“Okay. What would you like to say to Nate Xiao?” Siri asked. I fucking loved Siri.
“I’m tied in Henry’s car and he’s going to kill Laurel. Help me.” I tried to speak clearly. Siri wasn’t great under ideal circumstances. This was not an ideal circumstance.
“You’re saying, ‘I’m tried in Henry’s carb and his going to kill Laurie. Help me.’ Ready to send it?”
Close enough. “Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll send it.”
That was anticlimactic. I looked at my worn wrists. Blood was smeared on the zip tie and the grip handle. I wondered if I could pull the handle out. I tried twisting and pulling. The grip didn’t budge, and my wrists screamed in protest.
My phone vibrated. Oh, God. It was Nate. It had to be.
“Hey, Siri, read my text.” The tone sounded again.
“Nate sent you two messages. Nate said ‘Where are you? I’m going to kick that motherfucker’s ass.’ Would you like to reply?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“We are off Sixteenth Street by some abandoned warehouses. It’s on the left after you go under the bridge.”
Siri repeated the message back to me and sent it. Nate needed to hurry. Henry wouldn’t drag this out.
I tried to curl my fingers around the grip and pull, but it didn’t give at all. I kicked the underside of the dash. It didn’t help with my predicament, but it made me feel better.
I heard the thump of a car door and twisted around. Nate’s car was behind me. He frantically tried all of the doors, but didn’t get lucky until he hit the driver’s side.
“That was fast,” I said when he opened the door.
“I was already here. I followed Laurel. Henry told me to go home, but I don’t work for him.”
“That little bitch told me you were meeting us.”
“I’m going to kill him. Metaphorically because I’m not a fucking psycho,” Nate said.
“I’ll help. Cut me loose.”
Nate climbed in and dug through Henry’s shit until he found a knife.
“Christ, what did he do to you?” Nate leaned over me and attempted to work the knife between my wrists and the zip tie. He seemed very distracted by the state of my face.
“He hit me because he’s an asshole.” I didn’t have time for this. “I don’t care if you cut me. Just get this shit off.”
Nate shoved the knife in and pulled up. The tie snapped. “Are you okay?” He tossed the knife on the floor and tried to take my hands. My palm was bleeding from the knife, but I didn’t care.
“I will be. I have to go stop him.” I took off my seat belt and opened the door.
“Wait. Do you have a weapon? A plan?”
“No. I’m going to kick him in the balls.”
“Just hold up a sec.” Nate climbed into the backseat. He came back with a crowbar.
I took it. “Thanks. See if you can find another gun. I’m going.”
“Cash, wait.”
“Nope.” I hopped out and took off running in the direction Henry had disappeared in. When I rounded the corner, no one was there. I sprinted to the next corner of the building. Nothing. More abandoned buildings. They could have been anywhere. I stopped and bent over, gasping. Running was hard. I closed my eyes and listened.
“Cash,” Nate whisper shouted.
I turned and saw him stopped halfway down the building. He nodded at an alcove. I jogged back. There was a door that had been kicked in. Now that I was listening for it, I could hear voices. I edged closer and looked inside. Henry and Laurel were against a far wall, about twenty feet away. She was on her knees with her hands laced behind her head. She looked pissed. Henry was standing over her with his handgun. He didn’t look angry. He looked fucking crazy.
“What do they know? That’s all you need to tell me.” He put the gun to her temple. “Just tell me what they know.” His jaw was clenched, his tone desperate.
Laurel stared into his eyes. “I already told you. It’s in the reports you read.” She was admirably calm.
Nate and I inched back from the doorway.
“He’s totally lost it,” Nate said.
“You think?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Distract him. Separate them.”
“Solid plan,” Nate said. I doubted his sincerity.
“Suggestions?” I asked.
“Not really. I’ll try to get on the other side of him and get him to look at me. I can go behind that excuse for a wall.” He pointed to a wall perpendicular to the doorway. It had been partially demolished, but enough of it was standing to get him most of the way across the room. “Once I distract him, you get her out of there.”
“And what about you?”
Nate shrugged. “I don’t know. Hit him in the head with that thing when you get close.” He nodded at the crowbar. “I can run.”
“Okay.” Yep. We so had this. We weren’t acting rashly.
Nate crept forward and slid to the other side of the wall. I risked another look. Laurel was staring at the place where Nate had disappeared. She had seen him. Good.
“What are you looking at, bitch? Look at me.” Henry grabbed Laurel’s chin and forced her to look at his face. She smiled. “What the fuck are you smiling at?”
“Why do you have such trust issues? Did your parents not tell you about Santa until after puberty? Oh, or maybe your prom date stood you up for another boy?”
“Don’t get cute with me.”
“I’ve never really been able to nail cute. On occasion, sweet. Maybe pretty when I was a kid. But cute wasn’t in my wheelhouse.”
Henry punched her in the mouth.
“Fuck.” Laurel spit some blood. “Well, now I’ll never be cute.”
Henry pulled back again.
“Henry, hey, man. Where are you?” Nate called.
“Nate?” Henry spun and held out his gun, but there was nothing to aim at.
“I found Cash, but I left her. She doesn’t get what needs to be done. Christ, where the fuck are you? This place is a maze.”
Henry looked torn. He wanted, needed to believe Nate. But he couldn’t leave Laurel unattended.
“Over here, man,” Henry shouted.
“Keep talking.”
“I’m right here. Toward the door. How did you get back there?” Henry kept up a running commentary. He seemed to be studying the breaks in the walls, listening to the subtle scuff of Nate’s feet.
This was the best chance I’d get. His gun was pointed at the floor. Not Laurel’s head. Big plus. I took a few long, cautious strides into the room. Laurel stiffened, but stayed in place. He was watching her. I was about five feet from Henry when he heard me and started to spin. I wasn’t close enough so I ran the last few steps. He raised the gun as I swung. His shot went wide and he went down. A crowbar to the head was a good deterrent. Henry’s gun slid out of his grasp and skittered along the floor. I went to grab it, but Laurel slammed into me and dragged me toward the door.
“You cunt,” Henry screamed. “Stop.”
I made the mistake of looking back. He had the gun and was leveling it at us. The door was too far away. We weren’t going to make it. Laurel shoved me behind the wall Nate had disappeared behind. Shots echoed through the room, but we were safely behind the wall. It looked like the remnants of a hallway. Nate wasn’t there. He must have continued farther into the building.
“We need to move,” Laurel said.
Henry was shouting. His footsteps as he approached felt menacing.
“Stay low.” I ran to the end of the hallway. The wall was destroyed at the end, which would expose us to Henry. I sprinted across it and hoped he wasn’t watching. Laurel was right behind me.
We ended up in a room twice the size of the original. Obsolete machines were set at regular intervals. There was a loft that ran the length of the room and around one side. The walls of the loft ended halfway up to the ceiling and the remainder of the space was glassed i
n. Or was once glassed in. Now, large sections of the glass were missing.
“Up or stay down?” I whispered.
“Up.” Laurel pushed me toward the stairs. They made a fair amount of noise, but Henry was still shouting obscenities as he chased us so I didn’t think he could hear.
At the top we hunkered down below the wall. I tried to judge where Henry was based on his footsteps. It sounded like he was running around the machines. He shouted to Nate for help. Good. He still thought Nate was on his side.
Laurel reached over and tapped the cell phone in my pocket. She motioned for me to hand it to her. I was relatively certain that doing so would end with me getting arrested. Or at least detained. I was absolutely certain that without help, Henry would kill us both. I unlocked the phone and gave it to her. She held it awkwardly as she typed. I realized that blood was flowing down her arm, pooling in her elbow, dripping on the floor.
I reached over and tried to get a better look, but she shoved me away. Casual gunshot wound. No big deal. This bitch was crazy.
“We need to move,” I whispered.
Laurel shot me a death look for making noise, but I motioned to the abandoned furniture strewn around the room and she started moving. At the back of the loft, a series of doorways led to offices. I glanced in one and found that they had windows overlooking the scenic parking lot. Only three of the offices had doors that were still attached. I closed the one closest to the stairs. Laurel started to move away, but I stopped her and dipped my hand in the blood on her forearm. When I smeared it on the closed door and doorknob, she nodded. We went into one of the offices without a door. It had an overturned oak desk that was easily from the forties. It was gorgeous. Behind that, there were a few massive file cabinets. They were at least five feet tall and just as wide. Two were firmly against the wall, but one had been brought in and abandoned. There was about four feet between it and the wall. I squeezed in and crouched down.
Yeah, this was what badass drug dealers did. They hid.
The phone vibrated. Laurel looked at it and swiped it open. It wouldn’t unlock for her. I reached over and pressed my thumb to the home button. She typed again. I glanced at the screen.
How much ammo does he have? We’ll go in when he is out, the unnamed contact said.
Those assholes were waiting?
“How long have they been outside?” I asked.
Laurel shot me a look. My look was better, though. “Since I got here. They were tailing me the whole time.”
“And they didn’t intervene when he had you at gunpoint?”
“Why would they?” She seemed confused by the question.
“Because they’re fucking cops. And you’re a fucking cop. And generally, cops don’t let their buddies get shot.”
“And blow the entire operation?” She asked like I was stupid. “I was fine.”
“Yeah, that bullet wound looks just fine to me.”
“I can handle it,” Laurel said.
“Did you tell them you were hit?” Apparently, that was another dumb question. My second grade teacher had definitely lied about the nature of those. “Tell them.”
“No.”
I reached over and tried to take the phone, but she pulled it away. So I grabbed her upper arm next to the bullet wound and squeezed. Just a little. Laurel gasped. I took the phone.
Laurel has been hit. Gunshot to the upper arm. Take Henry out.
“They can’t risk it. We’re fine. Tell them we’re fine.”
The phone vibrated. Let us speak to Kallen.
I gave her back the phone. “Here, Kallen.” I may have sneered when I said her name. Maybe.
Laurel went back to texting. She was operating pretty well one-handed.
“What do we need to do to get them to come in?” I asked.
“Waste his bullets or flush him out.”
That I could do. “Stay here.” I backed out of the space.
“No.” Laurel tried to grab me, but I pushed her back.
I went back out to the loft proper. Henry had stopped muttering curses. I found a broken section of window and looked down. He was working through the room in a grid. There were two doors leading outside in addition to the one we had come through. The outside doors had boxes and shit stacked in front of them. It looked like the shit had been there a while. No wonder he was still searching. He knew we hadn’t left.
I looked around for something to throw. Most of it was furniture, which wouldn’t help me. I flipped open a box and found rat droppings. Lovely. I tried another. Same thing. One of the desks had an open drawer. I looked inside. Machine parts of some sort. Each was about the size of my fist. They would do. I grabbed a handful and went back to the window. When Henry was facing away, I chucked one of the pieces of metal at the far wall. Henry spun and pointed his gun, but didn’t shoot. Dammit. Why was he being cautious now of all times?
Henry hurried over to where the metal had sounded from. He searched the area again. I threw another piece of metal. Again, he aimed and approached, but didn’t fire. The third time, he fired. But not at the noise. He fired twice at the loft. And started running for the stairs. Shit.
I sprinted to the opposite wall, opened the bloody door and closed it loudly, then ran back to the room where Laurel was hiding. I squeezed in and crouched down.
Laurel gave me a very sarcastic thumbs-up and mouthed “good job.”
I gave her my most withering look. It accomplished a lot. She shook her head and went back to typing. Henry made quick work of ransacking the decoy room. Then he moved on to the next office. It was right next door to us.
I was pretty sure this was the ideal moment for Laurel’s friends to come in. But there was no noise downstairs. No shouts, no indication that they had entered the building. Cops were assholes.
Henry finished the second office and entered ours. Laurel and I went completely still. We heard him shove the desk. He tipped over one, two of the file cabinets.
Laurel waved at me and mimicked pushing the cabinet we were behind. That seemed like a decent idea. I nodded. When we could hear him grunting and the cabinet began to shift, we both pushed hard. The cabinet fell. I didn’t look to see where it landed. Laurel vaulted over the cabinet and ran for the door. I followed her.
Henry shouted some more obscenities and squeezed off two more shots. We sprinted down the stairs. We were about halfway down when there was a crash upstairs. He must have pushed the cabinet off himself.
Laurel turned back down the hallway we had come in from. I could see the pale light from the parking lot.
“Wait.” I slowed down. “Nate is still in here.”
“No, he’s outside.” Laurel turned back and grabbed my shirt to drag me with her. “Hurry.”
The moment we were out, a group of uniformed officers ran in. Another group of officers surrounded us and led us toward a circle of vehicles.
“She’s been shot. Help her,” I told them. Through the crush of bodies, I caught sight of Nate. He was standing next to a uniformed police officer. Good. I was glad she hadn’t lied about that. The officer turned Nate toward one of the police cruisers and I realized that he was in handcuffs. “What the fuck?”
Two of the men walking with me closed in. One of them made sure I wasn’t going to run while the other slapped handcuffs on me. I looked over to Laurel. She held my gaze as the officer frisked me. There was something hard in her gaze, a condemnation. One of the officers carefully turned her toward the waiting ambulance. At the last moment, the look turned to pity and then an apology and then she was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
They led me to a patrol car and guided me into it. Sitting in cuffs on a hard plastic seat is not comfortable. In fact, it’s a little painful. I was careful to pay my share of taxes. I wondered why a larger share of that didn’t go toward better patrol car seats. Then I thought about why the seats were plastic. How many people had vomited or urinated where I was currently sitting?
I tried to see if Nate wa
s still outside or if he had been put in a car too. It was impossible to pick out any detail. Night had finished falling. The sporadic lights in the parking lot did little to counteract the patriotic swirls from the police cars and ambulance and inexplicable fire truck. I found that if I picked a spot and stared, the lights and chaos would fade away and detail would emerge. I stared at the back of the ambulance Laurel had been led to. She was sitting on the gurney. An older guy in a suit was leaning in to talk to her. I couldn’t glean anything from their posture.
The building we had been in was filled with cops now. I could see silhouettes and movement inside. They were still searching. I looked up at the loft windows and saw the sweep of flashlights. Someone was moving on the roof. I stared hard at the familiar figure. It was Henry. Those assholes were searching the building and he had climbed to the roof. He sprinted to the edge and jumped. My heart stopped. I didn’t know in that moment if I wanted him to fall or to make it. But then he landed hard on the next building. His legs were still hanging over the edge, but then he rolled and collapsed on the roof.
If I was going down, that fucker was too.
“Hey,” I shouted at the cops outside the cruiser. “Hey, you assholes. He’s gone.” They looked at me and turned away. “Brewer is on the fucking roof. Go get him, goddammit.” I spent a fruitless five minutes yelling at them. In that time, Henry picked himself up and ran toward the opposite side of the building. He climbed over the side and disappeared from view.
This day just kept getting more awesome.
*
I lost track of time waiting in the patrol car. It could have been twenty minutes. It could have been an hour. My wrists stung every time I moved. They had scabbed over for the most part, but I could still feel the slow drip of blood cooling in my palm. Good, I really wanted to add my bodily fluids to the multitudes deposited here. The muscles in my arms were sore. My shoulders started to burn from the awkward angle they were held in. My face throbbed with every heartbeat. Good. I was still alive. I would have traded a lot for one of the new ice packs sitting in my freezer.
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