Dead Six

Chapter 14:

Anger Management

VALENTINE

I grabbed the woman’s arm with my right hand, crushing her thin wrist as roughly as I could. I used her momentum, vaulting her around the corner. She cried out in surprise as I wheeled her around a full two-hundred and seventy degrees, and gasped for air when I smashed her against the wall of the mosque, my forearm on her neck. In the same instant I brought my own gun up, leveling it between her eyes, and I froze.

The veiled woman was now staring down the barrel of my .44 Magnum, dark eyes wide with fear. Her right hand went slack, and the little Makarov pistol clattered to the pavement. She stopped struggling, and I asked myself why I hadn’t already fired. I couldn’t find an answer. Tailor asked what was going on. I didn’t answer him either.

I reached forward with my gun hand and ripped the woman’s veil off of her head. The black veil covered a very pretty face. She was young, with tanned olive skin and night-black hair. She was Hispanic, or maybe of Philippine ancestry, and she looked . . . damned familiar.

Holy shit, I thought, suddenly remembering where I’d seen that face. “Jillian Del Toro?” I asked cautiously. Her eyes suddenly went even wider, and the color flushed out of her face. I couldn’t believe it. It was the woman Gordon had put out the BOLO on.

I noticed something out of the corner of my eye: movement. Everything moved in slow motion as I watched, my consciousness still enveloped by The Calm. The man with the soccer jersey was approaching from my right, weapon drawn. He was running straight at me, hoping I wouldn’t notice him in the mass of panicked, fleeing shoppers.

I yanked Jill Del Toro’s arm forward as hard as I could, twisting to the right as I did so. She gasped in pain again. I let go of her hand and clamped my right arm around her neck. I pulled her against me and tightened my arm as I brought my revolver over her left shoulder and leveled it at the son of a bitch in the soccer jersey.

“Lorenzo, look out!” Jill Del Toro screamed. I tracked him with my gun and fired. Jill winced as the gun discharged a foot from her face. He dove aside. The .44 slug smacked the corner of the school, smashing a small piece of brick into a cloud of dust.

I tightened my grip on Jill and hunched down behind her. The man in the jersey, Lorenzo, hovered just around the corner, where I couldn’t get a shot at him. He didn’t seem willing to risk a shot at me under the circumstances, either. Tailor was coming up behind me, pistol drawn.

“Just let the girl go,” he said from around the corner. He spoke flawless, generic, unaccented English. “We can all just walk away.”

“Listen, asshole,” I growled, slowly backing down the alley. “I’ve had just about enough of you today. Why don’t you come out so we can finish this?”

“Yeah,” Tailor said, “we got your girl and your money bag. Having a bad day?”

We could hear police sirens in the distance. “What’s it gonna be, ace?” I asked calmly, continuing to back down the alley, pulling the young woman with me as I went. “Cops are coming.”

“Lorenzo!” the woman cried out, fear now obvious in her voice. I caught a flash of movement at the edge of the school. My revolver barked as I popped off another shot, taking another chunk off the corner of the building. Jill cried out again.

A couple of long seconds ticked by, and there was no response. Tailor and I made eye contact. I dropped the muzzle of my gun as he crossed in front of me, weapon held at the ready. He checked around the perforated corner of the school as I covered the opposite corner.

“He’s gone,” Tailor said, stepping back around the corner. He looked at Jill. “Guess your boyfriend got cold feet, bitch.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of the situation. I yanked Jill Del Toro around and began to force her back toward our car.

LORENZO

I left her.

“Fall back, Carl. Fall back!” I ordered. The sirens were wailing. The security forces would be here any second. Everything was ruined. Jill had gotten herself captured. Dead Six had won. She was as good as dead. The mission was screwed. The only option left was self-preservation. I would have to figure out what to do about Eddie later. “Hurry.”

“I’m almost there!” Carl responded.

“Leave them!”

The van tore around the edge of the school. I waved both hands overhead so he’d see me. Reaper stomped on the brakes, and the van screeched to a halt. I yanked open the side door. “Back up, grab Carl, and let’s go.”

“Where’s Jill?” Reaper shouted.

“Go!” I bellowed.

But he hesitated. “She’s one of us.”

I froze, half in, half out of the van. My first inclination was to reach forward and smack Reaper on the side of his stupid head. In a minute we’d be fighting half the cops in Zubara. I was a thief. You run. That’s what thieves do.

But he was right.

Something snapped just then.

I couldn’t leave her.

Things had changed. She wasn’t just bait. Jill wasn’t just somebody I could use and throw away anymore. Reaper was right. She was one of us. “Son of a bitch!” I grimaced. Reaper must have seen it. Instead of putting the van into reverse like I had ordered, he stomped on the gas, narrowly avoiding running down a bunch of innocent bystanders, and headed straight for the alley.

“Carl, turn around and take them out!”

He was out of breath from running. “Make up your mind!”

The alley was probably forty yards long, five yards wide, and their car had to be parked either in it or on the exiting street. Trying to walk down that alley would get me killed, and shooting it out down the alley would only get Jill killed, and either way the cops were going to kill all of us in a second anyway. I needed to get on top of them, fast. The school wasn’t very tall at all. I had an idea. “Reaper, pull right up to the front door of the school.”

“What?”

“Just do it! Then back up and block that alley.”

He did as I said, actually crashing our bumper into the front steps. But I didn’t feel it as I was already out the side of the moving vehicle before impact. I stepped onto the bumper, the hood, the windshield, and finally onto the van’s roof. I ran, jumped, and caught the edge of the roof with my hands. Pulling myself up, I scrambled onto the roof of the school.

I ran up the angled tile of the roof, parallel with the alley. This was idiotic. Half of Zubara was probably watching this moronic stunt, and I was sure that I’d be nicely silhouetted for the police snipers. The STI materialized in my hand as I approached the edge. Glancing downward, there were the assassins. The tall one was struggling against Jill, trying to force her into the backseat of a car, while she was fighting like crazy, but he outweighed her by eighty pounds. The Southerner was watching back down the alley, wearing my backpack, 1911 extended, waiting for me to appear at the end.

“What are you doing?” he shouted. “Cops are coming. Just shoot her already!”

The tall one grunted a response that I couldn’t understand. He was hugging Jill’s arms tight, but she just kept swinging her legs and jerking her head back into his face. I had no idea why he hadn’t already shot her. Dead Six must have decided they wanted Jill alive for some reason. There was no time to think. The second Reaper appeared at the end of that alley, that psychopath was going to light him up. I punched my gun out, sights lining up on the Southerner’s head.

There was a door into the alley from the mosque. It swung open directly behind the man, and he instantly spun toward it. There was a kid, probably all of six years old, standing there, and the kid was right behind my target. I was putting two and a half pounds of pressure on a three-pound trigger when I froze, thinking of the bullet that had passed through Jalal that was still throbbing, stuck in my vest.

I couldn’t kill a kid. I’d never killed a kid.

The child looked at the Southerner, at his gun, and then over his shoulder, right at me. The Dead Six operative instinctively turned, following the kid’s gaze. He saw me, eyes narrowed, and his gun flew up. Chunks of tile erupted skyward as I moved back from the ledge. Bullets just kept tearing through the mosque, searching for me, as he ran for the car.

At the end of the alley, our white van appeared, blocking their exit. They would cut Reaper to ribbons. I had to take them out now.

I took a few steps back, trying to remember the exact position of their car, hoped I was right, then ran forward and jumped off the edge.

VALENTINE

Jill Del Toro struggled mightily as Tailor snapped off several rounds at the man she’d called Lorenzo. I turned back to our Land Cruiser and, despite the girl’s thrashing, pulled the passenger’s door open. We had zip-ties in the glove box, and I was going to restrain the girl in my arms before I gave in to the temptation to shoot her. The terrified young child had disappeared back inside. We were out of time and had to get the hell out of there.

“Just shoot her and let’s go, Val!”

CRUNCH! I looked up in surprise as Lorenzo fell off the roof of the school. He put a dent in the roof of our Land Cruiser as he landed. He tried to do a shoulder roll to dissipate his impact but ended up rolling down the windshield and falling off the hood of the truck. He disappeared over the truck as he hit the pavement on the other side.

He reappeared a split-second later, pistol leveled at me across the hood of the truck. He was listing slightly to one side, and blood started to trickle down his face, but he had a killing look in his eyes.

“Lorenzo!” Jill screamed again. Before Lorenzo could turn around, Tailor was behind him, pushing his pistol into the back of his skull.

“Drop it, motherfucker!” Tailor growled. Lorenzo let his gun fall. Then there was more movement as someone ran up the alley from my left. I’d been so fixated on Lorenzo that I hadn’t noticed. Neither had Tailor, who, with a metallic CLANG, crumpled to the pavement as he was smacked in the head with a goddamned shovel.

LORENZO

CLANG!

Carl hit the Southerner unbelievably hard, collapsing the man in a heap.

I told him to take one of them alive.

The tall one shoved Jill down as his hand flew to his gun. Carl was already diving behind the trunk as the Magnum spit flame. I hit the ground as he reflexively turned on me next. Brick dust rained down on me when he fired, pulverizing the wall where I had just been. The shooter with the hand cannon was circling the back of the car, wearing that look on his face again, like everything else in the world had just stopped, and that all that mattered was taking out the garbage.

Carl was going for his pistol but was struggling to get it out, snagged on the unfamiliar clothing. The left-handed shooter came smoothly around the back of the car, doing the math, deciding to take me out first, like he had all the time in the world, mammoth handgun leveled right at my face. Time dilated until I could see the cylinder rotate another giant hollow-point into position behind the barrel. Guns are scarier when you can actually see the bullets.

He twitched at the last possible instant, .44 slug digging a divot into the pavement next to my face, fragments raking bloody chunks from my upraised hands. The shooter jerked as another round struck him in the chest. I looked through the open door to see Jill shooting him with my pistol, then back in time to see him go down.

The police sirens were right on top of us. Reaper was honking the horn.

“Come on!” Carl shouted. He had leapt to his feet, tossed the shovel, and was trying to pick up the man he’d knocked out, pulling him by one limp arm. I moved to help but saw the man crawling around the back of the car, his buddy’s 1911 in hand. Carl grimaced as the bullet struck him in the back. “Aaarg! I’m hit!”

“Run!” I shouted. The shooter ducked back down as Jill started punching holes in the trunk. I grabbed Carl by the vest and tugged him along. “Back to the van!” Jill kept shooting. “Jill, move!” She finally complied and ran after us. We reached the van a second later, and I shoved Carl in first. Jill leapt in after him. A new .45 caliber hole magically appeared in the sheet metal next to my hand. My opponent stood up and reflexively dropped the empty magazine from the .45 in his hands. He cursed as he realized he didn’t have a reload. I made eye contact with my nemesis.

This isn’t over.

There were flashing police lights coming up behind him. He tossed the empty gun into the car and went back for his friend, who was still wearing my backpack. I dove into the van and jerked the door closed. “Drive, Reaper, drive!”

Reaper did his best to get us out of there and managed to scrape all the paint off our passenger side on an approaching police car. The screech of metal on metal filled the compartment. Carl grimaced.

“How bad?” I asked.

“You know how hard it is to get a clean, untraceable, vehicle? How much work I put into this engine? I’m gonna have to burn it now. I didn’t want to have to use the spare yet. It ain’t as nice—”

“I meant the bullet.”

“Vest stopped it, bet I piss blood tonight, but I better drive before galinha-boy kills us all.” Carl crawled forward and started yelling at Reaper to get into the passenger seat. There was a brief lull as Reaper got out of the way; then the van really started to roar. Even kidney-punched with a .45, Carl was the best getaway driver in the business. We still had a chance.

I was lying on the floor of the open cargo area, breathing hard and sliding about as Carl took us around corners on two wheels, sirens screaming right outside our back window, when I saw Jill looking at me strangely. “You okay? Are you injured?”

She didn’t answer for a long enough time that I started to worry she’d taken a blow to the head. Then she finally spoke. “You came back for me. You weren’t going to. You were going to save yourself, you could have, but then you came back.”

“Yeah.” That made me uncomfortable. Of course I had been ready to ditch her. I don’t know why I’d changed my mind, but she had ended up saving my life, not the other way around. “Can I have my gun back?” She realized that it was still in her hands, then passed it over. “Go take a seat and buckle in.”

“Thank you,” she said softly as she moved forward.

Every cop in Zubara was going to be looking for our van. “Reaper, get on your computer and get rid of this pursuit. I want zero security forces communication. Screw with them however you want.”

“All of them?” he asked, opening his machine. He sounded eager. I didn’t normally just turn him loose like that. It was kind of scary.

“Use your imagination.” There were two police cars directly behind us on the narrow street. “Carl, you want a hand losing these guys?” I shouted.

“If you don’t mind me doing all the work!”

That sounded like a yes. I pulled up the rug in the back and opened a secret compartment, took out the stashed carbine, turned on the Aimpoint, and pulled back the charging handle. One thing I liked about this particular type of Toyota van was that you could open the back window. The muzzle cleared the window as I took a sight picture. It was difficult with the swaying of the shocks, but this wasn’t rocket science.

Unlike Western police agencies that relied on communication, tire spikes, and road blocks, Zubaran cops hung their guns out the windows and randomly started shooting, which was a whole lot more dangerous to the neighborhood than it was to the people they were pursuing. I was doing the populace a favor. I pumped half a dozen rounds through the radiator of the first car before the cop panicked and jerked the wheel to the side, spinning out of control. The second car T-boned them.

I rolled the window up and sank to the floor. Reaper was clicking away like mad, destroying thousands of man-hours’ worth of Zubara’s communications programming, Carl was driving like a Formula One champion, and Jill was just watching me with this indecipherable look on her face, probably thinking about how, for the first time in her life, she’d just shot somebody, and it had saved a life. My life.

It had been a long afternoon. And it had all been for nothing.

“Control, this is Nightcrawler, we’ve got a situation.” I recognized that voice, even distorted over an unfamiliar radio. He sounded like he was in pain.

“Go ahead, Nightcrawler,” said an unfamiliar woman’s voice. “Are you alright?” I could sense a note of personal concern slipping through the professionalism.

“Where’s that coming from?” I asked quickly.

Carl took one hand off the wheel long enough to hold up a small radio. “It fell off the one I knocked out.” He risked a look back at me. “Told you I do all the work around here.”

“I’m okay. Xbox is hurt. I’ve lost the cops and I’m heading to the safe house.”

“Nightcrawler, what’s Xbox’s status?” the girl asked.

“I don’t know.” He sounded worried. They weren’t just teammates. They were friends. Nightcrawler . . . so that was the name of the guy I had to kill. What a stupid call sign. “Xbox took a bad hit to the head. Some asshole hit him with a shovel!”

“Where’d you find a shovel anyway?” I shouted.

Carl shrugged. “I passed some construction guys digging up pipes. You know, knock one cold, to interrogate. Seemed like a smart idea at the time.” Good thing that the shovel was the official martial arts weapon of the Portuguese. It came from all of that dairy farming and hitting cows they had in their genes or something.

We were now listening in to Dead Six’s encrypted communications. This was huge. “Carl, have I told you yet today that I love you?”

The next voice that came on was older, gruff. He had the air of command. “This is Big Boss. Nightcrawler, was the target neutralized?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you sure, son?”

“He was dead before he hit the floor, sir. The guy he was meeting with got away. I don’t know who the hell he was. He looked like a local, but he didn’t fight like a local. He was good. Really good, sir. That girl that Bureaucrat put the BOLO on was there, too. I almost had her, but she escaped. She’s working with the shooter. Called him Lorenzo.”

There was a pause. “Understood, Nightcrawler. Did you notice anything else about this man? Any way to identify him?”

“He was average looking, could’ve been Arab, could’ve been Mexican. I couldn’t really tell. He did carry some kind of high-cap 1911. Xbox tried to take him prisoner, but that kind of backfired on him. Are the others okay?”

“Shafter and Anarchangel are on their way to the safe house. Zubaran communications are going wild. People saw you. You screwed up out there, son. I want a full briefing as soon as you get back. Bureaucrat will be mad as hell.”

“Reaper, can you track this?” I asked hopefully.

“I can try. Give me a second, though,” he responded. He was right. Eluding pursuit was more important. “I’m routing every cop in the city back to the Hasa Market where we’re holed up in a hostage standoff.” The boy was creative when you gave him some leeway. “We’ve got a room full of school kids and a sack of anthrax!”

“Don’t overdo it,” I warned.

The radio crackled one last time. “Nightcrawler out.”

You just wait.

The stolen radio sat in the middle of the computer table, volume cranked all the way up. Reaper had removed the back plate and attached a few mysterious wires to various things and was tapping away on his computer, looking at waves, graphs full of quickly scrolling numbers, and other things far beyond my meager comprehension. He’d already made sure that the radio didn’t have any sort of tracking device that could lead back to us. He was in the zone. I had pulled up a chair and was sitting there, pad of paper and pen in hand, scribbling furious notes each time someone from Dead Six spoke.

It had taken forever to get home. After being routed in the wrong direction, the police had actually caught on that they were being screwed with. Then Reaper had introduced a ferocious virus into their system, crashing the entire Zubaran security forces’communication network. We had parked the van in a ditch a few miles away and then walked home.

Jill, apparently not sure what else to do, was sitting across from me, nervously fiddling. The one called Nightcrawler—or Val, as Jill had said the Southerner had called him—had roughed her up pretty good, but she seemed okay to me. I’d been too engrossed with the radio on the walk home to talk to her. Carl had checked Jill’s minor injures, then had grabbed a beer, flopped onto the couch, and was watching TV. The selections in this part of the world were out of date and he was watching the end of a poorly dubbed episode of Three’s Company. He ripped the Velcro on his vest and tossed it on the floor, absently rubbing the bruise on his back.

Dead Six’s communications were thoroughly connected. Within ten minutes of Reaper’s virus attack, they had informed all of their operators that the security force’s comms were disrupted and to take advantage of that if they needed to. It pissed me off that some of our work might somehow benefit these jerk-offs.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“I can’t get a fix on the transmissions. This encryption is intense,” Reaper muttered. “Whoever set this network up is good, really good.”

“You’re better,” I stated. “Find them.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “It’s all about the math. If we hadn’t found this unit already open, I wouldn’t ever have cracked it. Even then, I can’t access any of the other channels. I can’t triangulate location because they’re bouncing these things off everything. Their crypto guy’s got mad skills.”

I scowled. Reaper was usually unbearably cocky about this kind of stuff. I didn’t like him sounding humble. That couldn’t be good. Shaking my head, I went back to the chatter. This was the operational channel of the day, and Dead Six was apparently a busy bunch. I had noted every call sign used or referred to, and they had mentioned eight different individuals so far. I had no idea if that was all of them or just a fraction.

I got the impression that this channel was for the operators in Zubara, but from the dialog I could tell that this was bigger, and there were other active channels, and probably command channels beyond that. Big Boss was the operational commander. He answered to somebody called Bureaucrat, who apparently had a sidekick called Drago, but neither one of those had spoken yet.

There were two other operations being conducted today in the Zoob. Unfortunately they all spoke in vague generalities about their locations, like “we’re on the street,” or “by the mosque,” or “we’re waiting in the parking garage.” No names, just random call signs. Nothing I could use to track them. The people they were either murdering or spying on were simply referred to as the targets, never by name.

“Nightcrawler, this is Control.” It was the girl from earlier. Her voice was young, American. Her tone told me that she was close to this Nightcrawler. “Big Boss wants an update on Xbox’s status.”

The voice that came back sounded tired. “He’s got a concussion. I think he’ll be okay. He’s pretty screwed up, though, kind of . . . like punch-drunk stupid or something.” His accent was from the northern Midwest, Michigan, or maybe Wisconsin. It wasn’t thick, though. He’d probably traveled. There was another voice in the background. I recognized the accent. “Yes, I am talking about you, asshole. . . . No sign of traumatic brain injury. Um, I think. It’s hard to tell with him. He’s awake, anyway.”

It sounded like the Southerner laughed and then said “Tell Sarah Ah said hi,” or something like that. He sounded like he was from East Tennessee, and not from the rich side of town. I quickly scribbled “Sarah?” after the note for Control.

“How are you doing?” she asked. That was real concern. I was right. There was some emotion there.

“I’m fine. Had a close one today, but I’m fine,” Nightcrawler answered slowly. The kid didn’t just sound physically tired, but weary, burned out. Good. From what I’d heard in the last little while, their operational tempo was brutal. They were being driven hard, and hopefully that meant they would slip up soon.

“What happened?” Control asked.

“It was that girl. The one Bureaucrat wanted so bad. I don’t know. I just . . . she caught me off guard.” I glanced over at Jill and gave her a big thumbs-up. It would have been better if she had shot him in the face, but she was new at this and wouldn’t have thought of a vest. Jill shrugged. Nightcrawler continued. “Then there was that other guy, the one with the tricked-out 1911. The girl called him Lorenzo. He’s good. He, I don’t know, fell off the roof of this mosque, landed on our truck, and started shooting.”

“He fell off the roof? He kept shooting after that?”

“It wasn’t that high. I mean, I fell off the roof of the barn once when I was a kid. I ended up in the emergency room, though.”

“I didn’t fall,” I said to the others. “I meant to do that.”

“Don’t worry,” Control said. “We’ll find him. I need you to be careful out there.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

Damn right you’re fine. You didn’t report my sack of money, either, you piece of shit. “They’re sloppy on the radio,” I said.

“You’re just annoyed,” Jill said.

Control came back. “They want to debrief you right away. Big Boss is sending a car to pick you up. I’ll . . . I’ll see you soon.” She was trying to be professional, but was . . . she was in love with him. Holy crap, this gets better and better.

Nightcrawler came right back. “I’ll—wait a second. What?” There was some commotion in the background. “I don’t have your radio. . . . What do you . . . Son of a bitch! Control, Xbox’s radio is missing. Repeat, his radio is gone.”

“Are you sure?”

Brief pause. “Yes. It’s missing.”

“No!” I shouted as I leapt from my chair. “Damn it, no!”

“Hang on.” Sarah, or whatever her name was, went right into full-blown damage control. “Attention on the net. ComSec breach. I say again, ComSec breach. Emergency protocol in force, Zulu One. I repeat, Zulu One.”

Then the radio went to static.

They’d changed to a different encrypted channel. “Reaper!”

“They’re gone,” he replied.

“Not good enough! Find them,” I bellowed.

“I’m trying, but this stuff is hard.”

Gone!

A bubble of rage uncorked from my soul, rumbled to the top, and erupted like a festering boil. All this work, all the killing, all the effort, all for nothing.

I just lost it.

With an incoherent roar, I picked up my chair and hurled it into the kitchen, shattering it against the far wall. “This Nightcrawler asshole has screwed me three times now! Three times!” I slammed my fist through the nearby Sheetrock, scattering tacked-up photos of the Zubaran underworld like confetti. “Falah, Adar, and now Hosani! And I even kind of liked Hosani! Worthless asshole cock-sucking son of a bitch!”

Jill and Reaper recoiled as I stomped past. “Every step of the way, every part of this suicide mission, complicated because of that piece of shit. Damn it! Not only does he have my box—he’s got my money! And I’ve got—” I kicked a hole through the kitchen door. “Nothing! It isn’t enough for him to ruin my life, but no, I get to make him rich, too. I swear I’m going to gut him like a fish. I’m going to pull his eyes out and skull-fuck him to death! I’ll tear his throat out with my teeth!”

Carl, having seen a few of my outbursts over the years, calmly turned up the TV volume and sipped his beer.

The neighbors started banging on the wall, demanding quiet. My first inclination was to pull my gun and shoot them through the wall. If they wanted loud, I’d show them loud. But I just stood there, breathing hard, chest heaving, veins popping out in my neck, left eye spasmodically twitching, fists clenched so hard that I was shaking. Big Eddie was going to murder everyone, and all because I couldn’t catch Dead Six.

So what the hell do I do now?

“Are you done throwing your sissy tantrum?” Carl asked over the sounds of Walker, Texas Ranger speaking in Arabic. “Or should I go get more furniture for you to break?”

Deflated, back to the wall, I sank slowly to the floor. “I’m out of ideas.”

Reaper had instinctively moved his body to protect his precious computer equipment from my fury. He’d rather me toss him across the room than one of those hard drives. “I can keep trying,” he assured me. The kid wasn’t used to me not having all the answers. “There’s got to be a way. You always figure out something.”

I shook my head. “We need to start thinking about how we can protect our families. How can we get all of them out of Big Eddie’s reach?” But I knew that was futile before the words even left my mouth. He had us by the short hairs, and there was nothing we could do. “Jill, you did your part. I’ll get you out of the country. I’ve got resources, friends. You—”

“Lorenzo!” Jill snapped. “You’re not out of options yet.”

I laughed, and it wasn’t a happy noise. If only she knew. Up until a few hours ago, she had been my final option. But somehow things had changed. I stood up. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” I said.

Jill’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Yes, I do.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but somehow that got everyone’s attention more than my ranting. “We all heard what they said. This Bureaucrat wants me dead, and I’ll bet you money that’s Gordon. You can still use me to get to them. I know you’ve already thought of that.”

That perked Carl’s interest, and he turned down the TV to listen to my response.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Yes, you would. I’m not stupid, Lorenzo. That’s why you’ve kept me around. I figured that out in the last few days. I could see it in your eyes. You didn’t like it, but I was insurance.”

“I wouldn’t do that now.” That time I said it with more force.

And she knew I was telling the truth. “What changed?”

I didn’t have an answer. “Nothing.”

But she wasn’t going to be deterred. “There’s no such thing as nothing.”

Reaper shook his head. “No way, man. Bullshit. Lorenzo wouldn’t sell you out. That’s . . .” He turned to me, scowling. “No way.”

I looked Reaper square in the eyes. “I was going to do what I had to do. This isn’t about me. This is about your mom, and Carl’s family, and a bunch of little kids I’ve never even met, and for Train. I know what Eddie can do. I’ve seen it. What would you do if you were in my place?”

He looked around hesitantly. “I don’t know.”

I turned back to Jill. “But I’m not selling anybody to Dead Six.”

Jill smiled. “So, you do have a heart.”

It was really tense in that apartment right then. “Look, sorry about . . .” I waved my throbbing hand at the new holes in the wall. “Whatever. Just leave me alone. I’ll . . . we’ll think of something in the morning.” I went to my room and closed the door, utterly defeated.

She didn’t bother to knock.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the folder of family photos in the dim light, absently spinning that blood-stained .44 Magnum cartridge between my fingers, and I looked up to see Jill’s silhouette in the doorway, hands on her hips. “Carl wanted me to tell you that he and Reaper went to pick up the spare car.” Closing the folder, I set it aside. “What’s that?” she asked.

Sighing, I responded. “This? This is a forty-four Magnum round. It came from the man that shot me today. And these,” I said, gesturing at the photos, “are a bunch of innocent people who are going to be hurt because of what I am.”

She waited. “Well . . . what are you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know anymore.”

“I do,” Jill said. She came inside and softly closed the door behind her. There was a sudden energy in the room. “I know exactly what you are.”

I recognized the look that she was giving me. I’d seduced more women than I could count, but it wasn’t like they knew me. I couldn’t do this. Not with her. This wasn’t right. I stood. “Listen, I—”

“You’re a thief, and a liar, and an all-around jerk,” she said with this mischievous little smile. “You’re this just horrendous asshole that takes advantage of everybody around him, and uses people whenever it’s convenient. And you’re so short. I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking.”

That was unexpected. “Me, either.”

“But . . .” Jill was closer now. She stopped, so close that I could just barely feel the soft curves of her body against me. It was electric. It had been a long time. “You’re also the man that saved my life.”

Her fingers were soft on my cheek. Then I was pulling her tight. Against all reason, I kissed her. She responded, quickly, aggressively. She felt so very good. “You don’t have to do this,” I said, and I meant it.

She whispered in my ear. “I know.”

Wide awake, I stared at the dark ceiling, listening to the night sounds of Zubara coming from the open window and Jill’s rhythmic breathing next to me. Her head was resting on my shoulder, and she had fallen asleep with one hand caressing the mottled scars on my chest.

Man, I needed that.

I moved the hair from her face, and she shifted slightly tighter against me in response.

What the hell was I doing? Men like me weren’t allowed to have relationships. It wasn’t that I wasn’t attracted to her. . . . Are you kidding? She was beautiful and had an unbelievable body. No problem there. I’m only human. There was nothing I’d rather do, but I actually . . . hell. I don’t know. It wasn’t like I was used to feelings.

Jill was different than the others.

But I couldn’t afford affection. Affection was weakness. I’d only ever had one serious relationship, and that had ended really badly. In the terrible world I inhabited, sex was business and love was for suckers. Loyalty was just something that could be used against you by anybody more ambitious than you were, my current predicament being a perfect example.

On the one hand, I felt like the biggest jerk in the world, like I was somehow taking advantage of this poor scared girl who had looked to me for protection, though it wasn’t exactly like I had initiated this. On the other hand, I was thinking about how stupid I was. The cold, calculating part of my brain was warning me that Jill was probably just doing this to cement her chances of me not selling her out, that somehow she was better at emotional manipulation than I was. Maybe the con was getting conned.

Then again, I was at least a decade older than her, probably more. Since I spent my days murdering scumbags, it seemed odd that I would have some sort of moral hang up about that, but I did feel like a dirty old man. On a strictly practical note, it made me really glad that at forty I had the physical conditioning of an Olympic athlete. Holy crap, the girl is energetic. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

So I lay there, beating myself up, yet somehow feeling strangely happy. It was kind of weird.

Jill stirred. “You awake?” she asked softly.

“Just thinking is all.”

I could see the whiteness of her smile in the dark. “Don’t worry. We will find them.” That hadn’t been what I was thinking about at all. In fact, this was the first time in weeks that every one of my thoughts hadn’t been driven by revenge. And for some reason, I liked how she said we would find them.

“You know, Jill, you’re really pretty when you’re homicidal.”

She giggled. “You think too much. Wanna go again?”

Maybe life doesn’t have to totally suck.