Stalker's Luck (Solitude Saga Book 1) (18 page)

With a final roar, Williams grabbed Eddie by the shoulders and slammed his forehead into Eddie’s face.

Eddie’s vision blackened for a moment. He felt himself roll aside, heard the sound of Williams’ footsteps over the rattle of the train.
Get up. Get the hell up. He knows where Cassandra is. Get up!

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and shook his head clear. The room spun around him. He squinted to make his vision focus. Williams ran towards the speeding train.

No.
Eddie forced himself to his feet, stumbled forward two steps. Fell again with his head pounding. He couldn’t do anything except watch.

As the rear of the train came into view in the tunnel, Williams leaped. He slammed into the railing at the back of the train, wrapping his arms around the guard rail as the train rushed on. He looked back, met Eddie’s eye.

And then he was gone, carried away by the train.

Eddie closed his eyes, sat down on the cold floor, and exhaled heavily. Damn it. He’d underestimated how much fight the fugitive had in him. And he’d overestimated his own ability after the beating Leone’s men had given him.

Stupid. Careless. He’d seen a chance and he’d taken it. But it hadn’t been enough, and now he didn’t have Williams and he didn’t have a location on Cassandra. Shit!

“Hey, Skinny.” Knox’s voice dragged him out his head. “We’ve got company incoming. They’re trying to get the elevator back online. We have to beat it.”

Eddie sighed and opened his eyes. He touched his nose. He was bleeding a little, but at least it wasn’t broken.

“Are you listening to me?” Knox said.

“Yeah, yeah. Take it easy, Jack.” He planted his hands on the ground and slowly, painfully levered himself upright. “How long until the next train?”

“Too long.”

Eddie nodded and limped towards the door at the other end of the loading bay. “Then I guess we’re walking.”

20

Roy clung to the back of the train as it whistled through the tunnel, passing loading bay after loading bay. He knew he was travelling beneath all the major restaurants and casinos on the strip and a good few smaller ones besides. The blood from his nose grew cold and sticky on his face as he was buffeted by the stale air. The stalker had hit true, even as injured as he was. Roy had to give him that.

But he wasn’t going to be taken. Not now, not when he was so close.

The stalkers had managed to stir up the Crimson Curtain more than he expected. The chaos had got him in, but it’d been too late.

That didn’t matter. He knew where he’d find the evacuated staff. Just one piece in a long list of the information he’d extracted from Leone’s man back at the apartment. He imagined that in his position, Leone would’ve discarded the information as useless, or never even attempted to extract it from the source. That was always his weakness. To be a syndicate leader you had to be able to hold a thousand details in your head at once. You had to know how the whole picture fitted together. You had to know more about the enemy than he knew about himself. Roy had lost a lot during his time in the Bolt, but he hadn’t lost that.

He was beginning to think the train would never stop, but then he heard the squeal of brakes and felt it begin to decelerate. He clutched the guard rail and waited as the train slowed and pulled to a stop in yet another underground loading bay. He released his death grip on the railing, edged around to the side of the train, and stepped onto the small platform. A scrawny kid barely out of his teens stared back. The boy pushed back his cap and wiped his hands on his overalls.

“Hey, pal, what the hell’re you doing back there?”

Roy glanced around. The loading bay was much smaller than the Crimson Curtain’s. A few scattered crates of beer and liquor were piled against the wall.

“Where is this?” he said.

“Louie’s,” the kid said.

“Who’s Louie?”

“He’s…I don’t know, it’s just the name of the bar. You can’t be down here, pal.”

Roy walked up to the kid. The boy’s eyes rounded and his back went stiff. He didn’t back away, but Roy could tell that was more from fear than bravery.

Roy had a head of height on the kid. He looked down at him and reached out his hand. The kid trembled. Roy plucked the rag out of the front pocket of the kid’s overalls. Without taking his eyes from the boy, he dragged the rag across his face, soaking up the blood that had streamed from his nose. The rag was soon stained a deep red.

He tucked the damp rag back in the kid’s pocket, his fingers touching something plastic as he did so. He pulled it out. A small retractable knife, the kind used to open boxes. He extended the blade, checked the sharpness with his thumb. It would do. He retracted it and pocketed the knife.

“The exit,” he said. “Where is it?”

The boy blinked and pointed to a small set of stairs. Roy grunted and patted the kid’s face.

“Get back to work.”

He stepped around the frozen boy and headed up the stairs, putting a cigarette between his lips and lighting it as he went. There was an open door at the top of the stairs. He came out behind a bar in some kind of dive half-filled with middle-aged locals bent over glasses, drowning their sorrows. The bartender, a woman nearly as wide as she was tall, stopped midway through pouring vodka into a shot glass.

“Who the shit are you?” she said.

He ignored her, moved around the side of the front bar, and found the bathroom, a dimly lit room that only held a single toilet and a sink. The door swung closed behind him and he snapped the lock.

He looked in the mirror. His face was a mess. Dried blood was crusted in his stubble. His nose was bulbous and angry.

He set his cigarette on the edge of the sink, turned on the tap, and put his hands under the flow. The icy water burned. He’d barely noticed the wound in his palm as he’d clung to the cold train railing. But now all the pain came flooding back.

He gritted his teeth and let the water clean away the blood and grime. The wound in his thigh would have to wait for later. The blade had been short; the stalker hadn’t hit an artery. Roy snatched some paper towels from the dispenser and wrapped his wounded palm, tying them in place with a strip of cloth from his sleeve.

Someone hammered on the bathroom door.

“I don’t know who you are, buddy,” the bartender said. “But you’ve got to get out of here now.”

He continued to ignore her. With his good hand, he splashed water on his face until the sink was red with his blood. His nose was crooked where the stalker had broken it. The little bastard. Roy had been intending to throttle him and leave him on the railway tracks. But the stalker had struck first.

The nose had to be re-set, there was no way around it. He stared at himself in the mirror, laid his thumbs on either side of his nose, and gave it a quick sharp twist.

He grunted and grabbed the basin with both hands, scraping his nails along the porcelain.
Fucking hell
.

The bartender banged on the door again. “I’m warning you, buddy, I’m armed. Get out here now.”

He grabbed another handful of paper towels and cleaned the blood from his nose. The stalker was going to pay for that.

Returning his cigarette to his lips, he ripped open the bathroom door. The fat bartender stared at him down the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun. Her hands were steady, but her eyes gave away her terror.

He let his eyes drift past her. The kid from downstairs was hiding behind the bar, watching.

“No sudden moves,” the bartender said. “Just get out.”

He pushed past her and walked towards the exit. The sullen eyes of the patrons followed him as he moved. He stopped at a comm terminal by the front door. A warning notice was displayed on the screen.

Attention all visitors to Temperance: In eight days, life support will no longer be guaranteed. The Temperance Municipal Authorities, in association with the Eleda Federation, advise all visitors to depart Temperance before this time to ensure your safety.

He dismissed the notice, fed a note into the slot, and dialled. He could see the bartender still pointing her gun at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes?” Victoria Palmer said when she picked up.

“I’ll be returning with Lilian soon. If you want to get off this station, I suggest you get ready to leave. We won’t have much time.”

Before she could answer, he cut the connection.

He looked back at the bar. The hubbub had quietened into silence. A dozen pairs of eyes stared at him. The rest watched their feet or the table or the liquid swirling in their glasses. He took a puff of his cigarette, pulled his jacket closed over his bloodstained shirt, and walked out the door.

21

Dom’s idea of a rendezvous turned out to be an abandoned hotel five blocks from the strip. With no staff around, the tourists staying there had apparently developed an honour system. They’d go behind the reception desk, take a key, and claim that room for however long they needed it. By the sounds of moans and thumping as Eddie walked down the corridor of the third floor, he guessed most of them only borrowed the rooms by the hour.

“Let’s see,” Knox said as he led the way. “Three-fifteen. This one.” He reached for the knob.

Eddie put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him aside. He placed himself out of the direct line of the door and gave three sharp knocks.

“Freckles?” he called.

“I told you not to call me that,” came the reply.

Eddie smiled. “You all right in there?”

“I’m alone. You can come in.”

He heard her decock her revolver. The lock snapped open.

He eased the door open and took a look at her. She was holding a wad of gauze against her jaw. It was stained red, as was the fabric of her white tank top and the duvet cover where it looked like she’d been sitting. In her other hand she held her revolver.

Eddie waved Knox inside, closed the door behind him, and studied Dom.

“Bad trip to the dentist?”

She sat back down on the bed, next to the first aid kit she’d laid out there. “I’m not in the mood, Eddie. Did you get it?”

“That depends what you mean by ‘get it’,” Knox said. “You see, on the one hand, the data’s all there. Everything we need to get to Roy.”

“And on the other hand?” Dom said.

“On the other hand, well, there’s some corruption. As it stands, I can’t access the tracking information.”

Dom growled.

“That’s not to say it can’t be done,” Knox added quickly. “I should be able to patch the data. It’ll just take me some time.”

“We don’t have time,” Dom said. “We’ve stirred things up out there. Williams knows we’re after him, Leone’s probably got half the syndicate looking for us after what we did.” Her eyes found Eddie’s and went hard. “What the hell happened?”

Eddie hung his holster over the armchair beside the bed and lowered himself into the seat, clutching his ribs. On the other side of the room, Knox sat down by the room’s computer console and hooked up his tab. Eddie left him to it.

“Take it easy, Freckles. Take a breath. We’re not moving from here for a while, so we might as well relax.” He gestured at the gauze pressed to her cheek. “Let me take a look.”

“It’s fine.”

“Just let me take a look, huh?”

He leaned forward. Her lips formed a line, but she didn’t resist as he peeled away the gauze.

The cut was deep. The flesh hung open, revealing a grisly mess of meat and blood. Any deeper and the shot would’ve struck bone. It ran from a few centimetres south of the corner of her mouth all the way back, nearly to her earlobe. The bleeding had slowed, but it still oozed from the wound.

“Will I ever play piano again, doc?” Dom said.

He grinned. “Did you clean it already?”

“Yes.”

“Took something for the pain?”

“Didn’t want to dull the senses.”

“To hell with that. What’ve you got here?” He rummaged through the first aid kit and came up with a pair of small self-injecting disposable syringes. “Lie back and think of New Calypso.”

He pulled the cap off one syringe and jabbed the small needle into the muscle of her shoulder. “One for you.” A few moments later, the lines drained from her face. “And one for me.” He took the cap off the other and plunged it into his thigh. Warmth spread through him, smothering the pain.

“There we go,” he said. “Don’t need a ship to fly, huh?” He prodded the flaps of skin around her wound. “Stitches or strips?”

“You’re not coming near me with a needle and thread when you’re high.”

“Strips it is.”

He found the wound closure strips in the kit and went to work, using them to bind the wound together. He could feel her eyes on him as he worked.

“What about you?” she said. “You look like hell. How badly did they hurt you?”

“Nothing some ice and time won’t heal. Although you cut it a little fine. A few seconds later and I would’ve been taking up a new job as a choir boy.”

“Might’ve stopped you being so cocky.”

“Why does everyone think I’m cocky?” He pressed a fresh wad of gauze against the wound. “Hold this for a second.”

She did so. “But you’re all right.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m all right.” He paused. “Thanks.”

“What happened in there, Eddie?”

“Like I said. Roy Williams figured out we were tracking him. He tipped Leone off.” He peeled the backing off an adhesive bandage, took the gauze away, and pressed it onto the wound. “I…saw him in there, on our way out. He was using the chaos to get inside.”

Her eyes flickered between his. He couldn’t hold her gaze.

“You’re not giving me the whole truth,” Dom said.

“Since when have we ever told each other the whole truth, Freckles?” He wiped his hands on a towel, leaned back, and put his hands behind his head. “Why do you think I had to invent so many things about you when I was writing
The Fires of New Calypso
?”

“I’m still angry at you about that book, by the way. You could’ve at least warned me you were writing about me before you published it.”

He shrugged and closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of the painkiller flooding through him. “If you were that mad, you would’ve kicked me off your ship long ago.”