The Survivor

Chapter 34

When the garage door lifted, revealing the gray morning sky, Nate heard Janie’s and Cielle’s breathing accelerate. The world had become a different place, full of dark vows and hidden eyes. He eased Janie’s car from the garage, the street drawing into view, but there seemed to be no one there, no dark Town Cars or faces in the bushes. On the freeway, blazing toward LAX, he could feel his heartbeat still surging.

After dropping off Janie and Cielle to pick up the Jeep, Nate drove north toward Wendy Moreno’s house. Idling at a stoplight, he glanced across at a board shop, a few kids skating outside and sucking on cigarettes, gliding through another world where cool still mattered. The surf-rat vibe reminded him of the Marina, where he’d paid the ill-fated visit to Luis Millan. Just a few miles farther north.

He felt a faint charge, the precursor to a thought. Pulling over, he grabbed a map and a pen from the glove box and circled the locations of Wendy Moreno’s house and Luis Millan’s apartment. Then the Brentwood residence of Patrice McKenna. They were in an almost precise line running north-south.

What the hell did that mean?

He tapped the pen against the tattered paper, considering, before folding the map and shoving it into his pocket. Three targets, all in a row. How could that possibly be relevant? Why would Shevchenko want to kill three strangers whose addresses aligned?

He pondered this question the rest of the way to Wendy Moreno’s house. Though residential, her street was animated with a constant stream of through traffic. Keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, he drove around the block a few times. No one following.

On the porch, as he waited for an answer to the doorbell’s ring, more questions hectored him. What if Moreno was out of town? What if Shevchenko’s men had somehow identified her already? What if she hadn’t answered last night because her corpse had been lying behind the front door, draining into the carpet?

He hardly had time to weigh these considerations when a Honda Civic pulled into the driveway and a bespectacled woman in her thirties climbed out and started for him. High heels looped around one finger, she tugged at an evening dress to straighten it. Her hair was a tangle. Her night out had not been a planned one.

“Wendy Moreno?”

“That’s me.”

“Can I talk to you a minute? I got your name through someone else, and I had a few questions.”

“World of Warcraft?” She suddenly looked embarrassed. “Oh, shit, I thought you were a salesman. Come in. Gimme a minute. I just need to … you know.”

He entered the small house and sat on the couch, listening to her bang about up the brief hall, closet doors opening, water running. Finally she came back out, more put together, and offered him something to drink. Sipping ice water, he ran through the initial questions. She’d never heard of Luis Millan, Patrice McKenna, or Pavlo Shevchenko.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “You lost me. I thought you were from the crew I met at Blizzcon. Which realm are you playing?”

He held on to his next breath longer than necessary, contemplating the variety of ways the next moment, if mishandled, would likely combust. An airplane rumbled overhead, buying him another few precious seconds before he confessed, “I don’t know you from World of Warcraft. I got your name off a list held by a very dangerous criminal. You did something to get on his radar.”

She guffawed, hooked a strand of hair back over one ear. “You’re kidding, right? Did Scytharian put you up to this?”

“No. This is real.”

A back-and-forth ensued, different versions of the same questions and answers, until finally Wendy Moreno looked convinced. “What the hell,” she said. “Do the cops know about this?”

“Not yet. Only I do. I wanted to warn you so you can get out of town, maybe, until you or I can find out what this is about.”

“It should be easy to stay somewhere. I have friends all over the place from WoW. But still. I mean, Christ.”

“You’re sure you can’t think of anything? Any reason you might have crossed-”

“A Ukrainian mafia guy? Uh, I think I’d’ve noticed. Unless maybe he’s a pissed-off gamer?”

“Doesn’t seem the type.”

Her breaths grew shallow, and then all at once she was crying in short, suffocating spurts. After a few moments, she took a deep, shaky breath and pulled herself back from the edge. “God,” she said. “Your life can just turn on a dime, can’t it? Everything’s normal, and then…”

“Wham,” Nate said.

“Yeah. Wham’s right.” She pulled off her glasses, wiped the lenses.

His work instincts kicked in, that urge to comfort, to solve. “Is there someone you want to call to help map out the next steps?”

But her mood, it seemed, was more existential. “Fate’s a bitch, huh? You ever think about it?”

He rotated his ankle, testing it. Since he’d awakened, the foot had been fine, as if healed by the few hours of broken sleep. That was the problem with ALS. It progressed in ebbs and flows. The spiral was downward, that much was promised, but you didn’t know how many times the symptoms would loop-the-loop on the descent.

“More, lately,” he answered. “I think about the bullets I’ve dodged. The ones I caught.”

She set her glasses aside, her face wan, washed out. “I saw this car crash a while back. This Jag came through an intersection and”-a nod to Nate-“wham. T-bone. Driver was some drunk girl, a scared, stupid kid so hammered she could barely stand up. Her face was all fucked up but she stumbled off. But the other car. Man. It was a Volvo. Supposed to be safe, right? With this family. A car seat, you know, the infant facing backward? It was a mess. Like a crumpled beer can. Just … parts. Right in front of us. I mean, right there. And I couldn’t help thinking, that Jag missed us by two seconds. Maybe three. If I’d left the house a little faster, or if we’d accelerated quicker off the last stoplight, or if that girl had sneezed, even, and taken her foot off the gas for a sec…”

She chewed at a cuticle and kept on in a kind of trance, the words flattened by the weight of everything behind them. “I still see it. The dangly mobile from the car seat, little giraffes and elephants on the asphalt. And I think, That could’ve been me. And I think how lucky I was, and then I feel guilty for feeling lucky when that family wasn’t. But I can’t help it. I think, Thank God I missed that car. Well, you know what? That fucking car? It hit me now, didn’t it?” She blew her nose into a tissue. “No one gets a free pass, do they?”

“No,” Nate said. “I guess not.” But his mind had wandered away from Wendy Moreno, locking on to a different image. Luis Millan and his upside-down neck brace. Screwed up my neck. Whiplash.

Pulses of cognition, words and images pulling into place quicker than Nate could process them. The plane’s roar overhead. That brochure pinned to Luis’s refrigerator with a Pep Boys magnet. I travel a lot. Shevchenko’s ghostlike face in the steam, holding that first, faint glint of humanity. They are impossible creatures. Daughters. They wind barbed wire around your heart and tug. Nate pulled the map from his back pocket, looked at the addresses he’d circled. That neat line, north-south. He traced his finger down, connecting the dots, his nail ending at Los Angeles International Airport.

Wendy was midsentence: “-you think Chicago’s far enough if-”

“You were in an airport shuttle,” he said slowly. “When you saw the accident.”

Wendy stopped, Kleenex halfway to her nose. “How could you possibly know that?” Her mouth came open a little. “I was going to the wedding of a girlfriend I met online.”

“There were eight people in that shuttle,” Nate told her. “One of them was a Hispanic guy. He hurt his neck.”

“Yeah. One guy got whiplash. Our driver stood on the brakes.”

“The girl driving the Jag. You all saw her when she fled the scene.”

“She literally staggered right past the shuttle.”

“The cops caught up to her.”

“Yeah. Later. I gave a statement. I said I’d testify if they-” She went ashen. “Oh, my God. The guy. Pavlo Shevchenko. That was his daughter.”

Nate stood, pulling the phone from his pocket. “You need to get out of town. Immediately. Just get in your car and start driving. Shevchenko doesn’t know your name yet, but don’t take any chances.”

Wendy called after him, but his ears were ringing and he kept on, moving mechanically, almost on autopilot. He banged through the screen into the front yard just as Janie picked up; not trusting the house line, he’d called her cell.

“The names on the list,” Nate said. “Those people, they’re all witnesses to a drunk-driving accident that killed some people. Shevchenko’s daughter was behind the wheel.”

“Holy crap,” Janie said.

“I’m going to Abara. Keep lights on in the house, make sure it looks like you’re home. Wait for me. I don’t know how long it’ll take with Abara, but I’ll come for you well before the deadline.”

“Wait-what if Shevchenko’s men catch wind of you going to the FBI right now?”

“I’m covered — I told him I was going to see Abara today. That it was part of my plan to get to the safe-deposit box.” Something seemed odd outside, but when Nate paused and looked up the street, it was peaceful and still. No suspicious cars. No loitering Ukrainians. He shoved the car key into the lock. “Keep the gun close,” he said.

She agreed and hung up. He swung the driver’s door open and was about to climb in when it occurred to him what felt strange about the neighborhood: It was perfectly still. When he’d waited at the front door earlier, traffic had been a constant background buzz. And now not a car. He shut the door and moved slowly to the center of the asphalt.

He looked up the street. Then down.

A few orange and yellow leaves scraped the sidewalk, the only movement.

A roar of engines shattered the silence. With stunned amazement Nate watched black SUVs screech into view from every side street, cascading in synchrony like stunt cars in a commercial, one after another, a ballet. They hurtled forward, sliding to within feet, corralling him, and then there were shouting voices and sunglasses and pointed guns.

Agent Abara broke through the vanguard, reaching Nate first, spinning him neatly to the ground, knee in back, zip ties on his wrists, frisking him high and low. “Nate Overbay, you are being taken into custody.”

“For what?”

“Issuing a terrorist threat against a United States airliner.” Fisting Nate’s shirt between the shoulder blades and grabbing his belt in the back, Abara hoisted him painfully to his feet. “Forget third base, Overbay. Now you’re gonna get fucked.”

Shoved from behind, Nate stumbled and tripped, disappearing into the dark interior of a waiting SUV.