WALKABOUT 2 - The Back of Beyond (Part 9)

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50

I wandered around downtown Adelaide until sunup. Saw dozens, if not hundreds, of kids and young adults dressed as zombies. Apparently it’s some sort of an annual event. A fundraiser. I don’t get it, but it saved my life, being able to blend in with them.

I felt as if I might collapse from the exhaustion of a night spent hiding, moving in the shadows, constantly looking over my shoulder like a hunted animal. I was tired. I was hungry. And I was broke. Well, almost broke. The wallet belonging to the rightful owner of the pants I was wearing had somehow remained in the right hip pocket during our scuffle. I was glad to see nearly a hundred dollars in it. My own clothes and cash were back in my room, but caution dictated I refrain from going there. I plopped down on a bench in an outdoor shopping plaza on Rundle Street. I needed to think.

Instead, I fell asleep.

51

When they grabbed Jasmine Figueroa at the cemetery, she calculated her odds of living to see the morrow to be one in ten. So, in her way of thinking, as long as she was still breathing, she was winning. She now found herself seated with two of the roughest looking men she’d ever seen in an airplane piloted by the man she’d been hired to kill, Dexter Flynn.

The seats were arranged in the club seating option. Simone and one of the men were seated in the third row, she with her hands and feet bound by heavy duty cable ties. Both her escorts held stun guns. “Flynn insists we don’t get blood on the interior,” one of them said when he noticed her looking.

“What’s in there?” she asked, nodding toward a covered basket strapped in the seat opposite her.

“Bruce.”

“Bruce?”

He tilted the basket toward her, lifted the lid partially. Jasmine stiffened. Bruce, apparently, was the name of the snake she had seen at the biker headquarters.

The biker laughed. “Flynn takes him everywhere he goes.”

52

I woke up a few hours later, disoriented and hungry. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to try to find my way back to the hotel. Shuffling along the sidewalk, I noticed my reflection in a storefront window. I stopped, barely recognizing the dirty, disheveled mess that was now myself. Whatever happened, I wondered, to Captain Ty Hamilton

When I was twelve years old, I got a new bicycle for my birthday. I rode it all the time. One day, just before sunset, I happened to see a crop duster spraying a field, and I stopped to watch. I marveled at the way the yellow plane with the noisy radial engine would drop down so low I swore its wheels were going to get tangled in the soybeans, dump its load, pull up just in time to clear the trees at the other end of the field. The pilot would make a steep ninety-degree turn to the right, and then whip it around into a left two-seventy to line up for his next pass and do it all over again. I stayed there, watching, until he finished spraying the field. When he finished, the pilot pulled up into a steep climb, executed a wing-over and swooped down, coming directly at me, rocking his wings. I grinned and waved, watching him fly that magnificent machine into the sun as it dipped into the horizon, the smell of the chemical lingering in the air. From that day forward, all I ever wanted to be was a pilot.

53

I had left my money, my clothes, and my passport, everything, back in the hotel room. I opened the door and walked into the small lobby and tapped the bell on the counter. The girl came out of the office to the front desk. “Help you, sir?” She gave me an appraising look. I must have been quite a sight, wearing the loose-fitting clothes of the bigger man—Tommy, was it?—who I had mugged.

I stole a glance at her nametag. “Yes, Allison” I said. “I’m Jared Mulligan. I’m staying in room 314, and I lost my key card.”

Allison typed my name, or rather, Mulligans, into the computer. “No worries,” she said cheerfully, reaching into a drawer and pulling out a new card to process. “It happens all the time.” She slipped it into a slot on a contraption in front of her.

I hoped I could offer some sort of plausible explanation before she asked for an ID. I said, “You ever do something on a whim, Allison? Something really bizarre?

Her eyes widened, just a bit. “I’m not quite certain what you mean, Mr. Mulligan. Like, when I’m with my boyfriend?”

“Oh, no, no . . .  that’s not what I meant!” I said, embarrassed at what she must have thought I was implying. “Although I suppose . . . I just meant that’s what I did last night . . . something really bizarre.”

There was no expression on her face now. She waited for me to explain. Or, more likely, hoped I wouldn’t.

“Here I am,” I said, “an older fellow, visiting Australia. Loving it, by the way . . . ” Allison blinked and nodded, attempted an understanding smile. I went on, “So I’m looking out my window last night and I see all these young people dressed as zombies, walking all around town, and I think, ‘What’s this all about?’ I decided to go down to the street and check it out. On a whim, I think, ‘Oh, why not?’ and I joined in. Considering my age, that was a little bizarre, don’t you think?” Before she could form an opinion and reply, I added, “But I did have the good sense to leave all my valuables and passport, things I couldn’t risk losing to street muggers, in the room.” I sighed, smiled sheepishly. “Unfortunately, I also left my room key card. I feel kind of ridiculous now, standing here looking like this.”

Allison processed my new card as I was talking, and handed it over without asking for an ID. “There you go, Mr. Mulligan. Enjoy your stay.”

I entered 314, looking forward to a shower and changing into my own clothes before getting the hell out of Adelaide. My wallet and passport had been on the kitchen table. They were now gone. As were my clothes and the computer. On the table was a cell phone. Not mine. Someone else had left it there. Peter? Archer? I had not been in the room ten seconds when it began vibrating and dancing across the table. Curious, I picked it up, to see there was an incoming text. A video.

A chill ran through my body at the sight of my illegitimate daughter, Shelby, lying on a gurney inside a brightly lit tent, with tubes up her nose. From the looks of it, she was already under anesthesia. Her wrists were bound and secured to the gurney rails by cable ties.

The tent flap closed, and I could no longer see her. The camera panned around briefly, as whoever was making the video fumbled to turn it off, stopping when it came to focus for a fraction of a second on an individual wearing surgical scrubs and mask.

There was something about the place. Gray floor with a single yellow stripe painted alongside the edge of the tent. White corrugated siding with turnbuckles on rods crisscrossing between steel girders. And the unmistakable sound of a single-engine airplane taxiing past the building. I had been there. My daughter was being held inside what once served as a corporate hangar at the Page County Airport. And I was on the other side of the world. Looking like a zombie.

In addition to the video, there was a text message. One word only.

Stay

That’s all it said.

Stay

Who wanted me to stay? I had no idea.

And what did Shelby have to do with it?

54

Shelby? Did they think they could get money from me? Not from Ty Hamilton, certainly. But Jared Mulligan, that’s another matter. Mulligan was loaded, and I had access to his funds. Or I did have. Before they stole my computer.

The text said to stay, but would I be risking Shelby’s life by leaving? Would it even make a difference? My instincts said to leave now. Save myself. Sort it out later.

I needed to report this. Contact authorities and alert them to the danger Shelby was facing back in the states. But, no one would believe me. At best, I might manage to convince Australian authorities to look into the possibility I might be who I said I was, Tyler Hamilton, posing as Jared Mulligan, a man I killed back in the US. They would take me into custody, and from there on out things would only get worse. God only knew what would become of Shelby.

I could think of only two people who might have a reason to believe me, and shared my interest in saving Shelby. Her mother, April Meyers. And her uncle, Mike Bridges, April’s brother and the sheriff of Page County, Indiana. He, like Mulligan, had tried to kill me once already. I had no doubt he would try again, given the opportunity.

When Peter and Archer came to take me earlier, they were wearing vests with insignia for the Death Adders MC, Australia. And some guy named Flynn wanted me brought to him. Nothing made any sense.

What would a biker gang want with me? . . . What would a biker gang want with Jared Mulligan? . . . What would a biker gang want with—

—a professional killer?

Oh, Shit.

What would the bikers do if they were needing a professional killer and learned I was not the real Jared Mulligan? Wouldn’t that be—Wait a minute! If they had connected Shelby to me, they must already know. know that. They had to know who I really was. Otherwise, why would they use Shelby to control me? For that matter, how would they have even found out she was my daughter? Other than myself and April, her mother, who would know?

I wondered as I sat there in the room, what my options were. If I stayed, would it really make any difference as far as Shelby was concerned? If the Death Adders were to get hold of me, what could I possibly expect to be able to do to ensure her being released unharmed?

They were no doubt on their way to collect me already. Any second, they would be coming through the door. The girl at the front desk must have been paid to call them when I returned. For a moment, I reconsidered that. Paranoia would not improve my chances of surviving or of saving Shelby. But, how else could I explain the text message coming just moments after I returned to the room? There is no such thing as coincidence, I reminded myself.

Instinct told me to get away. But, where would I go? And how would I get there? I couldn’t risk air travel. I would be identified and arrested – either as Jared Mulligan or as Ty Hamilton, and what was left of my life would turn to shit. What was I thinking when I chose to assume another man’s identity? How long had it been since I made that fateful decision? It seemed a lifetime ago.

Go, or stay? What would Baron Wilder do?