San Fernando Valley

 

Orion sat in the passenger seat of another SUV, staring up at a little house on a quiet street in the middle of the Valley. He had a house not unlike this one, only three miles from where they sat. He wondered if the nice family that lived next door to him knew that there were two hitmen working for a very dangerous man living this close to them.

“We’re sure they’re in there?”

“Positive,” Zeke said, glancing at the address on his cell phone. “Tech just sent it over.”

“Tech? Or Stevie?”

Zeke inclined his head slightly. “Stevie.”

They both trusted Stevie over the other techs that worked for Mastiff. They knew her, knew that she knew what it was like to be out here on the streets. They knew she’d double and triple check her work before she’d even think of sending it out to them.

“Jack and Tyler Watson,” Zeke said. “Twin brothers working for Manuel Martinez.”

“The hitman Trueblood hired.”

“The one and only. He apparently contracts out to them when he’s offered cases he feels are a little below his expertise.”

“Taking out a photographer and a Mastiff operative were just too far below him, huh?”

“He’s going to be deeply surprised by the mistake he made there.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not the only mistake he made. We’ve been sitting out here in the open for over ten minutes, and they haven’t made any move to check us out or run. The idiots aren’t even smart enough to watch their own backs.”

“They got their pictures taken a few hundred times. Maybe they’ve skipped town.”

“Nope.” Orion gestured to the front of the house, where a shadow moved over the blinds. “Someone’s in there.”

“Then let’s go see what they’re up to.”

Zeke slipped his gun from his holster and held it behind his back as he walked around the SUV. Orion followed, his own holster hidden under the sharp lines of his Italian suit. He felt good being back in his own clothes, felt good holding his own gun in his grip again. He made his way slowly up the walk, looking around the neighborhood as he did, watching for anyone who might tip the two men inside the house off.

Zeke knocked on the door.

“What you want?” a voice called out to them.

“Pizza delivery,” Zeke called despite the fact they were both dressed professionally, and there was no pizza in sight. But those fools didn’t bother to look through the peephole.

The door opened. Zeke kicked it wide, raising his gun as he charged into the house. He pinned the first idiot up against the wall, holding his gun to the man’s temple.

“Where’s your brother?” Orion demanded.

The guy’s eyes widened slightly as he took in Orion’s now familiar features. He’d probably seen pictures of him before he chased him through traffic. Or maybe he just recognized the pattern of bruises his actions had put on Orion’s face.

“Where is he?” Orion repeated, jabbing his gun toward the man.

“Kitchen.”

Zeke nodded, giving Orion the heads-up to go that direction. As Orion walked away, Zeke flipped the guy around and slapped a pair of plastic cuffs on his wrists.

The house was just a simple bungalow, the living room about the size of a playing card. The kitchen was behind an archway at the back of the living room, stuck just past the narrow opening to the hall that probably led to a couple of bedrooms. Orion paused on one side of the hallway, glancing down its dark depths. Three doors. All closed.

That could be good. Or that could be trouble.

He heard a clatter in the kitchen that drew his attention away from the hall. He stepped across the threadbare carpet to the sticky linoleum and stuck his head through the arch. The other brother was standing at the stove, flipping a dripping grilled cheese sandwich.

“Step back from the stove!”

The guy moved before Orion could stop him, throwing the hot frying pan at him. Orion dodged it and rushed across the sticky floor, slamming the guy in the middle of his back as he tried to flee through a back door. He fell forward, bouncing his head off the corner of the door frame. Blood began to pour from the side of his face.

“Should have done what I told you,” Orion said, roughly slapping the plastic cuffs over his wrists. “But then again, I suppose karma is a real bitch.”

“How’d you find us?”

“Wasn’t hard, buddy. Your face kind of sticks out in a crowd.”

Orion dragged him back into the living room, blood dripping with every step they took. It was a feat for Orion to keep from stepping in it with his expensive Italian shoes.

Once both men were on the couch, Zeke took the lead.

“We just want the name of the guy who hired you.”

The twins glanced at each other, clearly more afraid of their boss than of the two men holding them hostage at that moment.

“We know who it is,” Orion told them. “We just need confirmation.”

“And then you leave, and he comes and blows up our house in the middle of the night.” The first guy shook his head. “No thanks, man.”

“We can take you to jail and let the penal system protect you.”

“You think we’ll be safe there?” the second guy asked, gurgling a little as blood poured from his split cheek into his mouth. “He’ll get to us there, too.”

“You don’t give us his name, we’ll put word out on the street that you did. He’ll come for you either way.”

“You can’t do that!”

Zeke leaned forward and poked the second guy’s injured cheek with the muzzle of his gun. “You talk, and we’ll get you to a doctor. Then we’ll help you disappear, start over somewhere far from here. You don’t, you die. Simple as that.”

“He’s a bad dude,” the second guy said. “He’s really scary, you know?”

“Then let us help you.”

The first guy looked up at Orion. “Why would you want to protect us?”

“Because I want the guy who hired your boss.”

The twins exchanged glances. “Hey, man,” the second guy said, “we didn’t mean for your girlfriend to get hurt so bad. We were just supposed to scare you.”

“Scare us?”

“He told us to scare you. He said cause an accident, but don’t let anyone get badly hurt. He just wanted to spook the two of you.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah, man. Said his client has plans for you. Said he wanted to take her out himself, and you, you were just a bonus.”

Orion and Zeke exchanged glances.

“Martinez told you this?”

The twins once again exchanged glances. “Yeah. He said it was all just a little cat-and-mouse game his client was playing. Said you had a thing about car accidents.”

A sense of dread suddenly moved down Orion’s spine. He gestured toward the kitchen, and Zeke nodded, watching him go.

He pulled out his phone and called Pedro, the new operative who’d taken Jason Stine’s place. He was supposed to be standing outside Jane’s hospital room, watching over her while she received antibiotic treatments.

There was no answer.

He called the hospital switchboard.

“Put me through to room five-twelve.”

The phone rang and rang and rang. Orion was about to hang up and get the hell out of there when a breathless female voice finally came on the line.

“Who is this?” he demanded.

“I’m a nurse on this floor. Who is this?”

“Where’s the patient in that room?”

“She’s here. I was just changing out her IV.”

A second later, Jane’s voice filled the phone. “Hey, what’s going on?”

Orion closed his eyes, leaning back against the wall. “I want you to get out of there, okay?”

“What?”

“Call Piper, have her come pick you up. Tell her to take you to Chamberlain’s, okay?”

“What’s going on, Orion?”

“Just do what I ask, okay?”

“Sure.”

He disconnected and tried Pedro’s phone again. When he didn’t answer this time, he called Mastiff.

“I think we might have an operative down. Can you send someone to UCLA Medical, room five-twelve?”

Zeke already had the twins off the couch when he walked out. They herded them out to the SUV and put them in the back, intent on keeping their promise.

“The hospital?”

Orion nodded. “You can get his cheek fixed up while we’re there.”

“Then we go after Martinez.”

But Orion’s thoughts were on Jane.

He rushed up to the fifth floor the moment they arrived, running through the halls despite the dirty looks the nurses were giving him. There was no sign of Pedro outside the door.

Where the fuck had he gone?

He pulled his gun before slipping inside the room, not really caring if some nurse or passing visitor happened to see it. He didn’t know what he was going to find inside.

“Hell, O! Where did you get that gun?”

Piper, her hair bleach blond and wild around her face, stared at him from the chair he’d occupied up until a few hours ago.

“Where’s Jane?”

“They came and took her down for an MRI, something about looking for pockets of infection behind the cut on her face.”

“Was there someone outside this door when you got here?”

Piper shook her head. “Not that I noticed.”

He pushed open the bathroom door, flipped on the light to look inside. There was no one there.

He backtracked, making his way out the door. He slipped the gun back into its holster and went in search of a nurse.

“Where’s the patient from room five-twelve?” he demanded of the slight girl sitting behind the desk.

“She checked out fifteen minutes ago.”

“Excuse me?”

She lifted a clipboard and held it out to him. There were discharge papers under the clip, Jane’s signature scrawled across the bottom of the page.

“Who did this?”

“The charge nurse. She said the doctor wanted her to recover at home.”

Orion spun around and just caught sight of Piper getting onto the elevator. She saw him watching, and she lifted a hand, her expression almost apologetic. He ran down the hall, calling after her, but the elevator doors closed before he could catch up to her.

“What did you do, Piper?” he demanded of the closed doors.

The elevator took too long, so he ran down the stairs, taking some of them two at a time. He ran into Zeke in the emergency room. He was standing at the charge desk, handing the nurse some paperwork.

“Did you see Piper come through here? A girl about twenty, short blond hair?”

He shook his head. “Why?”

“Jane’s gone.”

“Let’s go get Martinez, then.”