by Jonas Saul
It was the ultimate hit to her sense of self that hate played such a strong role in fate. She was a good person. She felt that on the inside. A person of warmth with a big heart. Only ever willing to hurt others if it was needed to save someone weaker, the underdog.
Yet someone wanted her dead. Whether it was Violeta or Parkman or both, trying to kill Sarah had been an error.
Since she was still alive, she would continue her fight for the underdog. She would move forward without pause. If it were true, and her sister did talk to her as she had come to realize before she fell asleep, then she would listen.
There was nothing else left in life but to avenge the weak, help the needy.
Sarah had been weak once. She had been molested by her babysitter all those years ago. Being shot in the head made her weak again.
Sarah decided she would never quit. She would never stop fighting until her hardened heart turned gray and stopped beating.
And she would start her war on crime, her war on evil, with Parkman and Violeta. She would deliver the two men trapped in the back of the ambulance to Violeta’s front door once she got the address from Parkman. They were only a problem for her if they got in her way.
As she pulled out to pass a slow-moving truck, she understood why she had seen an image of Parkman on a cross in a church and why she was in a crypt throwing bullets in a fire.
She had to crucify him, kill him and bury him in a crypt.
Chapter 27
The sun was just rising in Los Angeles as the plane touched down at LAX.
As they landed and the pilot slowed the plane, Oliver’s wheelchair vibrated, jostling his sore limbs.
He turned to Athina. “Because of the wheelchair, we deplane first. I need a handicap bathroom immediately.”
She nodded. “I’m ready.”
The plane pulled up to the gate and after a five-minute delay, the door opened. Athina wheeled Oliver off the plane and up the long tube that fed arrivals into the terminal. Signs informed them where to gather their luggage and where customs was, but Oliver pointed at the bathroom sign.
Once inside the restroom, alone, he got out of the chair and stretched. He splashed water on his face, used the toilet, and then danced around the small room in an attempt to restart circulation.
“Could sure use a massage right about now,” he whispered to himself.
Someone knocked on the door. “You okay in there?”
“Yes, Athina. Be out in a minute.”
He did a few more turns around the bathroom, got back in the chair, covered his legs in the red checkered blanket they had given him, and opened the door.
Athina stepped around the chair and pushed him toward customs.
Other planes had arrived at the same time, and the line to see a customs agent looked a half hour or longer.
Oliver sighed in despair, not wanting to spend any extra time in the chair than he had to.
Twenty minutes later, they stood before a customs officer. Oliver showed him his American passport and was waved through with an entry stamp.
Athina showed her passport and police badge and said she was simply transporting the injured Oliver back from Greece as a professional courtesy. Her visit to the States would be short as she was heading back to Athens as soon as Oliver was settled at the care facility in his home town.
She was stamped and waved through.
With no luggage to claim, Athina pushed Oliver’s chair past the luggage area, out the exit doors, and entered the main airport.
“We’re supposed to meet two officers from the Santa Rosa detachment here at the doors,” Athina said.
Oliver scanned the crowds until his eyes stopped on someone familiar.
He froze.
Standing ten feet away was the man from Greece. The man who had found him at Lina’s Sugar Spell Spa and had taken his picture.
The man who worked for Violeta.
Would Violeta try to take him in such a public place? Why not wait until he arrived in Santa Rosa? Unless she wanted her men to escort him there.
The man from Greece was with two other males. One younger, fit looking man who had the build of a fighter. The other was in his forties and had the look of a professional.
“I think I see them,” Athina said, pointing just to the left of the three adversaries.
The man from Greece swiveled toward him.
“Turn me around,” Oliver said in a hushed voice.
“What was that?” Athina asked.
“Turn me around!” he snapped.
There was a moment of pause and then the chair turned too slowly.
Oliver snuck a glance toward the man from Greece. He was looking right at him. But then the doors behind them opened and more passengers departed from the luggage area.
“Go,” Oliver said. “Push me that way.” He pointed away from Violeta’s men.
Athina leaned down close to his ear and asked, “What’s going on?”
“One of my ex-wife’s thugs for hire might have seen me.”
“Would she send people here? To the airport?”
“Evidently.”
After clearing the majority of the people waiting on family and friends to exit the luggage area, Athina turned his chair around and almost bumped into two men in suits.
“Oliver Payne?” the taller one asked.
Oliver nodded.
“We’re here to escort you to Santa Rosa. You’re in good hands now.” He turned to Athina. “We’ll take him from here.”
She stepped around the chair and stood between Oliver and the two men. “I don’t think so. I take him to Santa Rosa. You escort. And I need to see ID.”
The men exchanged a glance and then produced ID.
“Fine,” the taller one said. “Have it your way. Follow us.”
When they were underway again, Oliver whispered his thanks to Athina.
He wasn’t leaving her side until this was over and Violeta was arrested for what she had asked Kostas to do.
Or he would stand from the chair and kill her with his bare hands.
Chapter 28
“Parkman, you okay?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah. I just thought I saw Violeta’s husband. Or ex-husband.”
“How’s that possible? Wasn’t he in Greece?”
“The man I saw was scared, broken, and in a wheelchair.”
Aaron scanned the crowd. “What makes you think it was him?”
“It was only two weeks ago that I took a hundred pictures of him, and the woman pushing his wheelchair looked Greek.”
“Really?”
“It’s just.” He turned to Aaron. “That’s what Violeta had wanted me to do. Paralyze Oliver.”
“Over here,” Detective Joffrey called.
He had pre-arranged a courtesy car from the local detachment for their time in California. On the flight over, he had explained that his boss was personal friends with someone high up in the ranks with LAPD. A favor was called in.
A man in a brown suit jacket and jeans handed Joffrey the keys and pointed out the window at the unmarked cruiser.
“All yours. Just call this number when you’re done with it. I’ll come back here to pick it up.”
“Got it. And thanks.”
Joffrey pumped the man’s hand.
Then the man turned around and walked away without addressing Parkman or Aaron.
“Let’s go get more coffee and then we’ll head up the coast to Santa Rosa. We’ve got over six hours in the car and I only want to stop for piss breaks.”
He walked away.
Parkman yearned for a toothpick. He’d had too much coffee.
And he wanted to get underway as soon as possible.
Sarah had been stolen from the Toronto hospital and was out there somewhere with a bullet wound to the head.
Hanging around to buy more coffees almost felt like time was running out.
Six more hours on the road.
He dreaded the ride and had the sudden feeling
that they were too late. The only explanation for Sarah’s disappearance was Violeta, and Santa Rosa was her headquarters. That meant that Sarah was in Santa Rosa and she would have already refused Violeta’s demands.
Which translated to Sarah was probably dead.
They were only chasing ghosts now.
Chapter 29
Sarah parked two city blocks from Parkman’s apartment. Dozens of memories flooded back, assaulting her on the drive to Santa Rosa, reminding her who she was and what she did best.
She understood herself better and now knew why she had chosen the path she had lived up to now. Something about quitting the vigilante life and doing something else left her confused. After examining the gift of being able to talk to her dead sister, it had become a responsibility to do whatever she could to fulfill the prophecies in the notes given to her.
She couldn’t figure out why she had wanted to quit, but wasn’t too worried about it now. Determined as she was, nothing would stop her from working with Vivian until she was dead.
The men locked in the back of the ambulance had buzzed her a couple of more times, but fell silent when she hadn’t answered.
Now, late afternoon, shadows lengthening, Sarah exited the ambulance, pocketed the keys, and placed the gun she had taken from the driver in the back of her pants.
In Parkman’s quiet neighborhood, one car passed and two kids rode their bikes along the sidewalk on the other side of the street. The ambulance was sound proof. That was the reason for the red button and the air-tight door. No one would hear the shouts of the two men locked in the back.
She strolled, nondescript-like, along the sidewalk until Parkman’s building came up on the left. The early evening breeze cooled her. It moved hair around the wound on her head and tickled her scalp. The pain was mostly gone. The stitches in her scalp held tight under the white bandage. Maybe by next week, when the bandage came off, she would wear a hat for a while.
The building’s side door stayed unlocked until the superintendent locked it at nine in the evening. She remembered this when visiting Parkman before she left for Las Vegas last summer. That felt like a lifetime ago. After dealing with a crazy loan shark in Vegas, it was a serial killer and a street gang in Toronto. Then off to Italy where she spent too much time trying to figure out who her enemy was. The FBI, a mobster hit man, or an assassin known as The Ghost.
The Ghost.
She stopped three doors down the corridor on the first floor of the building and said the name over and over.
The Ghost … The Ghost.
Why was that name so important to her?
A door opened behind her.
“Okay, Mom, yes, I’ll get the right kind. Okay.”
The door shut and a teenager walked the other way, headed to the side exit.
She kept moving. On the third floor, she eyed Parkman’s door before she got to it. His hallway was relatively quiet. The only noise was a TV that played a car chase, complete with police siren, in one apartment. The air was spicy with the smell of someone cooking Indian cuisine.
The thin carpet underfoot masked her footfalls as she approached Parkman’s door.
Her old friend, the turncoat, hung on a cross, flashed in her mind. There was something about the image of Parkman crucified that still bothered her. Not in a religious sense, but more that she was reading the memory wrong.
And why hadn’t Vivian talked to her again? No internal brain messages, no notes. Maybe the tinnitus was fading as she healed. Maybe she would never hear her sister’s voice in her head again.
But then why not offer a note of some kind? Tell her what to do, where to go?
Could she be on the right path so a note wasn’t needed?
That had to be it. Whatever Sarah decided to do in the next day or so wouldn’t need a letter or an internal voice unless she was going to do something wrong.
Her Parkman hunt was justified.
When she reached his door, the mental image of Parkman firing his weapon so close to her solidified what she was about to do.
One last look over her shoulder confirmed the hall was empty.
Before she could try the door or attempt to break the lock, someone coughed from inside. She edged closer to Parkman’s door, her ear a couple of inches from the wood.
Muffled voices. Another cough. A nose snorting.
Someone was home. More than one person. Males.
Perfect. She could deal with Parkman right now without having to wait.
Gently, she gripped the door handle and turned the knob. It wasn’t locked. She stopped at the tinniest squeak from the latch. She listened. Nothing from the inside.
She turned it until the latch disengaged, then listened again, but there was nothing.
After a ten-second pause, Sarah pushed the door and opened it slowly. It gave way to an apartment she was familiar with. The front area with its mat, the small hallway-like kitchen to the right. Beyond that was the dining area, then living room. She knew to her left were the two bedrooms.
Someone was home, but staying very quiet since she touched the door.
She stepped inside cautiously and eased the door back until it sat ajar an inch.
She rubbed her sweaty palms on her pants. She wanted the gun in her hand before exploring any more of the apartment but didn’t want it slipping at a crucial moment.
Before she could pull it out, a skinny man dressed in dirty jeans and a stained white T-shirt, stepped into the kitchen, set a can of Coke on the counter by the fridge, and turned to head back to the living room.
He stopped on the balls of his feet, pivoted and looked back at her.
“Oh, hey, didn’t know we had company.”
It was so nonchalant and surprising, yet friendly and unobtrusive, that she didn’t pull the gun on him. She allowed her hands to dangle at her side, ready, waiting.
“I’m looking for a man named Parkman,” Sarah said.
“You want to come in? Join us for a drink? We can all wait together. He should be here in,” he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and pushed a button, “twenty minutes.”
She almost drew her gun when he reached for his cell phone, her reflexes still honed and tuned.
“Do you know where he is right now?”
The skinny man dropped his cell phone back in his pocket and said, “I understand he was in Toronto, but he’s coming back.”
“Who is it?” someone asked from out of sight.
Sarah guessed the second male was in the living room.
The man in front of her shrugged and moved away. “Suit yourself.” From behind the wall, he added, “Come on in and wait or leave and come back later. Your choice.”
Maybe she should wait. Having two men here would complicate things if she had to hurt Parkman. But coming back wasn’t an option. What if these men were also here to hurt Parkman? Then she wouldn’t get a chance to find out why he shot her in Toronto.
She walked through the kitchen and just as she was about to enter the dining area, she remembered what Parkman had told her the night she was shot.
It was either a turkey or a chicken that was sacrificed in my apartment … the animal was torn to bits and pieces and the blood smeared everywhere.
The dining table was covered in blood and feathers. Something was wrong that these men were waiting for Parkman in such filth. A sudden urge to flee crept through her. Who were they and what did they want with Parkman? She couldn’t come up with anyone Parkman would have allowed to hang around his apartment. He didn’t associate with people like the skinny, junkie she just met.
But her memory couldn’t be trusted.
Where’s Vivian now?
When she turned the corner and looked into the living room, the skinny guy was there, along with the man who had spoken from behind the wall. He was just as thin, but more like a meth-diet skinny, all bony and sickly.
The room was ruined, the sofa flayed, a thick piece of wood stuck through the center of the TV. The walls had a dark
crimson paint job, complete with feathers, which was part of the sacrificed chicken Parkman had mentioned.
But that wasn’t what caught her breath in her throat.
Each man held a gun.
