Dust Up: A Thriller (12 page)

“What about sending it to Mikel?”

She shook her head. “I could give it to Sable, but I don’t know for sure that he really works for Mikel.”

“Right, but what about sending it directly to him?”

She tilted her head thoughtfully, but then something outside caught my eye. Jenkins and the kid had almost reached Jenkins’s open door when the kid stopped. Jenkins turned and glared at him, but the kid was distracted.

Then I saw them, getting out of a black SUV, asking the kid a question. Axe-Man and Old Spice. The gunmen from the Liberty Motel.

33

For an instant, I thought I had gasped, then I realized it was Miriam, following my eyes.

“That’s them, isn’t it?” she said breathlessly. “No, no, no, no,” over and over again, like she was hyperventilating. I put my arm on her shoulder, reassuring, but I was holding my breath, waiting to see if the kid was going to point toward us, if his lips were going to say, “
Yeah, she’s in the office.
” His eyes flickered in our direction, but he shrugged and shook his head.

He looked back at us, maybe sensing trouble, wanting to come warn us. But Jenkins snapped at him, and they both went into his room.

“Call Sable,” I said. “Do you have his number?”

She nodded, fumbling for her phone. “He said it’s just for emergencies.” I gave her a look that reflected the urgency of the situation, and she said, “Right,” tapping at the phone and putting it to her ear.

Outside, Axe-Man was knocking on the door to room number one, at the end. Old Spice started knocking on room number two, right next to it. Even from a distance, I could see the bulges of the guns under their jackets. Room number one opened, and an older woman looked out at Axe-Man, confused. She shook her head and closed the door. Door number two didn’t open, and as Axe-Man walked around to room number three, Old Spice glanced around furtively, then quickly picked the lock and slipped inside. Axe-Man knocked on the door to room number three, and a few seconds later, Old Spice came back out and headed to door number four.

The way they were leapfrogging down the row, we had maybe three or four minutes before they finished checking the units and came to the office. I looked down at the papers in my hand. We had the only two copies. If they got us both, they won.

“Sable!” Miriam hissed into the phone. “They’re here. The guys that came after me before.” She listened for a second, then looked up at me. “He says he can be here in five minutes.”

I took the phone from her. “We have three minutes, tops,” I said.

“No way,” Sable said. “I can’t—”

“There’s an open field across the street where you could easily land a helicopter.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll lead them away from the motel,” I told him. “You come and get Miriam in the copter.”

“I don’t have a copter…” He paused, and I could hear a loud engine starting up in the background. “Okay. Three minutes.” Then he was gone.

I handed the phone back to Miriam and ducked behind the desk, tearing open the envelope in my hand and pulling out the papers.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, her eyes round with terror.

I grabbed a Sharpie and a sheet of Everglades City Motel stationery from a pile on the desk and wrote on it:

Send a copy of this to Gregory Mikel c/o the Mikel Group.

Keep the original somewhere safe, and be careful.

I love you,

Doyle

I fanned the papers, put them in the fax machine, and punched in Nola’s fax number at work—one digit off from the main phone number.

“What are you doing?” Miriam asked again in a strangled high-pitched hiss.

“I’m trying to get this into Mikel’s hands. You said if anything happened to you, we needed to get this out, right?”

“Yes,” she said, a tight little whisper.

“Just in case.” I didn’t say it, but there was a good chance something was about to happen to her.

The fax machine dialed and started beeping.

I looked out the door, where Old Spice was knocking on the door next to where Jenkins and the kid were trying to get the shower to work. Axe-Man emerged from the room next to that. Room seventeen, where Miriam had been staying.

She started shaking. They’d already covered half the rooms. A door at the far end of the motel opened, and an old man came out, struggling with a small suitcase. Axe-Man eyeballed him for a moment, then turned so his body shielded the doorknob as he quickly picked the lock.

The older guy tossed his suitcase into the backseat of a dusty Buick. Then he got in and drove around to the office, to the door facing away from Axe Man.

There was no sign of Sable.

Miriam started shaking. She’d been heroic keeping it together as long as she had, but I was afraid she’d used up whatever reserves she was drawing from.

The old guy got out of the car and left the engine running and the door open. The dinging sound followed him as he came up the steps.

The fax machine started pulling the cover sheet through.

I turned to Miriam. “Give me your wig and your shades,” I said. “And your cardigan—give me that too.”

“What?” She wrapped one arm around her midsection and clamped the other on top of her head.

“Sable will be here in a minute with the copter. He’ll touch down in that field across the street. I’m going to draw those two away from here. Once I do and you see that copter coming, you head over there and meet him.” It would have been nice if I had my gun.

I took the wig off her head, took the shades off her face, and held out my hand for her cardigan.

She wiggled out of it and handed it over, her face stunned like she was going into shock.

The door opened and the old guy walked in just as the fax machine started sending the second page. I went behind the counter and grabbed the cover page and jammed it into my pocket.

“I just want to check out,” the old guy said, holding up his key, impatiently. He wasn’t as old as I’d thought, more worn down, like he’d been living so hard he wasn’t likely to get legitimately old.

“We’ll be with you in one moment,” I said.

I squeezed Miriam’s shoulder. Then I put on the wig and the shades and stuffed myself into the cardigan as best as I could.

I squeezed past the old man and out the door. Then I got in his car and drove off.

34

I put the car in gear and eased it forward, hoping the car’s owner wouldn’t realize right away that it was gone. I sank low in my seat, trying to look small as I swung through the parking lot.

Axe-Man was standing twenty feet in front of me. He looked up but didn’t seem to recognize me, or rather, didn’t seem to recognize Miriam. I stopped, waiting for it. Then he noticed me. And at the same moment, Old Spice stepped out of the door behind him. I eased the car forward as Axe-Man tapped his partner’s arm.

I glanced at them, full on, all fake bronze hair and big sunglasses. Then I turned away and hit the gas.

I swerved out of the parking lot, intentionally overcompensating on the turn and grinding over one of the flower beds, so as to give the impression of being in a hurry but not actually moving too fast.

They seemed to buy it.

I fishtailed back and forth onto the street, and behind me the black SUV screamed out of the parking lot, rocketing after me. The old guy ran into the street behind them, chasing after me as well, but he stopped after a few steps.

I felt bad, but I’d leave the car at the airport, and he’d get it back soon enough. Unless these assholes caught up with me. In that case, his car would be the least of my worries.

I didn’t know what kind of horsepower either of us had, but I wasn’t trying to lose them, just to lead them as far from Miriam as possible before they realized their mistake. Of course, I didn’t have a plan for if they actually did catch up with me.

I needed to work on that.

As it turned out, they had more horses than I did. Even with my foot on the floor, they were gaining.

I took a right and then skidded left onto the road with the palm trees lining the median. Up ahead was the traffic circle with the communications tower.

The airport would be just past it.

The SUV was growing in my rearview, and I was starting to wonder if Sable had run into technical difficulties when I saw a small airplane banking from the right and turning in our direction, flying low, straight down the middle of the road. It was a little prop plane, but oddly boxy and square. I didn’t know what that was about.

I kept my foot on the gas, and as I approached the traffic circle, the plane roared by, just overhead. Behind me, the SUV stopped growing. Then it started shrinking. By the time I reached the traffic circle, they had stopped completely. The plane slowed down and almost hovered over the motel, then it gently descended onto the road. Like a helicopter. It was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen.

The SUV spun its wheels for a second, its tires screeching as it turned and took off back toward the motel. I continued around the traffic circle and sped back after it, wondering what I was going to do if I caught up with them. The SUV was taking the turns so hard I was hoping they’d roll, but they didn’t. Neither did I, but I almost drifted off the road a couple times.

Two blocks up ahead, I could see Miriam running across the street toward the plane idling in the field. The door opened as she reached it, and she clambered aboard without breaking stride.

The SUV was still a block away as the plane rolled forward and miraculously lifted off the ground after just a few feet. I almost relaxed, but then I saw the top half of Axe-Man protruding from the passenger-side of the SUV.

He had a gun, an automatic, and apparently a decent touch with it, because when he let loose, at least three slugs dinged the plane’s paint job. I tried to push the pedal harder—maybe I could rear-end the bastards. But I was already going as fast as the car could go, and they were already pulling away from me in pursuit of the plane.

The plane swung around as it rose, and by now the SUV was closing fast. This time, Axe-Man was aiming, squeezing off shots, one, two, three. I was afraid the plane was going to burst into flames. I was close enough that I could see Sable through the window, then the window cracked and I saw a splash of red. The plane wobbled wildly for a moment as it headed off to the north, flying low over the road.

The SUV kept after it, Axe-Man leaning out the passenger side, firing wildly again. I slowed to a stop next to the motel. I didn’t know who’d been hit on the plane, or how bad. But there was nothing more I could do for Miriam, or for Sable.

As far as I knew, the fax had gone through by now, so hopefully Nola would get it and send it on to Mikel. I hadn’t put her name on it, hoping “
I love you, Doyle
” would be enough to get it to her.

But these guys were ready to shoot down airplanes to keep their secrets from getting out. Suddenly, it sunk in how much I was endangering Nola by sending that fax. I’d told myself no one would ever know a fax had been sent. But if they did, if they looked in the motel office and saw it, it wouldn’t take long for them to figure out where it had gone. And who the connection was to me.

I jerked the wheel and swerved into the motel parking lot, leaving the keys in the ignition and the engine running as I ran up the steps and into the office.

The fax had gone through, all the pages lying in the bottom tray. I grabbed them and jammed them into the waistband of my pants. Just as I was turning to run back out, I heard a loud metallic click. The black circle of a gun barrel appeared at the periphery of my field of vision, inches from my eye. My heart plummeted, not just because now they had me, not just because now they had the files, but because now they’d know where I sent them, and to whom.

Then a voice said, “I don’t know what you’re playing at, asshole, but this is one crime scene you shouldn’t have returned to.” He didn’t smell of Axe. Inexplicably, he smelled worse, a putrid combination of urine and halitosis.

I turned a little more. When I saw it was the guy whose car I’d stolen, I smiled.

“You think this is funny, asshole?” The gun started wavering, and he adjusted his grip. His grin had meth mouth written all over it. “You picked the wrong motherfucker to mess with, stealing a car I just stole my own self.”

Part of me did think it was funny. But I didn’t have time to explain to him why.

The gun was a big old thing, a Colt .357 with a six-inch barrel. He was holding it so close to my head I could have just bobbed out of the way and stepped past it to take it from him. Of course, if he pulled the trigger, I’d be deaf for a week.

He must have read my mind, because he stepped back. “Go ahead and make a move. I will open you up.”

Axe-Man and Old Spice already knew what the car looked like. They’d be looking for it. I raised my hands, and he laughed. “You’re lucky I’m in a hurry to get away from this shithole.”

In the background, I could hear the car dinging, with the engine running and the door open, just like before.

He backed out the door, holding the gun on me the whole time.

“Drive safe,” I said.

“Fuck you,” he replied.

As he got in the car, I could see the SUV approaching in the distance.

I hoped Sable and Miriam had gotten away.

The meth head peeled out, and I headed for the other door, pausing to watch as he tore out of the parking lot and screeched into the first left turn. I waited until the SUV went after him, then I slipped out the door and ran the other way.

35

The terrain was distressingly flat and open. I ran full out, the way you do when there’s a machine gun involved. I kept the motel between me and whatever was playing out between the SUV and the meth head in the Buick. I’d seen the town from the air, and I knew there wasn’t much of it—road out of town to the north and another one to the south. I knew the Buick wasn’t going to elude the SUV for long, and however that interaction ended, it wouldn’t take Axe-Man and Old Spice long to figure out I wasn’t driving.