She waited.
There would be no sense charging in and shooting this guy. It didn’t feel right. He may have been just another two-bit thief, like those kids on the scooter. Luanda was full of opportunists.
She’d wait and collect a little more evidence before she’d make her move. She’d watch what he did in there, how he’d go about searching what was supposed to be the room of the American—according to the books downstairs.
She watched, but still held the gun tight, the barrel inches away from the wood of the door. The situation was fluid and her response could change at any moment. Her brain was clean and clear now, up for the challenge. She’d figured it out, why she was so flustered earlier. It was that warm shower that had lulled her into a complacent sleepiness. Now, the sight of her latest intruder was like a bucket of cold water against her face.
He was still out of sight, doing something in the bathroom. But she could hear his progress. The door, and then bathroom fan turning on with the light switch. She waited for the curtain.
And waited.
Still nothing.
And then, a cop’s voice: “Freeze! Drop the gun!”
No, not a cop. A man’s voice, but not a local. An American. The sound of a quick-sliding shower curtain.
“Drop it!”
Multiple shots rang out, some over each other. A gun fight. More noise with the shower curtain and the tub, and then the door, scuffling feet with someone groaning in the background.
Before Macy could decide on her next move, the intruder was back in her line of sight. Her hand shook with anticipation. She tried pointing the gun at him, but he ran off toward the open rear window. She couldn’t let him slip away so easily.
Somehow, and definitely without thinking, Macy had launched herself into the room. It was stupid and not very tactical, exposing herself like that. But after what had happened in the bathroom, she felt compelled to stop him.
“Freeze!” she said in a similar voice to the one she’d just heard. Her gun fixed on the unarmed African. Another shape rushed into her peripheral view, a white male coming out of the bathroom, his arm wet with blood and dripping as he held it up to aim at the intruder. But all that was left to aim at were the kid’s legs, and then just his feet, him squirming out of the window like a rat through a sewer grate.
Macy rushed to the window in time to see him land, five stories later, headfirst. The sound of meat and bone slapping, almost liquefying, against the pavement. She felt the thud from her room and her stomach curdled. What was the scene like on the ground?
“Oh, Jesus,” she cried, slapping her hand over her mouth when she remembered the room’s other occupant. She spun around. His eyes were wide, chest heaving, arm bleeding. When he started rushing toward her and the window, Macy drew her gun on him, backpedaling toward her door, steadying herself. She tried desperately to make her brain interpret what the hell she was actually seeing. Who the fuck was this? Was he the real killer?
He was aiming his gun at her now, his body positioned in a familiar tactical stance. The Weaver stance. He looked like a trained professional. A killer. “Freeze,” he said, grunting it loud and guttural.
“You freeze,” she said, aiming in Weaver, too.
“You first,” he said.
“I’m fucking frozen.”
“Drop the gun, then.”
“You,” she said.
“Me what?”
“Who are you?”
When he lowered the gun halfway down, she wasn’t so fixated at the light reflecting from the barrel. She could finally see beyond the glint of death, to his face. But it still didn’t make sense. It was just as shiny and obscure and bright and confusing. She couldn’t make out the details aside from that it was a white man’s face. American as apple pie.
CIA?
“It’s okay,” he said, his gun lowering even further, his chest moving in long deep breaths as if to persuade her to do the same. “It’s okay, you can lower your gun.”
She kept her gun trained on Mr. Apple Pie. She didn’t trust him for anything.
“Can you?” he said. “Can you please lower it?”
The face had gone a little wary now, his arm muscles straining.
Her gun was shaking, too.
“Macy, please—”
“What?” The sound of her name ricocheted in her head like a hollow-point bullet.
“Please lower the gun,” he said. “Please?”
Something about that jaw line, the dimple, the way his nose sat on his face. His soft eyes pleading with her. Puppy-dog brown. He raised his eyebrows. Was he about to laugh?
“Come on, Mace. It’s me.”
It was St. Louis. It was seven years ago coming back hard, hitting her like a ton of bricks in the face. In her heart, the recollection piercing her.
“What?” she said, the word coming out limp and mumbled. Defeated.
“It’s me,” he said. “You know me. Macy . . .”
“You.”
“Tucker.”
“Tucker?” She wanted to run back to the door, crawl back through the little hole she peeked out of, crawl back into her room, alone, in the shower, melting away and hiding.
“There you go,” he said, soothing, smiling, his eyes still following her gun lower and lower. “Thanks,” he said. “Damn, I was worried you were about to blow me away.”
She didn’t feel herself lowering the gun. It was an automatic response, the gun already at her side and hanging off a few fingers. The piece of metal felt like a hundred pounds. There was weight now on her shoulders, too. On her neck, everything crushing her down. Everything about the situation, about who was standing in front of her in a hotel in Luanda making her knees wobbly and useless.
“It’s okay,” he said again, his voice fading. “You’re okay.”
The dim bulbs on the ceiling got dimmer, from orange to brown. The light in her head faded, too. Macy wanted to lie down on the ground for some reason.
When she mumbled something about how or what, her voice sounded far away. It was like she was back at the police academy, the firing range with Tucker, her ears covered with shooting muffs. It was so vivid that Macy could even smell the burnt chemical odor of gun smoke. And then she remembered that she was in Luanda, remembered what had happened in the bathroom, and what had just fallen five stories from the hotel window.
“Tucker,” she said, feeling her mind come back into focus.
“Yeah?”
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
8
Macy
Macy showed him through her room’s side-entrance, Tucker not stopping to ask questions about it or the hole in the door. She quickly packed her bag, everything except for her gun, which she kept at her hip on the inside of her jeans. She draped her shirt over the gun’s grip and then took another look at Tucker, squinting to make him out, to see through the years of his aging. Was it really him?
He was certainly as handsome as she’d remembered. Age had been good to him, turning a fresh-faced rookie into a solid professional. Was he still with the force? No, he couldn’t be, or what the hell would he be doing here?
What the hell was he doing here?
Part of her was itching to know just how the hell this was happening, how it was him, how he’d found her. And why. Another part of her, her legs mostly, wanted to run out of there at full speed.
“I don’t have a car or anything,” she said, unlatching the door to the hallway.
“I do.”
“Well, I have a scooter. Recently acquired.” She shrugged, turning back to look at him one more time.
He shook his head. “Leave it.”
He had wrapped a hand towel around his bicep. A small red stain seeped through.
“What happened?”
“I’m okay. Just a graze.” He checked his wrap-job, and then looked back at her. “How about you? You okay?”
“What’s going on?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “We ca
n talk more in the car.”
“Where?”
“Out back.”
“Okay,” Macy said. “Let’s split up. I’ll take the front and—”
“No. No way. I didn’t come this far to split up again.” He moved past her, his body brushing against hers as he pulled on the handle and held the door open. “Let’s move.”
They moved out, together. Tucker lead her toward the rear stairway, jamming the metal push-bar of the door and blasting it open, their feet pounding down the stairs until they were back in the acrid night air. It was humid and everywhere smelled of burnt oil and plastic. Macy could feel the chemical process on her skin. She could taste it.
“Nice place for a vacation,” he said, leading across the small dirt lot behind the hotel.
“It’s not a vacation.”
“I know.” Tucker went to open the passenger-side door of a silver SUV, but she moved in first, blocking him.
“I got it,” she said. “Thanks.”
“You got it.” He went around the other side and got in, starting the engine. “It’s a rental. I got tired of getting gouged by the cabs. It’s nuts here.”
A wave of sadness gripped Macy’s heart. “Yeah,” she said, thinking of the old man. “It’s nuts.”
“I even tried those vans. You know those blue and white ones?”
“They’re called Candongueiros,” Macy said. “And you’re basically risking your life every time you set foot in one.”
“Jesus . . .” Tucker pulled out of the parking lot, driving slow and steady and not like someone fleeing a dead body. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I think there must be a law for those bus drivers—they have to be severely intoxicated before getting behind the wheel.”
She watched him navigate the busy, chaotic streets of Luanda, but her mind was everywhere but.
“Look, Macy, I can’t even pretend to know what you’re thinking right now. I don’t even know what I’m thinking.”
It was good to have something in common.
Tucker continued. “So, I don’t want to overload you with questions, okay?”
“Thanks,” she said, quietly.
They were moving faster now, turning left onto an ocean-side road. In the tall lights above the promenade, the air was thick with dust. The wind had picked up, flags whipping straight. Tucker cleared his throat and said, “I think our first goal should just be to get the hell out of here, and then—”
“Out of where? Luanda?”
“Well . . .”
“Why? I was trying to get to—”
“I can take you to Kyle Raleigh.”
She didn’t say anything, but his gaze burned into her.
“I went to his house today. Beth’s house. You were there this morning.”
“Tucker? I thought you weren’t going to overload me with questions.”
“I’m not,” he said. “You asked me the questions.”
“Fair enough.” She turned around, checking through the rear window. There were a few pairs of headlights behind them.
Tucker sighed. “Fine. Where do you want to go? What’s your plan?” He slowed down for a group of people walking in the middle of the road.
“Just drive.”
“Where? Through them?”
“Yes.”
The crowd parted as Tucker accelerated. That was the rule of the roads here. If you’ve got somewhere to be, you just go.
“Where’s Kyle?” she said.
“South Africa. Johannesburg.”
She looked behind the car again.
“Is someone back there? Someone following us?”
“I’m not sure, just keep going.”
“You’ve had a lot of experience with that, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said. “So if I tell you to go . . .”
“Then I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll go as long as it’s with you.”
“Why?”
He didn’t say anything, but Tucker’s lips moved like he was processing it, trying it out on himself first. It was odd, that he hadn’t thought that far to prep an explanation.
“Hey,” Macy said, trying to soften her voice. “Let’s trade. If you tell me what the hell you’re doing, then I’ll do the same.”
“I already know what you’re doing,” he said. “You’re running from hit men, for years, all the way here from Syria. I’ve only technically been stalking you for twenty-four hours, but I still knew all about what happened to you. It was major news.”
“That’s why they’re trying to be subtle about it,” she murmured, thinking of the kids on the scooter and the kid out the window. It was piling up and getting confusing.
“Who?”
“I’ve lost track at this point,” Macy said. “But you know how it started.”
“What are they being subtle about? Offing you?”
Macy pulled her gun out and let it rest in her lap, the barrel pointing at Tucker.
“What are you doing?” Tucker said it as they rode over a bump, his voice wavering. Either that or he was genuinely nervous. But he wasn’t the nervous type, she thought, anyway. “And can you please not point that at me?”
She held the gun steady. “I really need you to explain what you’re doing here. No offense, but it would be best for both of us if I knew.”
“Just for the record,” he said, “I’m not offended that you don’t quite trust me. After all that you’ve been through, I can understand that. But, I mean . . .”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“And that’s fine.”
“Even myself,” she said, her thumb disengaging the safety lever. “I don’t even trust myself with this gun right now.”
“Even though I just risked my life to help you, in a close-quarters gunfight in a fucking shower stall?”
“I’ve had people waiting for me in shower stalls before. None of them were doing it for my betterment.”
“I’m sure,” he said. “So you really think I was sent across the world to kill you? Me?”
“Not really.”
“Then put the gun away.”
“We’ll compromise,” she said. “I’ll put the safety back on.” Tucker didn’t say anything. When he pulled off to the side of the road in front of a burnt-out apartment, her hand tightened around the grip. “What are you doing?”
He threw the car in park, holding both hands on the wheel and taking a deep breath. He turned to her. “Let’s hash this out.” The blue lights of the dashboard made his face smooth and cold. He looked freshly shaven. Militarized. “I’m not driving anywhere as long as you’re pointing a fucking gun at me.”
She knew he’d gone off to the military after St. Louis. But that was about it. No connection after that. No social media, no contacts, no shared friends. Macy thought she’d never see him again. She almost preferred that. Who knew how he’d felt about it?
She stared back at that hard blue face. She tried to find a hint of vengeance somewhere in there, a hint of malice.
After a moment, Macy rocked her hip forward off the car seat and put the gun back in its holster.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t like how that felt.”
“I know.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing out here? Carjacking people?”
She laughed a little.
“Is that how you get around? What’s your hustle?”
“My hustle is to just keep it moving. If I ever slow down, I’m dead.”
He was watching something in the rearview mirror now, a car driving up slowly and then past them. “How do you eat? I mean, where do you get your money?”
“I have a contact back home.”
“He sends you money?”
“She.”
“She sends you money.”
“Yeah, barely. Just enough to get by.”
“Who? A friend?”
Macy didn’t like the way he cocked his head after that. “Why are you asking?”
“Just curious.”
“I’ve been out here for years, running.”
“Yeah.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”
“Just running . . .” She looked back behind the car again. “Think we should get going?”
“Where do you want to go?”
At that point, she had no idea. Having to think about scraping together another night somewhere, another safe night, made her head hurt. “Let’s just start driving.”
He pulled back onto the road without a word. By now she was sure that he understood the kind of danger she was in. He had just experienced it firsthand, up close in a smoke-filled hotel bathroom. Why had he been there in the first place?
“How did you find me at the hotel?”
“I had a friend hack a few Luanda cell provider companies, got access to the towers, and used triangulation to find the area you’d most likely be.”
“You did that?”
“My friend did.”
“And he speaks Portuguese?”
“We have hackers, and linguists, and whatever else.”
“So that’s what you are, then?” Macy said. “You’re a whatever else?”
He ignored the question. “I went to all the hotels in the area. I had a hunch and I got lucky. Found your name on one of the books.”
“Your friend hacked all the hotels, too?”
“No. Fifty bucks American did. But you can’t be surprised. You set it up that way. A trap.”
“A decoy room,” she said. And it had caught an old friend. What were the odds?
“Well, it turned out being a trap for me. I think that was the closest I’ve ever been to death, and I’ve been through a lot of fucked-up experiences.”
“You handled it well.”
“No, I didn’t,” Tucker said. “That guy would be dead if that were the case.”
“He most likely is dead. You saw the pile of him.”
“I mean, I would’ve gotten off a kill shot. I was actually expecting it to be you so I wasn’t so zealous with the gun. I wasn’t prepared for that, to run up against one of your assassins on the first night. Is that really how it goes? Every night is like that?”
Dark Lies (DARC Ops Book 6) Page 4
