by Sam Sisavath
Quinn sighed. “I’m starting to come around to that.”
“Good. That attitude will help you come to grips faster with what you’re up against.”
Quinn looked toward the bedroom hallway. “Is it safe to move her?”
“No, but I don’t think you have any choice.” Mary took out a key ring with a single key on it from her pocket and tossed it to Quinn. “For the Charger in the garage.”
“I don’t think those two deputies are going to just let me drive out of here.”
“Not if you ask permission. So don’t ask.”
“Mary, I’m not going to kill two cops just doing their jobs.”
“I’m not saying you should. But the two of you need to get out of here before they come back with that official piece of paper.”
“What about you?”
“I have a very good lawyer. And I don’t have anything they can take from me or threaten me with anyway. Not anymore.”
What happened to your daughter? Quinn wanted to ask, but she could see the very real pain in Mary’s eyes.
Mary smiled, but it came out overly forced. She turned back to the peephole and peered through it. “Maybe I can distract them. Get them in here while you—” She stopped short.
“Mary?” Quinn said. “What’s wrong?”
The older woman took a step back and Quinn replaced her at the door again, and looked out.
The squad car was moving, rounding the cul-de-sac driveway before heading down the darkened streets a few seconds later.
“They’re leaving,” Quinn said as she watched the vehicle’s red taillights fading gradually into the darkness.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mary said. “Why would they just leave?”
It makes perfect sense, Quinn thought, remembering what had happened last night as she and Xiao fled the police barricade.
She pulled away from the door and looked back at Mary. “Did Porter leave anything else besides the Charger behind?”
“Like what?”
“Guns. Ammo. Something I can use.”
“Something you can use for what?”
“The people behind all this,” Quinn said. “They’re the ones who just ordered the deputies to leave. Soon they’ll send their own people here, and I don’t think you’re going to be able to turn them away.”
Chapter 21
“Porter,” Quinn said, pacing the living room.
Mary had gone back to the peephole and looked out. “What about him?”
“I need to contact him.”
“Good luck with that.”
“He didn’t give you a number?”
“If he didn’t tell me where he went or when he’d be back, why would he give me a way to contact him?”
Quinn sighed. “Plausible deniability.”
Mary pulled back from the door and nodded. “In case I’m captured, I can’t lead them to him.”
“And you’re good with that?”
“It wasn’t like I came into this with my eyes closed, Quinn. I knew what I was getting into, the kind of people Porter’s going up against. You know about some of that now, too.”
Quinn nodded. She had so many questions for Mary—What happened to her daughter? How did she get involved with Porter in the first place? And a dozen other nagging questions—but she didn’t give voice to any of them. Mary was like her and Xiao—victims of something bigger, and they were just doing whatever they could to survive it.
She took out the phone she had pocketed since the bus—the only thing other than Ben’s Glock that she had managed to save from the alley—and found the last-received calls from Porter. Unfortunately, redialing didn’t do anything. She didn’t even know if the damn thing had any memory to store numbers.
“That phone is older than me,” Mary said over her shoulder.
Quinn put the phone away and spent a few seconds trying to decide just how screwed she was on a scale of one to ten.
Maybe a nine…
She turned back to Mary. “Maybe I’m wrong, maybe those deputies just left on their own—”
The sound of a car engine, very faint but still audible against the quiet neighborhood, stopped her from finishing.
Yeah, right.
Mary hurried to the door and looked through the peephole again. “It’s a long black sedan, but I can’t be sure. Doesn’t look like any unmarked police car I’ve ever seen.”
“No, but it sounds like every federal vehicle I’ve ever seen.”
The doctor turned around, and there was very real concern on her face for the first time since Quinn had met her. “Then I guess you should hurry.”
Quinn nodded and headed into the back hallway, then slipped into the first guest bedroom.
“I must be in diyu, because that is some seriously ugly wallpaper,” a voice said as soon as she stepped inside.
Quinn couldn’t help but smile at Xiao, sitting on the bed and pulling wires out of her arms. “You shouldn’t be up.”
“I shouldn’t have done a lot of things, like run around a dark alley with some chick I barely knew, but here we are.” Xiao sighed and smiled at her. Or attempted to. “Besides, how am I supposed to get any sleep with you two chatterboxes going on out there? What’s the problem, anyway?”
“Two Harris County Sheriff’s deputies showed up a few minutes ago. Then they left and were replaced by an unmarked black sedan.”
“Yup, sounds like trouble.” Xiao looked around the room. “Where’s Porter?”
“He’s gone, and I can’t get in touch with him by phone.”
“Give it,” Xiao said, holding out her hand.
Quinn took the phone out and tossed it to her. “You know his number?”
“Well, yeah.” Xiao stood up with some effort. She looked in pain, but her legs seemed solid enough under her. Though how that was possible after what Quinn had seen in the alley, then later as she dragged a barely-alive Xiao through the apartment lobby, boggled her mind.
“How are you standing?” Quinn asked.
“Porter’s little pill,” Xiao said as she dialed the phone. “Two doses of it, judging by the cotton taste in my mouth.”
“What were in those things?”
“Did you ask him?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Sounds like Porter.” She pressed the speaker, and while the phone dialed, said, “Where are we?”
“Mary’s.”
“Ah.”
“You know her?”
Xiao nodded. “She’s helped us before in the past.”
“She doesn’t know how to contact Porter.”
“No one knows how to contact Porter. That’s part of his charm.”
“You call that charm?”
Xiao grinned, when they heard Porter’s voice through the phone: “Glad to see you’re still alive.”
“Didn’t think you cared,” Xiao said.
“Meh. But replacing you would have been a real pain in the ass.”
Xiao grunted, but there was something that looked dangerously like a pleased smile on her lips. “Since you’re not here, I assume you’re on-site?”
“You assumed correctly,” Porter said.
“By yourself?”
“Aaron’s with me.”
“Jesus, Porter. You took the kid along?”
“You were preoccupied. I didn’t have any choice.”
“You still shouldn’t have taken him.”
“We’ll argue about this later. What’s your situation?” Porter asked. “I assume it’s not good if you’re calling me hours after almost dying.”
Xiao handed Quinn the phone. “It’s for you.”
Quinn took it, said, “We’re still at Mary’s, but we’re not alone.”
“That was fast,” Porter said.
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“They sent out an AMBER alert on the Charger as soon as they lost us outside their blockade. I thought I was careful getting to Mary’s, but apparently I wasn’t caref
ul enough.”
“Thanks for nothing, Porter,” Xiao said. She had picked up her jacket from a nearby chair and slipped it on, spending most of that time trying to get her heavily bandaged left shoulder inside while fighting back a grimace. There was enough darkness in the room that it was difficult to tell there was dry blood on the black leather fabric.
“Can you get out of there?” Porter asked through the phone.
“That depends,” Quinn said. “How big of a scene are they willing to make?”
“It depends on how desperate they are to capture me. Or you.”
“What makes you think they’re after me?”
“Right,” Porter said.
Annoyed yet, Porter? she wanted to ask him. This is what it feels like when someone won’t give a straight answer to any of your questions—
But whatever smugness Quinn was feeling at the moment vanished when there was a loud crash! from the living room.
“Mary!” Quinn said.
“Wait,” Xiao said, but Quinn was already halfway across the room and reaching for the door.
The Glock was in her hand as she slipped out into the hallway and–
Mary!
She was lying on her side, on the floor holding her stomach as blood spurted through her fingers. A mask of pain covered her face, and Quinn thought, Jesus. Everyone who helps me dies. First Ben, and now Mary. Who’s next? Who are they going to kill next because of me?
But that thought disappeared in the blink of an eye when a familiar voice (No!) said from the living room, “We really need to stop bumping into each other like this.”
She looked up at him, standing on the other side of the open door, his face brightly lit and unmistakable, and her mind raced: No. No, no, no, NO.
It was impossible. She had shot him. Twice in the chest and two more times in the back for good measure, because she was so pissed off and couldn’t control herself.
She remembered the shocked look on his face when he lunged at her and took the first round to the chest from barely a few feet away:
“Fuck, you shot me,” he had said, almost as if he couldn’t believe that she had gone through with it.
Pete Ringo.
He was still alive.
How the hell was he still alive?
Had he been wearing a bulletproof vest when she took him in the street? No, that couldn’t have been it. She would have felt the extra weight as she dragged him out of the car and tied him up. There had been no bulletproof vest. Even if he somehow survived—and it wasn’t completely impossible—the idea that he was already up and around was…insane.
Or was she dreaming? Was all this a nightmare?
It didn’t look or feel like a dream, though, and Ringo looked crystal clear in front of her, holding a pistol with a long, smooth silver suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. It looked very much like the same weapon he had used at Ben’s apartment when he murdered Ben.
He smiled across the living room at her as he casually stepped through the doorframe, the door hanging by two of its three hinges after he had kicked it open. “Miss me—?”
She shot him before he could finish, but she had fired too fast and didn’t give herself the half second or so it would have taken to aim and hit him in the right shoulder. He spun and dove back out of the open doorway, moving like some kind of inhuman (and impossibly fast!) animal.
Her shot was still echoing off the living room walls when a second figure appeared and took Ringo’s place. The newcomer had the same kind of weapon as Ringo’s, and he was firing even as he lunged through the open door.
The round zipped over her head and hit the wall in the hallway behind her. The man was still firing, squeezing off shot after shot while racing through the living room as Quinn threw herself to the floor. In the time it took her to reach the carpet, Quinn marveled at just how quiet his weapon was. Suppressors weren’t designed to be that silent. Even the best suppressors required appropriate ammo to lessen the decibel, and even those didn’t completely silence a gunshot.
But there was no sound coming from the pistol whatsoever as the man fired again and again, and Quinn might not even know his gun was actually shooting if empty bullet casings weren’t ejecting out of the weapon and rounds weren’t zip-zip-zipping over her head even as she dolphin dived to the floor.
She landed on her face and chest, grunted with the impact, and miraculously managed to hold onto her gun anyway. But she had no opportunity to fire back at the incoming man, and it was all she could do to lift her head as he ran toward her—jumping over Mary’s still form as he did so—while lowering his gun hand to take aim—
A crashing bang! from behind her and the running man was upended, a stream of blood flicking from a hole in his forehead as he flipped in the air. He crashed down to the carpeted floor on his back a second later, the gun falling from his hand and landing close enough to her that Quinn thought she could have made a grab for it if she had an extra second or two.
But she didn’t, because the man’s body hadn’t settled on the carpet yet when Ringo poked his head back into the open front door. His eyes searched the living room and found her quickly, but before either one of them could do anything, there was another bang! from above and slightly behind her. A section of the door frame next to Ringo’s intruding head splintered, forcing the man to jerk it back out.
“Get up!” Xiao shouted from somewhere behind her.
Quinn pushed up from the floor, her eyes snapping from the damaged and wide-open door to Mary’s unmoving form in front of her.
First Ben, now Mary. Who’s next?
“Quinn!” Xiao shouted.
She retreated toward the bedroom hallway, keeping the front door in view the entire time. A flicker of movement from the corner of her eye as Xiao waited for her in the arch that connected the dining room with the hallway and living room.
Quinn backpedaled through the opening just in time to see Xiao vanishing through another door on the other side of the room and into the connecting garage. Quinn peeked back into the living room and at the front door, waiting for Ringo to stick his head into view so she could shoot it off.
You’re dead. Why aren’t you dead, you bastard?
She had shot him four times.
Four times.
So why the hell wasn’t he dead?
“Fuck, you shot me,” he had said back at the abandoned building, with that combination of confusion and shock.
I shot you, so why aren’t you dead? Why aren’t you dead, you prick?
He was out there, somewhere, even if she couldn’t see anything but the darkened neighborhood beyond the open door. The gunshots were loud enough that someone should have called the police by now. But what good was that going to do her? Wouldn’t the people Ringo worked for just recall the local law enforcement again anyway, the way they had the deputies earlier?
“Power?” Porter had said. “This isn’t power, Quinn. This is a minor inconvenience to them. When they flex their real power, you’ll know.”
Maybe I don’t want to find out what they can really do…
She didn’t know how long she waited to get another glimpse of Ringo. It might have been just a few seconds, or a few minutes. Her mind was racing, trying to understand things that refused to make sense.
And there, the pistol that had fallen from the dead man’s hand, in the living room next to Mary’s still body. It was a semiautomatic (she knew that from the way it fired) and looked like a Sig Sauer, except it wasn’t. It was a brand she’d never seen, and the suppressor… That thing had made the weapon absolutely quiet—literally silent—which wasn’t supposed to be possible. And yet she hadn’t heard a thing as the man shot at her, just as she hadn’t heard a peep when Ringo used a similar weapon to kill Mary, and before that, Ben—
“Hey,” Xiao said as she reappeared behind her.
Quinn glanced back. “How’s it look?”
“Garage door’s still closed, and the Charger’s inside. Where’s the ke
y?”
Quinn took it out and handed it to her, but not before giving her a concerned look. “Can you drive with one arm?”
“I guess we’re going to find out.”
“Maybe I should drive…”
“Quinn!” a voice shouted from the living room. Ringo. “Why did you have to go and wake up the whole neighborhood? Now how are we going to keep this quiet and just between old friends? And, uh, whoever that Asian vixen is helping you out.”
Xiao smirked. “And just when I thought I had made it.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Quinn said. “I wish he didn’t know my name.”
“But don’t worry,” Ringo was shouting, “we’ll still keep this little party invitation-only. I don’t wanna brag, but I have a little pull with the local fuzz.”
“No shit,” Xiao said. “You know this joker?”
“He’s supposed to be dead,” Quinn said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, that happens a lot with them. You’ll get used to it.”
How the hell do you get used to people coming back from the dead? Quinn thought, but she said, “How are we going to do this?”
Xiao told her.
“You’re going to get me killed,” Quinn groaned.
Xiao patted her on the shoulder and grinned. “Nonsense. It’ll be a blast.”
“How are you so damn chippy after getting a metal rod shoved through your shoulder?”
“Porter’s magic little pills. The secret? Magic.”
“Right. Magic.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. I can’t even feel my toes right now.” She smiled widely. “It’s fantastic.”
“You’re going to get me killed,” Quinn said again.
“That’s my girl.” Xiao peeked out the archway for a second or two. “There’ll be at least two more out there. Do your best to keep this one busy in the meantime,” she said, before turning and hurrying back to the garage door.
Right. Keep him busy.
Quinn peered out into the living room at Mary’s body. She thought about the woman’s missing husband and daughter. What had happened to them? And was that the kind of fate that awaited her and Xiao?