Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5)

by JC Andrijeski

  If he was calculating correctly, they should have about three hundred more meters to go in their current direction. Then, if they could find a way to follow the crates to the left, heading roughly northwest, they should be able to make another hard right going east after another few hundred meters and make it back to the parking lot. From there, they’d have to break into a car. He remembered seeing a number of older models he should be able to hot-wire fairly easily.

  Still, it was a lot of shoulds.

  By the time he’d brought them to the end of the first row, the field of play had gone totally silent. Black was sweating through the uniform, probably as much from stress as the running. Once he exited out the end of the row, the wind hit him in a cold blast from over the Pacific. Fighting off a shiver, he ran them left down another aisle between crates and then into a smaller crevice to keep them from being visible.

  Going that direction, the southern-blowing wind grew stronger.

  It was cold enough to make Black’s eyes water as it tunneled through the narrow opening, whistling in the quiet.

  His radar was going off again.

  When he reached the end of the next aisle of crates, he came to a stop.

  Mozar and Rodrigo, who’d been running right behind him, crashed into his back.

  “Why are we stopping?” Mozar’s voice was loud enough that Black jumped.

  Turning, he glared at the detective, telling him with his eyes to shut the fuck up.

  Mozar frowned, but seemed to get the message. His eyes showed him to be a lot more present than he had been over by the car.

  The next time he spoke, it was a lot lower.

  “I want my gun back, Black. Now.”

  That time, Black didn’t even bother to turn around. Behind him, he heard the SWAT guy smack Mozar in the back of the head.

  “Thut the fuck up,” he said, deliberately lisping the “S.”

  Apparently Black wasn’t the only one feeling jumpy.

  Peering out into the wider aisle, he looked up and down in both directions. He looked up, too, scanning the top of the storage crates, and down the smaller aisle straight ahead of them, on the other side of the lane.

  He couldn’t see anything. Not like that probably meant a fucking thing.

  He listened instead. Even using his seer hearing, nothing made a sound or moved, apart from a few pieces of plastic attached to crates that rustled and whipped in the wind. Black could taste the salt on his tongue now. He could also smell the overpowering brine from the surrounding ocean. They had to be close to the lot. He remembered it standing right by the water. Only the access road leading off the island and the train tracks stood between it and the open ocean.

  Still feeling that alarm going off in the back of his mind, he glanced back at the SWAT officer closest to him. The man met his gaze and shrugged. He had both hands on the automatic rifle and looked ready to use it.

  Even without his sight, Black understood the other man’s meaning.

  He felt it, too. Something was wrong.

  But they definitely couldn’t stay where they were.

  Which is more or less what the shrug conveyed.

  Nodding perceptibly, Black exhaled, trying to decide if they should backtrack. Then he decided that if they got trapped in the crates, things would only get worse. They were better off trying to outrun them. They still had a chance at that, given that the other team would have had to reconfigure their people after that first assault, especially those on top of the crates.

  Taking another breath, he motioned to the left with his gun, indicating he wanted the guy to cover him. Then he looked at Mozar and Rodrigo. Unholstering Mozar’s gun, he handed it to him, grip-first.

  “You two wait here.” He motioned with his chin towards the big guy in the kevlar suit, murmuring even quieter. “Let him pass. Quiet.”

  Mozar frowned––apparently enough of himself again to not like Black giving him orders––but he didn’t argue. Rodrigo nodded too, his brown eyes still overly wide, his face so pale and taut he looked like he might pass out if he didn’t move soon.

  Hopefully that would get him to run faster.

  Black wanted all of them to sprint for the lot. Whoever was following them probably figured out where he was taking them by now, so they didn’t have much time. So yeah, he wanted to run... but he wanted to check out the aisle first.

  They hadn’t wanted to kill him before. Maybe his luck would hold.

  He tried not to think about how Miri would react to that logic.

  “I’ll go,” he said to the big guy.

  When the guy frowned, Black held up a hand.

  “Cover me. Then follow me. When I give the signal, everybody run.”

  That time, Mozar and Rodrigo exchanged looks.

  Black decided he didn’t give a shit. Taking a breath, he walked out of the narrow aisle.

  He stayed in a crouch, gun out as he aimed his feet right. Moving fast, he closed the distance to the next break in the crates as quickly as possible, keeping to the metal walls on his right side, so he could disappear back under cover if need be.

  Nothing moved.

  He still didn’t hear a damned thing.

  After he’d made it about thirty feet, he glanced back at the opening he’d left behind. The big SWAT guy stood there, covering him from the other end. Mozar and Rodrigo peered out of the opening between the crates while he watched.

  Black saw the woman in position behind Rodrigo and Mozar, and the giant Latino guy who’d been holding their six jammed up next to her.

  Relieved they’d all done more or less exactly what he’d asked, Black used hand motions to get them to follow. Mozar left the opening first, followed by Rodrigo, the tattooed Latino guy, then the woman with the dark eyes. The big African-American guy remained where he was, using his gun to motion for the others to go ahead of him.

  Again, exactly what Black wanted.

  Once he saw Mozar, Rodrigo and the two SWAT agents behind them begin to follow him at a fast jog, he began running faster, aiming the gun down as he lengthened his strides.

  He could see the parking lot now.

  If he could get there ahead of the others, he might be able to break into a car before they got there... minimize all of their time out in the open.

  Otherwise, the lot was another damned turkey shoot.

  The thought got him to lengthen his strides... enough that he pulled a dozen or so meters out ahead of the rest of them.

  Surrounded by rows of tall crates, the parking lot was brightly lit by orange-tinted lights on tall poles. He scanned the visible cars through the small window he had, looking for one old enough that it wouldn’t be a nightmare to hot-wire, big enough for all of them to fit into, and with enough engine in case these assholes decided to take chase.

  At least ten minutes had passed since this whole thing started.

  Where the fuck were the Port Police?

  And why no sirens? Someone must have heard the gunshots by now.

  Really, a lot of someone’s should have heard them.

  They’d been close enough to the main admin building that every person in there must have come to the window to see what was going on.

  He was less than ten yards from the end of the row of crates now.

  Focusing on the pool of light from a waif-thin street lamp that started just past the opening, he tried to decide if he should keep to the shadows until he found a car, or just take his chances and run out into the lot...

  When something stung him in the back of the neck.

  He slapped it instinctively, without slowing his pace.

  ...Then stumbled.

  His mind lagged, processing the sequence slowly.

  He hadn’t lost his balance.

  His legs just... stopped working. They continued to move through space and time, just totally outside of his mind’s control. It happened so fast, it felt like being hit with a sledgehammer in the upper thighs... or maybe a strong gust of wind, since he felt noth
ing at all. No pain. It was more like someone just folded his legs up like a blanket... only without his permission.

  His fingers loosened, losing the gun.

  Everything got really quiet.

  Even the shouting he heard in the distance seemed really far away.

  More sounds grew increasingly distant in that fog––a distant patter of automatic weapon fire, a man yelling... someone saying his name. He heard every layer of the chaos around him but couldn’t turn towards it, couldn’t slow his momentum, or even tell if it came from outside of him or from somewhere inside his mind.

  There was a brief, lingering silence, an absence of any thought or sound...

  Then his shoulder and arm plowed roughly into the asphalt.

  He heard something pop as he drove into the ground, somehow making it there ahead of his face and hands and even his knees, despite the zero resistance.

  Pain exploded through his side, but that felt far away too.

  For a long-feeling few minutes, he just lay there, unable to move.

  His breaths textured the silence. More gunfire. He stared at the asphalt next to his face, the grains of light in the dust. Salt and copper seemed to cover his lips and tongue.

  Then someone was there. Someone was trying to turn him over.

  For the barest instant, he was sure it was Miriam.

  “GET UP! GET UP!”

  Gloved fingers gripped his arm...

  “GET UP! WHOEVER YOU ARE, GET UP! WE NEED YOU!”

  Then... for the first time... there was a loud sound.

  Instantly, those fingers on his arm loosened.

  Black heard a gasping scream, directly overhead.

  It was a woman’s scream.

  In that faraway tunneling of his mind and light, as his vision grayed to a deep black in what felt like a single beat of his heart––it was Miriam.

  It was Miriam who screamed.

  Horror exploded through him.

  A fear that felt primal in nature, so violent he couldn’t think past it.

  Solonik. The Templar.

  He couldn’t get there. He couldn’t get there in time.

  The fear was so intense his mind froze into its own Condition Black. Pure instinct kicked in, survival... fear of death, but not only of his. His mind flared outward as he fought to pull himself back, scrabbling and clawing for consciousness, for control, using every ounce of his strength to move any part of his body...

  MIRIAM! He screamed for her in the dark. MIRI... MIRI...!

  He managed to open his hand, to grip it back into a fist, to reach for her...

  Then, everything around him disappeared.

  Eight

  THE MIRROR CRACK’D

  I LOOKED UP, feeling a distant warning jab in my mind. I realized only then just how lost I’d been. Like coming out of a trance, I suddenly saw the world again.

  Reality crashed down around me.

  Seeing the car looming ahead of me, I slammed on the brakes, skidding the MacLaren to a fishtailing stop. Thanks to the insanely responsive brakes, I managed to halt a bare inch before I would have plowed Black’s insanely expensive car into the bumper of an LAPD black and white. Someone left the damn thing blocking the whole mouth of the lot’s driveway, driverless and with its blue and white bars flashing overhead.

  I still had the phone to my ear.

  Dex, one of Black’s employees, was talking a mile a minute.

  “I don’t give a fuck!” I snarled. “You need to get down here right now!”

  “We’re coming, Miriam. I’m telling you that we need people up here, too, running the intel. And we already have people there, Miriam... they’re with the cops now.”

  I jammed the car into reverse, craning my neck around as I backed up the MacLaren at around thirty miles an hour. I looked for some way to try and get around the cruiser, but he’d left only a few feet on either side. Clenching my jaw, I suppressed the urge to plow into the damned thing and use the MacLaren to shove it all the way into the lot. Then I heard something else Dex said on the phone and glared back at the receiver.

  “Stop telling me that you can’t get here tonight! They took him. Do you get that?”

  “Miriam, calm down...”

  “Don’t fucking start with me, Dex!” I snapped. “If you give me another of those ‘Black can take care of himself’ speeches, I swear to God I’m going to rip your lungs out when I see you and make you eat them!”

  Dex fell silent. I could almost hear him take a breath.

  “I wasn’t going to say that, Miri. I wasn’t. I swear to God. We’re taking this very seriously.”

  “Good. Then get on the goddamned plane. Now.”

  “Miri, we’re already stocking one, but––”

  I’d had enough, though.

  Hanging up the phone, I stared at the different sides of the lot, thinking there had to be another entrance. Finally, I gave up and yanked the steering wheel to the right. Executing a quick turn, I parked the car about a foot from the curb, more or less perpendicular to the black and white. Using a voice command on the emergency brake, I turned off the ignition by pressing the big blue button to the right of the steering column and jerked on the handle of the car door. The door slid up smoothly, still moving as I exited under it.

  Of course, I didn’t know how to close the damned thing. Finally, I barked a command at the dashboard and the door began lowering on its own.

  I hadn’t figured out Black’s keyless-smart-yet-also-manual car yet, but at least he’d programmed it to accept commands from both of us. The MacLaren had keys, too, although I hadn’t yet figured out how to use them.

  Knowing Black, those had some kind of tech component built in, as well.

  Squeezing myself around the police sedan, I walked through the gate of the chain-link fence and toward the group of officers in uniforms and black kevlar. They all stood in a pretty small area, clustered inside two rows of parked city cars, as well as two armored vans that stood nearby with their back doors open. All of the cops looked armed to the teeth, and from their formation, I had to assume they were about to leave.

  I scanned faces in the group until I found Mozar standing next to a Latino man I didn’t recognize. Both of them were wrapped in blankets and looked beat up.

  Before I could open my mouth, Mozar turned his head.

  He locked gazes with me and his eyes widened.

  I couldn’t help noticing that his skin was paper white, almost inhumanly white. His hand shook when he raised it with a water bottle, and he seemed to have trouble drinking from the mouth of it before lowering the bottle again.

  Adrenaline kickback, most likely.

  “Miriam,” he said, his voice rough. “This is a staging... you can’t be here right now.”

  My jaw hardened to stone. “Go fuck yourself, Mozar.”

  A few officers turned their heads, eyebrows raised.

  A few of them smiled, too, almost involuntarily.

  Mozar shook his head. “Miriam, I’m sorry, but I’m very serious. You’re not cleared to be here right now. You have to leave.”

  “No... I don’t have to leave. You have to clear me. Now. I’m coming with you.”

  He shook his head, vehement, glancing at an older man with gray hair wearing black kevlar. “That’s not possible. This isn’t an LAPD operation anymore. We’re supporting Home-Sec in this. I couldn’t clear you even if I wanted to... and the fact that you’re the wife of...” He seemed to realize what he was saying and trailed.

  If it was possible, his skin whitened even more.

  “Look, Miri. We’re doing everything we can. You have to trust us––”

  “Where’s Evan?” I demanded. At Mozar’s blank look, I raised my voice. “Hawking! Where the fuck is he?”

  “Miriam, you’re shouting...”

  “I know I’m fucking shouting! I’m going to keep shouting until someone answers my goddamned questions!”

  Two sets of hands caught hold of me on either side. Witho
ut thought, I writhed under their grip, struggling violently to free myself. I elbowed one of them hard enough in the face that he let out an ooof sound, right before he moved behind me, renewing his grip, a lot more tightly that time. When I looked up, I saw two men I didn’t know, both of them huge, both looking at me with regretful, apologetic looks on their faces.

  Both had smoke smudges on their faces like Mozar, and looked like they’d already been in some kind of firefight. They were still holding me when the older man in the armor motioned for the rest of the group to head for their cars, right before he looked at Mozar.

  “Keep her here,” he said, his eyes warning. He glanced at me, then at the two men holding me while I struggled. “All of you,” he said. “Just calm the fuck down. We’re on this.” He looked directly at my face. “We’ll get your husband back, ma’am. Don’t worry.”

  “Like hell you will!” I was still fighting to get free. “You have a mole in your department! For all I know, you’re him. I can’t trust you! I can’t trust any of you!”

  The man’s eyes grew openly startled.

  Then, as he continued to look at me, that surprise turned to pity, right before he aimed a much harder glare at Mozar. Motioning between himself and the homicide detective, the Homeland Security agent spoke in a low threat.

  “You and me. We’re having words when I get back. I’ve already told your captain the same.”

  Mozar didn’t answer, not even to nod.

  Then the older guy in the kevlar walked away, not looking back. The rest of his team followed. I was still staring after them when a women’s face slid directly into my view, blocking my line of sight.

  She had dark brown eyes, but they were sharp, almost inhumanly intense.

  “Hey.” She caught hold of my arm. “You’re Miriam, right? His wife?”

  “I don’t fucking know you.” I glared past her at Mozar. “Where’s Hawking? Is he still out there? Is he working with Homeland Security now?”

  “Hawking is dead,” the woman said.

  I turned, staring at her.