by M. G. Herron
Gritting my teeth, I smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Hix,” I said. “See you ’round.”
Hix grunted, turning back to his work.
We took our leave.
22
Anna and I stood in the back of some new construction on the far east side. We were on the first floor of what would soon become a condo building, but so far was nothing but slabs of cement mounted on a steel frame. The broad space was broken by supporting columns spaced at regular intervals, and the outer walls were missing. From where we waited I could see the city lights shining in the distance.
“A year ago, this was nothing but a dirt and gravel lot.” I'd removed the bandage, and the metal fingers of my new hand curled into my palm. The hand ached more than when I woke up, since the painkillers had worn off, but at least for now, I was happy to trade the pain for clarity.
“Amazing how things can change so quickly.” Anna looked me up and down beneath long eyelashes. We both knew she wasn’t talking about the new construction. There was a warmth between us that hadn’t been there before, when she was still angry at me, yet it had been such a busy day we hadn’t found an opportune moment to talk about us. Right now, we were happy to stop and breathe. We’d have to find time to talk soon, lest this habit of keeping silence between us become a hallmark of our relationship.
A muscle car growled on the street. The engine was killed and a moment later, the snap of cowboy boots on concrete heralded Alek Ludwig, who strode through the dust with unhurried purpose. I’d never seen the bail bondsman in a hurry, and tonight was no exception. He wore a pressed linen shirt stamped with lilac flowers and a thick stogie jutted out of his breast pocket above his bowling-ball gut.
“Gunn.” Alek clapped me on the shoulder, then gave Anna a side-hug. “Annabelle.”
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “I owe you big time.”
“Ain’t no trouble. I was damn happy to hear you’re both all right. Had me worried when you didn’t come looking for another contract.”
Alek reached into his back pocket and drew out a folded manila envelope. My heart pounded as I saw the thickness of it, and I did my best to hide the raw emotion that surged up through my chest and wrapped its hands around my throat. I didn’t want to react that way, but I couldn’t help it. “Are you sure about this, Gunn?”
I put a fist to my mouth and cleared my throat. “I have to see this through.”
Alek nodded, stepped forward, and dropped the envelope in my hand. I peeked inside. “This is more than you owe me for the Mannheim job.”
“I threw in a little extra. Just to be sure you had enough.”
I blinked a few times. “Thanks. I’ll pay you back.”
“Please don’t. I want to help.”
Car doors slammed shut in the distance. I shoved the envelope in my back pocket and clasped my good hand over the wrist of my cybernetic hand behind my back. Gonzalez strode in a moment later in her civvies, the bulge of her service weapon covered by her sweater. She pushed tall, skinny Travis Mannheim in front of her. He looked apprehensively around the half-built condo building, his wrists clasped before him in handcuffs. Not enough of a restraint to stop him from bolting if he had a mind to, but still useful if he tried any funny business.
“What is this, some kind of mob hit?” he complained. “I thought y’all were cops.”
“I’m not.” I kicked a folding chair out with one booted foot and pointed at it. “Have a seat, Travis.”
He gave me a wary side-eye. “I’d rather stand.”
“I’m more than happy to take you back to your cell, if you’ve changed your mind.” Gonzalez lifted her eyebrows and a little smirk ghosted at the corners of her mouth. She hadn’t liked the idea of pulling Mannheim out of jail in the first place. She thought he’d run, and she may have been right. But once we’d filled her in on the details, even she saw that it was a chance we had to take.
“Judge Favreau wouldn’t mind having you locked up again, either,” Alek said. “He was mighty pissed you violated your parole. I had to call in a favor just to get him to sign off on this.” Alek struck a match and cradled his palm around the end of his cigar as he puffed it to life.
Mannheim didn’t look happy about it, but he finally sat, then glared up at me under a knitted brow. “You better keep your end of the bargain.”
“You’re in no position to be making threats.” I grabbed a second chair from where it was leaning against the wall and sat knee-to-knee with the fugitive I’d worked so hard to catch. “Now, are you clear on what you’re supposed to do?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“He can’t suspect you at all. If he thinks you’re playing him, this will backfire, and you’ll go back to jail.”
He glared at me. I didn’t avert my eyes, and eventually, Mannheim looked down at his cuffed wrists. “He’ll believe me if I say it’s for Monica.”
“You got the address from her?”
Instead of answering, Mannheim held his handcuffed wrists out between us.
I shoved my tongue into my cheek and considered him. I had a good sense about people. Mannheim was as untrustworthy as any criminal I’d ever met, but he seemed to be playing it straight with us. And he should have, considering that if this worked, not only would his sentence be lessened but he might even have another opportunity for parole. That was a minor miracle in and of itself. Whatever favor Alek called in, it must have been a big one.
I glanced at Gonzalez. Ultimately, Mannheim was her responsibility, since she’d been the one that had taken custody of him when he was signed out of prison. Alek had helped, but if this failed, she’d be the one who suffered for it.
And if it worked, she’d be praised.
She fished a key out of her pocket and unlocked Mannheim’s handcuffs. We all tensed for a minute as he rubbed at his wrists. I think we all expected him to run. Instead, he just stood and stretched his arms overhead, then pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me.
I looked at the address, recognizing the street name as a place in the city.
“And you’re sure it’s the right address?”
“Sure as I can be. She don’t have no reason to lie to me.”
And Mannheim didn’t have any reason to lie to me. This was a gamble, but as I’d said to Alek, I had to see this through.
I yanked the envelope of cash out of my back pocket and waved it in Mannheim’s face. “We only get one shot. Make sure you get all of it.”
Mannheim tracked the envelope as I placed it into Gonzalez’s hands. I held onto it for a second longer, but unlike Mannheim, I actually trusted the detective. I let go, and couldn’t help it as my heart sank into my stomach. All that work I’d done to get ahead of my financial troubles, and I’d just blown all the cash I had in one fell swoop.
At least I’d made sure I had enough to pay my bills this month. Anna had helped with that. It would have to be enough.
Alek puffed on his cigar. “Good luck.”
“You sure you don’t want to come along for the ride?” I asked.
“Stakeouts are your area of expertise. I’m heading back to the office for a little while. Call me if you need anything, and stay safe out there.”
“We will.”
“There’s another job waiting for you after this is over, Gunn.”
I took a deep breathe. “I appreciate that.” I gave him a genuine smile as he walked off, puffing on his cigar.
Mannheim stood and stretched. Gonzalez put her hands on her hips, waiting.
Annabelle checked her phone once, and then stowed it.
“Ready?” I asked.
She nodded.
As we turned to walk away, Gonzalez called out, “Hey, Gunn.”
I turned. “Yeah?”
“Good luck.”
“Have fun,” I responded, the words rolling automatically off my tongue.
Then, together, we said, “Don’t die.”
23
Half an hour later, Ann
a and I sat in the cab of my truck, waiting.
It was a quiet street on the south side of town not far from where I had collared Travis Mannheim and found the drug addict, Monica, tripping on Ora.
Of course, this was nothing like the romantic evening with Anna that I had so frequently pictured in my mind during the weeks I spent tracing Mannheim, or during the months before when I’d only known her as the bombshell blond accountant who worked for Alek. Nothing at all. No white table cloth. No candles. No bottle of dark Italian wine.
Instead, we had a bag of trail mix in the cup holder between us, a pair of binoculars to share, and a canteen of hot coffee. We each had a paper cup sitting on the dashboard. Rising steam formed small discs of fog on the inside of the windshield.
In the passenger seat, Anna hammered away at her laptop keyboard. The screen illuminated her face, which bore the same little smile that always seemed to grace her lips when she was working on a project she enjoyed. I had always thought Anna liked her work as Alek’s CPA, but it was nothing compared to the kick she seemed to get out of writing about alien encounters.
For the hundredth time since I woke at Rashiki’s this morning, I shook my head ruefully, stunned that she had stuck by me through the events of the past few days. Somehow, Anna seemed to have seen past my foolish stubbornness, past my overprotective nature. Who was I to deserve such forgiveness? Such compassion?
And yet, there she was, typing on her laptop in my passenger seat.
Yet, I also sensed a hardness, a steel, in her that I hadn’t seen until now. Maybe she had hidden it from me as she had hidden her identity as Marsha Marshall. Or, more likely, the steel had been there all along, and I either hadn’t been perceptive enough to notice it, or in my ignorance had chosen not to.
It wasn’t something we talked about. It was just there in her body language, in the way she wouldn’t let me hold her too close, yet never strayed far from my side. It was in the way she’d accepted the paper cup of coffee from me a moment ago. It was in the way she’d agreed to this last stakeout, and then made me wait downstairs in her living room while she showered, changed and got ready. It was in the way she was writing with complete focus and refused to let me read it until she was done.
She caught me studying her and shot me a tight smile. Her fingers stalled over the keyboard and she folded them in her lap. “You and Gonzalez must go way back.”
“We grew up together.”
“Do you still have a thing for her?”
My heart dropped into my shoes. “No. We tried dating once, in college. It didn’t work out. We just fought the whole time.”
“You’re too similar.”
I smiled. “Yeah. We butted heads a lot.”
“A relationship isn’t a competition,” Anna said. “It’s a partnership.”
I nodded, unable to find any words that wouldn’t sound shallow and insincere. But Anna waited, and eventually I said, “I’m sorry I hid the truth from you.”
She inhaled through her nose and nodded. “I forgive you. But don’t you ever lie to me again, Anderson Gunn.”
There was that steel again. If I ever tried to deceive her, I had no doubt that it would be the end of Anna and me. She didn’t have to say it, but I knew it better that she did.
“I’ll never lie to you again. I promise.”
Once my words settled, the air between us seemed to clear. Anna reached over and gripped the metal and flesh fingers of my right hand, squeezed, and let go.
Minutes passed in a comfortable silence. I peered at the house we were staking out. Surprisingly well-maintained, I thought. But I supposed that whoever chose this person to distribute their drugs wouldn’t have been happy with just any idiot.
I picked up the walkie talkie from the dashboard and thumbed it on. “Gonzalez, what’s your ETA? Over.”
“Just turning into the neighborhood now. Over.”
Annabelle banged out another sentence or two with sure fingers, then slapped the laptop closed and picked up her phone and the binoculars.
“Think this’ll work?” she asked.
“It’ll work.”
“You’re the bounty hunter.”
“All we need is a little luck and a lot of patience.”
My words sounded more sure than I felt. These cat and mouse tactics had worked in the past to lead me to whichever flavor-of-the-week fugitive I was after, but this time, my ultimate quarry was nothing so basic as a human drug dealer.
Gonzalez showed up a minute later. “We’re in position,” her voice crackled over the walkie. “Ready? Over.”
I glanced at Anna. She pressed a button on her phone, and a red dot began to blink on a digital map of Austin.
I nodded. “We’re all set. On your mark. Over and out.”
Travis Mannheim climbed out of Gonzalez’s personal sedan and hiked up his pants as he swaggered toward the house. After knocking, the door opened a crack. There was a conversation through the gap that I couldn’t read, but even without binoculars, I could see when the door opened the rest of the way and he slipped inside.
The next fifteen minutes passed in nervous silence. Finally, Mannheim exited, glanced once in the direction of my truck, and climbed back into the vehicle with Gonzalez.
Once they had rounded the block and were away, Gonzalez’s voice came back through the walkie talkie. “We’re clear. Over.”
“Does he have it?”
“Orange crystals, right? Yep, right here. Didn’t bring you back any change I see.”
“What you expect?” Mannheim mumbled in the background. “Ain’t no negotiatin’ with someone like Spider.”
“There’s only about—I dunno, half an ounce,” Gonzalez said. “A small sandwich baggy.”
“You want the dealer to come back for more,” I said, “you don’t give him an infinite supply.”
“I’ll get my guys into position. Let me know when you’ve got what you need. Over.”
“Roger. Thanks, Sheila. Over and out.”
It was only a few more hours until our gambit paid off. A tall, thin man with the green and red tattoo of a spider on his neck, came out of the house and got into an ’86 Impala that had been lowered onto oversized rims.
We followed him at a distance using the same kind of tracker that Anna had used to follow me out to Rashiki’s Racetrack, staying far enough back so he wouldn’t see us.
First, he went to a burger joint, where he met with three other buyers. Each of them came up to the car empty-handed and left with a fast food bag full of a good time.
We waited, keeping our distance.
Then, he made the rounds on another few house calls. Anna began to get restless around midnight. She heaved a deep sigh and rubbed at her lower back.
“Not exactly a glamorous gig, is it?” I said.
“Bounty hunter sure sounds a lot cooler than ‘guy who sits in his car all night.’”
“We prefer to be called bail enforcement agents,” I said. “But I won’t nitpick.”
She stuck her tongue out at me. An appropriate response.
Eventually, Spider led us to a ritzy neighborhood in the hills of Westlake. He pulled into the horseshoe shaped driveway of a brick house in the ’burbs, got out of the car, and approached a door around the side of the house.
“Did he see us?” I asked as we drove past.
“Nope, not even an over-the-shoulder glance,” Anna said.
I killed the lights and pulled into the driveway of a dark house down the road. We both unsnapped our seatbelt buckles and turned in our seats to look back.
Spider stood outside the door for maybe five minutes before someone responded to his knocking. When the door opened, it was only briefly, a peremptory dismissal. Spider pressed his hands to the door when it was slammed in his face, keeping it from latching.
A heated argument followed as Spider pleaded with someone just inside the doorway that we couldn’t quite see.
“Are they refusing to sell him the drugs?” I said.
“Maybe they don’t like him,” Anna suggested.
I grunted. “Or they’re ready to discard him now that they’ve got what they wanted out of him. Which worries me even more.”
“Who is ‘they?’”
We didn’t have to wait much longer to find out. Spider got visibly angry—which made me think he had been getting high on his own supply, although I had no proof of that—and suddenly a hand appeared through the half-closed door, holding a weapon in his face.
More specifically, an alien handgun with a neon green tip.
My blood ran cold. I clenched my jaw and gripped the back of my seat so hard with my cybernetic hand that I ripped a finger-sized hole in the fabric.
“Is that…” Anna trailed off. Then her eyes went wide as she made the connection. “Hix?”
I shook my head—not to disagree, but to express my disgust with myself for trusting Hix and for thinking that Yarnow had been acting alone.
The gun pressed into the tattoo on Spider’s neck for only a moment before he retreated, fell into his car, and peeled away.
I texted Detective Gonzalez to let her know that Spider was heading back her way, so she could pick him up when he got there.
Anna and I decided to wait out our new quarry, but first we needed to find a better vantage point.
The streets in Westlake wound through the hills, with the backs of the houses looking out over the river whenever possible. As a result, the road wound up and back on itself, each row of houses making a terrace that overlooked the one below.
We eventually found a small woodlot that ran between the high brick walls surrounding two McMansions, a few terraces up from the house Spider had led us to.
We snuck out to the edge and, peering down, pinpointed the brick house. We could see the roof, part of the front yard, and part of the expansive back yard where a verdent lawn stretched to the edge of the property overlooking the river.
All was quiet for the next several hours. Anna fell asleep and was snoring softly with her cheek pressed against a small patch of grass among the pine needles. Her even breathing almost lulled me to sleep, too, but I managed to keep myself awake by sheer willpower.