The Collected (A Jonathan Quinn Novel) (2 page)

The next step was to make the body and the other items from the warehouse permanently disappear. After that, it would be straight to the airport and a flight back to L.A. that would get Nate home in the afternoon. He’d sleep in his own bed tonight, and then tomorrow Liz would arrive.

He started to smile, but stopped himself. He couldn’t think about Liz, not right now. She would only distract him.

Finish the job first, buddy. You can think about her once you get home
.

The plan for the body was simple. There was a lot of empty space in this part of Mexico. Nate had chosen a quiet ravine about fifteen miles away from the warehouse. The previous afternoon, he and Burke had dug the grave. Once they dropped the body into it, Nate would cover it with a healthy amount of a chemical powder blend Quinn had developed, and he and Burke would fill the hole with dirt. The chemicals would eat away at the body. Within a day, most visible identifying marks would be gone. Within a week, pretty much any method used to try to figure out who the dead man had been would fail.

The sun was still a good half hour from rising, but the sky in the east was beginning to pale. It was going to be close, but Nate was hopeful they would be done by the time daylight peeked over the horizon.

He checked the odometer. Their turnoff was a mile and a half away. From there, it would be a two-mile ride along a dry, flash-flood wash through a narrow valley.

Nate reached for a bottle of water next to his seat, but paused before he could grab it, his eyes focusing on a point in the distance.

What the hell?

At right about the point where they were supposed to leave the road, there were headlights of at least three cars parked on the side of the highway.

He slowed the van, wanting to give himself enough time to assess the situation before deciding whether it was something to worry about. The situation was not made easy by the brightening sky. It was screwing up his vision, making the ground and anything on it seem even darker than when the night had been in full control.

He checked the odometer again, and looked back at the headlights. No, they weren’t close to where he wanted to turn off. They were parked at the exact spot.

Coincidences didn’t exist. Not in a cleaner’s world, anyway. Believing in them was a quick path to a short career. He had to assume the vehicles were trouble, which meant scratching his primary dump site.

He pulled the van to the side of the road, and killed the lights.

“What are you doing?” Burke asked.

“Not now.”

“Something wrong?”

“I said not now.”

Before the van could roll to a complete stop, Nate swung the wheel to the left, tapped the gas, and pulled a U-turn. Driving dark, he headed back the way they’d come, his mind switching gears to his backup plan.

“Hey, you going to tell me what’s going on or not?” Burke asked.

Nate ignored the question as he flicked his eyes back and forth between the side mirror and the road ahead. If the cars had really been waiting for them, their occupants would be experiencing the same predawn vision issues Nate had been having, which, hopefully, would mean the last they’d seen of his van had been when the headlight switched off. If that were the case, they’d grow concerned and send a car to check what happened. If, on the other hand, they were just there by chance, then the cars would remain where they were.

In twenty seconds, he had his answer. But it wasn’t just one car racing down the road. It was all three.

Nate increased their speed.

“What the
hell
is going on?” Burke demanded.

In the mirror, Nate could see the cars slow as they approached the spot where he’d doused his lights. They paused there only seconds before accelerating again.

“We’ve got company,” he said.

Burke twisted in his seat and looked into the mirror on his side. “Who?” He stared at the reflection for a moment. “Those cars back there? How do you know?”

“Because they were waiting at the turnoff.”

“No way.”

Nate said nothing.

“Probably just some kids,” Burke suggested.

“Not kids.”

“Who else could they be?”

“Trouble.”

Nate pushed the van as fast as it could go, but knew it wasn’t enough. At the moment, they had just over a mile’s lead, and their lights were still off, but both those advantages would soon be wiped out by the faster cars and rising sun.

They had three or four miles, maybe, a few minutes at best, and then the others would be on them. Their only chance was to reach the outskirts of Monterrey, where they’d have some city to hide in. Roads, buildings, whatever they could find would be better than open countryside. It would be close, but maybe.

“What are we going to do?” Burke said.

“I’m going to drive, and you’re going to shut the hell up.”

Nate scanned the road ahead. Shapes were starting to appear out of the shadows that had covered the earth. Hills and trees and the still-distant city.

Too distant.

Come on
.
Just give me something.

Thirty seconds later, he spotted a sign about three quarters of a mile ahead. It was still too far away and too dark to read, but he’d seen its shape a dozen times before—a Pemex gas station sign.

Nate’s mind skipped over contingency B
and
C, and went straight to D. Though minor details within contingency D varied from job to job, the nuts and bolts were the same: ditch vehicle, set it on fire, and run.

He checked the mirror again. The gap between the van and the other vehicles had closed to three quarters of a mile. Before he could move his gaze back to the road, a new light flashed in the mirror.

Son of a bitch
.

Pulsating now on the roofs of all three cars were police lights.

CHAPTER 3

T
HE PEMEX STATION
was on the left. Just beyond it was a road that cut between the station and a row of cinderblock buildings that stretched along the highway for several hundred feet. If Nate could get the van behind those buildings without being seen, the cops might drive straight by and not realize their mistake for several minutes.

“Hold on tight,” he said.

Burke grabbed the back of his seat with one hand, and braced his other against the dash.

Now that the gas station was only a few seconds away, Nate had a much better idea of how it was laid out, and could see that instead of having to take a sharp turn onto the intersecting road between it and the other buildings, he could cut diagonally across the Pemex lot and whip behind the row of shops, all without having to touch his brakes.

He waited until the very last second, then yanked the wheel to the left. The van careened across the road, bouncing Nate and Burke in their seats as it hit the uneven asphalt surrounding the filling station. Keeping on as straight a line as possible, Nate aimed the van just to the right of the pumps, then off the curb on the other side.

“As soon as we stop, get out and run,” Nate said as he whipped the vehicle around the back of the first cinderblock building.

“Run? Where?”

“Anywhere. As far away as possible. I’ll contact you in a few days.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nate could see Burke nod, but if the other man said anything, it was lost in the squeal of brakes as Nate brought the van to a halt.

“Go!” Nate yelled.

Burke fought with his seat belt for a second, then wrenched open his door and disappeared.

Nate jammed the transmission into Park, grabbed his clean kit, and moved quickly into the back. From the main section of the bag, he removed a can of lighter fluid and a box of matches. He doused both the wrapped body and the package of materials, and removed a match from the box.

Just as he was striking the head against the side of the container, he heard the siren. But it wasn’t coming from the highway on the other side of the buildings like he’d hoped. It was quickly approaching the back of the van. Though it sounded like only a single car, it was still one too many.

His ploy hadn’t worked.

Cursing under his breath, he threw the lit match onto the plastic covering the body. As the flames ignited, he raced up front, pulled the backpack over his shoulders, and exited through the same door Burke had used.

He kept the van between himself and the police car, and ran as fast as he could, but was sure it would only be a matter of seconds before they saw him. He spotted a break ahead between the buildings. Knowing it was his only chance, he ducked into the gap, and was relieved to see it went all the way to the front. He moved rapidly down the space, crouched down as he neared the end, and eased his head out for a look.

There was another police car, lights flashing, sitting across the entrance to the road that ran next to Pemex. Nate had to fight the urge to jerk his head back as he slowly rotated around and looked in the other direction. The third police car was stopped on the shoulder, about a hundred feet away, on his side of the highway.

He carefully drew his head back into the safety of the narrow alley.

Escaping via the front wasn’t going to work, but neither was returning the way he’d come. He was surrounded. Either he stayed where he was and waited for someone to find him, or…

He looked up.

The roof?

Did he really have a choice? The walls were too close together to effectively spider-walk to the top, but there was a pipe running up the side that looked like it might be secure enough to use as an impromptu ladder. He gave it a jerk, and decided it would hold.

Just as he started up, he heard footsteps. Close, no more than a dozen feet around the front corner, moving in his direction. No way he’d make the top before the person reached the passageway.

He had but one option. He scrambled upward as high as he dared, and wedged himself between the walls and moved as close to the front end of the gap as possible. There, he hung, ten feet up and two feet back from the corner.

The steps approached from the other side, and stopped. Several seconds passed, then the end of a gun and top of a police hat peeked around the corner below him.

That’s right
, Nate thought.
Come on in for a look, but just keep your eyes down.

The man’s gaze swung from one side to the other across the ground, and seemed to freeze on the spot at the base of the pipe.

Nate’s footprints.

The cop moved all the way into the opening, and kneeled down for a better look. A moment passed, then he raised his head, his gaze continuing to move up toward the roof.

A split second before he would have seen Nate, the cleaner dropped from the sky like a stone.

The cop tried to raise a hand in front of his face, but Nate plowed into him feet first before he could, slamming the man to the ground.

Something popped along one of the cop’s legs, a knee perhaps, or an ankle bent the wrong way. Whatever it was, the cop wasn’t feeling it at the moment. He was out cold, thanks to his head thudding hard against the ground.

“
Lo siento
,” Nate whispered, apologizing.

He grabbed the man’s gun, and checked the main street again. The two police cars were still there, but now that it was a little lighter, he could see both vehicles were empty. He scanned the buildings in case another cop might be working his way toward him, but there was no one.

Directly across the street was a small dirt field, and on the other side of it were several cinderblock homes. There were no fences around the properties, just more dirt and the occasional patch of grass or brush.

So, go for the roof or take the chance?

Hell, the roof was a chance, too. Perhaps even a bigger one, because he could easily get trapped there.

He glanced at the road again. Nothing.

Option two, then.

He slipped out of the gap, and scooted along the front of the building to his left, alert for any movement. Reaching the end without incident, he snuck a look around the corner, down another road that led back toward the rear of the buildings. There were two cops, fifty feet away. Each had a gun drawn, but their attention was focused in the other direction, as if they expected Nate to come barreling around the back.

Nate glanced toward the highway, intending to pick the best path across the field on the other side, but his gaze strayed to the nearby police car. It was vibrating, its engine idling.

Like coincidences, there was no such thing as luck. “Opportunity, yes,” Quinn had once said. “It’s up to you whether you take it or not. But no luck.”

Consider it taken
, Nate thought as he moved silently over to the car and around to the driver’s side. He carefully lifted the handle, and eased the door open.

No yells. No one heading in his direction.

So far, so good.

Staying low, he slipped inside, and positioned his foot above the accelerator while grabbing the transmission lever with his right hand.

On three. One. Two.

The moment
three
passed through his head, he sat up, dropped the shift into Drive, and jammed the gas pedal to the floor. As the car jumped forward, he whipped the wheel around and pulled a quick U-turn so he would be heading toward the safety of the city.

The door was still partially open as he finished the turn, so he had no problems hearing the shouts of alarm. He reached out and pulled the door closed just as the crack of a gun echoed behind him, but wherever the bullet went, it didn’t hit the car.

He checked his mirror in time to see the men run out onto the highway. They were small and getting smaller fast, but that didn’t stop them from firing several more rounds in his direction. Again, none of the bullets hit their mark.

Then the road curved to the right, and the men dropped out of sight.

Nate knew it would only be moments before the other police cars took up chase. He needed to get off the highway and into an area where it would be next to impossible for them to find him.