The Brotherhood of the Wheel Read Free Page A

hub and three equidistant spokes radiating out from it. After a moment, the symbol and the words disappeared and were replaced by Dann’s FBI seal wallpaper and the military time on the East Coast: 0145. Dann quickly began to dial the phone as he retrieved his shoes from under the table.
    â€œThis is Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dann,” he said. “I need you to get me someone in the St. Louis field office right now, and scramble me a tactical team and a jet. I want wheels up in an hour or less. Thank you.”
    â€œCecil,” Jenna said, placing her hand on her husband’s shoulder, “what was all that about?”
    â€œApparently,” Dann said, wresting his shoe away from Oscar’s teeth, “Triple A has some kind of black-ops division.”
    *   *   *
    The Marquis’s truck growled like a junkyard dog as it glided past the industrial wasteland of South Wharf Street. His headlights caught the frozen rain as it continued to spill from a dark and merciless sky. A single, swaying yellow caution light blinked as it was buffeted in the wind and the rain, no audience to heed its mute warning. Crumbling concrete walls on either side of the street were smeared in vibrant, tangled graffiti, the secret language of the city’s soul. Above the painted walls, the gravel lots, and the chain-link fences were the silent black conveyor-belt towers of the rock quarry that covered several city blocks in every direction. The detour signs had led him here, and now the Marquis thought perhaps it was fate. This was the perfect place to pull over into a deep shadow, wait out the storm, and play with his newest toy. As he slowed to find a good spot, he didn’t notice someone else already using the shadows.
    Francisco Pena sat behind the wheel of his taxicab in the darkness, watching as the yellow-and-white semi rumbled by. The vibrations of the big truck made the Saint Fiacre medallion on Frank’s rearview mirror sway slightly. Frank had driven a hack for fourteen years in St. Louis and owned his own cab for most of that time. When the call came in tonight about the killer on the road, he knew he had to do all he could to help stop this man, the way once, many years ago, the others had helped him, saved him. He raised his microphone to his lips and keyed the mike.
    â€œHe just passed me,” Frank said. “He’s in position. The wheel turns.”
    The Marquis slowed as he scanned the desolate street for the perfect spot where he could have some time with his newest acquisition. The darkness of the road ahead was pierced as high-beam headlights suddenly snapped on. Another semi straddled both lanes about a hundred yards ahead, idling in the icy rain and mist. Condensation trailed from its twin-towered exhaust pipes, like smoke from the curled lips of a crouching dragon. The Marquis lurched to a stop, his own engine idling now.
    â€œWhat the fuck is this?” he snarled. As if to answer, his CB suddenly hissed with static. A voice broke the stale, evil silence of the Marquis’s cab.
    â€œBreak 1-9 to that bulldog up ahead of me, you got your ears on son? C’mon?”
    The Marquis picked up his mike and clicked it on, one of his eyes bugging out in anger, the other squinted up like Popeye. “10-4. You got the Marquis here.” Wayne Ray pronounced his handle as “ Mar-qiss. ” “That fancy poor-boy rig you’re driving there is blocking the road, asshole.”
    â€œHandle’s Paladin,” the voice replied. “Now don’t you be a-cussin’ on this here channel, Hoss. That’s against the law.…”
    Off in the distance, the Marquis heard them—sirens. Distant, but a chorus of them, growing slowly louder, closer.
    â€œSee,” the voice on the CB said. “That’s the FCC coming to get you right now. Nobody likes a potty mouth. Best pack it in, Marquis.”
    A cold sweat covered the nape of