Finders/Keepers

Twenty-Two

Dwight was dead, and he was on the tenth floor of an organization house with a woman who insisted on shouting at the top of her lungs and didn’t look all that interested in getting out of the building anytime soon. He guessed things could have been worse. For instance, the two remaining men (or “meatheads,” as Dwight called them) that guarded the building could have been five, or ten, or more. As it stood, there were just two guns still unaccounted for, and while that didn’t sit very well with Reese, it could have been much, much worse.

Then the girl who looked like Faith — and could very well have been Faith, but wasn’t, because obviously his luck wasn’t that good — poked her head out of one of the rooms.

“Faith’s gone,” the girl said. “But if you take me with you, I know where you can find her.”

Reese was going to say “Hell no,” but Alice beat him to it. “Come on!”

The girl came out of her room in jeans and a T-shirt. She was so skinny Reese thought she might trip over her own legs, but she was surprisingly athletic and ran past him without a look, clearly having decided that Alice was in charge of the situation.

Well, she’s not wrong.

“What’s your name?” Alice asked her.

“Iris,” the girl said.

“Where’s Faith, Iris?”

The girl shook her head. “Get me out of here first and I’ll tell you.”

Reese thought Alice might argue, but instead he saw the relief on her face as she nodded and looked over at him. “Let’s get out of here.” Then, to Iris, “Stay next to me and go where I go, understand?”

Iris nodded. She looked scared, but also resilient. Reese couldn’t help but be impressed by that.

“I got point,” Reese said, and hurried past them.

“I’m Allie,” he heard Alice tell the girl behind him. “That’s Reese.”

He smirked to himself and thought, Great. She won’t tell me her real name but has no trouble telling a perfect stranger she only met a few seconds ago. I should be insulted, right?

He decided to think more on that later (if there was a later), but right now there were still nine floors to get past before they were safe. Or as safe as you could possibly get once you crossed people like his former employers, anyway.

The apartments to both sides of him were dead silent as he walked past them, and he couldn’t even pick up shuffling from behind the doors like earlier. Alice (Allie) and the girl were wisely keeping quiet behind him, the soft tap-tap-tap of their footsteps, along with his, seemingly the only sound in the entire building. The girl was barefooted for some reason, which contributed to the quiet.

Reese wasn’t too surprised by the absence of police sirens outside the building. The organization had chosen their tenants well, because cops meant questions that not everyone could or wanted to answer. He’d been to too many ghettos around the world to think this was out of the ordinary.

He was a third of the way down the hallway when he noticed the camera perched above the elevator in front of him. Reese stopped and turned around and looked for the girl. She was so small that Allie dwarfed her. “Iris…”

The girl stuck her head out from behind Allie.

“Where’s the surveillance room?” he asked her. When she didn’t seem to understand his question, “The bad guys. What room do they usually stay in?”

Iris didn’t have to think about the question for very long. She pointed down the hall to their right. “The first door.”

He turned back around and hurried over, stepping over the dead man on the floor. He gave Allie a look, and if she didn’t understand what he was doing, that didn’t stop her from understanding what he needed from her. She nodded back and Reese turned around, opened the door, and went inside, the MP5K swinging from side to side.

The apartment was heavily lived in, the living room turned into a monitoring station with LED screens arranged in a semicircle. Reese was greeted by two empty chairs and no signs of occupants. He swept the back hallway, just to be sure, before coming back out and focusing on the monitors. There were five in all, and they switched between camera feeds every five seconds, showing all ten stairwells and ten floors.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think the building was empty, that there wasn’t a single soul in the entire place. Of course, he knew better. The residents in the other seven floors were staying indoors to wait out the chaos, which was smart of them. He searched for signs of the remaining two goons but didn’t see them anywhere, either. There was also something else missing that was harder to explain: a receptacle for all the footage being recorded by the cameras.

“Well?” Allie said impatiently, poking her head through the door behind him.

He sat down on one of the chairs and used a keyboard to switch between the monitors, stopping only when he found the lobby camera. Like the hallways and stairwells, it looked empty. Looked, anyway. Reese didn’t believe it for a second, especially with two more meatheads running around out there somewhere. Unless, of course, the caretaker had lied to Allie. That was entirely possible, too.

Reese took the opportunity to dig out the pill bottle from his jacket while he was scanning the monitors. Now that all the shooting had stopped and the adrenaline had ebbed, the throbbing pain had returned with a vengeance, and Reese swallowed down two more pills in an effort to stave them off for just a little bit longer.

“Reese,” Allie said behind him. “What are you looking for? You were the one who wanted to get away from here as fast as possible, remember?”

“I’m looking for the remaining two meatheads.”

“Do you see them?”

“No.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Maybe. But there’s also the other thing…”

“What other thing?”

“Where does all the footage go?”

“What footage?”

“The ones being recorded by all the cameras.”

“So? Who cares where they go?”

“You should care. Our faces are all over them, not to mention all the killing we did.”

He heard Allie whispering to Iris before she said to him, “Iris doesn’t know where the footage goes. Maybe they don’t want anything recorded, either. All of this might just be for surveillance only.”

“Must be,” he said, though he didn’t fully believe it as he got up from the chair.

“What now?”

He stepped out into the hallway and glanced toward the elevator, then the stairwell with its bullet-riddled door. “There’s only one way out of here, and that’s down. And they know that, too. Unless the caretaker was lying about their numbers.”

“Why would she lie?”

“She’s a criminal, and criminals lie. I should know.” Then he looked over and smiled at her. “So, Allie, huh?”

“What?”

“Your name.”

She nodded. “Yeah, it’s Allie.”

“Alice, Allie. You couldn’t have told me that the first time I asked?”

She flashed him an annoyed look. “Can we talk about this later?”

“Is that short for Allison?”

“Later.”

He chuckled. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and took the lead up the hallway once again.

“Are we taking the stairs again?” Allie asked behind him. He thought she sounded almost pained by the question.

He didn’t blame her; the prospect of doing ten more floors was like a physical hammer slamming into his side.

“I have a better idea,” Reese said.

Instead of going down the stairs, Reese opted to take the elevator. The only reason he hadn’t let them take it before was because the house could remotely control it from the monitoring station. That risk was now gone, with the remaining two (if there were even two more) somewhere below them instead of on the tenth floor.

He pressed for the lobby, then hit the third-floor button just as they passed the fourth floor and exited the elevator into an empty third floor hallway. Reese heard movements behind the closed doors of the two closest apartments, but no one (wisely) came out.

If there were two more gunmen left, they would no doubt be waiting in the lobby. That was the only explanation that made any sense and why Reese felt it was safe enough to abandon the elevator on the third.

He turned left toward the stairwell door as soon as the elevator closed back up and continued down. He didn’t go through the door but instead stood back and waited.

“Well?” Allie said behind him.

“Give them a moment,” he said.

“For what?”

“For them to realize we’re not in the elevator. They’ll figure it out.”

Allie said, “Whatever you do, stay behind me, Iris.”

Then Reese heard it — footsteps in the stairwell. They were coming up fast, and he waited, waited—

Clump-clump-clump! as heavy shoes reached the floor landing directly on the other side of the stairwell door. Reese took a brief step back and unloaded the submachine gun into the door and kept firing until the MP5K was empty. He quickly tossed the weapon, drew his Glock, grabbed the doorknob, and pulled the door open.

A figure lay on the landing on its back, the man’s head dangling off the steps behind him. Blood gushed from holes in his torso, his eyes open and staring up at nothing. A pump-action shotgun lay next to him, but Reese ignored it and stepped over the man and into the stairwell, searching for another target.

Searching, searching…

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

A soft tap from above him, and Reese looked up and saw a figure turning the corner, a pistol in his hand aimed right at Reese’s head—

Bang! from behind him, and the man collapsed and slid down the steps, landing in a pile at Reese’s feet.

Reese looked over at Allie, who was leaning into the stairwell with her Glock.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” she said, and stepped into the room beside him.

Iris, sticking close to Allie, looked down at the two bodies, but if she felt anything at all for them, Reese didn’t see it on her face.

Tough kid. Tougher woman leading her.

Reese followed them down. “You could have let him shot me, then taken him out later.”

“I could have,” Allie said, “but what if they had reinforcements in the lobby?”

He grinned as she leaned around the corner, looking down at the second floor below them.

“Anything?” he asked.

She pulled her head back and shook it.

He moved past her to take point again. Allie followed, with Iris close behind.

The second floor was empty, and they exited into the lobby without any problems. He thought about taking the back door instead, past the super’s office, but decided the distance to the front was closer and worth the risk.

“Come on,” he said, and headed toward the door, grimacing through a sudden flurry of pain.

Just a little longer, just a little longer…

Taking the elevator had been a well-deserved break, but the three stairwell floors had just about undone all of that. But as he made a beeline for the front door, Reese couldn’t help but feel better, almost light on his feet, which allowed him to push through the misery and keep moving.

Halfway to the front door (Christ, I might survive this after all!) Reese found himself thinking about that one million he had coming and wondered how hard it was going to be to convince Allie to give him Dwight’s share. Maybe he could come up with a sob story about Dwight having a wife, or girlfriend, or even better, kids. It wasn’t like Allie would know any different. Yeah, maybe that was the correct approach—

“What about the others?” Allie asked behind him.

“Everyone’s dead,” Reese said. “If they want to leave, there’s nothing to stop them.”

“They don’t know that.”

“Not my problem. We already had this talk, remember?”

Allie didn’t reply, but she stopped, and when he glanced back, saw her looking behind her. Iris stood obediently next to her, rubbing her arms as if she were cold. The girl kept looking at the front door, no doubt thinking about all the freedom waiting for her on the other side. Reese thought she might take off on her own at any second, but she never did.

“Allie,” he said.

She didn’t respond.

“Allie,” he said again, “we have to go.”

But she still didn’t move, and he had started running the scenarios through his head (How the hell was he going to get her out of here without bloodshed? Because he needed her out there; he needed her to release that money that was going to help him run as far away from the organization as possible, with or without Dwight’s share) when he heard it.

It was very soft at first because it was still far off, but it got stronger as it neared.

“You hear that?” he asked.

“Yes,” Allie said, looking back at him.

Police sirens…

“You said the cops were paid off,” Allie said.

“Some, but not all of them,” Reese said. “We left a lot of bodies up there, Allie. They’re not going to be able to cover this up.”

He saw her mind working…

Five seconds, then ten…

All the while, the sirens got louder, and closer…

“Allie,” he said.

She finally turned around. “Let’s get out of here.”

But of course she didn’t let him leave right away. They sat in the old truck almost a full block down and across the street from the organization house and watched as two police cruisers arrived, then two more five minutes later. They gathered outside the tenement and waited, cordoning off the street and diverting traffic.

“Here comes the big guns,” Reese said when a black van appeared and was waved through the sawhorses.

Men in assault vests and ballistic helmets, carrying rifles, climbed out of the back of the newly arrived vehicle.

“SWAT,” Allie said.

“And they’ll go in and clear the building,” Reese said. “The girls will be fine.” He turned in his seat and looked over at Iris in the back. “I guess you risked your life for nothing, kid.”

“I want to go home,” Iris said.

“They’ll take you home.”

“I want to go home now. It’s been so long…” She looked out the window, as if she was already imagining wherever “home” was.

“You said you knew Faith,” Allie said, looking back at the girl.

Iris nodded. “She was already here before me. I guess because we kind of looked alike, they put us together a lot of times.”

“Together?”

“You know, photos, videos, that sort of thing. Together.”

Allie nodded. “Do you know where she is now?”

“They took her away two months ago. She’s not supposed to be back for a while.”

“Where did they take her, Iris?”

“Can I go home now?” Iris asked. Suddenly she looked very young and vulnerable, and Reese couldn’t help but wonder if she was one of the girls stuffed into the trailers of those big rigs he and Dwight had babysat in the past.

If we didn’t do it, someone else would have.

Telling himself that usually worked, but this time it didn’t quite have the same impact. He looked out the windshield at the police action up the street instead, anything to keep him from seeing the tears coming down the girl’s cheeks in the backseat.

If we didn’t do it, someone else would have…

“All right,” Allie said. “We’ll go home first.” She turned around and nodded at him. “Let’s go.”

He turned on the engine and U-turned down the street.

He drove for half an hour, sticking to the speed limit. He didn’t say a word, and neither did Allie in the front passenger seat next to him. He hadn’t asked Allie where they were going, but he guessed it didn’t matter as long as they were out of the city. Iris sat quietly in the back, smiling to herself as she stared out the window, as if everything was new to her and she couldn’t (and never wanted to) get enough of it.

If we didn’t do it, someone else would have, Reese told himself for the tenth time in as many minutes.

He slowed down as they hit a stoplight and parked behind a beat-up Chevy with a Baby on Board sticker in the rear windshield.

“What’s next for you?” he asked.

“I take that list of addresses you gave me, and I give it to the authorities,” Allie said. “Then I go find Faith.”

“I thought you said the Feds were slow dinosaurs.”

“They are, but I can’t go around shooting up buildings like this the rest of my life. After today, after this hits the news wires, they won’t have any choice but to act on what I give them. If they don’t, I know a few people in the press I can call.”

He chuckled. “You mean blackmail the Feds?”

She didn’t answer.

“Damn,” he said. “Dwight was right. Remind me never to cross you.”

She still didn’t say anything.

“Listen, I was thinking, after this—” he started to say, when he caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of his right eye and thought, Shit!

Reese jerked his head back just in time, and the first shot buzzed! past his face, so close he could feel the heat of the projectile going by, and smashed the driver-side window. He struck out and hit her gun hand, and she squeezed off a second shot, this one sending a round into the front windshield and spiderwebbing it.

The wound in his side screamed from the sudden movements and pain lanced through him, but it was better than getting shot again. Reese reached blindly for the door lever with his left hand, by some miracle located it, and jerked it back while at the same time throwing himself out just as she fired again and the round zipped! over his head.

He landed in a pile on the cold pavement, then rolled and bumped into the tires of a gray sedan. A car door creaked open, and Reese, flat on his stomach against the road, looked underneath the truck and saw Allie’s feet hurrying down from the front passenger side—

He scrambled up and staggered down the street, partially bent over at the waist in some pathetic attempt to lessen the pain coursing through him. He went down the street, toward the back bumper, because he knew she would take the fastest route to him, which meant circling the hood. His side burned, and he couldn’t decide whether to reach for his gun or grab at the wound to keep the stitches from busting.

He reached for the gray sedan’s radio antenna to stop himself from falling headfirst to the street and nearly snapped it in two. He grabbed as much of the car’s trunk as he could and went around it. An old couple in a white station wagon five feet away stared wide-eyed at him as he darted in front of their vehicle and onto the other side of the lane.

Bang! as a round sailed over his head and hit a sign in the middle divider.

Reese summoned every bit of speed he could muster even as moving traffic threatened to run him over. Horns blared, but he ignored them (Bleeding man running for his life here! he wanted to shout and laugh) and made it to the other side of the street without having to dodge another bullet.

A half dozen people on the sidewalk scattered at the sight of him, and Reese threw himself into their midst to use them as shields. He took a moment to glance back and saw Allie looking after him before she turned and hurried into the driver-side of the truck and drove off.

He couldn’t help himself and smiled after her even as he felt the wetness against his hand. He was bleeding again, but that was okay. He watched the truck make a right turn and disappear and briefly wondered if Allie would turn around and try to finish him off.

That was unlikely, but he didn’t completely put it past her. She was, after all, one of a kind. He’d known that when he first saw her, and the last two days hadn’t changed his mind whatsoever. If anything, they’d only reinforced it.

Allie, or Alice, or whatever she called herself, was a hell of a woman, even if she had tried to kill him.

Twice, now.

“Hey, mister, you all right?” a man with a ball cap asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Reese said, and grinned back at the guy. “Lover’s quarrel. Nothing we can’t get past.”

“You serious, man? You’re bleeding!”

“Tell me something I don’t already know,” Reese said, and hobbled off.

Somewhere up the street he heard police sirens, but Reese ignored them and slipped into an alleyway.

He was bleeding badly and dripping blood on the pavement as he limped his way toward the end. He fumbled with the bottle in his jacket and popped two pills into his mouth, and that seemed to alleviate some of the pain almost immediately. Of course, that wasn’t really possible, but Reese had found that he could trick his mind into believing just about anything if he tried hard enough.

I’ll see you around, Allie.

I’ll see you around…