by Evelyn Glass
I take my pistol from the holster, steeling myself for it. I ain’t goin’ down as a cop killer, and I ain’t ratting anyone out. So that leaves one option.
I end up in a hallway where I’m sure the scream came from—near here, at least. But all I see is a bookshelf and then—Fuck! I duck low as the man emerges from the opposite end, twelve-gauge shotgun in his hands. He’s dressed all in black like the men who did the slaughter, so I reckon the bastards never left. His shot cuts the air above me, taking a chunk outta the wall. I shoot at his arm, and then his other arm, and then his foot. He collapses to the floor, droppin’ the gun and moaning like a little bitch. The lights above start flickerin’, and then go out entirely. I must’ve shot the fuse box. I take my flashlight from my pocket, hold it in my teeth, and approach the man carefully.
He’s pale like a ghost with bright green eyes. I kneel down next to him. “Where’d that screamin’ come from?” I say, taking my machete out and drawing a nice clean slice down his face, making him moan a little more. “I ain’t got time to fuck around with you, so tell me and I’ll kill you clean, you understand?” I cut him again. “Tell. Me.”
I’m about to cut him a third time when he blabbers, “The bookshelf! The bookshelf!”
On the other side of the bookshelf, I hear somebody curse in a foreign language. “You’ve been very helpful,” I tell the man, before splitting his head with the machete. Blood flares everywhere like a fuckin’ fountain. I leave the machete buried in his skull, reload my pistol, and kick through the bookshelf. One boot is all it takes, and fake books and plasterboard is flying like shrapnel all over the place. All we have for light is our gunshots and the flashlight, but I’ve fought in the dark more times than I can count. Two sleazy-lookin’ bastards crouch behind the desk. I put ’em down easily, two quick shots to the head, and then I aim the flashlight near the door to what looks like a prison cell.
A bald guy stands there, his face tattooed to hell and back, one of his thick arms wrapped around a woman and the other holding somethin’ to her back. Might be a gun, but I can’t see it. Could just be his hand. I don’t look at the woman, since she ain’t a threat, just stare into the man’s eyes.
“Now, let’s talk about this,” he tries. Fucking idiot. “I’m sure we can—”
I put a bullet between his eyes and he falls to the ground like a sack of shit. I see that it was a small pocket handgun he was aiming at the girl’s back. The girl is sprayed with his blood. Her eyes are wide, and an ugly gurgling noise is coming from her throat. Fucking idiots must have stuffed the rag so far back there she’s drowning. This must be the girl Nate was talking about.
There’s a split second where it’s obvious the right decision is to put this girl down so there are no witnesses, go and kill Nate, and then get out of town. This is mob life, and in mob life, you don’t hang around for the boys in blue. For the hundredth time, I think to myself: A dead fuckin’ cop.
But the girl is young-looking, maybe eighteen or twenty, with eyes darker’n the sea at night, and just as deep. Her hair is straight and brown down to her chin, and her nose is like a button. Her body is tight, skinny, on display in a torn sparklin’ dress. There’s no doubt this is Julian’s piece. I have a choice. And I can’t bring myself to let her drown in her own spit while she’s watching me. If I’d chosen to do it to her, that’d be a thing. But—I reach out and cut the tape, she’s so panicked and weak she can’t get the rag out on her own. I pull it out of her mouth and she vomits, a weak string of spit and bile. The place reeks; it probably wasn’t the first time she threw up. How long has she been here? What has been done to her? How many times has she been raped today?
This ain’t my business. My business is to kill her and get outta here before the cops try’n link me to a cop killin’, or trust that I can get out of this mess without more blood. That’s the smart move. Yeah, it’ll put a price on my head, but what’s the choice? If Julian were still in good with Giovanni, I’d bring her back and trust to their protection to get me out of this mess, but without that? If Giovanni wanted her, he would have said so. But there’s something about her that’s makin’ it damn hard to pull the trigger. Just aim at her head and pull the trigger and get outta here.
She isn’t a fool. She must see what I’m thinkin’, ’cause she darts across the room to the desk and picks up one of the dead men’s guns. She aims it at me, hands shaking, her eyes so wide that there’s a broad circle of white around her irises. Her hand is shaking so bad I don’t reckon she’d hit the ground she’s standing on, let alone hit me from across the room, but I’ve seen people who’ve never held a gun before kill men from hundreds of yards out, and men who’ve handled guns all their lives miss at point-blank range. Guns are tricky bastards when you come down to it. Anythin’ can happen.
I aim at her, just like she aims at me, only my hand don’t shake one bit.
“You’re going to kill me,” the girl says, voice sounding all throaty and sexy. Hell of a time to be thinkin’ like this, but I can’t help it. With those pale thin legs sticking out of her dress and her innocent naïve face looking at me, I’m instantly rock hard just looking at her, the little piece of ass. But there’re more important things right now, so I focus.
“I ain’t goin’ to kill you,” I say. It’s more like I hear myself say it. I could kill her at any moment, even with that little peashooter in her hand. And yet here I am, talkin’ with her. “Listen,” I go on, and now I’m lowering my gun like a goddamn fool, “I don’t wanna hurt you. Let me get you outta here, alright? Let me get you someplace safe. I know who you are. You’re Mikey’s kid. Julian was gonna have you, right? I know who you are. I’m here to help.”
She keeps the gun pointed at my head and I’m surprised when I realize I don’t know if she’s gonna shoot or not. She don’t look like the killer type, but she’s also in some kind of hysterics or shock or something. Her eyes moving all over the place, letting out sobs every time her gaze settles on one of the dead men, shivering, panting. It’s like she’s just run a marathon, the way she’s acting.
“Goddamn it, put the gun down,” I say. “We need to get outta here as quickly as we can, alright?”
Now I ain’t gonna kill her, we’ve gotta get everything sorted as soon as possible. I’ll have to do some staging and then get us to someplace safe, someplace where I can think all this shit over. If the cops come for me…they might, but without killin’ this girl, that’s just a risk I’m going to have to take.
“You’ll just…you’ll just kill me when I put the gun down.”
“The way that gun is shakin’, you’ll kill yourself before I get a chance.”
As I speak, a backup generator kicks in, the lights turning back on. I put my flashlight in my pocket and stand there, watching the woman. In the full light, she looks even sexier, even with the blood on her face. Maybe that’s why I can’t kill her; she’s too hot. Or maybe it’s ’cause I’ve never killed a woman before and I’m not as cold as I think—no, no fuckin’ way, it’s not that. But killin’ a woman…Maybe that isn’t me.
I walk across the room, hands raised, showin’ her I ain’t a threat. She keeps the gun pointed at me all the way until I’m standing right on the opposite side of the desk, and follows me with the barrel when I walk around the desk so that I’m standing close to her. I feel like a moron with my hands raised like this when I could just snatch the gun from her hand, but I’ve gotta remember that one mistake, just one, and the game ends forever. So I just walk forward so that the gun barrel is placed against my head. I’ve had a barrel pressing cold against my forehead more times than I’d like, but it never gets fun.
Looking into her dark eyes, I say, “I will get you outta here. Just lower the goddamn gun, woman.”
She hesitates, but then, slowly, lowers it. For a second, I think about clipping her right now, where her guard is down. If it was a man, I’d have no problem with it. But she ain’t a man. She’s a terrified woman, beautiful and scared and alone,
and I don’t reckon I can kill a woman like that after tellin’ her she’s gonna be safe. Don’t know why. Don’t reckon there’s anything soft in me. Just goes against who I am, I guess, or who I think I am…dammit, I gotta stop tryin’ to analyze myself and get this place set up.
“Are you done with that?” I ask, nodding at the gun. Numbly, she nods, and offers it to me. I take it from her hand. “I’m Chance, Chance Baylor.”
“I’m Becky Morris—” she starts, and then all the steel goes out of her. She slumps to the floor, gasping, coughing, hand covering her mouth. Vomit clings to her chin and lower lip, I see, and her dress is torn in several places. Her hair is plastered with sweat to her forehead. She sits on the floor, panting, before glancing aside and seeing that she’s sitting near the dead men. She tries to jump, falls on her ass, and crab-crawls backwards as she lets out a scream, a too-fuckin’-loud scream.
I go to her, place my hand over her mouth and my hand on her back, holding her still. “You’ve gotta be quiet,” I tell her. “You can’t scream, alright? We’ll be gone soon, but you’ve gotta be quiet while I work.”
She keeps wriggling, panting, struggling. Her legs kick out uselessly.
I bring my face close to hers. “Listen to me, woman. Just fuckin’ listen. I am the only person who’s gonna get you out of here. So just be quiet and let me work, goddammit.”
Finally, some life comes into her eyes, and she falls silent. Silent as the dead men scattered throughout the warehouse.
Chapter Five
Becky
I stand in the corner of the room watching as the strange man does strange things. Strange things like grabbing the bald man and dragging him across the room and placing a gun in his hand and aiming the gun at the man in the hallway, who has been moved so that he’s clutching his shotgun in death. The man—Chance Baylor, I remind myself, though my head is aching and remembering is painful—is older than me, but not by much. I’d guess around thirty. He has severe, hawkish features, sharp and serious, black hair cropped close to his head, curling slightly, and eyes almost as dark as mine. He’s wearing a black hoodie and black cargo trousers and a black hood, but even beneath the clothes I can see how huge and muscular he is, at least six-one, and trim. His face is clean-shaven, and his mouth is set in a line, showing absolutely no emotion. When he speaks to me, there is no emotion in his voice, either. I think I see some in his eyes, but that might just be my imagination. I recognize him vaguely; I think I’ve seen him around the Family places a few times, but I don’t remember him as one of the guys drinking and making lewd comments.
“Right, come here.” After he’s arranged them how he wants, he walks across the room and grabs me by the shoulder. His touch is firm, and I don’t know if it’s the shock, or just how firm he is, or what, but all of a sudden I feel lust grip me. A burning in my pussy that wasn’t there a moment before fires to life and I get the urge to reach down and grab the front of his pants. I can’t believe it’s there, but it’s strong, and I end up clutching onto my thigh to stop myself. I see his gaze move to where my hand clutches at my thigh, and I know what he’s thinking. When I don’t move, he sighs and grabs both my shoulders, lifting me above the men and carrying me from the room.
“It’s just adrenaline,” I whisper, so quiet he can’t hear. “That’s all.”
It must be. What else could it be? I’m a virgin, not some sex-crazed woman who throws herself at a man minutes after they were just pointing guns at each other. My heart is drumming, loud, drumming dirty thoughts into me that have no place in this situation. I think about what he’d look like naked, I wonder what he’d like to do to me. Stop it, I tell myself. Just stop it. I swallow it back, the misplaced lust, and remind myself that the scent of blood is in my nose; this is no appropriate time for feeling like this.
“You’ll want to close your eyes now,” he says. “I’ve gotta fuck with things in the other room and the other room is…well…you’ll wanna close your eyes, alright?”
He’s standing opposite me, looking down on me. His eyes are brown, I notice, but with a spot of light blue in one of them which gives him character, a tiny glint of light in the dark. I try and speak, but I find my voice has deserted me. All that comes out is a babyish babble. He shakes his head, and repeats to me slowly that I should close my eyes when we get to the room. I manage a nod, and he takes my hand and drags me through the warehouse corridors. I keep thinking about the men, the men and what they were going to do, and I begin to cry; and all of this is confused when I also think about how warm and firm Chance’s hand is. It’s a confusing mess that makes no sense and—I’m tired, achingly tired. I just want to pass out and wake up and find that all of this is a dream. Dad never sold me and Julian never traded me and those men didn’t almost rape me.
“Stop it.” Chance has stopped us outside a door, facing me, face stern. “Stop it.”
Stop what? I don’t even know what I’m doing, what I’m supposed to stop. Chance has his hands on my shoulders, looking deeply into my eyes. “I ain’t got time to play babysitter,” he says. “So get your breathing under control and close your eyes, alright? I’d take you to the car but the state you’re in…”
I close my eyes, just wanting him to stop snapping in my face, and then let out a low moan when he lifts me and throws me over his shoulder. He pushes the door open, and I immediately know why he wanted me to close my eyes. The smell is awful. The smell is worse than awful. I remember once when I was a kid and one of my friends and I was walking home from dance class and we found a dead cat flattened on the side of the road. It was summer and flies were buzzing around it. Its smell was so bad I had to run to a nearby bush and spew my guts up. The smell that hits me as Chance carries me across the room is like that, only multiplied by ten, twenty, thirty. It’s like all the dead dogs from every roadside in the States have been brought to this one room. I vomit, but my belly is empty and I just convulse in Chance’s grip.
He sets me down, and says, “Stay here, keep your damn eyes closed. I won’t be long.”
I wobble on the spot, eyes clamped shut, gripping my nose to try and stop the smell from hitting me. But I have to breathe, which means the scent of death and shit and piss and blood fills my mouth or my nose whatever I do. I hear Chance walking around the room, his movements sending echoes all over, and I guess that he’s doing the same thing he did in the office: trying to make it seem like a shootout gone bad.
“Just stay calm,” he says, his voice carrying to me. I get the sense we’re in a large cavern-type room. “Just keep your eyes closed and breathe deep and stay calm, alright? The last thing I need is a panicking woman to deal with.”
I try and do as he says, but the more I stand here, the scent of dead men all around me, the more I begin to freak out. My mind keeps replaying the scene in the cell, over and over until it’s like I’m still in there and this is just a dream, and I’ll wake in the cell with the tattooed man standing over me again. I have to keep my eyes closed, so I don’t see what’s in the room, but keeping my eyes closed means living in the hell of my mind. Keeping my eyes closed means reliving the tormented minutes spent in those men’s clutches, with their hands grabbing at my flesh like I am a piece of meat, not a person at all. Surely nothing in reality can be as torturous as the amplified scenes in my mind.
Steeling myself, I open my eyes.
Big mistake.
The scene is like nothing I have ever imagined, so sadistic and depraved that at first I struggle to accept it as reality. All over the place, there are dead men, splayed over each other, most of them with fingers and eyes and tongues missing, gouged out like you’d gouge out the inside of a pumpkin before carving it up for Halloween. I clutch my sides, unable to control my breathing now, and perversely unable to look away. I find my gaze flitting from dead man to dead man. Chance works quickly, ignoring me, arranging the men, and then turns to see me staring and panting breathlessly.
“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters, coming toward me. H
e reaches me, offering me his hands so that I can steady myself, offering me hands that minutes before provoked adrenaline-fueled lust in me.
But there’s blood on his hands, blood on my face…blood, blood everywhere. I was in a dress at a restaurant and now there’s blood and—
I collapse to the floor, hunching up, burying my face in my knees and whispering frantically that all of this is just a dream, just a sick twisted dream and soon I’ll wake up in California with Mom because I made the wrong decision staying here and trying to fix Dad. I’ve tried to do good but how can a person do good in a world where men cut other men’s eyes from their sockets and stuff them in their mouths?
“I—I—”
My eyes grow heavy, Chance’s voice dim.
“It’s alright, come on, it’s alright. I’ll get you outta here now. It’s alright.”
My eyelids close and I see nothing, just darkness, just sweet darkness.
Chapter Six
Chance
I’ve never had a goddamn soft spot, never since I was a kid, and yet as I carry the girl from the warehouse I find myself glad I didn’t kill her. I know it would’ve been for the best, but I can’t keep goin’ over and over that in my head. I’ve made my decision. I’m pissed, though, as I carry her through the autumn cold to my car, that tonight’s gone so fuckin’ terribly. It was meant to be a routine job: get in, fuck up some gangbangers, get some info on Julian, get out. I think about callin’ the boss, but decide against it. If he wants me, he’ll contact me. It won’t be hard to find me, not where I’m going.
