Despite getting hit, Jill kept her head turned, watching her mirror, trying to drive the giant vehicle too fast in reverse without crashing us into some of the abandoned heavy equipment. The light stuff, though, she didn’t care about, and our rear end slapped the side of one of the recently parked cars. I barely felt it, but from the horrible metallic rending noise, that car wouldn’t be following us.
We were putting distance between us and the shooters. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Jill insisted, but she didn’t sound okay. The words came out dripping with pain and focus.
I was shoving in my final magazine as the truck crashed through the outer fence, beeping the whole time, and out onto the access road. She kept us straight for another twenty seconds, giving us a good lead. “Flip around here.” Only we kept going, across the road, and into a field. “Stop!” I shouted as we ripped through the bushes, but Jill didn’t respond. Her chin had dropped to her chest. I reached for the wheel, too late, because then we were tipping backwards, and our rear end slammed hard into the bottom of a ditch.
The impact caused me to bounce my head off the ceiling. The padding there didn’t do much. I blinked myself back to reality a second later, staring up at the night, our one unbroken headlight launching a beam at the stars.
“Jill?” All I got in response was a moan. I reached out and found her in the dark. My hand landed in hot, sticky blood. There was blood everywhere. She was hit worse than I thought. “Come on, we’ve got to go.” I found my radio. “Reaper! We’re on the access road. We need extraction, now!”
“Already on my way.”
Jill’s door was stuck against a tree. Mine still opened. She was groggy, with the clumsy, drunken movements of somebody with dropping blood pressure. I pulled her tight against me, and fumbled my way out of the steeply angled truck. I don’t know how I kept hold of her, but I did. I fell backwards into the weeds, Jill on top of me. She gasped when we hit. “It’s going to be okay.” I kept repeating it, like a mantra. “It’s going to be okay.”
I dragged Jill up out of the ditch. “Can you walk?” But she didn’t respond at all. She’d passed out, dead weight. Anders and his men would surely be here any second. Desperate, I looked around for Reaper’s headlights, but I couldn’t see them yet. I couldn’t afford to wait. I didn’t know where she was hit, or if this was going to make it worse, but I didn’t have a choice. I hoisted her over my shoulder and started jogging through the bushes with her body over my shoulder. I could feel her blood pooling in my clothing and running hot down my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”
I could hear Jill’s ragged breathing on top of mine. I needed to stop the bleeding, but I had to keep running. To stop, even for a second, was to die.
They’d gotten closer to the truck. Someone spotted us. “There!” A bullet whizzed past my legs. I turned, found that asshole, thirty yards away, and popped off a shot at him. I don’t know if I hit, but he put his head down, so I kept running.
Headlights appeared ahead of me. Please be Reaper.
Someone else shot at me. It was so close I could feel the vibration of the bullet. It whined off into the darkness. It’s going to be okay. Another bullet smacked into a tree right behind us.
Reaper’s little rental Peugeot was speeding this way. I waved my gun overhead as his headlights engulfed us. He was going so damned fast that he had to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting us. I don’t think he intended to skid sideways, putting us right next to the rear door in a cloud of rubber dust, but it worked.
Opening the door, I shoved Jill’s limp form inside. “What happened to Jill?” Reaper shrieked when he saw her. I ended up knocking several laptops and tablets onto the floor.
“Drive,” I shouted as I got in behind her. To punctuate the severity of the situation, the Peugeot’s back window shattered.
Wheels spinning, Reaper got us moving. Terrified, he looked back over the seat at her. “Is she alive?”
“Get us out of here now!” The lights from the screens were enough for me to see by. I already had her shirt open. There were a bunch of scratches from the glass fragments, and right there, weeping blood, was a bullet wound on her abdomen. Then I saw another, and another, right next to each other. “Fuck.”
“There’s a first aid kit under the passenger seat,” Reaper said, as he took us around a corner way too fast. “Hang on.”
The only thing I was hanging onto was Jill, and she was barely hanging onto life. Stay cool. I’d seen lots of gunshot wounds. I got the bandages open and got pressure on the wounds. There were three entrance wounds, low on her left side. I rolled her over a bit. Two exit wounds. The exit wounds were small, and appeared to have gone through the muscle and fat at a pretty shallow angle, thank God. But the innermost round was still in there. If she was hit in the liver or kidney . . . Shit. Her breathing didn’t seem strong enough. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I didn’t see headlights behind us yet. She needed a doctor now, but when Anders saw the blood in the truck, every real hospital would be watched by Montalban. But in every major city the criminals always had people they could call on for emergency medical attention. “Get us to Doc Florian’s place.”
“I can’t. He committed suicide last year. I heard about another guy. His place isn’t too far.”
I kept pressure on the wounds. I could feel her weakening pulse beneath my palms. I’d gotten the bleeding slowed, but I had no idea how much internal damage there was. Projectiles could do crazy things once inside a body, I’d seen it all, on myself and others, but never felt it like this. I’ve got a reputation for being a focused, no bullshit, get the job done type, but when it is the woman you love bleeding to death right there, under your hands, you start to come apart at the seams. “Faster, Reaper.”
“I’m already doing a hundred!”
“Go faster.” I used one bloody hand to stroke Jill’s cheek. “It’s going to be okay, Jill. Stay with me. Please.”
She was fading in and out. “It hurts,” she mumbled. “This is my fault. All my fault.”
That didn’t make any sense. “You saved my life. We’ll get it taken care of, just hang in there.”
“I deserve this.”
“No. It’ll be okay.” But she’d already lost consciousness again.
Then I heard Anders’ voice. For a second I thought it was in my mind, taunting me, but then I realized it was coming from the floor of the car. Careful to keep pressure on Jill’s wound, I picked up a tablet. It was Anders’ voice. I turned up the volume, leaving bloody streaks on the glass.
“We got a problem.”
“That’s from my bug!” Reaper exclaimed.
“What now?” It was Katarina. Anders must have had her on his phone’s speaker. I could barely hear her, but that smoky voice just filled me with revulsion and hate.
“Lorenzo is still alive.”
The line was quiet as Kat digested that revelation. “That’s impossible.”
“I was camped at Varga’s place. Lorenzo’s alive and he’s here. He said Sala Jihan sent him. He got away, him and that Del Toro bitch, but there’s blood all over so I plugged at least one of them. Don’t worry. We’ll catch him.”
“You don’t know Lorenzo like I do. He’s harder to kill than a cockroach. He’ll find a way to ruin everything.”
“He knows about the package.” Anders stated flatly. “I was fishing and got the impression he doesn’t know the target or the timetable though.”
“Unacceptable! We can’t afford an interruption now! Find him and kill him!” She hung up.
“Bet your ass I will,” Anders muttered to himself. Then it was quieter, as he walked away from the bug. “Let’s go.”
“Lorenzo!” Reaper exclaimed. “My rogue tower is still up for intercepting their alarms. Anders’ phone was using my tower.”
“So?”
“Jill and I could never crack the Montalban’s encrypted communications, but with this, I can tell you approximately where Kat is,
or at least which cell tower she’s closest to.” Even though we were going extremely fast, Reaper reached down and began reading the screen of a tablet he had resting on the center console. I probably should have told him to keep his eyes on the road, but I wanted Kat dead. “She’s way over on the other side of town. But I know that area! There’s a fancy hotel there that the Illuminati have used for meetings. That’s got to be where she’s at.”
We had to get Jill medical attention ASAP. There was no way I could get over there before Kat was gone.
But Valentine could.
Chapter 10: Poor Life Choices
VALENTINE
Paris
September 24th
The quiet moments in my life always turned out to be like a lull between storms. It made it that much harder to enjoy them, knowing that it was only a matter of time before everything went to hell again, but I tried my best.
Unable to sleep, I lay there in bed, staring up at the darkened ceiling, and wondering what would happen next. Ling was asleep next to me. She denied it, but she snored. I thought it was adorable.
Sleeping was the one time she looked at peace. Like me—like so many other people I knew—Ling had just seen too much. I rarely slept for more than five or six hours at a time. Ghosts haunted my dreams, and I saw dead faces almost every night. People I’d watched die, people I’d killed, people I couldn’t save, all blurred together, until they were hard to tell apart. I’d lost track of how many people I’d killed. There’d been so many, from the Skinner Brothers back in high school to the Battle of the Crossroads, everywhere I went I left a pile of corpses in my wake.
Some deserved it, others were just fighting for the other side, and some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’d never been religious, but as I stared at that darkened ceiling I wondered if hell was a real place, and if I was truly damned.
Ling stirred and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Can’t sleep?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She snuggled up close to me, resting her head on my shoulder. “You didn’t. You’re not the only one who has a hard time sleeping. Just try to relax.”
Without any new leads, we had entered one of those dreaded lulls. There was nothing for us to do until we got something new, leaving the team with little to do but wait. Lorenzo was off grasping at straws, but Ariel was monitoring it. She insisted that there might be something worthwhile there, so we just let her do her thing and hoped for a break. Tailor was on standby in case I needed him, but until we had something solid to go on there wasn’t anything he could do, either.
“I’ve just got a bad feeling.”
“Are you actually worried about Lorenzo’s operation?” Ling asked.
“Maybe a little. I’m more worried about what happens if we fail.”
“We won’t.”
I yawned. Having Ling with me was terribly comforting, and not just because I was curled up with a beautiful, naked woman. She understood what was going through my mind. It was rare enough that I met someone who understood me at all, much less someone I could really relate to. I was damned lucky to have her and I knew it.
“Are you going to fall asleep on me?” Ling asked.
“I might actually get back to sleep, yeah.” I yawned again.
“I don’t think so,” she said. Before I could say anything else she climbed on top of me and kissed me. A moment later she pulled away from our embrace. She looked down into my eyes, her hair hanging in my face, and smiled. “I love you.”
It always sounded strange to hear her say that. “I love you, too.” I meant it. I loved this woman with all of my heart, and I would do anything for her.
Ling leaned in closer to me, eyes twinkling in the darkness. “You know what I think we should do?”
“Well, that’s pretty obvious.”
BRRRRRRT.
She sighed. “I think you should answer your phone. It’s probably important.”
BRRRRRT.
“Goddamn it,” I growled. Ling laughed and moved off of me so I could reach whichever of my three phones was vibrating on the nightstand. BRRRRRRT. This time it was the one Reaper had given me.
“It’s Lorenzo. He must have found something.” I tapped the screen and put the phone to my ear. “Go ahead.”
“Valentine!” Lorenzo was out of breath. Something was wrong. “We’ve got a problem!”
“What’s going on?”
“Jill’s been shot.”
“What?” Ling looked a question at me as I sat up. “Jill has been shot.” I spoke into the phone. “What happened? Is she okay?”
“No, she’s not fucking okay!” Lorenzo snapped. “She’s losing a lot of blood.”
I put him on speaker phone so Ling could hear. “Where are you? What happened?”
“Reaper is driving us to a doctor. We can’t go to a hospital.” He said something I couldn’t make out, talking to somebody else. “I fucked up, Valentine, I fucked up. This is all my fault.”
I’d never heard him like this. It was bizarre, hearing Lorenzo on the edge of panic. “Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down. Anders shot her.”
“Listen—”
“No. You listen. Reaper knows where Kat is right now. She’s at the Hotel Gueguen, or at least really close to there.”
“Okay, what do you want me to do?”
“Valentine, she has a nuke.”
I felt my heart drop into my stomach, and hoped I’d misunderstood him. “I’m sorry, what?”
“She. Has. A. Nuclear. Weapon!”
“At the hotel?”
“No! Fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know where it is, but she has one. That’s what Blue is. They’re going to nuke a city!”
“What city?”
“I don’t know!” Lorenzo roared. “Get over there and kill her!”
Ling had gone to work and had already pulled up the hotel on her phone. She showed me the display. It was a five-star establishment not too far to the northeast of Place de la Concorde. It was a short walk to the Louvre or the Grand Palace from there. The area would be covered in cops.
“Just like that? Just waltz into a hotel and have a shootout in the middle of fucking Paris?”
“Like you haven’t done it before!”
“What does he expect you to do?” Ling asked, concern in her voice.
“Alright, alright. Lorenzo, take care of Jill. I’ll handle the rest.”
“Handle it how? You have to take Kat out.”
“Just trust me. Take care of Jill. As soon as he can, have Reaper send me whatever he has on that place. I’ll talk to you later.” I cut the call before he could say anything else.
“What is it you plan on doing? We can’t just rush in there. There are only five of us.” Ling didn’t count Ariel on a combat op for obvious reasons. “Katarina will have twice that.” Ling was right. We didn’t know anything about the situation. Going in blind, guns blazing, was a sure to get some of us killed, or all of us caught. “Her security detail was extensive before she knew someone was hunting her. Now she expects trouble.”
I set down the phone Reaper had given me and picked up the one Tailor had given me. “Yeah, but they won’t be expecting this.”
LORENZO
Reaper had called ahead and woken up his contact, who had agreed to meet us. Before hanging up, Reaper had offered him a whole lot of money to keep his mouth shut. It wasn’t like off-the-books doctors were super honest types to begin with. The address he’d been given wasn’t a hospital, but a clinic in an immigrant neighborhood, and it had been closed down for the night. Most of the lights were off, but there was a fat, sweaty man, smoking a cigarette by the open back door. When he saw Reaper tear into the parking lot, he wheeled out a gurney.
“What you got?” he asked, with a thick Serbian accent as I got out of the back seat.
“Three gunshot wounds to the abdomen. She’s unconscious and lost a lot of blood.”
He
tsked disapprovingly. “Why you bring girl to gunfight? Get her on cart.” Reaper ran around to help me, and the two of us, as quickly—but gently—as possible, lifted Jill out. With the cigarette still dangling from his lip, the Serbian wheeled her inside. “Shoot with what? Big bullets? Little bullets?”
I remembered the sudden pattern of holes. “Buckshot.” Fucking Anders. “From maybe ten yards away, but they punched through a truck door first.”
“Is good. Pellets not fragment, but maybe bounce around a little. No problem.” He pushed the gurney down the darkened hall and into a small operating room. A man and a woman were already waiting inside, wearing scrubs and masks. The woman’s eyes were bleary and red from drinking. The male was probably still a teenager. They took the gurney, lifted the bandages to inspect the damage, and then waited, not doing a damn thing.
Why weren’t they working? “Save her.”
“Cash first,” the fat doctor said. “Then we start.”
Before I could say anything, Reaper stepped in. “This is what I’ve got on me.” He held up a thick wad of euros. Reaper slammed the wad down on a stainless steel table. “You know who I am, so you know I’m good for the rest.”
The fat face broke into a scowl. “Yah, I know you, Mr. The Reaper, which is why I know who shot this girl probably. The Montalbans already put out call for extra doctors for the men you shot tonight. They have more money than sense, but they will wonder why I did not answer. Which is why you pay extra up front.”
I got in his face. So close I could taste the cheap cigarette smoke, and glared into his greedy pig eyes. “If you know who he is, then you can guess who I am.” I put as much menace as I could in the words, and right then, pissed off and covered in Jill’s blood, I had menace to spare.
“You are him?” He looked me over suspiciously, but he wasn’t the easily intimidated sort. “I heard infamous Lorenzo was dead.”
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six Series Book 3) Page 23
