“Not really.”
He leans forward. “What about me—do I scare you?”
“What scares me about you is your breath. Really, have a Mento or a Tic Tac or something.”
He’s faster than I take him for. He slaps me once across the face, then leans back and takes a sip of his drink.
I sit there a moment, trying not to give him anything. A couple seconds pass and I shift my gaze down at the glass beneath my feet. I can see the dance floor. I can see the people moving frantically about. And I can see Nova moving through those people, moving with purpose.
Xerxes says, “What is it like?”
“What is what like?”
“Being a murderer.”
“I’m not a murderer.”
“No? Then what is it you call yourself? You kill people for a living, no? You take their lives away. The last I checked, that was called murder.”
“Work is work.”
“So you’re just a drone then, is that it? A puppet who waits for her strings to be pulled?”
“What I do is try to keep the world safe.”
He smiles, actually chuckles. “Oh come off it.”
“People like your father figure are evil sick fucks that don’t deserve to live.”
“Hmm, that’s interesting. You believe Roland was evil. You believe, I assume, that I am evil as well.”
“Among other things.”
“And so in your mind if you eradicate Roland and me and the rest of the evil men and women in the world ... what—the world will suddenly be a better place?”
He waits a moment for me to respond, and when I don’t, he grins.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Holly. Everyone’s evil. Even you. And not considering yourself a murderer is simply naïve. After all, killing is killing. Don’t you agree?”
He’s wrong, of course. I do consider myself a murderer. I’m not proud of the fact, but murdering people is what I do. And I’m good at it. One of the best. And I’ll be damned if I have some pink-shirt-wearing-ice-rattling cocksucker tell me otherwise.
“Are you in denial then?” I ask.
“About what?”
“About being a terrorist.”
“Terrorist?” He laughs, shakes his head. “No, I am no terrorist.”
“Then what would you call yourself?”
“What I call myself already. Xerxes, which means—”
“Douche bag?”
He takes another sip of his drink, again rattles the ice around in the glass.
“Terrorists for the most part want to destroy the world. But that’s not my ultimate goal.”
“What is your ultimate goal?”
He looks at me like the answer should be obvious. “Why, to rule the world of course.”
He leans forward, places his lips to my ear.
“Roland was my friend,” he whispers, “and I loved him like a brother. And while I mourn his death I can’t help but also be happy. Because now I have the chance to advance. Now I have the chance to take his place. And it’s all thanks to you, Holly. Not like you knew what you were doing at the time—after all, you’re just a drone, aren’t you?—but you helped secure my place in history and ... well, I just want to say thank you.”
He leans back in his chair, takes another sip of his drink. He just stares at me then, waiting for me to speak.
I say, “Did someone really buy the code today?”
“This morning, yes. It was done electronically.”
“And the boy?”
“One of my runners.”
“So the entire thing was just meant to be a huge waste of time.”
“Not entirely. We still wanted to send you a message.”
“How did you know I would even be here?”
He smiles again. “You can’t even begin to imagine how much I know.”
I glance around at the men watching us. I think about options, possibilities, causes and effects. I think about Nova somewhere downstairs, trying to find me. I think about Philippe somewhere close by too, either outside or in.
“So now what?”
“Now I’m afraid we part ways.” He sets his glass aside, stands up. “It was a pleasure finally meeting you. You are a very attractive woman and I wish we could have met under different circumstances.”
“Yeah,” I say, standing, “like you would ever have a chance.”
“Perhaps.” Xerxes smiles again. “But what you have to remember about men like me, Holly, is that we always get what we want.”
Three men approach. Two of them take my arms, turn me around. They steer me toward the elevator that’s already standing open. They push me into it. The doors slide shut and we start to descend. I think about options again, possibilities. The men haven’t let go of my arms. Their grip is tight. They may not know my entire background, everything I can do, but they witnessed me take out one of their own so they know I’m capable.
I think about struggling but know it’s not worth it. It would just waste time, burn energy, and right now I want to save up as much strength as I can.
We pass the first floor, continue down to the basement. The doors open, revealing a parking garage. A car is parked in front of us. Reed and Boylan stand beside it. Reed has a gun in his hands, Boylan a plastic zip-tie.
“Thank you, boys,” Reed says. “We’ll take it from here.”
40
They force me to put my hands behind my back. Then they put the plastic zip-tie around my wrists. Next thing I know I’m being shoved into the backseat next to a large man with a double chin and a cane who smells like cheap cologne.
He barely even looks at me.
Reed and Boylan get into the car. Reed slides into the driver’s seat, starts the engine, and then we start driving though the garage.
“Boris?” I ask.
He turns his head slightly, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. He says nothing.
“Where are you and Rocky and Bullwinkle taking me?”
Still no answer.
“You know, you’re a lot fatter than I pictured.”
He’s much faster than he looks. One moment his hand is on the tip of his cane; the next it flies up to backhand me across the face. Then it’s back on the tip of the cane, like it never moved at all.
Boylan shifts in his seat, glances back. “Just shut the fuck up, Holly. Okay?”
We drive up the ramp to the exit. Reed pauses for the gate to open.
As it does I play around with the zip-tie. When they placed it around my wrists I’d balled my hands up into fists and kept them together. Boylan hadn’t seemed too worried about it, because otherwise he would have noticed this gives me more room when I move my hands so the wrists are touching. It doesn’t give me a lot of room, but it gives me some, enough to start working the zip-tie.
The gate opened completely, we drive out into the rain.
“So where are we going?”
Nobody answers.
“You seriously don’t think Philippe isn’t going to figure this out?”
Still no answer.
I think about it a moment, then say, “Unless Philippe is in this with you guys too.”
Then I shake my head, say, “No, he wouldn’t be that corrupt.”
I say, “Philippe is a good guy. A true good guy. Not a poser like you fucks.”
Boris does his lightning-quick handwork again. This time I’m ready for it and turn my head away. His backhand hits me in the ear. And because it hits me in the ear, he grunts with frustration and punches me again, this time in the ribs.
We turn down one street, turn down another. I have no idea where they’re taking me. All I know is that when we get there they are going to kill me.
I keep working at the zip-tie behind my back.
“At least tell me what the appeal is. From what I could see, Xerxes isn’t all that charming. Why would you guys want to be in his pocket?”
Reed brings the car to a stop at a traffic light. He flicks the turn
signal on.
I stare out my window, at the cars parked along the street, at the lights in the stores. “Abraham and Kenneth. Delano never had anything to do with them. At least, he never had men try to come in and kill you all.”
The light changes. Reed presses his foot down on the gas, bringing us into motion again.
“By that point Delano had already gotten to you. He’d made a deal. Probably offered you money.”
The windshield wipers screech back and forth, back and forth.
“He probably offered you a lot of money. And maybe you didn’t want to split it between five people. Or maybe you knew Abraham and Kenneth would never go for it in the first place.”
Up in the passenger seat, Boylan tilts his head from the left to the right, from the right to the left. In the heavy silence of the car the pops are like gunshots.
“Yeah, you knew they wouldn’t flip, that they would be good until the end. So you had to take them out. You had to kill them. Yourselves. Except ... except Boris and Boylan were shot in the process. And so were Delano’s men ... or were they his men?”
Boris shifts beside me in his seat. I pause in trying to free my wrists, ready now for another blow. One doesn’t come.
“So you had men dressed up to look like Delano’s men. You killed them, only after you killed Abraham and Kenneth. And then ... what—did you guys draw straws or something to figure out who would get shot and who wouldn’t?”
The windshield wipers: back and forth, back and forth.
“You sick fucks. You did draw straws, didn’t you?”
My wrists working through the zip-tie: back and forth, back and forth.
“And Reed managed to luck out. He was the one who would walk away without a scratch.”
The windshield wipers and my wrists: back and forth, back and forth.
“All so you could be the ones who ran surveillance on Delano. Philippe doesn’t know. He might suspect, but he doesn’t know. And taking him out of the equation is too risky. Raises too many questions.”
One wrist, almost free.
“So you keep him around. You keep him around because you don’t want to kill him. Or because by killing him you would bring in more people. And right now you guys like it the way it is. You like it just being the three of you and Philippe.”
One wrist, moving back and forth, almost free.
“But one of these days Philippe is going figure it out. And if he doesn’t, someone else will. Because dumb fucks like you always mess up. And while Delano may have liked you, who says Xerxes will feel the same way? Who says he won’t get tired of your bullshit and decide to take you all out instead?”
The zip-tie bites into my skin, drawing blood.
I look at Boris, lean close to him.
“What do you think? Huh? What do you and your chinny-chin-chins think of that?”
His face scrunches up. He grits his teeth. He grunts as he raises his cane, swings it awkwardly at my head.
But my hands are now free and I bring them out, grab the cane, twist it out of Boris’s grip. I turn the cane around, so the tip’s pointed at his face, and I jam it right into his eye.
Boylan is already in motion. He has his seatbelt flung off, is reaching into his jacket for his gun.
I pull the cane back out of Boris’s eye, swing it toward Boylan.
And that’s when the car behind us speeds forward suddenly and smacks us in the rear.
41
Boylan drops his gun. I drop the cane. Before either of us can try to reach for our respective weapons, the car behind bumps us again.
Boylan’s gun is knocked forward to the foot well. He turns and bends down, scrambles for the gun, but by the time he comes back up with it raised I have the cane back in my hands, the bloody tip pointed at his face.
Like I did with Boris, I aim for one of Boylan’s eyes. But Reed swerves the car, trying to outpace the car behind us, and the tip of the cane grazes Boylan’s ear.
He fires wildly, shooting into the roof. Reed swerves the car again. The car behind us comes on faster, tries to bump us a third time. I lean forward and smack the gun out of Boylan’s hand, the gun falling once more to the foot well, and I elbow Boylan in the face, one two three times right in the nose.
One hand on the wheel, Reed reaches for his gun with his other hand. He pulls it out, raises it upside down and starts firing over his shoulder.
I duck down as the rear windshield shatters. A hand reaches for me and at first I think it’s Boylan but look up and see it’s Boris. The Russian is alive despite losing one eye and he’s trying to grab me, strangle me, break my neck, but the car behind us rams us again and our car jerks forward and Reed keeps shooting despite the sudden rocking and his aim gets thrown off, a couple bullets ripping into Boris’s chest.
Up ahead there is an intersection and a pile up of cars. Reed drops the gun in his lap, grabs at the wheel with both hands. He veers us suddenly into the opposite lane where a truck is coming at us, flashing its high-beams and blaring its horn, and then we’re up over the curb onto the sidewalk, riding this to the end of the block while the few people out in this rain run or dive out of the way.
Boylan regains his composure, regains the gun. He turns to shoot at me again but I grab for the gun, grip onto his wrist, try to push it away while he tries to push it toward my face.
The car bounces again as we make it back onto the main street. Only it’s a one-way street and we’re headed up it in the wrong direction.
Reed doesn’t seem dissuaded by this though; he grips the steering wheel tight and takes us forward, playing chicken with the oncoming cars that quickly realize they’re dealing with a psychopath and swerve out of his way.
Boylan grits his teeth, says something underneath his breath. He’s still trying to fight me with the gun and decides to let off a couple more rounds. These shatter the rear door window—my window—and the shots are deafening and the stench of cordite is bitter and I swear that it felt like one of those bullets took out the tips of my hair, just a couple, and I grit my own teeth and push his arm again, push it hard, and he fires again just as I push it down and the bullets shoot into Reed’s face.
Despite his seatbelt, Reed’s body leans forward over the wheel. His foot hasn’t lifted from the gas pedal, has in fact been pushed down harder, and the car begins to accelerate even more.
The street curves up ahead, cars parked along both sides. I see what’s going to happen and quickly jump back, grab my seatbelt, snap it in.
Boylan doesn’t have a chance.
Three seconds later we smash into a car parked along the street. Boylan, not wearing his seatbelt, is thrown through the windshield. Glass is everywhere. I quickly smell smoke, gasoline.
The seatbelt kept me secure, but it hurts like a motherfucker. I move slowly at first, making sure nothing has been broken or strained. I unclip the seatbelt, take it off, glance first at Boris to make sure he’s dead, then try to open my door.
But I can’t, no matter how hard I try. The edges of the door have been crumbled from the crash and I can’t get it open far enough for me to get out.
I decide to escape through the rear windshield. I have to be careful not to cut myself on the shards of glass still sticking up.
The rain feels like it’s coming down even harder, trying to wash away the world.
Drivers have stopped their cars, stepped out into the rain. A woman calls out in French, asking me if I’m okay.
I don’t answer her. I just crawl through the window, over the trunk, and down onto the ground.
Off in the distance I can hear the oncoming rush of sirens.
At first I figure I can just wait here for them. Philippe is technically still police, so he’ll be able to explain and bail me out.
Then I think what if Philippe is in this too.
What if he’s just as dirty as these three dead losers?
The sirens are closer now, maybe two or three blocks away. I start walking in one direction but stop
when I remember the car that tried ramming us and figure yes, that was Philippe, coming to my aid, trying to save the damsel in distress.
Wasn’t it?
I start walking.
That same woman calls out again, asking me to stop. Others pick up the chorus.
My walk picks up into a jog.
The sirens are a block away. I can see their flashing lights reflected off the buildings ahead.
My jog turns into a sprint.
As it’s a one-way street I can’t help but pass the first police car coming at me. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the two cops inside turn their heads, try to track where I’m going.
I reach the end of the block by the time the second car arrives. It screeches to a halt, quickly reverses, darts in my direction.
I sprint down one block, down another. The cruiser stays with me.
I spot an alleyway across the street. I keep sprinting on this side of the sidewalk though, pumping my arms and legs, until I’ve reached the end of the block and then I stop, pivot, start sprinting back the way I came.
The cruiser streaks past me, its siren still blaring. It screeches to a halt again, starts to reverse just as I cross the street, as I run into the alleyway.
Which happens to be a dead end.
A dumpster is set up at the end of this alleyway. A few trashcans are scattered about, all of them overflowing.
A fire escape hangs off one of the buildings. I jump for it but the end of the ladder is just too far for me to reach.
I grab one of the trashcans, dump it out, place it directly underneath the ladder. I climb up onto the trashcan just as the cruiser pulls into the alleyway, its high beams splashing me.
I grip the first rung and pull myself up. Reach up for the second rung, then the third.
The cruiser below me has screeched to a halt again. Both doors open. One of the cops shouts in French for me to stop. The other pulls out his gun, aims, and fires at the top of the ladder.
He doesn’t hit me. What he hits is the steel, enough to send a massive vibration to pass into my hands, through my arms, and into the rest of my body.
I let go of the ladder.
The fall is maybe ten feet. Not too high, but enough to knock the wind out of me when I hit the ground. My body has already been dealing with enough pain it doesn’t need this, and when I try to sit up, try to move, it’s like my body has gone on strike and refuses to do anything before it has been given a raise.
No Shelter (Holly Lin, No. 1) Page 15
