by Jane Seville
Jack nodded, swallowing hard. Can I do this? This isn’t like shooting at a target on a range… but hopefully we won’t have to shoot. Jesus, is this what D’s life is like all the time? He went over in his mind what they’d have to do when the bad guys came in. Wait for them to get in the room. Step out, block the entrance. Raise gun, let D talk. He nodded to himself. Wait… we never talked about this plan of attack. Jack blinked, and realized that he was correct. He and D had not discussed what they’d actually do, but somehow he just knew.
The footsteps had stopped at their door. A quiet pause… they’re getting the room key out of the marshal’s pocket… then an even quieter click as the door opened.
Two dark-complexioned men in nondescript business suits stepped into the room with purpose, guns drawn, eyes scanning the suite. As if they’d rehearsed it, Jack and D stepped out of the corner and blocked the entry. A cloak of calm descended over Jack’s mind and he watched from outside himself as he raised his gun and pointed it at one of the men, D covering the other one. “Hands up,” D said, his voice low and commanding. Both men froze. “Up, now.” They raised their hands. “Guns on the bed.” They both tossed their weapons to the nearest bed. “Now turn around, slow.” They did, both of them glowering at them. “Where was you takin’ us?”
The one on the left sneered. “I’m not telling you anything.”
“Huh. Guess I’ll jus’ shoot you in the kneecap.” He lowered his gun.
“All right, all right!” the man said. “Parking garage,” he choked out. “Then she’d tell us where to go.”
“And how many’re waitin’ down there?”
“Two more.”
“Where?”
“Bottom of the staircase. We were gonna take you down that way.”
D nodded, His tongue crept into the corner of his mouth as he pondered this. He tossed a quick nod at Jack. “All right, doc.”
Jack handed his gun to D so he could keep them both covered. He quickly withdrew a dose of sedative from the ampoule in his pocket, stepped up and injected first one, then the other in the neck, fast and painless. This is some kind of Hippocratic violation, I just know it, he thought, watching as both men collapsed to the ground, unconscious. It’s them or us.
D was already moving. He slung his messenger bag over his shoulder, tucking his second gun into the back of his pants. “C’mon, Jack. We gotta move.”
Jack grabbed his duffel and shoved his doctor’s bag into it. D was already heading for the door. He poked his head out, looked right, then left, and motioned Jack to follow. “We’ll take the elevator, right?” Jack asked.
“No, stairs.”
“But they’re waiting at the bottom of the stairs!”
“Yeah, I know. But if we take the elevator we’re gonna hafta walk by ’em ta get ta my car anyhow, and they’ll see us comin’. We take the stairs they be expectin’ their friends ta come out with us, might not realize we’re alone long enough for us ta get the jump on ’em.”
Jack nodded, seeing the logic but not liking the idea of the confrontation that would mean. “Can’t we just… you know. Sneak by?” Everything was moving so fast, he just needed a minute to catch his breath.
D sighed. “No, Jack, we cain’t sneak by. These aren’t movie bad guys who don’t got no peripheral vision and we can just slip past while they’re lookin’ the other way. You want yer life, you gotta fuckin’ take it.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “But… don’t kill anyone.”
That made D pause and stare at him. “All this goin’ down and yer still worried ’bout my soul?”
“Someone’s got to.”
D’s face relaxed for a brief second and Jack thought he might smile, but then he was back to all-business. “C’mon, let’s go.” They slipped into the hall and were into the deserted stairway within seconds.
D moved fast, but silently. It was all Jack could do to keep up. By the time they reached the door into the parking garage at the bottom, his thighs were screaming at him and his shoulders ached from holding the gun ready to fire. D didn’t seem affected.
They stopped at the door into the parking garage. D motioned for Jack to be quiet, and he leaned up against the door, listening. Jack did the same; he could hear voices on the other side, muffled.
What’s takin’ them so fuckin’ long?
D’s probably putting up a fight.
Better not damage them. She wants them both intact.
You want to knock them out for the trip?
Yeah. I got some chloroform.
You’re so fuckin’ old-school.
Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The men either turned away or moved a few paces, because their voices became difficult to hear. Jack pressed his ear closer to the door but couldn’t make out what they were saying. He looked up at D to ask if he could hear anything, but the question died in his throat.
D was looking down at him, not paying attention to their would-be kidnappers. His expression was flayed open and laid bare with raw emotion, fear and hope and sadness and tragedy written across his features in broad, deep strokes that seemed to deepen the lines on his face and push his dark eyes back into their sockets. Jack’s breath caught and he couldn’t look away. D looked like he was already mourning Jack, eaten alive by it from the inside out until he was nothing but a hollow skin.
He lifted a hand and stroked Jack’s face, his fingers trembling slightly. Jack swallowed hard and gripped his fingers. We’re going to be okay, I know it. I know it because you won’t let it be any other way, and I trust you. I trust you enough to place my life in your hands without hesitation, and even if we both die, at least we’ll be together. He hoped D could see his thoughts because he didn’t dare speak.
D squared his jaw and nodded briefly, then glanced at the door again. “On three,” he mouthed, and held up three fingers.
Jack took a deep breath, and prepared himself for his first field test.
~~~~~
Megan’s arms and legs were tied to the hard aluminum chair. Her head hung down, her shoulders were lax. The pain made it easier to fake helplessness, but she wouldn’t be faking it for too much longer at this rate.
Petros was walking behind her. Just back and forth. Letting her wonder when he’d strike again. The blood was congealed on her face and her bare chest, each cut precise, deep enough to bleed and hurt but not deep enough to incapacitate.
“So,” she rasped. “Are you ever going to ask me anything?”
He chuckled. “No.”
“This is just your happy fun time, then?”
“Something like that.” He came around in front of her and casually struck her backhanded across the face. At least it looked casual. What it felt like was being hit with a two-by-four. Megan let her head rest against her shoulder as if she lacked the strength to lift it up again. “I’ve been asked to keep you occupied.”
“We could just play cards or something,” she said, her voice coming out somewhat slurred through her bloodied mouth.
“I am playing cards,” he said, and struck her again on the other cheek.
~~~~~
D lowered the last finger, raised his gun and nodded to Jack, who nodded back. He burst through the stairwell door and whipped to the left, where the two men waiting to cart them away stood smoking, and now staring. They reacted quickly, much more quickly than he would have thought, but he was still able to get one of them right between the eyes with the butt of his gun. The man went down like a puppet with its strings cut. The other man turned toward him and raised his gun, but then Jack hurled himself forward and pistoned his shoulder into the man’s midsection. He grabbed Jack’s shoulders and brought up a knee into his stomach. Jack went down to one knee and D took advantage of the man’s distraction to swing his gun against the back of the man’s skull.
Both men down, he hauled Jack to his feet. “C’mon,” he said. “Car.” Jack stumbled along, recovering himself as they ran. D already had his keys out and t
he doors unlocked when they got there; Jack flung himself into the passenger seat as D got into the driver’s and started up the engine. “You okay?” he barked as he backed out.
Jack nodded. “Just need to catch my breath.”
D spun the wheel, resisting the urge to stand on the gas pedal and fly out of there as fast as he could; such an escape would only attract attention, which he didn’t need. He watched the rearview mirror as he neared the garage’s exit; so far, no one was behind them.
His relief didn’t last long.
As soon as they hit the street outside, a car came flying out of a side street, heading unmistakably toward them. “Shit,” he muttered, and tromped on the pedal anyway, careening around the corner. “Hang on,” he grumbled.
Jack was twisted around to look out the rear window. “How’d they know?”
“Either one a them guys in the garage came to and sounded the alarm or one a the guys in the room did.” D spun the wheel and zipped through a red light and around another corner. “Does it fuckin’ matter? And getcher ass down!”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than three bullets came zinging through the rear window, shattering it, several more hitting the car’s body. “Jesus!” Jack yelled, curling into a ball with his hands over his head. “I thought they wanted us alive!”
“They’re tryin’ ta stop the car.” D sped east, swerving in and out of honking cars and cutting people off left and right.
“Oh shit… now there’s two,” Jack said, peering around the headrest and yanking his seat belt around him.
D took an exit onto the highway, waiting until the last possible moment to swerve onto the ramp. He swore he felt the car tilt onto two wheels for a few hair-raising seconds. “We gotta switch,” he said.
“Switch what?”
“You gotta drive. Unless you think you can hit their tires with a bullet.”
“Switch? Are you insane?”
“Here. Put your foot here by the gas pedal.” D switched hands on the wheel and got his left foot on the gas pedal, moving his right leg into the passenger footwell.
“Oh shit oh shit,” Jack kept repeating under his breath, but he did as D asked. He got his foot near the gas, reached over and grabbed the wheel with his left hand.
“Okay, on three. One, two… three!” D flipped over into the passenger seat just as Jack slid over and got into the driver’s. The car barely shuddered. “Good,” D said, drawing his gun. He aimed out the hole where the rear window used to be and squeezed off a few shots. “Fuck, hold it steady!”
“I’m doing my best!” Jack yelled. “Do I look like a stunt driver to you?”
D tried again. The two cars pursuing them were still on their tail. He didn’t recognize any of the men in them; none of the four men they’d taken out at the hotel were in the cars. Shit, she’s got more muscle than I thought she’d have. Hitting the tire on a moving vehicle was a lot harder than they made it look in the movies, but D finally scored a solid hit on one of the cars. It veered toward the center, out of control.
The other car accelerated and drew up even with them. The driver fired a few shots at the driver’s side. “Shit!” Jack kept yelling, his head ducked down. D fired back but didn’t hit anything but the side of the car. The car began edging closer, forcing them to the right. “Fuck… he’s gonna push me off the road!”
“Pull ahead or fall back!” D yelled.
Before Jack could do either, their pursuer slammed into their left side, hard. Jack swerved right to get away and ended up taking an exit. “Fuck,” Jack muttered, muscling the car down the ramp.
“Get back on the highway!” D said, but it was too late. Jack had to swerve right to avoid cross traffic and now they were back on surface roads. He looked back. Their pursuer was right on their ass. “We gotta try’n lose this guy, doc.”
“All right,” Jack said, his jaw clenched grimly, his hands clutching the wheel. “Hang on.”
D grabbed the oh-Jesus bar above his window as Jack whipped the wheel around, taking turn after turn, running lights. D half-hoped that a cop would stop them, but on the other hand he didn’t want to be responsible for a dead cop. Their pursuer was having trouble keeping up; Jack’s car cornered better.
D had no idea where they were. Somewhere in East Baltimore. Wherever it was, it wasn’t a very welcoming landscape. Industrial wastelands and abandoned warehouses loomed like giants’ playhouses outgrown and left behind. Jack was watching the buildings speed by as he took turn after turn until, finally, their pursuing car was a few turns behind and out of sight.
“Okay, get off the road and quick hide somewhere, hope he goes on by us,” D said.
Jack nodded and took a hard turn into some kind of old brewery-looking building—a bit too hard of a turn. The tire caught on the broken curb going in and they both felt the pop as it blew. “Fuck me sideways,” Jack swore, manhandling the steerless car behind a large tank-like structure. He slammed the brakes and they both jerked forward, D bracing himself on the dashboard. “I’m sorry—” he started, but D cut him off.
“Jus getcher gun, we gotta move. Ain’t gonna take ’em too long ta figure out where we gone.” He’d reloaded both his guns; now all they could do was leave the car and try to hunker down and call for help. He hated calling for help, but it was him and Jack against at least four pissed-off thugs, likely more than four, and he couldn’t protect Jack against that kind of resistance.
They ran across the deserted yard and busted in the door to the warehouse. The morning sunlight slanted in the high windows; the place was empty save for a few lonely pieces of rusty equipment. D led Jack across the room to an office; they sat against the inner wall, hidden from view. “Now’d be the time to call Churchill,” D said. Jack pulled out his phone and flipped it open, then swore. “What?”
“No signal.”
“Shit.”
“Maybe if we got higher up?”
D didn’t like that idea. He liked this little hidey-hole just fine; it was defensible. But they couldn’t just sit here forever, and the odds of them walking out without help weren’t good. “Yeah, okay.”
They got up and left the office. There was a metal staircase nearby that led up to the rafters and a door to God knew where, but it was the best option. They climbed quickly; the door at the top turned out to lead out to a catwalk that led from the warehouse to some kind of storage tank about a hundred yards away. Jack tried his phone again, but the look on his face told D what he needed to know. “Well, we cain’t get no higher,” he said. “Back inside.”
They retreated to the office. “Now what?” Jack asked.
D hit the wall with a clenched fist. “I don’t fuckin’ know.” He met Jack’s eyes, those trusting blue eyes looking to D for answers, for safety, for a plan. “I’m sorry, Jack.” He swallowed hard. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry I ever got you inta this.”
“It isn’t your fault. I’m the marked-for-death witness, remember?”
“Yeah, but these guys are after me, not you. Only reason they give a shit about you is because I do.”
Jack sighed. “You risked your life for me half a dozen times, D. I guess it’s my turn now.”
“That ain’t your job.”
“The hell it isn’t.” Jack grabbed D’s hand, his eyes blazing. “You’re my guy, aren’t you?”
“Am I?” D asked, sounding like a little boy to his own ears, searching Jack’s eyes.
“Yes, you are. No matter what happens, ’til the day I die.” Jack took a deep breath. “Just as long as I don’t die at your hand.”
D frowned. “Jack—”
“That’s what she wants, isn’t it? For you to kill me?”
“I’d never hurt you.”
“I know. But….” He looked away for a moment. “I think we both know that there’s things she could do that might make you want to kill me, to stop me from hurting.”
Yes, D did know that. He’d lost considerable sleep pondering what he’d do in that situa
tion, which seemed like just the sort of thing Josey might be planning. “Maybe.”
“I need you to promise me you won’t.”
“But… Jack—”
“No, D. No matter what she does to me, you swear that you won’t kill me. Even if I beg you to. Whatever happens to me, I don’t want my blood on your hands, because you’ll never be able to wash it off.”
Jack’s words were burning D’s skin like a branding iron. “It don’t matter,” he said. “If it came ta that, I’d follow right after you.”
“Just promise me.” Jack was gripping D’s fingers so tight it was starting to hurt. “I won’t help her hurt you. I won’t be part of it. Don’t let her make you do it.”
D nodded. “All right,” he choked out. “I promise.” He stared at Jack’s face and wondered if he’d ever hold this man again, make love to him or wake up to the sight of his face on the pillow at his side.
Voices outside the warehouse, running feet. D and Jack just sat there huddled inside the office, fingers interlaced, waiting for their fate to find them.
The door to the warehouse was kicked in. “D!” a voice yelled. “You in here, asshole?”
D peeked around the open door to the office. Two men with large guns were standing at the door. They’d find them in mere seconds either way, and if he acted now, at least he could thin their numbers a little. “Nope!” he yelled, and shot one of them in the chest. He ducked back inside as the other man opened fire with the automatic, the hail of bullets shattering the glass windows above them. Jack had his arms over his head. D popped his head up again and shot the man with the machine gun, but only winged him. Four more had joined them, and for an agonizing few seconds all he and Jack could do was try and make themselves as small as possible as Josey’s men poured automatic weapons fire into the small office.
Abruptly, the firing stopped. “D?” came a new voice. A female voice.
Josey.
“Motherfucker,” D whispered. Jack grabbed his face and turned it toward him.