He tipped his head to the side as he listened. He could hear sirens in the distance. They might not be coming there, but someone in the neighborhood yelled that she’d called the police.
A voice barked an order to split left. Simon wiped his hand over his mouth, tasted salt, and—for some reason—thought about Jacob. Then he lunged out from his shelter and tackled the lean beaky-faced man closest to him.
He tried to favor his shoulder and used the opposite one to dig into the man’s gut, but the impact jolted pain through him anyhow. He ignored it and headbutted the man, who ended up on top of him, and drove the crown of his head into the man’s chin. The impact snapped the man’s jaw shut, and he spluttered blood over Simon’s face.
Simon twisted his hips and threw the spluttering, swearing man off him. Leaving his opponent to cough as blood ran down his throat, Simon scrambled to his feet and stamped on the man’s wrist. Bones cracked, and the gun fell out of suddenly nerveless fingers.
“Fucking rent-a-cop,” the man garbled out over his ragged tongue. He pulled his knees up to his chest and drove them into Simon’s stomach in a kick that lifted his hips off the ground. His heels made contact and sent Simon flying backward into the plastic shed. It pitched over, the panels cracked under his weight, and he went with it. The gun went flying as he lost his hold on it.
He grabbed blindly for something, and closed his fingers around the shaft of a—he glanced over quickly—rake. That would have to do. He got back on his feet, swung the rake up and around, and then froze. There was a man with dead eyes and a nondescript face pointing a gun at his head. Not good.
Simon let the tool drop and held up his hands. None of the options that flicked through his head ended well under those circumstances. So he needed to buy time until he could change the circumstances.
“Shaw. Long time, no see. How’s Denis?”
Amusement pinched Shaw’s mouth into an unremarkable smile. His gaze dropped briefly to Simon’s side where his jacket was hanging open. It took a microsecond to register the gun and then his attention was back on Simon.
“You should have gone for your gun. I’ve read your file. I’m sure you’re a better shot than Milo here.”
“Lot of people around here who aren’t involved in this,” Simon said.
“I didn’t take you for a bleeding heart.”
“Kids,” Simon said as he glanced around. “Thin walls and shoot-outs don’t mix.”
Shaw looked around. His lip curled with the sort of contempt that looked personal. “Place like this? They don’t have much to look forward to anyhow.” He flicked his attention back before Simon could take advantage of the momentary distraction. “You know, my information says that Syntech’s cut you loose. If you’re looking for work, I could always use a man with your skillset.”
Milo had gotten back to his feet. He spit out blood and mopped at his face with his sleeve. “Screw that,” he got out, slurring his words over his tongue. “Rent-a-cop made me bite off mytongue.He put my friends in the hospital.I’m going to make him pay—”
He stopped abruptly as Shaw pulled his backup gun and pointed it in his direction. Shaw’s eyes didn’t shift from Simon’s face, but the muzzle of the gun still ended up pointed at the merc’s center of mass.
“You don’t get a vote, Milo,” Shaw told him mildly. “If you and your friends were as skilled as Mr. Ramsey here, this situation would never have gotten so… messy. Now, pick up your tongue and go find our target.”
Milo glared at his boss with murder in his eyes.
That time Shaw glanced away from Simon. It was just a quick flick of his eyes and a minor adjustment of his aim—two inches down, one across—but the threat was clear. Milo blanched and crouched. He fumbled in the dirt for the wet bit of muscle he’d just spat out. He scraped it up out of the dirt and was shoving it into his pocket when the chokey growl of a car’s ignition coughed to life behind them.
Shaw’s mouth tightened with annoyance as he put the pieces together. “Playing the martyr, Ramsey? That’s going to get you killed one of these days.” He lifted the gun slightly and aimed it at Simon’s head. “Sooner rather than later. And for what? You think we won’t find Lau? He’s a scientist in a borrowed car, how far is he going to get? To the police station in what the locals like to call a town?”
“I think he’ll head to Syntech and tell Dev what’s going on,” Simon said. He gave a tight smile in response to Shaw’s skeptical look. “Well, I’ll be dead before I find out how it plays out. I might as well be optimistic.”
Shaw snorted a brief huff of laughter and curled his finger around the trigger. Simon’s brain went into overdrive. He scrambled through the bits and pieces that he knew and tried to shove them into the gaps of the things he didn’t. Something had changed between a screwup that killed Clayton and the decision to send a team to murder Lau.
“The job’s burned, isn’t it?” he said.
Shaw tilted his head to the side to consider Simon and decided to answer. “Not exactly,” he said. “Think of it more as undergoing restructuring. When one door doesn’t take you where you want to go, then you find another, don’t you? When my employer made it clear she didn’t have the balls to deliver the results, I went over her head. Men like you and me, Ramsey, we do what needs to be done. We don’t let sentiment get in the way.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Shaw chuckled. “Fair point. You are the sentimental type, but I bet you’d still sell that pretty boyfriend of yours out if you had to. Although I guess we’ll never find out, since I don’t think you’ll be seeing him again.” He paused for a second and then allowed himself another sentence. “I’m telling you, if the bitch had let me run things my way from the start, it would never have gotten this messy.”
The wail of sirens cut through the air like screaming cats, and Shaw’s attention snapped away from Simon. It was a narrow window of opportunity, but it was the only one Simon was going to get. He lunged forward, tackled Shaw, and rammed his shoulder into his lean stomach.
There was nothing graceful about the fight. It was quick and nasty—dirty tricks and rabbit punches. Simon brute-forced Shaw around and used Shaw’s body as a shield against Milo’s gun. The wail of the sirens got closer, and Simon could see the calculation flicker in Milo’s eyes. If he were arrested, it would cause repercussions that could impact his career. Not only that. He’d already admitted the job was a mess. The last thing he wanted was for whoever was pulling his strings to decide that door didn’t work either and just burn it all.
Right then Shaw needed an exit plan more than he needed Simon dead. His foot slipped in the mud. Maybe it was on purpose. Maybe Simon had just gotten lucky. He didn’t really care. He got behind Shaw, hooked his arm around Shaw’s neck, dug his fist in under his jaw, and dragged him backward.
“Get out of here,” he snapped at Milo. “I see you again, I snap his neck.”
