by P. R. Adams
Margo was right. He stank like something that had been living off beer and jerky, pissing and shitting himself while wallowing around in mud and guts.
I tried to retreat from his reach, but I was a little too slow, and his fist caught me on the collarbone, just short of my shoulder. Drunk, horribly out of shape, probably sleep deprived—it didn’t matter. He was big. The blow hurt.
“Neil!” I kept my hands up and staggered back. “I’m not going to fight you.”
“That’s good. Makes it a little more fun when I kick the shit out of you.”
I got an arm up just before he swung again. The blow didn’t register much on the arm itself, but the impact nearly shook the data device from my hand, and it drove the cybernetic mount up into my flesh, knocking me off-balance. That was going to bruise.
Neil laughed—wet and deep—and closed as I backpedaled. “You were always a cocky little asshole, Mendoza, an underclassman that didn’t know his fucking place. Too damn special to just fit in.”
Underclassman. Speeding hard toward forty, and he was still stuck in a school structure that had been torn down across most of the country before I was a freshman.
“Neil, please!” My sneaker caught on something—the tarp! I went down.
A sound like a pinwheel spinning in a hurricane echoed in the open space of the barn, and blood spurted out of holes in Neil’s jacket. Metallic pops came from the tin walls of the barn and dull thuds from the thick wooden support beams.
Neil’s bloodshot eyes tracked down to the trickling wounds. Blood drizzled from his nostrils into his bushy mustache. His brow bunched up, and I could almost feel his sluggish brain trying to make sense of what was going on.
But I already knew. They’d found me.
I stuffed the data device inside my shirt and jumped to my feet, then planted my shoulder into Neil’s chest, driving him back, taking on just enough of his weight and keeping enough momentum that he didn’t simply fall down. He made a strange, gurgling noise as we drew closer to his truck, then the whistling sound came again, and blood burst from his forehead.
He fell, and I dove beneath the truck.
Glass shattered at the third volley of whistling. The tires would be next. They were using low-power, high rate-of-fire automatic weapons, probably 6mm. That meant limited range and penetration, but if even a couple rounds caught me in the flesh…
How? How did they find me so fast? I’d been careful!
I crawled to the passenger door and pulled it open just as the tires on the opposite side blew out. Rounds dug into the dirt with soft thuds.
The keys were still in the ignition. I slid in and started the truck. Rounds banged against the door and crashed into the dashboard. My left arm was jerked forward a couple times, but I didn’t register any sort of damage.
I stayed hunched low, shifted into reverse, and punched the accelerator. The truck had the responsiveness of a bulldozer, but all I needed it for was to get me to my own truck. Once in that, I would be on my way again, leaving Emmett forever, heading—
Margo!
If they had seen her with me, if they could put together the significance of Neil’s assault on me…
Getting to my truck would take time I didn’t have. I needed to get to Margo and her kids. I needed to get them out of Emmett before the Agency figured out what she meant to me and used her as bait. Or worse.
The team would have parked a good distance out and sneaked in, probably through the high grass in my fields. I had a chance.
The old truck hacked and spat and threatened to die on me twice before I was out of the gate and back on the road leading into town. Bullets rattled off the tailgate and punched through the rear windows, but nothing reached me. I pushed the truck, pushed myself, and wished to hell I’d never listened to the voice in my head.
What do you want? Something that would never exist for me again.
Chapter 6
The old Ram struggled along, the engine sometimes gurgling, other times gasping. No doubt Neil had never put it through what I was putting it through. With the flat tires, I had to fight just to keep it on the road. Neil’s stench was everywhere—on my clothes, in my nostrils, in the pickup’s junk-cluttered cab. Spiderwebbed glass turned the windshield into a crazy-cut prism that let only fractured images through. I navigated by instinct, sweating anxiously, blocking out the rattle and clang of crumpled beer cans.
How long did I have? Could they have sent someone to Margo’s place already? My gut churned, and I found just how far I could push the ancient hunk of junk. People gaped along Main Street as Neil’s old vehicle barreled along.
I pulled the data device from inside my shirt, but I couldn’t use it and keep the truck under control. I tossed the useless device onto the seat.
Following the speed limit, it was twenty minutes from my place to town, and another ten to Margo’s. I pulled into her drive in fifteen.
An elderly woman looked up from where she stood beside a polished, fire engine red SUV that seemed fresh off the production line compared to most of the vehicles I was used to seeing in Emmett. She was squeezed into a ridiculous dark blue polyester pants suit with white shirt. Her short, dark brown hair looked like it was fresh from a bottle. The smile that had formed on her wrinkled face at the sight of the approaching truck twisted into an angry frown when I hopped out of the cab.
She came at me, liver-spotted hands wrapped around the handles of a stiff, black handbag that looked like it could weigh in at twenty pounds, easy. “Just who do you think you are, driving my Neil’s truck?”
Of course. Mrs. Bauer. Much older, much heavier, and more wrinkled. Farm life could be hard. “Neil’s dead, Mrs. Bauer. I’m sorry. Would you call the sheriff, please?”
She froze in place. A tremor ran through her flabby body. “My Neil? Dead?”
“You need to get out of here. There are some very bad people on their way here now.”
“Stefan? Stefan Mendoza? Is that you?” Color rushed to her cheeks.
I tried to walk past her. “Mrs. Bauer, please—”
She swung the handbag at me, catching me completely off-guard. All sorts of rattling, jangling, and tinkling came from the bag. “You murdered my boy for that slut!”
I ran around her.
“I’m calling Sheriff De Lint,” she screamed.
“Thank you!” I shouted over my shoulder.
Margo’s place was a small farm with five acres. It had a nice enough barn, a fenced-in area where they let folks put up cattle or horses for weeks at a time, and a storage shed. I’d only ever seen it from the street when I’d toyed with the idea of visiting and talking about old times. The house was a ranch design, no more than sixteen hundred square feet. It needed a good paint job; some of the siding needed replacement. Thick, dead grass crunched beneath my feet as I rushed across the uneven lawn. Dead vines twisted around the sagging split rail fence that blocked the yard off from the gravel road. The concrete steps up to the front porch were chipped and cracked, the porch itself not much better.
The door opened before I could knock on it, and Margo burst out, puffy-eyed. Her hair was up in a ponytail. No bruises, no scrapes—at least Neil hadn’t touched her.
She shook her head and said, “Now’s not a good time, Stefan.” Irritated.
Mrs. Bauer rumbled across the yard, halfway between the porch and her SUV. “It’s all your fault, Margo! Couldn’t keep your pretty little legs closed.” She shook a cheap data device at me. “I’ve got the sheriff on the line! You hear me?”
I kept my voice even. “Please tell them to hurry.” I hooked Margo’s arm and pulled her back through the front door and into a small living room—two quilt-covered chairs and a sofa with stuffing bursting from the seams all turned toward an older entertainment center, the sort you picked up from a parking lot surplus sale. There was a small dining area beyond that and a doorway that probably led to a kitchen. A hallway hooked off to the right. A high-pitched girl’s voice sang somewhere not far
away. “Pack. Only essentials—underwear, a couple changes of clothes. The kids inside?”
“Yes.” The irritation that had been in her eyes before disappeared. “What’s going on?”
“Some bad people have shown up. Hurry.”
“Bad pe—”
“Margo, hurry. Please.”
It dawned on her, then. The blood on my shirt, Mrs. Bauer calling the sheriff. “Neil?”
“He’s dead. Margo—”
Margo snorted—fear, confusion—then ran around the corner, into the hallway. I headed through the dining area. I had guessed right about the kitchen. I slammed through cabinets until I found a canvas shopping bag, which I filled with peanut butter, crackers, cheese, cookies, bread, oatmeal and jerky packets, some cups and sodas, and butter knives.
Someone scraped to a stop off to my left. Two someones. Girls. Dressed in matching pink pants and heavy cotton white pajama tops that were fraying around the collars. The older of the two had all the unfortunate traits of Neil—a bit of a bulbous nose, close-set eyes, and a high brow—while the younger one looked even more like Margo than Derek did.
“You robbing us?” the older one asked, shoulders swinging slightly. Stella. The one who had said God had touched Derek’s lips to seal the good inside him.
I smiled, like it was all a big joke. “Stella, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Stella, we’re all going on a trip—your mom and Derek and you two. You like trips?”
Stella’s close-set eyes closed, then opened wide. “A vacation?”
“A vacation.”
The younger one—Cecilia—grabbed her sister’s hand and looked up into her eyes. “Mommy knows?”
I grabbed a bag of chips and a jar of salsa from the countertop next to the sink. “She’s packing right now. Can you two do that? Get a bag or a box and put some clothes in? Toothbrushes, toothpaste.”
Cecilia shook her head. “Derek doesn’t like toothpaste.”
I squatted to be at eye level with her. My nerves were firing, telling my cybernetic limbs to pump, to run out to the truck and just go. Every second counted, and here I was talking to a kid, trying to gain her trust. But it was something she needed, so it was something Margo needed. “Could you grab the toothpaste for me? Please?”
Cecilia skipped away. “Derek! We’re taking toothpaste with us on vacation!”
Stella pointed at my shirt, and her mouth pinched into what could’ve been a red raisin. “You hurt?”
The blood. “Not really. Go get packed, okay? Just a few things.”
Margo called out, “Stella? Honey, where are you?”
Stella waved and ran out of the kitchen. I rushed outside with the bag of food and tossed that into Margo’s truck. It was in better shape than Neil’s hunk of junk and had an extended cab, but we would need to dump it at some point. There was a hunting rifle on a rack across the back window. I pulled the weapon out and checked it. A modest scope, a lot smaller than the one I’d used outside Denver—probably a .22. For varmint hunting.
Mrs. Bauer paced the path to the opening that I’d just driven through, data device still held up to her ear. She wagged a finger at me. “Don’t you try to go! Sheriff De Lint’s on his way!”
I thought I might have heard a siren in the distance. Could the sheriff get to the farm before the assassins? Would that be enough to scare them off? I thought about calling my cousin Elijah. Last I’d heard, he was still moving up the ranks under De Lint, the chosen successor. It seemed safer to assume Margo’s family and I would have to run.
Something tugged on my sleeve. Derek. Stretched up on his tiptoes, still in the basketball jersey. “Robotman?”
I set the rifle back in the rack. “Yeah?”
Derek glanced back at the house. “We going on a vacation?”
“Just like your mother always wanted.” I still hadn’t thought of where to go. There were only a few potential safe spots that could handle five of us. The closest was outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The truck could probably make that drive, which would give me time to think of my next step.
The boy tugged on my sleeve again. “Paris?”
“What?” It came out irritable. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.”
“My mommy likes Paris. She wants to see the Love.”
“It’s pronounced loov.” What would a trip to Paris run? For five. Hotels. Restaurants. Thousands. Passports. Lots of exposure.
The kid’s lips trembled. “Why’s mom crying?”
Shit. I knelt next to him and punched his shoulder with all the force of a feather. “There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t make any sense until you’re a grown-up. This is just one of those things. She’ll feel better soon. We just need to get on the road, okay? That’s the first thing that will make her feel better.”
He cocked his head, as if he might really understand the insane shit happening around him. “If it makes Mommy happy, we can do it.”
“Now that’s the right attitude.” What had she called him? “Champ!”
He smiled. It was a great look for the little guy.
Mrs. Bauer stormed up the path from the front, waving her data device like it was some sort of magic wand. “You leave my grandson alone! Derek, you move away from that man!”
I could have sworn I heard the sirens.
“He’s Robotman, Maw-maw. He won’t hurt nobody. He likes Mom—”
The distant sirens were drowned out by the distinctive, high-pitched whine of automatic weapons.
Mrs. Bauer staggered and pitched forward, dropping her data device in the dead grass.
I yanked Derek down to the ground as windows popped on the vehicles. A car alarm blared, and a tire burst, booming like a grenade detonating. More glass shattered, this along the front of the house, and the panes rained down from their frames with a delicate clatter.
Screaming came from inside the building: the girls.
Derek made a weak, strange sound, and blood bubbled up on his lips. “Robotman?”
No.
The screaming drew closer. Margo and the girls ran down the steps, hunched low, holding bags up like police shields.
I croaked something out. It was supposed to be, “Stay here, buddy,” but my throat wasn’t working. I ran to the porch, left arm up to shield my head. The gunfire continued, a constant whine that barely preceded the thud of rounds into siding or the crack of metal off concrete.
Or the even softer, hollow thunk of bullet passing through soft, unprotected flesh.
The girls went down, limp, bloody. Margo stumbled. Blood trickled from holes in her blouse, the same tight, cotton thing she’d worn over to my place for our rendezvous. I caught her as she slumped forward, eyes rolling around in confusion. Bullets traced my path as I ran for the cover of the trucks. A few rounds rattled off my limbs, a couple more buried themselves in Margo’s body.
I propped her against the front of her truck and crawled back to the rear cab to retrieve the rifle.
There weren’t a lot of great areas to take cover behind, and there was only the one road that eventually connected the bunch of smaller farms of the area back to Main Street. There were some trees on a lot…
I saw it, then. A small car near the closest clump of trees. A form in dark clothing, an assault rifle.
Muzzle flash—the form fired at me, punching holes in Margo’s truck and deflating another tire. I returned fire, not even worrying about a clean hit. I just wanted the bastard to know I had his position down.
Glass shattered in the distance.
A motor whined as it revved up, wheels chirped, then thrummed over gravel.
Just like that. With sirens unmistakably closing.
I dropped the rifle and pulled Margo to me, but she was already gone. Like everything else.
Gone. All I wanted.
You fucked up. You can’t escape them. They’ll leave their print everywhere. They’ll spread like an infection.
When Sheriff De Lint arrived, I
was barely aware of being cuffed. Federal warrants. Murder.
Whatever. I blacked out.
Chapter 7
The Gem County Sheriff’s Department shared office space with the Emmett Police Department, the county clerk, and the county jail. I’d seen pictures of the place from years before—a quadrangle with a pretty lawn and a nice parking area. Most of that was gone, replaced by soulless white halls. The polished gray marble floors held that neutral, non-smell of official buildings. My sneakers squeaked as they led me to a small holding cell. I was still cuffed, bracketed by two young, imposing police officers who looked like they shared the same ranching background I did. The taller of the two wore cheap cologne; the other needed to wear something. He had the sort of funk a gym rat would have if he were coming off an intense weekend of brews and free weights. The soft echoes of our travel over the marble floors was obliterated by the clank of the cell door rolling open.
They unlocked my cuffs and watched me through the bars until I dropped onto my bunk. That apparently satisfied them. The taller one ambled away, but Gym Rat hung back long enough to smirk before leaving.
There was an occupied cell far enough away that I couldn’t see it but close enough that I could hear someone looping through a mumbled song—tuneless, rambling. The voice belonged to someone who either gargled with glass shards or was old and had enjoyed booze and cigarettes too much. Normally, the noise would have gotten to me, but it was a welcome respite from my own looping nightmare.
The whining gunfire, the blood bubbling up from Derek’s mouth.
Margo’s dead eyes stared into nothing. Her purple lips were pale and stiff. I wanted just another day with her, a chance to promise her I hadn’t meant to cause all the trouble, a chance to explain that the world was too big and complicated for a simple farm boy from Idaho.
I was stupid. I thought I could get out of the game.
But there was no escaping.
I turned at clacking echoes from the hallway—someone in hard-soled shoes with heel plates. A man about my age, in crisp sheriff’s tan uniform shirt and brown pants, came around the corner. He had a well-managed mustache, which seemed to be part of the uniform. His hair was light brown, cut almost as close as mine, and he had the same pronounced Mendelsohn nose I had, minus the little nub mine had from the sparring match I’d let get out of hand.
