The Mafia Trilogy (74 page)

“Guess what else.”

Darwin nudged his head up. “What?”

“You were right about The Scythe. He cut a swath through Toronto yesterday, stole a police car to get to this meeting and left it parked by a farm out on hole number twelve. Left Russians cut up at Yuri’s Queen Street restaurant and attacked one of his businesses in North York. Two hours ago, detectives found his body in Lake Simcoe. His throat was cut and his teeth were stomped out. Both hands and feet were missing.”

“Nasty,” was all Darwin could say. He was overjoyed that The Scythe was dead.

The medics tried to pull him away but Williams held them again.

“I found something odd, though.” Williams stepped around and stared into Darwin’s eyes. “A couple of the descriptions from witnesses didn’t fit with The Scythe’s body shape and mass. Everyone at the strip club where he killed Arkady—”

“Arkady’s dead?” Darwin interrupted. He knew where Williams was going and didn’t want to go there.

“There was a female adult store clerk that described someone closer to you than The Scythe. I called Carson Dodge in Florida and asked if you could be running around Toronto using The Scythe’s name and cutting people up with a blade. You know what he said?”

Darwin shook his head, not trusting what his mouth would say. The last thing he wanted was a long court process and possibly jail after getting free of the Russians.

“He said he could see you killing people, you’re that determined to end this, but never with scythes or blades of any sort. ‘There is no court this side of heaven that would convict Darwin Kostas for killing anyone with a blade,’ is what he said. Can you believe that? He’s not even here and he’s vouching for you.”

“Agent Williams, you have your case. You have people saying it was The Scythe. I have a phobia of sharp or pointy things—”

“Didn’t the doctor tell you something about your induced coma and the swelling on your brain the day we met? Aren’t your phobias cured?”

“You have all you need. What more do you want?” Darwin looked up at the medics who were listening intently. “I’m bleeding to death. Can you guys do something about that?”

They pushed him away, leaving Williams to stand alone in the convention center, a smile on his face.

“Hey, Darwin.”

“Yeah,” he called as they pushed him through the double doors.

“I don’t believe in vigilantism.”

“Me neither.”

“But I’ll give you a free pass.” The doors closed, but through them, Williams yelled two more words. “This time.”

Chapter 22

Darwin sat in the back of the ambulance while they patched the open cuts and exposed flesh. They explained that a doctor at the hospital would take the hooks out of his face. He was supposed to already be on his way but refused to go until he saw his wife. He told the paramedics that he would not leave without seeing her.

An FBI agent said he would find Agent Williams and ask where Rosina was taken. It had been less than five minutes since he had been wheeled out of the convention center and no one had told him where Rosina was yet.

“What the fuck is going on?” Darwin asked out loud.

The paramedics worked behind him, dabbing here and there, pasting bandages in places. He winced, gasped at times, and waited.

Williams came out of the building, met Darwin’s gaze, and shrugged.

“What does that mean?” Darwin shouted.

Both medics stopped what they were doing.

Williams raised a finger for him to wait and started walking toward Darwin. He talked into his lapel but was too far away for Darwin to hear anything.

Darwin hopped off the back of the ambulance and dropped to one knee as pain shot up from his legs. Not as pumped up on rage, his adrenaline had withered and now he felt the damage.

It took effort, but he stood and faced Williams as he approached.

“They can’t find her. I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what happened. They said everything was secure. All hostages were safe. Combatants dead or secure. I was with you and now no one knows where Rosina is.”

Darwin scanned the golf course in the immediate area. “You have got to be kidding.”

“I’m sorry, Darwin. She’ll turn up. There’s no way anything could’ve happened to her. We have fifty men here.”

Darwin turned back to Williams. “Ask Yuri. He’ll know where she is. He was the last one with her. Get the agent that has Yuri to ask him.”

Williams shook his head and grimaced. “He’s missing too.”

The horror had restarted. Just like that, Darwin felt Rosina slipping away from him again. The incompetence of the authorities was going to cost him his wife.

Darwin spun on his bare feet in the grass, walked to the front of the ambulance and hopped in the driver’s seat. The keys were in the ignition. He turned it on and dropped it into drive as Williams got to the window.

“Hey, Darwin, what are you doing? Get out of there.”

He hit the gas. Both paramedics in the back jumped out as the vehicle lurched forward.

He ground the tires into the perfectly tailored grass of the golf course, drove over the first tee box to get around all the other emergency vehicles and squealed the tires as he fled the High Hills Golf Course.

A siren screamed behind him, but he didn’t care. It would only add to the entourage as far as the public were concerned.

He hit the two-lane highway and turned east toward Highway 400. If Rosina and Yuri were gone, that meant Yuri took her as insurance. How much of a head start did they have? What kind of vehicle would they be in? Once he hit Highway 400, which ran north to Barrie or south to Toronto, which way would Yuri have gone?

Some of his bandages bent up at the edges and a couple of them tore off. Blood ran down his back like sweat, but that didn’t matter. He could spend the rest of his life healing. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life without Rosina.

Highway 400 was coming up fast. In the mirror, he saw five police cruisers on his tail, taking up both lanes of the two-lane highway when no one was coming from the other way.

North? South? North? South?

He picked north. Yuri would head toward home. He wouldn’t go to Toronto where everyone was looking for him. He would go to the quieter city of Barrie where he owned a house somewhere on Highway 93 by a golf course. The same course where Darwin was found covered in peaches.

He slowed at the ramp. For a brief moment, the ambulance tipped up on two wheels, and Darwin wondered if it would roll. The ramp ended, Darwin straightened the wheel, and the vehicle dropped onto all fours. He jammed the pedal down and checked the mirror.

All five cruisers were right behind him. He stared forward and watched the vehicles ahead for any sign of evasive action. With this much noise and lights, if Yuri was up there, he would accelerate away or get off the highway fast.

Darwin had no illusions about the head start Yuri had. How he got past all of Kirk’s men baffled him, though. He would’ve had to slink away quietly, otherwise someone would’ve seen him.

But how did he do that with Rosina? How did he keep her quiet?

“Shit!”

He pounded the dash and drove on.

Maybe they’re hiding in the basement or somewhere at the course and this is all a waste of time.

The sign for Canal Road got closer. He was on an open stretch of the 400, surrounded by farmland.

An erratic car up ahead caught his eye and his hope rose that Rosina was in that car. The black Mercedes tore across three lanes and made a small zigzag as it snaked its way down the exit to Canal Road.

That has to be him.

Darwin pushed the ambulance into the slow lane to get ready to exit, but had to go around a slow truck that had pulled onto the shoulder to make room for the emergency vehicles racing up behind him.

After passing the rig, he hung a hard right and exited the highway with a quick hop onto the flat ramp that ran parallel with the 400.

In the flat area, it was easy to see the Mercedes just over five hundred yards ahead.

Darwin turned east on Canal Road and chased the Mercedes, silently wishing Rosina was in that car and that she was still okay.

The pain in his hamstrings had become almost unbearable from sitting and jostling with the violence of the wild ride. He wiped sweat out of his eyes and checked the mirror. The cop cars were still there, like faithful dogs following their master.

He hadn’t thought to flick on the ambulance’s sirens with all the noise from the cruisers behind him.

After a full minute of chasing the Mercedes, he wasn’t getting any closer. The vehicle ahead was moving away from him.

He checked his speed and pushed the accelerator down harder, even though it was already on the floor.

His vision wavered and he felt on the edge of passing out. He was in no condition to be driving. The face looking back at him in the mirror was pale white, the eyes bloodshot.

He slapped his face twice to bring himself around, but the drowsiness persisted.

A howl escaped his lips at the injustice. He was frustrated that the Russian was getting away with Rosina as a hostage while five police officers and an ambulance chased them.

Up ahead, the Mercedes swerved then righted itself.

“What’s going on?” Darwin asked out loud.

It swerved again.

Then he watched in horror as the Mercedes left the road and went airborne. It headed for the canal that lined the left side of Canal Road. The grill hit first, shooting a white spray high in the air. The back settled and the vehicle began to sink.

Darwin kept the ambulance barreling down the road. If Rosina needed medical treatment, he had brought the perfect vehicle.

When he squealed to a stop, only part of the trunk and the bumper were still visible. He jumped out and ran to the edge of the water on legs that almost couldn’t carry him. He stumbled at the edge and fell, skinning his knee and nearly passing out again. The sharpness of the pain all over his body woke him enough for a moment of clarity.

The muffled sound of a gun ripped through the air around him. What looked like an invisible spear shot out of the water from the passenger side of the Mercedes. Then another shot rang out, cutting a white line through the water.

Someone’s firing a gun from inside the car.

The police cruisers screamed to a stop behind him. Before he passed out, his head spinning from the pain and his stomach clenching like he was going to be sick, Darwin stepped close to the water and jumped in.

The cold of the canal shocked him awake. He opened his eyes, but it was murky. The water played with the hooks in his cheeks, moving them to and fro. It seeped past the holes, slowly filling his mouth. He expelled it, but held his breath.

The Mercedes had slipped below the surface, but Darwin knew roughly where it was. He pushed hard, the pain in his arms and legs tempered by the cold water. It was a hot pain like a curling iron pressed against his skin while an air conditioner blew ice-cold air on the wound.

The Mercedes popped into view when he was a foot away from it. He followed the trunk to the passenger side, but then had to leave the slowly descending car for air as his lungs screamed at him to surface.

After a couple of large mouthfuls of air, he dropped back under. The officers on the side of the road had shouted something at him, but he couldn’t discern what they said.

At the trunk, he worked his way up the length of the vehicle and tried to open the door.

It was locked.

The glass in the front passenger window was broken.

Must’ve been the bullet.

He reached inside the broken window, aware if the shooter from a moment ago was still alive or conscious, he could get a bullet for his trouble.

The water was so dark at this level that he couldn’t see more than ten inches in front of him. Already underwater for over half a minute and losing time fast, he reached inside the car, felt for the lock release, popped it and opened the door slowly. The water of the canal had already filled the interior of the car, so the door opened, but with great effort.

Someone was in the front seat. He unclipped the seatbelt and used his hands to feel the person’s face.

Rosina sat limp.

In a panic, his own lungs willing to kill him for the urge of a single breath, he yanked Rosina out of her seat and pushed off the rim of the open door headed for the surface.

It felt too long. Suspended as they were, floating upwards, the light of the sky so far away as it rolled lazily along where the water stopped and air began.

He thrust with his legs. He twisted his body, arched it any way he could, but they just weren’t rising fast enough.