Jeff Abbott - Fear

That didn’t bode well. Miles jiggled the broken bracelet. ‘What’s Frost?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t sit around pondering the meaning of my ID bracelet.’ But Miles didn’t believe him; the kid’s gaze returned to the floor.

‘Why are you waiting for Allison in the dark with a gun?’

No answer.

‘I can haul your ass straight down to the police, Nathan.’

‘I took it from that guy – you said his name was Sorenson. Hit him over the head when he came in the back door.’ Now he stretched an empty hand toward Miles. ‘Give me the gun and the clip back and we’ll part ways.’

‘No. We’re going to talk to Sorenson. Together. Find out what he did to Allison-’

Then they heard a click from the front door lock. Not a key sliding into it; a pick, working the mechanism. Miles knew the subtle difference in the whisper of metal forcing metal.

Someone was breaking into the house.

‘Allison?’ Nathan turned toward the door.

‘It’s not her,’ Miles said. Jesus, he’d unloaded the gun, that was stupid. He knocked over the lamp, fumbled for the clip in his pocket. ‘Get in the back bedroom. Lock the back door.’

Nathan Ruiz muttered, ‘The guards can’t find me, they can’t know she helped me-’ He spun on his heels, ran out onto the balcony, jumped over the railing. Miles grabbed at him and missed. Ruiz tumbled fifteen feet, landed in dirt and gravel, slid into the pinon trees, scrambled down the hillside that led to Cerro Gordo. Making a panicky, noisy escape.

The front door opened. Miles saw a tall figure in the spilled light from the toppled lamp, male, thickly built. Miles, retreating against the railing, saw a gun tracking his path.

Miles vaulted off the balcony. He heard the awful vroot of the silencer; the heat of the warped bullet passed above his shoulders, jetted near his scalp. He screamed.

He landed, twisted into the gravel, tumbled down against a pinon trunk, wrenched himself free. He sat on his butt and skidded down the rest of the way, down from the private driveway and the house onto the unpaved stretch of Cerro Gordo.

He heard the sound of a second muffled shot in the blackness above his head. To his left, feet pounded gravel; Nathan, panting as he ran. Follow him, and maybe they catch you both. So Miles bolted to the right, running hard and clean, zigzagging on the darkened road.

He heard a pursuer following him off the balcony, sliding down the pebbled slope. To his left lay a patchwork of houses, yards, undeveloped land. He jumped over an adobe wall, fell down into a side yard, ran past a kitchen window where light gleamed and children pleaded for chocolate ice cream for dessert. Over another fence, down a strip of driveway, the sound of his pursuer drawing closer.

Miles vaulted over a few more fences, then he ran into an open stretch of darkness. Armijo Park, he’d noticed it on the hike up Cerro Gordo. Flat, plenty of room for dogs to frolic, kids to run and play tag and football. He ran across the parking lot, caught his leg on a chain that fenced the park, sprawled on the grass. He could hear the pursuer and now a searchlight sparked from an approaching car, sweeping across the park.

He got up and ran, hard, not in a straight line, trying to dodge the circle of light that hunted him past the fence, past the playground, past the swings and slides. The clouds covered the sky and the gurgle of the Santa Fe River rose in the breeze. Usually the river ran dry or with the barest trickle, but now it surged with the recent heavy rains and snowmelt.

Get across the river, hide in the neighborhood, hunker down… Then his shoes hit the smooth glass of polished stone and he remembered the river still had to be across the street and below him, at least fifty feet, and he skidded into empty air.

Dead. Dead in a straight drop to rocks and then he crashed through a web of tree limbs. He grabbed at a cottonwood branch that smacked hard into his back, missed, fell, hit another one, rolled along its edge, arms flailing, fell again, thinking in a crazy jag, This’ll smash out my brains and I’ll be fixed.

But the next branch caught his weight, held, then cracked with a slow groan, and he let his weight slide down the creaking bough. Listened. No sound of a man still giving chase. The spotlight danced above him, a car driving into the park itself, searching. Hunting him.

He scissored his legs out over empty air. The branch snapped again. He let go.

The land rose in a sharp shift and Miles hit the ground after a ten-foot drop that jarred his ankles, sent him sliding. His legs caught a cactus, the spines needling through his thin khakis, and he howled. But he stumbled to his feet, navigated through a maze of trees, and saw a car driving by, its headlights painting the night.

East Alameda. He ran out onto the road, eased himself down the shallow bank, forged the thread of river in a few steps, the cold water soothing against his tree-and-rock-scored hands. He clambered up the side of the bank, glancing over his shoulder. No gunman. No police car. Nobody.

Across the street, the river, up the hill, the spotlight winked out, like a giant’s eye closing.

He wandered into the riverside neighborhood and ran through the spiderweb of streets. A dim orange glowed against the cloud bottoms to his right – Allison’s office, or the building next to it, still burning.

‘You still got the gun?’ Andy asked him, walking beside him, unruffled.

He groped along his belt. No. The Beretta was gone, lost in the tumbles he’d taken. But jammed deep in his jacket pocket, he touched the crumpled confession he’d written for Allison.

‘Losing the gun’s for the best,’ Andy said. ‘It would make my killing you a lot easier. What now?’

Miles didn’t answer. He walked, steering clear of Palace and the fire engines. He could smell the smoke on the wind. He stumbled across the empty Plaza – Santa Fe rolled up early most nights – and along the side streets until he reached his rooms. He washed his hands and face clean of dirt, sprayed antibacterial lotion on his palms and on his cheek. The bleeding from his head had stopped, clotted in his hair. He dumped his wet clothes in a pile, extracted a trio of cactus spines from his leg. He sat on the edge of the bed, wondered what Sangriaville meant, who was Nathan Ruiz, who was the man who had tried to kill him, why Sorenson had come to Allison’s house, and tried not to imagine Allison vanishing in a ball of flame.

The red cell phone on the table. Hers, he’d seen her use it before. She’d left it at her house. He tried her cell phone again. Two rings. The phone clicked on. But silence.

‘Hello?’ Miles whispered. Then against all hope: ‘Allison?’

‘You and I both know she’s not here.’ A man’s voice. Low, gravelly.

‘Where is Allison?’

‘All burned up. I think you know that, mister, because I think you and Ruiz were part of her plan.’

‘I don’t know what the hell you mean.’

‘I heard your voice,’ the voice said, ‘on the other side of Allison’s door. So don’t pretend you weren’t the asshole with Ruiz that ran away from me.’

Miles sat on the bed. ‘Okay, I won’t pretend. Who are you?’

‘I don’t like names.’

‘Did you kill her? Do you work with Sorenson?’

‘I don’t know who the hell that is.’

‘You’re lying,’ Miles said, but the voice talked over him: ‘Allison took property of mine and I doubt it coincidentally got blown up with her. I’ll pay you for the research. We can reach a deal. But you’re going to give it back, or you’re dead.’

Miles counted to ten, thinking, trying to figure out how to play the shooter. ‘I can’t give you what she took if I don’t know what exactly it is…’