my steps oh-so-carefully. Sweat rolled down my nose, stung my eyes. The corner was close. Almost there.
I moved past, edging my way up to what used to be a mini-courtyard pinned between penthouse units. The staircase leading down sat on the far side. The junk-strewn courtyard was lit by a portable gas lamp sitting on a crate. Maggie faced my direction, her hands raised halfway, like she’d gotten tired of holding them high. Mota and Panama stood opposite Maggie, their weapons drawn, covering both her and the staircase.
Maggie broke the silence. “So what if the war already started. I’m giving you the chance to end it.”
“And if we don’t?”
“If you don’t, my money’s on Juno.” A lengthy pause followed before she added, “He can be a ruthless son of a bitch.”
Damn straight. Exhibit A: I wasn’t above shooting two men in the back.
I blinked sweat out of my eyes, told my racing heart to settle down. I held my weapon lefty, finger on the trigger, forestock resting on what was left of my forearm.
I pinned down the trigger. No hesitation. No doubt. Panama was right. This was war.
I swept the weapon left to right, the targeting system firing timed bursts that briefly cast the rooftop in a fiery glow. Panama collapsed first, Mota an instant later, his body falling into a pile of scrap, followed by the sound of breaking glass.
Maggie’s body jerked and she let out a startled scream. Her eyes and jaw opened wide. She blinked, her face dotted with blood. Same with her hands and shirt.
I rushed forward, toward the smell of roasted meat. She ducked and went for Panama’s weapon, which still sat in his hand.
“It’s me.” I came out of the shadows, rifle in one hand.
She pulled the weapon from his dead grasp and held it in both hands, her face seized by shock.
“It’s me,” I repeated. “It’s okay.”
She lowered the gun. “What did you do?”
I stepped up to Mota’s lifeless body, peeled his gun out of his hand. “I ended it.”
She stared at the bodies, bewildered.
I watched the spreading pool of blood, his hat getting caught in the flow, blood sponging into the hat’s weave.
Maggie looked at her hands, at the spattered blood. She wiped them on her pants.
My feet tickled with pins and needles, sensation slowly coming back. I turned to take another look at Mota, a pane of glass partly trapped under one shoulder, shards radiating outward. His pretty-boy face was pressed into the rooftop, nose squished up, lips pushed into a guppy mouth.
A fist struck my back. “What did you do!”
I winced and arched my back. Another shot landed, this one on the kidney, the heft of her pistol making the blow sink painfully deep. More blows came and I took every one of them. She hit me with words too, a torrent of angry venom: They were listening to me, asshole. Why did you jump the gun? They were going to take the truce.
She figured the rest of it soon enough. Words snapped from her lips. You set me up. You didn’t want a truce. You used me as a diversion. You made me an accessory.
I waited quietly until she was spent, my back getting plenty tenderized.
Tentatively, I turned to face her and bowed my head. “I had to end it. There was no other way.”
“Yes, there was, dammit! I was about to make a truce.”
“We can’t trust Mota’s word.”
“How do you know? You didn’t even try.”
I looked into her blood-speckled face. “Some doubts can’t be left to chance.”
Exasperated, she rubbed her forehead with her free hand. Feeling the blood, she pulled her hand away. “Jesus.” She buried her face in her sleeve and tried to wipe it off. “You couldn’t do it, could you? Couldn’t give up your protection business like you promised. Now you’re eliminating your competition.”
“I gave the protection business away.”
“Bullshit.”
“I did. I gave it to Chicho’s bouncer. She and her sister are going to run it.”
Maggie aimed her gaze down at the bodies. A cloud of flies swirled about. The sound of chittering lizards came from the shadows, a four-legged army ready to feed. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do?”
“You think you could’ve convinced them you were on the up-and-up if you’d known? Would you have even come?”
“I can’t believe you. I really can’t. What are you going to do with them?”
“Hide them under some scrap, come back in a few days after the flies and lizards pick them clean to collect the bones.”
She closed her eyes. “Christ.”
With nothing more to say, we stayed where we were, alone with our thoughts, me hoping she’d accept the decisions I’d made, hoping I hadn’t driven us permanently apart. The air hummed with flies. Squawking horns sounded from the street while sirens sang somewhere in the distance.
I built up the nerve to ask, “Are we okay?”
She kept quiet, seconds stretching by. Finally she spoke. “Are those sirens coming this way?”
Twenty-six
My ears tuned into the whine of sirens. They couldn’t be coming for us. Couldn’t be. We were totally alone. Isolated in this condemned rooftop courtyard.
Yet they grew in strength, the walls echoing with their wail.
Maggie pulled out her phone. I dropped my rifle and nabbed the portable light, took off on a dead sprint, crossing the roof, running for the side that faced the street.
I sped past ventilation fans, weaved around piles of junk, skidded around a corner and up to the wall. I poked my head over, into the blare of sirens, the strobe of blue and red lights a mere block away.
I told myself they weren’t coming for us. They were coming for some other reason. Some kind of coincidence.
Packed traffic slowly parted, cop cars creeping closer, more coming from the opposite direction. Shit!
I was running again, back the way I’d come, my brain teetering on the brink. Maggie yelled to me, “We gotta go! They’re responding to a call of officer down.”
She went partway down the stairs before I could summon the breath to tell her to stop. “It’s too late. They’re almost here. They’ll have the alley and the hotel entrance blocked before we can get down there.”
She stopped. All I could see was the back of her head, the rest of her body hidden by the staircase she’d partially descended. Her voice sounded distant. Defeated. “Mota has a biomon. He gets wounded and it alerts KOP. Tells them where he is. They’ve been thinking about making them standard-issue.”
“It’s okay,” I said, as if saying it could make it true. “I’ll ’fess up. I’ll cop to everything. You had nothing to do with it.”
She turned to face me, her voice rigid with stern accusation. “You ruined everything.”
“It’ll be okay,” I pleaded. “You’ll be in the clear.”
She came up a step. “I’ll never see another promotion. You destroyed my career.”
“It’ll be okay.”
Another step. “You made me an accomplice.”
“I’ll tell th-”
“I never should’ve associated with you.” Step. “What was I thinking?” Step. “You’re a selfish prick.” Step. “A crazy drunk.”
The words struck with such force that I wished she’d just punch me some more. I’d fucked it all up. Fucked it every possible way. I was going down. Hard.
