Wisdom Spring (11 page)

We got out to sit on the rock wall, and waited. I sat so I could look out at the view on my right, while still keeping an eye on the road on my left. I kept the gun next to me. After about five minutes, I saw the SUV creep around the bend in the breakdown lane. There was only a driver. Seeing we were alone, he made his decision. He slowly pulled in with his hazard lights on and took a parking spot near us. My sweaty hand was on the gun hidden behind my body. I pulled back the hammer.

I whispered to Jess, “If I say ‘go’, or if anything happens, jump off the wall and hide behind it.” The wall was about three feet high. Beyond the wall was about fifteen feet of rock before it became a cliff.

The driver got out and stretched—the worst acting job I’d ever seen. He was young—mid-twenties—and well built. He was dressed casually, but for the city, not the mountains. Obviously not a tourist. The SUV had a rental look about it. He wore a light jacket, not so much because it was chilly, which it was, but to hide the gun on his belt over his butt. His fake stretch was the stupidest thing he could have done, as it allowed me to catch a glimpse of the gun. Okay, so I wasn’t dealing with a mental giant.

“Nice view,” he said.

“It is,” I answered. I was between him and Jess. She didn’t say a word. She was probably petrified, or waiting for the signal to jump behind the wall.

“Car’s giving me trouble,” he said, rather lamely, I thought. I wondered if he was as nervous as I was. He probably wasn’t part of Hillstrom’s team. Most likely he was just one of many temporary goons hired for the express purpose of finding and killing Jess. He looked at Jess. “Hey, do I know you?” He was scratching his leg in an obvious attempt to have his hand near his gun.

“Why don’t we cut the crap,” I said. “Were you sent to kill her?”

Genius that he was though, he decided he had to tell us how smart he was before killing us. He slowly pulled his gun out while he talked.

“Everyone else is looking for you along the highway. I saw you turn off suddenly, so…”

I lifted my gun, aimed, and fired while he was in mid-sentence. His eyes grew wide as he saw my gun a second before flying backward from the force of the bullet as it caught him in the chest. The sound of the shot reverberated through the hills.

Jess and I fell behind the wall the moment after the shot. I lifted my head to see where he was, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He was sprawled at an unnatural angle on his back on the pavement near his car. A pool of blood had formed on his chest and was dripping down to the concrete.

I knew I had to act quickly. I jumped over the wall and ran to his body. I grabbed him under his armpits and dragged back him to the wall. Jess came alive at that point and jumped over to grab his legs. Together we lifted him over the wall and set him down out of sight of the road.

“You okay?” I asked Jess. The fact that she’d helped with the body surprised me, because she was obviously in shock.

She didn’t answer.

“There’s a water bottle in the tray between our seats. Can you get it and pour it on the blood drops on the concrete?” She nodded, and without a word ran to the car. There wasn’t a lot of blood, and hopefully the coming rain would wash it away, but this would make it harder for someone to notice.

I walked to the cliff and looked over. It dropped about twenty feet to a steep slope leading to another drop-off into a dense forest. I was hoping he would roll into the trees when I dropped him over the edge.

I ran back to the body. A few cars had passed on the road, but luckily none had pulled in. Jess poured water on the stains, rendering them almost invisible. The rain would finish the job. She picked up his gun and dropped it over the wall next to his body. I quickly searched him and found a wallet and a cell phone. Putting those aside with the gun, I checked for traffic and again picked him up by the armpits and dragged him to the ledge, where I set him down and rolled him over the side.

He landed on the slope below with a sickening thud, then slid down and went over the edge into the trees. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see his body, but he had left a good amount of blood on the rock. Hopefully the rain would do a cleaning job before the blood dried. I looked back at Jess, who was just staring at me, then I looked over the edge of the cliff again.

I had just killed a man. This was for real now.

Chapter 11

I was waiting for the nausea. Wouldn’t that be the natural reaction to your first kill? Shouldn’t I have been bent over vomiting and wondering how I could have just done that?

No. Other than a little shortness of breath and some shaking, I felt fine. And those were merely the after-effects of the adrenaline rush. It’s amazing what you can do when you’ve hit rock bottom and no longer care. Of course, that wasn’t exactly true. I cared about Jess. But that was simply another reason why the man’s death meant nothing to me. I was protecting her. He had come to kill us, for no other purpose than he was paid to do so. Should I have really given a second thought to ending his life? I didn’t think so.

For Jess, though, it was a different story. Reality had caught up with her, and had hit her hard. She was sitting by the wall hyperventilating. I hurried over to her as she took in great gasps of air. I guided her head between her knees and rubbed her back, trying all the time to talk her down. I spoke in calming tones, telling her it would be alright, dehumanizing the man who had come to kill us, and letting her know that it was our right to fight back.

She was a mess. Tears were flowing and she was sobbing, while at the same time choking on her sobs, unable to breathe. I was afraid I was going to lose her.

“Jess,” I continued, “I’m falling in love with you. Do you understand? You’ve given me something to live for. There is no way in hell anybody is going to take that away from me. If we’re going to win this, we’re going to have to be willing to come down to their level. We may have to kill again. We have to take apart their machine piece by piece, coldly and logically, with no emotions. We will win this.”

I kept talking, knowing that this was a crucial moment. Her future survival depended on how she made it out of this crisis. After about fifteen minutes the gasps slowly began to lessen, then disappeared altogether. She finally lifted her head and I saw that the tears were gone. But she was fragile, oh so fragile. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she was a mess, but she seemed to be functioning again.

“Do you really love me?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.

“I do.”

She put her arms around me and we just sat there behind the wall, not saying a word. I could hear cars come into the overlook parking area and stay for a few minutes, then leave. Occasionally someone would get out and stand by the wall looking out at the view, then it would become quiet again as they left. I glanced up at the sky and saw the dark clouds rolling back in. It would soon be pouring.

“We should go,” I said quietly.

“Not yet. I have to tell you something. When you were talking to me, The Voice was also talking—comforting me, just as you were.”

“You were being double-teamed?”

She tried to smile, without much success. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“What did it say?”

“There weren’t many words. It was more feelings and emotions. While you were using words like ‘win’ and ‘cold’ and ‘logical’, The Voice was sending those sensations through me, as if it was showing me what they would feel like and why they were important. Like a tutorial to go along with the text.”

“I’m beginning to really appreciate this Voice,” I said.

“Because of the two of you I understand now what has to be done. And… “ She hesitated.

“And what?”

She shook her head. “I’ll tell you later.”

I gave her a look.

“I’m not trying to be mysterious. There’s just something I need to let sink in a bit.”

The heavens suddenly opened up and the rain came down in buckets. I gathered up the would-be assassin’s wallet, keys, and gun, and we ran for the car.

When we had closed the doors, I looked around. The parking lot was empty.

“We should think about getting out of here. You drive my car while I drive his. We’ll take it to a parking lot of a hotel and leave it. The car will probably sit there for days before anyone notices it. And who knows when his body will be found, if ever. This rain should get rid of all the blood on the ledge. I’ll look at his phone later and we can see if he called anyone when he was following us. Either way, there might be some interesting numbers on the phone. I can pass them on to Mill.”

I gave her a kiss and told her to follow me, and I jumped out into the deluge and ran over to his SUV.

The guy was a slob. Fast-food wrappers and bags, soda cans, cigarette butts, and coffee cups were everywhere, and the car had an overpowering stench that made me open the window more than a crack, even with the rain. I quickly looked around for anything of importance, but other than the garbage, the car was empty. I figured he had stashed his stuff in a hotel room somewhere. I was right about it being a rental though. I found the contract in the glove compartment and pocketed it in case it might prove useful.

I backed up and pulled onto the road, making sure Jess was behind me. It led back to I-15, but I took a side road before hitting the highway, eventually ending up in Salt Lake City. I stuck to the smaller streets as we wound our way through the city. I had no idea where I was, but at the same time I didn’t think of myself as lost because I didn’t know what my immediate destination was either. The downpour had been replaced by drizzle and the driving was easier. I pulled into a good-sized no-name hotel in a rougher-looking section of town and sought out the most remote corner of the parking lot. Jess pulled in next to me and moved over to the passenger seat. I left the SUV’s keys on the seat and joined Jess in my car.

“Plates,” she said, as we were backing up.

“Huh?”

“The word ‘plates’ just popped up. I have no idea what it means. License plates, maybe?”

I looked around, and suddenly knew what it meant. I pulled the car back into our original spot and reached into the glove compartment for a pocket knife. I opened it to the screwdriver blade and looked around the parking lot. No one was in sight, and I couldn’t detect any cameras either, but I put my hat on just in case and pulled it low.

“We should take the plates, just in case we need to switch them with mine.”

“But won’t a car with no plates attract more attention?”

“You’re right.” I looked around for the closest car. It was about a hundred feet away. Checking again to make sure we were alone, I got out and sprinted over to it and quickly unscrewed the front plate. I ran back and replaced the rear plate on the SUV with the stolen plate, then went to the front of the SUV and removed the front plate. I was back in the car in less than two minutes. I handed the plates to Jess, who stashed them under her seat, and we took off.

“The front of the SUV is up against the wall, so no one will see the lack of plate. And with a plate on the back, hopefully the SUV will go unnoticed. Good catch. My real hope is that being in a questionable neighborhood, someone will see the keys on the seat and steal the car.

It was beginning to get dark and we were both exhausted from the stress of the day. We managed to make it as far as Ogden without getting back on the highway, and found a nice Hyatt. We had abandoned the wheelchair at the last hotel, which was okay with me as I felt we had taken that act as far as we could, so we reverted back to our original routine.

After we got settled, I ventured out for some food and returned with a pizza and a couple of salads. We decided to make it an early night, and were lying in bed after showering off the memories of killing a man. Jess had her head on my chest. We were quiet, just enjoying the closeness. When her hand began to wander, the mood quickly changed and there was no turning back after that.

I was just reaching the point of no return when a phone rang and we both jumped. I rolled off Jess, my body reacting to the sudden change in focus. Jess quickly turned on a light.

It rang again, but I was totally disoriented. It wasn’t mine. Was it Mill’s or the assassin’s? I made my way to the desk where I had put all the phones. It was the disposable from Mill.

“Hello?” I answered out of breath.

“Jon, Mill Colson. You okay?”

“Hi Mill. Yeah, the phone just startled us.”

“Well, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be making the announcement tomorrow. Obviously I’m not going to bring up anything about Hillstrom, but at least we’ll get the ball rolling. Is my client there?”

“Sure, just a second.”

I handed the phone to Jess. “He’d like to speak to you.”

“Hello?”

Jess talked to Mill for about five minutes. Mill, of course, did most of the talking. Jess answered with “okay” and “uh huh” about a dozen times. Finally, when she was able to get in a word, she said, “Mr. Colson … okay, Mill … I just wanted to thank you for taking me on. Between you and Jon, I might just make it through this.” Mill said something else. “Uh, I think maybe you should talk to Jon.” She handed me the phone. “He wants to know if we’ve seen any sign of Hillstrom’s people.”

I got on the phone and proceeded to tell Mill about our hasty departure from the hotel and our encounter with the man at the overlook. I had a feeling it took a lot to surprise Mill, but this bit of news left him almost speechless.

“Do you still have his phone and wallet?” Mill asked, after getting over the shock.

“We do.”

“I need to get them from you. The other number programmed in your phone is for Joe Gray. He’s my lead investigator. I don’t want to know where you are. Deniability and all that, but he’s in the general area where I think you might be. Tomorrow morning I want you to call him and set up a meeting place where you can turn over the dead operative’s things.”

“Okay. There was also a 9mm semi-auto. I’m keeping that.”

“Well, don’t give it to Jess, and if you do, don’t tell me about it. I want to be able to tell the public that she is, in fact, not armed and dangerous.”