Splintered

by Jamie Schultz

  “I don’t—I don’t really have anything. You’re looking at it, all of it. Anything you want, it’s yours. This crap isn’t worth killing somebody over, huh? Or even kidnapping.” He chuckled nervously. “Who would ransom me? I’m telling you, it’s not worth it.”

  “Talk about her,” Anna said.

  “Oh, uh, right. With a little time, and the right tools, I can fix her right up. Scout’s honor. Just, um, no murder, right?”

  “No murder,” Anna agreed. “At least not if you keep your mouth shut on the way out.”

  “The way ou—oh. Still stuck with the kidnapping, then?” He looked more glum than worried, a lonely old man being told his son wouldn’t be visiting for Christmas after all.

  “Yeah.” Anna could hardly keep the disgust off her face. The moral calculation had always been easy in the past: Karyn needed medication; some rich assholes wanted some weird shit that belonged to some other rich assholes. No problem. Never lost an hour of sleep over it. This, though, was some other bullshit entirely. What the hell were they even doing here? If she lost Genevieve—

  No. Don’t even think it. Not for a second, not one goddamn second.

  “It’s a deal.” Van Horn made as if to step forward, hand extended, and Nail brought him up short by the simple expedient of cocking his pistol.

  “How about you just keep your hands up?” Nail said. “A, you want to cover this guy? I’ll get Gen.”

  Anna pushed to her feet and lifted her gun again. In her mind’s eye, four slugs punched through a bony horror and into the body of a man who’d made one mistake too many. She exhaled, willing the image away. Her hand barely shook at all.

  Van Horn turned his hands outward, displaying his empty palms up by his shoulders. “Whatever you want, we can just talk about it. I can’t help you any better somewhere else than I can here.”

  “Walk over to the door. Open it slowly. Don’t do anything stupid. I guarantee I can run you down if I have to, or I can just shoot you instead.”

  Van Horn gave her a pained nod and began a slow shuffle toward the door. Anna followed a few steps behind while Nail hoisted Genevieve off the floor with a grunt. Another time, she might have teased him about getting soft, but given the circumstances, and the fact that he’d had a hole shot through his torso just a couple of months back, she let it slide.

  Van Horn pushed the door open but made no attempt to go through. Instead, he looked over his shoulder at Anna, a question on his face.

  “Go ahead,” Anna whispered. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  He stepped into the gloom and turned left toward the front of the building. Anna followed, keeping a couple of steps behind. She’d heard somewhere that it was a bad idea to push somebody with a gun, because then they’d know where it is, and maybe they could make a grab for it or something. She had no idea if that was actually true or if she’d picked it up on some bullshit cop show, but it seemed like sound advice. Nail would probably know for sure, though maybe it didn’t matter much. It wasn’t like Van Horn was about to whirl around and lay her out with his wicked martial arts skills. He was older than dirt, and judging by the way he walked, his knees were shot.

  Anna was barely out the door when shouting began. It came from ahead of her, a man’s voice echoing in the huge building and accompanied by the flap of (bare?) feet running on the concrete. “Edgar! Edgar, come see! You’ll never—”

  The guy Nail called T-shirt and Cargo Pants ran out from the darkness and into the halfhearted light filtering down from the dirty, cracked windows high above, and then stopped abruptly. “What’s happening?”

  Anna’s heart clenched like a spasming fist. Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Don’t let this turn into a massacre. Again, she thought of the jobs she’d been on where she nearly got caught—by cops, owners, lovers, gardeners, whatever. There was a little kick of adrenaline, and the world became crisper somehow, everything more clearly outlined, and then she fought or fled as necessary. Right now, though, she felt like she was going to either vomit or pass out.

  Van Horn took a casual step sideways with Anna’s gun trained on him the whole way. He shrugged and cast a wry glance from Anna to the man as if to say, Would you look at this mess?

  Anna couldn’t help noticing that his little sidestep took him right out of a direct line between her and T-shirt. She had a fraction of a second to watch the man’s face contort in rage. Whether he was going to torch Anna, attack her with some other occult means, or simply charge, acting like a human bullet and Van Horn’s shield at the same time, Anna didn’t wait to see. She stepped forward and pressed the gun to the back of Van Horn’s head. His chin tipped toward his chest, and he winced.

  “Don’t,” Anna said, doing her level best to stare T-shirt down. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t.”

  The man leered at her. “You’re making a big mistake.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think you’re probably right.”

  They watched each other. Anna could hear Van Horn’s breath, raspy and wet, and beyond that, the grunting sound from before was escalating in pitch and frequency. She wondered just how crazy the man before her was. There seemed little doubt he would sacrifice himself for Van Horn. Hopefully, he was rational enough not to get Van Horn killed just because there was an interloper in the homestead.

  T-shirt turned and ran away, yelling, “Help! Come help!”

  “Shit,” Nail said. “Side door?”

  Anna grabbed the back of Van Horn’s coat with her left hand. “This way, come on.” Somewhere, a door banged open, and a second voice joined the man’s shouting. “Come on,” Anna said. She pulled, hard, dragging Van Horn behind her. He walked backward, stumbling, slowing them down while T-shirt rounded up an army. He tripped over his own feet once, caught himself, stumbled again.

  Anna leaned against him, holding him up. “Fall, and God help me, I will shoot you and leave you for dead.”

  “Sorry, Gen,” Nail said. Awkwardly, wincing at the pain in his side, he hoisted Genevieve up over one shoulder like a big heavy sack and readied his gun with his free hand. “Aw, hell.”

  Anna glanced back. The side door was still fifty feet away, and between her and it stood the kid with the basketball jersey. The lawyer stepped out from a dark doorway just past him, from the room with the clothes pinned to the wall, if Anna remembered right.

  She pulled on Van Horn’s coat, and they started moving again. The basketball kid and the lawyer stared with hate-filled eyes. Nail did the sensible thing and gave them a wide berth. Anna’s gaze darted from the basketball kid to the side door to the front. The Goth kid had come up from the front of the building, along with T-shirt, the hippie chick, two naked guys, and a woman in a fairly normal getup of jeans and a light-colored blouse, the normalcy of which was given the lie by her mad, rolling eyes. They got to about fifteen feet away and slowed, following at a speed that kept them the same distance away. T-shirt straggled a little behind, moving in a weird, shambling gait. Black rivulets ran in streams from his eyes. Blood, Anna thought.

  Nobody said anything. The crazed laughter from before had vanished, and now there was only a seething hatred, awaiting an opportunity. Anna and Nail passed the basketball kid and the lawyer, each of whom rotated to watch the two of them as they went by. When the main group reached them, they simply joined the arc of the others and moved with them.

  “If you hurt me, they’ll tear you apart,” Van Horn said, twisting his head around to try to make eye contact.

  “I figured. If it comes to that, you won’t be around to enjoy it.”

  They reached the side door. Anna backed up, holding Van Horn between her and his entourage while Nail opened the door and went out. Anna heard him go, heard him give the all-clear, but she didn’t take her eyes off the group.

  There was a sudden motion at the rear as T-shirt collapsed, hitting the concrete with a flat thump. Anna’s heart leaped and her finger tightened on the trigger. She could feel her pulse pounding in her ches
t and hear it in her ears, and horror filled her as she realized how close she’d come to ventilating Van Horn’s skull. She scanned the room, looking for what had dropped T-shirt. Nothing stood out. The entourage didn’t even look around. Just kept moving forward, even as a pool of blood spread around the man’s body.

  Anna adjusted her grip on Van Horn’s collar and stepped over the threshold, steeling herself. If he was going to move, it would be now. And then what? Shoot him? What choice would she have?

  Perhaps he’d been thinking the same thing. There was a moment of resistance, the slightest tension as he froze in the doorway, and then he let himself be pulled through. His shoulders slumped.

  The entourage followed them all the way to the car.

  Chapter 5

  “This ain’t a negotiation,” Nail said. They were back in the school, in the room Genevieve had fixed up for Van Horn. Nail hoped that shit still worked with her out of commission. He’d shot up the tires of the entourage’s vehicles before leaving, but he figured that wouldn’t slow them down for all that long. Outside the room, the sun would be coming up. Anna would be on the road, meeting Tran to set up a time for them to finish this shit. She’d been in bad fucking shape, shaking, with that tight-mouthed angry worried look, but they had to get this over with and Tran was expecting her.

  Meanwhile, Nail just had one job to do, and he wasn’t getting it done.

  He squatted next to Genevieve and checked her pulse again. Even, steady. Breathing was okay, even a little color in her cheeks. She just wouldn’t wake up.

  Van Horn sat miserably on her other side, features cast into sharp relief by the blue-white glare of a battery-powered Coleman lantern. “I’ll fix her up, you let me go, and you’ll never hear of me again, I swear. I can go as far away as you want.” Shit, he looked old. Liver spots along the back of his hands, his goatee with only a few threads of gray in it to darken the white. Bald head sweating nervously, now that he’d let his hat fall off. He looked like some white kid’s dotty grandpa.

  “I have money,” he said.

  “You ain’t got no money.”

  He tried on a rueful grin. “Well, no. But I have friends who might.”

  “You don’t have any friends.”

  He shrugged as if to say, Aw, you got me. “Acquaintances, then.”

  “Yeah. I bet.”

  The grin vanished. “You’ve already met one of them, haven’t you? Ah, damn.” His brow furrowed, creases multiplying across his forehead. “Which one? Not Nathan Mendelsohn, I hope? He certainly won’t be paying you.”

  “No. He’s dead.”

  “Like I said.”

  “So, who is it? It’s not Gorow, or I’d be dead. Disraeli isn’t local. Sobell thinks I’m dead.”

  Had Nail’s expression changed? Was there a flicker of surprise across his features, or had his eyes widened slightly? He’d thought he had a better poker face than that, but Van Horn suddenly deflated. “Oh,” he said, breaking eye contact with him. He stared into the corner. “It is Sobell.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Van Horn ignored him. His face had gotten noticeably paler, even in the low light, and he chewed one corner of his mouth. “Oh, hell.”

  Nail couldn’t leave it alone. He knew he ought to, but this thing with Sobell had Anna freaked out, and it was bugging the shit out of him, too. It was out of control. Anything he could get, any leverage at all would be helpful. “What’s he want with you?”

  “Nothing good, I’m sure. Vengeance, most likely.”

  “For what?”

  Van Horn held his bound hands out to him. “Untie me?”

  “Not a chance. I told you, we ain’t negotiating.”

  “You don’t have the slightest bit of leverage. If Sobell gets his hands on me, I’m a dead man. I’m having a hard time figuring out what my incentive to help your friend here is supposed to be.”

  “I can fuck you up pretty bad and still make sure there’s enough left for Sobell.”

  “You should get started, then,” Van Horn said. He didn’t look defiant, only resigned. “I might get lucky and stroke out, which would be better than you holding me for the likes of your puppet master. Do you know he called up seven demons to skin a man one time? Seven!”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

  “One is profligate enough—I mean, really. Who knows how to go about skinning a man better than a demon does? Seven is just grotesque.”

  “You need to be thinking about Genevieve here. Gettin’ to work on that.”

  “No.”

  Nail stared at Van Horn. He was a soft, pudgy, old man, with no physical resources and no real options. He didn’t look like he had any fight left in him, and he wouldn’t meet Nail’s eyes, but the finality of that “No” had serious weight to it. Nail couldn’t figure out how pushing against it was going to get him to move any.

  “I’m not kidding, old man.”

  “I know tough guys,” Van Horn said. “Tough guys, and killers, and maniacs of all stripes. You’re the first certainly, almost certainly the second, but not the third. You don’t enjoy making people suffer.”

  “I don’t enjoy a lot of things I have to do anyway.”

  Van Horn’s mouth was soft, mealy. “Coerce me if you must, but bear in mind that I can kill her just as easily as heal her. Probably easier, under duress.”

  Nail dropped his gaze to his hands.

  * * *

  Tran looked back over her shoulder as she came into the coffee shop; Anna was sure of it. It was an abbreviated look, stopped abruptly in the middle and awkwardly played off as Tran checked her appearance in the glass door and brushed an invisible hair off her forehead.

  She was actually nervous, Anna thought. Here, on her home turf, surrounded by suits and expensive shoes, looking out on the impossibly flat canyon floor of downtown, Erica Tran was shaken.

  Tran let herself all the way in and walked to the counter. A few minutes later, she brought a couple of paper cups of overpriced coffee to the table.

  “Black,” she said. “I didn’t know how you like it.”

  “Black’s good,” Anna said, reaching for the cup. Coffee was coffee. How was this place so full at six thirty in the morning? Tran must really have been worried about being overheard, if she’d expected it to be this packed.

  Tran gave her a slight smile and sat. “Is it done?”

  For a second, Anna thought she meant the coffee, but then she shifted gears and caught up. The job, of course. “Half-done.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Job ain’t done until delivery. When and where?”

  There it was again—a flick of the eyes toward the window. Tran’s paranoia at work, or was this being recorded for posterity? Surely Tran wouldn’t be laying the groundwork to fuck Anna over. Maybe lay the whole mess at the crew’s feet? Anna didn’t think it likely. Too much dirt would get uncovered in that event. It would be bad lawyering. “Not yet. It might be a few days before we can finish up.”

  “A few days?” Maybe it was the insomnia or the stress, but Anna’s fuse burned down to nothing in an instant. The hell with Tran, and her paranoia. “I’m not sitting on a stash of antiques here, lady—this is a goddamn human being we’re talking about.”

  Nobody looked up or showed the slightest interest in the conversation. A couple of guys argued about some sports event, somebody else complained loudly into her phone about something that sounded like home repair work. Tran froze, though, hands splayed on the table, cords standing out on her neck as she tensed up. “Keep your voice down, for God’s sake.”

  “Little too much heat these days? Imagine how I feel.”

  “I can’t do anything about that right now.”

  “We both know who can.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  That was a shocker—Anna would have bet a fat pile of cash that Tran would never have let the dreaded f-word cross her lips. “I don’t have time for this shit,” Anna sai
d.

  “You don’t have time for this? Do you think things just go away, Ms. Ruiz? Wait long enough, and everything bad you’ve done simply fades out? It doesn’t work that way. You might not realize this, but a lot of people have to work a lot of hours to make sure you stay off the radar.”

  “Because it’s in their best interests that I stay that way.”

  “Make yourself a big enough pain in the ass, and it won’t be.”

  Whether it was the open threat itself, or just the smug look on Tran’s face, Anna didn’t know, but the last of her patience evaporated. Karyn and Genevieve, the two people she cared about most, were both out of commission in the service of Sobell’s agenda, and now his lackey was here making threats? She reached out and, with her index finger, gave her oversize coffee a very deliberate shove. It toppled, sending an arc of oily-looking black coffee sloshing across the table. Tran shot to her feet, but not fast enough to avoid a slug of the stuff slopping across the bottom third of her skirt. Everybody in the room turned to look.

  Anna stood. “You’re a gofer,” she said. “A gofer in a pretty suit. You don’t get to make threats. Tell your boss he needs to hurry up and end this.”

  The look of hate on Tran’s face as Anna shouldered past her toward the door almost made the trip worth it.

  * * *

  “When’s the drop?” Nail asked. He sat on an overturned bucket outside the row of makeshift doors. A five-foot-wide anarchy symbol in black spray paint decorated the wall behind him. There was a surprising amount of light in here today, enough to show that the air was thick with plaster dust and worse.

  Anna held up her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “They’re working their shit out.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Means we’re supposed to sit on him for a while.”

  “How long is a while?”

  “No idea. Tell me Gen’s okay,” Anna said.

  “She’s okay. No better, though.”

  “Awake?”

  “No.”