Savage Justice

by Jason Briggs

  I was about to answer when a glance in the rearview mirror told me we were being followed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked. She was observing me stare in the mirror at the car behind us. It was hanging a good fifty yards back.

  “We’ve got a tail.”

  She groaned and turned in her seat so she could look out the back window. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “He shot out of a cross street a minute ago. When I passed that last intersection, the light was turning yellow. He gunned through the red light and slowed again. Now he’s maintaining his distance. Hold on, I’m going to try something.”

  We were going north on 16th Street: two lanes on either side of the double yellow stripe. High-end apartment complexes and mid-range condos rolled by, each building accommodating three or four floors. The area was mostly deserted this time of night, with only the occasional vehicle turning on or rolling past. I checked the road ahead and, seeing that it was empty, pinned the accelerator to the floor. The Acura responded immediately, the speedometer moving from forty to fifty, and then to seventy within just a couple of seconds. The force of the acceleration forced us back into our seats, and I let off the gas when the speedometer crossed eighty. The engine’s RPMs came down and I looked back. The car was now over a quarter mile behind us, but it had responded with a burst of speed of its own. It was coming on quickly.

  I hit the brakes and spun the wheel, crossing hand over hand as the car whipped into a hard right turn. Charlotte screamed and gripped her seat with one hand and the side of the door with the other. “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “They aren’t trying to just follow us, Charlotte.” I straightened the car and punched the gas; we flew by a park on our right and another apartment complex on our left. “If they were, they wouldn't have made their presence so obvious. They’re either really bad at tailing a car or they plan on killing us. And after the night I’ve had, I don’t think it’s the former.” Behind us, the car made the turn and escalated toward us.

  I flipped a left onto Georgia Avenue and we tore down it, passing more lofts and old buildings that had recently experienced the benefits of gentrification. The car shot out of the side street and continued to give chase. I leaned forward, reached around, and plucked my gun from behind my back. I set it in my lap and gripped the wheel tightly in my hand. I was about to give the engine a little more gas when a pickup truck appeared from a side alley and moved into the street ahead of us without even bothering to check for traffic. He wove back and forth between lanes like he was drunk; I couldn’t even pass him.

  “Slow down,” Charlotte yelled. “Slow down!”

  I mashed the brakes, the anti-lock system engaging as I put all my weight into the pedal. The seat belt dug into my neck and my chest as the Acura trimmed the kinetic energy still hurling toward the truck at sixty, fifty, and then thirty-miles-per-hour. The truck swerved slowly into the other lane, and we missed swapping paint by mere inches. It ambled across the two left lanes and entered an alley on the other side of the road, seemingly oblivious to the danger he had just put himself in.

  The episode had allowed the other car to close the distance on us. He was directly behind us now. His high beams were on, blinding me as they reflected off my mirrors. Up ahead the light at the intersection switched to yellow, and I gunned the car forward just as the driver behind me moved out and started to come up on my left. We passed under the light just as it turned red. I grabbed my gun off my lap and gripped it hard.

  “Oh, God,” Charlotte whimpered.

  “It’s all right,” I said calmly.

  The car pulled alongside me and drew close. It looked like an Audi, but I couldn’t be sure. Its windows were blackened with tint and I couldn’t see through them. The car’s window came down, and I hit the brakes again, bleeding off speed and preparing to spin the wheel into a U-turn. But the driver was apparently prepared for the move. His brake lights lit up, and before I knew it he was beside me again and a bright flash came from inside the Audi. A bullet shattered my window and continued through the car, barely missing Charlotte before exiting the vehicle.

  Charlotte screamed and put her hands over her ears. “Get down!” I yelled. She leaned forward and tucked her head between her knees. The driver fired off another two shots, both of them missing, one whizzing just past my forehead.

  My turn.

  I edged up a little closer, brought my gun up and fired off three rounds in quick succession. The first hit the door, but the next two tore through the window. The car cut a hard left and as we continued down the street, I turned and watched it slammed into a telephone pole. I tapped the brakes and spun the car around. Charlotte screamed again and pressed her hands into the dash as the Acura’s back tires skidded over the pavement. I moved into a parallel parking space on the edge of the road and jumped out of the car. “Stay here,” I said.

  “But what—”

  “Stay here,” I repeated, with a little more force. I watched the Audi as I worked my way toward it, clutching my gun in a double-handed grip. The car was at the far corner of an intersection. The driver’s door was open and the right blinker was pulsing on and off. I could see steam rising from the engine and heard hissing from beneath the crinkled hood. The pole he had crashed into was in front of a print shop. This entire section of the district looked liked it catered to commercial business. I’d left Charlotte parked near the side entrance of a warehouse, and across the street was a fenced-in parking lot full of old semi-trucks. No one seemed to be around to notice the accident, or the gunshots for that matter, and the road was absent of any oncoming vehicles.

  I approached the car cautiously swinging around wide to the left so I could get a clear view of the inside from the open driver’s side door. It was empty. I wrapped my hand around the back door handle and stepped back as I trained my gun inside. Empty too.

  There was a small pool of blood on the driver’s seat and a thin trail of it leading toward the print shop before disappearing altogether. I edged closer to the small standalone building and turned the corner, keeping my gun out in front and taking note of every shadow and hint of movement. The back area of the building turned into a grassy slope that led down to a dark treeline. I circled back around to the front of the building and checked the other side. He was gone. I sighed and kicked a Coke can off the sidewalk, frustrated that I let yet another door of inquiry slam shut in my face.

  I could circle around the trees and see if I could pick out the Audi’s driver somewhere on the other side, but I wasn’t going to risk him doubling back and grabbing Charlotte, or worse.

  I did a quick sweep of the Audi’s interior with no luck there either. The registration in the glove box showed that it was registered to a Heidi Collins and, while I couldn't be sure that the driver wasn’t a woman, I thought it was a fair bet that this car had been stolen too. Whoever these people were they clearly weren’t interested in leaving a trail.

  I jogged back across the street and got into the car. Charlotte's face was pale. “Did you find him?”

  “No.” I turned back out into the road, turned around, and headed north. “No one was following us when we left your office,” I said. A mile later we pulled beneath the bright glare of an overhead light in a grocery store parking lot. “Let me have your phone.”

  “My phone? Why?” She reached down and dug it out of her purse. “Here.”

  I pulled off the case and flipped it over, examining both it and the phone. “They knew when you were at the office and they magically found us again after we left.” I pressed the case back onto the phone and popped the trunk. “We need to search your suitcase.”

  I opened the back door and pulled her suitcase from the back seat. She followed me out of the car and met me at the open trunk. “I’m going to dump everything. I need you to search behind your clothing labels and along the seams. I’ll check the suitcase. Your shoes, too.”

  “What am I looking for?”r />
  “Anything out of the ordinary. A hard bump, what feels like a foreign object. It won’t be large.”

  I unzipped the suitcase and upturned it, shaking the contents out before setting it down on the pavement and using the overhead light to search by. I traced my fingers along the inside of the zipper then searched a mesh pocket and the edge of the partition. Finding nothing, I grabbed my phone and searched the liner. “Anything?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “No. Wish I knew what I was looking for.”

  I stopped when my palm ran over a slight bump on the inside edge. Looking more closely, I noticed a small tear in the fabric of the lining. I pinched at it and it tore back, revealing a tiny metal square less than half the size of my pinky nail. I plucked it off the plastic and held it up to the light. It was a solid piece of metal with the density of a magnet.

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked.

  “A tracker. And not one you can buy on Amazon, either.”

  “It was inside my suitcase?

  “Inside the lining.” I stood up.

  She groaned over my shoulder. “Dammit.”

  I laid the tracker on the asphalt, brought out my gun, and smacked the butt against it a couple of times. The tracker crinkled, but I didn’t know if what I had done was enough to deactivate it. So I picked it up and tossed it a few spaces down the parking lot.

  “That means they were in my room,” she said, “Unless they got into my suitcase at the airport.”

  “Airports have a lot of cameras along the luggage route,” I said. “I’m betting on the hotel. They got to your father there.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “Can we go now? I think I’d like to just get into bed.”

  I zipped up the suitcase and left it next to the concrete base of the light pole.

  “You’re leaving it?” she asked.

  “I doubt they put a second one in there, but I’m not taking any chances. Come on. Let’s get going.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I took a circuitous route out of D.C. and into Maryland. We passed through Silver Spring and I took Route 410 west into Bethesda, all the while checking my mirrors to ensure we were still in the clear. Satisfied, I pulled into a gas station and parked into a space at the front. “Wait here,” I said. “I’ll be right back. You want anything?”

  “Water might be nice. Thank you.”

  I went in and withdrew two hundred dollars in cash from the ATM and handed the attendant at the counter a ten for two bottles of water. He counted my change back to me and I returned to the car. “Thanks,” Charlotte said when I handed her the water. She unscrewed the plastic cap and chugged half of it down. I pulled out and drove a couple of miles before seeing a sign for the Old Glory Motel off the side of the road. I turned in and told Charlotte to wait in the car while I went inside. The small lobby was encased in dark wood-paneled walls and black carpet, on which years of foot traffic had worn a lighter-colored path that led to the front counter. I heard the distant whine of an old TV coming from the back and the flickering glow from what sounded like a baseball game. An old man with thinning lips and squinty eyes came through the doorway. He was hunched over and using a cane to maneuver across the floor.

  “Evening,” he said. “You need a room?”

  “I do. One in the back if you’ve got one available. And two beds,” I added.

  He ran his finger down an open ledger and mumbled to himself. “I’ve got room 182 available. We don’t offer breakfast and you have to be checked out by ten.”

  “That’s fine. How much?”

  “Seventy-two dollars. That includes tax.”

  That was a little steep for a place like this, but everything was more expensive in this part of the country. I wasn’t in the mood to haggle. I tugged four twenties from my wallet and handed them over.

  “All right,” the old man mumbled to himself. “Let me get your change.” He opened a drawer and counted out my change. “Here you go.” I pocketed it and he gave me an old-style key with a hard plastic tab with the room number on it. “Just drive around where we are now and you’ll see the room out near the corner. Park, anywhere you like.”

  I thanked him and returned to the car. Charlotte was quiet as I drove around the building and parked in front of room 182. Here we were out of view of the street and I was confident enough that we weren’t being tracked anymore. I went to the room and opened the door, flicked on the light.

  Two beds sat on the left wall with a nightstand in the middle. There was a plush lounge chair by the window, as well as a dresser and a narrow desk standing along the wall leading to the bathroom. A flat-screen TV was mounted above them. The room smelled like new carpet and the lingering scent of pine left behind by the cleaning products used in the bathroom. I’d seen far better, but I’d also seen worse. It wasn’t a roach motel, but it wasn’t a Holiday Inn Express, either.

  I returned to the car. Charlotte was already out and standing beside it. It was a mess. My window was blown out and tiny fragments of glass littered my seat and the console. Her window, while not shattered, featured two clear holes where the bullets had punched through, small spidery cracks running away from them. I opened the trunk, and she picked through some of her belongings and gathered them into her arms while I brushed away some of the glass with my hand. When I heard the trunk close, I grabbed the assassin’s gun and slid it into my bag, shut the trunk, and followed her inside, where she dumped her clothes into a dresser drawer. I locked the door, tossed my bag on the other bed, and pressed myself into the lounge chair. She sat on the edge of the bed farthest from the window and laid back into the mattress. “I can’t believe all this,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “This time yesterday we were just wrapping up the party. Now I’m hiding away in some crummy hotel room because the people who probably murdered my father are after me too. And I have no idea why.” She let out a tired and weary sigh. “You never did say why you were at my office tonight.”

  I’d already been pondering how much to tell her. She’d been through enough already. “I came up here to meet a contact about your father’s case. The man who gave it to your father to begin with.”

  “How did that come about? At breakfast this morning you seemed to know nothing about it.”

  “My boss is friends with the contact—Douglas Peterson. That name ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  “He reached out to my boss this morning. After he heard about your father’s death, he got more scared than he already was. Apparently, the list of people he felt he could trust was pretty short. My boss sent me up here to meet with Peterson to see what I could learn.”

  “That call you made tonight, back at the office, you said something about a body. Did they get to him too?”

  I’d forgotten about that phone call, that Charlotte may have overheard my conversation with Kathleen. “Yes,” I said reluctantly. “Driving by your office wasn’t really planned. It was just off the route to the hotel I was planning on staying at. I thought I’d drive by and get the lay of the land, as it were. I saw a man in dark clothing slip in through your front door.”

  “I don’t think I locked it,” Charlotte said. “God, how could I have been so stupid?”

  “You couldn’t have known,” I said. “What were you doing there so late?”

  “I wanted to feel like I was doing something.” She tossed her hands up and let them fall back to the mattress. “I have no idea what Dad was looking into. Did that Peterson guy give you anything?”

  “No, not really.” I only had a bare stretch of the details and didn’t want to concern Charlotte with even more questions to which I had no answers.

  “I wish I knew where Dad’s laptop was. I guess whatever is on there is worth killing me over, too.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why don’t you call the detective first thing in the morning and see if they have it in evidence? They may have bagged it when they went through his hotel room.”

  “Okay.”

&nb
sp; The truth was, I highly doubted that Miami PD had the computer. McCleary was pushed off his hotel room balcony, which meant the killer had access to his room, which meant that they would have grabbed it after the murder had it been there. Whatever the case, calling the detective in Miami would give Charlotte something to do in the morning; she wouldn’t have to go to sleep feeling completely helpless.

  She sat up and came to her feet. “I think I’m going to take a shower,” she said and opened the dresser drawer. She selected a few items and grabbed a towel from the rack above the sink, then went into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard the water turn on and the curtain slide shut.

  I slipped off my shoes and laid my Glock on top of the nightstand, then changed into a pair of shorts and swapped out my socks for a clean pair. I could feel the adrenaline starting to wear off and it left my eyes and muscles heavy.

  The shower knobs squeaked in the bathroom and I heard the water turn off. A couple of minutes later Charlotte reappeared wearing a set of silk pajamas: light blue shorts and a matching spaghetti strap top. Her hair was wet and limp and she toweled it off and slung it back. She looked amazing.

  After running the towel over her head a final time, she tossed it on the floor and grabbed a hairbrush from the counter. She stood in front of the mirror and started brushing her hair out. The reality of why we were here together and that fact that she was my former commander's daughter kept the rising temperature of my blood in check. He couldn’t protect her now, and by some twist of fate, I had been selected to take his place.

  “Ryan?” She stopped her brush and looked at me in the mirror’s reflection.

  “Yeah?”

  “I didn’t thank you for saving my life tonight. I’m sorry we’re not here under better circumstances, or in a nicer room.” Her tone was as suggestive as her words and I swallowed hard, struggling to keep myself in line. I wasn’t the kind of guy to take advantage of a scared and grieving woman.