A day earlier, Phil Wasnic had received a special UPS delivery. The bill of lading on the small package indicated that it had been sent from a Leavenworth, WA company that Phil had never heard of but the sender’s name was well known to him. Six years earlier, Wasnic had been a bartender in Seattle when he witnessed a gang execution. It was his eyewitness testimony that had been the clincher in convicting Marco Barcello of first degree murder. The jury had recommended life imprisonment and the judge had agreed. Because Barcello had been considered a high risk convict, he was placed in a maximum security facility in northern California. So it was with a certain amount of surprise and fear that Wasnic saw the name Marco Barcello on the UPS document.

How had Barcello found him?

And what was in the package?

His hands began to shake with that nervous tension that accompanies the fearful unknown as he struggled to open the package.

He stopped. Should he even open it? Maybe it would be better if he simply took the unopened package to the local police station. Of course he would have to explain a little of his background, but he could handle that.

Half an hour later, Phil was standing in the waiting room of the Carstairs police station. He was aggravated by the typically slow moving small town police policies. As soon as one of the town’s two officers got back from whatever crisis they were currently dealing with, he would be the next in line. He could be waiting fifteen minutes or all day. On second thought, he didn’t have to wait at all. No-one was forcing him to be here. It was his fear of the past that brought him here and his impatience with the present that would send him away again. It only took 23 minutes for his impatience to win out. He couldn’t be bothered with this, he’d check out the package himself. After all, it had already been cleared by Canadian Customs.

Of course…why hadn’t he thought of that earlier?