Second Solace

by Robert Clark

  There was nothing else for it. I would have to tell Maddox I couldn’t go. Whatever excuse I gave would be seen as suspicious, and a man as paranoid as Cage would not take it lightly. Chances were, telling him no would spell the end for me in Second Solace, which was as much a failure to Miles and Whyte as trying to escape. Either way, Sophie was doomed.

  How long had I been? Forty, fifty minutes? Cage would be ready any minute. I didn’t have time to waste. I pressed the call button on the phone once more and pressed the device to my ear.

  Five seconds passed. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.

  Nothing.

  Shit.

  Would they see how many missed calls I’d made? Would it show up on their phone? Maybe. Maybe they would put the pieces together and give me a chance. Or would they think the missed calls had come from a spooked spy about to forfeit it all? Either was possible, and the odds felt stacked towards the latter.

  My hour was up. Cage would be ready. I couldn’t keep him waiting for long.

  I tried again. Still nothing. The purr was driving me insane. I wanted to smash the phone to pieces. But I couldn’t. Sophie needed me.

  I paced around, trying to ignore the thumping in my chest. How long would Cage wait before he got suspicious? Would he send someone to find me? Would they come here first? Probably. I had minutes at most.

  I tried the call again.

  And someone answered.

  ‘What?’

  It wasn’t Whyte. It wasn’t Miles either. I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Hello?’ the voice said. Definitely male, but older and raspier than the two Agents I’d met. ‘Someone there?’

  ‘Who is this?’ I asked. My heart was in my throat.

  ‘Who’s this?’ the mystery man responded.

  ‘I need to get a message to Agent Miles or Agent Whyte,’ I said. ‘Are you able to do that?’

  ‘Depends,’ said the voice.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘What’s the message?’

  I paused. Choked by indecision. Every part of my mind was in conflict. Talk. Don’t talk. I didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Tell him,’ whispered the Wolf over the racket in my brain. ‘You don’t have a choice.’

  ‘I’m going somewhere,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where. I need you to tell Agent Miles or Agent Whyte that I’m still on their side. I’m making progress. Can you tell them that?’

  ‘Depends,’ said the voice again.

  ‘On what?’ I said again.

  ‘On who is speaking.’

  I could barely see. Barely think. My hands were shaking. My mouth trembling.

  ‘You don’t have a choice, James.’

  ‘It’s James,’ I said. ‘James Stone.’

  And as soon as the words left my mouth, the line went dead.

  I held the phone in my hands and stared at the screen. The call had been severed, but not on my end. Whoever I’d spoken to had done it. And for whatever reason, I had no idea.

  Sixteen

  Roadtrip

  I had to hide the phone. My eyes darted around, desperate to find somewhere Gail or anyone else wouldn’t discover it. Agent Noble had wrapped the phone in a watertight bag to keep it safe outside. So outside was my best bet. I heaved open the bedroom window and placed the phone in the drainpipe. Then I pushed a layer of snow over the top to hide it from sight and closed the window.

  I ran downstairs, throwing on my coat and boots as quickly as possible. No time to lace them up. I could do it on the drive. I ran as fast as I could back towards the courthouse, praying that I wasn’t too late.

  As I rounded the side of the building, I spotted two Humvees parked up beside the front entrance. Cage was standing beside the first. He wasn’t alone. Corser was nearby, packing bags into the back of the second Humvee with two men I didn’t recognise. Cece stood by the passenger door, scowling at me. Cage looked up.

  ‘Jesus Christ, boy,’ he said as he spotted me. ‘Thought you’d gotten lost or something.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I panted. ‘I went to get some food and lost track of time.’

  He grunted and nodded to the Humvee to get in. Not one for apologies it seemed. I jogged to the vehicle. Cece climbed into the front passenger seat.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind, but I asked Cecilia and the others to join us,’ Cage said. ‘Cecilia had my back last time we dealt with these people. Only fair she gets that chance again.’

  ‘I do not need this snake’s permission,’ she hissed at Cage. ‘I am here to protect you from him more than them.’

  ‘Stone’s no harm to anyone, isn’t that right?’ Cage barked.

  I didn’t know what to say. My mind was still on the phone call. I opened the door and looked inside. Sitting by the opposite door was Gail. She smiled at me.

  ‘Long time no see,’ she grinned.

  I returned the smile and climbed up onto the huge leather seat behind Cage. I buckled in and looked behind me in time to see Corser and the two other men climb into the second Humvee. So much for a two man trip. Cage fired up the enormous engine and turned the Humvee back onto the track. Bumps and dips felt like nothing for the massive vehicle. Cage took the track Corser had brought me up on my first day, heading down alongside the river, back towards the real world.

  ‘Eggs on toast not enough for you this morning?’ Gail asked. I looked at her blankly. ‘You said you had to grab a bite to eat?’

  ‘Oh, I… I just like to fill up before a long trip,’ I muttered. My head was a damn mess. I caught Cage watching me in the rear-view mirror. His bright eyes burned into mine for a second before he turned back to the road. My heart felt like it was going to burst.

  ‘I guess that’s not the worst idea in the world,’ she mused. She smiled at me again and fished in the bag between her legs and pulled out a battered old book. I looked at the cover. A Tale of Two Cities.

  ‘Charles Dickens,’ I said.

  ‘One of the classics. Have you read it?’

  ‘A couple of times.’

  ‘It's my favourite,’ said Gail. ‘I’ve read it too many times to count. What's yours?’

  ‘I read The Hobbit quite a few times.’

  ‘“Not all those who wander are lost,”’ she said, quoting the great author.

  I smiled and looked out the window to try to shut down the conversation. It worked. Gail stopped talking, and when I finally looked back, she was deep into her book. The Humvee followed the long winding track all the way down through the forest. No one spoke, with only the roar of the engine to fill the silence. Cece and Cage seemed content with keeping the silence going, so I sat back in my seat and waited.

  The further we went, the worse my chances were. If the mystery man had gotten the message to Miles or Whyte, then hopefully I was in the clear. If not, they could be watching my tracker move further and further away, and sentencing my wife to death. I tried to stop those thoughts from entering my mind, but I could as easily do that as I could voluntarily suffocate myself by choosing to stop breathing.

  We reached the point where the track to Second Solace met a public road. There were no signs around to suggest the settlement was there. Nothing but a worn out dirt track between two trees. Cage turned the vehicle right and put his foot down. No going back now. I was committed to the journey.

  With smooth tarmac beneath the tyres, the Humvee was a surprisingly agile vehicle. We were up to sixty in seconds and rarely dropped below for the duration of the drive. Cage handled the monster with ease, driving with the confidence of a professional rally driver. The forests soon gave way to a beautiful vista of snow-covered fields surrounding a frozen lake. In the distance, I could make out a small town nestled in on the far side of the lake. The glow of life apparent even from this distance. But we got no closer to the town as Cage took a road up ahead that led up back into the wilderness.

  From there, the journey lasted over two hours, yet I doubted we travelled more than forty miles. The track started out as rough and moved into the realm
s of piss-takingly difficult by the end. Trees bunched in like an angry crowd trying to bar access to the newcomers. The track morphed and shrank with every mile, determined to make our venture as difficult as possible. Cage persevered, forcing the convoy to give everything it could.

  But eventually, even he had to concede defeat. He nosed the Humvee onto a grass plinth wide and flat enough to park on, and switched off the engine.

  ‘We’re on foot from here,’ he announced to the group. ‘Keep your guard up. They could be watching.’

  He climbed out of the Humvee, as did Cece. Gail looked at me, smiled, and stored her book in her bag. Then she too climbed out.

  I got out last. The air felt thicker here. Probably the altitude wasn’t as fierce. And the temperature was a degree or two warmer. I felt a little further from hypothermia than I’d become accustomed to. The second Humvee pulled up alongside ours, and Corser and the two men got out. All three were armed and brought their rifles up into position before anything else. Cage opened up the boot of our Humvee and hauled out three weapons. The first was a pump-action shotgun, which he passed to Cece. A brute for a brute. The second was a sleek hunting rifle that he passed to Gail. She slung it over her shoulder without question. Not afraid to get her hands dirty, I see.

  The final weapon was an AK-47. I recognised it immediately. One of the most ubiquitous and well known weapons ever created. Cage ejected the magazine and checked it over, then he clipped it back in and held it out for me. Cece saw him do it.

  ‘You must be kidding me,’ she snapped.

  ‘Just a precaution,’ Cage replied, not looking at her. ‘I don’t want any of my people going in empty handed.’

  ‘He is not one of ours. He is a snake.’

  ‘Cecilia, stop calling the man a snake and just accept it, will you?’

  But she seemed unwilling to stand down. She snatched the assault rifle from Cage and thrust it at Gail, then yanked the old hunting rifle from her and threw it at me. I caught it wrong, and the barrel whacked against my head. Her vindictive smile stung worse than the weapon.

  ‘Happy now?’ Cage asked her.

  ‘I would be happy putting a bullet in his head.’ She replied as she stormed away.

  ‘Well, she’s fun,’ I said.

  ‘You get used to it,’ whispered Gail under her breath. She slung the AK over her shoulder and moved off, leaving me and Cage by the Humvee. Corser walked over.

  ‘Stone,’ he sniffed.

  ‘Corser.’ I said back. He nodded, then looked at Cage.

  ‘Should be ten klicks to Hope County,’ he said to the boss. ‘We set off now, we should be there within the hour.

  ’‘Then let’s get to it,’ Cage replied.

  ‘Hope County?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s what they call their home,’ Cage said. ‘The woman in charge is called Hope, and she built it herself after what went down at Second Solace. And yes, she has the kind of ego you might expect of someone who names their town after themselves.’

  Which was saying something from the man who had commissioned a giant oil painting of himself. Cage slung his backpack over his shoulder and patted me on mine. Then he turned and began to hike up the track. The group fell in behind. Cece hustled ahead, determined to be up close to her leader. I caught up to Gail and walked with her.

  ‘Why’d you come along?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s been years since I last left home. I wanted to see the sights.’

  ‘Why don’t you go travelling?’ I asked. ‘There’s no reason for you to stay in Second Solace, is there?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be right to daddy,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘It’s his vision, and I don’t want anyone to think I don’t believe in his dream. Maybe one day things will be different and I could travel the world with a partner. But, you know, it would have to be the right guy.’

  She smiled again, and the look in her eye was the same as it had been during our meal the night before. There was no mistaking something was there. Too bad the basket she was piling her eggs in was a burning, ruined mess with eggs of it’ own. Maybe in another life, we could have had something. But not this one.

  I didn’t respond to her. Instead, I tried to focus on the walk ahead and ignore the myriad of thoughts plaguing my rattled mind. Travelling here with Cage would accomplish nothing for me. Even if these people wanted him dead, I could foresee no outcome where they got what they wanted without a whole lot of bloodshed on both sides. And even so, getting back to Second Solace with no Cage would prove impossible without him to defend me.

  I had to get something out of the trip. If there was even the slimmest possibility that Miles and Whyte had got my message and decided not to kill Sophie, they would only do so under the pretence that my journey would be fruitful. Returning without progress would be enough of a death sentence for the both of us as a failed escape attempt.

  I slowed a little to put some distance between myself and Gail, and let Corser catch up with me. He nodded as he caught up alongside.

  ‘How’ve you been?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, you know. No one else has tried to murder me, so that’s good.’

  He grunted in response.

  ‘How’re things with you?’ I asked.

  ‘The usual,’ he replied.

  ‘Do you know much about these people we’re going to see?’ I asked.

  I met Hope once or twice before she left,’ he said. ‘Bunch of hippie freaks, if you ask me. Cage didn’t say why we were coming here though.’

  He gave me the kind of look that could spill a can of beans. I didn’t respond straight away. He’d been in that meeting too, back when they were deciding whether to ambush the truck. Just because he’d told Cage he was attacked, it didn’t prove anything. He was as much a likely suspect as the rest of them.

  ‘Cage thinks they might be involved with the people who attacked us,’ I said. I dropped the us in instead of you. A subtle play. I’m one of you now. Corser didn’t object to it.

  ‘Smart,’ he said. ‘They were a twisted bunch. Stands to reason they would try again.’

  He shuffled his grip on the rifle and winced. I’d completely forgotten he injured his shoulder killing Westaway.

  ‘How’s the arm?’ I asked.

  ‘Been better, but I’d had worse,’ he grunted.

  ‘Thank you, by the way, for stopping that guy from killing me.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ he sniffed. ‘Damn S.O.B shouldn’t have attacked you.’

  ‘Well either way, thanks for having my back.’

  Corser didn’t reply. Instead, he cast his eyes up the track. His eyes narrowed. Then he hustled up ahead to Cage. I tried to spot what he’d seen, but there was nothing but a thick cluster of trees with our tiny path snaking through them. Corser caught up to Cage,and whispered something in the chief’s ear. Cage nodded, and Corser fell back into line. He muttered something to the two men I didn’t know, then caught up to me.

  ‘There are people in the trees,’ he growled. ‘Don’t look, but keep your guard up. We might have to fight our way out of this.’

  He moved away before I could respond. I didn’t look up. Instead, I let the Wolf be my eyes. He manifested beside me,and scanned my peripheral for me.

  ‘I count five,’ he hissed. ‘Three up ahead, two on our right. They’re stalking us.’

  ‘What do we do?’ I asked.

  ‘Like Corser said, be ready to fight.’

  As casually as I could, I placed my hand on the rifle and inched it round to my side. It was an archaic weapon. The magazine couldn’t have more than a handful of rounds in it. But for now, I just kept my hand on the weapon, silently pretending that I was keeping it from slapping against my back. The Wolf kept his eyes on the figures, which left me to focus on the path, but my mind wandered, and my eyes drifted into the trees.

  I saw movement up ahead. A slight rustling in the trees that was too big for a gust of wind. Whoever the person was, they were high up, and moving from tree to tree wi
th the ease of a monkey. I gripped the weapon tighter, readying myself for battle. And I wasn’t alone. As I looked around at my companions, I noticed each held their weapons with a rigidity born from anticipation. The tension in the air solidified until it was as thick as butter. And with each passing second, I felt an outcome manifesting.

  ‘There’s four more to the left,’ said the Wolf. ‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more behind us.’

  ‘Always the optimist aren’t you.’ I said.

  ‘Okay then, we’ll play it your way. There’s at least nine people surrounding us, all probably armed, all definitely better equipped to fight in this terrain, but it’s all okay, because the great James Stone couldn’t possibly die in the Montana mountains.’

  ‘See, don’t you feel better for being a glass half full kind of hallucination?’

  ‘I was being sarcastic and you know it.’

  ‘Me too.’

  I inched the rifle around to my front. Up ahead, I could see Cece doing the same with the shotgun. Gail still had the AK on her back. Her backpack pinned the weapon down, making it difficult to get in a hurry. Cage had his hand on his hip holster. The grip of some kind of revolver protruded out the top. Was he as good with a six shooter as he thought he was?

  The path intensified. The trees closed in, creating a claustrophobic corridor big enough for one person at a time. Cage went first, with Cece close behind. Gail and I followed, with Corser and his two men taking up the rear. I could practically feel our enemies crawling through the branches directly above us. And I could swear I could hear whispers in the wind. Every person in our convoy had their hands on their weapons. There was no subtly about it. We knew we were being watched, and made no effort to hide that fact.