I close the knife, slip it back into my pocket.
“Whose apartment is this?”
The girl looks like she doesn’t want to say at first. Then she sighs.
“Miguel Dominguez.”
“And who is he?”
“He worked last night at the motel. Whoever called there most likely spoke to him. That’s why the police are now trying to find him.”
“Do they think he killed and burned those people?”
The girl shakes her head like the answer is obvious.
“Of course not. Not unless he’s the Devil.”
I frown at her.
“The Devil?”
The girl says, “You don’t know about the Devil?”
“You mean … like Satan?”
The girl frowns at this, and looks at the time on her cell phone.
“Shit. We’ve been here too long. We should leave.”
Sounds good to me.
I follow her out into the hallway. She says the door was mostly closed when she arrived, so we close it the best we can and then head back down to the first floor.
Through the glass door, I can see the fat man sitting on a plastic chair smoking a cigarette. Just the sight makes me crave some nicotine, so that’s what I’m thinking as I follow the girl outside. A breeze wafts some of the cigarette smoke my way, and all I want to do at that moment is get a sniff.
That’s when I hear somebody shout.
“There she is! Kill the puta!”
A familiar BMW is parked across the street. The two men I assaulted earlier are inside. The driver leans out his window, pointing at me.
Directing the two young men on the sidewalk with guns to kill me.
Seventeen
For an instant I’m aware that the two young men are much younger than I at first took them for. They’re seventeen at the oldest, fifteen at the youngest. Which is why in that instant I decide not to kill them.
The girl is in front of me, having pushed open the door, and she sees the kids with the guns but doesn’t move at first. Just like she had up in Miguel Dominguez’s apartment, she freezes.
The kids raise their guns.
I grab the girl and yank her back into the foyer as the kids open fire. The glass door shatters. The kids give no regard to the fat man in the lawn chair. The man is simply in the way. His body bucks in the chair as bullets tear into it. I push the girl onto the floor, covering her with my body until there’s a brief lull, and then I glance over my shoulder to see the kids advancing.
I jump to my feet, pulling the girl up with me, and push her toward the stairs. To her credit, the girl doesn’t hesitate—she sprints up the steps.
I follow her up the steps just as the kids enter the foyer and keep firing. The wall spits up plaster. I reach the spot where the stairs twist, and pause around the corner, slipping the switchblade from my pocket.
Two sets of footsteps hurry up the stairs. I wait until they’re only a few feet away—right around the corner—before I step forward and jam the blade into the first kid’s shoulder.
The kid cries out in both pain and surprise, and I leave the blade in his shoulder as I easily disengage the gun—an old Colt Commander—from his hand. The other kid is following too close behind, and I kick him in the chest and send him tumbling back down the steps, the gun clattering away from him as he falls.
I pull the knife out of the kid’s shoulder, shoot him in the ankle, and then start back down the steps toward his friend.
I lean down and press the barrel of the gun against the kid’s forehead.
“Why?”
At first it doesn’t look like the kid is going to answer, but then he issues a heavy breath.
“They paid us.”
“How much?”
“Fifty each.”
Jesus Christ. A hit on my life is only worth that much?
I keep the barrel pressed against the kid’s forehead.
“How old are you?”
Again, it doesn’t look like the kid is going to answer, but then he does.
“Sixteen.”
I nod.
“You keep this up and you won’t see seventeen.”
I step back, shift the gun down toward his leg, and place a bullet in his knee. I kick his gun farther down the hallway, then turn and shout up the stairwell.
“It’s clear!”
At least I think it is. I watch the street as I wait for the girl to reappear down the steps. She stares at the two kids with wide eyes. She turns to stare out at the street.
“It’s safe out there, too?”
“I’m not sure yet. Let me head out first. You don’t hear any gunfire, hurry out and get in your car.”
I step outside, the knife in my left hand, the gun in my right. The two men in the BMW are still parked across the street. Their expressions change the moment they see me. I glance up the block at where the two cops had been parked earlier, but they’re long gone.
The BMW’s driver starts the engine and throws the car into gear. Before he can peel out, though, I shoot out his front and rear tires as I advance across the street, and then I’m standing right beside the car aiming the gun at the two men.
“What did I tell you before? Nobody likes a pair of smelly assholes.”
The men just glare at me.
I hold the knife in my left hand. There’s still some of the kid’s blood on it.
“I know I said I was going to keep this, but I changed my
