by Nick Petrie
“Actually,” Peter said, “I have some questions of my own. I want to know what you’ve learned about Hansen and the guy he was with. Also, whose money was taken, last week and today? And what’s the name on the registration of that wrecker and ambulance?”
Sykes’s brown face, mobile and friendly and endlessly interested in the previous conversation, turned to wood.
Steinburger sighed. “I can tell already that you’re going to be a pain in my ass,” he said. He stood up and put out his hand to shake. “We’ll see you at noon at the Puzzle Palace.”
Peter looked at Miranda. “The Puzzle Palace?”
“What some people call police headquarters,” she said. “Downtown.”
“It looks a little like it’s made out of Legos,” Steinburger explained.
So reassuring, thought Peter.
12
Peter sat in the passenger seat of Miranda’s little red BMW, shoeless in a stranger’s clothes, holding on for dear life.
The car was nearly new, with black leather interior and varnished wood trim. The front was spotless, but the floor in the back was piled high with empty Starbucks cups. Miranda had slipped off her four-inch heels when she climbed into her seat, no panty hose, working the pedals barefoot, which Peter had to admit he’d always enjoyed himself.
But she drove like she was having an argument with the road, she was enjoying the fight, and she was determined to win. She ran the engine up into the red, punched the clutch, and jammed the shifter into the next gear, then popped the clutch to do it again. As she zigged and zagged through town, she blew past stop signs and flew through yellow lights as they turned red.
“Are we in a hurry?” Peter asked, watching the buildings fly by.
“I’m always in a hurry,” she said.
It was long after midnight and traffic was light. Peter was tired. His eyes felt like they had sand in their sockets. He yawned.
She shot a sideways glance at him. “Might be weird going back to your friend’s house,” she said. “I can put you up at my place if you need to.” She looked back to the road. “If you want.”
“I’d really rather not be inside,” he said. Also, if he was honest with himself, Miranda Howe scared the shit out of him. “Whose clothes am I wearing?”
“I don’t really keep track,” she said. “Does it matter?”
She flashed him that same high-wattage smile she’d given Detective Sykes, full of promise and pleasure to come. It made Peter understand how a moth might feel about a local floodlight. But he didn’t want to sizzle against the hot surface.
And June. Don’t forget June.
“No,” he said. “I have a change of clothes in my truck. And I’d like some shoes, too. Would you please slow down? I’ve used up all my adrenaline for the day.”
She eased up on the gas. “Peter, you should see yourself,” she said. “You really need to get cleaned up. My condo has a giant window in the shower with a great view of the city. Sixth floor. I have a nice big balcony, there’s a couch you can sleep on out there.” She took her hands off the wheel, still going over sixty on Broadway. “I won’t take advantage of you, I promise, no matter how much you beg. We need to talk about our meeting at the precinct. About what your plans are for tomorrow.”
“I’m going to find the last asshole in that crew who killed my friend,” Peter said.
“How do you propose to do that?” she asked. “Is there something you haven’t told me? Or the police?”
“Do you think those five guys brainstormed that plan over bong hits and Cheetos? That plan was meticulous and well executed. They were pros. And your friend Sykes was all over me about that third car.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Better you don’t know,” he said. “Something else is going on here. I don’t want to drag you into it.”
They went under an overpass and Miranda veered right as Broadway split into two one-way roads.
“You need to be careful,” she said. “Steinburger may look like a middle-school math teacher, but he’s a smart and capable cop. He got his rep when he stepped into some kind of battle between two meth crews, bikers. He was the only one to walk away. And Sykes may be even better. You start stepping on toes, they’ll lock you up, and I won’t be able to get you out.”
Peter closed his eyes in the lurching car. The man with the shotgun was there again. The long muscles of Peter’s left arm twitched with the memory of the knife in his hand, the slide and catch of the blade in skin. It was him or me, he told himself again. Him or me. He opened his eyes.
“Sometimes you don’t have a choice,” he said. “Henry was my friend.”
A flash in the small side mirror caught Peter’s attention.
Peter leaned toward Miranda to catch the angle. Headlights bouncing as the car behind them bucked on the uneven pavement.
Some kind of big sedan was behind them, a newer model, dark, half hidden in its own glare, barely visible on the dim, nearly empty four-lane road.
Miranda was in the left lane, going at least fifty.
“How long has that guy been back there?”
She glanced in the rearview. “I don’t know.”
They were midway down a long block. The stoplight ahead turned red.
Peter turned in his seat, digging his bare toes into the BMW’s carpet. The headlights shifted as the other driver pulled into the lane beside Peter and edged up to pass.
Peter wasn’t good at newer cars, but he remembered this one. Big and black, no markings, with a spotlight on the driver’s side above the mirror. Antennae coming off the trunk.
The window was slightly tinted, and with the night and the fractured glow of the corner streetlights, Peter couldn’t see inside.
If only Peter were driving. Better yet, if he had Lewis’s big 10-gauge shotgun.
On a more basic level, if only he had some goddamn shoes. Boots would be better.
The other driver’s window slid down. The driver stared straight ahead, his features dim in the dashboard glow. Peter couldn’t see enough to recognize the man, but then, he wouldn’t. He’d never had the chance to see his face, up on the mountain.
Both cars were approaching the intersection, with nobody in front of them. Miranda slowed for the red.
“Hit the gas,” Peter said. “Right now.”
“What?” Cars trickled through on the cross street.
“Punch it,” he said. “Run the light. Do it now.”
Miranda kept her bare foot on the brake. “Slow down, speed up. You don’t know what you want, do you?” She flashed that high-wattage grin again. “I bet you have like ten safe words.”
They closed on the intersection, bracketed with streetlights. Peter peered out at the other car.
A geometric gleam emerged through the open window.
“Gun,” he said. “Fucking gun, just go, Miranda, step on it.”
She glanced to the side. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened slightly.
Peter was sure he was going to die right there, trapped between this gorgeous predatory lunatic attorney’s high-octane personality and her vestigial remaining respect for the laws of traffic.
Then she faced front and popped the clutch and hit the gas. The little car rocketed forward, threading the needle between a giant green garbage truck and a ladder-loaded painter’s van. Peter twisted sideways in his seat, looked back and saw the big sedan maneuver through the intersection, red and blue lights flashing now, and surge after them.
“What the fuck, Peter? Is that the police?”
“Did you see the gun?”
“I didn’t see anything,” she said. “What the fuck is going on?”
“That thing I didn’t tell you?” She flew past a Prius like it was standing still, but stayed in her lane. “Up in the mountains, that third car, the sedan your friend Sykes was so interested in?” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “That’s the car.”
She was going seventy, focused on the ro
ad. Cars were pulling over ahead of them. The big black sedan was only a couple of car lengths behind her. “An unmarked police car? With the lights?”
“Yes.”
“With a policeman directing traffic for the hijackers? That’s a serious allegation. Are you absolutely certain?”
“Or else it was some guy dressed like a policeman, yes. He had a blue uniform and a flat-brimmed trooper’s hat, like Smokey the Bear. Either way it did the job.” He didn’t mention the state plates on the car, or that he knew the plate number. They could certainly have been stolen.
She eased off on the gas, not much, but enough for him to notice.
“Did you really see a gun, just now?”
“You don’t believe me.”
Another intersection flashed past, then another. They were lucky the lights were green.
He needed to get off this one-way. Downtown was coming up fast, and there were too many residential buildings around. He needed more space. He thought about the map of Denver he was building in his head. “Take this left.”
She slowed a little more for the turn onto Bayaud. The black sedan followed, staying the same distance back.
She slowed a little more. The area was more industrial. He’d had a dispensary pickup near here his first day, so he had an idea of the layout. He scanned the side streets, looking for something. He hoped he’d know it when he saw it.
“You’re sure you’re not just jumpy? You had a long day, Peter. Your friends died,” she said. “You also killed four people. I’m guessing that was pretty stressful, right?”
The war fucked you up, she didn’t say, although Peter heard her loud and clear.
She wasn’t wrong.
Otherwise what the hell was he doing here, in this car?
They bumped over the railroad tracks that ran at an oblique angle to the road. “Take this right,” he said.
She turned onto Santa Fe, a three-lane one-way road, and the black sedan followed, keeping its station behind them. The blocks were longer here, the buildings big commercial boxes, not houses, and mostly empty this late at night, so nobody else was likely to get hurt. Beside them to their right, the railroad tracks rose into the air.
“Maybe you’re not thinking clearly right now.” Her voice was carefully modulated. Calm, thoughtful, persuasive. “After all, I ran a red light. Now he’s chasing me.”
She was managing Peter now, the same way she’d managed the detectives, how she’d manage any other client or situation. She was good at her job.
The little red BMW flashed through another intersection, toward the railroad overpass. Ahead of them, all lanes were clear.
“Maybe you’re right,” Peter said, peeking in the rearview.
She eased off the gas even more, down below fifty. “Maybe we should talk to them.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Tell you what. Put one foot on the clutch and get ready to brake. But don’t touch the brake pedal yet.”
She moved her feet. The car coasted, slowing. Peter looked over his right shoulder again. The black sedan drifted to the inside lane and pulled forward to come even with them. Lights flashing in its grille, but no siren.
The gun muzzle peeked out of the driver’s window. The round black eye turning to look right at him.
“Stop,” Peter shouted, knowing she’d respond to the tone more than the word itself.
Miranda hit the brake from sheer reflex as the gunman pulled the trigger.
Peter pressed himself back in his seat, bare toes gripping the floor mat again, willing the rounds to miss him. Three short disciplined bursts raked across the front of the little red car, some kind of semiauto, maybe a modified AR-15, maybe something else.
The other driver braked hard, too, but a half second later. The BMW was a much lighter car with better tires and stopped more quickly. The shooter tracked them from the open window, his face still mostly in shadow, but now they were a stationary target.
“Pull a U-turn, fast, now now now.” It finally occurred to him to take out Henry’s phone and pull up a map.
“It’s one-way,” she shouted, but cranked the car around anyway, the centrifugal force slinging Peter hard against the door. Nice turning radius. They could use that.
He heard two more bursts and the sound of glass breaking, the back window turned to spiderweb. Miranda got to third in a hurry, then chirped the tires in fourth gear, carving lean curves around the few cars coming at them. “You knew that would happen,” she said. She was breathing hard.
“Do you have a gun in this car?” he asked. The big black sedan had to do a three-point turn to come after them and was now almost two blocks back. The BMW could accelerate faster, too.
“Not anymore.” Her color was high, a pink sheen on her cheeks and forehead. A near-death experience could do that to a person. Make you feel alive.
Some people became addicted to it.
He tasted copper in his mouth, and despite himself felt the smile spread wide across his own face. “Fun, isn’t it?”
“You’re fucking crazy,” she shouted. The wind from her open window blew her kinky blond hair back from her face.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Take this right, then the next.”
She slowed only slightly for the corner, gunned it again on the straightaway, and powered through the next turn, rubber straining against the asphalt, so they were headed back the way they’d come. “Now what?”
He wanted to take the fight to the other car, but he couldn’t. He was unarmed, in a smaller, lighter vehicle. So he’d call this a tactical retreat. Live to fight another day.
Their pursuers would be looking for light and motion in the night. He looked behind him and didn’t see the black sedan. At mid-block he said, “Right again. But kill your lights. Foot off the brake. If you want to drop your speed, downshift.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again, turned off her lights and made the turn, pumping the clutch to downshift and again to accelerate. Now they’d come three-quarters of a circle to cross the road they’d been on when the shooter had fired. As they hit the intersection, Peter peered right and didn’t see the police car. It had already followed them around the first corner and would be on the other side of the block. Every unobserved turn made the red BMW harder to follow.
“Now the next left,” he said, and she slung them around the next corner so they were heading back the way they’d come on a parallel road, what Peter figured was the least likely path of pursuit.
Unless the other driver had followed the same line of reasoning.
Miranda was back up to seventy now, running dark and ignoring all traffic lights and signs at the edge of the grid of multiuse buildings. Looking ahead, Peter saw some kind of trucking depot, a construction yard. Then a modest narrow building with a long row of off-street parking, a dozen or more cars already there.
“Up here, turn here,” he said, pointing across her body with one hand while looking back. Nobody behind them.
Miranda took a hard left, slowed fast enough for the anti-lock to kick in, then cranked the wheel all the way right and tucked them neatly into the farthest slot, sheltered behind a big purple SUV and hidden from the road on four sides. The little red car chirped to a stop, then rocked back on its springs. She was gulping air, her face flushed, her eyes dilated like an addict whose fix has just kicked in.
Turning to him, she ran the pink tip of her tongue across her lips and said, “Listen, I think we should have sex.” She knelt on her seat and shouldered out of her jacket and began to unbutton her blouse. Her red brassiere still didn’t cover much. “I mean, right now. I think that would be excellent, don’t you?”
13
Before Peter could decide how to react, Miranda reached across his body and tripped the lever that dropped his seat back, putting Peter in a horizontal position.
She slid her skirt, clearly made of some miracle stretch fabric, up to her hips and threw a leg over him. Her blouse was wide open.
She had a lovely plush
round little body, and God knows he’d never minded a little crazy in a woman. And Peter was having the exact same reaction, that adrenalized urge toward life and the pleasures of the flesh.
But he kept seeing June’s face, and imagined explaining the next series of events to her.
How his actions would change what had happened between them. What might yet come to be.
So he put his right hand under Miranda’s left thigh and his left hand under her right butt cheek and picked her up and set her back down half naked in her own seat.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, meaning every word. “You’re gorgeous and sexy as all hell and I can’t believe I’m saying no, but I’m kind of with someone right now.”
Or hoping to be, he thought. Or something.
She turned that crackling, high-energy smile on him like some kind of futuristic sex ray and climbed back to her knees. “I don’t mind,” she said, shucking her blouse. Tan lines, a pink nipple peeking out of her brassiere. Jesus. He was pretty sure she was wearing a thong. She put her left knee on the seat between his legs and leaned in. She smelled like wet flowers. “You don’t have to tell her a goddamn thing.”
“That’s the problem,” he said, closing his eyes. Maybe if he made the sign of the cross? Wore a necklace of garlic? He opened his eyes again, looked directly at her. “Because I would have to tell her. It’s that kind of thing.”
She stared back at him for a long moment, her body all but bare to him. Then closed her eyes, gave a kind of full-body shiver, and dropped back into her own seat. “Get the fuck out of my car.”
Peter got out.
Still barefoot. Wearing another man’s clothes.
What the hell was he doing?
—
He walked the narrow length of pavement between the parked cars and the building, stray stones sharp under his bare feet, taking deep breaths. Committing that moment to memory, the sight of Miranda in all her glory, because it was one for the vault, no matter what happened with June. He was still human, right?
When he approached the edge of the parking lot, he stepped between a Hummer and some bland beige compact sedan and peeked out to the street. A few sporadic cars, no lights or sirens or any other evidence of shots fired on a September night between the railroad tracks and the river.