Rough Hard Fierce, Chicago Underground 1-3 (Rough Hard Fierce)

by Skye Warren

  I practically dug tracks into the hardwood as I waited for Linda to come over. I remembered the business card that the other detective had given me. What could I say if I called him? I know my hooker friend gave you intel, but could you please do me a favor and not arrest my boyfriend? Really I was the epitome of class and grace.

  But maybe I could find out something. I darted upstairs and into the closet, where I searched through the folded shirts, looking for the envelope of money Andrew had given me, where I’d stored the business card. They weren’t related in any way except that they were things I’d hidden from Colin.

  They were gone.

  I flipped through the shirts again, then dumped them all out on the closet floor. No cards, no money, nothing. Then for good measure, I rifled through all the drawers. Nothing. It was like the Grinch had taken my Christmas, not even leaving the empty envelope behind.

  I had a crazy thought that I’d imagined all of it. Colin was safe, and I’d only imagined my meeting with Andrew and the cops in some sort of housewife hallucinations. I indulged in those fantasies for half a second before snapping back to reality. Colin needed me.

  Except Colin must have found the money and the business card. I rolled that over in my mind—he found them together. Would he have thought, was it possible he might think they were connected? That I’d gotten the money from the cops? And there was only one reason the cops would give me money like that: to betray Colin.

  No, he’d know better. I wouldn’t betray him—I hadn’t—and he trusted me. He’d said as much to his brother when Philip had accused me of being an informant. But the money—fuck! And of course Colin had no idea that I’d even met with Andrew, much less that he’d given me money. This looked bad.

  The discovery compounded the cluster fuck, but it didn’t change my purpose. If anything, it strengthened it. I couldn’t sit on my hands at home while Colin did God knew what with the wrong information. It could get him hurt—or arrested.

  I peeked in on Bailey, sending up a quick prayer for her safety here at home. Back downstairs, Linda came in carrying a thick book. She hugged me hard, clasping me to her round body. I resisted as if a hug was a threat to me, but she held on until I slumped in her arms.

  “Don’t worry, hon. Whatever happens, you’ll be okay, you know. Go on now.”

  The words helped, which was strange, because they never had before. I stumbled from the house, hoping I was doing the right thing, hoping I wouldn’t be Colin’s downfall.

  Chapter Four

  Some of my panic morphed into frustration as I circled the warehouses that huddled the one I was looking for. For blocks they went on, all large gray boxes, and none of them labeled. Around I went, peering at the tiny block numbers on the street signs, trying to make out the right section of street. Christ, if I was too late because of a fucking street sign…well, that would just be hilarious.

  The streetlamps glowed meekly, suspended in the thick of the night. No grassy plots or stick-thin trees dotted this concrete landscape. They’d done away with any pretense that this place was natural.

  Cars whirred by, oblivious to my worry. The people inside them surely had worries of their own, but to me those cars were just two bright lights tacked onto metal freight, part of the machinery. All backdrop.

  I hadn’t identified the warehouse, but I found my stop anyway. Shelly’s car. Parked on the side of the road behind a long line of cars, innocuously dark. I pulled in behind her and cut the engine. We were in this together, after all.

  The cars zoomed past my door, shaking my car like a bobblehead. At a break in the line, I opened the car door and clipped around to the curb. I started down the sidewalk when I heard a car door open behind me. My breath stuttered, and I whirled.

  Shelly sat in the shadows of the backseat, head bent low.

  “Christ, Shelly! You scared me.”

  She scared me still, unmoving. I walked back toward her, or at least I tried to, but ended up making an arc on the sidewalk, keeping my distance. I squinted into the car—it was empty.

  I approached cautiously and squatted in front of her. “Shelly? What’s going on?”

  She lifted her face, streaked with tear tracks. “I made a mistake.”

  “I know, shhh.” I tried to soothe. “Did you get ahold of Philip?”

  She shook her head, and fresh tears spilled over.

  “It’s okay. We’ll find them. We’ll fix this.”

  “It’s too late,” she said.

  “No,” I said, feeling clumsy. I wished I had a large, soft body made for comfort and the courage to give her a hug. “Whatever happens, we’ll be okay.”

  I expected her to blow me off with an I’m always okay, honey, but she sniffled and wiped her face with her forearms like a child. We were too young for this. Not the skulking around at night—that was the propriety of youth. We were too young for our lives. Selling our bodies and making babies. But then again, when was anyone really ready to do those things?

  It had felt like a betrayal when we’d grown up into the bodies and minds of adults but with all the cluelessness of children. Why had they—those adults—snapped at us to eat our vegetables and do our homework as if it mattered? When Shelly lay down and spread her legs, it sure as shit didn’t matter. And what could I teach Bailey about this world? Nothing I wanted her to know.

  I pulled Shelly from the car and towed her behind me, looking for the right gray box. She followed, docile. Little girls do what we’re told. We learned that lesson early. Little boys pull our hair and run away, but only a tattletale tells.

  This building was barren like all the rest, the rectangular gray walls cutouts against the dark. The door was just a regular door, undersized compared to the massive building.

  There was nothing and no one. Hope thumped, that they must have changed the location or canceled the whole thing. We’d come all this way for no reason. Worried little wives…or whatever we were. I would go back home, and Colin would be there. I’d explain everything. Colin would be angry, but at least he’d know I hadn’t betrayed him.

  A rustle sounded from around the side of the warehouse. The wind lapped against my face, but there weren’t bushes or anything else to make that shuffling sound. And I doubted there were animals around here, at least of the inhuman variety.

  “Go back to the car,” I told Shelly. She was almost catatonic with her quietness and downcast eyes. If something went down here, she’d get hurt.

  The low murmur of voices carried on the wind.

  “Go,” I hissed.

  Shelly tightened her hand on mine.

  The voices grew louder, and I dragged her toward the other side of the warehouse, thinking at least we’d stay out of sight. There was a long truck planted there, like one of the rigs my dad had driven. The back of the truck was rolled up, caught with its pants down, but no one was around. A stage with no actors, except for us.

  I pulled us both back flat against the front of the warehouse. My instincts screamed to get us both back to my car. I would be able to breathe again when we were doing sixty on the highway, any direction that was away. But I’d come here to find Colin. What had I expected—concierge service?

  I edged down the wall to the door. The handle actually turned, just like that, but perhaps when you had big enough guns, locks became superfluous.

  Peeking inside the door, I saw only shadows and darkness. Nothing but a big, empty room, I told myself. Only children are afraid of the dark.

  I didn’t really want to bring Shelly in with me, but I couldn’t leave her out here alone. We slipped inside.

  The warehouse was cavernous, with supports and ducts protruding from the ceiling. Huge crates splayed across the floor at odd angles as if they’d drifted, glaciers. An eerie glow from the rafters lit the space.

  An imaginary block of ice slid down my spine. This was all wrong. If they’d moved or canceled the drop, as I’d hoped, then there’d be no one, not even the voices I heard around the side. If they hadn�
��t and the drop was still here and such a big fucking deal, then there should be more people, more activity.

  I heard Colin’s voice in my head. “No,” he had said in his dreams. “It’s a trap.”

  We had to get out of here. At the very least I should bundle Shelly up in her car and send her off, assuming she was good to drive. As selfish as it felt, I decided to get out of there. I would have to hope Colin could take care of himself. I had Shelly to worry about now.

  I turned back to the door as it swung shut. It was just the wind, had to be.

  I put my hand on the knob. It didn’t turn. I jiggled it again, then yanked, then banged, but the door stayed shut. It was locked—someone was out there.

  I stared at the door, breathing heavily.

  Shelly broke her silence. “He must have found out.”

  I barely processed her words, my mind banging against the futility of our situation.

  “It’s for the best.” Shelly heaved a sigh. “I wish you weren’t here, though.”

  Who would lock us in? Was it better to try and wait them out, maybe arm ourselves with whatever we could find? Or should we call out to them, try to reason or bluff our way out?

  “Do you think,” she said musingly, “they’ll give Bailey to your dad?”

  “What?” Her words sank in. I backed Shelly up against the ribbed metal wall, shaking her, bullying her, furious that she would even say such a thing. “Have you gone insane? You have, haven’t you? I could kill you! We aren’t going to die. We aren’t. We’re getting out of here, and I’m going home to Bailey. You can do whatever crazy shit floats your fucking boat, but leave me out of it. Do you understand? Do you?”

  I was the crazy one, raging with impotence and venting fury at my best friend.

  Shelly looked past me, her glassy eyes reflecting red and orange flames.

  I glanced behind me. “Shit.”

  A fire spread nimbly along the perimeter of the back of the warehouse, following the path of a metal wall that shouldn’t burn. It came around the sides, and I yanked us both away from the wall just as it came around and engulfed the front. Panting on the ground, we were trapped in a rectangle of fire.

  Shelly’s words came back to me. “The whole house is rigged to burn if the security gets tripped. No paper trail, just ashes.”

  Philip liked fire. Philip was paranoid. One of us here had betrayed him.

  Now I understood what Shelly was saying. Philip must have known someone had betrayed him and set a trap. He’d probably thought it was me, though I doubted he really cared that much about Shelly either.

  There was no way we could get out of a locked warehouse. There was sure as hell no way we could get out of walls of flame. I glanced up at the ceiling. No way.

  I was really going to die here.

  The flames leaped from the far corner onto a crate, which burned around the edges before it puffed into an oversize torch. It was only a matter of time.

  Already my breathing was labored. Some of it was panic, but probably the fire was using up the oxygen. Would we suffocate first or would we burn? What a choice.

  Oh, Bailey. Now that I’d caught up to Shelly’s line of thought, my question was the same. Would they give her to my dad? He’d raised me alone, after all, though he was twenty years older now. It wasn’t so bad a fate for Bailey, I told myself, trying to ignore the sickness in my stomach. If I was upset that I couldn’t see her again, didn’t get to watch her grow, that was my own selfishness talking. I’d brought this on myself when I hadn’t trusted Colin.

  Oh God, did Colin know Philip had done this? For all I knew, he was the one who’d watched us enter and locked us inside. He’d found the money, the cop’s business card, so he had every reason to believe I had betrayed him. I wanted to believe he wouldn’t have done this. He would have confronted me, let me explain. Anything other than kill me—and like this.

  But I’d always been a realist, and Colin was a hardened criminal, after all. A mean son of a bitch, he’d once told me. I’d denied it then, but it might be true after all. He beat up a man just for messing with me when he’d barely known me. He’d probably killed before. Just because he’d let me live with him, just because he’d fucked me didn’t mean I got special treatment.

  Or maybe this was the special treatment. Maybe regular enemies got a bullet to the head, but traitors like Shelly and me got punished. Not just killed but burned, like fucking witches with a phony trial.

  God, I needed to do something. I couldn’t just sit here and wait.

  I ran to the nearest crate, one standing near the middle that hadn’t yet caught fire. My eyes burned from the heat and the smoke. I groped at the sides, searching for a latch. I moved around the crate, leaving a trail of blood as the coarse wood scraped open my fingertips. Finally I caught on a padlock.

  It wasn’t any good. I couldn’t budge it. Then Shelly’s hands pushed me aside. She reached to the top and pulled herself up as if to climb it, but then stomped down on the padlock, and it broke apart.

  Together we pulled aside the opening to reveal large black containers stacked up like legos.

  “Help me up,” I said. My voice came out scratchy, but she heard me and bent to give my foot a lift. I caught hold of the second to highest container by its top, and my feet found holds on the lower ones. Slowly and with Shelly’s support behind me, I dragged myself up to the top.

  The smoke was thicker up here, and I could barely open my eyes. I waved Shelly away, and she disappeared into a cloud of smoke. I rocked, gently at first and then harder, until the containers toppled onto the concrete.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw one of the containers had cracked open, spilling large, gleaming guns like a macabre treasure chest. I forced myself up, but Shelly had already picked up one of the guns. She aimed it at the fire and pulled the trigger—nothing happened.

  “Bullets?” she asked hoarsely.

  We looked through the rest of the guns, crouching low to avoid the worst of the smoke, but there were no bullets packed with them. That would be too convenient.

  Fuck.

  Through my fear and despair, anger surged. Okay, so I should have trusted Colin. He’d given me so much, all on faith, and I should have told him everything, but I hadn’t betrayed him. I’d had the opportunity to strike back at Philip—and every reason to do so, considering Tony Yates—but I hadn’t. And I was only here in this godforsaken warehouse because I was worried about Colin. I hadn’t betrayed him. I didn’t deserve this from him, assuming he’d known about it.

  I picked up one of the guns and dipped low. It was heavier than I’d thought, which was good. I stormed back to the door. The flames hadn’t actually caught on to the door. Whatever they’d put on the walls to make them burn, the door seemed to be resistant. But the flames still crowded in from the walls, heating my skin and making it itch.

  I raised the gun above my head and slammed it down on the doorknob, a shiny beacon through the flames. The shock from the impact traveled through the gun to my arms. Christ, that hurt. Was it possible to get bruised by vibrating?

  But pain hardly mattered when I was about to get fried. I picked up the gun and brought it down on the door again. I wasn’t even aiming for the handle anymore, just hitting the door with my everything. Maybe it would somehow be enough, and it would open. Even if it didn’t, I’d go down fighting.

  “Allie!”

  I paused with the gun raised above my head, panting. I must have imagined it. It didn’t come from behind me, from Shelly, but in front of me, from outside the door. And the voice, though distant, sounded male.

  “Allie!” Closer now and definitely Colin.

  Yes! My first thought wasn’t even that we would be saved, but that he hadn’t done this. If he was here looking for me, he must not have left me here to die. A weight lifted, and I breathed easier despite the thick, gritty air. It would have been almost the worst part of dying, aside from not seeing Bailey again, to think Colin had done this to me.

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nbsp; “I’m here.” There was no way he could hear my croak through the metal door, above the dull roar of the fire, so I banged against the door with the gun again. Not as hard now, but faster. I’m here!

  “Hang on,” he said.

  I stood there, because where else could I go? I could only hope I’d live long enough to have nightmares about this scene.

  Then the door banged back at me, hit from the other side. I backed up into Shelly, and we both moved out of the way. Whatever he’ used, or maybe just his stronger swing dislodged the door handle, and just that small sliver of escape sucked in fresh air.

  “Get back,” he yelled, his voice clearer now.

  We were already standing away, but we backed up even farther, to the spill of guns.

  Two shots and another loud bang and the door creaked open. The top side of it had pulled down and out, but the rest of the door seemed to have melted into the frame. The space should be large enough to squeeze through, but it was too high.

  Colin appeared in the space and saw that we couldn’t reach. “I’m coming in,” he said.

  “No,” I tried to yell. Then he’d be trapped. “Wait a minute. Shelly, help me.”

  We dragged one of the open containers over to the door. I let Shelly go first, practically pushing her out of the hole. Then I dragged myself through, ignoring the sharp pain of the too-hot metal against my skin.

  I collapsed next to Shelly on the concrete, gasping for the air of the city.

  “We’ve got to move,” Colin panted. “This place’ll blow when the fire hits the ammo.”

  Oh good. He was planning to blow us up, not burn us to death. How comforting.

  I dragged Shelly up, both of us wheezing, almost choking on the thick smoke inside our lungs.