“Derek,” Derek said, following Steve out of the warehouse and across a narrow alley to another building. They ended up in what was obviously a security room. Steve talked to the guard monitoring the cameras and a minute later the car Derek had been in appeared on one of the screens, complete with his escape.
The guard glanced at Derek for a second, giving him a thumbs-up, then zoomed in on the license plate, writing the information down on a pad by his elbow. He tore off the sheet, handing it to Derek.
“It’s not from here,” Derek said in dismay.
“Nope. Jefferson County, due west of here.”
“Thanks for the help,” Derek said, as he pocketed the slip of paper. “I should get out of here before they decide to send out the troops to find me.”
“You think they would?” Steve asked.
“Not really. But I still should split.”
“Go out the side door,” the guard thumbed in the direction he meant. “It’ll put you right by a bus stop. Stay in the doorway until it comes.” He grinned. “I have a bit of a James Bond fetish.”
Derek chuckled. “That works, and thanks, both of you.”
* * * *
At least I was smart enough to put a lot of Michael’s cash in my pocket. And they were dumb enough not to search me. Digging into another pocket, he got out the right change to pay the fare. He had no clue where the bus was going and at the moment he didn’t care, as long as it took him far away from the warehouses and from the area of the city where the diner was.
I need new clothes, a backpack, and someplace safe to hide. I also need to get to a library and use their computers. Maybe I can track down the license plate number, unless the city’s got that as locked down as the military and cops do their info files.
He got off the bus at the end of the line and found himself in a parking lot on the far north side of the city. At least it’s somewhere I’ve never been before, so chances are no one can find me.
Leaving the lot, he walked until he found a café. It was going on one in the afternoon and he was hungry, so he stopped to eat and asked the waitress if there was a shopping mall close by. From the look she gave him, he knew she wanted to say, ‘You need one,’ but she was polite and told him there was—and how to get there.
Two hours later he walked out of the mall with a new backpack and several changes of clothes. He even remembered to stop at a drugstore for the essentials, like a comb and toothbrush.
By then it was after three and he had no idea what he was going to do for shelter. “If I was four years older,” he grumbled under his breath when he saw a couple of motels up ahead. “And had ID.”
Since he wasn’t—and he didn’t—he decided to see if there was a library around. He stepped into a coffee shop to ask and found out there was. “Only three miles from here,” the helpful clerk said, giving him directions.
He found it and noted to his relief that it stayed open until eight. That gave him time to get on a computer once one was free and see if he could track the license number. He got lucky, both in spotting a computer open up half an hour later and finding a site online where he could track the number for free. Most of the others wanted money and he didn’t have a credit card—not that he’d have used it if he did. He knew that he could be tracked that way if the people after him had the right equipment. He was very certain they did.
The car belonged to Hayley & Oliver, but when he tried to discover what it was—or what they were—he couldn’t find any listings for a company by that name. So I have to find out where they are. He wrote down the address on the license plate registration. Then he used a map site and saw it was for a building in Golden. Back where I started when I got out of the mountains. He smiled a bit at that.
One more search and he knew which buses to take to get there from where he was. By then it was an hour until the library closed. He took advantage of that to doze off for a bit in one of the chairs in the reading room, only waking when a librarian touched his shoulder and told him it was time to leave.
It suddenly occurred to him he should call Mel. Those bastards may have gone back there looking for me and messed with him.
He found a pay phone at a convenience store and called Mel’s cell phone.
“Where the hell are you?” Mel said, the second he answered.
“How’d you know it was me?”
“Who else would call me from a pay phone?”
“Okay, makes sense.” Derek gave him a fast rundown of what had happened. Mel swore several times while he did.
“Now what are you going to do, as if I didn’t know?” Mel asked.
“Check out the address. Don’t worry, that’s all I’m doing. I’m not stupid enough to try to get inside. I just want to know who they are.”
“That better be all you do. So you lost the gun, huh?”
Derek sighed. “Yeah.”
“Probably just as well. If you sleep rough and the cops roused you, you’d be in deep trouble.”
“True.”
“Is that what you’re going to do, sleep rough?”
“No choice. And don’t tell me to come back there. It’s the only place other than Charlie’s where they know to look.”
Mel chuckled. “Wasn’t going to. Okay, you take care of yourself and keep in touch if you can.”
“I will, and Mel, thanks…for everything.”
Chapter 5
Derek did sleep rough, in a large park close to the parking lot where the bus had let him off. No one bothered him, much to his relief, and he was up and moving just before dawn. Going back to the bus stop, he waited nervously for it to arrive, even though he knew there was no way the men could have found him. It took three buses and well over two hours for him to get to Golden.
Soon after he arrived, he was standing in a doorway across the street from the building he wanted. As far as he could tell, it held offices. Men in suits and women in business attire came and went as the morning wore on, but none of them were the men he was looking for.
He knew he was tempting fate, but he had to get inside and at least see if he could find the offices of Hayley & Oliver. That could clue me in on what they do. Or…
Through the wide, glass doors he could see an information desk. Just as he took a step forward, intent on going over there, someone bumped into him. He tried to move aside, felt something press against his side and froze. Then a hand gripped his arm and the man he’d escaped from barely a day ago said, “We’re going for another ride.”
“Like hell.” Derek twisted away, racing down the street, his backpack banging against his spine. He heard the man coming after him and dodged into an alley. Suddenly a second man was in his path, shoving him against the alley wall.
There was a soft, plopping sound just as the man who had been chasing Derek turned into the alley. He spun halfway around then fell to his knees. The man who had fired the shot was beside Derek’s attacker seconds later. He pulled the attacker’s hands behind him, and Derek heard two clicks.
“You all right?” Derek’s savior asked, looking over at him.
Derek nodded. “I-I think so.”
“Good.”
At that moment, a second man appeared at the end of the alley. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yep. Did you get his friend?”
“Yep.”
By that time a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk, only to be told by the second man there was nothing to see and to move on.
Regaining some of his composure, Derek asked, “Who are you?”
“John Larson,” the man replied. “My partner’s Alan Park.”
“Okay. Why are you…? How did you…?” Derek shook his head in bewilderment.
“We’ll explain as soon as we get our prisoners taken care of,” Larson said, as he hauled Derek’s attacker to his feet. He paused when the sound of approaching sirens rent the air. “Follow me.” He walked his prisoner down the alley toward the far end.
Derek saw a car pull up and ha
d a strong feeling of déjà vu, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t afraid of Larson so he tagged along behind.
Larson shoved his prisoner into the waiting car, ignoring the man’s cry of pain, muttering, “It’s just a flesh wound, you pussy.”
Derek almost laughed at that as he climbed into the front seat next to Park. Turning to look, he saw the second of his attackers was also in the back seat, his hands cuffed in front of him. Larson got in—his gun now visible in one hand—slammed the door shut, and a moment later the car was speeding down the street.
* * * *
“You’re not cops,” Derek said half an hour later.
They were in an office in a building several miles from where Derek had first met Larson and Park. The two prisoners had been handed over to another pair of men. Derek had no clue where they were now, but as long as it wasn’t anywhere close to him, he didn’t care.
“How do I know you’re the good guys?”
“We saved your ass,” Park replied.
“Doesn’t mean you’re not just as bad as them but working against them.”
“The kid’s got a point,” Park said.
Larson nodded, swinging a chair around then sitting, his arms crossed over the back, while he studied Derek. “We are working against them, but from the side of the angels, so to speak. We know they’re probably the ones who killed a buddy of ours a while back. What we can’t figure out is how you fit into the picture.”
“How do you know I do?” Derek asked defiantly.
“Part guesswork, part legwork. We’ve been watching them ever since they got back in the city. They work for a couple of shyster lawyers who have offices in the building you were so interested in.”
“If you’ve been following them, you know they tried to snatch me yesterday. Why didn’t you stop them?”
“You did a good job of it all on your own and by the time Park let me out, you and your assailant had vanished down the cut-through. The driver took off and we didn’t see either of them again until he stopped long enough to pick the first guy up.”
“Do they have names?” Derek asked.
“Stanton and Raffin. Stanton’s the one who was chasing you. Now a question for you, what do you have that they’re after?”
“Nothing. Not a damned thing. I told them that. All I had was the box.”
Larson shot a look at Park. “What box, Derek?”
“How do you know my name?”
Park shook his head. “How do you think? As soon as we knew they were interested in you, we did some digging. Went by where you worked after one of them did, kept an ear open, and heard the boss man call you that. I want to know how they found you.”
Derek sighed. “I was trying to find out about someone I knew once. Online. I didn’t have any luck but they found out somehow and found me on a gaming site. I guess…okay, I know, I talked about where I worked with a couple of friends there. One of the friends was either Stanton or Raffin, Stanton said.”
“That explains them turning up at the diner,” Larson said. “Now back to this box. Where is it now?”
“They have it. It was in my pack—on the seat of the car—when I ran.”
“Then what they were looking for wasn’t in the box. What was?”
“Letters, from his mother and a girlfriend, his discharge papers, a gun, money, and an envelope with some threatening notes.”
Larson tapped a finger against his lips. “Do you remember what the notes said?”
“Something about ‘his time would come’, and ‘he’d suffer the consequences’.”
Again Larson looked at Park before asking, “Did you take anything of Michael’s from the cabin?”
Derek almost said ‘no’ before stopping himself. “What cabin?” he asked, trying to look as if he knew nothing about it.
Larson smiled. “Good try, Derek, but we were up there five months ago. Michael wasn’t there, but you know that. It was probably you who buried him. The place had been thoroughly searched, undoubtedly by Stanton and his pal.”
“You don’t know it was me,” Derek protested.
“Yeah, we do. Okay, let’s put it this way. We know Michael had someone else living there with him for a while because he told us the last time we contacted him. He didn’t say who, just that it was a kid who’d been in an accident. The kid—” Larson glanced down at Derek’s leg “—broke a leg and Michael fixed it as best he could.”
“Uh-uh. I’m not buying that. Michael had no way to contact you.” Derek snapped his mouth shut when he realized what he’d said.
Larson chuckled. “He did, actually. He didn’t keep it at the cabin. He didn’t keep anything there that could tie him back to what was going on. Even the stuff you said was in the box was just mementos of his past life, nothing more. He should have known better than to keep them, but we all do stupid things at times.”
Derek frowned, trying to puzzle out what they were telling him. “How could something be going on for almost thirty years?”
“Thirty years?” Park asked.
“Yeah. He said he’d been there forever. I figure since he got out of the Marines in, umm, seventy-one, and he was in his fifties when I met him, he had to have been there thirty years. Or at least that’s what it sounded like.”
“He moved into the cabin a month before he found you, Derek.”
“No way! It looked like he’d always been living there. He had things down to a science, how to survive, how to…everything.”
“Yeah, he was good at that, going underground to stay safe.”
“Safe from those guys?”
“Safe from the people looking for him. Stanton and Raffin were just hired help.”
“What did he do that someone wanted him dead?”
“He said he had information about a mole in our operation, and he only needed one last bit of proof before he could take it to our chief. Then someone tried to kill him. Twice. So he went underground to wait until the heat was off.”
“How did those men find him?”
“As I just said, there’s a mole. Since Michael’s the only one who knew who it was, it’s more than possible this man, or woman, learned something that led them to him.”
“I thought you said those men worked for some lawyers.”
“Shysters,” Park said, “who keep these guys on their payroll to do their dirty work. Our mole goes to them, tells them he needs to hire a couple of thugs for some unspecified reason, and for the right price, they put him in touch with them.”
Derek leaned back, staring off into space. “So, let me get this straight. Those two men came to the cabin, killed Michael—why didn’t they interrogate him first? Never mind that. They killed him, searched the place, then came back the next day to search again.”
Park broke in. “How do you know that?”
Derek looked at him balefully. “Stanton told me when they snatched me. So, anyway, they come back, don’t find what they’re looking for because I’ve taken off with it—or so they think. So they wait over six months doing nothing until they got lucky and used my stupidity to find me.”
Larson smiled a bit. “That sounds about right.”
“But you still don’t know who the mole is.”
“Had to point that out, didn’t you? We can talk to the lawyers but that probably won’t do any good. They’ll plead client confidentiality and get away with it.”
Park shook his head, looking hard at Derek. “You searched the place and found the box. You sure there wasn’t anywhere else where he could have hidden something?”
Derek grinned a bit. “Not unless he put it in one of the jars of canned vegetables.”
“And you didn’t take anything else from the cabin but the box.”
“Some of my clothes. Well, his clothes, actually, that he gave me because I didn’t have any of my own. That was it.” Derek paused then he shook his head.
“What?” Larson asked sharply.
Derek reached under his shirt, pulling out the Sain
t Christopher medal. “Before I-I buried him, I took this. I wanted something to remember him by.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so before,” Park asked angrily, holding out his hand. “Let me see it.”
“I forgot,” Derek whispered. “I’ve been wearing it so long…” He unclasped the medal, giving it to Park.
Park turned it back and forth in his hands, studying it intently. “Got it!” There was a small click and the medal opened into two halves. “A microdot.” He didn’t touch it, closing the medal again. “We’ll take it to our man to see what’s on it.”
“Can I,” Derek said hesitantly, “have it back when you’re done with it?”
“I don’t see why not,” Larson replied.
Park left the room with the medal. Derek let out a sigh of relief. “So it’s over. I can go back to being me again.”
Larson nodded. “Who is ‘you’?”
Derek shrugged. “I wish I knew. I just meant I could go back to what I was doing before, working at the diner, maybe staying with Charlie again if he’ll let me.”
“What do you mean, you wish you knew?”
“Michael didn’t tell you, when he told you about me?”
“All he said was he’d found you and was letting you stick around because he liked your company—or words to that effect. Best guess is he did, but he also didn’t want you leaving and maybe telling people about him and the cabin.”
“When I was in the accident, I guess I hit my head and rattled my brain. I don’t remember anything other than the few seconds before it happened.”
“Nothing?” Larson asked in surprise.
“Not one damned thing that counts. I know my dad was driving and my mom was in the front seat with him. But I don’t know who they were, who I am. Michael gave me the name Derek—after a friend of his, he said. I took ‘White’ as my last name because I stayed with a man and his wife for a couple of weeks after I left the cabin.”
“How did you end up down here, of all places?”
D-Boy Page 6
