The Hostage (21 page)

She breathed in and out in small gasps. Aches and pains came from everywhere, but she didn’t move. She did a mental inventory of her body and was pretty sure nothing got broken.

People gathered around her. Someone said not to move her for fear of further damage. Someone shouted for an ambulance.

There was too much attention. No way the uniforms would try to take her now. It would be routine to have an ambulance attend.

She opened her eyes in time to see the uniforms getting into the car they had tried to force her into.

I did it, but
I have to find a new way to live. Jumping in front of cars, just to avoid getting killed is fucked up.

She rolled onto her back and tried to get up, to the protests of everyone around her.

“I’m okay, really, I’m okay—”

The people around her were knocked sideways by a shockwave. Someone fell over her legs as she tried to right herself to see what had exploded.

Four car lengths away sat the car the cops had tried to get her into, fully engulfed in flames. No way the driver or the two uniforms had gotten out.

Her stomach clenched at the thought that not only was she almost in that car, she was under it moments ago.

Her stomach wanted to release its meager contents. She rolled to the side and got to her feet, a hand on her abdomen. Most of the people who had surrounded her had moved toward the burning car. A tattoo shop had lost all its front windows in the explosion.

Holy shit. I’d be dead right now. That was too close.

Who were these people? Who would kill in the open like this? Definitely not people like Elmore. They did it in private and they preyed on the weak.

A thought raced through her mind, like a power surge hit her. She jolted and stared, wide-eyed.

Ferenci and people of Armond Stuart’s ilk. The immigration fraudsters. The people after Drake. They’re here and after her too because she stopped them at the baseball game. Cops on the payroll. She would be a target because she took out their leader in Montone, Italy.

She cautiously stepped backwards until she was touching the wall of the nearest building. She felt exposed in the open and with no weapon.

Her left knee ached too much to walk without a slight limp. She’d torn her jeans at the knee. Her elbow was bleeding.

She edged along the building toward the alley’s entrance. As attentive to her surroundings as she could be, nothing or no one paid attention to her as far as she could tell. But she knew Ferenci was probably watching her. The bomb in the car was for when she got in. When the uniforms left without her, they ceased to be of any use to a man like Ferenci, so he disposed of them.

Where was Elmore? Where was Drake? Could Ferenci already have Drake?

She made it to the door of a restaurant called The Babur. A loud crack reverberated from across the street. People on the other sidewalk ducked as the window of the restaurant behind her shattered.

Gun.

That was enough to get her running, bad knee or not.

She ran hard for the corner, turned around it and bumped into Parkman.

“What the hell is going on out here?” he asked.

“The car … it exploded … someone shot at me … Ferenci,” Sarah managed to get out between breaths.

“What?” Spencer asked. “Slow down. What’s going on?”

Sarah leaned on Parkman’s arm, her leg pain flaring up. It struck her as odd at that moment that she would notice Parkman didn’t have a toothpick in his mouth.

“What happened to your toothpick?”

Parkman frowned. He looked at Spencer. “Elmore is dead. We found his body. He was shot in each leg and a couple times in the face.”

Sarah breathed easier. She pushed off Parkman’s arm, stood on her own and stepped away. “Good. Sounds like Ferenci did something right.” She turned to Spencer. “When I stood waiting for you two in the alley, two uniforms showed up. They escorted me at gunpoint to a car. If I hadn’t escaped, I would’ve died in that car. It just exploded on Queen Street. It was Ferenci. I’m assuming he has Drake. They just shot at me around that corner.” She pointed back to where she’d just come from, still trying to catch her breath.

Spencer got on his radio. “Lock down a two-block radius. Roadblock on each route leaving this area.”

He ran away from them, pulling his weapon, heading for the corner. A moment later he disappeared around the corner.

“You doing okay?” Parkman asked. “You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

A gun went off, sounding like a firecracker. A woman screamed. It came from Queen Street, where Spencer had just run.

Parkman pulled his weapon and jogged to the corner to take a look with Sarah close behind. A number of people had gathered around the burning car. What caught their eye was the old man standing over Spencer who now lay out on the sidewalk on his back. The old man aimed a gun at Spencer’s forehead.

Parkman didn’t call out. He didn’t identify himself as a police officer. He just brought his gun up, aimed and fired. It was a clean shot. The old man’s head snapped sideways, a splatter of blood sprayed out the other side. The old man fell hard, as if he had been asleep on his feet.

Sarah took in the entire scene. She looked at all the witnesses, all the stopped cars. Mothers covering their children’s faces. Teenagers, their mouths agape. What broke up the scene for her was the huge man in a long overcoat across the street. He had a weapon and he stared at them. As she watched, he lowered it and stuck it in the back of his pants.

“Parkman,” she said as he came out of his shooter’s stance. “That big guy over there has a gun too.”

Parkman snapped his attention to where Sarah pointed. “The guy in the navy blue overcoat? The one who just turned and started walking away?”

“Yeah, him. He jammed it in the back of his pants.”

“On it,” Parkman said and started across the street in pursuit.

Sarah leaned up against the wall and watched everything as best she could, looking for a threat. Police and ambulance approached to attend to Spencer. She could check on him at any time, but if there was another shooter, she could be shot at any moment, so she kept watching the street.

After a full minute of standing in the early afternoon sun and scanning the entire area, she felt confident no one else posed a threat unless a shooter was hunched down in an obscure spot in which case she couldn’t do anything about it.

She needed to locate Drake.

She watched as Parkman caught up with the guy in the trench coat just over a block away. Maybe he’d know where Drake was. The guy raised his hands and got down on one knee. Parkman applied handcuffs, got the man standing again and started back toward Sarah.

The car the man had been standing beside when Sarah saw him, moved. She shaded her eyes from the sun and looked again. Sure enough, the car moved ever so slightly. She pushed off the wall and walked across Queen Street, weaving through the slow-moving vehicles that skirted the burning car.

She neared the car. It was idling.

This was their getaway car. They wanted to shoot me and drive away.

The front door wasn’t locked. She opened it and saw the keys in the ignition.

The car moved and shook a little again, this time accompanied by a moan.

The trunk.

She pushed the automatic release button by the bottom edge of the driver’s seat and walked back to the trunk.

The lid lifted without resistance. A crowbar flew out at her. She dodged left, the steel bar missing her face by less than an inch.

“Drake!”

She was so happy to see him.

“Sarah? Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

She grabbed his wrist and helped him out.

“No problem … just don’t throw shit at me. Pisses me off.”

“No problem. I didn’t know … shit … sorry.”

The bullet wound in his leg had bled out more. His jeans were matted in blood and his face, pale.

“Are you okay? How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m good. They’re gone and you’re here, so yeah, I’m good.”

“We have to get you to that ambulance. Those paramedics can help—”

“No,” he cut her off. “Just get me out of here. Take me to the Trillium Health Center. It’s on the West Mall. I’ll show you. I just need to get out of here. Who knows who’ll pop up next with a gun and a desire to murder us?”

She looked at him for a second longer and then nodded. “You got it. Get in.”

Sarah helped him to the passenger side and after he was settled in, she ran around to the driver’s side of Ferenci’s car, jumped in and edged out into traffic.

Drake grabbed a blanket from the backseat and covered his blood-covered jeans, then lay his head back and closed his eyes.

“You know, Sarah,” he said. “You’ve saved my life twice now. That means I’m yours forever. I owe you my life. I know this may sound corny, but seriously, I’d be dead without you. I don’t have a death wish, but I know now that I will die in your place if it ever comes down to it.”

Sarah didn’t respond. She couldn’t. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her before. No one had ever said they would die for her, and she believed him.

The traffic slowed. Up ahead, four police cruisers blocked the road, leaving a narrow path where vehicles were allowed to go through once they were cleared.

There were two cars left and then an officer would ask questions neither one of them would be able to answer. She didn’t know where the papers were. For all she knew, Ferenci could’ve stolen the car and now she was driving it after stealing it from him.

Fuck. Now what?

“Don’t panic,” she said. “We’ll get through this. Follow my lead. And remember, we’ve done nothing wrong. I’m just getting us out of the area before someone picks us off.”

A Toronto police officer walked up to her window and asked her to roll it down.

“Evening officer,” Sarah said, a wide, innocent smile creasing her face. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“Where are you two headed?” he asked as he looked in at Drake.

“To our uncle’s place for dinner.”

“Really? Were you anywhere near the explosion on Queen Street?”

“There was an explosion on Queen Street? Wow … what blew up?” Sarah asked in her most dumb-blonde voice. She wondered if she poured it on too thick as her voice squeaked with the higher pitch.

The officer eyed her too long. He looked in at Drake again. “You okay over there? You look a little pale.”

Drake nodded. “Yeah, just seriously hungry and her uncle cooks up a mean lasagna.”

The cop looked at Sarah and pointed at Drake. “He your boyfriend?”

Sarah glanced at Drake and then said, “Yes.”

What the fuck? Too soon. It came out too quick. Shit, what will Drake think now?

“Okay,” the officer said and stood to his full height. He adjusted his belt and stared at Sarah with what she thought was anger.

He’s going to fucking call us on our bullshit.

“A moment ago, you said
our uncle
and then your boyfriend said
your uncle
. So which is it, because I’m starting to wonder about you two.”

Now what?

Another cop walked up behind the one talking to them. “Everything okay here, Officer Jones?”

He turned around, “Yeah, I got this. Just give me another second.”

“Okay, I’m going to make you pull over there so I can grill you and take you downtown and make things very difficult for as long as I can because I’m an asshole like that, and because I think you’re lying to me. But if you’re both just running away from mommy and you’re wasting my time by lying to me, then I need you out of my face. So here’s how it’s going to go.” He bent and placed his forearm along the door getting his face low enough to look in at Drake too. “Tell me the name of your uncle at the same time at the count of three. If you can do that, I’ll assume the story isn’t made up and you’re on the level. Deal?”

Sarah nodded, gritting her teeth.

He lifted his sleeve to look at his watch. “One. Two. Three.”

Please, say the same one as me.

“Uncle Rod,” they both said in perfect harmony.

The officer stood to his full height and knocked on the roof of their car to motion them through.

Sarah drove between the two cruisers and onto open road. They looked at each other and started breathing again.

They’d made it. Her heart beat in anticipation of what her life was about to become. They’d made it. They were out. But now she seemed even more afraid because of the man in the seat beside her. He could hurt her more than the bullets, bruises and fights she’d endured over the last five years.