Zero Sum Game

Chapter 20

My brain zigzagged through my options. Unlike most of the people I ended up on the wrong side of, law enforcement never seemed quite like fair game as targets. Well, unless they were dicks, but these people were just doing their jobs. See, Tresting? I don’t always go around killing people. And I had grenades, too! Set a few of those off and I’d have more than enough chaos to escape in.

It was tempting, now that I’d thought of it.

Okay, so Plan B was blasting and shooting my way out of here. I needed a Plan A.

The uniforms were multiplying like the supermarket was a kicked anthill. I didn’t just need a Plan A, I needed a Plan A fast.

A trickle of nervousness bled through me. This could be bad. Most violent situations I ended up in did not happen on busy downtown streets with lots of innocent bystanders, and as for police, I’d never done more than kick the odd uniform in the head while making an escape. The idea of a large number of law enforcement casualties made me…uncomfortable. Not to mention that it was the worst way ever to keep my head down; if I blew up this many cops they’d probably have Homeland Security out here after me.

My mobile buzzed in my pocket.

Only one person had this number right now. It had to be Rio. “Not the best time; I’ll call you back,” I answered in a whisper.

There was a pause. Then a voice on the other end said, “It’s Checker.”

“Wha—this is a new phone!” I hissed. “How—?”

“Oh, I’m all-powerful,” he said. “Hey, so I—”

I didn’t have time for this right now. I hung up on him.

The phone buzzed immediately with a text message: NEED UR HELP

What he needed was to learn to spell correctly. I moved my thumb to turn the damn phone off entirely.

PLS VRY IMPORTANT

I sighed. Checker was the most annoying person I’d ever met. Evading arrest. Will call back later, I texted, and pocketed my phone again, turning my attention back to the problem at hand.

Grabbing the evidence I’d left would probably be too complicated now. Dammit. I could have gotten away clean if I’d just kept walking, and now that I was boxed in, even escape was looking difficult. My hiding place felt more transparent by the moment, and I couldn’t think of any way out that wouldn’t lead to some version of a shootout. Which I would win…but at what cost?

Taking to a roof meant exposure to the helicopter—helicopters now; a second had joined the first—and trying to cut down the alley would make me the target of the three bajillion and counting cops on the ground. Seriously, you guys went to this much trouble just for me? I wondered if I should be flattered or frustrated that someone finally wasn’t underestimating me.

My phone buzzed, distracting me again. Swearing colorful curses at certain computer hackers in my head, I pulled it out to turn it off.

U NEED HELP?

I stared at the words. It felt like the setup to a really bad joke, one in which the next text would read, “ha ha, just kidding, you’re so stupid.” The little computerized letters burned into my eyes.

Cas! Stop it! No time! I chided myself.

But was he serious? Why would a guy I’d had barely any interaction with want to help me?

Maybe it wasn’t so unrealistic. After all, he seemed to need me for something. He could be trying to offer a quid pro quo, an “I’ll help you, and then you’re going to be obligated to help me.” Or he might assume he was charging me for it and that we would settle up after. Either of those explanations aligned much more reasonably with my expectations of human nature…but in a way it didn’t matter, because what could he possibly do to help me?

Unless…

Maybe he could forge something—some order, some directive, that would clear the police out of the area without anyone getting hurt. It was worth a try. I stabbed my phone with my thumb to dial.

Checker picked up on the first ring. “Turn yourself in,” he said immediately.

The world trembled. There, there was the punch line. First Tresting, now Checker. “What?” I breathed.

“Turn yourself in. It’s the easiest way. I’ll have you out as soon as I can push some paper.”

It took me a moment to catch on, and when I did, the jerk back from the self-pity and resentment I’d been starting to build up almost gave me whiplash, leaving me confused and embarrassed and angry about having felt anything so maudlin as emotions at all. Not to mention that Checker’s plan just sucked.

“That’s your solution?” Even though it was still hushed, my voice was more furious than I meant it to be. “Turn myself in and wait for you to fake a release order? No!”

“You’re not in the system anywhere yet, right? Then I’m telling you, I’ve got this! Just don’t say anything to anyone while they’re questioning you. Not a word, okay?”

“I am not getting myself arrested!”

“I promise you, I will get you un-arrested! Now go!”

“And let the authorities get a record of me?”

“I’ll un-record you,” he insisted.

“Not a chance!”

“For the love of God, you are unbelievable!” he exclaimed. “Do you have any idea what kind of a situation you’re in? I’m tracking it in real time here, and I didn’t know LA had that many police resources. Either Tokyo called about an enormous lizard, or they think you’re a domestic terrorist who—”

“Can’t you make them go away?” I demanded.

“Sure, I’ll wave my magic wand and, oh, wait, no, we don’t live in a mystical fairyland. But fortunately for your pwned self, we do live in a mystical bureaucracy land, and I’m telling you, go surrender. I swear to you, I have it covered.”

“Thanks but no thanks,” I said. “I’ll find another way.”

“Another way? SWAT’s moving in! I already faked a 911 call from a few blocks away saying someone had seen you and they had enough people on the ground to cover it; some poor Pakistani girl got tackled by mistake and I would not have wanted to be her. You are in deep trouble! Are you seeing—”

“I’m right in the middle of it, thanks,” I snapped in a whisper. “Look, can’t you just issue some fake orders or something? All I need is a distraction.”

“‘Can’t I just’—no, I can’t ‘just!’ Not on this scale! Not fast enough!”

“Getting arrested is not an option,” I hissed. “End of discussion. If you don’t have anything else for me—”

“You’ll what? Teleport?”

I was glad I could count on myself, at least. “I can shoot my way out if I have to.”

“Shoot your way—? What the—I don’t even know why I’m helping you,” he groused.

“Then don’t,” I bit off, and hung up, turning off my phone for good measure. Calling him had been a bad idea after all. If shooting my way out was Plan B, getting myself arrested was at least Plan Double-Y-and-a-Half.

But he said he could get you back out, said a small voice in my head. And even if he couldn’t get me cut loose quietly, I’d be able to break myself out in short order anyway…and leave the police with an even more complete record of me, I thought. Getting arrested was a bad plan.

Not to mention that it would mean depending on a guy I barely knew to pull through for me in a complicated gambit. I’d never trusted anyone aside from Rio to have my back, and I wasn’t about to change that habit now. No, I was much better off relying on myself, even if it meant violence. Grenades it was.

Your first solution is always to pull the trigger, said Arthur’s voice in my head, sadly.

“Shut up,” I whispered. I started measuring avenues of escape and blast radii with my eyes.

Life is cheap to you.

Shut the hell up!

I had a hand on one of the grenades in my pocket, the weight of the Ruger firm and solid against my back. I couldn’t depend on anyone else, I reminded myself. Myself, my skills, my gun—those I could rely on. Those were all I had.

Except in this case someone had offered me another way out. An insane, uncomfortable way that I really hated, but a way out.

One that didn’t involve hurting anyone.

You’re a good kid. You ain’t gotta be like this.

“Shit,” I said aloud, softly, and even to myself I sounded pitiful.

I peeled off my jacket and wrapped the grenades, gun, and spare magazines in it. Then I squeezed back along the cinder block wall behind my hiding place among the dumpsters and inched out until I could roll under a nearby parked car and wedge the whole package into the exhaust system. I measured tensions and pressures with my eyes: it wouldn’t be falling out unless someone started taking apart the undercarriage. I took note of the plate so I could track down the car and get my toys back after this was over.

I squirmed back to the dumpsters, turned, and snuck along the wall toward the rear of the supermarket, putting some distance between myself and where my hardware was hidden. I was unarmed now, and it was not a good feeling.

Fuck. I can’t believe I’m doing this.

I crouched for a whole minute at the end of the wall, still off the beaten path of all the police officers, one more parked car between me and them. I tried to will myself out, but it was like stepping off a cliff. Harder, because I could probably do the math fast enough to survive stepping off a cliff. I can’t do this, I thought.

If Checker doesn’t come through for you, you can always get yourself out, another voice in my head reminded me. This isn’t all that big of a deal. You won’t be in a much worse position than you are here.

Not a big deal? I’d be getting arrested!

I’d be putting myself in someone else’s power. In the authorities’ power. Voluntarily. They would be able to take whatever they wanted from me. It was lunacy.

Maybe, if you do this, he and Arthur will work with you again.

I wasn’t sure where that thought had come from, but I suddenly knew how much I wanted it—because they were still working the Pithica case. I’d told Rio I’d drop it, but in that instant I knew I couldn’t: I had unfinished business with Dawna Polk, and Courtney might still be out there, and Pithica…Pithica had a lot to answer for, and I was staying on the case until they did.

The resolution made me certain.

“Christ, this better be worth it,” I muttered, and stood up, my hands in the air. “Hey, you, officer people! Uh, don’t shoot; I’m unarmed!”

Boots stampeded on the pavement all around me, and I heard one or two pump actions chamber off to my left. Within seconds, I was surrounded by a ring of blue uniforms in bulletproof vests, a wall of police bristling with semiautomatics, mostly Berettas and Glocks.

I sighed and raised my hands higher. I hate Glocks.