by C.S. Stinton
* *
Luis Navarro checked every shadow in his apartment block’s car park, and only opened his car door when he was confident all was quiet.
This was the most dangerous point. The weakest security on his ride home, the trip between his vehicle and the elevator. The car’s security had been seen to at the precinct, and at the precinct he was safe. His apartment had the best security money - which was not in short supply these days - could buy. But he couldn’t run around improving his building manager’s work without a good excuse.
Normally it didn’t bother him. But the last two days had been, for lack of a better word, mixed.
Vincente had got away, Jovak had got away, Beyer had been easily deflected by blame being placed on Ramirez, and while the loss of the rifles hadn’t pleased his employers, it could have gone a lot worse. But the Marshals weren’t dead. One was in hospital and he didn’t fancy making a play for her while the press crawled over the place and anyway, she wasn’t a problem.
Ramirez was the problem. Navarro couldn’t bring himself to believe the Commander had been spooked by the failure and her partner’s injury and was giving up; she was still on-world. She had to know, had to suspect. Harrigan would have told her.
But what was she waiting for?
He tried to not let these thoughts consume him as his footsteps rang out across the gloomy car park. They echoed off the shadows and he didn’t take his hand off his holstered gun the whole way. Only when he was in the elevator, humming his way upwards, did he relax.
It was just nerves. He’d had a perfectly fine day. Nothing was going to go wrong.
There was a young woman he didn’t recognise heading down his corridor when he got to his floor. Pretty, blonde, suited. She was probably the latest girlfriend of that degenerate two doors down from him, the rich banker who worked three hours a day and gave up on the office for a liquid lunch. He would sneer at him when they passed in the corridor, like a cop living in this building made the place look untidy.
Navarro gave the woman a grin, but didn’t linger as he headed for his front door. He wouldn’t feel safe until he was inside, and relaxed when she turned the corner for the stairway. He swiped his card against his apartment’s reader and swung the door open when the light on the lock turned green.
‘Lights.’ Nothing happened as he stepped inside. Navarro put his hand to his gun again. ‘Lights?’
Then the darkness moved, and a figure stepped from the shrouded lounge into the hallway. Light spilling in from the corridor reflected off a glint in their hand, and he flinched until he realised it was plastic, not metal. An ID card, not a gun.
‘Lieutenant Navarro, you should come quietly,’ said Sara Ramirez.
He scowled. ‘You‘ve got to be kidding me, Ramirez,’ he said. ‘What‘re you going to do, haul me down to the precinct and expect them to believe you when it’s your word against mine? They think the other night was a blunder of your bad planning.’
‘I‘m not taking you to the precinct,’ said Ramirez, and Navarro started at movement from the bathroom door halfway down the hall. For a moment he’d thought it was Harrigan - but it wasn’t. The figure stood there was bigger, broader, bald and bearded and holding a huge, double-barrelled scattergun in one hand. It was levelled right at him.
Navarro reached into his pocket and found the small round button that gave him so much comfort. He pushed it. ‘I‘ve just hit the panic button. Cops will be here inside of five minutes.’
Ramirez gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘Apparently those are easy to jam. So you’d be better off simply panicking.’
He tensed, then there was a footstep behind him and he whirled around. The blonde woman he’d seen in the corridor was stood in the doorway, and he went to draw his gun. But she was moving quicker than him, like a blur, and the next thing he knew his gun had gone tumbling from his grip, she was behind him with his arm twisted behind his back, and there was a tight, tight choke-hold around his neck. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was Ramirez’s voice, droning out a list of offences.
‘...conspiracy to murder an officer of the law, attempted murder, conduct unbecoming an officer of the law...’