by Jonas Saul
The man in the front seat no longer resembled a friend. He wasn’t even an enemy. All he represented to Darwin in that moment, as his anger rose to intense fury, was a man who was part of the organization that wanted Darwin and his family killed and he mocked Darwin by simply breathing.
He lowered his face, but kept his eyes on the back of Greg’s head, his pulse increasing. Triggers were set off, and he was powerless to stop them. The darkness closed in. His heart rate spiked, his breathing rapid.
“Darwin, you okay?” Greg asked.
Greg’s cell phone rang.
The moment he reached for it, a car rammed them from behind.
Darwin had lifted his hands as they were about to clamp around Greg’s neck, but they’d only got to the headrest of Greg’s seat when the car hit them from behind.
His head snapped back, and then he was thrust forward.
Greg screamed as he tried to regain control of the vehicle. Darwin spun around in his seat, his rage not yet dissipated. The act of looking directly into the dark, a pair of high beams aimed at him, only added to the rage he felt in his soul.
“Get the fuck off the highway!” Darwin shouted.
“I’m trying, I’m trying.”
Their car had swerved two times and then Greg got it back under control. He hit the gas and launched them forward and to the right, his eyes trying to focus on their tail.
“Who is it?” Darwin asked. “Your friends?”
“My friends? What the fuck does that mean?” Greg asked.
Darwin spun around in his seat to face forward. All the anger showed on his face. “I know you. I know what you’ve done—”
Red lights flashed in the front window. Darwin snapped his head up and saw, what he thought was the end, in that second.
A large eighteen wheeler had slowed nearly to a stop in front of them.
“Look out!” Darwin screamed.
His warning came too late. Greg hit the brakes hard and then cranked the wheel to the left, exposing the passenger side to the impact. They almost skirted past the back of the truck, but the undercover cruiser hit the rig still doing thirty kilometers an hour. The passenger side doors crumpled like accordions, shoving the seat, glass and metal at the car’s two occupants.
Both men yelled as the contorted car buckled and bounced off the back of the rig, rolled off the highway and down the grassy median.
Darwin jostled around, his head cushioned between the backseat and the headrest on the front passenger seat. Side airbags deployed, completely protecting him from anything sharp and from taking most of the violence out of being thrown about.
When the car came to a rest, Darwin shook his head to shake the broken bits of glass from his hair. Instantly, a light flared up just outside the car. He shook his head again.
Fire.
The car’s on fire. I have to get out. I have to …
He reached for the door but it was locked. Heat blasted against his face like opening an oven door.
An explosion rocked the car from behind. Then another explosion knocked out the back window, the glass flying over his shoulder.
The interior light had gone out.
He pushed on the passenger side door, but it wouldn’t budge.
The flames were so high now that the inside of the car lit up. He saw everything clearly.
He was alone, the front seat empty.
Wasn’t there a driver?
Greg. Right. I gotta get out of here.
Heat covered him, flames licking closer. The door still wouldn’t budge. The metal frame sat at an angle, twisted in the wreckage.
No wonder. The door won’t work like that.
He looked around.
Why am I feeling so dazed?
He heard Rosina’s voice in his head. He saw the Harvester of Sorrow and his torture implements. Darwin had to save Rosina. He had to save his wife.
Her voice again. Darwin, I love you.
He rubbed his eyes. The passenger door on the right sat beside him, even though he’d been sitting behind the driver. Not one minute ago he was in a backseat large enough to fit three average men, and now it look like the backseat of an Austin Mini.
The window was missing. He shoved his head through first and then crawled out, landing on the moist grass of the median.
He glanced back at the car as flames consumed the front.
Greg.
Darwin pulled himself up and peered inside the front seat to make sure. It was empty. The car, or what looked like the car that had been following them, sat halfway under the back of the rig, completely aflame.
The explosion I felt.
The driver’s burned arm dangled out the crushed window.
Cars on either side of the 401 highway were slowing and stopping. He didn’t hear any sirens yet, but he didn’t want to be around when they got there.
He tried to crawl away, but his left arm protested too much. The bandage over the machete wound, courtesy of the Harvester, was soaking through in blood again.
Shit.
Favoring his arm, he struggled to his feet on wobbly legs and started off into night.
#
Rosina had just ordered a Quarter Pounder with cheese and a large Coke when Alfred’s phone rang. He stepped away to take the call.
After paying the clerk, she gathered napkins and found a table in the corner.
Alfred watched her the whole time. He snapped his phone shut but then didn’t move.
She took a bite of her burger and, after a second, slowed her chewing. Finally, she swallowed and set her burger down.
“What?” she asked. “What is it? My parents?”
“Prepare yourself.”
Rosina leaned forward. “After what happened in Rome, I’m prepared. Just tell me.”
“We have a safe house in Barrie. We’re heading there in different vehicles.”
Rosina rolled her hand around in a circle. “Go on, go on. I already know this. And …”
“The vehicle your husband was in has had an accident.”
She was astounded. “An accident?” she asked, her voice too loud.
“Please ma’am. Keep your voice down.”
“Is. Darwin. Okay?” she asked, clipping each word with her voice controlled.
“We don’t know.”
“Tell me what you do know. Now.”
“All I got was the vehicle hit the back of rig.”
“How come there’s no word on Darwin?”
The agent looked down at his shoes, his eyes wary. “The car was fully engulfed in flames before the fire engines got there.”
“Oh, no, oh, no … noooo,” Rosina moaned.
“There was another car that hit the rig. It too burst into flames. Multiple vehicles were involved.”
She looked up at him, her food forgotten. “Isolated incident, as in mob hit? Is that what you mean?”
He nodded. “From first accounts, it looks like an accident like any other on the 401.”
She stopped and widened her eyes in surprise. “What did you say?”
“What? About the accident?”
“No. You said, an accident like any other on the 401? Didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Why, is that important?”
She smacked the table. “What was his car doing on the 401?”
“I have no idea. I’m not given details about other people’s transport.”
“You don’t take the 401 to get to Barrie. When you guys knocked on my hotel room door, you said Darwin was already en route to Barrie and that I was to come with you to relocate to a safe house in Barrie. I repeat, you do not take the 401 to go to Barrie from where we were. So what’s going on?”
“I have no idea ma’am, but I think it’s time we leave. We’re attracting attention.”
“No. I want to know why Darwin was on the 401. You go north on the 427 and then across the 407 to the 400. The 400 goes north directly into Barrie. So you tell me, a woman who has lived her whole life in Toronto, to the p
oint where I could be a cab driver without a map, why my husband was on the fucking 401?” She was near screaming now.
Alfred stood up. “Ma’am, please, come with me—”
“Don’t ma’am me! My Darwin did not fight the Fuccini family in Rome to come home to die in a car accident. Don’t you dare tell …” she choked, caught her breath. “Oh my baby, my precious Darwin.”
She tried to get up and slipped to the floor. She whispered his name over and over as Alfred lifted her with ease.
Supporting her, he hustled for the exit, passing the restaurant’s night manager on the way. Alfred flipped his ID out and the manager stepped back.
Alfred set her in the backseat, locked both doors and stepped away from the vehicle.
She saw he was on the phone, but didn’t register much else. Thoughts of Darwin rolled through her brain as she tried to comprehend a life without him. Could it be over? Could he be dead?
She punched the seat beside her and decided to firm up her resolve. Until they had a positive ID, she would not believe he was dead. No way, no how. Not her Darwin. If he could walk away from Fuccini’s trap, he could walk away from scrap metal.
The driver’s side door opened and Alfred sat down in the driver’s seat. He turned around before starting the car.
“They checked the car your husband was in. The driver and your husband weren’t there. No one was in the car. They’re still on the scene, but at this point there are no bodies in the FBI vehicle.”
“I knew it. Darwin is alive. I feel it. He won’t die. You’ll see. He’ll come back around and kill everyone who fucks with him. You watch. He’s my husband.”
Chapter 12
He walked for hours, staying under street lamps as often as he could. The accident happened just before the exit for Keele Street, which he walked up and then went north on Keele until around five in the morning. He fell asleep for two hours behind a building on Ashwarren Road.
Once up, he continued along Keele until he saw a drive-thru Tim Horton’s.
The line inside was short, but the place was hopping as cars lined up over twenty deep at this early hour.
He got his large double-double and went looking for a pay phone. He found one, pulled out his wallet and used his Visa for the charges.
Sure, they can check my records to see where I am, but I’m pretty sure it’s not instant and by the time they figure out what pay phone and race over here, I’ll be long gone.
He sipped his coffee while he dialed his father’s home phone number. After three rings, he was about to hang up, when someone answered.
“Hello?”
FBI.
“Hello?” the man said again. “Can I help you?”
Darwin hung up. They were probably tapping the line, waiting to see if there was a list of demands.
Oh, Dad. I’m sorry you got mixed up in this. I’m so sorry.
He leaned against the pay phone’s Plexiglass shelter and wondered who he could call for help. His friend Bill would already be gone to work, and he couldn’t remember that number by heart. He knew Bill would extend a hand, but did he really want to involve someone else he cared about?
Finally, he decided to call Rosina’s parents’ number to see if the FBI would answer that one too.
He dialed and drank more coffee while he waited.
The phone was answered after three rings.
“Hello?”
Rosina’s mother? No fucking way. Impossible.
“Isabella?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“Isabella Capote? Is that you?”
“Who’s calling please?”
“Darwin.”
“You. What have you got my daughter mixed up in? FBI agents came by. They wanted to set up stuff in my house. I told them to get out. This was between you and someone else. Ohhh, Darwin, I’m so frustrated right now. Where is Rosina?”
It was so good to hear her voice, such a relief, that he wasn’t formulating a proper response.
The FBI said they had kidnapped you. What the fuck?
“It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“What? Darwin, are you on drugs?”
“I was told you were kidnapped—”
“Kidnapped? How absurd.”
“Tell me about it.”
His thoughts were coming together. They were lying to him. Everyone was lying to him. The FBI had set him up, and Greg was involved at some level. Greg had called the hotel room and told him that Rosina’s parents had been taken. The men in the car at the Park ’N Fly had told him that four agents were dead and two were missing and that they needed his help to bring Greg down, yet it was Greg who called him in the hotel. No one told Rosina that her parents were kidnap victims except Darwin. In that moment, he realized he was their fall guy.
“Darwin, are you still there?”
“Yeah, sorry. I need your help.”
“My help?”
“Something big is happening and you’re the only one I can turn to. I need to see you. Can we meet?”
“What’s this all about? Is it Rosina?”
“I will tell you everything. But you can’t say anything to anyone about where you’re going. Come alone and I will explain it all.”
“Um, okay. Where do you want to meet?”
“How about the food court at Square One Shopping Center? I’ll be sitting in front of the Tim Horton’s.”
“Oh, Darwin. I hate Tim Horton’s.”
“Well, you don’t have to order anything,” he said, completely offended.
“Meet me at the Starbucks in Chapters across the street from the Square One. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes,” Darwin said. “When?”
“In an hour?”
“Good. But come alone. I need to talk to you and only you. Isabella, I’m sorry, but if I see FBI or any of your friends, I’ll have to leave because what I need to tell you is secret, okay?”
“My husband is out at the shop and I’m alone at the house. Why would I bring anyone? I’ll just see you there in an hour.”
“Bye,” Darwin said and hung up.
He walked away from the pay phone and looked for a cab.
Why would they lie to him? What were they up to? Was Greg on their side or working for Fuccini?
Rosina would be so glad to find out her parents were alive.
Was that some sort of plan? Why did they have Darwin tell her about her parents?
He swung back to the pay phone. After inserting his card, he dialed information.
“Quality Suites Airport, please.”
When the front desk answered, Darwin asked to speak to Rosina Kostas and told the desk clerk their room number on the fifth floor. After three rings, it was picked up.
At first he heard nothing.
“Hello?” Darwin said.
“Darwin?”
“Yeah, who’s this? Put Rosina on.”
“Where are you?”
“Fuck you. Put Rosina on.”
“Not until you come in.”
“What’s your name? Who are you?”
“Not important. Where are you?”
“Not important, eh? How can I trust you? After what happened on the highway, eh? How can I trust you? Now, put my fucking wife on the phone.”
There was a moment of silence. Darwin figured the guy was thinking about it.
“Rosina’s not here.”
“Yeah, right. Stop fucking around and put her on, or I’m hanging up.”
“I’m serious. She’s not here. She was moved to a safe house.”
“A safe house? Where?”
“You know I can’t tell you that or it wouldn’t be safe now, would it?”
