by Theo Cage
“So you decided to stay?” Rice said, after a few mouthfuls.
She gave him a look that said don’t even think that you know me. She drank some of her pop from a giant plastic cup.
“This is usually where they disappear on me. Or during a bathroom break.” Rice said.
She picked up her sandwich. “Are we talking about your friends or your employees?”
He glanced at her. “Hitchhikers.”
“It’s not my fault you look like Tex.” She turned her attention back to her meal. Addie had asked for his name just as they reached the outskirts of Spokane. She was still mildly suspicious of him but must have decided that Rice wasn’t a homicidal maniac or rapist. Rice was beginning to enjoy her company. So he told her his name was Ray Martin. He had used that name years ago while working with the British in Venezuela. He grew attached to it and didn’t see any issue using it here. She gave him a look that was a cross between skepticism and boredom. As if to say here we go again. Rice guessed he didn’t look as much like a Ray as he thought. He spent the rest of the afternoon working at building her trust. It was like wading through cement.
“Where did you go to University?” Rice asked. That got her attention.
“Now you’re fishing. You tell me first.”
“OK. Wharton.”
“Bullshit. You don’t talk like an MBA.”
“How does an MBA talk?”
“Ohhhhh. Thinking outside of the box I’d say we strategically support the model to gain competitive advantage … and then deliver client-specific solutions to eyeball-sticky web portals.”
Rice whistled, “Impressive.”
Addie shook her head. “I was a technical writer for one summer while I was in Redmond. It’s all meaningless crud. Writing that stuff is like a parlor trick.” She nibbled on a piece of salad. “So where did you go to college. No bullshit this time.”
Rice leaned forward in the cab and checked the side mirrors. Habit. He couldn’t stop checking his blind sides. He put down his burger reluctantly and looked Addie in the eye. “A lot of our customers, are very secretive. They’re protecting their patents, their intellectual capital... ”
“Now you’re talking like an MBA.”
“Whatever. The world is full of hackers and con men and social engineers and terrorists ... you get the point? And my clients just think being totally discreet is the best way to survive. So you could say I’m like a private detective and an import agent all rolled into one.”
“Hmmm,” was all she said. “So just give me something then. Throw me a bone.”
“Fine. I made a ton of money during the dot com era. Went off and toured the world. Hid out in exotic places. Got bored mindless. Decided to come back to the real world and find something to do that interests me.”
“Like driving trucks.”
“Always wanted to try.”
“All by yourself? There’s no Mrs. Martin?”
That comment made Rice turn in on himself for a fraction of a second. Probably gave himself away with an unconscious flicker of a facial muscle or an unguarded sigh. He was out of practice, but he wouldn’t let it happen again. Especially with her. She was good at reading the signs.
“I’ve found life is not a romance novel,” he said.
“More like a spy novel,” she offered. And this grabbed him again. “So you went off and traveled the world by yourself?”
“Sure why not.”
“OK. Fine. Hope you got your rocks off, cause pulling empty trailers across the Midwest is not exactly the same as lazing on the beach at Club Monaco.”
“We’ll see,” he said, still not completely sure why he had dragged this girl into his game. He needed help and had no one he could rely on. Contacting anyone from his former life would be like giving them an instant death sentence. And he had to admit that ten years of sitting alone on his back porch had him craving company. Female company was just a bonus. But he needed to be extra careful, if that was even possible, to insure that she went unendangered. Rice knew that was being selfish. There was no way he could guarantee she wouldn’t be sucked into his own personal hell. No way at all.
CHAPTER 18
Spokane, Washington
THE LONGHAIRED BEANPOLE SAUNTERING across the restaurant parking lot was known to his biker friends as Bug. He acquired the name years ago during his initiation into Satan's Raiders. As part of an eating contest he consumed a record-breaking number of live cockroaches in three minutes. Fifty-eight.
Today, he was on his way to joining the members of his club who were heading in his direction along I90, their mission today to find Frank Fast, his employee Addie, or the young kid who robbed Frank's restaurant that morning. One of them had $100,000 of their money and they were intent on getting it back.
Bug had stopped at the truck stop to use the public washroom. Despite a penchant for eating almost anything that moved, he had an unusually tiny bladder that needed hourly attention. He was walking back to his Harley hardtail when he saw the girl.
Waitress uniform. Long blonde hair. Legs so long he felt a twitch down below that made him smile. A twitch was a special thing. Like a special delivery. He grabbed his crotch and straightened things out and hurried to his bike. That had to be Frank's waitress. She fit the description to a tee.
Bug watched the girl climb up into the Kenworth, carrying a box of take-out. Frank had really gotten lucky with this girl - most of his staff were tired and old and cranky. But you would be too - if you were serving bad food to hungry truckers on a lonely stretch of road that headed pretty much nowhere.
Question was - who was the trucker? Most likely a horny long-distance guy with tobacco-stained teeth, desperate for company. Or maybe not. A hundred gee's was a lot of money. Maybe that kind of found cash could help pay for that fancy rig. And it was fancy.
Bug kept an eye on the truck out of the corner of his field of vision, his shades covering his eyes. He was lucky. He was already parked by the washrooms when the rig pulled up. So the driver would never guess that Bug was interested in keeping an eye on him.
Bug took his time, played with his radio, tried not to attract attention to himself. If that was the waitress they were looking for, the rig had to be heading east. There weren't a lot of other options. Just a mountain range to the west. And a dead end winter road.
Bug figured his gang should be about an hour or two away. So if Bug drove out of the lot and headed west, that would really throw the driver off if he was even the least bit suspicious.
So that's what Bug did. He burbled out of the parking lot, turned west in the direction the truck had come from, twisted the throttle and felt the engine growl and shake underneath him. A thousand yards out of the lot, he pulled over to the shoulder and pried his phone out of his vest pocket.
Slugger picked up on the first ring. Bug described the eighteen-wheeler and the girl he found, then listened carefully to his boss’s instructions. Missing important details would mean disciplinary action. Not something Bug ever wanted to experience again.
The biker tucked his phone back in his shirt and killed the engine. He was told to wait. Watch for the big rig to turn back on to the freeway and then follow from a distance. Slugger and his crew were on their way. Bug had a feeling that this was going to be an interesting day after all.
CHAPTER 19
Yakima, Washington
FRANK FAST HAD BEEN CAUTIOUS around the police when they arrived after the reported robbery. He was never sure if they suspected something about his business. They didn’t frequent his restaurant because the locals knew his food and his service were way below par with other local roadside stops. Below par? Most of his creative output was worse than the mushy crap he ate while at the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center. And that was where he learned to cook. Did they wonder how he survived with so few customers? If you lived in northern Washington State, the Canadian drug world was always close by. Everyone knew it drove a major chunk of the local economy.
Frank
was now driving his flashy yellow Hummer down Highway 410, his eyes wide open. He was surprised when he heard from one of the attending officers that Addie had identified the robber’s vehicle as a Camaro. Cause the guy clearly drove a tricked up Honda Civic. He had seen it peel out of his lot. Not the world’s most unassuming getaway car. Did she just not know cars? Or was she in partnership with the guy?
He had confronted her about the safe combination and she had said that she had seen him open it a hundred times. She was amazed that he used 1-2-3-4 for the combination. She had that wide-eyed innocent look on her face when she said it and he felt like giving her the back of his hand. But she was right; it was a stupid thing to do. Now he was short a ton of cash – and cash was king in the weed business. He also had a debt payment coming up in two days and the interest on it was more money than Frank wanted to contemplate. He had never missed a payment to Slugger and didn’t want to know what happened if he did. He hated pain and blood made him woozy. Especially his own.
This young buck in the long black coat who had taken his money was going to learn a lesson. Frank was going to find him before the local constabulary and he wouldn’t be surprised if he found Addie with him. That would really be too bad, too. Too bad for her.
. . . . .
THE MAN ADDIE HAD CHRISTENED Jesse in the truck stop was born Marshall Wayne Dodd.
Marshall was a charming guy who had never worked a day in his life and wouldn’t know how if given the opportunity. His parents were wealthy doctors in LA who rewarded his lack of drive by kicking him out of their three-story mansion when he turned eighteen. He had completed grade eleven at that point and had no job, but he had a new car and had made enough selling drugs to pay for gas. His specialty was ecstasy. He bought the little blue tabs in bulk for a buck each and sold them for five. He could have made enough to pay rent, but that would require ambition.
He was so cute and charming he hardly needed drive. His standard operating procedure was to routinely rent high-end apartments, stay as long as he could by dodging the rent, and then disappear in the night.
He had never attempted armed robbery before, but considering how smoothly it had gone today, he was thinking about branching out from small time drug running. With more cash he could expand, build his own territory. Even hire runners. Maybe he could hook up with the girl in the Diner. Anything was possible.
He pulled over onto a side road off the highway an hour out of Yakima. He wanted to see if he was being followed. He felt like a highway cop, watching a mostly empty strip of pavement, the rain pattering on the roof.
Little did he know that the uncounted cash he now had stashed in the trunk of his Honda originated from drug trafficking. And that the man who laid claim to it was only mile behind him, desperately searching for the hundred thousand in cash that was payment for the sweetest haul of marijuana he had made in his brief criminal career.
CHAPTER 20
Interstate 90, Washington State
AFTER FINISHING HER FRIES, Addie pulled her iPhone out of her pocket and tapped the Facebook app. She noticed the driver watching her. Ray, he called himself. Her new employer. She rolled her eyes. He seemed very curious about her browsing activities. She flipped the phone over and turned to him.
“You said you had a family?” she asked. He nodded, took a sip from his drink cup. “Do they know where you are?”
“They know I'm on the road,” he said, slightly impatient with the question, treating her like a distraction.
She waved her hand across the cab. “But you don't have a phone. Who doesn't carry a cell?” The driver checked his mirrors and guided the rig through a lazy turn to the right.
“I use email,” he said, pointing his thumb to the sleeping quarters in the back where he kept his laptop.
She glared at him. “That would make sense if you had a smartphone to act as a WiFi hotspot. But you don't. So how do you use email from a laptop in the back of a truck?”
The driver squinted slightly, like a foreign traveler trying to decipher a new language. Addie had a feeling he didn't understand most of what she said. Another sign that he wasn't being honest with her. Ray, who wasn't Ray.
“You ask a lot of questions,” he said. “Don't worry, we won't break down.”
“But who doesn't carry a phone with them. I've seen homeless people with better iPhones than mine. Didn't you say you were independently wealthy?”
The driver looked at her. He sat up, his body tense, his arms rigid on the steering wheel.
“I don't like phones, OK? They can be traced,” said the driver.
“Traced? You're worried about the NSA keeping an eye on your phone calls home to your wife and your imaginary cats?”
“You know that phone you're carrying? It has a GPS chip built in.”
“Yeah. Perfect. That way I can use Google maps, or Tinder or Yelp.”
“Whatever. It also means someone can be tracking you. All the time,” said the driver.
“What?” said Addie.
“Exactly. If someone in the government wants to find you, there is no place you can hide.”
“Why would someone in the government want to find me? That sounds like one of those wacky conspiracy theories.” Addie couldn't help herself. This time she checked her side mirror. No one was on the road behind them as far as she could see. A sleepy pre-season Monday, no tourists in sight. But she could feel goose flesh on her arms and neck. Maybe she wasn't as safe as she thought. She turned her phone over, the Facebook app seeming to peer at her malevolently.
“What is that?” The driver asked, pointing at her phone.
“Facebook, you mean?”
“What does it do?”
Addie couldn't help it. Her mouth fell open. “You don't know what Facebook is?”
“I've been out of the loop.”
“You said you had kids. How old are they.”
The driver hesitated. “Ten and twelve.” Addie shook her head. “And they've never mentioned Facebook?”
The driver shrugged.
“Addie held up her pink phone. “And what's this?”
“Now you're being silly.”
“No, I'm not. You don't even know what an iPhone is. You've never heard of Facebook. And you dress like a hillbilly, and you obviously cut your own hair. You're like a caveman.”
“I prefer mountain man, myself.”
“And you lie about everything. You don't have two kids; you took way too long to answer that question. A dot com millionaire that's never heard of Facebook? No wedding ring, not even a shadow where the ring should be. So obviously not married. You're deadheading a brand-new semi trailer out of an old logging road. You can't drive worth shit. Your name is not Ray Martin. And finally. You never even asked for my name. We've been in this truck for hours and you haven't even asked who I am?”
“Are you done?”
“Yeah. I'm done.” She pulled out the five hundred dollars in twenties he had given her and threw them back at him. “I quit. Pull over and let me out, NOW!”
“Hold on...”
“NOW! Or I call the police.” She held up her phone to him. Nine and one were already punched into the display, her finger above the one key.
The driver took his foot off the gas, snapped the signal stalk up, turning on the right blinker. He braked and slowly rolled over onto the shoulder. She had already reached down for her backpack.
“My name is Rice,” he said. Addie looked up at him. She narrowed her eyes. “And what's your name?” he asked.
She turned away for a second. “It's too late for that. I have to go,” she said.
“If I knew better, I'd say you were stalling because you were making up a name too.”
She glared back at him, angry and hurt. “Addie Smith.”
Rice reached out to her, extending a very tanned and muscular hand, the nails short and chipped. She shook it reluctantly.
“It's raining outside,” he said. “And you're right. I don't have any kids.”
“It's always raining here,” she answered. “I'm surprised I don't have mold growing between my toes.”
He made a face. “That's an attractive image.”
“What kind of name is Rice?”
“It's a last name. My parents were both English professors. My dad always wanted to name a son Burroughs. After the writer.” Addie didn’t seem to understand. “He wrote Tarzan.”
“Burroughs? That's your first name?” Addie had her hand on the handle, but for some reason hadn't pushed the door open yet.
“I was off the grid,” he said after a few seconds.
“I knew it.”
“Rainier is a beautiful place to disappear. The mountains. The peace and quiet. It grows on you.” He looked out the windshield, the wipers like the arms on a metronome, counting out the beat. He wondered where his hunters were. If they were getting closer. “I stayed longer than I planned.”
“You missed Facebook,” she said.
“I did.”
“And YouTube. Hashtags.”
“You're talking Greek to me.”
“How about the Tea Party?”
“Never liked tea that much.”
“Tesla?”
“Didn’t he work for Edison?”
“We've got a lot of work to do,” she said, turning back into her seat and dropping the backpack onto the floor.
“I couldn't agree more,” said Rice, looking for traffic, seeing none and pulling back onto the highway.
“Addie. Nice name. But Smith? Couldn't you make up something more imaginative?”
Addie leaned back in her seat. “Just shut up and drive, Burroughs. Class has begun.
CHAPTER 21
Interstate 90, Washington State
THE STORY OF THE TRUCK STOP ROBBERY eventually came up in conversation. Addie told it with a lot of flair. She called the young thief Jesse and explained why. She also told Rice that she attracted trouble, but wasn’t sure why. Rice thought that was pretty ironic considering the truck she had jumped into in Yakima was being driven by the most wanted man in the United States.
