Death's Last Run

by Robin Spano

  “Of course we can.” Martha willed herself to sound more positive than she felt. Ted was good, but Martha didn’t know if he was this good. “South and Central American countries have been making intelligent arguments for this for years. And Mexico. I met with Ernesto Zedillo last year at Yale. If it wouldn’t have been political suicide, I might have entertained his arguments more seriously.”

  “Good,” Ted said. “We’ll play it like you’ve been a long time mulling. We’ll say you took Zedillo’s comments seriously but only now are you acting, because you needed intense research and contemplation to satisfy yourself that they’re workable.”

  Martha smiled. She could hear the strain in Ted’s voice. This was going to be stretch. “One more chance to leave,” she said. “With a glowing letter of recommendation.”

  “Stop saying that. I told you, I’ve been up all night for you. Do you want to hear your new platform?”

  “Sure, but in person. Can you be in New York this afternoon?”

  “I’m on the next plane. Can you hold off on leaving your house — or answering your phone — until we have your new platform in order?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I have a lunch I agreed to attend several weeks ago.”

  “Okay. So let me give you some sound bites.”

  Martha smiled as she pressed the button on her coffee machine. “Don’t worry,” she said over the whir of the grinder. “I’m back.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  CLARE

  Clare liked riding in Chopper’s truck. It was a big red Dodge diesel and it bounced up and down with the highway. The radio was tuned to a country station as Chopper navigated the snowy curves with confidence. What had she even seen in Noah, old before his time, preferring jazz to any music recorded in this century? She was glad to be with a real man for a change.

  After twenty minutes or so of highway driving, Chopper pulled onto an unpaved side road. He drove a hundred meters or so before stopping.

  Clare tried not to show her dismay that there was nowhere in sight that a human could conceivably call home. She tried not to recall the Sopranos episode where Silvio took Adriana into the New Jersey woods to whack her. She tried not to picture Adriana crawling away from the truck, screaming “No!” while Silvio popped two bullets into her back.

  Chopper cut the engine.

  Clare wanted to ask how Chopper knew, how he’d found out she was an undercover. She thought of the memory stick — the conversation she’d recorded in the bar — sealed tight in one of her secret inside pockets. Maybe the answer was on there? Or maybe he’d seen the transmitter on his beer glass at Avalanche. No wonder Chopper wanted her to think Sacha had killed herself — he’d been lulling Clare into a false sense of security.

  Clare needed to find a way out of this.

  Chopper turned in his seat to face Clare. “You ready for a sled ride?”

  Damn. Was a “sled ride” snowboarder slang for bumping someone off? Chopper looked friendly enough asking the question — but Silvio had been upbeat on the car ride with Adriana.

  “Sure,” Clare said, because she couldn’t tip him off that she suspected anything was wrong. She could get out of the truck and run, but where would she go that Chopper wouldn’t be able to chase her? And if he caught her, he would win.

  Man, Clare must be stoned. Wasn’t paranoia one of the side effects?

  But not all fear was paranoia — especially not when a killer was in town.

  Chopper trudged through deep snow to the back of the truck. Still in the cab, Clare looked back to see Chopper sliding a ramp out and easing his snowmobile to the ground. Clare felt incredibly stupid. A sled ride was a snowmobile ride. She knew that.

  Still, where the hell were they? She got out of the truck and slipped through the snow to meet Chopper at the back. “You said we were going to your place.”

  “We are. I live up Cougar Mountain.”

  “Why aren’t we taking the road?” Clare eyed a wide pathway not far from where Chopper had parked.

  “It’s a logging road. It isn’t plowed beyond that point you can see. Come on. You can have the helmet.”

  Aargh. How could Clare sound like Lucy and figure out if it was safe to get on the snowmobile? She had to rely on the lying tells she’d learned in agent training in Quantico. She said, “You could have told me you didn’t live in civilization before you lured me with promises of coffee.”

  “Would you have come?” Chopper’s grin was symmetrical and slow to develop — both signs of sincerity. He handed Clare a small knapsack. “Here. Put this on.”

  “What is it?” Clare slipped the straps around her arms.

  “Avalanche pack. Pull the cord if you feel any slippage underfoot — or under the sled skis. The pack will expand into a balloon on your back and keep you above the snow.”

  Clare’s eyes shot open. These woods felt full of risks she hadn’t even considered. The moon was bright — nearly full — creating shadows in the trees that seemed to shift, like little animals. Snow created a white blanket that covered the ground. Clare wondered what the blanket was hiding.

  “Avalanche danger is extreme,” Chopper said. “We’re pretty safe in trees, but I’d feel like a jerk if I didn’t let you wear the pack instead of me.”

  Clare found that kind of sweet. Not a detail a murderer was likely to consider. Or was the avalanche pack the first thing Chopper planned to take from Clare’s back when he killed her? “How come you live in a place where no roads go?”

  Clare studied Chopper’s eyes as he said, “I love privacy. I can retreat up there for days on end, if I want to. Plus I built the place myself — in summer, obviously, so I could use the logging road to truck supplies up.” Too much information? If so, it was a sign of lying. But no eye-flickering, no looking away. And also not overly intense. Seemed sincere.

  “You live in a homemade hut? Is there electricity, or do we have to melt snow to make coffee by candlelight?”

  Chopper laughed — easy, relaxed. “Is your mind still on coffee? No worries. I have a generator and running water.” His hands were steady. He wasn’t touching his nose or covering his mouth. His legs weren’t shifting or shuffling. All signs of sincerity.

  But people could fake that shit. That was the other half of Clare’s lying tell training — learning to look truthful under pressure.

  Chopper locked his truck and handed Clare the helmet.

  Clare fastened the strap. She felt like a kid on a first date — both terrified and thrilled. She sat behind Chopper and was at a loss for what to do with her arms. She looked down to see if there was something she could grip.

  “Hold on tight,” Chopper said.

  Clare shrugged, put her arms around Chopper’s waist. He squeezed her gloved hand and said, “You ready?”

  Damn, his touch felt good.

  Clare felt her stomach jump as he zoomed up the snowbank at a near right angle before settling on terrain that was more trail-like.

  “You all right?” Chopper shouted over the engine.

  “This is awesome.” Clare felt wide awake and amazing. The snowmobile’s speed felt as good as her motorcycle — which she missed like crazy in winter. If Chopper was leading her to a wooded death, at least she was getting one last adventure.

  Chopper gunned the engine and rode faster. His body felt strong — and oddly warm, though he was covered in layers of snow clothing. The machine hugged the mountain like it was made to climb, like it was a mountain lion grabbing hold and clawing to the top. Despite all the sharp turns and steep inclines and trees right next to the path, Clare felt safe the whole way up. Chopper pulled to a stop outside a log cabin.

  As he killed the engine and they climbed off the snowmobile, Clare felt giddy with relief. Seeing an actual home — as opposed to a clearing and a bloodstained ax — meant she was far less likely to be murdered that night.
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  Chopper unlocked the door, flicked a switch, and lit up the room. The ground floor was open concept. There was a kitchen in one corner with a hodgepodge of appliances that looked like they’d been dragged to the cabin from the 1950s. In another corner, a plush leather couch and two deep matching armchairs surrounded a rugged stone fireplace. In the middle of the room, a winding wooden staircase led up through a hole in the ceiling.

  “How can you afford this? It must be way more expensive to build up here than to rent in town.” Shit. Maybe Lucy shouldn’t be quite so curious.

  “Totally more expensive. But worth it. I might not seem like a typical loner, but when I want to be alone, I want to be the hell alone.” Chopper grabbed some sticks and a thick log from the wood pile and put them into the fireplace. He crumpled up some newspaper and wedged it in, too. “You sure you want coffee, or would you rather have a beer? You might sleep better with beer. Or did you want me to take you home after the coffee?”

  Clare laughed lightly. “A beer would be good.”

  Chopper pulled a giant beer bottle from the fridge and poured it into two glasses. The bottle was still half-full.

  “What kind of beer is that?” Clare tried not to sound suspicious asking.

  “Howe Sound Rail Ale. It’s local, brewed in Squamish. Come on, let’s sit by the fire.” Chopper took Clare’s hand and led her to one of the couches. “We need to keep each other warm.”

  Clare let herself be led. The couch was comfortable. Even more comfortable when Chopper grabbed her by the waist and pulled her toward him so they were sitting right against each other. The coffee table was an old sailing trunk with a glass top. Clare set her beer down.

  “What’s this?” Clare picked up a blue plastic tube from the table. It looked like a cross between a mechanical pencil and an X-acto knife.

  “That’s a bear banger.”

  “A what?” Clare was trembling with nervous attraction. She hadn’t felt this way in ages — like since a year ago, when she’d met Noah. She wanted Chopper to make his move, but at the same time she wanted to prolong this part, this not-quite-anything where they both knew something was going to happen soon.

  “You attach a tube of explosive to the end, shoot it out to make a big sound and scare away bears.”

  “Where are the bears you have to scare off?”

  “They live here. In the mountains.”

  “They do? Should I be scared?” Like with avalanches, no one had briefed Clare about avoiding wildlife.

  Chopper laughed. “It’s winter. Bears are sleeping.”

  “Oh.”

  In the real world Clare would take action around now, maybe hook her thumbs into the belt loops of Chopper’s baggy jeans.

  As Lucy, she smiled shyly and was pleased that Chopper tightened his grip around her waist, pulled her closer, and leaned in for a kiss.

  THIRTY-TWO

  MARTHA

  Martha sliced the yellow utility knife through six-year-old moving tape. Is this what surgeons felt like, slicing into someone’s stomach? She peeled back the cardboard flaps — or cracked the ribs and separated them — to open the box on which Sacha had written PRIVATE before sticking it in storage and leaving for university.

  Was it private even now? Sacha would have to forgive her.

  There was six years’ worth of storage room dust. Martha’s hands felt filthy. But she forgot all about hygiene when she saw Lorenzo.

  She picked up the photograph: a dirty, dusty road with a skinny ten-year-old boy. The boy was smiling in that brave yet forlorn way the Christian aid photographers liked their poster children to pose. The sun was high and the child’s shirt was torn at one shoulder.

  Lorenzo Barilla. This was how she knew the name.

  When she was eight, Sacha had sponsored a ten-year-old boy in Central America. After watching one of those horrible commercials (the kind that made Martha wish she had a weaker stomach so she could vomit to display her disgust), Sacha asked Martha to sponsor a child “for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day, Mom! You’re trying to drink less coffee anyway.”

  Martha explained that these organizations were corrupt, that only five cents on the dollar really went to the children. Sacha hadn’t believed her; she’d committed nearly all of her small weekly allowance to Lorenzo, convinced that her few dollars per week was enough to feed his whole family, buy Lorenzo’s clothes, and send him to school.

  For two years, Sacha had walked to the post office each Friday to send letters to El Salvador — via the aid organization. Sacha seemed happy enough with the correspondence she got back: quarterly packages with a photo Martha was sure went to a few more sponsors than Sacha, and a letter she was sure had been typed in an office somewhere in Kansas.

  Martha had always assumed that Sacha had given Lorenzo up — abandoned him innocently, like her Cabbage Patch Doll and every other childhood toy except Jules. But as she leafed through the papers, Martha was shocked to see that Lorenzo had started writing back real letters — not packaged school photos with the Christian Aid logo in the corner, but letters from a teenager, complete with broken English, discontent, and foul language.

  Lorenzo Barilla was the blogger who had interviewed her at LaGuardia. He’d said his name slowly, like it was supposed to mean something to Martha. It meant something now . . . but what?

  She studied the photograph. The child looked darker than the man she’d met at the airport. Also, the blogger’s accent wasn’t nearly as strong as it should be — not like someone who had grown up in Latin America. She’d heard of people hiring voice coaches, practicing hard to eradicate an accent, to blend into a new culture. But why would he want to?

  Martha looked at the clock. If she didn’t get moving, she’d be late for the Women of Influence luncheon she’d agreed to attend — an educational session where 120 of Manhattan’s brightest female high school students were invited to mingle with women in so-called powerful positions. When the invitation had come several months earlier, Martha had deemed it a worthwhile cause. Now, she felt like the privileged princesses — most of whom would no doubt be from private schools — could do without the added insider advice about their futures. It was the youth in Harlem and Alphabet City who needed these sessions.

  But she’d agreed to go.

  Martha put the letters back into the moving box and closed it, feeling like she was leaving Sacha inside.

  THIRTY-THREE

  CLARE

  Clare woke up and wondered where she was. The green curtains looked familiar. So did the brown plaid comforter. Traveling for work so much, she was used to waking up disoriented. And as Noah would note, being a slut should make that feeling even more familiar.

  She wanted Noah’s arms around her, if only so she could wrestle them off and tell him what a jerk he was.

  Not like Chopper, who was actually nice to her — and whose bedroom Clare slowly realized she was in. Upstairs in his groovy mountain cabin. Man, that sled ride had been fun — once Clare had dropped the illusion that she’d been about to die. She really had to figure out how to not inhale.

  Some thermal socks and sweats were folded on a wooden chair beside the bed. A piece of paper on top said Wear me in scratchy male handwriting. Clare put on Chopper’s clothes, which pretty much drowned her, and descended the twisty staircase down to the main floor.

  Chopper was facing the stove, pushing a spatula around in a pan. The smell of vegetables and spice made Clare’s stomach growl. “That smells amazing.”

  “It’s a tofu omelette. Didn’t know if you were a vegan or not — so many chicks in Whistler are vegans or vegetarians — but I had some tofu in the fridge, so I figured I’d get creative instead of waking you up to find out.”

  “I’m not a vegan.” Clare hoped she never had to go undercover as one, either. “But if their freaky food can smell like that, I’ll gladly eat it.” />
  Clare sat at the kitchen table — a long wooden slab that looked both homemade and designer. “Do you make your own furniture?”

  “The wooden stuff, yeah.”

  “You ever sell it?”

  “No way. I’m not interested in hearing some yuppie couple ooh and aah then tell me how they want theirs done custom.”

  Clare wondered if Chopper had already smoked a joint that morning or if the smell still clung to the air from the night before. “Why are you called Chopper?”

  “My summer job in high school. I was an arborist, like my dad. Chopping trees down for rich homeowners who want a nicer view.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “You have to sleep with me three times before I tell you.”

  Clare liked watching him cook. His shoulders were massive; the guy was made of muscle.

  He’d been good in bed, too. They’d clicked well. Clare recalled the flick of his tongue as it made her writhe in pleasure while sun had begun to filter through the curtains. She was tempted to get up and lure him back into bed for another round, but her coffee tasted too good. She also felt kind of hollow — like maybe fucking around freely wasn’t who she was at heart. She wished Noah were there, so she could squeeze his hand and feel him squeeze hers back.

  Clare said as casually as she could, “I feel like getting high today.”

  Chopper turned quickly. Something green flew off his spatula and onto the counter. “You want to smoke before breakfast?”

  “I don’t mean pot,” Clare said. “I mean something to take me out of my head. Shrooms or X would be awesome. Or are you all earthy Nature Boy — nary an artificial chemical can enter your body?”

  Chopper sprinkled a green herb onto his tofu concoction. “I’m not big on X unless I know the source. Shrooms are always fun. But my drug of choice when I have eight hours to spare? Hands down, LSD.”

  “Seriously?” Clare leaned back in her chair. “Jana said the same thing. Is it still 1970 in Whistler?”