The Fourth Option Read online

  Rink drove up to Mexico Beach in record time. If he’d come in his Porsche he might have cut his journey time by a few more minutes, but it was negligible. He pulled up on the packed sand that served as my driveway in the company Ford we used when requiring a less conspicuous vehicle. He couldn’t immediately see me for the piles of debris. I was waiting for him on the raised decking at beachside that gives an incredible view over the Gulf, the only recognisable part of my house to survive. For a tall guy built like a pro-wrestler, Rink is usually graceful and smooth in motion, so I could tell he was jittery with nervous tension when he clipped his way towards the foot of the stairs to the deck. He was unshaven, and his thick black hair was finger-combed back off his brow. An old scar on his chin was vivid against his deep saffron skin; it was pulled taut as he gnawed at his bottom lip.

  ‘It couldn’t have been him,’ he announced by way of greeting.

  ‘Trust me, Rink, I’ve told myself the same thing a thousand times, but it was him. I saw Jason Mercer. No doubt about it.’

  Rink climbed the short stairs to the deck.

  We stood side by side, looking out at the sun as it dipped towards the distant horizon.

  ‘Couldn’t be…’

  Rink was in denial. But seeing as he was the one who’d shot Jason Mercer it was more difficult for him to accept the truth. He possibly wouldn’t believe until he too laid eyes on Mercer, and maybe not even then.

  ‘I got two looks at him,’ I said, ‘and to be fair neither were full on, but I know it was him.’

  ‘I put two bullets in his head, Hunter.’

  ‘I know. And I saw his scars.’ I touched my head at the back of my right ear. ‘The second time I saw him he was in an elevator and he looked me dead in the face, Rink. He recognised me, too.’

  Rink exhaled through his nostrils. ‘If by some miracle he survived, why wait until now to show himself?’

  ‘That’s the thing; he wasn’t exactly showing himself.’ I told him about Mercer being with the woman at the oyster bar where I first spotted him. ‘To me it looked like he was on a lunch date or something, maybe an illicit one. Why drive all the way here from Panama City when there are plenty of restaurants nearer by, especially when half of this town has been blown away? I think they were keeping their rendezvous a secret.’ In the next second I made a reassessment. ‘Then again, Mercer was with the woman when she went home, and he accompanied her to a meeting in the city. So I guess they weren’t trying too hard to hide.’

  Rink faced me. ‘You think they knew you were there and wanted you to follow them?’

  ‘No. I arrived at the bar after they did. Their Merc was already parked when I pulled up. I remember. I never went inside, just ordered at my table on the porch. I never got a hint that they’d spotted me as they left, and Mercer looked surprised to see me when our eyes met when he was in the elevator.’

  ‘So he’s not here on some revenge gig.’

  ‘If he were he could easily look you up in the telephone directory,’ I said. ‘No. I think it was pure chance that I happened to be in the right place at the right time.’

  ‘I don’t usually believe in coincidence.’

  ‘Fate? Karma? Maybe there’s something in it.’ I’m an advocate of the old saying: what goes around comes around. This wouldn’t be the first time that a ghost from our past had come back to haunt us.

  ‘If it was Mercer, what are we gonna do about it?’

  ‘Maybe we should do nothing,’ I said.

  Rink grunted.

  He crossed his arms, leaned on the deck rail, and stared out to sea, but his gaze roamed further distant. I wondered what pictures were in his mind, and if they included dead women and children, murdered in a village in Sierra Leone.

  ‘Here,’ I said, handing him a Coke from a cooler box I’d brought. ‘Sorry I’ve nothing stronger.’

  He knocked the base of his bottle against mine.

  I chugged down half my cola in one long draught. Rink allowed his to swing from his hand by its neck. Condensation dripped off the bottle to the sand below.

  ‘As much as I hate to admit it, we’re gonna have to call Walter,’ Rink finally said.

  I’d come to the same conclusion, but was waiting for Rink to make the suggestion first. My pal held no love for our old controller and might have gone ballistic if I’d gone ahead with the call before consulting him.

  ‘Before we do that, I’m up for another look at him. Just to make certain.’

  ‘We should,’ Rink said. ‘But I’m afraid of what I might do if I see him.’

  ‘Whatever you do, the bastard will deserve it.’

  ‘There’s a law in this country, Hunter. Double jeopardy. You can’t be tried for the same crime twice.’

  ‘When did we ever observe the laws of the land?’ I offered a sly grin. ‘And don’t forget: the same goes both ways. Who’s going to blame you if you have to put another couple of bullets through his skull?’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

  ‘So we just forget about him. Let him go.’

  Rink didn’t reply.

  He didn’t have to. He knew as well as I did that if Jason Mercer had escaped death then others wouldn’t — and perhaps hadn’t during the intervening years. I seriously doubted that his near death experience had changed Mercer for the better.

  ‘I vote we take a run up to Panama City. You have to see him for yourself; whatever happens after that depends on it.’

  ‘You know where to find him?’

  ‘I know where the woman lives. I take it Mercer won’t be far from her side.’

  ‘You expect her to point us at him?’

  ‘I’m not going to twist her arm if that’s what you’re worried about. But where’s the harm in asking about an old friend?’

  Rink snorted. ‘That’s stretching the definition.’

  At the end, it was, but not in the beginning. I looked my friend fully in the face, adding weight to my next words. ‘We were all Arrowsake once.’

  ‘I hear you, brother,’ Rink said, understanding exactly what I meant. ‘Loud and clear.’

  Evening was on its way.

  ‘You want to head on up there now?’ I asked.

  Rink took a cursory sip of his Coke, but he’d no intention of finishing it. I took it from him and placed it on the deck. ‘Now’s as good a time as any.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rink. Neither of us would rest until we were sure that Jason Mercer had genuinely resurrected.

  Without discussion we went to the Ford.

  ‘Want me to drive?’ I asked. Rink had just driven the three hundred and fifty-plus miles from Tampa.

  ‘I’m good.’ It was probably best that he drive, because he’d be a fidgety passenger all the way. I got in the other seat, and Rink reversed off my drive and onto the short lane that led back to Highway 98. He turned left, following the same route I had earlier when chasing the SUV. He didn’t need directions to the red-haired woman’s home until we were in the city proper.

  When we arrived on the suburban street, I indicated the house where the SUV had stopped earlier, and we did a slow drive-by. There were no lights on in the house and the Mercedes-Benz wasn’t on the driveway. It was too early for the woman to have retired for the evening, and best bet was that she was yet to return home. Whether she’d do so with Mercer or not was still to be seen.

  Rink turned the Ford at the end of the street and we came back for a second look. Nothing had changed in the past minute. Rink turned the car again then parked beneath the boughs of a spreading oak. The extra shadows would help our car blend with the deepening night while we waited.

  ‘So we just sit tight?’ I asked.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘What if they don’t come back tonight?’

  ‘Then we wait til they do.’

  I glanced over at my friend. Rink is Asian American. His hooded eyes were inherited from his Japanese mother, Yukiko, as surely as his large build came from his Scottish-Canadian father. T
he epicanthic folds were more pronounced than normal, setting his eyes deeper; I hadn’t seen my friend this intense since we’d hunted the murderer of his dad a few years ago.

  ‘I’ve all the time in the world,’ I reassured him, ‘but I could spend some of it being more productive than getting a numb arse.’

  ‘You want to go in and take a look around?’

  No. Entering the home of a woman who could be totally ignorant of whom she was associating with was firmly off the cards. I was more inclined to check her out without having to sneak about like a thief. I took out my phone and rang Raul Velasquez, an employee of Rink’s and a good friend. First I made an apology for disturbing him at home.

  ‘Whassup?’ he asked, shrugging off the inconvenience.

  ‘I need an address checked, and any details on the homeowners.’

  ‘Easy enough,’ he said. ‘Beats watching reruns of Storage Wars on TV.’

  ‘Cheers, buddy,’ I said, and gave him the address of the house we were currently watching.

  ‘How soon do you need this?’

  ‘Soon as,’ I said.

  ‘Rink with you?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘We got a job on?’ Velasquez was hopeful.

  ‘Too early to say, Val,’ I said. ‘But if anything comes of this, we’ll let you know, okay?’

  I hung up, looked over at Rink. His hands were on the steering wheel, the skin taut over his large karate-calloused knuckles. I didn’t require a warning from him, because his body language spoke volumes. A silver grey Mercedes-Benz GL450 had just entered the street from the far end and was already slowing as it approached the target house. Even without being able to read the tag, I knew it was the same SUV I’d tailed earlier. The tinted windows and the glow of its headlights thwarted any view of how many people were inside.

  The SUV pulled on to the drive this time, but we were in a good position to see the same red-haired woman get out. She wore the same jeans and T-shirt from earlier, and still toted the large tapestry bag. Unfortunately, that was as far as the similarities went, because this time there was no passenger along for the ride. She walked up the drive fast, her legs scissoring, and up onto the porch steps. She already had her house keys in hand, and before going indoors she took a quick glance around, ensuring that nobody was about to rush her and bear her inside. Nervous? That wasn’t it; it was more like precaution. Before she unlocked the door she looked directly at our Ford. From the distance, and hidden in the shadows from the oak tree we wouldn’t be apparent, but I’m sure that the woman sensed our observation. Her gaze lingered a moment, then her head shifted subtly, apparently writing us off. She unlocked the door and went inside. Lights went on in the downstairs windows, but no shadows shifted behind the blinds. I looked higher up and after half a minute I thought I caught a shifting of the darkness in one of the bedrooms. She was up there, surreptitiously watching us as we watched her.

  ‘Interesting,’ Rink said, and he was more pensive than I’d ever seen him.

  It was interesting. The woman wasn’t exactly acting counter surveillance savvy; otherwise she wouldn’t have been so obvious as to look directly at our car. But she was more aware of her surroundings than most civilians, and pointedly checked out anything unusual, which was enough to suggest she had a reason to be wary.

  ‘You said that Mercer met your gaze when he was in the elevator,’ Rink said. ‘Maybe he mentioned seeing you and she’s on the look out for us.’

  ‘That’d suggest she knows who Mercer really is, and how he knows me, and why that should concern them.’

  ‘He could have lied to her. He was good at lying.’

  ‘He certainly fooled us for years,’ I concurred.

  ‘Fooled me when the frog-gigger played possum too.’ Rink shook his head, sighed again. ‘I should’ve made sure the sumbitch was dead.’

  I didn’t reply. Recrimination wouldn’t help.

  The front door of the house opened and the woman stepped out. She’d pulled a jacket on over her T-shirt and jeans, and was still lugging her large bag: it looked heavier now. Purposefully she stared at our Ford again, but instead of going back inside, or even striding towards us she got back into the SUV and backed it down the drive. Rink started our engine but didn’t turn on the lights, maybe anticipating following. But the SUV drove towards us.

  The Mercedes came to a halt, its driver’s window adjacent to Rink’s. We were being studied from beyond the tinted window.

  ‘Some stake out,’ I admonished under my breath.

  Rink didn’t reply, he just sat there looking up at the elevated window of the SUV. It powered down, and Rink also hit his window button.

  I had a poor view of her from where I sat, and could only see the bottom edge of her window and the shape of one shoulder. Rink observed her in silence.

  ‘Jared Rington,’ the woman said, and it was the subtle accusation in her tone that made my pulse leap.

  Rink still didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. It was apparent that she’d positively identified him. And exactly what the consequences were.

  A tubular object appeared above the window frame, and even from my poor angle I recognised it as a suppressor screwed onto the barrel of a handgun.

  ‘Bastard!’ the woman snapped and the gun aimed for Rink’s head.

  Rink hit the gas and the Ford lurched forward, just as the woman squeezed the trigger. Even with a silencer, this close the report of the gun was a harsh crack! The round striking was a dull thud. Thankfully it had impacted the headrest of Rink’s seat and not his skull. In the next second or two we were a full car’s length out of range, and to fire on us again the woman would have to lean out of the window. She didn’t. She also hit the gas and tore away, and the distance between us lengthened rapidly.

  Rink hit the brake and we came to a halt.

  Rink, I could tell, was tempted to chase her down. And I’d’ve been with him. But he didn’t.

  He looked across at me, surprisingly calm for having come so close to death.

  ‘I guess you were right, brother,’ he said. ‘Mercer is back from hell, and he’s brought somebody equally as mysterious with him.’

  4

  Rink dug the spent slug out of the headrest, held it up for my appraisal. We’d driven away from the scene, found some waste ground overlooking a stretch of water the colour of burnished brass, and now stood alongside the Ford. The floodlights from a nearby factory stained everything the same amber hue.

  ‘It’s nine millimetre,’ I said, though he already knew that.

  It was a calibre of round big enough to have addled his brain if the woman had gotten a clean shot at him.

  ‘Good job you hit the throttle,’ I said.

  Rink grunted, bouncing the barely misshapen bullet on his palm. ‘Not sure she would’ve hit me even if I didn’t.’

  ‘Warning shot?’

  ‘If she wanted to she could’ve killed me, no problem.’

  ‘So she didn’t want to kill you?’

  I waited.

  Rink pulled his bottom lip over his teeth, thinking hard. The scar on his chin was vivid again. Then he looked at me, and I knew what was coming.

  ‘I knew her.’

  ‘Yeah, I guessed.’ I thought about his enigmatic statement from earlier. ‘You identified her the second she got out of the SUV.’

  ‘Suzanne Bouchard,’ Rink said. ‘At least that’s what she was called back then. It’s been a few years.’

  The name didn’t mean anything to me.

  Rink stared up at the sky. The light pollution from the nearby factory washed out the stars, but the moon presented a fingernail clipping of radiance for him to concentrate on.

  ‘So,’ I said.

  Rink exhaled, but didn’t elucidate.

  I waited.

  ‘I dated her,’ he finally said.

  ‘No wonder she tried to shoot you in the head.’ I smiled to punctuate the joke, but he wasn’t looking at me. I shut up.

  ‘You don’
t remember her?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘She was younger — obviously — didn’t have that dyed red hair back then. She’d a short dark crop? Canadian girl?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. Back in 1989 a Canadian Human Rights Act appointed the full integration of women into the Canadian Armed Forces. It took some years afterwards but Suzanne Bouchard — though the name still didn’t mean much to me — had been put through for selection with Arrowsake. She hadn’t completed the course. As I recalled, she was deemed physically incapable of the rigours male recruits were subject to and the Arrowsake command would not allow a significant lowering of the physical performance requirements — but that was just bureaucratical, misogynistic bullshit. The truth was, they’d vetoed the intake of women into front-line military combat, choosing instead to use them as their own undercover operatives, the way that the CIA and MI6 did. If women were going to get killed in combat, it wouldn’t be while wearing a recognisable uniform. When female operatives had worked alongside us on missions they’d proved themselves every bit as capable as any of the men, sometimes more so. I could vaguely remember the young woman from Toronto, though she looked nothing like she did now and back then went by the shortened name of Sue. She was tough and resourceful, and now that I thought back, as hot as hell. Rink had spent some downtime with her, but I’d have been a third wheel on their dates. Anyway, back then I was still loved-up and when off duty I’d returned home to England and my wife, Diane, so I never got to know Rink’s girlfriend. Now that I thought about it, their relationship had cooled after the death of Jason Mercer.

  ‘She wasn’t there when Mercer caught it.’

  ‘No. But Mercer was.’ Rink ruminated a little more. ‘From the look of things he’s kind of skewed the version of events he’s told her. Like I said: he’s a good liar.’

  ‘He’s convinced her he was badly done to and you were the one in the wrong.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t take too much convincing. She already thought I was the one in the wrong before we said goodbye.’ Rink shook his head, rueful that things had ended badly with Sue. ‘I wanted to see Mercer for myself; now it’s not as important. That was definitely Sue, so there’s no reason to doubt it was Mercer you saw with her.’