Blackbird

by Anna Carey

  “We only have two locations for her—the station and park. Where was she the last few days? Just tell us and we’ll stop.”

  Your whole body is rigid, afraid of what Ivan will say. Was he checking the tracking device when you were at Ben’s? You imagine Ben there, alone, when the car pulls up outside. You imagine him seeing the two men on his front porch. Your chest tightens. It was stupid to think that you could somehow protect him from them. You don’t even know who they are. You hold the keys tightly in your hand. You could get to the car in less than a minute. You could be at Ben’s house in less than twenty. You could try to get there first.

  But Ivan just repeats his story, his voice low and even. “I don’t know. I didn’t write down every location. I told you—I was nearby when I saw on the device that she was at the freeway, and went to check on her. I saw her shoot the woman and I called it in and cleaned it up, like you told me to. Then she went to the park and she’s been there since. The tracking device didn’t move for days. That’s the only reason I went to check on her, I swear. I’m not helping her,” he finishes.

  The next few blows are louder. The man lets go of Ivan’s hand and hits him several times, in quick succession. Ivan tries to protect his face, but already there is blood seeping through his fingers. It continues until the man in the black hat holds up a hand as if to say enough.

  “I can’t trust you,” the man in the hat says. “And if I can’t trust you, I can’t use you.”

  The other man grabs Ivan’s hands, dragging him to the front of the house. The man with the baseball hat follows behind. You press against the side of the building, lowering yourself down, out of sight. Ivan had access to the tracking device the entire time. He must’ve known you were at Ben’s. He had all the information—the motel you stayed at, the diner, the beach. He chose to protect you. And now what was going to happen to him?

  You listen to the door open and close, to their steps as they circle the front of the house. They climb into the car. The engine starts. You don’t know where they’re taking him, but you can’t let them hurt him—not after what he’s done for you.

  The car sets off. You count down from thirty, waiting to move until you know they’ve cleared the end of the street. Then you hop the fence, sprinting through the neighboring yards, not stopping until you’re in Ivan’s car. You pull out to follow the Mercedes. You pass the first corner, then the next, scanning the side streets for any sign of them. But there’s only a lone taxicab and the neon signs of the passing strip malls.

  You have lost them.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  YOU HIKE UP the trail, scanning the darkened slope for your pack. It was a risk to come back to Griffith Park, but without the knapsack you have nothing. You checked and doubled-checked your route, taking one of the upper paths, below the Hollywood sign, to make sure you weren’t followed. You parked several blocks below the entrance. Now you snake down to the spot behind the bushes and quickly dig the pack free. The mace is empty, and the knife fell somewhere in the ravine as you ran away, but you can’t find it in the dark. After a few minutes of searching you give up and return to the car.

  You climb in, listening to the sound of your breaths. The clock reads 9:38 P.M. You pull the notebook from your back pocket and write:

  - The woman who tried to kill me was a client of some sort of organization

  - Ivan met these people through a man he was doing work for in Altadena

  - The men involved:

  - thin man with black baseball cap, stubble, 6'3"-6'5"

  - stocky man, shorter (5'9"?)

  - The house they used as a headquarters was off Hollywood Blvd

  - Map and three photos on the wall: a falcon, a cobra, a shark (Code names? Related to my tattoo?)

  - The men referenced an island

  When you close your eyes you can’t see the man in the black hat, can’t make out his features. The other man is even hazier. Maybe he wore a blue shirt, maybe it was black. You left so fast you didn’t get the exact street name. You didn’t look at the house number and the Mercedes didn’t have plates. But what they said . . . those words are still clear. Did she know about the island?

  As you put the notebook away you notice a small square of paper in the center console, right under the emergency brake. You hold it up. It’s a photo of Ivan and his daughter, no more than fourteen. They have the same blue eyes, the same square jaw and long, angular nose. Ivan’s arm is around her shoulder. Smiling, he seems like a different person. Just looking at it your body is cold, and there’s a heavy tensing around your heart. Where did they take him? What is happening to him now?

  You start the engine and begin to drive, considering your next move. You’ll need to dump the car somewhere, but then what? It’s too risky to go back to the headquarters. You don’t know if it’s safe to go to Ben’s—the men seemed to have very limited information on your whereabouts, and Ivan didn’t tell them anything, but you’re still not sure. You listen to the dull rush of air through the vents, thinking of Ivan’s words. Why did they put a tracking device on you and then only ask for your location twice?

  You drive for fifteen minutes. The traffic on Venice Boulevard drags on, cars inching forward, slowing up, then speeding down. Suddenly a flash of headlights blinds you in the rearview mirror. A black car is directly behind you. You turn. It follows. Again you turn and it follows you.

  You watch the odometer change, ticking out the miles. The black car is still visible in your rearview mirror, even though you’ve switched lanes several times, even though you changed your route, trying to lose it. Has it been there since Griffith Park?

  It’s probably nothing, probably someone anxious to get home at 10 o’clock at night, but you’d rather be sure. Up ahead is a gas station with a fast-food restaurant attached. You park at the edge of the lot and wait a minute before getting out of the car, heading toward the fast-food restaurant. You grab your pack and slip the photo into your pocket.

  Inside, it smells of fried chicken. A few people wait in line for fountain sodas. Others are huddled over their trays, wolfing down the last of French fries and onion rings. There are security cameras by the front entrance. You turn away from them, keeping your eyes down, heading toward the bathroom.

  There are four stalls and you move past each one, pushing in the door, making sure no one’s behind it. You turn the water on, letting it run until it’s nice and cold. The water feels good on your face, a stinging flush that wakes you. Staring in the mirror you start to feel normal again. Whatever you thought you saw you imagined.

  You push into the farthest stall, pulling your T-shirt off and turning it inside out so the logo is gone. You braid your hair to the side, making sure it covers your scar. The cameras have already seen you once. This time you’ll walk out in the other direction, cutting through the side exit so there isn’t a clear record of you leaving.

  You’re about to go when the bathroom door opens. Through the crack in the stall you see a man in a hat and sunglasses. He turns the lock behind him, trapping you inside. He’s holding a gun.

  You immediately bring your feet up, one on either side of the toilet lid, trying to stay hidden as best you can.

  Everything in you goes cold.

  He pauses, looking down the row of stalls. He has a gray T-shirt on and it strikes you how ordinary it is, how normal. You still your breaths. You reach for the knife at your waist, forgetting it’s gone.

  He moves down the row slowly, methodically. His palm rests flat on the first door, then he pushes it open. He goes to the next and does the same. With only one more left you know he’ll be here soon, in front of you.

  “Why’s this locked? Who’s in there?” a voice calls. Someone pounds on the door, the lock rattling.

  The man spins around, staring at the bathroom door to see if it
will open. The door is shaking. You can see the lock turning, about to come free. The man turns, lunging for the last stall. He is almost to you when the bathroom door springs open.

  A man in a gray jumpsuit pushes in, two older women behind him. “What the hell is going on in here?” he asks, looking at the man in the hat. His gun has disappeared behind his back.

  It’s your chance. You slide open the lock and push out of the stall. “He followed me in here,” you say, pretending to wipe away tears. “He locked it and he wouldn’t let me out.”

  You don’t wait to hear the janitor’s response. You don’t even turn to look into the man’s face. You just run.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  AFTER TWENTY MINUTES, your arms pumping, heart steady in your chest, you finally slow to a walk. The man didn’t follow you out of the fast-food restaurant. He probably had to stick around, answering questions . . . maybe they even called the cops. You couldn’t risk waiting there to see. You sprinted for as long as your legs would carry you, making sure you’d lost him.

  You turn everything over in your mind. The man followed you, trailing you for miles, probably from Griffith Park. Who is he? How is he related to the men who questioned Ivan? You’re certain it wasn’t either of them. This man was broad-shouldered and athletic, taller than one and shorter than the other. You’d never seen the car before. It only had a slip of paper for the license plate, a shiny advertisement for Calabasas BMW.

  Ivan said that they asked for your location twice. The first time was at the bus station, the second time the park. The man, like the woman, trailed you and tried to kill you. But why? What did they have in common? Who are you to them?

  You’re so deep in thought you almost miss it. You stand there under the awning marked LIQUOR STORE, staring straight into the glass case at a green bottle filled with dark liquid. It’s the label that caught your eye. There’s script, and above it an antlered deer with a cross in the center of its horns.

  It’s the same image that was on the woman’s medallion.

  You push open the door and head for the clerk, remembering at the last second to smile. He looks up and smiles back. He’s in his late thirties, wearing thick black glasses and a vintage T-shirt. His laptop is open in front of him. He looks like he spends most of his time behind this counter.

  “That bottle there,” you say, gesturing to the one in the window, “what is it?”

  “My sanity,” he says with a grin.

  You remember to laugh a second too late. “The Jägermeister,” you clarify, reading the name. “Do you know anything about the label—what that symbol’s for?”

  “Finally,” he says with a smile, “a real question.” He does a quick search and then turns the laptop toward you so you can read it yourself. You skim the passage. Bottles feature a glowing Christian cross in the middle of a stag’s horns. This imagery is in reference to the two patron saints of hunters, Saint Hubertus and Saint Eustace.

  You look up and nod, but your whole body is shaking. You manage a short “thank you” as you head for the door. He’s still smiling, still asking you if you want a bottle, offering a curious “customer discount.” But your lungs are tight, your breaths so shallow they hurt. You can barely manage a wave.

  You walk quickly, hoping the movement will steady you as the puzzle pieces click into place in your mind. It makes strange sense that they would want clues as to where you were and where you were going to be, but not access to the tracking device the entire time. It would make it more challenging to find you . . . to hunt you.

  The man and the woman don’t know you and they don’t have a reason for wanting you dead. They are simply the hunters and you are the prey. You are a target in an elaborate game.

  You sit down on the edge of the sidewalk, feeling your stomach twist and tense, running through everything that’s happened since you woke up. How the men referred to their “clients.” How the woman followed you beneath the freeway, waiting until you were alone in the alley to try to kill you.

  Ivan had been telling the truth. He was part of it, but he never wanted you dead. He’d been keeping track of you for them. He’d used the robbery to keep you away from the police. He’d set up the interactions twice—first between you and the woman, then giving them your location in the park. The man must’ve followed you from there. He is after you now. . . . He’s still hunting you.

  You pull the photo of Ivan from your back pocket, hoping he’s alive, that it’s possible they’re keeping him somewhere.

  A few minutes pass in quiet silence. Finally, you look up. Up the street, a police car sits in a parking lot with its lights off. The officer doesn’t see you. As you start toward him, you brush the dirt from your knees, straighten the pack across your shoulders, knowing it’s useless. You look how you feel—worn, beaten, half dead.

  You keep your hand on the photo, running your finger over its glossy surface. When you’re nearly at the edge of the parking lot the police officer looks up. He stares at you, holding his hand over his eyes as if he’s not quite sure what he sees. Then you wave your arm back and forth, signaling him. “Over here,” you say, but your voice sounds so different now. Low and cracked. Barely a whisper.

  “I need help. Please.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “IT WAS IN the afternoon,” you say. “I don’t know the exact time I woke up, but it was light out when I left the station.”

  “The report from the subway station said around three in the afternoon.”

  The detective has a gray beard and mustache. In his plain green shirt and gray pants he looks like he could be someone’s grandfather. There’s been no pounding on the table. He hasn’t even raised his voice.

  Instead he asks slow, specific questions. It’s been like this for hours. He writes everything you say on a yellow legal pad. He keeps scribbling things down, flipping the page over, and scribbling more. There’s a camera in the corner and you can feel that they’re watching, that somewhere several officers are standing around, waiting to hear more from the girl from the office robbery downtown.

  “We should have more answers after you’re admitted to the hospital, but as I understand it—you haven’t had any flashbacks? No memories that seem like they could be from the days before you woke up?”

  “There are things . . . but I don’t know what they are. I don’t know if they mean anything.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “There was this funeral. I had a flash of it. . . . It was only for a few seconds.”

  “Whose funeral?”

  “I don’t know, really. I was just walking past a coffin and it felt like someone I knew had died. That’s all. It was barely anything.”

  The man nods. They took your knapsack when you came in and you still haven’t gotten it back. You’ve mentally gone through the contents, hoping everything in it backs up your story, that everything, eventually, can be explained. You’ve told them about your memory loss, about Ivan and the way you were set up, the robbery he staged downtown, the woman he killed. The men, the house, that they took Ivan somewhere. Each time they asked why, what this was all about, you hesitated. You can feel the words on your lips . . . I am being hunted . . . but you can’t bring yourself to say them just yet. You don’t want them to discount all you’ve said before. You need them to believe you, to listen.

  “And the man, the one who said his name was Ivan? Have you had any memories or flashbacks of him or the woman he killed?”

  “No,” you say. “None. Did you find anything about his car? Was it where I left it?”

  “Yeah, an officer found it in an hour ago. There wasn’t anything inside.”

  “C
an’t you trace it?”

  “The VIN number was filed off. It was completely clean—nothing on the inside doors, the engine, the steering column. We’re thinking it was stolen a while ago. They’re running tests on the trunk, but nothing yet.”

  He shuffles some papers, as if preparing to leave. You take a deep breath. You know that this is it, that you need to tell him now.

  “There’s something else.” You clasp you hands together, squeezing the blood from your fingers. “The men who were at that house, the ones who took Ivan . . . he worked for them, and he was following the tracking device, but I think there’s more to it. I think it was all part of a game.”

  “What do you mean, ‘a game’?” The man stops writing, instead watching you intently.

  “The woman who was shot . . . before she died, she tried to kill me. And I couldn’t figure out why she would follow me. But then, after I left Griffith Park, another man came after me, one I’d never seen before. He also had a gun. He cornered me in a bathroom but I got away.”

  “And you think they were playing a game?” the man almost laughs as he says it.

  “I know how it sounds,” you say. “But it’s the only thing that makes sense to me right now. Ivan didn’t know what was really going on, and as soon as he started to figure it out, as soon as he tried to help me, they turned against him. I know that he set me up, but he’s in just as much danger as I am. Wherever they took him, whatever he did—he needs help, too.”

  “We’re going to try,” the man says. “But explain this to me . . . why would these people go through all this trouble for a game?”

  You can’t hold back anymore. “It’s not a game . . . it’s a hunt. I think they’re hunting me.”