LITMIR.BIZ

      Dedication

      To Chaz

      One

      Bitter End

      Lance Liu was beginning to believe he wasn’t dead after all. He hurt all over, couldn’t see too well, couldn’t seem to move. But if he was dead, he would be pain-free, wouldn’t he? And probably serene, and looking down a tunnel of warm, bright light. He was distinctly being or doing none of that.

      So he had survived. He blew out a shaky breath. He blinked at the murk above, all dark and dribbly, spattering erratic raindrops on his face. The tree was pissing on him, like it hadn’t done enough already. All around was tall grass, bushes. The bushes made him nervous. Would sure be nice to have his vision back. Damned shenanigans.

      What had his mom always said?

      Coming events cast their shadows before them.

      Or I told you so.

      After tonight, he was going to make some major changes in his life. Maybe return to church. He wanted to bring a hand to the side of his head and feel the damage, but couldn’t. Tried to shift his legs and couldn’t. Just needed to calm himself a bit. He tried to pray, stretched out under the giant tree that had smacked him twice. “Dear God …” he whispered, doing his best, because his best was all God required. “Forgive me my —” but a noise stopped him. He listened hard.

      A car sped past above, wet tires on wet road. Was that the noise he had heard? He struggled to turn that way. He shouted out, “Hey! Help!”

      The car was gone. Didn’t see his vehicle down here, didn’t see trouble, wouldn’t come to his rescue. Nobody would come to his rescue. The panic surged through him like a low-grade electric shock. He couldn’t keep lying here. He needed to get back to the family, make sure they were safe. He managed to flop a knee, up and down, and up again. Good. Not paralyzed.

      He made more resolutions as he worked his other leg back to life and flexed his hands. Never rise to a taunt again.

      That was what put him in this ditch. Taunts. The SUV dripped privilege, just glared cash, a big, boxy black-and-chrome Hummer telling him I’m rich; you’re a blue-collar shithead. All he had wanted was to level the field, make a buck, and take that guy down a notch. No face-to-face confrontation. No bloodshed. No harm done.

      Didn’t happen that way.

      * * *

      How did it happen? Lance picked up the tail in Deep Cove, as instructed. He was led around town a bit, stopping at the liquor store and a KFC, and finally hitting the Upper Levels. All good, just two trucks tootling along the highway. Where it went wrong was the Hummer taking an off-ramp up a sparsely trafficked two-laner, leaving Lance exposed and vulnerable. Which would have been a really good time to back off. And he didn’t.

      The Hummer sprinted away, topping a hundred in a sixty zone. Lance did his best to keep the vehicle in sight, trying to tail without looking like a tail. The Hummer swerved hard through a hairpin. Lance took the curve more cautiously, but his tires still squealed. At which point he was hit by an epiphany. “I don’t need this,” he declared. He dropped back so the Hummer’s wide-ass tail lights ahead shrank and converged into the darkness. “We don’t need this. Nobody needs this. I’m calling it off. Not just this, but all of it. Pack it in, moving back to Cowtown, with or without you, man.”

      The you, man was Sig, the Sig Blatt in his mind, his business partner and pal. Moving west was Sig’s idea, just like this Hummer business. The Sig in his mind was peeved, a pale, blotchy face telling him to stay on that Hummer’s ass. Lance switched him off and spoke to Cheryl instead, the other reason for this move.

      Cheryl’s pressure was more a passive insistence. A prairie girl who thought it would be so cool to live on the very edge of the Pacific Rim. “See what I’m doing here?” he told her. “Never had this kind of baloney in Calgary, did we?” He’d been based in Airdrie, not Calgary, but from this distance, way over here on the west coast, Calgary and Airdrie pretty well converged to a point on the map. “And all this so you could wade in the waves. Well, you waded, didn’t you? Then you said it was cold and dirty and you wanted to go home. One flippin’ day at the beach. Big moves like this don’t come for free. D’you have any idea what that walk on the beach cost us?” He made up a number. “Five hundred dollars a millisecond’s worth of walk on the beach. No way, princess. I’ve had it. I’m gonna beg Ray for the job back, and we’re outta here tomorrow.”

      Sig popped back into view, still griping. But in the end Sig would pull up stakes, too. He would follow Lance back to Morice & Bros. Electric (1997) and their cheapskate boss Ray Duhammond. Sig would get it, eventually. They just weren’t cut out to be businessmen.

      The tail lights were back in sight, for some reason, and growing larger. The Hummer had slowed right down. Lance did, too. He slapped at his jacket pockets, then the seat beside him piled with receipts, grubby boxes of connectors, a tangle of hand tools. He found his iPhone and thumbed the home button. A colourful, glowing line indicated his phone servant was listening. He snarled at her: “Siri. Call fucking Sig.”

      Red blazed at the side of the road ahead and to his right, smeared by rain and darkness. The Hummer had pulled over and was parked on the shoulder. Lance drove past, not giving a fig anymore who was in that Hummer or what he, she, they, or it was up to. Siri apologized and said she didn’t understand his request. He started to repeat, “Call Sig,” without the F-word, but headlights popped up in his rear-view mirror, pitched and straightened and expanded.

      The Hummer was beginning to scare him.

      It was now coming up on his rear, and by the way those headlights were spreading like a couple of supernovas, it was coming fast. He sighed in relief as the Hummer pulled into the oncoming lane and tore past. Passed on a solid line, it was in such a hurry. Why the rush? There was nothing up here but forest, rock wall, and more forest.

      He didn’t care. He was off the case. He slowed further, on the lookout for a good place to pull a U-ey, and in the distance, red dots flared. The fickle-hearted Hummer had put on its brakes. Again. A knot tightened in Lance’s gut. White lights glared. The Hummer had thrown itself into reverse and was moving. Seemed to be moving fast, too.

      Lance swore aloud. He flashed his high beams. He leaned on his horn. He tried steering forward into the oncoming lane, but the road was narrow here, and the SUV was wigwagging, hogging the centre, blocking him.

      This wasn’t a freak accident. It was an attack.

      He shifted into reverse and pressed the gas, scudding backward into the night, but the Hummer came at him fast and straight. Lance veered toward the shoulder, but the white lights followed. A car’s length, half — “My God!” They were going to connect. Or he would be sandwiched by somebody coming around the dark curve behind him. He was looking ahead, behind, over his shoulder. On one side the road fell away steeply; on the other he sensed the slope would be milder, and aimed in that direction. He crossed into the oncoming lanes, felt tires hit gravel, and gravity took him.

      Tall grasses scraped the chassis as he slid to a stop, spiking the brakes and twisting the wheel. The truck swung to face downslope and rocked to a standstill.

      Lance’s headlights shone on dark woods. He was tilted awkwardly to the right, boots pushed against the manifold to keep him upright. Getting the driver’s door open would be tough, and getting the truck back on the road tougher still.

      But the fate of his vehicle was the least of his worries. He had two options now: reach for the knife in the glovebox or get out and run.

      In the end, his usual half-assed indecision lost the day for him. He opened the driver’s door when he should have left it locked, leaned across the centre console,

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