After the Rain

“Oh yeah?” He cocked his head.

“Yeah. I’ll be going back to spend some time with Broker and Kit.”

Nina stopped talking when she saw Ace’s eyes move off her face and look behind her. She turned as he asked, “Now what do they want?”

At the same time Jane picked them up in her rearview mirror: two men, one big and sloppy but moving at a fast shuffle, the other darker, his face all wrong, and he walked with a slight limp. The way they moved got her attention. Her hand snapped to her face and tossed off the sunglasses. So much for a leisurely morning. They were coming across the road into the parking lot at a brisk pace. The big one carried some kind of yellow backpack, but tiny. The darker one had a gym bag in his hand. That would be Ace’s brother and the brother’s sidekick, the Indian, Joe Reed, the guy Nina had noticed.

Dale climbed the porch steps. Ace moved to block him and said firmly. “Can’t this wait? I’m busy.”

“You seen Gordy?” Dale asked with a broad smile. Then, not waiting for an answer, he said, “Aw, fuck Gordy, he was just one of the little people.” He grinned at Nina. “See? I knew you’d be back. I just knew.” He shouldered on past Ace, went through the door and into the dark interior of the bar.

Ace had never seen his brother so positive, so happy, so pushy and sure of himself. A little amazed and curious, he was dragged into Dale’s gravity field and followed him inside. Nina, too, was swept along. She had been interrupted and was not quite finished. Jane was out of the car now, fully alert. And irritated. She’d thought that this drive-by farewell was a lapse of common sense on Nina’s part, and now it was getting complicated. At first she picked up no hostile vibes off Joe; he just stood at the door, shifting from foot to foot, waiting. But when she came closer she felt his cold eyes.

I’m gonna watch you, fella, Jane thought as she went through the door and stepped to the side so her back was to the wall. Her right hand shook out, just in case. A Beretta nine in a breakaway hideout holster lay across the small of her back, under her shirt. But Joe stayed out on the porch. She moved deeper into the room, where her back was secure and she could monitor him through the window. Her eyes tracked from Joe on the porch to the awkward scene percolating between Ace, Nina, and Dale.

Finally Ace said, gently, “Whatever it is, Dale, this is not the time.”

Dale’s round face was swelling up, about to burst, like a kid at the Christmas pageant getting set to deliver his one big line. “Ain’t it funny, Ace? My whole life, people always notice you and never me.” He bared his teeth to his handsome brother.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ace said, his patience worn hangover-thin.

“What I’m talking about is-It’s me!”

Ace stared at Dale, slowly shaking his head.

Dale went on triumphantly. “She didn’t come to town to look for you, she came for me.” He was speaking to Ace, but he was looking at Nina.

And Nina saw enough resentment and malevolence surface in Dale’s eyes to kill a whole high school. Along with a leer of sheer physical lust that made her skin crawl. But then she realized that Dale wasn’t speaking in some kind of sibling code to his brother…

Jesus. That means…

Oh shit!

And she got caught in one of those expanding fractions of a second that inform enlightenment-except this was gonna be very bad.

Like Broker, she was a natural fighter. Physically and psychologically, she adapted to conflict. The Pentagon spent a lot of time and money trying to train people to acquire the sort of reflexes she had naturally. She could anticipate a threat and move to disrupt it, step inside other people’s physical time, second-guess their intentions. She did this without thinking.

“Janey.” Her voice rose to a dangerous treble.

“I’m here, girl,” Janey said, tensed forward, her right hand sweeping behind her back, her left hand reaching out, sensing like a rangefinder. Then she spun to check the porch, to locate Joe. Her Beretta coming up, her free hand meeting it to form a two-handed brace on the grip.

“What the hell?” Ace said, starting to react himself. And Dale just went on grinning except now his hand was reaching into his foolish little pack.

And that’s when Nina got stuck on the slo-mo glide path. Powerless, all she could do was watch. A fraction of a second stretched out long like a colonnade, pillars going on and on, endless. She distinctly saw her.45 in its holster-on the table in the motel room where Broker lay peacefully sleeping. The note next to it with her lipstick smear…

She was moving now, toward Dale. Good. Janey bringing the Beretta up as she came around from looking out the window.

Then not so good.

Janey’s eyes ran wild because Joe Reed appeared at the other end of the room, in the doorway to the stairs, the one that led to the rear entry. And she was still coming around in the turn.

Fucker came in through the back.

Came in hot with a big Browning held rigid in a professional two-handed grip, arms extended, on target, taking small quartering steps. Both eyes open. Not aiming like an amateur. Pointing like a pro.

Jesus! Rashid had not lied.

They had gone after the wrong Shuster.

Nina stretched out for Dale, pushing past Ace, who had jumped in front of her, his arms spread protectively. Had to stop Dale’s hand in the pack. If she got her hands on him she could disable him. Bet on it. And if Janey could…

But it was like competitive swimming. Hundredths of a second decided…

Joe squeezed the trigger while Janey was still cementing her grip around the nine and-crack crack-Joe Reed shot her twice in the chest at a distance of ten yards. Janey Singer went down and Joe came on another two steps-crack-and put that one in her head.

Nina saw Janey jerk with each impact but all that registered in the moment was the need to dive across the floor and get her hands on Janey’s gun. As she hit the floor, seizing the pistol from Janey’s motionless hand and rolling over, Joe Reed wheeled the Browning on her.

“No!” Dale yelled. “She’s mine!”

But Joe was on automatic, operating on pure survival reflexes as his pistol centered on Nina’s chest.

Ace was in midair. And Nina would have occasion to remember his remark about playing ball: You stand around a lot, but then sometimes you gotta move fast to make a play.

Like now.

He dived as Joe fired and put his body between the bullets and Nina’s heart and took two in the back. She felt his body collide with her, still alive, bounce once, and what he’d lived in flopped on top of her in a messy lifeless embrace.

Dale’s boot stomped down on Nina’s right hand and she lost the Beretta. His hand came around, held something-yellow, a knife? No, more like a stubby pen. There was a needle in the end. He plunged it into her thigh.

Calmer now, more in control, Joe came forward, covering her as Dale grabbed the body of his brother by a limp arm and dragged it aside. “Now look what you went and did,” Dale said. Not to Joe, but to the corpse. And Nina, who felt the first lift of a rearing narcotic wave, noted the homicidal marker of not owning the motivation of one’s violence, of assigning it to others.

She was being swept away. Out of herself completely. She’d mourn Ace and Janey later. Right now gotta work on having a later.

Deadly efficient, Joe covered her.

“No need,” Dale said. “She going in the K-hole. Be a couple minutes.”

Nina going slack, shook words from the fog enveloping her: “Not Ojibwa…” Joe just smiled. She tried again. “Where did you train?”

The smile broadened. He shrugged. “In the Bekaa Valley.”

“Not Afghanistan?”

“Fuck Afghanistan and their religious bullshit,” Joe said.