The Unlucky (8 page)

They stared at each other for a moment before Sarah mouthed the words,
I’m sorry.

He made a half smile, then blinked his eyes in an
I got this
gesture. Her heart swooned in that moment.

What did they have on him, anyway? Sitting in a car in the parking garage? That wasn’t illegal. Sure it was the car she’d used, but she was the one they were after. He would have an alibi for any questions they threw at him. He had friends, a dojo to run, students who would corroborate his attendance in class. They had nothing on him. This arrest was a formality. Aaron would be home for dinner.

Maybe that was Vivian’s plan since the beginning.

But Sarah didn’t have to like it. The people she was close to weren’t pawns. Sarah was always willing to do what was necessary, but lately, without use of the old method of automatic writing, Vivian could tell Sarah what she wanted whenever she felt like it, and that was taking some time to get used to.

They picked Aaron up and placed him in the back of the unmarked cruiser. A tall woman closed the car door and leaned in the passenger window. When she stood back up and walked around to get in the driver’s seat, the passenger leaned out the open window.

Timothy Simmons.

He was connected to all of this. When would Vivian let her in on it?

Soon …

The word echoed throughout her head.

Sarah eased the door closed and headed down the stairs to the sidewalk. Outside, she mingled with a crowd of people and watched as the cruisers, one by one, exited the parking garage.

The unmarked car with Aaron in the backseat emerged from the garage and hung a left. As it passed, she studied the female driver. When she moved her eyes to look at Simmons, he was staring back at her.

The car’s tires screeched to a stop as the cruiser braked instantly. He’d seen her and recognized her without the braids.

Sarah ducked low and bobbed and weaved through the crowd until she was in the stairwell again. She ran up, jumping two stairs at a time as she did ten minutes ago. On the second level, she exited the stairs and headed for the edge to look down on Yonge Street. The passenger door was closing. Tim must’ve lost sight of her and got back in the car. It started away, Aaron in the backseat.

After watching until she couldn’t see it anymore, she entered the mall and exited at the south end. A few blocks up she found a small bar.

Vivian wanted her to take a Greyhound to somewhere just north of a city called Barrie. It was something to do with a summer cottage she was supposed to stake out tomorrow afternoon for some reason.

But tonight she would stay lost in the stream of thousands of people downtown Toronto. Tonight, she would drink to squash the memory of shooting Vanessa, such a young girl with so much life ahead of her. She would drink because she had no idea how many days of freedom she had left.

She felt very unlucky. As if nothing was working out as it should. How could Vivian get a murder charge off her back? What did the police know? They had to have pictures, videos, eyewitnesses to the shooting. Yet the media weren’t publishing much because of a gag order.

She had thought about calling Parkman in, but not now. The way Vivian handled the people close to her convinced Sarah to keep Parkman out of this one.

The bar was quiet as the sun hadn’t dropped yet. After a few drinks she would take a taxi to Mississauga. She knew a few hotels that took cash, no ID. After some rest, she would take the bus north of Barrie and stake out the cottage. For what, she still had no idea. But she’d do it because that’s who she was. Vivian’s pawn.

As she ordered her drink, a thought struck her. Maybe Vivian was withholding something because the information was too horrible. After all that Sarah had seen and been through, what could be so bad that Vivian felt the need to shield her from it?

Just trust me …

The echo of those words made her call the bartender back.

“Cancel that wine I ordered. I need whiskey. Make it a double and keep the bottle close. I need to drown out the voices in my head.”

“Coming right up, lady.”

Chapter 9

With every cop in Toronto looking for Sarah, taking public transportation was risky. The Greyhound ticket to Barrie was already bought in her name, but instead of using it, she took a cab to the Toronto International Airport and hired a black limo—not the stretch kind—to drive her to Casino Rama in Orillia. Just short of her destination, she told the driver to pull over and let her out. She paid the full amount and started walking.

The cloudless sky offered a rich shade of blue, the sun high and blazing its heat down upon the cement she walked, sweat oozing from her every pore. Eyes half-lidded, she lumbered along the road hoping today wouldn’t require a lot of physical work.

Vivian had explained where to go in a version of psychic magnetism. The image of the cottage Sarah was supposed to stake out was planted in her mind like a photo. The location was offered in a way that Sarah knew where to go by moving forward—which was a strange feeling. If she headed away from the cottage, an internal compass, a yearning to turn back, coursed through her. Until she reached her destination, this internal guide led her to the cottage just south of Orillia without any explanation as to why.

“What’s this for, Vivian?” she asked out loud.

The concession road she walked along was dirty, the pavement broken and disheveled in places. A sign on her right said
Frost Heaves,
which probably explained the decrepit look of the back road.

The heat didn’t help with her throbbing head. Even after three painkillers, her whiskey headache had only dimmed slightly, leaving a subtle throbbing between the temples.

Served her right for trying to block Vivian’s voice. It seemed she couldn’t detect Vivian’s presence at all when she was quite sloshed. The more she drank, the further the voice moved into the far recesses of her consciousness, and the more Sarah got herself back. In the end all that achieved was a drunk Sarah without Vivian’s protection. That was scary and made her feel vulnerable in its own way, but it was also liberating.

The year before, she had learned whiskey meant something like
water for life
in Gaelic. She could use some water now as her tongue was an arid piece of meat flopping around in her mouth.

It wasn’t the brightest idea to get drunk in Toronto either. Not while every authority on every block hunted her.

They probably still had Aaron locked up, drilling a thousand questions at him. And when they learned he was her boyfriend but had only heard from her recently under mysterious circumstances, they wouldn’t believe him. How could Sarah be in Toronto and her own boyfriend didn’t know about it?
Where is she?
they’d ask.
Why is she here?
Aaron was tough, but they would push him hard.

When this was over, she would find a way to make it up to him if he’d let her.

The concession road was surrounded by shrubs, bushes and trees. Not a single leaf moved in the still air. The sound of the highway grew dimmer as she walked away from it.

After five minutes, a green car came toward her. The female driver checked her out, staring longer than normal. Sarah paid the driver no extra attention. There was a cottage Vivian was leading her to. Focus on that. Watch the place. Then leave and get water. And more sleep.

After fifteen minutes, a tall fence came up on the right. A cool slither moved down her back, a chill in the heat for a brief moment. She slowed her step.

Is this the place?

Sarah didn’t need an answer. She knew what she was looking at. That all-knowing feeling, strange as it was, returned.

She had found the cottage. It was surrounded on all sides by a fence topped with barbed wire.

“How do I get in?” she asked out loud.

The urge to move forward swept over her. Putting one foot in front of the other, Sarah followed the fence until she came to a corner where the road turned to the right.

Detective Simmons’ gun had slipped slightly in the sweat at the back of her pants. She pulled it out, checked that the safety was off and held it aimed at the sky as she eased around the corner. A large iron gate sat open. Atop this gate, barbed wire was twirled in circles like the fences at concentration camps.

How can I watch the cottage from outside the gate?

Enter quietly in half a minute,
came the reply, echoing in that resonant cadence of Vivian’s voice. Even though Vivian had occupied her body, made her pass out and write notes, saved her life countless times and now talked directly to her in this fashion, it still took some getting used to. Sarah had the urge to shake her head as if a mosquito buzzed close by when Vivian whispered to her. Only recently had she been able to resist that urge, knowing how it would look to others.

The clock ticked. The gate remained open.

Maybe the woman who drove by minutes before had come from here, leaving the gate ajar.

Then why wait, Vivian?

At least twenty seconds had passed. Sarah decided to move forward. She stepped out from behind the corner and heard footsteps approaching almost immediately.

She pivoted on her heels and jumped back behind the security of the wall where she had been hiding moments before.

A man emerged from the opening in the gate. He walked with purpose, his face glued to the phone in his hand. White cords fed from the phone to his ears. As she watched him, the man touched something in his pocket and the large iron gate began to close.

She waited, judging how far away he would get before the gate would close completely. The gate was slow, but if she ran through now, all he had to do was turn around to see her out in the open.

But the gate was almost closed now.

Go!
Sarah winced and tightened a fist at the loud shout in her head. As she opened her eyes, she jumped from hiding, ran the short distance to the opening in the gate and hopped out of sight of the road. A moment later the gate closed, clunking into place with finality.

A buzzing hum, like the sound of a busy beehive, started at the second the gate closed.

Electricity
. The fence was wired.
What the hell for? What are they afraid might get in?

Sarah turned around slowly on the gravel driveway and surveyed the cottage’s facade.

Or better yet, what are they afraid will get out?

On the outside, the building appeared to be like any other in these parts. Big for a cottage, though. She headed to the side of the four-level side split fully detached house. Something told her—whether it was Vivian, or her intuition—that the house was devoid of hostiles. Knowing she could relax, she eased the gun back into her belt line and began to examine the building from the outside.

Ten minutes later, other than uncut grass, dirty windows and a ratty interior—whoever lived here didn’t keep a clean home—Sarah took one of the Adirondack chairs from the back porch and carried it up to the small thatch of trees on the side corner of the lot for shade. She cursed herself for not having brought water. There was nothing she could do about it now. When this stake-out task was done, she would drink a keg of water, pouring half of it over her face and body. Then she would pop more painkillers and get some rest.

And lay off the whiskey,
she thought.

She found a spot in the trees that gave her a clear view of the front gate. Shrouded as she was in deep shade, anyone coming in the gate wouldn’t readily see her, nor would they know to look her way.

Her head back, feet out, she crossed her hands on her stomach and closed her eyes. A catnap would help. Could be the residents had gone to work and wouldn’t return until evening.

A voice startled her. She jerked awake and sat up.

It sounded like someone had pleaded for help. The gate was still closed, the electricity humming softly. The air was still, only the distant sound of the highway reached her. She waited, breathing slowly in order to listen. Whatever the noise was, it didn’t come again.

Must’ve been in my head.

She leaned back in the chair and kept her eyes open as long as she could. Eventually they closed and Sarah fell asleep.

When the call for help came from the house again, she was too far under to hear it.

Chapter 10

Belinda McCarthy sang along with the music of Toronto band Moxy Früvous as they boasted through her car stereo speakers about being the King of Spain as she drove along Highway 11.

Thirty more kilometers until her turn, the music loud, window open, the wind rushing past her face, hair blowing over her shoulder in the wind. Nothing better than a summer drive toward Rama.

Casino Rama, on the other side of Orillia Ontario, had filled this part of Highway 11 with traffic since it opened in the ’90s. People from southern Ontario flooded the road, racing north in hopes of popping the big one and living on easy street after that.