by Jack Stroke
She wouldn’t be bothering anyone anymore.
34
The paddle back to shore took longer than Amber would have liked, her skirt, blouse and sneakers not the most optimum outfit for swimming.
She avoided the marina. It seemed far more likely a swimmer climbing out of the water would be noticed, especially one fully dressed. Instead, she headed for the privacy of the adjacent Billow’s Beach. It would be possible she could have the same issue here in summer. At this time of year she was fine. There wasn’t a single person on the beach to spot her, despite the perfect weather.
Not bothering or really able to dry herself, Amber headed back to the Cards ’n Care warehouse on foot. She hoped Ben was all right, reminding herself he hadn’t actually been shot, he had just fallen. Amber must’ve looked like a drowned rat. She didn’t care. Again, there was no one to notice anyway.
She approached the warehouse with caution. Getting in and out without being seen was preferable, but it ran second to making sure Ben was okay.
The space appeared eerily quiet, but for how long? Someone could easily have heard or seen something and the police be on their way. She entered the same way she had exited - via the loading bay. Instinctively, she felt for her Sig. Not there. She no longer had Fedora’s empty Glock either. It must have been lost in the boat collision.
Entering, Amber reduced her footsteps to quiet, wet splotches, almost impossible for anyone else to hear.
The warehouse was still.
Amber took a moment for her eyes to fully adjust from the daylight to the artificial light.
“Who is she?”
The voice was unsteady, cutting through the otherwise quiet space. It belonged to Scar. He was facing the main entrance, pointing Amber’s Sig with a shaky hand.
In front of him stood Ben, hands raised.
“I said… Who is she?”
Scar must have doubled back after he ran away. Returned to survey the damage. Or perhaps he to assuage a guilty conscience.
Ben remained poised for his part, his raised arms quivering a little the only sign of nerves.
“I said —”
“I… I don’t know,” Ben said. “I don’t know who she is.”
“Is she police? She had a police ID.”
The requirement here was making a correct tactical decision, not a purely emotional one. Not easy with an unsteady hand pointing her own weapon at her godson.
“What are you doing here?” Scar said. “You know something.”
Ben said nothing.
“Look, you either tell me.” Scar cocked Amber’s gun. “Or I’ll shoot you, right here and now.”
35
Moving as lightly as a cat, Amber sprung towards Scar’s back. It was a dance, avoid all the noisy package strapping littering the floor.
The real Connor’s gun lay beside his body. Using it was an option, except Amber had already had issues with someone else’s weapon today. She wasn’t ready for that to happen again. Especially since Scar had her Sig which she knew wouldn’t misfire.
“I don’t know anything,” Ben protested. “I was just walking past, and that security guard dragged me inside. I have no idea why.”
There was no way to stop Ben from seeing her coming. To his credit, he didn’t react to the sight of his Godmother at all.
Amber grabbed a loose piece of package strapping from under her feet. In a flash she had it around Scar’s thick neck.
She had the element of surprise, but that was about it. Scar had a significant weight advantage. As he tried to get the fingers of his free hand under the strapping, he writhed and squirmed. It was like Amber was riding a bucking bronco.
She was okay, though. As long as she held firm, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do.
Trouble was Ben jumped forward to help, unsure exactly how. He tried to hit the gun from Scar’s hand, doing little more than sending his arm flying off to the right but not dislodging the weapon. The move distracted Amber. Not much, but enough. She lost position.
Scar pitched forward, tossing Amber over his head. She landed with a smack on the concrete floor. It was a horrible second or two - first, the hit to the concrete rattling her bones, then staring down the barrel of her own Sig.
“You know it’s not loaded.”
A momentary confusion clouded Scar’s face, replacing the rage. He tilted the gun slightly as if he would be able to tell somehow by looking at the side of the weapon. The moment was all Amber needed. She spun around on the concrete and kicked him hard to the groin.
A shot exploded in her ear, flecks of concrete ripping at the side of her face as the bullet buried itself in the floor. Jumping to her feet, she followed up with a stab kick to Scar’s knee, sending Scar crashing to the concrete ground. He fell hard, grabbing for his groin.
Once he was down, Amber stomped on his forearm. He released her Sig. Not messing about, Amber snatched the weapon and put a bullet between his eyes.
The shot was loud and definite. Scar immediately went limp.
A quiet took over the warehouse. Nothing happened for several moments.
“All right… We… We better get out of here,” Ben said.
Amber remained still.
“Amber?”
She held up a hand. Her mind ticked over at a million miles an hour. He was correct of course. They should get out. And quickly. At the same time, she needed to be smart.
Amber retrieved her false ID from where Razor had dropped it. She hurried to where Razor and Connor had been standing when they entered.
“What’s that?” Ben asked, looking over her shoulder at the open box.
“Heroin.”
“Pink?”
Amber nodded. “Same as Ava’s. Some type of Eastern European heroin.”
Did they have time to destroy it? Possibly, although Amber had no idea how much there was. And she didn’t want to be here when the authorities arrived. She may have taken the risk on her own. No chance with Ben. They had to move.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the strapping in his hands.
“It’s what you strangled that guy with. It’ll have your fingerprints on it.”
Good thinking. Had she touched anything else? Not that she could recall.
“All right. Let’s go.”
They took the rear entrance via the loading bay.
“Do you know Officer Stacey?” she asked Ben, head checking all directions.
“I’ve met her a few times.”
There was no one about. The two of them cut through the concrete yard and hurried out onto the street.
“What’s your impression of her?”
“Umm, she seems all right.”
Yeah. Amber thought so too.
36
Amber and Ben slowed once they were a safe distance from Cards’ n Care. Amber’s mind raged, full of things she wanted to yell at Ben. She chose to wait and see if she calmed down, so it didn’t all come gushing out at once.
“How’s the arm?”
“It’s good. It’s fine.”
He was lying. It was clear from the way he was holding it that his arm was sore.
They stopped so she could examine it. He winced as she bent his arm different directions.
“We need to get it checked out.”
“Amber. It’s fine.”
She shot him a look, making it clear this wasn’t up for discussion.
There was a surprising amount of people in Port Simmons Hospital’s emergency room, given how quiet Port Simmons was as a whole. Then again, hospital emergency rooms were generally quite busy places in Amber’s experience.
They sat on two moulded plastic chairs to wait, far enough away from everybody that they could talk in hushed tones without being overheard.
Amber couldn’t hold it in anymore. “What the heck do you think you were doing?”
“Shouldn’t you be thanking me?”
“Thanking you?”
“Yeah. What would you have done if
I hadn’t shown up?”
“What would I have done? Whatever I needed to do. I had it under control.”
“Sure didn’t look like it.”
“The last thing I needed was you waltzing in and messing everything up.”
“Me messing things up? They had you at gunpoint and were about to shoot you. I’d say you were doing a pretty good job of messing things up yourself.”
They drifted into silence, surrounded by the busyness and noise of the emergency room. Amber reminded herself Ben wasn’t the enemy.
“What were you doing there anyway?”
Ben turned excitedly like he had been waiting for her to ask.
“I figured it out. You tried to fob me off this morning, but I knew if you were going to Port Simmons, it had to have something to do with the smugglers.”
“I told you I wasn’t going to Port Simmons to find them.”
“Phhfftt. I’m not an idiot. You were pretty obvious. And these guys, they’re drug smugglers, right? It made sense they would be somewhere near the marina bringing stuff in by boat like last time. So I thought I’d help look for them.”
Amber nodded, avoiding eye contact.
“Anyway, I caught the bus in. When I couldn’t see anything happening around the marina, I thought, where might be a likely spot? I walked a few of the surrounding streets until I found the warehouse.”
“Well, you are smarter than me then,” Amber said, both impressed and annoyed with his deducing skills. “What were you planning to do? Storm the place by yourself with no weapon and no backup?”
“No. The plan was to call you if I found the right place. I snuck up and looked in the window. They had a gun on you ,and it looked like you were in trouble. So I made sure the guard spotted me. I figured I would cause a distraction.”
“Okay,” Amber said. His actions sloshed about in her brain. “Pretty brave.”
“Thank you.”
“But also, incredibly stupid. What would I have told your Mum if you’d been killed? Or Joan?”
“I think we did good. We make a good team.”
“What part did we do good? The part where we almost let them get away? Or the part where you very nearly got shot? Twice?”
“The part where we stopped them.”
“This isn’t a game, Ben.”
“I don’t think it’s a game.”
“There are very real consequences. We are lucky to have escaped with just an arm injury.”
“Amber, I’m not a child. I understand all of that. What I am saying is these guys were selling drugs. We put a stop to that. That’s a good thing. Those drugs won’t be out there. On the streets.”
Amber gave a noncommittal grunt. It concerned her just how excited he seemed, like he was high. All she could feel was the dread that this all almost went a much different way.
“Ben?” said a nurse with a clipboard.
“All right, I’m going to leave you to it,” Amber said.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“How will I get back?”
“I suggest you ring your Mum. And if you do that, I can’t really be here when she arrives, can I?”
“No, I guess not.”
Ben stood, still wincing slightly from his arm soreness. “What should I tell her?”
“Up to you. You managed to get yourself here and almost get yourself shot without any help. Lying to your Mum should be the least of your problems.”
Amber strolled out, leaving Ben in the nurse’s capable hands.
37
Dusk was settling as Amber began the long trek from Port Simmons back to Paradise Cove. As usual, she made her way along the beach route rather than the roads. The water was calm. Barely a ripple from the waves. She did her best to move and not think. It wasn’t easy. Worse still, what would generally be a pleasant walk was decidedly uncomfortable, given she was still quite wet from her impromptu swim. Her shoes were especially damp.
As she moved, one memory played itself over and again in her head like a movie.
Ben being dragged into the warehouse by the security guard.
That look in his eye as he charged along the platform.
“No!”
The security guard on the ground turning and firing.
Ben falling off to the floor.
It didn’t matter whether he’d actually had been shot. It sent a shudder through her every time. That he hadn’t was merely good fortune.
How had she allowed this to happen?
As Amber walked, her resolve grew. This was quite simple. She was going to have to be smarter about everything. The kid was intelligent and determined to put himself in harm’s way. Put simply, she had to stop that. Starve him of opportunities to do so. Yes, he was desperate to be an agent now. That could all change in an instant once he became distracted. He was only seventeen. Something else would come along.
Several hours later Amber arrived back to the quiet of Paradise Cove, more determined than ever to find a way to protect her godson.
The following morning, Amber awoke to a gentle knocking on her cabin door. Instinctively, she grabbed her Sig out from under her pillow. It made no sense though. If the person knocking intended her harm, they were exceedingly polite.
“Ms Storm?” came a woman’s voice, followed by more gentle wrapping. In days gone by, Amber would have had to hurry to pack up her tripwire alarms. Recently she had managed to get to sleep without setting them up. It was a challenge but showed her increasing comfort at Paradise by the Bay.
“Coming…”
She opened the door to a police officer.
“Hi, Amber. Do you have time for a quick chat?”
“Sure. Come in.”
Officer Stacey? What could she want?
38
The two women took a seat at the cabin’s kitchen table.
“Thanks for your call yesterday. I just wanted to quickly follow up.”
“No worries.”
Amber felt at a distinct disadvantage in her pyjamas sitting across from a fully-uniformed officer.
“You say you were just walking by the warehouse?”
“Yes, and I heard yelling and then loud bangs. I was concerned the bangs could be gunshots. That’s why I called you. Not that I know what gunshots sound like, other than in movies and TV. Was it anything?”
Stacey ignored the question, keeping her eyes trained on Amber. “You didn’t see anyone?”
“No. I just kept walking. I wasn’t even sure if I should ring at all, you know? I didn’t know if it was anything. But after thinking about it, I decided better safe than sorry.”
Officer Stacey studied Amber, not giving anything away.
“What were you doing in Port Simmons?”
“Just a bit of shopping. And a stroll. I like Port Simmons.”
“What did you buy?”
“A shirt and a dress.”
She indicated to where the crumpled shirt sat on the floor.
“Do you have the receipt?”
“No. But I am sure the Target at the Pines would have CCTV. I’d be on that if you want to check. Why? What’s this about?”
Officer Stacey’s stare was unwavering. “Just attempting to get to the bottom of what happened. That noise you heard at the Cards ’n Care warehouse was gunshots. Several people were killed.”
Amber feigned an appropriately shocked reaction. “Really? Do you know why?”
“We’re still looking into it.”
Surely that was for Amber’s benefit. They must have found something. Stacey just wasn’t saying.
“Did it involve drugs?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Gunshots. Close to the marina. Drug trafficking seems logical.”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Did they have cameras there?”
“Yes. They appear to have all been disabled.”
“Makes sense. And how does this involve me?”
“Y
ou called it in. I thought you might have seen someone. You know, coming or going.”
Was that it? Or was there more that Officer Stacey wasn’t saying?
“No, sorry.”
The officer took her time. “Plus, one of the deceased was one of the men suspected of attacking Grubby.”
“Oh, right. Coincidence, hey?”
“It would appear so. You didn’t see anything else?”
“What sort of thing?”
“Nothing else out of the water perhaps?”
“The water? No.”
Silence took over. Stacey waited. She could wait all day as far Amber was concerned.
“Why did you ring me?” Stacey asked.
“It seemed appropriate to ring the police.”
“But you didn’t ring the police. You rang me specifically.”
“Well, we’d just met. You seemed like the right choice.”
The two women waited, sizing each other up.
“Can I ask you a question? How big is the Port Simmons police department?”
“Why do you ask?”
“If this business at the warehouse is to do with drugs, I want to be sure you’re taking it seriously.”
Officer Stacey furrowed her brow. “We’re taking it seriously. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“And you trust your fellow officers?”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s just a question.”
“Why wouldn’t I trust my fellow officers?”
“I don’t know. You hear stories. Drugs going missing after drug busts.”
“Stories from Port Simmons?”
“No. I guess more generally.”
Stacey’s eyes cut into Amber, trying to figure her out. “What is it that you do, Ms Storm?”
“Logistics. Usually.”
“No law enforcement or military in your background?”
“No. Why?”
“Just a feeling you give off.”
Amber stood. “Well, with several people killed, I’m sure you’re very busy. If there’s anything else I can help you with, be sure and let me know.”
