The Hostage (24 page)

I’m sorry, Sarah.

If this doesn’t work, you have seven days to live.

The Threat - A Preview

An excerpt from, The Threat, where you meet Drake Bellamy for the first time.

Chapter 1

Drake Bellamy stood in the pouring rain looking up at the high rise building on Victoria Park Avenue. He knew this was the building as he’d memorized the address days before. The meeting had been set for two in the afternoon.

He opened his cell phone; 1:49pm. The instructions he’d been given were ridiculous and easy. Enter the lobby, buzz 1408 and ride the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Knock two times, pause and then three times. Simple really. But covert too. It was the knocking that bothered him. Why be covert in the first place? Why all the hiding and sneaking around? It was only a little weed.

He stepped from the sidewalk and sauntered across the wet grass. It would be all over soon. Get upstairs. Meet some guy named Charles, pay him a hundred bucks for a small quantity of medical weed and get the hell out of there. Nothing to it.

“Who am I kidding?” he asked himself. “I could get busted for this.”

But there was no choice now. His mother had cancer and was in pain all the time. It was a huge fight with the system to get medical marijuana. They were still months away from obtaining any and his father had given him this contact over the phone. Everything would be fine. He knew it. But still, this really sucked.

If I’m going to break any laws at least I do it for the right reasons
, he thought.
Whatever that meant
.

A woman with two children were coming out the apartment building’s main door when Drake got there. He stepped up, grabbed the handle and held the door for her. She walked past him pulling her children along. After lifting her raincoat’s hood she entered the downpour becoming a blur of yellow.

“You’re welcome,” Drake said.

Already on edge, his nerves firing salvos through his stomach, Drake wasn’t going to take any disrespect. He wasn’t a doorman. But that’s what you got in Toronto for doing the right thing.

Inside the doors he realized just how wet he was as the air conditioners were working to cause every goose bump they could rise to the surface of his arms. With his index finger he scanned the list of names and apartment numbers stopping at 1408.

Keeley, Anne.

One last look around before he committed himself to the illegal task of buying drugs. No one was in the lobby. Outside, only the woman and her two kids could be seen walking on the sidewalk he had been on five minutes before. Cars and a TTC bus raced up and down Victoria Park paying no attention to him. No one was watching him. His purpose went undetected.

What could go wrong? It was all set up. Prearranged.

He pressed the button. A low buzzing sound emitted from the circular speaker that sat in the middle of the large console.

He waited. He could almost hear a clock ticking in his head. Maybe no one was home? He looked over his shoulder. This mid-afternoon time seemed perfect as no one would be around. Most people would be at work. Anyone who was home in this building wouldn’t want to brave the rain.

“Hello?”

He was still leaning forward when the metallic voice startled him. He jumped and lost his balance just enough to bump into the row of buttons creating a dreadful cacophony of noise that sounded like a dying synthesizer.

“Um, yeah, hello,” he said, attempting to sound like he had it together.

“Come on—”

He was sure the man’s voice had tried to say
come on up
, but it got drowned out by the five or six other voices competing for a spot from all the buzzers he’d just pushed.

The door clicked beside him. He grabbed the handle, opened it and headed for the elevators. So now he was a criminal. Like he was going upstairs to visit a prostitute for an hour and the police were waiting for him. The point of no return had come and gone. He had chosen to do this for his mother. If his dad hadn’t supplied the address he would have had no idea where to buy this kind of thing.

Everything was going to be fine. No one was getting arrested today. Once the jury heard he did it to ease the pain of his sick mother, a woman who didn’t have long to live, he’d be sent home with a warning. And he was a first time offender. Everything was going to be fine.

Waiting for the elevators to come from the floors above he could still hear a couple of stragglers asking who was there. The door clicked again behind him. Then someone swore over the intercom.

“I’m coming for you, mutherfucka…”

Drake figured the guy thought he’d been pranked. It was rare for Drake to actually start begging the elevator to hurry as he watched it lower to the first floor.

“Come on, come on,” he said out loud.

A look each way down the hall of the first floor revealed empty carpeted hallways.

Ding.

The elevator doors opened slowly. He made to jump on but had to step back as two huge black men were coming off.

“What the fuck?” the tall one said. “Give us some room white boy.”

“Sorry,” Drake said and ambled past them and onto the elevator. He pushed fourteen and only had to wait for a few seconds before the doors started to shut. Both black men had turned and were staring holes into his head as the doors shut.

The tallest one blew out of his lips in a disrespectful manner, telling Drake in one breath that he wasn’t worth it.

The doors closed. Relative safety. He took a deep breath and leaned on the wall. What was this place? Why’s everyone angry? Is it a black building or something and being white was going to be a problem?

He felt even colder as his shirt and jacket were glued to his skin like wet paste. A shiver ran through him, shaking his shoulders.

Okay, get it together. This is almost over. I’m making it a bigger deal than it already is.

The elevator slowed and stopped at fourteen. The doors opened and he stepped into the hallway. Instantly he was assailed with a food smell. Someone was cooking Indian food very close to the elevators as the air was almost unbreathable. It was like someone had cooked the hell out of a curry dish and decided to feed the fourteenth floor it’s last meal.

He started walking to the left only to realize within a couple doors that he was going the wrong way. After passing the elevators again the smell intensified. He brought his sleeve up to breathe through it and only succeeded in wetting his mouth and nose as his jacket was still quite soaked.

“Shit.”

1408 came up on his right. He got to the door and knocked. Always on guard, he scanned up and down the hallway. After about twenty seconds he knocked again. Why were they taking so long? He buzzed up first. They knew he was coming.

Then he remembered the code. He stomped his foot.

“Shit.”

This time he knocked twice and paused, then knocked three times.

The door was opened instantly. So fast actually that Drake stepped back and his hands clenched as if he’d have to defend himself.

A bald man stood there, smiling back at him. So it wasn’t a black building after all.

“Come in, come in. You look wet. Lotta rain eh?”

The man stepped back and Drake entered the apartment.

“Here, let me take your coat. I can hang it on the closet door knob. Maybe while you’re here it’ll dry a little faster than being on you.”

Drake eased out of the jacket and handed it to the bald guy who looked to be in his early forties. Easy ten years older than Drake. A snake tattoo came up from under his collar shirt and wrapped around his left ear, the forked tongue aimed at the ear canal.

That’s fucked
, Drake thought.
How is he supposed to ever get a job wearing that thing? Oh, wait, maybe he doesn’t need a conventional job. Right, he’s a drug dealer
.

“Come on into the dining room. We’ll have a seat and discuss terms.”

Drake hadn’t said a word yet. The truth was he didn’t know what to say. This was his first time and as first time’s go, he was as nervous as a pilot who has lights flashing on his panel, the cabin pressure’s dropping and a flap’s not working.

The dining room was through the apartment’s kitchen. The counters had limited space but every bit of area was used up with small appliances. Dishes sat in the sink. Drake took a quick look to see the kind of food these people ate. At least they weren’t the people causing that horrible smell in the hallway. He would’ve smelled it the second he came through the door.

The dining room was another story. The table was littered with dishes, cutlery and parts of a turkey or large chicken that sat on a cutting board.

“You guys must’ve just eaten. I hope I didn’t come at a bad time.”

“Oh, no, that’s from last night. Been busy taking care of something else. The clean up will happen after you’re gone. Have a seat here.”

The guy had a European accent he couldn’t place readily. Central Europe somewhere like Romania or Bulgaria. Maybe Hungarian.

Drake was directed to the head of the table. He sat in front of a plate with gristle, a couple bones and leftover scraps on it.

“Move it aside if it bothers you. As I said, clean up is later.” The man stood back and crossed his arms. The collar shirt he wore had the sleeves half rolled up. When he crossed them, the sleeves pulled back enough to reveal a red splotch on the bottom of his forearm.

“Oh, I think you may have cut yourself,” Drake said while pointing at the arm with the mark.

The bald guy uncrossed his arms and looked at the bottom. “That’s nothing.” He ran a finger through the mark and placed the finger on his tongue. “Cranberry sauce. I knew it.” He recrossed his arms and looked at Drake. “Tell me what you have come here for?”

Was this a test? The guy knew why he came. It had been set up with his dad. Drake had no idea where his dad got the information and he hadn’t asked. He was just supposed to get a hundred bucks out of a bank machine, come here, buy some medical weed and leave. Quick and simple.

“Let me make it easier. Are you here for something specific?”

“Yes,” Drake said. He sat at the head of a table littered with dishes, in a stranger’s apartment on the fourteenth floor of a strange building, getting asked crazy questions by a bald guy with a snake tattoo about why he was sitting there. He really had no idea how his life had come to this.

“Look, I can’t offer you anything unless you ask for it. Or…” the bald guy turned his head slightly to the side. “Are you a cop?”

“No, no,” Drake said as he raised his hands in defense. “I came to buy drugs. I mean, medical weed. It’s for my mother. She has cancer.”

There, he said it. All blurted out at one time. Without even checking if the bald guy was a cop first. He’d committed himself now. No going back.

To break a law and be convicted you need to establish two things, intent and the the act of breaking the law. Drake was pretty sure that the intent part was just handled. The act was coming.

The bald guy smiled. “This your first time?”

“Yeah,” Drake said and looked away. He fumbled with the dish in front of him and moved the utensils aside so he could place both elbows on the table.

“It’s okay. I get first timers all the time. I have everything in the other room. Give me a few minutes to get it and I’ll be right back.”

The bald guy walked away, leaving Drake sitting alone in the dining room with a table full of dirty dishes. Drake watched the guy as he entered the kitchen. What surprised Drake was the smug look on the guy’s face. Like he won. He had Drake right where he wanted him. He was the master in charge and Drake was the puppet.

If his stomach
could
be any more sick, dealing with the bald guy added to it.

Why didn’t snake head ask about quantity? How much was he getting? Or did his father already deal with all that? He’d only brought the hundred bucks his father told him to get for the deal. He’d even left his wallet at home in case he got jumped or something. This wasn’t just the first time buying drugs, it was also the first time coming to this part of Toronto and the first time making a deal with a criminal.

Maybe he’d been watching too much television.

Deals like this happen all over the place all day long. You only hear about deals gone bad and shootings when there are territorial disputes or someone’s trying to rip another dealer off. Simple deals like this one not only happened often, it was exactly why a dealer remained in business in the first place. To make money. Good money and fast.

Drake looked back into the kitchen. He was close enough to the stove to see the time. It was 2:12pm. How long was this going to take? He wanted out of here. Every second seemed to drag on.

To pass the time he counted the dishes. It appeared that three people ate here last night. They ate well too by the looks of it.