Hitmen Triumph Read Online Free PDF Page B

was going to keep following him. If he wasn’t renting a movie, maybe I’d see the two guys from the Mustang go in or out of the shop.
    I sat in my Camry, just a few parking spots ahead of Nate’s truck. The streetlights showedclearly that Mercedes was still sitting in his truck. It was more fun to watch her than the sidewalk.
    I frowned.
    She had pulled a video camera from her lap. Had it been in her purse?
    She swung the camera toward the video store and pointed it at the store window for a few seconds. Her lips were moving.
    She was talking as she recorded?
    I stared as hard as I could. It wasn’t daylight, and even with the streetlights I couldn’t be sure that I was seeing every lip movement. Still, I was pretty sure I could make sense of it.
    â€œNate Andrews has run into this movie rental place,” she said. “He didn’t want to discuss why. It will be interesting to see if he comes out with a movie. The two men speaking to him are not Asian. I doubt they work in the video store.”
    Then she pulled the camera down. It disappeared below the dash of the truck as if she were putting it back into her purse.
    Now this was getting truly weird.
    Before I could give it any thought, a big biker guy showed up at my driver’s side window. The big blond guy with tattoos who had given me money to give to Nate.
    He bent down and looked at me. Then he tapped on the window. With a tire iron.
    â€œStep outside,” he said. “If you don’t, I’ll break the window.”
    I’ve read that the best time to resist during a mugging is in the first few seconds. I was going to slide across to the passenger side and try to make a run for it down the sidewalk. The guy with the tire iron was huge. But probably not fast. If I couldn’t outrun him, I didn’t belong in the WHL.
    But someone else was waiting on the other side of my car. The other guy from the Mustang. Just as big. Just as mean-looking. With a bent nose.
    I didn’t have much choice.
    I got out of the car.

chapter eleven
    â€œKid,” Tattoo Biker said to me, “this is the end of the line for you.”
    If he meant it as a joke, he wasn’t smiling.
    Neither was I. We were standing near the LRT tracks by the river, not far from downtown. LRT stands for Light Rail Transit. Calgary’s C-train. It’s part of the transit system, but it uses trains instead of buses. The trains came and went about every ten minutes.
    I hoped he didn’t mean what I thought he meant about the end of the line. I was having a hard time keeping my balance, and there was no way I could make a run for it.
    After taking me from my car, they had put me in a white van. Once I was inside, they had used duct tape to wrap my wrists and my ankles. Then Tattoo Biker had started driving, with me in the back.
    No matter how many questions I’d asked, they’d said nothing. They’d gone through some alleys and ended up near the river. The tracks were fenced off, but they’d used wire cutters to get through. Then they had carried me like a sack of rocks to a place near the track. Finally they had put me on my feet again.
    Tattoo Biker was holding what looked like a long unlit flashlight with two points sticking out of the front of it. The tracks were well lit. I wondered why he needed the flashlight. He saw me looking at it and gave his first smile.
    â€œIt’s a flashlight stun gun,” he said. “Know how it works?”
    â€œBetter be simple,” I said, “or an idiot like you doesn’t have a chance.”
    Not the smartest thing to say, but I hate bullies.
    Tattoo Biker proved it wasn’t the smartest thing to say.
    He shoved the stun gun into me.
    Once, when I was too little to know better, I had pushed the end of a screwdriver into an electrical outlet. That’s what it felt like. Except a hundred times worse.
    I screamed and barely managed to keep my balance.
    â€œThat’s