“Call her off, Ben,” Robert demanded.
“Sure,” I said. “Just uncuff me and send your partner back to Philly.”
“Ben, god damn it, this is serious!”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that since we first met, Robert.”
He glared at me, then went back to watching the door with Jimmy and the All-American. I could only see their backs, but their heads were in constant motion, trying to spot Erica before she could launch a fresh attack.
It didn’t work.
Three shots rang out from around the corner of the cabin and the QB, about ten feet to Jimmy’s left, flopped backward on the ground.
“Shit!” Robert called out, but it quickly became apparent that Erica was no cop killer. The QB writhed in obvious pain, but there was no blood despite the three puncture holes in his neatly pressed shirt. The body armor he wore beneath it had stopped each slug before they pierced his skin, but at such close range, and in a tight, triangular cluster around his heart, at least one or two of his ribs were likely bruised, if not cracked outright.
None of us saw Erica, but that didn’t stop Jimmy from squeezing off another four rounds in the general direction of where the shots came from. The bullets pinged off trees and the side of the cabin, no more effective in taking her out than if he had grabbed a handful of stones and tossed them toward the same area. He stood for a moment, icy puffs of breath pulsating from his mouth as he considered his options while Robert holstered his gun and came back to where I sat in the back of the squad car.
“Get out here, and call her off,” he growled, yanking me out of the seat. He never heard Jimmy come up behind him, so he never even tried to defend himself as his partner of ten years, the one who always had his back, smashed the butt of his gun into the base of his neck. Robert collapsed in a heap at my feet. Denise got out of Jimmy’s car and screamed but Jimmy ignored her, grabbing my cuffed wrists and shoving me toward the center of the yard, picking up Robert’s gun and tossing it into the woods as we went.
I was getting tired of being right.
Denise and Maggie both cried out, but I couldn’t make out what they said. Jimmy told them to be quiet and stay in the car, which they did. On the ground by Jimmy’s car, the QB was undoing the Velcro on his body armor, reaching a tentative hand underneath to make sure his torso really was still intact. Lying on his back, his breathing labored, he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“Drop the gun and come out or he dies,” Jimmy said, his gun pressed hard against the side of my head. His voice was loud, but it wasn’t a yell. He knew she was close by. Some of the fear in his body language had subsided as well. A human shield tends to have that effect on armed assholes.
We stood there for a moment, waiting for Erica to comply or make her move.
“When did Trish get to you?” I asked.
“Shut up,” he said.
“Was it after Robert called you or before?”
“I said shut your fucking mouth.” He was pissed, but also a little scared. He couldn’t hide it all the way. It was good to hear. I kept pressing.
“If we hadn’t fled Denise’s house that night, would you have killed us all then?”
That earned me a smack on the back of the neck with the butt of his pistol, but not as hard as the one he gave Robert. He needed me awake. Gray spots exploded in my vision but I shook my head until they cleared.
“How much they paying you?” I asked, pushing my luck. I needed to keep him distracted enough for Erica to make her move, whatever that move might be.
As if reading my thoughts, she stepped into view from the corner of the cabin where she’d taken out the QB. She had her HK P30 leveled at Jimmy’s head, or at least the half of it that was visible from where he hid behind me. The bullet would go right through my brain if she was off by even half an inch, but I wasn’t worried. Her hands were steady, and her eyes were laser-focused.
“Drop it,” Jimmy repeated, although it came closer to sounding like a plea than a demand. “Now,” he added, trying to sound tougher.
Erica held her pose for another few seconds, then noticed the QB at her feet, struggling to get to his knees. She lifted her foot and brought it down hard on the side of his face. His head whipped into the loose dirt and he lay still.
Jimmy pressed the gun harder into the side of my head. I squeezed my eyes shut but refused to give him the pleasure of a grunt or cry. “I’ll blow his fucking brains out,” he said. “Swear to God. Drop the gun.”
I kept my eyes shut, waiting to feel the zip of the bullet as it passed by my ear into his head. What I heard instead was the sound of Erica’s pistol hitting the ground by her right foot, next to the unconscious QB. I opened my eyes and stared at her in disbelief.
“Kick it behind you,” Jimmy said.
She did. I tried to ask her what the hell she was doing with no more than a look, but she never took her eyes off Jimmy. I was starting to feel less confident about her plan. When Jimmy spoke, I felt even worse. It was little more than an exhalation of breath tinged with the hint of words. If his mouth wasn’t pressed against the back of my ear, I never would have known what he said. But I did hear, and knew it wasn’t good.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
“Erica!” I shouted. Not soon enough.
With quicker speed than I expected for a man his size, Jimmy took his gun from the side of my head, pointed it at Erica, and pulled the trigger.
He got only two shots off before I reacted, but they both found their target. Erica’s shirt puffed out tiny bursts of thread where the bullets punched through. I saw her legs buckle but never watched her hit the ground. The adrenaline had kicked in, and all my attention was on Jimmy.
My head jerked back like a hydraulic hammer. I was hoping to find the weak, rubbery cartilage of his nose, but whatever I hit was as solid as the back of my skull. It wobbled me for a second, but I still gave better than I got. The hollow clunk I heard in my own head must have been echoing through his because he let go of my arm and took a step back. Before he could recover, I turned and swept his feet out from under him with one swift leg hook. All 220ish pounds of him dropped without any attempt to break his fall. When his head bounced off the gravel, his hand opened and the gun popped out. I kicked it as far as I could, not caring where it landed, then pulled back with every intention of punting his chin through his brain.
Maybe if I’d broken his nose earlier instead of just conking him on the forehead, I’d have had better luck. As it happened, he wasn’t quite dazed enough and caught my foot before it could connect. With a renewed sense of purpose, he twisted my leg and pulled me off balance. I landed hard on my shoulder, biting my tongue. I spat out a mouthful of blood just as he climbed on top of me, lifted my upper half off the ground by the collar, and began pounding the side of my face like a man working out his anger issues on a heavy bag.
Three punches in I must have become too heavy to hold up, because he let go of my collar and my already throbbing head hit the ground. I couldn’t see out of my left eye, partially from the shock of the blows and partially from the steady stream of blood flowing into it from a gash in my eyebrow that felt big enough to dock a canoe in. Sharp, stinging pain spiked out from my orbital bone. If it wasn’t broken already, one or two more good shots would do it. Jimmy’s arm was cocked back to finish the job when his body jerked, and a strange look came over his face. With my one good eye, I saw his expression go from rage, to surprise, to fear.
And the fear was pure white. It spread across his face like water soaking through a paper towel. He reached over his shoulder and touched a spot just below the base of his neck. His fingers came back bloody and he staggered to his feet, but that didn’t last long. His legs gave out and he sat hard on the ground, holding a spot just above the top of his bullet proof vest that was leaking blood at an alarming rate.
Erica stood over him, the barrel of her HK P30 still smoking from the two shots she put into the back of his body armor, and the third that clipped the top of the vest and got lodged in the base of his neck. The vest slowed it down, but it was still dangerously close to his spinal column. He needed to get to a hospital, but that wasn’t high on her priority list at the moment.
“Are you okay?” she asked me.
“Yeah,” I said, blinking the blood out of my eyes.
Erica produced a set of handcuff keys she’d taken from the unconscious QB. As she freed my wrists I said, “Are you okay?”
