Under the Gun (27 page)

“Get out,” Alex spat. “I want you to see something.”

The sea of police officers parted as Alex flashed his badge and I hurried behind him.
It was still unnaturally hot for San Francisco, but now there was something else hanging
in the air—something that clawed at my chest and made it hard to breathe. I looked
around cautiously, wondering if anyone else felt it, too. No one seemed to; all eyes
were saucer-wide and glued to the taped-off door of the Du delicatessen, Chinese America
Food Wi-Fi Bathroom for Customers Only.

The silence should have alerted me. At no time in my entire adult life had I known
my city to be as eerily quiet as it was now. No one spoke. No birds chirped. No cars
backfired, no church bells chimed, no planes whooshed overhead. There was nothing
but an impenetrable, unholy silence.

Alex paused in front of a table set up along the sidewalk, blocking the entrance to
the delicatessen. A police pop-up tent shaded it, and the table was heaped with all
manner of crime scene preservation material. The man behind the table nodded solemnly
when Alex showed him his badge, and pushed forward to stacks of hospital-looking garb.

“Put these on.” Alex didn’t look at me when he spoke to me, and I picked up my own
stack of disposable crime scene cover-ups.

“These, too?” I asked, referring to the tie-back paper hats left on the table.

Alex nodded, the tension stiffening his body palatable.

“Yeah, it’s that bad,” the guy behind the table filled in, handing me a hat. I saw
his eyes go to my cuffed wrist. “It’s couture,” I said hastily.

I tucked my mass of red curls up and nodded to Alex. “I’m ready.”

He grabbed my elbow and steered me to the door. I sucked in a preparatory breath and
steeled myself, stepping into the dim delicatessen.

“Holy shit.” It was out of my mouth before I had a chance to think about it, and had
I thought about it, I would have screamed. The stark white tiles and Formica tables
that I had grown accustomed to in the store were still there, only now they were stained
a heinous red. The little anime dolls wielding swords and arrows and daggers were
drowning in sticky pools of it, and all around me bodies were scattered in various
positions of desperate escape: a small woman’s fingers still curled, clawing the floor
as she’d tried to pull herself toward the door; a young boy I recognized from a recent
visit was only partially visible as he must have attempted to sprint out the back,
and Xian, her bubble-gum-pink baby-doll dress in angry shreds, each tear to the fabric
puckered and blood soaked, as if her attacker had had claws—claws that recently drew
enormous amounts of human blood.

She had been lain on the counter that she usually stood behind, her body dumped—or
positioned—in such a way as to leave no doubt that the woman no longer lived. Her
head was cocked at an impossible angle, her arms stripped down to sinew and bone.
Her legs were folded daintily, carefully underneath her but on closer inspection they
were just that: placed carefully underneath her as they were no longer attached.

There was no warning to the bile that seared my throat and I turned to run, but slid
on a pool of half-congealed blood. I flailed, but it was useless and the blood-soaked
floor rose up to meet me, my cheek smacking sticky linoleum, my palms sliding against
pooled fluids, and when I opened my eyes, the eyes that gazed into mine were the clouded,
sightless eyes of the dead.

I felt my stomach seize again, but Alex grabbed me, snatched me up from the ground
and held me against him. “No,” I screamed, kicking out and pounding his chest. “Why
did you do this to me? Why? I didn’t do this! I’m not responsible for this! I fucking
hate you! You insensitive piece of shit!” The tears were coursing down my cheeks,
commingling with snot and blood that was not my own. My whole body hiccupped and my
heart slammed against my ribs. I didn’t want Alex to touch me; I wanted to scratch
out my eyes, to beg God to allow me to unsee everything that I just had. I wanted
to be somewhere else, be someone else—even one of the sightless beings ruined on the
floor. My whole world was crashing down around me and suddenly everything I knew was
false.

“Calm down, Lawson, calm down.” Alex pressed me nearer to him each time I struggled.
I could feel his rhythmic heartbeat thumping against my shoulder and suddenly, I was
struggling to breathe.

“Why did you do this to me?” I croaked.

Alex scooped me up in his arms now. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into my hair. He carried
me across the deli and when he pushed me out through the glass door, the clean smell
of the outdoors couldn’t penetrate the heavy stench of death, the metallic smell of
blood and ruin that hung all around me, that clung to my nostrils.

Alex set me down gently but still held me close. He looked down at me, his cobalt
eyes searing. “I needed you to see what we’re dealing with. What Sampson has done.”

The tremor started deep in my soul. I felt it there, then felt it break into my body,
seeping into every muscle, every pore. It ached when it went into my bones and twisted
every muscle. Soon my teeth were chattering, and the bitter, bile-laced saliva pooled
in my mouth. I wretched.

I wiped the back of my hand across my lips and spat.

“I’m sorry, Lawson. I shouldn’t have brought you here like that. I was just out of
ideas. I—you wouldn’t listen to reason.”

“So that”—I jutted my chin—“is your idea of reason?” I held Alex’s eyes until he looked
away.

“You had to see.”

“I’ve seen it.” I turned, shrugging out of my crime-scene garb. “But I still don’t
see what Sampson has to do with it.”

Alex grabbed my shoulder and spun me to face him. “Really, Lawson? Look at
that
.” He pointed to the trail of blood that came from the deli. “Whoever did that was
not human.”

“And that’s how I know it wasn’t Sampson,” I said.

Alex’s nostrils flared and he let out a deep disbelieving sigh. “Then give me someone
else.”

“Nicco,” I said slowly.

Alex pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, his whole body visibly slumping.
“I’m sorry, Lawson. I am really, really sorry. I know this can’t be easy for you and
I should have been more sensitive. What do you know about this Nicco guy?”

I started to shake my head. “Not much, but Sampson says he’s out for revenge. And
it would make sense, especially if it—if the trail ends here.”

“Remember when you told me that werewolves are very few and far between in this city?”

“Well yeah, because of Feng and Xian.”

“Did you find any active werewolves in the UDA files?”

I swallowed hard. “No, but—”

“Sampson sent you to Mort’s. It took us an hour to get there and he tried to kill
you. Do you think that wasn’t a coincidence? Do you think someone who really cared
would put you in that kind of danger?”

Tears stung at the corner of my eyes and I blinked slowly, feeling the first tear
fall.

“But the files,” I said. “Sampson told me to get the files.” I dug in my shoulder
bag, a tiny of flicker of hope all but doused. I found the piece of paper that Sampson
had given me. “See?” I held it up. “He told me to look up . . . werewolves.”

Suddenly, my skin was too tight. Everything hurt and my head started to pound. The
paper trembled in my fingertips. Alex took it from me and turned it around.

“What is this?”

“It’s a page from a UDA file,” I answered.

“Were you missing a page?”

I shook my head. “No. I was missing a file.”

Alex looked down at the page and shook his head sadly. “Nicco Torres. Werewolf. Deceased,
Anchorage, Alaska.”

“No. He’s good,” I said, biting off my words, rage burning tears behind my eyes.

“The good don’t always stay good,” he said, his eyes clearly avoiding mine.

“Sampson told me Nicco was the only other one to survive.” I sighed, dumbfounded,
a tremble going clear through to my soul. “It wasn’t Nicco who vowed revenge. It was
Sampson.”

Alex licked his lips. “What do we do now?”

I closed my eyes and saw the destruction burned into my eyelids. Saw the torn faces,
the ruined bodies, the rivulets of blood. I saw the single tear cutting through the
blood on Feng’s face, but I couldn’t pull up an image of Sampson.

“We bring him in,” I said, my voice cracking.

Alex leaned into his car and pulled out his radio, thumb at the ready. “Where is he?
I’ll have a car there in two minutes.”

I put my hand on Alex’s arm. “No. Not the police.”

“Lawson, you saw what he did.”

I swallowed as the tears poured down my face in a steady flow. “So you know what he’s
capable of. Jail won’t hold him. You’re just going to lose your officers. He’ll go
with someone he trusts.”

A cool breeze started to kick up then, and for the first time in days the fog blew
in in thick gray blankets. I shivered and held my hands over my bare arms. “He trusts
me.”

“Lawson, are you sure?”

I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. “I need to call Dixon. I need to tell him.” My breath
hitched on a sob that wracked my entire body.

This couldn’t be happening.

“I need to tell him to have a team ready for—for him.” I couldn’t say Sampson’s name
anymore. The person—the monster—responsible for all this carnage, for lying to me,
wasn’t the Pete Sampson that I had known.

That
Pete Sampson was dead.

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the Underworld Detection Agency, each ring of
the phone slicing deeper into my heart.

I was doing this.

I was leading Pete Sampson to his death.

Dixon’s voice mail clicked on and I cleared my throat. “Dixon, this is Sophie Lawson.
I—I have the werewolf who killed Octavia. It’s—it’s Pete Sampson. He’s here in San
Francisco.” It physically hurt to say the words. “I’ll bring him to you.”

I hung up my phone, numbness spreading through my whole body. Alex slid his arm around
my waist and nuzzled me to him, but I had never felt more alone, more separate, than
I did at that moment.

“Is Sampson secure where you have him?” Alex asked.

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s get your shoulder fixed up first.”

The ambulance was right behind us, and the same paramedic who tended to me at the
Sutro Point crime scene went to work cleaning the wound on my shoulder. I recognized
him from the Pacific Heights scene , where he’d been handing out paper cups of water
to the pup cops after they hurled in the bushes.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” I said, feeling the strange need to insert some
bland normalcy in the day. “Torres, right?”

“You’ve got a good memory,” he said without looking up.

“Guess so.”

The paramedic just smiled at me, and silently brushed mercurochrome over the wound.
I winced and was about to open my mouth, but was stopped by a bone-rattling scream.

“Medic! Medic!” I heard as people started to mobilize toward the scream.

“It’s Feng,” Alex said.

“We should get out of here.”

“No,” Alex said, with a hand on my good shoulder. “She’ll be taken care of.”

I craned my neck to see two more paramedics restraining a flailing, screaming Feng.
I should have been frightened, but my heart just lurched. Feng wasn’t looking for
me. Her eyes were focused on the open door of the family restaurant, her cheeks blanketed
in a wave of fresh tears, her whole body vibrating under her wails.

“Nick!” One of the paramedics holding Feng said, “We need you.”

My paramedic—Nick, I now knew—looked over his shoulder and then glanced back at me.
“You’re almost done, but I’ve got to tend to her.”

“Don’t worry,” Alex said. “I can slap a Band-Aid on her.”

Nick nodded and snatched a fresh pair of gloves out of his medical box before running
toward the group restraining Feng.

“I feel really bad for her,” Alex said, watching Nick join the group. Squad cars were
starting to leave now and the restaurant was blocked off so most of the curious onlookers
had ambled away. Those who remained looked up at the darkening sky with worry-etched
faces and moved toward storefronts and awnings.

My cell phone chirped and I nudged it toward Alex as I held one arm up, using the
other to poke around Nick’s abandoned medical box for a Band-Aid.

Alex answered the phone and mouthed,
Dixon
.

My chest tightened, my heart starting to thunder again. “I—I can’t,” I mumbled. Even
after all that had happened, I couldn’t be the one to say the words. I couldn’t be
the one to tell Dixon, couldn’t be the one responsible for Dixon giving the kill command.

Alex nodded and stepped back, walking behind a squad car for privacy. I sucked in
a shaky breath and tried to locate a Band-Aid.

When my hand ran across something furry, I retracted it, disgusted.

“Ugh!”

I pushed my hand into the medical box again, my fingertips touching the soft material.

“Fur?”

Shorn pieces, pressed to the back of the kit.

Long, brown—the kind that had been collected at the Sutro Point crime scene. I pulled
out the piece and unfurled it, horrified, my eyes scanning the blood, the words.

“Oh my God.”

The paramedic was the contract holder? It didn’t seem right.

I shut the plastic case, my saliva going sour. Carved into the nameplate was the name
N. Torres.
And everything suddenly became clear.

“Nicco Torres,” I whispered.

I launched myself off the tailgate of the ambulance, cradling my wounded arm in the
other. “Alex, Alex!”

He wasn’t far, but the distance between us seemed expansive as I ran in molasses-slow
motion. The heat in the air was unnatural, stifling; the entire city seemed to have
gone from buzzing and vibrating to stalled, silent, and breathless in that one small
second.

“You can’t! Don’t!” I screamed.

Alex stepped out from behind the squad car and I watched in horror as he hung up the
phone. I opened my mouth to explain, but my words were lost when the sky thundered
and a flash of lightning cracked. All the emotion on Alex’s face was lit for a single
split second before going dark again, before rain started to fall in heavy, hot sheets.

I turned and Alex’s finger’s caught my wrist, his touch burning my skin. His eyes
were pained. “Sophie,” he said, the words almost lost on the hiss of the rain.

I stiffened. It was so rare that he called me by my first name and suddenly it felt
too intimate, too close.

“I know you don’t want it to be true.”

The rain sizzled and steamed as it hit the pavement. I turned my face to the sky,
feeling the rainwater on my forehead, on my cheeks.

“It’s not.”

Chaos ensued as the rain pounded the ground. I grabbed Alex. “The paramedic,” I screamed,
pointing. “The paramedic is Nicco.”

A raindrop zipped down Alex’s furrowed brow. “The dead werewolf?”

I spun, looking through the rain and the mass of people ducking and reveling in the
fresh rain. “That’s Nicco!”

But he wasn’t there.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Alex’s arm. “We have to go!”

The rain thundered against the hood of Alex’s SUV as we tore out of Chinatown, police
lights flashing.

“So, Nicco is alive?” Alex asked.

I nodded, gripping the dashboard. “He’s the paramedic. His name was on the first aid
kit. It was on his name badge.” I slapped my forehead. “How could I not have noticed
that? He was at every crime scene.”

Alex glanced at me sideways. “I’m sorry, Lawson, but that doesn’t really prove anything.”

I unfurled the piece of hide and it shook in my trembling fingers. “This does.” Suddenly
anger raged through me and I gripped the hide. “If I destroy it, it’s over.”

Alex’s hand clasped over mine—hard.

“What are you doing?” I shrieked, trying to shake him off me.

“What are
you
doing?” he roared back. “You can’t destroy the contract. Not yet.”

“Why not? It’s what we’ve been trying to do the whole time.”

“Not we,” Alex said, taking a corner hard. “You.”

I watched the rain splash over the windshield and the tremble started again. But this
time it wasn’t out of fear—it was rage.

“Nicco and Sampson could be working together.”

I gaped at Alex. “Or Nicco could be working against Sampson. Sampson said—”

“Sampson has screwed you up at every turn. He sent you to Mort’s. He fed you the fake
UDA files.”

I swallowed, my mouth going dry. “He didn’t feed me the files. Dixon did.”

“God, it’s like people can’t drive when it rains.”

“And the contract was in his medical box, but so were a bunch of loose strands of
fur.” I shook the contract, growing more and more disgusted. “This fur.”

“So?” Alex said, eyes focused on the road ahead. “Shedding?”

“He was framing Sampson.”

“What?”

“Nicco was framing Sampson! God, Alex, I left Sampson chained up in my basement. Nicco
heard us talking about it. We have to get there before he does.”

“Or before Dixon does.”

Alex took another hard corner and I dialed Nina, commanding her to answer the phone:
nothing. I tried Vlad and prayed to Count Chocula’s ghost that he would answer. Nothing.

A car cut in front of us, causing every other car on the block to honk and stop short.
“Let me out. I can get there faster from here.”

“Lawson—”

“Don’t!” I exploded.

Alex closed his mouth and slapped open the glove box, his pistol nestled there. “Go,”
he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I snatched the gun from the glove box and went tearing into the street. My lungs were
burning by the time I reached my apartment building, my scissored leg screaming in
protest. I snatched open the door, screaming and huffing.

“Sampson! Sampson! Can you hear me?”

There was no answer and I slid across the slick vestibule floor, clawing for the door
to the stairwell.

“Oh, God.”

The door was busted open, whatever hit it powerful enough to crush the steel and nearly
fold the door in on itself. “Sampson?” I yelled.

I choked on a sob. The chains I had used to bind Sampson were destroyed, broken as
if the heavy chain was nothing but string. Blood and hunks of fur littered the floor,
and a steady stream of rainwater trickled in from the broken window near the ceiling.

“Lawson, come on!” Alex called from upstairs. “They got into a car in front of me.
Let’s go!”

I shoved Alex’s gun into my waistband and ran outside, throwing myself into the car.
“We’re never going to find them,” I said miserably.

“Yeah we are,” Alex said, putting his hand on my knee. “If there’s one thing you can
count on on a rainy day, it’s traffic. Sampson got in that car.” He gestured with
his chin to a Suburban with blacked-out windows just a few car lengths ahead of us.

“Oh my God—someone answered my prayers.”

“Romero did. I called it in and he set up a roadblock.”

“Remind me to thank him when this is over.”

“Better not. He’s still pissed that you took off with his cuffs.”

I held up my arm, the open cuff flopping around. “I’m beginning to like the look.
It’s dangerous.” I clawed the dashboard. “Look! They’re moving.”

The car that held Sampson edged its way through traffic, side-swiping cars until two
wheels were on the sidewalk. Then the driver must have pushed the gas pedal to the
floor, because the car took off like a shot, disappearing around another apartment
building.

“We have to stop them!”

Alex shrugged, slammed the gas down, and took the same route the Suburban did.

“No wonder our cities are going bankrupt,” I said.

“Do you want to catch this guy or not?”

I grabbed the sides of my seat and held on for dear life. “Punch it, Chewy!”

Alex zipped around the city like a pro while I concentrated on keeping my lunch down
and figuring out what to do next.

“Are you putting on makeup?” Alex asked incredulously when I began rifling through
my purse.

“Do me a favor and hold the car steady for a half-sec, will ya?”

Alex groaned until I found what I was looking for: Feng’s silver bullet. I slipped
it into the chamber and glanced at Alex in profile. His eyes flashed over me.

“You sure?” he asked.

“I have to be.”

“Lawson!” I heard Alex’s voice at the same time I heard the screech of tires. The
seat belt tightened around me, and I gasped, the gun sliding from my hands and slamming
into the dashboard. I threw my arms up as my body lurched forward, slowing the trajectory
of my skull and stopping just short of going through the windshield. Smoke rose from
the car’s crumbled hood and the back of the Suburban was wedged securely into the
front of Alex’s SUV. Alex was pinned behind his air bag, dust swirling in the air.

“Alex!” I tried to paw away the air bag. “Are you okay?”

Alex’s head lolled toward me, his eyes still a brilliant blue even as a rivulet of
blood worked its way down his eyebrow. “I’ll be fine,” he whispered. “Go get Sampson.”

I opened my mouth, torn, but Alex pushed me with a shaking hand. “Go,” he said.

I grabbed the gun and ran toward the Suburban.

It was empty.

I stumbled backward, dumbfounded. Our chase had taken us through the city; our crash
had left us in an industrial area at the edge of town. The battered ground was littered
with shipping containers and rusted-out warehouses. “Sampson?” I yelled.

The buildings tossed my call back to me in an endless echo. I took a careful step,
trying to make out any sound over the rush of rain.

Then I saw the flash.

The pop came next.

I took off running, my thighs pumping, vaulting me forward as the rain soaked my T-shirt,
weighed down my jeans.

“Dixon!”

He spun, then grabbed my arm. “He’s in here.”

I followed Dixon into one of the buildings. He went to loosen his grip on me, but
something happened, and my back was pressed up against his front, one arm clamped
around my waist, the other around my throat.

“Dixon?”

“You’re such a good friend, Sophie. But not a very good employee.”

“What?”

I had barely blinked by the time Dixon wound my legs with duct tape and did the same
with my arms. “You shouldn’t go through company files, Ms. Lawson.”

He gave me a hard shove and I flopped into a folding chair, struggling against the
tape. My eyes swept the empty warehouse for a weapon. There was heap of broken pallets,
a length of twine, and then I felt like I had been punched in the chest. “Mr. Sampson?”

He was chained to the wall across from me, face forward on the cement, blood pooling
at the edge of his mouth. There was a bullet hole just above his waist. It was fresh,
but the blood was already starting to congeal.

“Is he dead?”

“No! Not yet.”

“Wh—where’s Nicco?”

Dixon cocked an eyebrow. “Out getting me a snack.”

As if on cue, the warehouse door shoved open and Nicco—still dressed in his paramedic
garb—pushed in. He was gripping Alex in front of him, the cut above his eye now bleeding
profusely. A piece of duct tape was covering Alex’s mouth and his shoulder slumped
forward at an impossible angle. His hands were wound with a length of tape.

“Oh, God. Alex, are you okay?”

“Go ahead, tell her, Alex,” Dixon said, a wicked smile crossing his face. “Are you
doing okay?”

Alex nodded slightly and I felt my heart speed up again.

“I don’t understand,” I said breathlessly. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Dixon blinked, his eyes going wide and sympathetic. “Don’t you? Your friend Sampson
came back to San Francisco to get revenge on those pesky Du sisters. If he could just
find out who it was who hired them, he could at least buy some time.”

I licked my lips. “But it was you who hired them. It was you, wasn’t it?”

Dixon nodded bashfully as if I had just accused him of a terrific performance.

“Guilty. But you know how werewolves are—volatile. You’ve seen the files.”

“You doctored them,” I said, finally understanding. “You wanted me to find them.”

“And you didn’t surprise me.” Dixon produced a flashlight from his pocket, twirling
it in his hands until the white sticker was visible, the name ‘Sophie Lawson’ printed
on it. “Such a good girl.”

He smiled, baring his teeth. His smile dropped. “Don’t worry, Ms. Lawson. Even if
you weren’t so predictable—it wouldn’t matter. People were dying because wolfy boy
couldn’t keep his jaws to himself.”

“But Nicco’s a wolf.” My eyes cut to the accused. “You know that, right? Nicco was
the one who wanted revenge.”

“And why he couldn’t kill Sampson in Alaska like I asked remains to be heard, doesn’t
it, Nicco?” Dixon’s eyes flicked over Nicco, who stood tall, still with a heavy grip
on Alex.

“You were working together?”

Nicco cocked an eyebrow, flashed a disgusting grin. “You were fun to play with, sweetie.
Sorry about the dog park though.”

Dixon rolled his eyes. “Hard to get these beasts to keep their hands to themselves.”

Nicco let out a low growl, his eyes cutting to Dixon, who ignored him.

“Anyway”—Dixon grinned, his ultra-sharp fangs pressed against his bottom lip—“Nicco
had something I wanted. I had something he wanted. So we made a deal.”

“What could you want with him?” I asked Nicco.

“I wanted him.” He jutted his chin toward Sampson. “Dead.”

“What? How could you?”

“How could I want the man who domesticated our entire race dead? That’s your question?”

I turned away from Nicco, from the raw hatred in his cold eyes. “And what did you
want, Dixon?”

He shrugged. “I wanted Sampson dead, too. I wanted the UDA to be mine—to be run properly.
Maybe a little mayhem in the interim. By the way, Ms. Lawson, there’s really no need
for you to come in on Monday. As of today, the Underworld Detection Agency runs on
an all-vampire staff.”

“But Sampson was gone. He wasn’t a threat to you.”

Dixon crossed over to Sampson. I could see his chest rise and fall gently, but other
than that, there was no sign of life. “Well, he isn’t a threat right now. Either way,
it was a win-win for Nicco and I to do business together. He gets to chew a few breathers—no
offense, Ms. Lawson—and plant a few hairs, and I get to watch the show.”

“Octavia?” I asked.

Dixon shrugged. “A little funsie for me to throw you off the trail. She got on my
nerves, anyway.” He stuck a thumbnail between two teeth. “And she stuck in my teeth.”

“So now what? You’re just going to kill Mr. Sampson?”

Dixon cocked his head, his smile still huge. “No, Ms. Lawson.” He took his precious
time dipping into his pocket, then displayed a silver bullet between forefinger and
thumb. “You are.”

Dixon leaned forward and snatched me off the ground, standing me upright.

I shook my head. “You’re crazy. I would never hurt Sampson. And I would never,
ever
do anything for you.”