10,000 Bones

by Joe Ollinger

  “Taryn?” Brady is asking. “Taryn? You going to put up the next one or not?”

  I snap out of my line of thought slightly annoyed at the interruption. “No, Brady,” I tell him calmly. “I think that’s all we need.” Standing up, I step away from the chair and the monitors. If the security guards are thinking anything, I can’t read it on their faces as I pass between them to the door. “Thanks, gentlemen.”

  “We’ll show you out,” says the shorter one, a stocky man with sallow skin, a pinched face, and a prematurely bald head. He opens the secure door ahead of me. “After you.”

  I get the message, and flash him a disingenuous smile as I exit into the hallway. He follows behind Brady and me to the door out into the lobby, then opens that for us as well, standing aside as we exit. The door snaps shut behind us, and again we’re in the corner of a vast, busy space filled with strangers and low-level noise.

  Glancing around uncomfortably, Brady leans a bit closer and asks, “Those people don’t even exist, do they?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “So where’s the money going?”

  “This is not the place to talk about this,” I tell him, mindful of the cameras all around us. “And I thought you were off this now anyway.”

  “Hey,” he says, “a thank you would be nice. You were about to get turned away before I came in and rescued you.”

  He’s right, but that only makes it more annoying. “Whatever you say, Brady.”

  “If those names are not real people, how did they get on Commerce Board payroll?” he asks. “That’s what I want to know.”

  Why is he asking these questions? Is he trying to probe my suspicions, test what I know?

  The info, or lack thereof, that I’ve picked up here seems vital, but for the life of me, I can’t put it all together. Dr. Chan must have put the names of those Commerce Board employees on his patient list for a reason. Was it a failsafe like Troy Sales might have been? A mechanism to prevent his blackmail victim from taking him down? Did he even know that if he was to die under suspicious circumstances the trail would lead here? If that was his plan, the person he was blackmailing must have seen the patient list at some point, though I suppose Chan could have shared it with whoever he wanted . . .

  “Taryn?”

  “We can’t talk about it here, Brady,” I snap. “Don’t you get that?”

  He holds up his hands, backing off. “Sorry.”

  “Let’s go,” I tell him, resigned. “I’m sure you’ve got work to do.” I start out ahead of him, trying to keep my distance from customers. I can hear the sound of his hard-soled dress shoes on the stone as he follows, but I don’t bother looking back.

  About halfway to the exit, I stop suddenly, paralyzed with surprise and suspicion and fear. Walking through one of the main entrance doors is a courier, dressed in the same uniform as the one I killed in ParkChung Tower, except this one is wearing a bright red cap on his head. He’s lean and fit, with narrow but otherwise generic features, and he’s carrying a brown box exactly the same as the one that blew up Troy Sales’s office.

  “Package?” he calls loudly. “Who takes deliveries?”

  He’s drawing a suspicious amount of attention to himself. My first thought is that he’s coming after me, but he doesn’t make a move in my direction or even search the crowd for me, heading instead toward the tellers’ counters. Surely the bank’s security data is backed up somewhere off-site, so if this guy blows up the bank he won’t eliminate whatever incriminating evidence is in the video footage. What could he be doing?

  I’ve got no time to think, no time to wait and watch. Determined and hurried but keeping my pace even and cool, I leave Brady behind and cross the floor toward the courier, refusing to let my eyes leave him even though the possibility enters my mind that he is a decoy, bait to draw my attention so that I can be attacked from a more advantageous angle. He arrives at a teller window, where he places his box on the counter, says a word to the woman behind the window, and curtly walks away. I change direction slightly, aiming to cut him off.

  And that’s when I see it. My heart leaps at the sight of the object in his left hand: a small, simple, matte-gray tube. A proximity detonator. Just like the one the bomber used at ParkChung.

  14

  I quicken my steps, hurrying toward the courier but trying not to alert him or alarm the bank’s customers. He’s moving fast, though, and he’s closer to the exit than I am to him. Each step feels like a mile, each second an hour. I’ll never make it. His lack of discretion is troubling, but as he nears those glass doors, I’m running out of time and running out of choices.

  Faced with no other option, I break into a full run. “Stop!” I shout, pushing an old man out of my way. “Stop the man in the red hat!”

  Hearing me, the courier glances over his shoulder, and for the briefest instant, we make eye contact. Customers pause and look curiously in my direction, but he continues straight ahead at a fast but calm walk, getting ever closer to those flip-style doors. I brush past a woman and her young child, and I’m gaining ground fast, but he’s still going to beat me to the exit. I’m not fast enough, there’s too much floor to cover.

  I stop in my tracks. Drawing my sidearm, I dart a couple of steps sideways, trying to get a clear line of sight. “I said stop!” I shout again as loud as I can, “You in the red hat! Stop right there, or I will fire!”

  People scream, duck, rush out of the way, rush into the way, panic. In my peripheral vision, I see some dark-dressed figures that I know must be security guards closing in on me quickly. Worse, though, people run for the doors, flooding around the courier, clogging my firing lane with innocents. I can’t line up a shot.

  I aim at the ceiling and squeeze. The report rings loud through the vast lobby space, echoing with a dry clatter off the stone floor and ceiling, piercing for a brief instant through the shouts and screams and yells. “Stop him, or we’re all dead!” I yell again, but no one moves to help. “Drop the weapon!” a voice snaps in response—at me, not the courier. I don’t bother to turn, but I know that the security guards have drawn their weapons and have their aim on me, trigger fingers twitchy and anxious.

  “Down!” I scream, furious. “Everyone down!”

  Many comply, kneeling down, terrified. More ignore the command and keep rushing for the doors, around and over the ones crouching low. The courier doesn’t even flinch, he just keeps walking.

  “Dammit, drop the weapon!” another security man commands, overlapping with another screaming, “Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!”

  Even though I know all of them are ready to put me down, I ignore them because I’ve got no choice at this point. Taking a shooter’s stance, I draw a bead on the courier. He’s so close to those flip-style doors now, just a few meters, a few steps away from the exit, out in the world and gone. I lower the sights, try to set up a clear shot at a calf or thigh, but there are too many people on the ground, too many heads and torsos blocking those angles. If I’m going to take the shot it has to be a high one.

  “Down! Down! Down!”

  “Drop the weapon!” one of the security guards shouts. “Do it, or we’ll shoot!” calls another. Their fierce masculine barking rings into a dull, indistinct drone as I focus, staring down the brushed-titanium-and-LED sights of my sidearm, finding the center of that red cap and putting it right on the middle dot.

  I squeeze the trigger. The gun jumps with its familiar kick, but the ring of the shot is startling and loud, the puff of red against red immediate. Another report rings out, even as the courier collapses forward, but I don’t see where it came from, and I don’t feel it hit me. Rather than shooting back at whoever fired, I raise my arms in surrender, letting my gun hang slack by its trigger guard on my index finger.

  “Down!” one of the security guards shouts again. They close in, encircling me. “Drop the weapon!” “On the ground, on the ground!” “Nobody move! Nobody move!” In the air above my head,
five security drones hover in place, their rotors buzzing softly as they point weapons and cameras at me. They probably haven’t fired yet because their protocols have either determined that I’m no longer a threat or that the danger of a ricochet is still too great.

  I stand frozen still, surprised I haven’t had half a dozen bullets put through me already. “The device in that man’s hand is a proximity detonator,” I announce loudly, trying to keep the panicky shake out of my voice. “If he got far enough away from the bomb, it would’ve killed all of us.”

  “He’s not going anywhere,” says the security guard right in front of me, “and neither are you.”

  “What bomb?” asks another.

  “Brady?” I call out. “Get the box.”

  I’m too petrified to turn my head to see, but the lobby has suddenly gone dead quiet except for the barely audible whir of the drones. I can hear one set of footsteps, one hurried pair of hard-soled dress shoes moving quickly over stone, going away and then coming nearer.

  But they stop some distance behind me. “Taryn,” Brady says, his voice strangely quiet, “this doesn’t seem . . . I’m not sure this is right.”

  “What?”

  I hear some shuffling like he’s opening the box. “Sir!” shouts one of the guards. “Stop right now! Do not open that package. Put it down, sir!”

  “Gentlemen,” I say loudly, trying to push the doubt out of my voice and replace it with authority, “you can see that I am a Collections Agent. I am going to holster my weapon—”

  “Put it on the ground! The police are on their way.”

  “Good,” I answer coolly, gambling that even though they’re SCAPE employees, these goons won’t risk shooting down a Collections Agent unless they have to. “I’ll cooperate with them when they get here.”

  With slow, obvious, demonstrative movements, I lower my gun to my side and slip it into its holster. Still moving slowly, I turn to face Brady and take several paces toward him, the sound of my footsteps isolated in the silence. At about arm’s length, I peer into the box he’s opened.

  It’s empty.

  Oh, no. No, no.

  The world seems to close in on me fast, the quiet in the air suddenly stifling. This was a setup, an obvious trap, and I fell for it. I knew something seemed too obvious. How far back does it go? Did one of the security guards tip someone off that I was here? Was it Brady? Were the names planted on Chan’s patient list just to get me here? It could have been Myra . . . I can’t think clearly. There’s no time.

  What do I do now? What can I do? I’ve shot a man in cold blood. I’ve got no evidence that it was justified, and the police are probably halfway here by now. I will have to answer for what I’ve done. The end of the road is near. I look up at Brady, unsure if I should be furious at him or afraid for him. His eyes look like those of a man who is lost.

  “It was a setup,” I say, stupidly. “A setup.”

  “Myra?”

  “Or was it you, Brady?”

  “It wasn’t me,” the newly promoted Deputy Auditor swears, pale-faced. He looks all around him, overwhelmed. “Taryn,” he says, stone serious, “you have to run.”

  “What?”

  “You have to run.”

  He said it loud enough that the security guards surely heard him. But the instinctive part of me tells me he’s right, and the logical part of me can’t come up with a better answer.

  Time is running out. Make a choice, Taryn.

  I grab Brady by his gray striped necktie, and he’s too surprised to resist as I yank him close, spin him around, draw my weapon, and put it to his temple. Before he can question me I’m already screaming at the guards and at the customers, “Everybody listen up!”

  The drones whir slightly closer, probably lining up a better angle to take me out, but otherwise the lobby is silent. I’ve got the attention of everyone here.

  “You’re gonna do what I say, or I’m going to start killing people, starting with this man! Got it?” I motion with my gun to a group of people nearby cowering on the ground—three middle-aged men, an overweight old woman, and a trim woman of about my age. “You five, go to a teller’s window.” They hesitate, petrified. “Now!” Frightened, they hurry to their feet and across the floor to a window. “Give each one of ’em a thousand unit chip,” I shout. The teller behind the glass evidently heard me and complies, slipping the chips through the slot even though the glass is bulletproof. “Take them and run!” I command, “Out the door, opposite directions! Go!” The confused customers hesitate again, so I repeat myself louder. “Go!”

  They rush, as fast as they can, toward the exits. Just as I hoped, the drones turn and whirr through the air after them, one each, the doors opening for them as they follow the customers outside. The two security guards seem surprised to see them chasing the bank robbers.

  “Move, Brady.” Keeping him tight to my body, I force him forward, his resistance more out of uncertainty than defiance. The security guards stalk along with us, keeping their distance even as they angle for a clean kill. I jerk Brady back and forth, trying to keep him in the way. For the first time, I notice the sound of sirens somewhere in the distance.

  “I say we take the shot,” one of the guards behind me says. “The guy is clearly working with her.”

  “Think harder,” I reply. “This is not a robbery, I haven’t even taken any money.”

  “What do you call the chips your accomplices just took?” he asks.

  “They weren’t accomplices.”

  “Put the gun down,” says one of the guards in front of me, backpedaling slowly as I move with Brady toward the front entrance. “You don’t have to die today.”

  The doors are near, but the two guards in front of me are blocking the way, and if I run, all four will shoot. I’m going to die here. In the next seconds I will be forced to weigh the lives of the guards, and maybe the lives of some of these customers, against mine. And what is mine worth, really? Odds are I won’t live out the hour.

  But if I drop my gun right now, they win. Whoever they are, they win, and nothing changes.

  The sirens are getting louder, decibel by decibel. I’m running out of time.

  I pull the gun away from Brady’s head slowly, extending my arm, and the security guard in front of me tenses visibly as my aim comes to rest on him. The other three fan out.

  “This is your last chance,” I say with an icy sureness that somehow doesn’t sound as false as it feels. “Drop your guns, and let me walk away, and you all live.”

  The one I’m aiming at gives a barely audible nervous chuckle. “Drop your gun, bitch, and maybe you live,” he says.

  Do something, Taryn. You’re out of time. You gave them a chance, and they’re still in your way.

  “Fuck this,” says the guard I’m aiming at. He raises his gun.

  Before he can level the barrel at my head, I squeeze my own trigger.

  The silence is shattered by the crack of the gunshot. It stays shattered as everyone panics at once. People scream, people flee, another two gunshots ring out, all drowning out the nearing sirens and the sound of the dead guard dropping to the stone. The security guards bark desperate orders at me and at each other as they scramble to line up a clean shot, afraid to fire again as bank customers run past us, fleeing for the exits.

  I’m in automatic mode now, though. I turn mechanically to the next guard, line it up, and fire. He gets off a couple of errant shots as he falls. As he clutches at his wound with his off hand, I aim carefully and put a bullet through his shooting wrist, and the gun falls loose as he screams in pain.

  “Taryn, what the hell?” Brady is yelping, terrified, and probably deafened by the gunshots so close to his ear. I wheel him violently around, facing the two remaining guards. One fires hastily, missing, and with all the strength in my left arm I shove Brady off, sending him stumbling forward. Taking a two-handed grip, I fire over his shoulder. Another guard drops and his weapon clatter
s away, kicked by the feet of panicked customers rushing for the doors.

  If everyone clears out of here but me, I’m screwed. There’s a reason bank robbers don’t let the customers leave. “Everyone down!” I scream as vicious as I can possibly sound. “Get on the damn ground and stay there or else!” I fire a few shots over their heads, and most of them drop to the floor, cowering, though many keep running.

  One guard left. Anticipating his attack, I dive sideways to the floor, rolling through it and rising to a knee. Before I can get a fix on him he’s moved, and too many people are rushing through my line of fire. Evidently no longer caring about harming customers, he takes a few hurried pot shots through them, which zip and ricochet off the stone floor behind me. One of them nicks a middle-aged woman who shrieks but keeps running.

  I leap to my feet and run, zig-zagging to avoid the bullets whizzing past. A shot strikes a civilian trying to crawl toward the exits, sending him spinning round like a top and tumbling down. A few screams go up as the remaining customers hug the floor. The sirens are close, I think, but it’s so loud in here that I can’t tell how close. How much time do I have before they’re here? How much time has gone by? Have those decoys led the drones far enough away? The sirens are so loud now. Time is nearly up.

  I slip into cover behind one of the big, round pillars in the middle of the floor. A bullet strikes the opposite side of it, chewing into the stone. I creep around, then lean out, searching for the last security guard. He’s moved, and I can’t find him before a fast burst of bullets cuts through the air near my head. A full auto.