“Hey,” said Dan, nodding toward a rusty blue muscle car in our rearview that seemed to want to pass us. “What say we give that Mustang a run for its money, eh?”
I shrugged and laughed. Why not? Could be fun.
I gave the car a little gas and let the engine bark its challenge. The Mustang replied by moving in closer, almost right on our tail. Punching the gear, I pushed ahead, but the ton and a half of American muscle laughed and drew up almost side by side.
“Oh shit,” said Dan, staring at the car.
I hated to take my focus off the road at these speeds, but the way his eyes bulged told me it was probably something I should know about. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw what had captured his attention so completely. The driver wore a ski mask, his face obscured entirely save for his eyes, which stared wickedly, and his mouth, which cackled with mad laughter. Part of me hoped that maybe he had just robbed a bank and wanted nothing more than to get away from us and everyone else. The GoPro he had strapped to his head and the menacing way he drew his finger across his throat, however, made it really difficult to believe.
“Oh shit,” I agreed.
The Mustang swerved into us, and the furious crunch of metal heralded a violent shift in the view from my windshield as the world outside began to spin. The car pivoted hard left, then bounded savagely off the front of the Mustang, straightening me back out. “What do I do?” I screamed to Danger Man. “What do I do? What do I do?”
Dan barked a command to me, but I was too slow to respond. I overthought the maneuver, and the Mustang scraped by, tearing off my sideview mirror. He shouted another order, but I panicked and froze, and the enemy car clipped the front bumper, sending ours swerving drunkenly across the asphalt. I must have been physically capable of doing this because Danger Man did it all the time. I just didn’t have the practice he had telling the body to do it. Somewhere buried in these wrinkles of gray matter filling my drug-addled skull, virtually identical to Dan’s own mind, were the memories, the years of practice I needed to get out of this scrape, but I was too frightened, too present to access them. I knew if I could focus, if I could go mushin and slip into the Zen “no mind,” then it would allow the biological instinct Danger Man had spent years instilling into these bones and sinews to kick in and do the driving for me. Unfortunately, that was a skill I had lost touch with centuries ago when I left Japan and never really re-learned to control, despite my New Year’s resolution year after year that I would. Stupid lack of will power.
The Mustang dropped back beside us once I had straightened the car out, then lunged in for another strike. The demon scream of metal scraping metal pierced my ears, the wretched stench of burning tires assaulted my nose, and I had to fight the steering wheel tooth and nail to keep from going off road.
“Oh, screw this!” I said and jammed my foot down hard on the brakes. They shrieked like a banshee and the Mustang lurched ahead of us, disappearing off the road. The cloud of dust that had trailed us since this chase began now overtook us, and I gasped for breath as it rolled into my lungs. My limbs shook like epileptic puppies. Deep in my chest, my heart pounded like canons in the 1812 Overture. What I wouldn’t have given for a fix right then.
“What the devil was that?” I asked, trying to settle my jangly nerves.
“I don’t know,” Dan said.
“Lies, Dan,” I said, turning on him sharply and pressing my finger into his chest. “You lied about the drug addiction. What else are you keeping from me?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What else?” I glared hard and he withered beneath my gaze. He looked like he was about to speak when we heard the growl of an engine in the distance. Casting our gazes out the front window, we saw the Mustang had circled around and was coming back for seconds.
“Drive!” Dan shouted.
“Where?”
“Obviously not forward,” he said.
Obviously. I popped the clutch and put the car in reverse. It wasn’t nearly fast enough to escape, but it would at least slow down the Mustang’s approach and buy me more time to find a way out of this mess. It was one thing if the car took me out, but it was quite another if Dan died. If Dan didn’t make it, I wouldn’t get paid.
“Whatever happens, play dead,” I said and redlined the car in reverse. “Now before everything goes to hell, who wants you dead?”
“The Wightmans,” he said, whimpering, as though I might somehow recognize the name and whimper too.
“Who?”
“The Wightmans. They’re a couple of vice dealers back home. Drugs, gambling, sex. If it’s illegal and it’s exciting, they have a hand in it.”
“So, what happened?” I asked, staring over my shoulder out the back window. “You bought your fix on credit?”
“Yeah, but when I couldn’t pay it back, I thought I’d win it back.”
“Oh Dan, you poor sad bastard,” I said. “You really are into death-defying acts.”
The roar of the Mustang grew louder and I knew I didn’t have long before it caught us.
“So, they figured they owned me,” he said. “Made me work off my debt. I’m a pretty good driver, you know. They had a mind to rent me out to bank robbers and stuff.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, one day, they were in the bank, the guys I was working for, and I don’t know what came over me. I was weak. I…”
“You shot up, didn’t you?” I said incredulous.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him nod meekly. “So, the car crashed on the escape. Somehow, I got out. They got stuck in the car. I took the cash and ran.”
“And now they want the money?”
“Probably not,” said Dan, voice dripping with shame. “I lost it all at their casinos trying to win enough money to buy their forgiveness.”
“You stupid junkie buffoon. You’re just a chain of worse decisions chasing bad ones, aren’t you?”
It occurred to me that I had been driving really well those past few minutes. My conversation with Dan must have distracted me enough for his instincts to take over. The car swerved hard, and I struggled to keep it on the road. I read once, if you notice someone is really on their game, the best thing to do to beat them is ask what they’re doing differently to be playing so well. Nine times out of ten, they’ll start overthinking and start making mistakes. Like me. Like now. The car slipped onto the shoulder and weaved wildly across the gravel. “No, no, no!” I screamed, but the car wanted nothing to do with what I wanted it to do.
As if on cue, the Mustang smashed into the front of the car, sending us spiraling uncontrolled off the shoulder and down an embankment, tumbling wildly as we went, twisted metal and shattered glass flying all around. When the car finally sputtered and skidded to a halt in the ditch, we were upside down. Something warm and wet flowed down my face, and I realized I had taken shrapnel to the jugular, and upside down, the blood rushed to the wound like a raging river. At least I would bleed out quickly, and the gash would patch up in short order after that. I turned to see how Dan was doing. He was shaken but seemed okay physically. The driver’s side took the brunt of the impact.
“What do I do?” he asked, terrified.
“Play dead,” I gasped, and then the dizziness of blood loss gave way to the scorching flames of death.
Chapter 10
OLIVIA
LET’S PLAY HIDE AND SEEK AGAIN
My stranger wakes tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Philadelphia. I hadn’t planned on this turn of events, but it’s the nature of plans to get away from you. It’s funny, really, looking at it. As I survey the scene, the shafts of dusty light splashing in through a broken window, the ever-present echo of water dripping somewhere, I can’t help but think how much it feels like a bad movie. It’s not my fault abandoned industrial centers are so easy to find just outside major cities, and there’s usually at least some chair, either abandoned when the company moved its operations to China or brought in by adven
turous teenagers who thought it might be a cool place to hang out. The teenagers have left other things behind as well, but there’s not a snowball’s chance in Hell I’m touching any of that. I wonder for a moment if this is life imitating art or art imitating life?
“Where am I?” the bomber asks.
“Tied to a chair in a seedy, abandoned industrial district,” I say. “What’s it look like?”
“Looks like I’m tied to a chair in a seedy, abandoned industrial district.”
“Well, then you must feel pretty stupid for asking.” I pull Queen Mary from my pocket and point her at my bomber. “Now how about I ask a few questions.”
“You’re the one holding the gun,” he says, surprisingly calm. “We do what you want to do.”
“A madman who listens to reason,” I say to myself. “This is new.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Says the guy planting bombs in old men’s apartments.”
“You were there same as me,” he says. “I’m no crazier than you.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“I know you don’t work for the power company. I know you’ll kill for a buck just like me.”
I chew my lower lip like a child caught red-handed but still looking for a lie. He has a point, but how does he know? “You’re not the Fist,” I say finally.
“Yeah…?” he says, as though I just told him he wasn’t a penguin.
“So, who are you?”
“Bigbadaboom84. I’m a seeker, same as you, and this,” he says, nodding his head wildly around as if to point at the whole room with his nose, “is bullshit.”
Seeker? Bigbadaboom84? What the hell was this guy talking about?
“This isn’t bullshit. You’re bullshit.” I am so lame sometimes I hate myself.
“You can’t tie me up,” he says. “It’s cheating. And you definitely can’t kill me.”
“Please,” I say with a sneer and the cocking of my pistol. “I can do what I want. I have the gun, remember?”
“You kill me, and someone will find out. They’ll ban you from the boards. You’ll never play hide and seek again.”
What have I stumbled into? My thoughts scramble for a way to keep him talking without giving away the game. Whatever he’s into sounds secretive, and I don’t want him to clam up.
“Where on the boards does it say that?” I ask.
“Uh, in the terms of service you signed?” He’s so arrogant, so superior. Good. Let him lord it over me how much more he knows. Let him mansplain murder for all I care, so long as he keeps talking.
“Like anyone reads the terms of service,” I say and roll my eyes.
“Everyone on the board reads the terms of service. It sets the terrain, so to speak. It sets the standard for proof, how prizes are awarded, everything. It has the ranking structure.” He groans and his distaste for me seems to cause him physical pain. “I hate newbs like you. You think it’s all about money and killing and that’s all there is to it. It’s a sport. There are rules you have to follow.”
“The only rule I need is strike fast, strike hard.” It seems like a safe enough thing to say.
“Typical.” He rolls his eyes. “Look, let me help you out kid. This is your first game?”
I nod, because why not?
“Where’s your camera? Where’s your proof? How are you going to convince the Fist it was you who killed the hider without video? Did you think you would just say, ‘Oh it was me’ when the obit hits? Like no one’s ever tried that before. You want the five grand, you gotta prove you won it fair and square.”
Five grand? The Fist is playing the middleman and making a nice chunk of change for his efforts. He’s smarter than I thought. I look at my feet sheepishly, hoping it convinces him I’m in the know but stupid rather than that I’m clever but clueless about what’s going on.
“Look, when you let me go—and you will let me go—go home and read over the rules you agreed to when you signed up. Only go after the hider posted. You can interfere with another seeker’s work, but you can’t actually attack another seeker. It’s that whole clean kill clause. No collateral victims.”
“You plant bombs,” I say. “Where’s the clean in that?”
“Small, localized charges,” he says with pride. “You’ve seen the leaderboards. You should recognize my name. I’m, like, one of the best.”
“That is true. Sorry, Bigbadaboom. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I just… I saw the bomb stuff and thought it might be you and figured I’d be like, ‘Oh, look who I was able to catch,’ you know?” Seems like a reasonable lie.
“Well, it’s wrong. Now untie me. Let me go and we’ll forget this whole thing ever happened.”
I almost do, but then I remember that I’m dealing with someone who isn’t killing for money. He’s killing for sport. You can’t trust someone who kills for the love of it. “Tell you what I’m going to do, Bigbadaboom. I’m not going to untie you,” I say. “I’m going to get that head start on the hider. A new kid needs all the help she can get. But I’ll send someone to get you out of that chair in a jiffy.”
I run to my car, pull out a notepad and write in big scrawling letters that make handwriting analysis useless.
Organizing Bigbadaboom’s explosives around him like a department store window display, I tape the note to his chest.
My name is bigbadaboom84 and these are my toys. I like to kill people for fun and profit in an Internet-organized game of hide and seek. You should see my high score on the leaderboards!
As I walk away, I hear him shouting after me. “I’ll get you banned! You’ll never play hide and seek again!”
Ha, I think. I never played in the first place.
Once in the car, I place an anonymous call to the police and puzzle out what to do next. I’m not worried about Bigbadaboom IDing me. I’m not on whatever website he’s talking about and I don’t have any sort of police record to be matched to. I should be safe. Should. Meanwhile, I have much bigger problems to worry about. I’m not dealing with one killer coming at Dan Germany. I could be dealing with dozens.
Chapter 11
JAIME
THE PAST IS DEAD, LET’S START ANEW
The flames faded, and the world melted into blissful euphoria. I should have been bothered that I was drugged to the gills while someone was out to kill me, but I just couldn’t seem to find the urge to care. It was all a wash of heavenly numbness. No concerns, no worries. It was perfect. I felt a strange sort of scraping against my back, which was really interesting because the sky was also moving overhead. In the murky distance, I heard Dan, and it occurred to me he must have been dragging me someplace, though for the life of me I didn’t know why. It was all fairly silly, really, so I had a nice laugh about it all.
I felt a shock of cold against my neck, and I swatted my hand weakly at the sensation. Dan leaned over me, took my wrist, and tucked it beneath my body.
“You’ll probably be too lazy to pull that out from under you. At least long enough for me to clean the blood off you. Maybe we can get someone to give us a lift.”
The rest of the afternoon disappeared into a blur. When my senses finally started to sharpen again, I found myself lying on a ratty couch in a cramped, dingy apartment.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“My place,” said Dan. “Or yours, depending on how you want to look at it.”
“How did we get here?” I rubbed my head, which throbbed as though I had been dragged up a mountain by my feet.
“Do you remember the car crash?”
“Vaguely,” I moaned.
“Well, I dragged you out after you uh… died. Then you woke up and started babbling about the sky while I cleaned you up so we could hitchhike the rest of the way home.”
“Any more problems?”
“Mrs. Evers, the landlady, she said the power company came by and they caught a burglar or something? Tried to break in through the window.” He pointed and I could see the tale tell
signs, chipped wood, scraped paint, the crowbar.
“I think it’s best if we assume that’s related to the masked road rage guy from earlier.”
“You sure?” asked Dan. “This is a pretty rough neighborhood. No need to be paranoid or nothing.”
“Better safe than sorry,” I said. “If you want your legacy, we have to live long enough for the headline to be Legendary Stuntman Dan Germany Dies Attempting Unprecedented Stunt and not Former Stuntman Dan Germany Killed in Robbery Gone Awry, Drugs Found at Scene.”
“Speaking of,” he said, “do you need a top off? I know it’s been a while.”
“No,” I said, mustering the ghost of the willpower I used last time I had a crippling heroin addiction. I was still fresh enough off a high that saying no was easy. “Insurance will never pay out if there are drugs in my system. Besides, I think I got enough practice flooring it in a souped up hot rod or whatever those things are called these days. Once I get off the ramp, the rest of the scheme should sort of take care of itself. The car slips off the ramp, I might live, but flying over a helicopter into the Grand Canyon? There’s no surviving that no matter what I do.”
“So, keep you cold turkey and focus on surviving long enough to get everything organized.” he says. “That about sum up the plan?”
“Spot on,” I said.
“I’m starving after dragging your old ass out of that wreck,” he said to me, holding a gut I could hear rumbling from across the room.
“Hey, it wasn’t too long ago it was your old ass, so watch how you talk about it or it’ll be yours again.”
“Any food in the fridge?” he asked.
“How would I know?” I said. “It’s your kitchen.”
We stared at each other for several moments before I relented. “Fine. I’ll look.”
I walked to the kitchen and popped open the icebox, marveling at the finest selection of gas station condiments and moldy Chinese food I had ever seen. “No luck in here,” I said and began to scour the cabinets. A can of green beans, a rusty can of mini ravioli, and a box of saltines. “Or anywhere else for that matter.”
The Daredevil Corpse (The Departed Book 2) Page 5
