Keith stretched out his glass of iced tea for a toast. “To exciting times and my future son-in-law.” He clinked his glass into Smoke’s, took a long drink, and then looked over sideways to where Sally had just closed the slider. “Now tell me everything I can stand to hear.”
Over the next three hours, Smoke filled Keith’s ears with plenty of what had happened. He told him about the Black Slate and what he and Sid had been hired for. He talked about Adam Vaughn the werewolf, the deaders, the shifters, and Mason Crow the minotaur.
Keith’s mouth dropped open until his jaw almost hit the ground more than a few times. A breeze came, but the older man started to sweat a lot. He had the expression of a man who had seen a ghost.
Finally, Keith waved his hands and said, “That’s enough. I’ve heard plenty.” He slumped back in his chair and let out a long sigh. “I don’t want to believe it, but I do believe it. And my daughter is out in the thick of it. My little baby.”
Smoke nodded. He’d left out some items. He hadn’t told about Sid being abducted by Kane Lancaster, and he hadn’t mentioned Allison or Megan. “I’ll always protect her,” he said.
“I know you will. Damn. I want to join the fight with you.”
“You’re better off in Florida.”
“Hah, there are deaders there, too.” He slapped his knee. “They just call them senior citizens. You ought to see them down there. I’m talking about my father and mother of course. They still get around pretty good. It’s a nice community, but dead quiet after seven p.m.” He rubbed his knee. “Oh, getting old sucks. So, tell me more about the weapons you use. We aren’t going anywhere until you two are settled, and who knows, we might need some protection. I still get the willies thinking about that man that was here from the Drake months ago. He was dead, wasn’t he?”
“Edwin Lee,” Smoke said softly. “Yeah, I saw his tombstone. There’s no telling how many of those kinds of people are out there running around.” He felt at little flutter in his stomach. “There are children too, Keith.”
“Children? You mean like Megan, but they’re dead?”
“Clones is more like it. Honestly, I can’t tell if they’re real or not. Maybe they’re something else entirely.” Smoke’s broad shoulders sagged. “It isn’t easy.”
The older man fanned himself and refilled his tea and offered some. “More?”
Smoke held out his glass and said, “Sure.”
“You know, it really breaks my heart that we haven’t seen or heard from Allison or Megan for quite some time. Sally grieves about it every day. I catch her looking at photo albums and crying sometimes. I can’t help but wonder where we went wrong with Allison.” Keith pinched his tear ducts. “It hurts, and even worse, my gut tells me they’re in the thick of all this. Aren’t they, John.”
Smoke had hoped the topic wouldn’t come up, but there wasn’t any point in trying to hide anything from Keith now. One never knew how hard life would hit you. One day you were here and the next day you were gone. Keith needed to know everything he could about his daughter and have some peace with it. “Senator Wilhelm was in league with the Drake, and Allison—as you know—was in league with him. She’s still with them. It’s the choice she made, Keith, but you can’t blame yourself.” He looked around at the wonderful ranch home and all of its pleasant surroundings. “I don’t have any children, but I’ve known plenty of prodigal sons. Some were in the military and others were in prison. It leaves you shaking your head. Most times it reminds me of Cain and Abel. One just had faith and the other didn’t. It’s hard to understand why.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought along those lines before. It offers little comfort and it hurts like hell. I just hope for Sally’s sake that Allison will come around before it’s too late. I think Sally’s getting her hopes up that this wedding will bring us all together, but I fear she’ll be disappointed.”
“It’s going to be a great day for all of us,” Smoke said. He gulped down his drink and rattled the ice in the glass. “With tea like this, how can it not be?” He tapped the back of his hand on Keith’s knee. “Come over to my car and we’ll talk more about those weapons you’re so interested in.”
With a groan, Keith got up. “Good. I hope I can get a few shots in on those bastards that have screwed with my daughters.”
CHAPTER 5
Smoke spent the rest of the day with Keith and Sally. They all spent a lot of time in the living room after they finished a wonderful home-cooked dinner. Sally showed him volumes of family photos while Keith watched Gunsmoke on TV. It was one of the better days Smoke had had in a long time, being around real people that lived a simple life and cared about one another so much. He’d had days like that when he was young, and the familiarity of the family atmosphere left him nostalgic more than a few times.
He left them with smiles on their faces. Keith thanked him for the blue-tipped bullets that he’d left and one of his pistols to shoot them with. Sally was all tears. The sweet woman gave him a big hug and pecked his face with a kiss. Smoke found a tissue in the Camaro, checked the red smudge in the rearview mirror, and wiped it off. He turned up the radio and tapped on the wheel. “Never enough good days like today.”
The Camaro rolled down two miles of gravel road that led away from the Shaw house before hitting the T-intersection of a one-lane highway. Happy to get off the long drive that was better suited for trucks than low-riding sports machines, Smoke laid into the gas and zoomed down the blacktop. He was feeling giddy. Even though his discussions with Keith had been on the darker side, it felt right. A perfect day.
Perhaps it won’t be long before Sid and I settle down and start our own family.
Family. That was a sore issue for him. He’d had one when he was growing up, but not with his real parents. He’d been adopted as a baby, and he didn’t have any idea who his parents were. There were days, not many, but enough, when he’d wonder who his parents really were. But he had Samantha, his half sister, and her parents—his adopted parents—were just as much his parents as hers. They’d been nothing short of good to him. His life had been normal, but unlike the other kids where he grew up, he was different. Special. In his gut, he felt that everything going on right now might have something bigger to do with him. It bothered him.
I wonder how Sid’s doing.
He picked up the phone lying on the passenger seat and didn’t see any messages on it. It had been a full day without a word from his bride-to-be. It was as if he expected to be chatting with her all the time like two teenage kids on a sitcom, but he did like the excited purr in her voice. At the same time, there was a nagging in the back of his head that something might be wrong. The Drake was out to get them. Possibly she could’ve been abducted again. If he had it his way, he’d be with her most of every day.
Maybe I should check in with Sam. She’ll know something. Ah, Guppy. He’ll know what’s going on. Sam tells him everything.
Eyes on and off the road, he started thumbing a quick text to Guppy. The radio station fizzled out and squeaked and became static. He pushed the button for another station. It was static as well. Through the windshield, he looked up at the full bright moon hanging in the sky. He passed by a white big rig that was pulled over on the side of the road. He hadn’t seen a car pass by in the last few miles. It was just him and a vacant road. The lights on his dashboard blinked. A chill went up his spine. He gripped the wheel.
Feels like an X-Files moment.
He drove another mile with nothing but static in the speakers. He turned the volume down. The lights on the dashboard flickered from time to time. The engine’s throttle skipped more than once. Smoke was taking the same route back to DC as the way he’d come. The vehicle had been freshly in tune then, but now it seemed off. He passed another big rig pulled over to the side. Its lights turned on just after he passed, and smoke rolled up and out of its stacks as it pulled onto the road.
Something’s going on.
Smoke wasn’t one to be paranoid. If anything, he exp
ected things to suddenly happen. That’s what he was trained for. He always had a plan of action. An escape plan. He reached into the backseat and grabbed a semi-automatic pistol. The safety was off and it was ready to fire. He laid it in his lap.
He caught his first glimpse of another vehicle coming his way. Its high beams were bright, almost blinding. He glanced to the right side of the road until the whoosh of the other car that was over the centerline whizzed by his. A huge man with stone-cut features was crammed behind the wheel, looking right at him.
This is getting weird.
Pressing on the accelerator, he sped the Camaro up to eighty miles per hour. Ahead, a big rig started to switch lanes in an attempt to pass another one. Smoke let off the gas. Both lanes were blocked. He checked the rearview mirror. The big rig that had pulled out onto the road behind him was coming, and it wasn’t alone. Another filled the oncoming traffic lane.
I’m blocked in like it’s a smash-up derby. I get the feeling the Malachy Crunch is coming on.
The trucks in front of him slowed, taking their speed down to about sixty. Between the trucks, Smoke had both lanes to himself. He guided the wheel over to the right and accelerated up the berm. The truck swerved to the right, blocking his passage and kicking up road debris. He pumped the gas and swerved back behind the trucks.
“So are you trying to stop me or to kill me?”
The trucks behind him accelerated toward his back bumper. The space between the four trucks was closing fast.
He patted his dash. “It’s moments like this I wish you were a Volvo or that you had about twenty air bags.”
Behind him, the big rigs’ diesel motors roared with new life and closed in. There was only a car length between his car and the trucks. The doors in the back of the trailers rose. Inside, men wearing goggles were pointing machine guns right at him.
Great Dane. Those goggles look ridiculous. And I’m all out of L.A.W. rockets.
They charged their weapons and opened fire.
CHAPTER 6
Smoke cut the wheel hard to the left. The eighteen-wheeler behind him clipped his rear bumper and spun him off the road into the berm. He stomped on the gas and shot down the berm the opposite way. The huge truck swerved at him, but the speed of the Camaro rocketed Smoke to safety. It was just him and the open road in front of him.
“What was that all about?”
His thoughts went immediately to Sid and her parents. He checked his phone, but there still wasn’t any signal. Whatever was going on stank. The men with the guns didn’t have any peacoats on, and he hadn’t noticed any Drake symbols or black suns on them. His mind was racing through the details. White freight trucks with no markings. Men with goggles and machine guns. They were trying to kill him or stop him from getting back to DC, which meant that somewhere, something was going on.
“Heh, they can’t catch me now.”
The red taillights of the trucks flared in his rearview mirror. Their tires skipped and skidded on the road.
Smoke brought the Camaro to a stop. The trucks were now at a stop half a mile away. Their cargo doors rolled open, and automatic ramps were let out over the road. Men burst out two by two. On motorcycles.
“Now this is getting silly,” Smoke said, tapping on the steering wheel. His car was fast, but the speed bikes were faster. There wasn’t much point in a race, and two more sets of headlights filled the roadway in the distance. More big trucks were coming. He dropped the car into reverse, stomped the gas, and said, “Screw it!”
The tires smoked, and he made a beeline straight for the racing bikes. The bikers veered out of the way.
Smoke whipped the wheel around, screeching the tires into a one-eighty turn. He was facing the back end of the trucks again. Laying into the gas, he zoomed over the right side of the berm and sped right by the trucks that were stopped dead on the road.
He left all four eighteen wheelers in his rearview mirror, but the motorcycles were coming. The pursuers closed fast, goggled men with Uzis in their hands.
Smoke rolled down his windows, held the wheel steady, and reached under his seat. He had two small boxes that filled his hand.
With the wind beating into his face, he said, “I never thought I’d see the day when I got to use this. It looks like today’s the day.”
Checking his rear and side mirrors, he watched the cycles close in. As soon as they got within a car length, he dropped one box out of each window. Two loud pops followed. Hundreds of tiny caltrops covered the road and dug into the motorcycle tires. Both riders went down in a speeding skid of flesh and metal.
Smoke pumped his fist. “Woooooohooooooo!”
He didn’t know what was going on, but it was getting interesting. Getting fun. Behind him, the danger began to fade. He turned up the radio, but the static was still there. He hit the play button on the cassette player, saying, “You can’t stop rock and roll.” He turned up the volume. Electric guitars were playing. “No matter how hard the bad guys try, I can still rock in America!”
Smoke contemplated his next step. Whoever was after him had gone to an awful lot of trouble to get him. They must know where he lived, so going home was out. In the meantime he’d need to check on Sid, Sam, and Guppy. His phone still didn’t have a signal. He’d have to go into hiding until he could figure something out. That wouldn’t be hard to do once he got back into the city. He’d vanish.
He cruised down the road two more miles at about ninety. A speck of light hung in the sky and was closing in on him. He tilted his rearview mirror and squinted.
Tell me that isn’t a chopper coming for me.
He made an air guitar. “All day! All night!”
In seconds the chopper hovered right over him, hung with him like a black bird of prey.
Smoke stuck his head out the window and looked up. A huge metal disk was coming down right on top of the roof of his car. “No! No! No!” He jammed on the brakes.
Clank!
His move was too late. The massive magnet fastened onto his roof and lifted the Camaro cleanly and quickly off the highway with a jerk that slammed him back into his seat. By the time he could move again, he was two hundred feet off the ground and flying.
Hands on his head, he said, “This sucks.” Watching the ground beneath him, he said, “But the Adventures of the Flying Camaro would make a great movie, I bet.” He grabbed his guns and harnesses. Found knives and strapped them on. Wherever they were taking him, he wouldn’t go down easy. The chopper rose another five hundred feet off the ground. A bad feeling sank his stomach down into his toes.
What if they drop me? I’ll be the cream filling in a metal pancake.
CHAPTER 7
Soaring through the air and veering away from the bright lights of DC, Smoke’s palms started to sweat. He was too high up to jump, even into one of the many bodies of water. It would crush him to death. He didn’t think any super vitamins would help him out. Besides, he didn’t have any.
He leaned back in his seat and took a deep breath. The car had the weightlessness of an amusement park ride.
His phone rang. The screen read Unknown Caller.
He answered, “Smoke Airways.”
“Hello, John, how are you?” the person on the phone said with a tone of familiarity. His voice was formal and polite.
“Never better. How can I help you?”
“Well, if you’ll just sit still for a change, I’ll be helping you out.” The man cleared his throat. “So, what’s it like inside a flying car?”
“There’s nothing quite like a Man with a Golden Gun moment. Why don’t you come down and join me? I’ve got an extra window seat.” Smoke stretched out into the back seat and pulled the backrest of it down, exposing his trunk. The Camaro hatch was crammed full of weapons, ammo cases, and a variety of emergency kits. He fished through the packages.
Just keep the man talking.
“You sound familiar. I’m assuming we’ve met before.”
“We have, but it’s been a very v
ery long time.” The man coughed. “So, I understand that you have a big wedding day coming up. That Sidney Shaw is a real catch. I’m certain the two of you would make quite the happy couple...”
Smoke jerked out a puffy army-green pack that looked part life preserver, part backpack. “But,” he said.
“But, I can’t allow that marriage to happen. You see, the two of you have caused enough trouble already. It’s time to put an end to it.”
“So put an end to it, already.” Smoke slid the pack over his shoulder.
“You seem awfully eager to die.”
“I’d rather die than listen to your small talk.” Smoke clicked the pack’s straps together over his chest. “But since your plan is to kill me, you might as well tell me who you are.”
“I’m not trying to kill you, John. I’m just getting your attention, but you make it very difficult, which is something that I anticipated.” The man on the phone cleared his throat. “Excuse me. I’ve been under the weather of late. The plan was to shut down your car on the highway and have a roadside chat.”
“Or abduction.” Smoke smiled and patted the dash of his car. “But you couldn’t stop the old Camaro. It runs without the electrical systems you tried to block out. Heh heh, I was ready for magnetic pulses but not a magnetic chopper.”
“You’ve proven to be every bit as clever as I thought you’d be, John, but you don’t have anywhere to go now. Now, you’re coming to see me.”
“No. No, I’m not.”
“Don’t do anything foolish, John. You can’t survive a fall like this if you jump.”
Smoke slipped some gloves onto his hands. “Are you going to tell me who you are or not? Because time is running out for you to tell me your dastardly plan.”
“Dastardly? John, what are you doing?”
Holding the phone to his lips, Smoke said, “I’ll give you five more seconds to say something reasonable. Five...four…”
The Supernatural Bounty Hunter Files Collector's Set: Books 1-10: Urban Fantasy Shifter Series Page 82
