by Sam Sisavath
Thank God I did something right today.
Thank God…
“Job well done,” Reese said. “The girls are safe in police custody. All of them.”
He watched her closely, with that same intensity that was annoying and disturbing and more than a little unnerving. Okay, it was a lot unnerving.
“So the girls were important to you,” he said. “But they weren’t your priority. At least, not at first.”
For some reason, Reese was starting to drift in and out of her vision, and she swore he split off into two Reeses at one point, which prompted the amusing thought, Great. I can’t even kill one of him, now there are two?
“Before the truck stop, you were content to ride it out to the end with us,” he continued. “I had to ask myself why—what was so important that you were willing to risk losing the girls?”
He leaned slightly forward, as if to get an even better look at her, though she wasn’t sure how that would be possible given how close they already were. If she could move her arms, she would have been tempted to throw a few haymakers in his direction.
“So what was it, Alice? Was it to get to my employers? Were they your primary target? Am I close?”
She was doing her best to maintain her concentration, to force the two Reeses back into one, and failing miserably. If Reese noticed her waning focus, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he sat back in his chair and casually touched his side with one hand, over the spot where she had shot him.
Hurts, huh, asshole?
Reese looked down at his watch. “Dwight should be back soon.”
“Where did he go?”
“I told you, errands.”
“Does he know you’re about to fall off that chair?”
He gave her a wry look. “Yes, well, we’ve both seen better days, haven’t we?”
He was still talking when she glimpsed a shadow flitting across the curtained windows over his shoulder.
Dwight’s back, she thought, when Reese suddenly stood up and a Glock appeared as if by magic in his hand.
Or not?
Reese moved silently across the room, abandoning the chair for the wall between the windows and door. Almost at the exact moment Reese pressed his back against the ugly wallpaper, the doorknob turned slightly, as if someone on the other side was trying to see if it was locked. It wasn’t just locked; there was also a deadbolt and chain in place.
When she looked back to Reese, he was facing her with one finger held up to his lips. She sat up, wincing as every joint in her body seemed to pop and enough pain flooded her senses for two, maybe three people. But she kept going, pushing every bruised muscle and (broken?) bone, because the alternative was to lie in bed and do nothing, and there was no way in hell she was going to ignore the alarm bells going off inside her head. She might have been able to convince herself she was just being paranoid, that nothing bad was about to happen, except Reese clearly believed the same.
She swung her legs off the bed, biting back the tears and misery. There was something odd on Reese’s face as he watched her. If she weren’t too busy trying not to scream and pretending that every inch of her wasn’t hurting, she could almost believe he looked...impressed?
Go to hell, Reese, she wanted to tell him, but it was hard enough to breathe, never mind get the invective out.
Voices, coming from outside, whispering back and forth, just before a second (or was it the same one?) silhouetted figure appeared at the window to Reese’s left. With the bright parking lot lights behind him, the man (and it was a man, she was sure of it from the shoulders and frame) looked enormous, and he was holding something in his hand. The man turned slightly, giving her a good look at the barrel and the pistol grip underneath it.
Crash!
It had to have been a heavy boot, because the motel door smashed open and wood paneling along the frame snapped and splinters speared the darkened room. A figure—another man—blotted out the open doorway, gripping something short and black and metallic in its hands. The intruder was trying to reestablish his balance in the aftermath of the kick that had sent the door into the wall, the doorknob slamming hard enough to embed in the drywall.
The man took one step inside, his face becoming visible for the first time—he was in his thirties and had a mustache, his cheeks pockmarked with acne scars from his youth—and the thing in his hands was an MP5K—
Bang! as the man’s brain, along with the 9mm round from Reese’s Glock, exited the left side of the intruder’s head and splashed the door, his body slumping sideways from the impact before collapsing to the doorway in a useless heap.
Reese pushed off the wall and spun around even as the silhouetted figure outside the window reacted to the gunshot and took the first step toward the door. He got halfway before Reese unloaded into the window. The man’s outline seemed to jerk once, twice, before disappearing underneath the windowsill on the other side.
A car alarm began blaring in the parking lot, which set off a chain reaction.
Reese was leaning against the wall, his chest heaving loudly against the spill of moonlight, when they both heard a steady stream of gunfire from outside. The shooting was so loud and ferocious that it actually managed to drown out the car alarms.
What now?
The idea that there were people shooting each other outside hardly computed before she looked back at the dead man just inside the motel room. She searched for and quickly found the shape of the submachine gun nearby and tried to conjure up a scenario where she could stand up and walk to it and pick it up and shoot Reese with it before he noticed.
She was still cycling through the possibilities when Reese snatched the MP5K off the floor (Goddammit!) before leaning against the open door for support. Reese hadn’t been looking out at the parking lot for more than a few seconds when the gunfire suddenly stopped, the last shots fading until there were just the car alarms wailing away, except now it sounded like more than just one or two fighting with one another for attention.
“Reese,” she said, “who’s out there? What’s happening?”
Maybe she was still too groggy from the pain, from almost dying earlier today (Days ago? Weeks ago? She still didn’t know how long it had been since Andy’s), but it was incredibly difficult to figure out what was happening.
Who were the two men with the MP5Ks? Who was shooting at whom outside in the parking lot? And dear God, what was it going to take to shut up those damn car alarms? She focused on the shattered windows, flinching at the shrill cries of the alarms as they attempted to drill right down into her soul.
Would someone please shut them up!
When she looked back over, Reese was limping toward her. “Time to go, Alice.”
“I can’t move,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. She wished it were, but it wasn’t. She simply couldn’t move at the moment. Just maintaining her current sitting posture was taking everything she had.
“Yes, you can,” Reese said.
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” he said, and holstered his sidearm and grabbed her arm and jerked her ruthlessly up to her feet.
She didn’t even bother to stifle the screams this time.
Sixteen
He didn’t think she would ever stop screaming, and it made the twenty or so feet from the motel door to Dwight and the Chevy feel like an eternity. He wasn’t even sure how he did it, but he kept pushing, dragging her with one hand, the other gripping the MP5K he’d salvaged from one of the dead guys.
One foot at a time. Move, move, move!
Then they were outside and at the car, and Dwight, a scowl on his face, was shouting at him, “Leave her!”
Reese didn’t waste time arguing and instead opened the back door of the Chevy and pushed her inside. She stumbled and fell face-first onto the seat, but thankfully her momentum put her inside the vehicle as he slammed the door shut after her and turned his attention to a white van parked about ten rooms down from them. His ears were still ringing from Alice
’s screams, which he guessed was a good thing because it meant he didn’t have to hear the car alarms filling the night air around them with impunity.
“You good?” Dwight shouted from the other side of the car.
Not even close, old sport! he thought, but shouted back, “Yeah, let’s go!”
Dwight unslung the Heckler & Koch UMP45 hanging off his right shoulder by a strap and tossed it into the car before ducking inside after it. Reese gave the parking lot one final look—the two bodies around the bullet-riddled van, a third slumped over the open driver-side window—before pulling open the Chevy’s front passenger-side door. He dug out and dropped the burner phone to the pavement, then smashed it under his shoe before climbing inside.
The Chevy was a stolen replacement for the Ford, which they had ditched in one of the wooded areas on their way to the motel. Reese hadn’t asked Dwight where he had gotten it, though his partner assured him the owner wasn’t going to notice it was even missing until sunup.
With the windows rolled up, they were mercifully spared most of the blaring car alarms. Dwight reversed, then spun the wheel until the vehicle was facing the right direction before he gunned it. In no time, they were back on the road with the motel fading fast in Reese’s side mirror. Dwight floored the gas and their car’s headlights sliced through darkness. Instead of turning back toward the interstate, Dwight took a small country road where they were the only moving object for as far as Reese could see in either direction.
“How many at the room?” Dwight asked.
“Two,” Reese said.
“Lucky you. They were getting ready to send over more before I pulled up. You should have seen the slack-jawed looks on their faces when I whipped out the UMP. Sad-looking motherfuckers.”
“You grabbed any of their weapons?”
“Didn’t have time. You?”
He held up the MP5K. The submachine gun was highly portable and had a pistol grip under the barrel. The long, skinny magazine offered up a thirty-round load. “I should have grabbed the other guy’s, too. More guns are going to come in real handy after tonight.”
“Understatement of the decade, dude.”
“How’d the scavenger hunt go?”
“Fruitful,” Dwight said, and grabbed a plastic bag from between their seats and tossed it into Reese’s lap. “Don’t ask where those came from.”
Reese opened the bag and peered down at a pile of pill bottles. “Where’d you get them?”
“Didn’t I just say not to ask?”
Reese grabbed the first bottle. He had to turn on the ceiling light in order to read the label: Tramadol. It wasn’t the Vicodin he was hoping for, but it was a hell of a lot stronger medicine than the Ibuprofen Dwight had gotten from the gas station earlier tonight.
He sifted through the other labels just in case there was something stronger. They were all prescription-strength painkillers, but the Tramadol was the best of the lot. He popped its lid, shook out two, and gulped them down.
“Easy there, Bend it Like Peckham,” Dwight said. “You get yourself knocked out again, and there won’t be anyone to stop me from taking care of your girlfriend back there.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I very fucking would in a heartbeat.”
Reese grunted, then turned around and looked into the backseat at Alice. She had somehow turned over onto her back and was staring at him. Even though he knew she was in tremendous pain and had been since waking up in the motel room, that didn’t stop her from gritting her teeth and firing daggers in his direction.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I had no choice. It was stay behind and die, or run and live.”
She blinked but didn’t say anything.
If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man a million times over.
“Peace offering,” he said, and took the bottle out of his pocket and shook out two pills, then leaned between the seats and held it out to her. “Painkillers. Blink twice for yes, once for no.”
She blinked twice rapidly.
He smiled. “See, we’re already getting along.”
He pried open her lips and slipped one pill through them. He waited for her to swallow, but she didn’t.
“Water?” he asked.
Two blinks.
He turned around and picked up a water bottle from the floor.
“Jesus Christ, you really are into her,” Dwight said from the driver’s seat.
“Don’t be ridiculous; I’m just trying to keep her alive,” he said, and returned to helping Alice swallow the pills.
* * *
Either the pills knocked her out or the combination of pain and meds did. Either way, Alice was sleeping soundly in the backseat by the time Dwight pulled the Chevy into a roadside convenience store and parked next to a couple of semitrailers that had shut down for the night.
Dwight killed the engine and let the darkness swallow them up. Whoever was working the store would still be able to see them, thanks to the streetlights, but Reese doubted if the employee would care about a sedan parking for the night, especially amongst two big rigs that were already there and doing the same.
“I guess we’re fucked,” Dwight said, tearing open a bag of Twinkies before sucking out the white cream filling, while his other hand busied with opening a large-size can of Red Bull wedged between his thighs.
Dwight didn’t sound nearly as angry as Reese had been expecting; in fact, he was remarkably calm, which was a rarity when it came to his partner. That in itself was surprising, but considering the series of failures they’d had to deal with today, it was downright miraculous.
“Not necessarily,” Reese said.
“You don’t think so? Not even after those guys back at the motel?”
“It’s safe to say they figured out we never intended to make the rendezvous point, so they came searching for us.”
“How’d they do that, by the way?”
“The burner phone they gave me. They probably had some kind of tracking software installed on it.” When Dwight flashed him a concerned look, “I got rid of it back at the motel.”
“That wasn’t the first phone they gave you.”
“Nope.”
“You think they could always track us, even on past jobs?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Paranoid bastards.”
“Indeed.”
Dwight started working on the yellow part of the Twinkie. “So what are our choices?” he asked between bites.
“I guess it all depends on how determined they are, whether they want to cut their losses or make their dissatisfaction with our performance a permanent thing.”
Dwight chuckled. “You say it like we screwed up their pizza order. We probably coast them a few hundred grand with that shipment.”
“You’re lowballing it.”
“No kidding?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Well, damn. Maybe I’ve been in the wrong business all this time.”
“You were in the right business; you were just at the wrong end of it.”
“Figures,” Dwight grunted. “When have I not ended up on the wrong end of things?”
“At least the pay was good.”
“Yeah, but I bet it’s gooder on the other side.”
Reese smiled. “Likely.”
“So, the drivers are probably goners,” Dwight said. “If they’re even still alive after Sleeping Beauty back there pumped their cab full of bullets.”
“I think that’s a safe assumption. Leave no loose ends.”
“Like us.”
“Uh huh.”
Reese watched a van pull into the parking lot behind them and instinctively reached for the MP5K resting in his lap, but relaxed when the vehicle drove past them and pulled up to one of the gas pumps instead. A fifty-something man climbed out of the van and made his way to the store, hitching up his pants as he went.
“Our reputation’s going to take a hit,” Dwight said.
�
��That’s putting the cart well before the horse, partner.”
“So, what’s the cart?”
“Getting out of this alive.”
“Makes sense. I’m very biased toward staying alive. Call me selfish if you want, but that’s just me.”
“First things first: We need to find out how far they’re willing to pursue this.”
“You still gotta ask that after the motel?”
“The motel is here, now. It was an easy decision. Tomorrow, the week after that, won’t be so easy.”
“And if they’re not going to stop?”
“We can only run so far for so long before they eventually catch up to us.”
“I don’t know, dude, I can run pretty far.”
“Even so…”
“So worst case, what happens if they don’t feel like letting us off the hook after tonight?”
“Then I guess we’ll have to kill them.”
“All of them?”
“That goes without saying.”
Dwight chuckled. “And I thought I was the crazy one.”
“I call it practical.”
“Your ‘practical’ sucks.”
“That may be, but I don’t see any other choices. If they won’t let it go, then we need to end them before they end us. It’s as simple as that.”
“Simple and stupid.”
“Only if we fail.”
“Which, in all likelihood, we will. They’re bosses and we’re worker bees for a reason, you know.”
“Even the bosses were worker bees once upon a time.”
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
“Does it?”
“Not even close.”
“Oh, well,” Reese said.
“They probably have more assholes like the ones bleeding out back at the motel,” Dwight said. “A whole bunch of assholes. An asshole factory, if you will.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“This job just keeps getting better and better,” Dwight said, and opened a bag of chips and started loudly crunching them. “Have I told you how much I regret this partnership of ours?”
“Only twice in the last week.”
“Well, it really sucks.”
