"We've got no choice," I said. I told her that she needed to put on her coat, and she unbuckled her seatbelt and started to pull it on. As we reached the exit for the rest stop, I turned the wheel towards the off ramp and we drifted into the parking lot in a lazy arc, gliding on top of several inches of snowfall over frozen rain. Then the tail of the Camry broke loose, pointing the headlights back toward the highway and the trunk of the car toward the building that contained the bathrooms. I pumped the brakes to try to halt our slide, but the back wheels of the Camry did a slow bounce over the curb in front of the bathrooms anyway. The car came to rest with the trunk of the car nearly against the wall of the bathroom. I told Bonnie "GO! NOW!"
I shut off the headlights, reached into the back seat for the shotgun, and we both jumped out of the car, slipping and sliding as we ran for the restroom. I hoped that the Corvette driver hadn't seen me pull off the highway, and that he'd continue on toward the coast. If he did that, we could turn the Camry around and head back down the long hill towards Portland.
I went past the bathroom door to hide behind the far wall of the building. The only illumination in the parking lot was the bronze-colored glow coming from a single sodium lamp atop a pole in the center of the paved area. The back side of the building was in near-total darkness.
I heard the hollow metal rattling sound that it makes when a door is locked and someone pulls the door handle over and over.
"Shit, it's locked!" Bonnie said. "What do you want me to do now?"
I stepped around the corner into the light and took her by the hand.
"Come with me and stand up against the wall. It's dark. Just stay close, okay?"
We went around the corner into the shadow of the building, and she wrapped both of her arms around my torso and put her head against my shoulder. "I don't want to die," she said. "I don't want to die."
"We'll be okay," I said. "We will."
Then I heard the sound of the Corvette engine shifting into a lower gear as the driver made the turn into the rest area parking lot. Bright white headlights slashed across the trees behind our hiding place, and we instinctively pressed ourselves harder against the wall, deeper into the darkness.
After a few moments the Corvette motor stopped, and it was absolutely quiet. Then I heard a dinging sound from the Corvette reminding the driver that the keys were still in the ignition. Then it was silent again, with only the faint sound of boots crunching in the snow.
The sounds of a car door opening and closing again.
The hollow metal rattling sound that it makes when a door is locked and someone pulls the handle over and over.
Then complete silence, as if the hunter hadn't followed us at all. It was just me and Bonnie in a private embrace, with nothing in the world existing beyond the small slice of darkness the two of us shared.
Then I heard his boots crunching back over towards his car. I pried Bonnie off of me and stepped far enough towards the trees that I could watch him from a dark vantage point.
He popped the glass hatchback open on the Corvette, took off his coat, and put on a heavy black vest before putting the coat back on. Then he strapped a pistol to his right thigh and pulled a short-barreled pump shotgun from a soft case. I watched him put a half-dozen shells into the shotgun’s magazine before holding the forestock in one hand and jacking the gun up and down one time to force a shell into the receiver. Then he donned a short-brimmed hat, closed the hatchback, and locked the car. Then he switched on a tactical flashlight attached to the top of the shotgun and he rotated in a full circle taking in the parking lot, the picnic tables, and the small white bridge that marked a trailhead. As he turned the flashlight towards the trees where I hid, I silently stepped back over to the shadow where Bonnie waited for me. I felt the solace of her embrace as she wrapped her arms around me again. She asked if he was leaving and I said "Shhhh," as quietly as I could.
Then I heard his boots crunching through the snow again, knowing that he had begun the process of circling the building and parking lot to see where we'd gone. The logical place for him to begin his search was with our footprints where we'd left our car, and that's what he did. I listened to him retrace our steps, his footsteps coming closer and closer.
I raised my shotgun up to head high and held it out at arm's length. As he rounded the corner of the building and his flashlight lit Bonnie's and my feet, I watched his mouth open under the walrus mustache in a toothy smile, and I squeezed the twin triggers of the shotgun, distilling the entirety of my existence into the roaring ka-kunk of the two gun barrels and the brilliant cones of fire from the twin .410 shells.
I was blinded and deafened for a while. There was an intense ringing in my ears, and the only thing left in my visual field was the ghost flare etched into my retinas from the flash of the gun.
Gradually my eyesight returned and my world started to remake itself. The feathery snow began to fall again through the cone of light made by the parking lot lamp. The haze from the burning slash piles still carried the pungent smells of wood a hundred years old, of rain and moss and incineration. The dark and crumpled form of the wolf had stalked us at the airport and hunted us in the wilderness began to take shape in the snow only a few feet from where I stood. One of his arms was outstretched over his head, the other at his hip. The barrel of his shotgun rested across one leg, with the flashlight painting me and Bonnie against the wall like shadow puppets. At the base of his neck, his long hair was fanned out on the snow in a circle like a small halo. I watched as the halo was gradually replaced by a growing stain as black and shiny as oil, and I felt the world begin to unmake itself around me again. Then I rested my head against Bonnie's and we embraced for a long time, Bonnie's body shuddering with sobs as we waited for the world to right itself once more.
Chapter 10
When the ground finally felt solid beneath my feet, I told Bonnie that she needed to go to the Camry and wait for me.
"What are you gonna do?" Her face was still pressed against my chest, so her words sounded like "Whachygundoo?"
"I'm going to make him disappear," I said. "Like he was never here, and we were never here."
I felt her head nodding against my chest. "Okay," she said.
I put my hands on her shoulders and rotated her towards the Camry. I watched her trudge away in a daze.
I knelt down and went through the pockets of his pants and coat, pulling out a cell phone, wallet, car keys, and folding knife. I took the .45 automatic from his holster and put it and his shotgun against the bathroom wall. Then I dragged him to the wall and rested his back against it before picking up one of his limp arms and levering his body across my shoulders in a fireman's carry.
He was heavier than he looked. I felt the hardness of his bulletproof vest against my neck and realized that I would have to take the vest off to continue, so I bent forward and dropped him on his back. He hit the ground with a thudding sound, a lungful of his breath condensing into a cloud as if he had sighed. I bent over and unzipped his coat, rolled him over, and struggled to get his coat off of him. I felt naked and exposed in the light from the parking lot lamp standing over the man I'd killed. Would the highway patrol pull into the lot, see what I'd done, and arrest me? I pressed on, popping the plastic clips from the thick straps that held the vest in place, and then re-rolling him onto his back so I could finally get the vest off. I left the vest on the ground beside his coat and then picked him up again. I felt my spine compressing and my hip and knee joints aching, but I kept moving, carrying him across the parking lot towards the white wooden bridge that connected the parking lot to the forest.
The snow continued to fall as I trudged towards the bridge. The pale gold light from the overhead light made everything shine with an odd glow as it reflected off the ground, the trees, and the snow.
I tightened my grip on his arm and leg as I carefully made my way onto the footbridge. A sign mounted on a pair of white poles said that the bridge was the trailhead for the path that led to the
Steam Donkey trail and the wilderness beyond.
The smell of smoke from the burning slash piles was strong. I began to work my way along the path using the dim light that filtered through the trees from the parking lot. My eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, and I was able to see enough of the tree shapes around me to keep from tripping and falling. After maybe a hundred yards I started looking for a place where I could drop my package and cover him up somehow. In the distance ahead, a red glow filtered through the trees, beckoning me on. I pressed ahead, feeling the sweat running down my back.
I reached the point on the Steam Donkey trail where the path connected with the clear-cut area that I'd passed on the highway. The red light that I'd seen in the distance became the glowing cores of a pair of timber slash piles that were still burning. On the nearest of the two piles, the scrap timber on one side had collapsed into the center of the pile, leaving a blood red open maw, a kiln made of wood feeding on itself. It looked like a tunnel to hell.
Even from thirty feet away, the heat from the slash pile was intense. I took in a lungful of air, held it, and shuffled forward into the heat until I felt like my clothes might catch fire. Then I bent at the waist and launched him into the open core of the slash pile, turned, and ran. After a dozen steps I took in a huge breath, stopped, and looked back at what I'd done. The light from the slash pile core illuminated the body in demonic red colors. His boots had already begun to smoke from the heat, his shirt spotting with flame and emitting sparks into the air as the fabric began to burn.
Still breathing hard, I started back down the Steam Donkey trail towards the rest stop. I took one last look back at the slash pile as I re-entered the trees. The body was in full flame, now a misshapen lump of fire that was barely recognizable as a corpse.
I made my way back along the trail and across the white footbridge, returning to the place where I'd left his coat and bulletproof vest. I picked up the coat and vest, carried those over to the backside of the restroom, collected the shotgun and pistol I'd left there, and then walked through the snow to the Camry. Bonnie was waiting for me in the passenger seat. I opened the back door and put the hit man’s gear on the floor of the car, then handed Bonnie the keys to the Camry.
"You smell like smoke," she said. "Like you've been burned."
"I need you to follow me," I told her. "I'm going to drive the Corvette down the hill to the main highway. We'll leave the car down there with the keys in it. Someone will find it and take it. Hopefully they'll never know we were here. Can you drive this car? We'll go really slow."
She nodded dully.
"Good," I told her. "Get behind the wheel."
Chapter 11
I climbed into the Corvette. The interior was impeccably clean, smelling of leather, of gun oil, of cologne, of tobacco. I inserted the ignition key and hit the starter. The engine roared to life and shook the car as it settled into a lumpy idle. The heat was on, and the wipers began clearing the snow that had accumulated on the windshield.
A few minutes ago, my hunter had sat where I was sitting, had touched the same car key, had looked through the same windshield. I tried not to think about it. I put the car into reverse and tapped the gas pedal. The car surged backwards before I hit the brakes, bringing the car to a halt. Then I turned on the headlights, illuminating Bonnie's shaken, paralyzed face in the driver’s seat of the Camry.
I cranked the steering wheel towards the highway, put it in drive, and we started the long, slow process of making our way down to the Pacific Coast Highway. Bonnie followed me in the Camry, leaving plenty of space between our two cars. After an hour of nerve-wracking driving, we left the snowfall behind us and the skies were crystal clear. The pavement was dry, completely free of the snow and ice we'd endured in the mountains. We'd only seen handful of oncoming cars passing us on their way up the hill, and all of them had tire chains mounted. Then I found out why: a highway patrol car was checking oncoming cars to make sure that anyone headed into the mountains had tire chains on. The highway patrolman took a hard look at Bonnie and me as we went downhill past the checkpoint, but he didn’t stop us.
When we reached the Pacific Coast Highway, we headed south towards Cannon Beach, the closest town to where Eric's cabin was. We took the exit to Cannon Beach and drove slowly past the city park and into the town center where the shops, bars, and restaurants were. I pulled into the parking lot of a busy pizza restaurant and parked it. I wiped the car key against my pants to make sure there would be no clear fingerprints on it, and then started it up again. Then I rolled the windows down and left the car running and the headlights on. I knew that someone would see it, want it, and take it, hopefully down the coast to California, to a chop shop, or to someplace else far away.
Chapter 12
Bonnie waited for me in the Camry. I got into the passenger seat and directed her back out of the Cannon Beach city limits and north up the highway, then onto the small road that led to Eric's house. When she pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine, she sighed as if every ounce of energy had been squeezed out of her. I went around to the driver's side and opened her door.
We went inside and Bonnie shrugged off her coat. I got her luggage from the trunk of the car and brought it inside. She took the luggage into the bathroom without saying a word. I heard the shower begin to run. While she was showering, I went back out to the Camry and got the weaponry I'd taken off the hit man. Then I patted my pockets to see if I’d forgotten anything and felt the lump of the man's cellphone and wallet. I pulled them out and considered launching them into the wilderness between the house and the ocean, but decided not to. I held the power button down until the phone turned off, then put it with the guns under the kitchen sink.
I sat at the kitchen table and waited, aware of how dirty I was. After a while Bonnie came out of the bathroom in a white and blue pinstriped men’s dress shirt. Her legs and feet were bare.
"Where am I supposed to sleep?" she asked without looking up from the floor.
I pointed towards the unused bedroom. She nodded and went in, trailing her luggage behind her. Then she came back out to the living room. She looked like she didn’t know what to do with herself.
"Do you want something to eat?" I asked. "I can make something for you."
She shook her head no. I could see that she was overwhelmed with stress. There were dark circles under her eyes. She'd washed her hair and combed it out but not dried it. With her flattened hair pulled back, the perfect oval shape of her face, the pert nose, the slightly almond shaped eyes all seemed more apparent.
She caught me staring. "I just want to go to sleep," she said. "Is that okay?"
"Of course," I told her.
"I had to take a shower to get the smell of the gun off," she said.
"I'm sorry."
"There were blood spots on my face," she said. "The whole way I was driving here there was blood on me, on my coat."
I couldn't think of anything to say.
"I'm freaking out and I haven't slept in two days. I'm not sure I can sleep, and I feel like if I don't, I'm going to lose it. Could you please just hold me while I try to go to sleep?" she asked.
"Sure," I told her. "Just give me a minute to clean up."
I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. It was the first chance I'd had to look at myself in the mirror since the shooting. My face was freckled with spots of blood. I washed my hands and face at the sink with soap and then scrubbed with a hand towel. My pants, shoes, and shirt were filthy from what I'd done at the rest stop, and they smelled intensely of smoke from the burning slash pile. I felt lucky that the highway patrolman hadn't taken a closer look at me. He would never have let me pass. I took everything off and stepped into the hot shower, scrubbing myself with bar soap and shampooing my hair. When I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, I found Bonnie in her bed under the covers, her back to the darkened room. I went into my bedroom and pulled on a pair of clean jeans, then came to her bedside and sat on the e
dge of the bed.
"Are you asleep?" I asked.
"We killed someone," she said quietly.
"We didn't have a choice," I told her. "He had a gun. He was going to kill us both."
"Why? We weren't doing anything."
"Bonnie, he was waiting for you at the airport. When he saw I was with you, he came after both of us. I think that the cartel put a bounty on our heads."
"Are we going to tell the police?"
"It's too late for that," I said. "We got rid of the body and the car. It would look like we're covering up a murder, instead of trying to keep the cartel from knowing what we did."
She was quiet. "What are we going to do now?" she asked.
"I'm not sure. They knew you were on the plane somehow, and now they know I'm here, too. We can't stay here for long."
"Jesus Christ."
"Look. Get some sleep and we'll make a plan in the morning. Okay?"
"Just hold me for a little while," she said. "Just until I'm asleep. I keep seeing that man's face. Every time I close my eyes. It's like… there... again."
I lifted the sheets and slid in behind her, cupping her body with mine. I put my arm around her and she held it against her chest, her hand gripping my forearm tightly. I felt the heat that her body radiated through her shirt and smelled the perfumed scent of the shampoo she’d used. I felt her tears on my arm, and then her breathing became rhythmic before she jerked slightly and let go of my forearm. As she entered dream sleep I heard murmuring, plaintive cries catch in her throat. Then she was perfectly quiet and still. Eventually I fell asleep, too.