by Sam Sisavath
“I’m sorry,” Walter said.
“You think you can do it?” Jack asked.
Walter looked down at the gun. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He held up his left hand, the knuckles still raw and covered in specks of Jack’s blood. “I didn’t think I could do this, either, but desperate times…”
“There’s a big difference between blindsiding someone because you have no choice, and what you’re thinking about doing right now.”
“It wasn’t difficult for you earlier, when you wanted me to get to work.”
Jack thought about lying, but he didn’t, because Walter was too smart. More than that, Walter already knew what he was capable of, because Jack had shown him with his Ka-Bar knife earlier.
“It’s part of the job,” Jack said.
“You like it? The job?”
“It’s a living,” Jack shrugged.
“I suppose it is,” Walter said. “The problem is, Jack—that’s not your real name, right?” He shook his head before Jack could answer. “Doesn’t matter. I’d rather not know anyway. Jack’s generic enough that I probably won’t dwell on it too much after tonight.” He paused for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts. Finally, he said, “The problem is, Jack, I don’t have much of a choice. I knew this was possible when I started on this road, that I might actually have to get my hands dirty, even bloody. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but here we are.”
“I’m surprised you’re not going to let Monroe do it. Keep your hands clean.”
Walter looked down at his bloody knuckles again. “My hands are already dirty. Besides, I need him to know I’m capable of this, so he doesn’t think he can push me around. Another lesson I learned the hard way, Jack: When you’re dealing with bad men, you can’t let them think they can bend you over whenever they want.”
Jack sighed and leaned against the wall. For some reason, he didn’t feel like fighting what was coming. “Before you do anything, at least tell me who you are. Who you really are.”
“I’m Walter.”
“Besides that.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Walter said. “It’s a long, winding story. The truth is, I needed you to succeed. To leave here with the goods. But something went wrong. You weren’t supposed to harm me, but you went beyond that, didn’t you?”
“I had no choice.”
“Of course you did. You just chose the wrong one,” Walter said, and lifted the gun and aimed it at him.
“Wait!” Jack shouted.
Suddenly, he wanted to live. Suddenly, he wasn’t ready to just accept what was about to happen.
His mind spun and words clamored to get out of his mouth, but the only thing he could muster was, “Let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Walter said.
“You don’t want to do this.” He started to get up, his back pressed against the wall for support, and he swore he could feel every bump in the wallpaper behind him. “Once you pull that trigger, there’s no turning back, Walter. That’s it, it’s permanently etched into your brain. Trust me, I know what it’s like. You think you can just forget about tonight? You’re lying to yourself. It’s going to haunt you for the rest of your life.”
Walter sighed, and for a moment—just a moment—Jack thought he wasn’t going to do it, that he had gotten through to the man.
But then Walter said, “Sorry, Jack,” and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 15
Allie wasn’t sure if she was screaming as she dived to the floor. The walls inside the narrow back hallway exploded, chunks of Sheetrock flying through the air like missiles, some pelting her, but most missing and spreading across the floor. The lightbulb above her exploded and sparks showered the air, leaving the only source of light coming from behind the man with the Uzi. He was shooting wildly, swinging his weapon left and right, but he must have lost sight of her as soon as the corridor went dark.
Pressed against the floor on her stomach, she couldn’t get up or retreat, which left her with only one option. She stuck her gun forward and fired up the hallway, knowing she wasn’t going to hit anything, but desperately needing to make the man with the Uzi dart for cover. Which was exactly what he did.
She didn’t hesitate, didn’t waste a heartbeat, and was scrambling from the debris-strewn floor when the tall man who had been talking on the phone started shooting. Except it wasn’t at her. The mystery of why lasted for a second, when she glimpsed the flash of white fur (Apollo!) racing around the living room, drawing the man’s attention—and bullets—to him.
Woman’s best friend, she thought, unable to stop the stupid grin spreading across her face even as she pushed up to her knees, in time to see Apollo disappear into the kitchen. The island granite counter—or what little was left of it—blew apart as the tall man fired after the dog.
Run, boy, run!
A blur of motion drew her eyes back to the immediate danger, as the man with the Uzi reappeared in the opening in front of her, blocking her path to the chaos in the kitchen.
She snapped off a shot—too fast—and chipped the corner where the back hallway met the living room, and the man pulled his head back before he could unload on her a second time. But he didn’t stay hidden for long. He stuck his right hand—and the Uzi—into the opening and pulled the trigger.
She launched herself to her feet and lunged to the right, smashing into an obliterated section of the wall and hugging it as the floor and far wall came undone against the onslaught of full-auto fire. The man obviously couldn’t see what he was shooting at, and was pointing his weapon in the general vicinity of where he had last seen her.
Allie didn’t think there was anything left in the back hallway to be destroyed, but she was very wrong as more Sheetrock exploded almost in tune to the cyclic whirring of the submachine gun in front of her. The man didn’t stop shooting until he had run out of bullets, when he finally jerked the Uzi back behind the wall and she heard the click of his magazine ejecting and the man scrambling to reload.
“Don’t open the fucking door!” someone screamed. It sounded like the tall man, but he, along with Apollo, had vanished out of her view somewhere to the left of the kitchen.
Then Apollo was barking again, except this time it sounded slightly muffled, almost as if he was…
Outside the house!
How had Apollo gotten outside?
Shut up and run! a voice boomed inside her head.
And she did. Allie pushed off the wall, spun around, and ran toward the back of the hallway, the basement door so tantalizingly close and yet so far. Thank God it was still ajar and she only had to grab the doorknob and throw the door open, then let the darkness inside swallow her up as she felt the top landing under her soles. She didn’t stop running until she had reached the middle of the concrete steps, and only then did she slow down until she had stopped completely, twisting around and dropping into a crouch—
The door was swinging open and a figure was moving in the doorframe by the time she had turned completely around. She fired.
The man’s head snapped back and he dropped, followed by the clatter of a weapon falling. The man had collapsed partially in the doorframe, and one of his legs was keeping the door from closing, giving her a decent view of the destroyed hallway beyond.
“Shit!” someone hissed from the other side of the door.
She didn’t dare move, or lower her gun, and waited for a target to appear, but none did. Instead, the body she’d shot began sliding backward—someone was pulling it—until the man finally cleared the doorframe, allowing the door to close back up. She thought she heard voices again, but with the door closed it was difficult to be sure.
The gun in her hand was feeling light, but Allie remained frozen, the gun unmoving, while her heart hammered against her chest.
Reload, a voice inside her head commanded. Reload the gun now!
But she didn’t move. Even if she wasn’t rusty, it would have taken too long to swap magazines. Three seconds at l
east. Not long by any stretch, but that was three seconds too long to be without a loaded gun—
The doorknob moved slightly, and she put a round through the wooden frame, at dead center. Heavy footsteps echoed as whoever was on the other side took a couple of quick steps back. The doorknob didn’t move again.
Silence.
She finally forced her legs to move and took one step backward, then two. She repeated the process until she was standing at the bottom of the steps. She kept her eyes and the gun focused on the door while devoting a part of her attention to slowing down her heartbeat. All the days and weeks and months of practice at the range came flooding back, and she found that she wasn’t anxious at all.
She was just…calm.
She hadn’t heard anything fall after her last shot, so she had probably missed. Not that it changed anything; the goal of the shot was to let them know she was still dangerous, and to discourage them from trying to come at her head-on. The prospect of having to face off against another Uzi made her shiver involuntarily.
Maybe her warning shot worked, and maybe it didn’t, but no one came through the door.
Allie took two more quick steps away from the stairs before shooting a glance over at the basement window behind and to her right. A figure moved on the other side of the rectangular opening, and she swiveled around, the gun raised to fire—
Big brown eyes were watching her curiously.
Allie couldn’t help herself, and smiled.
A dog versus an Uzi. She’d take the dog every time.
*
It was harder to climb out of the basement than it had been to climb in, but if some squatters had already done it multiple times, she told herself, there was no reason she couldn’t, too. Of course, those squatters didn’t have to keep looking over their shoulder to make sure armed gunmen didn’t storm inside and murder them.
She used the sofa as a stepping stone and stretched up enough to grab the sides of the window and pull herself up. She deposited herself back on slightly damp earth at the same time Apollo was pushing his way back through the two bushes that had hidden the window. The dog sat down on his haunches in front of her.
“Anything?” she whispered to him.
In lieu of a response, Apollo turned around and continued to stand at attention.
She pulled the gun out of from behind her back and glanced into the basement to make sure it was still empty, that no one had rushed inside while she wasn’t looking. It bothered her there was no one outside the window waiting for her. She’d expected to be shot regardless of which direction she went—back into the house or out the window. Except there was nothing waiting for her besides Apollo.
This can’t be right.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out how she had gotten into the basement. She should have had to shoot her way out, but as she looked around at the darkened back of the house, there were no signs of men in suits, not even the one she’d seen at the front of the house.
Maybe they’re out of fresh bodies. Or maybe I just don’t rate as important to them.
That thought led her to the obvious:
Walter. They’re here for Walter. Why waste more men chasing a woman with a gun outside the house, when their prize is inside?
Dammit, Walter, what does everyone want with you?
Apollo’s head snapped left at the same time she heard voices coming from the back patio. The speaker was too far in the house for her to make out words, but there was, like last time, just one person talking.
The tall guy. Maybe he was even on the phone again.
“What’s he saying, boy?” she whispered.
Apollo must not have found the man interesting or dangerous, because he turned back to her, looking almost bored. She reached over and scratched his head, and was running her hand through his fur when she felt something sticky. Blood. She leaned in closer, saw the fresh red splashes among Apollo’s white coat.
“You’re hurt…”
Apollo leaned over and brushed his head against her leg.
“Where’d he get you, boy?”
She checked him for wounds, pushing at the strands of fur until she found a sharp cut on his left shoulder. It was a bullet graze, enough to draw blood, but not enough to keep Apollo down for the count. If the dog was hurting, he didn’t show it. She wondered if he even knew he was bleeding. Maybe, like her, he was still pumped full of adrenaline.
“Gotta get you to a vet. They’ll fix you right up.”
She put the gun down and scratched him under the chin while simultaneously rubbing his head. He leaned in closer and let out a soft whine to let her know he approved of the extra attention.
“I’d send you back to Lucy, but you’re probably too stubborn to go.”
He blinked at her, brown eyes glinting in the moonlight.
“Like owner, like dog,” she smiled.
*
She circled the back of the house the same way she had approached it earlier: with Apollo next to her, and sticking to the shadows. Her instincts were to run into the woods and make her way back to Lucy, but she couldn’t leave.
Not yet, not with Walter still inside the house.
She rounded the building until she was along the side. She stopped, pressing her back against the brick exterior, and leaned around the corner to scan the front yard. The two SUVs and Walter’s Mercedes were where she’d last seen them, and the extra man in the suit she’d seen earlier was nowhere to be found.
She looked down at Apollo, standing calmly next to her. “Anything?”
He glanced up at her in silence, before returning his gaze to the front yard.
“You’d tell me if you sensed something, right?”
He snapped at a mosquito that flew too close for comfort.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
She turned the corner and, bent low at the waist, moved along the front of the house with the Sig Sauer clutched at the ready. The first security bars she passed were the ones over the master bedroom. No one had bothered to turn on the lights inside, and when she stopped to listen, couldn’t hear anything from within.
The next window was the second guest bedroom, where Jack had taken Walter. If her boyfriend was still alive, he’d be in there right now doing whatever it was Jack wanted from him in the first place. Jack, and now these men in suits.
What do they want from you, Walter?
There was only one way to find out…
She moved under the windowsill, spending another few seconds making sure there wasn’t anyone hiding behind the SUVs or coming out of the front door before raising up and looking past the metal bars through a small sliver in the curtains, then into the guest bedroom. There wasn’t a whole lot of space to see inside—barely half an inch—but it was just enough.
Jack, on the floor. His face was covered in blood and his eyes looked puffy, as if he’d gotten himself involved in a fistfight and lost badly. Jack was looking across the room at something, and she had to adjust her position to see what he was staring at—
Walter?
He was leaning against the wall, with white gauze wrapped around his head. Blood was seeping through the material around his left ear where he had been injured, but Allie couldn’t tell how grievous the wound was underneath the bandage. If the trail of blood (still drying along his cheek) that had dripped over the collars and parts of his shirt were any indication, the injury was bad enough that Walter had bled for a while afterward.
Jesus, Walter, what did they do to you?
There was something else about Walter that wasn’t right. He was armed. He didn’t just have a rifle (That looks familiar…) slung over his shoulder; there was also a gun in his hand, and he was pointing it at—
Jack raised his hand, shouted, “Wait! Let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Walter said.
“You don’t want to do this,” Jack was saying, even as he started to get up, using the wall as a brace, because his feet looked
wobbly. “Once you pull that trigger, there’s no turning back, Walter. That’s it; it’s permanently etched into your brain. Trust me, I know what it’s like. You think you can just forget about tonight after this? You’re lying to yourself. It’s going to haunt you for the rest of your life.”
Walter said something in reply, but she was too busy focusing on his hand as he tightened his finger on the trigger. Walter was going to shoot Jack.
“Walter!”
His name burst out of her before she even knew what she was doing. Maybe it was the shock of seeing Walter with a gun, or seeing him about to shoot someone that made her stand up and shout out his name, at the same time exposing herself.
But Walter was already squeezing the trigger, and he couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to.
Bang! as his gun discharged, and the round hit the wall above Jack’s head—barely two inches from its intended target. Jack flinched and threw himself to the floor face-first.
Walter spun around and his eyes went wide at the sight of her.
Then Jack was on his feet and running toward the window—toward her. She didn’t understand what he was doing. How did he think he was going to get past the burglar bars? Or maybe he just didn’t have any choice, because on the other side was Walter—
Bang!
Jack stumbled and collapsed, revealing Walter across the room, the gun still gripped tightly in his hand.
Chapter 16
How did it go so wrong?
The thought raced through Walter’s brain as he looked at Allie, standing on the other side of the window with shock all over her face as she stared back at him through the small break in the curtains.
Then Jack was on his feet and diving toward the window, as if he could make his escape that way. How exactly was he going to get through the bars, Walter wanted to ask him. Jack bled the entire time, blood splattering the carpet as he ran for all he was worth.
It wasn’t quite fast enough, as it turned out, and Walter shot the gunman in the back without thinking, which was for the best, because trying to shoot him the first time (and missing) had involved too much doubt and second-guessing. Walter hadn’t come here to kill someone; he hadn’t wanted anyone to get hurt, but there had been no choice with Jack. Even as he took aim and squeezed the trigger, he thought he was going to vomit.