Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

Immediate aggressive response. Hammered into us until it was instinctual. Eliminate the threat.

  My chest hurt. A lot. The white light threatened to come shining back, but seemed to change its mind as my next breath sharpened the hurt into a fleeting glimpse of agony.

  The Toyota pickup was gone. Daryll and Fain with it. I was lying next to the unconscious mass of the cousin I’d shot in the ankle, half under the back bumper of the armored car. The white light wasn’t entirely my imagination. Ivory smoke swamped the road. I caught a faint but terrible acrid whiff of CS gas in the still air. Fain must have laid down every grenade in their arsenal.

  In the reflections of store windows—where the glass wasn’t broken—I caught flashes of red and blue behind the wall of smoke and noxious gas to the south. Maybe they’d cordoned off the block. More bursts of carbine fire echoed off the building. No answering fire from the police in that direction. No visibility, no clear targets.

  Cops in either direction on 6th. Rigo and Zeke in the middle of the block, raining hell. And me, stuck right here. Feeling like a rhinoceros had stepped on my thorax.

  Could I escape into the bank? No exit there. The grocery was fifty yards away, which might as well be a hundred miles. I couldn’t run. I didn’t even have to try standing up to know that.

  The volume of fire from Zeke and Rigo slowed, stopped. Out of ammo, or reloading?

  I got my answer as a car engine thundered. Lifting my head to see over the rounded gut of the unconscious hulk as a Ford Mustang peeled out from the curb and raced north, toward the police who had been the targets of their suppressive fire. Christ, I hoped it had been suppressive fire. The alternative would be massacre.

  Think, Shaw. Cops would be closing in from the cordon at any moment. Bluff my way out? No. Even if my HaverCorp disguise bought me an extra minute, I couldn’t just fade away, not with dozens of police around. As soon as they found the guards hogtied in the back of the armored car, I would become the focus of all kinds of mean attention.

  The motorcycles. Leo and I had left the bikes in the grocery lot next to a collection rack for shopping carts. Easy to find in a rush. Like now. He’d chosen two older Kawasakis, common enough not to stand out but with enough horsepower to kick a pig halfway to Canada. I hoped Leo had made it to the bikes and escaped. If he’d tried to come back for me, the cops would have nailed him.

  But that salvation was even farther away than the grocery itself, and on the other side of the police cordon. Impossible.

  Impossible without getting crazy.

  Shit. A bad idea beats no idea.

  I reached up, grabbed the bumper of the armored car, and hauled myself to stand before I had time to realize the pain. An iron vise squeezed my rib cage as I climbed through the open back door. My legs buckled, held, and I managed to turn around and pull the thick steel door shut with a clang.

  The guards still lay in their hoods on the floor of the truck. In the side compartments, nine or ten satchels of cash remained. Fain and his team had run out of time, and then some.

  “Get us out of here,” one of the guards yelled. Thinking I was a cop, maybe.

  I stumbled to the driver’s seat, stepping over the green nylon duffel with Jaeger’s coat and drugs. The truck’s engine was still running. Through the windshield and the smoke I saw the roadblock two hundred feet away. Three cruisers set at angles with six or seven uniformed cops crouched behind them. One edged out along the engine side of his vehicle, risking fire to get a look at the street. And me.

  I put the armored truck in drive and floored it.

  The six-cylinder diesel punched us forward and the transmission screeched as it tried to keep up. I prayed the truck wouldn’t stall. Beyond the fading columns of smoke and the flashing red and blue light show, cops fanned out, pointing in my direction. No one risked shooting. Not yet.

  I’d had courses in mobility training on the Army’s twenty-ton Stryker personnel carrier. The HaverCorp truck was smaller, but the attitude still applied. If something’s in your way, make it regret that choice.

  I barreled toward the blocking cruisers. Twenty miles an hour. Thirty. The truck roared through the artificial fog of smoke and stinging gas. I heard the simultaneous blast of a gun and the smack of buckshot striking the front tire’s hub, which had about as much effect as spitballs on a window. I veered left, aiming the corner of the truck’s enormous front bumper at the grille of the first police cruiser in line. My eyes blurred from gas vapor leaking through the ceiling vents.

  The armored truck smashed into the cruiser’s grille, swatting it backward into its mates with a crash like dropped china plates. One of the bound guards screamed in terror. The truck shuddered but barely slowed. I straightened the wheel, leaning forward, willing the huge machine to go faster. Smashed cars or not, the cops would be on my tail within seconds.

  The Uwajimaya lot was directly to my right now. I timed the spaces between trees and swung hard around. The truck bounded up the curb and over the sidewalk, crashing through the short fence of the parking lot like it was made of cardboard. People fled from the truck as if from a monster. I kept the accelerator floored and looked for the motorcycle—There. Closer than I’d thought. I swerved and hit the brakes almost immediately, the truck shuddering to a stop. The bound guards were both yelling now. I jumped out, landed, and collapsed to my hands and knees.

  Get up, Shaw. For fuck’s sake, move. You’re not hurt. The bike is right there. Move.

  Leo had taped the key under the front fender. I found it, peeled it away, half fell onto the seat, and got the key into the ignition. My fingers shook. The armored car shielded me from the roadblock I’d hammered through, but there would be other cops.

  Shouts, and more sirens. When the engine caught, I barely heard it. I found myself popping the brake and goosing the throttle, and the bike lunged ahead. The air rushing at my face filled my lungs and revived me. I leaned low—a smaller target—and flew out of the parking lot exit.

  The cops had emptied the road of civilians. I had a clear path into the complex intersection of boulevards and avenues on Dearborn. SPD cruisers had blocked the Dearborn side from traffic but the intersection was too wide for an effective barricade. Cops ran between the cruisers, readying for pursuit. I gunned the cycle across the broad expanse and onto the overpass for the Metro line. If there was a shot fired, I lost the sound in the wind.

  Now I was soaring. Following the emergency route that Leo and I had arranged. Going the wrong way on a one-way bus lane. Clocking a mile a minute and more, with no traffic in my way and the city streets far below.

  As perfect as it seemed, this was the dangerous part of the route. While I raced along the overpass for miles until the bus lane merged onto I-90, the cops had every chance to radio ahead. If I stayed on the freeway too long I would be trapped in the traffic flowing into the tunnel and onto the bridge over Lake Washington. Cooked and quickly eaten. They’d have every SWAT hard-case on both sides of the water waiting for my ass.

  I aimed to be long gone before then.

  A bus loomed ahead, rushing at me like an angry beast. I hugged the outer barrier, my handlebars only inches from scraping the cement wall. Willing the bus driver not to panic and drift the wrong way. He leaned hard on the horn, holding its single blaring note until I was far past him and seeing Beacon Hill flash by my peripheral vision.

  The front tire wobbled. Not the bike, me. I inhaled as much as my chest allowed and tried to use the stab of pain that came with the breath. Seeking adrenaline any way I could get it.

  One mile. Two. The bus lane rejoined the express lanes running down the center of the freeway. I was flying head-on into the morning crush.

  Another bus came at me, closing the distance at our combined speed of one hundred twenty. I swung left this time, feeling the heavy drag as the leviathan rushed past, threatening to tip me and the bike over. I caught a glimpse of one passenger, her face stretched in an O of shock.

  Then I was through, at the edge of the b
arrier dividing the express lanes from the main freeway. I screeched to a near-stop, waiting for a gap in the hissing river of oncoming cars, then kicked it and sailed across five lanes and a shoulder, hearing the stutters and songs of furious horns, onto the exit ramp that made a full circle and shot me out onto Rainier.

  Nearly back to where the morning had started, one hour and a full century ago.

  Three minutes later, I stopped the bike on a block of one-story houses with muddy yards and missing roof shingles. I left the key in the ignition. Maybe I’d get lucky and somebody would steal it.

  Peeling off the HaverCorp jacket was embarrassingly slow. I had the shakes, and not just from the cold sweat on my face. Finally I freed myself and stuffed the jacket and mask and comm headset deep into one of a dozen trash cans waiting for pickup.

  I walked the last blocks to where I’d left the Dodge, slowly, shakily. At one point I stopped and leaned against a rusted-out Hyundai like we were two drunks reliant on one another to stay upright.

  There was something wrong in my chest. Something more than the obvious and expected contusion from taking a sponge round at ten paces. The whole cavity felt squeezed. My heart rate was still somewhere north of ninety. I could feel it, an animal battering itself against the bars of its tight cage.

  Gingerly, I pressed three fingertips where the round had hit. Steel needles mixed with the oxygen on my next inhale, and my vision blurred at the edges. Fuck. I didn’t need to attempt that again.

  Get to the truck. One step at a time. That seemed more in the realm of possibility.

  Turned out it was. I even unlocked the door and crawled into the cab and closed the door again.

  And that was all.

  Forty

  “Hey,” a voice said. “You’re alive.”

  The voice was masculine and scratchy and high-toned. With a touch of an Ulster accent. Yes. Hollis. I felt proud at my powers of recognition.

  And confused. The face in front of me was female, strong of bone, and undeniably beautiful. I liked the eyes especially. Ocean gray and blue.

  Hey, Luce. Why are you talking like Hollis?

  Hollis stepped to the side, the better to peer at me around Luce, who was seated next to wherever I was lying. A high black ceiling, and high-set windows with bits of stained glass around the edges. I knew those, too.

  “Why are we in the Morgen?” I said to Luce.

  She leaned back a fraction, assessing. “You don’t remember?”

  “Easiest place,” Hollis jumped in. “She had to bring you somewhere.”

  “You called me,” Luce said, “and told me where you were, and then the line cut off. That was scary enough. When I got down to Rainier you were unconscious in the front seat of your pickup, and that was even worse.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You woke up when I opened the door. You even moved over to the passenger side and told me . . .”

  She hesitated.

  “You told me to call Hollis,” she finished. “By the time I did, you had faded out again.”

  I looked around. The sun was high enough that it caught the windows, which meant it must be sometime around noon. Any later and the alley outside would be submerged in its customary shade. I was lying on one of the long built-in benches that lined the walls of the bar. The four-top tables had been pulled away to make space. The Morgen’s main room was a long, uniform rectangle. Luce had painted the walls and ceiling and permanent furnishings a flat utilitarian black, the better to show off the hints of color—the window glass, the bottles, and the big tapestry behind the bar with the nude woman on horseback in the roiling surf, from which the bar got its name.

  “I was running errands,” Hollis said, “when Lucille got hold of me.” His way of cluing me in that he hadn’t given Luce the whole story. That would be my decision. “We talked over where to take you. The Morgen here was closer than the marina and my boat.”

  “And my place has too many stairs,” I finished.

  “I don’t know where you live now,” Luce reminded me.

  “Right,” I said.

  “You’re just lucky I know how to drive a stick.”

  Her joke covered the awkward moment well enough. I tried sitting up, and found it easier to slide my legs off the bench and let the weight tilt me skyward.

  “Easy, boyo,” Hollis said.

  But my head felt better, even if my chest was still in the grip of a python. “I remember using you like a crutch to walk in here,” I said to Hollis.

  “What happened with Leo?” Luce asked. “Can they appeal his plea?”

  “Leo’s free,” I said. “The real killer committed suicide and left a note.”

  She stared. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t. It’s been . . .” I wiped a palm over my hot forehead. “There’s no real excuse.”

  Someone outside knocked on the dark green door that was the Morgen’s main entrance.

  “I’ll get that,” Luce said, standing up before either Hollis or I had moved. She strode away.

  I turned to Hollis. “Where’s Leo?”

  “I don’t know. No word from the man. From either of you. Christ, when the sirens started . . .” He blinked hard and shook his head emphatically. “I thought Leo might have holed up at your place. I was about to drive there when Luce got hold of me. What the hell happened?”

  “Fain chose the money over catching Jaeger.” That was all I had time to say before the sunlight through the opened door cast the customarily dim bar from charcoal-gray into cool silver.

  Luce stepped aside to allow a man to walk in. Six-foot-four at least, not counting the cowboy boots. With a mane of sun-streaked brown hair sweeping back from his forehead, and crisply dressed in a white button-down shirt and midnight-blue jeans. He carried a teal backpack by its top strap. Luce touched him on the upper arm and guided him toward Hollis and me.

  Her touch lingered long enough for me to understand their relationship. The tall guy was Luce’s fiancé.

  “Van, this is Carter,” Luce said.

  “Hey,” Carter said, and knelt down without offering his hand. “How are you feeling?”

  “You’re a doctor,” I said.

  “Not yet I’m not. Just an intern at U-Dub Med.” He unzipped a side pocket of the backpack—which I took for an EMT kit—and uncoiled a blood pressure cuff. “Lucy didn’t tell me what happened.”

  Lucy?

  “Batting cage,” I said. “I took a fastball to the chest.”

  “Any trouble breathing?” He extracted a stethoscope from the pack.

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. Take your shirt off and let’s see where you got hit.”

  I was still wearing the generic brown shirt and blue pants that formed part of my HaverCorp disguise. Luce would have noticed my odd choice of clothes. They had probably clued her not to take me straight to an emergency room. I unbuttoned the shirt and rolled my shoulders back to cautiously peel it off.

  “Damn,” Carter said. Luce inhaled.

  I looked. A violent purple blotch with red outlines sat on my breastbone like some sea anemone, a finger’s-breadth to the right of the center of my chest. It had swollen at least half an inch above the surface of the undamaged skin around it.

  “Well. Hematoma like nobody’s biz,” Carter said. “Let me feel it. This might be uncomfortable.”

  I’d always hated that phrase, and his probing the bruise didn’t improve my opinion. By the time he pressed the third time, prickles of sweat had erupted on my scalp.

  “Sharp pain?” he said.

  “Sharp enough.”

  “No fracture,” he said, “or you’d know for sure. But you might have tears in those intercostal muscles between the ribs. It’s the breathing that worries me. Inhale.” He touched the stethoscope to my chest.

  I took a breath.

  “Can you inhale deeper?” he said.

  “I can. I don’t.”

  “That’s what I mean. You might have a
pulmonary contusion. That means a—”

  “Bruise on my lungs.”

  “Yes. Well.” He checked my blood pressure, which was normal. My pulse was around seventy, a lot higher than my usual resting rate sub-sixty.

  Carter nodded. “You need to go to the hospital, no question. For X-rays and maybe a stay. Something like this could turn into pneumonia, or ARDS. That’s—” Carter caught himself. “You might need oxygen. And a doctor needs to cross-check any pain medication you take. So no self-prescribing.”

  “But no surgery, either,” I said.

  “If it’s what I think, there’s not much to do except rest and monitor progress and let it heal,” he said with some reluctance.

  “Right.”

  “But there could be internal hemorrhaging. That builds up over time, and it can become very bad, very, very fast.”

  “He blacked out,” Luce said.

  “That true?” said Carter to me. “When you got hit?”

  “For a few seconds. I figured it was just shock.”

  “I meant in your truck,” Luce folded her arms. “You didn’t mention it was your second time.”

  Carter checked my skull. “No sore spots to indicate a blow? Falling on something?”

  “No.”

  “Could be shock,” he said. “It’s also possible that your heart stopped for a moment.”

  Hollis spoke for the first time. “Jesus, Mary.”

  “Like a defibrillator,” said Carter. “One big thump can make the ticker stop or start. You got lucky.”

  “Yes,” said Luce, her light skin all the way into pale.

  “Go to the hospital. Seriously.”

  “It’s a serious day,” I said.

  Carter didn’t seem sure how to take that. “Okay, then.” He stood up, all six-four-plus-boots, and zipped up his kit. “No more Hernandez heaters in the batting cage for a while. Okay?”

  “Thank you,” Luce said.

  “Thanks,” I echoed.

  “No problem.”

  Luce walked Carter to the door. I occupied myself by standing up. It went better than expected.

  “D’you want Harborview or Swedish?” Hollis said. “Or do you use the Army hospital?”