“Bring him in, Nick.” Joe beckoned from the counter as Nick poked his head in after holding the door to the Monte Café open for Rachel and Jean. He held Deke within sight on his leash. “It’s a slow morning, and a good thing, too, since Nancy’s still out. Where’d you pick up the strays, Hemingway?”
Nick chuckled. “Up North, along the side of the road. This is Rachel Hunter, her daughter Jean, and Deke the dog. I don’t want you to get into trouble for having Deke in here, Joe.”
“Glad to meet you, Rachel, Jean, and of course, Deke.” Joe gestured at the first table by the window. “I’m the owner of this establishment, Joe Montenegro. Now, if you see anybody come in, act like Deke’s your seeing-eye dog, Hemingway.”
“I have my sunglasses right here,” Nick agreed instantly, holding them up. “Two coffees and a hot chocolate, please Sir.”
“Coming right up.” Joe left to get their order.
“Another friend?” Rachel needled Nick.
“Any more out of you, Kimmy, and I’ll have Deke herd you up to the house.”
Deke gave out a short ‘grumphf’ in agreement and on cue.
“Okay, for you, Hemingway,” Rachel retorted as Jean giggled.
After collecting an application from an eager Joe, who offered to hire Rachel on the spot, the four walked up 12th Street to Nick’s house as sunlight streamed through the dissipating clouds. Nick saw that Rachel kept glancing over her shoulder at the ocean’s colorful transformation under the sun’s rays.
“It’s gorgeous when the sun comes out,” Rachel noted, as they stood on Nick’s porch.
“Yep, it’s nice. We can go up on the balcony. I’m working on my outline for Diego’s next adventure.” Nick disabled the alarm system, propping the screen open, and kneeling down to check over Deke. “You didn’t collect much sand, Deke. I guess we don’t have to give you a bath this time.”
Nick opened the front door. Jean skipped over the stoop and a huge hand grabbed the little girl up. Nanoseconds later Deke clamped onto the wrist with snarling ferocity. Morris cursed, dropping Jean, while pivoting to the right, swinging the attached Deke with him. Rachel scooped up Jean and Nick stomped his booted right foot into Morris’s left Achilles tendon. Morris collapsed, gritting his teeth against the blinding pain while trying to swing his silenced automatic toward Nick. With Deke out of the way, Nick swung his left boot up in a roundhouse kick which smashed into Morris’s face like a jackhammer. Morris’s weapon clattered to the hardwood floor. Morris pitched over on his back, blood gushing from his shattered nose. Nick had the automatic pointed at Morris in the next split second. He kicked the front door closed.
“Take Jean and Deke upstairs, Rachel.” Nick directed, watching Morris roll around in misery.
Rachel carried the stunned Jean upstairs, pausing only to call Deke.
“Go on, Deke. Thanks for the save, mutt.”
Deke gave out a sharp bark and ran after Rachel and Jean.
Nick waited, keeping his distance from Morris. Morris coughed up blood after rolling to his hands and knees. He tested his left leg, falling on his right side with a grunt of pain. Getting back to his hands and knees Morris looked up at Nick sullenly.
“You’ll hav’ to call. The tendon’s busted,” Morris said nasally.
“What the hell are you doing here? Frank and I have a deal.”
“You ain’t got a deal with me. If not for that Goddamn dog, I’d -”
Nick fired two shots into Morris’s right temple and one more into his forehead after tipping the shuddering man onto his back. Nick went into the kitchen and pulled out two black plastic garbage bags and his duct tape. After pulling Morris into a sitting position, Nick covered the head and upper torso with doubled black plastic bags, duct taping them tightly into place. It took Nick twenty minutes longer to clean up the blood spatter. He retrieved the satellite phone and made initial contact. Fifteen minutes later the phone vibrated.
“Clean up on aisle seven.”
“What the hell did you do now?”
“Morris went rogue on you, Frank.”
“Did you have to kill him?”
“That was rhetorical, right?”
“You’ll have to find a way to speed up the flash drive retrieval, Nick. I’m going to have some trouble fixing this without them.”
“I talk to the Marshalls tonight. I’ll try and get them on board with a family trip within the week.”
“The best I can do is two hours for clean up.”
“Call me before they get here. Morris is next to the front door. It’s strange, Frank. If Morris wanted me dead, why didn’t he send a long range postcard? He knew we had a deal; but he tried to get leverage against me like he wanted to barter. You wouldn’t know what he would’ve been bartering for, would you, Frank?”
“You could have asked him.” Frank’s nonchalant tone was not fooling Nick at all.
“He was bleeding all over my hardwood floor. It would’ve been a noisy question and answer session. As you know, I have company.”
“I’ll ask around.” Frank disconnected.
Sure, you’ll ask around. Nick put the phone and weapon up on the hutch inside his dining room. He walked upstairs and knocked on Rachel’s door.
“Come in.”
“We have a problem,” Nick stated, seeing Rachel, Jean, and Deke huddled up on the bed together. There’s an understatement. “I don’t think my insurance is enough. I may have overestimated my value. The man downstairs was trying to get you and Jean. If not for Deke, he would have. I played dumb with my boss, but we need a new plan.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Road trip.”
“All of us in your Chevy? How soon?”
“We have an hour. Any longer and we’ll be cutting it close. I have something a bit more comfortable for us to travel in. Sorry we didn’t get much time to rest up. We’ll call Grace and Tim after we’re on our way. I’ll tell them we had to leave because we spotted trouble. I think we may have to use your nest egg to deal with them, Rachel.”
“You’re screwed, aren’t you?” Rachel wrapped her arms around Jean.
Nick shrugged. “Hey, new choices mean new gambles.” You sell this, you should get into the movies next, killer. “Grace and Tim will not be happy with this decision, especially since they’ll have to stay in the dark until we finish our scavenger hunt.”
“Are…are you going to stay with us, Nick?” Jean asked.
“I’m stuck, Jean. Deke saved my bacon. A life for a life, little one. If your Mom and me manage to find the right owner for your nest egg we might even make it back here soon.” Right after I kill a few people. “Get packing if you want aboard Nick’s Adventure Express. Otherwise, we call Grace and I deliver you three to them right now.”
“I want to stay with Nick.”
“This won’t go away,” Rachel said. “They have the Marshalls under surveillance. They know where we are and apparently the identities of the ones hunting us down may be on those flash drives. Did I miss anything?”
Yeah, how the hell I managed to get myself into this.
“You forgot about my boss getting in the game and deciding a high value asset with very high blackmail potential takes second place to what’s on the flash drives. This goes beyond the network you compromised. Someone has managed to get into a position of power who knows what’s on the drives. Some players in this want you dead before anything surfaces, and others want the drives as leverage. My cavalier remarks about making people-adjustments according to what I found on the drives triggered somebody’s survival instinct – either my boss, or someone in on briefings he gives.”
“Gee, you have it all figured out.” Rachel grinned up at Nick to take the edge off her sarcastic tone.
“Not everything.” Nick smiled back, admiring the way she took the news. “I’d still like to know what made my boss think the guy downstairs could pull this off by himself.”
“You said except for Deke he would have got you,” Jean put in, reminding Nick they were debating this in front of a seven year old.
“Very true, smarty, but my boss assumed without divine intervention in the form of Deke the dog, I would have been handled. I surmise from that fact either I’ve dropped a few notches in the eyes of my superiors or they have less assets to send after us. I’m hoping for less assets, because two of them have already been retired.”
“Couldn’t they recruit others?”
“From where, ‘Psychos Are Us’? There are very few ‘no questions asked’ people working at my level. This conference is over, my dears. If you want aboard the Express, get packing.”
Nick left the room. He used the remaining time to gather weapons and gear he did not already have stashed in his hidden away Cadillac Escalade. After forty-five minutes Nick stored his own Heckler & Koch USP-Tactical with extra clips in the recessed compartment he’d built under the driver’s seat of his Malibu. He next set up his satellite phone and went in to help Rachel and Jean. Nick retrieved Morris’s Glock automatic with silencer from the top of his hutch. He took off his shirt and put on a black pullover sleeveless shirt with a sewn in weapon pocket. The Glock fit into the pocket. Nick put on a windbreaker jacket over it, then threw a blanket over Morris’s body.
“The Express leaves in five minutes,” Nick called out, jogging up the stairs.
Nick went into Rachel’s bedroom, where Rachel was hurriedly zipping up the two bags on her bed. Nick picked them up the moment she finished and headed to the car.
“Bring Jean and Deke. We have to go.”
Minutes later, Nick started the Chevy and drove around the block. He parked it.
“What’s going on?” Rachel asked with a bewildered look.
“I have to meet my guests, who will be arriving unannounced very quickly,” Nick told her, leaving the spare Chevy key in the ignition. “I’ll call your cell-phone when I want you to drive the Chevy around to the house again. From there, you’ll follow me in a vehicle yet to be determined.”
“What’s this about, Nick? Why don’t we just leave?”
“Mainly, this is about asset reduction. It’s also because I don’t want to be set up by having the other unmoving asset discovered inside my house. Plus…I don’t like being played.”
“You…you mean…the guys being sent over -”
“Yeah, sucks to be them.” Nick shut the driver’s side door with satellite phone in hand.
Nick jogged to his house, went inside and dragged Morris’s body into the entryway closet. He quickly retrieved his duct tape and another black plastic garbage bag. With a box cutter from his kitchen, Nick made a slit on each side of the bag, and put the bag over his head, carefully cutting two slits for his eyes. Nick put the bag and duct tape aside and then made sure Morris’s silenced weapon was operational with a full clip.
Nick’s satellite phone vibrated. “Find out anything useful?”
“No. Cleanup arrives in ten minutes. They don’t want any trouble, Nick, so wait upstairs. If they see anything move, they’ll spray everything in sight.”
“I’ll be upstairs in the back bedroom with the woman and her daughter. All they have to do is remove Morris’s body, wrapped in a black plastic bag, leaning against the wall to the right of the front door. They won’t even have to step inside the house.”
“Good, I’ll tell them. We’ll talk after they remove the body.”
“Fine.”
Nick pulled the bag over his head, aligning the eyeholes with his arms through the slits. He wrapped the duct tape around the bag at his waist, and positioned himself sitting next to the doorway, with his right arm free behind him. His left side leaned against the entryway door frame with legs splayed out sideways. After making last minute adjustments to his eyeholes, Nick waited, his right hand holding Morris’s weapon slightly under his right leg.
Minutes later, the front door opened. Without more than a glance at Nick’s bagged figure, the two men entered the house, pausing when they reached the stairwell. Nick raised his right arm and fired with deadly accuracy from only fifteen feet away. The silenced shots from Morris’s 9mm Glock struck the two men’s heads. Nick fired four times, two striking the man in the rear over his right ear. The third shot struck the second man through the jaw as he turned and the fourth through his forehead. Rolling to his left, Nick propelled himself up after one spin with his left hand. He shot twice more into each man’s head as they lay twitching on the floor.
Nearly forty minutes later, Rachel’s cell-phone rang. She jumped as if touched with a cattle prod. Rachel had been taking turns with Jean on her daughter’s Nintendo DS. Opening the cell-phone with a shaking hand, Rachel said hello.
“Drive around to my house. You’ll see a black Ford van parked out in front. I’ll wave and you follow me down to the Monterrey Marina.”
Rachel drove around the block and followed Nick as he drove the Ford van. When they reached the Monterrey Marina, Nick waved Rachel around, pointing toward the curb. He parked the van and took a last look around the van’s rear cargo compartment. Morris sat propped against the rear doors, his Glock with silencer in hand, and his legs splayed out in front of him. Morris’s weapon pointed in the general direction of the two men Nick had shot after they entered his house over an hour ago. The corpses stared sightlessly at Morris from where they were slumped against the front seat backs. Nick straightened the body behind him slightly with gloved hands and then locked up the van. He set the vehicle alarm. Nick ran up to his Malibu’s driver’s side and opened the door for Rachel.
“Where to now?”
“Las Vegas, baby,” Nick answered. “I have an emergency place out in the desert there. We can hole up for a few days until we’re off the radar. Get in.”
“Nick…” Rachel grabbed Nick’s arm before he could get into the driver’s side seat. “Were those guys in the van assets like you thought?”
“Absolutely.” Probably.
“Thanks for stopping, Nick.” Jean settled into the seat with Deke’s head on her lap. “I was starving.”
“I noticed. I think I saw the McDonald’s assistant manager send out for more food after you ordered.”
“Did not.” Jean made a face at Nick as he watched her in the rearview mirror. “Where’d all the cars come from?”
They were on their way to California Route 46 East, near Bakersfield. The McDonald’s stop had been the first rest break since leaving the Monterey area. While heading toward the freeway on-ramp, they encountered a traffic jam up. A State Highway Patrol car with lights flashing was visible along the roadside a hundred yards ahead. Nick could see the route lay open past the patrol car, with vehicles speeding up from there on.
“There must be a fender bender up where the patrol car’s parked,” Nick speculated, as the traffic inched ahead. “Naturally, the looky-loos have to jam us all up.”
Rachel opened her window, getting a blast of hot air from the Bakersfield desert area, while craning her head out the window to see around the vehicle ahead.
“Nick!” Rachel gasped, jerking back inside. “Some guy’s kicking the crap out of a state cop! They’re wrestling around on the ground and no one’s stopping except to look.”
“People know they can end up getting killed sticking their noses into something like that,” Nick explained calmly. “Hopefully, he called for backup, and they’ll be here soon. Sometimes you…what?”
Rachel stared at Nick in open-mouthed surprise, all the while knowing it was ridiculous to think Nick would react any differently. “What if the cop didn’t get a chance to call in? Couldn’t you help?”
“You do realize we’re on the run, right?” Nick was unable to disguise the irritation her question provoked in him. “I could get killed. I could help and end up on the six o’clock news. I could be a star on a You-Tube vid thirty seconds after I get involved, with all the cell-phone freaks out there.”
“Stop the car. I’m going to help him,” Rachel ordered.
“Are you out of your -”
“Stop the damn car now!” Rachel turned on Nick, her mouth a thin line of angry determination.
Oh great, Dudley Doright to the rescue. Nick glanced at Jean in the rearview mirror. It looked as if both the little girl and Deke were looking at him accusingly.
“Jean, hand me my windbreaker, quick.” Nick sighed. “Hold the wheel, Wonder Woman.”
Jean handed Nick his windbreaker while Rachel held the steering wheel. Nick slipped into the jacket and pulled the hood up over his head, cinching it tightly. He reached across Rachel and popped open the glove compartment. Nick extracted the pepper spray and stun gun he had stored there.
“I’ll stop, jump out, and you get your Good Samaritan ass over into the driver’s seat. Keep going no matter what you see and wait for me at least twenty yards past the incident. If it doesn’t turn out well for me, get turned around and head back to Grace and Tim.”
Rachel tensed as Nick stomped on the brake, shifted into park, and leaped out of the car. Rachel exited her side and moved quickly to take his place. It took Rachel only a few seconds to get into the Malibu driver’s seat and shift the car into drive. She watched Nick jog toward the flashing lights. Rachel only caught brief flashes of his windbreaker hood as Nick moved along, staying close to the slow moving line of cars.
Nick saw the faces of mildly interested people gawking ahead, anticipating their soon to be front row seats to a possible tragedy. As he suspected, Nick saw cell-phones held out windows nearer to the fight. He shifted the stun gun to his left hand while positioning the pepper spray nozzle with his right. As he drew nearer, Nick saw the State Highway Patrol officer slip and go down on his back hard. His attacker straddled him with arms cascading closed-fisted blows on the downed officer. Nick noted the guy on top wore only a white t-shirt and jeans. His unkempt dark brown beard and long hair lent a wild aspect to the hulking figure.
Nick heard the mixed grunts and cries of rage, fear, and pending exhaustion, as the life and death struggle played out toward disaster for the patrolman. The bearded attacker stopped his assault and grabbed for the officer’s gun. The patrolman, spitting blood and gasping for breath, tried to cover the man’s access to his holster with both hands. This drew his attacker’s ire in the form of a one-fisted pummeling the officer had no defense for. Nick kept close to the cars, breaking into a run, knocking into arms and cell-phones, as he covered the remaining distance.
The patrolman gave up defense of his weapon, unable to withstand the pounding he was taking to his already shattered face. With a yelp of triumph, the bearded man seized the 9mm automatic, wresting it out of the patrolman’s holster with his left hand as he continued to smash the officer with his right fist. The side of Nick’s booted foot struck with the full power of his running leap into the man’s right ribcage. Rib bones cracked and the attacker shrieked in pain, pitching sideways off the patrolman, the weapon falling from his hand.
Nick followed through his kick, landing over the fallen officer, spraying the still screaming attacker full in the face with pepper spray. With calm, calculated movements, Nick then stunned the convulsing man, blue crackling arcs highlighting his relentless assault, until the man made no sound. Only the man’s heaving chest and jerking limbs gave any indication the attacker still lived. Nick heard cries of shock from the vehicles’ open windows as they passed by. He made sure he kept his face turned away from the people’s cameras. Nick pocketed his pepper spray and picked up the patrolman’s handgun with the sleeve of his windbreaker pulled over his right hand. He leaned over the officer, who had groggily rolled to his left, wheezing and gasping for air. Nick stuck his handgun into the empty holster and helped the patrolman up into a sitting position against his squad car’s rear door. The officer blinked tears and sweat away, his arms hanging at his sides limply.
“I doubt this clown will be moving, but if you’ll allow me, I’ll cuff the prick for you.” Nick looked closely at the officer’s eyes, trying to determine the patrolman’s state of consciousness.
Not in a condition to question his savior, the officer nodded slightly, and turned to allow Nick access to his handcuffs. Nick took them out of the pouch at the patrolman’s belt and went over to flip the bearded man over on his face, dragging the man’s hands behind his back and expertly cuffing him. Nick leaned down and wiped the cuffs with his windbreaker before returning to the patrolman.
“I have to leave. Will you be okay?”
“Tha…thank you…they…they just watched. He had my…gun…I -”
“Easy now,” Nick soothed, holding his hand up in front of the officer’s eyes. “Keep your focus. Did you get this called in?”
“No…I didn’t have time, he -”
“I’ll get it.” Nick noted the officer’s name was Tomlinson. He opened the driver’s side door, reached in with his windbreaker-covered right hand and called in an ‘officer down’ call, naming Tomlinson.
Nick left the driver’s door open and leaned over to Tomlinson again. He saw some clarity returning to the patrolman’s eyes. “Help’s on the way. Want me to kick the sucker on my way by for you?”
In spite of his painful condition, Tomlinson grinned a little, but shook his head slightly.
Nick ran off, ignoring the mixture of cheers and accusations, while he ran for the Malibu parked ahead. He ripped open the passenger door and dived in.
“Go, go, go,” Nick ordered Rachel.
Rachel spun the wheels slightly, kicking up dirt and loose gravel getting onto the road again. In minutes she had the Malibu on the freeway heading East, with Nick watching for possible looky-loos following them from the scene. Nick stripped off the windbreaker. He was drenched in sweat, and leaned back in the seat taking slow, deep breaths while enjoying the blast of cold air from the vents.
“I…I was wrong, Nick.” Rachel gripped the steering wheel stiffly. “That guy was a monster. He’d have killed me…and…I saw all the cameras. If -”
“You were right,” Nick interrupted, thinking of Tomlinson’s smashed face. “You made me do what was right and I don’t often know what’s right anymore. He would’ve killed the cop.”
Suddenly remembering Jean, Nick whipped around in his seat, peering back at the little girl appraisingly. “I don’t suppose you looked away as your Mom drove by, did you?”
“Nope,” Jean replied with a mixture of fear and awe. “Did you kill that guy?”
“No, but he ain’t happy.”
Jean giggled.
“Great.” Nick sighed, turning to the front again. “Another psycho in training.”