by L. A. Witt
A car door slammed outside the building, turning Jim’s head. I seized the opportunity—and Jim’s momentary distraction—and dove for cover.
I grabbed my second pistol from my ankle holster and pressed my back up against a metal container.
“Fuckers!” Jim screamed. “You’re not taking me to jail!”
Something exploded.
My ears popped, ringing from the noise and the pressure change. I peered around the side of the container. The explosion had ripped a hole in the wall where one of the doors had been. Cold panic knifed through me. He could take down the whole building if he detonated all the C-4. Even if he didn’t, the growing fire would kill us all in minutes.
As I took cover again, I glanced to the side and found Darren sitting up against another container, pistol in hand. I met his gaze. He tapped below his eye, then past me, indicating Jim was still there. I nodded. Then I did the same, pointing in Jenna’s direction. He twisted around, paused like he was locking on to something, and nodded back at me.
Then he was off, and so was I. I used the container for cover as long as I could, and as I came around into the open, my spine straightened. Jim wasn’t in sight, but the warehouse was a hell of a lot brighter now. It was getting dark again quickly, though, thick smoke rapidly filling the place from the top down. Already the rafters were obscured and my eyes were burning. Across the warehouse, flames lapped at stacks of pallets. In a building this dry with this much debris, the whole place would be up in flames before long.
Forget Jim. Jenna, Darren, and I needed to get out of here.
I looked around for them. Jenna was gone. I couldn’t see Darren.
Movement to my left caught my attention, but too late.
Jim lunged at me, roaring, and knocked me to the ground. I shoved an elbow into his gut, and we grappled, fists and knees and elbows flying. He smacked my wrist against something, and my hand flew open, sending my pistol skittering across the concrete.
The muzzle of his dug into my vest, but I elbowed his arm away before he could pull the trigger. A knee to his balls doubled him over. Slamming his arm into a pipe sent the gun to the ground.
I got to my feet and scrambled backward, looking for my gun. A split second too late, though, I realized I’d miscalculated where the edge of the loading dock was. I tried to recover, but my center of gravity had gone too far past the lip, and I was weightless.
The fall wasn’t a long one, but the instant I hit the concrete, something in my lower leg crunched, and I toppled onto my side, blind with pain. I’d taken a knife to my side before, and it hadn’t hurt like my ankle did right now. Or maybe it had and I just didn’t remember because Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck . . .
“Andreas?” Darren’s voice cut through the haze and echoed through the warehouse. “Andreas, are you—”
A gunshot.
Another.
A bullet ricocheting off metal.
Fuck.
I couldn’t even speak. If I tried, I was just going to puke.
I forced my eyes open, which meant more bad news. The smoke was low now, burning my eyes and my throat. Flames rushed toward me from the other loading docks. I had time, but not much, and Jim was loose, and Jenna was—
“Andreas?” Darren was closer now. Dangerously close with Jim lurking just above me.
I swallowed the vomit trying to rise in my throat, and croaked as loud as I could, “He’s got a gun!”
“Where are—”
Gunshots. First one, then more. Seemingly from all directions.
Then nothing. I couldn’t hear a damn thing except a high-pitched whine through the invisible cotton stuffed in my ears.
“Darren?” I coughed as smoke singed my throat and blurred my vision. “Darren? Jenna? You okay?”
Still couldn’t hear anything. And the fire was getting closer. The smoke was getting thicker and lower. Too thick. Too low.
Darren. Where was Darren?
Panicking, I tried to pull myself upright, and that was a mistake. Oh fuck. My balance was off, and I wavered, and landed right on my injured ankle, and dropped.
And, just before I blacked out, I prayed like hell that Darren and Jenna were okay.
Jim wasn’t exactly a crack shot.
He didn’t have to be, not when the building was quickly going up in flames and the doorways were packed with enough C-4 to turn quickly into meteoric in a split second if he pushed the button. But he was wild enough that I had the time to get close to the place where Andreas had vanished. Jenna hadn’t stayed in one place long enough for me to reach her—she’d probably run for the closest exit. God, I hoped so. I had something bigger to worry about right now—namely, where the hell Andreas had gotten to and whether or not he was hit. He had to be close, he had to be.
“Where are—”
A bullet struck the flimsy wooden pallet I was crouched behind, splintering the board just above my head. Then another, to my right. I glanced around the corner to return fire, then startled when I saw movement beyond Jim, near the pillar where I’d lost track of Jenna in the first place. I couldn’t yell at her to run, not if I didn’t want to alert Jim to her presence, and she was—
Bam. Bam. Bam.
Holy shit, she was shooting at her uncle. More than that, she hit him. Jim toppled onto his knees, the gun slipping from his fingers as he clutched at his wounded right shoulder. Jenna kept her gun trained on him, but I could see her shaking from twenty feet away. Her eyes were wide, the whites showing on all sides, and I worried she’d drop the weapon—or worse, start shooting again and kill him.
Over the crackle of the spreading flames, I thought I heard a voice say my name, but I was already moving toward Jim, kicking his gun away and forcing him down onto his stomach. His shoulder was bleeding profusely, so I wasted a few valuable seconds pressing my jacket into the wound—hard enough to make him cry out—and securing it in place before I slapped a pair of handcuffs on him and left him there. I needed to get him out of the building, and take care of Jenna, and find Andreas, and get myself out before this fucking place went up in flames.
One thing at a time.
“Jenna.” I hunched over and went to where she was standing, trembling, glaring at her uncle with the fiercest combination of fear and hatred on her face that I’d ever seen, and pulled her down out of the rising haze. She was holding Andreas’s service pistol. I gently pressed her arms down until the gun was pointed at the floor, then took it from her. “You need to get out of here,” I said. It was getting hot enough in places that the air wavered, and my throat was starting to ache from the smoke.
“What about him?” she asked hollowly. “Are you going to leave him here to die?”
“No. I’m going to call someone to come in and get him.”
She turned to me, and said through gritted teeth, “You should leave him here. That’s what he’d do to us.”
“I know, but we’re better than that. You’re better than that, okay? But you’ve got to get out of here now. Down that hall and out the back office, those doors are the safest.” I couldn’t guarantee there was no C-4 in that direction, but it was the best bet. “Go, Jenna. Run!” She nodded, finally, turned and ran. One more problem down.
“There’s a hostage heading for the north entrance,” I called into my radio. “Don’t shoot. Suspect is apprehended and immobilized. I need backup in the main warehouse to come and get him.”
Chief Singh’s voice crackled over the radio. “You’ll have to bring him out yourself. We’re waiting for the firefighters to get here before we send in more officers.”
You didn’t send in any officers in the first place. “Negative, I’ve got to find Andreas.”
“Detective Ruffner can take care of himself, Detective Corliss, you need to—”
“Detective Ruffner might be injured, and I’m not going anywhere without him.” I put my radio away, ignored the startled squawk that came from it, and started hunting for Andreas. Jim was here—and not about to get up and
start running, if his pallor was anything to go by—so Andreas had to be close. I checked around the nearest piles of empty boxes and pallets, all kindling for the rapidly encroaching flames, and shouted his name. “Andreas! Andreas!” He would answer me if he could, I knew it, but he had to be here somewhere. He couldn’t be . . . It wasn’t possible that he was . . .
When I saw him lying at the bottom of the loading dock, my heart stopped. Just stopped, frozen in my chest as I tried to wrap my head around him motionless. No. No, no, fuck no, nono—
I jumped down—I must have, I didn’t remember how I got here, but I was beside him in a flash, holstering my gun and his as I checked to make sure he was breathing. As soon as I saw his chest rise, I almost lost it. “Jesus fucking Christ, you asshole,” I muttered as I looked him over for injuries. Swearing was better than breaking down, and I didn’t have time for that right now. He was out cold, but I didn’t see any blood. There was a bump on his head, though, and his left ankle was swollen above the line of his shoe. I pulled out my radio.
“I found Detective Ruffner.” Fuck, the smoke was getting thick. “He’s unconscious, I don’t know if I’ll be able to move him on my own.” I ran over to the sliding door at the end of the bay and tried to open it—no go. It had to be locked from the outside. Shit.
“Where are you, Darren?” Oh thank God, it was Paula. I glanced around and counted the bays.
“Loading dock three. There’s fire coming in on the right, and not much room to maneuver on the left. We need help.” If we stayed here much longer, we’d need a miracle.
“Detective Morris, you are not cleared to handle that door,” Chief Singh said sternly. “There might be another explosive device. You could detonate it and cause a chain reaction. The fire crew isn’t here yet, but I have people working their way to you, Detective Corliss, so hold your position.”
“Who?”
“Detective Perkins and—”
An explosion erupted somewhere behind us, one of the doors in the front of the building, maybe. The ground seemed to shake, and I leaned over to shield Andreas’s body as a few pieces of flaming wood blew over the edge of the dock.
“—already gotten the suspect out of there, but the route is no longer safe. Give us a minute to work.”
Great. Perkins and his lackeys had had time to retrieve Jim, but hadn’t bothered to give two fucks about us. “We might not have a minute, Chief!” I thought I heard something clanging against the rollup door of the bay, but it could have just been the ringing in my ears.
“Detective Morris, I told you, you are not clear to—”
Whatever else Chief Singh had to say I completely tuned out as the metal door started to rise. It was slow, inching rather than sliding as it fought against rust and disuse, and after checking Andreas one more time, I got up and helped. Once it was high enough, Paula ducked under. “Where is he?”
“Over here.” I led her to Andreas, and we each grabbed him under an arm.
“On three. One, two—” We pulled him toward the gap, fast now that it was both of us. Getting under wasn’t easy, but we hunkered down and tugged until all three of us were clear of the building. I almost fell over an abandoned crowbar as we made more distance, and by the time we were twenty feet away from the building, smoke was pouring out from where we’d just emerged.
Paula activated her radio. “Detectives Corliss and Ruffner are out of the building. We need EMTs to come to the east loading bay.” She grimaced. “I swear, you guys are giving me gray hairs. Can either of you go a single month without nearly dying?”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t really listening to her, still checking Andreas for any signs of waking up. I barely noticed the arrival of the paramedics before they were gently but firmly moving me out of the way, one of them peppering me with questions that I didn’t care about. I was fine, wasn’t that obvious? I was fine, but Andreas was—
He groaned and coughed, and my eyes fell shut with utter relief. He was waking up. He was already talking, and his first word was a very distinct, “Fuck.”
“Typical,” Paula said, but she was grinning.
“Darren?”
“I’m here,” I called out. The paramedics were trying to talk to him, but he didn’t even look at them. He only had eyes for me. “I’m fine. Jenna’s fine, and Jim’s in custody.” I wanted to say more—wanted to glue myself to his side and, preferably, stay there for the rest of forever, but that was when the cops of Precinct Thirty-Two caught up with us.
“What the hell was that?” Detective Perkins yelled at Paula. “You disobeyed a direct order from the chief, going in like that. You could have taken down the whole building if that door was wired!”
“What, that building right there?” She jabbed her finger at it. “The one that’s currently on fire, that building? The one you and your posse were so quick to enter as long as there was a serial killer to apprehend, but when it came to finding one of your fellow cops, you couldn’t be bothered? That building?”
“Don’t comment on a situation that you’re willfully misunderstanding and expect me to take you seriously, Morris. You screwed up, and—”
“I helped save the lives of two of my friends and coworkers—”
“While putting everyone else at risk of—”
Their argument was the perfect distraction. I crept over to Andreas’s side as one of the paramedics left to get a stretcher that he said he didn’t need.
“You’re not walking on that ankle, sir,” the other paramedic said firmly, fastening an oxygen mask over Andreas’s mouth before moving down to splint his ankle with something vibrantly orange. “And you may have a concussion. Let’s do this safely.”
“He’s allergic to being told what to do.” I took his hand and smiled when he squeezed down.
“I’m allergic to being coddled,” he snapped, but it wasn’t very energetic. He didn’t look good, pale and sweating and dirty, and he smelled like smoke. I imagined I didn’t look much better, but at least I was on my feet.
“It’s not coddling, it’s proper medical procedure.”
“Screw proper medical procedure. Just treat me here so I can get back to work.”
“Paula’s got it covered.” I motioned toward her, where she was still fending off Perkins’s attacks.
“She’s gonna need backup.” Andreas tried to lift his head, then winced and set it back down. “Who got Jim?”
“Well . . . technically, Jenna did. She shot him.”
He looked at me like I’d said, It was a fluffy bunny with an Uzi, instead of Jenna. “Nonfatally,” I clarified. “She used your gun. I got it back, though.”
“She shot her uncle?”
“Well, he did try to kill her, and blackmailed her for years. I’d say it—”
“I’m surprised you were able to get her to stop once she started.”
Sometimes I thought I had a pretty good handle on people’s motivations. Then Andreas would say something like this, even beat up and concussed as he was, and I realized he just got the situation in a way that I didn’t even think of. What had been shocking to me, he almost seemed to expect. It made me wonder how many other things I was missing.
I could waste time feeling sorry for myself later. Right now, the other paramedic was back with the stretcher, and the pair of them were very good at ignoring Andreas’s insistence that he was “fucking fine, for the love of God,” and loading him onto it. The movement caught Perkins’s eye, and he ducked past Paula and was on us before we could roll more than a foot.
“You!” He seemed to be in permanent shout-mode. “You’re not going anywhere, Corliss. Chief Singh wants to talk to you about your role in this colossal fuckup of an investigation.”
“We can talk later, I’m going with Andreas.”
“Why? Is he dying?” Perkins glanced at Andreas, who glared back. “Looks like he’s still alive, which means you’ve got better things to do than waste time holding your partner’s hand while he gets his boo-boos taken care of.”
I was going to hit him. It was going to tank my career and get me suspended, maybe fired, but I was going to hit this interfering asshole so hard that I knocked his front teeth into the back of his throat. I started to move toward him, but Andreas still had a grip on my hand, and it was too tight for me to shake off. I tried to, but he just held on.
Finally I stopped trying and stared at him, frustrated and furious. He stared back, and his iron grip became a gentle squeeze. “Stay and talk. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“Close enough. I’ll get in touch with Hamilton, get you backup.” He patted the pocket with his cellphone. “Don’t leave Paula to fight this battle alone.”
Goddamn it. God damn him and his stupid, dumb, totally correct logic. He was right. I finally nodded, and he let go of my hand. “I’ll come as soon as I can.”
“I know.”
The paramedics finally left with him, and I took a deep breath, straightened my tie—how I still had my tie on, after all the running and ducking I’d done, was kind of a mystery to me—and turned to face Perkins.
We’d see who’d answer for their mistakes tonight.
Bright lights jabbed at my eyes, making my head pound even harder. I couldn’t move, but at least I was warm. In fact, I was getting kind of hot.
I forced my eyes open despite the obnoxious lights, and realized I was all but pinned down by thick, heated blankets. In a hospital bed.
How the . . .?
My vision swam in and out of focus, and my head throbbed. My throat and eyes still burned. I remembered smoke. When I tried to shift around, my left leg wouldn’t move at all, and I froze, suddenly relieved my leg was pinned so securely because . . .
Oh.
Right.
Slowly, the pieces fell into place.
The warehouse. The loading dock. The pain shooting up from my ankle. Then I’d blacked out, and somehow woken up outside, and the next really clear memory was “taking you into surgery.” Either it was a really slow day in the ER, or the doctor thought it was that urgent to knock my ass out and put my foot back together. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know which.
