Sean Slater - The survivor

‘What?’

‘Take you out for dinner, just you and me.’ He leaned forward and rested on his forearms. ‘One night when you’re really, really hungry, Beautiful.’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever be that hungry.’

‘You might be,’ he said, and smiled.

Courtney leaned back in her chair, away from the table, away from Que until Raine got back from the rest room.

‘What you guys talk about?’ Raine asked.

‘Food,’ Courtney said. She let out a long breath. Her throat was dry, her water glass empty. She refilled it from the pitcher, drank a third of a glass, and looked back at the register, just in time to see Que get up and pay for another bottle of whisky. As he did so, he leaned forward across the counter and his white hoodie rode up at his waist.

Courtney blinked. There was something underneath the back of Que’s hoodie, something about the size of a man’s hand. And it brought back all the bad feelings she’d been experiencing ever since they’d met him two hours ago in the mall.

It was a gun.

Courtney knew it. For sure. She’d seen her father’s Sig too many times to count when he worked plainclothes or undercover.

‘Raine,’ she started, then cut herself short when Que returned to the table.

He didn’t sit down. Instead he took his wallet back out, grabbed a pair of fifties, and handed them to Raine. ‘Take a cab home,’ he said.

Her smile weakened. ‘But I thought… Well, I thought that tonight…’

‘I have to go. Meet me at the usual place tomorrow night.’

The smile slipped a little more from Raine’s face and she gave Courtney a confused look. Que grabbed her, pulled her close. He gave her a long kiss, one so deep Courtney’s cheeks grew hot and she turned momentarily away from them. When the kiss ended, Raine let out a gasp, laughed softly, and touched his face.

‘Are you sure-’

‘I have to go,’ he said again. His voice was distant, faraway. ‘Wait here for ten minutes before you leave.’

‘Wait?’

‘Just do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll be gone a while.’

‘But I thought tonight was going to be-’

‘ Enough!’ he snapped. He rubbed a hand over his face and muttered something in a language Courtney didn’t understand. ‘I should never have gotten this close to you.’

Raine gave him a lost look. ‘I don’t understand.’

Que looked back at her, said nothing for a long moment, then he touched her face softly.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s me. Go home.’

Raine nodded. ‘You’ll call?’

‘Meet me tomorrow, like we’d planned. We’ll talk more then.’

He kissed her again, hard, then turned away and grabbed the bottle of whisky. He spoke to the young Asian girl at the cash register, and she led him through the kitchen out the rear entrance. The door slammed closed, so loudly the girls heard it in the eating area, and then they were alone again, just the two of them in a strange back alley restaurant that had no menus or sign or name. A place where people left by the back door.

Striker drove.

They took the soft decline of Dunbar Street, heading south towards Kerrisdale. Traffic was heavy, the narrow roadway clotted from the rush-hour flow. Everyone was fighting to make their way home under the dark shroud of cloudbanks. Road conditions were poor. Striker felt the car slip on an oily patch of rain, and he eased off the gas.

No point in dying just yet.

‘We should be calling the Emergency Response Team.’ Felicia spoke the words with authority, and it was the fourth time she had said this to Striker.

‘And like I’ve told you, there’s no time for that. We call in ERT and this will turn into a six- or seven-hour standoff. You know how it is with those guys. Next thing you know we’ll have dogmen on scene, and Laroche will show up and call for a negotiator — and then we’ll have a real wait on our hands.’

Felicia rested her head against the window. ‘Fine. Your call, Jacob. But Laroche is gonna freak, and you know it.’

‘All the more reason to do it.’ When Felicia didn’t respond, Striker explained his reasoning. ‘Look, all we got on this Raymond Leung kid is circumstantial at best. Friendship and absenteeism. Nothing. We don’t have one bit of hard proof that Raymond Leung is involved in anything worse than skipping class.’

Felicia bit her lip. ‘Still, Laroche should know.’

‘Forget Laroche.’

‘I’m just saying-’

‘You’re always “just saying”. Haven’t you ever noticed how the guy never makes a decision? Not on anything? He just shows up for the news conference and reiterates decisions other people have made. Gets his fat face on TV and takes absolutely no responsibility for anything. Not ever.’

‘Can I finish a sentence?’

‘Who’s stopping you?’

‘You are, and you’d know that if you listened to yourself as much as you want other people to.’ She took in a deep breath, then continued, ‘All I’m saying is, yes, the man has flaws. We all do. But for some reason, you’ve got it in for him. You provoke him. Like you did back at the school.’

‘Back at the school?’

‘Yes.’

‘I provoked him?’

‘You were a bit harsh.’

‘He wanted my gun.’

‘He has a right to it, Jacob. A legal right. Hell, an obligation. And you challenged him on it, right in front of everyone. You gave him nowhere to go, no way out. Like you always do with anyone who so much as blocks your way.’

‘You saying I’m a bull in a China shop?’

‘More like a rampaging rhino.’ She let loose a soft laugh, then stopped talking for a moment, as if replaying the scene in her mind.

Striker held his tongue on this one. Because he had to. It was typical of Felicia to never leave anything be. She would just pick and pick and pick until there was nothing left. Sometimes, with her, it was better to let things go.

The light changed to green, and Striker drove south on Dunbar. When they crossed Forty-First Avenue, he reached down and made sure his gun was snug in its shoulder-holster. Just feeling the grip brought him a sense of calm. He gave Felicia a glance.

‘We’re getting close. Call for another unit — preferably plain-clothes. We’ll need them stationed out back in case this prick runs.’

Felicia got on her cell, called Dispatch, got a unit started up.

A few turns later, on Balsam Street, Striker killed the headlights and pulled over. The twilight was deepening, the dark sky purpling under the growing reaches of night and angry cloud. Striker stared through the darkness, thankful for the few streetlights that splattered the road.

Far down Balsam Street, at the end of the roundabout, stood a large, square, two-storey house. It was a modern special — made up of big dark windows and grey concrete walls — and front-lit only by the weak light of the streetlamps.

Striker pointed ahead to it. ‘That’s Quenton Wong’s residence, or at least where he’s listed as staying.’

‘What about Raymond Leung?’

‘Leung is an exchange student. Apparently, he lived with Quenton in his parents’ house.’ Striker shrugged. ‘That’s all I could get from Caroline.’

He pulled out his cell and called Information. After obtaining the telephone number for the residence, he called it, let the phone ring a dozen times, got no answer and hung up.

‘No one’s home,’ he said. ‘Or no one’s answering. No machine either.’

Felicia never took her eyes off the house. ‘No lights are on.’

‘Means nothing. God knows, if I was on the run, every light in the house would be off and I’d be as heavily armed as possible.’ He located the magazine release on his pistol, he pushed the button and slid out the mag, made sure it was topped up, then reloaded. He glanced down at Felicia’s chest, looking for a trauma plate bump.