Hollow Point

by Robert Swartwood

  The room was nice enough for the price, but not anything special. There were two beds, though he had no intention of sleeping. It was almost four o’clock now, and with Cortez arriving first thing in the morning, the job should be over quickly. He would be gone well before noon. He’d leave the keycard on the desk by the door and check out remotely. After he wiped down the room, of course. Even now, as he navigated the room, flicking on the lights, he made sure not to use his finger but the back of his hand.

  He set his overnight bag on one of the beds, zipped it open, and dug under the clothes he packed as a decoy to the pistol buried beneath.

  It was a Smith & Wesson M&P9 with a threaded barrel, what he’d come to decide was his favorite piece to use on a job like this. The magazine held seventeen nine-millimeter rounds with one in the chamber. More than enough to accomplish the job, plus take out the two men parked outside on the street.

  He withdrew the suppressor from under the clothes and screwed it onto the barrel, then set the pistol on the bed next to the bag.

  He grabbed a tissue from the bathroom and wrapped it around the TV remote to work the buttons. Soon he had the television on and was flipping through the channels as he settled back on the other bed.

  He pulled out his cell phone and sent an encrypted text to his brother three thousand miles away, who had needed to hustle even faster to make it to Washington, D.C. in time.

  In position. Go when ready.

  Thirty-Eight

  At just after 5:00 a.m., Louis’s phone vibrates on the desk. He grabs it as he stands from his chair and starts toward the bathroom, the phone to his ear.

  I nearly shout at him.

  “I have to pee.”

  He pauses, glances back at me with a frown.

  “Hold it.”

  “Not sure I can. You want me to pee my pants?”

  The phone to his ear, he makes a face, takes a deep breath.

  Tweedledee and Tweedledum are still lounging on their respective beds. Tweedledum isn’t on his cell phone anymore, but he has it on the bed beside him. Tweedledee’s phone is still in his pocket.

  Louis gestures at Tweedledee, whose bed is closer to me.

  “Take care of her.”

  Louis doesn’t wait for a response; he steps out into the hallway, murmuring into the phone.

  Tweedledee grunts as he slides across the bed and stands up, facing me.

  I push to my feet at the same time—and lurch forward, as if tripping over my own feet. Straight into Tweedledee.

  Tweedledum is on his feet a second later, his Beretta in hand, the barrel aimed at my head.

  Tweedledee pushes me away angrily—“What the fuck?”—and I stumble back and fall into the chair.

  “I’m sorry! I just”—I hold up my zip-tied wrists—“I don’t have much balance with my hands like this. Plus, I’ve been sitting for hours. My legs fell asleep.”

  Tweedledum keeps his gun trained on me while Tweedledee takes a step back. He glances at his counterpart, then at the door Louis disappeared through, and motions at me to stand up again.

  I stand up.

  Tweedledee reaches into his pants pocket—the right-hand side, fortunately—and pulls out a tactical knife, pops the blade. He motions with the knife toward the bathroom.

  I move past him, conscious of Tweedledum tracking me with the Beretta. The bathroom door is closed, and I push it open and hit the switches inside the door, turning on the light and overhead fan.

  Tweedledee says, “Toilet.”

  I pause, turn back around.

  “Is that how you get your rocks off—watching a girl use the toilet?”

  Tweedledee doesn’t answer. For some reason, he doesn’t get my sense of humor.

  The lid is already up. I unbutton my jeans and push them and my underwear down as I sit on the cold toilet seat.

  I stare back up at Tweedledee, ignoring Tweedledum who stands a couple feet behind him with his gun still aimed.

  “Like what you see?”

  He steps forward, holds up the knife. I hold out my hands, and with one simple twist of his wrist the zip-tie snaps and falls to the floor.

  As he shuts the door, he says, “One minute.”

  The moment the door closes, I reach for my jeans pocket, where I slipped Tweedledee’s cell phone once I lifted it from him. Thankfully, the phone isn’t locked. Of course it isn’t. Why bother locking a phone that will be destroyed in a couple hours and doesn’t contain any personal information?

  I punch in Atticus’s number, the same number I gave Erik the other day. I have to assume Erik didn’t contact Atticus, and even if he did, it doesn’t matter. Atticus needs to know I’m still alive. He needs to know what’s happening, and how President Cortez is in danger. Most importantly, of course, he needs to know about my family.

  “Thank you for calling Scout Dry Cleaners. Our normal business hours are Monday through Friday, seven a.m. to seven p.m., and on Saturdays eight a.m. to three p.m. We are closed Sundays.”

  A beep sounds, and that’s when I hit the plunger to flush the toilet and start to whisper.

  “It’s Holly. My entire family is in danger. They need protection ASAP. I’m in L.A., and they want me to assassinate—”

  The door handle turns, and at once I disconnect the call and shove the phone back into my pocket as I stand and start to pull up my underwear and jeans.

  The door opens. Tweedledee stands there, the knife still in his hand, his face stoic.

  “Minute’s up.”

  “Can I at least wash my hands?”

  He says it again, this time slowly.

  “Minute’s up.”

  He moves away as I step into the room. I head toward my chair in the corner when Louis returns.

  Closing the door, he says, “We’re still on schedule.”

  I’m almost to the chair when Tweedledee speaks, his voice low and menacing.

  “You bitch.”

  I pause, glance back at him.

  He says to Louis, “She took my fucking phone.”

  Before I can even argue my case, Louis grabs the fob from his pocket, and a firework explodes around my neck. I turn and fall back into the chair, my body jerking for the couple seconds it takes before Louis disengages the fob.

  Tweedledee advances toward me, his face a storm of rage, the knife held up at his side.

  “You fucking bitch.”

  I manage, “Wait—”

  Louis zaps me with another firework, and I’m starting to wish I used the toilet, because if this keeps up much longer, I’m probably going to pee my pants.

  With a shaking finger, I point at the floor.

  “There!”

  Tweedledee pauses long enough to spot his phone on the carpet, right beneath the bed. It’s where I managed to kick it when Louis entered the room, granting me a second or two of distraction. I didn’t have time to delete the call from the log, so if they check it, I’m screwed.

  Louis disengages the fob, and I sit slumped in the chair, breathing heavily.

  Tweedledum covers his counterpart with the Beretta as Tweedledee retrieves the phone from the carpet.

  Tweedledee stares down at it for a beat, then shakes his head as he glances at the two men.

  “Musta slipped from my pocket.”

  He tosses it on the bed and turns to the bag on the floor. He takes out a fresh zip-tie and crosses back over and tells me to hold out my wrists.

  Once he’s bound my wrists together, Tweedledee asks Louis, “How much longer before this shit’s over?”

  “Two more hours, give or take. Mr. Hayward will alert me once he gets notification. Then we can wrap this up and go home.”

  He pauses, and smiles at me.

  “Well, except you.”

  He pulls the hollow point from his pocket, holds it up.

  “You’re going to stay here with this in your head.”

  Thirty-Nine

  Nova had positioned his car in a lot across the highway that faced the
motel—about four hundred yards down from the park—and that was where he still was at almost nine o’clock that morning, his head tilted back on the seat, the windows down, listening to the morning traffic and trying not to fall asleep.

  Besides the few times the motel door opened to let the same two freelancers out to smoke, nothing else happened. A housekeeper pushing her cart of towels and sheets had ignored the do not disturb sign hanging on the doorknob. She knocked at the door, and one of the men answered, shook his head at her, and the housekeeper had continued on her way to the next room.

  Despite the fact they believed all the men who posed a threat were in the motel room, James had returned to keep an eye on Holly’s mom, just as Erik stayed in the neighborhood to keep an eye on Holly’s sister and her family. Erik texted not too long ago to alert them that the sister’s husband had left for work, but so far that was it.

  Nova’s phone buzzed with an incoming call from Atticus.

  “Holly made contact.”

  He bolted upright in his seat.

  “What? When?”

  “Only a couple minutes ago. Her message was brief.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Los Angeles, though I know that simply because she said as much. The message didn’t last long enough for me to establish a location. The number appears to have come from a disposable. Nova, she confirmed what Erik said—her family is in danger.”

  Nova nodded, his gaze focused on the motel across the highway.

  “I think we already came to that conclusion.”

  “That’s not all. The people who took her want her to assassinate someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. The message got cut off before she could say. But it’s Los Angeles—it could be anybody. Although President Cortez of Mexico is flying in this morning for an event.”

  Nova remembered standing in a church in Colotlán and listening to Father Crisanto tell them about how the cartels had come for Alejandro Cortez because they wanted to punish his father. That had been right before narcos dragged the priest out into the street and murdered him.

  Nova said, “Cortez is the target.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Call it gut instinct.”

  “I can’t notify the authorities based on gut instinct, Nova. Besides, if President Cortez suddenly cancels his trip, the people holding Holly will probably kill her if Cortez is indeed the target.”

  “She’s probably dead either way. The least we can do is make sure her family stays alive.”

  The motel door opened, and the same two freelancers stepped out to light cigarettes. A moment later, a man appeared on the steps leading to the motel’s second floor. He had dark hair and wore a dark suit. He climbed the steps casually, not looking like he was in any hurry.

  Atticus said, “Nova, are you there?”

  “Hold on a second.”

  Nova leaned forward in his seat. With all the toys James had supplied them, Nova didn’t have a pair of binoculars.

  The two smokers noticed the man coming their way and shifted their bodies in a naturally defensive position. They were no doubt carrying. One of the men even reached behind him but didn’t pull out his gun.

  The man in the suit held his hands to the side and smiled as he said something to the two men. The two men glanced at each other. The man in the suit said something else, and motioned with his head to the motel room. One of the men stepped toward the room and opened the door, spoke to somebody inside, and then another man appeared.

  The man in the suit was now only a few steps away from the door. He still kept his hands held out at his sides. He glanced out at the parking lot, said something else, and the other men seemed to realize just how exposed they all were. The one who’d stepped out motioned the man in the suit inside. The man in the suit followed him into the room, and the two smokers flicked away their cigarettes before joining them.

  As the motel door closed, Nova said, “Someone new showed up.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Dark hair and dark suit. That’s all I could make out from this distance.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He just went into the room with the others.”

  Nova watched as the motel door opened again. The man in the suit stepped out, this time a bit more cautiously, scanning the parking lot and second level to make sure nobody was watching. He had a pistol in his hand and was unscrewing the suppressor from the barrel as he closed the door and started back toward the stairs.

  Nova said, “Shit.”

  He started the car but then immediately turned it off. He’d parked in a lot that gave him a great position to watch the motel but not a great position to reach the motel easily. That was because he hadn’t foreseen any need to reach the motel.

  Atticus spoke in his ear.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think the new guy just took the rest of them out. Let me call you back.”

  Nova grabbed his gun off the passenger seat and jumped out of the car. He ran down the embankment toward the highway and paused once his feet hit the macadam. The morning traffic was congested but not moving too fast. He spotted an opening and darted out, sprinting across the highway, ignoring the blare of horns that followed in his wake, and then he was racing up the embankment on the other side.

  The man in the suit was long gone. He’d appeared from around the side of the motel, so Nova wouldn’t have been able to see what vehicle he drove even if he’d stayed.

  Nova hurried across the parking lot and up the steps to the second floor. He kept the FNX-45 down at his side, concealing it the best he could. The last thing he needed was for somebody to spot the gun and call the police.

  He hesitated outside the door. Tried listening for any sound inside, but the noise of the traffic was too loud to hear anything at all. He reached for the doorknob but didn’t want to leave his prints. Besides, there was a chance the man in the suit hadn’t killed all the men inside. There was a chance the man in the suit hadn’t killed any of them.

  Nova squared up to the door, raised his knee, and kicked at the spot just beneath the doorknob.

  The cheap motel door gave way, and Nova entered with his pistol raised.

  He stood motionless for a beat, and then lowered the gun.

  All four men were dead. One was splayed out on the bed. Another was slumped at the table with several laptops open. The two smokers were on the floor. All of them had been shot three times each—twice in the chest, one in the head.

  The man in the suit was clearly a pro.

  Nova crossed over to the laptops. The video feeds coming through were from the cameras posted outside Holly’s mom’s and sister’s places. Another one of the computers only had audio; the men had planted listening devices in the homes as well.

  He stared at the screens for several seconds before he pulled out his phone and typed out texts for James and Erik.

  A new player showed up and took out the men in the motel.

  Dark hair and dark suit.

  Be on the lookout—he’s on his way to either of your locations.

  Forty

  Ryan was in a hurry that morning, even more than he typically was, racing down to the kitchen with his shirt half undone while he used the electric razor to get the spots he missed. He offered up a quick excuse—“Forgot I had an early meeting”—grabbed a granola bar from the basket on the counter, kissed both boys on the head and his wife on the cheek, and then, bang, he was out the door.

  The boys, sitting at the kitchen table, stared at the door for a couple seconds before diverting their attention back to their tablets.

  This was how the summer would go, she realized. Stacey Holbrook wasn’t going to offer to take her sons to the zoo every day. The boys may be out of school, but they wouldn’t do much more than play video games or mess around on their tablets.

  Well, not if she had anything to say about it.

  “All right, who wants to take the
first shower?”

  Neither boy volunteered.

  She cleared her throat, loud and overdramatic, and the boys rolled their eyes at her.

  Max said, “Where are we going?”

  Matthew said, “Yeah, where are we going?”

  She crossed her arms meaningfully, furrowed her brow to try to make herself look stern.

  “Who says we’re going anywhere? Maybe we’ll stay home and clean.”

  The boys looked stricken.

  Matthew said, “Or … we could not.”

  Max giggled and took the final swallow of his orange juice.

  “Yeah, Mom, how about we go to the mall instead? Or the movies! The Rock has a new movie out, and Dad said he’d take us and that was weeks ago.”

  The truth was Ryan had wanted to take the boys to the movies—take all of them, Tina included, the whole happy family—but they simply couldn’t afford it. Even the matinee tickets were expensive these days, and the boys would no doubt want snacks.

  No, they ultimately decided, the money could be better spent elsewhere—like paying off one of their credit cards, or at the very least trying to get the balance down to a more respectable amount—but how does one explain such a thing to kids? They didn’t understand credit card debt or interest rates or credit scores. All they understood was The Rock had a new movie out that their friends had seen but which they still hadn’t.

  Because Tina didn’t want to start an argument, she said, “We’ll see. Now, who’s showering first?”

  Both boys looked at one another, and shrugged simultaneously.

  Max said, “Why don’t you go first, Mom?”

  She smiled and answered dryly.

  “Why, aren’t you the thoughtful son.”

  He beamed back at her but then immediately focused his attention on his tablet. So did Matthew.

  She sighed.

  “All right, you’ve forced my hand. We’ll let fate decide who goes first. Rock, Paper, Scissors.”