Harmless (24 page)

“We brought in some peelers from Russia,” the Muscle said. “Nikita Bityacockoff!”

“
Fresh
. Eighteen.” His boss shrugged. “That’s what their passports say.”

Derek forced the corners of his mouth to rise. “Everybody’s gotta hustle these days,” he said, taking out his Zippo lighter, which the big biker intercepted.

“Psych!”

Derek lacked the hardware to bust the biker’s balls in return. The big man did Derek the honour of
not
pulling out the vial of coke from his pocket, allowing Derek to hand it over.

“Derek—that’s a German name, eh?” the biker said as he lit a smoke. He spoke a German word that sounded like “shit pig” and did a toot from the vial. He said the German word again. The leader liked the game. Derek answered in German.

“
What?
”

“You spoke in German,” Derek said. “I answered you.”

“I’m not fucking German.” The biker stared at Jimmy the old hippie. “Your boss thinks I’m a fucking Kraut. Do I look like a Kraut?”

Jimmy was happy to lend the giant his outrage.

“Do Germans ride fucking Harleys?” the biker said, inches from Derek’s face. “Would a fucking Kraut be out here working at four in the morning?”

“No way,” Derek said. Forty years of sitcom watching couldn’t rescue him from the biker’s lame routine.

“Exactly. He’d be in bed with his fatty frau.”

He stepped back and laughed. Derek did some of the coke. If he didn’t get this situation under control the bikers would end negotiations by cutting out the middleman and hiring the vet to run the grow-op. These were not good men—they were not “cool.” They prowled the edges of cities and towns and former Soviet-bloc nations siphoning up the lost girls and the desperate men and putting their bodies to work.

It was time to go. Joseph backed away from the tree, staying in the column of shadow. He waved away a cobweb that brushed his face, sending it swinging out into the light, where it transformed into a bright silver thread before vanishing back into the darkness. The web came to rest in his hair, and it stuck to his finger when he tried to pull it free.

The pain was so sudden, so sharp, that an image of a spider biting his fingertip flashed in his mind. He tried to flick the spider off but it bit down to the bone. How could half an inch of fingertip emit so much agonizing sensation—an entire leg shouldn’t have so many nerve endings. He held up his left hand to the light. A fish hook was stuck clean through the tip of his middle finger. So much pain, as if his body were saying “fish hook” a thousand times a second. He could taste the metal, like the hook was stuck in his tongue.

The men were staring in his direction.

“You said no one knew about this place,” the big biker said.

“It’s a raccoon,” Derek said. “No one would dare come here.”

Alex clamped his hand on Joseph’s wrist.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. “Not a sound.”

Joseph’s arm was shaking. The fishing line was taut, pulling the punctured flesh with it. He bit his lip to stifle a cry. Alex held his wrist with a crushing grip.

“Just wait it out,” Alex said. “They can’t see us. Give them a few seconds and they’ll forget they heard anything.”

“I can’t,” Joseph said. The pain ran like liquid ice through his finger, eating its way up his arm. He needed release, through screaming, through running, through pounding the tree. His silent tears did not oil free the hook. “I can’t. Just cut me free. My knife.”

Alex set the rifle against the tree, took the knife from Joseph’s pocket, and leaned closer to get a better look at the fishing line, careful not to pull on Joseph’s finger. The wind picked up, rustling the branches, and Alex pulled the line down, loosening the tension but not relieving the agony.

“It’s a steel line,” he said. “I can’t cut it with this.”

The line slipped through Alex’s fingers, jerking his finger up, the sensation like a nest of hornets trying to sting their way out of his flesh. Joseph must have moaned because Derek pulled out a huge black pistol—two steel bars welded together, the kind of gun movie thugs fire with the barrel tilted on its side.

The big biker pushed down Derek’s erect arm. “Whoa there, Mr. Pink!”

Mr. Pink
: did everyone watch the same fucking movies?

“Someone’s out there,” Derek said.

The leader stepped toward the trees, his eyes searching the darkness beyond the headlights. Everything extraneous had been pared down and sharpened to serve the man’s will, even his capacity for pleasure—Joseph could imagine the coke granules going exactly where the leader ordered them to. His expression changed as he moved away from the other men, revealing a longing in his eyes, maybe a wish to be overpowered or awed by a superior force. He seemed to know that Joseph was strung up on a hook and wanted to see him do something extraordinary or at least unexpected in his predicament. If Joseph failed, the biker’s wet black eyes would be the last thing he’d see before he died.

“It’s not the cops,” the leader said. “They’d have started the light show by now.”

“I’m going to pull it out,” Alex whispered. He raised a stick up to Joseph’s mouth. “Bite on this.”

Joseph clamped his molars down on the stick, not tasting wood or anything else. The biker was fifteen feet away, tops. He was rubbing his hands together, the muscles in his forearms contracting like steel cables.

“It’s going to hurt,” Alex said. He’d coiled the line around one hand and held Joseph’s arm with the other.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Do it.”

Alex pulled hard. The pain seemed to drag Joseph’s bones out through his fingertip, but he was not free. His finger throbbed with the force of a horse’s heart.

“Get behind the tree,” Alex said as he lifted the rifle and aimed it at Derek and the bikers.

Someone was going to die here.

“Think we caught us a big fish,” Derek called out, finally getting a laugh from the bikers.

The leader shrugged, bored of the game, and turned around and pointed at Derek. “Fucking deal with this!”

Derek’s face was ghastly, the sunburned skin encased in sweat, his panicked lips muttering nonsense, the pistol shaking slightly in his hand. He pushed his body toward the trees, holding up his gun like it was a magic lantern, perhaps sensing that he was in someone’s rifle sight.

“Don’t do it,” Joseph said. “We’ll never get out of here alive.”

Alex lowered the rifle and put his hand on Joseph’s shoulder. It felt good. “Just run,” he said. “The line will either snap or pull the hook free. When you get out of this grove, turn left. We’ll meet up at the road.”

“Alex.”

“You can do it.” He squeezed Joseph’s shoulder and ran into the night.

It was Joseph’s turn to run.
Fuck no—anything but that
. He had a better plan: swing his arm like he was throwing a ball. He planted his feet and took a deep breath.
One, two, three, throw!
The branch yanked his hand back. He nearly passed out. He swung his left arm again and let out a howl. Derek was ten feet away now. Time for Alex’s plan. Joseph’s finger would either follow or stay behind on the hook. He ran and the skin ripped like a ream of thick wet paper, and he let out a high, outraged scream as his legs gave out beneath him. The pain was abstract—he wanted to argue with it—and liquid heat spilled across his hand.

“You better fucking run, cocksucker!”

The first bullet pulverized a thatch of bark a few feet from Joseph’s head and the second hit somewhere closer. He got to his feet and ran, trying not to panic. Derek would be blind for the first minute after he entered the woods.

“Let it go, Derek,” Joseph mumbled. “You’ll never catch up.” He pressed his thumb against the wound and reached into his left pocket to get the knife. Only the case was there. He checked his other pocket. Nothing. Alex still had the knife.

Derek was at the edge of the trees, scanning the area with a flashlight. Of course he had a flashlight—everyone was so fucking
prepared
out here. Derek picked up something from the ground.

“What is it?” the leader shouted.

Joseph knew the answer a half-second before Derek answered.

“The fucking yuppie dropped his iPhone!”

He heard branches snapping deeper in the grove, followed by a muffled grunt of pain.

“Joseph!” Alex called his name in a loud stage whisper. He was close. “I’m hurt! Over here!”

Alex’s plan fell into place: Lead Joseph to the grow-op. Pretend to get injured. Put a bullet in Joseph’s chest when he comes to help. Let Derek deal with the fallout. Fucking brilliant. Except Alex didn’t know about the iPhone.

Joseph saw something move near the base of a tree: it was Alex’s head, arms, and chest. The rest of his body seemed to be neatly tucked under him like a cat’s legs. Joseph moved closer.

“I’ve wrecked my knee,” Alex said. “
Shit!
” He tested his leg and winced, making the hissing sound of an athlete who can’t walk off the pain. “It’s a fucking booby trap.”

The hole was about as deep as you could dig without a bulldozer. There was no way Alex planned this. The rifle lay next to the pit. Joseph picked it up, but there was no need to aim it at Alex.

“You have to get out of there,” Joseph said.

“I don’t think I can put weight on my knee.”

“Try! We don’t have a lot of time.”

“No.” Alex leaned against the lip of the hole, a tree root providing a natural slouching post. “If I try to run they’ll catch me in the open. Just go. I’ll hide here until they’re gone.”

“That’s not going to work. Derek has Mike’s iPhone.”

Alex looked like he’d been punched in the stomach.

Joseph wanted to scream. The phone was out of batteries, but it wouldn’t take long for Derek to figure out that it belonged to Mike, information he’d pass on to the bikers.

“They’ll trace it back to you, Alex. Mike will tell them.”

Which meant the bikers would be at the farm by lunchtime, prepared to kill Alex and anyone else who got in their way. Even if Franny was safe now, she wouldn’t be out of danger for long.

Derek was moving into the woods, his flashlight sweeping the trees, but Joseph’s mind remained focused, aware of an overriding fear without submitting to its power. He’d never felt anything like it.

“I’ll draw him away from you,” Joseph said. “Then I’ll get that phone back.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But first you have to tell me—are the girls safe?”

Alex tried to bury his head in his hands, and when that didn’t work he shrank into the hole.

“I don’t care what happened,” Joseph said. “Just tell me if they’re safe.”

Alex raised himself up. He looked ashamed, but also relieved. “They’re safe. There was a note. A bush party. They went to a fucking bush party.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Maybe not at first
.

There was no time to argue the point. Franny was safe, but for how long? He handed the rifle to Alex. “You’re helpless here.”

Alex gave him back the knife. They each tried to exchange a meaningful expression but Alex broke the tension by smiling.

“Use the knife,” he said. “Hurt him so he can’t get up.”

J
oseph ran across the burned field as quickly as his injured ankle would take him, occasionally letting out a yelp to let Derek know where he was heading. He found a path back into the forest, waiting for the flashlight beam to start jumping around the trees near him before he started running again.

“I’ll find you, asshole!” Derek shouted.

Joseph drew him deeper into the woods, faint lines and shadows guiding him between the big trees, the darkness making every running step a dare completed, a jump into a river from a high rock. Derek pursued him, shouting “Cocksucker!” and “You’re dead!” They both knew the drill: Derek, the armed hunter; Joseph, the defenceless prey.

Joseph tried to pick up speed, his legs falling into a rhythm his lungs couldn’t keep pace with. He was swallowing bagfuls of air and the bags were shrinking; his ankle threatened to tip him like an overloaded trailer, spilling its human cargo onto the ground. He hadn’t pushed his body to full speed in years, and his finger hurt so badly it might
have been trying to tear itself free of his body. What was the point of so much pain? He knew his finger was injured—he didn’t need second-to-second updates.

He stopped to make sure he hadn’t gotten too far ahead of Derek. His only play was to ambush Derek, then knock him out with a rock or a log and take the phone. Joseph had a knife; Derek had a gun, fresher legs, no wounds, and the feral-dog energy of the bluffer forced to prove his worth. But Joseph had surprise on his side, and the distraction of the coming storm. It would have to be enough.

“I can do this,” he said out loud. His voice sounded unfamiliar, but he found the strangeness comforting, as if he had a friend in the woods with him.

He ran for a few more minutes, then stopped to take the weight off his injured ankle. Having exhausted the pain receptors in his muscles and tendons, the throbbing ache had moved deep into the ankle joint. Then he heard it, the first burst of birdsong, a chirping trill that seemed to displace the darkness, releasing a little of the night’s grip. He’d pulled enough all-nighters to know that dawn was at least an hour away.

He couldn’t keep up this pace. Derek probably couldn’t either, but he was dug too deep with his new partners to let Joseph get away. The iPhone wasn’t enough—Derek had to either bring back a scalp to the other cowboys or hand over his dope farm. His flashlight beam was barrelling in Joseph’s direction like a locomotive’s light. Derek was coming to kill him. Another asshole with a gun. History was full of them, stealing fathers from their children, husbands from wives, sons from parents. He thought of Franny in ten years,
another easy target for weak men, searching for someone to replace the father who’d bounced in and out of her life before bouncing out for good, the father who should have cooed over every gold sticker and ribbon she won and laughed at every joke that caught her fancy. He couldn’t lay that burden on her.

The long-awaited rain began to fall, cooling his face. He saw the flashlight heading toward him, then heard Derek letting out a string of curses. He was still following, going along with Joseph’s plan.
Good
. What other advantage did Joseph have? There was his anonymity. Derek must have a shortlist of suspects he thought he was chasing through the woods—a kid looking for an easy score, some local pothead come to check out the rumours, a rival grower, variations on the standard-issue coward who stumbles onto something bigger than he can handle. By fleeing, Joseph had numbered himself among the harmless, another man-boy hoping for rescue, seconds away from breaking down and begging his pursuer for mercy.