Run (11 page)

"The Fans?" asked Jason. 

"Could be," answered Adam.  "They might know about John and Fran, and if they do –"

"They couldn't.  That would mean –"

"Exactly.  Another traitor in our midst.  So find out who made that registry entry and report to me."  Adam watched the man driving the Mustang.  "God in Heaven," he murmured, a swiftly-uttered prayer to stave off the fear that clutched him like an icy gauntlet holding fast to his guts.

He touched a control on his wrist, and the world around him desolidified, seeming to shatter into a trillion pixels that hung before him before slowly fading.  Adam was already walking to Jason's station before the miniature starbursts had begun to dissipate.

"We need to fix this," he said.

"What happened to John?" asked Jason.  "It's just a
bit
up front." 

"I would guess from his reaction that John has seen him before.  So we need to get the bit out of there, now."

Adam turned back to the monitor, image now flush against the wall, but still showing the chase. 

"This could destroy us all."

DOM#67B

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

3:40 PM FRIDAY

John dropped his Pathfinder into second gear, simultaneously breaking slightly.  The shift in momentum made the SUV surge forward, dropping the front closer to the ground and making a more efficient turn. 

John smiled grimly to himself.  If the Mustang had stayed on the main strip, it would have outpaced his small car quickly, leaving him behind and helpless to pursue.  But the driver of the car ahead was obviously a novice.  He panicked, turning onto one of the dirt roads that led to the farms outside of town.  He took the turn too fast and fishtailed, sending up a great plume of dust and losing precious seconds getting his car back onto the road.

In that time, John closed much of the gap between them.  He took the corner perfectly, old reflexes and training surging to his consciousness for the first time in ten years.  He upshifted, then braked and slammed his accelerator in a close series of movements that coaxed the maximum speed out of his tired old Nissan. 

He was right on the Mustang's tail now, and damned if he was going to lose it.

***

Kaylie watched the road in front of them, clutching her backpack like a spiritual ward that would keep away demons.  Her father sat beside her, his face haunted and waxy.

"What’s going on?" she asked.  She wanted to know the answer to that question, wanted to know so badly that she felt she could scream if it wasn’t answered soon.  Scream and never stop. 

She could go mad.

She bit back the scream in the back of her throat, though, and looked to her father.

"What’s going on?" she repeated.

He didn’t answer.

No answers for her.  She did not understand what was going on, or why she had felt so much anxiety when meeting her new teacher that morning.  She only knew that she must not –
could
not – answer his questions about her past.

Why not? she thought for the thousandth time that day.  Why couldn’t I say anything?  Why not just tell him where you were from?

And suddenly, agonizingly, Kaylie realized that she herself didn’t know the answer to that question.  She strained to think, to remember where she had been before that morning, but every time she did, her mind seemed to...
bounce
, somehow, and she found herself remembering only what she had had for breakfast that morning.  All that lay before that meal was a fog.

She looked at her father again, and thought, Who is that?  If he’s my father, why don’t I remember him?

The man beside her cranked the wheel hard then, and the Mustang slewed to the left, losing traction in spite of the expensive racing tires that bit and tore at the road beneath them.  The man looked afraid.  He looked terrified, in fact, and Kaylie knew with dreadful certainty that her eyes appeared every bit as frightened as his.

***

John yanked his wheel to the left, surprised at the abrupt swerve the Mustang took in front of him.  It had passed several small dirt roads, and when it took this one - chosen seemingly at random - it hadn’t slowed enough to make a safe turn.  If John had been watching the chase on TV, a police report or one of those tabloid "Real Police Chases, Real Police Blood" shows, he would have expected the Mustang to rise up on two wheels, doing a short moment of stunt driving before completely flipping over.

The car ahead of him didn’t flip, though.  John was fairly certain it had violated some serious laws of physics, but the muscle car kept its balance and sprinted ahead again.

John slowed for his turn.  He didn’t know what was driving him to find out what was going on, and he didn’t know what he expected to find if he did manage to catch up, but he wasn’t so obsessed that he would risk being pinned in an upside-down Pathfinder.

The slower turn cost him time, and when he completed his change to the smaller street - a dirt road that was hardly more than a wide trail - he saw that the Mustang was hauling its way toward the mountains.

John jammed his foot down on the accelerator, managing to catch up to the gigantic plume of dust the Mustang threw behind it.  Small pebbles and twigs slapped his windshield with light snaps, as though someone with extremely hard nails was flicking his finger against the safety glass.  The tapping unnerved John, and he let his speed drop a bit.  He realized that pursuit at this point was beyond strange, it was foolish.  Even if he could manage to keep up with the -

(Skunk Man)

- gray-haired man’s car, he wouldn’t be able to see through the dust cloud created by spinning wheels on a dry trail.  John knew potholes, some small, some large enough to break an axle, could be found throughout this area.  His foot eased off the accelerator a little more, and soon the car ahead of him pulled away.

It turned again, and disappeared behind a stand of trees.  John watched the other side of the small copse of foliage, waiting for the car to emerge and continue its dogged climb up the small mountainous trail.

It did not emerge, however, and John allowed himself another smile as he realized the car must have stopped, whether because of the driver’s choice or because some accident had befallen the vehicle.  He gunned his accelerator again, rapidly approaching the trees, then turning his wheel to slide sideways below a thick canopy of foliage.  He jammed on the brakes without thinking, as the sight that greeted him tore the breath from his lungs in one hoarse gasp.

The Mustang was nowhere to be seen. 

Vanished, as though it had never been.

DOM#67B

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

4:10 PM FRIDAY

Casey’s was a place that reflected its owner: small, mostly quiet, and comfortable. 

At the age of twelve, Casey ran away from home.  He had lived in New York, in an apartment with his mother and two other women.  All three were hookers, a fact that no one in Loston knew about.  The only things that they knew about him were the things that they had seen after his arrival in the small town at the age of eighteen.

After seeing his mother beaten mercilessly for the third time in as many weeks, Casey had resolved to fix the situation.  The assailant was Tray, his mother’s pimp, and a man who gave dirt something to feel superior to.  A squat, fat man with a cartoonish overbite, Tray held sway over the three women in Casey’s apartment, and, by default, over Casey himself.

Casey took the slaps, the taunts, the invitations to participate in "grownup games" that Tray extended on a regular basis.  He took them for years, until that cold day in mid-December when Tray began beating Casey’s mother again.

Nothing snapped in Casey, not exactly.  He always thought of "snapping" as something that happened right before the people in the movies lost control and killed several of their friends in a frenetic rage.

Casey didn’t snap.  He was calm.  He was controlled.  And there was certainly no way that he consider Tray a friend.  So the only way Casey might have fit into the category of people who have "snapped" was that he did in fact kill someone.

Tray stood over Casey’s mother, who was bleeding copiously from several wounds.  He’d used his belt on her, the metal buckle slapping harshly against her body, actually ripping a chunk of skin the size of a golf ball off her back.  And since his belt was off anyway, the pimp apparently decided that now was a good time to assert his authority in a few other areas, as well.

He dropped his pants and pushed Casey’s mother onto her back, ignoring her scream as the floor abraded her wounds.  She was kicking feebly, trying pitifully to dissuade him, but Tray wasn’t listening.  He lay on her with a grunt, forcing her legs apart.

That was when Casey buried the knife in Tray’s back. 

Casey was a small kid, a source of never ending shame to himself and those around him.  A thin boy, often sick, unable to get heavy work at the docks or in a warehouse somewhere, too small to be intimidating.

Yet when he stabbed Tray, the knife went all the way in.  Casey remembered being surprised at how easy it was, like the pimp was made of Spam or something.  He missed the bones of Tray’s back, his ribs and scapulae, sending the knife on a virtually unimpeded trip that ended in Tray’s heart. 

The man died almost instantly. 

Casey stuck around long enough to get his mother into bed, dress her wounds, and give her a kiss.  Then he left, with nothing but his clothes, seventy five dollars he found in Tray’s pockets, and a heavy winter coat.

Seven years later, he straggled into Loston.  A bit of a frightening face, ringed by an ever-present halo of scruff, but his diminutive size mitigated the threatening aspect of his features.  Somewhat.  He got work as a night janitor at the small bar on Main Street - Mick’s, it was called back then - and worked hard enough that no one asked him more than minimal questions about his past.

Just as well, because the past wasn’t something Casey was prepared to discuss.

He worked at the bar for ten years, gradually assuming more and more responsibilities, and by the time Mick died at the tender age of sixty two, Casey was more a son to the man than an employee.

No one was surprised that Mick willed Casey his bar, but what did surprise some was Casey’s immediate remodeling.  He got rid of the hunting trophies and stuffed heads that adorned the walls, replacing them with corn shucks and hay on the floor.  He brought in a brand-new juke, and the kids started coming in. 

He didn’t mean disrespect to his unofficially adopted father.  Quite the opposite.  He wanted to remember Mick’s bar with Mick in it, and each day without him there would be a tear in the fabric of that memory. 

So Casey’s bar was born, and though Casey got a little more of the profit, not much else changed.  Not much ever changed in Loston, and he liked that.  It was a nice place, and no one ever showed interest in his formative years.  They minded their business, and the secrets stayed put.

Casey might have been surprised how many people in Loston felt the same way about their pasts and the secrets
they
didn’t want to share.

But whether that would have surprised him or not, the sight of John Trent coming into the bar most definitely
was
a shock.  Casey had known John for nearly twenty years, since the young man had started frequenting the place.  John didn’t drink much, but Casey’s had a pool table, and John loved that game.  "It’s all about certainty, Case," John had told him during a moment when they were the only two in the place.  "You hit the balls, and they
have
to go somewhere that makes sense.  Maybe you miss, and maybe you miscalculate, but the game has to make sense.  It’s kind of a nice feeling."

Never in all twenty years as acquaintances and friends had Casey seen John wild-eyed and dusty like he was now.  His order, a shot of whisky, straight up, surprised Casey even more.

He poured the drink though, glancing at Coach Harding, who was playing pool in the back room, waiting for his friend.  "Coach is here," he said to John as the younger man belted back the glass.

"What?"  John’s gaze seemed to swim about in front of Casey before making successful contact with the bartender’s hazel eyes.  "Oh, yeah."

He put the glass down and headed to the bathroom, almost going into the ladies room before entering the correct door.

Casey shook his head and went back to dusting the glasses, the chore he’d been doing when John came in.  He wondered what it was that could have put his friend in such a state, but knew he wouldn’t ask.

The past - even recent past - usually felt best when left alone.

***

John splashed water across his face.  He noted his hands trembling, and concentrated on them for a moment, trying to stop the shivers that gripped his extremities.  It didn’t work, so he grabbed the sides of the sink.  He took a deep breath, then let it out.  Again.  Another.

In a few seconds he was calm once more.  He could even look at himself in the mirror and laugh about what had just happened.  He decided not to tell Gabe about it, because the coach’s only reaction would be to chortle and do some friendly mocking, most likely bringing up the story every time a friend or acquaintance of John was anywhere near.

"Stupid," said John.  No way it could be the same man.  No way.

Then why did he run from me?

The question stumped John for a moment, but he knew -
knew
- there must be some logical answer.  So he pushed it back to the posterior regions of his brain, surrendering it to his subconscious for further analysis.

He left the bathroom, going back to the bar.  He ordered a beer this time.  It was early in the day, but John relaxed his personal rules for once.  Besides, it was Friday.  A hell of a Friday.  Casey handed him the drink, and asked, "How ya doin’?"

"Fine, Casey," he answered.  He didn’t feel fine.  In spite of the decision he’d just made not to say anything to Gabe, he knew he would.  He had to talk to someone about what had just happened.  It was his way.  Annie used to call herself "John’s Mind Massager" because of his need to talk about things.  His mind worked better when he could bounce his thoughts off someone else.