by Sam Sisavath
“Time to go,” Xiao said, and stood up. She brushed aside her jacket and pulled out a handgun from behind her back.
She’s had that thing this entire time, Quinn thought as she did the same, removing her pistol from her front waistband, then snatching the backpack up from the floor and slipping it on. “Watch your fire.”
Xiao rolled her eyes. “Don’t fret, little missy. I don’t shoot unless I know what I’m shooting at.”
The bus driver had stood up and was peering out the front windshield as the police cruisers neared them. They were moving fast, and it wouldn’t be long now.
Xiao was already halfway to the bus’s secondary door when she shouted, “Hey, old timer, open ’er up!”
The driver—whom Xiao had correctly identified as an “old timer”—glanced back at her in confusion for a moment. Xiao was standing in front of the couple, and Quinn, in the aisle next to them, saw the woman clutching the man’s arm at the sight of Xiao’s exposed gun.
“The door,” Xiao said, pointing. “Open it.”
It took another five seconds before the door creaked open and Xiao stepped through. Quinn followed, keeping her head low and her face hidden behind the hoodie, but even so there was no way the couple couldn’t glimpse her as she hurried past them and down the steps.
Xiao was waiting for her on the sidewalk, looking up the street at the approaching police lights. The sirens were louder out here, or maybe they were just closer. Xiao turned and began jogging in the opposite direction, and Quinn fell in behind her.
“You know where you’re going?” Quinn asked.
“Nope,” Xiao said. “I’m playing this by ear.”
“Oh, great.”
“Relax, it’ll be fun.”
Quinn glanced back down the street at the bus parked at the curb. The mother and son and couple were looking out the windows after them, but there were no signs of the old man. Quinn wondered if he was still trying to pick up his loose groceries. Farther up the street the police cars were getting closer, their sirens even louder. The sight (and sound) of them made her double her efforts through the chilly night.
“Now that’s a sign, if I’ve ever seen one,” Xiao was saying.
Quinn turned around and saw the other woman jogging across the empty street toward a store with BETTER THAN HELL written in neon lettering above its front door.
“There?” Quinn said.
“The streets aren’t our friends tonight.”
“And that place is?”
“You have something against sex?”
Quinn didn’t answer, but followed Xiao toward the store even if every ounce of her told her to turn and run in the other direction.
What did she know about this woman? Nothing, except that she was friends (Colleagues? Partners? Lovers?) with a man wanted on every continent on the planet, and who was the cause of all her present miseries.
But was that really true?
Yes, spotting Porter at the nightclub had started all of this, but he wasn’t the one who made her a fugitive. Ringo’s lies had all been in service of capturing Porter and not to hand him over to the FBI, as far as she could tell. So who exactly were Porter and his friends, and why did she think they were better than whoever Ringo was working for?
“You’re thinking about it way too much,” Xiao said as they slipped into the sex shop side by side and were immediately assaulted by a slow R&B tune about, predictably, “getting it on.”
Quinn saw Xiao put her gun away and did the same, then followed her through the aisles. The store was empty except for the two of them, and the twenty-something employee with more piercings on her face than Quinn would ever think to put on her entire body in a lifetime.
“Help you guys?” the woman asked as she looked up from a copy of High Times.
Xiao spun around and, still backpedaling down the long aisle, glanced over the racks of vibrators and flimsy lingerie. “My girlfriend and I know exactly what we want. Thanks anyway.”
“Let me know if you need help,” the woman said, even as she narrowed her eyes back at Xiao.
Xiao turned around. “I don’t think she bought it. I guess we don’t look like a lesbian couple. I don’t know why. I’m clearly the lipstick lesbian to your dyke.”
Quinn sighed. “Let’s just find the back door.”
“That’s what he said.”
“What?”
Xiao grinned as they came up to the door at the back of the store. EXIT was written on top of it, and Xiao pushed through and into a back alley.
Something wet squished under Quinn’s shoes, but she ignored it and turned right with Xiao, since their left was blocked off by the back of another building. It looked very much as if they had stepped into a concrete maze filled with shadowy patches and littered with garbage. The walls were covered with graffiti and dull-colored stains that Quinn didn’t want to think too much about.
“Now what?” she asked instead.
“Stick to the shadows as much as you can,” Xiao said. “They can’t find what they can’t see.”
“Why do I have a feeling you don’t actually have a plan?”
Xiao grinned back at her. “Probably because I don’t?”
Quinn sighed.
She’s crazy. And I’m following her through a series of dark alleys.
So who’s really nuts here?
They were moving deeper into the shadows when Xiao turned left. The other woman had begun to pick up speed, and Quinn had to do likewise in order to keep up. Xiao had longer legs but she wasn’t that much faster, though Quinn didn’t completely discount the possibility her guardian angel wasn’t going as fast as possible for her benefit.
The whup-whup-whup of helicopter rotors broke through her thoughts, and Quinn instinctively glanced up just as a pool of light washed across the alley. She ducked her head and moved toward the wall, pressing against the jagged brick surface as the spotlight raked across the same path she had been walking just a second ago.
Quinn stared at a dirty patch of…something splattered on the brick and mortar barely an inch from her face. The jumbled colors assaulted her eyes while the smell… She started breathing through her mouth.
Xiao had mirrored her movements a few feet in front of her, and they exchanged a brief look. There was too much shadow for Quinn to be sure if that was amusement or mild annoyance on Xiao’s face.
“Back at the hospital,” Quinn said.
“What about it?” Xiao asked.
“You saved my life.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I mean, why did you do it?”
“It was better than sitting around waiting for Porter to give me something to do. I get bored very easily, in case I haven’t made that clear. Some call it ADD, which is why I stopped going to him.”
“Who?”
“Some.”
“Some?”
“Yeah, my doctor. His name’s Some.”
Quinn rolled her eyes and Xiao grinned.
She’s insane. Absolutely bonkers, Quinn thought, when the spotlight moved away from them, followed by the actual presence of the police helicopter swooping above a few seconds later. It wasn’t just one chopper up there, but two, the whup-whup-whup of their rotor blades impossibly loud against the quiet night air.
Xiao gave her a we’re clear nod and they continued jogging up the alley, keeping as close to the shadowed walls as possible before disappearing around another turn. Quinn picked up her pace to catch up, passing the back doors of stores and tenement buildings and overflowing Dumpsters.
Then, without warning, Xiao stopped in front of her.
“What?” Quinn said.
“Listen,” Xiao said.
“Listen to what?”
Xiao pointed up at the sky. Quinn looked up, but she couldn’t see anything but stars.
Wait, what happened to the helicopters?
Quinn slowed down her breathing so she could hear better, but she couldn’t detect the whup-whup-whup of helicopte
rs no matter how hard she listened.
“They’re gone,” Quinn said. “Why did they leave?”
Xiao looked back at her. “How good of a shot are you?”
“Good. Why?”
“Really good?”
Good enough to kill Pete Ringo, she thought, and said, “Better than most. Why are you asking?”
“Normally people can’t shoot for shit, never mind hitting a moving target.”
“I’m not shooting anyone, Xiao. Especially cops.”
“You’re not going to be shooting cops.”
“Then who are you talking about?”
“The guys that want you; the real guys behind all of this. You don’t want them to get their hands on you, Quinn. But then you probably already know that. Did they put you in the chair yet?”
“What chair?”
“That’s a no.”
“They put me in a chair. What kind of chair are we talking about?”
“You’ll know it when you wake up in one,” Xiao said before she looked up at the empty skies again.
“I still don’t hear anything,” Quinn said.
“Oh, they’re coming. They wouldn’t have sent the locals away if they weren’t going to take over.” She turned back to Quinn. “Shoot them in the head and don’t hesitate, do you understand? Shoot to kill. If they capture you, if they put you in the chair, you’ll never see the light of day again. At least, not as the person you used to be.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“In the head, remember that,” Xiao said, and turned and ran off.
Quinn sighed, wondering again why she was allowing herself to be led through dark alleys by a woman she’d never met until a few minutes ago, and whose name she didn’t even know was real.
But she took off after Xiao anyway, because what the hell else was she going to do? She needed answers, and the only way to get them was to go right into the belly of the beast.
Right to John-fucking-Porter himself.
Xiao had turned the corner in front of her, and Quinn ran faster to catch up. She unslung the backpack and pulled at the zipper even as she darted through shadows, then stuck her hand inside to look for Ringo’s Glock. If there was going to be a gunfight, she’d rather have both weapons at the ready instead of just Ben’s G42.
She was rounding the turn when a door opened in the corner of her eye and a figure lunged out and broadsided her and drove her into the wall, the building’s rough and jagged surface stabbing into Quinn’s back like a thousand swords.
Chapter 18
Gunshots—Two? Three? Hard to tell, because they came so fast, one after another, that she almost believed it was a fully automatic weapon—bellowed from farther down the alley to her left.
Or was that to her right?
Her sense of direction was warped by the pain lancing through every inch of her body, every one of them originating from behind her where chunks of the brick wall dug into her flesh through her clothes.
Somewhere between being power slammed into the wall and rediscovering a whole new universe of aches and bruises, Quinn managed to hold onto her gun. She didn’t know how—in fact, she could barely feel her fingers—but when she opened her eyes, strands of moonlight were gleaming off the polymer barrel of the Glock G42. She couldn’t say the same for the backpack she had unslung just seconds ago, or Ringo’s gun that she was reaching in for.
But before Quinn could swing the gun up to fire, a hand grabbed her wrist and shoved it against the rough surface of the wall about a foot from her head, where an impossibly strong viselike grip held it in place. Either her assaulter was the strongest sonofabitch that ever lived, or she was sapped of strength from being rammed into. Maybe it was a little of both, because she was having difficulty just breathing, never mind focusing on the figure looming in front of her.
He was big. Christ, he was big.
At least six five with broad shoulders that poked out from underneath dark clothing. She couldn’t make out a face because it was moving too fast, twitching back and forth, and forward and back.
A faceless man.
Not again. Not again.
While he held her gun against the wall, with the muzzle turned harmlessly to the sky, his other hand was pressed against her chest, which explained why she was having difficulty breathing. Or at least she hoped so. The only other explanation was that the blow had caused some kind of internal injury.
More gunshots—she was sure it was exactly two of them this time—boomed from farther up the alley.
The man holding her in place might not have had a face (Where did your face go? her dizzied mind wanted to ask), but he had ears, and he turned his head toward the source of the gunfire.
Xiao. Where was Xiao?
The man’s head was still turned when Quinn swung with her left hand, balling her fingers into a fist at the last second, and struck her captor in the face—or at least where she assumed his “face” was.
It was like hitting granite.
The man didn’t go down and he didn’t even act as if he had felt it, so she hit him again, then again, and again.
Finally, the faceless man “looked” back at her. She stared at the spots where his eyes should have been, but were instead just blurring lines that crisscrossed and never stayed still for even a split second.
“Give it a rest,” the faceless man said. His voice came through loud and clear despite the ringing in her ears. “They want you alive, but it doesn’t have to be in one piece.”
That voice. She recognized that voice.
Quinn squinted back at him, thought, Go to hell, and swung again.
This time the faceless man intercepted her incoming fist, but in doing so he had to take his hand away from her chest and Quinn thought, Now now now!
She lunged forward—or as much as she could with her other hand still pinned to the jagged bricks along with that entire side of her body—and rammed her forehead into the man’s face.
It hurt. It hurt a lot, and new rounds of pain exploded across her body.
But the man let go of her hands!
The hulking figure backpedaled even as he groped awkwardly at his indecipherable face. Drops of dark blood dripped to the dirty alley floor as he took one faltering step, then two backward. She couldn’t be sure if he was hurt or just stunned, but the result was the same: She was free!
“Shoot them in the head and don’t hesitate, do you understand?” Xiao had said. “Shoot to kill. If they capture you, if they put you in the chair, you’ll never see the light of day again. At least, not as the person you used to be.”
Quinn put the first two bullets into the man’s chest, and as he stumbled back (Go down, goddammit, why won’t you go down?), she lifted the gun slightly and fired the third into where his face would be.
The man crumbled in a heap, but even before his body touched the filthy ground his face seemed to pull itself together until…it was just a face again, with an improbably small hole almost exactly in his forehead.
No, it wasn’t just any face. The driver. The same one who had taken her to Hofheinz with Ringo, and who had almost stopped her from escaping. She recognized him even through the blood still flowing out of his battered nose.
Quinn found herself staring at the body. She’d done that. She’d killed him. Just like she had killed Ringo. The vast majority of FBI special agents went through their entire career without having to kill someone, and she had already done it twice in one day. Four times now, if she counted Brown and Sterling.
But there wasn’t the regret she expected as she peered down at the lifeless body, even as her heartbeat continued racing and every breath she managed was louder than it should have been. She didn’t know how long she stayed that way—a second? Two or five, or had it already been minutes?—but she didn’t snap out of it until more gunshots boomed in the alley ahead of her.
Xiao!
Quinn pried herself off the wall and stepped over the black lump on the ground and r
aced up the alley toward another intersection. She immediately turned left, because that was where the gunshots had come from—
And almost tripped on something (a body!) lying on the filthy floor. She saw it at the very last second—it was wearing all black like the driver—and managed to jump over it just in time, but almost fell anyway. She somehow regained her balance enough not to go splat on the pavement, even as all the days and weeks of Quantico close-quarters combat training rushed back to her.
Quinn swept the darkened alley with the Glock, quickly picking up the two extra bodies in front of her, their forms revealed by a generous pool of moonlight. Like the first one, these were covered in black clothing and lay unmoving. The second one was on the ground, the third sitting awkwardly against a wall that was splashed with bright red blood, a thin metal rod of some kind gripped tightly in his right hand. The item was about a foot long and an inch and a half wide, and the way he held it told her it was a weapon. Both men had been shot multiple times in the chest, but it was the headshots that had finished them off.
Quinn saw all of this within five seconds and two controlled breaths.
“Look at you, still alive,” a voice said.
Quinn blinked at the shadows around her until, finally, she was able to make out a lone, tall figure standing in the darkness.
“You’re alive,” Quinn said as she hurried over to the other woman.
“So are you,” Xiao said. “Did you kill them?”
“Him, and yes.”
“Just one?”
Quinn glanced back at the three dead men in the alley. “Yeah, just one.”
“Oh well, we can’t all be special,” Xiao said, and grinned.
Quinn didn’t know why Xiao was so amused, because she wasn’t actually leaning against the wall—she was pinned to it. There was a long metal rod sticking out of her left shoulder, almost identical to the same object one of the dead men was clutching, except for the length—the one protruding out of Xiao was at least a foot and a half long, the rest of it buried somewhere in the wall behind her.