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Authors: Eric Pete

BOOK: Crushed Ice
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Chapter 33
Inside the elevator, I pushed the button for my floor, remaining icy calm to the uninformed passerby. Inside, my heart threatened to erupt from my chest as I waited for the doors to shut. The two men from the front desk joined me before it closed. Shit. I had terrible luck with elevators.
“What floor?” I asked, settling on the direct approach. I took on the affect of a Midwestern brother straight out of college who chose to party too hard. If I were lucky, they hadn't been sufficiently briefed on who they were searching for.
“Twelve,” the stubble-faced one muttered. Looked to be Armenian. Would Penny pay for something of this caliber? I punched the button as instructed. They hadn't realized it was already pushed when they entered. They were certainly looking for me. I followed by pushing number fourteen as if it were my floor.
The small one spoke into his cell phone. “Yeah,” is all he said, replying to someone giving orders. I kept pretending to listen to music, as if I were someone other than whom they sought. A target in plain sight posing as an obstacle, I shifted my weight and altered my stature, willing myself into another person entirely. What used to take days of rehearsal, I could now do in minutes if it called for it. I just prayed this time was academy worthy.
“Man, did y'all go to Republic last night?” I asked, referring to the loud, trendy bar that I could sometimes hear from my balcony. “They had the bitches. Man, I'm still tryin' to sober up.”
They ignored me, focused instead on the escalating numbers as the elevator approached my floor. I could almost see the gears turning in their heads as they game-planned for whatever might go down. High quality suits they wore, again not jiving with Penny Antnee or what he'd associate with. You'd never guess they were on a mission with bad intentions by the way they coaxed my whereabouts downstairs. Well-paid and well-trained. I wondered if they were the same ones who busted up Collette's place, or whether they had teams combing through Uptown.
“Y'all not cops, huh?” I asked in an intentionally noisy whisper. I strained my voice to add to the illusion that I'd been yelling all night. “Y'all look like cops.”
The short one looked at me this time, shaking his head in the negative. From behind my sunglasses I grinned, while watching the numbers close on twelve.
“Good!” I shrieked, becoming more obnoxious as we got closer to my floor. “Y'all want some X? 'Cause I got the good stuff in my bag right here, y'know? And I'm cheaper than those bastards on the third floor.”
“No, thanks,” the stubble-faced one replied with a slight laugh. His guard was down now. And they'd reached my floor. The doors began to open and my options were few.
I crouched down, taking my earbuds out and reaching into my backpack. “Jus' . . . jus' let me show you, man. I even do bulk discount if you wanna party. Avon ain't got shit on me.”
“Go away,” the small one said without looking at me, his mind entirely on business.
“Suit yourself,” I said as I took a secure grip on my laptop. They were both threats, but I had to choose quickly. Throwing all my weight behind it, I swung my laptop into the larger one's prominent nose, driving him to the back of the elevator car. I threw my leg around, kicking the small, shifty one in his chest. He went spilling into the hallway as I swung my laptop over my head in an arcing motion to connect atop his partner's head again. The direct strike was a finishing blow for him, as he crumpled before he even had a chance to defend himself.
I didn't have time to celebrate, as the one in the hallway proved just how deadly they were. As quick as I suspected he was, he'd drawn his gun, just missing my head with his first silenced shot. I yelped as it sparked off the elevator wall, turning my laptop just in time to shield me from the next one.
And the next one came, striking me dead in my chest, if not for the miraculous piece of technology that was my connection to all.
Was.
I would come to regret that my laptop was destroyed, but praised the most basic purpose it served at this moment. I darted to the side of the elevator car to avoid giving him another clear shot. Any element of surprise I had was quickly fading. As good as I was at what I did, he was equally good at his craft.
Figuring I was their immediate target and not Collette, I played into that and rapidly pushed the button to close the elevator doors. He fired a wild shot, striking his unconscious partner—killing him on the spot, based on the entry point. I jumped to my feet, pressing myself against the wall as much as I could. As the doors were almost completely shut, I knew he couldn't chance my slipping away.
He could risk pressing the hallway button and hope it would stop my car, or he could do that which I hoped, the more immediate solution.
He inserted his gun, silencer first, unloading where I'd just stood. I risked all, diving toward the muzzle as it exploded, but higher than his calculated aim. As the final shot rang out, he extended his arm further in. The doors were parting as I caught his arm, wrenching it backward as I flew in the other direction. I threw all my weight into it, hearing the sick snap as it banged against the retreating door. He fell over, writhing, and dropped his empty gun to grip his dangling, wounded limb. That left nothing to shield him from the hardest knee I could place to his exposed brow. On contact, his head snapped up, his eyes rolling back as he went to sleep.
As the doors attempted to shut on him, I dragged his limp body fully inside to join the dead man. Before leaving them and allowing the elevator to continue on its ascent to the fourteenth floor, I smashed their cell phones. I was running down the hall before I remembered my shot-up laptop had been left behind; something that could be a costly error. Things had gone from bad to worse.
“Chris, what's wrong?” Collette asked as I entered my apartment in a hurry, slamming the door behind me.
“Baby, we have to go. Now,” I answered, gasping for air and trying to steady myself as the adrenaline fled my body.
Chapter 34
I swerved over the line, avoiding a crossing armadillo that may or may not have been there. A hazy cloud enveloped my mind at the moment; a product of hours behind the wheel of a slow-moving truck. Collette was jarred from her fitful slumber by the sudden sway.
“Sorry about that,” I offered, too guilty to look at her.
“Fuck you, Chris,” she spat. “If you were sorry, you'd tell me where you're taking me. Or at least bring me back home.”
“Can't do that, but I can tell you we're going somewhere safe.”
“Like your place was supposed to be safe? I should just jump out,” she countered. It woke me up. Made me focus as I questioned how serious she was about hurling herself from the vehicle.
“You might want to reconsider. We're doing seventy miles per hour,” I said.
“Bullshit. From the way the engine's straining, you're having trouble keeping it over fifty.”
I glanced at the speedometer, grimacing as it sputtered out around fifty-three. “You'd still hurt yourself. Look . . . can you cut me some slack?”
“My back is killing me in this awful seat, and I have to pee again. Don't you dare talk to me about slack.”
We'd been on I-20 for longer than I'd care to admit, stopping only for gas and bathroom breaks at the smallest of gas stations, those less apt to have surveillance. Half that time was spent getting Collette to calm down and trust me somewhat. I constantly checked the rearview mirror of the oil field truck I'd “borrowed” back in Colorado City. It'd be at least a week before they noticed an abandoned Audi left in an old barn off the highway. When they found it, they would also find the bag of Collette's things I'd left by accident. I didn't dare break it to her that she wore the only set of clothes we had in the truck.
My current diet consisted of Red Bull and pepperoni sticks. Any time I wanted to nod off or let my guard down, I just had to think back to the unlucky one in that elevator back in Dallas. His death and my narrow escape left me with only enough time to snag some emergency cash. Low on options, I was going to the only safe place I'd known, taking a journey back in time.
“If you have to go, I'll pull over.”
“If I have to go,” she repeated, mimicking me robotically. “What's wrong with you? Ever since you yanked me out of your apartment scared shitless, it's like you're another person, Chris.”
“It might be best if you don't call me that anymore,” I solemnly warned.
I'd caught it on the small TV back at the Conoco in Abilene. Chris was being sought for questioning in the murder of a businessman and possible kidnapping of a blind woman in Dallas. But not everyone was so blind. That officer had seen me at her apartment, so they'd have a sketch connecting me to both events.
All this shit was being intentionally laid at my feet. They knew the authorities wouldn't find Chris. But they might find Collette, and in that, a way of tracking me down. Maybe once I had some breathing room, I could negotiate. Thing is, something kept nagging at the back of my head, telling me I was more lost than ever.
“Was it an accident?”
“Huh?” I asked with a stutter, replaying the errant bullets burrowing into my would-be assassin's body as I ping-ponged around the elevator. I hadn't shared it with her, hoping to postpone it until a time when I could rationalize everything.
“That we met,” she answered, either voluntarily turning toward me for the first time or simply repositioning herself in the seat. Regardless, I looked at her. She was absolutely breathtaking, a soothing melody in the middle of a noisy, loud, screaming, terribly bad world.
“I'd like to think it was fate,” I said, smiling for the first time since our journey began.
The road sign said forty miles to I-10 and one hundred twenty miles to El Paso.
It must've been an omen, for steam and smoke shot out from under the truck's hood. I shook my head in disbelief, powerless to do anything as we sputtered to a halt.
 
 
“Good luck with y'all's truck,” the towering man in the Vietnam Veterans baseball cap said as he stopped at the red light just off I-25.
“Thank you much, sir,” I replied with a polite nod of my head as I helped Collette down.
The fortuitous eighteen-wheeler had come along, delivering us to our final destination. Rather, delivering me and my sister, Nolene, who was recovering from Lasik surgery when our truck broke down on our way to our mom's. I advised Collette to wait for the truck to disappear back on I-25 before using her walking stick. She'd heard every word I'd uttered, reserving her comments until now.
She shook the collapsed white wand, allowing it to unfold in her hand. She tapped it once to the pavement for certainty. The multi-colored dress she'd worn since my apartment was terribly wrinkled. In spite of her attire, her elegance was in no way diminished. “It's so easy to you,” she said.
“What?”
“Lying.” She said it with utter contempt, the polar opposite of the admiration expressed by her cousin Sophia at my ability.
“I'm just trying to protect us. Somebody out there has bad intentions, so I'm in survival mode. Forgive me for not wanting anything to happen to you,” I chided.
“You just don't stop,” she sang. “If that was true, then why don't we just go to the police?”
“Maybe in your world. In mine, they can't be trusted. Not with something like this,” I said, surveying the well-worn streets leading to our temporary home.
“It's you I'm about out of trust with.”
“It won't make things better, but I'll explain it all. C'mon. Let's get off the street. I've got somewhere to freshen up and get some rest.”
“Do you have my bag with you?”
I didn't reply, instead postponing the full wrath of a woman stranded in New Mexico without a change of clothes. Without delay, I led Collette a few blocks to an aging hotel on the edge of the small town.
Chapter 35
“We're not in Texas anymore, are we?”
“Neither are we in Kansas, Toto,” I joked, trying to add some levity to a dire situation. Didn't work so well. Exposing so much to Collette made me nervous, something I wasn't accustomed to feeling.
“You're neither cute nor funny, Chris—or whatever you want me to call you. Asshole will do?”
“Okay, I deserve that. We're in New Mexico, if you must know,” I replied as I opened the front door to an establishment for her and to a previous chapter for me. The hotel still had that tacky red interior that I remembered, albeit less cared for. My mom told me she found this place by accident, when she meant to stay on I-10 in the storm, but made a wrong turn in her undependable car. She wound up at the Asilo Rojo Inn, arriving in this very lobby with a world of problems and a bellyful of hell spawn that was me.
The elderly man at the counter smoked a cigarette, while a tiny woman vacuumed. He muttered something while folding over the pages of his newspaper. Thought he would've been dead by now, yet there he was.
“¿Cómo estás, Daniel?” I asked as I approached.
“What do you want? Do I know you?” he asked, not really expecting customers. I could tell the nicer spas and lodges closer to town had supplanted his establishment as options for other than the most desperate of travelers. For me, this suited my needs.
“My mother used to work here,” I answered formally, showing no love for the man who probably saved our lives back then and on whom I was relying now to shelter me and Collette from the brewing storm.
“Oh? What was her name?”
“Leila,” I answered. I knew he had no other African-American women ever working here, so that was merely for his satisfaction. I watched the smile slowly sweep across his face, exposing rotting teeth.
“Yes, I remember,” he hissed, his Spanish accent thickening as it once was. Before me, his white hair transformed back to the solid ebony mane he previously possessed. His teeth fixed themselves, and his gut reduced by an inch or two. I was suddenly three feet tall before the man who merely tolerated me, due to his fondness for the exotic chocolate that was my mother, and because I stayed out of his way.
“How is she?” he asked, abruptly running his hands through his scraggly mane while examining the lobby further in hopes that she might be with me.
“She's doing fine,” I answered matter-of-factly. “Married to a nice man. They live in a mansion in the Bay Area these days. Told her I might see you. Traveling around the country and figured I'd stop by. Need a room for a few days.”
“Oh. I think we have some rooms. Especially for Leila's son. Josefina!” he yelled at the woman vacuuming before quickly shifting his focus back to me. “One bed or two?”
“Two,” Collette interjected as I opened my mouth. One didn't need sight to know our relationship was disintegrating the longer this went on.
“Very well,” Daniel the inn owner said, cutting his eyes back to me as if to say I was less than a man for letting her mouth off. “I'll give you our best
two bed
room then. Josefina, get the keys.”
Realizing how thin the walls were, I turned on the TV. Collette, sitting on the bed farthest from the door, massaged her aching feet. “Was that stuff about your mom true? Did she work here?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I can't believe you never talked about her. Wow.”
“That's because she's dead.”
Collette gasped before regaining her composure. “Are you telling the truth now? Not to be rude, but—”
“Yes, I'm telling the truth. She died a long time ago.”
“I'm so sorry.”
I picked at a loose thread on the scraggly comforter I sat upon. “Don't be. You didn't have anything to do with it.”
“Why are we here?”
“It was nearby. And totally safe. Some people might know about other places, so I just got you out of there and ran. It's not you. It's me they're after. But I can't risk them hurting you.”
“How long do you plan on keeping me here? The place reeks of old cigarettes and sex.”
“I know. It's just temporary. Long enough to regroup and make sure you're safe in all this mess.”
“You keep saying that. How do you know they'd hurt somebody?”
I bit my lip. “Because somebody's dead already. Back in Dallas. Would've been me if things worked out as they planned. I'm sure it's the same people that broke into your place.”
“Oh my God. What are you involved in? What kind of person are you?”
I got off my bed and went over to calm her down. Wanted to make her understand that although a demon, I'd changed . . . because of her. I had to change.
“Don't touch me!” she yelled over the audio of the television set. I backed off, pacing the floor instead of returning to my bed, the isolated isle in the room.
“Things were going too good. Didn't want things to change between us or weigh you down with my past,” I muttered.
“What did you do?”
“Information. Information of mine got out because of somebody.” I didn't dare open up about me and Sophia to her. Not with the fault lines forming across the room, threatening to erupt in a magnitude six quake. “Certain people who didn't want this to get out are now looking for the source.”
“You.”
“Exactly.”
“Before my head explodes, I have to ask you:
Is Chris even your real name
?”
I took a deep breath. “No. It's Truth.”
“Truth? That's your name?” she asked, half smiling at the irony.
“For real.”
“As in ‘truth or dare' or ‘the truth will set you free'?”
“No,” I finally answered honestly, replaying this same scenario with her scheming cousin Sophia when I'd lied. “As in ‘Truth or Consequences,' the name of this town. That's my full name—Truth or Consequences. For real. My mother named me for the place where she had me.” I chuckled. “She was strange like that.”
“I could see why you'd want to be called Chris,” she stated dead-face.
“The town used to be called Hot Springs. My name could've been worse. Or I could've been born in Roswell.” I hoped for some softening of her mood, but Collette remained steeled.
“How come you never told me any of this?” she asked, as if more disappointed parent than angry lover.
“Because you never would've let me into your life. And I was ashamed. I never planned for any of this to—I . . . I'm sorry.”
“How did you come about this information that is causing all these problems?”
“On one of my research trips. It wasn't what I was looking for at the time, but I kind of stumbled across it.”
“Research. So you
are
a writer? Is that part true at least?”
“Yes, I'm a storyteller,” I said, fudging in a desperate attempt to keep any portion of our relationship intact. “But not a very good one.”
“Don't you dare feel sorry for yourself,” she spat. “After someone lost their life because of you?”
“Actually, the person that lost his life tried to kill me,” I replied, keeping the obviously related departure of Andre Martin to myself. That was the most needless death in all this. And I don't think my life would've spared his. They wanted anybody that could verify that video was gone, and that included one of the participants. Maybe keeping Collette in the dark about the particulars could keep her off that list.
“Shut up! Just shut up! I don't know how you can be so calm and matter-of-fact in the middle of all this. People want you dead and could've killed me. This is hard to digest, Truth. Were you ever going to tell me your real name?”
“We agreed to only share so much. Remember? Did I ever push you to talk about your—”
“My blindness?” she asked, cutting me off. “I knew it was a problem. It would be for any man.”
“No,” I replied. “I was going to say your husband. I don't care if you're blind or have three eyes. I love you, Collette.”
She gasped.
“I saw your picture with him back at your place, when I got your things. I know I could never replace what you had. I just need to know if you love me now. Especially now.”
“I can't answer that at this moment. Honestly. These past twenty-four hours have been crazy. This is a lot to drop on me. I . . . I need a good night's sleep. Then maybe we can talk.”
“Okay. I can respect that. I have no choice. And I'll do whatever I can to get your life back to normal.”
“I haven't known normal in years, but I appreciate that. Do you have my clothes handy? I'd like to wash up and get some sleep.”
“Um . . . about your clothes.”

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