Shelter (29 page)

             
Alma gritted her teeth against all the pain that swirled through her body, and conjured up an image of Sam. And then, unbidden, Carlos came into her head too. With one of his big smiles and that roman nose, the soft love shining in his eyes.

             
I love you.

             
In one great big movement, she took the shotgun in both hands and pulled it free of the couch. Salvador hadn’t seen it before and its appearance shocked him just long enough, gave her just the opening she needed. Screaming for all she was worth, tears and stars and black spots dancing in her eyes, Alma mustered up all the strength she had and jammed the butt of the long gun into the bastard’s throat.

             
Salvador made a gasping sound and went tumbling backward off of her.

             
“Fuck!” she exclaimed as she sat up and thought she might puke, felt each blow throbbing in time with her pulse. Her head swam, her aim would be poor, but that didn’t matter at point blank range.

             
She racked the slide with her good hand and the broken one shook like hell, but her index finger still curved around the trigger.

             
Salvador was on his knees and moving toward her, but then his eyes widened when he saw that the barrel of the shotgun was pointed at him.

             
Without a moment’s hesitation, Alma pulled the trigger.

             
The Remington kicked hard against her shoulder and the blast was deafening as it echoed off the confines of the living room walls.

             
Salvador flew back, sprawling across the carpet and landing with a loud, dead,
thump
. A bloody hole the size of her fist had opened up his chest.

             
She pulled in a breath, and then another, her chest pumping. She registered that she was making this high-pitched whining noise and couldn’t seem to stop it. The sun was still pouring in through the open door, the chilly breeze ruffling the drapes, flipping the pages of a stray magazine on the buffet table. Through the window, across the street, she saw that her neighbors’ icicle lights were still on, the dangling white ropes swaying back and forth along the gutter.

             
Everything was as it had been. She was alive, the sun shone, the world still spun.

             
But now there was a dead man in her house.

30

             
For some reason, the EMTs hadn’t been allowed to take her straight to the hospital, and she realized why when she saw a black Escalade pull up to the curb in front of her house and Sean Taylor exited it.

             
Alma was sitting inside the ambulance, a paramedic splinting her hand so it would stay immobile until it could be set and casted. She knew she had a mild concussion based on the frown the young, blonde, female paramedic had worn when she’d inspected her pupils with a penlight, that and the fact that she’d vomited in the grass on the way out of the house.

             
The house…she shuddered every time her eyes roved over the gray ranch. The police were on the scene now and the front door was roped off with yellow crime scene tape. Uniformed CCPD officers kept ducking under the barrier, moving in and out. The CSI equivalents hadn’t showed up yet, nor had the coroner. Thankfully, the cops had been gentle with her, not pressing with any serious questions, offering arms for support as she’d been wheeled out to the ambulance that had pulled up in her driveway.

             
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Salvador. But it was not his lifeless, sprawled body, blood oozing out of the shotgun wound that left her quaking, but the memories of the attack leading up to it. She’d never thought she’d be so foolish as to let something like this happen to her. And she knew that luck and timing and maybe prayer had saved her life, that had things gone any differently, she’d have been the one who wound up in a black body bag.

             
“What about the baby?” she asked as the EMT taped off the last of the splint.

             
The blonde twitched a small frown. “You’re not bleeding?”

             
“No.”

             
“That’s a good sign. They’ll check you out at the hospital.”

             
Alma nodded, worry not totally abated, but Sean was drawing up to the open rear doors of the ambulance, and she decided worrying about little Sam would only be distracting, because clearly, she had been held here until the undercover cop could arrive.

             
He at least had the good graces to look apologetic, or, as apologetic as he was probably capable. He reminded her a bit of her father when he finally, reluctantly, admitted fault about something. His hands settled on his hips and his head tilted, eyes giving her battered, already-bruising body a once-over.

             
“We didn’t know Salvador was a person of interest until about forty-five minutes ago,” he said, tone almost gentle. “I hauled ass to get here.”

             
Alma started to nod, but it made her head swim, her eyes blur, and bile pressed at the back of her throat. “I appreciate that,” she said instead.

             
“It looks like he was popped with a damn cannon,” he stated.

             
“Twelve gauge shotgun, actually.”

             
Sean smirked, just a small gesture, though it did nothing to alleviate the tension in his face. It was there and gone in a second, then he was serious again. “You know, most women wouldn’t have been able to pull the trigger, even if they had the chance.”

             
She didn’t think of herself as tougher than anyone else – in fact, she knew she was prone to emotional tailspins – and she didn’t think of what she’d done as brave. She wasn’t proud, wasn’t glad, but she wasn’t all that remorseful either. “It was him or me,” she said quietly, eyes falling down to the metal bumper of the ambulance.

             
Sean took a step closer and his voice lowered. Alma hadn’t heard the EMT leave, but suddenly, there was no one sitting beside her on the gurney. “The second he came into your house wanting to kill you,” he said, “he gave up his choice to live. You made the right call.”

             
She nodded. Yeah, she was going to have some serious nightmares. Knowing she’d taken another human’s life was going to twist her head around when she least expected it. But she was alive, and, God willing, her little Sam was still okay too.

             
Her head came up, pulse kicking up again. “Where’s Carlos?”

             
Sean sighed through his nostrils, jaw locked into a rigid line. “We’ll find him. I swear.”

31

             
The city was alive tonight. As the sun had gone slinking down over a horizon jagged with skyscrapers, the lights had come on like tens of thousands of twinkling eyes. Carlos had driven past the flash-and-bang community unto itself that was Atlantic Station – apartments, stores, theaters, restaurants and entertainment centers complete with the theft and murder the rest of the city enjoyed – the Hilton, the Ritz Carlton. Had gotten stuck in the congested traffic crawling its way toward a rock concert at Phillips Arena and had seen the teenagers with spiked hair of every color and too many facial piercings crowded along the sidewalks, all headed for the show. All the shops had Christmas lights and displays up in the windows. People on the sidewalks were buttoned up in coats and scarves to ward off the chill. So many people thought poorly of the South – when he’d moved down with Nadia and Sam, he’d secretly wondered if the houses were roofed with straw or something – but Atlanta was just like every other metropolis in the country: busy, dirty, packed, and wonderful. A melting pot where old South and new urban collided and created an atmosphere all its own.

             
Of course, Carlos wasn’t thinking about any of this.

             
The text had come in around eleven that morning, just a phone number, but he’d known who it had belonged to. He wondered how many people over at Dolman Development had shuffled his message around before one of the high-ups had heard it and realized that they’d better connect him to Sal before the company was on the news. Carlos had texted a response, the address and time. Now it was twenty minutes until the designated meeting, and he turned the Firebird down the narrow side street where the former bank, former department store, empty shell of a building where Sam had died resided.

             
Street lamps were set every hundred feet down the street, but there was only one on either end of the alley where he snuggled the car up to the curb and killed the engine. The soft glow of lamplight down at the other end reached only partway up the alley, leaving a knot of black, liquid shadows in the middle. It looked like the place where teenagers were knifed to death in horror movies. A place where nefarious villains waited, lurking beneath the cover of night.

             
But Carlos was not afraid. He realized, as he popped the door handle and slid out into the biting wind that whipped down between the tall brick buildings, that all fear had abandoned him. His safety, his reputation, his life, none of that mattered now. He had officially given up pretending that he wasn’t neck-deep in a shitpile of his own making. He’d fucked up, he’d put himself in this position, and he wasn’t going to let nerves or some fake pride prevent him from taking the necessary steps. He wasn’t
not
a bad guy. He
was
a bad guy. And as a bad guy, he was going to have to do a bad thing. He accepted that now.

             
He went around to the trunk and used the remote to open it. The light inside came on and illuminated the bag he’d brought along. From it, he withdrew his Glock – slipped it into the waistband of his jeans and pulled his sweatshirt down over it – and the Bowie knife he’d dug out of the back of his closet – it was in a sheath that he threaded his belt through.

             
The side door with the hole beside the lock seemed like the obvious entrance point, and though not frightened, Carlos was acutely aware that Sal had no reason to leave him alive, and that if he could, he’d pick him off before he could get inside. So he went all the way down the alley, through the shadows that made him feel like he’d gone blind, all the way down to the sidewalk on the other end and around the somewhat lit backside of the building.

             
There was a rear exit back where the dressing rooms had once been, and his interior searches had revealed that it opened up into a narrow, doorless hall. It would be the best possible way in, because he could at least seal himself into the place before he had to worry about being ambushed.

             
The door was recessed into the brick, down a short flight of steps, a good thing because it would prevent anyone on street level from seeing him as he broke in. This time, he’d come prepared, and the lock was old and easy to pick.

             
A sound like a cat who’d had its tail stepped on accompanied the door opening. Carlos pulled his gun and flashlight, and slipped inside, letting the portal close up behind him with a loud
thump
. The darkness was absolute. It made the alley seem like a sun-soaked afternoon by comparison.

             
Carlos took a deep breath and held it, straining to hear something beyond his pulse, which had increased by a half measure, a steady drumming inside the veins that laced his ears. The moldy, damp scent of the place – decaying insulation, mildew, and a faint whiff of garbage – rushed into his lungs. Small sounds, inorganic, infinitesimal creaks and scrapes, the sounds an empty structure made teased at his senses. And the sound of the heavy, breath-held silence was oppressive. But he didn’t detect another human, at least not right there with him.

             
He side-stepped to the mouth of the hall, his back pressed to one wall, and the two yards felt like a mile. Still, though, he marveled at how calm he was. It was adrenaline that piqued his pulse, anticipation that made the short hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, but he was not nervous. He was still not afraid.

             
He clicked the flashlight on, swept it side to side, then shut it off once more. The quick search had revealed what he’d expected: exposed wiring, rotted ceiling tiles, accumulated trash and graffiti. Yellow light beams sliced through little holes and gaps in the plywood that covered the windows, the street lamp outside putting polka dots on the floor. It wasn’t much in the way of illumination, but it prevented Carlos from having to use his flashlight as he exited the hall and headed for the staircase.

             
Debris shifted under his feet and his boots sounded too loud as he moved across the floor, but that couldn’t be helped. With only one more use of his Maglite, he found the stairs and this time, he didn’t pause to let his eyes wander over the tatters of leftover crime scene tape. Carlos put his foot on the first step and kept going, up and up until he hit the landing where Sam had died…

             
And that was when something slammed into him.

             
Carlos toppled backward, staggered and tripped over his own feet until his shoulder and side of his head collided with the wall. There wasn’t enough light to see what, or who it was, or to tell if his vision was impaired by the blow, and then it didn’t matter, because something hard pushed against his chest and sent him flying again.

             
Hands
, he thought, before he pulled himself into a protective ball and went tumbling down the stairs.

             
He landed on his side, heard a Coke can crunch under his weight, and even though the wind was knocked out of him, he was on his feet in an instant. Somehow, he’d managed to hold onto his flashlight, and he drew it and his Glock simultaneously, angling the light up under his gun like cops did on TV, so both were aimed up at the stairwell.

             
Sal stood in front of him, spotlighted, halfway down the steps and looking like he was in the middle of a Broadway number the way his arms were raised and his dapper coat was open over an expensive black suit. But instead of a top hat and cane, he was holding a gun, the barrel trained on Carlos.

             
“You thought I was gonna let you get the drop on me?”

             
Carlos tightened his grip on his nine. “Worth a shot.”

             
Sal had not so far, and still didn’t, seem the least bit affected by a threat. Carlos knew the only thing that had stayed Sal’s trigger finger thus far had been the gun pointed at his head. He may have been a cocky shithead, but he wasn’t quite ready to risk simultaneous fire and hope he came out the survivor.

             
His heartbeat ratcheted up a couple of gears, its rhythm becoming a steady drumming. He knew he had maybe one shot, literally. This wasn’t like in the movies, where the villain started pontificating on all his diabolical plans and reasoning, waving his gun around to emphasize his points. No, Sal was a real killer; he didn’t have time for big speeches.

             
But Carlos had to ask, just to solidify his decision. “I gotta know,” he said, deep down knowing the truth. “Are you the one who killed Sam?”

             
No smile, no smirk, no show of emotion whatsoever. Just stone cold indifference. “Yeah.”

             
Carlos pulled the trigger a half a second before he dove to the side. But the blast echoed twice and he realized why as fire tore through his shoulder. His intended tuck-and-roll turned into a sprawl and he cursed as he landed on his side.

             
His shoulder…goddamn his shoulder…he fumbled up with his right arm, gun still in hand, and felt along the top of his left sleeve, fingers finding something wet and warm. Blood.

             
He was still breathing, though it was labored, and the pain was a searing, jagged bolt that felt like it had cleaved his arm off at the shoulder. “Oh, fuck…” Carlos gritted his teeth and tried to feel his way through the blazing agony, tried to figure out how badly he was injured, if he was going to bleed to death. But of course, none of that was as important as the footsteps he heard coming toward him through the darkness.

             
The clip of shoes on dusty concrete was the same as he’d heard a month ago when he’d come here to look for clues. It had been Sal then, too. And now he was lying here, bloody, about to be sent to join his cousin at Sal’s hand.

             
That was not happening.

             
Lips pressed together, groaning internally, he fumbled across the floor with his left hand, just the small movement like a meat cleaver being twisted in his shoulder. But the flashlight was just in front of him, still on, its beam filled up with the swirling dust that had been disturbed. It was like a beacon that would draw Sal right to him. Sweat popped out on his brow from the effort and he gasped, but he got his hand around the slender tube and clicked the device off, plunging the room into blackness once more.

             
Sal was coming closer, so Carlos had no choice. In an effort that felt monumental, he got to his feet and moved, not sure where he was going. He’d gone about twenty strides when he ran into something hard that came up to his waist.

             
The old checkout counter.

             
He felt across the surface, detected gritty dirt and bits of what was most likely ceiling tile, but the counter itself felt sturdy enough. With his good arm, he turned around and levered himself up onto it, the gun mashing his fingers, but he refused to let it go. Then he spun and dropped down onto the other side.

             
It was a wide counter, that had once had space for five or six employees to work within its confines, but was now full of accumulated garbage. Some kind of paper rustled beneath his feet as he dropped down into a crouch, his back to the interior of the counter. The sounds of bottles and cans bumping against one another was obscenely loud. He smelled rat piss and thought he might have even heard one of the little bastards squeak in alarm at his appearance.

             
Sal was moving quickly now, shoes rapping along the floor. Carlos leaned back and tilted his head up, took the gun in both hands though the pressure it put on his oozing shoulder left him breathless, and aimed the nine skyward. When Sal leaned over the counter…

             
A gun shot rang out so close it sounded like a cannon blast and an explosion of particle board signaled that the round had gone through the counter. Shards of plywood peppered his legs.

             
Shit!
He was going to blast apart the whole thing rather than try to draw him out.

             
A second shot penetrated the counter, though further away, the sound echoing off the high ceilings and large expanse of concrete. The third was even further.

             
Carlos knew he had to either retaliate, or sit here until Sal got lucky and put a round through his back. In a small, ashamed part of his mind, he knew he hadn’t expected to live through this. But the thought of that fucker walking away unscathed, thinking about Sam. About Alma. Little Sam. He didn’t just want revenge, he needed it, craved it,
had to have it
.

             
He sent up a silent prayer to whichever God allowed killing, and pushed the pain in his shoulder down someplace where he wouldn’t have to feel it until later. Carlos heaved himself to his feet and spun, flashlight coming on, gun hand steady. The moment Sal appeared in the beam of the Maglite, he pulled the trigger.