Working Stiff

Page 44

Not that she was legally considered human anymore.
The voice seemed to come from behind her this time, startlingly close. “Hey, sugar, where you goin’?”
Bryn spun, gun in a firing stance, just as something lunged at her from the darkness on her left. The man skidded to a stumbling halt, the muzzle pressed to his face.
“I’m leaving, sugar,” she said. “Sit your ass down on the floor, cross-legged, hands behind your head. Now.”
He sank down and complied without another word. Homeless, she guessed, and definitely high, from the way his pupils failed to contract in her flashlight beam. He was wearing faded surplus military khakis under layers of coats and dirt-stiff scarves. ‘“Sup?” he mumbled. “Just tryin’ to be friendly.”
“Yeah, I can see how friendly you want to be by the bulge in your pants. Just your way of saying hi? Stay down.” Bryn took three giant steps back, and then paused. She was leaving a hundred thousand in cash sitting there with a homeless would-be rapist. If she turned her back, he and it would surely be gone. “Okay, I’m going to need you to get up. We’re going to take a walk.”
“A walk?” He went from menacing to pathetic in the blink of an eye, and raised his hands over his head. “Please don’t kill me; I didn’t mean nothin’!”
“I’m not going to kill you. Stand up. I can’t leave you here.”
“It’s my place. I got stuff. I leave it, it gets took.”
“Get up, now, or I promise you won’t need stuff ever again.”
He scrambled up, awkward with fear, and she knew this wasn’t the first time he’d had a gun pointed at him. His head was tucked down, his hands trembling, and his posture was totally submissive.
“Walk,” she said, and circled around so that his path was clear and not within grabbing distance of her.
Her captive shambled out, hands raised, and she followed, careful not to close the distance as he slowed down. “Move. Head for the fence.” He glanced back, and she noticed something strange about him.
His eyes. They didn’t look right. Still dilated, but …
Contacts. He was wearing some kind of costume contacts.
This was him. The one collecting the money. Maybe even the mystery caller himself. It was a great disguise, and she’d almost completely fallen for it.
“Wait,” she said, but that tipped him off that the game was up, and he dodged, blindingly fast, out of the beam of her flashlight.
She lost him.
Bryn switched the light off—had to, to use the starlight effectively—but it took time for her eyes to adjust to the change, and in the second or two required, he just … vanished.
Bryn backed up toward the building, then plunged inside and turned the penlight on to illuminate the desk.
The bag was gone.
The whisper came again, raw and amused. “I think I like you, sugar. You can handle yourself.”
“Show yourself!” she yelled. “I don’t do business with jackasses in clown makeup!”
She got nothing in reply but echoes, but she heard a scrape from a side passage. Her blood was pounding in her head, and she knew the smart thing to do was withdraw, regroup, wait for backup … but he was going to get away clean if she did. I had him, she thought. I had my gun in his face.
She also knew that she’d never be able to identify him. She’d seen what he wanted her to see—the filth, the straggly hair, the clothes, the contacts hiding his real eye color. First rule of disguise was to distract, and he’d done it brilliantly, right down to the submissive body language.
There was another scrape, behind her, and she whirled with her gun ready and braced. She wasn’t going to take another chance, not this time….
And she barely stopped herself from putting a bullet center mass in Joe Fideli’s chest.
He held his hands out to the sides, his gun pointed up, until she came off the shooting stance. She started to speak, but he shook his head, and she fell back into military hand signals to show him where their suspect had gone. He pointed at the penlight, and she clicked it off, and for a moment she felt claustrophobic, swarmed by the dark, until her eyes adjusted enough to make out shadows and shapes.
Then Fideli went in the direction she’d indicated. He moved like the very best combat soldiers she’d worked with, or watched—smooth, calm, no wasted motions. He had some kind of extremely advanced training, whether it was Army Rangers or Navy SEALs or Marine Recon…. Bryn felt unavoidably clumsy next to him, but she kept up as he glided through the hallway, stepping over and around obstacles and trash as best she could. There was a faint clink from somewhere up ahead, off to the right—a bottle rolling? Fideli held up a clenched fist, and she stopped, nerves crawling. After a few seconds, he indicated for her to wait, and he glided a few more steps ahead, checking the exposed point where the hallway emptied into the next room.
Gunfire shattered the glassy silence. Fideli hit the floor, return-firing from a prone position, and Bryn decked it, too, to avoid any ricochets. It was over in a couple of seconds. Her ears were still ringing from the hammer blows of the shots, but she heard running feet somewhere beyond.
Fideli stayed in firing position, but he keyed a throat mike and said, “He’s on the move, heading for the north fence—” He coughed, and rolled over on his back. “And I took one,” he added. “Call nine-one-one, Bryn.”
She saw the dark stain of blood on the filthy floor, and for a second she couldn’t react at all—and then it all snapped together, and she flung herself across to him and pulled his jacket back, then ripped open his shirt.
“Be gentle,” he said. “Got to”—a pause for an ominously wet cough—“explain to Kylie later—”
“Shut up.” Bryn fumbled for her phone and hit the programmed button for McCallister. He answered on the first ring. “Fideli’s down; he took a round in the shoulder but I think it bounced; he’s got a lung wound.” Time was of the essence; she knew that. Depending on the size and location of the puncture to the lung, it could collapse quickly or slowly, but it was bound to happen. “Get in here.”
“I can’t,” McCallister said. He sounded way too calm. “Calling nine-one-one now.”
“But—”
“Handle it, Bryn. Keep him alive until they get there.”
“Wait!” But McCallister had hung up on her, damn him. She dropped the phone and began ripping up the clean portion of Fideli’s shirt to make a pressure pad for his shoulder; it was freely bleeding but not pumping, so it was unlikely the bullet had hit an artery. Internally was another matter; the bullet could have done terrible things on the bounce. No way to tell.
His color was fading, but that was a normal shock reaction. She pressed the wadding of cloth into place, and he winced, turned his head, and spit blood. Not much, though. Not as much as she’d feared.
“Pat call nine-one-one?” he asked. His breathing sounded labored and damp, but not yet critical.
“Yes. I thought he was your friend.”
“He is. But he’s got a job to do.” Another hitch in his breath, but it might have just been a pain reaction; she felt him stiffen, then relax a little. “Should have worn a vest.”
“Yes. We both should have.”
“Next time, eh?” He coughed and reached up to pat her hand where it pressed against the wound. “Good job, Bryn.”
“What, getting you shot?” Her heart was hammering now, and fear was creeping in. “Don’t die on me, Joe. I don’t want to face your kids.”
“Ought to be more afraid of Kylie,” he said, and coughed. This time, there was a lot of blood—oh, Jesus—and she heard distressed breath sounds in his right lung when she pressed her ear to his chest. “Going to be one of those damn tension pneumo things. Check jacket pocket.”
She did, fumbling quickly, and pulled out … a silver tube with a seal. Her drug, which he kept with him in case of her distress. “Joe? Do you want me to give this to you? Will it help?”
“No,” he whispered. His lips were starting to turn blue where they weren’t dark with blood, and his breathing was hitchy and painful. “Drain it. Use it as a needle tube.”
“Is that safe?”
“Safer than dying—ah, God—” His back arched a little, and when his next breath came, she heard nothing from his right side. The lung had collapsed. Fideli’s breathing was shallow and fast.
She ripped the tube open, slid the syringe out, squirted the contents onto the ground in a silvery stream. Well, there goes a few thousand, she thought, stupidly, and filled it with air to push out again, just in case. A drop of liquid hissed out, and then the syringe was clean, or as clean as she could get it. She ripped the handle out to leave a jagged opening for air. She checked his other pockets and came up with a rubber glove; she pricked a hole in one finger and jammed it down over the syringe.
Bryn held the penlight in her teeth and counted off ribs, hoping her years-old emergency field medicine still held true. She pressed on the area, took a deep breath, and pushed the needle home. There was a pop as she went through connective tissue, and then a sudden hiss as air pushed out, inflating the finger of the glove as it escaped. Fideli took in a sudden gasping breath, and the glove deflated, preventing air from flowing in to compress the lung from outside. She couldn’t do anything about the blood in the lung, but that seemed to be less of an urgent issue.
About thirty seconds later, she heard the advancing wail of a siren, and took Joe’s hand. “Hey,” she said. “Looks like I won’t have to get beaten up by your wife. Much.”
He smiled with those pale lips and gave her a thumbs-up, but didn’t try to speak.
One minute later, she heard shouting, and left him to lead them back inside. The police came first to secure the scene, and then let the paramedics in. They immediately threw out her makeshift needle arrangement and inserted a catheter, scooped Fideli onto a gurney, and ran off with him, leaving her in the position of explaining … everything.