Light It Up

by Nick Petrie

  She turned the pack so the top was facing toward the lid of the trunk and gave it a careful shake, settling the contents to the bottom, then unzipped the smallest pocket. Reached past her hairbrush and the slender tube of lip balm—where is it? where the fuck is it?—then, in the bottom corner, under the little pouch of nail clippers and tweezers, she found it.

  The rounded shape of the fake pink lipstick, her pepper spray, firmly in her hand.

  The knife still safely in her back pocket where she could reach it.

  The car slowed again, more than it had before, made a turn. Picked up speed again, but less than before. Getting closer to wherever it was they were going.

  She struggled through a rotation so she was on her side facing the rear of the car, armed and ready. Still locked in the trunk of a car but not helpless, not fucking helpless. And saw something glowing before her eyes.

  Glowing greenish-white. A simple sideways push lever. Glowing in the dark, with a little picture on it. International iconography: the rear of a car, with the trunk lid standing open.

  A safety latch, so kids didn’t get locked inside by accident.

  No good if you were all wrapped up with duct tape. But now?

  Okay.

  It’s time to prepare, June told herself. For what you have to do. For whatever might happen.

  Pepper spray in one hand, knife now in the other. The latch right in front of her. Surprise was her only advantage. She’d use it.

  She flexed her muscles one by one, getting the blood flowing through her limbs, through her mind. Car-trunk yoga, she thought absurdly.

  But she was fucking ready.

  The car slowed again, turned sharply, and came to a stop.

  38

  Daniel Clay Dixon was in the back of the Kia, on the passenger side, Beretta held loose in one hand, a clear view of Leonard behind the wheel. Leonard had retrieved his gym bag with his guns and ammunition from the Mustang. The Big Dog was on Dixon’s leash, at least for now.

  They’d needed to get rid of the girl’s Mustang. Normally Dixon would have done it himself, walked a few minutes away, then caught a cab back.

  But there was no way Dixon was going to leave Leonard alone with the girl.

  Dixon was a lot of things, but he wasn’t that.

  Plus he was too keyed up to stay in one place. And he didn’t trust Leonard out on his own for one fucking minute.

  So Leonard had driven the Mustang to that parking lot while Dixon followed in the Kia, and now they were circling the city, killing time instead of each other, giving Lieutenant Ash his few hours to get those seeds.

  A few lousy seeds. For what? How would he even know they were the right seeds?

  He didn’t care. This was all going to shit. Dixon could feel it.

  Leonard was talking to Dixon over his shoulder now. “I don’t get what you bring to the table, boss. What’s your job here, exactly?”

  “Just drive, Leonard.”

  “But how we gonna do this? What’s the plan? We gotta work together here.”

  Dixon was not remotely convinced Leonard was looking to work together. Leonard was looking to slip his leash. To take everything.

  “Just follow my lead,” Dixon said. “I know this guy, we can work with him.”

  “Wait,” Leonard said. “You know this guy? The guy who fucked all this up? Who killed my people?”

  “I didn’t know it at the time. He served under me in Iraq. He was a very talented Marine. Don’t underestimate him. But I know how he’ll react. Seeds for the girl. Follow orders and everything will go smoothly.”

  “Right.” Leonard faced front. “Just like they have so far.”

  The weight of the Beretta was comforting. Dixon couldn’t believe how he’d been fooled by Leonard Wallis. It was only a slight consolation that everyone else had been fooled, too, including the psychologists who administered the tests for Palmer’s lawyer. A true, off-the-charts psychopath shouldn’t have made it through the filters. But Leonard was smart enough to see through the tests, had tailored his answers to the result he wanted to show.

  Dixon had seen three ugly wars and a great deal of human atrocity on all sides. He’d been afraid for his life and the lives of his men many times, had come to terms with that and pushed forward as he pushed forward now.

  But Leonard Wallis was one scary fuck.

  Dixon had always been able to compartmentalize. It was the only way he had survived the complicated mess of his life as a Christian, a homosexual, a loving husband and father, a Marine Corps warrior, and now a mercenary for hire. He’d built strong, high walls around the separate pieces of himself, walls made of honor and will, and isolated those pieces from each other.

  Those walls had doors, though. Usually they were locked tight. Sometimes Dixon peered through the peephole, one part of him getting a glimpse of another.

  Sometimes a door swung open, and Dixon could stand in the opening, one foot in each room.

  It was hard to be a Christian Warrior, although there was some precedent for that. Not killing the infidels, he’d never bought into that idea, but fighting for what was right, for the ideals in the Gospels. And he could fight for his home, to protect his family. He’d become a mercenary to protect the family he’d lost, the family he still loved.

  But after the damage done the last time his homosexual self had opened the door to his prison, Dixon had closed and locked that door for good. Now that part of him could only peer through the peephole.

  But sometimes that part of him watched. And wanted.

  He had no desire for Leonard Wallis. Far from it. Leonard with his macho swagger was the opposite of the kind of man Dixon was attracted to.

  There was no particular physical trait that caught Dixon’s attention. Although there was a physical component, obviously, because if it wasn’t physical, he wouldn’t be damaged. He would be a normal man. Not damned to hell for all eternity.

  He loved his wife. Just not in that way.

  He wasn’t attracted to the men he thought of as queers, effeminate, although in a way Dixon thought maybe that would be better. That would make him still a man, somehow.

  No, Dixon was drawn to kindness. Strong men, but kind. Strong enough to show that kindness, to share it. Willing to show you how they feel.

  The way Dixon never could.

  The car lurched and Dixon pulled himself back from his thoughts to see Leonard’s cool eyes watching him in the rearview mirror.

  Dixon made a decision.

  “Let’s swing back to that motel,” he said. “Have some coffee, get cleaned up. Then we’ll make our plans, set up the exchange.”

  Dixon knew it was possible he wouldn’t succeed. He was willing to take this step precisely because he felt that risk growing.

  But alone, with Leonard dead, Dixon might be able to appeal to Ash’s honor as a Marine to make this exchange in good faith. It was still possible he could accomplish this mission without killing the girl.

  Dixon’s part of the bargain would be simple.

  Ash could come after him another time. Maybe he would agree to that.

  It was probably inevitable, no matter what Dixon wanted. Once Ash knew who he was, if he didn’t already.

  Dixon had six more months until the terms of his exorbitant life insurance policy would fully apply.

  He could survive six months.

  Accidental death paid double. His wife was the beneficiary.

  It would be enough.

  39

  Peter had found a corner at the far end of the covered walkway where he could stand out of the rain and watch the door to room 168. He leaned the Winchester on the wall behind him, harder to see, easy to reach.

  Lewis had walked into the wet parking lot and disappeared.

  Peter didn’t need to look for Lewis to know he was there.

  He held Henry’s phone in his open hand, glancing down at the screen from time to time. What people did now instead of smoking, he figured. The new excuse to stand
around and wait.

  He almost jumped out of his skin when the phone buzzed in his hand.

  It was Lewis.

  “My contact called back,” he said. “Your friend Daniel Dixon was promoted to lieutenant colonel four years ago. He was being groomed for battalion commander, a big promotion. Then the battalion’s new XO discovered that Dixon had been selling government property off the loading dock. Small scale, not much actually taken. At first he said he was being blackmailed, but when they asked him for more details, he changed his story. He should have gone to jail, but he had good lawyers. He was given a dishonorable discharge and stripped of his pension just shy of his thirty years. Now he owes his lawyers a couple million bucks. It’s sad, really.”

  “So how did Dixon get involved in something like this?”

  “Actually, June was pulling this string from the other direction. I just checked my email, she sent me something from the plane.”

  “Wait. You were checking your email?”

  Lewis arched his eyebrows. “Some of us have a life, you know. Anyway, June found a company called Fidelis International Risk this morning, by backtracing Leonard Wallis. He’s a Fidelis subcontractor. And Fidelis is owned by your friend Dixon.”

  “So we know they’re connected.”

  “Yes. But more importantly, it looks like June found a connection between Fidelis and a man named Russell Palmer.”

  “I know who Palmer is,” Peter said. “Kind of a high-profile corporate bandit.”

  “‘Bandit’ is too nice a word,” Lewis said. “The feds have been after him for twenty years. Interpol, too. He’s built a financial empire through intimidation, bribery, blackmail, and assassination. No convictions but multiple settlements totaling half a billion dollars. He’s got homes all over the world, but supposedly lives mostly on his yacht and on several private jets held under other corporate entities. The great thing about a private jet is that, if you don’t get off your plane, most small airports don’t really check passports, even in the U.S. and Europe. So Palmer can go pretty much anywhere. And he has the reputation of a guy who likes to be there for the kill.”

  “Are you saying he might be in Denver?”

  “Probably not at Denver International,” Lewis said. “But maybe at Jeffco, where most of the private planes land.”

  A white Kia sedan rolled into the parking lot and came to a stop outside room 168.

  Even through the steadily increasing rain, Peter could see the cracked back bumper, marked with blue scrapes.

  He reached behind him for the Winchester.

  “This is us,” he said, and hung up. The adrenaline rose, crackling.

  The lever gun had a long reputation as a reasonably accurate rifle, but Peter hadn’t checked the sights, had never even fired the weapon. The Colt SAA was a serviceable hand cannon, but not much use past ten yards, not anywhere off a target range, and carried only five rounds. Both were antiques. Lewis’s 10-gauge was new, but as indiscriminate as a Claymore.

  So Peter needed to be closer.

  He held the lever gun down beside his offside leg and ambled along the walkway, still holding Henry’s phone up one-handed as if occupied with the screen.

  The back passenger-side door of the car opened and a man in a tan suitcoat climbed out. Peter could only see the back of his bare head. If he felt the rain, he didn’t show it.

  The driver’s door opened and another man got out. Peter only saw him from the back. He had a head like a cannonball, wore an orange plaid Western-style shirt, and held some kind of fat-bodied machine pistol in one hand, maybe a MAC-10.

  Four rooms away, off the front of the Kia on the driver’s side, Peter slipped the phone into his back pocket, raised the Winchester to his shoulder and cocked the lever in the same motion, bringing his eye down to the sight.

  “Hands up,” he called. “Where’s the girl?”

  The man in the plaid Western shirt turned, impossibly fluid, the muzzle of the fat-bodied machine pistol now pressed hard to the trunk of the car. “She’s in here,” he said, his voice carrying easily. The shoulders of his shirt darkened in the rain. “Don’t fuck with me or I’ll give her some extra holes.”

  It was Leonard Wallis. Peter recognized him from the photo Henry had shown him. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, big round head, a wide smile on his face that said, Ain’t this fun?

  The man in the tan suit didn’t even turn to look at Peter. He had his own pistol up in a crisp two-handed shooter’s stance, facing the parking lot.

  Facing Lewis, who stood on the shining black asphalt not twenty yards away, rain beating down on his head, arms, and shoulders, the shotgun raised and ready.

  None of them wearing armor. Not even a raincoat.

  “Double-ought loads.” Lewis’s voice was pleasant. “Lead, not steel. I can cut you in half with one shot.”

  “But you’d put some holes in the trunk,” said the man in the tan suit. Peter knew his voice. It was Dixon. “In the girl. You don’t want to do that.”

  “She’s wearing some mighty fancy underwear,” Leonard said. His smile got wider. “I mighta peeked a little. Tasty little piece you got there.”

  Peter stepped closer, still under the shelter of the walkway, angling for a shot, lining up the sights.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Leonard said, sliding around to the rear of the car and ducking down behind its shelter. “Stop right there, bub. I can put one hole in her, or I can put ten. How many is up to you.”

  Peter felt that tug of the knife in his gut again, sorrow and shame and fear. June curled into a ball in that trunk, alone and afraid, shying away from the muzzle of the unseen gun, not knowing where the bullet might come from.

  His fault.

  All his fault, like all his men dead, all over again.

  “Take me,” he said. Then louder. “Take me instead. Please, I’ll do whatever you want.”

  He raised his cheek from the butt of the Winchester and stepped forward.

  “Just take me instead.”

  40

  With the car stopped, without the sound of the tires humming on pavement, June could hear again.

  Pepper spray in one hand, knife in the other.

  Except for the pale glow of the emergency trunk release, it was dark as night in there. She was blind, but ready.

  Her other senses perfectly attuned.

  She heard rain drumming on sheet metal.

  She heard the soft release of the car doors opening.

  She felt the springs shift as the men got out, first one, then the other.

  Then a loud voice saying, “Hands up.”

  It was Peter.

  A loud, heavy thunk on the trunk lid, metal on metal, right over her head. The rodeo rider, threatening to shoot her. His weight on the lid.

  She wanted to scream Peter, but she didn’t.

  It would be just a scream. It would change nothing.

  Surprise was all she had, her only advantage. The fact that they thought she was silenced and helpless, trussed up like a chicken in a pot.

  She reached for the trunk release. Tightened her grip on her little knife, readied her finger on the pepper spray. She’d push her way out, goddamn it.

  Then she heard him say it. Take me, he said. Take me instead. Please, I’ll do whatever you want.

  It filled her again, a heavy wash of sorrow and regret, like a faucet filling a flawed vessel to overflowing.

  She had put him in this position. Of sacrifice. For her.

  But she could still do something to save him. To save them both.

  Not quite yet.

  But soon.

  She kept herself ready.

  41

  Peter.” Lewis had a warning in his voice. “Don’t do this. We don’t even know she’s in there.”

  Dixon swiveled his eyeballs to look at Peter, his pistol still pointed unwaveringly at Lewis.

  “Lieutenant Ash,” he said. “The girl is in the trunk. I promise you that. And she is unharmed.”
r />   Lewis stood ten yards into the parking lot with the shotgun in firing position. He couldn’t miss at that distance. Leonard crouched against the back of the Kia, the fat-bodied machine pistol barrel-down against the trunk. Peter with the Winchester still raised, but his eye no longer at the sights.

  Rain coming steadily down. Thunder rattling the cheap motel windows.

  Each of them ready to kill or be killed.

  Peter could see Leonard’s eyes and the top of his cannonball head and his raised elbow and part of the hand holding the machine pistol with its long, ugly magazine.

  If it was the small magazine, it would hold thirty rounds, and empty in a second and a half, a wild spray of rounds.

  He wasn’t going to risk June’s life on a snap shot with the Winchester, a gun he’d never fired.

  “Lewis, don’t shoot. Dixon, we can work this out.”

  “I’m not trading you for the girl, Lieutenant,” Dixon said. “I want that package of seeds and this girl’s my leverage. Where are the seeds?”

  “I can take you,” Peter said. “Leave June here with Lewis. It’s not far. You and I and Leonard can go in our car. It’s a black Jeep, right around the corner. I’ll give up my weapon. You have my word, if June stays here, I’ll give you the package.”

  “Hell no,” Leonard said. “Here’s how it’s gonna go. I’m gonna take the girl in the car. I can shoot into the trunk just as easily from the driver’s seat. You there, boyfriend, you’re gonna take the colonel in the Jeep. The jig with the shotgun stays behind in the parking lot.”

  “Not happening,” Lewis said. “No way that ends well.”

  Peter felt himself at the edge of a bottomless pit. The chasm yawning beneath him.

  “There’s no way any of this ends well,” he said. “The only thing that matters is June. I accept your terms. Lewis stays behind. Leonard takes the lead in the car. I follow with Dixon in the Jeep. I’ll drive and give him step-by-step directions to relay to you over the phone as we go.”

  Dixon nodded. “That works. But no police. This is private.”