Authors: Jane Seville
Churchill was over with Brad. The marshals were both flirting with pretty women in power suits.
He hunched over a little and made his way to the men’s room, pardon-meing through the crush of people, growing more crushing with each minute. He shut himself in a stall and sat down to read the note. His fingers shook as he opened the careful folds.
Threat? Request? Fan letter?
We have D.
Jack’s insides went cold and slippery, like a fish fresh from the water, flopping on the boat deck and gasping for breath where there was none to be had, the strange sun blinding and burning. “Shit,” he muttered.
Come to the alley behind the bar. Come alone. We are watching. Alert no one or he
dies.
You have ten minutes.
Jack read the note three times. It was handwritten in generic block letters.
They can’t possibly have D. He’s far away from here.
And what, they’re incapable of finding him and bringing him here? They found you
in Vegas, didn’t they?
There’s no way they captured him. He’s too smart. He’d never allow it to happen.
He’s human. And he’s not exactly on his A-game, is he? You know how distracted
you
are; don’t you think he might be too?
But I’m just me. He’s… D. He’d never let himself get that distracted.
Do you know that?
Jack knew that this internal argument was futile, because even if he was ninety-nine percent sure that they were bluffing, that one percent doubt that they might not be wouldn’t let him do nothing. He couldn’t just throw the note away and dismiss it. What if they really had him? They probably didn’t. What if they did? What if he did nothing and they killed him?
They couldn’t. He’d get away, or something. They can’t kill D.
He isn’t Superman, even if he seems that way to you sometimes. They could kill him.
If they have him.
They don’t have him.
Jack pressed his balled fists to his mouth to stifle a cry of frustration. He struck the wall hard, hard enough to hurt and jolt him back to the situation.
Tell Churchill. Tell somebody.
They said not to tell. They’re watching.
Zero at the Bone | 189
They’re not watching. It’s a trap. They’re just trying to get you to come out there
alone so they can grab you. It’s so obvious. It’s an obvious trap.
So obvious it might be real. But I have to walk into it whether it’s real or not.
D would have a seizure if he could hear you thinking things like that.
Fuck D. He isn’t here. I’m by myself and there’s nobody to help me.
It’s a trap. D is miles from here.
But what if he isn’t? What if he’s out there right now with a gun to his head?
Then he’s praying you don’t come out there. He wouldn’t want you to go into that
alley even if they do have him.
That isn’t up to him. He might be willing to give himself up but I’m sure as hell not
willing to let him.
He would yell at you until he was purple that it’s a trap, you should know it’s a
trap, it’s obviously a trap.
Get help.
I can’t get help.
What would you do to save him? What would you give up?
Everything.
There is no one to help me now.
There is only me.
But I’m not going to just walk out there like a sacrificial lamb.
Jack flushed the note and slipped out of the men’s room. A quick glance out at the bar showed the marshals still chatting up the ladies. Churchill was still with Brad, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was looking around the room for Jack.
Shit.
Jack ducked into the coatroom. He grabbed somebody’s baseball cap and jammed it on his head. He stripped down to his undershirt and put on someone’s leather jacket. His gun was in a holster strapped to his belt; he released the safety strap and checked its load.
He pulled the cap further down on his head, ducked his chin down and bent his knees to take a few inches off his height. He slunk through the crowd, unnoticed, and went out the front door.
He walked casually down the sidewalk, heading for the alley. In fact, there were two alleys on this block, one cutting it in half east to west, and another one branching off in a T-junction to the north. It was this shorter alley that ran behind the bar. The bar had a rear entrance onto this alley; no doubt they expected him to use it, which he had no intention of doing.
He walked into the longer east/west alley and paused. He didn’t see or hear anyone.
He needed a better lay of the land.
He jumped up to grab the bottom rung of the ladder on a nearby fire escape, dragged it down and climbed up to the roof. Crouching low, he slunk across the rooftops until he was over the bar. He took a deep breath and peered over the side.
At first he didn’t see anything, but then a slight movement drew his eye. A dark shape of a stranger, standing just to the left of the bar’s back door, a glowing cherry of a cigarette marking him. He had his back to the T-junction. Jack peered into the dimness, but didn’t see anyone else.
He went back to the fire escape and descended. He walked carefully to the T-junction, eyeing the ground as best he could so he didn’t step on anything noisy. At the corner, he shut his eyes and tried to compose himself, pull some of that silent-and-detached armor of D around him. Some of that had to have rubbed off on him, given all the rubbing they’d done over the past weeks.
190 | Jane Seville
What the hell do you think you’re doing, Francisco? Who do you think you are,
Action Dentist? What are you doing skulking around dark alleys trying to rescue a man
who would be mad at you for doing it, can take excellent care of himself and probably
doesn’t need rescuing in the first place?
Jack shut his eyes.
I know who I am. I put people’s faces back together. I once gave a man who’d
fallen through the ice internal CPR for half an hour straight. I sat in front of ruthless mob
bosses, told a jury what they’d done and sent their asshole lawyer to school. And I got a
man with a steel-plated heart to tell me things he’d never told anyone.
I don’t know what I’m doing. So here we go.
He withdrew his gun, holding it low at his side, and then quickly slipped around the corner into the alley behind the bar.
D CUPPED his hand around the dim display of the tracking monitor to keep its glow from attracting attention. He’d found a perch on a fire escape that overlooked the street and had tucked himself into the shadows of a corner to watch Jack’s dot inside the building. This was as close as he’d been to Jack in a week, and watching him through a hotel window with high-powered field glasses just didn’t cut it.
He scanned the street, seeing nothing but pedestrians and cars. So far there wasn’t anything suspicious, but it was too goddamned exposed; he didn’t like it.
He stared down at the roof of the bar, the third rooftop up from the cross street beneath his feet, the demarcations between storefronts indistinguishable from above, just a knobby expanse of gravel-and-tar roofing with ventilation shafts, HVAC units, and random protuberances jutting up like gravestones.
He’s in there right now. Havin’ a
drink. Probly smilin’ that smile. Laughin’ and bein’ congratulated on a job well done. As
he oughta be.
You could jus’ go down there and walk in. Surprise him. Imagine the look on his
face when he saw ya. He’d grin so wide, and his eyes’d light up, and then maybe he’d
even hug ya. You could have him in yer arms again right now. Jus’… go on down. It’s
easy. Where’s the harm, really? He’s goin’ inta Witsec real soon. You ain’t got much
time, so take some. Take some time with him.
It was so seductive. And it would be so easy to give in. But he couldn’t. He had work to do, and he couldn’t afford to take his eyes off his goals. That was how he’d survived more than ten years in a cutthroat business, and how he’d managed to keep his sanity in the meantime. He wouldn’t give it up now.
He glanced down at the tracking monitor and jumped. Jack’s glowing red dot was no longer in the bar. It was around the corner and moving into the alley—the dark, deserted alley. D whipped out his binoculars and peered into the dimness. There was a man. A dark stranger, standing by the rear door to the bar. His cigarette glowed briefly red. D could just make out his face.
He was on his feet and riding the ladder down to the ground before another thought could pass through his mind.
JACK crept slowly along the wall, his dark coat invisible in the shadows. He was pressed against the same wall where the stranger waited, several storefronts down. He watched Zero at the Bone | 191
him for a few moments; the man didn’t move. He crept along the wall until he was about five feet away. He hesitated, sucking in a steadying breath.
Here goes. My first real-life application of all those gun-handling lessons.
He raised the gun to shoulder height, supporting it firmly with both hands. “Don’t move,” he said. He wanted it to sound commanding and confident, but instead it sounded a bit like the kind of squeaky toy you might give a dog to play with.
The man waiting for him went very still, then slowly turned to face him. He had a dark, swarthy face and glittering rattlesnake eyes, and he didn’t seem at all perturbed to have a gun pointed in his face. “Hello, Mr. Francisco,” he said. He calmly reached out and slid the heavy security beam over the bar’s rear entrance.
“That’s
Dr.
Francisco.”
“So it is. My apologies.”
Jack kept the gun on the man’s face. “Where’s D?” The stranger sighed. “You didn’t really think we had him, did you?” Even though Jack had expected this, he felt an untidy mixture of relief, dread, and disappointment. Relief that D was not in danger, dread that he himself most definitely was, and disappointment that he’d screwed up all his courage and come out here for nothing. “No, not really.”
“But you came out anyway,” the stranger said, nodding. “That was very brave. But foolish.” The man took out a lighter and flicked it on.
Jack barely had time to register that this was a signal of some sort before two shapes detached from the shadows and rushed him. His gun was knocked out of his hands. The immediacy of the assault surprised him.
Do something! You learned
something from all those Krav Maga lessons, didn’t you?
It was all happening too fast. One of them knocked him down, then another hauled him to his feet. He was punched across the face.
Jesus God that hurts when it’s for real.
The pain exploded over his whole skull and made the world fade white for a moment and his hearing cut out.
Shit, D never warned me it’d feel like that.
Another punch was flying through the air when something clicked over in his brain.
React. Hurt. Take advantage.
Jack stepped toward the man and turned his back quickly, grabbing the punching arm out of the air. He slammed his elbow back into the man’s chest and stomped on his foot as hard as he could, then pushed him over onto his side. He was grabbed from behind and, without thinking, he whipped his head back and rammed it into the nose behind him. It hurt him almost as much as it sounded like it hurt the other guy.
The stranger was just watching all of this, silently, hands in his pockets.
His arms were seized and yanked around behind him. The two men he’d managed to hurt—a little—were back on their feet and at his sides. They dragged him to the center of the alley and held him. Jack struggled, but he was pinned.
The stranger appeared in front of him. “That was… not so bad,” he said. Without warning, he stepped forward and punched Jack again, harder this time. All the air rushed out of Jack’s chest and his knees buckled. The pain was enormous. “I was asked to pass that on by Roderick Carlisle. He’s quite put out, you know. He’ll never live that down, what happened today. Myself, I thought it was funny. He really is an asshole of astonishing magnitude.” He sighed. “We don’t have much time. Your minders are probably already looking for you. I think I ought to sedate you for the ride.”
“Where are we going?”
192 | Jane Seville
“Does it matter?” He pulled out a syringe just as someone tried the bar’s back door.
Jack heard Churchill’s voice, then the door shuddered on its hinges as it was struck from inside. The stranger sighed. “All right, no time. Bring him.” He was lifted under the armpits but then he heard two quick spits from behind him, and he was abruptly released.
It took a moment for him to realize that both of the men holding him were now on the ground at his feet.
The stranger just blinked, holding his syringe aloft in one elegant hand like it was a fancy cocktail in a delicate glass. His eyes slid past Jack’s face to the alley beyond.
Jack turned to see a dark figure approaching, a gun in one raised hand, the dim light glinting off the silencer. It wasn’t Churchill. The figure passed in front of the Exit sign of the neighboring building and was briefly silhouetted by the sign’s red glow.
Jack’s mouth hung open, his injuries forgotten.The pain in his face receded to a dull roar behind the rushing of blood in his ears.
D wasn’t looking at him, but past him to the stranger. Jack swung around and realized he was blocking D’s shot. “Jack, get down,” D said, calm and icy as if he were commenting on the unseasonably cold weather.
Jack lurched out of the way on rubbery legs and D fired, but the stranger had taken advantage of his momentary hesitation and disappeared into the shadows. Jack heard running footsteps but couldn’t see where he’d gone.
He turned back around. “D, what the….” The words were swallowed as fast as they could be uttered.
D was gone too. Jack turned in a circle, hearing sirens approaching, and more running footsteps, wondering if he’d hallucinated it. Had D just been here, or had it been a product of his overstressed brain? No, he’d been here. There were two dead bodies at Jack’s feet who could swear to it. Churchill and the marshals appeared at the mouth of the alley and ran toward him, one of the marshals talking into a radio. “Jack! Are you all right?” Churchill demanded. The marshals were off in separate directions in the alley.