Red Knight Falling (8 page)

THIRTEEN

The drones were about the size of German shepherds, sleek and gleaming chrome in the moonlight. I saw what looked like camera nozzles on their bellies, not weapons, but they didn’t need a missile to take us out: their razor-sharp helicopter blades would do the job just fine. I jerked the handlebars left, hard, as one veered past, the ATV rocking under me while I fought to keep all four wheels on the trail. The other one shot up ahead, spinning as it dropped down in Cody’s path.

Cody careened off the trail, darting between a gap in the trees, and Jessie and I followed. My front wheels hit a divot hard enough to rattle my teeth, and I clung to the handlebars for dear life as we shot into uncharted territory. A drone came back for another pass, and I swerved left again as the screaming blades carved the air an inch from my shoulder. Trees formed a broken, jagged wall between me and the others, and I tracked them by their bouncing headlight beams as I strained to keep the ATV under control. We were going too fast for rough terrain—dangerously, recklessly fast—but we didn’t dare slow down.

Gunfire crackled as the lead drone came back around. Jessie fired off wild shots, making sparks fly. The drone warbled, spinning, and slammed into a tree at full speed. Tortured metal shrieked as the hull burst into a gout of flame, scorching the tree black, and severed rotors whipped away into the dark. One to go.

The survivor went back to harassing Cody, winging almost close enough to slash him again and again, forcing him to steer left.
It’s not trying to kill us,
I realized,
it’s herding us, like a sheepdog. Herding us toward—

We burst from the underbrush and out onto the highway.

I hit my brakes as blinding high beams washed over me, and a wall of olive steel loomed square in our path. A firing line of mercenaries stood before the troop transport, six in all, rifles shouldered and fingers on their triggers. I screeched to a halt, Jessie and Cody pulling up short behind me. Then I put up my hands.

They took us back to the lodge. To the café, where they put our backs to the rough wooden posts in the middle of the restaurant and tied our wrists behind us, leaving us to sit and stew while they went through our pockets. This was the nerve center of the Xerxes operation: four laptop computers sat out on dinner tables, networked with thick, chunky cables to a gray metal box and a portable fan. I didn’t know what the extra gear was for, but the mercenaries were clearly traveling light, quick to set up and quick to tear it all down when the time came to flee the scene. A hit-and-fade mission, just like us.

“I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us,” Abrams said, still wearing the counterfeit silver oak leaf on his fatigues. “You killed five of my men tonight. None of you are walking away.”

“They were resisting arrest,” Jessie said.

“The only question remaining,” he said, ignoring her as he glared daggers at Cody, “is whether you get a nice, quick, clean, and painless death or we make this ugly and slow. Because I might be pressed for time, but I assure you, I can be very,
very
ugly.”

Jessie thumped the back of her head against her post. “
Really?
He serves up a straight line that easy and
neither
of you is gonna bite? It’s like I have to do all the work around here.”

Cody looked at her like she had two heads, but I knew what Jessie was doing. She wanted Abrams angry—angrier than he already was, given how his jaw was clenched and how his face had gone beet red. Angry people make dumb mistakes and say things they shouldn’t.

I also knew that if this interrogation was about to get rough, she wanted his undivided attention, to spare me and Cody from as much pain as she could. As team leader, that was her job.

Just like it was my job not to let her.

“It’s over, Abrams,” I said. He whirled to face me. “That’s right. We know who you are, and so do the state police. They’re on their way, right now. Best thing you can do is untie us and give yourself up.”

Slim chance of that. The only hope for the cavalry to save the day was if those hostages we set free made it to civilization—and the nearest town was a long, long hike away. By the time the cops got here, they wouldn’t find anything but our cold, dead bodies. Still, I caught the flicker of worry in his eyes.

He strode over to the computer table, leaning in to confer with two of his men in hushed tones. As he straightened his back, I heard him say, “—then start searching grid three. And hurry it the hell up.”

The Red Knight might have already crash-landed—or it might be about to—but at least Xerxes hadn’t found it yet. A small blessing, but at the moment I’d take any I could get.

“You,” Abrams said to Cody. “Who do you work for?”

Jessie looked my way. “Did you see that? Went right for him. Just assumes the only man in the group is the one in charge. What an asshole.”

“We’re with the FBI,” I told him. “Another good reason to surrender.”

He walked to the table where they’d emptied out our pockets, and came back with a gun.

“Since when do FBI agents carry pieces like this?” he said, dragging his fingertip across the acid-marred serial number. “This is a hitter’s gun. I’ll ask again: Who do you work for? Who sent you?”

“The Mormons,” Jessie said. “We’re getting
really
aggressive on the door-to-door thing. Have you made your decision for Christ?”

He took a step toward her, cocking a fist.

“That’s not the right question,” I blurted, stopping him in his tracks. He looked my way.

“What is, then?”

“Xerxes,” I said. “You were a soldier-of-fortune outfit. I assume you still are. So the question is, how much money will it take to get you to flip sides and join
our
team?”

Pointless question. Whatever the fee, I could guarantee I didn’t have it—and Linder wouldn’t be covering the cost, either—but it might bring me one step closer to figuring out who they were working for.

He sneered. “More than you’ve got. We’ve moved up in the wo—” From a nearby table, a walkie-talkie squawked. He rushed over and snatched it up. “Sir.”

The accent on the other end was pure cockney, and back-alley rough. “Got anything yet?”

Abrams’s back went ramrod straight. “Not yet, sir. The second we find anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

“You lads havin’ a wank together, or doin’ your jobs? Never mind, don’t tell me, I don’t even wanna know. What about those tangos you netted?”

“They say they’re with the FBI.”

“Like ’ell they are,” the voice growled. “Take off the kid gloves, son, and start yanking out toenails until somebody tells it straight. There’s too much on the line tonight to be messing about.”

I glanced over at Cody. He stared straight ahead, eyes unblinking, expression blank. I watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, and realized every breath was a perfect four seconds in, four seconds out.
He’s counting,
I thought,
to keep himself calm.

And I was the one who got him into this mess.

“Yes, sir,” Abrams said. “I’ll keep you updated.”

No reply beyond a soft bed of static. He set the walkie-talkie back down.

“Angus Caine, I presume,” I told him. “What, your boss couldn’t even be bothered to show up? He can’t think your chances of success are too high.”

“We’re the best of the best,” he said. “We
always
get the job done.”

And getting the job done, in this case, was about to involve somebody’s toenails and a pair of pliers. Or any of a hundred other ways to treat somebody to their very own living hell. I had one shot at stopping him. If I could hold his attention on me while breaking Jessie free, she might be able to grab his gun and take out the mercs at the computers. I made eye contact with her, and flicked my gaze downward.

She got the idea. She wriggled to one side, stretching her arms to give me a glimpse of the thick coils of rope binding her wrists to the pillar, while I quietly called to my magic. Feeling elemental fire well up in the pit of my stomach, a slow-kindled flame, and willing it across the distance between us.

A pinprick of light blossomed on the ropes at her wrists. Sizzling, sending up a thread-thin line of gray smoke as it wormed its way through her bonds. If I could hold my focus for just a couple of minutes—and keep Abrams from noticing what I was doing—the ropes should have weakened enough for Jessie to break loose.

“You always get the job done?” I asked Abrams. “Like in Las Vegas?”

His eyes went hard as stone. Jessie wasn’t the only one who knew how to piss people off.

“That’s right,” I said. “Xerxes’s last job, before you lost your corporate charter and all your money, and three-quarters of you wannabe soldiers landed behind bars? I was there that night. I put a whole bunch of your buddies in handcuffs. It wasn’t like they put up much of a fight. While you and Caine were running out the back door,
abandoning
your men, they were competing to see who could surrender fastest.”

Abrams loomed over me. His lips pursed into a hard, tight line.

“Sir,” said one of the mercenaries at the computer table, “confirmed wreckage in grid three! Drone has visual.”

Abrams sprinted over, resting a beefy hand on the man’s shoulder as he leaned in and stared at the screen.

“I’ll be damned,” he breathed. “There she is. Beautiful. Where’s it at? Can we get the truck in there?”

I craned my neck, but I couldn’t get a look at the screen. Jessie’s ropes smoldered in silence, the pinprick of flame burning time we didn’t have to spend. The merc shook his head.

“I don’t think so, sir. Rough terrain, no trails for half a mile. We can retrieve it on foot and meet up with the truck . . . there. Right there.”

Abrams slapped his back. “Get to it, then. That means all of you: get out there and grab our satellite. I’ll coordinate from here. Double time!”

The door slammed shut behind the last mercenary as they sprinted out of the café, leaving us alone with Abrams. And the gun in his hand.

“I just went from ‘not a lot of time’ to ‘no time at all,’” he told us, “so here’s what I’m going to do. I have three of you. I
need
only one of you. Let’s cut that number down.”

He put the barrel of the pistol to Cody’s forehead.

“I want to know who you work for. And if nobody gives me an answer by the time I count to three, I’m pulling this trigger. So let’s go.
One.
”

Cody didn’t flinch. He looked up, staring Abrams dead in the eye.

The truth was on my lips. The truth could save Cody’s life, or at least keep him alive a little longer. All I had to do was tell Abrams everything he wanted to know.

But I didn’t say a word.

This was about more than the three of us, more than just our lives. Vigilant Lock’s very survival depended on secrecy. Someone—maybe the same people who hired Xerxes—gunned down an entire cell of operatives in Miami. That happened because somebody talked, or got sloppy. I thought about Agent Lawrence, tortured to death with a car battery because somebody, somehow, had penetrated his cover.

“Two,”
Abrams said.

The only real currency when you live in the shadows—the only real power—is information. Secrets kill, faster than a bullet, and if I told Abrams everything I knew about Vigilant Lock, we wouldn’t be the only ones who paid the price. Not even close.

Jessie tugged on the ropes, the singed coils frayed to the breaking point, but her eyes were on the gun. If she tore loose and lunged for Abrams now, either she or Cody would eat a bullet before she took him down. Just a question of who.

Cody looked over at me, something written in his eyes. Fear? Hope? Good-bye? He wanted something from me, needed it, but I had nothing to give him. I held his gaze. I owed him that much: to witness the consequence of my mistakes.

I could save Cody’s life.

But I wasn’t going to.

“Three,”
Abrams said.

FOURTEEN

Abrams pulled the trigger.

The hammer clicked down on an empty chamber.

He pulled the barrel from Cody’s forehead, leaving a red welt and glistening sweat behind. Cody shut his eyes and slumped back against the post, letting out the breath he’d been holding.

“Look at that,” Abrams said. “Guess this one was out of bullets. Lucky you.”

He strolled back over to the table, set the gun down, and picked up another. He popped the magazine, turning it in his fingers, nodded, and loaded it back into the Glock.

“This one, though?” He tapped the barrel. “This one’s still got two shots left. How about you? You feeling chatty yet?”

I stared into the eye of the gun.

“One,”
he said.

The air shifted. I thought it was just me, at first, the back of my neck prickling as the seconds slowed to a molasses drip. My skin getting hot, like the onset of a bad sunburn. But he felt it, too. He scrunched up his brow and took a wobbly step back on suddenly unsteady feet.

“What the hell?” he said. He lowered his gun and stared at his other hand. Pinpricks of light, like tiny fireflies, glistened on his flesh. Multiplying. Beginning to blossom. “How are you—”

Abrams’s skin ignited like a roman candle.

I had never heard a scream like that. I never wanted to hear it again. He was a white phosphorous torch now, blinding like a diamond in the sun, leaving a trail of spitting sparks as he flailed and staggered across the room. He crashed into a table and brought it down in a blazing pile of wreckage, letting out inhuman shrieks while he kicked and thrashed like a fish on a line. The flames spread, licking across the rustic floorboards in all directions.

I felt hands at my wrists, tugging the knotted rope. “It’s okay,” Kevin said. “I’ve got you.”

The ropes pulled away. I jumped up and ran to Cody’s side, working to set him free, while Kevin helped Jessie. Finally, mercifully, the screaming stopped. What remained of Abrams, barely visible behind the growing curtain of fire, was a black and misshapen lump of gristle that barely resembled a human being.

Cody’s ropes fought me, the knot too tight, my fingers too shaky. I tucked my chin and pulled the collar of my shirt up over my mouth and nose while the air went silver gray with gathering wisps of smoke that tickled the back of my throat. It smelled like burned hamburger.

“I’m here, boss,” Kevin told Jessie. “Good time for a rescue, huh?”

She didn’t even look at him. She just rubbed her freed wrists as she stood and pointed her finger at the computer table. “Bag and tag. I want everything on those PCs, and I want it in the next ten seconds.
Move.
”

There was something off about Jessie. Her movements were stiff, her face tight and eyes hard. She looked more like someone had slapped her than saved her. As I finally got Cody loose, I followed Jessie’s line of sight back toward the café door and saw what she was looking at.

A woman leaned against the wall beside the door, arms crossed and one boot against the wood, nonchalant. If the spreading flames and smoke bothered her, it didn’t show. If anything, she seemed bored. She looked like she was in her early twenties, tanned, lean, in ripped jeans and a leather bomber jacket. A riot of rainbow streaks ran through her big, wavy hair, flaring out behind her like a lion’s mane.

I inhaled to ask a question, and the smoke shoved its fingers down my throat. I went into a coughing fit, my lungs burning, and scrambled to help Kevin instead. We yanked cables wildly, slammed laptop lids and grabbed as much gear as we could, while the advancing blaze crept toward us. The fire spread to the back wall of the café, licking up the walls like a burning waterfall, crawling across the rafters.

Cody gripped my shoulder and guided me through the swirling clouds of smoke, both of us hunched over and stumbling half-blind. We made it to the café door and out into the hall just ahead of the others. I staggered to the closest window, leaned my head out, and gasped for breath. The cool night air felt like a glass of ice water after a march through the Sahara Desert. I didn’t take too long to enjoy it, not with the fire spreading faster by the minute.

“Jessie,” I said, “that woman. Who the hell was that—”

“Regroup out front,” Jessie snapped, ignoring my question. She’d gathered up our confiscated gear, brandishing a pistol as she charged past me with murder in her eyes.

I emerged from the lodge right behind her, with Cody and Kevin flanking me. The building burned at our backs, a crackling beacon that lit up the forest night. The rainbow-haired woman waited out front. She leaned one palm back against the hood of a cherry-red Ferrari, stifling a yawn with the other.

Jessie marched up and stuck a gun in her face. The woman lowered her hand and squared her shoulders. She gave Jessie a lazy, feline look.

“Why the
fuck
,” Jessie snapped, “aren’t you dead?”

“You know, when someone saves your life, a thank-you never hurts. Put the gun down, Temple. If I wanted you dead, I would have just let soldier boy do it for me instead of lighting him up.”

“I think introductions are in order,” I said to Jessie.

“Sure,” she said. “Harmony Black, meet Mikki Howl. Your predecessor. Whom I
buried
.”

I walked up to stand beside Jessie, and Mikki looked me up and down. “Ooh, my replacement. A freak like me, huh? You any good?”

As our eyes met, her pupils dilated. They grew and grew, until her baby-blue irises vanished, and nothing remained but black and bloodshot white. Then, in the darkness of her pupils, two tiny pinpoints of dancing fire grew like twin jack-o’-lanterns.

I felt my skin grow hot.

Fingers twitching, I called for my magic. Elemental water washed over my body, invisible to the naked eye but cold, flowing, soothing against my skin. Mikki’s power broke against mine and shattered, dissolving in the night air.

“I have my days,” I told her. “And no, I’m not a pyrokinetic like you. I’ve got a different bag of tricks.”

Her pupils contracted, the fires sputtering out, eyes back to normal in an instant.

“Humph,” she said. “Not bad.”

“You gonna tell me why you’re still breathing?” Jessie demanded.

“As soon as you get the damn gun out of my face and show a little gratitude.”

Kevin stepped up behind us. He cleared his throat, squeezing his hands together, looking like a kid who just got sent to the principal’s office.

“Mikki knew you were in trouble,” he said. “So, uh, she came and got me, and . . . c’mon, Jessie. Put the gun down, okay? It’s really her, this isn’t a trick. She’s on our side!”

“That remains to be seen,” Jessie muttered, but she lowered the gun.

“Much better,” Mikki said. She pushed away from the hood, taking a slow stroll up the lodge’s front drive and inviting us to follow. “I had to leave, Jessie. You were cramping my style.”

“You walked into a building right in front of me,” Jessie said. “Then I saw it explode.”

“Sure. What you didn’t see was me running right out a side exit before I hit the detonator. Those explosives? I planted them, along with a body for you to find, and the evidence making it look like Roman Steranko was responsible. The body was just some streetwalker who OD’d on heroin. A serious autopsy would have shown those remains weren’t mine, but hey, why bother? You said it yourself: you
saw
me walk through that door. I had some money stashed away in a numbered Swiss bank account. Enough to hire a really good surgical team.”

She pulled back her jacket and lifted her tank top, twisting her hip and showing off the thin white scar near her appendix.

“Linder’s little science experiment was no more, and I was free as a songbird.”

“Then why did you come back?”

Mikki paused. She turned to face us, her expression bright.

“Isn’t it obvious? For
Kevin
. I missed him.”

I glanced back. Kevin gazed at her with puppy-dog eyes.

“I was in town for the same reason you are,” Mikki explained. “The Red Knight. Know how much money I could get for that thing on the black market? It’s not easy out there for an independent contractor. When I spotted Kevin at the lodge, though? I know staying hidden would have been the smarter move, but I just couldn’t help myself.”

Timbers groaned inside the hotel, then snapped with a sound like cannon fire as the second floor gave way. A window exploded, flames billowing from the glass, lashing at the air.

“Let’s get farther back,” I said. Jessie held up her hand.

“No. Let’s stay right here. Kevin, go to the parking lot, find a place to work, and start combing the computers we took. I want to know what Xerxes knows, and I want it five minutes ago.”

“But Jessie, can’t I—”

“Go,”
she snapped. As Kevin trudged off, biting his lip, Cody glanced from him to me. I read the question in his gaze and gave a slight nod. He jogged over to walk with Kevin, putting a reassuring hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

As they slipped out of earshot, Mikki’s smile fell away like a mask.

“Well,” she said, her voice cold as an iceberg, “I see you’re still the same insufferable control-freak
dyke
you used to be.”

“Thank you,” Jessie said.

“For what?”

“For using a homophobic insult instead of your usual racist ones. I was getting bored, and frankly, starting to question your creativity. And what the hell did you do to your hair?”

“This?” She patted her rainbow bangs. “I did it for Kevin. There’s a character on this show he likes—you know what? Never mind. You wouldn’t know
what
he likes.”

“Don’t even,” Jessie said. “Don’t even pretend you give a damn about Kevin. I’ve seen your psych evals, Mikki. You have no concept of human empathy. You’re literally incapable of it.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I still
like
things. And I
like
Kevin. Boys his age have
so
much energy, to say nothing of enthusiasm.”

Jessie’s lips parted, eyes widening as she caught Mikki’s meaning. She was probably having the same thought I was.

“Last night,” I said, “when he came back to the room after midnight.”

Jessie’s nose hadn’t failed her. Kevin had been with someone, all right. We’d just made a bad assumption based on limited evidence. Singled out the wrong woman.

“Just like old times,” Mikki told Jessie. “It was always so funny, watching you try to keep us separated. We just had to get creative.”

“You slept with him. While you were on my team.” Jessie said. I could hear the tremor on the edges of her voice. The faint repressed fury, inching toward an explosion. “More than once?”

“Please. I popped his cherry one week before his eighteenth birthday.” She held up her wrists, as if offering them for handcuffs. “Wanna arrest me for statutory?”

“What I want,” Jessie told her, “is to put a bullet between your eyes and save the whole world a lot of grief.”

“Sure you do. But you won’t.”

Another window exploded behind us, spraying the lawn with shards of glittering glass.

“Yeah?” Jessie said. “Why’s that?”

“Because I have a message for Linder. And you’re going to deliver it for me.”