No Cry For Help (7 page)

CHAPTER 15

Crow exited the hut with JoeJoe by his side and quickly descended a flight of wooden stairs to reach Wallace.

“Do you still have a credit card?” he asked.

Wallace patted his front pocket. The only items he left the house with each morning were an emergency credit card, driver’s license and enough pocket money for continuous coffee refills and the bus driver’s pension scheme: twice-weekly lottery tickets. He had abandoned his now-useless passport and change of underwear back in the overturned van, but these meager necessities had stuck with him even through a change of clothes. He nodded.

“Good,” said Crow. “Cheveyo is ready to take you across the border, but he needs you cleaned up first.”

“Cleaned up?”

“Less redneck,” said JoeJoe. “You look too much like a fugitive in borrowed clothes. He wants you looking smart. More American.”

Crow nodded in agreement. “JoeJoe will take you to the mall for new clothes and then over to the Peace Arch.”

There was a pause and Wallace could feel the unspoken tension.

“You’re not coming with me.” Wallace tried to hide the hurt in his voice, but knew he couldn’t disguise the raw desperation. The thought of being alone, not knowing how to proceed, frightened him to death.

Just as Crow was about to answer, his cellphone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and listened.

“It’s okay,” he said into the phone. “I’ll be home soon. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”

Crow hung up and squeezed the phone so tightly in his hand that his knuckles turned white. He had trouble meeting Wallace’s gaze.

“That was Delilah,” he said. “Marvin’s just been to the house and found your bloodied clothes. They’ve issued an alert on the truck and a warrant for my arrest.”

“Ah, Christ.” Wallace ran his fingers through his hair, digging the nails into his scalp, finding too many tender spots in tight, knotted muscles.

Crow kicked at the dirt. “If it was just me, I’d be backing you up one hundred percent. You know that, right? But I can’t leave Delilah and the girls, especially since we don’t know what the hell is going on. What if . . .”

Crow hesitated, unable to put words to dreaded thought.

“It’s okay.” Wallace infused his voice with grit, hoping it was enough. “I understand.” He gnashed his teeth, hating his own selfishness and the position he had placed his closest friend. “Christ, Crow. If
anyone
understands, it’s me. The girls come first. Go to them.”

“Yeah, I know, but I still feel like shit. Those are my godsons out there.”

A heavy silence passed between the two men.

JoeJoe broke the tension.

“This is sweet an’ all,” he said, “but we’ve got, like, other things to do.” He grabbed at Wallace’s arm. “We gotta go, dude.”

Crow squeezed Wallace’s other arm. “I’ll wait here until I know you’re across the border,” he said. “That way if the cops arrest me, it’ll be too damn late.”

CHAPTER 16

JoeJoe led Wallace at a hurried pace behind the huts to a semi-circular metal barn that housed a dozen ATV Quads and Trikes. The roof of the barn was covered in camouflage netting that trapped fallen needles and leaves.

As Wallace’s vision grew accustomed to the ghostly gloom, he saw at least a half-dozen other barns hidden beneath the forest canopy. He doubted they all contained recreational vehicles.

Inside the barn, a mechanic in pristine blue coveralls with the nametag
Clarence
embroidered over his breast pocket had pulled two of the vehicles into the center and was giving them a quick final inspection.

JoeJoe handed Wallace a tin helmet and a pair of plastic goggles before straddling one of the two-seater trikes.

“Climb on, dude. We need the head start.”

Wallace had just settled himself onto the narrow seat when JoeJoe tilted his head back and released a loud whoop that had all the earmarks of a war cry. In the same breath, he twisted the accelerator to the full-on position. The trike’s front wheel lifted off the ground for a brief instant before the back wheels dug in and they roared off into the woods.

Before the huts vanished in a blur behind them, Wallace caught a glimpse of two native men climbing onto the other vehicle.

WALLACE HELD
on for dear life as JoeJoe thundered through the forest. He used previously laid ruts and cleared bush as general guidelines rather than broken trails, preferring to make the trike leap over fallen logs and threaten to flip end over end as they careened up the sides of narrow gullies and down steep ravines.

Branches whipped across Wallace’s face, making him glad for the helmet and goggles. He just wished JoeJoe had also given him a jock and protective cup for the hard landings.

After a final leap that crossed a small mountain stream and sent Wallace’s stomach crashing against the back of his teeth, JoeJoe landed the trike in a rough clearing that acted as a parking lot for two black 4x4 Toyota trucks and four large bone white Yukon Hybrids.

Two armed guards appeared from two different directions as JoeJoe killed the ignition and yanked the helmet off his head. JoeJoe waved at the guards and turned to Wallace. His face was split in a grin that stretched from ear to ear.

“Now that was cool, dude. You stoked?”

Wallace tried not to vomit all over his shoes.

THE ONLY
store open that early in the morning was a Wal-Mart Supercenter, but it carried everything Wallace would need.

JoeJoe instructed him to go “paleface casual” with beige slacks, a golf shirt, comfortable shoes and a light wind jacket in a dull color. He was also told to stop by the electronics department and pick out a digital camera.

“Nothing too small,” JoeJoe said. “The bulky ones are cheapest anyway. Get one of those.”

Wallace did as he was told.

When he returned to the truck, he was dressed in his new clothes. He had discarded his ruined shoes, but bundled the clothes borrowed from Crow into a bag under his arm.

JoeJoe had changed his appearance as well. Instead of army surplus fatigues, he wore a simple pair of dark blue jeans and a black T-shirt. Even tucked into jeans, the T-shirt hung loose around his skinny frame.

JoeJoe gave Wallace the once-over. “If I looked like you, dude, I’d kill myself.”

Wallace frowned. “Is that good or bad?”

JoeJoe grinned, displaying a disturbing array of crooked teeth. Without another comment, he threw the truck in gear and aimed for the border.

CHAPTER
17

Instead of staying on the highway straight to the border, JoeJoe took the 8
th
Avenue exit off the traffic circle and drove to 172nd Street. There, he turned south, skirting the Peace Portal Golf Course, and west again when he reached Zero Avenue.

The houses that ran along this stretch of rural suburbia were separated from their American neighbors by nothing more than a small ditch, border markers and an occasional line of decorative rock.

Wallace looked across the invisible border, so close he could touch it. Alicia, Fred and Alex were somewhere on the other side. Needing him.

He had been there when both boys were born. Feeding Alicia ice chips, feeling helpless and scared and in awe of it all. He had been there when each boy started school, despite the ribbing from his boss and co-workers when he booked the mornings off.

Both times, he and Alicia had lingered outside the classroom with the other parents, finding it more difficult to leave than it was to be left. A part of him didn’t want his sons to grow up and yet his heart filled with pride that they were.

He had been there when Alicia’s father died. When she needed him to stand strong and just hold her.

And they had all been there for him when he needed them most.

It seemed ridiculous that he couldn’t just sprint across the narrow patch of ground separating the two countries. Neighborhood dogs did it on a regular basis, but a series of hidden ground sensors combined with video surveillance made human crossings a risky proposition.

JoeJoe drove to the end of the avenue and parked the truck on scenic Peace Park Drive. The ocean was stormy; dark clouds in the distance; rolling towards shore.

“Dude?” JoeJoe snapped his fingers to get Wallace’s attention. “Now we walk.”

Wallace followed JoeJoe down a grassy hill into Peace Arch Park. When they reached the bottom, Wallace found himself standing by the side of the road where Interstate 5 became Highway 99. It was practically the same spot where the Bellingham detectives had given him back his van and told him never to return.

JoeJoe pointed at the large white monument glistening with dew in the middle of the groomed green lawn.

“You’re already on the U.S. side,” he said. “Now you just need to stay here.”

A lanky figure crossed in front of the monument and headed towards them at a leisurely pace. He was definitely native, a hardscrabble life etched deeply in the shadows and lines under his eyes, but his hair was cut short and he possessed a similar build to Wallace.

“Two people walked down the hill to look at the park,” said JoeJoe. He waited until Wallace’s face registered confusion before continuing. “But nobody cares, dude.” He grinned. “So long as two people walk back.”

JoeJoe nodded to the south where a public washroom was nestled in a stand of trees.

“Go in there. Wait five minutes, then head east. Walk easy. Put that cheap-ass camera around your neck. There’s a parking lot for American tourists. Transportation will be waiting. Don’t panic. Don’t rush. And everything will be cool.”

“That’s it?” asked Wallace.

JoeJoe grinned. “This ain’t Mission Impossible, dude, and you’re not a truckload of weed. Why would anyone think a paleface like you needed to sneak across the border?”

Wallace bumped JoeJoe’s extended fist with his own. “Tell Cheveyo I appreciate all he’s done.”

JoeJoe’s grin faltered and he lowered his voice. “Between you and me, dude, I’d forget you ever heard that name. Cheveyo did a favor for Crow. Normally, he wouldn’t lift a finger for a white man.”

Wallace nodded in understanding, then turned and headed for the washroom.

WALLACE WAS
inside less than a minute before the washroom door opened and the man he had seen walking past the monument entered. He had sad brown eyes and his cheeks and chin were pitted from a bad case of childhood acne. Combined with his height, the scarring gave him a threatening presence.

Wallace gulped, suddenly wondering if something had gone wrong. What if Cheveyo had made a secret deal with whoever abducted his family to deliver Wallace in exchange for leaving Crow out of it?

Wallace braced himself, preparing to fight, but the man simply nodded to him, washed his hands in the sink, and exited without a word.

Three minutes later, Wallace followed.

Outside, Wallace was surprised to see an attractive native woman leaning against a tree. She was young and lean with an angular face so perfectly proportioned it would have made Michelangelo itch to pick up a chisel. Her hair flowed past her shoulders and made him think of spilled ink, flashes of indigo glistening within the midnight strands.

As soon as their eyes met, she flashed him a dazzling smile and rushed over. She wore a playful silk blouse above a smart pair of tight, riding-style pants and polished boots. Before he could react, the woman wrapped her arm in his, squeezed it against her body and stood on tiptoes to peck his cheek.

Wallace tensed. The woman’s soft lips burned into his stubbled cheek with the heat of fresh embers. Her kiss felt like an invasion, a hammer against glass, the brief intimacy a betrayal of his missing wife. He struggled not to recoil, knowing this stranger couldn’t possibly understand how fragile a simple kiss made him feel.

“Relax,” she said. “It looks better as a couple. Not so obvious.”

She steered him, arm in arm, along a landscaped white gravel path toward the parking lot on the Washington side.

Sweat trickled down the back of Wallace’s neck as they moved further away from the Peace Arch headquarters of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Despite its recent makeover, the two-story building still looked tired as it squatted on a tarmac island in the middle of the incoming and outgoing traffic. The money it was promised to beef up security prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics had been compromised by a government that had inherited a financial sieve rather than a bucket.

There was little activity visible on this side of the building. Most of the officers were on the far side, facing the ocean, screening five lanes of slow moving, bumper-to-bumper traffic. The outgoing vehicles weren’t their concern; they would all be handled by Canada Customs at the north end of the park.

“They’re busy,” said the woman. “Looking for drugs and nervous tourists sneaking Cuban cigars. Don’t worry.” She squeezed his arm. “And don’t stare. It’s not polite.”

She grinned up at him, but Wallace didn’t smile back.

He couldn’t.

Soon, the building vanished from sight as they strolled by a stand of tall cedars. No one called out for them to stop or fired a warning shot into the air.

When they reached the parking lot, the woman led the way to a midnight blue Crew Cab truck.

“Get in,” she said. “I’m ready for breakfast.”

Wallace wiped the nervous sweat off his brow and climbed into the passenger seat.

He was relieved to be back in America and one step closer to finding out what had happened to his family.