Walk Away, page 29
“Tell me it’ll be all right, Luke.”
“It’ll be all right. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
He stabbed the phone with his thumb, ending the call. He was headed farther east. He knew a mall in City of Industry that would be busy on a Saturday afternoon. Konnor’s truck would be lost in the parking lot, and Lukas would be another face in the crowd.
The decision made, he made a second call. Otilio answered. “Hey, my man,” he said. “What’s happening?”
“The deal is happening. Today. Four o’clock.”
“Hey, what happened to giving me twelve hours’ notice?”
“My timetable’s changed. I need to unload my shipment and get the green in the next few hours or it’s off. This is a limited-time offer, so if you can’t deliver, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
Otilio spoke in Spanish to someone away from the phone, his voice muffled; then he came back on the line. “I might be able to get you what you want. But it’s gonna cost you.”
“Same deal as before. I deliver the guns, you give me the weed. No bullshit and no renegotiation.”
“You’re stressing me out, cuz. This was supposed to be smooth and quiet. I don’t like all this rushing around. You got heat on you?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is I got what you want, and you got what I want. So let’s do it.”
“Fine. But if this goes the wrong way on me, some people are going to be very upset about it.”
“I’m shaking,” Lukas said, and he cut Otilio off.
He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw a cop a few cars back and one lane over. Immediately he checked his speed. He was going no faster or slower than anyone else on the road. The touch of a knob tilted the side mirror so he could have a better look at the cop without lifting his eyes. The cop behind the wheel didn’t look his way.
Lukas kept steady. When an exit presented itself, he put his signal on and gently changed lanes, careful to monitor the cop’s progress relative to him as he made the maneuver. He started to lose speed for the ramp. The cop didn’t slow down. A moment later they were abreast, two lanes apart. The cop didn’t even turn his head, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Lukas let out a breath as he descended on the ramp. A gas station was just ahead. He slotted in next to one of the pumps and got out. His hands trembled slightly. He made fists until it stopped.
Traffic passed. People filled their tanks. Lukas opened the gas cap and put the pump nozzle in, but he didn’t pay for any gas. He stayed where he was for ten minutes, and when the time had elapsed, he took the nozzle out as though he had finished up like everyone else and then got back in the truck.
His hands were rock-steady now. As he pulled out on the road, he had an image locked in his mind of flat packages bound with tape and shrink-wrap. Break the seal with the point of a knife, and the air was filled with the rich, unmistakable odor of resin. It was the smell of money.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
WHERE IS HE?
At Spencer’s house. Where are you?
Candy store.
He’ll come there.
I know.
Camaro stood near Yates behind a wholesale produce business that seemed closed for the day. There was an alley that traversed the length of the entire block, branches letting out between buildings. There were Dumpsters filled to the brim with rotting vegetables and fruit, others snarled with plastic packaging and cardboard. Where they found shelter, the shadow of a Dumpster fell over them, and they had a clear view of the candy store’s loading dock.
“How’s our friend?” Yates asked.
“Worried. She’s right. It’s just a matter of time until Way comes here. He was ten minutes behind me at Spencer’s house.”
“Let’s hope we have more lead time than that here. If Lukas comes now, there are innocent people inside that store. And we’ve already seen what happens when innocent people get in the line of fire when Lukas is around. I won’t have that on my conscience.”
Camaro watched a couple emerge from the side entrance of the candy store with a gigantic piñata between them, their wrists laden with plastic bags. She made a note of the yellow rental truck. “The place will close soon,” she said. “After that, they have the whole store to themselves. Lukas has to show then. We see him, we move on him.”
“That’s the general idea.”
“Is your shoulder all right?”
“I can move it, if that’s what you mean.”
“If we have to do this the hard way, do I have to worry about you?”
Yates turned from the candy store to look at Camaro. He squinted in the late afternoon sun, and his mouth was almost hidden by the brush of his mustache. “You worried about me, Ms. Espinoza?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“Maybe you’re not as cold as you like to think you are.”
“I’m not Lukas,” Camaro said.
“No, you’re not. I can see that now. I trust you to watch my back. Lukas? I wouldn’t trust him to watch my clothes at the laundromat.”
“I’ll still kill him.”
“That I don’t doubt for a second.”
Together they waited. Not far away, a police siren called out among the concrete walls of the city and was ultimately smothered. Time passed. People came and went, but never Konnor Spencer, and never Lukas Collier.
Camaro sweated, a thin band of perspiration on her spine. Every time a car passed on the quiet street, she tensed anew. The parking lot thinned out. She checked her watch. “Almost time,” she said.
“Keep your eye out. He’s coming. I can feel it.”
The last of the customers departed. The employees at the candy store stayed inside another ten minutes, and then they filed out in their pink shirts. Randy was among them. They closed the shutter behind them.
“Spencer’s still inside,” Camaro said.
“Waitin’ for Lukas.”
The employees drove away. Randy’s little Toyota was the last out of sight.
“Truck,” Camaro said.
A black pickup appeared on the street. The windows were tinted, but Camaro knew the profile. She took a step forward. Yates put out his hand to stop her. “Hold up. There’s more coming.”
“Where—?”
As she spoke, three other vehicles cruised into the parking lot from the opposite direction. One was a van painted white, dirty and badly abused. The others were immaculate, a red ’67 Impala that sat low on its wheels and a Ford Shelby GT500 painted blue with a twin stripe splashed from nose to tail.
The van circled around to the rear while the cars parked in the center of the small lot. Camaro saw movement on the loading dock. Konnor Spencer was there.
“Update our lady friend,” Yates said.
Lukas was out of the truck and shaking hands with a lean, muscular Latino, the sides of his head shaved and his arms heavily inked. There were four others with the leader. They scattered around, casting looks here and there but not seeing Camaro and Yates where they hid.
It’s happening, Camaro texted.
I’ve lost W.
When?
An hour ago. Not on Spencer scene.
We need time.
Calling him. No good. Not answering.
“Damn it,” Camaro said out loud.
You are exposed.
L could leave. Got to move.
I’m coming.
Careful.
“I suspect the news is not good,” Yates said quietly.
“Way’s loose. Hannon’s coming.”
“How far out is she?”
“Minutes. If we want this, it happens now.”
Lukas and the Latinos climbed the steps to the loading dock and vanished inside. Camaro’s heart raced. Her mouth was dry.
“I’m going to let you call it,” Yates said. “Last chance to step back and let the good guys take him.”
“Do you think he’ll let that happen?”
“Can’t say. But it’s a crowd in there. It’s not going to be one-on-one anymore. The question is whether you still want him, and how bad.”
Camaro watched the store. She tried deep breathing to slow her pulse. “I have to look him the eyes,” she said.
“Even if you can’t take him out?”
She flexed her hands. The muscles in her back were locked. She was frozen in place with competing visions in her head. Lukas dead. Lukas taken away. She licked her lips. “If it comes to it, Hannon can have him.”
“But you want him to know it was you.”
“Yes. And you.”
“Then I guess the decision’s made. Let’s go.”
Camaro emerged from cover with Yates a step behind. They skirted the low wall that offset the parking lot from the alley, steel bars preventing ingress, then made their way in from the street. She fell in along the wall of the candy store and moved forward.
She heard voices ahead, slipping easily from English to Spanish. Camaro understood enough to know they were only shooting the breeze. The business hadn’t started yet.
They reached the corner of the building. Yates touched her on the arm. She bent close to let him speak into her ear. “Step in like you got a hundred men behind you. Don’t let ’em see you sweat.”
Camaro acknowledged him with a pat on the shoulder. She drew the pistol from her waistband. Yates’s was already out. They advanced on the concrete steps leading to the loading dock. She held the P220 low ready, against her belly. She took the steps one at a time.
More than half the lights were off in the candy store. Camaro had the sun at her back when she stepped into the open. She brought the gun up smoothly as all seven men came into view. Lukas was framed in the center, three men on each side of him, standing over an open case with a trio of black carbines inside. The hollows of the store were murky behind him, filled with deep shadows. The place had no windows.
“Hey,” Camaro said quietly.
The men reacted at once. They reached for guns under the loose tails of shirts or at their bellies. Lukas simply stood, and when Camaro’s eyes met his, he smiled.
Yates ghosted in behind her. “Guns down!” he commanded. “First man who moves gets shot.”
Lukas still smiled. “Relax, amigos,” he said. “It’s old friends.”
“What the hell?” asked one of the Latinos. The bottom of his Lakers jersey was pulled up and hooked on the butt of a Glock at his hip. His hand hovered over the weapon. “Is this a rip-off? Goddamn it, Luke, you son of a bitch!”
“No rip-off,” Camaro said. Her gaze held Lukas’s. “I’m here for Lukas.”
“Gonna shoot me now? Is that how it goes down?”
Camaro’s finger rested lightly on the trigger. “Is that how you want it?”
“Cops,” said the man in the Lakers jersey.
“No, they ain’t cops,” Lukas said. “They’re concerned citizens.”
“Why don’t you gentlemen put down your weapons?” Yates asked. “Nice and slow. Nobody gives us trouble, nobody has to get hurt. Like the lady says, it’s Lukas we want. The rest of you can go on about your business.”
“You can’t shoot all of us,” said Konnor. He stood two from Lukas, his hand behind his back. Camaro knew his fingers were on his weapon. She heard it in his voice.
“Who wants to volunteer to be first?” Yates asked.
Camaro’s vision narrowed. She closed out Konnor, she closed out the man in the Lakers jersey and all the men he’d brought with him. She saw Lukas’s face, Lukas’s eyes. He didn’t blink. Her finger tightened just a little. “You lose, Lukas,” she said.
“Boys,” Lukas said, “I think it’s time to finish our deal.”
He blinked. Immediately the collection of men snapped into Camaro’s focus. Konnor whipped a pistol from its hiding place and squeezed the trigger in the same motion. She felt a slashing pain in her arm just as Yates’s .45 boomed.
The men scattered and left Konnor kneeling on the floor, blood soaking his pink shirt. Camaro moved right and Yates left. She put a bullet into the leg of a fleeing man and saw him go down on his face.
Return fire began to explode from inside the store, sounding like cannon. The gunmen melted into the shadows, and only the sharp flashes of their muzzles revealed them, like burning fireflies.
“You hit?” Yates asked her.
Camaro glanced at her arm. It throbbed, the fabric ripped and fresh blood underneath. Flexing the muscle was painful. “It grazed me,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
“I’ll go high, you go low.”
“Let’s do it.”
They entered the store as one. Camaro picked out a shape in the half-darkness and squeezed the trigger. A short yelp was followed by silence. All the shooting had stopped. Her stunned ears could barely make out the voices sounding farther inside the cavern of the store.
Together they skirted the cases on the floor and moved through the loading area. Camaro used a pallet of candy boxes nearly as high as herself for cover. Yates knelt behind a forklift. She pointed to herself, then gestured with her head. Yates gave her an okay.
She stepped out from behind the candy and dashed for the nearest aisle. Yates triggered his pistol twice into the dark, and the vaulted metal ceiling slammed the report down onto them like an open hand.
A peek around the edge of the shelving revealed a dark, open aisle shadowed at the far end. Camaro saw no one. She emerged from cover, crouching low and moving quickly, weapon up. Her arm was wet with blood and burned more and more by the minute.
A shape loomed out of the dark, and Camaro zeroed in on it. The contours of the giant gumball machine solidified. She took shelter in its shadow just as its plastic globe exploded.
Gumballs showered Camaro and sprayed out across the concrete floor. She sighted on another vague shape in the dark and fired. She saw the shape sink to the ground and lie still.
She slipped on the gumballs as she crossed open space to reach the man she’d killed. Up close she could see it was the man in the Lakers jersey. An automatic lay inches from his hand. Camaro left it and advanced.
More shooting erupted behind her. She dropped to the floor and scrambled toward a display of plastic party favors, their colors dulled by the poor lighting. A man screamed. Another gunshot silenced him. Camaro listened. “Yates?” she called out. “Yates!”
His voice carried over the stacks from somewhere: “Still alive. You see him?”
“Working on it.”
The deeper into the store she went, the spottier the light became. It shone in pools ahead of her where the registers and the office were and in spots and splashes. Camaro spotted the end of an aisle and made for it, her boots scuffing as she moved forward.
She reached cover and stopped. She breathed hard, and her vision limned with silver. She exposed herself to peer around the corner.
Lukas seized her by the gun arm and whirled her around, jerking her halfway off her feet. She squeezed the trigger, and her pistol went off between them, a sudden flashbulb of muzzle flare that lit Lukas’s face. He hammered her wrist, and her grip on her weapon loosened. His hand closed over hers, and her fingers strained as he twisted the gun from her grip. The gun clattered on the floor.
He backhanded her across the face, and she felt the healing stitches on her brow open up. She came at him low, driving her elbow deep into his ribs. The wind rushed out of him as he fell back. She kicked him hard, and he went off his feet entirely.
Gunfire detonated close by, and a bullet skimmed off the floor between them. Camaro scrambled for her gun. Her hand closed over it, and she fired instinctively.
Lukas threw himself on her. Two hundred pounds, and his breath was in her face. He had a hand on her gun arm, and he slammed her weapon against the concrete. Camaro brought her knee up hard. Lukas cried out.
They rolled. Camaro tried to bring her gun to bear, but Lukas’s grip was unbreakable. He closed his other hand around her throat. She gouged him in the eyes.
He torqued her wrist, and she felt something give. Her hold on her weapon slackened. She fired into the floor by Lukas’s head, and they both screamed at the close-range report. Dark blood oozed from his ear.
Lukas got a leg between them and pushed her up and off. Camaro went over, striking her head on the floor as she tumbled onto her back. She still had the gun in her hand, but her grip was weak.
Shooting sounded all inside the confines of the store, echoing and reechoing. Someone called for his mother in Spanish. Yates was yelling for Camaro, but she was breathless and hurting.
She saw Lukas make it to his feet. A string of gunshots sounded as rapidly as crackling fireworks. Camaro was misted with blood, and Lukas reeled. She couldn’t raise her right hand to fire as he retreated into the dark. She grabbed for her gun with her left, opened fire at his retreating back as it merged with the shadows.
Yates was there. “Are you down? Are you hit?”
“I can’t move my arm. I think I tore something. Help me up.”
Men shouted to one another in the dark. Yates looked around. “I don’t know how many more we got to deal with.”
“Get me on my feet.”
He helped her rise. She opened her mouth to speak in the same moment a shrill alarm sounded. A red light flashed two rows down, and then there was the sudden burst of white light from outside. “Fire exit,” Camaro said.
“I’ll go,” Yates said.
Camaro shook her head. “No. Hold them off for me.”
“You’re hurt.”
“He’s hurt.”
“It should be me.”
Camaro looked at Yates in the dark. “It has to be me.”
“What about Hannon?”
“She’s too late.”
Chapter Eighty
CAMARO BURST OUT of the store into the space between it and the chili wholesaler next door. She heard renewed gunfire inside, but there was no time to think more of it. Alley access was fifty feet away. Lukas was already out of sight, but there were scattered red droplets on the dirty ground.
High up in the air, the sound of skirling police sirens carried. Camaro ran to the alley, skirting a Dumpster filled with discarded packaging. Her lungs bellowed.
Her arm was hurting more and more. Blood ran down her hand in a steady stream. She knew she’d feel foggy soon, and after that she’d feel nothing. Her fingers were numb. She dashed ahead, heedless of her own booming pulse. She made the main alleyway just in time to see Lukas vanish thirty yards distant, limping hard.
“It’ll be all right. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
He stabbed the phone with his thumb, ending the call. He was headed farther east. He knew a mall in City of Industry that would be busy on a Saturday afternoon. Konnor’s truck would be lost in the parking lot, and Lukas would be another face in the crowd.
The decision made, he made a second call. Otilio answered. “Hey, my man,” he said. “What’s happening?”
“The deal is happening. Today. Four o’clock.”
“Hey, what happened to giving me twelve hours’ notice?”
“My timetable’s changed. I need to unload my shipment and get the green in the next few hours or it’s off. This is a limited-time offer, so if you can’t deliver, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
Otilio spoke in Spanish to someone away from the phone, his voice muffled; then he came back on the line. “I might be able to get you what you want. But it’s gonna cost you.”
“Same deal as before. I deliver the guns, you give me the weed. No bullshit and no renegotiation.”
“You’re stressing me out, cuz. This was supposed to be smooth and quiet. I don’t like all this rushing around. You got heat on you?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is I got what you want, and you got what I want. So let’s do it.”
“Fine. But if this goes the wrong way on me, some people are going to be very upset about it.”
“I’m shaking,” Lukas said, and he cut Otilio off.
He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw a cop a few cars back and one lane over. Immediately he checked his speed. He was going no faster or slower than anyone else on the road. The touch of a knob tilted the side mirror so he could have a better look at the cop without lifting his eyes. The cop behind the wheel didn’t look his way.
Lukas kept steady. When an exit presented itself, he put his signal on and gently changed lanes, careful to monitor the cop’s progress relative to him as he made the maneuver. He started to lose speed for the ramp. The cop didn’t slow down. A moment later they were abreast, two lanes apart. The cop didn’t even turn his head, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Lukas let out a breath as he descended on the ramp. A gas station was just ahead. He slotted in next to one of the pumps and got out. His hands trembled slightly. He made fists until it stopped.
Traffic passed. People filled their tanks. Lukas opened the gas cap and put the pump nozzle in, but he didn’t pay for any gas. He stayed where he was for ten minutes, and when the time had elapsed, he took the nozzle out as though he had finished up like everyone else and then got back in the truck.
His hands were rock-steady now. As he pulled out on the road, he had an image locked in his mind of flat packages bound with tape and shrink-wrap. Break the seal with the point of a knife, and the air was filled with the rich, unmistakable odor of resin. It was the smell of money.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
WHERE IS HE?
At Spencer’s house. Where are you?
Candy store.
He’ll come there.
I know.
Camaro stood near Yates behind a wholesale produce business that seemed closed for the day. There was an alley that traversed the length of the entire block, branches letting out between buildings. There were Dumpsters filled to the brim with rotting vegetables and fruit, others snarled with plastic packaging and cardboard. Where they found shelter, the shadow of a Dumpster fell over them, and they had a clear view of the candy store’s loading dock.
“How’s our friend?” Yates asked.
“Worried. She’s right. It’s just a matter of time until Way comes here. He was ten minutes behind me at Spencer’s house.”
“Let’s hope we have more lead time than that here. If Lukas comes now, there are innocent people inside that store. And we’ve already seen what happens when innocent people get in the line of fire when Lukas is around. I won’t have that on my conscience.”
Camaro watched a couple emerge from the side entrance of the candy store with a gigantic piñata between them, their wrists laden with plastic bags. She made a note of the yellow rental truck. “The place will close soon,” she said. “After that, they have the whole store to themselves. Lukas has to show then. We see him, we move on him.”
“That’s the general idea.”
“Is your shoulder all right?”
“I can move it, if that’s what you mean.”
“If we have to do this the hard way, do I have to worry about you?”
Yates turned from the candy store to look at Camaro. He squinted in the late afternoon sun, and his mouth was almost hidden by the brush of his mustache. “You worried about me, Ms. Espinoza?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“Maybe you’re not as cold as you like to think you are.”
“I’m not Lukas,” Camaro said.
“No, you’re not. I can see that now. I trust you to watch my back. Lukas? I wouldn’t trust him to watch my clothes at the laundromat.”
“I’ll still kill him.”
“That I don’t doubt for a second.”
Together they waited. Not far away, a police siren called out among the concrete walls of the city and was ultimately smothered. Time passed. People came and went, but never Konnor Spencer, and never Lukas Collier.
Camaro sweated, a thin band of perspiration on her spine. Every time a car passed on the quiet street, she tensed anew. The parking lot thinned out. She checked her watch. “Almost time,” she said.
“Keep your eye out. He’s coming. I can feel it.”
The last of the customers departed. The employees at the candy store stayed inside another ten minutes, and then they filed out in their pink shirts. Randy was among them. They closed the shutter behind them.
“Spencer’s still inside,” Camaro said.
“Waitin’ for Lukas.”
The employees drove away. Randy’s little Toyota was the last out of sight.
“Truck,” Camaro said.
A black pickup appeared on the street. The windows were tinted, but Camaro knew the profile. She took a step forward. Yates put out his hand to stop her. “Hold up. There’s more coming.”
“Where—?”
As she spoke, three other vehicles cruised into the parking lot from the opposite direction. One was a van painted white, dirty and badly abused. The others were immaculate, a red ’67 Impala that sat low on its wheels and a Ford Shelby GT500 painted blue with a twin stripe splashed from nose to tail.
The van circled around to the rear while the cars parked in the center of the small lot. Camaro saw movement on the loading dock. Konnor Spencer was there.
“Update our lady friend,” Yates said.
Lukas was out of the truck and shaking hands with a lean, muscular Latino, the sides of his head shaved and his arms heavily inked. There were four others with the leader. They scattered around, casting looks here and there but not seeing Camaro and Yates where they hid.
It’s happening, Camaro texted.
I’ve lost W.
When?
An hour ago. Not on Spencer scene.
We need time.
Calling him. No good. Not answering.
“Damn it,” Camaro said out loud.
You are exposed.
L could leave. Got to move.
I’m coming.
Careful.
“I suspect the news is not good,” Yates said quietly.
“Way’s loose. Hannon’s coming.”
“How far out is she?”
“Minutes. If we want this, it happens now.”
Lukas and the Latinos climbed the steps to the loading dock and vanished inside. Camaro’s heart raced. Her mouth was dry.
“I’m going to let you call it,” Yates said. “Last chance to step back and let the good guys take him.”
“Do you think he’ll let that happen?”
“Can’t say. But it’s a crowd in there. It’s not going to be one-on-one anymore. The question is whether you still want him, and how bad.”
Camaro watched the store. She tried deep breathing to slow her pulse. “I have to look him the eyes,” she said.
“Even if you can’t take him out?”
She flexed her hands. The muscles in her back were locked. She was frozen in place with competing visions in her head. Lukas dead. Lukas taken away. She licked her lips. “If it comes to it, Hannon can have him.”
“But you want him to know it was you.”
“Yes. And you.”
“Then I guess the decision’s made. Let’s go.”
Camaro emerged from cover with Yates a step behind. They skirted the low wall that offset the parking lot from the alley, steel bars preventing ingress, then made their way in from the street. She fell in along the wall of the candy store and moved forward.
She heard voices ahead, slipping easily from English to Spanish. Camaro understood enough to know they were only shooting the breeze. The business hadn’t started yet.
They reached the corner of the building. Yates touched her on the arm. She bent close to let him speak into her ear. “Step in like you got a hundred men behind you. Don’t let ’em see you sweat.”
Camaro acknowledged him with a pat on the shoulder. She drew the pistol from her waistband. Yates’s was already out. They advanced on the concrete steps leading to the loading dock. She held the P220 low ready, against her belly. She took the steps one at a time.
More than half the lights were off in the candy store. Camaro had the sun at her back when she stepped into the open. She brought the gun up smoothly as all seven men came into view. Lukas was framed in the center, three men on each side of him, standing over an open case with a trio of black carbines inside. The hollows of the store were murky behind him, filled with deep shadows. The place had no windows.
“Hey,” Camaro said quietly.
The men reacted at once. They reached for guns under the loose tails of shirts or at their bellies. Lukas simply stood, and when Camaro’s eyes met his, he smiled.
Yates ghosted in behind her. “Guns down!” he commanded. “First man who moves gets shot.”
Lukas still smiled. “Relax, amigos,” he said. “It’s old friends.”
“What the hell?” asked one of the Latinos. The bottom of his Lakers jersey was pulled up and hooked on the butt of a Glock at his hip. His hand hovered over the weapon. “Is this a rip-off? Goddamn it, Luke, you son of a bitch!”
“No rip-off,” Camaro said. Her gaze held Lukas’s. “I’m here for Lukas.”
“Gonna shoot me now? Is that how it goes down?”
Camaro’s finger rested lightly on the trigger. “Is that how you want it?”
“Cops,” said the man in the Lakers jersey.
“No, they ain’t cops,” Lukas said. “They’re concerned citizens.”
“Why don’t you gentlemen put down your weapons?” Yates asked. “Nice and slow. Nobody gives us trouble, nobody has to get hurt. Like the lady says, it’s Lukas we want. The rest of you can go on about your business.”
“You can’t shoot all of us,” said Konnor. He stood two from Lukas, his hand behind his back. Camaro knew his fingers were on his weapon. She heard it in his voice.
“Who wants to volunteer to be first?” Yates asked.
Camaro’s vision narrowed. She closed out Konnor, she closed out the man in the Lakers jersey and all the men he’d brought with him. She saw Lukas’s face, Lukas’s eyes. He didn’t blink. Her finger tightened just a little. “You lose, Lukas,” she said.
“Boys,” Lukas said, “I think it’s time to finish our deal.”
He blinked. Immediately the collection of men snapped into Camaro’s focus. Konnor whipped a pistol from its hiding place and squeezed the trigger in the same motion. She felt a slashing pain in her arm just as Yates’s .45 boomed.
The men scattered and left Konnor kneeling on the floor, blood soaking his pink shirt. Camaro moved right and Yates left. She put a bullet into the leg of a fleeing man and saw him go down on his face.
Return fire began to explode from inside the store, sounding like cannon. The gunmen melted into the shadows, and only the sharp flashes of their muzzles revealed them, like burning fireflies.
“You hit?” Yates asked her.
Camaro glanced at her arm. It throbbed, the fabric ripped and fresh blood underneath. Flexing the muscle was painful. “It grazed me,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
“I’ll go high, you go low.”
“Let’s do it.”
They entered the store as one. Camaro picked out a shape in the half-darkness and squeezed the trigger. A short yelp was followed by silence. All the shooting had stopped. Her stunned ears could barely make out the voices sounding farther inside the cavern of the store.
Together they skirted the cases on the floor and moved through the loading area. Camaro used a pallet of candy boxes nearly as high as herself for cover. Yates knelt behind a forklift. She pointed to herself, then gestured with her head. Yates gave her an okay.
She stepped out from behind the candy and dashed for the nearest aisle. Yates triggered his pistol twice into the dark, and the vaulted metal ceiling slammed the report down onto them like an open hand.
A peek around the edge of the shelving revealed a dark, open aisle shadowed at the far end. Camaro saw no one. She emerged from cover, crouching low and moving quickly, weapon up. Her arm was wet with blood and burned more and more by the minute.
A shape loomed out of the dark, and Camaro zeroed in on it. The contours of the giant gumball machine solidified. She took shelter in its shadow just as its plastic globe exploded.
Gumballs showered Camaro and sprayed out across the concrete floor. She sighted on another vague shape in the dark and fired. She saw the shape sink to the ground and lie still.
She slipped on the gumballs as she crossed open space to reach the man she’d killed. Up close she could see it was the man in the Lakers jersey. An automatic lay inches from his hand. Camaro left it and advanced.
More shooting erupted behind her. She dropped to the floor and scrambled toward a display of plastic party favors, their colors dulled by the poor lighting. A man screamed. Another gunshot silenced him. Camaro listened. “Yates?” she called out. “Yates!”
His voice carried over the stacks from somewhere: “Still alive. You see him?”
“Working on it.”
The deeper into the store she went, the spottier the light became. It shone in pools ahead of her where the registers and the office were and in spots and splashes. Camaro spotted the end of an aisle and made for it, her boots scuffing as she moved forward.
She reached cover and stopped. She breathed hard, and her vision limned with silver. She exposed herself to peer around the corner.
Lukas seized her by the gun arm and whirled her around, jerking her halfway off her feet. She squeezed the trigger, and her pistol went off between them, a sudden flashbulb of muzzle flare that lit Lukas’s face. He hammered her wrist, and her grip on her weapon loosened. His hand closed over hers, and her fingers strained as he twisted the gun from her grip. The gun clattered on the floor.
He backhanded her across the face, and she felt the healing stitches on her brow open up. She came at him low, driving her elbow deep into his ribs. The wind rushed out of him as he fell back. She kicked him hard, and he went off his feet entirely.
Gunfire detonated close by, and a bullet skimmed off the floor between them. Camaro scrambled for her gun. Her hand closed over it, and she fired instinctively.
Lukas threw himself on her. Two hundred pounds, and his breath was in her face. He had a hand on her gun arm, and he slammed her weapon against the concrete. Camaro brought her knee up hard. Lukas cried out.
They rolled. Camaro tried to bring her gun to bear, but Lukas’s grip was unbreakable. He closed his other hand around her throat. She gouged him in the eyes.
He torqued her wrist, and she felt something give. Her hold on her weapon slackened. She fired into the floor by Lukas’s head, and they both screamed at the close-range report. Dark blood oozed from his ear.
Lukas got a leg between them and pushed her up and off. Camaro went over, striking her head on the floor as she tumbled onto her back. She still had the gun in her hand, but her grip was weak.
Shooting sounded all inside the confines of the store, echoing and reechoing. Someone called for his mother in Spanish. Yates was yelling for Camaro, but she was breathless and hurting.
She saw Lukas make it to his feet. A string of gunshots sounded as rapidly as crackling fireworks. Camaro was misted with blood, and Lukas reeled. She couldn’t raise her right hand to fire as he retreated into the dark. She grabbed for her gun with her left, opened fire at his retreating back as it merged with the shadows.
Yates was there. “Are you down? Are you hit?”
“I can’t move my arm. I think I tore something. Help me up.”
Men shouted to one another in the dark. Yates looked around. “I don’t know how many more we got to deal with.”
“Get me on my feet.”
He helped her rise. She opened her mouth to speak in the same moment a shrill alarm sounded. A red light flashed two rows down, and then there was the sudden burst of white light from outside. “Fire exit,” Camaro said.
“I’ll go,” Yates said.
Camaro shook her head. “No. Hold them off for me.”
“You’re hurt.”
“He’s hurt.”
“It should be me.”
Camaro looked at Yates in the dark. “It has to be me.”
“What about Hannon?”
“She’s too late.”
Chapter Eighty
CAMARO BURST OUT of the store into the space between it and the chili wholesaler next door. She heard renewed gunfire inside, but there was no time to think more of it. Alley access was fifty feet away. Lukas was already out of sight, but there were scattered red droplets on the dirty ground.
High up in the air, the sound of skirling police sirens carried. Camaro ran to the alley, skirting a Dumpster filled with discarded packaging. Her lungs bellowed.
Her arm was hurting more and more. Blood ran down her hand in a steady stream. She knew she’d feel foggy soon, and after that she’d feel nothing. Her fingers were numb. She dashed ahead, heedless of her own booming pulse. She made the main alleyway just in time to see Lukas vanish thirty yards distant, limping hard.
