Run, Girl, Run: A Thriller Read online

  He waved to beckon a waiter from the opposite corner of the bar.

  “What will you have?” Mahler asked Greene.

  “Nothing.”

  “Hey, kid, relax. You’ve got to learn to take things easy. Enjoy life. Enjoy the good stuff. Look, I’ll get you one of what I’m having.”

  The waiter arrived and Mahler ordered another cognac.

  “So, how’s your mother?” Mahler said. “You know, this is so typical of Monaco; we live in the same building and I never see her. How’s she doing?”

  “Haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “I know how it is. The women around here, when they start on their soirees, and lunches, and whatever the hell it is that they get up to, they become so busy, they have no time for anybody.”

  Mahler leaned in conspiratorially toward Greene.

  “Take Fran as the prime example. I can’t remember when last we exchanged two proper sentences between us. Seems like months she’s been planning this bloody dinner she’s having this weekend. Got the prince, himself, to be the patron. But it’s a ruse, I tell you.”

  Mahler lifted his glass and winked before taking a sip. “This business about the dinner to raise funds for some charitable cause or the other, it’s all a ruse. I think her real plan is to try to seduce the prince and take off behind him.”

  Mahler threw back his head and chuckled.

  “Can you believe such a thing? I’ve given her everything money can buy these last nineteen years — the jewellery, the clothes, the properties around the world, a life of unending vacations. And yet, in a heartbeat, I promise you she’d leave me to run off after him — if she had the chance. The lucky thing is she has so much competition, and younger competition, too, from all–”

  “Can we cut the crap?” Greene growled.

  Mahler stared at him.

  The waiter reappeared. Tension hung thick in the air as a white-gloved hand placed the balloon glass of golden liquid before Greene.

  Mahler fingered his own glass and looked around the room.

  “Syron Lake,” Greene said after the waiter left.

  “What about it?”

  “Did you read the report I sent you?”

  Mahler sighed. He brought his glass to his lips and emptied it slowly.

  “It’s been more than a month now,” Greene said.

  “Look, kid–”

  “Do I look like a kid to you?”

  Mahler observed the flared nostrils, and felt the cold steeliness of Greene’s eyes.

  “Fair enough. Look, Daniel, what that report calls for is impossible. It simply can’t be done. Not with the kind of regulations that are in place.”

  “Since when did Magrelma Mines let rules and regulations stop it?”

  Mahler let out a sharp breath. “Syron Lake is in Canada, damn it.”

  Greene narrowed his eyes into a piercing stare.

  Mahler shook his head. “Look, forget about whatever leverage we may have elsewhere. Government controls are shaky in Africa and the former Soviet Union. Canada’s different. And besides, you’re talking about a former uranium mine. That’s a whole different ballgame. You just can’t do whatever you want with those things.”

  “But did you read the projections in the report?”

  Mahler rapped his fingers on the table.

  “Did you even get the potential of this thing?” Greene said.

  “Listen to me, and listen carefully.” Mahler leaned in toward Greene. “The only reason we bought that Syron Lake company was to get its operating mine in Saskatchewan. But as for Syron Lake, itself — the original property in Ontario — that’s worthless.

  “In fact, it’s worse than worthless. It’s a damned albatross around our necks. Just a pile of bloody uranium waste that has to be kept under protective cover for all eternity.”

  Mahler leaned back. “The only saving grace is that we get to pass it off to the government, eventually. And I tell you, as soon as the chance to do that comes up, later this year, we’re grabbing it with both hands.”

  “But if you read the report–”

  “Enough!” Mahler slapped the table. “That report is pure, unadulterated bull!”

  Greene’s jaws tightened.

  Mahler shifted in his chair as much as his leg casts would allow. “I don’t know who’s feeding you these things, but this Syron Lake project is going nowhere as long as I head this company.”

  Greene stared ahead in silence.

  Mahler looked around the room. He caught several hastily averted eyes and continued in a lower voice.

  “Listen, Daniel, in this business, you get all kinds of people coming at you with all kinds of plans and projects. But you have to sniff them out. You can’t jump at every report and all the fanciful projections that pass under your nose. No! Even if that report had any merit to it, if we acted on it, it would stir up so much hell, this whole company could blow up.”

  Mahler looked at Greene’s chest rapidly heaving and falling, as if the younger man, himself, was about to explode.

  “Look,” Mahler said in a mellower tone, “I know you’re just trying to jump in there with two feet and do your part. I realize you and Isaac didn’t always get along, and maybe your father didn’t give you enough credit for your abilities. But I know you’re an intelli–”

  Greene stood up abruptly and his chair screeched as it shifted away. He leaned over the table toward Mahler and spoke through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  He straightened himself, turned on his heels, and marched off.

  Mahler watched him exit the bar, then reached over for the untouched glass.

  The two companions from earlier returned.

  “That one sure seems wound up,” Pimms said as they sat.

  “Bloody cokehead,” Mahler said.

  “Oh, one of those.” Pimms nodded to Crawford.

  “I don’t understand it,” Mahler said after a sip. “The kid grew up wanting for nothing. Isaac near killed himself working to build this company. Isaac, his cousin Bernard, Henry, and I…we all worked our tails off.

  “We were young renegades. Sure we bent some rules here and there. We did what we had to do to make a name for ourselves and give to our families the best in life. And for what? For a young punk like that to thrash everything we worked so hard to build by going off on some coke-fueled fantasy?”

  “It’s a different generation, Bill,” Crawford offered.

  “Different is right,” Mahler said. “With that attitude of his, that kid won’t survive in this business.”

  Chapter 3

  The bush two feet ahead on the forest trail shook, and I froze.

  It wasn’t the work of the wind. In fact, the morning air was still.

  Something was there, moving among the shrubs.

  My first thought was to dash back to the motel where I’d parked the rented cargo van. At the front desk, the receptionist had said the shortcut through the woods would lead straight into the town. I’d been driving for five hours that morning alone, so I had relished the idea of stretching my legs.

  But now, the inescapable truth filled me with panic: I was in a real forest, and within two feet of some wild creature.

  Ironically, this was what I’d wanted when I had decided to move two thousand miles from Vancouver to this remote town, deep in the Northern Ontario forest — to be close to Nature.

  For the last month as I’d thought about relocating to Syron Lake, I’d pictured myself camouflaged among the bushes, watching in awe
as moose, elk, or deer foraged before my eyes in their natural environment.

  But what if it was a great, big, angry black bear lurking in the bushes?

  I hadn’t expected to meet such danger, and certainly not within minutes of arriving.

  The branches rattled again. My heart slammed against my ribcage.

  A tiny, brown limb poked through the leaves. I screamed and jumped back. The rest of the ball-like body came into view, and, immediately, my fear began to ease.

  A hare: it was nothing but a hare.

  “Phew!”

  The sound that escaped my lips seemed to startle the animal. It made as if to dart off, but got nowhere, and the bush near it shook violently. Sunlight glinted off a translucent, blue ring around one of the hare’s back legs. Some carelessly discarded plastic bag had snagged it.

  The hare bucked, cracking brambles and tearing off leaves. Its thrashing had me shaking, even though it was just a tiny critter.

  I’d always been a scaredy-cat. I was nothing but a mousey slip of a girl who was squeamish about the sight of blood and would run from the scene if she saw people do as little as raise their fists against each other. And I was scared now. What if the hare bit my hand or jumped and scratched my eyes? What if it was diseased?

  But I couldn’t leave the poor thing trapped like that to starve and die, or to be eaten by some ravenous predator.

  My trembling hands grabbed the plastic even as the hare pranced about. Its soft body brushed against my knuckles and made my insides go cold. I held my breath and tugged at the plastic with everything I had until, finally, it burst.

  The hare didn’t hesitate for even a second. It shot across the trail, and disappeared in the undergrowth.

  I fell back on my buttocks. My mind rewound the adrenalin rush of last few moments. I’d been terrified of some unknown creature lurking in the bush, and it turned out to be a tiny fur-ball that had been even more scared of me.

  I threw my head back and laughed.

  My eyes welled up, and the laughter soon turned into sobs.

  It was bound to happen.

  Tears had been streaming down my cheeks almost non-stop since I’d loaded up the van with all my worldly possessions and set out from the west coast, six days earlier.

  Four weeks before that, I had been told I was out of a job as editor of the website and newsletter of a small non-profit that fought to protect B.C.’s salmon. It was the downturn in the economy, my boss had said. Funding had dried up and the organization had to shut down.

  It seemed everything had been pushing me out of Vancouver, anyway.

  My uncle, who lived in California and whom I’d never met, had suddenly called to say he was selling my grandparents house from under me. I’d lived with my grandparents since my last year of high school, when my father had died, and I became an orphan; we’d got on so well that I’d continued to stay with them after graduating from journalism college. When they died in a car crash and my uncle inherited the place, he had let me stay on for a nominal rent as he’d had no plans to return to Canada. The arrangement lasted almost three years, until he, too, got burned in the global financial meltdown. He needed to liquidate assets in a hurry. He’d given me mere weeks to pack up and leave.

  And then, there was Peter.

  I’d told myself this was The One. Third time’s a charm, I’d thought. My first two romances had both been like wet fireworks that sparked at first and died quickly without ever going anywhere. But Peter and I had been together for fourteen giddy months, during which my mind had constantly conjured up images of our future — of him getting down on his knees with a ring; of us strolling barefoot on a beach on our honeymoon; of him changing diapers or fumbling with a bottle, and of me giggling and giving encouragement and instructions.

  Since the middle of spring, though, every time we met, we inevitably ended up fighting. Even something as stupid as whether he’d used the term “vegan” correctly had blown up into an argument that’d killed all romantic possibilities the last time we’d seen each other.

  We hadn’t officially broken up. But he’d talked on the phone about needing some space. Well, fine. I would take what he’d said literally. I would show I was strong enough to be the one who created that space.

  I would run away from him.

  But in the convoluted logic of a love-addled mind, I felt I was running to him when I left Vancouver and headed off to Syron Lake.

  It was his home town, after all.

  After he’d left to attend university in Vancouver, he had never returned, not even at Christmas, although his father still lived in Syron Lake. As the media relations officer of a large environmental organization in Vancouver, Peter could hardly see himself settling back home where there were no such job prospects. But he and I had bonded in our early days over our mutual hatred of big city life, and our common desire to move to a small town where we could live at a slower pace, and be close to Nature.

  Everything happens for a reason, my grandfather used to say. And, trying to make sense of the previous hellish month, I figured I’d been pushed out of Vancouver so that I could live that quiet, small town life I’d said I really wanted.

  Deep down, I hoped that if Peter realized I’d established myself in Syron Lake, and that if I got to know his old man — who I imagined would probably be going down in age — well, I hoped that Peter, too, would come to choose the lifestyle he had said he really wanted. And, maybe, when he did, he would come to decide that what he really wanted included me, too. Maybe….

  A chorus of birds chirped in the trees overhead. The only other sound was my jagged sobbing.

  At that moment, I felt completely broken and alone in a big, unfriendly world.

  But crying couldn’t change a stitch.

  Eventually the sobs turned into sniffles. I dried my cheeks with the ends of my sleeves and pulled a small mirror from the sling bag I carried. Bloodshot eyes stared back at me, their dark brown irises dull, their pupils soulless. Dark, puffy eyelids called attention to themselves on an ashen face.

  No, that wouldn’t do for my morning’s mission.

  I slapped my cheeks, and put on a coat of lipstick. I took several deep breaths of the cool, pine-scented air. Finally, I felt ready to move on.

  I followed the trail out of the forest and abruptly found myself in what looked like a slice of suburbia.

  Neat bungalows and a row of cheerful, redbrick townhouses lined the street. Dusty pickups and shiny sedans squatted in the driveways. Garden gnomes watched over late summer blooms of blue monkshood, pink turtleheads, oxeye daisies, and baby’s breath. Almost all the front lawns were trimmed low and many bore small, plastic signs urging anyone who noticed to vote for someone or the other for mayor or council.

  But it was another type of sign that I was interested in. My eyes honed in on anything bearing the magic words: “For Sale.”

  Houses were dirt cheap in this town. The real estate section in an old copy of the Syron Lake Beacon that I’d once seen at Peter’s place had sent my pulse racing when I’d realized that for less than a down payment on a rundown Vancouver starter home, I could have an entire, three-bedroom house in Syron Lake.

  My plan was simple: get a nice two-story, take in tenants on the upper floors, and use the rent to pay the mortgage while I lived — at no cost — in the basement.

  I calculated that I had just about enough from a small inheritance from my grandparents and from my own savings for a down payment and for food and necessities for one and a half, maybe, even two (very) frugal years. I wouldn’t have to work. I could finally get a start on that romance novel that I’d been dreaming of writing since childhood.

  At age twenty-six,
it was about time for me to give it a shot.

  The street descended to the commercial part of the town, marked by nondescript two-story buildings. I found the office I was looking for and a bell tinkled as I pushed through the glass door.

  “Mr Ada?”

  “Mrs Jacob?” A short man with a shock of white hair bounded from behind his desk and stretched out his hand toward me. “You’re in good time.”

  “Actually it’s ‘Ms.’ But, please, call me Stella.”

  “Okay, Stella. Good to meet you in person, but you’re nothing like I imagined from your phone call.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I was expecting someone older. It’s mostly retirees who move up here.” He grabbed a pile of papers and a bunch of keys. “I made a list of places that might work for you. Shall we get going?”

  In the car, he had all the conviviality of a seasoned salesman.

  “So where are you from?”

  “Vancouver.”

  “Ah, but I hear a slight accent. I’m thinking somewhere in the Caribbean. Jamaica, perhaps?”

  “Actually, I was born in Toronto, but grew up in Trinidad.”

  “Trinidad? Is that the one with the Carnival?”

  “Yes.”

  The island — home to the descendants of British, French, and Spanish colonists; African slaves; East Indian, Chinese, and Portuguese indentured laborers; Jewish, Syrian, and Lebanese later arrivals; and the original Amerindian settlers — was best known for the annual festival that brought its people out into the streets to dance and party together, regardless of race, religion, or social status.

  “I’ve always wanted to go for Carnival,” Ada said. “Heard it’s lots of fun.”

  “It is. You should go.”

  “One of these good days, I will. But how come you’re coming all the way from Vancouver?”

  “After my mom died, my dad married a Trinidadian and we moved to the island when I was five. When my dad passed away, I went to live with his parents out West.”