Protecting Dallas

by Krista Wolf

  “I’ve seen a lot of shit,” Kane growled, dropping his knee onto the man’s back. He grabbed his arms. Pinned them behind his torso. “But never a straight-up deathwish like this!”

  “Motherfucker,” the man growled from the floor. All the air had been knocked from his lungs. He was wheezing hard, trying to regain his breath. “Shut the fuck up already… and listen.”

  Holy shit.

  Dietz.

  “Listen to what?” Kane growled. “To how you betrayed us? To how you got Winters killed?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “To the sinister shit you’ve been doing out in the desert with your friends? “ I added. I produced a pair of thick white zip-ties. Kane had the man bound in seconds, hands and feet, still coughing as he lay on his side.

  “Pat him down.”

  We did it together. The whole thing happened quickly, surgically. Like we’d done it a thousand times.

  Which of course we had.

  “He’s clean. Not even a blade.”

  Dietz coughed again, and this time there was blood on his lips. Kane slid a chair over, and together we lifted him up and planted him upright.

  “You assholes,” Dietz spat, and a tooth came out. It skittered noisily across the tile floor. “This is how you answer the door?”

  “It is when a traitor shows up.”

  Karl Dietz looked like shit warmed over. Part of it was his scraggly patch of stubble, which was halfway between clean-shaven and a respectable beard. The other part was his dirt-streaked face. His dust-caked hair. The pink froth of blood, dribbling from his split bottom lip…

  Well, I guess that last part was on us.

  “How the fuck do you even have the nerve to show your face here?” I demanded. I still had a lot of anger. A good part of me wanted to swing my rifle butt straight into his jaw, claim another tooth for myself.

  Dietz spat again. On our kitchen floor, mind you.

  Holy shit he was making me angry.

  “I came to warn you,” he growled. “Why the hell do you think I’m here?”

  “Who the fuck knows?” asked Kane. “Lots of people have been coming here, including some of your friends. You haven’t been keeping very good company lately.”

  “I came alone,” Dietz said. “Unarmed. In the middle of the fucking day.”

  “So?”

  “So use your head!” he practically yelled.

  “Fuck you.”

  He shook his head and laughed. “Unreal.” His eyes found Kane’s. “You never were the smart one, were yo—”

  The second shot came from Kane’s fist, rather than his pistol. Dietz’s head whipped to the side so fast it left his hair standing exactly where it was. I could tell Kane was holding back only because our captor’s neck wasn’t broken.

  “GodDAMMIT!” Dietz shouted in pain. “Shit, STOP already!” He winced hard, but some of the defiance was gone now. “And one of you get me a fucking aspirin!”

  Neither of us moved. Neither of us said anything.

  “What do you mean by warn us?”

  Kane and I turned at the sound of Dallas’s voice. She was standing half in the hallway, her hair still wet from the shower.

  And she was staring daggers at the man tied up in our kitchen.

  “They’re coming soon,” said Dietz ominously. “All of them. At once.”

  Kane shot me a concerned look. “Now?” I asked.

  “No. Not now. But maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. I’m not sure, and—” He paused and winced again. “Can I get a glass of water at least?”

  To my surprise, Dallas fetched him one. She moved barefoot across the kitchen, still in her bathrobe. She even took the towel from her head and used it to wipe the blood from his lips before tipping the glass back so he could drink.

  “Thank you,” Dietz grunted. “Shit, at least someone here’s got some sense.”

  “You’re lucky she doesn’t pour Drano down your throat,” I warned. “That’s Dallas Winters. Connor’s sister.”

  Dietz chuckled through his missing tooth. “I know who she is.”

  “You’re the reason her brother’s dead!” Kane shouted. He was a half-second away from hitting the man for laughing. “You and your frien—”

  “No!” Dietz jumped in angrily. “NOT me! I’d never hurt Winters.” His eyes shifted briefly to Dallas, then back to us again. “You’ve got it all backwards.”

  “Oh?” I laughed. “So that wasn’t you out in the desert last night?”

  “Of course it was me. And shit, you guys ought to be ashamed. A high school band could’ve made less noise up on that ridge.”

  I closed my eyes. Damn.

  “What, you think no one noticed?”

  Kane hissed through clenched teeth and shifted uncomfortably. The movement was subtle, but there.

  “I noticed,” Dietz went on. “Not them, though. Just me.” He shrugged. “It’s the only reason you’re still alive. The only reason I even came here. In fact—”

  “Did you hurt my brother?”

  Dallas’s words came out deadly calm. But there was an underlying tension though, a sense that at any point her resolve could break.

  “No.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  Karl Dietz lowered his chin to his chest. His expression softened. He looked troubled.

  Dallas edged closer. She knelt down, squatting until her face was mere inches from his. The arm still holding the glass of water was trembling.

  “I said,” she growled, “do you know who—”

  “HOLD HOLD HOLD…”

  Austin flew into the kitchen, surprising us all. He had both hands held outward, looking rushed, hurried. He didn’t even bother to close the door behind him.

  “Stop,” he said. “Everyone just stop.”

  He pulled out his knife. I watched as he approached our captive, sitting in his chair…

  With one swift movement he sawed through the zip-ties, cutting them off. The man in the middle of our kitchen began rubbing his wrists.

  “Trust me,” said Austin, as he sheathed his blade. “Dietz is okay.”

  Fifty-Seven

  DALLAS

  I wasn’t sure what was going on, where Austin had come from, or how things had gotten to this point. There was only one thing I was sure of, however.

  The man in our kitchen looked pissed.

  “Got anything other than water?” he grunted, still holding my towel against his mouth. Maddox went to the fridge and returned with a beer. Dietz took it without thanking him, twisting the cap off in one big hand.

  Everyone else remained standing, while the others greeted Austin in turn. When he reached me, I gave him the biggest hug I could manage.

  “Everything alright?”

  He nodded and smiled. “Yeah. Better than alright.”

  My body relaxed just the tiniest bit. That was good news at least.

  “Who’s talking first?” Kane asked, arms folded. “Seems we don’t have much time.”

  “You don’t,” Dietz confirmed. “So… me.”

  He lowered his bottle to the table. Half the beer was gone already. He sucked in a long breath, then launched into his story right away.

  “It all started about two years ago…”

  The stranger in our kitchen talked, and the four of us listened. Most of what he said at first was military jargon; stuff I could only marginally understand. The gist of it was he’d fallen in with some bad people. Or rather, fallen in was a bad word. He’d inserted himself into something in order to gain trust and intelligence, at the behest of one of his commanding officers.

  And then halfway through it… that commanding officer had been killed.

  “By then I was deep,” said Dietz. “Too deep to get out. At least not immediately. Not without attracting attention.”

  “What kind of attention?” asked Kane.

  “The kind that got my commander killed.”

  The murdered man was Wesp. His death was officially ruled
an accident. Dietz almost brought the whole dirty thing to the man above him, but then that man showed up in the circle of bad people as well.

  “They were trading secrets,” said Dietz. “Failed bio-weapon projects. High level intelligence from the old New Orleans lab that people had forgotten about. Only not these guys. There was an old timer from the lab — a guy by the name of Cameron — who turned everyone on to what they had. He thought it could be useful. But I don’t think this guy realized what they’d be doing with it.

  “You’re talking about him in the past tense,” said Maddox.

  “Yeah,” Dietz nodded grimly. “Good catch on that.”

  He went on, talking in detail about how things progressed. The story only got worse from there.

  “With Cameron out of the picture, no one knew what they were doing. They had free reign over the old database. Two guys started picking it apart, while a third went and started looking for buyers. They cut a deal with someone over the border. Started drip-feeding the database to some very bad characters, in exchange for—”

  “Drugs,” Kane finished.

  Dietz nodded in confirmation. “They’ve got one big dealer from Vegas who buys everything in bulk. He picks it up from out in the desert, and his network deals it to the tourists.” His lip curled into a snarl. “If I told you how much money they’re raking in, it would make you—”

  “I don’t care about that,” Kane growled. “I care only about the guys harvesting and selling bio-weapon secrets.”

  “The guys who had Connor killed,” Austin added.

  Dietz nodded his acknowledgment. He motioned for another beer, and Maddox brought him one.

  “So how are you involved?” asked Maddox. “Why were you even down there last night?”

  “Because I have full security clearance,” Dietz said, “for the lab and otherwise. This makes me invaluable to them.”

  Kane sneered at him. “And when the fuck were you gonna stop trading military secrets for drugs?”

  “He already stopped,” Austin cut in. He held up a small, grey thumb-drive. “According to Connor.”

  Everyone turned Austin’s way. Dietz tipped his bottle toward him gratefully.

  “The chip from Dallas’s necklace contains a complete report of everything that went on,” said Austin. “The whole undercover operation, including Wesp’s files up to and including his death.”

  The room went silent for a moment. Details were coming fast, and there were some questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to. I stepped forward anyway and let out a shuddering breath.

  “So where does my brother come in?”

  Dietz took one look at me and his expression completely changed. He looked genuinely sad.

  “I brought Connor in,” he lamented. “He’d already figured out some stuff for himself, and was getting in way over his head. The others were noticing. They were talking about… about…”

  “We know what they were talking about,” I said calmly. “Go on.”

  Dietz nodded appreciatively. “I got to him before they could,” he said. “That’s when I told him everything. I gave him everything, all of it, and told him to take it to someone far enough up the chain that it would actually matter.”

  Maddox nodded. “He tried that. Only it didn’t work.”

  “Woodward,” Dietz confirmed. “Yes.”

  “So then what happened?”

  Dietz rubbed at his overgrown crewcut. He’d been tough the whole time he’d been here, but this part was difficult. I could tell he was grieving.

  “Connor came back with an idea,” he said. “We’d keep going, and he’d keep feeding me data from the lab. He had the same clearance I did. He could get the same things I could, so he got himself transferred to New Orleans.”

  Kane shook his head gravely. “No way you’re gonna convince me Connor gave up secrets.”

  “He didn’t,” said Dietz. “He mocked up the data. Took what was there and screwed with it enough that it was useless.” He smiled a little at the recollection. “Shit, it was genius. They never knew. Even now, they still don’t know.”

  “But they’re going to find out,” said Austin. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes. Fairly soon, too.”

  “Which is why you’re looking to get out.”

  Dietz dropped his head into his hands. “I’ve been looking to get out the whole time,” he said. “Don’t you realize that? Once Wesp was gone I was fucked. Connor and I tried to blow it all open, but with Woodward failing to come through and then… and then they got to Connor…”

  “Hey.”

  The voice somehow didn’t seem my own. Dietz looked down, and realized I’d laid my hand over his. The physical contact seemed to relax him, even if just a tiny bit.

  “Who killed my brother?”

  The man looked up at me, his eyes laden with sorrow.

  “Tall guy. White hair. Almost albino, I think.”

  My eyes closed. A chill ran through my body.

  “Guy by the name of Alacard.”

  Fifty-Eight

  DALLAS

  It turned out to be the strangest day.

  I spent most of it up on the roof, watching over the neighborhood with Austin. Talking about the things on my brother’s memory chip — a whole digital array of secrets that got him killed. I wasn’t sure which was more ironic: that I had the answer to my brother’s death the whole time, or that I’d somehow worn it unknowingly around my neck.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  I nodded for the fifth and final time. “Trust me,” I said, pulling the blanket around my shoulders. “After the shit I’ve been through, it’s nice to finally have answers.”

  It was cold up on the roof. I was tired. Aching. Even hungry. Plus, to top it all off, my ass was falling asleep.

  “When do you think the others will be back?”

  Austin shifted the rifle that rested in his lap, just long enough for a quick glance down at the phone’s screen. Then he went back to being vigilant.

  “Maddox and Dietz are almost back already,” he said. “Kane… I don’t know.”

  I turned and put my back against his. Stared out over the remains of the once-nice homes of our once-busy block.

  “What’s going to happen when all this is through?”

  Time passed. The wind whipped my hair back against my face. Austin remained silent, until finally:

  “Dunno.”

  It was a question he wasn’t expecting. Or maybe he was just thinking of a thoughtful answer. Either way, it was all coming to a head. Their surveillance of me had turned into protection, which had turned into a full-blown investigation that had led us here, to this moment. And now…

  Now we were on the verge of settling things, one way or another. Either the people involved in Connor’s death would be brought to the mother of all reckonings…

  Or we would.

  “Want half?”

  He passed me a foil-wrapped Hershey bar. Or rather, part of one.

  “Half? You ate three quarters of it.”

  “Sue me.”

  For some reason it made me laugh, and Austin started chuckling right along with me. It felt good, laughing into the wind, his broad back shifting up and down against mine. Hell, it was fucking cathartic.

  “You think we got this one?” I asked, going suddenly serious.

  Austin paused. “Maybe.”

  “Gimmie the odds.”

  “Sixty-forty.”

  “Us or them?”

  I felt him shift to glance back at me. “Do you really wanna know?”

  I sighed without turning around. “No, actually.”

  “There you go.”

  The sky was a rich purple now, the sun almost level with the horizon. Out in the desert things got cold quickly. Warming up sometimes took a while, but the cold…

  “Dallas.”

  I shifted again, this time so I could see him. Austin was facing me now. Completely ignoring the half of the
neighborhood he’d been tasked to watch over.

  “I love you.”

  I blinked, dumbstruck. Not because of the admission, but because it came at the strangest of all possible moments.

  “I love you too,” I told him.

  We were almost face to face now. Cheek against cheek. The wind sent a blast of cold over me, causing me to shiver.

  “When did you know?” he asked.

  I thought for a few seconds. “When you told me how much you loved my brother.”

  Silence reigned. A moment passed between us… of shared feelings, emotions, love.

  “That time out on the balcony didn’t hurt either,” I smirked.

  He kissed me, and suddenly it wasn’t so cold anymore. It was just the two of us, sitting on top of the world. Looking out over oblivion and holding each other, while the rest of the universe went to complete shit all around us.

  You do love him, Dallas.

  It was fantastic, even just for a minute, to forget about everything else. To press my lips against his, to feel the fire and heat of his body against mine.

  You love them all.

  I came to groggily, wondering how it suddenly got so dark. Wondering if we’d somehow fucked up, or if ninjas had dropped from the desert trees and were right now climbing the walls to get us from all sides.

  Headlights appeared, and we were back to back again. Austin’s grip on the rifle tightened… then relaxed in the span of a single heartbeat.

  “C’mon,” he said, standing up. He offered his hand and I took it. “Maddox is home.”

  Fifty-Nine

  DALLAS

  ”So did you reach anyone on the list?” Austin was asking.

  Maddox shook his head from his end of the table, where he was cleaning a variety of weapons. It wasn’t a good sign. Or a good start.

  “What about Flynn?”

  “Out of town.”

  “Sully?”

  “Nope.”

  Dietz was in the fridge again, rummaging through our meager pickings. I figured he was looking for another beer, but he came out with a container of milk instead.