The Hostage
Page 23
Drake set the cap on the counter and reached for his money.
“Do you read newspapers?” Drake asked. He had to know.
The clerk looked at him sideways and then flipped his hair back out of his face in an exaggerated head toss.
“No, dude. You serious?”
“Yeah, kinda. No biggie. How much?”
“Eleven and a half.”
Drake paid him with a twenty, got the change and headed for the door. He ripped off the price tag and firmly placed the hat on his head.
At the door he turned back to the clerk who was watching him. No doubt thinking he was the weirdo.
“You know, working the night shift, you really should read the newspapers or at least watch the news. You never know who might walk in on your shift.”
Drake turned and left, leaving the kid with a look of bewilderment on his face. He crossed the street and started up the Danforth heading for the Coffee Time Donut Shop a block up.
One look back before he lost sight of the interior of the 7-Eleven and the clerk was on the customer side of the counter, a newspaper in his hand, mouth agape.
Good, Drake thought. Just what I wanted.
He hustled up the street, the baseball cap lowered to just over his eyes. He felt alive. The five hour nap earlier had rejuvenated him. It felt like one in the afternoon and not one in the morning.
Just as he suspected, a yellow cab sat in front of Coffee Time. At the corner of Jones Avenue he slowed to make sure no cops were in sight. A cruiser sat parked about five hundred meters down Jones. He saw nothing else. Not even any cops in the donut shop.
Drake walked across Jones and entered the coffee shop. He walked up to the taxi driver who sat nursing a large black coffee.
“That your cab?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you take me to the Valhalla Inn off the East Mall?”
“I’m off duty. Get the clerk to call you another one.”
Drake shook his head. “I need you. How much? Just tell me how much?”
“I said I’m off duty. Buzz off.”
Drake sat down at his table. The cabbie leaned back not knowing what to expect.
“Look, this is serious. I just received a call from my girl. She’s really fucking hot,” Drake said and used his hands to demonstrate her figure. “She called me all lonely and shit. She already paid for a hotel room. I’m wasting time here. I need to be there as fast as I can and at this time of night I could lose a half hour or more waiting for another cab.” He stopped and reached in his pocket to pull out his wallet. “Look, the ride would be no longer than ten to fifteen minutes, tops it would be thirty bucks. Drive my there and I will give you one hundred. Deal?”
The cabbie looked at the hundred being offered and took another sip of his coffee.
He didn’t protest right away. Drake knew he had him.
“You’d do the same for a twenty-two year old College girl with a perfect body. I need to get to the Valhalla Inn. Do a brother a favor.”
The cabbie nodded. “Okay, one hundred bucks. No meter.”
“Deal,” Drake said and shot his hand out to shake the cabbie’s. After a moment he pulled it back as the cab driver stood and headed for the door, his hand untouched.
Drake followed.
They got into the taxi and the cabbie asked for the money up front. Drake passed it forward to the front seat.
In seconds they were racing along the Danforth toward the Don Valley Parkway. At this late hour hardly anyone was on the highway. They made good time along the Gardiner and up the 427. The cabbie exited and got onto the East Mall.
The Valhalla Inn came into view. Drake leaned forward and whispered, “do you read the newspapers?”
“Yeah, all the time. Sitting in a cab all day you gotta read somethin’.”
“How about the news on T.V.?”
“When I get the chance. Why?”
They pulled into the main hotel entrance lane. “Just wondering if you recognized me.”
The cabbie look at him sideways. “Should I?”
“No real reason. You will be asked about this trip by the cops. I would advise you to tell the truth. That I talked you into taking this ride after your shift and with the meter off. It’ll look better that way.”
The cab slowed and then stopped ten meters from the entrance to the hotel.
“Why? Who are you?” his voice was suddenly more cautious.
“You’d know if you read the papers better.”
Drake reached for the door and jumped from the cab. The taxi sped away, the door slamming shut.
Perfect, Drake thought.
He hustled away from the Valhalla Inn and into the darkness of the shrubbery beyond the parking area. He kept his movements confined to only when vehicular traffic in the area was absent. The only time he was really exposed was walking across the Bloor Street bridge. He needed a hotel, somewhere that took cash and no I.D. You don’t live in Toronto all your life and not know the landscape.
After he crossed the Bloor Street bridge he kept to the shadows again as he ran down The West Mall. He dropped down Westmall Crescent and onto Dundas where he immediately saw the little fires from the lamp posts at La Castile. Behind the restaurant was the Super 5 Inn.
As he passed La Castile he took off the baseball cap and folded the bill in half until it squeezed into the back pocket of his jeans. Then he removed the Dead Head T-shirt, folded it inside out and put it back on. When the police sent out a description on the news in the morning based on the eyewitness statements of the 7-Eleven clerk and the cabbie he didn’t want the guy at the hotel to readily recognize him.
He entered the front and handed the clerk, who wore a turban and a very thick black beard, two twenties. He received a room key and headed upstairs.
The room was standard and exactly what Drake needed for the night. He hit the bed hard feeling exhaustion settling in.
His plan worked perfectly. No one knew where he was. He had a bed and a shower for the morning. All he needed next was a shave and a change of clothes. That could be accomplished in the morning too.
The police would scour the area near his parent’s home and come up empty handed until they reached the 7-Eleven. Unless the clerk called them first which Drake doubted as he probably had a few priors himself.
The police would question the clerk and security cameras would show that he was wearing the orange Dead Head T-shirt still but now he had added a Maple Leaf baseball cap to his disguise.
They would be looking for someone that Drake wouldn’t resemble in the morning at all.
The cabbie might call it in. But even if he did, the same description would be sent out collaborating the store clerk’s story. Also, they would search every room of the Valhalla Inn. There were a considerable number of hotels in the area. They couldn’t possibly search each one in time and he was over ten blocks away in a room without a name on any computer. In six hours he would be gone and looking completely different.
Then he could figure out his next step. He had an idea of what he wanted to do but it would take some luck and planning on his part. He would also need patience.
Drake rolled to the side and wondered why he didn’t look in the mirror when he got to the room. It would have been his best chance to see what that asshole had done to his face. Probably nothing but red marks but he still needed to check. Getting a black eye right now could hurt his chances at staying disguised.
As he drifted off to sleep he could hear the guy at his parent’s house talking in his head. That accent again.
Then the answer came to him. He shot up in bed.
“No way. I can’t believe it.”
Hungarian.
Monika was Hungarian.
Did he know any other Hungarians?
Only his girlfriend Monika from high school. The one who disappeared. She was found in Budapest. Everything turned out to be okay except for his heart. When she ran, four months before they were to elope, she had taken his h
eart with her. It had been twelve years since she’d left. That was one of the last times he had heard the harsh sound of an Hungarian accent.
And now he’d heard it again. In his parent’s house. By the very people who were terrorizing him.
Could it have anything to do it Monika? Did this have anything to do with what happened twelve years ago? Attila did say something about the plan taking ten years or something.
Nothing connected or seemed plausible at all and it was the thinnest idea he had. But it was all he had. Two men show up with Hungarian accents. They talk about how this was in the works for over ten years. They know everything about him; where he lives, where his parents live and that his mother needs medical weed. They probably got his dad to call him with the address which set him up in the first place.
Everything seemed much clearer and based on this thought pattern much easier to swallow. It had to have something to do with Monika.
And who was the strange woman watching him run in the alley behind his parent’s house. Could that have been Monika? Was he stretching events to make them work into a scenario that was plausible?
Where to go next?
Avery Hammond, that’s where.
In the morning he would visit Avery to see what he remembered about that fateful night when Monika left his life forever.
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About Jonas Saul
Jonas Saul is the author of the Sarah Roberts and The Kill series. Visit his website, www.jonassaul.com for upcoming release dates. Jonas lives in Europe with his wife, author Kate Cornwell.
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Table of Contents
Beginning
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
The Threat - A Preview
About the Author