‘The A-Team,’ Gordon said, already moving. ‘Try to keep up.’
‘One for you,’ Frost said, circulating around the room, handing a set of disposable plastic flex cuffs to each person not already wearing a shoulder sling. ‘One for you. One for you. Aaand one for you. Everybody put those on. Nice and snug. My associate, Lucius, will be available for those who need special assistance. He’ll also be performing final inspections.’
Charley’s eyes still looked red and wet, but he’d pulled himself together. He looked at the restraints, then at Ben.
Ben sat at the edge of the bed, breathing through his mouth, trying to will himself back to clarity. His eyes wouldn’t stay focused, although that seemed almost academic, given that they’d swollen halfway shut anyway. His right hand – also now swelling to cartoonish proportions – throbbed in syncopation with his shattered, blood-plugged nose.
He nodded to Charley. ‘Do what he says.’
‘That’s excellent parenting,’ Frost agreed.
‘Get bent,’ Ben told him nasally.
Lucius stepped over, casually swinging his good arm, clobbering Ben once more with his pistol. There came another sharp burst of tooth-rattling pain; the room went dark again, then wobbled back into focus. In the meantime, he’d slid off the bed, on to his knees. The back of his scalp burned as if seared by a hot iron. He could feel warmth trickling down the back of his neck.
Ben heard Charley before he saw him – he was wild-eyed, fighting against Anabeth, who’d wrapped him up tightly in her arms, holding him back. She whispered something in his ear, trying to calm him.
‘Lucius,’ Frost said. ‘If you’re not careful, you’re going to bend your last gun.’
‘I got two more in the trunk still.’
‘I stand corrected.’
Anabeth helped a still-vibrating Charley into his cuffs. ‘Malcom, you can’t think we’re going to get very far in that heap outside.’
‘I was beginning to have my doubts, now that you mention it. Lucky for us, a fresh new vehicle has arrived just in time.’
Francesca said, ‘Who, me? My car only seats five.’ She held her own cuffs away from her on the end of an index finger, looking at them as if they were Charley’s dirty undies.
‘No problem,’ Lucius said. He pressed the muzzle of his gun to Ben’s head. ‘Got more people than we need anyway.’
Charley shouted, ‘Nopleasedon’t!’
‘Lucius.’
‘Boss.’
‘While I can’t fault your logic, we’ve been over this. Our mission may still benefit from a certain amount of redundancy in personnel.’
Lucius swung the gun up and pointed it at Francesca instead. ‘Anything we need her for?’
Now Charley’s voice jumped up a register: ‘No!!’
Ben saw the panic in his eyes, saw the way he twisted against the cuffs, and something sparked in his jangled brain – two bare wires accidentally rubbing together. He remembered the strange look that had passed across Charley’s face this morning, back in Christine’s kitchen, at the mention of Francesca’s name. Suddenly, as Ben found himself contemplating Francesca Montecito as if through Charley’s eyes, something became perfectly, dismally clear to him. He thought: Ohhhh, no.
Forget about guns and handcuffs and lurching mud monsters. Ben tried to imagine what the poor kid must be going through already. He certainly didn’t need to try very hard to remember what it felt like to be fourteen. What would he have thought of Francesca Montecito at that age?
He’d have been utterly, hopelessly besotted, that was what. Now he tried to imagine the added torture of being forced to live in the same house with her, day in and day out. As instant, circumstantial siblings. Pushed together by forces completely beyond his control. Poor, poor Charley. What had they done to him?
Francesca, for her part, seemed remarkably unfazed by a gun in her face. ‘Who else is gonna drive?’
‘I bet we can manage.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ she said. ‘Good luck with that.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means my dad hooked up the Sube with fingerprint start. So I wouldn’t get carjacked.’
Lucius snorted. ‘So all we need’s a finger, then.’
Francesca lost her smirk.
Frost chuckled, patting his operative on his non-bandaged shoulder. ‘I know it’s silly to get attached, but I like her.’
‘Yeah,’ Lucius agreed. ‘It does seem silly.’
Anabeth took Charley’s face in her hands, spoke a few quiet words to him, then left him standing alone as she stepped over to crouch next to Ben. She looked him in the eyes as she helped him on with his cuffs, conveying an unspoken version of the same message she’d just given Charley: I said let me handle this. Then she did her own cuffs, first using one hand to zip in the other, then the other hand by itself, pulling the strap tight with her teeth.
‘We’re ready to go,’ she said. ‘I’ll sit on Ben’s lap. Reuben will be out for who knows how long – we’ll cuff him while he’s sleeping and he can curl up behind us in the cargo hatch. Francesca drives, leaving you and Mr Personality free to ride herd. There’s no problem here, Malcom. Absolutely none at all.’
‘The Subaru people ought to put you in a television commercial,’ Frost said. ‘Shall we?’
Lucius transferred the gun to his sling hand and grabbed Francesca by the meat of her arm. ‘We’ll make sure the coast is clear. Get all settled in.’
‘I still need the keys,’ Francesca said.
‘What happened to fingerprint start?’
‘It’s aftermarket shit. I still need to turn the ignition on for it to work.’
Lucius sighed. He held the gun on her while he dug in his front pocket. ‘You make any kinda move I don’t like, I’ll make you stop making it. Hear?’
‘Loud and clear.’
‘Good girl.’ He tossed her the keys.
Francesca laughed. ‘God, you’re so easy.’
In one deft motion, she flicked the key ring, flipped the attached pepper spray canister into her palm, and triggered it right in his face.
TWENTY-TWO
For approximately the next seven to ten seconds, Room 103 at the River Bend Inn and Suites became part cage match, part crucible, and part comedy of the absurd. The whole thing seemed to develop in slow motion, yet somehow it was over before Ben fully recognized that he’d participated.
First, the big man who answered to ‘Lucius’ bellowed and stumbled back, clawing at his eyes with his free hand. Francesca used the opportunity to plant the laces of her sneakers in his crotch. He grunted and stooped, wheezing, still wiping at his face, now glistening with tears and mucus. Ben sat blinking for a moment, first in surprise, then at the first tendrils of pepper fumes as they reached his eyes.
He saw Frost move with unnerving speed and agility. The man’s long, gangly limbs seemed to gain extra segments, unfolding and working in disjointed concert as he flew across the room like some great mechanical buzzard. He grabbed Charley with one hand, using the other to backhand Francesca to the floor. Her keys flew, jingling to the thin carpet as she sprawled backward over a chair. She landed in the corner with a yelp and a thud.
In the same moment, Ben launched himself from the floor, going straight for the bigger man’s gun hand.
Lucius – even with half his total number of arms out of commission and a face full of capsicum foam – made a firm obstacle. Ben, on the other hand, made something less than an unstoppable force even on a good day, let alone in his current condition. He came out on the short end of the collision he’d engineered, knocking the wind out of himself on impact and bouncing harmlessly away.
But the gun came with him, clutched in his swollen, cuff-bound grip like a priceless artifact. From somewhere he heard a desperate, glottal croaking sound, had a peripheral awareness of Anabeth leaping on Frost’s back like a monkey climbing a tree … whipping her bound hands over his head … choking him from behind with her own cuffs.
Meanwhile, Lucius stripped his sling and tossed it aside and stood over Ben like a grizzly rising up on its hind legs. Riding a surge of adrenaline, Ben forced himself to ignore the bothersome fact that he couldn’t breathe. He rolled on to his back, pointed the gun at the center of the big man’s chest, and pulled the trigger three times: splurt-splurt-splurt.
His first shot gouged a long, splintered hole in the headboard of the bed. The second round shattered the lamp on the far side table. Only the third round found its mark – sort of – clipping Lucius high on his previously injured shoulder, knocking him back a step.
Lucius took one look at the red flower blooming on his hospital t-shirt, then re-zeroed his attention on Ben. His inflamed, snot-slick face twisted into a mask of such pure rage – such undiluted hatred – that Ben definitely would have shot him again, or at least tried his best, had he not been in the process of passing out from lack of oxygen himself. The weight of the gun seemed to double, then triple, then became a fifty-pound dumbbell in his aching hand. He gasped and gulped for air. Tiny lights buzzed in the corners of his vision like gnats.
Then Lucius was on him, roaring. He planted a knee in Ben’s chest. Clamped a hand around his throat. Twisted the gun out of his hands by the barrel.
Ben had enough time to think: This is it. He had enough time to register the sensation of his ribcage compressing beneath his opponent’s bull weight. Enough time to become familiar with the unforgettable taste combination of oil and gunpowder, time to experience the invasive finality of a gun barrel in his mouth. He had time to hear screams in the hazy distance, time to think: Charley.
Or maybe it was only in retrospect that he had time to think any of those things. Maybe he’d made all of it up in his mind, retelling the story after the fact.
All Ben could say for sure, in the very last moment before he checked out for good, was that everything changed suddenly, completely, and for no clear reason he could discern.
First, the crushing weight disappeared. The vise around his throat disappeared. Ben drew in a rattling breath; the first sweet sip of oxygen touched his foundering lungs, opening his throat like a shot of epinephrine. With it, his vision cleared.
He looked up to see Lucius sitting back on his heels, slapping at his own neck as if swatting a mosquito. Frost’s thug pulled his hand away, looked at the odd tuft of orange pinched between his fingers.
Then he looked down at his left forearm and saw another orange puff stuck to his skin. He brushed it away and winced as he lifted the arm, plucking a third orange puff from his blood-drenched t-shirt, just beneath his armpit.
Then he looked toward the bathroom.
Reuben Wasserman stood in the open doorway, brandishing a strange-looking pistol of his own. Where he’d gotten it, Ben had no idea. Where he’d come from, Ben had no idea. But he’d obviously come back in through the bathroom window, the same way he’d escaped in the first place.
‘You stupid motherfu—’ Lucius started to say, just as Francesca rose up behind him and smashed the remaining bedside lamp over his skull.
Anabeth disentangled herself and leapt up from the floor, where Frost lolled, belly-up, like a fresh cadaver. Except that Ben could see the son of a bitch still breathing. Instead of finishing the job, Abe rushed to Wasserman’s side. ‘Reuben!’
Reuben Wasserman staggered past her, into the room. He pointed the pistol down at Frost and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He tried it again: still nothing. Just empty clicks.
No more darts.
‘Huh,’ he said. He looked straight down the barrel of the pistol and clicked the trigger three or four more times in his own face. Then his arm fell. The gun hung loosely at his side. He looked around the room. ‘What happened just now?’
‘Reuben, honey.’ Abe helped him over toward the bed. ‘Lean on me. That’s the way. How do you feel?’
‘OK, I guess.’ He waggled the pistol. ‘I must be getting immune or something. This stuff hardly works now.’
Then he pitched face down on to the bed and started to snore.
‘Well,’ Anabeth said. ‘OK, then.’
Charley hurried over to Francesca. Abe snatched Frost’s jet injector, shot him in the neck with it, and hurried over to Ben. They both stopped in their tracks at the unmistakable shick-clack of a shotgun slide racking up and back.
‘OK, all you assholes get down on the floor with them others,’ a new voice said.
‘He’s not answering,’ Jeremy said.
Gordon sat at the lights at Douglas and Tenth, drumming his fingers impatiently, yearning for the bridge just beyond the intersection, waiting to carry them over the river. ‘Call Abe.’
‘I’m trying her,’ Devon said from the back seat. ‘She’s not answering either.’
The light changed. Gordon stomped the gas and popped the clutch. Jeeter’s sister’s car, a base-model subcompact, still had no guts to speak of. When they returned it to her, he’d advise her to spring at least for the turbo-charged two-liter next time. Miles per gallon were a crock of shit. This thing was like driving a sewing machine.
But at least it was a set of wheels. ‘Try ’em again,’ he said.
‘Obviously.’
‘Don’t mind him,’ Jeremy muttered, holding the phone to his ear. ‘He hasn’t had his afternoon feeding.’
‘I heard that.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re such an asshole.’
‘Somebody has a full diaper.’
‘Just keep trying,’ Gordon said, thinking, how does McLaren keep ranking these dipshits 2 and 3?
Ben looked up to see a scrawny guy in a faded River Bend Inn polo shirt splotched with food stains. The guy had a patchy red beard, a wad of chaw plugged into his cheek, and a twelve-gauge plugged against his shoulder.
Anabeth raised her bound hands. ‘We’re the good guys.’
‘Those cops across the way can figure that all out,’ the guy said. ‘I figure you’re the ones they must be looking for anyway. Meantime?’ He waggled the gun barrel. ‘On the floor like I said.’
Everybody looked to Abe for guidance. Ben was already on the floor. He’d swallowed so much blood in the past ten minutes that he feared he was about to be sick again. Heard a muffled buzzing: somewhere, Gordon’s prepaid was ringing again, just like it had been doing every couple minutes since he’d hung up on Christine.
‘Wherever that phone is, let it go,’ the motel day manager said. ‘You three: on the floor. I’m really not gonna say it again.’
Abe nodded. Charley and Francesca got down on their knees, then their bellies. Then, over on the dresser, Abe’s phone started vibrating.
‘That one, too,’ the manager said.
‘No problem,’ Abe said. She got on her knees next to Frost. Instead of going face down like the teenagers, however, she started digging through Frost’s pockets. ‘What’s your name, Red?’
‘None of your business. And whatever the hell you’re doing, knock it off.’
‘No problem. I just need to show you something.’
Red’s voice gained a nervous tremble as he stepped further into the room. ‘Look, I don’t want to shoot a girl, OK? But I will if you make me.’
‘It’s important. I promise.’
The phones fell silent. Then Abe’s chimed audibly: incoming text.
Red glanced over, then back at Abe. Ben saw him flick off the safety with his thumb. ‘I’m gonna count to three, now. Seriously.’
Ben marshaled every last pitiful gram of strength he had left and struggled unsteadily to his feet. Red wheeled on him, eyes going wide, trying to keep track of Abe and Ben at the same time. ‘Stop right there!’
Ben raised his hands. ‘We’re already cuffed. See? You’ve got us right where you want us.’
Red raised the gun an inch. ‘If you don’t get back down I’ll drop you down. One. Two …’
While he was counting, Abe moved quickly, silently, sidling up beside him
. She held some kind of capsule in her fingers. Ben watched her break the capsule open with her thumb and pass it beneath Red’s nose.
Red flinched, then reared back, seized by a sudden, powerful sneeze. Abe grabbed the shotgun out of his hands before he could accidently pull the trigger. She leaned the gun safely against the bed as Red doubled over, hands on his knees, sneezing again.
‘Gesundheit,’ she said, patting his back.
Red straightened, looking disoriented. He raised his chin, mouth open wide, caught in limbo between the last sneeze and the next.
Then it passed. He blinked at Abe.
‘Red, sweetie, I don’t know what they’re paying you,’ she told him, ‘but it can’t be enough. Listen to me, now.’
TWENTY-THREE
Red used the folding knife clipped to his belt to cut their cuffs, then thanked them for staying at the River Bend Inn and Suites. Then he wandered back to the front office, seeming to enjoy the lovely autumn weather.
If the River Bend had the privilege of serving any other guests this October weekend, none made themselves present to inquire as to the mid-afternoon ruckus in Room 103. As to Room 103 itself, the rest of them moved quickly, first employing Francesca’s unused cuffs to bind Lucius and Frost together by the wrist through the bed frame. Then they gathered all the phones, Francesca’s keys, Lucius’s gun, Red’s gun, and Reuben Wasserman.
Of these items, Anabeth caught Ben with only one of them, a few minutes after he’d left the others arranging Wasserman in the backseat of the Subaru outside.
The honest truth was that he’d come back into the room only long enough to clean himself up. Ben hardly recognized the defeated prizefighter looking back at him in the bathroom mirror. He soaked a towel in warm water and went to work, doing his best to dab the thick, congealed impasto of blood and snot and whatever else from his muzzle.
It was so much fun that he’d ended up staying longer.
‘We’re all ready,’ Anabeth eventually called, hustling back into the room. ‘Are you coming or … Ben?’ She stopped. ‘What are you doing?’
What he’d been doing was standing over a supernatural arms dealer and a one-armed hitman, pointing the silenced pistol at Malcom Frost’s hanging head. Trying to work up the guts to pull the trigger.
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