After a rigorous day of training and preparing for my big night, Van, Cliff, Jim, Steve, Kyle, Ace, War, and I arrived at Lou’s at precisely six thirty, accompanied by a box of fabulous trophies in the shape of gun-toting action figures. The FSC trophy was just what I needed to complete the collection on my mantelpiece at home. Six zillion basketball, volleyball, softball statuettes, most often of a girl playing the game, and now one guy with a gun. How phallic would that be?
I would have been more zealous about winning a prize if I hadn’t been as nervous as the starting pitcher at the state championships. Completely, petrifyingly nervous, and worried that my fastpitch was not up to speed.
As if it was conspiring to set the perfect gothic atmosphere, the weather had turned from balmy, sunny October to typical Seattle weather—fifty-five with a wind out of the west carrying a waft of impending rain.
I’d changed out of my FSC battle clothes and into tight skinny leg jeans that made me look tall and all leg. I also wore my spiky party sandals, a metallic magenta cami with spaghetti straps, a shiny black belt, and a black crop jacket. Cliff wore his ubiquitous shorts and a short-sleeved dress shirt. Jim was dressed in a dress shirt and sports jacket. Steve had put on jeans and a polo. Van wore jeans, button-down shirt, and a sports jacket, though I’d been kind of longing to see him in a shirt and tie, like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in
Men in Black
or Agent Jack Malone. Guess that would have been a giveaway. The three FSC instructors had changed into civilian clothes.
We blew into Lou’s with a precipitous gust of wind and chose a long booth and accompanying table in the midst of the mixed bag of customers. Seattle is not the fashion capital of the world and has no pretensions to be. It was, after all, the birthplace of grunge. Which meant that people here dressed however they pleased, from fashionable to homeless couture to drag queen. Two of the drag queen variety sat at a table in the corner with their faces obscured.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Neither of them were the right size to be Goon.
The Bobs were back on duty and incognito. I recognized them at a booth by the window. I felt like someone in a
Where’s Waldo
book. Where are the FBI agents and how can you tell?
War set the trophy box down on the table as the gang took seats and began perusing the menu.
“Sit down, R, and stop ogling the prizes.” Cliff motioned me into a seat. “And the prize for eager beaver camper, the girl with the mostest, and I mean moistest”—his gaze slid up my double Ds—“goes to Reilly.”
I rolled my eyes and played along. “I’d like to thank the academy and all my long-suffering cohorts at FSC…” I remained standing. The seat Cliff had indicated was sandwiched between him and Steve. No way. I could barely look at Steve without losing my lunch. And Cliff just wanted to feel me up.
Cliff patted the seat next to him again. “Come on, baby. Have a seat. I’ll buy you a drink.”
Cheeky, I’ll give him that. Van was standing right next to me. It was patently obvious to even the casual observer that Van and I had a thing. We’d dropped all pretenses of feeling otherwise. Ket was already on the rampage. One more inducement might just draw him out.
I gave Cliff a weak smile. I couldn’t sit. I just couldn’t force myself. I was too fidgety, too jumpy. The door opened and I had to fight the urge to whip around and look for Goon.
I grabbed Van’s arm and smiled up at him. “I’m going to go powder my nose.”
Van flashed me a look that said, “We just got here.” He leaned over and whispered in my ear. “You okay?”
“Preshow jitters.”
“I’m going with you.”
I couldn’t dissuade him. “I’ll be right back, boys.”
“I’ll get you a drink,” Cliff said. “What do you want?”
“Ménage à tini.”
Cliff looked altogether too hopeful. “You got it, baby.”
“I think Cliff has a thing for us,” I whispered to Van as we walked off. “Did you see the look he gave us when I ordered the Ménage à tini? He wants me and you. Can you sic your agents on him? I’m the jealous type.”
“After this operation goes down, he’ll be history.”
I did a big, fake, sad sigh. “And so will my movie career.”
The ladies’ room was opposite the men’s room down a small hallway at the back of the bar. It was a one-person affair. I knocked on the door and when there was no answer, tried the knob. The door fell open.
“Are you just going to linger about in hallways?” I asked Van, indicating that no way was he going into the ladies’ room with me.
“I’ll be here waiting. For you, and you alone,
baby
.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, man, don’t say it like that. Not if you ever want to get lucky again.”
He grinned. I stepped into the bathroom. He caught my arm. “Not until I give it the all clear.”
I pushed the door all the way open. “One toilet, a pedestal sink, a side table, no cabinets, some soft soap in a pump, folded paper towels. No place to hide. I think we’re clear.” I pushed past him and closed the door in his face, locking it behind me. Force of habit. Not like Van was going to let anyone walk in on me.
I sighed and did the cliché gaze-at-myself-in-the-mirror routine. The swelling of my goose egg had gone down. My real minerals makeup had done a decent job of covering the purple-green bump left behind. As a woman on the make, I looked pretty good. As the heroine of an action-adventure story, I pretty much sucked. I already had the deer-in-the-headlights, please-don’t-shoot-me look on my face and the game hadn’t even begun. I tried the sinister
Dirty Harry
sneer. Somehow it didn’t come off as intimidating on me as it did on Clint.
My cute little party bag hung from my shoulder on a sleek metal chain. The silver metallic bag held my gun, my super high shine lip gloss, my cell, and the fake dongle. I’d driven to Lou’s with a cavalcade of cops following me. When I’d reached Lou’s, I jammed my car keys into my jacket pocket. No room for them in the purse, poor things. Now I jingled when I walked.
I snapped open my purse and pulled the gloss from my bag, assessing the odds of wedging my keys in. It was pretty much a no-go. I twisted the lid off my gloss and was just lifting it to my lips when my focus changed from my reflection in the mirror to the reflection of the closet door on the wall behind me. Pulled there by a glimpse of movement.
The closet door had been hidden behind the bathroom door when I’d unceremoniously interrupted Van’s inspection. It swung open silently and suddenly before my eyes, exposing not towels and janitorial supplies, but Goon with an evil, triumphant grin on his face.
My gaze darted to the main bathroom door as I calculated whether I could make the quick dash and reach Van and the safety that waited on the other side. I opened my mouth to scream. Before I could move or make a sound, Goon pointed the gun at the back of my head and shook his head in a “no” motion, all reflected in the mirror.
I froze.
In an instant, Goon grabbed me, pressed his hand over my mouth, and a gun to my head. My lip-gloss tube slid nearly noiselessly into the sink like a bar of slippery soap. The powder soft gloss applicator hit the floor with all the oomph and volume of a marshmallow.
I was toast. Damned by silent makeup.
As Goon dragged me into the closet, I saw my pitiful life flash before me. The closet was tiny, barely enough space for both of us. Not that Goon intended to linger in tight spaces, not this one anyway. Someone, probably Goon, had cut a hole into the floor. Goon pulled me down it, onto a wobbly ladder lit with an electric lantern and into the pits of hell.
Suddenly the answer to the question I should have pursued hit me, why Madam Lou’s? Now the why was easy. Lou’s was on the edge of the Seattle Underground, our buried city that spanned a mile and a half circumference and varied in depth from ten to thirty feet. No one expected there to be an entrance to it from Lou’s. No one but Goon.
Over a hundred years ago, Seattle burned to the ground. After the fire, the city wanted to regrade the streets to a higher level so that the crapper devices—toilets—would actually flush and not back up and the sewers would work properly. Only the city was slow in going about it, so slow that merchants got overeager and began building without waiting. The city finally got on the ball and raised the streets, but not the boardwalks. The merchants found themselves with first floors that were now basements, ten feet or more below the raised streets.
The guides at the Underground Tour make it all sound like a big joke. Horse teams following off the streets and down into showroom windows. The merchants didn’t think it was funny at all. Eventually they resigned themselves to the “first floors as basements” state, all those fancy entrances gone to waste, and built raised sidewalks from the buildings to the raised streets so that people would stop falling off the roads.
Ta da! The birth of the Underground. Today, no one uses the Underground except the Underground Tour, which uses only a piece of it. No one but Goon, who I was certain was leading me to my doom, never to be found again, lying in a tomb beneath the bustling streets of Seattle.
I didn’t find the Underground any funnier than our pioneer forefathers. All the way down the ladder, I calculated my odds of success of jumping and running or climbing and running. Neither option seemed particularly viable if I wanted to survive. Goon had one hand on the ladder and one hand with a gun pressed to my head as he climbed down behind me. I had both hands on the ladder and a gun in my purse, but no way to gracefully get it.
I’d played the hostage in several of our earlier game scenarios at FSC. None of them included the Underground. All of them included the cavalry rushing in to save me at just the right moment. What if the cavalry didn’t come? Where was Van? Just how long did he think I took in the bathroom?
Goon hit solid ground, grabbed the lantern, grabbed me by the waist, and pulled me off the ladder. “Hurry!” he whispered, shoving me forward.
Lou’s sat on the corner, which presented us with four directions we could head. Absolutely diabolical. When Van finally came after me, he’d only have a twenty-five percent chance of making the right choice first off. Goon didn’t know about my tracking device.
“Hey! Me hurry? Who jumped the gun?” I was stalling for time, willing Van to get a move on as I tried to get my head in the game. Fastpitch was a mental skill game. Evidently, so was staying alive.
Goon grabbed my arm and thrust me off to the left, gun still pressed to my head. The Underground was pitch-black and smelled every one of its hundred odd years of existence. Dank. Dusty. Depressingly like death. And maybe rats. There had to be rats.
The ground was uneven and not fit for strappy party sandals with fabulous spiky heels. I stumbled. Goon squeezed my already bruised arm and kept me upright. I winced. He ignored me and pressed forward.
“Hey,” I said again, more conversationally this time. “Why don’t I just give you the dongle right here? You tell me where I can find my grandpa and we’re even.”
“Not this time, toots.”
“Toots?” I said, stumbling again. “You’ve been watching too many gangster movies.”
I felt him grin. In the lantern light he looked sinister and ghoulish. Happy Halloween a few weeks early, Reilly. Stephen King should have set a horror novel down here in the dank scariness.
“What’s different about this time?” I asked, still being propelled forward and trying desperately to think of a way to get to my gun and reverse our fortunes. Or remove my belt and buckle him to death.
“This time I stash you while I verify the authenticity of the dongle. Then we talk about Grandpa and returning you to the fresh air above.”
“I get it. I’m Persephone now. Instead of six pomegranate seeds, the price of freedom is a dongle.”
“You’re a sharp one.”
“People are going to miss me,” I said reasonably. “My friends are going to miss me.”
“So what if they do?”
“They’ll come after me.” I was wearing a tracking device. Not that I mentioned it. Okay, so I had the upper hand. Worse came to worst, I let myself be stashed and Van find me. Assuming I wasn’t stashed as a corpse. “What if I tell you I don’t have the dongle on me? What do you do then?”
“I strip-search you first to make sure you’re telling the truth.”
Gruesome thought.
“If you are, I ransom you for it. It’s a foolproof plan.”
I hadn’t counted on Goon being so smart. That’s what comes of underestimating people.
“You’re still not being paid extra to murder and maim, right?” I asked as I stumbled through a cobweb, stuttering and spitting.
“No, but if I have to off someone, or something goes wrong and someone dies, that’s business.”
When the Underground was first built, the people of Seattle used it as a covered walkway. The builders installed glass block skylights at intervals for that cool, natural lighting effect. The lusty, lonely loggers of old liked to linger beneath the skylights and look up the skirts of the ladies who walked at the new street level. The whores, or seamstresses as Seattle liked to call them, used the skylights to advertise their wares, sparking outrage among the morally minded of the city. Eventually the Underground shut down, but the skylights remained. I glanced up, trying to keep track of how many we passed. My own breadcrumb trail system.
Goon kept propelling me forward as if the hound of Baskerville was on our tail.
A rat ran by, his shadow large and grotesque in the lamplight. I screamed. I hate rats.
Goon cupped his hand over my mouth, stifling my scream. “Shut up! Shut up or I’ll kill you.”
Goon’s tone scared me silent. The stench of his rank sweat, not the sweat of exertion, the sweat of stress, mingled with the gloom of the Underground and I felt his desperation. A desperate man was a dangerous man.
This wasn’t the same easygoing Goon I knew and hated. Van’s warning came to me. The stakes around the dongle reached higher with each day that passed. Someone was squeezing Goon to make good. Which scared the spit out of me.
Escape, escape, escape!
This Goon didn’t give a rip about coming back to release me. This Goon was a shoot-and-stow Goon. I’d be dead toast if Van couldn’t find me and soon.
I don’t know what changed in that instant, but my FSC survival training kicked into high gear and the warrior in me came out. I wobbled forward, looking for a weapon. Goon kept cursing and perspiring. I worried the stench would overpower me.
“Faster, bitch.” His voice held all the promise of an itchy trigger finger.
“I’m moving as fast as I can,” I hissed back to him. “Have you ever tried running in three-inch heels? I’m not one of Charlie’s Angels you know.” I stalled.
He nearly yanked my shoulder from its socket.
I tugged back. “Let me take my heels off. We’ll move faster without them.”
Goon hesitated. I bent to remove my shoe. Shoe with a sharp, pointy heel. Looked like a weapon to me. I removed the first one and dropped it. I took off the second one, twirled around and beat Goon on the head with the heel of my shoe, ignoring the sickening thuds of shoe meets flesh, aiming for his eyes and windpipe. He dropped the lantern. Then he lost his grip on his gun as he tried to protect his head. It clattered into the darkness.
I seized the opportunity and gave him a knee to the groin. Goon groaned and went down on his knees. As he cupped his boys, I grabbed his head, pulled it back, and punched his neck with all the force in me, silently thanking War for my secret spy move, and regretting I didn’t have any coins to pack my punch.
Goon gagged and his eyes rolled back in his head. He slumped forward, unconscious or dead. I didn’t take time to check.
I grabbed the lantern and did a quick sweep for his gun. I didn’t see it. There was no time to lose. I hated to bash and dash, but there you have it. I pulled my cell from my purse. Damn it all! No coverage beneath the city. Wait until I filed my complaint!
My little Berretta sparkled up at me from the recesses of my bag. I pulled it out, slid my shoes back on, and ran back in the direction I’d come, pretending I was Drew Barrymore, Lucy Lui, or Cameron Diaz—one of the Angels, anyway. Those girls kicked butt and ran in high heels as if they were sneakers.
My little bag swung against me as I ran. My keys jingle-jangled with every step I took. The lantern bounced in my hand. Retracing my steps, I screamed for Van. As far as I could tell, the goon and I had made only one turn in the Underground, one turn three skylights back. I screamed and counted skylights, looking for my turn and my way back out.
I found it, spun around it. And ran right into a six-four drag queen with enough force to knock my breath and the lantern away. Soft, feminine curves, he did not have. As I gasped for breath, the drag queen grabbed my arm, wrenched it back, and pulled my gun from my hand.
In the next instant, he pulled me against him and pressed the gun against my head. “Miss me, baby?”
“It’s been less than twenty-four hours, Ket.” I tried to keep my voice even. Where was Van? Where were my special agents? Evasive action. Stall. “Nice dress. Get it at the Big and Tall Man’s Drag shop? Or did you borrow it from someone in the WNBA?”
Ket shook me until I thought my head would rattle off. “See what you drove me to?”
Hard as it was to suppress the obvious smart retort, I kept my mouth shut. I kind of liked my brains.
“Looking for someone?” Ket tipped the lantern upright with his foot. “I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for him.” Ket laughed like he was high. “I took him out before I came after you. I left him unconscious with his head bleeding.”
“What did you hit him with?” My voice pitched into panicked, hysteria territory. I struggled, wanting to punch a hole straight through his windpipe. “He’s FBI. They’ll give you the death penalty.”
“Such concern.” He gave my arm another good wrenching. He would have been good with the rack.
I winced and took a deep breath to keep my knees from buckling under the pain. “You’re hurting me, Ket. You don’t want to break my arm. You know how good I am with my arms.”
“Pick up the lantern, bitch, and let’s get moving.”
I did as he asked. “Where are we going? We can’t go back the way we came.”
He laughed. “You think I’m stupid? There’s another way out. My limo’s waiting in a back alley.”
“So it’s off into the sunset for us? I don’t think so.” I winced again as he tightened his grip.
“I do. Let’s move.” I fought him as he tried to spin me around and point me back in the direction I’d left Goon.
“No! No!” I screamed, struggling. “There’s a dangerous mafia goon that way.”
He managed to flip me around, bringing us face to muzzle with a submachine gun–toting man who looked like he meant business.
“Hold it right there.”
“Huff?” I asked, stunned. “How in the world?”
“I told you I’d be watching your backside, babe.” The lamplight gave him a huge, grotesque shadow and lit up his grin like the Cheshire Cat’s. I was betting he had the Cheshire’s little cat feet, too. “This your boyfriend?”
“Ex,” I replied.
“Thought he’d be more masculine. I didn’t figure you for the type to go for a cross-dresser.”
“The drag queen routine came after we broke up. Personally, he could have used my advice with his makeup. I was a model—”
“Shut up! Shut up, both of you.” Ket pressed the gun against my temple with enough force that I could feel a barrel-shaped bruise forming. “Move and I kill her.”
FSC had given us only minimal training in hostage negotiation. Although great sport and satisfying in its own warped way, working the perp and insulting his manhood probably wasn’t the greatest idea.
Huff shrugged like what the heck, do it. Okay, so that peeved me. Until I realized his game. Ket pulled the gun from my head and pointed it at Huff.
Both men looked eerie and surreal lit long in shadow.
“My piece is bigger than your piece,” Huff said conversationally. “Drop your weapon.”
“Drop yours, asshole.” Ket sounded furious and crazy.
“You think you can outshoot me?” Huff laughed. “Drop it before I make Swiss cheese out of you.”
Desperation made me fearless. While Ket focused on Huff, I knocked his gun arm with the lantern. He squeezed off a shot, but it went wild.
Huff surged forward and pressed the submachine gun against Ket’s head. “Let her go. Point blank I never miss.”
Ket released me.
“On your knees,” Huff ordered Ket.
Ket fell onto his knees. Huff had his gun trained on him.
I collapsed against Huff. “I think I love you,” I said, and kissed him full on the mouth in front of Ket, temporarily forgiving him for the whole dongle episode.
He grinned. “What about V?”
“Him, too.” Tears ran down my cheeks.
“Hey, don’t cry.”
I bit my lip and tried to hold back the tears.
“I should have been here sooner. Sal gave me the slip back there.” Huff gave me a squeeze.
“S’okay.”
“Give me your car keys, babe. I need an escape vehicle.”
I shimmied them out of my pocket and handed them over.
“Good girl.” He pulled something from his pocket and handed it to me.
It took me a minute to realize it was a flash drive like the one on my key chain. “What the…?”
Huff grinned. “Yeah, you had it all the time,” he said, leaving me feeling like Dorothy in Oz. “That one’s yours.” He nodded toward Ket. “He’s been a real asshole to you.”
I nodded.
Huff tipped my chin up and gave me a light kiss on the lips. “Things got out of hand. Didn’t mean to put you in danger. I’ll make it up to you. Promise.”
I stared at him and nodded, still feeling his kiss on my lips.
Huff gave me a slow smile. “If only things were different…”
I knew what he meant. But he and I would never work out. He wasn’t totally tall enough for my tastes. I’d be stuck in flats forever.
“Pick up your gun, R. Take the lantern, and head back the way you came.” He pointed the way. “I know another way out. I’ll take our boy here and go that way.”
Ket was scowling and looking like he wanted to kill both Huff and me.
I nodded. “Huff?”
“Yeah?”
“My grandpa?”
“He’s fine. The cops have him. The man’s an ox, but he swears like a sissy.”
I laughed and a tear of joy trickled down my cheek. Huff really did know Dutch. “Were you…?”
“Watching him? Yeah.”
“Thank you,” I said, totally relieved. “I really do have a guardian angel.”
“I don’t know about that,” Huff said. “Dark angel, maybe.”
I retrieved my gun. “Be careful.”
“Always.” He pointed again. “Did you kill Sal?”
“I don’t know. I punched him in the windpipe and fled. I left him back there.” I pointed in the direction I’d come.
Huff nodded as he gave me the up and down. “Hot shoes.”
I smiled through my tears.
“Hot woman, too,” he said. “Now go.”
I took off down the tunnel, running in my heels as if they were Nike Airs.
I’d gone maybe half a block when I heard a gunshot. I convinced myself it was a car backfiring on the street above. Cars did that all the time on the steep Seattle hills. A backfire didn’t bear investigating. Not like a gunshot.
I twisted my ankle and my shoe heel snapped. I stopped to fix my shoe and heard footsteps and raspy, labored panting behind me. I lurched forward, ready to go it lopsided.
“Hold it right there, toots.” Only the words came out hoarse and raspy.
I froze and turned to look behind me. Goon had his gun aimed at me. He was holding his throat with his other hand. Even in the dim light he looked green to me. Probably I’d done a bit of windpipe damage to him. He was breathing hard and labored. Why hadn’t I heard him before? It may have had something to do with my own heart hammering away in my ears.
“You look terrible,” I said to him without a trace of sympathy. “You need a medic. You don’t have the energy to take me hostage.”
And then in a twinkling, I heard down the path the prancing and running of a dozen FBI agents. More rapid than eagles, the agents came with weapons drawn and bright lights obscuring them from view.
Blinded by the light, I shielded my eyes with my arm.
“Drop the gun, Sal!”
“Van!” I screamed, and started toward him. Or rather, the light. Which I think meant him. Light at the end of the tunnel took on a whole new meaning.
“Stay put, R.”
“I’m in the crossfire here, V. I really, really want to go to the light.” I imagined him smiling, though he could have been all serious FBI.
“When it’s safe, R. Drop your weapon, Sal. We outgun you. We have snipers. Let the girl go. Come in peacefully, and maybe we can cut you a deal.”
“No deal. I still have Toots’s gramps.” Goon’s wheeze sounded worse. He gave a big, bloody-sounding cough that made smoker’s hack sound melodious by comparison.
“We have Dutch. Safe and sound,” Van said.
I almost collapsed with relief as Van confirmed they’d found Grandpa bound and stashed in a nearby alley, giving Goon enough details to convince him of the truth.
Goon hack, hack, hacked again.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, taking some small amount of pity on Goony boy. “He needs a doctor, V. Offer him a trip to Harborview before he hacks his insides up. I gave Goon a good chop in the throat. Goon, take whatever V offers and get help.”
“What she said,” Van said. “Medical attention.”
Goon wheezed out a curse and dropped his weapon.
“Hands above your head where we can see them.”
Goon wheezed a second time and held his hands over his head, looking like it took his last ounce of energy to do it. He swayed, ready to go down for the count. Two agents ran past me and cuffed him. They had to hold him up to do it. Several other agents kept their guns trained on Goon.
I ran to the light and Van, and collapsed into his arms. “Boy am
I
glad to see you! Ket didn’t kill you, after all.”
“I have a hard head.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Thank God for tracking devices.” He paused. “You knew about Ket attacking me?” he asked, suspicion and surprise in his voice. “And I thought I was going to have to apologize for not fully checking the bathroom.”
I blushed, but I doubt anyone noticed in the dark. “I
did
slam the door in your face.”
“Yeah, that.” He looked around. “Ket?”
I did a mental head slap. “Ket! Huff has him.”
I hesitated just a second out of loyalty for Huff. I couldn’t withhold evidence from Van. That would be wrong, illegal, probably making me an accessory, and probably be bad for our relationship. Huff was on his own with his head start.
“And the dongle! Huff has the dongle. It was on my key chain. And then he asked for my car keys, to escape. And he gave me back my flash drive. The real one. And he said—”