122 Rules (20 page)

Where Monica’s modest bungalow once stood, a raging inferno consumed the space. Staring at the cratered, burning house, understanding dawned, and he slinked away to where the motorcycle sat hidden. His head screamed in protest as he righted then pushed the big bike down the road. He wanted to climb on and drive away, but he had to keep the noisy engine from attracting unwanted attention.

After he had gotten a safe distance away, he started the bike and rode off. Stopping at the same wide patch in the road where he had sent the email, he turned off the engine. Instead of helping, the silence only seemed to exacerbate the hornets, armed with ball peen hammers, pounding in the inside of his skull.

Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed Josha’s number.

“Done?”

Sam wondered if his boss even knew how to say the word
hello
. “Well, in a manner of speaking. Someone got to her first.”

“What happened?”

Sam fought through the daze that still plagued him from the explosion and relayed the details of his evening, leaving out the part where he failed to pull the trigger.

Josha remained silent, and Sam gave him time to process the turn of events. After a minute his superior asked, “So, you’re sure she’s dead.”

“I saw her in the scope right before the place went up. No one could live through that.”

“All right. Consider the case closed.”

Though unsatisfied, Sam had no choice but to let it go. Whether by his hand or someone else’s, Monica had died, and nothing further could be accomplished by continuing the investigation. The injustice of her demise tried to assert itself, and he shoved it away. “So what’s next?”

“What’s next is a little R&R.”

“What?” Sam recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “Where are you sending me?”

“Nowhere. That’s the point.”

“I don’t need a vacation. Just tell me what my next assignment is.”

“Look, Sam, I just checked the records, and you haven’t taken any time off in almost four years. I’m not giving you anything for three weeks. I can’t; it’s policy.”

Sam started to protest, “I don’t—”

“And,” Josha interrupted, “if you fight me, I’ll make it a month.”

“Okay, I’m not arguing, just telling you how it is.”

“Go on.”

Sam pursed his lips. He didn’t want, nor did he need, to lie around doing nothing when so much had to be fixed in the world. He had been born to protect his country from the threats that bombarded it, and he couldn’t do that from the sidelines. “I don’t need any time off. Really. I have plenty of down time on assignment. Besides, I like to keep busy.”

“Sam, have you ever thought about having a life? When was the last time you spent the night in your own apartment?”

“I was there three months ago.”

“Only because you were tracking Monica and one of the leads was in L.A.”

“Still…”

“Look, you are one of the best, but regulations are regulations. Go do something besides work. Meet a girl. Get laid. Go surfing. According to your file you used to do that, remember? But whatever you do, don’t call me.”

Sam punched his bike. “Fine. Three weeks.”

“Good man. Have fun,” Josha said and disconnected the call.

Sam opened the music streaming service on his phone and chose one of his traveling blues channels. Though it killed his head, he turned up the volume to drown out the voice of his conscience who wanted to continue to ponder, question, and work through his unresolved feelings for his mother or whatever.
Kiss my ass, Chet.

He took one last look around the arid wasteland, started the Triumph, and dropped it into gear. A minute later, he crossed the city limits of the thriving metropolis of Walberg to the soulful melancholy guitar riffs of Stevie Ray as the talented prophet sang about the crying sky.

You tell ’em, Stevie
.
Poor bastards sure as shit could use a few tears or something from Heaven.
Sam gunned the engine and headed towards home.

PART 3

24

Monica drove out of Walberg on the back streets to keep off the main thoroughfare. Not many roads crossed the desert, so she took the first highway she came to, teeth rattling. Her hands shook so hard she could barely keep the Audi in its lane. But as full-on darkness descended and the miles spun out, the shaking subsided.

A sign flashed in her high beams, indicating the town of Sinalta lay just ahead. The fuzzy map in her head pinned her at about seventy miles east of Walberg. As she passed through the decrepit little city on the edge of nowhere, a pair of headlights snapped to life in her review mirror. Monica’s breath caught in her throat. Her knuckles turned white as she bore down on the steering wheel and pressed down on the accelerator. The Audi responded, sailing over the blacktop with a smooth grace. But no matter how fast she moved, the lights grew larger as the other car closed the gap. She needed to go faster, but it took all of her effort just to keep from veering off the road.

Monica cursed. It hadn’t taken the homicidal bomber long to find her. He must have waited just in case he missed, and now he chased her with a raging intensity so great only her complete annihilation could soothe his fanatical desire for carnage. No chances this time. No mistakes. She wouldn’t be able to elude him and couldn’t hide in the desert, but she’d be damned if she wouldn’t make him work for it. Monica pressed harder on the gas pedal. The engine growled in response, and the wind howled like a demon.

As the pursuing vehicle caught up, the glare of its lights—level with the Audi’s back window—shone through with a blinding intensity that scorched her eyes. At any second the deranged killer would bump her, sending her car careening into a cactus or flying into a culvert. Suddenly, the tailgating car swept out into the oncoming lane and moved up beside her. Terror shrieked through her veins as Monica dared to look over, certain she would see the madman with a gun aimed in her direction.

A pickup full of teenage boys, laughing and hollering on the lonesome highway, met her gaze. One of the hooligans in the back of the truck took a long pull off his beer, then tossed the empty and stood. Wrapping his arm around the roll bar, he turned and dropped his pants, mooning her. The boy’s friends howled with approval. Monica rolled her eyes then flipped them the bird, which only made them hoot and holler louder.

Ahead, a cross street intersected with the highway. At the last second, she slammed on the brakes and spun the wheel. The Audi chewed gravel, its tires squealing in anger, but as the rubber grabbed hold of the asphalt, she floored the accelerator around the corner.

She watched in her review mirror, but the truck did not give chase. Fear gave way to the anger that surged in her blood. This should never have happened. The FBI should have been watching out for her. Crew Cut’s only job had been to keep her safe, and with her on such a tight leash, he should have been able to do so with ease. It’s not like she’d gone anywhere or told anyone…

Her eyes widened as an image of the man on the motorcycle flashed through her mind. Peter. It couldn’t be a coincidence that he’d appeared on the same day she’d gotten her tracking device off. Or that he’d left town, and then her house had been blown to smithereens.

But had Crew Cut been under orders to remove her tracking device? If so, and the FBI agent proved to be innocent, who in the organization had told him to do so? Jon? If not, then Crew had been bribed or otherwise finagled, and the FBI had a corrupt agent in their ranks.

Peter had been hired to kill her, but why hadn’t he just done so? Why seduce her first? Maybe using the victim one last time for his own pleasure had become part of the assassin’s creed?

Of course, she’d been using him too. She’d wanted to strike back and screw with the FBI in any way she could. A smug expression crossed her lips at the idea of Crew Cut and his hoard frantically making phone calls as she spilled all to Peter.

But then her smile faltered. Could she be as much to blame for Peter getting at her as the people in charge of keeping her safe? Why did she always fight the system so hard? Maybe if she’d just gone with the flow, things would have worked out. Laven would have died or something, and she could have gone back to her regular life. Unlikely, but not impossible. He had to have enemies. And really, what had possessed her to open her damned mouth and tell Peter her name in the first place? And shouldn’t the FBI have come barreling in the second she’d revealed herself?

These questions circled her mind like vultures targeting an injured deer.

This wasn’t the life she’d envisioned when she started at NYU. She’d hated her life in Walberg—the city was shit and most of its citizens assholes.

Until the incident at the library, Monica had always been in control of her own destiny. She had given that up for a while, but now the time had come to take the reins back. Somehow.

She could hypothesize scientific principles, calculate derivatives, and ponti
ficate on the philosophers of the Renaissance, but evading the FBI and hitmen? Phantom ideas barraged her at such a dizzying pace, each of them vying for her undivided attention, that she could not maintain focus on any one of them. Just as she attempted to grasp one of these roaming specters, it dissolved.

Monica took a deep breath and quelled the stymieing thoughts. What did she know? From the mystery novels she consumed by the barrelful, she knew not to use her credit cards or cell phone. In fact...Monica fumbled in her purse and shut the FBI-issued phone off. She opened the Audi’s window and threw the little marvel of technology into the gutter, watching in the mirror as it hit the side of the road and broke into a dozen pieces.

In the fictitious renditions of life as portrayed on the silver screen, the police often snared their quarry by triangulating signals or whatever. The task, so trivial and commonplace, had become part of the standard curriculum in Law Enforcement 101. Inexperienced as she was, she nevertheless wanted to make it as difficult as possible for Jon and his goons to apprehend her. Picturing the smug expression on the bastard’s face when they captured her due to some rookie mistake only doubled her resolve.

So she did the only thing she could think of: put as much distance between herself and Walberg as possible.

* * *

The all-night truck stop where Monica stopped to fill up the little Audi had an attached convenience store that carried everything from auto parts to cheeseburgers. She bought some food and basic supplies for life on the lam, including a pre-paid cell. As she loaded her purchases into the trunk, she noticed the pump jockey leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette, eyeing the flashy little red sports car.

Shit
. She sighed, and her shoulders drooped. Could she drive anything more conspicuous? She needed to maintain as low a profile as possible, an infeasible task as long as her wheels looked like they belonged parked at an A-list celebrity auction.

Maybe she could find someone willing to trade their Buick or Chevy for the Audi? But that seemed messy and time consuming; besides, she didn’t have the title, and the registration would be in Lisa’s name. What if the person she tried to sell it to thought she’d stolen it and called the police?

She closed the trunk, went back into the store, and returned a few minutes later lugging several bags, which she added to the ones already in the small trunk. Apprehensive relief filled her when she saw the jockey no longer lounged against the wall, but prudence told her to put this place behind her as quickly as possible.

Walberg had receded in her rearview mirror but so too had the adrenaline rush that had propelled her, and she found herself yawning as exhaustion filled the chasm left in its wake.

But before finding somewhere to spend the night, she had more to do.
She started the car, and steered it out of the lot and back onto the road. After a
nother hour of driving and then the headlights flashed on a sign for the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. Monica guided the car into the deserted parking and surveyed her surroundings.

No cars lingered in the deep pockets of shadow that lay like seas of inky darkness outside the sparse pools of eerie yellow light cast by the overhead fluorescents. She paused, listening, but could hear nothing save for the crickets and the occasional truck as it downshifted on the lonesome highway.

Satisfied no one would bear witness, she opened the car’s little trunk and removed the large tire iron she’d purchased at the truck stop. The Audi’s creators had built the car for those screaming for attention. Fire-engine red, compact, and sleek, the design fell woefully short of satisfying her current needs.

Monica intended to spray paint the car and be done with it. But the shiny metal gleamed under the artificial light, beckoning. She walked around Lisa’s little indulgence, looking for just the right place. She found a spot that seemed particularly tempting and raised the heavy iron over her head, then brought it around in an arc—not dissimilar to the one she’d used to bash the brains in of the man who tried to rape her all those years ago—and smashed it into the passenger door.

It made a deep
whomp
as metal met metal and teeth-rattling vibrations reverberated through her arms and shoulders. She raised the iron and brought it down again, the dent evolving into a divot. She moved a few inches to the rear and gave the divot a twin, then another.