by Dani Amore
This guy was a professional bodyguard.
And then it hit me. That initial feeling of things turning out badly had been more than that. It had been my instinct telling me I was being set up.
I went through the documents in the box. They were gibberish. Sheets and sheets of meaningless information.
They’d known all along.
And now I knew, too.
I had one shot to find her.
They would want to take her out of there as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.
I left the bodyguard tied up, but with the knife close by so he could free himself. I ran out to the car, threw it in gear and rocketed out onto the highway, thinking they’d watched me watching the bodyguard, knew I was going to take him down while he was jogging. So they moved in, got her, and got out, leaving me to take the blame once what was left of her body washed up on shore somewhere, whatever the sharks decided not to eat. And they’re not known for being picky eaters.
I used my cell phone to call the marina. The only marina in the area if you had serious money.
I got the receptionist, named the law firm, and said I was a caterer needing to deliver a gourmet picnic basket for the law firm’s boating party.
She checked her records.
The firm had no boat at the marina.
I swung onto 41 South.
As I drove, I tried to put myself in the shoes of the cockroaches back in Detroit. They weren’t going to fly her out for the simple reason it’d be better to kill her down here. So if they were going to kill her here and dump her body someplace and they weren’t using a boat, they’d probably do it in one other place.
The Everglades.
I drove ninety miles an hour, approximately. I figured my odds weren’t that bad. According to my map, there was only one road to the Glades from here and I figured they had maybe a ten minute head start. But they wouldn’t want to speed and attraction attention.
I notched it up to a hundred, as fast as the piece of shit rental car would go. And I caught up to them ten miles from Everglades City. The touching off point for any forays into the swamp. As soon as I pulled up to the gray Buick, I knew it was them. Two bullet-headed thugs in suits in the front seat. The top of someone’s frizzy hair against the bottom of the back window. She was probably unconscious and bound. Slumped in the back seat.
I dropped back into traffic and followed them to a small, public marina. They parked in front of the public information area and one of the slabs of meat went into the little building.
The other one went around to the trunk of the car.
That’s when I shot him in the back of the neck with the tranquilizer gun. He took two steps and stumbled, luckily, on the side of the car not visible from the information shack. So when his partner came out, I shot him in the thigh. He took three steps and fell on the other side of the car.
I hurried out and saw the girl in the backseat. She was trussed up with nylon ties and a gag. Here eyes were open. She didn’t look scared.
I didn’t have much time. I loaded the two guys into the trunk of their car, undid the girl’s ties and walked her back to my car with my arm around her. I had no idea how many people were in the information building just how much they had seen. I backed out of the lot so my license plate wasn’t visible. It might buy me a little more time.
Back on 41, I turned right and headed toward Miami.
After a few minutes, she sat up a little straighter and looked at me.
“Who are you?” she said. Her voice was firm and low. A lawyer’s voice.
“A former employee of the same firm you worked for.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“No.”
“Are you going to take me back to them?”
“That’s what I was hired to do,” I said.
“And?”
“And I don’t think I’ll be fulfilling my end of the bargain. I believe in lawyer’s terms it’s called misrepresentation.”
“Are you the Garbage Collector?” she said.
“I really hate that name. But yes.”
“Your reputation precedes you,” she said. She glanced back over her shoulder. No one was behind us.
After a beat, I said, “What do you have on them?”
She let out a long sigh. “Money laundering,” she said. “For the mob and a big collection of drug dealers.”
“Were you blackmailing them?”
She smiled, a tired exercise. “You don’t blackmail these guys.”
“So they tried to bring you in, you said no, then you had to get out. But they weren’t about to let you out.”
“No one gets out.”
“Why didn’t you go to the Feds?” I said.
“I did,” she said, an eyebrow raised. “They had an agent guarding me but he left for his jog and then they came and got me.”
“Oops,” I said.
“Now what,” she said as much to herself as to me.
I thought about it.
“I have a buddy who makes people disappear,” I said. “He’s in Arizona.”
“I don’t have much money,” she said.
“I’ve got some money from the law firm. I don’t think they’ll be asking for its return.”
She smiled just a little bit.
“Consider it your severance package,” I said.
She gave a slight nod and I turned the car around.
Pointed it toward Arizona.
THE END
Also by Dani Amore
The Killing League
Death By Sarcasm
Dead Wood
To Find A Mountain
The Garbage Collector
Hanging Curve
Scale of Justice
About the Author
Dani Amore is a crime novelist living in Los Angeles, California. You can learn more about her at http://www.daniamore.com
Winner of the 2011 Independent Book Award For Crime Fiction
Follow her on Twitter: @authordaniamore
