[Holly Lin 01.0] No Shelter

by Robert Swartwood

  “I’m okay.”

  “Holly.”

  “If I go to a hospital, there will be a lot of questions. I’d prefer not to deal with that right now. Besides, I think the worst of it is just a broken rib. I can take care of that on my own.”

  I pull into the gas station on the corner, park in one of the spaces off to the side. I look around but don’t see the trio of poser nitwits anywhere.

  Shutting off the car, I lean over and open the glove box. I pull out the registration card and read Atticus the name and the address. I feel bad about stealing the car—not to mention the Taurus—but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

  “Okay,” he says. “I’ll make sure he’s contacted. Now get yourself home.”

  I take the transmitter out of my ear, turn it off. I lock the car and start walking the three long blocks home. My apartment complex doesn’t look any different. Not even at this time of morning, where the tall buildings block out the sun and swallow my apartment in shadows.

  As I walk, my hand brushes the slight bulge in my pocket. Besides Delano’s flash drive, it’s the one thing I pulled off Zane before we left the alleyway: a cell phone. And saved inside on the recent calls list are only three numbers: my apartment, the cell phone Zane had waiting for me in my car, and another number. This last has a 011 + 33 in front of it, meaning a foreign exchange, and it’s been taking everything I have not to dial the number and see who’s on the other end.

  Despite what Atticus says, I do have self-control.

  For some reason I’m expecting the elevator to be out of service again. It’s not. I think this is a good thing, a nice reward, and even though the thing is so slow it would be faster to take the stairs, I ride it up to the third floor, my body wearing down now the closer I am to my bed, becoming heavier, weaker.

  I reach for my keys but realize I don’t have them on me, that in fact when I left I didn’t even lock the door.

  I step inside, shut the door, turn around and place my forehead against the wood.

  I close my eyes. Take a deep breath.

  And feel the soft cold kiss of a gun barrel as it’s placed against the back of my neck.

  Sixty-Eight

  “Hands flat against the door.”

  The voice is male, heavily accented with Spanish. Should have figured.

  I open my eyes, take another breath, and place my hands against the door. Footsteps sound, a different pair, and then hands run all over my body, searching for a weapon. All they find is the cell phone, which is pulled out and tossed on the table in the hallway.

  “Now,” says the voice, “walk,” and I’m yanked back, turned around, and yes, there are two of them, both whom I recognize from yesterday, and I’m pushed forward to walk down the hall toward the living room, knowing before I even get there who will be waiting for me.

  “Miss Lin, buenos dias!” Javier Diaz sits on my sofa. He’s wearing another freshly pressed suit, one leg crossed over the other, and he smiles at me like we’re old friends who haven’t seen each other in decades. “Please, please”—moving aside, patting the cushion beside him—“have a seat.”

  The barrel of the gun has been making love to the back of my neck this entire time. Now it’s lifted, and I turn my head, slowly, to the left, to the right, noting the two men standing aside with weapons in their hands.

  I walk to the sofa, sit down beside Javier. This close I can smell his aftershave, something that smells cheap but which is probably very expensive.

  “You,” he says, wagging a finger, “are a very big pain in my ass, you know that? Lucky too, I would say. Tu tienes suerte perra—you are a lucky bitch.”

  “Are you here to kill me?”

  “No.”

  “Then get out of my apartment. You’re not welcome.”

  Javier leans forward, clears his throat into his fist. “You know, this isn’t the best neighborhood. A young woman like you should really be more careful and lock her door when she leaves, yes?”

  “Get out. Of my. Apartment.”

  Javier gives his men a tired, disgusted look. He leans back, crosses his leg over the other, and says, “Do you realize how easy it would be to kill you right now?”

  “All due respect, I don’t think it would be as easy as you think.”

  “Perhaps. But fortunately for you, that isn’t going to happen. At least not today. If I had my way, you would be dead already. You know this. You know how much I … loathe you. But that party I mentioned before? Apparently he doesn’t want you harmed. He made a deal with my father, and as you can imagine, this deal does not please me at all.”

  “So you came here just to tell me that? You know, an email would have been easier.”

  A brown envelope lies on the coffee table. Javier leans forward, opens it, reaches inside. Somehow I know what’s in there, and what he pulls out doesn’t surprise me at all.

  “Your sister and her husband have two very lovely boys, yes?”

  The first photograph he places on the coffee table, right in front of me, is a snapshot taken from a distance, Matthew and Max together in their backyard.

  “Even your sister is a lovely piece of work.”

  The next photo shows Tina, stepping out of her car.

  “And her husband”—this photo showing Ryan coming out of Markham & Davis—“is quite successful at what he does. Yes?”

  For some reason I think that’s it for the pictures, but it’s not. Javier pulls out more, spreads them across the photos of my sister and brother-in-law, of my nephews. Shots that are barely recognizable for what they truly are.

  “I told you I would show you those pictures, yes?”

  Broken bones. Gouged eyes.

  “You can keep these, if you’d like. As a … reminder.”

  Pieces of flesh. Dried blood.

  “From what I’m told, she was a strong woman. Put up quite a fight.”

  Cracked teeth. Bits of brain.

  “But she wasn’t strong enough, was she?”

  Javier sets the envelope aside, pats me twice on the knee, then stands. He doesn’t look back as he walks toward his men, doesn’t say anything else as he passes them. The men follow him; they leave my apartment, shutting the door so quietly behind them it doesn’t make a sound.

  Sixty-Nine

  The moment after they leave, I jump to my feet. The world has gone out of focus again. My hands curl into fists. I scream, lean down, brush the photographs off the coffee table, pictures of Tina and Ryan, Matthew and Max, Rosalina, floating everywhere. I hurry around the coffee table, through the living room to the kitchen, to the counter where the butcher block sits, five knives nestled into the wood. Without slowing I grab two of them, the longest, and I make a beeline straight for the apartment door, step out into the hallway just as the elevator doors close. I sprint for the door leading into the stairwell, the stairs that smells of mildew and piss. I start down the steps, taking two at a time, three at a time, holding one knife in each hand, running, running, my blood boiling, my heart racing, my entire being shaking so hard I don’t think it’ll stop. I pass the second floor and then make it to the first floor and tear open the door, not caring if anybody is around—which there isn’t—and I head straight for the elevator, gripping the knives as tight as I can, so tight I think I might snap them. I reach the elevator just as the ding sounds and the doors start to open, and Javier’s men are positioned right behind them, just as I knew they would be, and they see me at the last moment but they’re not quick enough to grab for their weapons. I jam the blades into their throats, blood gushing everywhere, and as they fall down I pull the knives out, step over their bodies, bring the knives together and push them straight into Javier Diaz’s chest. His eyes go wide. His face pales. His mouth drops open. And I keep the knives there, don’t pull them out, don’t move them at all, as the elevator doors slide shut, hiding us from the rest of the world.

  Seventy

  “Goddamn, you sure know how to make a mess.”

&nb
sp; Nova has just stepped out of the elevator, the elevator that now has the out of service sign back on it, shaking his head at me.

  “So do you think you can take care of it?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”

  “James will be here any minute. He’s bringing back my car. Atticus said he’ll help you.”

  Three hours have passed since killing Javier Diaz and his two men. The first thing I did was made sure everyone in the building knew the elevator wasn’t working again. The second thing I did was start cleaning up the mess, which was easier said than done. I called Nova but there was no answer on his cell. I then called Atticus, explained the situation, and for the last hour I’d been calling Nova again and again, thinking maybe Walter was wrong, he had drowned, until Nova showed up himself. Said he had just gotten out and wanted to see if I had bought him his new pickup yet.

  “You know,” Nova says, “you’re starting to take advantage of me being a nice guy. All these favors you’re racking up … I don’t know, it’s becoming a bit excessive.”

  “Put it on my tab.”

  “So what did these guys do to you again?”

  “They pissed me off.”

  The lobby door opens, an old Korean woman coming in with a bunch of groceries. She gives us a suspicious look, probably because we’re standing in front of the elevator that is once again out of order, then she shakes her head, sighs, and starts for the stairwell.

  Nova says, “You really going to go through with this?”

  “I can’t stay here anymore.”

  “But where are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know. California, maybe.”

  “Do you have money?”

  “Enough to get me started.”

  “And”—he clears his throat—“what about the other thing?”

  “Atticus said he’ll give me a hand with that.”

  Nova’s eyes get really big, and he pouts his lip. “What—you don’t want my help?”

  “Like you said before, I’m starting to take advantage of you being a nice guy.”

  “I was just saying that.”

  “I know. But you’re not involved in any of this shit. I started it, which means I need to finish it.”

  “It’s not going to be easy.”

  “I know.”

  “The man’s going to be very well protected.”

  “I know.”

  “But that’s not going to stop you at all, is it?”

  I shake my head. “When he finds out what I did to his son, that truce my father set up will be finished. Nobody in my family will be safe. So I have to kill him before he kills them.”

  Nova looks away at a stain on the wall. “And then that’s it?”

  I nod. “That’s it.”

  “You really think you can walk away from it, just like that?”

  I think of that gradual decline I’ve been on, the slope so steep Walter said I could never find my way back. “I hope so.”

  “Because … I mean, this is what you do. What you are.”

  “Every time I take a life, a piece of me falls away. I don’t want to get to the point where there’s nothing left.”

  Nova touches the stubble on his chin. “It could be the opposite. Every time you take a life, a piece is added on. You grow stronger. Did you ever think of that?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  I step forward, place my hand on Nova’s arm. “And I’m still not changing my mind.”

  The lobby door opens again; this time James walks through.

  I nod to him, then think of something and glance back at Nova. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “For a while there I thought you were dead.”

  “Yeah, and let me guess—for a while there you regretted never sleeping with me.”

  “Not quite. But I did miss you. You’ve been a good friend to me.” I pause, then say, “So what did they do to you in there?”

  “Locked me in a room, asked me a bunch of questions.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “Walter came in.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. He came in and sat down at the table and offered me a job.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Me?” Nova grins. “I told him I’m retired.”

  Coda

  Despite the fact this is my car, it has a different feel to it, a car that is mine but is not mine. When I get the chance, I’ll get rid of it, buy a new one. A new used one, because it’s not like I have that much money. But still, first things first …

  I pull into my mother’s driveway. It’s almost noontime. Thankfully this is one of her days off work. She’s probably sitting in the living room, watching her soaps, or some talk show, or some game show. Maybe she’s knitting. Maybe she’s reading. Maybe she’s playing video games.

  Fact is, I don’t know much about my mother.

  I don’t know her favorite song, her favorite color, her favorite meal. I don’t know what kind of prayers she says before she goes to bed. I don’t know how she spends her weekends or who her friends are. All I know is that she is my mother, I am her daughter, and to save her—to save my sister and my brother-in-law, my nephews, to save everyone I care about—I have to kill Ernesto Diaz.

  How I’m going to do this, I don’t know. My mother will take one look at my face, see the bruises, and immediately start to worry. No matter what I tell her, she won’t believe me. In fact, it would be best to leave right now, send her a postcard, an email. But I can’t do that. She deserves more. Not the truth, exactly—I will not tell her about her husband, cannot tell her about her husband—but a half-truth, a quarter-truth, just enough so she will understand I am going away and will never be back.

  I turn off the car and then just sit there, listening to the engine tick.

  I glance at the phone on the passenger seat. Zane’s phone.

  I pick it up and scroll through the recent calls list.

  I highlight the number with the 011 + 33 in front of it, the foreign exchange.

  I press SEND and place the phone to my ear and wait until it’s connected and then wait four rings before a familiar yet unfamiliar voice answers with one simple word:

  “Yes?”

  I close my eyes. Think about hanging up. Think about crying. Think about screaming.

  I say, “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Zane is dead.”

  Silence.

  “I don’t know what you’ve become or why you became that way, but you disgust me.”

  More silence.

  “You are no longer my father.”

  Even more silence.

  “You should have killed me back in that alleyway in Paris, because the next time we meet …”

  Still more silence, the quiet so heavy that I wonder if maybe the connection has been lost. But no, I can hear him breathing, a soft, shallow sound, and I picture him wherever he is in the world right this moment, sitting in a chair, by a window, staring out at a world he doesn’t agree with, that doesn’t make sense to him, a world in which everyone else are bad guys and he is the hero.

  I open my mouth, start to say something else, but then decide I’ve already said enough.

  I disconnect the call.

  I turn off the power.

  I toss the phone aside.

  Then I get out of the car and start up the walkway to my mother’s house, up the steps to the porch, where I open the screen door and knock. I stand there, waiting, thinking how easy it would be to go back to the car, run away, never have to face her.

  But I can’t do that. I can’t run away. I need to stay here, talk to my mother, who always knows what to say and do. And who, hopefully, will explain to me why just because everything turns out good doesn’t mean it’s a happy ending.

  THE END

  Continue reading for an excerpt of the new Holly Lin thriller, The Devil You Know, available now.

  The guard
is short and stout, almost pudgy. He walks his section of the perimeter carrying an AKM at the ready. He’s walked past this spot twice so far, taking his time, his focus mostly down at the beach. He pauses, straps the AKM to his shoulder, and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He uses a match to light the cigarette, flicks his wrist to extinguish the match, then tosses the spent match aside. He takes a heavy drag off the cigarette, blowing the smoke out through his nose.

  I give him the pleasure of one final drag before slipping out of the shadows, a knife in hand. His back is to me, so he doesn’t see me, but he hears me at the last second. He turns, and I plunge the blade repeatedly into his chest.

  The cigarette falls from his hand. He tries to reach for his rifle, but by that point it’s useless. My blade has punctured his heart and lungs. Blood instantly stains his shirt. He issues his final breath. Not the noblest way of taking his life, but the quietest I could do under the circumstances.

  From the transmitter in my ear, Atticus says, “You have two more heading your way.”

  I whisper, “How long?”

  “Ten seconds. Fifteen if you’re lucky.”

  Right now six quadcopters are quietly buzzing in the air above me, each equipped with an infrared camera, monitoring the area, the feeds bouncing back to Atticus in the States while I’m here on the Mexican coast, twenty miles from Culiacán, on Ernesto Diaz’s compound. I’ve been in Mexico three days now, having done as much surveillance on the compound as could be done in that time. Ernesto Diaz is inside the house, with a bunch of guards. By now Ernesto knows his son is dead. He may not know this for certain—there’s no way Javier’s body has been found—but maybe a gut feeling a father has when his son disappears off the map.

  Despite the fact it’s the middle of the night, sunglasses are currently propped on my head. I check to make sure they’re secure and then sheath the knife and grab the guard with both hands, drag him back into the shadows where I’d been hiding. I try to do this as quickly as possible, but my broken rib is causing me pain. I also try to do this as quietly as possible, but the guard’s boots scraping against the ground sound like fireworks in my head. At least there’s the sound of the ocean not too far away to muffle the noise, the surf hitting the sand and rocks.