The Others Page 3

  If we don’t boogie, and fast, the worst day of the year is going to get a whole lot more craptastic.

  I make it two steps before experience kicks panic in the face and reasserts itself.

  “Have the car running when I get there,” I shout to Wini, who’s shuffling at top speed in her tight skirt.

  The incognito tiny-house shakes as I careen back inside. I pick up the phone again, my hand wrapped in a handkerchief I keep on me for moments like this. I wipe down the phone, then the tabletop. The photo of Marta and Isabella goes in my pocket beside the envelope, my fingers lingering on the paper for a moment. Then I wipe down the door handle and step back out into the pecan tree’s shade.

  A torrent of wind slaps into the branches above as the thunderous pounding of rotor blades thump. The chopper is directly overhead, just a hundred feet up. Leaves peel away from the trees, as dust swirls. Before blocking my eyes, I catch sight of Marta’s garden, the plants bowed low in subjugation to the helicopter’s power.

  They can’t land here, I think, aghast.

  Two ropes unfurl beside the tree.

  Aww, shit.

  I break out in a run without looking back and pass Wini ten feet from the car. I attempt a classy action-cop hood leap, but two things prevent me from accomplishing the feat in style. First, the car is a black Toyota Prius, bought for stealth, not power. Second, my foot clips the car’s side and instead of sliding over the almost non-existent front end, I roll over it and off the far side.

  The pavement greets me as pavement does—without mercy—but it fails to slow me. I stand, reach toward Wini and shout, “Keys!”

  But Wini is already in the passenger’s seat, closing her door.

  Beyond the car, back by the trailer, two men dressed in black tactical gear land on the ground. I glance up at the chopper. It’s a Black Hawk. Military. With no more information to be gleaned by staring, I climb inside the car and don’t bother looking to see if the soldiers spotted us.

  I start the car and let the Prius do what I bought it to do, drive silently away.

  “What are you waiting for?” Wini asks. “Step on the gas!”

  “Trying to not draw attention,” I say, nearly whispering, like someone might overhear us.

  “Look in the rearview!”

  A quick glance is all it takes to register the black SUV racing up behind us. But I still don’t hit the gas. The truck is most likely heading for the house. If we don’t draw attention, they’ll just assume we live—

  Nope. The SUV passes the house.

  I crush the gas pedal to the floor and the vehicle accelerates like a three year old on a tricycle. The SUV roars up behind us, but it doesn’t run us down or make contact. The shrill chirp of an amplified horn moves through me in painful waves. Headlights flash in the rearview. The message is unmistakable. I know it well.

  Pull over.

  Now.

  But since I don’t know who these guys are and they’re not making any effort to tell me, I’m not legally obligated to obey.

  I decide to use the one advantage a Prius has over the hulking behemoth behind us and crank the wheel hard to the right. Tires squeal, but we stick to the road, rounding the corner while the SUV barrels forward.

  With a thump and a grinding of metal, the Prius continues to turn, even after I’ve straightened the wheel. The big vehicle clipped us as it drove by, putting the small car into a spin. We wind up facing the wrong way in the middle of a residential street. A group of kids, standing with their bikes on the sidewalk, look at us like we’re the bad guys. And then they flinch when Wini starts yelling.

  “Those sons-a-bitches are going to get someone killed!”

  I throw the car into reverse, speeding away as the SUV performs a similar maneuver on the side street. When I see the black monster lock its brakes and spin its front end toward us, I do the same, putting us in a 180 degree spin, slamming the car back into drive and speeding off again. Though ‘speeding’ is a gross exaggeration.

  The neighborhood is a vast maze crammed with homes. If I can keep making turns, I might be able to get enough ground that the SUV’s driver won’t be able to track us. That is, until the chopper joins in the hunt.

  I lean forward, looking up through the windshield. The chopper is nowhere in sight, but I can still hear it, no doubt still hovering over Marta’s trailer.

  Tires squeal as I bang a hard left.

  I watch the rearview as I speed away, waiting for the SUV to thunder into view.

  “Lookout!” Wini screams.

  Without looking forward, I mash the brakes, and it’s a good thing I do. When we come to a stop, a young boy stands up, eyes as round as the ball he’s clutching.

  This is not the place for a high speed pursuit.

  Tears burst from the boy as he retreats back to his house, meeting his irate and foul-mouthed mother along the way. She pursues us into the road as we speed away again and narrowly avoids being mowed down by the SUV, which is once again gaining.

  I take the next right, followed quickly by another left, eyes locked on the road ahead.

  I need to get out of this residential area.

  “Find me a mall, or any place with a lot of people.” I hand my phone to Wini. “They know the car, but not our faces. We need to get lost in a sea of people.”

  “Won’t they be able to figure out who we are from the car?” she asks.

  Shit. She’s right. While we could take the registration with us, if these guys have access to government databases, they’ll be able to ID me from the license plates or even the VIN. But that means… “If they can ID from the plates, they already have.”

  “But maybe they can’t?” she asks.

  “Maybe,” I say, but I think there’s an equal chance of Santa Claus being my father. But right now, ‘maybe’ is our best hope, so I cling to it and turn right.

  Midturn, I glance down the street from which we’ve just come. It’s empty. My eyes flick to the rearview as I accelerate again, but all I see is black. It’s disorienting for a moment, and then painful.

  The SUV smashes into the Prius’s rear end, lifting the small vehicle before releasing it and sending us up onto the curb.

  “They’re trying to kill us!” Wini shouts, as we bounce to a stop just short of a parked Mercedes. She’s beet-red angry and digging in her purse.

  “Hold on,” I tell her, putting the vehicle into reverse.

  “Wait!” Her hand emerges from her purse clutching a small revolver. Before I can stop her, she’s out the door, leveling the weapon toward the SUV. She unloads all six rounds, holding back whoever’s behind the tinted windows, and freeing the air from both front tires.

  She climbs back in, closes the door and brushes the gray hair from her face. “Okay.”

  Dirt sprays from the Prius’s reversing front tires, coating the Mercedes. Then we screech from the curb and back onto the street. As we speed away, I watch two men who look like Secret Service agents, climb out of the SUV to inspect the tires.

  “We did it!” Wini shouts, matching Dora the Explorer’s excitement level. I half expect her to follow it up with “Lo hicimos!” but instead, she shakes the spent cartridges from the weapon and starts reloading, one bullet at a time.

  As it occurs to me that I actually know a few more Spanish words than I believed, I glance in the rearview again and realize that, no…no lo esimo.

  The Black Hawk is closing in.

  4

  The road curves to the left and I follow the bend, trying to keep a wall of houses between the car and the approaching chopper. It works for a moment, but there’s no universe in which a Prius can outrun or outmaneuver a Black Hawk. But we can still outfox the men piloting it.

  “We need to ditch the car.”

  Wini’s response confuses me. Instead of looking at the maps app on my phone, or giving me directions, she leans forward and looks past me, through the driver’s side window.

  The bend continues. Endless. Feels like we’re d
riving through a particle collider. Centrifugal force pulls me to the right as the endless left continues. When we pass a house with a pink door for the second time, I realize the horrible truth—which would be hysterical under other circumstances. We’re driving in literal circles.

  The neighborhood streets are laid out in a series of rings with straight crossroads leading to the core…which is where Wini’s focus lies. I glance left at the next intersection and see a large brown building surrounded by a sea of cars. Looks busy.

  “Next left,” Wini says. “All the way to the center. I think it will do.”

  Turning hard left after the endless curve nearly puts me in Wini’s lap. The helicopter roars past overhead, unprepared for the sudden change in direction. I lay on the horn as we accelerate toward the building at the neighborhood’s core, hoping the noise will warn people out of the street.

  When the white steeple and large cross come into view, my question about what the building is has an answer. But there’s still something that confuses me. “Why are there so many people here?”

  Parked cars line both sides of the road ahead. The church parking lot is loaded. But I don’t see any people.

  “It’s Sunday morning, you heathen,” Wini says.

  I’ve been transported to another world, my mind sent reeling by this revelation. “What?”

  “It’s a church. People go to church on Sunday morning.”

  “Yeah, but…we don’t work on Sunday.” Saturdays are big cheating days, so our work week, depending on the case, is typically Tuesday through Saturday. Wini is a church-goer in addition to being a science fiction buff, so even if I put in hours on the ‘day of rest,’ she doesn’t.

  “Last night you said, ‘See you tomorrow,’” she explains. “I knew what day it was. Figured your subconscious was asking for company, so here I am.” She points out an empty spot in the lot.

  I can see the blue and white paint of a handicapped space from here, and even under the circumstances I don’t feel comfortable taking it. “We can’t—”

  Wini produces a handicapped placard from her purse. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m an old lady.”

  “An old lady who can run in a tight skirt,” I point out, tires screeching as I brake hard and pull into the lot. The helicopter roars past again, circling the building. When it’s behind the steeple, I pull into the handicapped spot, and turn the car off, hoping we’ll just blend in with the sea of vehicles.

  “First, there aren’t many old folks who can’t shake a leg for a few minutes when commandos fall from the sky. Second, I’m glad you like the skirt.” She gives me a wink and hangs the placard from the rearview mirror. Then we’re out and hustling through the heat. When the chopper circles the building, I put my arm around Wini, to slow her down and look casual. Just two people late for church.

  “Skirt’s making you frisky,” Wini says, and I hold the door open for her as the distinct smell of church—of every church—wafts out over us. It stops me in the doorway. Smell is occasionally an important part of my job, both in my investigations, and my clients’ stories. So I understand how it works. The technical term for what I’m experiencing is Odor-Evoked Autobiographical Memory. The short version is that life events, either repeated ones like school, or traumatic ones, like the funeral for your wife, can be linked to a specific smell. Catching a whiff of that odor later in life can transport you back in time, where you might not remember the circumstances in detail, but you relive how you felt. In my case, it’s the funeral scenario and the somehow universal smell of churches. On most days it would be disconcerting. Today, it nearly undoes me.

  Wini tugs me into the foyer as a second black SUV pulls into the parking lot. Impending danger returns me to the present, and I peek through the church doors just before they close, memorizing the faces of four men climbing out of the SUV. It’s not hard. They’re all big, ugly, and well dressed. A little too hairy to be government agents…unless they’re not agents. The Black Hawk suggests military, and the facial hair and muscles suggest Special Ops.

  I wrack my mind, trying to think of military branches that might fit the profile and come up with just one: Delta. The anti-terror specialists are allowed to dress down, and have facial hair and styles uncommon in the rest of the military because they often need to not look like soldiers. They often don’t even acknowledge rank. If these guys are Delta, Wini and I are screwed on so many levels. Not just because we’ll be jailed and questioned, but because it means Marta is somehow involved in terrorist activity. And that means we’ll be suspected of the same. There’s no evidence of it, but our mad flight through the streets, not to mention Wini’s quick shooting, would support the accusation.

  As we stroll into the vast, half-circle shaped sanctuary mid-prayer, a number of people look at us with disapproving eyes. We should have waited to sit, I realize, but we also need to plant our asses in seats before the men follow us in. The space is larger than expected, seating perhaps five hundred people. The floor slopes down toward the shiny, wooden stage. Every seat in the house has a good view. And there are no old-school wooden pews here. The seats look cushy—not quite movie theater cushy, but close enough. Arched, stained-glass windows line the sidewalls, filling the space with pleasant colors and not too much light. If not for the men chasing us, the atmosphere might even be pleasant. The pastor, a black man with a thick beard, stands behind a podium, head bowed, eyes closed.

  “Help us to experience your Word with an open heart today, Lord,” the pastor prays, and I tune out the rest. I spot two seats in the middle of a row and start shuffling past the folded hands of annoyed believers.

  Wini offers apologies, her kind smile and aging body gaining sympathy from those we’re passing. When we reach the clearing, I make a show of helping her sit, and I can see forgiveness in the eyes of those whom we offended. I can also see the four men enter through two different doorways. I sit slowly and keep my eyes forward.

  When the prayer ends with an emphatic “Amen,” I glance back. The men haven’t moved, but they’re scanning the sea of heads.

  “Just keep your head forward,” I whisper to Wini. “Try to look like you’re listening.”

  “That’s what people do in church,” she says, settling in like she was meant to be there. “And maybe you should actually listen.”

  She’s been trying to get me into a church for years. Says a little faith would go a long way, especially since Kailyn believed in all this, which to me seems as otherworldly and as strange as Wini’s science fiction.

  The pastor clears his throat behind the podium and starts speaking. I don’t hear a word of it. Ten minutes pass, and while several older gentlemen look close to nodding off, I’m in a hyperaware state, tracking the four men acting like beefy doormen. They let people out, let people in, inspecting faces as they do and offering phony smiles.

  If they’re checking faces, they know what we look like. And if they know what we look like, they know who we are.

  I identify the other exits, six in total. The two at the back are blocked, but the two near the front are… A little boy doing the potty-dance exits one of the front doors and bumps into the large man waiting on the far side.

  Shit. All the exits are covered.

  Working my phone with the sound muted, I open Uber and summon as many drivers as I can. I then put in requests to every taxi company in town, timing their arrival thirty minutes out. If we can get out of the building when the service is over, the commingling stormfronts of arriving drivers and departing worshipers might give us enough cover to slip away.

  If that’s what we should do…

  I ponder simply turning myself in. Explaining the situation. But that warning from the phone, coupled with my distrust of federal agencies, tells me to not attempt that until I have something concrete to deliver. These guys are brutes, not detectives.

  “Brothers and sisters…” The pastor’s voice doubles in volume, startling a few old men awake and gaining my full attention. “We
do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.”

  My stomach sours. What the fuck is this?

  “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

  The words stir up an anger in me. The only thing keeping me from standing up and delivering a big ‘fuck you’ coupled with a pair of middle fingers is the fact that I’m being hunted.

  I realize the pastor has been quoting scripture because the words are plastered on a big screen hanging behind him crediting 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. That only makes it slightly less offensive. I don’t need a pastor, or a two thousand year old work of fiction telling me how to feel today.

  Wini places her hand on mine. Gives me a gentle squeeze. This small sign of affection is a catalyst for an emotional shift that catches me off guard with its suddenness and strength. Before I can think to contain it, a choked sob escapes my mouth.

  I shrink down, lowering my head into my hands, my logical mind raging for control as it’s swallowed up.

  The tears don’t stop.

  Can’t stop.

  Five years of pent up sorrow spill out of the chink-turned-floodgate in front of a few hundred worshipers and a handful of people chasing me down. If they hadn’t seen me before, they’re seeing me now. But are they seeing the man who led them on a bold chase through packed neighborhoods, and the old woman who shot out their tires, or are they seeing a broken man mourning his dead wife?

  “Today is the anniversary of his wife’s death,” Wini whispers to someone. For a moment, I’m horrified that she shared this personal detail with strangers. Then I hear the news sweep through the congregation like a wave of static and have no doubt that our pursuers have heard as well. Definitely not the guy they’re looking for…unless they’ve already dug up and studied my history.