“You should see a doctor,” Miles whispers to me after he effortlessly leaps the chain-link obstacle.
I wave away his comment and motion for us to continue.
The construction site is organized in a neat fashion, with all the lumber stacked together and separated out for the machines. It makes it easy to duck behind one stack and jump to the next without getting caught. The two thugs cutting cameras only have a handful to deal with. I see them finish their task by the time I reach the half-constructed building near their car.
“What’re we going to do?” Miles asks as we kneel down behind a fabricated wall.
“You go for one guy, and I’ll go for the other.”
“Which one?”
“I got the thin one,” I say. “You take the dude with the gut.”
I assume the enforcer will be more difficult to deal with than the other one. I know I can handle myself, but I always worry with Miles. He’s in good shape, but it’s not like he’s been in as many fights as I have.
To my surprise, both men head to different buildings rather than back to their car. The buildings are half-constructed office complexes—big, two stories, high ceilings—and it makes it easier for me and Miles to run up without them seeing. Miles heads to his building, and I head to mine. The moment I get close, the raspy voice of the enforcer draws my attention.
“Everything is set,” he says.
I poke my head around the corner and stare inward. The floors aren’t done. They’re nothing but a cement foundation with steel beams stuck in as support. The enforcer wanders around, a cell phone pressed to his ear, and he stares at his feet while he walks.
“No,” he says, curt. “Things are going to plan.”
While he’s distracted, I hustle into the building and duck behind a set of stairs that lead to the mezzanine floor. Now that I’m closer, I can hear the voice from the other side of the man’s phone. His volume is set to the max, and I wonder if he has hearing problems. Guys who shoot a lot of guns sometimes get that.
“We’ve got another shipment’s worth,” he continues. “It’s good stuff. Real good stuff.”
“How many more shipments are we going to make, Castor?”
The enforcer, Castor, shrugs. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll have a few more within the month. Like I said, things are running smoothly. We got our drop-offs. We got our shipping. All we need now is—”
“What about our loose end? Is he dead yet? We can’t have guys betraying us.”
“He’s a hero right now. We don’t want more media attention. We wait, and then we kill him.”
“Get rid of him before he starts more trouble.”
I slide around the side of the stairs, the dusty air messing with my breathing. I coil in preparation for when this guy gets close, but my train of thought stops when I hear the distinct crack of gunfire.
Miles.
Castor snaps his attention to the door. “I’ll call you back,” he says. “I think we’ve been compromised.”
He hangs up his phone, and I have to remind myself that I’m here for a purpose. Castor heads for the door, and I lunge at him. My shoulder connects with his back, and we both hit the ground, winded. I grab my gun and press it to his head, but he rolls to the side—faster and stronger than I anticipated—sending me to the floor.
Castor jumps to his feet. I fire, missing him, but his panicked dive for cover gives me long enough to stand. I rush after him and tackle the guy before he can get his own handgun up and ready. We struggle for a moment, and I wrench his weapon from his hand. Castor pulls back with a fist and cracks me hard across the face.
The next moment I’m on my back, my head pounding.
I get up, and that lunatic kicks me in the sternum like he’s a goddamn soccer player. I stumble back and hit the stairs, unable to take in breath.
Castor runs for his handgun and I fire again, causing him to go for cover. With my strength returning in small amounts, I kick his handgun away and chase after him. Castor exits the building into the midafternoon light. He’s running at full tilt—no way I’ll catch him—and instead I fire at his legs, clipping his ankle and sending him to the dirt.
Before he can recover, I throw myself on top of the man and torque his arms around to his back. He thrashes about, the blood from his ankle splattering across the ground in light amounts. I use the zip-tie to keep his arms in place, but the man is thin like a boney coatrack. I fear he might be able to slip from the device.
The sound of a car peeling out across loose gravel draws my attention. A van—some dirty ice-cream truck thing—rolls through the construction site at a speed well beyond the posted limit. It heads straight for me, not but a hundred feet away, and my whole body tenses.
“Pierce!”
I jump up and shove Castor away from me, getting some extra momentum as I push him to safety. The tires of the van graze the tip of my shoes as I stumble back across the dirt, my heart pounding.
Gunfire rattles from the vehicle as a pair of lowlifes fire at me with fully automatic weapons. I scoot backward behind a stack of pipes and listen to the ricochet of bullets on metal.
Castor, handcuffed, snakes his way away. “Hey!” he barks. “Hey!” But his voice is drowned out by the roar of a car engine, the blasts of Uzis, and the general pandemonium of echoes across the construction yard.
As the van speeds off and begins to turn, I run over to Castor. Sure enough, the man is nimble and flexible. He jump ropes backward
