Zero Sum Game

by SL Huang

  The next obvious solution was to take out both men and run. But the minute I did, we couldn’t stop running. We’d have to dodge this organization’s crosshairs for the rest of our lives. Could we take Finch and his boss hostage instead, use them to negotiate for getting ourselves off the target list? Unfortunately, I had the distinct feeling their employers had a broad definition of “acceptable losses,” even when it came to their own.

  My jaw clenched, and the metal of the Smith & Wesson dug into my palm. There had to be a better option.

  Tresting had his head cocked to the side, still seemingly casual. “I’m thinking you’re an international group,” he said to Steve. “Banding together to protect the global power dynamic from Pithica’s influence, or something. Off the grid, not even answerable to the people who set you on this crusade of yours. Am I right?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more about us,” said Steve, still far too calm, “regardless of whether you take our offer. The less you know, the less you would be able to give away. Now, I must have an answer.”

  “Well, you see, that’s a problem,” said Tresting, and I felt a surge of good will toward him. Did he have a plan? Maybe this working together thing wouldn’t turn out to be so bad after all.

  The man called Steve sighed. “Please don’t make this difficult, Mr. Tresting. Not to be callous, but it’s not even your decision.”

  “Oh, I have a problem, too,” I said immediately. “Right here. Problem. You look up ‘problem’ in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of me putting a gun to your head, which is what I’m considering doing in about three seconds.”

  “Did I not make myself clear? If you don’t—”

  “Oh, you were perfectly clear,” said Tresting. “Perfectly. Only, see, this here’s the problem. Just a little one, but—I got a guy on the outside, who knows everything we know, including about running into Mr. Finch here. If he doesn’t hear from us, bam, it all goes public. Everything, including you gents.”

  Steve twitched. “You’re bluffing.”

  “Willing to take that chance?” said Tresting.

  “If you begin throwing Dawna Polk’s name and face around openly, we will be the least of your problems.” The ominous edge in Steve’s voice had turned darker, more deadly. “Besides, Mr. Finch has been with you since you discovered our involvement. You never had the opportunity—”

  “He did make a phone call, Boss,” interrupted Finch with a wince. “And she ID’d me from Courtney Polk’s house. It’s possible they made us there.”

  His boss gave Finch a look that promised repercussions would come later and took a deep, steadying breath before moderating his tone. “I told you our offer extends to the people with whom you’ve been working. Believe me, whoever this is, we can find him, too, and he can disappear along with you both—in whichever manner you choose.”

  I ignored the very real fear settling in the bottom of my stomach, and decided to follow my other gut feeling, which was telling me to get out of here now. “Points for creepy,” I told the guy whose name wasn’t Steve, pleased with how unconcerned I managed to sound. “We’ll think about helping you, but it’s sure as hell not going to be on those terms. We have your phone number already—don’t call us; we’ll call you.”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that,” I mused. “Bye now.”

  I glanced at Arthur, but for once we seemed to be in complete agreement. I hopped off the picnic table and we backed slowly away. Finch and his boss watched us go, not moving from the table. Their tranquility was unnerving. It meant they didn’t have to be worried.

  We headed onto the winding road. I saw a thick, knobbly stick by the side of the pavement and picked it up, twirling it experimentally. I looked back. Perfect. The picnic area was almost out of sight. Nobody on the path here would find someone tossing a branch that odd, and nobody back there would connect me with it. I twirled it one more time to build up the exact right centripetal acceleration and let it fly. Way back in the picnic area, barely visible now, the butt end of the branch smacked into Finch’s temple and bounced off at just the right angle to whack his boss across the ear. They both collapsed. “Might buy us some time,” I said to Arthur, who was starting to get the freaked out my-window-had-bars-on-it look on his face again.

  His eyes went down to my chest, and widened. “Or not.”

  I looked down to see the bright pinpoint of a red laser sight dancing there.

  Oh, hell.

  Chapter 17

  “Please come with us,” said a nondescript woman, appearing with an equally nondescript man right next to us.

  “Laser sights? Really?” I said to her in disgust. “What is this, a cheesy action movie?”

  She smiled slightly. “They are more for you than for our people. An incentive to accompany us, if you will. I’m sure it has been explained that we prefer not to kill you.”

  “It’s just so hard to take you seriously now,” I said. I felt the breeze on my cheek and calculated wind speed, trajectories springing up in my head. Assuming the snipers were dialed in correctly…I casually rocked my weight back. The bright red light was several seconds in correcting.

  “Thought we went over this with your boss,” said Tresting. “We ain’t coming, and if you try to force us, things will go bad for you people. Seemed like he got it.”

  “He gave us no signal to let you go.”

  Tresting glared at me.

  “Oops,” I said. “My bad.”

  “We would prefer it if you came with us. However, I have been authorized as to alternatives,” the woman informed us.

  “I have an alternative,” I said. “Tell your snipers to back off, and they get to live.”

  Tresting and I each got an additional laser dot joining the first. Two for each of us. Goody.

  “I recommend you come with me,” said the woman. She didn’t have any visible weapon, but her casual clothes might have been concealing one, and the same was true of her partner. Both of them stood with their weight square and their hands free. They were ready for a fight.

  Of course, so was I.

  The last few hours had been nothing but subterfuge and conspiracies and deep secrets and threats in the dark. The fact that I finally had an enemy pointing a gun at me again was glorious.

  This was an enemy I could fight.

  I took one last glance at the four dancing laser dots. To the close observer they stretched into slightly elongated ellipses, and the angle automatically backtracked for me, extending upward infallibly, four lines of sight to our four snipers. Excellent. I hoped one of the clowns in front of us had a high frame rate camera, because otherwise they were going to miss a spectacular feat.

  “Well, I warned you,” I said. I slipped back a step and whipped both hands across my body and under my coat, drew before anyone could react, and fired two shots with each hand.

  The red dots disappeared from our chests.

  One of the passing hikers screamed.

  Pandemonium erupted. The woman and her partner tried to grab us and to reach for their own weapons, but they never had a chance. Tresting gave the woman a vicious uppercut that dropped her like a sack of potatoes, and I brought my right-hand gun back down to the man and fired, but the gun didn’t go off, so I whipped my leg around and kicked him in the face instead. I gave Tresting a shout and a shove with my shoulder and we started racing down the lane. Pedestrians screamed behind us—someone yelling for help, someone else yelling for the police.

  I shouted for Tresting to follow and skidded into the woods, realigning what I remembered of our arrival in my mind and pelting down through dry leaves in a shortcut to a parking area we’d passed. At least, I hoped we were aiming at the parking area—my memory wasn’t perfect, but I could estimate, and I drew lines and angles through the woods and yes, there! I stumbled out among the cars, shoving my guns back underneath my jacket, and dashed to a van with nicely tinted window
s. I jacked it so fast that by the time Tresting scrambled up next to me the passenger door was already open with the engine thrumming to life. I pulled out onto the street toward the park’s exit before he had even gotten his door shut and tried my best to drive sedately despite my pulse hammering away at a hundred and sixty-three beats per minute (well, a hundred sixty-three point four, but who was counting).

  For the second time that day, we pulled over to let police cars scream past on their way into the park. I didn’t start to breathe normally until we were back in traffic on Los Feliz and headed toward the freeway.

  Night was falling, and I flicked on the van’s headlights as we merged onto the 5. Beside me, Tresting made a quick call to leave a message for Leena Kingsley—he told her he didn’t think she was in danger, but the stakes were going up and maybe she should get gone just in case—and tapped out a couple of text messages before taking the batteries out of both his smartphone and the burner phone we had used to call Finch’s boss. Smart man. My phone was already in pieces in my pocket, even though only Tresting, Checker, and Rio had the number. Less trackable was always better.

  “Did you really tell Checker about Finch?” I asked.

  “Asked him to check on the name for me; that’s all.”

  I laughed. “Good show back there, then.”

  “I’ll make sure he’s up to speed. Good insurance policy, sounds like, and Checker’s thorough. Won’t be easy for them to get around him.” He paused, and his voice became weighted. “Course, I don’t have the full story.”

  I felt a little bad about that. “I took Courtney back to her place to pick up some cash,” I explained. “A bunch of men in suits were there searching for something. Two of them were Finch and our friend Steve.”

  “They find what they were looking for?”

  “I don’t think so. But it’s how I knew he wasn’t a Fed—none of it exactly struck me as FBI procedure. Plus, one of the guys was British, and Finch had some other accent, too. He only started to sound American when we saw him at Kingsley’s.”

  “Yeah, I got that he wasn’t American,” said Tresting. “Kept using the word ‘mobile’ for his cell phone. Knew you were on the money with him from that.”

  I frowned. “Is that strange? I say ‘mobile’ sometimes.”

  “I noticed that,” said Tresting. He didn’t elaborate, however, instead switching topics entirely. “And Dawna Polk?”

  Cards on the table, I supposed. Dawna Polk…even the thought of her name was enough to make my throat close bitterly, and for my stupid headache to begin throbbing again. I swallowed. “She mojo’d me the last time we talked. I told her exactly where I was headed next and didn’t even notice.”

  “But you sussed it out later.”

  “Yeah. It took a lot. Rio knew me well enough to see it and prod until I connected that something was wrong.” I hesitated, then added, “She did a number. She had me utterly convinced she was harmless.”

  “You didn’t mention this before.”

  “Well, yeah; it was embarrassing. I thought she had drugged me. I didn’t start to put it together any more than that until we were talking to Kingsley.”

  “But you did put it together. Seems our new friends think that’s a touch improbable.”

  I frowned, watching the road. “If what they say is true, I don’t know why I was able to. Or how. All I know is that resisting her seems to come with a nice side effect of chronic headaches.” I paused. “And that I definitely wouldn’t want to talk to her again.”

  Tresting sat back and digested that. I felt like brooding myself. This whole thing was far beyond anything I usually dealt with. We had another global organization after us now—another one with tremendous resources and no compunction against violence. Not to mention the whole “Dawna Polk, Functioning Psychic” thing…

  The twilight had nearly turned to full dark while we inched forward in traffic before Tresting spoke again. “Where you headed?”

  “I keep a few places around the city in case I need to get off the grid, but I figured we’d drive around and swap cars a few times first,” I answered. Go Cas, ever prepared.

  “Russell,” said Tresting, “I don’t think I can work with you.”

  Dammit. Not this again. Maybe I could make him understand. “Look, I know you don’t like Rio—”

  “No.” He rubbed his forehead with one hand, like someone with a migraine coming on. “Well, yeah, that’s an issue. But it ain’t him, Russell. It’s you.”

  Something constricted inside me. “What does that mean?”

  He took a deep breath. “Life is cheap to you.”

  I started to get angry. “Those snipers had rifles pointed at us. It was self-defense.”

  “Yeah, and why was that? Your little trick with the hunk of wood? Violence ain’t always the best choice, you know. If you didn’t—”

  “We don’t know he was going to tell them to let us go,” I countered, bristling. “Maybe he was going to give the order to shoot on sight instead. Did you ever think of that?”

  “Maybe,” said Tresting, “and maybe we could’ve got out of there without anyone hurt at all if we just walked away. Without anyone else dying. And without another dozen eyewitnesses fingering us for a crime.”

  “You don’t know that,” I argued. “Any of it could have gone either way. And I did just save both our lives—again—so a little gratitude might be in order!”

  “Gratitude?” He shifted in his seat to face me. “You caused the whole damn situation in the first place! And shooting off a bunch of rounds in a crowded park—what if you’d hit an innocent?”

  “I knew I wouldn’t,” I tried to defend myself. “I’m really good at what I do—”

  “Which is what?” challenged Tresting. “Killing people? Threatening people with guns? Punching them when they insult you? That what you so good at?”

  I fumed in silence for a minute, revving the engine hard and then slamming on the brakes every time traffic moved a few inches.

  “You got some good in you,” Tresting said quietly. “You do. But you also scare the shit out of me.”

  Usually I enjoy scaring people, but for some reason, hearing Tresting say that gave me a crumpled feeling inside. I didn’t like it.

  “And you’re a smart kid, shit, maybe brilliant, but for some reason your first solution is always to pull the trigger,” Tresting continued after a moment. “And I can’t work with that. I can’t.”

  “I don’t go around killing innocent people,” I said stiffly.

  “That guy just now, in the park,” said Tresting. “You went to shoot him.”

  “Piece of crap gun misfired,” I said. “Look, he was trying to grab us or kill us, one of the two—”

  “Yeah, and that’s another good reason to avoid that sort of fubared situation in the first place: what if you got a jam in the middle of capping those snipers? Or if there was more than four? But that ain’t my point. First you tried to shoot him, and then…I don’t know where you learned to fight, but you kicked him so hard…” He swallowed. “Shit. I was almost sick on the street right there.”

  I thought back. I’d been in the throes of adrenaline at the time, but now I could remember the feeling of his face collapsing against my boot—I cut off that line of thought. “He was a threat,” I insisted stubbornly.

  “And now he’s dead, ain’t he?” said Tresting. I didn’t answer. “What about our buddy Finch and his boss? They dead too?”

  “No,” I said. “It would’ve been too hard to get the leverage from that distance.”

  “Listen to yourself,” Tresting said, his voice cracking.

  They’re enemies, I told myself. Taking out an enemy is not wrong.

  “How about me, back in that motel bathroom?” Tresting said. “Just couldn’t get the leverage then neither?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Too small a space, I guess,” he filled in for me after a moment. “Lucky me.”

  “You were threateni
ng me with a gun,” I pointed out angrily.

  “The rate you do that yourself, it should count as a hobby.”

  I accelerated and slammed on the brakes a couple more times.

  “Drop me in East LA somewhere,” said Tresting.

  “Pithica’s after you,” I reminded him, trying to keep my tone neutral. “And the police. And now these guys—without me around and whatever they want from me, they’ll just kill you.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Right.

  I pulled off the freeway and found the seediest-looking neighborhood I could to park the van in. We both got out, Tresting giving his door handle and seatbelt a quick wipe down with a napkin as he did so.

  “I guess this is good-bye, then,” I said.

  We stood awkwardly.

  Then Tresting spoke, with an obvious effort. “Thanks again for saving my life, back at my office.”

  I shrugged a little too harshly. “We’re even.”

  “Russell.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Think about what I said, okay? You’re a good kid. You ain’t gotta be like this.”

  “I like how I am just fine,” I said.

  “Take care of yourself.”

  I shrugged again.

  He turned and walked away, leaving me on a graffitied street corner that smelled vaguely of human urine. My adrenaline had faded into listless fatigue.

  Well, I supposed it was time to steal another car and head to one of my bolt holes. Cas Russell, ever prepared.

  I sighed.

  Why did people have to be so complicated? I thought of Dawna Polk’s superpowered human relations ability, and a spark of jealousy twinged. Dawna Polk would have known how to say exactly the right thing so that Arthur understood her. He’d have been eating out of her hand.