Chapter 2
Flora
Richard Wells is a walking irony.
His deep, baritone voice on the phone had prepared me to meet some sort of a giant, not the diminutive and mousy man cowering before me.
“Did anybody follow you?” he asks now.
“No,” I tell him and settle into the only chair in the room. It's an armchair with peeling leather. The bed is on the other side of the room. It's neatly dressed, like it hasn’t been used all day. Richard has probably been too terrified to sleep.
He's at the window, taking a peek at the street outside. With the light on in the room, he’s making a big target of himself for anyone who might be watching.
I heave a sigh. “Mr. Wells—”
“Call me Richard, please,” he says without looking back at me.
“I checked for cars turning with me at every intersection,” I assure him. “I didn’t notice any following me. And I watched the street for half a minute after I pulled in here, and I still didn’t see anybody following or watching.”
He comes away from the window and crosses the room to the wardrobe on the other side of the bed. I watch in silence as he rummages through a duffel bag. After a while, he pulls out a small plastic box and brings it to where I’m waiting. “Here.”
“What’s this?” I ask. It’s one of those transparent plastic packs of dental floss.
“Everything you need to know who killed my neighbor,” he says.
Puzzled, I take a closer look at the pack. It's then that I notice the black memory card lying in a corner. “You made a recording?”
“Yeah. It was raining when I heard the gunshot. When I looked through my window, I saw a man loitering in Carter’s—”
“Your window?” I ask.
“Yes, my window.” He turns toward the motel’s window again.
Now I’m confused. “You heard a gunshot in your house?”
“Not my house,” he clarifies. “The house next door. Carter’s house.”
My confusion deepens. “Raymond Carter was found dead in an abandoned warehouse in—”
“Forget what you heard,” Richard cuts in. “He was killed in his house, right next to mine. I heard them shoot him. I saw them loitering around on his patio. So I got my camera and went to the window. You won’t believe what I saw.”
“What’s that?”
“They were carrying him out to…”
“To where?”
He holds up a finger to silence me. Now there’s a frown on his face. “Someone is coming here,” he says and runs over to the window.
A loud bang rips through the room, and the door springs free of its lock, swinging open with a violent force. A tall, dark man marches in, waving a gun as his eyes flash. “In the bathroom, you two!” he barks.
For a moment, I’m frozen in my seat, staring at him with my mouth agape.
Richard backs away from the door with his hands in the air. “I didn’t see anything,” he cries, “I promise you. I didn’t see anything—I didn’t hear anything!”
“There are three bad men out there on the sidewalk,” the man says.
He’s talking calmly and gesturing at the doorway while he speaks.
“They have guns, and they are coming here. If you two are still here by the time they come in, they’ll either kill you right here in this room or abduct you to a place where they can torture you for information. ”
“What?” Now the look of horror on Richard’s face has given way to bewilderment.
“Into the bathroom,” the man commands again.
As if on cue, three men walk into the parking lot at that moment. They're visible from the doorway, walking fast with their hands by their sides, keeping something out of view. I’ve seen too many scenes like this in movies not to know what they’re hiding.
“Now, Miss Mount, move,” the man says again. He turns to Richard and points at the bathroom.
Richard scurries in there without another word.
I pocket the dental floss pack and head in after him.
The man follows us in and bolts the door behind him.
In that cramped space, he seems like a giant, towering above the two of us.
We flatten ourselves against the wall to make way as he hurries around us to the window and shatters the glass with a single blow.
In the next few seconds, he works its frame out of the panel.
“Who are you?” Richard asks him.
“Go,” he tells Richard and gestures at the now open window.
Richard turns to me. “He knows you. Do you know him?”
I’m still too stunned to speak. There’s a dangerous glitter in the man’s eyes that makes it impossible to trust him. Looking into them feels like staring into a tiger’s eyes as it stalks you. You come away with chills running down your spine and a rubbery feeling around your knees.
Now he grabs Richard by the shirt and hauls him up the window. It’s like watching somebody lift up a small sack of clothes. In a moment, he stuffs the poor man through the narrow window, head first, out into the motel’s backyard.
I don’t wait for him to reach for me before I inch closer to the window.
He supports me by the legs as I heave myself up and wriggle my body through the window.
Soon, I’m halfway out of the room with my upper torso hanging above the ground and my legs still scrabbling for purchase on the windowsill.
Richard is supposed to hold me while I climb out, but he’s walking away now.
“Mr. Wells?” I call.
“I’m getting the hell out of here,” he replies and keeps walking fast.
“They’re getting away!” someone cries from the room.
“Go ‘round to the back!” another snarls.
It’s the bad men.
What do they want?
The man pushes me through the window. I try to hold on to the wall and not fall, but then my grip comes loose as he practically flings me out. I tumble to the ground on the other side with a squeal. Loud banging on the bathroom door drowns out the stream of invectives that follow my fall.
The loud report of a gunshot silences me.
I flinch and a gasp escapes my lips. My heart lurches violently as I struggle to my feet. Now my heartbeat has changed to a wild hammering.
Another shot follows in reply.
The man comes clambering out the window. He drops to the ground on his hands and rolls over to his feet in one fluid motion that leaves my jaw hanging. A man that big has no business being that agile.
“Where is he?” he asks.
“Who?” I ask stupidly.
“Your friend.”
Richard. The man and I turn at the same time, and we look down the length of the building. Richard is at its end. Just as he rounds the corner, a gunshot roars through the night. He jerks immediately and falls to the ground.
Oh my God.
I have a scream halfway out of my mouth before I strangle it. Years of digging through dirt, grime, and death for the truth have built the reflex that snaps my mouth shut.
The man grabs me and shoves me behind him. He keeps me there as we back away from the window, in the other direction, towards the opposite end of the building. His gun is raised and at the ready as we beat that hasty retreat.
It takes all the restraint I can muster to keep from crying as we hurry backward.
Instead, I keep watch behind us, hoping that there’s no one coming around the back from this side of the building to trap us.
A six-feet-high chain link fence behind the motel has ensured that we won’t be making any alleyway escapes tonight. So this is our only way out of here.
At the end of the backyard, the man takes my hand to stop me from going around the corner yet.
I wait by the wall, down on my haunches, murmuring a silent prayer.
Now I’m no longer interested in his identity.
All I want is to get out of here alive, and he’s clearly the only one interested in helping me do that.
“Get out your car key,” he whispers.
I dig into my right hip pocket with a shaky hand and pull out my key fob. The dental floss pack falls out with it, and I shove it back in.
The man fires then, right at the bathroom window we’d escaped from.
A scream and a crash reward his effort.
Someone had tried to climb out the window, but I hadn’t seen.
A salvo comes at us from the other end of the building.
I hear two cracks close by before I feel the man fall against my back with a grunt.
He’s been hit.
With that realization, the icy hands of fear clutch at my heart and squeeze hard.
He fires off a few rounds in retaliation before nudging me. “Move.”
I stretch my neck to take a peek around the wall first.
“There’s nobody there yet,” he says and pushes me this time.
I scramble around the corner, and he follows suit.
Thankfully, there’s no shooter waiting by this end of the building’s frontage.
Halfway down the path, the man slips ahead of me. Now he duckwalks fast, still with his gun at the ready.
Was he not just shot now?
There’s no time to think about it or rationalize the fact that he’s still on his feet. I follow behind him, making myself as little as I can while glancing behind me every second. Toward the end of the building, he stops and turns to me. “Ever driven while under fire?”
I shake my head no, baffled that he’d even think to ask me that.
“I’m going to open fire at them now,” he whispers. “While I do that, you run to your car, alright?”
“Right,” I say.
“When you start the car, scoot over to the passenger side,” he continues. “I’ll come join you.”
“Okay.”
“On the count of three.” He raises his free hand with three of his fingers up.
The ring finger goes down.
One.
The middle finger follows suit.
Two.
The index finger folds.
Three.
He reaches around the corner and begins to fire.
I set off on a run, bent low. There’s only a short distance from this side of the house to the driveway, and I cover it in a matter of seconds. When I get to the car, I hunker down by the side and pull the door open.
My finger shakes as I reach for the start button and push it. Next, I clamber quickly over the driver’s seat and the gearbox into the front passenger seat and bend low.
In a moment, the man starts racing down the frontage to the driveway. He continues to shoot at the open doorway and the other end of the building as he runs. One or two yards away, he stops shooting and leaps into the car.
He slides in behind the wheel while keeping low and pulls the door shut.
It is then that all hell lets loose.
Bullets come flying at us from both the doorway and the other end of the building. The bad men shatter the windshield in a matter of seconds.
A few inches above the dashboard and my pretty head would be in the way of those bullets. The thought wrenches a whimper from my lips, and I squeeze myself even lower, between my seat and the glove box.
The man shifts the gearstick into reverse and floors the gas pedal. The car goes careening backwards off the driveway and into the street. He hits the brake then, and the car halts with a shuddering screech.
There’s a lull in the gunfire, and I’m sorely tempted to raise my head and check. However, quick footsteps hitting the driveway stifle my curiosity, so I stay put and instead shut my eyes.
I feel the car jerk forward and swerve right as we race down the street.