“Somebody had to get Clara to wherever it is we’re going. I left her less than ten hours ago. So unless she’s in the trunk, you have some help. Other than the iffrit, I mean.”
He didn’t feel like talking any more. I tried a different question. “When will I see her?”
He sighed heavily. “After you have been delivered,” he said. “All right?”
Now, if you’re paying attention, that was a mistake. Up until then I wasn’t sure Clara was being brought to the same location as I was. John figured there was no reason not to tell me that because I couldn’t possibly know where we were going or how to find out. He was wrong on both counts, and had he bothered to search my bag, he would have known that.
“How will I know you’ll release her?” I was just killing time now.
“As I said, we are not cruel people. She’s an instrument to facilitate your delivery.”
“Can’t you use hostage and blackmail like everybody else?”
He smiled. I could tell because the sides of his face twitched upward.
Jerry, in the meantime, crawled off the floor and sulked his way back to the baby seat. He seemed to be under the impression that I was mad at him. Either that or he was pissed I’d taken away the photo of Clara.
Up ahead I saw a small plane descending, to the left of the highway. We were near an airfield. So that was how he was taking me west. A private plane.
That wouldn’t do.
I lifted my bag from the seat and made like I was slipping the photograph of Clara into it. I was, but more importantly, I was removing the arm strap. (It was the kind that clipped on, the kind airports always make you remove beforehand.) Since Jerry was sulking and John was watching the road and making the proper turnoff toward the airfield, nobody noticed.
The off-ramp led to an overpass, which fed a two-lane road that ran perpendicular to the highway. Then we hung an unexpected left onto a private road that barely qualified as one lane and quickly devolved from marginally paved to mostly dirt covered with a crust of snow. With the poor traction John had slowed to fifteen. Honestly, he was making this much too easy.
Conveniently isolated from potential witnesses, I waited until a decent pothole and then leapt forward. Being a very conscientious motor vehicle operator, John was focused entirely on maintaining control of the car when we hit the pothole, so he couldn’t do much other than take note of the fact that when he settled back down in his seat he had the strap from my bag wrapped around his neck. I yanked back hard.
“Better ease off the gas there, John,” I suggested.
“You idiot,” he muttered, managing to keep the car on the road despite the imminent threat to his life. In fact, he picked up speed. Impressive. I yanked tighter.
Jerry, not real quick on the uptake, finally noticed his ride was about to get a lot bumpier. He went into attack mode—such as it was—and launched himself at my face, but I warded him off with my free hand. He clung on and sank his teeth into my forearm.
“Ow!” I exclaimed. You would, too. I took my eyes off the driver just long enough to swing Jerry against the side of the baby seat, stunning him into letting go.
The distraction Jerry provided was sufficient for the driver to get his hands on his gun and raise it over his shoulder. I saw it just in time to duck.
He fired. The bullet put a good hole in the roof but fortunately not in me.
Unwilling to see if he could improve upon his aim, I gripped the strap with both hands and tugged sharply back and to the right until I heard John’s neck snap.
We were up to twenty miles an hour. Spotting a turn ahead that we were definitely not going to make, I threw myself on the floor and curled up in a fetal position. Impact with a decent-sized tree came shortly thereafter.
I didn’t hear the car hit the tree, the airbags deploy, or Jerry’s scream as he was thrown forward. The gunshot had temporarily deafened me. But once things were settled I could see that I was okay, the driver was still dead, and Jerry was decidedly unhappy. He was lying on the back seat—he’d bounced off the back of the passenger seat—looking dazed and resting awkwardly on his arm, which appeared broken. I left him where he was, pulled myself up, and let myself out.
The minivan had a tree-shaped dent in the front. It wasn’t totaled, but it also was no longer a viable transportation option in the immediate future. I had hoped to avoid that, but walking away intact was still a pretty good result, all things considered.
Opening the driver’s side door, I pushed over my friendly ex-captor and searched him, finding a wad of cash, a spare clip for the gun, a regular cell phone, and his satellite phone. I took each item, plus the gun itself from the floor of the minivan, then reattached my extremely useful bag strap. I would have to send a thank you note to the manufacturer. (“This strap is very sturdy and makes for an excellent murder weapon…”)
My hearing returning, I turned my attention to the injured iffrit in the back seat.
“Adam, man, you fucked up…” he whined, prone on the seat and looking up at me.
I pulled him out of the car and dropped him unceremoniously onto the smoking hood. He yelped in pain.
“Did I?” I asked. “Tell me how.”
Wincing from the broken arm I had dropped him on, he said, “Whatta ya gonna do now? You don’t even know where to go!”
“Let me worry about that. Did you really see her?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The red-haired woman. You said in Boston that you’d seen her.”
“Oh her… of course I did…”
He was lying. I held the gun to his head to emphasize my feelings regarding his veracity.
“Okay, okay!” he cried. “I needed an excuse to be there, all right? Plus, you get even more shit-faced than usual every time you think about her, and I figured that’d make you stay put until they came to take you away. But I tried to warn you!”
“Warn me? When?”
“I told you to stay away from her.”
“That’s not a warning.”
“Best I could come up with and still get paid.”
Iffrit logic.
“You described her eyes to me,” I said. “How did you know what color her eyes were?”
“What?” he laughed. “You told me that yourself, you stupid prick. Jesus, do you have any idea how much you talk about yourself when you’re drunk? You act like this whole immortality gig is one big fucking secret, and then you go tell anybody who’ll buy you a bottle. Half the fucking western world knows your deal by now. Are you really surprised at all this shit?”
I almost pulled the trigger, mainly out of spite. He was right though. I hadn’t been careful for a very long time. It used to be it wasn’t a big deal to spout off in a tavern somewhere, because odds were, nobody of consequence would be within earshot. But, it also used to be true, that a boat trip across the Mediterranean would be an effective way to disappear and that it was possible to change your name just by deciding to call yourself something different. The world had changed, and I’d lost track again. Eventually something like this was bound to happen.
“Okay.” I slipped the gun into my bag. “You can live.”
“Geez, thanks,” he muttered. I started to walk away, toward the air field.
“Hey, Adam,” Jerry called out after me.
“What?”
“Why’re you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“The girl. You were already done with her. Why do you even care?”
I smiled. “Because I’m the hero.”
Chapter 22
I’m a little worried. I deliberately led Ringo closer to the second cell this morning. The last two times we did this, the creature in that cell hit the door hard. Since Ringo hates it when that happens, I can only do this once in a while because otherwise he’ll figure out it’s intentional. Anyhow, it’s just about the only way I can check to make sure it’s still alive in there. And today, nothing. The door didn’t rock at all. And the late night booming noises stopped some time ago. Hope it’s not dead. That would mean it’s not what I thought it was, which would screw up everything.