Saint/Sinner (14 page)

“Toss it,” Walter said.

Or not,
Jack thought, and fished the phone out with a bloody hand, and tossing it across the room. Walter caught it just barely, juggling the cell phone with his left hand for a moment. Then he wiped the blood on his pants, just before the device began vibrating, followed by the familiar ringtone.

As Walter put the phone to his ear, Jack calculated the distance between them. Too far, and he was sitting on his ass. If he were on his feet, then maybe he would have had a chance to rush Walter before the man could line up and fire a shot.

As if reading his thoughts, Walter’s eyes settled on him, and Jack thought,
Dammit.

“Yeah,” Walter said into the phone, one eye on Jack, the other on the door. He listened for a moment, then said, “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”

Jack listened, but hearing the conversation from one side was aggravating.

“Gorman?” Walter was saying into the phone. “Goddammit, I should have known.”

Gorman?
Jack thought
. As in Gorman and Smith?

He could practically see the cogs turning in Walter’s head as the other man struggled to process what he was being told through the phone.

Then, with more confidence than Jack would have thought possible from a man in his position, Walter said, “They didn’t tell you everything, did they? Who I really am. What I’m doing here. If you knew, getting me back into the city and handing me over to them would be the last thing on your mind.”

What the hell is he talking about? What are you doing, Walter?

But of course he knew what Walter was doing, even before the man said, “Peanuts. That’s what they’re paying you. But my counteroffer is enough to retire on a hundred lifetimes over.”

Oh, dammit. Is he doing what I think he’s doing?

“You won’t have to worry about Gorman and Smith,” Walter was saying into the phone. “Not for long. They’ll be too busy to come after you. Or anyone.” He listened, then, “We can discuss the details later. For now, you just remember one thing: If anything happens to me, you don’t see a dime of that forty million.”

Forty million? Did he just say
forty fucking million?

“What’s going on?” Jack asked, when Walter turned off the phone and shoved it into his back pocket.

“I think I just came to an agreement with our friend out there,” Walter said. “I took a chance that he’d be like you.”

“Like me?”

“For sale.”

Millions,
Jack thought.
Shit, the things I wouldn’t do for fucking
millions.

“Millions,” Jack said out loud, if just to hear the word coming out of his own mouth and prove that it wasn’t all a bad dream.

“This was never just about the money,” Walter said. “Yeah, some of it was, but the other factors…they were always more important. At least to me.”

Jack wasn’t sure if Walter was trying to convince him, or himself.

“Am I going to like this agreement?” Jack asked.

Walter shook his head. “Not one bit.”

“Saw that coming.”

Walter pursed his lips and gave Jack something that looked almost…apologetic? “It’s not your fault, you know.”

“What’s not my fault?”

“How badly everything got. Allie, the dog, those guys out there.” He shook his head. “I didn’t see any of this coming, either. But hey, I’m nothing if not flexible. Always have been. Learned that the hard way when I went to work for Gorman and Smith.” He snorted, and Jack thought there was a lot of bitterness there. “They don’t play around, those guys.”

“Who? Gorman and Smith? I thought that was just the name of the company.”

“It is. But there are people behind it…” Walter shook his head. “Anyway, it’s not important. It’s time to be flexible again. Improvise.”

Aw, man,
Jack thought, when he saw how Walter was holding the gun. He’d seen that before—Walter was psyching himself up to do something he didn’t want to.

“I’m sorry,” Walter said.

“You think you can do it?” Jack asked.

Walter looked down at the gun. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He held up his left hand, the knuckles still raw and covered in specks of Jack’s blood. “I didn’t think I could do this, either, but desperate times…”

“There’s a big difference between blindsiding someone because you have no choice, and what you’re thinking about doing right now.”

“It wasn’t difficult for you earlier, when you wanted me to get to work.”

Jack thought about lying, but he didn’t, because Walter was too smart. More than that, Walter already knew what he was capable of, because Jack had shown him with his Ka-Bar knife earlier.

“It’s part of the job,” Jack said.

“You like it? The job?”

“It’s a living,” Jack shrugged.

“I suppose it is,” Walter said. “The problem is, Jack—that’s not your real name, right?” He shook his head before Jack could answer. “Doesn’t matter. I’d rather not know anyway. Jack’s generic enough that I probably won’t dwell on it too much after tonight.” He paused for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts. Finally, he said, “The problem is, Jack, I don’t have much of a choice. I knew this was possible when I started on this road, that I might actually have to get my hands dirty, even bloody. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but here we are.”

“I’m surprised you’re not going to let Monroe do it. Keep your hands clean.”

Walter looked down at his bloody knuckles again. “My hands are already dirty. Besides, I need him to know I’m capable of this, so he doesn’t think he can push me around. Another lesson I learned the hard way, Jack: When you’re dealing with bad men, you can’t let them think they can bend you over whenever they want.”

Jack sighed and leaned against the wall. For some reason, he didn’t feel like fighting what was coming. “Before you do anything, at least tell me who you are. Who you
really
are.”

“I’m Walter.”

“Besides that.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Walter said. “It’s a long, winding story. The truth is, I needed you to succeed. To leave here with the goods. But something went wrong. You weren’t supposed to harm me, but you went beyond that, didn’t you?”

“I had no choice.”

“Of course you did. You just chose the wrong one,” Walter said, and lifted the gun and aimed it at him.

“Wait!” Jack shouted.

Suddenly, he wanted to live. Suddenly, he wasn’t ready to just accept what was about to happen.

His mind spun and words clamored to get out of his mouth, but the only thing he could muster was, “Let’s talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Walter said.

“You don’t want to do this.” He started to get up, his back pressed against the wall for support, and he swore he could feel every bump in the wallpaper behind him. “Once you pull that trigger, there’s no turning back, Walter. That’s it, it’s permanently etched into your brain. Trust me, I know what it’s like. You think you can just forget about tonight? You’re lying to yourself. It’s going to haunt you for the rest of your life.”

Walter sighed, and for a moment—just a moment—Jack thought he wasn’t going to do it, that he had gotten through to the man.

But then Walter said, “Sorry, Jack,” and pulled the trigger.

Allie wasn’t sure
if she was screaming as she dived to the floor. The walls inside the narrow back hallway exploded, chunks of Sheetrock flying through the air like missiles, some pelting her, but most missing and spreading across the floor. The lightbulb above her exploded and sparks showered the air, leaving the only source of light coming from behind the man with the Uzi. He was shooting wildly, swinging his weapon left and right, but he must have lost sight of her as soon as the corridor went dark.

Pressed against the floor on her stomach, she couldn’t get up or retreat, which left her with only one option. She stuck her gun forward and fired up the hallway, knowing she wasn’t going to hit anything, but desperately needing to make the man with the Uzi dart for cover. Which was exactly what he did.

She didn’t hesitate, didn’t waste a heartbeat, and was scrambling from the debris-strewn floor when the tall man who had been talking on the phone started shooting. Except it wasn’t at her. The mystery of why lasted for a second, when she glimpsed the flash of white fur
(Apollo!)
racing around the living room, drawing the man’s attention—and bullets—to him.

Woman’s best friend,
she thought, unable to stop the stupid grin spreading across her face even as she pushed up to her knees, in time to see Apollo disappear into the kitchen. The island granite counter—or what little was left of it—blew apart as the tall man fired after the dog.

Run, boy, run!

A blur of motion drew her eyes back to the immediate danger, as the man with the Uzi reappeared in the opening in front of her, blocking her path to the chaos in the kitchen.

She snapped off a shot—too fast—and chipped the corner where the back hallway met the living room, and the man pulled his head back before he could unload on her a second time. But he didn’t stay hidden for long. He stuck his right hand—and the Uzi—into the opening and pulled the trigger.

She launched herself to her feet and lunged to the right, smashing into an obliterated section of the wall and hugging it as the floor and far wall came undone against the onslaught of full-auto fire. The man obviously couldn’t see what he was shooting at, and was pointing his weapon in the general vicinity of where he had last seen her.

Allie didn’t think there was anything left in the back hallway to be destroyed, but she was very wrong as more Sheetrock exploded almost in tune to the cyclic whirring of the submachine gun in front of her. The man didn’t stop shooting until he had run out of bullets, when he finally jerked the Uzi back behind the wall and she heard the
click
of his magazine ejecting and the man scrambling to reload.

“Don’t open the fucking door!” someone screamed. It sounded like the tall man, but he, along with Apollo, had vanished out of her view somewhere to the left of the kitchen.

Then Apollo was barking again, except this time it sounded slightly muffled, almost as if he was…

Outside the house!

How had Apollo gotten outside?

Shut up and run!
a voice boomed inside her head.

And she did. Allie pushed off the wall, spun around, and ran toward the back of the hallway, the basement door so tantalizingly close and yet so far. Thank God it was still ajar and she only had to grab the doorknob and throw the door open, then let the darkness inside swallow her up as she felt the top landing under her soles. She didn’t stop running until she had reached the middle of the concrete steps, and only then did she slow down until she had stopped completely, twisting around and dropping into a crouch—

The door was swinging open and a figure was moving in the doorframe by the time she had turned completely around. She fired.

The man’s head snapped back and he dropped, followed by the clatter of a weapon falling. The man had collapsed partially in the doorframe, and one of his legs was keeping the door from closing, giving her a decent view of the destroyed hallway beyond.

“Shit!” someone hissed from the other side of the door.

She didn’t dare move, or lower her gun, and waited for a target to appear, but none did. Instead, the body she’d shot began sliding backward—someone was pulling it—until the man finally cleared the doorframe, allowing the door to close back up. She thought she heard voices again, but with the door closed it was difficult to be sure.

The gun in her hand was feeling light, but Allie remained frozen, the gun unmoving, while her heart hammered against her chest.

Reload,
a voice inside her head commanded.
Reload the gun now!

But she didn’t move. Even if she wasn’t rusty, it would have taken too long to swap magazines. Three seconds at least. Not long by any stretch, but that was three seconds too long to be without a loaded gun—

The doorknob moved slightly, and she put a round through the wooden frame, at dead center. Heavy footsteps echoed as whoever was on the other side took a couple of quick steps back. The doorknob didn’t move again.

Silence.

She finally forced her legs to move and took one step backward, then two. She repeated the process until she was standing at the bottom of the steps. She kept her eyes and the gun focused on the door while devoting a part of her attention to slowing down her heartbeat. All the days and weeks and months of practice at the range came flooding back, and she found that she wasn’t anxious at all.

She was just…
calm.

She hadn’t heard anything fall after her last shot, so she had probably missed. Not that it changed anything; the goal of the shot was to let them know she was still dangerous, and to discourage them from trying to come at her head-on. The prospect of having to face off against another Uzi made her shiver involuntarily.

Maybe her warning shot worked, and maybe it didn’t, but no one came through the door.

Allie took two more quick steps away from the stairs before shooting a glance over at the basement window behind and to her right. A figure moved on the other side of the rectangular opening, and she swiveled around, the gun raised to fire—

Big brown eyes were watching her curiously.

Allie couldn’t help herself, and smiled.

A dog versus an Uzi. She’d take the dog every time.

*