As he pounded across the road, he heard the screech of brakes. He glanced to his right to see a minibus taxi hurtling toward him; an ancient-looking death trap of a vehicle. The driver had run the red light and now, too late, he was stamping on worn brakes, as threadbare tires skidded over the wet road. The taxi was hydroplaning, and Joey was directly in its path. The blare of its horn filled the air. He could see its windshield wipers... one moving at full speed, the other hanging down, broken.
Stop, he thought. Back!
It was the safest option. But already the skinny youth was sprinting down the opposite sidewalk and if he stopped now, he’d lose him.
Joey decided to make a run for it.
The rear of the taxi was fishtailing... its grille loomed, far too close, and the wailing of worn rubber on tarmac filled his ears. He leaped for the opposite curb, vaulting the crash barrier to safety just as the out-of-control taxi rattled past.
Usually, this sidewalk was cluttered with pedestrians at this time, but today only a few braved the elements, heads bowed under umbrellas and mackintoshes. It was easy to spot the fleeing thief darting between them. It looked as if he was heading for a beaten-up Mazda which had stopped on a yellow line, engine revving.
Frustration surging inside him, Joey realized his assailant had too much of a lead; he wasn’t going to catch him in time.
But then the youngster tripped, sprawling to his knees as a cracked manhole lid gave way. He picked himself up and carried on, limping badly, and Joey knew he had a chance.
“Stop!” Joey yelled, racing to intercept the Mazda. The driver was reversing to meet his accomplice. The passenger door swung open and the thief dived in.
But Joey was on him. A desperate lunge, and he had hold of the man’s knee, dragging him out again even as the Mazda’s driver tried to accelerate away. The thief was clinging to the seat-belt strap, his body in the moving car and his legs scissoring on the asphalt. The Mazda jerked to a stop.
“Give it back!” Joey shouted, twisting the man’s left ankle hard. From the screams that followed, he guessed he had gotten hold of the injured leg.
The man kicked out at him wildly with his right foot, but Joey grabbed it with his other hand. He clawed at Joey’s head, trying to pull his hair, but Joey’s dark buzz cut was too short for him to get a hold. One more powerful yank on the legs, and he pulled the thief right out of the car. He hit the road butt-first, then his head followed with a bump, and finally, his outstretched arms came free. He still held Joey’s rucksack in a death grip in his right hand and Joey wrenched it loose.
Street fighting had taught him his skills — crude, but effective. A kick to the crotch, and the thief forgot all about his injured ankle and curled into a ball, his screams turning to sobs.
Lying there in the rain, the young man looked vulnerable and terrified, and Joey suddenly felt sorry for him. He didn’t know the would-be mugger’s circumstances, but guessed they were even more dire than his own. At any rate, he had his possessions again, and that was what mattered. As the man crawled back to the Mazda, helped in by the visibly shaking driver, Joey shouldered the bag and turned away, jogging down the sidewalk as the rain stung his face.
He passed a streetlight with a newspaper headline poster attached to it. Torn by the wind and ripped by the hail, the print on the paper was illegible apart from a single word at the bottom.
“...COINCIDENCE?” it read.
Joey looked at the dripping newsprint as he passed, thinking of everything that had happened to him in the recent past. The word stayed in his head, refusing to leave.
He’d sure been unlucky. But had it all been coincidental?
He didn’t have Khosi’s background as a PI. He’d qualified with a business degree and worked as a forensic analyst in top-level corporate finance. Even so, he should be able to deduce if there was a pattern here, and whether this mugging and the recent burglary were linked.
Damn it, he thought, realizing he shouldn’t have let the thief get away without answering some questions. He turned, shielding his eyes against the rain, but the Mazda was gone.
Chapter 4
“You OK?” the removal-van driver called out from under the shelter of his umbrella, as he saw Joey crossing the road. “Did you catch him?”
“Yes, and yes. I got my bag back,” Joey replied, reaching over his shoulder to pat his rucksack. “Let’s load up and get out of here.”
“Never known crime to be so bad in this neighborhood,” the driver said, shaking his head. “Crazy that you can’t even walk around safely in broad daylight.” He glanced dubiously at the storm clouds, as if unsure whether this awful weather did, in fact, qualify as broad daylight.
Joey gripped the desk again firmly. But as he lifted it, he saw a silvery oval object gleaming on the pavement below.
“Just a sec,” he said, because it looked familiar. He bent and picked it up.
He was correct, and his heart quickened as he examined it.
“You dropped it?” the driver asked.
“No, it must have fallen — from somewhere under the desk, I think.”
It was Khosi’s USB storage device, specially engraved with his name, which Joey had given him as a gift. That had been only three months ago, just before all the trouble started. The device had been attached to a keyring, but Joey saw that the ring had been removed and a piece of double-sided tape attached to it.
Peeling off the tape, he pocketed the USB.
He guessed it had been stuck to the bottom of the desk. If the mugger hadn’t shoved Joey off balance and caused him to drop the desk, dislodging the device, then Joey would never have found it. It was sheer luck it had landed on the sidewalk and not in the gutter, to be washed away by the cascading storm water.
Suddenly, Joey shivered, and not just from the chill of the blowing rain.
He was wondering if this USB might contain Khosi’s suicide note.
Chapter 5
Thanking his lucky stars that his watch was waterproof, Joey checked the time and saw it had only taken ten minutes to finish loading the office furniture. The attempted mugging hadn’t caused too much of a delay.
But there was no time to check the USB he’d picked up. He needed to get to his bodyguarding assignment with Isobel Collins — the sooner, the better.
In the building’s small basement garage, he stripped off his soaked shirt and put on a dry one. He always kept a change of clothes in the trunk of his SUV, because investigation work was unpredictable. In the past, he’d often had to drive straight from a dirty, dusty site to a boardroom meeting. Today, he was especially thankful he’d packed a fresh pair of shoes and socks. His gym bag with the change of clothes was packed next to the other essentials in the Private Johannesburg world — cable ties, duct tape, rope, bottled water, and a knife.
Then he set off, joining the Friday rush-hour traffic heading out of the city center and onto the highway going east.
As soon as he got onto the road, he called Jack Morgan on his cell phone.
Jack seemed to travel almost nonstop. When Joey had phoned to break the news of Khosi’s death, Jack had been in Paris, on his way to board a plane to New York. In the few seconds this call took to connect, Joey had time to wonder in which country, and which continent, Private’s owner would be now.
“Joey.” Jack answered after just one ring, sounding concerned. “You doing OK?”
“It’s tough at the moment, but I’m coping,” Joey replied. “I’m on my way to a bodyguarding assignment. It’s the first time I’ve done this. I thought it would be routine, that it was just a tourist needing some extra security. But the lady sounds scared, and she’s staying in a very dangerous part of the city. I don’t know why she’s there. Don’t know if it’s my job to ask questions.”