ER JAW TIGHTENED and a fire burned in her eyes. I asked her, “What do you plan to do?”
“Do? I’m going to arrest them and take them in.” She looked at me, “It’s my job. It’s what I do.”
There was the line between us. I could feel it. She was the law. Driven by duty. It reminded me of my own tours of duty. Times when orders were all you needed to propel you. Times when the picture in front of your eyes was only of the action you needed to take. Comrades under threat, a village in danger? You knew what you had to do. Choices were made for you. No messy thinking. Just act. Inside, I envied her certainty. And, for a moment I wished we were on the same side.
It almost made me chuckle. Thinking about her working on contract for El Guapo. Or Carmine. Or Vassily. No, Vesper wouldn’t ever come over to work my side of the street. Over here, duty wasn’t part of the job.
Honor, only sometimes, though even that was really only for the mob guys. The tribes. The Italians, the Irish. Czechs, Serbs and Russians, they all had their blood feuds. Revenge. But when a contractor, someone like me got involved, I wasn’t avenging anybody’s cousin or their uncle or their daughter. I was just the hammer. The ax.
Could I cross the street to Vesper’s side? That idea actually did make me laugh. Thinking about all of her co-workers in their suits. Following the rules. Bureau policies. Getting to work on time, jostling for promotions.
No, avoiding life in that kind of a rat-run was a big part of why I did what I did. I picked my work and I did it my way. Nobody came to me at the end of a job, telling me it was time for a performance review and ‘feedback’ from the team.
“What?” she peeked over her coffee cup. The look in her eye, I wanted to stretch her across that desk. Sweep away the keyboard and screen, rip her pants off and fuck her. Glass walls around the business center, though. Could be a bad idea. Her chin tilted up, “What’s making you laugh?”
“You.” She frowned so I said, “Me,” then she looked puzzled. When I said, “Us,” she stood. She started grabbing her stuff together to go. It gave me a pang deep in my stomach. I touched her arm.
I took a breath. Tried to fix the scent of her so I could remember it. Her face tightened.
“Not now,” and her eyebrows pleaded. This was why I didn’t have deeper and more lasting relationships with women. They’re fucking complicated.
I kissed her. That often simplifies things.
The way she struggled, she was fighting to pull closer and to pull away, both at the same time. The churning of her body made my cock swell and stand like an eager animal. When I pulled us apart, her body was still clinging to me and her hands clawed at me.
She felt it like I did. The time we had together now, it wasn’t enough. And we couldn’t even use it to the full, do what we both wanted to do.
But it was all the time we would get. If we could get through the next few hours alive, we would have to part. Go back to our own sides of the street. Maybe peer across a crowded scene one time, see each other stood up against opposite walls. Like young teenagers at a church dance, desperate for each other but unable to cross the floor.
There was no way that she could cope with colleagues and superiors asking, ‘Still seeing the mob guy?’
Come to that, my work would get complicated if people were forever asking, ‘You meeting that FBI broad later?’
No, this was it. It wasn’t nearly enough and it was all we were going to get.
She pushed the heel of her hand against my chest. Pushed back and bit her lip. “We have to go. There must be…”
Over her shoulder I saw them. Crouched, in black helmets and Kevlar. Sliding into position by one windowed wall.
I had the presence of mind to yank the memory stick out of the side of the monitor before I flipped the table forward. Vesper was trying to turn and I had to literally throw her to the floor. At the same time the glass wall in front of us shattered and two smoke grenades rolled in. I pulled a pistol and shot the other glass wall.
Shouldering one leg of the table, I dragged it to the busted window wall and pulled Vesper with me. I moved fast it didn’t seem likely the inch thick table would stop much ammunition, but it was all the shield we had. I hefted the table into the corridor.
“On three,” I told her, “We go down the corridor, thataway. Be fast. As soon as we move, we’ll have no cover. Ready.”
She stood. Braced her firing stance and faced the four-man SWAT team. She got three shots off in a swift, steady rhythm. Each one hit one of the men in the ankle. I was seriously impressed.
I said, “That was good. Now are you ready?”
She nodded.
I nodded back and said, “Three.” And we beat the floor without looking back. A rifle round chiselled the wall by her ear. Then we were around the corner. In the next corridor, a door to the left had an ‘EXIT’ sign.
“That’s where they’ll look,” she said, “There will be another at the other end of the corridor.”
She was right about the second part at least.
Halfway down the stairs, I stopped and pulled out a phone and the card I got from the valet parker. I told him to bring the car meet us at the door to stairway 4 immediately. “It could take a moment, sir,”
“Do you remember the tip?”
“You bet I do.”
I told him, “Time to earn it. Now’s good.”
“Right away, Sir.”
When we got to the door, the car was there. The valet was still in the driver’s seat.
“It’s the rule, sir. I have to take the vehicle to the street.”
I asked him, “You have much experience in hostile pursuit driving?”
He shook his head.
“Then you better get out the fucking way.”
Vesper got in the passenger seat. The kid stepped out and I got in to drive. “Make sure the gate’s up,” I told him as I pulled away.
The half barrier at the entrance was rising out of the way. At the same time, up the ramp a metal mesh shutter was coming down. The old sedan picked right up as I hammered the accelerator pedal. The bottom edge of the shutter was a heavy steel bar. It was pretty much at the height of the car roof as I punched us through.
The hood of the car squealed and whined as the bar scraped and tore it. Then the car faltered as the steel shutter clanked onto the trunk. We were held there. A black van was approaching the entrance. Men in helmets opened the doors.
I stomped on the accelerator. The tire squealed and the wheel spun. The men raised short, automatic rifles. I let my foot off the gas. Then stamped on it again.
With a howl of tearing metal, we were free and up the ramp. A truck swerved and his horn filled the air as we blasted into the street.