Nothing Short of Dying (8 page)

“She does,” Chopo said, not needing a confirmation.

I changed the subject. “Listen, Chopo, you put your ass on the line a couple times for me today. I won't forget that. Once we make the switch tomorrow, I'll be out of your hair, and you've got a marker you can cash in with me. I just want you to know that.”

Chopo nodded. He was starting to ask me about the game plan for tomorrow when Nita creaked onto the porch, ending our conversation. “Everything all right?”

We said yes. She waddled back inside as we finished our smokes. Then we went in and settled down for the night.

We both slept in the spare bedroom on a floor of threadbare carpet, surrounded by walls covered in peeling Superman wallpaper. I felt worthless for involving the girl and swore I'd make it right the next day.

Sometimes the universe has other plans.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I
awoke on the floor in the dark, thrashing, half-covered in blankets that were too small. Nothing looked familiar. I heard someone snoring next to me and it sent me back to the dark rooms, waking up next to men I barely knew, all of us forced to inhabit, indefinitely, a Mexican hotel with iron doors. The first year I was locked up, before I got moved out to the “village,” I was held inside the towers, in a small cell with four others.

It was a place where time meant nothing. I could still smell the sweat and fear that permeated the hole, could still feel the hollow lump in my stomach that came with the thought of another day stuck in that spot, with the only break in the monotony coming from a trip to the yard that would inevitably lead to random violence and pecking-order maintenance.

I could hear the taunts and jeers echoing off the walls, the catcalls and the agonizing screams of loneliness and abandonment. I screwed my eyes shut and shook my head, hoping it would go away.

It did, when Nita started singing in the other room. Some Spanish song—one of Shakira's, it sounded like—and it brought me immediately back to the present. I got dressed, stepped over Chopo, and headed into the kitchen.

Nita had made coffee and breakfast. She handed me a steaming mug of the black elixir and shoveled eggs onto a tortilla. I sat at the table and sipped the coffee. The kitchen smelled fantastic, and until then I hadn't realized how famished I was. I'd eaten three fresh tortillas slathered in hot sauce by the time Chopo came to join me.

“The girl sleep?” he asked.

“Yes,” Nita said, “but not much. She needs to go, you know?”

“We know. Barr?” He raised his eyebrows over the top of his coffee cup.

“Right,” I said. “After I finish this coffee, we'll all be out of your hair. You're a wonderful host, Nita. You ever need anything, give me a call.” I wrote my number on the back of one of her magazines, finished my coffee, and went outside. I fumbled around in my jacket pockets for the right cell phone. I had three: mine, the boyfriend's, and the girl's. The girl's phone contact list contained a number for Jeff. I highlighted it and pushed Send.

“Katy?” a voice asked after one ring.

“Hello, Jeff,” I said.

“Who is this? Where's Katy? You the one who took her? If so—”

“Yeah, I have her. She's safe, she's not hurt. You have a friend of mine. We need to make a trade.”

“We do, huh? I think if you don't let Katy go, I'm gonna put your dick in the dirt.”

“Now that just isn't very nice, Jeff,” I said. “And it isn't much of an incentive for me to hand her over. I get Allie back, you get Katy. Simple. Let's just do some business.”

“Business? This ain't about business. You done screwed my business. You got Spike running around crying like a little pussy. And you done pissed me and my guys off. I'm down
four. Spike's down more than that. And now I'm just supposed to hand you the little bitch?”

“
Only
,” I said, getting very tired of talking on the phone, “if you want to see your daughter again. I have a guy here, a very bad man out of Mexico, who would gladly do very bad things to Katy. I don't want that to happen. I want Allie, then I go away. How about that?”

I could hear Jeff breathing heavily, thinking this through, trying to find a way to get his daughter and jam me up at the same time. Finally he said, “If I don't get her back, the wife will cut my nuts off. So, fine. Screw it. How you want to do this?”

I told him we'd be at the rest stop by the interstate at noon. There'd be cameras there, and plenty of people, so neither of us could pull anything. I'd let Katy out and send her to the bathrooms. He'd do the same with Allie. Simple. I liked things simple.

“Fine,” he said. “Done. But if Katy's hurt, I'll never stop hunting you. I'll kill you and everyone you know and love. Your mom, dad, sisters, brothers, friends, the librarian that checked out your first goddamned book.”

I believed him, so I gave him an inch. “I'll drop Katy off first. But if I don't see Allie within thirty seconds of letting your kid out, she'll get one in the back. Deal?”

“Deal. You son of a bitch.” He hung up.

Nita and Chopo were at the table sipping coffee, talking amiably in Spanish, when I came back in. They stopped when they saw me.

“Thanks again, Nita. Showtime, Chopo.”

WE PULLED INTO THE REST
area for the first time at eleven o'clock. Drove the paved loop that circled the concrete restrooms
and info center, and then drove out and got on the interstate. Nothing looked out of place, and no one followed us. We repeated this three times, then finally stopped and parked under a canopy of cottonwoods at the far end of the passenger-­car parking lot. I peered into the backseat. We'd taken the tape off Katy's mouth. She sat there looking quiet and forlorn but not angry or upset as I would have expected. She stared out the side window into the spaces between the tall trees.

“Chopo, you want to cover all this from over there by that pond? It should give you a good line of sight to the bathrooms. You can cover her and Allie, if Jeff keeps his end of the deal. My hunting bag is in the back. Use the twenty-two, and leave me the big gun.”

“No problem,
patrón
.” He got out quickly, rummaged in the back, and then headed off into the tall grass next to the large stagnant pond. I pulled my pistol from the small bag I'd moved to the front seat, chambered a round, and looked back at Katy.

“I'm sorry it's gotta go down like this, kid. But if your dad plays this right, no one is going to get hurt. You should be home by lunch.”

“I hate him,” she said faintly, as if she were talking to herself.

“What?” I asked, turning around in the seat.

“I hate him,” she said, louder this time. “Jeff is an asshole. He isn't my real dad. My stupid whore mother likes money and Jeff has it. I don't want to go back. Drop me off somewhere else, okay? Max, my boyfriend, can come and pick me up. How did you guys get his phone anyway?”

This was going to be awkward. “We picked it up at the junkyard,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

I wished Chopo hadn't left the car. Maybe he'd be able to think of the right reply. I waited a moment, sighed, and just let it out: “I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Katy, but Max is dead.”

She inhaled sharply. “No . . . I saw him yesterday. He can't be—”

“He did an errand for Jeff,” I said, simplifying. “I'm afraid it backfired. He was pretty shot up when we found him.” Watching Katy's face from the front seat, some part of me was thinking back to the people I'd buried when I was real young. One corpse would have been too many, but there were a few. Kids shouldn't have to learn about death this early in life.

For a long moment there was silence from Katy. Then, “Jeff killed Max.” She said it deadpan, no emotion, matter-of-fact. “I knew it might happen, eventually. My other boyfriends—they all got run off or beat up. Not by Jeff himself—he's too much of a weasel. But his guys always took care of them. I'm not allowed to be happy.”

She broke down then, tears streaming down her cheeks, her back heaving with every sob. She pounded a fist against the window and the seat, crying out Max's name every time it connected.

Damn.
I turned back around in the seat, looked vacantly through the windshield. Now I was stuck. The girl didn't want to go, and I didn't want to send her back into that mess.
You can't help them all
, I told myself. I'd started out blindly searching for Jen, had discovered and lost Allie, and now I had this bawling teenager to deal with. Could it get any worse?

For
Katy it could. That was pretty clear.

“Please,” she said, slowing to a stop mid-weep. “Get me out. You kind of owe me, anyway, for kidnapping me.”

I wasn't sure about that logic, but I knew right then that I wasn't going to say no. I ran a hand through my hair and exhaled. It was time for another crazy-ass plan. After thinking on it for half a minute I laid out a sequence of steps that most likely wouldn't work but was worth a shot. Sometimes when you're knee deep in horse manure, you just have to keep slogging forward.

“We get out of this,” I said, “you can't stick with me for long. You got anyplace else to go?”

“My real dad. He lives in Reno. He calls sometimes. Said I could come visit.”

“Okay, then. I'll put you on a bus.
If
we make it.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A
s we sat and waited, I heard a muffled sob from Katy every once in a while, no doubt spurred by memories of her boyfriend. Me, I was on edge, wanting desperately to see Allie, to make sure she was okay, but also because I was thinking of Jen. Had word gotten back to Jen that her brother was looking for her? Had her situation deteriorated? How much time did I really have to find her? There were too many unanswerable questions, so I decided to concentrate on the “swap” that was taking place.

It was almost noon. We were the only passenger vehicle in the lot, but there were five tractor-trailers idling just north of us. I doubted Jeff would send a crew in one of them—fuel was too expensive. Jeff's boys would come in from the east because that was the only road in. It came off the cloverleaf exit on I-70, wound for a quarter mile through willows and trees, following the river until it looped around the restrooms and tourist info building, then connected back into itself.

I drew a map of the place in my head. The parking lot was on the west side of the buildings, and the pond was west of that. North of us was the Colorado River, and south was the interstate. There were at least three cameras mounted
on the light poles, and I'd made sure to park outside of their line of sight.

My guess was that the crew would come in and park one car, presumably the one that contained Allie, leaving another car back on the quarter-mile stretch. They'd let the trade go down, then leave. We were supposed to wait and then go out the main road, where we'd get popped by whoever was waiting for us. If they took up positions on both sides of the road, we'd get mowed down.

It was a classic ambush technique—one I'd first learned from the books I'd buried my nose in as a kid, and then relearned in places like Cabinda and Freetown and Khartoum.

The sun shone almost directly overhead, glaring down on the Jeep, heating it like a can of soup on a fire. I rolled my window down as a blue BMW sedan pulled into the lot, then backed into a parking space across from us. I glanced to the left and slightly behind our Jeep, out at the six-foot-tall river grass surrounding the pond.

Chopo would be lying in there somewhere, watching the lot and the restrooms through the scope of my little semiauto .22. The rifle held twenty-five rounds per magazine, was reasonably quiet, and could handle multiple targets as long as they weren't too far away.

I still had my pistol, though if everything went right I wouldn't have to use it. If things went real bad, I had the big .375 in the back. It held only three rounds, but it could stop a moose in its tracks.

“They're here,” I said. “Get ready.” Katy unbuckled her seat belt, wiped her eyes, and retied her shoelaces.

“These shoes are horrible for running,” she said, sniffing.

Her cell phone buzzed in my jacket so I handed it back to her. She answered and said, “Okay.”

“Remember our plan.”

“I hope you know what you're doing,” she said, then got out. She walked to the bathrooms and stopped with her back against the gray concrete. I started counting. I'd made it to twenty when the back passenger door on the BMW opened and Allie got out. Her clothes were ruffled and her cheek sported a fresh bruise, but other than that she looked good. She made her way to the restrooms quickly, trying not to run. Both girls nodded at each other, and then crossed toward their designated vehicles.

Allie made it to the Jeep first, shuffling quickly and hopping into the passenger seat. Katy took her time, like I'd suggested. When she was within a couple yards of the Beemer, she turned and ran back toward the restrooms, crouching and running, zigging and zagging. Two men immediately got out of the car; one pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster, and the other started to sprint after Katy.

I took aim at the sprinter, but before I could squeeze the trigger, Chopo opened fire with the little .22. He was much closer to us than I'd thought he'd be, maybe twenty yards from the Jeep, shooting at men maybe fifty yards away. And he was pulling the trigger as fast as possible, the staccato popping sounds hesitating only when he switched magazines. The sprinter went down, rolled into a ball, and lay still. Katy changed direction in the grass and ran across the pavement toward my Jeep.

The man with the holster returned fire, aiming at the grass. The second burst from Chopo found him, and his face disappeared in a blur. His body fell onto the Beemer's hood. Katy made it to the Jeep and clambered in.

“What's he
doing
?” she shouted. “I thought we weren't going to kill anyone?” For a second there was only the sound of both girls panting.

“It's what he does, can't stop him now,” I said.

Chopo had stopped firing and the lot became quiet again—or mostly quiet. Truckers were coming out of the rest­room, out of their cabs, yelling, talking, wondering what the hell just happened. An elderly black woman hurried out of the tourist info office, talking into a phone.

Time to go.
I jumped out of the Jeep, telling the girls to stay put. Chopo should have been hauling ass back to the Jeep by now. He wasn't. So I put the pistol back in my jacket and headed into the tall grass. The thick reeds towered above me, making it difficult to see. Shoving the thick grass aside, I made my way toward the area where I'd heard the shots, and saw a boot.

Chopo's fancy boot. I moved closer and saw his jeans sticking out into an open, muddy spot. They weren't moving. I ran as fast as my sore leg would allow and crouched beside him.

He was facedown in the mud, my .22 rifle lying inches from open hands that were stretched above his head. He looked like he was jumping up to catch it, frozen in mid-jump. But he wasn't jumping. A puddle formed underneath his neck, and when I moved closer I could see the source of the blood.

A large, neat hole had been drilled in the front of his neck, and another, larger one, from the exit-wound two inches down from the base of his skull. He must have caught a random round from the man with the holster just as his own shots connected.
Damn.
Another pointless death that was entirely my fault.

I stood up. The only way I could rationalize his death was by remembering that he was a soldier, and this was bound to happen one day. Live by the gun, and eventually this would be the result. I'd arrive there, too.

I left him dead on the ground, left the .22, said good-bye.
Then I walked slowly back to the Jeep, trying not to attract attention.

As I settled back behind the wheel, I heard the wail of sirens coming closer. I put the Jeep in gear and headed west out of the lot on a dirt service road that skirted the edge of the pond. Once on the backside of the pond, we drove up the steep, grassy shoulder of the interstate and onto the paved westbound lanes, slipping unnoticed into the flow of traffic headed toward Grand Junction and places farther west.

“Who's your friend?” Allie asked, tilting her head back at Katy.

“The daughter of the man who took you. I kidnapped her, was going to trade her for you, but she didn't want to go back. So here we are.”

“That's
great
, Barr—now we're kidnappers.”

I looked at Allie, saw that she was trying to play it tough but was still shook up from her overnight with Jeff. She kept looking out the windows to her right and left, probably wondering where the next lethal threat was coming from.

“Relax,” I said softly. “You're okay now.”

She rocked back and forth slightly, looking as if she were trying to convince herself that was the case.

“What happened to the other guy?” Katy said from the backseat.

I put the Jeep on cruise control at a speed five miles over the speed limit. An eighteen-wheeler blew past. “He's dead. Caught one in the neck.”

“What do we do now?” Katy said, sounding almost excited.

“We get off the interstate, just in case they set up roadblocks. Just in case, but I don't think they will. This will look like a big drug deal gone wrong, or some gang shoot-out. I hope.”

Allie stopped rocking. She seemed alert now, focused on the situation at hand. “What if someone at the rest stop gives the police a description of us? Aren't there cameras there?”

I was already brooding on that. “They probably have footage of you two girls. You'll be persons of interest,” I conceded.

“Wonderful,” Allie said.

“Listen, I did what I did to save your ass. And for all they know, you were just scared rest stop patrons.”

Allie looked like she was going to argue, but then her face softened. “Yeah, well, I appreciate your coming to collect me.”

We continued down the road for another ten miles, at which point Allie said, “Pull over.”

“Why?”

“You're shaky,” she told me. “And I'm the better driver. Give me some directions.”

She was right. I hadn't noticed that my own adrenaline hadn't worn off, and truth was, I
wasn't
that great of a driver. So I got out, Allie got out, and I told Katy to take the front seat. I'd ride in back and stretch out. When Katy got in the passenger seat and closed the door, Allie leaned toward me as she passed and whispered.

“We go to Leadville,” she said.

“Why?”

“That's where Lance cooks. I got one of those idiots in the Beemer to tell me. The guy says he's been there. Somewhere in the woods outside Leadville—a little fortress hidden in the mountains.”

I felt like a hound striking a scent, realizing this was my chance to find Jen. “Good job,” I said. When Allie's face didn't brighten as much as I expected, I asked, “Hey, you okay?” I didn't ask
how
she'd gotten the man to tell her.

“Yeah,” she said, opening the driver's door. “They smacked
me a couple of times. No broken bones, though. I knocked one of them to the ground at the junkyard before I got clobbered on the head. See.” She showed me the scabs on her knuckles.

“Nice,” I said, and stuffed myself into the back of the Jeep.

“Where are we going?” Katy asked.

“Barr?” Allie said, putting the Jeep in gear.

I didn't want to go to Leadville just yet. “Head north. We'll make a big loop through the mountains, let this thing die down a little, get Katy on a bus, and then head to the place you were telling me about.”

Allie nodded and eased us back into the work traffic of heavy trucks and white pickups. As the Jeep began eating up the miles, Allie looked over at Katy. “So you got to meet the famous Clyde Barr, huh?”