The Vigilante's Lover #2

by Annie Winters

  Still, I leave the back door open wide as an invitation for the rodent to leave. It has to be lonely, like me, all locked up with nobody to talk to.

  The hatch is exactly as I left it, shut tight. I spread my feet wide, trying to get a nice steady base to strike from. I don’t have a lot of space.

  I raise the axe over my head and the sharp corner scrapes the ceiling, sending down a shower of plaster. I blink from the dust, resting the axe on my shoulder. Aunt Bea would kill me if she saw what I was doing to her house.

  Although I guess it’s mine now.

  I lift the axe again, being more careful this time. Then I slam it down in the middle of the floor.

  It cuts cleanly into the wood, but a ringing noise of metal on metal blasts my ears. The reverberation from the strike travels all the way up my arms.

  I jerk on the axe and dislodge it from the floor. I kneel closer. A shine of steel glints between the splintered planks. The dang thing is lined with metal.

  I bring the axe down again, this time shattering a plank. More of the steel door is revealed.

  I keep hacking at it until most of the hatch is uncovered, hoping there will be a lock or a handle.

  But even once I have a major hole, bits of wood all over the floor, I spot nothing but the crack along the rectangular edge of the metal trapdoor.

  I sit on the floor among the wreckage, even more disheartened than before. My hands are screaming, red and bruised. At least two blisters are forming. I should have worn gloves.

  And I have gotten nowhere. I’m no closer to opening this secret door than I was before I destroyed the floor.

  I stumble to my feet and lean the axe against the shelves in the pantry. I’ll clean up the mess later.

  I can call someone, hire somebody who can cut metal. But I don’t know what’s down there. And for all I know, the people watching me would keep him from coming inside to do the job.

  I have to face facts. I’m not going to be a Vigilante. I’m not going to go on more dangerous excursions or escape high-security silos.

  And I will never see Jax again.

  I sit at the kitchen table, picturing Aunt Bea on the other side, wearing a faded housecoat and pouring a cup of tea. My throat wells up. She was my last and only family. I’m really and truly on my own.

  It’s time to move on with my life. Figure out what I want to do next.

  It won’t be here.

  12: Jax

  I take it easy on the drive to Vegas, attracting no attention and trying to stay off the Vigilante radar. I obey all speed limits, pay with cash, and think over my plan of action.

  And try to banish Mia from my thoughts.

  Still, she creeps in at odd moments. A woman on a billboard reminds me of how Mia tilts her head when she’s confused. A laugh on the radio sounds like hers.

  I have to reconcile myself that I’ll never see her again. Hell, if Sutherland thinks I’m checking up on him, Sam could be right. I might not survive this thing. It’s one thing to be a rogue Vigilante. It’s another to be hunted by the head of the American syndicate.

  It explains why he wouldn’t talk to me at the silo, though, and why he ordered me to New Attica. He wants me out of the way. He always has. Clearly my position to take over his job was a threat.

  But to what?

  The drive, done like a normal civilian, takes almost two days. The night in the hotel is brutal, a crappy room with precious few amenities. I think of heading to a local watering hole and looking for company. I get as far as the parking lot and go to a diner instead. I have to forget about Mia first.

  And I plan.

  When I get to Vegas, I have to think about how to contact Antonio, an old friend who goes back as far as my Phase Six days. When I left there for the West Coast, he rose through the ranks as fast as I did. By the time I got sent to Ridley Prison a year ago, he was in line to run that syndicate.

  I had to dump the clone ID when I left Tennessee, so I can’t go anywhere near his silo. But because of all the years I worked the Vegas channels, I’m familiar with all the outposts and safe houses in the area.

  One in particular was a favorite spot of mine when I got in a jam with the syndicate. Well outside Vegas near Lake Mead was a little old lady named Martha Clementine who ran a safe house mostly used by Phase Twos on their first missions who were feeling shaken up. Everyone called her Grandma Marty.

  Marty was shrewd when it came to hiding Vigilantes from the network and giving them downtime. She got in hot water once for trading IDs, which back then were housed in our shoes for everybody, not just Phase Ones.

  She would sometimes let a Vigilante take a job for one who might be struggling or was in danger of being removed from the program.

  I have the technology in the car Sam outfitted for me to check and make sure her safe house is still operational and secure, but I decide against it. I’m well cloaked and even a mundane transmission like that could alert the Vigilantes to my whereabouts. I feel sure Grandma Marty will take me in if I show up unannounced. Then it’s just dealing with the discretion of anyone else at the safe house.

  It’s late afternoon when I arrive at Lake Mead. I park near the cliffs and view the house with binoculars. The same yellow curtains hang in the front windows. She’s kept up her prized white oleander bush in the yard, surrounded by the unrelenting dirt.

  My best shot is to walk up without any tech. Most safe houses aren’t equipped with scanners that pick up heat signatures as identifiers.

  I’ll pretend to be a stranded motorist in the audio. Her house is one of only three in this twenty-mile stretch of desert. It’s reasonable enough.

  When I walk up the road to her house, though, three Vigilante vehicles are parked under a desert camo tarp strung between the house and her shed. This makes me pause. That’s a lot of witnesses. Liability.

  But the woman herself comes out to empty a bucket of recovered dishwater on her oleander. She’s wearing lemon-colored sweatpants and an oversized military jacket. Her hair is in rollers covered by a floral scarf.

  I stride across the highway to catch her before she goes back inside.

  She peers across the barren yard. “Is that you?” she asks.

  “Just a stranded motorist, ma’am. Hoping you’ll point me to the nearest gas station for my punctured tire.” I take the bucket from her and spread the water evenly around the bush.

  Marty nods knowingly. “Did you need a small service station or a full-sized outfit?”

  “I’d like to talk to someone in charge.”

  “How bad is your flat? Might be rough weather coming.” She points up, not at the sky, but at the corner of her roof.

  I see the camera. It’s where it always was. But she’s telling me they’re already listening.

  “How rough?” I ask.

  “People die of exposure in places like this,” she says.

  “I really need to talk to someone in charge since they made a rather large mistake when they sold me the tire.” I set her bucket back on the ground.

  “I understand what you need. Let’s see what I can find. We don’t have much time, though, before the storm hits.” She turns and leads me to her back porch. “I assume you left your receipt in the car?”

  “I did,” I say. I know she’s asking if I have tech on me. The woman is clever, and frankly, I’m relieved she’s helping if things are as bad as she’s suggesting. I don’t know if she’s reacting to the instructions to have me sent to New Attica, or if it’s gotten worse. Grandma Marty was never one to exaggerate a threat.

  “Come sit at my table,” she says. “I’ll find my phone book.”

  I hide a smirk. I always loved Marty’s ruses. We go into the back of the house, and I slide into one of the orange vinyl chairs. A boy in his late teens trundles into the kitchen. Marty waves him away. “Come back in five, Ray,” she says. “I’ve got a stranded driver in here.”

  The boy snatches an apple from a bowl and heads back out. I frown. Back in my train
ing days, memorizing bulletins was an essential part of your daily duties. If this Ray kid has even looked at them, he’ll know who I am.

  “He’s a good kid,” Marty says over her shoulder as she opens a cabinet. “He never causes trouble.”

  I assume that means he won’t report me. Probably she’s protecting him from something too.

  I glance around the kitchen. It’s just like it always was, bright and sunny and almost completely decked out in 1970s orange. I don’t know how she keeps all her aging avocado-colored appliances running. Probably any Phase Two techs who come through help her with them.

  She plunks a giant 1987 set of Las Vegas yellow pages on the center of the table. Immediately, all the electronics in the kitchen go out.

  “Well, look at that. Another rolling brownout.” She sits down. “I have to say this fast.”

  I nod. Her face is drawn in concern, wrinkles collecting around her tired eyes. “I don’t like this, and I’m not alone, but here it is. Someone tampered with a backup unit down south and you’re being fingered for it after your Houdini in the Missouri silo.”

  I control my concern for Sam’s safety. “They don’t know who got in?”

  “If they do, they’re not saying. But I don’t think they do. They’re blaming you, regardless.”

  “Sutherland already ordered my apprehension for New Attica,” I say.

  “It’s worse.” She sighs. “Now it’s a kill order.”

  The entire Vigilante network, ordered to kill me on sight.

  “Thank you for not doing it,” I say.

  She reaches over and tweaks my ear. “You were one of my boys. I don’t hold no account for them killing the likes of you, no matter what it’s over.”

  I take her hand. “Thank you.”

  She squeezes my fingers. “I can’t get you to Antonio, if that’s what you were after. If I were you, I’d ditch everything tying you to the network, even if it’s stolen or redirected. Cloaking won’t help. They’re double authenticating everything with a circuit, trying to ferret you out.”

  I nod. “Got it.”

  “I wish I could do more to help you,” she says.

  “You’ve done plenty.” I let go of her hand.

  The lights flicker and come back on.

  Marty draws the book closer to her. “There’s the lights. Will that number work for you? Is your cell phone charged?”

  I nod. “Thank you. I’ll call them straightaway.”

  “Take care of yourself,” she says. “It’s a big bad desert out there.”

  I walk out the back door, skirting the fringe of the range of the cameras. They’ll have me identified within ten minutes, if I have to guess. Damn. Someone will see that power drop, pull up the footage, and do a visual.

  Still, Marty did me a favor. I know what I have to do now.

  As soon as I’m out of camera range, I break into a run in the opposite direction of my car.

  * * *

  It’s sixteen miles before I come across a ramshackle gas station on the highway. I’ve got nothing on me but my clothes and Sam’s Blackphone, which I feel reasonably certain can’t be traced by the Vigilantes since none of the parts or circuits came from their inventory. That’s what makes it a Blackphone.

  Still, I power it up only long enough to nab the number of the only person I can think of to get me information on that MMA fight in Vegas, someone outside the Vigilante network but who could access that sort of data.

  The Cure McClure.

  The Cure is a retired boxer in California. About six years ago, he called on me to help locate an abducted girl, a friend of his son, Colt. Colt was big in the MMA circuit at that time, at the height of his career. Some punk hired a thug to shoot him in an alley, then tried to settle another score with another fighter who went by Power Play.

  I remember the girl, black haired and fiery. Maddie was her name. She’d been through some stuff that night. But The Cure called on me for a couple other things after that, and now it is my turn to call on him.

  Rather than use the Blackphone and have the use of a high-tech device be spotted so close to the compromised safe house, I head into the door of the gas station to see what I can use inside.

  An old man sits behind the counter, reading a newspaper from 2009.

  “Hello, sir,” I say to him.

  He catches me staring at the front page and shakes the newspaper so it rustles. It’s a nostalgic sound.

  “I share your fondness for paper,” I say.

  “Still can’t handle those newfangled reading devices,” he says. He thumbs at a pile of papers in his corner. “I figure I’ve got enough old news to keep me occupied till I keel over.”

  “Indeed you do.” Quite the fire hazard as well, I want to say, but simply grab three bottles of water from a cooler.

  He smacks the back of his hand against a headline. “Really funny to read a decade later about how we’re all going to die of swine flu,” he says. “I love this stuff.”

  I wait for his laughter to subside, trying not to sweat the time passing. I drop several dollars on the counter for the water.

  “Where’s your car?” he asks.

  I down one entire bottle of water before answering. “A few miles back. I need to make a phone call, if I may,” I say. “Cell phone’s dead.”

  “All righty.” He passes over his own cell. “I’d have kept my pay-phone box, but those dern workers came one night and hauled it off! Then they told me I couldn’t have no landline neither. Weren’t worth fixing the cables anymore.” He picks up his newspaper. “Damn progress.”

  His phone is at least ten years old, an ancient Motorola flip. I pop it open and dial The Cure.

  The voice is unhappy and harsh. “Who gave you this number?” The Cure barks.

  “You did. Just before I scooped up a fighter’s girlfriend who’d been abducted in Vegas.” I hold my breath that he won’t say my name aloud. If Sutherland has gone all-points with a kill order, they could be monitoring anyone I’ve ever contacted.

  “James, my golden boy!” The Cure says. “I haven’t seen you since you left the ring.”

  I release my breath. He gets it. “I’m outside Vegas and I need a ride.”

  “Give me the coordinates, and I’m on it.”

  Damn. I don’t have any tech to give me my latitude and longitude. I could take a guess. I glance around the gas station. This Luddite is bound to have maps around.

  Sure enough, there’s a rack of faded crinkled road maps by the door. I pull one out and dust falls from the creases. It barely holds together as I unfold it.

  “Searching,” I tell The Cure. I find the highway I’m on and approximate the run from Grandma Marty’s. “Latitude 36.206653, longitude -114.053843.”

  “I’ll send a helicopter,” The Cure says.

  “I like subtlety,” I tell him.

  He pauses. “I’ll scramble a fleet so it’s not obvious.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Anything for a fighter boy.” He hangs up.

  I set the man’s phone back on the counter and glance out the doors. This place won’t be too hard to defend if I have to, but I hate having a civilian involved.

  “Not much around these parts, is there?” I ask.

  He looks up from his paper. “Only gas for fifty miles. You stranded?”

  “My friend is picking me up.” I spot the door to the restroom. “I’m going to make a little use of that.”

  “Help yourself.”

  In the tiny room I strip down and wash off the sweat and dust from the travels. There’s probably no point in even stopping by any of my homes in New York, LA, or Detroit. A sniper would spot me before I got to the front door. There is no costume that hides a heat signature, and even Sam has never come up with a way to fake that.

  When I come back out, I finish off the second bottle of water while I look out the window. It will take The Cure close to two hours to get here from LA. I need to find a defendable place and figure out
what I can use as weapons, since I don’t have a thing on me.

  The man resumes reading his paper. I spot cigarette lighters and motor oil. If he has some twine — yes, there’s a coil of it — I can oil it to be lit. Run it into the gas line.

  That’s all a last resort. I’m not keen on blowing up this poor man’s livelihood.

  I’m about to pick up the supplies when the unquestionable thrum of helicopter propellers drowns out all sound.

  “That your ride?” the man asks, jumping up to look.

  I peer out the window. When the dust settles, I see Colt McClure, The Cure’s son, waving from the open door.

  “It is. Thank you,” I tell the gaping man and run toward the helicopter.

  “I was in Vegas with Pop’s chopper,” Colt yells.

  “Perfect,” I say and climb into the cabin.

  The pilot gives a half salute and fires the helicopter back up.

  Colt leans forward in his seat. He’s got on a UFC ball cap and a blue sweatshirt for some gym. I have to hope if this helicopter is suspected, the Vigilantes won’t do anything drastic with two civilians on board.

  “We sent six choppers in random directions,” Colt says. “Good to see you again.”

  “How is that lovely girl of yours?” I ask. “I didn’t get to meet her in Vegas but I’ve seen her in the ring with you after matches.” MMA fighting was popular in the viewing room at Ridley Prison.

  “She’s good. We’re good,” Colt says. “So what sort of tangle have you gotten yourself into?”

  “You can’t even imagine,” I say, scanning the sky. A helicopter in such close proximity to that safe house and its power outage is going to be noticed. Too bad civilian copters can’t be cloaked. I have to hope The Cure’s idea of scrambling six of them will be effective.

  I don’t see any imminent danger. The skies are clear.

  “Where are we headed?” Colt asks.

  “I’m hoping you can tell me that,” I say. “I’m trying to find a woman who was at an MMA fight in Vegas on July 28.”

  “Just as a spectator or does she know a fighter?”

  “I’m not sure. But there was an altercation that got caught on a lot of cell phones.”