Chance
This is some sorry fuckin’ business, walking up and down with a piece of cloth and spraying bleach like I’m the goddamn cleaner. I retrace my steps, one by one, cleaning anythin’ I might’ve touched. I’m wearing gloves now, pissed at myself that I didn’t wear ’em before. A cop—a goddamn cop. I’ve worked my way back into the slaughterhouse when I hear a scream, a woman screaming at the top of her lungs, from the other side of the warehouse. “Please! Help me! Please! Stop! Stop! Help me!”
I’m runnin’ before I think. If there’s a woman screaming in here, then that’s more witnesses I need to deal with. More Bandit bastards who might know I’m here, put this whole goddamn mess on my head. There may be cameras that need dealing with. I sprint quickly through the warehouse, down corridors, in the general direction the scream came from. For most men, five seconds of screaming wouldn’t be enough to locate exactly where it came from, but I ain’t most men. I’ve been training on this shit for years. I’ve gotta get there, and wipe ’em out. Cleanin’ this place is a fuckin’ joke. Kill ’em, get out of here, run, just fuckin’ run. Screw the Family, screw the life, take the cash I’ve got tucked away and get out of here.
I take my pistol from the holster, steeling myself for it. I ain’t goin’ down as a cop killer, and I ain’t ratting anyone out. So that leaves one option.
I end up in a hallway where I’m sure the scream came from—near here, at least. But all I see is a bookshelf and then—Fuck! I duck low as the man emerges from the opposite end, twelve-gauge shotgun in his hands. He’s dressed all in black like the men who did the slaughter, so I reckon the bastards never left. His shot cuts the air above me, taking a chunk outta the wall. I shoot at his arm, and then his other arm, and then his foot. He collapses to the floor, droppin’ the gun and moaning like a little bitch. The lights above start flickerin’, and then go out entirely. I must’ve shot the fuse box. I take my flashlight from my pocket, hold it in my teeth, and approach the man carefully.
He’s pale like a ghost with bright green eyes. I kneel down next to him. “Where’d that screamin’ come from?” I say, taking my machete out and drawing a nice clean slice down his face, making him moan a little more. “I ain’t got time to fuck around with you, so tell me and I’ll kill you clean, you understand?” I cut him again. “Tell. Me.”
I’m about to cut him a third time when he blabbers, “The bookshelf! The bookshelf!”
On the other side of the bookshelf, I hear somebody curse in a foreign language. “You’ve been very helpful,” I tell the man, before splitting his head with the machete. Blood flares everywhere like a fuckin’ fountain. I leave the machete buried in his skull, reload my pistol, and kick through the bookshelf. One boot is all it takes, and fake books and plasterboard is flying like shrapnel all over the place. All we have for light is our gunshots and the flashlight, but I’ve fought in the dark more times than I can count. Two sleazy-lookin’ bastards crouch behind the desk. I put ’em down easily, two quick shots to the head, and then I aim the flashlight near the door to what looks like a prison cell.
A bald guy stands there, his face tattooed to hell and back, one of his thick arms wrapped around a woman and the other holding somethin’ to her back. Might be a gun, but I can’t see it. Could just be his hand. I don’t look at the woman, since she ain’t a threat, just stare into the man’s eyes.
“Now, let’s talk about this,” he tries. Fucking idiot. “I’m sure we can—”
I put a bullet between his eyes and he falls to the ground like a sack of shit. I see that it was a small pocket handgun he was aiming at the girl’s back. The girl is sprayed with his blood. Her eyes are wide, and an ugly gurgling noise is coming from her throat. Fucking idiots must have stuffed the rag so far back there she’s drowning. This must be the girl Nate was talking about.
There’s a split second where it’s obvious the right decision is to put this girl down so there are no witnesses, go and kill Nate, and then get out of town. This is mob life, and in mob life, you don’t hang around for the boys in blue. For the hundredth time, I think to myself: A dead fuckin’ cop.
But the girl is young-looking, maybe eighteen or twenty, with eyes darker’n the sea at night, and just as deep. Her hair is straight and brown down to her chin, and her nose is like a button. Her body is tight, skinny, on display in a torn sparklin’ dress. There’s no doubt this is Julian’s piece. I have a choice. And I can’t bring myself to let her drown in her own spit while she’s watching me. If I’d chosen to do it to her, that’d be a thing. But—I reach out and cut the tape, she’s so panicked and weak she can’t get the rag out on her own. I pull it out of her mouth and she vomits, a weak string of spit and bile. The place reeks; it probably wasn’t the first time she threw up. How long has she been here? What has been done to her? How many times has she been raped today?
This ain’t my business. My business is to kill her and get outta here before the cops try’n link me to a cop killin’, or trust that I can get out of this mess without more blood. That’s the smart move. Yeah, it’ll put a price on my head, but what’s the choice? If Julian were still in good with Giovanni, I’d bring her back and trust to their protection to get me out of this mess, but without that? If Giovanni wanted her, he would have said so. But there’s something about her that’s makin’ it damn hard to pull the trigger. Just aim at her head and pull the trigger and get outta here.
She isn’t a fool. She must see what I’m thinkin’, ’cause she darts across the room to the desk and picks up one of the dead men’s guns. She aims it at me, hands shaking, her eyes so wide that there’s a broad circle of white around her irises. Her hand is shaking so bad I don’t reckon she’d hit the ground she’s standing on, let alone hit me from across the room, but I’ve seen people who’ve never held a gun before kill men from hundreds of yards out, and men who’ve handled guns all their lives miss at point-blank range. Guns are tricky bastards when you come down to it. Anythin’ can happen.
I aim at her, just like she aims at me, only my hand don’t shake one bit.
“You’re going to kill me,” the girl says, voice sounding all throaty and sexy. Hell of a time to be thinkin’ like this, but I can’t help it. With those pale thin legs sticking out of her dress and her innocent naïve face looking at me, I’m instantly rock hard just looking at her, the little piece of ass. But there’re more important things right now, so I focus.
“I ain’t goin’ to kill you,” I say. It’s more like I hear myself say it. I could kill her at any moment, even with that little peashooter in her hand. And yet here I am, talkin’ with her. “Listen,” I go on, and now I’m lowering my gun like a goddamn fool, “I don’t wanna hurt you. Let me get you outta here, alright? Let me get you someplace safe. I know who you are. You’re Mikey’s kid. Julian was gonna have you, right? I know who you are. I’m here to help.”
She keeps the gun pointed at my head and I’m surprised when I realize I don’t know if she’s gonna shoot or not. She don’t look like the killer type, but she’s also in some kind of hysterics or shock or something. Her eyes moving all over the place, letting out sobs every time her gaze settles on one of the dead men, shivering, panting. It’s like she’s just run a marathon, the way she’s acting.
“Goddamn it, put the gun down,” I say. “We need to get outta here as quickly as we can, alright?”
Now I ain’t gonna kill her, we’ve gotta get everything sorted as soon as possible. I’ll have to do some staging and then get us to someplace safe, someplace where I can think all this shit over. If the cops come for me…they might, but without killin’ this girl, that’s just a risk I’m going to have to take.
“You’ll just…you’ll just kill me when I put the gun down.”
“The way that gun is shakin’, you’ll kill yourself before I get a chance.”
As I speak, a backup generator kicks in, the lights turning back on. I put my flashlight in my pocket and stand there, watching the woman. In the full light, she looks even sexier, even with the blood on her face. Maybe that’s why I can’t kill her; she’s too hot. Or maybe it’s ’cause I’ve never killed a woman before and I’m not as cold as I think—no, no fuckin’ way, it’s not that. But killin’ a woman…Maybe that isn’t me.
I walk across the room, hands raised, showin’ her I ain’t a threat. She keeps the gun pointed at me all the way until I’m standing right on the opposite side of the desk, and follows me with the barrel when I walk around the desk so that I’m standing close to her. I feel like a moron with my hands raised like this when I could just snatch the gun from her hand, but I’ve gotta remember that one mistake, just one, and the game ends forever. So I just walk forward so that the gun barrel is placed against my head. I’ve had a barrel pressing cold against my forehead more times than I’d like, but it never gets fun.
Looking into her dark eyes, I say, “I will get you outta here. Just lower the goddamn gun, woman.”
She hesitates, but then, slowly, lowers it. For a second, I think about clipping her right now, where her guard is down. If it was a man, I’d have no problem with it. But she ain’t a man. She’s a terrified woman, beautiful and scared and alone, and I don’t reckon I can kill a woman like that after tellin’ her she’s gonna be safe. Don’t know why. Don’t reckon there’s anything soft in me. Just goes against who I am, I guess, or who I think I am…dammit, I gotta stop tryin’ to analyze myself and get this place set up.
“Are you done with that?” I ask, nodding at the gun. Numbly, she nods, and offers it to me. I take it from her hand. “I’m Chance, Chance Baylor.”
“I’m Becky Morris—” she starts, and then all the steel goes out of her. She slumps to the floor, gasping, coughing, hand covering her mouth. Vomit clings to her chin and lower lip, I see, and her dress is torn in several places. Her hair is plastered with sweat to her forehead. She sits on the floor, panting, before glancing aside and seeing that she’s sitting near the dead men. She tries to jump, falls on her ass, and crab-crawls backwards as she lets out a scream, a too-fuckin’-loud scream.
I go to her, place my hand over her mouth and my hand on her back, holding her still. “You’ve gotta be quiet,” I tell her. “You can’t scream, alright? We’ll be gone soon, but you’ve gotta be quiet while I work.”
She keeps wriggling, panting, struggling. Her legs kick out uselessly.
I bring my face close to hers. “Listen to me, woman. Just fuckin’ listen. I am the only person who’s gonna get you out of here. So just be quiet and let me work, goddammit.”
Finally, some life comes into her eyes, and she falls silent. Silent as the dead men scattered throughout the warehouse.