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I wiped my face on a towel and looked at my reflection in the rearview mirror. I’d grown a beard and had dark circles around my eyes. It wasn’t like I’d stopped showering and eating, but I did look like someone who’d been caught lying to his girl and had gotten his heart broken, rightfully so, in return.
I was about to start my truck when I noticed the beat-up car shining its headlights right into my rearview mirror. At first, I didn’t give it a thought, but then, the headlights blinked three times—and every cop knew what that meant in headlight morse code.
Follow me!
A cold knot formed in my stomach as excitement swelled in my gut. Could that be a messenger from her?
Throwing the towel onto the seat next to me, I started the engine and backed up. The old, brown car was waiting for me at the end of the parking. It started to move the moment I approached.
“It’s most likely Andrei,” I mumbled to myself. Yet I kept following the car through rainy roads and busy traffic lights. It wasn’t until I got out of the city center that I realized I, too, was being followed—by a black SUV.
I sighed at how cheap this was. Black SUV meant FBI 95 percent of the time. I always wondered why they couldn’t go through the trouble of changing cars.
All I could do was hope that the beat-up car in front of me was also aware of my uninvited guests. At the next traffic intersection, I stopped behind the old car and signaled it by shining my headlights three times.
It must have communicated something, as the rusty, old car didn’t accelerate once the light turned green but remained parked at the traffic light. An inferno of car horns swelled instantly. Several cars sped up next to us, slowing long enough to curse at the brown car holding everybody up at the green light.
“Okay,” I mumbled to myself. I knew exactly what the brown car was doing and prepared myself for this dangerous maneuver. I waited, my hands gripping my steering wheel until the light turned yellow. The car in front of me hit the gas pedal, smoke billowing out its exhaust as it blasted through the intersection. Jerking my head left and right, I analyzed the first cars in the lines waiting for our light to turn red and theirs green. As soon as the light turned red, the first cars began to move in the other lanes. This is when I hit the gas pedal all the way down, bottomed it out. My undercover patrol car was equipped with a faster engine for these exact moments. With a loud roar from the engine, my car heaved forward and crossed the intersection just before the other traffic was in full motion. I heard a few car horns behind me, and with a satisfied grin, saw the black SUV stuck behind traffic.
We drove on and on. I followed the brown car for what must have been two hours—off the highway, out of Boston, and onto smaller country roads. There was a high chance this was a trap set by Andrei, and I’d most likely be killed. But there was still this tiny chance that it was her who’d sent for me. To talk to me away from all the hassle of lawyers, cops, and FBI.
So I didn’t hesitate when the brown car led me down a dirt road and into a small patch of woods. I looked down at my cell phone: no service. I was on my own.
Trees towered to my left and right in endless rows. I slowly followed the brown car as it turned onto another dirt road. The rain had let up by now and turned into a soft drizzle. Squinting at the vehicle in front of me, I tried to figure out if the person behind the wheel was a man or woman. But its windows were too dark to tell.
Suddenly, the car came to a stop in the middle of the abandoned dirt road. At first, I waited, but after ten minutes and still no movement from the brown car, I decided to get out.
I left the engine running as I opened the door. My right hand gripped the concealed gun tucked away at my back. My first boot hit the wet forest ground when the car in front of me turned its engine off. Slowly, ready to draw my gun at any moment, I stepped all the way out. But nothing happened. Nobody moved in the brown car. I decided to step closer.
“Hands where I can see them,” I shouted, deciding it would be better than walking up to the window and getting shot. The person in the car lifted both arms; I could see at least this much through the tinted windows.
I hesitated. There could be someone in the back, hiding, pointing a gun at me right now. Or Andrei was out here in the woods; his sniper rifle pointed right at my head. But I didn’t stop; I walked up to the driver side’s window.
“I’ll roll down the window, but I need one of my hands for that,” a male voice in a thick Russian accent announced. I nodded, gripping my gun even tighter behind my back.
With a squeal, the old window opened, revealing a middle-aged man with a big mustache.
“I hate this old car,” he huffed as the window creaked all the way open. I nodded at him, trying to hide my confusion.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I have a message for you.”
“From who?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said again.
“It matters to me.”
“Doesn’t matter to me. Do you want it or not?”
I analyzed the car and the man in front of me. There were empty fast-food bags on the seat next to him, a gun as well. His big belly pressed against the steering wheel.
“Yes,” I said, letting go of my gun. The man’s eyes followed my hand as it fell next to my hip. Then he scratched his oily, black hair.
“Good. Go down this path until you reach a little opening on a small lake. Wait there.”
“What?”
