Chapter Fifty-Three

 

DAVIS

 

I curl another tight circle around Logan. Never mind listening to his excuses, I'm barely listening to the words coming out of my own mouth. Ryan wants me over here, I'll do it, because I want the fuck out of this mess.

The weapon fires, with a bang like someone dropped a big church bible flat on the floor. Carabello slumps to the floor, his phone still connected. I set my weight against Logan and hold him back as best I can. My barricade lasts a couple of seconds, but it's enough time for Ryan to pick up the phone and disconnect it.

"What the fuck did you do?!"

Logan's wild. I can see from the way that he shifts his eyes from the body on the floor to Ryan. I don't know how I wasn't aware of the suppressor on that pistol; I thought I'd seen it before, but apparently he's got several holdouts throughout the house.

I don't know how we're going to get out of this, but now Ryan's committed. And, though I don't know why, I feel like I'm committed to it, too.

I swallow hard.

"Ryan."

His head turns towards me just enough to let me know he's listening.

"What do we do? They'll have heard that."

"Good. I'm counting on it."

He reaches down and pulls a set of keys out left-handed and tosses them to me.

"There's a rifle cabinet on the second story. Go on, take your pick of the litter, and I need you posted upstairs. How good a shot are you?"

"With a rifle?"

"Naw, with a catapult, babe."

"I can hit what I'm shooting at, up to say fifty yards."

"It'll do."

His eyes don't go off his brother. I don't know if I want to be there when they say whatever they've got to say, and then I decide that I sure as hell don't.

The cabinet's pretty easy to find, and one of the keys—the one that obviously isn't for a door, or for his old Indian—fits. There's a surprising selection, even considering that he's a gun runner himself.

Everything about the house seems to be hard to coincide with what I've known about him. It's small, it's unassuming. It gets broken into all the damn time, if he's to be believed, and I'm starting to see evidence of that already.

Sure, there's apparently a dozen-odd hold-out pistols hidden in various parts of the house, but… other than that, and you don't even know that to look at it.

The closest he comes to the guy I thought I knew before I met him is this gun rack. It would fit in better in Texas than Arizona, but even this isn't outside the realm of the ordinary for some folks.

I take a convincing-looking weapon with a composite body. I test the weight in my hands. Heavy enough to have some heft, light enough that it doesn't look like it'll tire me out. I take a magazine, test the fit.

I haven't counted, but I'm fairly certain that this magazine wouldn't be legal in the state of California. We're not in the state of California, though, so I don't have anything to say about it. I should be looking into all of this.

As a Special Agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms… well, it's right there in the name. But I don't have any interest in poking into the legality of these weapons right now, not when it's my ass on the line. My phone rings a minute later, as I'm settling into a chair by a window.

I pick it up.

"Yeah?"

"You ready up there?" Beauchamp's voice is cool and calm. I don't know how he does it, because even though I'm not the one they're coming after, my heart's beating a thousand miles a minute.

"Sure."

"I need you to keep an eye out. Keep this line open, and you see anyone, call them out to me."

"And?"

"And nothing. Call it out."

"What's the rifle for?"

"Just in case," he says. The line doesn't go dead, but he goes quiet. I set the phone on the windowsill and prop the rifle between my knees. A deep breath in, a deep breath out.

Nobody's coming yet. All quiet. A minute passes, then two. Two becomes five, and still, nothing. It's starting to be a little nerve-wracking. They're going to come. I'm sure of that.

If they've got more than one or two guys coming in, then they're going to need to move them all together, or it'll be a slaughter. Which means that they'll be coming in, like it or not, right down the road I'm looking at.

But if they're coming, how much longer could it possibly take? Why aren't they here yet?

I hear it before I see it. A low growl. I'm not sure, but I think I know the sound. Then a front fender crests the edge of a house, followed by a wheel, followed by a bike, with a man sitting on top of it.

Another comes after, and another. They're coming in two columns, and the columns split to accommodate a big, boxy European car. Pretty old.

"They're coming."

It takes a second to get a response. "How many?"

I count as quick as I can. "A car, plus ten on bikes."

He curses into the open voice line. "Alright. Stay calm. Maybe get that rifle ready. Don't shoot until you don't have another choice."

"I won't," I tell him. It's true. I'm not planning on shooting anyone. But that's never stopped me before, I have to admit. If I have to shoot someone, I have to shoot them, and that's how it is.

The rifle isn't light. I trace the line of bikes as they go. The scope's set for targets way further out than I'm using it for. As they pull up in front of the house, row by row, I could practically close my eyes and hit someone.

A posse of people stands outside, and all I have to do is aim in their general direction and the bullet will be magically guided into one of them by the power of dreams.

With that in mind I pull the rifle down. I don't have a lot of time, but I hope to hell I'll have enough. I start working the thumb-screws that hold the scope onto the rifle at a frantic pace and toss it back onto the bed behind me.

The scope's already forgotten by the time it hits the fabric because I'm bringing the rifle back up into line. The sights on it are a hell of a lot clearer, now. I can see what I'm aiming at.

I count them off. Scheck, Rosen, Dupree. That completes the set. Scheck stays in the back.

"Dupree's coming up. I just lost sight of him, but he's coming up. Three other guns with him. Rosen and Scheck hanging back."

I don't get a response from the other end. Instead, I hear someone put their shoulder into the door. I don't know how it goes for them, but I don't hear any gunfire. That answers the question, I guess.

They put their shoulder into it again. This time I hear another pop, just like the one that put Carabello on the ground. Like someone downstairs dropped their phone book. Bang.

Another a second later. Bang. I don't have time to wonder what's happening, how it's going. I have my eyes on Scheck. It's twenty yards to her, I figure, and so I can't be sure if I'm reading her face right, but she doesn't look happy.

She doesn't look like her guy just got inside and put an end to all her problems. A different shot goes off. I can hear the pitch different. This one is sharper, higher-pitched. Like someone smacked chalk into a blackboard.

The shots start all firing at once, now. Like the initial lull was all setup to what's happening now, to train my ears to get used to slow firing.

I take a deep breath and move my finger onto the trigger. Do I take the shot? It would end several problems right away. Right now. All I'd have to do would be to squeeze a little tighter, and…

I lift my finger back off. It would be easy. Very easy, in fact. Which is why I'd better wait for Ryan to tell me to do it.