by Jonas Saul
She was nobody’s fool. And she was not a wounded horse being delivered to its owner to be put down.
Even without the memories, one thing was abundantly clear in her mind. If anyone was being put down, it was Sarah Roberts who did the putting down. As long as she had her feet on the ground and not six feet under, it would remain that way.
“Doc, I’m not feeling so good.”
She made out like she would faint, falling backwards, then correcting herself before bumping into the wall cabinet. He rushed to her side and grabbed her around the waist.
“Come on, let’s get you back up onto the table.”
She squinted and moaned, holding a hand to her temple. “I need something for my head.”
“Okay, I’ll prepare a needle as soon as you’re lying down and strapped in.”
Sarah broke out of his grasp and bent from the waist, leaning her upper body over the bed.
“No,” she said forcefully. “Get me something now.”
The doctor paused. After a second, he moved away and opened a cabinet where he retrieved a small bottle. He stuck a needle inside the top, filled it and came back to her side.
“Where are you going to put it?” she asked.
“In your thigh. Then I’ll help you back onto the bed before it knocks you out.”
Sarah moved her thigh out toward him, widening her stance for balance.
The doctor bent over.
She lunged at him and wrapped both hands around the wrist that held the needle. In the moment of surprise, before he could react, she spun his wrist at an impossible angle, and shoved the needle’s tip into the front of his thigh and pushed the plunger.
“No!” he yelled as he stumbled away from her. “What have you done?” He bumped into the wall and leaned sideways, favoring the stuck leg.
Sarah stood back up to her full height. “Sorry, doc, or whoever you are. But this ride is over. This is where I get off.” She shoved him to the floor of the vehicle. He fell, but not before brushing his hand along the counter, knocking needle packages, small boxes, and the empty pasta container he’d used at lunch to the floor with him. “Actually, I meant, this is where you get off. Appreciate your help, but I don’t need it anymore.”
The doctor’s eyes were already closing as whatever was in the needle coursed through his blood.
“Nighty night,” Sarah whispered.
And the doctor was out.
She ran for the cabinet he had pulled the bottle out from and saw a dozen more like it. Following his procedure exactly, she had two needles ready for the driver in case the first one didn’t work fast enough.
She headed for the door, turned the handle and bumped into it.
Locked.
“Shit, now what?”
The door needed a key. She set the needles down and searched the doctor’s pants. Empty but for a few hundred in cash, which she relieved him off.
Frantic that the driver would return at any moment and start driving again, she rummaged around the areas the doctor frequented, but found nothing.
“Shit.”
The door to the front of the vehicle opened. The modified ambulance’s weight adjusted as the driver got back in.
“Think, dammit.”
The engine started.
She stumbled along the side, skirted the sleeping doctor and hit the red button just as the driver had started to move the vehicle.
It stopped, the engine idling.
The metallic voice returned. “Yes, doctor.”
“Help,” Sarah said. “He went to give me a shot to help me sleep when he slipped, and fell down. He’s out cold and I’m not tied up. I’m weak and dizzy. Don’t drive with me like this.” She sobbed for his benefit. “I think the doctor may have had a stroke or a heart attack or something. Please help us.”
She waited at least ten seconds before the driver responded.
“Okay, here’s how we’re going to do this.”
“Please hurry.”
“I will only open that door if you’re tied up. I will have a semi-automatic weapon with me. If you try anything, I will give you a matching hole on the other side of your head. Got that?”
“Why would I try anything? Please, I think he’s going into convulsions or something. We just need help.”
The door opened at the front as the driver got out.
“When I open the side door, if you’re not secured in that bed, I will shut and lock the door and not open it again until we get where we’re going.”
“I’m in the bed now. I will try to tie myself up, but when you get here I will still have one hand untied.”
Sarah grabbed the needles she’d prepared and moved for the bed. The ankle straps were easy and fast. She positioned the left wrist strap to appear secure, but left it loose. Then she hid a needle under her left hip. The right wrist stayed unlocked and the strap for her chest dangled under the bed, out of sight.
A key slid in the door to the outside. A loud set of locks clicked, then for a brief second, there was the sound of air being sucked out. It reminded her of the sound an airplane door made when the flight attendant opened it.
Sunlight blanketed the floor and wall as the driver pulled the door all the way open.
“Are we cool?” the man outside asked.
“We’re cool,” Sarah called back in a frail, weak voice.
“Okay, I’m coming in, gun first. I will shoot if you try anything.”
The tip of a gun appeared, then the hand holding it. After that, the driver dipped his head inside, saw her on the bed, and lowered the weapon.
“Please,” Sarah begged, making her voice sound hoarse. “Help him.”
The driver was young, sporting a mustache and beard. He had to be mid to late twenties. She had expected someone older, more experienced. His cheeks were pockmarked, leftover damaged skin from a teenage acne problem.
He scanned her body from the door and frowned.
“I don’t see a strap on your right wrist.”
“I was unlocked to stretch my legs and walk with the doctor. When he was putting me back, I needed a shot for the pain.” She dropped her head back to the pillow softly. “I guess you didn’t hear the screaming. I was in so much pain that he stopped there and then fell onto the needle himself.” She looked back up at him. The driver was at the end of the bed now, the gun near his stomach, aimed at the floor. “Lucky for me I wasn’t fully secure. How could I have reached the buzzer when you got back in the driver’s seat if I had been?”
The driver studied her face for a moment longer. “Something’s not right, here.”
“Look, please, just do something for him and then tie me back up. No problem. But I need a shot of whatever he’s having.” She pointed at the doctor on the floor.
The driver bent down to check the doctor’s pulse while keeping an eye on Sarah.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“What?”
“I tie you back up first, then tend to the doctor.”
“Sounds fine to me. Do it your way. Just do something.”
The modified ambulance’s engine still idled. She couldn’t recall if he shut the driver’s door or not. If he did, it was probably unlocked.
The driver cautiously stepped up to her chest area, the gun now aimed at her face.
“You mind aiming that thing somewhere else? You can still make me dead with a bullet in the chest, only less messy.”
Once he got the strap, he tossed it over her shoulders and walked to the other side to secure it. He fit it into something and a second later the strap was pulled hard, locking her shoulders down.
“Hey, the doc didn’t put it so tight.”
“Look, Sarah.” His face popped up in front of hers. She could smell his breath and didn’t like the taste of Doritos. “I’m not as trusting as him, nor as stupid. He was hired because he was the best medical guy money could buy. He would never jab himself with that needle and plunge whatever was in it into himself. You did this and
you are not going to do it to me.”
“Fuck you,” she said in a clear voice. “I’m trying to help.”
He leaned closer and examined her eyes. “You’re fully awake. The hoarseness in your voice is gone.” He roamed her face with his eyes. “You set this up and didn’t expect I would come in with a gun, did you?” He lifted the gun up for her to see now that she was almost all secure. “That’s why the side door is locked. If you ever took over back here, no one would get out. Smart, huh? That was my idea.”
“Yeah, real smart. No one gets out.”
On the word ‘out,’ she wrapped her fingers around the hidden needle, flipped it in a way so the plunger was at her thumb, spun her arm in a wide arc and rammed the tip into the back of the driver’s right shoulder as he leaned over her, depressing the plunger all in one motion.
His eyes widened like he’d been stung by a bee. Or maybe it was shock at being bested by a girl who was almost completely secured with straps to a bed.
He brought the gun around and tried to aim even as his eyes drooped.
Sarah unlocked the shoulder strap, sat up too quickly to unlock her feet and battled a wave of dizziness, then finished unlocking herself completely.
After holding the second needle with the intent to use it, the driver’s eyes closed and the gun slipped from his grasp. She picked it up and checked the driver’s pockets. A wallet with ID and money. She brought it with her to the open side door of the modified ambulance.
“Enjoy the ride back here, boys. It’s going to get bumpy.”
Chapter 23
Oliver Payne needed to get up and move around. His ass had numbed and his legs ached from sitting in the wheelchair. They had changed planes in Zurich and had to wait for two hours. The only break he got was when Athina, his Nafplio police officer posing as a nurse, pushed his wheelchair into the handicapped bathroom and allowed him to stand up and walk around.
Since Zurich, he had remained seated. They were still over five hours out of Los Angeles and his mind had numbed too.
“Athina.” Maybe talking would keep his mind off what his body was dealing with. “Does your name mean anything?”
Athina was a hardened woman. Kostas had told him she had spent a few years in military service before coming to work at his police station. She had been through a lot and would serve as a capable companion on the trip to America. The chiseled face and buzz-cut hair made her almost look male, but her soft voice and her ample breasts confirmed her sex.
“I’m named after the Greek Goddess Athina. My parents used the name because of Athens too, our capital city.”
“Athens?”
“Yes, in Greek Athens is called Athina.”
“When we land, is everything taken care of?”
“Yes. Relax. Sleep. Don’t stress. It is almost over.”
He closed his eyes and put his head back, but there was nothing to rest his head on.
Kostas had sent the pictures. Violeta, as promised, had sent the money. While that was happening, Athina had taken the two of them to the airport in Athens where they stayed one night, in two rooms, at the Sofitel Airport Hotel right across the street from departures.
When they landed, Oliver would be driven to Santa Rosa, where he would be checked in to a care home. Athina would stay with him until Violeta was arrested once the local authorities were presented with Kostas’ evidence and Oliver’s statement.
If this didn’t work, and Violeta found out he wasn’t paralyzed, she would get her two gorillas that never left her side to paralyze him for sure. A bonus hundred grand each would be all it would take for those bozos.
He hated what his life had become. He hated that he needed to enter the lion’s den after having escaped it and hoped that he didn’t lose his head.
And he hated his ex-wife.
He needed a plan if everything failed. He needed to take care of Violeta if she went after him and the cops weren’t there to protect him.
Living like this wasn’t an option anymore. Now that he had made the decision, living on the run wouldn’t work. Whether he came out the victor or not, he was determined to see this to the end.
All he needed was a long sturdy knife. The kind sitting in the butcher’s block on Violeta’s kitchen counter.
A plan began to form.
Oliver smiled as he worked out the details, momentarily forgetting his discomfort.
Chapter 24
The driver had left the key on the outside of the ambulance door. Sarah closed the door, twisted the key, and dropped it in her pocket. She would keep the two men captive in their own modified ambulance just in case she needed them.
Why would I need people like that?
She had to start remembering who she was so her thoughts would be less confusing. Personality and strength wasn’t part of the temporary memory loss.
It was early morning, the air warm, the sun just cresting the eastern sky. With her newfound money, she needed food and drink for the long ride ahead. She couldn’t use any of the food in the back.
The keys were still in the ignition. She turned the vehicle off and pocketed the keys.
Inside the convenience store, she stocked up on energy drinks, a loaf of bread, and baked goods. Not the healthiest diet, but one with lots of sugars to keep her going. Something bothered her about what she was buying. Maybe the old Sarah was a bit of a health nut.
The letters GMO entered her mind. She recalled something about being in Italy and how food had been modified. Or they were fighting against modified food. The memory stayed fragmented.
Weird.
The man in the line in front of her turned around twice. He had to be looking at her bandage and the shaved hair around it. She ignored him because saying anything here would draw unwanted attention her way.
At the counter, the clerk stared at Sarah’s eyes each time she addressed her, trying hard not to look at the bandage.
Outside, she got to the ambulance, tossed her purchases to the passenger side, slipped in behind the wheel, and started it up. Relieved to see the vehicle was an automatic, she put it in gear, aligned the mirrors, and hit the gas.
Within ten miles of the rest stop, a sign said Reno, Nevada, was fifty-five miles away. Reno to Santa Rosa was roughly another four hours.
She didn’t know how she knew that.
She pushed the gas harder, wanting to make Santa Rosa by nightfall. Parkman’s apartment was on a quiet street about five blocks from the downtown core. She knew where she was going and she knew what had to be done.
Something still bothered her about this guy Parkman. The name sounded friendly to her. But there as no disputing the image in her mind. That was clear. She had been there. It was as clear in her mind as if a photo was tattooed on her brain. The note the doctor found on her had said to stay away from Parkman. She saw his gun, heard the report, felt the pain. But why shoot her? What could she have done to Parkman?
He must’ve been a friend, someone she trusted. That felt right.
Toothpicks.
What the hell do toothpicks have to do with anything?
Her heart swelled at the thought of Parkman’s name, but she ignored it.
Maybe she wouldn’t kill him. Maybe just a bullet in the leg. Make him limp for a while to remember what he did to her.
She had compassion. She could feel it. Deep down inside, she didn’t want to hurt anybody. In a perfect world, everyone would love one another and no one would go out of their way to hurt anyone else. But this wasn’t a perfect world. There were horrible people bent on destruction and pain. Sarah had a unique ability to stop them because of the contact with her dead sister.
She hit the brake and pulled to the shoulder of the road. Someone had said something, but the cab was empty. Maybe it was the guys in the back on the intercom system.
“What?” she asked out loud as the vehicle came to a stop.
(The note was my words.)
“Who are you?” Sarah asked. A lump formed in her throat as s
he checked the mirrors through watery eyes.
(I love you, Sarah. All will be given to you in time.)
The words faded, like an inward echo. Her ears hadn’t heard a thing. The words had formed in her consciousness, but they weren’t her words. The inner voice held a palpable difference. It made her think of watching a movie with a surround sound system. The action was on the screen in front of her, but the noises connected to the action were behind her. A disjointed feeling of thinking one thought and having another planted, rooted.
