Kill the Messenger

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 off 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.”

                            3

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 and the package 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 Madame 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—a glass shop, an air-conditioning place, a furniture-stripping place, an auto-body shop—in the dirty, low, flat-roofed buildings 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 low-end career criminals.

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 straight, 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, a 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 it and spotlit him, he had a fifty-fifty shot at ditching it. 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.

Shit, shit, shit.

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. He nearly fell onto the hood of the car. Moving as close as he could against the fence, Jace touched his brakes, dropped just behind 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 turned and grabbed hold of the chain- link fence with both hands, hanging on hard as the bike was yanked out from under him. The toe of his right shoe hung up in the pedal clip and his body jerked wildly sideways as the car pushed the bike forward.

The fence bit into his fingers as the bike tried to drag him. It felt like his arms were tearing out of their sockets, that his foot was being wrenched off at the ankle, then suddenly he was free and falling.

He landed on his back on the cracked asphalt, rolled, and scrambled up onto his knees, his eyes on the car as his bike went under the back tire and died a terrible death.

His only transportation. His livelihood. Gone.

He was on his own. On foot. And one foot was missing a shoe. Pain burned through his wrenched ankle as Jace pushed himself to his feet and ran for the buildings before the car could come to a complete stop.

The voice of his survival instinct screamed through his brain. Go, go, go!!!

He was young, he was fast, he was highly motivated. He set his sights on a half wall blocking the space between two buildings. He would hit it running, vault over the side, and be gone. Bum ankle or no, he could damn well outrun the asshole driving that car.

But he couldn’t outrun a bullet.

The shot hit the Dumpster a foot to Jace’s left almost simultaneously as he heard the report.

Fuck!

He had to get over that wall. He had to get over it. Get over it and run like hell.

Footfalls were coming hard behind him.

The second shot went wide right and hit another Dumpster.

A man shouted, “Fuck!”

Too close. Too close.

Footfalls coming hard behind him.

Jace launched himself at the wall and was summarily yanked backward as his pursuer grabbed hold of the messenger bag he wore strapped across his back.

He fell into the man, and momentum carried them both backward, their feet tangling. Predator’s body cushioned the fall as they went down. Jace scrambled to get his feet under him, to wriggle away. Predator hung tight to the messenger bag.

“Fucking little shit!”