LEO
I take the next right, spinning the car back toward the edge of town. “Where are we going?” Amelia asks. “We’re going back toward them.”
“No choice,” I tell her. “That way’s the sea and not much else until we hit penguins or polar bears.”
The blinding lights of the chasing car loom toward us. Amelia yells a warning as I hit the gas and race toward it. She screams louder when I yank the steering wheel to the left at the last moment.
I swerve around the oncoming car and then ripping up the road, moving faster as the chasing car does its best to turn around.
“Nice driving,” she says. “You should live in Rome with skills like that.”
“We need somewhere to hide,” I say, killing the lights and taking the first turn I come across. “Somewhere they won’t find us.”
She wrinkles her forehead, and for a moment she looks utterly adorable.
Then she holds a finger up. “I got it. Take the next right.”
“You sure?”
“Just do it!”
The right doesn’t look like much, just a dirt track with overhanging trees, the branches scraping the top of the car like we’re a can they’re trying to peel open.
“Where are we going?” I ask, foot to the floor, doing my best to ride out the bumps under the tires without losing control.
“Slow down. There’s a sharp bend coming up.”
I ease off the gas and I’m glad she warned me. It’s not just a sharp bend. It’s a hairpin and there’s a gorge in front of it.
Even in the dark, I can see the looming hole we almost drove straight into. “This way,” she says as I swerve and head further along the track. “Not much further.”
I slow some more, not wanting my brake lights to flash and give away our position. I look back and the lights of the chasing car are approaching the bend far too fast.
I come to a halt in time to see it reach the edge. Too late it tries to slow, but then it crashes through the ancient barrier and wedges itself over the gorge, rocking in place.
“It could go over any second.” Amelia is tugging at my arm. “Help them.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Please,” she says. “You can’t just let them die.”
“Listen,” I say, removing her hand from my arm. “Get this into your head. They were going to kill us both. What good is sympathy now?”
“It’s the difference between good people and bad,” she replies, swinging open her door and running back to the hairpin bend.
I curse and shove the car in reverse, backing up in time to get there just as she does. The car is creaking as it dangles over the gorge.
A piece of the metal barrier is stuck in the driver’s side of the car and by the sounds of it, stuck in the driver too. He’s screaming at the top of his voice.
Amelia is trying to get the door open, but that’s never going to work. I look in and it’s not the sheriff. It’s an associate. Just an anonymous guy whose name I’ll never know and whose life is now over.
“Help me,” he’s crying out at the top of his voice. “Oh, God, it hurts so bad.”
“Hold the back of the car,” Amelia says. “Stop it going over.”
I see it before she does. The screams might have been real. They might not. What’s definitely real is the gun the driver’s swinging upward straight toward Amelia’s head.
“Drop it!” I yell at him, giving the car a kick toward the edge.
“Fuck you,” the guy says as he goes to pull the trigger. I grab Amelia and pull her down to the ground in time for the bullet to whiz past her. It catches my shoulder and I grimace. I’ll have to deal with that later. One more scar to add to the collection.
I give the back bumper of the car another solid kick from the ground and it tips forward, the metal barrier scraping loose with a fingers-onblackboard squeal.
This time the man inside is screaming for real. He gets off another shot, but then the car’s tipping over the edge.
I scramble backward, still holding onto Amelia as the car vanishes from sight. For a moment there’s no sound at all and then a satisfying crunch far below in the gorge.
“You all right?” I ask her as she looks through me. I wave my hands in front of her face. “Are you all right?”
“He was going to shoot me,” she says. “He had half that barrier stuck in his stomach and he was still going to shoot me.”
“I know.”
“I was trying to save him and he still tried to shoot me. Why would he try and shoot me when I was saving him?”
“Because that’s what they hired him to do.”
“But he died trying to shoot me. I don’t get it.”
“Nothing to get. They paid him to kill me and you were in the way. He won’t have thought any further than that.”
“But he died. He didn’t have to die.”
“If he’d failed, he’d have been whacked, anyway. What choice did he have?”
She looks at me, and her eyes are glistening. “This is your world, isn’t it?” she asks.
I get to my feet and help her up, guiding her back to her car. “Get in,” I tell her. She’s still looking back at the spot where the other car vanished.
“There might be more coming.”
“I can’t do this,” she says. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
She climbs in, not moving as I plug her belt in before climbing in myself, driving forward slowly, risking turning my sidelights on. “Where are we headed?” I ask. “What’s down this road.”
“A house,” she says, no emotion in her voice. It’s like she’s completely shut down inside.
“I know how you feel,” I tell her. “I reacted like that first time I saw someone die.”
“Like what?”
“Like you think you should feel something, but you felt nothing. It won’t last.”
“He tried to shoot me. I can’t believe he tried to shoot me.”
“He missed. That’s what matters. I tell you something, whoever this snitch is, they really don’t want me to find them.”
“Slow down,” she says. “Another bend.”
We’re gradually climbing up a hillside. Another mile and we come out from the trees into a clearing. From here all you can see is the ocean.
The town is completely out of sight down in the valley somewhere. Ahead of me is a house, but it looks like it hasn’t been lived in for some time.
It’s big. Four floors and a tiled roof. Windows are rotting but mostly intact. There’s moss on the gravel outside the front door and the grass is long, covered in weeds.
The paint is peeling off the exterior walls and I suddenly see how it used to look. I bet it was a beautiful house once.
“How do you know about this place?” I ask as I bring the car to a stop around the back.
“I used to walk past here sometimes,” she says. For the first time, there’s some emotion back in her voice, but it’s a sadness so deep it cuts me inside somewhere.
I want to wrap her in my arms. This place means something to her. I could ask, but now’s not the time. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s get inside.”
The back door to the house isn’t locked. I have to shove with my shoulder to get it open. A plume of dust and rotted air wafts out as we get inside. I kick the door shut and pull out my cellphone, using the flashlight on it to illuminate our way through to what was clearly once a study.
The bookcases have a couple of moldy volumes on them, and a desk sits over by the window. There’s a sofa beside it, stuffing sticking out like it’s thrown it up. I sit Amelia down.
She still looks bewildered, and I can understand that. A few hours ago she was home in bed.
Now she’s been in a car chase like an action movie, nearly got herself shot trying to save someone, and she’s seen that same someone die right in front of her eyes.
“What’s going on?” she asks. “Will you please tell me what’s happening because it feels like my entire world is crumbling under my feet.”
“I warned you,” I tell her. “I warned you what would happen if you came into my world.”
“You didn’t tell me about all of this. About men who die trying to kill other people.”
I put an arm around her. She goes stiff but then collapses against me. “Just be straight with me,” she says, her voice quieter. “What’s going on, Leo? Why are all those people after you?”
“Last time I was in Gordon’s Cove, I was here to steal something from the casino.”
“What?”
“The chip.”
“The casino chip?”
“The one I gave to you.”
“But why? It’s only worth ten thousand. You must make more than that if you’re in the mafia.”
“It’s what’s inside the chip.”
“And what’s in it?”
“Leverage the Don needed to take over Belucci’s turf.” “Who’s the Don?”
“My boss. The boss. The head of the Gianni famiglia.”
“You mean the head of the mafia?”
“The mafia isn’t a single group. It comprises different families.”
“And the Don is head of one of them?”
“Right.”
She looks up at me. “What’s all this got to do with me?”
“Something happened when I met you.”
“Was it just because you needed someone to look after your dog?”
“That was part of it, but not all of it. I think it’s because you were an innocent. All you did was look after animals and you got swept up in something that had nothing to do with you. It wasn’t your debt to the casino. It was Cam’s.
“I leaped at the chance to come back when I was told about the snitch being based here. I was hoping I might run into you again. I wasn’t going to talk to you. I couldn’t risk it. But I was just going to see if I could spot you somewhere. See how your life turned out.”
“You mean spy on me.”
“Yeah, then I could disappear happy, knowing you were all right. But here we are and it’s all fucked up.”
She looks at me and says nothing else. I close my eyes and lean back, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Disappearing doesn’t sound like such a bad thing,” she says quietly. “You could stay here with me, maybe?”
“The Don would find me. You can’t hide from him.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go back into town and find the sheriff, make him talk.
Then I’m going to talk with the Don.”
“What about me? What do I do?”
“You’re going to stay here where it’s safe. This is the perfect place to hide. How do you know about it, anyway?”
“I told you, I used to walk past here.”
“There’s more than that. What is it?”
She looks at me and then stands up. “You’re bleeding,” she says. “Wait there.”