Steven Gould - Jumper:Griffin _s Story

Going to live with Alejandra had doomed Sam and Consuelo. If I hadn't sent the INS in, would the agents still be alive?

If I hadn't used my real name with E.V. or real details about where I lived. Me, me, me, it was all me.

I hated myself. I even thought about the pills down the tunnel. I fell asleep and had nightmares. I woke up and the reality was just as bad.

E.V.'s smell was a torment and a comfort and I thought about wrapping myself in her coat, going down the old tunnel, and getting the pills.

I soaked in that for a while-wallowed, really-but then the other common denominator gradually surfaced.

Them.

I snatched San Diego Sheriff's Department investigator Bob Vigil from the parking lot at the Lemon Grove substation. He'd just shut the door on his car and was turning toward the building when I appeared, grabbed his collar, and jumped. He came down on his back, hard, in the Empty Quarter, but his hand came out from under his coat with his service automatic pretty darn fast.

I wasn't there any more.

I watched him for a few minutes, sitting in the shade on top of the ridge. He tried his cell phone but it didn't get a signal. He put away his gun after a few minutes and I jumped, jabbing him in the right arm with the black cylinder. He fell over in a very satisfying way and I had his gun, his Mace, his extra clips, his cell phone, his wallet, and his handcuffs before he was able to sit up, much less stand.

When I'd first grabbed him, in the parking lot, I'd felt the stiff edge of his Kevlar vest. I'd been planning to shock him in the back, but I changed to the arm instead.

I didn't bother threatening him with the gun. In fact, I popped the clip out and then aimed it off to the side, to see if there was a bullet chambered.

There was. We both flinched at the noise.

"How's that shoulder, Bob?"

He glared at me. I pulled up my shirt, on the left side, and twisted to show him my scar. "See that, Bob? That's where your friends tried for my kidney. Pretty, huh?"

His expression went from angry to wary.

"I'm not happy about that, Bob. I think that's pretty understandable." I jumped twenty feet directly behind him and said, "Do you understand, Bob?"

He twisted so fast he tangled his feet and staggered off to one side. "What are you?" he asked hoarsely.

"Didn't they tell you, Bob? Didn't they give you some justification?" I jumped again, twenty feet off to his left, and he recoiled again. "You set me up. What did you think would happen?"

"They said you were a threat to, uh, national security."

"A sixteen-year-old kid? A threat to national security?" I opened his wallet. He had three twenties and a few credit cards but there was a zippered compartment behind the cash. I pulled the zipper, spread it wide, and whistled. I held it out to display a thick sheaf of hundred dollar bills. "How good is the pay at the sheriff's department?"

"Go fuck yourself," he said. "I don't have to tell you anything!"

"Oh," I said quietly to myself, "I really think you do" This time I jabbed him in the right buttock with the shock stick. He dropped to the side and yelled.

I crouched down about five feet away. "I'm not the police. I'm not constrained by your rules of evidence and prisoner treatment." He was watching me and twitching. I swayed to one side and his eyes followed me. "Of course, you don't seem that constrained by the rules, either. I almost believed you about the national security thing."

He snarled.

"I don't even care about you. I don't know if they told you they'd be trying to knife me or not. But I want to know what they told you. How they contacted you. If-no-how they wanted you to contact them if I showed up again."

I played with the black cylinder, passing it from hand to hand. "Why don't you just tell me? You do, and it checks out, I'll let you go."

He swore at me in Spanish so I switched to that.

"Este es tu momento de la verdad, Roberto. Literally. Your moment of truth. They didn't quite get me, but they killed someone else two days ago and I'm not happy about that. You can probably tell. Not only can I do this-"

I feinted toward his leg with the cylinder and he cried out, "Stop!"

I rocked back on my heels. "But I can also give information to the FBI about your involvement in that murder. They cut his throat while his hands were tied behind his back. And then there's the INS-they'd probably like to know that you've been taking bribes from the people who killed six of theirs."

I sort of smiled but I could feel the wrongness of it, like fingers tugging my features around. "I'm not sure you'd see trial."

Now this, where the physical stuff didn't seem to be getting through, actually seemed to work.

"It's on my phone. In my contacts. There's a number labeled saltador\ But that's all I know, I swear!"

I laughed out loud. Saltador is Spanish for vaulter or jumper.

I left him there while I checked for a signal. I got one at the Texaco petrol station out on Old 80, barely. I jumped to the ridgetop where I used to meet Sam and Consuelo and found that it was closer to the cell tower, three bars on the signal-strength indicator.

Vigil was standing when I got back but looking around, confused. The sun was high overhead and he wasn't sure which direction was which. I threw his wallet to him, high, and as he jumped up into the air to grab it, I jumped him and spilled him onto the ridgetop.

"Hey!" he yelled. "I told you what you wanted to know!"

I said soothingly, "Yes, you did. But did you want me to shock you again, to get you here? That was the alternative."

I took the shock stick out of my pocket again. "Now. All I want you to do is tell them that you convinced me they were following you, that you're on my side, and I've agreed to another meeting out at Sam Coulton's place. Uh, nobody's moved in there, have they?"

"Hell no. Eight people died there. The cousin who ended up with it wants to sell but nobody is interested."

"Okay. Tell them it's set for three o'clock."

He looked at his watch. "That'll only give them an hour to get out there."

"So it will." I flipped open his phone and found the entry and dialed it.

He did it as I'd told him and, after he told them when and where, he said, "So, I'll see you-" He tilted the phone in his hand and stared at it. "They hung up."

I held my hand out for the phone.

His fingers closed around it and I lifted the shock tube.

"Hey, it's my phone."

"Sure," I said.

He relaxed and I jumped, only two feet to the side, and kicked the phone out of his hand. It really flew, high, higher, and came down in the brush thirty feet away.

He was clutching his hand to his chest and swearing. I walked over, picked up a fist-sized rock, and hit the phone three times.

I set his gun and ammunition and the Mace and handcuffs on the fragments of plastic and circuit board. "See the highway?" I said pointing at the distant gray line.

He held up his good hand and flipped me the bird.

"I bet you can walk it in about two hours."

I jumped away.

I was on my back, under Sam's couch, my nose just clearing the cotton batten and steel leaf springs. If I'd been one inch thicker, it wouldn't have worked.

I heard their footsteps first, but just barely. Didn't hear a car so I presumed they'd parked their vehicle somewhere off the road, out of earshot. They came sooner that I expected, but I'd been there for thirty minutes and was reasonably confident that they hadn't felt me arrive.

Not unless they'd been camping within range.

The door was locked but they opened it. Didn't know if they had a key or if they'd picked it but they didn't force it- that would've given the game away.

They checked the house carefully, though, opening closets and cabinets, peeking up into the attic crawlspace. I'd been planning on waiting up there, myself, but it was like an oven so I'd checked the couch on a whim.