Vigilante Reloaded

by Jack Quaid

  Gunfire erupted outside.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The shooting lasted no longer than a few seconds. Then there was silence. Sullivan pushed his head against the bars for a better look; he couldn’t see a thing so he paced the narrow cell.

  ‘It’s all over now.’ Bean grinned.

  The hallway door burst open. Sullivan pushed his head against the bars again, caught sight of Mickey and Jay dragging Val across the floor, leaving a long trail of blood in their wake. They left him slumped against the wall, still clutching his weapon. Alive but barely.

  Jay was hysterical. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fucking cocksucker motherfucker fuck. What the fuck now, man?’

  Mickey closed his eyes. ‘Shut up. Let me think.’

  The scenarios he ran through his mind all came to the same dead-end conclusion.

  With what little strength he had left, Val hissed, ‘We bunker down. Negotiate our way out.’

  Jay’s hopeful eyes looked toward Mickey for approval. ‘Sounds like a plan?’

  ‘You do that, and you’re dead.’ Sullivan leaned against the bars. ‘You want to get out of here, you talk to me.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ Jay said.

  ‘You really think they’re calling a negotiator? You’ve got a couple of minutes until they storm the place with a shoot-first, no-need-to-ask-questions-later type of attitude.’

  A window broke a couple of floors above: they were coming.

  Mickey turned to Sullivan. ‘What’s your plan?’

  Sullivan tapped his fingers against the bars. ‘Wanna find out?’

  A moment later, he was free. Mickey palmed him his .45. Sullivan checked the rounds. Still good.

  Jay was erratic and panicking. ‘So how do we get out?’

  Sullivan shifted his gaze to the cells. Within them lay an army of cruel and violent men, many of whom had killed before and would do so again to get loose.

  ‘We let them out. All of them.’

  Mickey smiled.

  ‘You might be safer in here,’ Sullivan said, tossing Bean the key to his cell.

  He made no move to catch it, and it clattered on the floor. ‘I hope they gut you,’ he said.

  ‘They just may,’ Sullivan said, heading to the control switchboard, a relic from the days when the station was a prison. He flicked the switches on the primitive machine. One by one, cell doors opened, and the criminals flooded out in a rush toward the exit.

  Sullivan made his way through the stampede of criminals to find Jay on his knees, beside Val, gently rocking him back and forth. He was dead.

  Noise of panic, anger, and violence filtered through the walls. ‘We gotta go,’ Sullivan said.

  Jay was crying. ‘What about Val?’

  ‘What about him?’ Sullivan said.

  Mickey put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘He stays.’

  The sounds of the riot chased them through the maze of tight and ancient corridors. Stopping at a door marked ‘Basement,’ Sullivan kicked it open, patted the wall inside, and found the light switch. The three of them quickly descended the narrow staircase.

  Unlike the floors above, the basement was a wide-open space with low ceilings, dim lights and filled with rows of ancient filing cabinets and broken furniture. A diesel generator chugged away in the corner, providing emergency backup power.

  They had come through the only door, and it looked like they had just run into a dead end.

  ‘What the fuck now?’ Mickey said.

  ‘When this place was converted to a station, half of it was turned into apartments. This building and the apartment building next door share the same basement. Take a wall,’ Sullivan told them. ‘Tap around for hollow spots.’

  The Franks brothers took a wall each. Sullivan snapped a leg off a chair and did the same. Dull thumps. All brick. Just when he was about to think that this was the worst idea in the history of ideas, Mickey called out from over by the generator.

  Sullivan hurried over to them, tested the wall with his chair leg: hollow. The three of them swapped a glance. Taking a step back, Sullivan steadied himself, let out a breath, and hurled himself forward, his foot smashing clean through the particle board. When he pulled his leg out again, it was covered in plaster dust.

  Mickey smiled. ‘Well, Bob’s me uncle.’

  The Franks brothers went to town with their pistol butts, then the three of them tore at what was left with their hands. The air of the other side smelled damp and old, and they couldn’t see more than ten feet in.

  Then they heard the bullets.

  Sullivan hit the deck. Jay lunged into the hole.

  Behind them, from the staircase, shots rang out again, pounding into the filing cabinets that shielded Sullivan.

  ‘Come on, Mickey!’ Jay yelled.

  But Mickey wasn’t going to move. The two bullets that had caved in the left side of his face saw to that.

  ‘He’s not coming,’ Sullivan said.

  The sound of gunfire bounced off the walls; it was difficult to tell where it was coming from. Sullivan fired back. High, safe, aiming for no one, hitting no one. Jay got hold of his dead brother’s boot and dragged him back. A couple of bullets buried themselves in Mickey’s corpse. Sullivan emptied another clip into the basement roof and crawled back through the hole and into the corridor. Sullivan knew no uniform in their right mind would follow two armed men blindly into the darkness, so they had just bought themselves a couple of minutes at least.

  Jay was on his feet. Mickey was over his shoulders like some demented backpack, and the pair of them were heading into the darkness. They ran until they hit another wall, and like savages, they tore it apart until they found themselves inside another basement. This one was smaller and tidier. The sensor light flickered on as they headed for the stairs and into a pastel-pink hallway and followed that to the apartment’s lobby.

  A patrol car hammered down the street toward the madness outside the precinct down the road. A helicopter buzzed the skyline and blasted light onto the street, tracing the steps of three lifers who were frozen by the blast of artificial light.

  Jay shifted his weight from one foot to another, trying to get a better grip on his dead brother. ‘Now what?’

  Sullivan stepped out onto the street. He passed a couple of cars, then stopped beside a parked Eldorado. He broke the window, popped the trunk. Jay lugged Mickey over and laid him down inside.

  After a couple of moments under the dash, the Eldorado turned over. Sullivan sat up and found himself staring at a uniform standing by the front bumper. His name was Daniel Tucker. A career cop who Sullivan knew pretty well. The guy didn’t know what to do, and as a result had done nothing but stare.

  Snapping out of it, he reached for his sidearm.

  Sullivan put the car in gear.

  ‘Go, man. Go,’ Jay yelled.

  Sullivan’s foot hit the gas.

  The car shot backward.

  Tucker blasted away.

  The windshield cracked.

  They reached an intersection. Sullivan pulled the wheel. Swung the Eldorado around, changed gears, and sped away from the horrible mess.

  Beside him, Jay gurgled. Sullivan looked over. Blood painted the window.

  He had copped one in the neck.

  Chapter Thirty

  ‘Jay. You got to tell me where the cash is, man!’

  Jay’s eyes were glazed, staring. He was on his way out—no doubt about it.

  ‘Stay awake, don’t you die on me. Where’s Rayburn? Where’s the cash?’

  His lips moved. Words Sullivan couldn’t hear. He hit the brakes: the Eldorado slid to a stop. He pushed his ear to the bloody lips.

  ‘Don’t let me die,’ Jay whispered.

  ‘Tell me where Rayburn’s hiding the cash, and I’ll take you to a hospital.’

  ‘Don’t let me die. Take me to a hospital. Don’t let me die.’

  ‘You may not make it.’

  ‘Make sure I make it.’

  Chapter Thirt
y-One

  Sullivan called for help, but no one came.

  The emergency room overflowed with the sick, and those who couldn’t find a seat were laid out on the floor. Some of them slept; others groaned in pain. Jay had passed out before they got there, and Sullivan struggled to carry him. Blood dripped off his shoe and trailed behind them as they headed toward a mob of people gathered around the nurses’ station.

  ‘I got a GSW here, unconscious fifteen minutes,’ Sullivan yelled above the racket.

  The nurse at the desk pressed a buzzer and led them through a door to the ER, where several other nurses helped to lift Jay onto a table.

  A thirty-year-old doctor, with a calm look on his face and Converse on his feet, hurried over. Sullivan squeezed in between them and slapped Jay’s face.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ the doctor said.

  ‘Give him something to wake him up.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Wake him up.’

  A battle-axe of a nurse cut in with, ‘If you can’t control yourself, I’m going to have to call the police.’

  ‘I am the police.’ Sullivan pulled his weapon. Kept it low. ‘Wake him up.’

  The doctor got the message and turned to one of his nurses. ‘Fifty milligrams of codeine.’

  The nurse did as she was told. Jay’s eyes snapped open. He was confused. Scared. Cold.

  ‘Jay, you’re at the hospital; you’re going to be just fine,’ he lied. ‘But you need to tell me where Rayburn’s hiding the money.’

  Jay struggled to form the words.

  ‘Where is it, Jay?’

  ‘It’s somewhere . . . safe, in . . .’

  Jay flatlined.

  The doctor pushed Sullivan aside and went to work. His hands moved fast, but it was too late. Jay Franks was dead.

  He felt sick and made a line for the bathroom. Darkness. Shit smell. He collapsed on the floor, his knees in piss. He hugged the bowl and threw up. For close to ten minutes, Sullivan’s body convulsed and heaved until there was nothing left. When the worst of it was over, he struggled to his feet and tentatively made his way to the basin. Water ran down his neck and his back. When the dizziness faded, he stood up.

  The reflection in the cracked mirror stared back, and he didn’t like the way it looked at him.

  Then, through the noise of the ER and the complaints of the waiting room, Sullivan heard the sirens.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Aches plagued Sullivan’s body. His nerves were on edge, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had anything to eat, so he pulled into the first joint he came across.

  Scorpion Motorcycle Club was a shithole. Its floor was nothing more than a concrete slab covered with beer stains and dried blood. Titty pictures of women bent over Harleys covered the walls, and a handful of bikers in leather and tattoos seemed more interested in the football spewing from the television in the corner of the room than Sullivan or the naked women on the walls.

  He took a seat at the bar, ordered a beer, drank it, and ordered another. All they had to eat was chips, so he had two packs of crisps and was halfway through his third beer when the football broadcast broke to a newsreader with fake hair and a fake smile.

  The bikers abused the television. Sullivan paid neither one any particular attention until the words ‘armored truck’ bled from the speakers. Then the beer in his gut began to churn.

  ‘. . . that left twelve people dead and fifteen million dollars stolen. Police have been working around the clock and are currently searching for this man . . .’

  A photograph flashed up on the screen. It was black and white and grainy.

  It was Angus Sullivan.

  ‘Ex-DPD detective, Angus Sullivan, is believed to be the mastermind behind the daytime assault and robbery that left the community stunned two days ago. In an unprecedented move, the police department is offering a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to his arrest.’

  And in case some poor, money-hungry bastards missed it, they flashed his mug back up on screen a second time.

  Sullivan felt a tap on his shoulder but didn’t look around. A useless gesture: the four bikers had already surrounded him, their eyes filled with dollar signs.

  Sullivan let out a long and deep sigh. He was really having a son of a bitch of a day.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Doesn’t matter who you are, everybody second-guesses their life decisions with the barrel of a .45 buried in the back of their skull. The piece-of-shit biker Sullivan had by the scruff of the neck was having just those kinds of thoughts as they barged out of the bar and onto the footpath.

  Pedestrians averted their eyes, some crossed the street, others hurried past. None of them wanted any part of any of this.

  Sullivan turned the biker around. Buried metal into his dirty hair and used him as a shield against his three buddies, who piled out of the bar armed with pool cues and drunken thoughts.

  ‘Walk away and he lives,’ Sullivan said. ‘You want your friend to live, don’t you?’

  The bartender’s cue shook in his hand. He was going to make a move.

  Sullivan cracked his hostage out cold with the butt of his gun then turned it on the others. They each took a step forward, their faces twisted in frustration. ‘Just pick him up and go inside,’ Sullivan said. ‘That’s all you need to do.’

  They swapped glances three ways. Then, after a moment, they picked up their friend and went back into the bar.

  Sullivan drew in a long deep breath, holstered his piece, and thought about how the rest of his day could go to shit. He parked on Fenkell two blocks away and crossed over Keeler Street and stepped off in that direction. Half a block later he caught a glimpse of their reflection in a shopfront window. He had picked up a tail. It was official, Sullivan thought. His day had well and truly gone to shit.

  Sweat rolled down the back of his neck. His hands grew clammy, and his stomach churned. The tail was too far behind for him to make them out. He counted the steps: six seconds behind. Anywhere between ten and fifteen feet.

  At the end of the block stood a closed bank with vandalized ATMs lining one wall of the building. Sullivan took the corner, slammed against the wall, yanked out his weapon, and waited.

  SIX.

  One deep breath. Held it.

  FIVE.

  Gripped the weapon.

  FOUR.

  A couple turned and headed in the other direction.

  THREE.

  Got his footing.

  TWO.

  Don’t miss.

  ONE.

  The tail stepped around the corner. Sullivan grabbed hold. Fingers in neck. Slammed against the wall. Gun to the skull. Hold back. Stop.

  Winter.

  A strand of hair fell across her sweaty face. Her mouth opened, gasping for air. Sullivan let her go.

  He clocked the street. Rubbish chased rubbish down the footpath, but otherwise it was quiet. She was alone.

  ‘Goddamnit, what are you doing?’

  ‘I came to help you,’ she said.

  Sullivan holstered his weapon. ‘Go home, Winter. Just go home.’

  Tired, his nerves shot, he stepped toward the Eldorado. Winter trailed behind him.

  ‘You can’t do this on your own,’ she said. ‘You need me.’

  He yanked open the driver’s side door and shot a glance over the roof. ‘Winter, go home.’

  And then just as he was about to climb inside, crank the engine up, and hit the road, Winter’s words stopped him dead in his tracks. ‘I know where the money is.’

  For a brief moment, his heart stopped. By the time it started up again, a smile had grown in the corners of her mouth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was Rayburn all along, wasn’t it?’ she said with a smile.

  Sullivan bit. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I hear things,’ she said. ‘Some people don’t think very much of me.’

  ‘Where’s the cash?�
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  ‘Am I on the case?’

  ‘This isn’t a case.’

  ‘If you try and finish this by yourself, you’re not going to make it,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘It’s going to get a hell of a lot bloodier before this thing is over.’

  Winter shot him a sly smile. ‘So long as I don’t break a nail.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  She shifted in her seat and tried to steer clear of Jay Franks’s blood, then poked a finger though the bullet hole in the windshield that had created it.

  ‘Looks like you pissed somebody off,’ she said.

  ‘Some people are sensitive.’

  She lit a couple of cigarettes and passed one to Sullivan. He rolled down the window. A gust of hot air drifted through the cabin. ‘How did you get the address?’

  ‘Rayburn had me doing witness reports,’ she said. ‘All the witnesses were dead, so all that was left for me to do was interview the staff at the casino who loaded the truck before it was hit. One of the guards turned out to be Jay Franks, but he wasn’t one of the victims. I went to Rayburn; he and Cooper told me they were already on it, that Jay Franks was working with the stick-up men they arrested. Something about it smelled like shit. When they left, I followed them to this house. After twenty minutes, I snuck around the side and peeked through the window. I saw Rayburn, Cooper, and Warren counting up slabs of cash, blocks of it. Then it all made sense: the robbery, Jay Franks, you. I sat with my ear glued to the radio waiting for you to surface. Picked up your trail at the hospital when a nurse called it in.’

  Thirty minutes later, they arrived at the housing estate. The wind blew with a drunken violence down the street, howling and throwing up dust from where the gardens were meant to be. Half the houses were built, the other half were nothing more than wooden shells with plastic sheets for walls.

  Winter leaned forward and peered through the filthy windshield. ‘That’s it, over there,’ she said, and pointed to a house farther up the street on the right. They cruised past: no car in the driveway, no movement through the curtains. No sign of anything.