by Sam Sisavath
Jesus Christ, how did someone shove that through brick and mortar?
“Yeah, it’s pretty deep,” Xiao was saying.
Quinn realized she hadn’t done a very good job of hiding the shock on her face. “How—?”
“Look at them, Quinn. These guys are the size of elephants.”
Quinn stared at her, then at the long piece of metal (Steel? Was that steel?) sticking out of Xiao’s shoulder.
“You’re going to have to pull it out,” Xiao said.
“What?”
“The staff. You’re going to have to pull it out. I can’t do it. At least not while holding this,” she said, showing the gun still clutched in her hand.
Quinn moved around Xiao to get a better look at the “staff.” A small amount of blood coagulated around the point of penetration, but she wouldn’t have been able to make it out if not for the pristine condition of the weapon—and that was exactly what it was. A metallic version of the wooden bo staff that she had trained with in the academy.
“How deep is it?” Quinn asked.
“Deep enough,” Xiao said. “Pull it out.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Sure you can.” When Quinn didn’t look convinced, “And it’s not like you have any choice. They recalled the locals, so we’re good on that front. But it’s only going to be a matter of time before they realize the four they sent failed. That means they’re going to send more.”
Xiao paused, as if to catch her breath. Sweat covered her forehead and face. Quinn could see that she was in pain. A tremendous amount, but she was fighting through it by putting on a brave face and just barely pulling it off.
“Pull it out,” Xiao said again.
Quinn sighed and took a step back.
“Do it,” Xiao said.
“It’s going to hurt.”
“Losing my virginity to a guy ten years older in a seedy London hotel hurt. This is going to sting.”
Quinn didn’t believe her for a second, but she smiled back anyway. “You sure?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Would you stop that?”
Xiao grinned, but it quickly slipped away, replaced by obvious pain. “Sorry. But yeah, I’m sure. It’s the only way.”
“What about Porter?”
“He’s not here. You are.” She took another labored breath. “You have to do it quick. If more of them show up, I won’t be much help in this condition.”
Quinn nodded. She put her gun away, then began unzipping her jacket.
“What is this, a strip show?” Xiao said.
“Shut up,” Quinn said.
“What happened to your pack?”
“My what?”
“Your pack.”
“Shit,” Quinn said, and glanced around the alley. She’d dropped it when the driver slammed into her. It was somewhere back there along with the extra Glock she’d taken from Ringo, some cash and clothing, and a half-used roll of duct tape.
“Wanna go look for it?” Xiao asked. “I’ll wait. Not like I’m in shock or anything.”
Quinn sighed and shook her head, then focused on the task at hand.
She balled up the jacket and slung it over her shoulder, then gave Xiao a long look. “You ready?”
“No,” Xiao said, “but do it anyway.”
Quinn took another breath. A very, very deep one this time.
Xiao closed her eyes.
Quinn lunged forward, grabbed the smooth—and cold, God, it was freezing cold—end of the rod with her right hand and pushed the open palm of her left against Xiao’s chest, and pulled.
Xiao screamed, but Quinn continued pulling, and pulling, and pulling.
First a foot, then another, then another came out of Xiao’s shoulder.
Finally, mercifully, the final inch, including the very sharp point covered in blood, came free and the rod clanged against the concrete ground. Quinn grabbed the jacket slung over her shoulder and shoved it against Xiao. The fabric was instantly covered in blood and Xiao’s body went slack, her head lolling heavily to one side, and Quinn grabbed her just before she could drag the both of them down like two sinking boulders.
Slowly, Quinn lowered them to the floor and sucked in a deep, relieved breath.
“How is she?”
“She’s bleeding.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s bleeding a lot.”
“All right,” Porter said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Do your best to keep her alive until then.”
Why weren’t you here before, asshole? she wanted to ask him, but bit her tongue.
Quinn put the phone away before going back to wrapping both arms around Xiao’s sagging body as she half-led and half-dragged the two of them through the hallway.
They were inside some kind of apartment building, having kicked—and when that didn’t work, shot—her way into the back door. If any of the tenants heard her entry—and they would have unless they were all deaf or in a coma—no one had called the police yet. Or as Xiao had put it, “They recalled the locals, so we’re good on that front.”
She didn’t know how much longer they would be “good,” because it had been at least ten minutes since the faceless men (Not faceless anymore. How the hell does that work, anyway?) had ambushed them in the alley. And yet there were no sirens, and no matter how many times she glanced over her shoulder, no one was pursuing them from the alley.
Quinn was very aware they were leaving behind large drops of blood as they moved through the darkened corridor. Xiao hadn’t said a word (if she even still could) since Quinn pulled the metal out of her, though Quinn could see her struggling through the pain whenever she looked over. The woman was losing a lot of blood—too much—and she had difficulty keeping her eyes open. Her lips quivered every now and then, as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t, and her face was covered in a thick layer of sweat despite the chilly air.
They finally reached the end of the back hallway and stepped into the lobby.
Quinn renewed her grip on Xiao’s limp body and dragged them past a row of mailboxes to her right, then a bank of elevators to her left. There were a couple of squiggly yellow light bulbs, but the moonlight flooding the large space from the front windows illuminated most of her path.
They were probably being very loud as they trudged through the hallway and then the lobby, but all Quinn could really hear was her own labored breathing. Xiao might have looked tall and lanky but she was surprisingly heavy, and Quinn struggled to hold onto her even with both arms, all the while continuing to pin her balled up jacket against Xiao’s bleeding shoulder.
And the blood. Jesus, there was a lot of blood, and they continued to drip-drip-drip to the floor as Quinn struggled to get them from one side of the building to the other.
She focused on the moonlight, using it as a beacon. All she had to do was reach it. All she had to do was reach it…without both of them collapsing to the floor because she wasn’t sure if she could get back up, and she knew for a fact Xiao wasn’t going to by her own power.
She changed up her grip on Xiao’s body again when she felt the other woman start to slide.
Quinn gritted her teeth. “Stay with me, Xiao. Come on, just a little farther…”
Another step, then another one.
Quinn could only focus on putting one foot in front of the other, in front of the other. Thinking about anything else, including just how goddamn far that front door was, didn’t do either one of them any good.
So she concentrated on extending her foot, then dragging Xiao along, then another foot—
Bright headlights, flashing across the front of the building as a car came to a quick, screeching stop outside in the streets.
Porter.
Hopefully it’s Porter.
Then, smirking to herself, God, I can’t believe I just thought that.
The front door was locked, and to break it she would have to put Xiao down, and Quinn wasn’t sure if she would
have the strength to pick the other woman back up if she did that. As it turned out, she didn’t have to worry because someone kicked at the door once, twice, and smashed it open on the third try.
“How is she?” Porter asked as he stepped inside.
There he was—the man who had started all of this.
He was also the same man who could help her end it.
For a moment—just a very brief moment—Quinn considered letting Xiao go and drawing the Glock from her waistband and shooting Porter. She wouldn’t kill him, just wound him. She’d need him alive when she brought him in, and then this nightmare would all be over.
He was walking toward them, making up the space between her and the door with quick and efficient strides, and as far as she could tell, he wasn’t armed. Or at least he didn’t have a weapon in his hands.
It would have been easy and he wouldn’t see it coming, because his eyes had gone—and remained—on Xiao’s sagging body. And even if he did realize what was happening—what she was considering—how was he going to stop her? He wasn’t armed, and this time he didn’t have Gary Ross’s bodyguard to distract her shot.
But she didn’t pull the gun, because she couldn’t.
Porter had the answers that she needed. Answers that might explain who the people that had killed Ben were. And right now that mattered more to Quinn than proving her innocence to the FBI or getting her career back.
You’re dead because of me, Ben, but I’m not going to let whoever’s behind it get away with it. I promise you that.
If Porter could read the conflict on her face, he said nothing as he reached for Xiao. “Give her to me.”
“She’s heavy,” Quinn said.
“Hey,” Xiao said, opening her eyes with some effort. “Don’t go blabbing about my weight to a guy. What’s wrong with you?”
Quinn managed to somehow smile back at her. “Sorry.”
“Don’t let it happen again,” Xiao said as Porter lifted her into his arms, seemingly with hardly any effort, and headed back to the door.
Quinn didn’t move and instead watched them go. She was covered in Xiao’s blood, and some of it continued to drip to the floor, joining the puddles that were already there. Around them, the building remained still and quiet, and though she had been waiting for it ever since she led Xiao into the place, there were no sirens in the air or police lights visible through the building’s windows.
“They recalled the locals, so we’re good on that front,” Xiao had said.
It took Porter a while to notice she wasn’t behind him, and he stopped at the broken door and turned around, his body, with Xiao slumped in his arms, silhouetted against the moonlight. He looked back at her and didn’t say anything for a moment, but he was too far away and there were too many shadows between them for her to read his face.
“You coming?” he finally asked.
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t move, either.
“The answers you’re looking for aren’t here, Quinn,” Porter said. “They’re not at the FBI, either, but I think you already knew that after what happened to your friend.”
She continued not to move, and though she didn’t know how it had happened, her hand had inched closer toward her gun.
“But you’ll have to ask yourself,” Porter continued, “do you really want to know? Do you really want to know?”
She remained silent and watched him back, but didn’t take her hand away from Ben’s birthday gift.
Ben…
“Make your choice,” Porter said, “because if you come with us, you won’t be able to come back, and the path forward is treacherous and it’s lonely, and there will be no parades waiting for you on the other side.”
Ben, tell me what to do. Please, tell me what to do.
“Make your choice, and make it fast,” Porter said, and turned around and slipped through the door.
She watched him go in silence.
One second.
Two…
…five…
She sighed, took her hand away from the gun, and hurried after him.
Chapter 19
John Porter.
“I know you have questions, but right now I need to make sure Xiao lives.”
John friggin Porter.
“Can you help me with that?”
John fucking Porter.
“Quinn?”
It was an easy enough question, but she found the answer difficult. Instead of replying, she stared at him from the backseat of the Dodge sedan and watched him lean slightly back and hold out the first-aid kit toward her.
Their eyes locked, and if Porter was aware of all the scenarios that were currently racing through her head—and every single one of them ending with him either in cuffs or dead or both—he didn’t react to it.
But he had to know, didn’t he? Not just who he was, but what had happened to her these last few days because of their encounter. He had to know, and yet he didn’t seem all that concerned that she had a gun on her, and he was, right now, helpless to stop her from pulling the trigger and ending her problems once and for all.
Except that wasn’t entirely true. Maybe it had been a day or two ago, but that was before they killed Ben.
And it was they now, not him.
It wasn’t just Pete Ringo. Someone (someones) was behind him.
“It was his own damn fault. He was being nosy. Asking too many questions, going into places he wasn’t supposed to. After a while, the higher-ups just decided he was more trouble than he was worth. Plus, we already had a perfectly good way to get rid of him.”
“The higher-ups,” he had said. Who were the higher-ups?
She wasn’t going to find out from Ringo, but maybe someone else knew. Someone the same people that killed Ben for being “nosy” were also after.
Porter.
John friggin Porter.
“Quinn,” Porter said now, having turned back to look at the road as he drove while his hand remained extended toward her with the kit in it.
She snatched the small, rectangular box from him and turned her attention to Xiao, lying quietly in her lap. The other woman hadn’t stopped bleeding even after Porter deposited her inside and she climbed in after them.
Quinn opened the box and removed the bundled up jacket (it was sticky with blood) from Xiao and tossed it to the floor. She took out what she needed and used the ceiling light Porter had switched on to cut away a large section of Xiao’s shirt to get at the wound underneath. She grimaced involuntarily at the sight of the gaping hole, thick with blood, but forced herself to keep going. She owed Xiao. Twice now.
Porter drove without any sense of urgency, and she had lost count the number of times he had stopped and made turns seemingly at random. She would have asked him how he was doing it—always staying one step ahead of the pursuing vehicles on the streets and the helicopters above them—but a part of her didn’t want to jinx it.
So she bit her tongue and concentrated on keeping Xiao alive.
The other woman’s breathing had become shallow, her body slowing down to keep the rest of her from overexerting itself. Either that, or she had become dangerously weak from the blood loss. Quinn thought it was probably likely the latter, given how much fluid Xiao had shed as they moved from the alley to the apartment lobby and now through the dark streets of north Houston with calm purpose inside Porter’s car.
Inside Porter’s car.
Jesus. She was riding in the backseat of a wanted terrorist’s vehicle. Not just any terrorist, but the most wanted of them all. Porter had slaughtered and stolen and terrorized his way through most of Europe and Asia these last five years, with at least a dozen high-profile actions in the States before that. What the hell was she doing back here?
But to look at him—in the driver’s seat in front of her, bloodied hands calmly guiding the steering wheel—she wouldn’t know just how wanted the man was. Five years and counting. That was how long he had been at the very top of the list, the same one her na
me and face was probably on now, too.
Where did it go so wrong, Ben? It was supposed to be a new start. A new life together.
But you had to go and die on me.
Dammit, Ben, why did you have to go and die on me?
Porter made another slow turn and pulled into an alley, then turned off the car’s engine when they were fully inside the shadows. That also shut down the ceiling light above her. She was going to ask why when two squad cars passed on the street behind them. It wasn’t the first time he had evaded the police by knowing exactly where they would be.
“Here,” he said.
She looked up at his offered hand. There was a white pill in his palm. Or it looked like a pill. It was big enough that she didn’t have any trouble imagining another pill inside it, like a Russian matryoshka doll.
“What is that?” Quinn asked.
“For Xiao.”
“You really think she can swallow that thing? It’s the size of my fist.”
“She doesn’t have to. Put it in on her tongue, and it’ll dissolve on its own.”
She took it. “What is it?”
“It’ll help,” he said, and didn’t say anything else.
Xiao was unresponsive when Quinn opened her mouth and placed the large pill on her tongue. Xiao’s mouth closed on its own, as if she knew what it was.
They sat in silence for another full thirty seconds before Porter started the engine and reversed back out into the street, and they continued on.
The city was quiet around them, and though she thought she could hear the faded blare of sirens every now and then, they were very far off and didn’t seem to be getting any closer. However Porter was doing it, he was doing it well.
“How is she?” he asked after a while.
“She needs a hospital,” Quinn said.
“She can’t afford one.”
“She needs a doctor, Porter. I did what I could, but this isn’t exactly my forte, and she really bled a lot out there.”
And I have her blood all over me to prove it.
“There’s one waiting for us,” Porter said. “A doctor. We just have to keep Xiao alive until we get to her.”