Jeff Abbott - Panic

‘Here’s where you start trusting me. We need new wheels. That soccer mom’s calling the cops, no doubt. Turn here.’

Evan drove into a shopping plaza that had been caught in the last economic downturn, half the storefronts empty, the others held by an Episcopal thrift shop, a used-book store, a taqueria, and a mom-and-pop office supplies store. A center on its last legs until the inevitable midtown gentrification.

But full of people, Evan thought. He could get away. Yell for help. The parking lot wasn’t too crowded, but if Gabriel let him park close to a store, he could run into the shops.

‘Show me you’re smart.’ Gabriel gave Evan a cool stare. ‘No running, no yelling for help. Because if you force my hand, someone gets hurt. I don’t want it to be you.’

‘You said you’re the good guy.’

‘Good is a relative concept in my line of work. Be still, shut up, and you’ll be fine.’

Evan surveyed the parking lane. Two women, laughing, getting into a station wagon, carrying grease-spotted bags from the taqueria. An elderly woman with a cane hobbled toward the office supplies shop. Two black-togged twenty-year-olds window-shopped at the resale store.

‘Don’t test me, Evan,’ Gabriel said. ‘None of these good folks need trouble today, do they?’

Evan shook his head.

‘Park next to this beauty.’

Evan stopped the Ford next to an old gray Chevrolet Malibu. A sticker on the back window announced that a child was an honor student at a local high school.

‘I didn’t plan on your mother getting killed and rescuing your ass from the police in a car that could be identified. Pop the hood, like we’re jumping the battery.’ Gabriel stepped out of the Ford, fiddled at the Malibu’s lock with a slim finger of metal, opened it, dove under the steering column for a fast hot-wiring.

Open the door. Get out and run. He’s bluffing.

Evan opened the door and Gabriel was back in the car, gun at Evan’s ribs. ‘What part of don’t do you not get? I told you not to force my hand. Shut the door.’

Evan closed the door.

Gabriel ducked back into the Malibu and put his head back under the wheel.

Leave a sign, Evan thought. He stared down at the wheel. His fingers. He pressed his fingertips against the steering wheel. Then forefinger and middle finger against the ashtray and the face of the radio. He didn’t know what else to do; it was the only trace of himself he could think to leave.

Gabriel gestured him over with the gun. Evan got into the car, behind the steering wheel. The car smelled of a sun-spoiled milk shake and the backseat held a stack of yellowing Southern Living magazines.

Gabriel returned to the Ford and quickly wiped it down. Evan’s heart sank. He watched Gabriel smear a cloth along the steering wheel, the doorknobs, the windows. He was fast and efficient.

But not the radio.

Gabriel left the Ford’s keys in the ignition.

Gabriel slid into the Malibu’s passenger seat next to Evan, tossed out the leftover milk shake. Evan headed out of the lot, slow and casual, and merged into a steady stream of Burnet Road traffic.

Gabriel fished a baseball cap from where it rested on the backseat. He shoved it down hard on Evan’s head. He stuck a pair of woman’s sunglasses that had rested on the middle seat onto Evan’s nose. ‘Your face will be all over the news tonight.’ Gabriel’s lips were a thin, pale line; Evan saw, for the first time, he’d left a rising bruise on Gabriel’s jaw when he’d punched Gabriel at the house. ‘I’d prefer no one be able to recognize you.’

‘Please listen to me. Really listen to me. My mom doesn’t have your files, whatever it is you or this Jargo guy wants. This is a huge mistake.’

‘Evan, in your life, nothing is as it seems,’ Gabriel said softly.

The statement made no sense, but then it did. His mother, packing up bags for an extended secret trip. Her demand he return home immediately without explanation. His father not where he was supposed to be. Carrie, gone this morning, quitting her job, calling him and warning him back to Houston. You’re in danger. Serious danger. Carrie. How would she know his life had crumbled into dust since last night?

‘Get onto the highway here. Head south to 71 West.’

Evan eased onto MoPac, the major north-south highway on Austin’s west side, pushed the speed up to sixty. After fifteen minutes MoPac ended, merging onto Highway 71, which fed into the rolling Hill Country west of Austin. ‘You said you’d explain the situation to me.’

Gabriel watched the traffic.

‘You promised me.’ Evan pushed the accelerator up to seventy. He was sick of being pushed around; a sudden awful rage burned into his skin.

‘When we get settled.’

‘No. Now. Or I crash this car.’ He knew he would do it. At least take the car off the road, let Gabriel’s side be torn up by the wire fencing marking property lines, render the Malibu undrivable.

Gabriel frowned, as though deciding whether to play along. ‘Well, you might.’

‘I will.’

‘Your mother has certain files that would be devastating to certain people. Powerful people. Your mom wanted my help in getting out of the country in exchange for those files.’

‘Who? What people?’

‘It’s best you not know specifics.’

‘I don’t have these files.’ Evan rocketed past a pickup truck. Every day they handed out tickets in Austin, here he was speeding like a maniac, and he couldn’t get a police officer’s attention. Traffic was light and the few cars he raced behind politely moved over to the right lane.

‘I think you do,’ Gabriel said, ‘but you don’t know it. Slow it down and drive steady if you want to know more.’ Gabriel nudged the shotgun into Evan’s kidney.

‘Tell me everything you know about my mom. Now.’ Evan floored the accelerator. ‘Tell me, asshole, or we’re both dead.’

The last thing Evan saw was the speedometer inching past ninety as Gabriel slammed his fist into Evan’s head, sending it smashing into the driver’s window, and the world went black.

S teven Jargo was killing mad. He hated failure. It was a rare occurrence, but it haunted him longer than most men, and he despised the sensation of panic that was a misstep’s inevitable partner in his world. Work went well or badly; a middle ground was only a theory. Panic was weakness, a lack of preparation and resolve, a poison for his heart. The last time he had been afraid was when he’d committed his first murder, but that terror soon dissipated, like smoke caught in a breeze.

But now he was scared and running, his hands scraped raw from sliding along the rooftop of the Casher house when all hell had broken loose in the kitchen while he was erasing the upstairs computer. He had dropped down to the cool of the yard, crashing into Donna Casher’s rosebushes, thorns ripping at his hands, and seen Dezz running out the back door, heard the shriek of the bullets, and they had both retreated to their car parked one street away. The noise meant police, and the police always drove fastest in wealthier areas.

Jargo had rented an empty apartment in Austin yesterday, under a different name and for cash, and perhaps it wasn’t safe but they had no other place to go.

‘At least one of them.’ Dezz breathed hard as Jargo drove twenty miles over the limit to a quiet, faded neighborhood on the east side of town. ‘Shaved head. Old like you. Mexican-looking. That’s all I saw.’ Dezz dabbed at his head, reassuring himself that a bullet hadn’t tweaked his skull. He jabbed a caramel in his mouth, chewed fast. ‘Didn’t recognize him. I saw a blue Ford on the street. License plate XXC, didn’t see the rest. Texas plates.’