by Candice Fox
Brassen stood nervously outside the gift shop windows, pretending to be fascinated by a postcard stand. Trinity lifted a radio off her belt and gave some commands to her team, checked on the assembly of the inner and outer cordons. Celine only had eyes for her former colleague. Even from a distance, Joe Brassen looked thin and wan compared to his usually plump, sunburned self. It was impossible that he had lost a substantial amount of weight in the days since he had been exposed, but something had loosened inside him, deflated, sagged. He wandered to the front of the gift shop and then crossed to a fairy floss stand, watching a man in a pink hat fiddling with the dispenser.
‘Teams Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, you’re all checked in,’ Trinity said. ‘Command team is good to go. Brassen, you can approach the lockers.’
Celine saw Brassen jolt at the sound of his name. He wiped his nose and mouth, a clumsy cover as he spoke into what she guessed was a collar microphone.
‘I . . . I can’t. I can’t do this. I feel sick.’
‘He looks like shit,’ Celine said. ‘He’s a sitting duck out there and he knows it. You can’t make him do this.’
‘You’re right, I can’t,’ Trinity said. ‘But he wants to be able to tell a judge that he put his life on the line to redeem himself after helping Schmitz break out of Pronghorn. It might be the difference between a life sentence and twenty-five years.’
‘I can’t do this,’ Brassen repeated.
‘He wants to back out,’ Celine said. ‘You have to let him.’
Trinity nodded to one of the women positioned by the window, who took a radio out of a pouch on her thigh and tossed it at Celine. ‘He just needs encouragement. Your time to shine, Osbourne. Do your thing.’
‘That’s why I’m here? You want me to talk him into it?’
‘You did all right the first time.’
‘Look, you’re asking me to walk him into the danger zone,’ Celine scoffed. ‘He could have a sniper lining him up as we speak. Any of those people down there could be about to—’
‘He’s wearing a vest,’ Trinity said. ‘And I’ve got five men down there within a stone’s throw of where he’s standing. See there?’ She pointed. ‘In the gift shop window? That’s one of my guys. I’ve got two guys up there, behind that screen. One guy there at the fairy floss stand. One guy over there. If anyone attacks Brassen, they’ll rush to his aid.’
‘What if the sniper—’
‘Heel, little doggy,’ Trinity snarled. ‘Just fucking heel, and do what you’re told. You remember what it felt like the last time I gave you a smack for messing me around?’
‘Yes,’ Celine groaned.
‘So, take the radio and get your friend into line before I shoot him myself.’
Celine snatched the radio. Her lip twitched with the urge to cry or smile, she wasn’t sure.
‘Brassen, it’s Celine,’ she said.
‘Celine?’
She saw Brassen turn and look around the square.
‘You’re safe, Joe,’ Celine said. Her throat felt hoarse. ‘I’m here with Trinity’s team. They’ve got everything under control. Just do what they’re telling you to do.’
‘I don’t want to die, Celine.’ Brassen wiped his brow. Celine bet he was drenched in sweat. ‘I shouldn’t have . . . I know I shouldn’t have done this. But I . . . I just . . . I’ll do the time in prison. I’ll do it. I-I-I just don’t want to die out here.’
‘Command, we’ve got a possible target,’ a voice on the radio said.
Trinity shoved Celine aside, looked towards the ticket booths. A tall, thin man in a heavy green jacket was shaking his head in refusal at a costumed parrot trying to lure him towards the free gifts.
‘This might be one of The Camp’s guys,’ Trinity said to Celine. ‘We need to get Brassen to pick up the bag.’ She held the radio to her mouth. ‘Alpha team, cover the possible target. Don’t let him come any further down the avenue.’
Celine watched as a pair of women in colourful uniforms rushed out of a restaurant with a tray of food to intercept the thin man. He stopped and started picking from their sample tray.
‘Celine?’ Brassen called. ‘Can you tell them? I want to back off.’
‘It’s too late for the ballad of the condemned,’ Trinity growled in Celine’s ear. ‘Tell him to go to the locker and, while he’s at it, stop looking around everywhere like a fucking moron. He’s going to blow our cover.’
‘Just go to the locker, Brassen,’ Celine said into the radio. ‘You’re safe. Just go.’
‘What if it’s a bomb?’ Brassen said. ‘We-we don’t know that it’s not a goddamn hand grenade tied to the inside of the locker door.’
‘He’s got a point,’ Celine said. ‘He might open that locker and blow up the entire building. What exactly do you know about what’s in that locker?’
Trinity gave a hard, rueful laugh.
‘What we know, Captain,’ she sneered, ‘is that at seven twenty-five pm, just before the park closed last night, someone in a cap, gloves and jeans paid cash at the ticket booths, came in and deposited a duffel bag in locker twenty-three. We have CCTV footage of the drop. The guy walked in, shoved the bag into the locker, slammed the door shut and locked it at the pay station. He didn’t rig it as a trap. We know that from the footage. From the length of time he spent standing in front of the locker.’
‘That’s some pretty good footage,’ Celine said. ‘Was it very clear that he—’
Celine noticed Trinity’s right hand curling into a fist.
‘Okay, okay.’ She put a hand up, pressed the button on her radio. ‘Joe, we know the locker isn’t rigged.’
‘W-what if it’s remote detonated? What if the bag’s rigged?’ Brassen said. ‘For when I open it.’
‘You’re not going to open it, genius!’ Trinity shouted into her radio. ‘Go to the locker, get the bag, turn and walk out of the park. That’s all you have to do. Now do it!’
Brassen stood frozen. Celine put the radio to her lips.
‘You’re safe,’ she said again. ‘Joe, you can do this.’
Celine watched as Joe Brassen turned from the fairy floss stand and started moving across the square like a man walking on a tightrope above a pit of fire. For years, it seemed, he walked. One foot in front of the other.
‘I’m gonna have a heart attack,’ he said. Celine watched him reaching for the keypad on the front of the locker. His breath rattled on the line. ‘I can’t breathe.’
Celine looked around the square. There were three people outside the gift shop – one perusing postcards, one talking on a cell phone, one fiddling with the lid of a water bottle. The thin man seemed to be flirting with the waitresses. In the seconds that had passed, two more people had refused the free gifts blockade and were walking down the avenue, one holding a phone to her ear, stopping by the gift shop to peruse the items there, the other heading for the toilets just inside the gates.
Brassen opened the locker. Celine held her breath.
He took down the black duffel bag. Celine saw the weight of the items inside the bag shift as it came off the shelf, sliding downwards beneath the thin fabric. Brassen gripped the straps of the bag, weighed it a little in his fist, then turned towards the building from which Celine watched him.
‘Okay.’ She heard his wet, rattling breath. ‘Okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.’
‘Turn and walk out of the park,’ Trinity said. ‘Alpha team, move out. Delta, get ready in the parking lot.’
Brassen turned towards the ticket booths at the front of the park. Celine watched him emerge from the shade of the awning that covered the wall of lockers. It seemed as if the sun hit his face like a punch. His mouth twisted, one hand rising and gripping at his chest. Brassen dropped the bag and went down on his knees, flopping on his front in the sun.
CHAPTER 33
A tearing. That’s what it felt like. Pieces coming apart. Skin ripping, blood oozing, warm and delicious. She felt it all over her body. Kerry Monahan pressed th
e phone too hard against her ear, standing outside the Rancho Salvaje gift shop, watching the man with the bag go down. She was wild-eyed, being torn apart by competing desires: wanting to stay and watch the man die, and wanting to get out of there, to pull her focus away from what she was seeing and concentrate on what she was hearing on the phone. The voice of Burke David Schmitz. The boss. The others had told her that he would personally call to listen in on the assassination, but Kerry hadn’t believed it until the phone started ringing in her pocket. She was just a kid from Michigan with big ideas about how the world should work. About self-awareness, and genetics, and peace. Now she was a killer, and the master of all killers was talking to her, of all people, telling her she was doing a good job.
She was a soldier. A warrior.
‘They’re rushing in to help,’ Kerry said. Her chest felt tight, hard, only small amounts of air getting in and out, the adrenaline zapping and tingling in her veins. ‘Jesus. They’re everywhere. There are people coming from everywhere.’
She backed up a little as men and women in tactical gear seemed to materialise from the very air, rushing in to assist the man who’d taken the bag from the locker. People she had thought were other park visitors were rushing over, too. A pair of waitresses dropped a tray and turned and ran, while the customer they’d been giving samples to stood staring at the fray.
‘Do not get snatched up,’ Burke insisted.
‘I won’t. I won’t.’
‘He’s definitely down?’ Burke said on the phone.
‘Oh, yeah, he’s down.’
‘Good,’ the boss said. ‘Good work. Get out of there. Call when you’re clear.’
The line went dead. Kerry felt herself sucked back into the present moment. The man on the ground. The woman with the black cap shaking him, yelling at him, dragging him up while others tried to push him down. They seemed like they were going to try to resuscitate him. Like they thought it was a heart attack. Kerry shifted her feet and turned to walk away, but then she saw one of the tactical squad going for the bag, the bare hand reaching for the handles, the exposed skin slipping around the fabric, and she had to stay and watch her second ever kill.
The effect of the poison on this man was almost instant. He clutched at his throat, gagged, coughed white foam onto his chest. Kerry was shivering with excitement. The first one hadn’t foamed at the mouth. She wondered why the effect was different, supposed everybody took the chemical differently. The man went down. Finally, they were coming to their senses, realising what was happening. Pushing each other away from the bag, fumbling, yelling. Kerry really had to go now. Had to force herself. She gripped her way along a railing and pushed towards the ticket booths. She treated herself to one last backwards glance at the scene she had created.
That’s when she locked eyes with the short blonde woman.
She was not part of the tactical team, but was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Kerry hadn’t noticed her in the square while she waited for the man to pick up the bag. Perhaps she had burst out of a shop or emerged from one of the roads into the square at the sight of the chaos. Kerry told herself she was okay. She had time. She walked to the ticket booths and put a hand on a turnstile.
Something made her look back again. She saw the blonde woman had started to run towards her.
Celine saw it in her eyes. The excitement. She’d seen it in the eyes of inmates before, a kind of primal ferocity that was the closest thing, she was certain, to the hunter inside every human being. The thing that liked the sight of blood and gore and death. A fight would erupt in the cell block, and while the faces of some men showed shock, horror, fear, there were some whose eyes glowed with adrenaline.
She was kneeling by Brassen in the centre of the square, which was crowded now with members of Trinity’s team, including the marshal herself, who stood directing personnel to secure the area, grab the three civilians who had made it down the avenue and drag Brassen to safety. That’s when Celine looked up and saw the girl by the gift shop.
Wild eyes. Her mouth taut, face hard, thoughts obviously whizzing through her brain. The eyes were recording everything, gathering up pleasurable memories of Brassen and the male agent’s deaths. Then the girl looked at Celine, and knew she had been made.
She ran.
‘She’s there! She’s there!’ Celine shouted.
She got up and sprinted after the girl.
The first indication that Celine wasn’t alone was a boot scraping against the back of her shoe as she ran. Celine glanced over her shoulder and saw Trinity so close behind her she could feel her body heat. Celine burst through the turnstiles after the reedy, thin teenager, who had slipped through the hands of the team members posing as ticket sellers as if she were made of smoke. She was now halfway across the parking lot. Trinity and Celine ran side by side, feet pounding on the asphalt, their breaths in unison.
They slid seamlessly into single file, sprinting between cars, a side mirror bashing against Celine’s arm as she turned into an aisle, following the bobbing shape of the girl’s head.
‘She’s going for the trees!’ Celine called. Trinity surged ahead of her, shoving her out of the way. Celine skidded to a halt at the sight of the black pistol rising in Trinity’s hands.
Two blasts. The girl stumbled and pressed on.
‘No! Stop!’ Celine grabbed at Trinity, catching her jacket briefly as she took off again. ‘She’s a kid!’
‘She’s a killer,’ Trinity huffed. Celine felt the ground beneath her feet rise, becoming concrete, then dirt, then grass. The woods swallowed them. Trinity kneeled and lined up another shot, and Celine rushed past her, unable to slow herself. She heard the crack of the gun and watched the girl tumble onto the ground in front of her.
‘Oh, god! Oh god! Oh god!’ Celine scrambled to the kid’s side and threw herself on her warm, writhing figure. ‘Don’t kill her! Trinity, please!’
‘Get off, idiot.’ Trinity grabbed Celine’s shoulder and shoved her aside. The girl was flushed pink and gasping for air, blood smeared on her pale, freckled face. Celine watched as Trinity climbed on top of the girl, straddling her.
‘What’s the target?’ Trinity said. ‘Tell me now before I put another bullet in you.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t—’
Trinity pushed the girl’s wrist against the earth, pressed her gun into the centre of her palm.
‘Trinity, please!’ Celine begged.
‘I’m not taking you into custody, little girl.’ Trinity grabbed the teenager by the throat to silence her cries. ‘I’m not spending another two days rattling around a stinking prison, bouncing threats and promises off another half-witted piece of redneck trash. You tell me now what Schmitz’s target is, or I’ll put a hole in your hand.’
‘I can’t!’ the girl screamed. ‘I don’t know—’
A gunshot. It was loud, thunderous, echoing. It rolled over Celine like a wave, thumping in her chest, pulsing in her eardrums. Trinity slumped sideways off the girl and fell near Celine’s legs. Celine wiped blood out of her eyes, gripped her way towards the girl as the second shot came whizzing past her, sputtering dirt and grass.
She gathered the shaking girl under her arm and dragged her to a small tree, which exploded almost instantly, shorn in half by another shot. Celine used the cover of the falling branches to run with the girl to different tree, then another, away from where she guessed the sniper was. As the trees began to thin before them, a huge black tactical van skidded to a halt at the edge of the shade, and Celine shoved the girl through the door just as it slid open.
The firing had stopped.
She sank to the carpeted floor, gripping the girl, the two of them still screaming as the van pulled away.
2015
He’d calmed down a little by the time they met at the table in the very back corner of Ballie’s Diner. It was the place they’d used to go to when they first moved to Mesquite, when they had grown tired of living on the road, chasing ghosts and c
ramming themselves into tiny, mouldy motel showers. Kradle arrived first, looked at the menu, which still served the blueberry pancakes she used to order before she disappeared from his life to find herself in Tibet. It was about the only thing that remained the same. The new owner had painted the place, ripped out the shelves Kradle had installed above the cash register for the last owner, and added a gelato freezer. Christine appeared in the doorway twenty-five minutes late and stood there for a moment, just looking at him across the restaurant, half-seeming as if she was going to step back out into the street and disappear again for another decade and a half without explanation.
When she finally slid into the booth, Kradle nodded to the waitress. He expected Christine to order coffee with room for milk, the way she always had, but she ordered chai tea instead with a side of hot water, in case it came too strong, he guessed.
He leaned back in his chair and drank his coffee, and waited for her to say sorry for running off on him. He’d run their conversation at the door of their house through his mind a hundred times during the night, and was sure she hadn’t said sorry yet. She’d said hi. She’d told him she went to Tibet. She’d asked to see their son. But she didn’t say sorry, and she wasn’t saying sorry now, and Kradle took a long breath because he could feel the tips of his ears getting hot again, and he knew what that meant.
‘He looked handsome,’ Christine said. ‘From what I could see.’
‘He is handsome,’ Kradle agreed. ‘And he’s smart. And he’s funny. He’s so funny he brings me to tears sometimes.’
‘I bet.’
‘He was a funny kid. A trickster.’ His words were coming out angry, as if he felt he had something to prove. ‘He used to put things in my shoes before he left for school – buttons, paperclips, notes, a whole banana one time. He sings all the time. On the worksite. At home. In the shower. He never shuts up. We don’t own a radio for work. Don’t need one. The kid knows the words to every song he’s ever heard, from show tunes to heavy metal. The past week it’s been all Etta James. Beats me why that is. It’s not my kind of stuff.’