“Why would you think that?”
She glanced over at the magazine lying on the shelf with the cleaning supplies, D'Artagnon and I floating across the page like something from a dream. But she said nothing. If she had an explanation for her belief, she thought better of sharing it with me.
“I'm nobody's hero, Molly. I'm sorry you got that impression. I'm sure if your parents aren't worried about your sister, and the cops aren't worried about your sister, then there's nothing to be worried about. You don't need me, and believe me, you'd be sorry if you did.”
She didn't look at me. She stood there for a moment, composing herself, then pulled a small red wallet from the carrying pouch strapped around her waist. She took out a ten-dollar bill and placed it on the magazine.
“Thank you for your time,” she said politely, then turned and walked away.
I didn't chase after her. I didn't try to give her her ten dollars back. I watched her walk away and thought she was more of an adult than I was.
Irina appeared in my peripheral vision, propping herself against the archway as if she hadn't the strength to stand on her own. “You want I should saddle Feliki?”
Erin Seabright had probably quit her job. She was probably in the Keys right now enjoying her newfound independence with some cute good-for-nothing. Molly didn't want to believe that because it would mean a sea change in her relationship with the big sister she idolized. Life is full of disappointments. Molly would learn that the same way as everyone: by being let down by someone she loved and trusted.
Irina gave a dramatic sigh.
“Yes,” I said. “Saddle Feliki.”
She started toward the mare's stall, then I asked a question for which I would have been far better off not having an answer.
“Irina, do you know anything about a jumper trainer named Don Jade?”
“Yes,” she said casually, not even looking back at me. “He is a murderer.”
KILL THE MESSENGER
by TAMI HOAG
On sale July 2004
LOWELL HANDED HIM a five-by-seven-inch padded manila envelope. He hung a cigarette on his lip and it bobbed up and down as he spoke while he fished in his baggy pants pocket for a lighter. “I appreciate you dropping this for me, kid. You've got the address?”
Jace repeated it from memory.
“Keep it dry,” Lowell said, blowing smoke at the dingy ceiling.
“Like my life depends on it.”
FAMOUS LAST WORDS, Jace would think later when he looked back on this night. But he didn't think anything as he went out into the rain and pulled the U-lock off his bike.
Instead of putting the package in his bag, he slipped it up under his T-shirt and tucked the shirt inside the waistband of his bike shorts. Warm and dry.
He climbed on the bike under the blue neon of the Psychic Readings sign and started to pedal, legs heavy, back aching, fingers cold and slipping on the wet handlebars. His weight shifted from pedal to pedal, the bike tilting side to side, the lateral motion gradually becoming forward motion as he picked up speed, the aches gradually melding into a familiar numbness.
One last run.
He would leave his paperwork 'til morning. Drop this package, go home, and crawl into that hot shower. He tried to imagine it: hot water pounding on his shoulders, massaging out the knots in the muscles, warm steam cleansing the stink of the city from his nostrils and soothing lungs that had spent the day sucking in car exhaust. He imagined Mrs. Chen's hot and sour soup, and clean sheets on the futon, and did his best to ignore the cold rain pelting his face and deglazing the oil on the surface of the street.
His mind distracted, he rode on autopilot. Past the 76 station, take a right. Down two blocks, take a left. The side streets were empty, dark. Nobody hung around in this part of town at this time of night for any good reason. The businesses in the dirty, low, flat-roofed buildings—a glass shop, an air-conditioning place, a furniture stripping place, an auto body shop—closed up at six.
He might have thought it was a strange destination for a package from a lawyer, except that the lawyer was Lenny, and Lenny's clients were what Jace's mother would have naively described as “colorful.”
He checked address numbers as lighting allowed. The drop would be the first place on the right on the next block. Except that the first place on the right on the next block was a vacant lot.
Jace cruised past, checked the number on the next available building, which was dark save for the security light hanging over the front door.
Apprehension scratched like a fingernail on the back of his neck. He swung around in the street and rode slowly past the vacant lot again.
Headlights flashed on, blinding him for a second.
What the hell kind of drop was this? Drugs? A payoff? Whatever it was, Jace wasn't making it. Only a fool would ride into this and ask for a signature on a manifest.
Now he was pissed. Pissed and scared. Sent to a vacant lot in the dead of fucking night. Fuck that. Fuck Lenny Lowell. He could take his package and shove it up his ass.
Jace stood on his pedals and started to go.
The car lurched forward, engine roaring like a charging beast as it made straight for him.
For a split second it seemed Jace didn't—couldn't—move. Then he was going, legs pumping like pistons, the bike's tires slipping on the wet street. If he ran straightaway, the car would be on him like a cat on a mouse. He turned hard left instead. The bike's back end skated sideways on the slick pavement. He stuck a foot down to keep from falling, pulled the bike back under himself. Then he was charging the car.
Heart in his throat, he juked right, nearly too late, jumped the curb back into the vacant lot, shooting past the car—big, dark, domestic. He heard the grind of metal on pavement as the car went off the curb and bottomed out. Tires squealed on the wet street as it swung a wide, awkward, skidding turn.
Jace made for the alley as hard as he could go, praying it wouldn't dead-end. In the heart of downtown he was like a street rat that knew every sewer pipe, every Dumpster, every crack in a wall that could offer a shortcut, escape, shelter, hiding place. Here he was vulnerable, a rabbit caught in the open. Prey.
The car was coming after him. The predator. The headlights bucked up and down in the gloom as the car banged back up over the curb.
Jace had had cars come after him in traffic—kids screwing around, men with rage disorders pissed off that he had cut in front of them or skitched a ride up a hill or knocked a side mirror. Assholes trying to make a point, trying to give him a scare. He had never been set up. He had never been hunted.
If he could get to the end of the alley before the car turned down the alley and spotlit him, he had a fifty-fifty shot at ditching them. The end of the alley looked nine miles away.
And it was already too late.
The high beams slapped at his back like a paw reaching out to tag him. The car came, as loud as a train, sending trash cans scattering like bowling pins.
His luck was running out faster than the alley was. He couldn't outrun the car. He couldn't turn and ditch the car. To his left: buildings shoulder to shoulder, backed with Dumpsters and boxes and discarded junk—an obstacle course. To his right: a chain-link fence crowned with razor wire. On his ass: the angel of death.
Jace reached back with one hand and jerked his U-lock out of his messenger bag. The bumper kissed his back tire. The bike jerked. He nearly came off, nearly fell onto the hood of the car. Moving as close as he could against the fence, Jace touched his brakes, dropped just behind the predator's bumper.
Jace swung the heavy U-lock left-handed into the windshield. A spiderweb of cracks exploded across the span of glass. The car swerved into him, drove him sideways into the fence. Jace hurled the lock at the car, turned, and grabbed hold of the chain-link fence with both hands, hanging on hard as the bike was yanked out from under him.
