Half Life (Russell's Attic Book 2)

by SL Huang

  “For me, Russell,” said Arthur. “Please.”

  “Jesus Christ, fine,” I said. “If it means that much to you, I’ll help him keep his fake daughter. You are a pain in the ass.”

  “Yup,” said Arthur cheerfully.

  Damn. Had I just signed up for helping Warren and his robot child disappear on my own dime? That was a lot of work, a lot of money, and all in all a pretty fucking stupid thing for me to have agreed to.

  Though something in me was also relieved—relieved at not having to make the call. It wouldn’t matter anymore how I should feel toward Liliana, whether I should still care even if Warren came up dry. I’d help her and her father get away as a favor to Arthur, and it would be done.

  A thought struck me. Maybe there was an easier way to deal with all this anyway. Maybe there was a much easier way. Warren wouldn’t like it, but screw him—if he wanted to dictate terms he could come up with my fee. I pulled out my phone, but the signal was dead.

  “Reception’s spotty here,” said Arthur. “’S why I missed your first call.”

  I took a second to recall the name of Arkacite’s CEO and then texted Checker instead: Send me Imogene Grant’s number. The message made it through, and my phone buzzed with a reply almost immediately.

  “Thanks,” said Arthur.

  I grunted.

  Reese and Tegan took their time. Eventually Reese came back out into the living room, looking cleaner and in a new set of clothes. Arthur and I both stood up.

  “It’s someone you know, ain’t it?” said Arthur, when Reese had done nothing but stare blandly at us for a few moments, arms crossed. “They got in ’cause they know you, drugged your dogs—how close am I?”

  Reese didn’t say anything.

  “Let me hang and keep watch, okay? At least till you two can get some rest, get some more security over here.”

  “’Kay,” said Reese, with an expression that looked like the opposite.

  “Okay—great,” said Arthur, clearly flummoxed by not having to marshal any other argument. “Uh, I’ll be right here.”

  I wet my lips and said, “Can I talk to Tegan?”

  Reese gave me permission with a little head jerk. I left the two of them in the living room and approached the bedroom door, knocking as I opened it. “Tegan? It’s Cas.”

  “Cassandra. Come in.” Tegan was the only person who called me Cassandra, and with the second syllable pronounced long and fancy, as if he were British. It had always bugged me, but for some reason I’d never corrected him.

  I pushed the door open. Tegan was in a robe and sitting up in bed against a mound of pillows, the covers drawn up and his prostheses removed. In this context, instead of on a stool in his shop, he appeared shockingly old. I swallowed, clicking the door shut gently behind me. “I know who did this.”

  “Do you?” he sounded unconcerned.

  “The Lorenzos were using your name to get to me.” I said it bluntly. Baldly. “I’m sorry.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and touched his forehead, as if he had a very delicate headache. “They were…genteel. They did offer to pay me first. Handsomely.”

  “To sell me out?” Fuck. It wasn’t right that Tegan should have refused such an offer in order to protect me. Wasn’t right at all.

  “No, not quite. They simply asked that I not answer my phone for twenty-four hours. I knew the purpose must be underhanded, so I refused.”

  “If they come back, just give them what they want.” My voice scratched. “I promise I can handle it.”

  “Then you underestimate the danger.” Tegan folded his hand across the blankets, a calm statue of resignation. “Mama Lorenzo is much more powerful than she was even a year ago. Make peace with her, truly. Or I fear for you.”

  “I’ve beaten everyone she’s sent after me so far.”

  “Then she has not been trying.”

  The room felt very quiet.

  “She’s not getting away with this,” I said. “I won’t let her.”

  Tegan bowed his head. “Cassandra, it’s not worth it. Make your peace with her, I beg of you. Before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late,” I said.

  CHAPTER 19

  I DIDN’T have a plan.

  My blackmail scheme wasn’t ready, and I still couldn’t put a bullet in Mama Lorenzo’s head without making everything exponentially worse. But somehow, some way, I had to drill it into her coiffed marble skull that she was capable of pushing me too far. That there were rules to this little war of ours. That she was not fucking invulnerable.

  Or maybe I was just too angry to think straight, my slow-burning guilt and rage smoldering up as soon as I left Tegan’s and filling me with the blinding need to prove I wasn’t powerless.

  I didn’t buzz in at the estate’s intercom. Instead, I ran up the pillar next to the gate and vaulted over the iron spikes to land on the driveway inside. A couple of guys who were clearly private security started scrambling toward me. I shot them each in the leg and then marched up and kicked down the door.

  Alarms started going off, the wails a deafening echo in the immaculate foyer. I shot the nearest alarm system box for good measure.

  The housekeeper saw me and shrieked, thrusting her hands into the air and dropping the cleaning supplies she held. I strode past her through the house and burst into Mama Lorenzo’s study.

  The woman herself was just rising from her chair behind the wide desk. I pointed my Colt at the center of her forehead.

  “You asshole,” I said. “Somebody needs to put you down.”

  “If you kill me—”

  “You’ll be dead. After that, you’ll hardly care what your family does to me.”

  “Though I think you would.” She was entirely serene. Jesus, the balls on that woman. Betting her life on my sense of self-preservation when I had a gun in her face.

  “You underestimate how stupid I’m willing to be to get one brief moment of satisfaction,” I shot back. “This is between us. And you’re not playing fair.”

  “‘Fair’ is for people who want to lose.”

  “Pithy. I thought you had rules. I thought you didn’t go after innocent people.”

  “What happened with Ms. Maddox was regrettable,” she allowed. “I have spoken to her.”

  “And Tegan and Reese?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “They were not harmed.”

  “What are you on?” I cried. “Your men left them there for a day and a half! They could have died!”

  “Someone would have returned today to free them. Mr. Tegan refused a perfectly reasonable offer.”

  Oh.

  Oh, fuck.

  I might be the one who had the gun, but the power in the room had suddenly flipped, with Mama Lorenzo holding all the cards. Because until now, somewhere in my head I’d still been assuming Mama Lorenzo hadn’t known about the attack on Tegan and Reese, that her men had acted unsanctioned. Tegan—it wasn’t just that he was well-liked.

  You didn’t go after Tegan. Nobody went after Tegan. Not on purpose.

  Either Mama Lorenzo was flaunting remarkably idiotic hubris, or Tegan was right about how massively, unassailably powerful she was. And Gabrielle Lorenzo was not an idiot.

  My mouth was dry. I didn’t know if I should keep up the bravado or run like hell.

  Mama Lorenzo canted her head slightly, watching me, as if she’d only been waiting for me to catch up. “You’re proving unexpectedly irritating,” she said.

  I found my voice. “Yeah, I’m like that.”

  “I’ve made some inquiries about you.”

  “What, after I owned your hitmen?” I managed a sneer.

  Mama Lorenzo flicked a well-shaped fingernail as if she were dispensing with a fly. “They tried to impress me. They failed.”

  My hands had started to sweat. Jesus, she was testing people on me. This was bad. “Your guys are after me,” I said. “Me. Not Tegan, not Reese, not Cheryl Maddox.”

  “I had not thou
ght you so concerned with the lives of others.” She smiled thinly, her voice turning heavy with the ominous weight of someone perfectly capable of carrying out exactly what she threatened. “I’ll make use of that.”

  No. No. No way.

  Every bit of apprehension and uncertainty crystallized into rage. Adrenaline flooded me, the numbers shattering my senses and tearing reality apart. I lunged forward, sweeping Mama Lorenzo’s notes and papers and computer monitor off her desk in a chaotic cacophony and leaping to land on the blotter in a crouch, my 1911 pointed up under her chin. My finger was against the trigger, and I barely stopped myself.

  She laughed. The sound was terrifying.

  I almost didn’t catch it when her eyes slipped to the side.

  My body reacted faster than my fury-soaked brain, and I dove off the desk and past her just as a rifle report echoed through the room, followed by three more. A side door was disgorging masked security, all toting the latest hardware out of Germany. Mama Lorenzo had already slipped backward, out of reach, escaping toward the side of the room—

  I fired my remaining rounds through the desk, five shots that hit the first five guards each in the hip or leg, the mathematics drawing the trajectories through the wood for me. Then, while the people behind the downed men were still tripping over their comrades, I ran for the plate glass window and jumped.

  I’d forgotten momentarily that the house was built into the side of a fucking mountain.

  I hit the glass at a decent angle—I felt a small nick to my right elbow and that was it—but as I twisted to see a snapshot of the ground below me, my brain exploded into oh, SHIT—

  I’d busted out over a sheer drop, over thirty feet of empty air between me and the mountainside.

  I had an instant of weightlessness to think about it, the crash of the glass still echoing in my ears, a spectacular view of Los Angeles spread out below me, and I had no options but one.

  I fell.

  Calculus slammed through my head as I plummeted—I’d be hitting a near-vertical slope, with rocks, with trees, with the glass panes showering around me—shit shit shit! I had just enough time to twist and fall feet-first, and with a silent, cringing apology to the memory of Samuel Colt, I thrust out my empty 1911 a handful of instants before I hit, carving a swath into the dusty cliff and almost jerking my shoulder out of its socket but slowing my plunge just the tiniest bit. Then I kicked out a leg to brake myself with one boot, dropped the gun, and snapped into a ball as the mountainside came up to meet me.

  My bodily crumple let my ankles and knees cushion most of the force as they bent and buckled, and by then I was rolling instead of falling, the mountain alternately pulverizing my feet and back and shoulders as I tumbled. A cloud of dust and gravel choked me—I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see—sturdy tree trunks whipped by on either side, near-misses that were far too close to splintering my skeleton. And then it was all rocky grass and weeds. I grabbed at the foliage as I went, ripping it out by the roots in an attempt to curb the momentum sucking me downward, the sharp blades and leaves slicing at my hands and face.

  My velocity ticked down in my head, a touch lower, a hair slower. The instant it decreased just enough, I unrolled and jammed my feet out below me, digging them into the mountainside.

  The impact jolted through my knees and hips and my body thumped over a few more rocks, but then my feet caught me and I jerked to a stop.

  I didn’t have time to take a breath. I pushed up off the slope and continued downward at a run, leaping down the incline in a juking zigzag. The trees would help screen me, but the Lorenzo security had the high ground. If they had any good snipers…

  I sprinted.

  I didn’t slow down until I’d put a chunk of a mountain between myself and the Lorenzo estate, and then I only decelerated to look around and triangulate the way to a road—I had no idea how large Mama Lorenzo’s private army really was, or how fast she could scramble them. I rounded into a patch of woods and silently cheered when I almost crashed into another secluded house, this one much less extravagant than the Lorenzos’.

  Yes!

  I made a beeline for the truck in the driveway. The tires spit gravel behind me as I peeled out and careened down the slope.

  My phone had somehow stayed in my pocket, banged up but miraculously still working. It had been inside my jacket, so probably my body had protected it—lucky phone. I dialed Arthur as I drove. “Are you still at Tegan’s?”

  “Yeah, I thought I’d stay until—” Reception fuzzed out. “—you. Russell? Can you hear me?”

  “I’m in the mountains,” I shouted. Why I thought shouting would improve a bad connection I had no idea. “Stay there, okay? Stay there!”

  “If I…spotty here, too. You…”

  “Stay at Tegan’s,” I bellowed. “You hear me? Stay!”

  “…but I gotcha. You going to…” He faded out again, and the phone beeped, dropping the call.

  I shot him a brief text message: stay, danger. It would have to do. I couldn’t remember all the people I’d called on this phone and didn’t have time to check—driving one-handed, I popped out the battery and stowed the pieces in my pocket.

  My watch was so scratched up the numbers were barely visible. Fuck, I was going to be late to my meeting with Ally Eight.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I LURCHED into the park Harrington had directed me to more than half an hour after the appointed meeting time. I’d swapped the truck for a rundown SUV, and the thing had zero suspension, jolting up my spine at every pebble.

  Hopefully the Ally Eight rep had waited. Harrington had said they represented some Japanese companies; surely they knew that in LA nobody was on time for anything.

  I took a moment in the SUV to take stock and try to make myself marginally more presentable. This mainly consisted of picking twigs and grass out of my hair and smudging the most obvious dust and blood off my face and onto my jacket sleeve. It didn’t do much good. I still looked like I had gone four rounds with a maniac wielding a hedge trimmer.

  I was also acutely aware I wasn’t carrying anymore, and I hadn’t had time to stop somewhere and pick up another sidearm. If Ally Eight ended up double-crossing me, I supposed I could throw my spare magazines at them. Those had survived the fall quite happily in my pockets, causing nice rectangular bruises up and down my legs.

  I limped into the park, haplessly trying to blot a cut on my scalp that was trickling blood down my neck and back. I remembered Harrington’s instructions and looked around for a bench under a bronze statue.

  An older Japanese woman in a pantsuit sat waiting for me. She was average-looking in all ways—not strikingly tall or short or fat or thin, her appearance neither exceptionally beautiful nor exceptionally lacking. She wasn’t young or old either, but somewhere in between, gray just starting to sprinkle her short dark hair.

  It was hard to read her expression as I approached. I guessed it to be, I really hope that’s not the person I’m supposed to be meeting.

  “I’m Cas Russell,” I said when I’d reached her. “Are you waiting for me? Excuse my appearance. I just had a vigorous…business meeting.”

  “Oh—it’s no problem.” Her English was almost unaccented, with only the slightest edges of a different intonation rounding her words. She stood and extended a hand. “My name is Janet Okuda.”

  I looked down at my right hand, which was streaked with dust, covered in scratches, and oozing blood from a torn-off fingernail, and we had an awkward moment of understanding in which I didn’t shake her hand and she plainly appreciated it.

  She cleared her throat. “I understand you have a business proposition for me.”

  “Yeah.” God bless Harrington. I got right to the point. “My specialty is acquiring items of value for people. I may have a source for a quantity of plutonium-238 in the form of alphavoltaic nuclear batteries. Would that be of interest to you? Or to anyone you represent?”

  Her eyebrows lifted slightly, and she glanced around
before stepping closer and lowering her voice. “Yes. Significant interest.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Let’s walk, shall we?”

  We moved aside briefly for a cyclist to speed by before starting down the path. Okuda made sure he had passed out of earshot before adding, “I should clarify for you, Ms. Russell, because I believe there have been some rumors circulating. My clients are not interested in elemental plutonium. They require an atomic battery of a particular design, no matter what it might be powered by.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I said. Dammit. Clearly someone had heard the word “plutonium,” panicked, and started gossiping about it. It was going to be a real pain in the ass if the Arkacite batteries didn’t fit her clients’ specifications—see, this was why I didn’t usually work on spec. I pulled the printouts from Arkacite’s files out of my pocket. They’d ended up in a crumpled, tight wad and I had to peel them apart. “Here’s what I know I can get for you. If this won’t work for your clients, give me the lowdown on what will, and I’ll keep my eye out.”

  Okuda took the pages and stopped walking for a few moments to study them. “No,” she said slowly. “No, this is exactly what we need.”

  “It is?” God Almighty, something this day had finally gone right. “Then I can get them for you.” I didn’t tell her I had them already. Best to make her think I’d have to work for them.

  She handed the papers back, a small smile touching her lips. “We do have a time incentive. I will give you a significant bonus for sooner delivery.” She held eye contact with me. “For instance, today.”

  I squinted at her. “How big of a bonus?”

  Her slight smile grew. “I thought so.”

  Either my lack of skill at subterfuge had bitten me in the ass again, or she knew someone had stolen from Arkacite. The latter wouldn’t surprise me—Harrington always seemed to have his fingers in a dozen corporate espionage pies; why wouldn’t Okuda have found out Arkacite had been broken into the night before?

  “How big of a bonus?” I asked again.

  She smiled even more broadly, and from there it was just haggling.