Her answer was a slap to the face that stung my cheek like a whip crack.
I rubbed the tender flesh. “What was that for?”
“For not backing me up at Smoke & Mirrors,” Kennedy snapped, the Texan accent bleeding into her usual news-broadcasting voice.
“And I was supposed to know you were there how again?” I queried. “Besides, I wasn’t the one trespassing.”
Her cute mouth scrunched into a hard pout of disapproval.
“Now that we’ve gotten the outrage out of the way,” I said, “how did you know where I live?”
“You’re not Harry Houdini,” Kennedy retorted. “A little check through the phone records told me that this is where you hang your hat and run your business.”
“Since I’m guessing that you’re here because of business, let’s get inside already,” I suggested. What I didn’t say was that I wanted to get her out of there as quickly as possible.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she snapped as she held up a finger.
“Last thing on my mind, trust me,” I told her.
***
Normally, I’d have offered a visitor to my place a drink. But since this was anything but normal, I just sat down on the couch and waited for Kennedy to do the same.
“So you want to tell me what you were doing in that club in the first place?” I asked, getting right to it.
The flirtatious smile came back. “I got a … connection that told me Smoke & Mirrors was worth checking out. Didn’t want to stand in line all night, though, so I snuck in through the side door when one of their boys came out for a smoke break. Hadn’t been in the place for five minutes when that monster bitch grabbed me and picked me up.” She shuddered at the memory. “Can you even call an iron freak like that a woman? I’ve known guys who work out who didn’t have muscles that big. Can’t imagine what kind of man would find that attractive.”
“Well, seeing as that was the wife of Ramon De Soto who showed you the door, I’d say your imagination needs to open up a little bit,” I informed her.
Kennedy’s eyes widened. All she knew were allegations about how De Soto made his living. But I imagined what I had told her might change her mind about what kind of men found buffed-out women like Estella appealing.
“Now,” I said, pressing on, “if we’re done speculating about other people’s love lives, how about you tell me—”
I never got to finish my question. A sudden screech of tires in the parking lot below cut it off. The hairs on the back of my neck told me that the vehicle making the noise didn’t belong to kids looking for cheap thrills.
I got up and grabbed my Sig from the drawer where I kept it in the kitchen, and then I moved to lock the front door. Kennedy was getting off the couch herself when we heard the sound of frantic footsteps coming up the stairs to our floor. I didn’t recognize the voice as it approached my front door but there was no mistaking the words: “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit …”
This repetitive mantra ended in furious knocking at my door. Kennedy shot me an expression that meant, “What the hell, now?”
I took a quick glance out the peephole and distinguished a very disheveled Zian standing on the other side. What was he doing this far from the Indigo? I unlocked and opened the door and my friend all but leapt inside.
While I was closing it behind him, he turned wild eyes in my direction. “They’re after me!”
“Who?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but they’re maybe thirty seconds behind me!” Zian explained, looking around the apartment for somewhere to hide.
“Who’s this?” inquired Kennedy, gesturing towards my favorite hacker.
“A friend who’s in serious trouble, it would seem,” I replied.
Zian looked like a deer caught in the headlights. I noticed that his eyes had started changing color, darkening to a deep, dark blue, and I cringed. As close as Kennedy was watching him right now, no way she could have missed that.
“How’d it happen, Z?” I asked, moving to block Kennedy’s line of sight.
Zian ran a nervous hand through his bleach-blond hair. “Came out of the club. I was just going on a food run when—”
Shots started banging against my door like a thunderous downpour against a window pane. Every one of us hit the floor and scrambled behind the couch as the bullets kept coming. That was a lot faster than thirty seconds.
Peeking over the couch, I covered the door with the Sig. The sturdy wood was soaking the impact of the bullets from outside like a sponge, courtesy of Lady McDeath-powered protection over the apartment. I prayed that it would prove sufficient.
“What’s going on?” Kennedy yelled over the noise. “Why are they shooting at us? Who is shooting at us?”
“No idea,” I replied, and that was the goddamn truth.
I heard a thunk outside on the balcony and glanced over my shoulder. Almost at once I spotted a metal hook, attached to what looked like a rope ladder. Kennedy, who was kneeling closer to the window, had a better view of what was going on out there. “Somebody’s trying to scramble in that way,” she warned.
“We’re five stories up,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t do anything stupid to put us in danger. I focused my attention back on the front door. “Unless you see Spiderman coming over the balcony railing, I’d say we’re safe.”
“Tell them that,” Kennedy said a moment later.
I glanced back at her and saw that she was pointing outside. Sure enough, there was a goon climbing up the rope ladder to get inside. I wasn’t worried; Lady McDeath’s protection covered every possible entrance into the flat. But when Kennedy ran over to the sliding glass doors, then I did start worrying.
“Don’t!” Zian and I shouted together.
Kennedy’s hand kept reaching for the handle. Of course, she had no way of knowing the mistake she was about to make.
“The glass is bulletproof!” I yelled.
She didn’t hear a word I said, just pulled a gun out of her purse with one hand while she yanked the door open with the other. The goon was up to her knees when she gave him a couple of hard kicks to the head through the bars of the railing. He howled the whole way down until hitting the ground cut his scream short.
I gave the front door an apprehensive look. Just as I had feared, the stream of bullets was causing significant damage to it. Thanks to Kennedy wanting to play hero, the overall protection of the flat had been weakened to the point where the hit squad outside might get through any minute. At that moment, just to make things interesting, another goon vaulted over the balcony railing and grabbed Kennedy by the wrist. Give her credit for knowing something about self-defense … she circled her wrist against her attacker’s thumb before pointing the gun in her hand at his chest. Three shots center-mass and he went over the railing too.
Then, at the worst possible moment, she froze. If she had just come back inside and closed the door behind her, we’d have been all right. But instead the enormity of what she had just done, shooting a man to death up close, got in the way of her survival instincts.
The shooting stopped. My guess was that they’d exhausted their clips. I heard heavy thuds against the door, like the barbells I sometimes heard my downstairs neighbors drop on the floor when they were done training. It would take longer than blasting their way with bullets but the end result would be the same: it was just a matter of time before the door came down.
I had to get the flat’s protection back up to full strength, or none of us would make it. “Kennedy, get back inside!” I yelled at the reporter.
She looked up at me with a dazed expression on her face.
“Get that hook loose and get back inside!” I repeated.
I was about to order Zian to get out there and help her, when she finally found her senses and complied with my instructions. Weapon in hand, she bent down to wrench the hook free
and then rushed back inside.
“Lock the door,” I ordered.
I returned my attention to the front door, weapon ready to fire. The thuds kept coming, amidst loud cursing. Plaster dust, set loose around the hinges, fogged the air. If it were any other door, it would have given way a long time ago already. Mine held on as the seconds ticked by.
Then I heard a sound I never thought I’d be grateful to hear—sirens. Our assailants on the other side of the door appeared to hear them as well and their pounding ceased abruptly. We heard feet take off down the hallway and hurry back down the stairs.
I checked Zian, who was looking intently at his smartphone. Tapping his shoulder, I pointed at the device.
“Emergency response signal,” he explained. “I classed it as Priority One.”
“Prowl cars aren’t that thick in this part of town,” I said.
“Must have been one close,” Zian replied. “Gods, that was crazy.”
His eyes were almost entirely black by now and they looked comically wide in his ashen face. I noticed that his hands had started shaking like he was chilled. He growled as he grabbed ahold of one of them to make it stop.
“Better they’re shaking now than when the shit was hitting the fan,” I said, giving his shoulder a good squeeze.
I went to check on Kennedy. Her eyes hadn’t left the dark shadows that lay on the ground five stories below. She was shaking just as bad as Zian was and she wore a stunned expression that I knew too well.
“It was you or them,” I said. “And you didn’t want it to be you.”
Kennedy gave me a look and nodded.
I made tea for everyone and we sat down to wait for the cops.
***
I didn’t open the door again until I saw a badge through the peephole. As I had guessed from the pounding, the door had taken a hell of a beating. Some of my neighbors came out in the hallway, wondering aloud what was going on. The uniforms herded them back inside unless they had a statement to give. One of my neighbors across the hall had taken a round that had ricocheted off my door. It was a safe bet that everyone’s sleep had been ruined for the night.
Morgan came in after a while, giving me the hard eye. “It’s bad enough when you do this sort of thing out on the street, Vale, but this—”
“Hey, I’ve got no idea what this was about, for once,” I protested, holding up my hands. “I’m minding my own business when my friend Zian runs up to my door telling me that there’s some people who are after him. Next thing, they’re knocking on my door with enough ammo to re-enact the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
“That your name—Zian?” Morgan asked, giving the hacker a professional once-over.
“Yeah,” Zian stuttered, still shaken by the ordeal. “It’s actually Zianyon but …” His voice failed.
Morgan grunted. “Who was chasing you?”
“I don’t know, Detective,” Zian responded. “I was just coming from the Indigo when I noticed this pair of cars behind me. I made a few moves on the road just to be sure it wasn’t my imagination. It wasn’t. That’s when I came here. Bellamy’s been …” He had to stop for a moment to clear his throat. “Bellamy’s been a good friend for a while.”
Morgan raised an eyebrow. “If you say so … okay, go over to the officer and give him your statement.”
Zian nodded and did what he was told.
“Okay, that covers him,” Morgan said.
He walked over to Kennedy, who had been sitting off to the side and staring at nothing.
“What business did you have with the likes of Bellamy Vale at this time of night, Ms. Kennedy?” Morgan demanded.
She blinked a couple of times before looking at him. Then she glanced at me and moistened her lips. “I was doing a follow-up interview … on the Townsend kidnapping. Mr. Vale said that this time of night would be the best time to catch him. Since I work the late broadcast shift anyway …”
I was impressed. Despite being disorientated and in shock, she had managed to feed Morgan a convincing lie about her presence in my flat. She then went on to describe the particulars of how she had killed the two men on the balcony. That made me uneasy for her. Admitting to murder one to a cop like Morgan was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. But then the detective lieutenant surprised me.
“All right, seems like a pretty open-and-shut case of self-defense,” he told her. “Just the same, I’ll need you to make a statement as soon as you’re feeling up to it, okay?”
Kennedy nodded and went back to staring at nothing.
Morgan gestured at me to follow him. We retreated to my much-battered front door.
“I don’t think that thing’ll be much good after all the target practice it’s taken,” he noted drily.
“I know a guy who can help me with that,” I told him. “I’ll give him a call in the morning.”
“Funny thing,” Morgan went on to say, “but from what I’ve seen of apartment construction, this door ought to be splinters by now. Why do you suppose that is?”
“I upped the security on it when I bought the place,” I said, keeping reasonably close to the truth. “The line of work I’m in, I figured it couldn’t hurt.”
“Sure didn’t hurt tonight,” Morgan muttered, giving the door an appreciative knock.
“Guess I’ll need to make a statement too?”
“You know it … and you seem more up to it than your guests.”
“Sure you don’t want to take it yourself—”
Morgan raised a finger to stop me. “Unless you’d like to spend the rest of the night in the drunk tank … don’t push it.”
He then pointed me to the officer I should talk to and went back to supervising the scene.
***
It was close to one in the morning by the time all of our statements were taken. The adrenaline was wearing off and I was starting to feel sleepy. Still, given what had just happened, I’d have felt as safe sleeping there as I would have in the middle of a minefield. I didn’t care if the cops were going to be camping around the place on the off-chance that our attackers had another go. When I brought this possibility up with Zian out in the hallway, he just shrugged.
“Yeah, well …’ he muttered. ‘I’d say you could sleep it off at my place but, for all I know, those assholes could be over there waiting for another crack at me.”
He gave me the ghost of a smile and I felt bad for him. Now that the commotion was over, his eyes had regained their regular light blue color, but he was shaken.
“So how ’bout you guys sleep over at mine?” Kennedy offered, coming up to us. “I’ve got just enough room. Whoever was here ain’t going to know about it and nobody’s tried knocking on the door with automatic fire lately.” Then she seemed to have second thoughts about the offer. “You will be camping out in the living room, mind you. Either one of you gets the wrong idea …”
Zian held up his hands and shook his head. I was seeing her show of bravado for what it was: she was trying to reassert control over her nerves. I could tell that having to shoot a fellow human being had really got to her.
Morgan came out of my place. “What’s this I hear about you bunking somewhere else for the night?”
“My place,” Kennedy said. “It’s within the Cold City limits.”
Morgan grunted. “All right, then … have you all given statements?”
“And left the contact info,” I answered.
Morgan tilted his head to the side. “Scram … but don’t go too far.”
***
Before I followed Kennedy, I texted Mr. Townsend to let him know to expect me at about nine in the morning. That finally out of the way, I followed Kennedy’s car, a little 1990s Nissan that had seen better days, back to her place. Zian was right behind me in his oh-so-eco-conscious Prius. Once we got past the second red light, my cell started ring
ing. The ring tone of “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar” by The Guild told me it was Zian.
The song wasn’t my choice; it had popped up on my cell at the same time Zian’s number had appeared and both were now impossible to erase. I’d asked my hacker friend about it once, and got a confused reply that left me wondering if Felicia Day may have come from Alterum Mundum. One thing that was sure, though, was that Zian had a serious crush on her.
I picked the phone up. “What’s up?”
“Just wanted to tell you a few details I didn’t pass on to the cops,” Zian said. “Don’t worry, this line is encrypted. Anybody trying to listen is going to get nothing but static and a headache.”
“You shouldn’t have,” I said with reproach in my tone. “Lying to the cops is a—”
“My dad’s gonna give me worse than the cops ever will,” Zian countered. “Because really and truly, what happened tonight was all my fault.”
“How do you figure that?” I asked as we got moving again.
“Right before I went on that food run,” Zian explained, “I did a little more digging into those killings you were looking into. Well, not those killings, but I wanted to see if there was anything before those that tied in somehow.”
“And you did this despite what your dad—”
“Look, I was doing you a favor,” Zian snapped. “Given what we just went through tonight, the least you could do is act grateful.”
I sighed. “I’m not ungrateful, Z. I’m just … I’m just … worried. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“Already got one dad, Bell,” Zian said. “That’s more than enough, trust me.”
“So what did you find?”
It was Zian’s turn to sigh. “The data’s processing at a little offsite that I’m running a ways from the Indigo.”
“Trying to not catch the eye of Big Daddy?”
“For all the good it’s going to do me. Still … had to try.”
“How soon can you have that data crunched?” I asked as I followed Kennedy into a sharp turn left.
“Won’t be before tomorrow night,” Zian said. “Breaking down homicides into all the categories I have takes some work.”
Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book 1) Page 12
