No Cry For Help (10 page)

CHAPTER 24

Mr. Black sped down the quiet residential street, acutely aware that any hope of remaining inconspicuous was rapidly fading.

Even if he wasn’t speeding, the large and expensive Lincoln stood out. Despite its incredible view of Burrard Inlet and the glistening office towers of downtown Vancouver on the far shore, this segment of the city was built on native reserve, which protected it from the get-rich-quick developers who would have stuffed it with million-dollar condos for white and Asian yuppies.

As such, the newest vehicles parked in driveways and on the street were from the previous decade. Anything newer was small and cheap and bought with gas mileage in mind.

But if Mr. Black’s suspicions were confirmed, being inconspicuous was the least of his worries.

Crow’s truck loomed less than half a block ahead and Mr. Black closed the gap in a hurry.

Two figures were inside the cab.

Talking. Oblivious.

He moved closer still.

Reckless. Uncaring.

He eased up just as the Lincoln’s chrome grill came within inches of the truck’s rusting rear bumper.

Both Crow and his passenger
— a young native with a thick cotton headband the color of ox blood — looked back in alarmed curiosity.

Mr. Black bared his teeth and twisted the steering wheel to the left. His foot pushed the accelerator to the floor, making the large vehicle growl.

The Lincoln jerked to the left and shot through an impossible gap between Crow’s truck and a parked van. The gap proved too narrow and Crow’s side mirror snapped off at the base in a shower of broken glass and twisted metal.

Mr. Black sucked air through his nostrils to expand his lungs in an attempt to circulate every last drop of precious adrenaline.

This is what he lived for.

Once the Lincoln cleared the nose of the truck, Mr. Black twisted the steering wheel to the right and slammed on the brake
s
blocking the road.

He twisted in his seat and braced himself. Through the passenger window he watched Crow’s truck screech in agony, its rear-end fishtailing as aging brakes desperately tried to bring the clapped-out hulk of iron to a halt.

The rush was razor sharp.

To its credit, the truck stopped with barely an inch to spare. Smoke poured from its wheel wells and a thick cloud of steam exploded from beneath its hood.

Mr. Black exhaled and opened his door. He walked around the front of the Lincoln, preparing his mind and his body as he moved.

He knew the passenger would be the first to exit the truck. The young native was lean, fit and his temper wouldn’t be tempered by the relief of having miraculously avoided an expensive collision.

Mr. Black wasn’t disappointed.

The young man’s face was practically white with rage.

CHAPTER
25

The grocery clerk eyed Wallace’s colorful Canadian currency with unbridled disdain before reluctantly allowing him to exchange it for a pre-wrapped sandwich, two chocolate-dipped granola bars, four cans of a caffeine-loaded energy drink with a ridiculous name, and a large bottle of artesian tap water.

Back in the truck, Wallace tossed his groceries on the seat beside him and studied the dash-mounted GPS. By zooming out the map, he was able to scout the area around the border without accidentally displaying his hand and setting off any “suspicious vehicle” alarms.

It didn’t take long to find a spot that appeared perfect for what he had in mind.

Following the GPS directions, Wallace kept to the east side of the interstate. At 6
th
Street, he turned north and then west again on C Street. There, he drove into a seldom-used parking lot behind a large rectangular warehouse with a corrugated steel roof.

The gravel lot was bordered by a shallow grass verge that overlooked the I-5 and offered a clear view of the border patrol headquarters.

Wallace slowly turned the truck around and reversed into an out-of-the-way spot under a neglected huddle of trees on the edge of the grass.

He stayed parked for awhile with his back to the view. His palms were sweating and the back of his neck itched with the need to turn around, to locate the guard, to get some answers
—

He fought the impulse and stuck with his plan, sitting in silence to make sure his presence didn’t warrant any undue attention. If a nosey patrol car came by, he would need to move fast.

Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be anyone working inside the warehouse or patrolling its grounds. On the far side, where gravel turned to tarmac and the lot butted onto 2
nd
Street, cars came and went at a large Pac Can Duty Free, but everyone there was too focused on a last chance for discount liquor to even glance in his direction.

Before today, Wallace’s biggest crime had been disobeying company policy and refusing to pick up certain unstable passengers with a track record for violence. The courts may have ruled those individuals still had a right to ride the bus, but when a fellow driver could no longer do her job because of the severe beating she received over a 25-cent shortage in fare, Wallace
— and most of the other drivers — believed the judges could go fuck themselves.

Alicia had worried about him. About the increasing violence that made driving a city bus more dangerous than most people realized. He had always tried to assure her that he could handle himself.

And he had.

But how were they to know that danger would arrive through a different door? A door that neither of them even knew existed.

Wallace rubbed his face. He didn’t want to think anymore. He needed to act.

After sliding out of the cab, Wallace quickly moved his supplies into the open-air cargo area and lowered the tailgate. Next, he unfurled the canvas tarp and draped it over the truck bed, anchoring it on each side to a series of welded hooks. He left the rear flap hanging loose. When he was done, he took one last look around, lifted the flap and crawled underneath.

The truck bed became a hunter’s blind, cold and damp but perfectly disguised by its normalcy.

If he’d had more cash, Wallace would have bought a sleeping bag and waterproof mat. With the RCMP looking for him, and his illegal status on this side of the border, his credit card was useless. But, then again, with comfort came sleep. And he couldn’t afford to close his eyes
— even for a second.

Lying on his stomach and using his elbows for support, Wallace lifted the skirt of the tarp and focused powerful binoculars on the rear entrance to the border headquarters situated less than eight hundred feet to the north.

On the far side, out of his line of sight behind the building, border guards questioned their share of the 250,000 people who wanted to enter the United States from Canada every day. If they suspected anyone of trying to smuggle contraband across the border, or they just wanted to be jerks, they sent them to the search and seizure stalls on Wallace’s side of the building.

Wallace was assuming the guards took turns at each station to avoid boredom and that sooner or later his blond guard would appear on one of the search crews. Not that it mattered. Even if his guard stayed on the far side of the building, Wallace had chosen this spot because it offered a clear view of the staff parking lot. That meant he should easily spot him heading home at the end of his shift.

Wallace watched the guards working for awhile before grabbing a sandwich and energy drink from the grocery bag. The sandwich disappeared so fast, he became worried he hadn’t taken the time to remove all of the packaging and had simply inhaled the Styrofoam liner along with whatever the processed meat was supposed to be. He contemplated eating a granola bar, too, but a sudden sharp pang of guilt stopped him.

He thought about his sons and wondered if they were being fed. At home, they were constantly eating and yet still complaining about being hungry, and they weren’t even teenagers yet. Alicia kept saying they would soon have to start going to all-you-can-eat buffets each evening to let the boys graze before they ate them out of house and home.

Wallace didn’t know where they put it all. Both boys were lean like . . . well, Wallace patted his stomach, like their father used to be.

When he complained to Crow about the pounds he had put on in the time he was off work, Crow had laughed and told him the extra weight suited him.

Wallace questioned what he meant by that and Crow said, “You’re settling down, becoming comfortable in your own skin. Even when you were bitching about the physiotherapy you had to do on your leg, your outlook was changing. Day by day, I watched you become happier than I’ve ever seen you. Frankly, I was a little jealous.”

Wallace stared straight ahead, lost in thought as though a movie was being projected on the flapping canvas. He wiped a stray tear from his eye.

He had been happy. At the time of the crash, he had been sure he was going to die, but to survive that only to have something even more terrible brought down on his family. It just didn’t make sense.

Why would someone take his family? There’d been no ransom or demands of any kind. In fact, it was the opposite. Someone went to a lot of trouble to get him completely out of the picture.

“And why not just kill me?” Wallace whispered aloud. “If the bastards want nothing from me, why
didn’t
they kill me?”

There was only one person who knew that answer.

Wallace drained his energy drink, feeling the caffeine and sugar buzz filter through his brain, and returned his attention to the binoculars.

He focused on the busy guards and devastated bystanders whose vehicles had drawn the short straw. He knew the blond guard would relish being part of the wrecking crew, to wield the immense power of the Patriot Act like a sledgehammer wrapped in the Stars and Stripes. He scanned each guard’s face, desperately trying to find him.

And then he did.

Blond. Smug. Muscles bulging as he wrestled the middle seat out of a minivan while a young olive-skinned couple and their three children looked on in terror and confusion.

“If this fucker doesn’t talk,” Wallace told himself. “I hate to think what I’m going to do.”

He heard another voice from deep within his brain say. “Don’t worry. He’ll talk.”

And before he could question it, the voice told him why.

“Because you’re not a nice man,” it said. “Not anymore.”

CHAPTER 26

JoeJoe threw open his door and rushed out of the truck. His lean frame was electrified with anger and his hands automatically curled into tight fists.

He wished he had thought to pack a gun. Make the fuckin’ idiot really crap his pants.

The jerk had almost killed them and now he was
—

Grinning?

JoeJoe’s step faltered under the intensity of the man’s unapologetic stare — coffee-brown orbs within an elliptical pool of startling white.

He moved with alarming speed and purpose, every muscle seeming to know its place, its connection to the others. His face reflected stone-cold sobriety with a hint of glee rather than the expected fear or remorse.

“Dude, are you fuckin’ crazy?”

The man’s right hand slid across his belt and suddenly there was a flash of curved silver.

JoeJoe unfurled his hands to protect himself, but the black man rushed in so close, so quickly—

JoeJoe fell to his knees, warm blood gushing from between his fingers as he clutched at his torn throat.

CROW RELEASED
his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and stepped out of the truck.

His legs felt wobbly as he walked around the rear of the vehicle and saw
—

The black driver, his right hand dripping with blood, was staring down at JoeJoe, watching him die.

Crow gasped. “Jesus.”

The black man cocked his head.

“Where’s Wallace?”

“Jesus,” said Crow again.

And then Crow did the only thing he could think of. He turned and ran.

MR. BLACK
cursed and launched himself in pursuit, but he had been standing too close to JoeJoe’s draining corpse and his left foot slipped in the expanding puddle of blood.

Even as he tumbled to the tarmac, Mr. Black did a quick calculation of Crow’s speed. He rolled and regained his footing, making the move look fluid, before deciding he was better off giving chase in the Lincoln.

Without another glance at the corpse slumped in the middle of the road, Mr. Black leapt into his vehicle and screeched the tires as Crow turned a corner and headed down a back alley.

WITHIN SECONDS
, the Lincoln entered the mouth of the alley, chewing up any advantage that Crow’s head start had given him. The alley had been a poor choice. It was high-fenced, filled with locked gates, chained animal-proof garbage containers and gave Crow nowhere to hide.

At the time, however, it had offered the only thing that mattered
— it took Crow’s pursuer away from Delilah and the girls.

Crow fumbled with his cellphone as he ran. He glanced over his shoulder. The Lincoln bore down. Its huge front grill was the size of a bar piano and projected an unspoken promise of major pain and irreparable damage to whatever it struck.

He stabbed at the tiny plastic keys of his phone with his thumb. Number one on the speed dial.

His lungs burned as the cellphone rang and he was panting like an overheated dog. The real agony, however, was in his stomach. It had twisted into a knot and was trying to exit his body via his anus.

He glanced from side to side as he ran. The alley was too narrow. The fences too high.

He was going to be crushed.

He thought of his youth. Indian Days at the rodeo. The insane clowns distracting the angry bulls so they didn’t crush the fallen braves.

He reached back his hand, felt it skim hot metal. One chance. He kicked up his heels and leapt skyward at the first kiss of steel.

A voice answered the phone.

Delilah.

But it was too late.

MR. BLACK
cursed and slammed on his brakes as Crow was carried over top of the Lincoln’s grill. He rolled the full length of the hood and flattened briefly on the windshield before being squirted over and onto the roof.

When the Lincoln finally screeched to a halt, Mr. Black tore out of his seat and ran back down the alley. He needn’t have hurried. Crow was lying face first in the gravel and dirt. His leap to safety, anything but.

Mr. Black immediately rolled Crow onto his back. His face was bloody, clothes ripped and torn to expose raw patches of skin. His proud nose was bent at an awkward angle and his eyes were closed.

Mr. Black checked the man’s pulse and breathed a sigh of relief. His heartbeat held strong and steady.

Eliminating the young native had been an unnecessary indulgence, but it would have been a major mistake to lose the only other person who knew Wallace’s location.

He unlocked the rear hatch of the Lincoln and, with some sweat and effort, dumped Crow inside.

The rear third of the vehicle had been equipped for transporting private security guard dogs and as such was separated from the rest of the interior by a reinforced cage of powder-black steel bars.

Mr. Black never liked dogs. Not even as a child. He found the domestic breeds too neurotic as though bred by insecure sadists to continually pine for human interaction and approval. The trained breeds were no better. They always killed too quickly, seeming to take more pleasure in ripping out someone’s guts than listening to them beg.

He had respect for their handlers, though. He enjoyed that gleam of madness behind their eyes. They reminded him of the explosives specialists he worked with in the sand. They were crazy fuckers, too.

The owner of this vehicle had been no different. The dogs hadn’t turned on him until the third slice, when he held his liver in his hands and his voice took on a whiny pitch. The dogs hadn’t liked that pitch.

Mr. Black closed the rear hatch and climbed back behind the wheel.

Now he just needed a quiet place to talk. Somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed until he had all the answers he needed.