The Devil You Know

by Sam Sisavath

  At least he’s not freaking out. The kid’s tougher than he looks.

  “I thought they had me at the mall,” Aaron said. “But they were after her. I don’t know which one of us was more shocked.”

  “The reporter that found your phone. Who I talked to.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Why did they arrest her?”

  “For murder, apparently.”

  “Who did she kill?”

  “I don’t think she killed anyone. She didn’t look like the type.”

  “What does a killer look like, Aaron?”

  She imagined the teenager shrugging when he answered, “I’ve seen killers, Quinn. She didn’t look like one.”

  Quinn nodded before belatedly realizing she was on the phone with him and Aaron couldn’t see it. The only person who could was Sarah, sitting across the seat from her in the darkened rear of the moving van, watching and listening to the phone conversation closely. The others were asleep, Reiko and Rick both snoring in the seats in front of them with Owen behind the wheel. After half a day on the road, Quinn was feeling the fatigue, too, but she’d stayed up for the joint FBI-HPD press conference about the school hostage situation. After that, sleep continued to elude her.

  “You think they have something to do with it?” Quinn said into the phone. She didn’t have to say who they were.

  “Maybe,” Aaron said. “All I know is that a dozen cops stormed that food court, and not a single one of them noticed me. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, they never even mentioned I existed at that dog and pony show of theirs. I don’t know whether to jump for joy or feel insulted.”

  “Let’s go with the first.”

  “Probably a good idea.”

  “Back at the mall with the reporter. The cops just let you go?”

  “Not right away. They asked me questions about what I was doing there with McIntosh. I told them she was interviewing me about what happened at the school earlier.”

  “And they bought it?”

  “I can be pretty convincing. Anyway, I gave them another fake name and got the hell out of there.”

  “Where are you now, Aaron?”

  “Looking for a place to crash.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Not yet.”

  She cupped the phone’s mouthpiece and said to Sarah, “How long before we reach Houston?”

  “By noon at the earliest,” Sarah said. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s a little wound up, but he’s joking, so…” She shrugged. “He’s a tough kid.” Quinn returned to the phone. “We’ll be there by noon, Aaron. You need to find a place in the meantime. And whatever you do, don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

  “Like what?” Aaron asked.

  “Like getting involved with the reporter.”

  “Never crossed my mind.”

  “Aaron…”

  “Scout’s honor,” he said.

  Now why don’t I believe him?

  “Should I even ask how things are going on your end?” he asked before she could pursue the matter.

  Quinn looked across at Sarah again. “It wasn’t a total loss, but it could have gone better.”

  “Good thing you weren’t here. Man, it really went bad, real fast.”

  “I should have still been there with you guys.”

  “And do what? Xiao handled it. Big Man Trevor did his best. Nothing you could have done against that army they assaulted the school with.”

  “How did they know about the school, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone ratted us out. Maybe they got lucky. Who the hell knows. They did and it happened; that’s all that matters.” Then, lowering his voice a bit, “Look, I gotta go. I just saw something with huge potential. It should be big enough for your new friends too when you guys get down here. I’ll call back with the address when you guys get closer.”

  “Be careful.”

  “You, too,” Aaron said before hanging up.

  Quinn put the phone away and looked across at Sarah. The other woman didn’t look sleepy at all; in fact, Quinn didn’t remember ever hearing her yawn once since night fell. Meanwhile, Rick and Reiko were snoring loudly behind her, and even Owen, up front, looked noticeably more tired by the way he kept reaching for his can of Red Bull.

  “I’m sorry about your friends,” Sarah said.

  “Thank you,” Quinn said, and thought, I should have been there. Aaron’s wrong; I could have made a difference if I had been down there.

  I should have been there.

  “It doesn’t help, I know,” Sarah was saying, “but we’ve all lost people. Me, Reiko, Rick, Owen... I don’t know anyone who’s fighting this war that hasn’t lost someone to them.”

  “Is that what this is? A war?”

  Sarah nodded somberly. “I don’t know what else to call it. If we lose…”

  “Red Sky.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Porter believed the same things you do. Even Xiao, to a lesser extent. But how do you know for sure?”

  “I just know,” Sarah said.

  “But how? What if it’s not what the three of you think it is? What if it’s just some innocuous thing?”

  “This is the Rhim we’re talking about, Quinn. Nothing they do is innocuous. I thought you would have learned that by now.”

  “Fair enough. They’re an evil bunch of sonsofbitches, I’ll give you that. But what if this Red Sky isn’t the end of the world you believe it to be? What if it’s just another in a long line of efforts to harness data? Or to put people in positions of authority? Isn’t that what they’ve been doing for decades now? Controlling, manipulating, and gathering power?”

  “It’s not that. Red Sky is something else entirely.”

  “But how do you know?”

  Sarah didn’t answer her.

  “You don’t know, do you?” Quinn said. “You’re just guessing. You, Xiao, and Porter. But at least Porter had some credibility. He used to be one of them. But you and Xiao, and everyone in this van. How do you know?”

  Sarah continued to remain quiet.

  “Tell her,” Owen said from the driver seat, the sound of his voice surprising Quinn. “You need to tell her.” Then, when Sarah still didn’t say anything, “You said it yourself, she’s going to find out sooner or later.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Quinn asked.

  Sarah sighed. “Something he shouldn’t be, because I told him I’d do it on my own time, not his or anyone else’s.”

  If Owen was affected by that rebuke, Quinn couldn’t tell because their driver remained focused on the road with his back to them.

  “What are you keeping from me?” Quinn asked.

  “There’ll be time for that later,” Sarah said.

  “Now’s a good a time as any.”

  “It’s not. Trust me, it’s not.”

  “Trust you?” Quinn said. “You’re not exactly earning that trust by keeping something from me, Sarah.”

  Sarah didn’t reply, when Owen said from the front, “Trouble, ladies.”

  Both women glanced over at him, but before either could say anything, bright lights came alive inside the van.

  Quinn turned in her seat and looked out the vehicle’s tinted back window. It was almost pitch-dark outside with almost no other traffic, which made it easier to see the red and blue lights on the hood and front grill of a car trailing behind them.

  “Shit,” Quinn whispered.

  Sarah leaned over. “Local?”

  “DPS.” She paused for a moment, then, “It’s my fault.”

  “What is?”

  “You have out-of-state California plates. I should have paid more attention. We were lucky to get through the other states in the daytime without being stopped, but our luck was bound to run out sooner or later.”

  “So?” Owen said from the front. “What’s out-of-state plates have to do with it?”

  “They’re like catnip to state troopers. They daydream about t
he big drug or cash bust from some out-of-state car passing through their state that’ll make their career.”

  “Swell.”

  “Don’t speed up, Owen,” Sarah said.

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  The vehicle continued to follow closely behind, close enough now that she could tell there was just one person inside the front seats. It was a Dodge Charger, which meant there was no way they were going to outrun it even on the van’s best day, which was long past.

  “Thoughts, ideas, plans of action?” Owen asked.

  “Get ready to pull over,” Sarah said.

  “What if he searches us? You forget about those humongous crates of guns and ammo in the back?”

  “He won’t search us unless we give him reason to.” She looked over at Quinn. “Right?”

  Quinn shook her head. “He’ll see how many people we have in the van, and he’ll ask, just to test us. If we say yes, he’ll call for backup and wait until they show up before he actually takes a look.”

  “And if we say no?”

  “He’ll call for backup and wait until they show up, then come up with a reason to get us out of the vehicle. Either way, he’s taking a look inside. He’s not going to let a van with all of us just go. We’re not exactly college kids on spring break.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Look at us, Sarah. We don’t fit. There’s no reason for the five us to even be in the same vehicle.”

  “She has a point,” Owen said.

  Sarah got up from her seat to get a better look out the back window. Quinn could practically see her mind working, turning over her choices, and she knew exactly what one of those options were.

  “I’m not going to kill a cop just doing his job, Sarah,” Quinn said.

  “I didn’t say you should,” Sarah said.

  “What if he’s not just a cop doing his job?” Owen asked. “What if he’s one of them?”

  “He could be, or he might not be,” Quinn said. “I’m not taking the chance either way.”

  “Neither am I,” Sarah said. Then, “You’re ex-law enforcement. Why hasn’t he turned on his sirens and pulled us over yet?”

  Quinn looked out the window at the Dodge. “He’s radioing in his location and the van’s license plate, make, year, et cetera. If there are any other patrolmen nearby, they’ll be on their way now to back him up.”

  “So how do we get out of this?”

  Quinn glanced back at Owen. “Pull over. Slowly.”

  “You sure?” Owen asked.

  “We don’t have any choice.”

  Owen tapped the brake before gradually pulling over to the side. “You got a plan?”

  “Yes,” Quinn said, and pursed her lips when Sarah gave her a questioning look. “Just follow my lead.”

  “It’s your play,” Sarah said, but for some reason Quinn didn’t completely believe her.

  The state trooper stepped out of his vehicle almost as soon as he stopped his Dodge fifteen feet behind them. Quinn was ready for it—most cops were taught to quickly get out and approach the vehicle once the stop was made to keep the driver off balance; it didn’t pay to give potential bad guys (Like us; wow, how things have changed) too much time to think.

  The squad car’s lights were still on, its multiple sources of red and blue flashing silently across the two-lane interstate road. The shoulder was wide enough that the uniformed figure was able to stay off the active lane as he approached the driver side of the van, the wide beam of his flashlight raking across the back windows and waking up Reiko.

  The young woman sat up in her seat and wiped at some drool along one corner of her mouth. “Did we stop?”

  “Don’t make any sudden moves, Reiko,” Sarah said behind her.

  Reiko remained still as she followed the flashlight as it abandoned her window and moved over to the driver’s side. “Five-o.”

  “We’ll handle this.”

  “Good to know. I would really hate to lose all my equipment.”

  Unlike Reiko, Rick had remained asleep.

  “Ugh,” Reiko said. “You’d need an atom bomb to wake Ricardo here up.” Then, looking down at the floor, “Comfy?”

  Quinn would have grinned up at her if she could, but with the shirt wrapped around her mouth like a bandana, Reiko wouldn’t have seen it anyway. She remained crouched near Reiko’s legs, almost directly in front of the van’s side door. Slightly behind her, Rick’s snoring was like explosions going off, but it was tempered by Owen’s amazingly calm breathing on the other side of the driver’s seat.

  She reached up and got a grip on the door’s handle and waited as the state trooper stopped next to Owen. The trooper was positioning himself just slightly behind the driver-side door so Owen couldn’t open it and strike him with it. Standard operating procedure. Right now, the man would be using his flashlight to get a better look inside the van—

  There, another beam of light cutting through the side window and washing across Reiko a second time, before moving to a sleeping Rick, and then Sarah in the back. The trooper’s right hand, no doubt, would be resting very obviously on the butt of his holstered sidearm as an unspoken warning.

  “What seems to be the problem, Officer?” Owen asked.

  Owen hadn’t finished officer when Quinn jerked on the lever and pulled with everything she had. The side door slid open and slammed into place with a loud crunk!, but by then she was already lunging out of the vehicle—

  The trooper was turning, eyes going wide even as he dropped the flashlight and stumbled back, his right hand pulling his pistol when Quinn slammed into his gut shoulder-first. She heard a surprised grunt and then they were on the interstate pavement, and Quinn thought, Don’t let there be any traffic! Don’t let there be any traffic!

  The two-lane road was pitch black with no signs of another vehicle in any direction, and Quinn breathed a sigh of relief.

  The trooper landed on his back, the tools around his belt jingling loudly with the impact. Those noises, along with the clatter of the flashlight as it hit the blacktop and rolled, and the heavy pounding of footsteps as the van rocked behind her, all rushed against Quinn’s senses as she scrambled up first, straddling the cop’s waist. She hit him in the face with a balled fist, putting just enough into it to keep him down.

  The man under her grunted again, but he was still trying to pull his gun out of its holster, so she hit him a second time, then a third, and each time she wanted to shout at him, Stay down! I’m trying to save your life! Stay the hell down!

  Finally, the man’s right hand let go of his partially drawn sidearm and fell to the ground. Quinn grabbed the gun and staggered off him, then tossed the weapon into the grass on the other side of the road. The trooper rolled over and spat a thick stream of blood onto the black pavement, but he didn’t try to get up.

  Good man, good man, Quinn thought, even as she struggled to breathe behind the shirt. The air around her was cold, and she felt like she was suffocating, but it was probably just all the adrenaline.

  She looked down at the trooper as he coughed up more blood. “Stay down. Just stay down.”

  “Quinn,” Sarah said behind her.

  “We’re good. We’re good.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Quinn turned to climb back into the van when something flashed in the corner of her right eye. She already had one foot up the vehicle when she looked down the interstate and thought, Oh, dammit.

  There wasn’t one, but two vehicles tearing through the pitch black toward them. Their red and blue lights were spinning, but neither one had turned on their sirens.

  Sarah hopped out of the van next to her, and she hadn’t touched down on the interstate for more than half a second when she shouted, “Reiko!”

  Quinn turned to her. “What are you doing?”

  “We can’t let this turn into a pursuit.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Sarah ignored her and stepped away from Quinn. She looked down the
interstate at the two approaching vehicles. Both sedans, probably both new-model Dodge Chargers, too, and they were coming fast.

  Fifty meters.

  Forty…

  Thirty.

  “Reiko!” Sarah shouted again.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Reiko said from somewhere in the back of the van.

  Quinn leaned into the open side door and saw Reiko struggling to open one of the moving boxes. “Reiko, what are you doing?”

  “Just following orders, Chief,” Reiko said.

  “Reiko!”

  But the woman ignored her.

  Rick, meanwhile, had finally woken up. He opened his eyes and stared at Quinn. “Hey, what’s going on? Are we in Houston?”

  Quinn didn’t bother answering him and pulled her head out of the van. She turned to Sarah, standing next to the prone trooper, while looking down the road. The squad cars were close enough now that their headlights were washing across the van and the surrounding area.

  “Sarah,” Quinn said.

  “Now, Reiko!” Sarah shouted.

  No, no, no, no, Quinn thought when she heard the van’s rear twin doors clacking open just as the two sedans (Dodge Chargers, just as she thought) screamed to a stop twenty feet behind them. She expected—and dreaded—the boom of a gunshot next, but instead there were two almost gentle ploompt! ploompt! ringing out from the back.

  Those “somethings” turned out to be grenades, except they didn’t explode when they struck the vehicles, one of them smashing into a windshield and disappearing inside, while the other hit the hood of a second car and bounced onto the roof. Both immediately began emitting thick streams of white cloud.

  Tear gas!

  Quinn’s face began to sting, and she was backing up, trying to get away from the widening smoke when she caught another sudden movement out of the corner of her eye. Sarah, moving toward the cloud.

  What the hell is she doing?

  Not that she had the chance to ask before Sarah was gone, disappearing into the thick folds of white smoke.

  The sounds of coughing from below her, and Quinn glanced down at the trooper as he tried to roll away from the expanding reach of the tear gas. Quinn crouched and grabbed the man by the arm. He attempted to hit her, but he was still too hurt and it was more like wild flailing. She gritted her teeth, thought, I’m trying to save your life, dumbass! and began dragging the man away. Thank God she still had the shirt wrapped around her mouth and some of her nose to conceal her identity.