by a b
Brent followed him, straining for a casual gait that his legs obviously had no idea how to produce. He saw what had launched Legacy into action. There was a table near the back where two chairs were drawn away like their occupants would return at any minute. In the ashtray, a thin plume of smoke rose from a cigarette that had nearly burned down to the filter. Even from ten yards it was easy to see the lipstick imprint drawn in an arc around the tip. It didn’t look like a shade that any of the men in the corner could pull off. He did know someone, however, who could.
Brent broke into a sprint as he left the building, catching Legacy at his open window as the car started. “Legacy.”
“Use the phone, call in, get helicopters floodlights and roadblocks, we still don’t know where Blade is, and if any of the other colors in that bar go anywhere, erase them.”
“It’s Wagner, isn’t it?”
Legacy punched the car into drive, his voice was stone cold, and it pushed Brent away like an icy hand on his shoulder. “Laura’s clock is down to nine minutes, Wagner can take care of herself.”
Legacy’s voice sounded convincing, but something in his eyes as he charged the trail ahead of him reflected in the rearview mirror. His worries were spreading out rather than consolidating, the opposite of what was supposed to happen.
Wagner knew who they were up against: an inventive, brutally efficient sociopath who had made a living out of the chaos of a shadow world he called home. He hadn’t yet felt danger recoil onto himself. People mistake criminals like this, thinking that their crime defines them. Their crime is the most recent symptom of their warped inner workings, it is their latest cruel art, but it is still a hobby compared to a highly elastic basic drive. At the core of the most feared modern predator is self-preservation. Wagner was in full assault mode with Laura’s life on the line. It was her anthem, but somehow, Legacy thought, in the chill of the thin mountain air, it rang like a death knell. If Legacy were emotionally capable of startling revelations, he would have leapt far enough out of his seat to eject when he came to the end of his bumpy journey of thought on the subject of Wagner. He wasn’t sure if he was careening upward to rescue Laura at all anymore.
The taillights curled red tracers like the tip of a sparkler, bouncing into the vast darkness of the quiet mountain. Gun to his head, he couldn’t honestly say what was at the front of his thoughts, rushing into the same danger at a pace that every other adversary of Blade used to run away from him. The trees, row upon row, gave the light more and more filter as the car climbed, until finally, from his vantage, there was no evidence that light or life existed at all.
*****
Wagner felt a large hand clamp onto her shoulder. Her body tensed as a mountain of human flesh pushed her up against her midsection. She caught the faint scent of spearmint, and a voice pressed into her inner ear.
“You need to get out of here.” Burly shifted his weight pointing his gut diagonally so it didn’t rest on this little toothpick of a woman. His frame, if he lost his balance, would have spread her like peanut butter up against the wall. Burly didn’t want to have to clean the wall. “Trouble is on the way.”
Wagner slid to the floor. Burly reached out a hand to her shoulder, “Are you OK?”
Wagner only needed two fingers, and with a snap of leverage, she turned her shoulders into a hand crank, spinning the pressure into the slow separation the bones in his wrist. In a blink of an eye, she had turned and was kneeling before Burly. Burly’s eyes flooded with pain, and tears began to pool in the corners. Wagner was controlling the floodgates. She pressed her thumb further into the joint, her nail pinching the connective tissue.
Burly somehow maintained an even tone. “Jesus, little lady, I’m trying to help you - “
She cut him off, “Let’s start talking about what I want to talk about. Where did she go?” Wagner couldn’t let go of Darci’s trail. The concern of the bartender, even the sincerity of his warning, didn’t throw up any alarms.
Burly heaved a minty sigh, and he decided that it was far less painful to give the agent what she wanted, rather than argue with her.
He pointed two fingers on his free hand toward a rusty sign, gleaming in the half moon. “Trailhead to the compound starts right there.”
“I’ll take the road.”
“The back trail is faster, even at night. The road winds all the way out to Park Canyon Bridge.” His husky voice began to quiver. Wagner released her grip.
She paused, considering her options. The fact that the bartender didn’t want her to go back into the bar area was clear. He hadn’t moved a step and his message was protective. “Protective of what? Of her?” Wagner’s thoughts rang so loud in her head that she was sure that he could hear her. The presence of something or someone hung in the air. It was Blade. Burly knew when his customers were scared. Years of running a bar had tuned his radar carefully to the moment before blood was going to be shed. Blade was on his way; knives were out.
None of the information that hung in the air filtered into Wagner – it seemed like she’d have to make a decision without all of the facts. If, for example, she had any idea that Brent and Legacy stood only yards away, it might have changed her reasoning. She might have pushed past the mountain of a man who filled the hallway and ordered a final round for the men in the corner. Instead, she decided if there was any chance of getting to Darci before she came into contact with Blade, it was worth the gamble. One last confirmation -“Darci started coming in here about six moths ago?”
He nodded, “She smiled and winked every time she picked up drinks for them, she made little toothpick decorations with the fruit – she’s a kid. She’ll end up going to jail with them, and she doesn’t deserve that.”
“Do you know what they’re up to?”
“Drugs? Theft – the regular.”
Wagner did her best in the dim light to judge the bartender’s eyes. She made a snap decision and pulled out a pen, then plucked a detached scotch label from the utility shelf. “It’s a satellite phone number, call it and tell the man on the other end these exact words.” She wrote a single sentence.
Burly looked passive, indecisive, it was probably the trait that had made so many women walk out on him. He needed something – what was it?
Wagner perched up on her tiptoes hauled back and slapped the large man full force across a chubby cheek. “There’s more where that came from, don’t disappoint me.” She flashed a smile. A rumble began in Burly’s tummy, erupting past his stinging cheek and finally coming out of his nose and mouth simultaneously. Burly had a therapeutic break through in that hallway; he’d always hesitated when someone walked out on him - in his own world. Bang! The back door crashed against the frame. He finally got out the words. Wagner had already left, and he spoke under his breath, as the message wasn’t for her. “Leaving me is the biggest mistake you’ll ever make, don’t walk out that door.”
Trailblazer Wagner was five minutes up the trail when she began to hear noises ahead of her. Twenty yards up the trail a shadow crossed the moon, it might have been a coyote, or a bear, or a tiger. Wagner’s identifications betrayed her east coast city upbringing. She had less understanding of alpine predators than grasses that she crushed under foot. It didn’t slow her down a bit. Her instinct that anything truly dangerous wouldn’t announce its presence kept her plunging forward toward the noise ahead at breakneck speed.
She knew that trusting Burly was a huge leap; however, it was one she took at a full run. It all came down to his breath. Not the odor, that was putrid. The sound of breathing told Wagner a lot about a person. The sounds that a person calculated were not half as interesting as the ones they didn’t control at all. They couldn’t conceal the nature of the breath that they had been drawing into themselves since birth. Very few people can control their breath with the same precision as his words. Legacy could. It was number 321 on a list of reasons to dislike Legacy, pages and pages were filled and she was even printing the mental list double sided nowadays
to save space. Still she wouldn’t mind hearing his voice to calm her racing pulse, or at least in order to redirect her anger.
It sounded crazy but she’d thought she’d heard his voice outside the bar, just as she’d left. It was over the racing of an engine – another reason she was sure it was paranoia, because she’d also thought that the engine sounded exactly like her own car. So, in her mind, Legacy was outside the bar, yelling, stealing her car. Wagner knew why she’d created it. What was it about the tall dark father figure head case that put her at ease during crises and pissed her off at all other times?
Her legs raced over old halved out logs compacted so far into the earth that the fact that were once stairs was almost completely lost to the feet which alternately skidded off or sunk into sections of the wood – at the top, the sound of breathing became louder. Wagner was almost on top of her when she topped the stairs, and what she saw made her pause.
A pool of light filtered pale green by the pine needles. There was a compound of buildings. The down slope after the top of the stairs had hidden the cluster of outbuildings from sight, but now she could see their location winking from behind the trees.
There was the movement again. Two different sources now, and one of them was getting louder. It was approaching. She and Darci were not the only ones out walking the silver tipped edge of the moon.
Chapter 62 Bar Tag
“Do you think he’s going to bust up the place again?” Mac grumbled. The memory usually brought a laugh from the group, but tonight, not even a smile.
Vorest spat back, “This dump could use a kerosene and a spark plug to complete the make-over.” He flipped his lighter back and forth with a clicking sound like he was threatening the timbers around him. The timbers, comfortable in the dark recesses of ancient slumber, were unimpressed.
Sean nodded, staring at the door where Blade would soon make his entrance. He turned to Mac, smiling belatedly at his joke. He scanned his eyes over to Vorest, who was so jittery that parts of him looked out of focus. Some men, when they are threatened, like to intimidate weaker people or break things. Sean sat silent like he expected everything.
His father was a mechanic and every day he’d come home like clockwork, stoned beyond reason. Father would hit mother, mother would slap oldest daughter Kim, Kim would lock middle child, Sean in the closet where he’d take care of the youngest daughter, Nelle. He didn’t remember molesting her, there was no agreement whether it was him or his dad, but the accusation had sent him away from her for life. He had ridden thousands of miles to get away from the cycle, and yet he’d become a participant and enabler in the torture and violence against innocents. He’d become his father. Experts would add him to the statistics. He sometimes wished that he could bring himself to put a bullet between his own eyes.
The thought spurred him to speak, “He’ll be here any minute. What do you think he needs us for?”
“It’s obvious, Feely and Stones fucked up. We need to find a replacement.”
“Should have taken that sweet piece of candy sitting in the bar, where did she go anyway?” Vorest growled.
“Why didn’t he just call us back to camp?”
“He wants to make this beating public.”
“You call this public?” Sean looked around the bar, only a square head from town sitting talking into a hands free cell phone headset. “I think he just wanted to know where we were – he’s cut and run.”
Vorest punched Mac in the chest, half because he was closest, half because he had never been able to read Sean. He might be one of those quiet killers, and right now he didn’t need enemies, he needed allies. “Fuck you. He’s walking through that door and kicking our asses and then you’ll be sorry you said that.”
Sean waited for him to catch up to his own logic. It didn’t happen. “Sure, I’m wrong.”
The tension suddenly shifted. Before they were afraid of Blade walking through the door and now, strangely, they worried that he wouldn’t.
Ten minutes later, the phone rang and a message was delivered through the fat bartender. Blade had fixed the problem, and he wasn’t coming after all.
*****
Wagner heard the attacker coming through the trees, along with the shriek from Darci. She acted on reflex, taking long fluid strides over the uneven ground, and yet somehow launching herself gracefully into the pile, gun drawn, screaming. “Federal Agent, I’m armed.”
This was all academy training, but nothing in her experience had prepared her for what was at the bottom of the scrum. The attacker hadn’t cared in the least that she was FBI or that she was armed. Her shoulder struck the attacker and her gun hand brushed against a sagging coat of warm soft fur, heaving the animal off of Darci and sending him skidding down the slope.
The animal snapped its jaws at his attacker, drawing blood on the fleshy part below Wagner’s chin, inches from her throat. She could tell that its jaws had the power to send a lot more than the trickle of blood running down the ridge of her collarbone.
Wagner pulled Darci off of her knees, “Are you bleeding?”
Darci looked like she was about to cry, looking at the three deep marks across her midsection where the animal had raked its claws. Darci couldn’t answer, she was frozen and had gone sheet white. She held out her hand, covered in blood. It was like she wanted Wagner to verify something she couldn’t bring herself to believe.
The flailing dog finally regained traction, skidding to a stop far below. It quickly began circling outward looking for a safe, fast way back up the ridge to its prey. Wagner judged the distance to the nearest building and began tugging on Darci to follow. Her legs moved like concrete stilts, stiff and heavy.
Wagner heard a yelp, and then the sound of running. The dog had found its trail.
They were halfway across the clearing, nearly to a small 8 by 10 enclosure when the dog broke from the dark underbrush. Forty yards were gobbled in half. According to the shadows created innocently from the lamppost light, the heads of the women were almost touching the bloodstained teeth of the dog.
The snarling beast was ten yards away when Wagner pushed on the door. It didn’t budge and, much worse, the gun which was in her hand dropped from the effort. She knew it was too late to pick it up and take aim on the dog. Wagner had made a huge mistake by not simply waiting for the dog at the clearing’s edge, putting a bullet in the chest to slow its breathing then walking up and putting a second in the brain. It hardly deserved a bullet in the brain for protecting its home, but looking at the situation she was in now, she saw the error clearly.
Her mind raced trying to make up for her body’s error. There was something strange about the rough-hewn door, something that didn’t fit the measure of its utility or perhaps some detail that would give her leverage – then she saw it. The hinges were visible on the outside of the door. Most hinges are on the inside so that nobody can simply remove the door and enter the house. It makes the usual swing of a door inward. This door swung outward, making her original push ineffective. She took a deep breath and pulled. It flapped open, banging against the exterior wall, bringing the other occupant of the room to his feet. This was the dog’s house; there were bars on the windows and the door swung outward because it was built to keep things inside, not discourage entrance from the outside. Wagner had hoped to pull the door shut once entering, but the surprise of finding another dog waiting on the inside had cut her enthusiasm for being locked inside the room. The two dogs growled and circled the women.
Wagner couldn’t stop thinking about the defensive wound patterns that the ME would examine on her body post-mortem. What a strange image to take into forever land. There was a hint of a smile on Wagner’s lips, she hoped that it would linger, and that someone would have to guess what in this terrible situation had put it there.
*****
Agent Brent had to repeat every third word he spoke into his headset. Sitting near enough to the bikers that he couldn’t shout, he kept an efficient cadence and military structu
red communication pattern through the crackling connection back to Washington.
It wasn’t the overcast skies or even the accompanying pressure drop before a storm that interfered with his satellite unit; it was most likely it was some kind of magnetic content in the rocks. It was only a hundred years past that these ranges had produced a rich variety of ores for a nation with a growing appetite for silver place settings, gold for rotting teeth, and, later, uranium to ensure a quick death for anyone who tried to take the gold or silver away. Most people think that the magnetic charge somehow interferes with the signal, and this is not the case. Each phone has an identifying chip that allows linkage to a series of communication satellites. It’s this chip that changes the equipment from an extremely expensive receiver (like a radio) into a communication device.
Brent heard each of Wilkes’ excited words perfectly clearly, however, getting his position back to Wilkes took a gymnastic exercise of speech, the long program, minus the medals and leotards.
Wilkes didn’t know that his side of the conversation was perfectly clear, and he yelled into the receiver, “There are four units on the way on the ground. One will be in the air in forty minutes, and the entire area can be contained by dawn. Copy.”
