Darker Things (The Lockman Chronicles #1) (25 page)

Tanner let the shotgun drop as he hit the floor. He reached for the pistol in his shoulder holster and Lockman realized his mistake. He should have kept them close, but he’d managed to give Tanner the clearance he needed to gun Lockman down before Lockman could reach him.

He backpedaled around the hall corner. A chunk of drywall exploded by Lockman’s ear and embedded shards in his face. He didn’t stop moving. Dropped to the floor and retrieved Clown’s Beretta, then scrambled back into the room where he came from.

Another shot sparked above him.

Once in the room he dove to one side and aimed the Beretta at the doorway.

He waited.

Then he heard Tanner’s feet twist in the drywall dust on the floor and his footsteps fade as he retreated through the house.

“No,” Lockman shouted and scurried out after him. He couldn’t let that traitor get away. No fucking way.

He leapt over the bodies in the hall and rounded the corner, catching a glimpse of Tanner on the stairs going down. Lockman charged after him and fired a couple of wild shots, hoping to get Tanner to stop his retreat to dive for cover.

Tanner ignored the shots and kept running.

Lockman followed him down the stairs into what was probably meant to one day serve as the condo’s living room. The interior wall separating this room from the next had yet to have drywall hung, the studs left bare.

Tanner weaved between a pair of studs and headed for a doorway beyond that led to the outside with only a sheet of plastic separating inside from out.

Lockman chanced another shot, but it went wide. He bolted along Tanner’s path and slipped between the same pair of studs. By the time he reached the doorway, Tanner was out of sight. He blasted through the sheet of plastic which tore loose and tangled around him. His hands cuffed and holding the Beretta, he tried to push the plastic off of him with his elbow. The plastic caught under his feet and he stumbled like a rookie on his first foot chase. He rolled into the fall and quickly returned to his feet, free of the plastic, but disoriented for a precious second.

He heard the shot. Then felt the burn on his side as if a flaming whip had lashed against his ribcage.

Lockman twisted in the direction he thought the gunfire came from and squeezed off blind shots. He caught sight of Tanner sprinting toward another row of condos, but in the open. Lockman took a knee, lined up the sight on his weapon with Tanner’s back, squeezed.

Tanner jagged left, but a spray of blood plumed from his shoulder. He staggered, managed to keep running.

Each breath felt like inhaling fiberglass. Lockman’s chest ached. So much adrenaline coursed through him he shook like a caffeine junkie. He tried to line up another shot, but Tanner disappeared around the corner of the opposing building.

He forced himself back to his feet and jogged on. He ignored the searing pain along his side. He could feel a warm wetness sticking to his shirt.

While he had lost his edge in so many ways, he did have enough presence of mind to stop at the corner of the building he saw Tanner go around instead of blindly chasing after him and possibly into a bullet.

He leaned against the brick façade of one of the few completed buildings on the grounds. He peered around the corner. This must have been the front of the complex. The building he stood by faced a road with an overgrown lawn in between.

No sign of Tanner.

Lockman inched a little closer to the corner to get a view of the face of the building. Several cement staircases led up to the front porches of the individual condos making up this row. The porches were all inset, out of Lockman’s view. Tanner could have scurried into any one of them like a rat into a hole in the wall. If Lockman tried to break for the street, he would offer his back to Tanner for target practice.

Then he remembered what Tanner had told him—Jessie was in a car somewhere across that street. He scanned the several cars sat parked at the curb on both sides. He didn’t see any that obviously had someone inside. Would Creed really have left her right out in the open?

No. But he would have tucked her within sight of the condo. A side street maybe. The closest side street was about fifty yards to Lockman’s left. At the corner, a maple tree thick with leaves provided shade for the yard of the ranch style house there. An old Mustang in prime condition sat parked under that same tree. With the tree’s shadow over the car, he couldn’t see inside.

Lockman called out Tanner’s name. “You’re not getting out of here. Show yourself.”

Tanner made the smart move and stayed quiet.

Lockman glanced toward the Mustang again. He peeked back around the corner of the building. Looked back the way he had come. Tanner had to have at least two more men with him. Had Creed brought more than Clown? He didn’t hear any more gunfire. Maybe Creed and Clown had taken out Tanner’s backup. But if Tanner really had Detroit cops at his disposal, more could be on the way.

He had to make a decision soon. The pain in his side went from a burn to a shark-toothed chewing.

Move forward. Capture or kill Tanner. Go.

Gun up, he rounded the corner and inched his way to the first porch. He took a deep breath, stepped sideways, pivoted so his gun led the way in.

Tanner lay in the porch cubby, his gun on the concrete stoop, blood soaking through his shirt from a gash in his shoulder. His eyelids drooped. His head lolled to one side. His chest heaved with labored breaths.

Lockman kept the Beretta trained on Tanner’s heart. He wasn’t taking chances. “Wake up.”

Tanner’s eyelids fluttered. He lifted his chin just enough to look at Lockman. Then he smirked. “You stupid asshole. That’s twice you fell for the same trick.” He melted like a sugar cube in the rain, until the residue on the porch blew away and left nothing behind.

A second later Lockman heard a car engine start. He spun around.

The Mustang squealed its tires and tore off down the road.

Chapter Thirty-Four

She should have taken the gun.

Jessie sank back against her seat as the Mustang accelerated. She stared at the place on the dash where Mr. Creed had left the Glock, now empty. When Tanner had flung open the driver’s side door and hopped behind the wheel, he grabbed at the gun immediately.

“Don’t want to have any accidents,” he said through heaving breaths and tucked the gun in the back of his waistband.

Jessie tried to open her door and escape, but Tanner grabbed her arm and yanked her back. “I might need you.”

She bit his hand as hard as she could, tasted the salted metal of blood, and spat.

But his grasp slipped, allowing her to shove her way out of the car and scramble away.

He didn’t come after her. Started the car and peeled out, the sound of the squealing tires like a scream in Jessie’s ears.

She staggered to the opposite curb and sat down, her whole body shaking. She clenched her hands into fists. They still shook. She pinned her hands between her knees. Her legs trembled. God damn, she was so sick of being afraid. She couldn’t take anymore. So she welcomed the rage that coiled like a snake in her gut. She taunted that rage, dared it to spring and bite. Which made her realize she could still taste Tanner’s blood on her lips. But instead of disgust, she felt a righteous hunger. That man was behind so much of her fear. Behind the threat to her mother. She wasn’t going to blame Craig anymore for the things Tanner and Dolan were doing. She would focus all her anger on them.

She thought of the Glock Tanner had taken from her. Imagined what might have happened if she hadn’t left it on the dashboard. No safety. One in the chamber. She could have squeezed the trigger the second he got in the car.

Instead, he had the gun. Tucked in his pants. She wished the gun would misfire and blow another hole in his ass. Wouldn’t that be great? Then Jessie could catch up to him, laugh in his face.
See that, asshole? That’s what you get for sticking a gun without a safety down your pants.

Then she heard the tortured cry of rubber on concrete. The symbol crash of metal against metal followed close behind.

Jessie stood and jogged to the corner. Down the road she spotted the Mustang. It had veered to the left and smashed into another car parked at the curb. A wisp of steam trailed out from under the crumpled hood.

The driver’s door popped open and Tanner limped away from the vehicle, clutching at his lower back. He dropped to the ground and writhed. Jessie heard his howl from at least a third of a mile away.

The iron taste of his blood flared in her mouth for a brief moment, then evaporated completely. She touched her lips and her fingers came away clean. What the hell had just happened?

A hand touched her shoulder. She shrieked and spun around.

Craig stepped back, hands held up, one of them holding a massive gun. He nodded toward the Mustang. “That Tanner?”

“Yeah.”

“You shoot him or something?”

She turned to look down the road again. Stared a second, mouth wide. “Or something.”

“Well?” Jessie asked as Craig huffed back with an unconscious Tanner over his shoulder. “What happened?”

“Looks like a Glock he had tucked in his waistband fired. He’s bleeding pretty good. We have to get him someplace fast or we’ll lose him.”

Jessie’s stomach flipped a few times. Seriously? Had she somehow made that happen? No. Had to be a coincidence. But after all she had seen—vampires, ogres, secret agencies versus terrorists using dark magic—she could not deny the possibility.

“Let’s go,” Craig said. “We’re almost home free.”

“I thought you wanted to kill him.” She pointed at Tanner.

“I do. But not until after he tells us where Dolan is, and where he’s holding Kate.” He hiked Tanner’s limp body higher on his shoulder and winced. The wound in his side oozed with fresh blood. “Come on. We need wheels and we need to find Creed.”

Creed found them first.

As Craig shoved Tanner into the backseat of a hotwired minivan, Jessie stood watch. Amazingly, no one seemed to have called the cops. Not yet anyway. She spotted Mr. Creed come around one of the condos with another man in black and grey camouflage. It looked like Mr. Creed had to lean on the other man for support while he walked.

Craig finished belting Tanner into the back seat by the time Mr. Creed and the other man reached them. He looked at the man in the camouflage, squinted. Then he smiled. “Rand.”

“Lockman.”

Rand was actually taller than Craig, with arms almost as thick as Jessie’s waist, and ebony skin that shone in the sunlight as if polished. He looked like he could crush cinderblocks with a stern look, but his smile brightened his whole face in a way that made Jessie like him right away.

“You look like shit,” Rand said to Craig.

“I’ve looked worse.”

“Oh, I know it.”

“Who else we got?”

“Just me and Clown. But Rodriguez will rendezvous once he gets here.”

Jessie saw Craig’s jaw clench. “Clown didn’t make it.”

Rand looked over his shoulder at the condos. “Damn.”

Craig nodded at Mr. Creed. “You hit?”

“I threw out my back of all damn things.”

“Easy does it old man,” Rand said and slapped Mr. Creed on the back. “We’ll get a nice home picked out for you. One of those places with the pretty nurses willing to spoon feed the resident relics.”

“Fuck off.”

Rand looked at Jessie. “Who’s the new recruit?”

“We’ll have time for intros later” Craig said. “We have to get Tanner here some medical attention. Dumb fuck shot himself in the ass, and I’ve got questions I want answered before I let him bleed out.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Lockman drove the minivan. Rand took his own vehicle. Jessie rode shotgun with Lockman. Creed sat in back with Tanner and a gun handy in case he woke. Creed had pulled some rags from the back of the van and cut a section from a seatbelt to make a rough bandage to staunch some of Tanner’s bleeding. From what Lockman had seen, the wound didn’t look detrimental in any way other than the bleeding. Which would be bad enough if they didn’t get it stopped soon.

That’s how Lockman kept himself focused. Remain on task. Get Tanner fixed up enough to question. Never mind that crap he had spewed earlier about stolen souls or whatever.