Chapter Sixty-One
I had to convince Mrs. Rodriguez to leave me. I could see she wanted to wait until I handed myself over to my supposed adult father. I didn’t see either of the Kitwillies but I pushed her unease aside and she drove off more worried about meeting her time schedule than me. She did ask one of the other passengers to keep an eye on me. All six agreed and hung out in a cluster that made the Walmart greeters and other customers nervous. It didn’t help that I carried a rifle, either. None of them ventured inside to buy beer nor were they as drunk as they had been on the bus. I wouldn’t say they were sober but close enough that no cop could hassle them over it. Not that the cops needed a reason to hassle Indians.
“You don’t want to buy beer?” I asked surprised. All of them shook their heads sheepishly. They sorta looked like a herd of befuddled sheep. None of them were over 30 and actually, I thought 25 was stretching it.
“What are you going to do?” I asked them and each one of them came up to me and asked for a blessing in the old way.
Astonished, I gaped at them. “I’m no holy man! You think I can bless you? Better you go home and talk to the priest. He can change your life, not me!”
“You changed our lives, Shaman,” First Man said. “You gave us hope. I am going back to the Rez and I will tell my people of your vision.” He turned on his heel and walked off with the others following like stunned deer in the headlights.
I shook my head and wandered the parking lot remembering the last time I’d done that. Not such a good idea but at least Sami and TG were still safe.
My quipp buzzed in my pocket and when I pulled it out to read the text, I saw that it was from Mairy. They were on the way and I was to meet them on the road out of town heading for the Cisco Mountain Pass.
Why there? Im at Wallyworld.
We were followed. Had to ditch the truck. DHS found us Denver.
How???
Saw C&C. had an Injun tracker w/. looked Dinee, found ur tracks Big Creek, saw Robin. B careful. Know where ur headed.
Went there. Saw my cousin Dan K. and his wife BT.
There was a long pause and then a spate of words. Lakan, ur cousin Daniel Kitenanny died in a car crash two years ago w/wife and 3 kids. He was driving drunk. Did they give you anything? Touch your things? Feed you?
I had coffee and burritos. No one stopped me or has followed me. Im fine - no drug effects or sickness.
You could be tagged!!!
I did not sense any deception from either of them! He looked like my grandfather’s nephew!
Get out of there, Lakan! Run! Hide! We’re coming for you!
I shut her off and went searching through the classifieds looking for a reasonably priced off-road motorbike and called as soon as the clock turned to 8 a.m. I didn’t want to wait that long but calling someone at four in the morning was sure to piss them off. The seller sounded like a teenager and he agreed to bring the bike and a helmet out to the parking lot of the Piggly-Wiggly on state highway 79 at 11:00 a.m. which was the soonest he could drag his ass out of bed. I wanted to test drive it before I bought it. I spent the rest of my morning at the McDonalds eating breakfast burritos and drinking coffee, the rifle now wrapped inside a used paper cylinder I’d found in their dumpster. It smelled vaguely like French fries but it did a great job of disguising the rifle.
When the kid saw me, he almost backed out of the deal thinking I was too young to have the money. I had to give him a deposit upfront and show him the full amount in my Bitcoin account before he agreed that I could buy the bike. He signed the pink slip and I transferred the coins, all four thousand into his Amazon account. He handed me the helmet. I took it for a quick spin around the lot and found it had been used hard but still had plenty of rubber and spring. The engine sounded sweet, throaty and no oil leaks. It would do.
“How are you getting home?” I asked and he said I could give him a ride back. He wasn’t more than 18 himself, thin and with a bad case of acne.
“I live in Red Hill.” That was just outside Cortez near my meeting place with the Kitwillies.
“Okay,” I said.
“But I’m driving.”
I hesitated but shrugged. “Okay.” I climbed on behind him and held onto the sissy bar as he took off. There wasn’t a lot of traffic but enough to make me nervous. I liked riding the bike, even one as small as the Honda. He rode like an indestructible teenager with a death wish but managed to reach his house without dying, wrecking the bike, mailboxes or even a scrape. He lived in a nice house in the burbs with a Volvo SUV parked in the driveway.
“Great,” he muttered. “Mom’s home.”
“Why are you selling the bike?” I was curious.
“Too small and too slow,” he shrugged. “Besides, I want a Ducati.”
Huh. If he could afford that, he had some serious money. “Well, thanks. Good luck.”
He jumped off and went in without a backward glance or another word. I backed up, rode off and popped a wheelie just because I could. And it felt good.
I was careful on the highway, not taking the bike above 50. I wanted to feel how it handled on the pavement as well as off so I took it on the shoulder and further out onto the sandy scrub beyond the road. I raised clouds of dust making me glad that I was wearing a helmet as the visor kept most of it from getting in.
I was just about to head back onto the pavement when I saw a string of red and white lights go flashing by and then heard the sirens as county sheriffs and state police SUVs blasted past. I hit the brakes and let the bike idle to a stop setting my feet on the ground to hold it upright. It was heavier than I expected and strained my arms and chest. I wasn’t as healed as I thought.
I checked the quipp, set it to the local police band so that I could hear the chatter. Strangely, there wasn’t anything on the band so I tried Mairy’s cell.
??? I texted and she answered a few minutes later.
Wuzup?
Police just blasted by. CSP and locals. U OK?
Nothing here. How far u?
Not far, I texted back. How’s Leon?
There was a wait and then she texted me. He’s in the bathroom. We stopped at the Circle K for sodas.
Great. Get me my usual. Be there in 10, 15.
Miss u. Hurry.
I veered off into the brush but kept the bike’s speed down so that I didn’t kick up dust clouds but it took me longer to reach the cutoff. I followed the dirt bike trails of which there were many crisscrossing the high desert of chaparral grass, cedar, and cottonwoods. In places, it was so thick that I couldn’t see my way through and that made me less worried that anyone would spot me. Unless they were in a helicopter.
From the message sent me from Mairy’s cell phone, I knew something was wrong. She should have known that Leon had gone back home. I had a bad feeling about them and stopped the bike to unwrap the rifle and make sure that it was loaded before I continued on.
I rode the bike up to a mile from the cutoff, dropping it in a dry wash that came down from the beginning of the hills. They were piñon green and sandstone red. Behind me rose the foothills into the Wyoming wilderness where no one could find or track me.
I crept to the back of the Circle K sitting at the junction of two highways, one of which led up into the mountains to the town of Red Cat. From there, you could depart from the Yellowstone National Park, a land that even today, people could not fathom, were frequently lost in, found dead or not found at all.
Home to bison, elk, mule deer, grizzlies and newly released wolves as well as mountain lions, it was a predator’s paradise. Even if some of those were human.
The Circle K was a large one with a Subway inside it and an attached car wash. There were several trucks parked outside, two at the pumps getting gas and one at the pay for air checking their tires.
The people I saw were ordinary, overweight and clearly not the agents I was expecting. None of them had out of state plates and at least one of them should have - Robin and Maiara had driven up from Tennessee. None was from the D.C. area and none was rentals. I watched to see if there were any cameras outback and scanned the front using the quipp. It told me that no one inside was using anything more than a cell phone, no one carried a concealed weapon or ear mics. I couldn’t be sure if any were undercover police or FBI but I could piggy-back my quipp into their CCTV coverage and see what their cameras saw.
The interior of the store was the typical gas station/convenience/video rental store. It had two huge freezers in back next to the restrooms. One carried dry ice for the long journey from store to home where that could be a hundred miles round-trip in the high heat of the desert and the other carried bags of ice.
They offered live worms and flies for fishing once you rose higher into the mountains, there you could fish for trout.
Several customers were wandering the aisles, picking up beer and chips, jerky and coffee, water and ice. The heavy woman and skinny man at the pump came in and paid for their gas. The woman with cash and the man used American Express. My quipp told me the amount of each sale, the gallons, credit or debit, his pin number, name, and address. He was from Farmington and she was local. The two clerks, an Indian girl with long braided hair was pretty in her green shirt with the Circle K logo. The man was a few years older and seemed nervous, constantly flicking his gaze back and forth to the CCTVs.
He looked white, red from sunburn on his pale skin but his arms were heavily tanned as if he was an outdoorsman. Hair and eyes dark with a short cut that was almost a buzz. He wore an expensive watch on his right hand.
My quipp vibrated and I looked at the text screen. I looked at another message. Where r u?
My car broke down im walking to the station. Should b there in 20min or so.
Well come get u.
?about all the cop cars I saw?
Theyre going to a big reck at the I 18whls hit a school bus.
I looked around and didn’t see a single police vehicle parked anywhere I could see that they could park. Unless they were hiding in the brush and even there, I would have seen some sign that they had gone in, a dust cloud, broken brush, tire tracks. I saw nothing like that.
K. meet me at mile marker 277, she texted.
K. I punched back.
I saw two people exit the store, a man, and a woman. Both looked the same size, build, and general description of the Kitwillies but then, they would be in a disguise. This woman had dark hair tucked through the back of a baseball cap and wore a thin summer sundress with worn sneakers and a wide leather belt. The man was sandy-haired with light eyes and wore a tan hoody with black jeans and lime green sneakers. Expensive Jordans.
They moved as a team, getting into one of the pickups - a Dodge 4x4 that looked like an older model, 05. One of the few that didn’t have a pair of rifles hanging behind the driver’s seat.
I watched them drive off and then another couple followed speaking into their hands as if they had radios. I didn’t see any cords hanging from their ears but micro-radios were much more sophisticated than portrayed in the movies. They could be as small as a mud spot on your hem. I didn’t watch the next ones leave, they were Afro-American and so obviously cops that no one would mistake them.
When the convenience store was empty of customers, I sneaked up to the back door by the dumpster and unlocked the electronic keypad with my downloaded code.
I didn’t realize how hot it was until I was inside the air-conditioned cooler and backroom. Sticking my head out, I said hi to the clerks and watched them whirl around in shock. The male almost went for the gun hidden under the counter.
She jumped over the counter and hugged me. Then she hit me. I yelped.
“Lakan,” she cried. Maiara looked nothing like I’d last seen her, nor Robin.
“Great disguises,” I admired, grinning. He hugged me, too but I stopped the punch before he could finish it.
“How’d you know the texts weren’t from us?” she asked.
“Well, they were until they found the frequency and stole my transmissions,” I admitted. “Somewhere near the village where I grew up. I guessed something was up when that local cop went flying by me. Luckily, they thought you were still on your way to meet me, not already here. You ready to leave?” They nodded and we went out the back door.