F Wilson - Sims

“Shit! All right, let’s do this guy, dump him back in his car, and go after her.”

Do?Panic clawed at Patrick’s brain.

For the second time tonight, he felt himself grabbed by the back of his coat. This time he was hauled to his feet.

“Steady him,” the big one, the one called Ricker, said as a pair of massive arms twined around Patrick’s head and neck like anacondas.

“Wh-what’re you doing?” he cried, although he sensed with a sick terrifying certainty what was coming.

“What the accident didn’t, buddy boy,” said Ricker’s voice close to his ear.

Patrick writhed in their grasp and cried out his fear as he felt those arms tighten, but he was trapped and pinned and helpless as a moth about to have its wings plucked…

…and then a jarring impact, an agonized “Uhnh!” from Ricker, a startled “What the—?” from the other, and the murderous grip loosened, the arms fell away, and something slammed against Patrick’s back, knocking him face first onto the ground. He heard scuffling feet, grunted as someone’s heel kicked him in the ribs, then winced as he heard a loud, wet, crunchingsmack! followed by a brief light rain of warm heavy droplets against his head and the back of his neck. After that, a heartbeat of silence, followed by the impacts of two heavy objects thudding to the ground, one on his left, another on his right. Then…

…silence.

He waited in panicked confusion, holding his breath, playing dead, praying he’d survive the night. Silence persisted. Warily he raised his head, inching it upward, spitting the dirt from his lips. To his left he saw a pair of blackclad legs and sneakered feet, only this time they were horizontal. With growing alarm he slowly rotated his head left—

—and scrambled to his feet with a startled cry when he found a bloodstained face and dead staring eyes only inches from his own.

Heart hammering, he backed away from the two still forms, the one who’d been struggling with his car door, and the bigger one, the one called Ricker, the one who’d been about to snap his neck when—

When what? What had just happened here?

He did a full, stumbling turn as he edged out of the grove, searching the shadows for something, anything that might account for the two dead men, but found only more shadows. When he reached the edge of the foliage he ran, blindly at first, but then a passing splash of light from above told him where the roadway was. He veered right and began to claw his way up the steep slope, stumbling, slipping, the rough granite tearing his pants, cutting his skin. Finally he reached the battered steel guardrail and pulled himself over.

No one else in sight. Where was Romy? God, he hoped she was okay.

Aching and bleeding, he slumped against the cold metal and tried to catch his breath.

Not in shape, he thought as he searched his pockets for his PCA. And even if he were, he wasn’t in shape for a carjacking and dead bodies. He was a talker, not a fighter. He—

Shit! He’d plugged the PCA into the recharger in the car!

All right. As soon as he claimed a second wind, he was going to start running, and keep on running until a car showed up. And then he was going to stop it and have them call 911.

Lights glowed beyond the curve to his left. As a car careened into view, he rose and staggered across the shoulder toward the roadway, waving his arms. Only when he was completely exposed and vulnerable did it occur to him to wonder whether it might be friend or foe.

Moot question. The car hurtled past without even slowing.

Patrick looked down at his wrinkled, torn, bloodstained suit. I wouldn’t stop for me either.

Maybe he’d be lucky and the driver would call in about a disheveled crazy looking man wandering the Saw Mill. But the way his luck was running…

He ducked and turned as he heard a noise on the slope below…moving closer. Someone climbing his way. He peeked over the guardrail and sighed with relief when he recognized her.

“Romy!” he said, rising and extending his hand. “Thank God you’re safe!”

And please don’t say, No thanks to you, my hero.

He helped her over the rail and noticed she wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Are you all right?” she said, giving him the once-over as she straightened her coat. “Where are you bleeding from?” Was that real concern in her eyes?

“What? Oh…only a little of that’s mine.”

He recounted what had happened in the grove.

She glanced between him and the dark pool of the ravine. “And you didn’t see who it was who saved you?”

“Not a hair, not a trace.”

She nodded, looking around. “Typical.”

“What’s that mean?” And then he realized she didn’t look the least bit shocked or worried.

“It means the organization is looking out for you.”

“What organization? Those ‘friends’ you mentioned earlier? Who—?”

She pivoted and held up a hand to shush him. “Hear that?”

He heard a car engine gunning in the ravine. No way that could be his. They both leaned over the rail, squinting into the dark.

“When I was hiding in the brush down there I spotted another van just like the one that drove us off the road. On my way back up here I noticed that the two guys I gassed were gone.”

“You think they took the bodies with them?”

“I’ll bet on it. This wasn’t a couple of beered-up Teamsters. These people had a plan and they were following it by the numbers, military style.”

Patrick noticed her stiffen, as if a bell had just rung. “What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

As the sound of the van’s engine faded, Patrick stared again into the dark ravine, trying to locate his BMW, and was struck by how perfectly their “accident” had been planned. If he had trouble locating his car in the shadows below—and he had a fair idea where it should be—a passing car wouldn’t have a clue.

A shudder cut through his body. He began to tremble inside.

“Don’t tell me ‘nothing,’” he said. “Somebody tried to kill us and—”

“They were going to shoot me up with something first…to ask me questions.”

“Oh, Christ! What are we into here? Whowere they?”

“SimGen, I suspect.”

“No way! With their clout in court and Congress, they don’t need to hire killers.”

“Who’s got more to lose?”

“No, Romy, I don’t buy it—I won’t buy it. They’re—”

She leaned close. Intensity radiated from her like heat from a reactor core. “They’re hiding something, Patrick. And whatever it is, the two of us—you, me—we’ve touched a nerve. We’ve somehow threatened that secret.”

“Just great,” he said. “One of the largest corporations in the world has painted a bull’s-eye on my back.” He held up his hands and watched them shake. “Look at me—I’m a wreck.”

“The shakes are normal,” Romy said, holding out her own trembling hands. “Just excess adrenaline. It’ll pass. How do you feel otherwise?”

“How does terrified sound?” He wasn’t ashamed to admit it: He was shaken to his core. “It’s not every day someone tries to kill me.”

“The all-important question is: Have they scared you off?”

“Oh, they’ve scared me, but not off,” he said, hoping he sounded a lot braver than he felt. “You see, they made a big mistake when they ruined my practice: It left me with only one client. Ican’t quit.”

Romy smiled at him, and he sensed genuine regard in her eyes. Somehow that made the terrors of the past few minutes almost worthwhile. Almost.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” he said, feeling a growing anger blunt the edge of his fear. “I’m still not convinced SimGen was behind what happened here, but just in case it was, I’m putting them on notice.”