I was within five feet when my foot scraped a rock on the sidewalk. Talbert whipped around, his eyes going round when he saw me.
“Wha—”
I moved fast covering the last few feet, and “finessed” my booted foot into the side of his right kneecap, hard. He yelled and fell to the ground grasping his leg, and Morgan jumped away from him.
The surprised guard hollered, “What the fuck?” and grabbed at Morgan who had the good sense to scramble away from him.
He was fumbling at the holster on his side when I plowed into him and deliberately banged my head underneath his chin. As he started going down, I finished getting his sidearm out for him. He hit the ground hard falling on his ass, and went over backward banging the back of his head. He lay still. At the same time Morgan yelled, “Look out!” and I whirled around to see Talbert, who’d quit yelling about his leg, pulling a gun from a jacket pocket. Before he could bring it up, I clicked the safety off the guard’s gun and aimed it at his head.
“Put it down,” I said.
With his eyes on the .45, he laid his gun on the sidewalk.
“Slide it to me.”
He gave it a shove and it fetched up against my boot. Keeping my eyes and the gun trained on him, I picked it up. I almost snorted at the little .25. I thought he’d have something bigger. No wonder he gave it up so quickly. Had he shot me with it, unless something outlandish happened – like, say, he managed to hit me in an eye – I would’ve blown him away with the .45. Apparently, he was smart enough to know that. I slid it into a jacket pocket. He sat there glowering at me. Morgan stood gazing down at him from about four feet away.
“Morgan,” I said quietly. “I was informed that you left with this man willingly. Do you still want to be with him?” I didn’t think I was wrong, but one could never tell.
Her face tightened as she pulled her eyes away from Talbert. “No! Well, I admit I wanted to go with him when we left to come here but that changed. I would’ve said something at Dr. Bennett’s house but he saw you on the surveillance monitor and said if you came in and I said anything he would shoot you. I was afraid he might shoot me, too.” She looked up at me, her eyes puzzled. “How did you know? I was too scared to say anything that might set him off. After you left I just knew you’d go back and tell Maddy I was shacked up with him and everything was okay.”
I shrugged. “Your body language. It implied that you were… not happy.”
She eyed Talbert again and frowned. She began to talk fast, her tone accusatory. “He said he knew where there was an open-all-night club. I wanted to have some fun, and I thought he was cute and funny, so we went to his place first and had some drinks, and we… um,” her face colored and she puffed out a breath, “we decided not to go to the nightclub after all. We fell asleep.
“When I woke up, it was morning, so I asked him if he had a phone. I wanted to call my sister. He said he didn’t have one but he’d take me to a phone booth after we got dressed. While I was in the bathroom, I heard a noise and when I stuck my head out, he was leaving the bedroom. He had it dialed down to its lowest setting but I know a ringing phone when I hear it. I went back into the bedroom and he was still in the other room talking to somebody. I felt something was shifty, I mean why would he tell me he didn’t have a phone when he did? So I hurried up and finished dressing then I slipped out while he was still on the phone, but I got lost.”
She sighed. “I was going to find a phone booth so I could call my sister but I couldn’t find one and I couldn’t find my way back to the entrance no matter how hard I tried. Did you know most of the streets here are graveled? Walking is awful! Then, wouldn’t you know, I found myself back in front of his place! I don’t know how I got there but he was standing out front and took me inside. I told him I had to go to the bathroom and I sneaked out the window but, dammit! I got lost again. That time, he found me. He was in his car and when we drove towards the entrance, I thought he was taking me to the hotel, but he parked over on the side and made me get out, and we walked back down to his place.”
It was more than I needed to know but it verified that he’d held her against her will. Obviously, Talbert didn’t tell her about Blue Heaven’s peculiarity or how to navigate the place without getting lost. I shook my head. Kid was simply trying to have fun and unfortunately ran into an asshole.
The only thing I said was, “There are no nightclubs in Blue Heaven, Morgan.” Might not be any phone booths, either, or if there were, I hadn’t seen any when I was wandering around lost.
That seemed to set her off. She glared down at Talbert, and her face bunched up in anger. “You bastard! I thought you were someone I could trust! You lying sack of—”
We needed to get going so I cut in, “Come on, Morgan, we have to go.”
Fuming, she shut up, and dashed around Talbert, coming up beside me.
I studied Talbert, who looked less smug than he had earlier. The guard, stretched out on the sidewalk, gave a soft moan.
Morgan glanced at him and then back at me with raised eyebrows. “Hey, you head-butted that guy pretty hard. Are you okay?”
I smiled. “I’m good, Morgan. I have a hard head so that maneuver didn’t hurt me much.”
Talbert looked up at me, narrowed his eyes, and huffed out with false bravado, “Where do you think you can go, Smith? Yeah, I know you must be a tracker, but you lucked out getting to the doc’s house. You don’t live here so you don’t know this place. You’re gonna get lost.”
I raised an eyebrow at Talbert. The things people assume. I gestured at his knee. “One thing’s sure; you won’t be chasing me, will you.”
He tried to move the leg I’d kicked, and winced. “You broke my goddamned leg!” he whined.
My kick can take a toll and his kneecap might be dislocated, and I had broken a knee that way before, though never a leg. His leg might be twanging from the jolt but I didn’t think anything was broken. He’d limp for a minute but he’d be okay as soon as it quit hurting.
I suppose it didn’t take much for him to guess that I was a tracker. After all, who else would Morgan’s sister send to find her? But he didn’t appear to know which tracker, which meant he didn’t know my real name. Neither did the guard, who’d come around enough to struggle to a sitting position. He wasn’t one who’d been at the neighborhood entrance either of the other times I came to Blue Heaven. He was breathing hard and staring up at me, his eyes big and glassy. He rubbed the back of his head where he’d whacked it when he fell, and blood ran from the corner of his mouth and trickled down his chin. I gathered he’d bitten his tongue.
I started to turn to Morgan but caught a motion from the guard. I swung back. He’d pulled out a walkie-talkie. I pointed the gun at him. “Toss it over,” I told him quietly.
He threw it hard, apparently in an attempt to either hit me with it or make me drop the gun. On the other hand, since he was staring at the gun, maybe he was simply scared. But I think he was still a bit out of it otherwise he might’ve made a better throw. I caught it with my free hand and stuck it in a pocket. The guard’s shoulders slumped as Morgan reached out her purple-gloved hand and caught mine.
Talbert looked up at me, his eyebrows crashing together in a scowl. “You can’t get out of Blue Heaven, tracker. There’s only one way out and if you make it to the entrance, they’ll be on you like fleas on a dog at the guardhouse. I don’t know what you told them to get in, but you’ll never get outta here with Morgan. They want her, you know.”
Morgan threw in, a worry frown crinkling her smooth forehead, “He said something about that earlier, Mr. Smith. I kept asking him to take me home but he wouldn’t. I was afraid to sneak off again, and we stayed at his place ‘til this evening. Then the phone rang and after he hung up, he said he was taking me to Dr. Bennett’s. He wouldn’t tell me why but said we were going there to wait for somebody. Then, right before he spotted you on the monitor, the phone rang and the doctor answered it and when he hung up he told Ken that somebody named Henderson had decided he wanted me brought to him instead, and he was sending a guard along as an escort.”