Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (2 page)

“Christ,” he muttered.

He quickly checked his mirrors before veering over to the opposite shoulder of the
road, away from the ledge. He came to a stop about thirty yards past where the car
had most likely gone over, skidding the last couple of feet along gravelly dirt.
He flipped the transmission into park and twisted the ignition off.

Katelyn was already far off in the distance, speeding down the interstate, and most
likely feeling relieved that he was no longer trailing her. It seemed that she hadn’t
noticed it was a car accident that had caused the cloud.

When Andrew opened his door, the cold and crisp January night air quickly flooded
in along the open chest of his leather jacket, making him lift his shoulders in an
attempt keep warm. Guided only by a dim dome light, his hand found the brass handle
of the wooden walking cane he occasionally used where it was wedged between the passenger
seat and the center console. The slope of the road had a more than moderate angle
to it, so the cane could be useful.

He knew from the lingering fume in the air that the accident had to have just happened.
From the glance he had stolen, the drop-off was steep, but was probably no more than
forty feet in depth. He looked around at the ground. It didn’t appear that the car
had rolled. It possibly wasn’t even totaled. No flames were present, which made him
question if the thinning cloud was even actual smoke or a combination of exhaust,
scorned pavement, and possibly steam from under the hood. There was definitely a
stench of antifreeze in the air.

Even if the car was spared major damage, there was a decent chance that the driver
was injured. Andrew felt obligated to help.

He stepped out of his silver Lexus LS and into the brisk darkness. He clearly remembered
the night that he and his family had been in that accident two years ago on a remote
road in the mountains where help hadn’t arrived for thirty minutes. It had felt more
like
an eternity. It was a horrifying experience, especially for his teary-eyed,
then teenage daughter, whose inability to pry her father free from the wreckage or
wake her mother added to the chaos of the quandary. It was a night none of them would
ever forget.

He wouldn’t wish such torment on his worst enemy. If there was a chance he could
spare someone else from such suffering and a sense of helplessness, he was at least
going to try.

Feeling the tingle of cold moisture brushing across his face, he whisked his way
out from under the dull light of a street lamp and walked across the road. Once on
the other side, he began making his way back to the incline to the spot where he
believed the car had gone over. He could hear no moans or cries for help, only some
distant, oblivious traffic from the interstate below and the crinkle of patches of
frozen grass that strayed up from cracks in the pavement beneath his feet.

The brake lights of the car below were no longer on, nor were the headlights. The
darkness wouldn’t let him make out the outline of the automobile or the shape of
anyone who might have exited it.

“Don’t go down there!” commanded a loud, unexpected voice from the night.

The abrupt order nearly caused Andrew to drop his cane. It hadn’t come from below,
but from above—further up the hill. He halted in his tracks. His head twisted back
and forth as he struggled to pinpoint the voice’s source.

A pair of headlights quickly flicked on and off about twenty yards up the road from
him. There was another car, a van, hidden in what was left of the diminishing cloud.
It was parked along the ledge of the embankment. The flash of the lights acted as
a homing beacon, sent to Andrew from the van’s driver.

He glanced down at what he could make out of the wreckage below before turning his
gaze back to the parked van. He walked toward the vehicle, intermittently planting
the tip of his cane into the gravel-laced shoulder as he did.

The van was a full-sized Chevy, a few years old. It looked to be white, and was possibly
a work-van, though there was no company name visible on its side. As Andrew approached
the vehicle, he could make out the driver’s hand draped outside of the open window,
motioning him to step in closer.

“The guy’s crazy!” said the same voice, now nervous. “He was driving like a madman.
The police are on their way.”

Andrew reached the driver’s side door and leaned forward to greet the man inside.
Dim, blue light from the dashboard gauges offered little clarity, but enough for
him to distinguish the contour of the man’s face and body. He had curly hair under
a dark baseball cap and a mustache with a crowded thickness that seemed a bit outdated
for the current styles. He wore thick-framed glasses with even thicker lenses and
looked to be of average weight and height. He was dressed in a dark sweatshirt and
jeans.

“What’s going on?” asked Andrew.

“I think he’s drunk. He was all over the road up there,” replied the man, nudging
his head in the direction of the highway. “He took the turn way too fast and went
over the edge.” He held what looked to be a cellphone up for Andrew to see and explained
that he had already been talking on it with a dispatcher to report the erratic driving
when he witnessed the crash.

Andrew nodded. “You keep saying
he
. Are you sure it’s a man?”

There was some hesitation. “I’m just assuming,” the man finally said. “I guess I
don’t know.”

“Okay. How long has the driver been down there?” Andrew asked. He twisted his head
again toward the wreckage.

“Just a few minutes. Not long.”

“You haven’t gone down there to check on him? Or her?”

“No!” The response was impulsively defensive. The man took a deep breath before continuing.
“Listen, he was driving like a lunatic. He didn’t care one bit about anyone else
on the road, so I say we
should just let him sit down there in his car until the
police come. Let them deal with him. He doesn’t deserve our help.”

“But what if he’s injured?” asked Andrew.

The man said nothing at first, and then shrugged his shoulders. “Better him than
us.”

Air left Andrew’s lungs. He considered the man’s attitude, but couldn’t bring himself
to share it. “Well, maybe he’s crazy or drunk, or whatever,” he said, “but he might
also be injured.”

The man blew a chilly exhale from his mouth in frustration. He shook his head. The
lights from the dashboard danced across his glasses.

“I’m going to check it out,” said Andrew. He turned his back to the driver, gripped
his cane firmly in his hand, and readied to begin a careful descent down the hill.
He had only made it a couple of steps across some snow-blanketed earth when he heard
the man behind him sternly shout.

“Wait!”

Andrew’s head snapped back in annoyance. “What?”

“He’s trying to drive out of the ditch. Look!”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed at the faint sound of tires skidding on grass and slush. He
turned his attention back to the car below and noticed its white reverse lights now
illuminated brightly. The hum of its engine could barely be heard. The wheels didn’t
sound as if they were gaining any traction as the back of the car only bobbed up
and down slightly from the motion.

“He’s not hurt,” said the man in the van. He craned his neck to grab a better view
around Andrew of the trapped motorist.

The car below suddenly jerked up the hill a foot or two. It didn’t get far, but it
was enough for the person inside it to step on the brakes to lock in the progress.
After a few seconds, however, the car slid begrudgingly back to its original position.
A muffled snarl of frustration came from below. It sounded like a man’s voice.

“You see? He’s fine,” insisted the man in the van.

Andrew sighed in relief. “I guess you’re right,” he conceded. “He sounds pissed,
not hurt.” He felt some tension leave his body. He would have made his way down the
steep hill with his cane, but he was now glad he wouldn’t have to.

“I suppose you’re a better man than me for wanting to help,” said the man. He seemed
more at ease now, too. “That’s good. The world needs more Boy Scouts.”

Andrew drifted back over to the window and smiled. “I was kicked out of the Scouts
when I was twelve.”

Both men laughed.

“So what brings you out on a school night?” asked the driver in a gamesome tone.

“Just a late dinner in town.”

“By yourself?”

Andrew sighed. “That probably would have worked out better.”

An uncomfortable muteness fell between the two, and Andrew silently scoffed at the
strangeness of the conversation.

The flakes of snow that fell from the sky seemed as if they were growing in size.
The frosty air made Andrew raise his cupped hands to his mouth and blow into them.
He eyed his own car parked along the exit ramp as the whine of spinning tires again
ascended from the bottom of the gully.

“There’s no sense in you hanging out here man,” said the driver. “He’s okay. And
like I said, the police are on their way. I’ll catch them up to speed.”

Andrew took a moment to digest the man’s offer, and then nodded. “Yeah, I suppose
there’s no point in me sticking around out here in the cold.”

No sooner did he finish his remark than he heard the unmistakable thud of a car door
closing from down at the bottom of the hill. He turned his head and saw a dark, male
figure in what appeared to be a snug white t-shirt climbing up the hill toward them.
The climber
looked to be a large man with broad shoulders. Deep grunts of effort
bellowed from his mouth.

“Ah, shit!” The van driver suddenly appeared nervous again behind the thick lenses
of his glasses. He leaned forward and began fiddling with something below his steering
wheel. A second later, the engine cranked.

“Go!” Andrew thought he heard someone say from inside the van. It didn’t sound like
the driver’s voice.

Andrew’s eyes widened in curiosity. “What are you doing?” he asked loudly over the
roar of the van engine.

The driver kept facing forward on the road, ignoring Andrew’s query and his questioning
gaze. A grimace etched across the man’s teeth as he popped the transmission. Wheels
spun for just a moment on the wet ground before the van lurched forward and took
off quickly down the exit ramp.

Andrew felt the spray from the tires slap his face. His chest tightened as he struggled
to comprehend the driver’s bizarre reaction. Though largely concealed in the darkness,
he knew that his reaction was clearly prompted by fear—fear of a confrontation with
the large man who was now nearly at the top of the hill behind him—the man who Andrew
was about to be standing with . . . alone.

The loudening racket of hands and feet digging into frosty earth suddenly stopped.
Andrew could feel warm breath bearing down on the back of his tense neck as the rest
of his body turned ice cold. He swallowed before slowly turning his head to meet
the eyes of the person standing behind him.

It wasn’t the man’s darkened eyes, however, that greeted Andrew’s line of sight.
It was his neck. The man was huge. He towered above Andrew, who had to lift his head
to meet the man’s opaque stare.

Andrew stumbled backwards a step, digging the tip of his cane into the ground after
carving out some marginal distance between himself and the imposing stranger who
hovered much too close for comfort.

The man didn’t say a word, which made Andrew nervous. He wasn’t sure if the man was
just trying to catch his breath or if he was evaluating Andrew’s reason for being
there. He had short, dark hair and appeared to be Caucasian and somewhere in his
mid- to late-twenties. His large biceps looked like upside-down tree trunks rooting
out from his receding shirtsleeves. Half a dozen earrings snaked up the sides of
each of his ears and a slightly larger ring looped through the bottom of his nose.
The man should have been freezing with his bare arms and thin shirt providing no
insulation from the brisk temperature, yet he didn’t seem too affected by the elements.
The strong, repellent stench of alcohol skimming the air perhaps explained why.

Andrew forced himself to speak, hoping to assess whether the paralyzing anxiety that
rushed through his skin was truly warranted. “Are you okay?” he timidly asked.

There was no reply. Only heavy breathing.

Andrew opened his mouth, searching for something else to say when the man suddenly
spoke.

“Yeah. . . I’m fine.” His voice was eerily deep and somewhat hoarse.

Andrew didn’t feel any less on edge. “I saw the exhaust from your car,” he sputtered
out in a single breath. “From the road. I was worried you were hurt.”

The man just glared. A moment agonized by before he nodded. He slowly turned to gaze
at the sight of his disabled automobile below. A couple of cars quickly sliced along
the interstate beyond it, with their headlights casting brief shadows along the overpass.
The man’s head twisted back to Andrew.

“Who was that guy who drove off?”

Andrew hadn’t been sure that the man had even seen the fleeing driver, but he apparently
had. Based on the driver’s abrupt departure, Andrew considered that the two men might
have been engaged in some kind of late night road rage. “Just some guy who
also saw
your car,” he answered, thinking it to be the most harmless response. He took a second
before continuing. “He called the police to report the accident. Help should be here
soon.”

The man’s body tensed at the word
police
. Andrew questioned whether he should have
offered up that information. He had done so as a way of incapacitating any hostile
intentions the man may have been weighing in his mind.

The man’s stoic presence suddenly shifted to one of worry, even though he tried to
conceal the change.

Andrew watched him clench his fists until his large arms trembled slightly.

“Can you give me a ride to Denver?” he asked. “I need to get to Denver.”