I stalk my prey, step by barefoot step, as he backs up, his human shield in front of him, past the doors that lead to the shooting range and the changing rooms. They’re almost at the exit. Beyond that final door lies the decon unit and escape. Hawke will go in alone, and he’ll dispense with Quinn as he does so. I can feel it in my bones.
I half expect Quinn to ask me not to shoot, to try another attempt at talking Hawke into surrendering. But he doesn’t. He just stays calm and still. Trusting me?
Options, angles, ideas stream through my mind in a cool, logical sequence. Ideas are born, weighed, discarded. I sift through all the shots I’ve ever taken, all the shots I’ve ever seen, in microsecond analysis — Sarge’s neck, the rats, the woman with the red shoe, the little boy at the pond, Nicky, the aching M&M man, Tae-Hyun’s high-angled shots, my snake-eyes, Robin’s wrist and shoulder, Sarge’s forehead, Bruce’s gut.
Robin’s wrist and shoulder. Beth explaining about severed ligaments and sheared tendons.
“Last chance to let him go, Hawke,” I say.
The stock is cool and hard against my cheek, the rifle cradled in my steady hands, which make minute adjustments to keep my target centered. I breathe in. Hold it. My eye is at the scope. Breathe out. My forefinger is curled, the pad of the fingertip on the trigger. Gently now.
I take in a breath.
“No!” Hawke yells.
Hold it.
“I’ll splatter his brains acr—”
And squeeze.
The round tears through Hawke’s wrist, shattering bone, instantly severing tendons, muscles, ligaments. The report cracks loudly at my ear and echoes through the warehouse. The pistol drops from Hawke’s limp fingers. His arm falls as Quinn flings himself aside.
I breathe out. Look up over my sights. Move forward.
In the second I turn my head to check Quinn, to ask, “Are you okay?” Hawke is through the exit door and into the decon unit, screaming, “Help me! Get me out of here! Seal this exit, nobody comes out, y’hear?”
My hand is on the door, ready to pull it open and follow my prey, when Quinn tugs me back. “No, Jinxy! You’ll be walking into a death trap.”
“You’re right,” I say. I still feel cold with icy logic, fully alert in this strangely detached state. “But I need to stop him.”
“The stairs — to the roof. Go!” Quinn yells, thrusting me forward, back in the direction of Roth’s end of the arena. “I’ll take care of Bruce.”
If he can still be taken care of.
I hurtle back down the street, passing Cameron and Evyan, who are bent over Bruce, yelling at him to hold on. I bound over the traffic circle with the cavalryman, yank open the door to the fire escape, and scramble up the stairs, shoving past Sofia, who flattens herself against the stairwell wall as I approach.
“Where’s Robin?”
“He’s fine. On the phone,” she says as I bound upwards without pausing.
His phone? Can he be logged onto the Game, seeing whether the hack is working?
No time to think of that now. Hawke will be racing around the side and the length of the warehouse arena, headed toward the helipad. Maybe he’ll stop for a few minutes while his bodyguards fashion a tourniquet around his arm to stem his bleeding. Maybe he’ll tell them he needs to be med-evacuated urgently, and even now they’re carrying him to the chopper.
It’s a race against time. He’ll want to be away from here as soon as humanly possible.
I hurtle around the balustrade on the level of Roth’s office and keep going, vaulting the stairs two and three at a time as I climb upward. The door at the top is sealed with a padlock. I move to the side, aim and shoot it off, sending a shard of shrapnel deep into the calf of my left leg. A cry leaves my lips, but I have no thought of stopping while I can still walk.
I thrust the push-lever down and slam my body against the weight of the door, driving it open, and step onto the roof outside.
Chapter 44
Out for blood
Chest heaving, I stand still for a moment, taking in my environment, getting my bearings, catching my breath.
My back, at six o’clock, is to the warehouse arena. At the far end of that is the exit where Hawke escaped. Directly ahead of me, at twelve o’clock, beyond the far end of the office building, is the parking lot and beyond that, the gated entrance. The helipad must be at three o’clock, slightly ahead of me and to the right.
The roof of the PlayState building is flat and filled with what I guess is the cooling system equipment for the data center below. Scores of wide, horizontal fans spin lazily in the afternoon sun, pushing out invisible columns of hot air. Giant, tubular water tanks form a perimeter along the outer edge of the square rooftop. They look like submarines, with railed ladders mounted on their sides, for access to the openings located on their tops.
The high-pitched whine of a helicopter engine starting up is like a starter’s pistol to me. I spin to my right and run in an uneven limp to the middle of the five water tanks, leap up the metal-runged ladder, climb onto the top of the tank, and peer over the building’s edge.
On the ground four floors below me, the helicopter is warming up. A tight cluster of figures approaches the helipad. I lift my rifle and scrutinize the scene through the powerful magnification of my scope. Four of the president’s guard have each other’s hands grasped in an interlocking formation and are carrying Hawke in a sort of netted seat to the chopper.
I sit on my butt on top of the water tank, my right leg bent up and crossed over my left, which is tucked beneath me, still bleeding and throbbing with a hot pain which I try to push from my awareness. It’s not a great position — my balance is precarious on the curved surface of the tank, and I’m backlit by the sun, making me a literal sitting target for anybody who may look up. I brace my rifle on my knee and tilt it down, trying to find my shot.
Target acquisition is impossible. The president bounces up and down as he is carried by the surrounding tight knot of guards. Every time I think I’ve found my shot, someone moves, and there’s a head or a chest blocking my line of fire. I know that my round would probably pierce them and keep going, slamming into my ultimate target, but I can’t — I won’t — turn human beings into expendable collateral. That’s the way of my enemies, both those who spread the plague and those who cultivate child soldiers to fight them.
It’s hard to keep my focus on Hawke and still retain an overall awareness of what’s happening below. The one requires me to look through my telescopic sight. The other requires me to lift my head and peer over the top or to the side. What I really need now is a spotter. Cameron would be perfect, or Bruce.
Bruce …
I clench my teeth and try to line up a shot. The bodyguards are lifting Hawke into the back of the chopper now. Hawke has his right hand bound against his chest in a makeshift sling. His other hand is holding his hair down. The man is utterly ridic—
The loud crack and the simultaneous blow of ice and fire that punches into my right thigh is the first I know that anyone is shooting. The force of the shot knocks me backward, and I roll over and fall off the water tank, toppling face-first onto the rough cement surface of the roof.
The searing pain in my thigh is bewildering in its intensity. It knocks me clean out of my calm, icy state and into a hot awareness of agony. I am fully present, all here, all now.
It’s nothing! I tell myself. This is nothing compared to that room, that chair, those machines, that endless blinding torment of pain.
I make myself say it out loud. “It’s nothing! Ignore it.”
I press a hand to my thigh, to the nucleus of the radiating pain, and feel a squelchy mess beneath my palm. I taste the salty iron of blood in my mouth.
This leg belongs to someone else. It is somewhere else. I will not think of it now. Will not acknowledge the existence of the shredded flesh and scorching pain in that thigh that is not mine.
A new sound, rising up from below, blends with the pounding of blood in
my ears — the rhythmic whirring of rotor blades beginning to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
I crawl on my belly and elbows to the spot where my rifle lies at the bottom of the metal ladder on the side of the water tank. I grab and lift it, rolling onto my back and pointing my sights at the sky where I imagine the chopper will appear above the top of the water tank. But it’s no good. The shot will be from an extreme low angle, almost vertically up and directly into the blinding sunlight. I’ll be able to hit the underside of the chopper, but there’ll be no guarantee I’d get Hawke.
I could aim for the tail rotor, in the hope of bringing down the whole chopper, but I’m not sure how many other people might be in the craft — the pilot, perhaps another agent? — or on the ground directly underneath it.
I roll back onto my stomach, sling the rifle over my shoulders and grab hold of the second-lowest rung on the ladder. I drag myself toward the tank.
My leg screams a protest.
Ignore it. It doesn’t belong to me, I think savagely.
I lift first one hand, then the other to the next rung and pull, grunting with the effort.
Ignore, ignore, ignore.
The sound of the helicopter changes. The engine whines louder. The beat of the blades chopping the air gets louder and faster, until it’s a whirring din. It must be ready to take off.
I grasp another rung, pull up, and another.
My legs are dead to me now. My arms are what ache. The muscles twitch and jump with the effort as I haul myself upwards, rung by rung.
It’s nothing. Just monkey bars.
A new sound joins the deafening purr — an echoing growl.
I can do this. Pain is good.
My head crests the tank. With a final heave I pull myself to the top, wedge my left elbow between two rungs so I can’t slip backward, and reach back with my right hand to slide my rifle forward. Gusts of wind buffet me, whipping my hair around my face and drying my eyes.
I am so tired, so sore, so done.
Blood fills my mouth, tinny and sickening. A welcoming blackness beckons temptingly at the edges of my consciousness, offering relief from pain, an absence of feeling, a respite from having to make decisions. Promising a release from awareness and responsibility.
Failure is not an option. I will not quit.
I’m just this side of consciousness, lying on my belly, eye up to the scope, finger on the trigger, when the helicopter, glinting electric blue in the sunlight, hovers into my line of sight.
The shot, if I take it, will be easy.
Hawke is in the seat against the window closest to me, the golden triangle of his chest and throat is clear and open. My focus is on his torso, not his face, but I wonder — does he sense me there, a bleeding, sixteen-year-old angel of death lining up my crosshairs over where his heart should be? Does he look my way, his eyes surprised at this last turn of fate when he thought he was safely on his way to a beach, or perhaps a snow-frosted mountain range, near a bank where he’s squirreled away his obscene profits? Does he curse the choices he made to mold, select and train the expert that would be his downfall?
Does he understand, finally, that the human mind, the individual spirit which powers each of us, cannot ultimately be controlled and determined? That we are humans, not machines. Survivors, not victims. As feisty and adaptable and unpredictable as rats.
I close my finger on the trigger, breathe out, and in that fractional stillness at the center of all the noise and motion, I take the shot.
Chapter 45
Over and out
Done.
Utterly done in, I topple backward.
And land heavily in the soft, strong arms of — “Quinn?”
“Jinxy!” he yells above the noise.
Above us, the chopper banks and pulls away into the sky.
“He shot you! That bastard shot you, and he got away!”
“He didn’t get away,” I say. My voice is hoarse, rough with emotion. I spit out a mouthful of blood and swallow. It’s hard — I’m so thirsty.
“You got him?” Quinn says, lowering me gently to the roof, wedging something soft beneath my head.
“Uh-huh,” I sigh, then suck in a breath and squeeze my eyes shut when I feel painful pressure on my thigh.
“You are such a wonder wench. When we get home, when we’re safe and together and in a bed somewhere, I’m going to buy you a superhero costume,” he says, anointing my cheeks and my forehead with tender kisses, sure as love, light as a blessing.
“You want me to wear a superhero costume to bed?” I sigh, opening my eyes to stare up into the frantic gray depths of his. “Kinky.”
He laughs. But he’s crying, too. Tears land on my face. Or is it raining?
“Hold on, my Jinxy. Please hold on.”
I sigh and close my eyes. I want to go into that dark bliss that’s closing in on me. It’ll be warm there. Safe. I’ll be able to rest.
“Jinxy!” Quinn gives my shoulder a little shake. “Please hang in there, Jinx — for me.”
I can hold on for Quinn. I can do anything for him.
“Hold on,” he says. “Help is on the way. Can you hear the sirens?”
Help is on the way?
“Who?” I breathe. “How?”
“Robin did the obvious. He called 911. The cops and ambulance are on their way, just hold on, mo chuisle.”
There’s a loud bang, and a man’s voice yells, “Hands in the air where I can see them, both of you!”
The lids of my eyes are so heavy. They drag down, but I force them open. Quinn’s hands are not in the air — they are still pressing down on my leg. I don’t mind. It doesn’t hurt anymore. None of me does. But he should do what the man says.
“Freeze! And put your hands in the air.”
I want to tell him, do what they say, Quinn — be clever, be safe. Because he is being neither. He is angling his body around mine, bending over me, blocking me from the man.
Drops splash on my face.
“I can’t put my hands in the air, officer,” that Irish voice says, thick with emotion. “She’s been shot, and she’s bleeding heavily. I’m applying pressure to the wound.”
“What the hell happened here?”
“I’ll explain later. Right now she needs urgent medical attention. Please, just lower your weapon and call for help. Neither of us is armed.”
In my mind’s eye, I wag a finger at Quinn. Not true, Pirate. You’ve got a knife, and I’ve got a pistol digging into my back. But I couldn’t reach either weapon, not for all the will in the world.
I open my eyes for a final look at my pirate, taking in his gray eyes — the color of frozen steel, as they always are when he’s angry or afraid. His olive skin and chestnut hair. The circle of silver through his brow.
Circles never end.
“I’m coming closer, no sudden movements,” the man’s voice says.
“I’m with her. I’m not going anywhere.”
Quinn lifts a hand and cups my cheek. I’m sinking into the soft, velvety darkness.
“Mo chuisle,” he says. “Mo stóirín, I love you.”
“Love you too. Got in last,” I say, with the last of my breath and strength.
And then I’m gone.
Epilogue
Chapter 46
Out of the gates
When I wake up, I brush my teeth and, still in my shorty-pajamas, sneak downstairs. Quinn is fast asleep on our sofa where he spent the night, as he regularly does. I lift the sheet and lie down next to him, cuddling up close.
“I love you — I got in first,” I murmur softly, running a hand down the stubble of his jaw and kissing the tiny dent in his chin.
“No fair. I’m not even awake yet,” he mumbles, pulling me close against the length of him.
I yawn widely, stretch and wince, grabbing my right thigh.
“Sore?” Quinn asks, opening his eyes.
“Yeah, it’s going to rain today or tomorrow.”
Six months after the bullet tore through my leg, it only aches when I’ve been exercising hard or when rain is on the way.
“Shall I kiss it better?” Quinn asks with a sexy grin and a raised eyebrow.
“Uh-huh.”
He disappears under the sheet and trails a circle of kisses around the old wound.
It tickles, and I giggle as I rub a hand over the spot, feeling the dented hollow in the flesh of my thigh. Quinn lifts his head and smiles wickedly at me.
“Any other booboos you want me to kiss better while I’m on the job?”
“Here,” I touch the scar on my left calf where the shrapnel left a jagged scar, now faded to a pale silver line.
He pushes me onto my back and moves back down to kiss the old wound.
“Next?” he asks.
“My arms, please.”
He moves under the sheet, trailing a line of kisses over my hip and side, up to the top of my left arm, where the old, round blotch still marks the spot where an electrode burned me in my torture session. Quinn kisses first one arm, then the other.
The scars have healed nicely. I don’t pick at my sores anymore, not the ones on my skin, and not the ones inside. What is, is. And what is, right now, is a lot better because of what happened, back then.
“Any others?”
I tap my mouth. The cut where my teeth smashed through my lip, when I toppled off the water tank and face-planted on PlayState’s hard roof, has left me with a distinctive bottom lip — it’s more rounded, a little uneven, undeniably unusual.
A bit like me.
“When I get there, I think I should kiss your tooth,” Quinn says. “It was injured, too.”
True. The outer corner of my right front tooth was chipped off in the fall. For a while, I toyed with the idea of getting the edge repaired in gold, teasing Quinn that I’d join him in piracy. But in the end I decided to leave it. I like running my tongue across the missing bit. It reminds me that I’m a survivor. Damaged, edgy, but here.
Quinn moves his mouth over my shoulder, brushes it along my collarbone, and sucks gently on my neck. The air around us shifts, tightens, intensifies. His lids go heavy. The pit of my belly contracts. I knot my fingers in his hair and pull his mouth up to my own while he slips the straps off my shoulders and moves his hands lower.
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 71