by Joshua Guess
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go with you. Just…if this is a trick, I’ll run. Or scream. Whatever I have to do to get away. Get me?”
“I get you,” I assured her. “You got no reason to trust me. Now, you’re going to have to stay here for a few minutes. I’m going to give you a weapon, so if you don’t hear me knock three times real quickly, you shoot, okay? You shoot to kill.”
I pulled my pistol free and held it out to her. She had to reach up three times to grab it. I knew the feeling; that horrible weight lent the situation a realness impossible to ignore.
“What are you going to do?” Kate asked again.
I tilted my head back against the door and forced every distraction out of my mind. No thought of consequences, or of regret. No second-guessing.
“We’re up against a lot of threats,” I said simply. “I’m going to reduce the number.”
7
I carefully moved Robby’s corpse behind the makeshift bar so there would be no way to see it when I opened the door. Kate crouched on the other side of the bar, ready to pop up and fire if she needed to. She held the pistol with more confidence than I expected, but these were trained men and if something went wrong, she was not.
Javier was waiting just outside as I knew he would be. I slid through the door smoothly and pulled it shut behind. “We have a problem,” I said.
A muscle in Javi’s jaw twitched. “When don’t we? Is it Robby?”
I nodded toward the door. “Jeremy still outside?”
“He’s doing a patrol of the block,” he said. “Should be back in a few minutes.”
“Good, that’ll be plenty of time,” I said, and lashed out.
Catching your enemy off guard is the best way to win a fight. Honor and fairness have nothing to do with combat in the real world. I let Javier get slightly in front of me, then kicked the back of his knee and slipped my arms around his neck as he fell backward.
Javier was powerfully built, but the awkward angle plus the sheer surprise of the attack ruined any chance he had for a strong defense. He managed a single strangled word before the blade of my forearm clamped his trachea and arteries shut. I leaned back, hauling his weight by his neck, and kept taking little steps so he couldn’t regain his balance.
I had to duck and weave my head and, twice, twist my hips out of the way. His training had taken over. Not bothering to even try to overcome the superior leverage my arms had, he was going for throat or eyes or balls in order to make me let go.
“I’m sorry, man,” I said as his struggles weakened. “I really am.”
I kept the pressure at full blast, wanting to make sure Javi wasn’t faking me out. It was the smart move, except the door leading outside opened to reveal a horrified and confused Jeremy.
The younger man’s hand went inside his jacket and reappeared with a pistol, giving me barely enough time to duck behind Javier before the first shot rang out. He missed, though if you can hear the bullet pass right through where your head had been a half-second before, it’s only a miss in a narrow, technical sense.
Jeremy was shouting incoherently, or so it sounded to me. My attention was focused on my next move. Not dying meant letting go of Javi, who was now entirely dead weight if not certainly dead. As a shield he was only useful if I could keep him between me and the shooter.
The second shot went through my left forearm, which made the decision for me. My muscles released their iron hold automatically, and I began losing control of Javier’s body. I uncurled my right hand from my left wrist and snaked my arms back to grab Javi by the coat.
My right hand slipped up and under, snagging the butt of his gun in its holster.
Two more shots filled the tiny entrance hall with deafening thunder as I pushed Javier at Jeremy with my left arm and shoulder. Took a little work, too. I had to crouch and get under him to keep him from toppling over. Jeremy reacted as you’d expect, dancing to the side to avoid being slammed against a wall by the weight of a tumbling body.
I let Javi’s forward momentum pull the gun for me. I fired one-handed, not ideal, at his center mass. The bullets from Javier’s .38 slammed into the vest I knew Jeremy wore, leaving cratered dimples in his otherwise immaculate shirt. He fell back, punched in the chest at eight hundred feet per second. In the movies, a guy wearing a vest sometimes keeps his composure enough to stop the next part from happening.
Not Jeremy.
I raised my injured arm and steadied the gun with it, firing again. The wall around Jeremy’s head blossomed into a crimson flower.
Breathing hard, I took a second.
“Fuck me,” I said. “Fuck me raw.”
I knocked on the door, hoping Kate wouldn’t shoot at it out of pure nerves. “It’s me,” I said, just to be safe.
“Okay,” came the muffled reply.
“We need to get moving,” I said as I pushed into the main room. “I doubt those shots will attract much attention in this area, but better safe than sorry. I need to do a little housekeeping and you won’t want to be in here for it.”
“Like what?” she asked as I took the gun back from her. I put Javier’s revolver in my pocket. I’d wipe it down and toss the pieces in the river later.
“Too much physical evidence here,” I said. “Three bodies all connected to my boss, which means connected to me. Nothing to do about that. I could make them impossible to identify, but there’s no point. People know they were here. One way or another it’ll come back to me. We need to confuse the issue first and buy a little time.”
I found a box of matches tucked under the bar, presumably to light some idiotic drink popular with young people. I shook it.
I dug my keys out of my pocket and tossed them to Kate. “Go start the car. I think the only other vehicle here is Javier’s. I’ll take it and you can follow me. Be ready to go as soon as I come out the door.”
She stared at me hard for a few seconds, took one last, deliberate look at Robby’s body, and spit on it.
I dragged the bodies into the main room, then went searching for chemicals. The warehouse was one of those little places you never notice inside a city until something goes horribly wrong. People don’t often think about where things are stored or traded. When the modern world is working as the well-oiled machine it should be, they don’t need to notice any more than a man should hear the ticking of his watch.
Fortunately for me, the place was stocked. I wondered if the owner rented it out for this purpose. Seemed likely; the janitor’s closet was a gold mine for a determined arsonist. I splashed gallons of cleaning products all over the place. Some on the bodies, more on the old, exposed wood of the walls. I made sure to liberally douse the entry. I had to obscure evidence of Jeremy’s death as much as possible.
I tossed a match on the bodies dispassionately, old habit forcing my brain to a purely mechanical state. The low blue flames whooshed into existence at once, and I repeated this several times throughout the room before doing the same in the entryway.
I’d taken Javier’s keys before giving him his Viking funeral, and I pulled them out intending to hit the remote start.
Then I stopped.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and saw Kate frantically waving her hands from behind the wheel of my car. I raised a finger and crouched, feeling the bottom of the frame. I knew Javier would have disabled the GPS inside the car itself—leave no trace, electronic or otherwise, was our motto—but I also suspected Amanda had orders, or just the inclination, to lowjack everyone.
I knew she’d done it to my car twice, and I had let it slide.
My hand slid over a bulky little box. I pulled it off with a quiet snap, then chucked it as far away as possible.
The first thin filaments of smoke climbed out of the building, nearly invisible in the dark, as we drove away.
We stopped in a parking lot half a mile from what was surely a raging fire. I carefully wiped down the few surfaces I’d touched that could hold a print, locked the car, and toss
ed the keys down a grate nestled in the curb.
“I’m driving,” I said to Kate when I approached the car. “Scoot over.”
We puttered along in silence for a few minutes. Then:
“Why did you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?” I answered, even though I knew.
A pause. “Robby. Why’d you kill Robby?”
Honesty was not the best policy. I knew it would sound nuts—it was nuts—and she’d probably bolt at the next stop light. Yet I found myself telling the truth anyway. “When you looked at me, I saw my daughter. She died. It was as if he’d hurt her, and…”
Silence. Sometimes blessed, usually just a pause between. A beat marking the rhythm of a conversation.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “That’s awful.”
I nodded, afraid to say anything else. The night was starting to catch up with me. Not just the killings, which I was trying mightily to avoid thinking about, but the pure mental and physical exhaustion. I had been asleep for a short time when I was called, the adrenaline was wearing off, and my entire body felt like it had been slapped with chains. The fact that I was bone tired helped stave off thoughts of killing men I was friendly with and a young man who had at one time treated me like family, however distant.
“What do we do next?” she asked.
I’d been thinking about that. “My apartment will be safe for a little while, maybe half a day. I’ve made sure no one knows it exists, but once people start looking for me they’ll find it. I hired smart folks.”
Kate shifted in her seat, leaning a shoulder against the door and propping an ankle across her knee. “So we just, what, hang out for a few hours and then go on the run?”
“We rest,” I said. “I need a nap. I have some things at my place we can use. Weapons for me, cash, a bug-out bag. We’ll stop at a store and grab you some clothes and a toothbrush and whatever else you need, then I put you in a safe house.”
“Won’t your friends check there?”
I smiled. “No. I set up two of them when I first moved here. Fallback spots for a rainy day. I only visit them once a month to make sure no one has been there, so we should be good.”
“You work for Robby’s dad, right?” Kate asked.
“Worked for him,” I replied. “I’m pretty sure he’ll take this as my resignation.”
I could feel her fidget next to me. “You said you’re criminals and he has all these people. How are you going to stop them? You’re one guy. And why? Why do all this for me?”
The answer was easy, simple. “When Tom Russey found me, I was on a bad road. But I never hurt people if I could help it, and never an innocent. Part of why I took the job was because I saw a chance to do things a different way. I like the idea of minimizing collateral damage. I also knew that if I wasn’t the one with his hand on the tiller, someone else might steer Russey in a much worse direction.”
A few spatters of rain fell on the windshield. “As for how? I won’t have to kill everyone, if that’s what you’re getting at. Some will take a hint and run. The smart ones. In the end, I’m not going to let them hurt you because you had the bad luck to be in Robby’s way and the worse luck to be there when I lost my mind. As far as I’m concerned, that makes me responsible for your safety.”
Kate’s voice had a rough edge when she next spoke. “I hope you can do it.”
What she didn’t say, I still heard clearly.
Kate very much doubted I could.
8
Then
I stared at the bank statement. “You made how much, now?”
Rosa grinned at me smugly. “Total? Or just from my share of the company?”
“Ro, I can see it right here,” I said, shaking the paper gently. “Obviously I can see the total. I had no idea it was going this well.”
Her full lips curved into a dark red crescent. She preferred more subdued lipstick, but always wore it. “You’re not upset?”
I frowned and felt my eyebrows knit together in my confusion. “Why would I be? This is great. We can move off base and buy a bigger house if you want. Or put it away for Hannah. Maybe top off your retirement fund.”
Hers, because mine was going to be the full twenty in the service. Granted, my lack of ambition meant I didn’t make a lot of money and probably never would, but it was a decent living.
“I’d rather invest some of it,” she said. “Put the maximum in my Roth and most of the rest in my index fund. The returns are steady, and…Carter? Are you listening?”
I was, but I had begun drifting off into a daydream. We’d been poor kids. My job gave us security if not luxury, so the numbers on the paper seemed like a fortune. People who are used to buying off-brand everything live under a kind of pressure the well-to-do aren’t capable of grasping, not in a real way.
“I was just thinking about what we could do with this,” I said. “It’s your money. I’m not telling you what we should do, but honey? We could make a down payment on a car. Yours is falling apart. We can actually start a college fund. For Hannah. That’s crazy! That’s a thing people only get to do in TV shows, right?”
I heard the excitement in my voice and didn’t care. Rosa’s normally reserved demeanor melted, as it always did for me and only me, and she grinned widely. “It’s our money, baby. You worked just as hard as me. We’ll decide what to do with it together.”
I didn’t bother arguing the point. It was an old bone between us. I liked my job, a turn of events I hadn’t expected when I joined up. It didn’t feel like work in the way most people viewed the concept. I didn’t hate going in or the people around me. I came home feeling gentle satisfaction.
Rosa, on the other hand, had gone to school while also being a full-time mother and homemaker. She claimed that once she worked out how to do it properly, most of the work was easy.
Bullshit! I knew it was bullshit. Hadn’t I seen the dark circles under her eyes, the stress hives on her forearms, as she struggled with balancing her school work and time with Hannah? Damn right I had.
But I said nothing, because I didn’t have to say anything. A decade together made it pointless. My thoughts were as transparent to her as hers were to me. “I’m gonna make you a sandwich,” I said.
“Why, did I insult you somehow?” Rosa asked, feigning perfect innocence.
I shook a finger at her. “Woman, you love my sandwiches. Don’t lie. I’m gonna make it so good…”
It was a Saturday. Hannah was at the pool with a bunch of other kids, giving us a rare day alone together. After we ate—she loved the sandwich—we went for a jog, shared a shower, made love.
The secret of a lasting relationship, or at least one of them, is to find someone you can laugh with while you’re having sex. Intimacy is a complicated thing, but the sort of openness and trust it takes to giggle at each other in bed is some next level stuff.
I lazed in bed after, and Rosa sauntered over to her laptop to make one of her obsessive checks. It was a pro and a con of working from home that the same flexibility doing so lent your schedule also meant you were never off the clock.
“Are you happy?” I asked her. I thought I knew the answer.
She glanced over her shoulder at me, her mass of dark curls whispering softly against her skin. “Yes,” she said simply. “You really think I’d be quiet about it if I weren’t?”
“Definitely not,” I replied with a smile. “I was just thinking about how lucky we are, you know? Even without the money. We’re stable, we actually listen to each other…”
“We talk,” she said. “You haven’t heard what these other Army wives say like I have. They listen, their husbands listen, but they almost never actually talk about the things on their minds. That matters. It’s why we work, babe. No bullshit.”
“Just problem solving,” I finished. It was kind of our mantra.
She bent over the desk in the corner of the room, still very nude, and typed out a fast email. If I could have taken a picture just then, I would have. The
rosy afternoon sunlight dappled her in contrasts, the soft color of the room bringing out the vibrancy in her skin. In another age she’d have been the subject of paintings and great sonnets. In this one she was a modern day renaissance work.
To me, she was. I had no close male friends, certainly no one I talked to about how much I loved my wife, but I got the sense that many men weren’t still infatuated with theirs the way I was with mine. There was much of the schoolyard crush still in me—in us—and it suffused even the banal moments of everyday life.
Did we argue? Fight? Sure. No two people were perfect, much less perfect for each other. Love is not a storybook, or if it is it’s a story you’re constantly writing and editing. A sentence or paragraph will go wrong and you’ll have to back up and do the work of fixing it.
I was happy to do it as often as necessary.
I wanted nothing more in this life.
Now
There was an empty place in my heart when I woke up, but that didn’t stop me from springing to my feet and reaching for the pistol hanging heavily beneath my left arm.
An arm which hurt a fucking lot.
“You need to let me take care of that,” Kate said.
I looked around, still wonky from sleep. I gathered my marbles and dropped them back into my mental jar. “You want to treat my gunshot wound,” I said, not really asking.
“You bled all over your couch while you were sleeping,” Kate said. “The bandage you put over it is shit.”
“Done a lot of battlefield surgery, have you?” I asked.
Kate scowled, which made her look like Rosa much more than Hannah. “For your information, my dad is a trauma surgeon.”
“My dad was an electrician,” I said, neglecting to mention he was also a bookie and loan shark. “Doesn’t mean I know how to wire a lamp.”
