A man sat one stool away from her and ordered a beer. He turned to her and smiled. “Hi, I’m Brad.”
“Sam. Nice to meet you.”
“You, too. Haven’t seen you here before.”
“I’m not really a drinker.”
“Who you texting?”
“Excuse me?”
“I saw you texting. Just wondering who.”
“No offense, but I kind of came here to be alone.”
“You picked a helluva place to be by yourself,” he said.
He was right. Why would she come to a bar, of all places, to be alone? She finished her soda, then brushed past him on her way outside. A hiking trail wasn’t far from here, and reaching the summit of a hill overlooking the city took only about fifteen minutes. After driving there, she was pleased to see there were no other people around.
The dirt on the path was smooth, and her hike was quick. She took out her mace and held it in her hand until she reached the summit, where she placed it in her pocket and sat down.
The lights of Atlanta twinkled, and a plane flying by overhead blinked rapidly from the cadre of illuminations along its body. Streetlamps looked like glimmering buttons in the dark, and farther up, past the mountains of steel and glass, were flashing radio towers. She wondered how much longer standard radio would exist with digital available.
The skyline was a mass of buildings pointing skyward, each lighted differently and with diverse company logos stamped over them. She noticed one for a bank, and she remembered that she needed to pay her credit card bill. She had called them earlier, but they’d said their system was down…
Her heart skipped a beat.
She pulled out her cell phone and looked up restaurants in Los Angeles. She called the first result in Google. She got a busy signal. She tried the second result and got the same. She looked up bars in San Francisco-all busy. A clothing store at a mall in Sacramento also had a busy signal, as did television stations, utility companies, and twenty-four-hour pharmacies. She looked up random people in the online phone directories, and their numbers went straight to voice mail. Calling another five, she got the same results each time.
Jane wasn’t avoiding her.
10
When Ian’s plane landed at LAX, he got off with the twenty-five other passengers. He guessed it would be one of the last flights into California.
His feet hit the terminal carpet at nearly seven o’clock in the evening West Coast time, and he checked his watch, then set it back an hour. As he walked through the terminal, past security, a man in a gray suit was walking toward him. The man placed a suitcase down about ten feet in front of him, and Ian picked it up and walked out of the airport.
He stood outside in the warm Los Angeles air, glancing over the palm trees, and was glad he wasn’t in Chicago anymore. After growing up in Rio de Janeiro, he felt as though he were being strangled by the compacted cityscape of modern cities, and LA was no different. But at least in the oasis surrounding the airport, trees, open space, and a sweeping twilight sky existed.
He walked to the curb, where he saw a car with two men inside. He glanced inside, but walked past them. He walked past a minivan, then came to an Audi with a single female sitting in the driver’s seat. The young blonde was trying to send a text. Looking in through the passenger-side window, he saw that the doors were unlocked. He opened the door and got into the passenger seat.
The girl looked at him, her face wrinkled in confusion, and then her eyes went wide as she saw the muzzle of the Smith amp; Wesson.
“If you scream or try and get out of the car,” he said, “I’m going to shoot you in the face and then drive myself. Do you understand? Nod if you understand.”
She nodded.
“Good. Now put it in drive and get on the freeway.”
“Just take the car.”
“I need a driver, not a car. If you do everything I say and you do it well, by tomorrow morning, I will be on a plane, and you can go back to your life.” With his free hand, he pulled a wad of cash from his pocket. He counted out several hundred dollar bills and threw them on the center console. “And you’ll make some money for your troubles.”
She looked behind her. “Why do you need a driver?”
“I’ll tell you when we move.”
She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. Once they were out of the airport and winding their way to the 105, Ian lowered the weapon but left it on his lap, where she could see it.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You don’t need to know that.” Ian opened the suitcase and glanced inside. He closed and locked it again, then put it in the backseat. He opened the note app on his phone. Of the seven names he’d had two days ago, three were grayed out. That left four people, all with Los Angeles addresses. The name at the top of the list was Wendy Alvarez.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Suzan.”
“If I look at your driver license, is that the name I’m going to see?”
She hesitated. “No. It’s Katherine.”
“Katherine, I need your help for tonight. If something should happen to you, it interferes with my schedule, and I certainly don’t want to interfere with my schedule. I have a flight scheduled for noon tomorrow, a flight where I’m the only passenger, and I intend to make that flight. So my inclination is to make sure you’re safe. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“I’m going to need you to say it.”
“I understand.”
“Good. So the only way you are going to get hurt tonight is if you change that inclination, which I’m hoping you won’t. Take the third exit down from here.”
Katherine took forty minutes to drive to Inglewood. Ian saw men on street corners throwing up gang signs at him, and groups of teenagers roamed the night as though they were in some post-apocalyptic capital.
“I was here once about ten years ago,” he said. “It’s gotten worse.”
“What has?”
“The city. Maybe people.” He looked to her and could tell she grew uncomfortable. “Who were you waiting for at the airport?”
“My dad. He’s coming to visit me.”
“He’ll be fine. By the way, I can see that you’re trying to hide your phone on the other side of your lap. Pick it up.”
She glanced at him.
“It’s all right. Pick it up.”
She did.
“Call 9-1-1.”
“No,” she said.
“It’s not a trick. Call 9-1-1. Tell them the make and model of your car, and give them a description of me. I’m serious. Do it.”
“You’ll hurt me.”
“I give you my word. I will not hurt you. Call.”
She looked down at the phone and held her thumb over the keypad for a moment before she dialed the number. It played an error message.
“Try your dad’s cell,” he said.
She called her father’s cell and got a busy signal.
“It’s not working,” she said.
“No, it’s not. So you can put the phone away. You don’t need to hide it from me. Turn right up here.”
She stopped at the intersection and glanced at a group of men on the corner and then at Ian.
“I wouldn’t,” Ian said. “They’ll rob you, rape you, and leave you on the side of the street. I’m not going to do any of those things.”
She swallowed and then turned into a residential neighborhood. The houses were worn down, and the dilapidated chain-link fences with missing sections did a poor job of protecting yellowed lawns. Some lawns were strewn with broken-down cars and parts and some, without any effort to hide it, simply had garbage thrown around. A few of the homes were kept up, though, and dogs were chained near the front doors.
“Stop here.”
She pulled over to the curb and parked. They were in front of a white house with yellow trim that was lit up brightly by two small flood lamps.