Said he wanted to meet here at the hotel instead. Told me he was on his way and to stay put.”

  Rachel didn’t reply. Just stared at him.

  He looked up from packing his clothes, “His voice was all wrong just now. He’s a shitty actor. I’m telling you, somebody is onto him, after him…or he’s after us. Pack, Rachel. We gotta go. Gotta go now.”

  She didn’t move and looked up at the ceiling. “We need this one, Sam.”

  “I know.” He walked to her and cupped her face. “But trust me on this.”

  She met his eyes and locked on. After a long pause, she sighed and asked, “Where?”

  Avoiding the elevator, Rachel headed for the stairwell. Sam’s phone chirped as he was going down the steps to an exit door on the side of the hotel. He glanced at the screen and kept going. It was Bloom.

  They crossed the parking lot casually and threw their bags in the back seat. His phone chirped again as he got in. He ignored it and buckled up.

  “Which way, left? Can’t remember where the ramp is,” he said as they pulled out of their space and headed toward the hotel exit.

  Rachel looked down at her phone. “No, go right. We’ll be on Britton Road then, about a mile turn left on Second Street. I-35 ramp will be about another mile.”

  Sam wasted no time pulling out of the hotel parking lot and Rachel turned in her seat to glance out the back window.

  There was a light a block ahead and it was green but the car ahead of him was just puttering along. Sam glanced to his side, ready to pass, but he saw a car just behind them in the other lane. The light switched to yellow up ahead and he slowed to a stop.

  Rachel turned to him. “Dark blue SUV just pulled out of the hotel…in a hurry. Two cars behind us.”

  They did not speak while waiting for the light to change. Rachel adjusted her visor mirror. Underway again, Sam saw a gas station up ahead and without signaling or slowing down much, he pulled in. Cutting through, he dodged a guy getting out of his car and exited onto another road on the other side.

  “They’re following.” Rachel’s voice was calm and measured.

  He went around the block and came to Britton Road again. He looked at the oncoming traffic quickly, saw a break and went through a stop sign, continuing along the route they had begun.

  “Still there.”

  They took a left on Second Street and headed for the interstate ramp.

  “North or south?” Sam asked, eyes straight ahead. The light ahead went green and he accelerated through it.

  Rachel didn’t answer, she was locked onto the rearview mirror.

  Sam took the north ramp and entered the northbound lanes of I-35 and made his way over to the left lane. The speed limit was seventy-five. He hit that and then some as the old Jeep Cherokee responded. Oklahoma City was behind them and Wichita was dead ahead.

  “What’s our plan here, Sam?”

  “It’s not Wichita.” His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “We’ve got to lose them first before we decide anything else.”

  “I wish you still smoked sometimes.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  They drove on without much more conversation at all. Each lost in thoughts about what could have been back in OKC. Sam didn’t believe in luck, good or bad, but he was starting to become a believer in curses.

  When they finally crossed the state line into Kansas, Sam looked back at the SUV still trailing them and said, “Pretty soon here, I’m going to exit before we reach Wichita, then head east to Missouri…Springfield maybe.”

  “Alright, whatever you think. Like you said, though, wherever we’re going we need to get there without them.”

  Pretty soon came about two minutes later.

  After he passed a car and returned to the left lane, Sam looked up ahead at the overpass, then over his right shoulder. There was a gap and he was fairly sure he could make it, but it had to be now. “Hold on.”

  The sudden move shifted Rachel in her seat and she leaned toward Sam, gripping the arm rest hard.

  At a forty-five-degree angle, he cut across two lanes. Cars and trucks behind them honked, swerving and locking up their brakes. Rachel saw the exit coming up that Sam was aiming for, but it was too late, and they were not going to make it.

  Sam broke hard, fighting the Jeep just enough to stop it from flipping over, missed a sign by two feet and his left tires found some rock and grass. As he straightened out and corrected the car, he punched it and the tires dug, spit, but then dug their way back onto the exit ramp.

  Rachel was completely turned around in her seat and just caught a glimpse of the dark blue car as it continued north.

  Blowing through the stop sign at the top of the hill, Sam took a right and headed east on a state highway. He took it back up to eighty.

  She blew a strand of hair off her forehead. “Well, this Jeep sure isn’t a Mustang, but that was a move Steve McQueen would have been proud of.”

  Sam grinned at her and she returned it. First smiles of the day, but they didn’t last and melted away.

  He tried to keep it positive, though. “So, they have about five miles or so to go before the next exit, unless they use a cross over and come back to this exit. That wouldn’t really save them all that much time though.”

  Rachel nodded, “This has to help. Distance betw
een us is the name of the game right now.”

  “Tell you what.” He pointed at her phone. “What’s another close eastbound road that parallels us and still heads to Springfield? I’ll zig zag over to that.”

  Rachel brought up a map app. “Uhm, let’s see…Next intersection take a left, then a right onto Highway 160 east.” She leaned toward him looking at the dash. “Gas?”

  “Right, but we’re good for now.” Sam looked back at the empty road behind them.

  Whether it had been the hit man they had run into in again in Wisconsin, or someone that worked for Bloom, or someone else entirely, they couldn’t be sure. All that mattered was, whoever they were, they weren’t in the rearview mirror anymore.

  Sam and Rachel continued east, putting as much distance in between them and the tail as possible, finally crossing into Missouri. Eventually, they came to the outskirts of Springfield. On the fly, they both agreed on changing direction just one more time, but they couldn’t decide.

  “You’re turn, babe. You decide. I’m too damn tired to think straight.”

  A mile went by, then Rachel straightened in her seat and ran a hand through her hair. “South,” she decided. “Never been to Little Rock.” She looked over at him and her face showed the strain and exhaustion, but she worked up a small grin. “Have you?”

  “Nope. Yeah, okay. Why not?”

  A few miles later, Sam stopped for gas and filled it, got a cup of shitty coffee and paid cash. When he got back in the car she roused up from a curl in her seat and reached for the coffee. He pulled it back from her, though, and smiled.

  “Go back to sleep, I’ll wake you up when we get there.” He put his light jacket over her as a sort of blanket.

  “’Kay…just really tired.” She muttered something else he didn’t catch and put her seat down as far as it would go.

  During the drive, he was left to his thoughts and think he did. About everything. Yes, they had managed to escape, but this was yet another setback. Bottom line was, being on the grift wasn’t always pretty. No matter what the popular belief or glamorous impression was of their profession and lifestyle.

  Sure, there had been times in the past where the cup was running over. Long cons and even short ones, with big hits. Money to burn afterwards. At the same time though, there had also been some lean times, even teetering on the desperate side. Like now. It was simply the nature of the game and no one knew this better than Sam and Rachel.

  Sometimes, you just do what you have to do. It was a time to swallow some pride, lick some wounds and take a short break. A time to regroup and reset.

  It was late and raining when they finally parked in a city parking garage and checked into a non-descript downtown Little Rock hotel.

  They would hunker down. They would focus on nothing. Might be a week, but that would be the absolute max. They were very low on cash money and but they were hesitant on using almost any of the credit cards in their collection. They had one Chase card they had just picked up in Wisconsin but that was pretty much it. The rest were just old pieces of plastic, and probably on the radar of anyone looking for them. After all the bad luck they’d been having, Sam didn’t want to risk it.

  Money wasn’t the only motivation though. It was inevitable, they both knew that. Sooner or later, it would be time to get back into the game. Even if they had a bathtub full of money, which they certainly didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. They were who they were. The lure and urge would just be too great.

  A grifter’s gonna grift.

  Click here to learn more about Losing Streak by Jim Wilsky.

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview from The Pyongyang Option, the fourth Jonathan Brooks thriller by A.C. Frieden.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  CHAPTER 1

  Northern Ukraine—July 2005

  Tall, dark silhouettes of pine trees, resembling a horde of witches, passed by on both sides of the desolate roadway as the rain pounded Misha’s helmet, his soaked gloved hands tightly gripping the handlebars of his old Voskhod motorbike. This was no ordinary night, nor a leisurely ride. The cryptic messages spun wildly in his head as he sped along the shoddy pavement, at times weaving into the opposite lane to avoid potholes. This isn’t right, he told himself, hoping, however, that he’d be proven wrong. That his fear was indeed misplaced. And that the hastily arranged meeting was entirely benign. But how could it be?

  The text message had in fact come with the proper codewords, and from the right phone number. But everything else in the meeting request was a break from protocol: a rural location not previously used; a strange demand that he leave his cell phone behind; and an ungodly hour that drew unwanted attention when Misha exited the two checkpoints within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the thousand-square-mile security perimeter around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was set up after the reactor meltdown in 1986. He’d asked why. He’d asked for another day and time. But the messenger insisted. Misha had never been tempted to say no before, but even though he needed the money, he’d felt his stomach wrench as he agreed to this meeting. I can still turn back, he thought. I can.

  Misha reached the town of Ivankiv—an already sleepy hamlet by day, but now, nearing one in the morning, activity was all but nonexistent. He hadn’t expected rain, and certainly not this fierce downpour that had soaked through his leather jacket, jeans and shoes. The cold wetness of his clothes made him angry. If only he hadn’t been so rushed, he could have checked the weather and donned a rainsuit.

  At the village’s only lighted intersection, he turned right, heading northwest toward the next village, Obukhovychi. Misha despised anything rural. The manure-scented air. The primitive dwellings. The peasantry. It reminded him how far his country lagged far behind the likes of Austria or Germany, where he’d visited often in recent years. He was in this northern part of Ukraine only by professional obligation, crisscrossing this unimposing landscape after being assigned as the numbers-cruncher at the former Chernobyl nuclear power complex. To him, all that mattered in the Ukraine was his native Kyiv, and Crimea for those infrequent vacations on the coast, but nothing else. Accountants don’t belong in fields or forests, he thought, and even less so on such a dreary night.

  The rain pummeled his helmet, muffling the sounds of his bike as he continued down the darkened road walled in by tall trees—witches, he thought, as his mind raced along with his motorbike. Perhaps they had cast an eerie spell on him. His prior rendezvous had always seemed mundane, and most importantly, safe. But not this one tonight.

  “What the fuck am I doing here?” he mumbled into his helmet. He struggled to gauge why a meeting that had originally been set for Saturday in a quiet café on the west side of the capital was now hurriedly pushed forward. Worse yet, in the middle of the night on a barren green spot on a map. He couldn’t think of any justifiable reason.

  Misha continued down the country road, his weariness exacerbated by nerves. Could it be a trap? he pondered. Did the late-night message really come from his handler? But the codewords were correct, he reminded himself. He’d deciphered them using the identical formula they’d been working with for months.

  In keeping with the instructions, he turned onto the first dirt road after spotting the faded welcome sign for Obukhovychi. His heart sped up the moment he saw the path exit the roadway and enter a forest—the witches’ lair. He thought of his handler, a man he knew only as Brian—a wiry, sharp-dressed Brit whom Misha had never imagined would be the type to meet anywhere as uncivilized as a forest.

  He slowed. The rain eased the instant he passed under the shelter of the pine trees. He slowed further, maneuvering his bike over the muddy trail and natural debris that told him no one had wandered down this way in a while. It reminded him of his childhood fear of forests—and not just because they were dark and secluded. His grandfather had gone missing on a long walk through the woods and
was later found dead of a heart attack. Misha had gone through his teens believing all woods were haunted. As an adult he simply disliked them.

  Misha struggled to keep the bike’s tires from sinking into the muddy trail layered with fallen branches, wet leaves and shrubs. His boots felt heavy. He peered into the darkness as he crept forward on the bike but saw nothing. Then a brief flash of headlights suddenly pierced through the mass of tree trunks ahead. The car must have driven in from another path, since he hadn’t seen tire marks.

  He stopped about fifty yards from the car but stayed seated on his bike, the engine left idling. He noticed his breaths becoming more rapid, as was the thumping in his chest, as if he was running a marathon. This spot could not be farther from help, he thought, if he needed it. His eyes chased the darkness for any sign of Brian. He removed his helmet, tensely scanning what little he could see.

  Misha quickly pondered how he’d escape if things went wrong. Impossible. There was no telling who else was around, perhaps behind him, or to the sides, hidden, maybe with a night-vision scope aimed at his head.

  An outline of a long-coated person emerged a few feet away and slowly approached.

  Misha keenly eyed the silhouette with the scrutiny he would give a financial statement. The person didn’t appear to have Brian’s lean physique. The man was shorter. Wide-framed.

  “I am glad you made it, Mikhail,” the stranger said in English, his words barely loud enough to be heard over the 175 cubic centimeters of motor belching between Misha’s legs.

  Misha felt a chill crawl down his spine. That was not Brian, for sure. The Brit had switched to calling Misha by his nickname some months ago, rather than using the more formal “Mikhail.”

  “Where’s Brian?” Misha blurted loudly, his heart now threatening to crush through his sternum. He gripped the handlebars so tightly that his knuckles hurt. He turned it towards the stranger, then flipped on the high beam. “Where is he?”