by Sam Sisavath
She wasn’t sure if he was trying to goad her into answering or if he really was just reminiscing. And he had to know that the longer he toyed with her, the more time he was giving Danny and Nate to reach her. Or was that the point, she wondered, even as the pop-pop-pop continued unabated outside, getting closer…
Is that it? Is he using me as bait to lure Danny and Nate here?
That, more than anything, pissed her off. Gaby had stopped thinking of herself as a damsel-in-distress a long time ago, and to be used as one now…
She leaned against the counter and rested for a moment. The crawling from one side to the other had tired her out more than she wanted to admit. Her shoulder continued to throb underneath the bandage, as if the entire arm was going to fall off at any moment.
Maybe that would have been best; maybe the pain wouldn’t be so unbearable if the arm just plopped right off…
* * *
No!
She opened her eyes.
When had she closed them?
She blinked against the sweat and wiped dirt from her face, then painfully picked herself up from the floor and searched frantically for—there, her rifle. She grabbed it with her good hand.
How long had she been out? Worse, she had laid her head down on the floor just beyond the edge of the counter’s protection, and it was a miracle Mason or whoever was out there with him hadn’t spotted her and ended everything right then.
Stupid. Don’t ever do something stupid like that again!
She pulled farther back from the edge and sat up, using the wall as support, and tried to calm down her breathing. Her left shoulder pulsed with every breath she took, and the pain was still as awful as anything she had experienced. What she wouldn’t do for some painkillers, or maybe just a little bit of morphine. They still had some from when they treated Nate—
Wait, something’s wrong.
She didn’t know what it was—what grabbed her and refused to let go—for the first couple of seconds, but then it came to her.
It was quiet around her.
The shooting had stopped!
Glancing down at her watch did her no good because she had no frame of reference. They had climbed out of the rubble around the bank as soon as the sun washed over the town, and it had taken her maybe an hour to walk the length of the street, maneuvering around the destruction, all the while looking for danger. No one had wanted to separate, but they had no choice. They weren’t going to get anywhere on foot with their cargo.
They needed a vehicle. A working vehicle. And that meant spreading out to cover as much ground as possible. It was a calculated risk, especially with Nate still hobbling around moving almost entirely on pain meds.
“Gaby?” Mason’s voice again, coming from the other side of the counter. She looked over at the radio, still sitting where she had left it. “I feel like I’m talking to myself here. Won’t you say something?”
He doesn’t know.
She could hear it in his voice: Mason had no idea she had lost consciousness for…however long it had been. Maybe it was just a few seconds, after all, because he sounded more bored than anything.
“It’s not too late, you know,” Mason said. “With Mercer’s people out there, we can always use more volunteers. You’d fit right in, and you can count on me to keep quiet about what you’ve been up to out here. We’ll just pretend it never happened. Clean slate and all that. What do you say?” When she didn’t respond, “I bet all the boys would go crazy trying to get into your—Uh, I mean, be all friendly like with you.”
This time she didn’t stop herself from crawling back down the length of the counter and snatching up the radio and keying it. “That ship sailed when you tried to kill me, you piece of shit.”
“She lives!” Mason laughed. “Sorry about that. I thought you were someone else.”
“Fuck you.”
“Okay, okay, I admit it, I knew it was you. Can you blame me? These last few days have been a real pain for both of us.”
“Go to hell,” she said, and lowered the radio back to the floor. Just holding it to her lips was tiring, and with her useless left arm it meant she had to rely on her right, and she preferred to be holding the M4 instead.
“That’s not very ladylike, is it?”
She lifted the radio back up with some effort. “Fuck off.”
“You kiss Nate with that mouth?”
“I do more than that.”
Mason laughed again. It was loud and booming, and she tilted her head to see if she could hear it outside the diner, but she couldn’t. Wherever he was, he was well hidden enough that his voice didn’t travel. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that with everything reduced to rubble around her, he couldn’t have been all that comfortable out there.
“By the way, you hear that?” Mason asked. When she didn’t respond, he said, “Shooting’s stopped. You know what that means, don’t you? The rescue has, alas, been canceled. You’re all by yourself, Gaby. There’s just you and me now. Somehow, I always knew it’d end up this way.”
She glanced to her left, where all the shooting had come from before the silence. What were the chances Mason was telling the truth, that Danny and Nate had been stopped on their way to her?
No. He’s lying. That’s what he does. He lies.
She looked back at the radio. Mason was in a mood to talk, so who was she to keep him from flapping his gums? The more attention he paid to her, the less he was looking for Danny and Nate, because she didn’t believe for a second they were both dead, and death was the only thing that was going to keep them from coming to her.
She picked the radio up. “Last night…”
“What about it?” Mason said.
“You attacked us.”
“So?”
“You weren’t supposed to do that. But you did.”
“That’s what’s on your mind? Now? With Danny and Nate dead, and you in that diner all by your little lonesome, surrounded by my guys?”
She ignored him and said, “Why did you attack last night?”
“Because I could,” Mason said. “Because the person our mutual friends were luring to Gallant had arrived, and they gave me the go-ahead to finish you off. I know, I could have sat back and let the little beasts finish the job without ever having to get my hands dirty, but I really wanted the satisfaction of shooting Danny in the face. It must be the Army Ranger thing. I don’t have a lot of ambitions in life—survival’s always been the number-one goal—but to take out a Ranger… Well, I couldn’t resist.”
Danny’s going to love hearing that…because he’s not dead.
God, please, don’t be dead, Danny. Don’t be dead.
“I met your friend, you know,” Mason said.
Friend?
“Will,” Mason said. “The other Ranger. Back in Louisiana, outside of Dunbar. That was me. I put that together. Well, most of it. See, we’ve been connected for a while now, only you never knew it.” He chuckled, clearly satisfied with himself. “You don’t know how many times I wanted to let that slip while you were dragging me around Texas.”
“You were there…”
“Not just there. I was the one who handed him over to them. To her.”
Her?
Gaby stared at the radio, not quite sure what she was feeling. Anger? Hatred? Guilt?
There had always been a large hole in her knowledge about what had happened to Will that day and the days after. The not knowing had affected Lara the most as she waited for him, but it hadn’t been easy on her and Danny either because they were the last two to see him alive, and it weighed heavily on them that they had left him out there, alone.
Maybe, she thought, that was why it was so hard for her to believe that the thing from last night was Will, because admitting it was also accepting that Will hadn’t managed a miraculous escape, a fairy tale she continued to cling to all the way up to last night. In so many ways, accepting that the blue-eyed creature that had shadowed them from Larkin and Starch
and now Gallant was, in fact, a transformed Will was the same as coming face-to-face with her failure.
“Hey, you still there?” Mason was saying. “You didn’t fall asleep on me, did you?”
She didn’t bother answering him. Her shoulder hurt and her left arm had grown three (five?) times its normal weight, and it was difficult just to lift it an inch off the dirty diner floor. Besides, Mason’s voice was starting to give her a headache.
“Sweetheart?”
Don’t call me sweetheart, you sonofabitch, she thought, but didn’t have the strength to say into the radio.
“I guess this is goodbye—”
She was so numb and tired and ready to just close her eyes and go to sleep that she almost didn’t react when a hellacious series of gunfire crackled through the radio and cut Mason off in mid-sentence. At first Gaby thought it was all taking place on Mason’s side of the radio, but no, she could actually hear it outside in the street, too.
Crunch! as something broke underneath a heavy boot to her left.
Gaby turned her head—at this point it was the easiest part of her to move without sending jolts of pain through her body—as a man in a black uniform stepped out from a back hallway. The man had frozen in place when his boot came down on a piece of fallen plaster, the crunch that she had heard earlier. He was cradling a rifle and looking forward, searching for (her) something when she saw him.
Almost as if in slow motion, the man turned his head in her direction, and for the briefest of heartbeats they stared silently across the length of the counter at one another. The gunfire from across the street continued, but neither one of them heard it at the moment. For a second—maybe two—there were just the two of them in Tobey-something, staring at one another, both shocked to see the other there.
Mason?
No, not Mason.
She hadn’t needed to see his face to know the man wasn’t Mason because he was too tall and too skinny. He was holding his rifle in front of his chest, the muzzle pointed slightly forward and down, so when he reacted he had to lift the weapon and turn at the same time. She didn’t have to do anything because her M4 was already flat in her lap, the muzzle pointed right at him.
She simply squeezed the trigger and the carbine jumped slightly without the benefit of a second hand to steady it, but she unleashed enough rounds—and, more importantly, in the right direction—that the man screamed as bullets chopped into his legs just around the kneecaps. Many more rounds missed him and slammed into the far wall—and he collapsed to the debris-strewn floor, his body jerking uncontrollably the entire way down.
Gaby didn’t stop firing until she had emptied the entire magazine. She quickly pulled out a fresh mag from her pouch with her good hand and reloaded the rifle, her eyes glued on the twitching form the entire time. The collaborator had landed on his back with both legs still attached, but enough blood had gushed out of his destroyed limbs that they blanketed the area under and around him in no time. A thick stream was already flowing in her direction, and Gaby found herself fascinated by it even as she jerked back the charging handle, doing the whole thing without having to look down at the rifle once.
She couldn’t see the dead man’s head or face because of the angle he had landed, but she could hear him gulping for air just fine. Because of the way his hands were positioned, she had no fears that he was going to reach for the fallen rifle or his holstered sidearm anytime soon.
“Did you get her?” a voice asked. It was Mason, and it was coming from another two-way, this one still clipped to the (dying) dead man’s waist. Mason sounded out of breath, as if he had been running. “Carter, did you get her?”
No, Carter didn’t get me, you shit.
Gaby scanned the diner while doing her very best to ignore the new stabs of pain that seemed to be coming from everywhere. If one of Mason’s goons had managed to sneak into the building unnoticed, a second—even a third—could have done the exact same thing.
So where were they? Because she was ready. Or she was as ready as she was going to be, anyway.
After about five seconds without an answer from Carter, the radio on the floor next to her squawked, and Mason said, “I guess it’s true what they say: If you want something done, you have to do it yourself.” He sighed, sounding exasperated but resigned. “Maybe next time, sweetheart. Until then, don’t forget me, huh?”
Go to hell, she thought. Go to hell…
* * *
Sometime between when Mason signed off and she was telling him to go to hell while staring at the unmoving body at the other end of the counter, she closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until a voice said, “Hey-o, what have we here?”
She snapped awake and turned her head because the voice had come from right next to her—
“Relax, it’s me,” Danny said.
She let out a relieved sigh and forced her finger off the trigger. “Jesus, Danny…”
“No, just Danny, but you’re not the first person to confuse me with a higher power.”
He was crouched next to her, looking past her at the dead body on the other end. She choked back tears at the sight of him. She didn’t know how he was still alive or how he had gotten here, and she didn’t care, either.
“You made a hell of a mess there, kid,” Danny was saying. “Remind me never to invite you to Danny’s Game Nights in the future.”
“I’d kick your ass,” she said.
“Oh, I have no doubt,” he said, and grinned at her through a face full of scratches and bandages. Gaby didn’t even want to think about what kind of work Zoe was going to have to do on all three of them when they made it back to the Trident.
All three of us…
“Nate?” she said, almost too afraid to see the response on his face.
Except he smirked, which was a good sign.
“Limping around somewhere outside, but otherwise still in one piece,” Danny said. “Well, mostly. I had to leave him behind so I could take care of the dudes hiding in the donut shop.”
“What happened?”
“There were guys. I killed them. No big whoop.”
“Did you get him? Mason?”
Danny shook his head. “Sneaky little bugger must’ve snuck out before I showed up and ventilated the place.”
“He’s really good at that…”
“His luck’s going to run out sooner or later.”
“Hopefully sooner…”
Danny nodded when suddenly he jerked his head toward the street and lifted his M4 from the floor.
“What is it?” she asked, because she hadn’t heard anything.
“Cars,” Danny said.
“I don’t hear—”
“Stay here,” he said before she could finish.
“Danny, wait—”
But he was already on his feet and rounding the counter.
She sighed and tried to get up, but the pain was too much and she had to sit back down. With the carbine still across her lap, she waited to hear gunshots, but there was just the silence and…
She gave up and closed her eyes.
* * *
“Hey,” Nate said as he hovered over her.
“Hey,” she said, smiling up at him. “You’re alive.”
“I am. And you are, too. You did a pretty good job with that shoulder. Good thing you’ve had a lot of experience lately.”
“You really okay?”
“Stop worrying about me.”
“I can’t help it.”
He smiled. “Okay, if you insist.”
He reached down and stroked her cheek, and she leaned against the familiar and welcoming feel of his hand as she tried to figure out where she was.
She was lying down, she knew that much, but where? It wasn’t the diner’s hard-tiled floor under her, but it wasn’t quite a mattress, either. Maybe one of the booths? It was definitely something soft, and she never wanted to get up.
“It’s a van,” Nate said, seeing the look on her face.
“A van?”
“They found it near the shoreline. I don’t think they had any idea how handy it’s going to be, with you and the chest and all.”
“They?”
“I’ve been called worse,” a familiar voice said.
Gaby turned her head and saw Carly leaning over the front passenger seat of the vehicle. She had a ball cap on, long red hair spilling out along the sides, and she had a contagious grin on her face as she looked back at Gaby and Nate.
“And yes, in case you were wondering, I was totally eavesdropping on all the lovey-dovey talk,” Carly said.
“Thank God you’re here,” Gaby said. “I’m getting so sick and tired of staring at these two guys all the time.”
“You’re just saying that because I brought a van to pick you up.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“Now that we’re all caught up, what’s in the chest?”
“The chest?”
“The chest,” Nate said. “Remember?”
Oh. Right. The chest.
It was an old-fashioned wooden treasure hope chest, to be specific. They had found it in an antique shop next to the bank. The building had almost completely collapsed in on itself from the bombing, but the chest, all thirty-by-eighteen-by-twenty inches of it, stood out from the destruction anyway, heavily chipped by falling debris but intact. They had covered up all the edges where even the littlest bit of sunlight could possibly penetrate with duct tape and ended up using three full rolls just to be absolutely certain.
“So what’s in the chest?” Carly asked again, looking from Nate to Gaby.
“You didn’t ask Danny?” Nate said.
“He wouldn’t tell me. Kept saying it was a surprise.”
“Oh, it’s a surprise, all right.”
Carly sighed. “See, this is why I could only get Blaine and Bonnie to come with me to rescue you guys. Because you guys suck. Even Lara turned me down.”
“Liar,” Danny said as he leaned into the front passenger-side door and kissed Carly.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in tight. After a while, Gaby wondered if the two of them even remembered that she and Nate were still back here doing their best not to notice, which was difficult since they were just a few feet away.