Austin Camacho - Damaged goods

“Sure it has. You.”

“Huh?” The road curved, and the water veered to his right. Hannibal turned the next corner to again face the silver he saw shining under the moon.

“You are the bad thing that’s happened to him. I think maybe you are an agent of the cosmos, sent here to right the balance.”

“Okay, you’re higher than I thought.” A loud cough from the back seat cut across his mind, shorting out any other ideas. Mariah coughed again, louder, and Hannibal pulled to the curb.

“I think she’s choking,” Missy said, twisted around in her seat. Hannibal slipped the shifter out of gear and yanked the emergency brake, jumped out of his car, ran around to the passenger side and yanked the back door open. Mariah appeared to still be only half conscious, gagging on her own vomit. Hannibal grabbed her under her arms and slid her out onto the narrow strip of grass at the edge of the sidewalk. Her breathing deepened as he wiped her mouth. Sitting up seemed to be all she needed so he propped her against a tree. The cool, wet grass dampened his knees. Her pulse was a little slow, her breathing irregular, and her pupils dilated under the streetlight, but all that could be caused by any number of drugs. If he knew where a clinic was, he’d drive her to it.

A feeling of relief washed over him when he heard an engine approaching. It was one of those four-wheel drive monsters from the sound of it. It was probably a local resident on his way home from a late party. Who else would be out on the streets at this hour? Surely the driver would know where the nearest hospital was.

“Hey Missy! Flag that guy down.”

Missy rolled her window down. “What, in my underwear?”

Hannibal stood. “Good point.” He walked to the middle of the street. Bathed in the headlight beams he waved his arms overhead. The vehicle stopped just past the corner and turned to the right so that it blocked the street. Without the lights shining into his eyes he could see the vehicle more clearly. It was a Jeep.

Derek’s Jeep.

“Damn.” Hannibal yanked his car door open. He had one leg in the car when a gunshot split the night silence and he felt the slug punch into his car door. Missy’s scream drowned out the slam of him pulling the door shut. He yanked the shifter into first gear, cranked the wheel and spun his tires whipping the Volvo in the opposite direction from the Jeep. He heard another shot, but couldn’t tell if it had hit his car or not.

Now the welcoming narrow residential streets were far less hospitable. Instead they were too small for maneuver. The Jeep’s lights burned his eyes in the rearview mirror. At the second corner he pulled his car into a sharp right turn. The Jeep followed.

“Are we in trouble?” Missy asked.

“Not if we can find a cop car.”

Missy jumped at the sound of another gunshot. “Don’t you have a gun?”

“Sure,” Hannibal said. “My Sig Sauer is strapped under the glove compartment. You want it?”

“I can’t shoot a gun.”

“Well I try not to either, when I’m driving.”

As Hannibal approached the next corner another car was racing toward them. The other driver slammed to a halt at the intersection. Maybe the driver was waiting for Hannibal’s car to pass. His elbow stuck out the window. The engine thrummed so confidently Hannibal could hear it over his own humming engine's sound. It was a big car. The top was down and its white interior glowed ghost-like inside a fiery red shell.

“Jesus,” Hannibal mumbled through clenched teeth. It was half curse, half prayer. Rod leaned forward behind the steering wheel as Hannibal cranked hard to get around the corner to his right. A high-pitched crack slammed his ears followed by the dull thud of a bullet punching through his rear quarter panel. Missy screamed again and fumbled with her seat belt, trying to crouch lower.

Hannibal drove as quickly as he dared through the residential streets with Rod’s hybrid muscle car on his tail. In his mind’s eye he imagined Derek in the Jeep coming around from his right at the next intersection. They would be herding him away from the beach, toward ever more isolated streets until they could corner him or run him off the road and Rod could exact his revenge on Hannibal for deceiving him and taking his women. He might never know what this was all about and that, to Hannibal, was unacceptable.

The corner yard on his right was wide enough for Hannibal to see the approaching Jeep halfway up the block. They moved closer and closer to one another, apparently on a ninety-degree collision course. Missy sat frozen, staring out her window at the incoming open vehicle. She knew these men better than Hannibal did, but he suspected that this was not a situation that fell within her understanding. She knew violence as play but he wondered if she had missed the rage underlying it.

In the second before Hannibal cranked his wheel hard to the left he was not quite close enough to see Derek’s eyes, but he could clearly see the oversized revolver in his right hand. Rod had given the boy a. 44 and probably carried one himself. Listening to his tires squealing as he whipped around the corner, Hannibal wanted to ask Missy if the boys were compensating for something, but didn’t think she’d find this line of conversation humorous right then.

Another gunshot sounded, this one a wild shot that never came close to his car. Those boys were more dangerous to the locals than to him. If this kept up much longer some innocent would be hurt or killed. Where the hell were the police? Hannibal had heard that Virginia Beach had more cops per capita than any community in the nation except Las Vegas. Surely someone had reported these maniacs shooting up a quiet suburban neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning. How could they get away with it so close to the beach? And that was when he realized that the water he was working toward had no beach in front of it.

“What the hell is this?”

“It’s one of the lakes,” Missy said, sounding short of breath. “I think. Maybe Lake Holly. It’s spread all over this area with little inlets and stuff where vacationers can keep their boats.”

“Great.” Hannibal’s hand slipped on the gearshift lever, wet with perspiration. Now he had no idea where the ocean was. Breathing was getting harder. He pretended it was the humidity and powered down his window. A swampy odor wafted in. Lakes always smelled nasty to him.

A narrow bridge loomed ahead. He would have to slow down a little to cross it. Rod’s Corvorado filled Hannibal’s mirror, its engine so loud it drowned out his pounding heartbeat. On the grid in his head Hannibal could see Derek circling around in the Jeep to get to the first corner on the other side of the bridge. Hannibal couldn’t afford to slow down very much.

“Come on, old friend,” he muttered under his breath. “Get me over this one obstacle fast enough and I think we’ll be home free.”

The bridge was wooden, arched high like a medieval monastery gateway. The water on either side of it was thick with reeds, lily pads and flotsam he couldn’t identify in the colorless moonlight. It must be lovely to stroll past on a warm summer day. Then it would be picturesque, charming, maybe even calming. This night, the bridge was simply an obstacle.

Hannibal slammed the accelerator to the floor just as his front tires touched the first slats of the bridge. He figured that Rod’s rear-wheel drive car couldn’t possibly hit the bridge this hard. Rod would lose ground and he would gain just enough to race past the Jeep at the intersection, dodging them both. All he had to do was to keep a tight grip on the wheel and allow the Volvo to go airborne past the crest of the bridge.

No! Hannibal’s eyes stretched wide as he reached the midpoint and saw the headlights of the little Toyota. What kind of idiot was driving around at this time of night? And hadn’t he heard the Volvo racing toward him? Why was he driving toward the bridge? In truth, they might have been able to pass each other if Hannibal was driving at a reasonable speed. But his speed was nowhere near normal and he would crush the other car in a second unless he did something radical.