“Uh huh. Listen, friend, are you—I mean, do you need me to call someone—”
Ian’s whole person seemed to rumble. “Don’t worry, friend Jack. I’ll be gone soon enough. And when I am, you may wish I’d stayed here, sipping my pint.” His eyes came very near to sparking, and Jack was about to call in one of the cooks for help, but Ian slumped again and took a morose sip.
“And it may be that I wish the same,” he whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“WHAT IS THIS, JOHN? Is this another one of your mind games?”
Johnnie Northern paused in his shuffling and shot Max a look. Max watched him with a slight smirk, a glint in his eye.
“No Max,” Northern said carefully. “It’s poker.”
Max looked pointedly at the cards in Northern’s hand, then shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just saying we could use a bit more target practice, not card games.” He glanced at Nikkie for reassurance. Nikkie smiled awkwardly. “It’s just that... you know—”
“No, I don’t know, Max.”
“Poker?”
“You must be a terrible poker player if you can’t see how it might benefit a group like ours. A group that needs to read each other in a flash. That might have to pick up on tells to survive.”
Max flattened his brow. “I’m a fine poker player, John,” he said coldly.
Nikkie sighed and stood. “I’m gonna hit the little girl’s room,” she said, taking a swig of her beer before rounding the table. When she was gone, Max leaned back in his chair.
“Fine,” he said, waving it off. “You’re probably right. Poker it is.”
Northern set the cards down with a smack. “Then why the hell do you make such a show of it in front of her?”
Max straightened. “What are you saying, exactly?”
“Don’t make me spell it out for you.”
The crease of his brow twitched slightly and a pinch of color appeared on his cheeks. “John, I think you may be misunderstanding—”
“You have tells of your own, Max,” Northern said, not unkindly. He glanced back towards the restroom. “You know that there can be nothing between the two of you. Nothing between any of us that is anything more than the love of a brother for his sister.”
“Of course I know! You don’t need to worry about anything from me.” He started to say more but Nikkie was coming back to find her seat. Northern got up to dispel the air.
“I gotta go too,” he said, and glanced once more at Max before leaving the room. As he walked down the hall he overheard them speaking:
“What was that all about?”
“Just John thinking too much. As usual,” Max replied. “Poker,” he rolled his eyes. “Ridiculous. Right?”
Northern paused. He gritted his teeth and formed a fist with his right hand that he spent several moments convincing himself to pry open again. His mind raced. He’d thought this might become a problem; he could see it almost immediately back in the coffee shop seven months ago, when they’d first met. He had nothing against Max. Although Max could be difficult, he was a solid striker with the potential to be great. They all had the potential to be great. That is, unless Max did something stupid like fall in love with Nikkie, which would cloud his judgment, and could get all of them killed. His dispassion was his strength. If he threw it away their enemies would know it. They would use her. They would use him. All might be fair in love and war, but Northern knew one always weakened the other.
His mind made up, Northern moved over to an old liquor cabinet against the hallway wall. When they bought the place, it had been there, sealed into the wood paneling either by hand or simply by age. He’d hollowed it out and bolted their gun safe in the middle. Maybe Max was right. Maybe it was time to be done with the safe. Time to truly bring out the guns.
The cabinet’s telltale creak stopped whatever conversation Max might have been having with Nikkie. The beep that came when Northern swiped his forefinger on the keypad to the safe confirmed it.
“John?” Nikkie asked, and he almost stopped then. This wasn’t really a lesson she needed to learn. But if one of them needed to learn it, all of them did. He scooped the guns up, narrowed his eyes, and walked back to the table where he spread them out before them. They rattled and scraped on the old wood.
“Did I miss something?” Nikkie asked.
Max stared at the guns and wouldn’t look at Northern, but his face was easy and his gaze calm.
“It’s time we felt the diode,” Northern said.
Max glanced at him. Nikkie took in a deep breath and crossed her arms.
“What are you gonna do, John?” Max smirked. “Shoot me?”
“No. You’re gonna shoot me. In the gut. It’ll be quick enough, no need to draw it out, but it’ll give me enough time to shoot you back. I’ll make the call in to Medical so that when we all drop, they’ll know where to pick us up.”
“You can’t be serious,” Max said, his eyes wide, all pretense fallen away.
“Dead serious. But first you’re going to shoot Nikkie.”
Nikkie didn’t protest, and took on a grim, determined look. Northern felt a measure of pride in her courage; she was a gamer. Max, on the other hand, had gone soft. Northern pushed a gun towards him and it slid over and into his hands like a shuffleboard weight. Max looked at it as if a rock had fallen into his hands.
“You asshole,” he said, quietly but clearly, although it sounded as though it caught for a moment in his throat.
“Stand up. Ten feet away.”
Max sat still.
“Max. Now.”
Max slumped his shoulders and his soft eyes sought her face, but she was preparing for the shot and paid him no attention. He slowly pushed back his chair and stood.
————
The winter wind cut through the looming pine trees with the sound of a million whispers. It was late and dark, and the four of them—the young team and Max—were deep in the recesses of Medicine Bow National Forest. Their only light was the brittle white of the moon. They could scream until their lungs collapsed, and the only response would be the wind’s steady retort through the branches and needles, and it seemed to grow more intense as the early morning hours came upon them.
“Hit me!” Max yelled. His voice wavered as it was buffeted away by the winds.
“What do you mean? You just want me to attack you?” Ellie yelled back, her arms wide. Her hair was a dark crimson in the moonlight and it whipped around her in a frenzy. Cy Bell and Tom Elrey stood to the side, cocking their heads to hear. Without another word Max stepped up to her, pivoted on the balls of his feet, and drove his good hand into her stomach. It sank into her like an anchor. She let out a great white puff of breath that was quickly whipped away as she doubled over onto the snowy underbrush.
“Get up, Ellie,” Max ordered, creaking the leather of his gloves into a fist. His face was slack and determined. “What have I been telling you? This game isn’t about how well you hit. It’s about how well you can get hit and live. When a man hits you, he’s exposed. If you can take a punch, you can probe for a weakness.”
Ellie was gasping on the ground, searching for a breath that eluded her.
“What’s my weakness?” he continued. “How can you get me off balance?”
Max gazed down upon her for a moment, shrouded in darkness, the moon at his back. Ellie couldn’t speak. She scratched about at the ground, looking for anything to strike back with. Max shook his head.
“Not fast enough,” he said, moving towards her again. He hitched back to kick her in the side, gritting his teeth, but just as he shifted his weight Tom was there. He shot out with both hands and popped Max off balance.
“What the hell, man? At least let her get her breath back! Why don’t you beat the shit out of me again, if you’re looking to hit someone?” He tried to step in between Max and Ellie, but Cy grabbed him by the coat. Tom looked slowly from Cy’s hands up to his face, almost invisible under his hoodie.
; “Let him work,” Cy said.
Tom sneered and broke Cy’s grip, shoving him back. “Fuck you, let him work. He’s not even giving her a chance!”
Cy pointed one long finger into Tom’s face. “If she can’t get up from that, if she can’t at least try to fight, I can’t follow her.”
“Oh, and you would be better? Is that what you’re saying, in your huge-ass hoodie and your parachute jeans and your fucking work boots? Big New York gangster, huh? Fresh from the hood?”
“I know I’d be better,” Cy said, his voice so cold it was hard to hear. “I don’t know what you think this is, but it’s not high school football. We’re not dicking around by the lockers anymore, Tom. This shit here is life and death. What do you know about protecting anybody?”
Ellie found herself and pushed back to sitting, but she wasn’t interested in the exchange between Tom and Cy; she focused upon Max, and Max alone. He watched her carefully as she backed her way against the thin trunk of a young sapling nearby, bowing in the wind. The needles scratched at her face.
“You have no idea what I know. What I see.” Tom said. “You’re hiding under that hood. Tell me, Cyrus Bell, how many stone cold killers they got at Columbia music school? My guess is you’d be the first.”
Cy froze and Tom smiled. Cy’s hand slowly dropped to his side.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“Kind of hard to hustle when you’re practicing the trumpet all day, isn’t it?”
Cy stepped back a pace. “Where did you hear that?”
Tom cracked a leering smile. “I was down by the Promenade today, figured I’d drop by the house. None of you were there, but someone else was.”
Cy flipped back his hood, eyes blazing into the night. “You little shit.”
“That’s right, Ms. Troya Parker. Lovely woman.” He turned to Max, holding his arms wide to the night. “Did you know that our cold-blooded striker is engaged? Isn’t that interesting!”
Max’s eyes went wide. “She’s here?”
“Wait... wait—you knew about this?” Tom asked. “She just got in today. She took quite a liking to me, after I explained that all of us were in the same situation. We talked trumpets, and college, and debt, and about your goddam dog—”
Cy moved in on him in a flash and had him by the collar. “You stay out of my life! That’s none of your business!”
Tom sputtered a chuckle, lolling along with Cy’s shakes. “You don’t seem to get it, Cy. Your life is my life now. Your weakness is my own. ‘This is no game for a married man.’ Isn’t that what you said, Max? ‘Your emotions will get you killed,’ and all that monkish horseshit? Right? How could you allow this?”
In the darkness under the swaying canopy, Ellie watched Cy throw Tom to the ground and when he hit he sounded as though he let out a sigh, and there he lay, almost smiling. His words rang in her ears and crashed against those Max had screamed before he hit her. What’s my weakness, Ellie? And there, on the floor of the forest, her brain clicked.
Ellie pushed herself standing and walked towards Max with slow, delicate steps. She was pale unto bone white under the moonlight and her eyes were like pits, and she forced Max to turn towards her once more.
“You loved her,” Ellie said.
Max’s face twitched as he cocked his head at her.
“You don’t like me,” Ellie accused. “From the first you dismissed me as a stupid little girl...
Max looked askance at her. The other two quieted. Out of habit, Max tapped the outline of his gun over his jacket.
“Cy, you never had a problem with. In fact, he’s the only one I’ve seen you say a lick of praise to in the all this time. But Tom... Tom you hate.”
Tom let out a sad, two toned laugh from where he lay sprawled on the snow.
“You’ve belittled him from day one. You beat the hell out of him all in the name of your ‘training.’ You never even look him in the eye. It’s like you can’t stand the sight of him.”
She stopped close to Max, and suddenly the wind died down so that the steam of her breath nicked him.
“He can be a weasel, for sure. But to hate him? I think you’re just fine with replacing the captain, who was Northern. And even yourself, the striker. But the sweeper?” Ellie shook her head slowly. “The only one you think was truly irreplaceable was her. You loved Nikkie Hix, and she ended up dead, and you think it’s your fault.”
Max snatched his gun from his coat in a flash, took one step back, and leveled it at Ellie. His hand had the slightest tremor, betrayed only by the bright moonlight as it played off the cold, grey metal. “You know nothing about her. About us.” Max turned to Tom, his voice dripping. “But it’s true that you’ll never be an ounce of the sweeper she was. You’re a fool taking the place of a queen.”
“Yeah?” Tom sat up, mouth slack, mad twinkle in his eye. “This whole sweeper thing must really be a tough gig then, for a queen to still end up dead in the water.”
There was a flash and an echoing crack as a rock near Tom’s head careened into the darkness. Max adjusted his aim to sight Tom’s head. “It’s about time we brought this to the next level. Before they go into battle, every player should feel the diode.”
Tom cringed, turning his head to the side in anticipation, but Ellie stepped between them. “That’s not your call to make, Max.”
“Get out of the way, Ellie. I’ll gun you down too, in good time.”
“You wanna shoot him? Fine. So do I sometimes. But sack up and admit it’s not because he has no hope as a sweeper, it’s only because he’s not Nikkie Hix.”
Max stood frozen for a moment. His gun hand had stopped trembling, but the calm that overcame him held its own malice, like the pressure drop of a coming storm.
“Huh,” he said, turning up his head, almost as if he approved. The gun dipped a bit. Ellie let out a breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But this is a lesson you have to learn.” And just as he started to sight again, Ellie sprang sideways at him, a split second ahead of the gunfire. The diode rang off into the woods as she sank the crown of her head into Max’s side. He collapsed in a heap and suddenly Tom was there, digging for his gun. He landed an elbow on Max’s scrunched nose and Max yelped, dropping the gun as his hand shot to his face.
Tom scrambled to his feet and aimed at Max. Ellie rolled away and popped up quickly with her hands at the ready, but she needn’t have bothered. Max stayed on the ground, free hand cupped over his nose, and at first she thought he might be crying. Soon she realized the sound was a strange, blubbering laughter. He propped himself up on his elbow.
“You found it!”
“Found what, you lunatic?”
“My weakness!” Max said. “My nose! Obata, the Red captain, he crushed it a few months ago in a fistfight. Never quite healed right.” He looked directly into Ellie’s eyes. “After she died... he trailed off and his face was washed with sadness for a moment. “Damn nose. Now that she’s gone, it’s the only thing that can get to me anymore.”
Without letting Ellie react, he swiftly stood. Tom aimed at him but he held the gun like it was a dirty sock, and it had about the same effect on Max, who ignored him and snatched it from him without pause. As Tom stared at his empty hands, Max walked calmly over to Cy Bell as if nothing had happened at all. Ellie felt like she was watching the stage act of a mad magician.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was here?” Max asked.
“She just got here,” Cy replied, taken aback.
Max put his hands on his hips and looked out into the forest.
“Our time is up,” he said. “It would have been better, you know, if you’d just let me do it. Shoot the three of you and get that first hit over and done with. Take some of the fear out of it. It’s bad, but the anticipation it worse. I was trying to help you.”
“I said that’s not your call. That’s my call,” Ellie said.
“You’re right,” Max said.
Ellie was stunned. She had n
o response.
“But it doesn’t matter, not anymore. Looks like your striker’s fiancé saved all of us the trouble and went and got you killed anyway.”
“Troya?” Cy asked. “She’s no threat to anyone! I wanted to talk to her face to face about this, that’s all. About everything.”
“It’s not Troya,” Max said. “It’s who she brought along with her.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
FRANK WINCED AS HE touched the purpled side of his head. Whenever his hand got near it, his left eyelid fluttered involuntarily and his face scrunched up in dread, as if he held an angry cat. Every evening for the past four days Lock made him clean the diode hit on his temple in the dingy, scratched mirror of the Turist A1 motel. Although the skin seemed to have settled back in again and become decidedly less flappy, Frank still dreaded removing the bandage. He also thought it was a special kind of cosmic kick in the ass that one of the few places he still had hair was just above his temple, and little springy bits of it came away with every tug.
“It’s looking better!” Frank called out.
Lock peeked around the bathroom door and eyed Frank suspiciously.
“It looks like a donkey kicked you in the face.”
“Naw, c’mon, it’s just this crappy yellow lighting. This bathroom looks like a morgue.”
“Clean it, Frank. The last thing I need is you getting infected. We’re close to something, I can feel it.”
“The major networks are here now. They’re setting up broadcast booths around the mansion. The news is everywhere. What can we offer?” Frank sucked at his teeth as he patted an alcohol-soaked cotton ball at his temple.
“They don’t know what they’re doing. None of the news outlets do. As far as they know, it’s just torches on a wall, a few teams meeting up. I know their faces. I know their histories. We can piece things together that they can’t.”
“Still no sign of that nutjob Mazaryk,” Frank said, coming out of the bathroom with a grimace.
The Tournament Trilogy Page 56