Up Against the Wall. Julie Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      One of the keys in the passenger seat winked at him as he passed beneath a street lamp. The game was still on. “Brilliant, kiddo.”

      The rush of discovery fueled the story composing itself inside his head as Reuben swung the car toward the city bus terminal. He reached for the key to a bus-station storage locker and tucked it into his pocket. In the same motion, he retrieved a pen and notepad, turned to a fresh page and jotted a cryptic note.

      Balancing the pad on his knee and writing as he drove couldn’t make his handwriting any worse. There was only one person left in the world who could decipher his illegible scrawl, one person who looked forward to reading his notes, one person he loved and trusted enough to share them with.

      Dear Rebecca, he began.

      Since his wife’s death a decade earlier, Reuben had started sending his story notes to his daughter. Once upon a time, his wife had translated them and typed them up for him. But now that Rebecca was away at the University of Missouri’s journalism school in Columbia, following in his footsteps as a reporter, she seemed to enjoy reading them as though she was keeping up with a journal of his activities. He supposed they replaced the letters he always intended to write, but never could quite get onto paper or into an e-mail. His scribbles connected them in a way that the dangers and demands of his job rarely allowed them to. Besides, with the number of computers he’d sent to their makers, it never hurt to have a backup copy of his current work in someone else’s hands.

      As he sped through the fog-shrouded streets, Reuben briefly detailed Dani’s murder, skipping the more graphic elements. He wrote about the disk, listed abbreviations of the names he thought would be linked to the murder. He sent his love and promised to visit Mizzou for homecoming in a couple of weeks. He pulled an envelope from his briefcase, tucked the notepad inside and addressed the package. He stuck a wad of stamps onto one corner and dropped it into a mailbox en route.

      The bus terminal was a surprising hive of activity at one in the morning. Parked cars lined the street and Reuben had to squeeze his long sedan into a tiny space nearly a block away. The street lamps barely cut a path through the fog, but still he looked—peering up and down the sidewalk as he turned up his collar and checked for familiar cars. Then, when he felt certain enough that nothing beyond leaving the scene of a murder was out of the ordinary for the night, he crossed the street. Two buses were loading and unloading passengers beneath the driveway canopy on the west side of the building, and he jogged up to lose himself in the parade of travelers entering the terminal.

      Inside, Reuben separated himself from the crowd and made a beeline across the lobby to the rows of storage lockers. He found number 280 easily enough and inserted the key.

      The square, squat locker could have held an entire computer, but there was only one small item inside. A padded envelope with his name on it. Hunching over the open doorway to hide his prize, he slipped the disk inside his jacket. He couldn’t resist a satisfied smile. “You’re gonna be more famous than Deep Throat, kiddo.”

      When he closed the door and saw the man in the tailored suit at the coffee counter, cradling a plastic cup between his well-manicured hands, Reuben’s temporary rush of victory chilled in his veins. Dani had never stood a chance. That smug son of a bitch. Publicly claiming to be a friend of the press. A friend to Kansas City. A friend to all.

      The eyes that met Reuben’s gaze said he was no man’s friend but his own.

      And the evidence to prove it was burning a hole inside Reuben’s pocket.

      His story wouldn’t get written. Not tonight. Not by him. Maybe not ever.

      Then he became aware of the bruiser with a mustache standing at the exit, watching him without blinking. Another overbuilt guard dog waited with the passengers lining up for St. Louis. Obliquely, Reuben wondered which one of them had Dani Ballard’s blood on his hands. Maybe they both did. Their boss, still sipping his coffee, certainly wouldn’t dirty his hands that way.

      Reuben cursed beneath his breath and slowly walked toward the heart of the lobby. How had he been followed? When had he missed the car that must have been waiting for him to leave the docks? Or had they tailed him some other way? A tracking chip, maybe? He swallowed hard and gathered his thoughts. Whys and hows no longer mattered.

      Justice did.

      Survival seemed a mighty distant second.

      He could be bold and approach the man at the counter, disk in hand, and dare him to deny the truth. Or he could take a chance.

      The same chance Danielle Ballard had taken.

      With a firm resolution, Reuben Page pulled his shoulders back and exhaled a steadying breath. With his gaze darting from one threat to the next, he strode with purpose to the center of the crowded waiting area.

      And tossed the ten grand of cash into the air.

      As the passengers converged and chaos erupted, Reuben shoved his way past them and ran. Once-weary citizens attacked the free money with a frenzy that blocked the two thugs and gave Reuben a clear path to the door. He shot outside, never sparing a glance behind him until he reached his car.

      There was no finesse to slamming the bumper of the car in front of him, no apology for scratching a strip of paint from headlamp to taillight. He jerked the wheel, floored the accelerator and sped into the street. He turned two corners and ran one stop sign before daring to turn on his lights. Hopefully, he’d gotten enough of a lead that the three men couldn’t follow him.

      No such luck.

      Now he was painfully aware of the screech of tires and blare of horns behind him as the men who wanted to silence him closed the gap between them. Though little more than a pair of lights in the fog behind him, they closed in with an ominous intent. His own low-slung Caddy bottomed out over a pothole as he barreled through town. The base of skyscrapers gave way to empty parks, then tiny homes. The sleek black car chasing him took shape and color as it rammed his rear bumper. He skidded on the pavement made slick by the drippy fog and careened into a narrow alley. A gunshot cracked his rear window and a telephone pole tore off his side mirror as he whipped past.

      Reuben couldn’t remember breathing, much less turning toward the decaying isolation of the warehouses that lined the river. Another gunshot shattered the rear window and debris slammed into the back of his neck and scalp. The lacerations burned, startled. The steering wheel lurched in his grip.

      He thought of his daughter as the sedan flew off the end of the dock and plunged into the river. The water was a cold shock that slapped him in the face and sharpened his senses. The heavy car sank quickly, but as the murky water pooled around him, Reuben had the presence of mind to unhook his seat belt and swim up through the empty rear window.

      He kicked to the surface as the current carried him downstream. Reuben coughed up water and gasped for breath. But bright car lights from the street that ran the length of the docks caught him in their glare. Shouts and bullets followed, and he dove beneath the water again.

      Rebecca would love an adventure like this one. She’d inherited her mother’s beauty, but she had his tenacity. His reckless determination to know.

      Reuben slammed into the rusting steel hull of the abandoned Commodore riverboat, permanently anchored and left to be sold for scrap metal. As his breath whooshed from his chest and he sank beneath the water, Reuben thought like a father, not a reporter. He didn’t want Rebecca risking her life for a news story. He didn’t want her to wind up like Dani Ballard.

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