Crystal Whisperer (Spotless Series #3) Read online

  Everything was happening too fast: my brain had slowed down and couldn’t process it. March. For a second, I thought, He’s dead, and something shattered inside me. But his hand closed around my shoulder and pulled me up, away from that slow-motion hell and back to reality. The first thing I saw clearly was the jagged hole in the windshield, where the bulletproof glass had been torn apart by the helicopter’s powerful ammo. And the wheel. Empty.

  “Island, the wheel! Take the wheel!”

  March’s roar achieved to clear my thoughts, and with it, chaos returned. The pickup was still driving fast in the middle of the road, facing that flying monster in the distance, which now hovered low enough to fire another round in what was left of our windshield. Gusts lashed at my face, covered the hum of the rotor, and March lay half sprawled between the seats, trying to grab something from the back.

  On a normal day, I’d have commented that he had to be pretty desperate to allow me anywhere near the steering wheel, and that the seat adjustment was all wrong anyway. But, honestly, we were past that point. I went on autopilot, scrambling over his hip to take hold of the wheel and keep us from barreling off the road. I didn’t even really think it’d save us; I just gripped the damn thing until my knuckles hurt and looked straight ahead, like a mosquito on a suicide mission against a halogen lamp.

  Next to me, March raised something in the general direction of the helicopter. I thought a gun or a rifle wouldn’t do much, until I saw the size of the barrel. Yes. Now was the perfect time to use the grenade launcher. Six detonations shook my frame in a matter of seconds. Most of them missed, because you’re not supposed to shoot in a reclining position, at a moving target, in the dark, and through a broken windshield.

  They retaliated with the machine gun almost instantly, and bullets clanked against the hood. One single grenade, however, hit the mark. It was all it took. A safety reminder for all criminals out there: under no circumstances should a live grenade make contact with the rotor mast of a helicopter. Not if you want it to keep spinning anyway. The explosion itself wasn’t nearly as terrifying as that of the rockets, only a burst of light and some smoke. I should, however, have known better than to underestimate anything coming from March’s magic basement. Ahead of us, the aircraft wobbled and started spinning down.

  I pulled the handbrake with all I had. The tires screeched, and the pickup skidded to a stop as bits of the rotor flew in all directions, hitting the remnants of the windshield. I jerked back against March with a yelp when a burning metal fragment grazed my forearm. The blades bent, some snapped off, and one of them went flying toward us, scraping against the pickup’s roof with a terrifying creak.

  Now, there’s this rule in movies that any flying object experiencing a crash must explode upon making contact with the ground. I threw myself over March between the seats and buried my face in his chest, bracing myself for the blast. It never came; the helicopter hit the asphalt with the deafening sound of smashed metal. I looked up to see the tail shattering all over the place before the battered cabin toppled over and finally came to a full stop. An odd peacefulness fell on the road, barely troubled by plaintive whirring sounds and clouds of steam hissing from torn wiring where the rotor had been.

  So, no. It wasn’t the crash that caused the explosion. Without a word, March carefully pushed me out of the way and stepped out of the truck. I extracted myself too and managed to stand on unsteady legs as he walked to the cargo bed and pulled out . . . the Twitter bazooka. Ukrainian technology, designed for the modern, connected man. An integrated app allowed the user to post a tweet that said “Boom” every time you fired it. I knew March had recently opened a Twitter account on Phyllis’s recommendation, but I gathered this had little to do with social networking. Watching him secure a long rocket in the tube and steady the beast on his shoulder with a deadly cold gaze, I knew, without a doubt, that this was payback for the little cubicle house.

  A tiny part of me did yell that I should have stopped him, but I was riding a spectacular adrenaline low at the moment, and I don’t think I could have moved even if I had truly meant to inquire about the status of the guys who had just tried to kill us with military-grade stuff. My jaw went slack at the same time that March pressed the trigger. And that is, indeed, how the helicopter blew up in a cloud of flames. We were standing far enough away, but I still felt the wave of hot air sweep over us. Burning fragments rained like shards of gold, some falling mere feet away from me. I watched the wreckage in a state of shock.

  With the same apparent cool, March went to place the bazooka back in its case. He then produced a folded rag from a compartment in the cargo bed, which he used to wipe the case over and over for a good thirty seconds, until it sat oddly clean and shiny in a truck that was otherwise nearly totaled. I stepped closer and saw that his hands were shaking a little. When I touched his arm, the muscles bunched under my palm, and his fingers curled into fists. He turned to face me, and there it was, the mask I knew too well: icy gaze, courteous and empty smile, both letting nothing through.

  In the distance, I could hear a siren. The helicopter had crashed less than a quarter mile away from a shantytown: we must have drawn some attention. March steered me toward the partly shredded passenger seat with a palm on the small of my back. “We have to leave. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I guess. But you . . . Are you sure? Your hands—”

  “Don’t worry,” March said as the engine coughed to a start. There was a little smoke coming from the hood; it didn’t look like we’d make it far with the truck.

  I wished he’d have dropped the act and let me in a little, but it’d take a while to make it past those walls—if I ever did, I realized, with a tinge of sadness. I fastened my seat belt and snuggled into his bulletproof fleece jacket. I had yet to tell him about my creepy little chat with Alex, and now that my mind was clearing up, I was beginning to see how badly I had messed up.

  4

  Viva Polo

  That beautiful, annoying American girl had it all fucking wrong, and Dmitri would show her. He was Bratva. He didn’t ask women out; he shoved them in his trunk.

  —Abby Chuman, The Russian Mobster’s Innocent Tourist

  After March had texted Phyllis to let her know that, against all odds, she still had an employer, we drove east on a deserted country road, passing a few houses and larger properties I assumed were ranches.

  A rising migraine throbbed under my forehead in response to the stress of the past hours. My body was exhausted and at the same time acutely aware of the slightest stimuli: the night breeze blowing through our now nonexistent windshield—March had done some cleaning up—or the faint tang of my own sweat. When he saw me massage my temples and forcefully dig my thumbs into my skull, he fished a pack of pain pills out of the glove box and popped one, which he handed me. I swallowed it dry, for lack of any water to help it go down.

  His eyes darted over to me. “Will you be all right? Do we need to stop?”

  “No, I’m okay . . . Don’t worry about the car. I won’t throw up.”

  “Island, I don’t care about the car.”

  I slumped in my seat with a sigh. “You said the guys who attacked us were Lions. How did you know?” I sensed he was in no hurry to have this conversation. But we both needed it.

  “Someone called me,” he admitted.

  I remembered seeing him on the phone in the garden moments before the house had blown up. “Phyllis?”

  “No. Dries.”

  A bump on the road shook the pickup. The hood clanked loudly, as if to express a shock similar to mine. “He . . . Where is he?”

  “Still in Venice. He called to warn me that there would be some cleaning up, and he requested my help.”

  “But who . . . Why would anyone want to clean you up? It’s been more than a decade since you left the Lions, and they never went after you!”

  “I’m not certain what’s going on, but it would seem that the plane bombing put Dries in a precarious position, and t
he brotherhood made a decision to cut their losses.”

  The brotherhood? More like their commander, and the man my mother had tried to warn me against before her death—Dries’s elder brother, Anies, aka the sketchy uncle. Inside me, confusion gave way to a rush of anger. “It still doesn’t explain why you would pay for the attack.”

  March turned left onto a narrow trail. Trees and tall grass flashed by, briefly outlined by the headlights. “When a high-ranking Lion is cleaned out of the brotherhood, his closest disciples will often be cut as well. Anyone whose loyalty might be questioned. It’s not just me. Dries has always entertained strong ties to his disciples. I can think of at least half a dozen men.”

  “This is insane! You dumped him, you sided against him, you ruined his plans with the Cullinan, you destroyed his penthouse with a rocket, you killed all of his henchmen, you punched him in the face, you—”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes, biscuit, I understand your point.”

  “How can they be dumb enough to think you’d still be loyal to Dries?” March went silent, and I felt my throat tighten at the implications. “Did you agree to help him?”

  “No,” he said, licking his lips, as if looking for his words. “But as much as I acknowledge our differences, I know what I owe him. Starting with your life, and mine, tonight.”

  I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my palm. “You agreed to help him.”

  “I did not. He simply gave me a contact. Someone who’ll help us leave the country safely.”

  “Out of his good heart?”

  “I didn’t expect that from him, but I think he wants you safe.”

  I could believe that. While he didn’t exactly qualify for a Father of the Year Award, I knew Dries secretly entertained regrets over my mother’s death and all that could have been. It was in fact an odd, almost chilling hindsight that I could have been raised by him.

  March, on the other hand, Dries regarded as some sort of lapdog he had trained. A dog he was proud of but still only a dog. And no matter how much he had accomplished on his own, March did feel the same, to some extent, as evidenced by his comment that he owed Dries somehow. So, if Dries was willing to help March out of the pool of crap he himself had dragged us into, it could only mean one thing: he wanted something from his favorite disciple.

  “It’s a trap.” I sighed. “You know it’s a trap.”

  “I don’t. What I do know is that the Lions are playing at home, and they have much more reach here than they do anywhere else. If Dries can help me protect you, I don’t care what it costs me.”

  That’s when I felt really bad. No, that’s actually when I felt like shit because there he was proclaiming that he’d protect me at any cost like some fairytale knight, and I still hadn’t told him. Guilt filled me up, lapped at the back of my throat, making me nauseous.

  I mentally went over the words again and again. My lips parted. “March . . . ”

  “Yes? By the way, we’ve arrived.”

  His announcement derailed the carefully crafted apology I’d been rehearsing. I checked the road ahead of us to see that we were driving toward a hangar. The doors were still open, illuminating a rusty façade on which a sign painted in bold black letters read Kromrivier Deluxe Garage. On each side of the doors, faded red and yellow logos encouraged customers to trust either Pegasus or Shell for their motor spirits. March parked his pickup in the courtyard. Before we'd even stepped out, a long whistle ricocheted in the quiet of the night, followed by an exaggerated groan. “Jesus fokken Christ, bra. What the fok is that?”

  A lean form came out of the hangar, wiping his hands on baggy overalls. At first, all I could make out was a dark silhouette haloed by the warm glow coming from inside the hangar. As he staggered toward the truck, I made a note that the guy had a slight limp, but he sounded relatively young, no more than thirty.

  March greeted the shadow with an apologetic shrug. “Good evening, Pieter. There was a slight incident.”

  “Man, when my pants fell off at Friendly, that was an incident. This . . .”

  That Pieter person took a step closer, and the light revealed a youthful face, large round eyes, and equally large ears. A mop of curly black hair served to half conceal those cute satellite dishes. I decided I liked this guy, maybe because I too had once performed a literal walk of shame, pantsless, in the aisles of a French supermarket, thanks to March. Pieter scuttled around the truck, feeling the deep bullet impacts on the doors, and stood on tiptoe to take a better look at the roof.

  He eventually stepped back and dragged his hand across his face. “Fokken shame.”

  “Shame,” March agreed with a small nod.

  “I told you. I told you this would happen!” Pieter squeaked.

  My heart faltered. He knew? About the Lions and everything?

  Turned out he didn’t. Pieter’s rationale was a simpler one. He kicked one of the front wheels, causing the hubcap to fall off with a clang. “Japanese car!”

  “Well, those bullets were really big,” I said, in defense of the magic pickup.

  His face pinched. “That’d never happen with a Polo.”

  No, indeed, I thought. Because a Polo would have been blown to smithereens by the very first round of fire. I kept my snark to myself though; the sheer number of Polos I had seen since our arrival in South Africa suggested that, much like Peppermint Crisp, they were serious business around here.

  Past the initial shock of discovering the state of March’s truck, it seemed that a light bulb lit up under all that unruly hair. Pieter’s eyebrows arched until deep creases appeared on his forehead. “Who’s that?”

  March cleared his throat. “Pieter, this is Island. Island, this is Pieter.” He motioned to the mechanic. “Pieter took over his father’s business and has done a remarkable job developing it.” He paused, and I held my breath. “Island”—we both knew what particular word hung in the air. Would he say it? Or maybe it was too soon. Or . . . —“Island is my girlfriend. She’s spending a few days with me here in Saint Francis.”

  Forget about those proverbial butterflies in one’s stomach. The little assholes appeared to have migrated, and they were now fluttering everywhere in my body. Not only that, but I could tell my ears and cheeks were reddening out of control.

  Pieter, on the other hand, seemed deflated by the news. “Ag, bummer. Always thought you’d stay single. No more braai nights?”

  “I’m sure there’ll be opportunities,” March reassured him.

  I looked back and forth between those two. So March did sometimes socialize like any other man his age. Knowing him, those barbecue nights with Pieter must have been pretty quiet—on his part, anyway. But they nonetheless qualified as bro dates. The notion brought me an odd sense of comfort on an otherwise disastrous day.

  “So, came here to relax?” Pieter asked me, leading us inside the hangar, where an odd mix of decrepit furniture cohabited with brand-new equipment.

  I grimaced. “Sort of.”

  He pointed to a blue stuffed chair facing what I assumed to be his desk. “Take a seat. And don’t worry; I never ask.”

  So, Pieter did understand that clients—or friends, for that matter—weren’t supposed to show up in the middle of the night driving a truck that was riddled with bullet holes. It wasn’t clear how much he knew about March’s former line of business, but that didn’t appear to bother him. I plopped myself in the chair’s well-worn cushions with a sigh, inhaling the delicious smell of gas permeating the garage. Meanwhile, Pieter and March had reached the other end of the hangar, where a few secondhand cars, Polos mostly, awaited a new owner.

  Pieter reverently patted the side of a white one. “So here we have a Vivo GTI. Not even five hundred kilometers on the clock. Panoramic roof. Air conditioning. Front electric windows. Very nice.” He opened the rear door and caressed the back seat covering suggestively. “Lekker comfortabel.”

  March tipped his head toward a lone brown SUV. “I’ll take this one. Phyllis will transfer you
the money.”

  The corners of Pieter’s lips fell. I shifted in my seat to take a better look at the logo on the large grille and had to clasp my hand over my mouth to stifle a snorting laugh. Honda.

  “I’ll do the papers,” Pieter muttered. “But you’ll be dead by morning!” he added, pointing an accusing finger at the vehicle.

  Pieter lived behind the hangar, in a trailer he’d bought from one of his cousins who lived in Port Elizabeth. The guy worked at Ocean Basket and smoked too much dagga because his girlfriend had dumped him—it was a long story, but the point of it was that Pieter now possessed the trailer, and whenever he traveled to Port Elizabeth, the cousin would get him vouchers for free fried seafood.

  Anyway, while its interior was a long shot from March’s hygiene standards—which could explain why he spent less than five minutes inside to freshen up and change—the trailer was cool. It wasn’t huge, and over time, the white walls had turned various shades of yellow, but there was a sink, a shower stall, and tepid water. Also, Pieter had this antibacterial shower gel that promised ten times more protection and “odor control” in stressful situations. I needed that.

  I came out smelling of “sandalwood and masculine power,” wearing a perfectly pressed white shirt March had retrieved for me from his magic suitcase, and felt overall very manly. Save for the yoga pants and red polka-dotted ballet flats, which might betray my gender to the most attentive observers. I trotted back to the hangar, where Pieter was busy filling out forms behind his desk.

  Watching him print a small card and some kind of green diploma, both bearing the seal of the Republic of South Africa, I came to understand that what he had meant when saying “I’ll do the papers” was “I’ll forge the shit out of them.” March was finished loading any intact weapons into the SUV’s trunk and stood in the courtyard, drinking a coffee while his beer buddy now worked on affixing new plates on the vehicle. I joined him there, thinking of ways to free myself of the weight that had returned in my chest.