I raise an eyebrow. “What’s that look for?”
“He’s basically a younger you.”
She’s probably right. I thought the same thing in Karachi when I recruited him. However, I feign offense anyway.
“Looking to trade me in for a younger model, are you?” I ask.
She laughs. “Please. Like I would ever find anyone else who would put up with my bullshit the way you do?”
I grin. “Well, you’re not wrong there!”
She immediately screws her face up and throws a packet of sugar at me. “Hey! You’re not meant to agree with me, asshole.”
“Sorry. I was just putting up with your bullshit, like you—”
My words trail off. My gaze is drawn to the group of people walking along the sidewalk, heading toward us from our right. They’re still a few hundred yards away. There’s a real mixture in the large huddle—young, old, couples, kids, students… all shuffling together, focused on their own little worlds. Some are chattering into a cell phone. Others are listening to music. Some are talking to each other.
But three people in the group are doing none of those things. They’re walking with hardly any additional body movement. They’re not talking. They’re not listening to music. They’re not with anyone. But they do all have one thing in common.
They’re all looking at me.
“What is it?” Ruby asks, sitting forward slightly in her chair.
“I think we might have some company,” I reply.
She follows my gaze and sees what I see. She looks back at me for a moment, then her gaze flicks to something over my shoulder. Something behind me. Her expressions changes to mirror mine.
“I think you might be right,” she mutters.
I glance behind me and see three more people standing out from the crowd. This time, however, there’s a big enough gap in the sea of pedestrians for me to make out the gun one of them is holding low, discreetly pressed against their body.
There are too many people around. I can’t risk this devolving into what it did last night. But we’re pinned in now. Flanked from both sides. Handling three killers each isn’t ideal, but we could if we had to. That’s not the problem. The problem is doing it without anyone around us getting caught in the crossfire.
“Shit, Adrian, what do we do?” asks Ruby.
I casually take the car key out of my jacket pocket and show it to her. “I drive. You shoot. Let’s go. Now.”
17
08:43 CEST
Ruby moves first. She vaults over the door and shuffles into the passenger seat. She’s already reaching back into the weapons bag as I land in the driver’s seat and start the engine. The three assassins in front of us stop, immediately making them stand out even more in the sea of people still going about their day, blissfully unaware of how bad shit’s about to get.
Behind me, I hear people start screaming. I hear the commotion of a crowd, scared and confused, running in any direction they can.
“Go!” yells Ruby.
Smoke billows behind me as tires screech, partially masking us from the group back there. I slam my foot to the floor and speed away from the café. The street is narrow, but thankfully, the traffic is light. Almost immediately, I’m forced to swerve into the opposite lane to navigate around a vehicle driving too slowly. I glance at the group that were in front of us as I drive past, making eye contact with each one for a fleeting second. Two men and a woman. The expressions on their faces are hard as stone and twice as cold. I see one of the guys talking into a cell phone.
That’s probably not a good sign.
I move back out to the right lane and speed up again. I’m approaching an intersection and a red light. A couple of vehicles are stopped there, which may cause a problem.
I grip the wheel and shuffle in my seat, trying to get comfortable. I think this car’s an MX-5. I don’t know—Ruby picked it. Whatever it is, it’s not built for someone my size. I’m just glad there’s no roof, so I can sit straight.
Ruby’s sitting half-turned in the seat, facing me. She’s holding one of my Raptors on her lap, looking behind us.
“Do you know where you’re going?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Not a clue. Right now, I’m settling for anywhere those bastards aren’t.”
We pass a side street on my left. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a large black vehicle come speeding out of it. It slides loudly across the road, narrowly missing the back end of my car.
I glance in my rear view. It’s a 44. Mercedes. I see a driver and a passenger glaring out at me.
“Ruby, is that—”
Automatic gunfire fills the air. More shouting and screaming from bystanders is carried past us on the wind as the needle tips fifty.
“Never mind.”
Ruby balls up on the seat beside me, getting as much cover as she can behind it. I sink down into mine as much as the legroom allows.
This is the problem with a convertible: there’s little to no protection from bullets. They should warn you of that when you rent them.
“You gonna fire back at any point?” I shout over.
I feel her glare at me. “I’ll fire at something in a minute! I’m trying not to get my head blown off.”
“Fine. Just try to—” The dull, stuttering thunk! of bullets punching through the body of the car distracts me. I look in the rearview again. “Hey! This is a rental, fuckface!”
Ruby pops up in her seat and fires off a few rounds as I reach the red light. It isn’t going to change in time. There’s a line of cars heading toward us from across the intersection. Some are heading right past us. Others are turning left, moving across us. I need to get around the stationary cars in my lane before the oncoming traffic reaches us. Then I need to get across the intersection without being T-boned by cars turning.
Easy.
Adrian, you’re not exactly known for being the best driver. Are you sure about this?
Josh, now isn’t the time for the glass to be half-empty. Be positive or be quiet.
Fine. I’m positive this is a stupid idea.
I sigh. I hate myself sometimes.
“Hang on…” I say, gripping the wheel tight enough to lose color in my knuckles.
I accelerate, moving into the left lane and around the cars in front of me. Horns blare as I’m now faced with another car speeding toward me. I yank the wheel right, zipping back onto my side. The car shoots past me, missing me by inches.
Ahead, I see another car turning left, about to cut across me. I step on the gas, accelerating way beyond the speed limit in an attempt to get past where that car’s about to be.
…
…
…
I clear it. I must’ve been a couple of inches away from getting clipped. The car coming from my left slams its brakes on. Again, horns sound out, but I ignore them. I imagine the driver would prefer to be alive and pissed off, as opposed to the alternative.
I need to get on a freeway—get some room to move where there’s unlikely to be many people.
Next to me, Ruby pops up on one knee and starts firing, resting on the back of the seat for balance. In the mirror, I see the Mercedes take the same path I just did, cutting it even closer to stay in pursuit. A few rounds find their mark but do little to deter them.
She sits back down to reload.
“We really need to get out of Paris,” she says, breathing heavy with adrenaline.
I nod, staying focused on the road. “I know. After tonight, hopefully, we can.”
“If we make it to tonight…”
“We will. We just need to—”
Up ahead, I see another vehicle speed out of a side street. It fishtails across the road before settling directly in front of us. Another black car. This one’s a BMW. A man leans out of each rear passenger window and takes aim with an assault rifle.
I slam the brakes on. “Oh, fuck! Hold on!”
The car lurches forward, throwing Ruby against the dash. She grunts
from the impact and bounces back against her seat. I yank the wheel left, sliding sideways and lining the car up with the next left turn along. Then I hit the gas again, taking us off the main road.
The street is narrow, more like an alley. A thin strip of sidewalk, littered with trash, runs along either side of a single lane.
“You okay?” I ask.
Ruby’s just composing herself in her seat. “Yeah, just—watch out!”
Shit! There’s a car heading straight for me!
I brake and swerve, mounting the curb on my right and scraping Ruby’s door against the wall of a building. Thankfully, the oncoming vehicle did the same. We just about squeeze past each other, but we both lose our driver’s side mirrors in the process.
I grimace. “Ah, fuck. There goes the deposit.”
“Well, at least it doesn’t matter as much about the mirror I just lost over here,” says Ruby. “Have you taken us the wrong way down a one-way street?”
I quickly look around, but there are no signs. “It would appear so.”
“Nice going…”
“I’m sorry. I could’ve always stayed sandwiched between the two cars full of assassins shooting at us, if you’d have preferred?”
Gunfire interrupts us. We both duck instinctively.
“The Mercedes followed us,” says Ruby. “And they’re gaining.”
I let out a grunt of frustration. “I see them.”
Up ahead, this side street leads out onto another main road. Cars are moving quickly in both directions. No way I’m getting out of this intact.
“Seatbelt.”
“What?”
I speed up, reaching back to put mine on. “I said, seatbelt. Now.”
Ruby looks ahead and sees the stream of traffic we’re heading for.
“Oh, shit.” She fumbles for her belt. “Adrian, tell me you know what you’re doing.”
“Okay. I know what I’m doing.”
She places her hands on the dash, bracing herself. “Are you lying?”
“Yes.”
“What!”
“You told me what to say. You didn’t say it had to be the truth.”
She pushes back against her seat as we approach the end. “I swear to Christ, if we die here, I’m gonna kill you.”
We burst out into the street. I brake hard and steer left, moving across both lanes of traffic. The first lane, the vehicles are moving left to right. By some miracle, I find a gap and slide through it.
Tires screech. Horns blare. People nearby scream.
Uh!
My body jolts. I hear the sound of metal buckling behind me.
Ruby grunts as she’s thrown sideways into me.
Shit.
Not so lucky with the other lane. A car moving right to left just clipped the front of our car at speed, sending us spinning. I wrestle with the wheel, turning into the spin to try and even it out.
I grit my teeth, snarling through the effort. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Hold on!”
We complete a full rotation and half of another, then rock to an abrupt stop facing the opposite way I had intended. I immediately look down the side street we just came from. The Mercedes wasn’t as fortunate. They must’ve gotten T-boned from the left, as they’re now stationary a little way past the side street, facing away from us. A significant dent has appeared in the passenger side.
No time to waste.
“Ruby, get ready.”
I start the engine again and set off in the direction we’re facing. Ruby doesn’t need to be prompted. We both live on the same wavelength, and she knows exactly what to do.
I slow as we draw level with the Mercedes. She turns in her seat, extending her arm and taking aim with my Raptor. She fires multiple rounds through the window. Both the passenger and the driver flail in the seats as they’re peppered with bullets.
I speed away. Ruby sits back in her seat, reloading the weapon.
“Now can we get out of here?” she asks.
I nod. “That’s the plan. I’ll head for the freeway, which will take us out of the city. We’ll lie low until tonight, then head back in quietly, ready for the hit.”
She sighs. “This better be worth it.”
“No reason to think Corbeau won’t deliver. Ichiro chooses his friends carefully. I trust his judgment.”
We fall silent as I navigate a few back streets, eager to put some distance between us and the chaos behind us. It will undoubtedly have attracted the attention of the police, so we need to be far away and driving like everyone else, so as not to stand out.
Ruby reaches behind me and draws the second Raptor from my back. She holds them both low and smiles.
I glance at her. “What?”
She looks at me. “These weapons are incredible. They have no right to be as lightweight as they are, given the power they pack. Their accuracy is off the charts. I don’t know how Josh made these.”
I smile. “GlobaTech have some talented R&D guys.”
“No denying that. But these things… they’re better than any other handgun out there. By a long way.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
She shakes her head. “It’s definitely not a bad thing. I just… I don’t know. Think about it. Josh made these handguns for you, with instructions to deliver them to you should he die. They’re literally the best handguns in existence. On a different level to anything else.”
“Right…”
“And now here we are, working for the president, running a team whose sole purpose is to be better than anything the military has because we need to be ready to fight a war that no one else is even close to being prepared for. Am I the only one here who sees the comparisons?”
I focus on the road ahead in silence for a moment, thinking.
Finally, I say, “You think Josh anticipated whatever Schultz and Buchanan are worried about, figured I would be involved at some point, and made these so that I was equipped for the new fight and ready for it before anyone else?”
Ruby raises her eyebrows and shrugs. “I think Josh was smarter than you or I could ever hope to be. I think he read the game better than most. And I think he knew you better than anyone.” She waves the two guns at me. “In a lot of ways, these things represent everything Schultz asked of you.”
“And you don’t think it’s just a coincidence?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think the universe is lazy enough to allow coincidences. Adrian, I’ve just used one of these things, and doing so made me feel… invincible. Like I had an unfair advantage over everyone else. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
I laugh. “Welcome to my world. Why do you think I’m so confident all the time?”
“Because you’re an asshole.” She sticks her tongue out playfully. “I’m just saying, I think when we finally get out of this crazy town, it’s something we should explore. See if these weapons are Josh’s way of trying to tell you something.”
If it were anyone else, I would dismiss the whole idea as clutching at straws. But I trust Ruby’s instincts, and I know she wouldn’t say anything if she didn’t believe there was something to it.
I also know Josh better than anybody ever did, as he did with me. Ruby was right—he saw the world in a way few others ever could. He definitely understood our world better than anyone. He was always really good at chess. I never played him. Never had the patience. But his ability to see how things would play out was extraordinary. Easily the only reason I’m still alive. If anyone could’ve seen the way things would play out post-4/17, it was him. Maybe working with him is exactly why Schultz and Buchanan are on edge. Maybe he saw the ripples, and now they’re preparing to ride the waves.
Of course, they were going to come to me.
I follow a sign that says the autoroute is two kilometers away. Pretty sure it’s French for the freeway. It leads me onto a wider and busier road. There are four lanes—two running in each direction. I see a walkway up ahead, bridging over the road—likely an alt
ernative for people to get across, given there’s no sidewalk or lights here. On the left is a long line of trees, separating this road from the city streets. On the other side is a steady stream of low commercial and industrial buildings. I think the river is behind them.
I see the tip of the Eiffel Tower in my rearview, shadowed against the cloudless blue sky. Beside me, Ruby rests her head back and closes her eyes. Her hair waves in the wind as it blows against us.
“Do you think Fortin really was behind all these contractors coming after us?” she asks, raising her voice a little to be heard over the noise of the wind.
I think for a moment. “I still think it’s unlikely. Although, I promise you, if I find out he was, I’ll be heading back to that casino to do more than just play Blackjack.”
She says something I can’t make out. I lean over a little.
“What’s that?”
“Bridge,” she says.
“I don’t think Bridge is a game you play in casinos. And I didn’t mean I’d spend more money there. I meant—”
“Bridge.”
“Huh?” I glance across and see her staring ahead, her eyes fixed and unblinking. “What’s wrong, Ruby?”
She points through the windshield. “Bridge. Bridge. Bridge!”
I frown and follow her gaze. We’re approaching the walkway that stretches over the four lanes. I can make out the people standing on it. Six, to be exact. All are looking down over the railing at the road. At this speed, we’re maybe five seconds away from being directly beneath them. From here, I can clearly see one of the people is holding something up, resting it on their shoulder.
Oh, shit.
Six people on the bridge. Six assassins last seen by the café. Coincidence? Unlikely.
No such thing, according to Ruby.
I squint against the sun. “Are they holding—”
“A rocket launcher?” Ruby nods. “Yes. Yes, they are. Can we think about moving now, please?”
If they fire at us, they’ll either hit us—which would suck for us—or miss us, which would likely suck for everyone else. I can’t let that happen.
I check the mirror and weave through the traffic, away from the bridge.
The Devil You Know Page 13