7
CAP
The weld gave with a small, tired creak. That was my green light.
I slid out under the lifted panel with my shoulder first, ribs scraping, hips last, and came up in a crouch in the aisle. Ariel was already at her door, fingers white on the wire, eyes on me like I’d just hauled the moon closer.
“Hold,” I whispered.
Boots hammered the stairs. Keys. I stepped under the bare bulb over the landing and yanked the chain, so the light swung. A swinging bulb lies to your eyes; distances slip.
He hit bottom and shoved my gate on habit. There was no gate.
I hit him low, driving through like the ground owed me space. My shoulder slammed his ribs, solid and breath-stealing, and my forearm trapped his wrist before he could find steel. The bones in his arm twisted under mine, tendons popping their protest. His grunt came out half pain, half surprise. I rolled his arm until the joint started to scream, felt the give, and ripped the key ring off his belt clip in one pull.
He sucked air sharp through his teeth and tried to turn into me. I caught a fistful of his collar and bounced his head off the post once, clean, just enough to make him forget his plan.His knees hit concrete with a hollow thud. He stayed there, breathing through anger he’d have to save for later.
In two strides I was at her lock. The square silver bit found the keyway, quarter turn, a clean click. The slide scraped back, and the door gave. She slipped out low, fast, eyes on me. I caught her wrists, tugged the tie until the plastic sang, then set the box-cutter nub against it. One steady rock of the blade. The band hissed and snapped.
“Take these.” I dumped the ring into her hand. “Sunshine first. Then Juno. Then our guy.”
More footsteps slapped tile. Tote-man with a baton came down hot and didn’t check his feet. Ariel stuck her shoe through the seam beside her door and hooked his ankle. He hit the rail thigh-first and lost the stick; it clattered, and I scooped it without even looking at it. Always pick up what the other man dropped.
The air on the stairs changed. Calm weight. The watcher reached the top step with a pistol in a two-hand grip and eyes that didn’t blink for anyone.
“Move,” I told Ariel without turning. “I’ve got up.”
Keys jingled somewhere on concrete behind me, metal teeth in a girl’s hand, then the sound everybody learns to love: a lock giving up. Sunshine’s door thumped open. Juno’s followed. The hoarse man at the end braced both hands on his mesh like he was afraid hope might slip if he didn’t pin it down. Ariel got him too.
The watcher fired once into the floor near my foot. Concrete stung my shin. He wasn’t hunting, herding. I reached up, yanked the bulb chain again. The light rocked harder and made the shadows jump. I shoved the mop bucket up the stairs with my boot. It flipped end over end and threw gray water across the risers. Wet steps make careful men slow.
I took the stairs on the inside rail, fast. Stairs curve; hugging the inside steals space the shooter expected to own. He tried to adjust; I pinned his gun wrist to the wall, forearm across forearm, bone to concrete, muzzle away from anything I loved, and rolled his hand until his fingers forgot the job. The pistol fell. I booted it into the kitchen and let it go wherever cowards go.
I popped the mag on instinct, racked the slide to spit the live round, then kicked the empty frame under a cabinet. If he wanted it back, he’d need a flashlight and a lot of dignity he didn’t have.
He reached for my throat. I didn’t swing; didn’t give him a clean fight he could enjoy. I shoved his shoulder into the doorjamb and let the house hit him for me. He stumbled sideways and caught himself on the jamb with a hand that would be purple tomorrow.
“Up!” I barked.
We spilled into a bad dream of a kitchen, fluorescents buzzing, metal prep table scarred and sticky, folding chairs, a whiteboard covered in route lines and times like math could make evil tidy. Straight ahead, the opening to the garage bay gaped: concrete floor, roll-up door half open, a van nosed in, two loaders by a tool bench. Off to the right: a short hall into the mudroom and the back door that remembered being a back door when this was still a house.
Ariel came up hauling Sunshine, Juno muscled the man after them. The watcher steadied in the kitchen doorway behind us, breathing even, eyes narrowed against the swing of the light.
I grabbed the red extinguisher off the wall by the fridge, yanked the pin, and hosed a white storm across the kitchen threshold and the opening toward the bay. Dry chem isn’t smoke, it’s ground chalk and bad decisions, it clings to eyelashes and turns sight into soup. People cough. More importantly, they stop aiming like they mean it.
“Mudroom, right!” I said, walking the cloud across the watcher’s line of sight.
Ariel’s head snapped left anyway. Through the rolling powder, a shape at floor level in the garage: a blonde chained low to a pipe, face a ruin, a sun tattoo the color of an old bruise on the inside of her wrist. That was all it took.
Sunshine broke.
“Ariel,” I didn’t bother with the rest. Sometimes you pick the person and make the tactics catch up. I followed.
The bay was concrete slick with old oil. The van’s side door hung half open. A loader yanked a pistol from his waistband and tried to make it mean something. I swung the extinguisher can like a bat, short arc, heavy end first, and buried it in his ribs. He folded around it, and the pistol snapped a round into the floor where my foot had just been. I kicked his wrist into the door track; he yelped and let the gun go. I booted it under the van where all dumb ideas go to die.
Sunshine had bolt cutters on the chain, long handles opening and closing like the mouth of a stubborn animal. You don’t snip a link; you lean your weight in and make steel remember it’s softer than it thinks. Metal screamed. The blonde moaned and sagged.
The watcher found another gun, someone else had been careless, and fired two low from the kitchen doorway, blind through white. Chips kissed my calf.
