Last Call - A Thriller (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mysteries Book 10) (34 page)

Phin clung to that.

L
ights were coming on everywhere, and I pulled off my night vision goggles before I was blinded.

“I lost Katie. Does anyone have eyes on her, or Tequila?” I asked. “Tequila, are you there?”

“Copy,” said Fleming. “They took Tequila inside. Cracked him in the head first. Might have disabled his com. Over.”

“Herb? You see Katie?”

“No. But more guards are coming out of the mission. I count five.”

“Harry?”

“I was pissing. You guys try to piss with night vision goggles on? It looks exactly like Mountain Dew.”

“Chandler?”

“Copy. Rigging explosives, haven’t seen them.”

“Copy that. Same here,” Heath added.

“How about you, Val? Do you see Katie?”

No answer.

“Val? You there?”

My stomach sank. Where the heck was Val?

T
he girl wasn’t struggling very much at all.

Even more proof that I have super powers,
Donaldson thought.
I snuck up without her hearing me, grabbed her with little effort, and now I’m flying.

Wait… why am I—

The girl had flipped him off the edge of the RV, and he hit the ground so hard he bounced.

Donaldson’s wind blew out of him, and as he desperately tried to suck in some oxygen there was a huge
BANG!
next to his head.

The girl on the roof is shooting at me.

He managed to get onto one knee, blindly reaching for the motorhome’s side door handle as another shot passed between his open legs. If Donaldson still had something there, it would have been blown off.

Pulling hard, the door swung open, and Donaldson planned to take cover when a demon appeared in the doorway and squealed at him.

Donaldson fell backward, managed to turn onto all fours, and then began to crawl as fast as he could toward the lights in the distance.

W
ho fired the shots?” Chandler said.

I looked back in the direction of the Crimebago Deux. “They came from beyond the minefield. Either Fleming or Val.”

“Copy that,” Fleming said. “It came from Val’s twenty, over.”

“Was she the one shooting?” I asked. “Or…”

Or was she the one shot?

Could some patrol, or guard, have gotten to Val without any of us noticing?

“That was me,” Val said. “I’m okay.”

I blew a stiff breath out between my teeth.

“There was a man on the roof of Harry’s RV. He attacked me. Knocked off my goggles. He took off in your direction. I don’t see him.”

“More guards coming,” McGlade said. “I count ten.”

“Another eight on my side,” Herb said.

“Copy. I’m going back for the last wheelbarrow,” Chandler told us. “Lay down suppressing fire. Keep them off of me and Heath.”

And then everyone began shooting.

T
he guards led her into the dining room. There was a muscular man on his knees, hands cuffed behind him, bleeding from the side of his head. Luther was standing over him with his Spyderco Harpy in one hand. In his other was a piece of paper. He held it out for Lucy to see.

It was a computer printout of a man’s face.

Mr. Hanover.

“It was in his pocket,” Luther said. “That, and two guns, are all he had on him.”

Lucy’s mind whirled with scenarios. Had Hanover been lying? Was he actually a cop? How did this affect her murder plot?

Outside, there was gunfire.

“Is this a raid?” Lucy wasn’t sure who she was asking, K or the man.

“We’re prepared for a raid.” K brought his curved blade up to the man’s ear. “How many of your men are out there?”

The man stared impassively. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t so much as flinch.

Not even when K cut off his ear.

Lucy had never seen anything like that. Not ever. K was holding this guy’s severed ear, and the dude didn’t even blink.

K took a step back. “Well may it sort that this portentous figure comes armed through our watch,” he whispered.

More gun shots. Closer. The five guards in the room raised their weapons.

Lucy didn’t know what to do. She realized she was frightened. Of whoever was outside. Of K. Of Hanover, who she realized must have lied to her. Of this kneeling man who didn’t react to pain.

“He is an omen, Lucy. As harbingers preceding still the fates.”

“Will you fucking stop it with the fucking Shakespeare!” she screamed. “Make him say something!”

“Who are you?” K said, holding his knife to the man’s throat.

The man didn’t speak. Didn’t move.

K lowered his crooked body, peering into the man’s face, cocking his head. “It doesn’t matter what I do to him. He isn’t going to talk. This man is empty inside. You can see it in his eyes. It’s like… gazing into a mirror.”

Lucy considered the straight razor in her back pocket. Killing the prisoner was an option. Maybe K was right, and he’d never talk. But if he did, and Lucy’s deal with Hanover was somehow revealed, she would die a horrible death.

The other option was killing K. The guards were covering the doors, and no one was looking her way. Lucy could slit K’s throat, and try to escape amidst the chaos.

“Three of you, bring him to the arena,” K said. “Keep your guns on him. If he tries anything, shoot him until you run out of bullets.”

They led the man away, and K turned to Lucy. “You have Hanover in the playroom.”

She nodded, slowly dropping her hand to be closer to her razor.

“Bring him to the arena. These men may not talk. But we’ll see if they’ll fight.”

Huh? “K… that makes no sense.”

“This man was carrying Hanover’s picture. Is he a friend? Is he an enemy? This is how to find out.”

“We don’t even know what’s going on out there. It could be cops.”

“Or a rival cartel. Or prisoners trying to escape. Or the men, shooting at shadows. For all I know, princess, it could be friends of yours, here to rescue you. I know you want to leave. You could have gotten a message out a dozen different ways. You could have sent your mind waves out to the machines in the sky.”

She shrank back. “Mind waves?”

“They record our thoughts. Don’t pretend you don’t know. The spiders who crawl in your brain when you sleep. The cameras, everywhere.”

And it was now official. K had turned the corner into paranoid ranting madman crazytown.

She nodded, trying to appear as sincere as possible. “You’re right, K. We need to fix this. I’ll bring Hanover to the arena right now. We’ll find out everything.”

Lucy hurried out of there, fast as her skeletal legs could carry her twisted frame, the guards trailing her as she entered the playroom. When she unshackled Hanover’s hands, Lucy whispered, “You have to kill Luther.”

“When?”

“He wants you to fight in the arena one more time. Kill your opponent, and I’ll make sure you have a shot at Kite.”

They marched Hanover out at gunpoint, and Lucy wondered where she might be able to find a gun. If K was coming for her, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

C
haos.

I’d been in a few shootouts, but this was different. I didn’t know who was firing, where they were, where to fire back, or what to do next. I’d known a few vets, heard them talk about the confusion, the insanity, of war, and at that moment I fully understood what they meant.

My back was against the arena, bullets flying everywhere, dozens of guns firing from so many directions I couldn’t pinpoint any of them, four people at once yelling in my earpiece, and I had no idea how to react.

Then someone’s voice rose above all the others. Chandler, saying, “Take cover!”

What cover? There was no cover. I was in the middle of a shooting gallery, and too frightened and disoriented to know my left from my right.

I looked around, spotted a storage shed fifty meters to the east, realized that if I stopped to think about it for too long I’d freeze, so I just ran.

I’d never felt so exposed. Every step I took, every millisecond that passed, I expected a bullet to cut me down. I didn’t know where it would come from, or where it would hit me, but there was no way anyone could survive a situation like this, out in the open with dozens of people shooting, no reason or sense or order to any of it.

And then, somehow, I was at the shed. I got behind far wall, crouched down, my Glock at the ready. Somewhere during my sprint I’d dropped my night vision goggles. But it didn’t matter, because as I stared into the darkness, watching muzzle flashes wink like fireflies, the gigantic lights of the arena blazed on and illuminated the whole area, bright as the noonday sun.

I saw Herb, pinned down.

Harry, pinned down.

Chandler, pinned down.

No sign of Heath. No sign of Katie. No sign of Tequila.

And then, cutting through the cacophony of gunfire, I heard the roar of an engine, coming from the bullfighting ring.