by Avery Duff
They stopped at the far end of Samuelson’s Rocks and stashed all the bills in Robert’s pack. Erik grabbed Carlos’ rocks-only pack, and they took off with both packs, their path still directly away from that rock formation, their pursuers, and Samuelson’s Rocks.
A few minutes later, Robert stopped. Let Erik run on until his body descended into the next dip. Erik’s shallow footprints in the hard-packed sand were invisible to Robert in the growing gloom.
Robert shouted, “Stop!”
Then Robert, his tread light, joined Erik. In the decline together, they started running in the dip, perpendicular to their earlier route. Invisible, he hoped, to their pursuers’ upcoming field of vision. An edge, no matter how small, as he and Erik headed for Hidden Valley. That’s where Park Boulevard swung deep into the desert. Where they’d hit the blacktop, turn on the afterburners, and leave Boris behind.
He looked behind them. Visibility in the storm had compressed from five miles to five hundred yards, if that. And so far, no Boris.
The storm. Good for me, bad for Boris, he was thinking.
But he was wrong.
In the wetter sand, their steps left easy-to-follow tracks. Nothing to be done; they kept churning through it. Another two hundred yards, according to plan, Erik slung away that rock-filled pack. Boris would stop to check it out or grab that extra weight on the fly. Either way, it would slow them down.
“How you hanging?” Robert asked.
“Okay. You?”
“Easier’n the beach.”
They’d been thinking along the same lines: good thing they were in shape. Otherwise, they’d be on their knees in the downpour, playing a losing game of Let’s Make a Deal with Boris, whose endgame was a given: Robert and Erik, stripped of all money, dead in the desert.
The rain still came hard and strong. The lightning—biblical. He’d never experienced it so close outdoors, where branches of it branched off other branches and struck the desert floor. A cosmic light show to watch from behind double-pane plate glass—not while running for your life.
For the next five minutes, clothing soaked, breathing steady, they kept a good pace, picking their path across the soaked sand. Swiping his iPhone screen clear of raindrops, Robert used its compass to keep them roughly east-northeast—on track for Hidden Valley—jumping rivulets of rainwater that flowed left to right in front of them across the sloping desert floor.
Not tired, not yet, but it was coming. Back of his mind, fatigue was there, and with it would come fear.
Delfina’s rock . . . Teo’s rock . . . whoever’s rock it was . . . bounced in his pocket. He pictured Gia and Delfina waving goodbye in front of Gia’s house.
As if he were making his final reckoning, his thoughts turned to the farm. His family. A dominating uncle; his deranged father; his loving, weak-willed mother; the farm’s wise foreman, Luis; and his once best friend, Rosalind. All the years he hadn’t seen them and maybe never would again.
Still running, he looked over his shoulder. Lightning lit the world behind him. Even though visibility was now a hundred yards or so, at least no one had appeared through the sheets of rain and fog and darkness.
“Don’t see ’em,” Robert said.
“Pretend they’re right on our ass,” Erik said.
Robert caught the look on Erik’s face. Knew that Erik’s wife and kids rolled through his mind in ways Robert didn’t fully comprehend. Five years knowing Erik, Robert couldn’t recall seeing this expression. He’d only glimpsed it. Most recent, when Erik saw that trio of wasted bullies who’d picked a fight with Teo—a father just protecting his child.
Today’s look went even deeper—Erik preparing for war.
Glancing back again—bad news this time. That largest of the four pursuers carried Carlos’ rock-filled back. A forty-pound pack, and still this one ran ahead of the others.
And he spotted Robert the moment Robert saw him. Motioned to the others behind him.
“Still with us,” Robert said.
“They catch us, they’re dead men,” Erik said.
Robert dug deep into places better forgotten. Deep hatred. Moments on a Capitola clifftop, fighting for his life with Jack Pierce. On the beach below . . . Jack Pierce drowning . . . Robert’s heart hardened enough to kill.
And he realized: he’d twice seen that monster man’s gait. Bursting past him on the Santa Monica stairs, and jogging though Gia’s neighborhood, his hood pulled up. Plus, Delfina’s unexplained, cracked-open bedroom door. The thought of this man coming through the kitchen door off Gia’s backyard surged through him; his heart went rest-of-the-way cold.
“Dead men,” Robert said.
The next fresh rivulet ahead held more water than others he’d seen. Instead of jumping it, Robert grabbed Erik.
“Follow the water?” Robert shouted over the deluge.
“Yeah!” Erik shouted back.
Tracking it downslope another five hundred yards, they reached the vast plain’s low point: a riverbed cut into the desert. A hundred feet across at its widest; sheer five-foot-high sand banks; a channel littered with dead creosote, rocks, and brush; a wet sand bottom pooling from the downpour.
“Like it?” Robert asked.
Erik’s answer—he jumped into the channel. Robert landed beside him. They shared a look.
“They catch us . . . ?” Erik asked.
“Dead men,” Robert said.
They took off again, using the closest channel bank to shield themselves from Boris. As they ran, Robert saw a place where the far bank had caved in. A Joshua tree had recently toppled into the riverbed, an event hundreds, maybe thousands, of years in the making.
As they neared the next bend, Robert saw their pursuers. Erik saw them, too: four men lit by an electric sky, then cloaked again in rain and darkness. All of them now inside the channel bed together. Inside those five-foot walls.
Given enough time, Robert had a couple of ideas that might help give them the upper hand.
“The tree?” Robert asked.
“The tree,” Erik said.
They dashed across the channel, back to that fallen Joshua tree. After clambering up its gangplank-narrow trunk onto the bank, they pushed and kicked its trunk back into the channel. They took the high ground.
Their pursuers ran past as Robert unzipped his pack, removed two coils of rope, two stainless-steel thermoses, and his Swiss Army knife. The emergency flares—those he tossed to Erik.
“For up close,” Robert said.
“Pop it, stick it down his goddam throat,” Erik growled.
Meaning the big man, Robert knew.
Robert dumped out a thermos, filled it with wet sand. He tied a rope knot around its plastic screw-in-top handle. Swung in a three-to-five-foot circle, it was a weapon. Hit a man’s head just right—a deadly weapon.
Out in the channel, Robert saw one pursuer stop. Look right at him up on the bank. He stopped and called out to the other men, who returned and gathered around him.
Their leader, Robert figured, was wearing that camouflage jacket and cap. Robert finished knotting off a second thermos weapon.
Out in the channel, he saw that camoed guy grab Carlos’ backpack from that badass lead runner, kneel, and unzip it . . .
Once Kiril opened the backpack and saw the stones, his big-money plans with Ilina went to shit. Before he even stood up, another idea born of fear and desire jumped front and center. Why not slit Penko’s throat, kill Niko and Petar? Do it all now instead of later, like he’d planned. Do it now, and for a while trick the pair he’d just chased across this desolation. His only hope for getting the money rested with those two on the bank.
Before he could act, Penko roared in rage and rushed the sand bank. It yielded to his force as he leaped up, clawing for a grip, sliding him back into the channel. The harder he tried, the more that sand yielded.
Tire yourself, Penko. Easier for me to kill you.
Kiril told Niko and Petar: “Go to that tree, climb onto the bank. I wil
l rush them with Penko.”
Once they took off, Kiril gave a thumbs-up to that lawyer on the riverbank. The one looking at him.
In his mind, he heard Ilina telling him, Whatever you do to make it happen is already forgiven.
Then Kiril watched Petar and Niko clamber onto the tree’s unsteady trunk. That put them about three feet from the bank. The lawyer ran toward them as Kiril drew his blade from its scabbard and shielded it inside his sleeve.
Robert reached the Joshua tree where those two gangster-looking guys were making their move up its trunk. Waiting till the first one got closer—four feet away, he guessed—Robert started swinging his three-pound thermos in a tight circle. As that first man looked up to leap ashore, Robert aimed for the guy’s temple. He missed low—the thermos struck his windpipe. The man clutched his throat, gagging as he tumbled into his comrade; the pair wound up tangled in the channel.
At that point, Robert saw the man in camo calling to the fallen pair; the one who could still stand ran back to him. It seemed impossible—the leader gave him a second thumbs-up. Then again.
What the hell . . . ? He’s helping us?
Robert jogged back to Erik, who kept booting the animal lunging up the bank. Next try, the monster got his elbows onto the bank, and Erik caught him in the forehead with his heel.
In the channel, face bloodied, the monster tasted the blood dripping into his mouth.
Pointing at Robert, he screamed, “I will take young girl in room where I watch her sleep.” Then to Erik: “I will rape your sons in your yard! In that tree house you build when I go back to—”
That’s all it took.
“Don’t!” Robert screamed. Too late.
Erik had leaped off the bank, feetfirst, striking that big man square in the chest. Both men slammed to the ground, struggling, first one on top, then the other. Erik cracked open his road flare and jammed it into the monster’s neck, spewing molten red.
The monster laughed insanely at the pain.
Then on Robert’s periphery, the man in camo, the leader, slammed a knife into that second gangster’s chest. Another thumbs-up to Robert, another thumbs-up, signaling what? We’re on the same team?
What the . . . ?
In the channel, the monster caught Erik with a sharp elbow to the jaw and dazed him, sending the flare flying. He rolled Erik off him, regained his feet. Stood over Erik, who tried clearing his head.
No choice now—Robert had to give up the high ground. He made ready to jump down and start swinging the thermos—and that’s when they all heard it.
Distant at first, like a surging wind. Then the sound picked up, became a roar, growing.
From his vantage point, Robert saw the flash flood first. A sea of mud and rocks and debris, rolling and churning, the face of it four feet high and growing. The monster saw it, too. No fool, he forgot Erik and ran down the channel, that camouflaged leader not far behind, the water overtaking them.
But Robert’s focus was Erik: on the ground, ten feet out from him, five feet below. No way to hoist him up in time.
“Erik!” he screamed. “Grab it!”
Paying out twenty feet of rope, Robert slung Erik the thermos. Erik got to his knees, gave the rope a wrap around his body, tucked the thermos behind his bicep, and clamped down his arm.
“Got you!” Robert screamed.
Erik stood, ran toward him, jumped as high as he could, his feet digging into the riverbank. Not high enough to get out—both of them knew that—even as Robert pulled with all his might. But Erik’s momentum and Robert’s pull got him just high enough. When that first surge of floodwater reached him, Erik still had a fighting chance, unlike the other men.
They’d be dead as soon as the water hit.
Erik’s eyes caught Robert’s. Robert nodded.
I got you.
The water swept Erik away.
Robert was instantly on the move, running downstream along the riverbank, dodging several small Joshua trees, knowing that one slip put him in the flood to die with Erik. Looking ahead: a large Joshua tree thirty yards downstream, ten feet back from the riverbank.
But no matter how fast he ran, the torrent rushed faster. He paid out more rope to Erik from his coil as he went.
Erik faced downstream, knees tucked to his chest, Robert’s rope wrapped around his body, locked in by that thermos wedged behind his bicep.
Still alive. Still breathing.
That Joshua tree came up fast on Robert. He paid out twenty more feet of slack rope to Erik and ran the other end of the coil around the tree, keeping the rope low on its thick trunk. Once around the tree, then again, hand to hand. Five more feet of rope left when it pulled tight against Erik’s body. The tree groaned but held; so did the rope.
Robert watched the flood: the tight rope against the current shot Erik’s body underwater. Had he just drowned his friend?
Waiting. Water rising. Tree holding. The rope’s angle to the shoreline more and more acute as Erik’s submerged body angled closer to shore. Robert tied off the rope and ran to where he guessed the rope ended underwater.
Waiting until Erik—close to the bank now—lunged from the floodwater.
Robert reached out. “Erik!”
Not enough time. Grabbing a breath, Erik went under again. Robert grabbed the rope with both hands. Five tortured seconds passed—Erik lunged free again. Robert dug in both heels and leaned into the rope with all his might. Every force at work—even the floodwater—now helped swing Erik’s upper body partway onto the bank.
Erik grabbed Robert around his legs. Robert lay back on the ground, and Erik climbed over him till he was free. Erik collapsed onshore. Robert stood, half dragging, half coaxing Erik another ten yards from the water, where he made it onto all fours, coughed up a mouthful of water-and-sand slurry, then another one, gagging on the horrible mix.
Robert couldn’t believe it. Alive, both of them. He leaned back on his elbows, gasping for air.
“You maniac,” he said to his dry-heaving friend.
A deep look passed between them—they’d gone into battle together, came out the other side.
Erik raised a weak arm, pointing upstream, behind Robert.
“What?”
“Money . . .” Erik gasped.
Robert stood, whirled. On the bank upstream, his $100,000 backpack floated in a pool of overflow. Not far from the channel and drifting that way.
Running upstream, he summoned reserves he’d never before called on.
Thinking: Not gonna lose it, not after all this.
Diving flat at the water, he belly-skimmed across it. Teo’s rock dug into his thigh as he grabbed the strap of his errant backpack. He rolled over onto his back in the slush.
Clutching the backpack to his heaving chest, he gazed up into the new night: the storm had passed, and the desert sky was as clear as any sky he could ever remember.
CHAPTER 40
At a Joshua Tree motel that night, Robert lay in the plastic tub, the bathwater running hot on him again. Wrung out beyond anything he could recall, he was still coming to grips with being alive.
Three hours ago, he’d driven Erik to a local ER with a bruised and rope-burned torso. Nothing, they decided beforehand, would be gained by mentioning the four men—one stabbed to death by his partner, the other three surely drowned.
Fortunately, Erik’s injuries passed for a rock-climbing snafu. Now, Erik slept in the next room, doped up on narcotics, and Robert found himself reliving the aftermath of what had just happened. Once they’d retrieved their trail bikes, half-buried in rain-slammed sand, they’d ridden out of the park back toward the SUV. Before that, at the North View Trail parking lot, a single car remained.
Belongs to Boris, Robert had been thinking.
“Keep going, I’ll catch up,” he told Erik, who was grabbing shallow breaths to ease the shooting pain in his ribs.
“Got it,” Erik said, and kept going.
Robert rolled into the parking lot, over to a b
lue Ford sedan. A San Bernardino rental, according to its markings. This blue car, he now recalled, had passed him on Park Boulevard, once or twice at least. The Ford was locked; he peered inside. Nothing of interest to see on the seats or floors; he decided not to press his luck by breaking a window.
And now, lying in his plastic bathtub, he thought about Carlos’ backpack note again.
Don’t Forget! the note had said.
In each Argonaut notice, in Carlos’ work notes, Carlos had used the same phrase.
He tried to sort out all the pieces. San Bernardino. Sharon Draganov Sloan, once nicknamed Dragon Lady. Sharon from Glendale, an hour’s drive east of San Bernardino.
Reyes’ texted reports about Sharon had yielded nothing helpful so far:
Lives in Glendale for sure. Drove home from work. Home near lake. Shopping at Glendale Galleria with two kids. Mediterranean food delivered to her house from Central Cuisine. Had a cousin worked there a few years ago. Yelped it five stars, especially the kabobs. Homegirl Sharon’s in for the night.
Good to know if he ever wanted a kabob over that way, but it left Robert with the question: How was a probate lawyer of Bulgarian descent connected to four men who’d just tried to rip off the trust and murder him? The answer seemed impossibly out of reach.
At some point after he’d appeared in probate court, Sharon must’ve put these killers onto Teo. Then onto him. He remembered what that monster had raged in the channel: that cracked-open door into Delfina’s bedroom—that man had been in the room with Delfina. And he knew about Erik’s tree house.
How close all of them had come to disaster chilled him. He twisted the tub’s hot water handle again.
He’d spoken to Gia a half hour ago: Teo could be brought out of his coma as soon as tomorrow. After that piece of news, Robert had told Delfina how much he appreciated her camping-store buys.
“Especially the rope,” he told her.
“Did you go climbing on rocks?”
“No, but we needed rope. We caught an elephant with it, but we let it go.”
Delfina liked hearing that, told him: “A man brought over a frame with my Magna Carta Man drawing inside it. Gia and I put it on the wall.” Then whispering, “He was fat.”
