The Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Boxed Set, page 38
part #1 of Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Series
Mrs. Bauer paced the path to the opening that I’d just driven through, data device still held up to her ear. She wagged a finger at me. “Don’t you try to go! Sheriff De Lint’s on his way!”
I thought I might have heard a siren in the distance. Could the sheriff get to the farm before the assassins? Would that be enough to scare them off? I thought about calling my cousin Elijah. Last I’d heard, he was still moving up the ranks under De Lint, the chosen successor. It seemed safer to assume Margo’s family and I would have to run.
Something tugged on my sleeve. Derek. Stretched up on his tiptoes, still in the basketball jersey. “Robotman?”
I set the rifle back in the rack. “Yeah?”
Derek glanced back at the house. “We going on a vacation?”
“Just like your mother always wanted.” I still hadn’t thought of where to go. There were only a few potential safe spots that could handle five of us. The closest was outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The truck could probably make that drive, which would give me time to think of my next step.
The boy tugged on my sleeve again. “Paris?”
“What?” It came out irritable. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.”
“My mommy likes Paris. She wants to see the Love.”
“It’s pronounced loov.” What would a trip to Paris run? For five. Hotels. Restaurants. Thousands. Passports. Lots of exposure.
The kid’s lips trembled. “Why’s mom crying?”
Shit. I knelt next to him and punched his shoulder with all the force of a feather. “There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t make any sense until you’re a grown-up. This is just one of those things. She’ll feel better soon. We just need to get on the road, okay? That’s the first thing that will make her feel better.”
He cocked his head, as if he might really understand the insane shit happening around him. “If it makes Mommy happy, we can do it.”
“Now that’s the right attitude.” What had she called him? “Champ!”
He smiled. It was a great look for the little guy.
Mrs. Bauer stormed up the path from the front, waving her data device like it was some sort of magic wand. “You leave my grandson alone! Derek, you move away from that man!”
I could have sworn I heard the sirens.
“He’s Robotman, Maw-maw. He won’t hurt nobody. He likes Mom—”
The distant sirens were drowned out by the distinctive, high-pitched whine of automatic weapons.
Mrs. Bauer staggered and pitched forward, dropping her data device in the dead grass.
I yanked Derek down to the ground as windows popped on the vehicles. A car alarm blared, and a tire burst, booming like a grenade detonating. More glass shattered, this along the front of the house, and the panes rained down from their frames with a delicate clatter.
Screaming came from inside the building: the girls.
Derek made a weak, strange sound, and blood bubbled up on his lips. “Robotman?”
No.
The screaming drew closer. Margo and the girls ran down the steps, hunched low, holding bags up like police shields.
I croaked something out. It was supposed to be, “Stay here, buddy,” but my throat wasn’t working. I ran to the porch, left arm up to shield my head. The gunfire continued, a constant whine that barely preceded the thud of rounds into siding or the crack of metal off concrete.
Or the even softer, hollow thunk of bullet passing through soft, unprotected flesh.
The girls went down, limp, bloody. Margo stumbled. Blood trickled from holes in her blouse, the same tight, cotton thing she’d worn over to my place for our rendezvous. I caught her as she slumped forward, eyes rolling around in confusion. Bullets traced my path as I ran for the cover of the trucks. A few rounds rattled off my limbs, a couple more buried themselves in Margo’s body.
I propped her against the front of her truck and crawled back to the rear cab to retrieve the rifle.
There weren’t a lot of great areas to take cover behind, and there was only the one road that eventually connected the bunch of smaller farms of the area back to Main Street. There were some trees on a lot…
I saw it, then. A small car near the closest clump of trees. A form in dark clothing, an assault rifle.
Muzzle flash—the form fired at me, punching holes in Margo’s truck and deflating another tire. I returned fire, not even worrying about a clean hit. I just wanted the bastard to know I had his position down.
Glass shattered in the distance.
A motor whined as it revved up, wheels chirped, then thrummed over gravel.
Just like that. With sirens unmistakably closing.
I dropped the rifle and pulled Margo to me, but she was already gone. Like everything else.
Gone. All I wanted.
You fucked up. You can’t escape them. They’ll leave their print everywhere. They’ll spread like an infection.
When Sheriff De Lint arrived, I was barely aware of being cuffed. Federal warrants. Murder.
Whatever. I blacked out.
Chapter 7
The Gem County Sheriff’s Department shared office space with the Emmett Police Department, the county clerk, and the county jail. I’d seen pictures of the place from years before—a quadrangle with a pretty lawn and a nice parking area. Most of that was gone, replaced by soulless white halls. The polished gray marble floors held that neutral, non-smell of official buildings. My sneakers squeaked as they led me to a small holding cell. I was still cuffed, bracketed by two young, imposing police officers who looked like they shared the same ranching background I did. The taller of the two wore cheap cologne; the other needed to wear something. He had the sort of funk a gym rat would have if he were coming off an intense weekend of brews and free weights. The soft echoes of our travel over the marble floors was obliterated by the clank of the cell door rolling open.
They unlocked my cuffs and watched me through the bars until I dropped onto my bunk. That apparently satisfied them. The taller one ambled away, but Gym Rat hung back long enough to smirk before leaving.
There was an occupied cell far enough away that I couldn’t see it but close enough that I could hear someone looping through a mumbled song—tuneless, rambling. The voice belonged to someone who either gargled with glass shards or was old and had enjoyed booze and cigarettes too much. Normally, the noise would have gotten to me, but it was a welcome respite from my own looping nightmare.
The whining gunfire, the blood bubbling up from Derek’s mouth.
Margo’s dead eyes stared into nothing. Her purple lips were pale and stiff. I wanted just another day with her, a chance to promise her I hadn’t meant to cause all the trouble, a chance to explain that the world was too big and complicated for a simple farm boy from Idaho.
I was stupid. I thought I could get out of the game.
But there was no escaping.
I turned at clacking echoes from the hallway—someone in hard-soled shoes with heel plates. A man about my age, in crisp sheriff’s tan uniform shirt and brown pants, came around the corner. He had a well-managed mustache, which seemed to be part of the uniform. His hair was light brown, cut almost as close as mine, and he had the same pronounced Mendelsohn nose I had, minus the little nub mine had from the sparring match I’d let get out of hand.
The deputy stopped, big hands wrapped around polished pouches on his belt. “Stefan.”
He had a couple years and more importantly a couple inches on me, so it wasn’t a problem if I stood, but I hung back from the bars. “Elijah. They call you in, or were you on shift?”
“I run Corrections.”
Of course. There were only so many administrative positions to be had for someone planning to run for sheriff. Corrections sounded like it was probably the best path. Safer than Detectives or whatever. “Sorry for all the trouble this is going to cause.”
He glanced down the hallway, as if he might be listening to the singing prisoner. Or maybe he couldn’t look me in the eye. “You do what they’re saying you did?”
“Depends on what they’re saying.” I had to hear it from him.
His eyes—a faded green—drifted back to me. “You kill Margo and her kids?”
“I’ve never killed anyone here in Emmett. You know that.”
That got a dip of the head, a noncommittal nod. “Federal warrants say you killed a bunch of people out in D.C.”
“When’d that come in? This morning? Yesterday?”
“You’re not denying it.”
“Would it matter? You’re wondering if I could kill Margo and her kids, and the answer is no. And I didn’t kill Neil or his mother, either. Take a look at the bodies. You find a weapon anywhere that could do what was done to those? Check that place down the street from hers, near the trees. Unless they’re using caseless ammo, you should find casings. A lot. Same out in the fields behind my shack.”
His mustache twitched as his lips pursed. “Aren’t you just a little concerned you got a warrant out for killing—”
“I won’t live to see trial, Elijah. They didn’t serve up a warrant so you could ship me off for justice to be served. They wanted eyes out for me. Some trigger-happy cop blows my head off after pulling me over, that’s just as good as a contractor tearing me apart with some sort of advanced assault weapon.”
He shook his head. “Contractor. Is that a euphemism for hit man?”
“Solution providers, cleaners…they have a lot of names. People who take care of problems. Loose ends.”
He snorted. “You’re a loose end? More like a loose cannon.”
“The problem kid, right? Couldn’t fit in; didn’t have farming and ranching in his blood. Thought he was too good for Emmett and left his mother behind. That’s the story, right? That strange boy Victoria Bolan had with that drunk Mexican ranch hand?” I plopped on the bunk and leaned against the cool wall. “You’ve got to get past that, or you’re going to have a lot of dead people around here soon.”
“You making threats, Stefan?” He grabbed the bars. “In a building full of law enforcement officers? You might want to reconsider.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s what’s going to happen. The people sent to kill me have to finish the job. I drove one or two off but there’re more. Or there will be, and a little place like this won’t stop them.”
He squeezed the bars like they were my neck, then pushed off, taking a step before stopping abruptly. “This is so like you—screw up royally, and cook up an elaborate story.”
“Are you still pissed because my mother wouldn’t sell the farm to Uncle Martin, or is this about something else? Were you all expecting me to fail and come crawling back? Is that why you can’t accept what I’m telling you?”
Another snort. That seemed to be Elijah’s tell. “Aunt Victoria went on and on about you going off to fight a bunch of wars no one’s heard about, and all that time she’s stuck taking care of a place you don’t even want. How’s that not a failure? Hm? And you haven’t even been in the military for the last ten years. Yeah, I can see your records now that you’re a fugitive from the law. The Feds sent out all sorts of information.”
“Soldiers don’t fight a lot of the wars anymore.”
“I guess they wouldn’t shoot up a bunch of old men, would they? What’d you do, steal money from them?” He paced in front of the cell. “Aunt Victoria would be heartbroken if she knew what you were.”
“I told her what I do, but she can’t remember anything because you clowns couldn’t protect her when you let Carlos out.”
That brought Elijah around, finger wagging at me. “Your father served his time, and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it.”
“He was a violent drunk. What would it have taken to keep an eye on him?”
Elijah sucked in a deep breath and held it, then he let it go. “Paul’s always been right about you.”
Paul De Lint, the great and mighty sheriff of Gem County. I laid flat on my bunk, remembered the notification about my mother’s hospitalization. Chance of significant brain damage. “Good to know he was right about someone in my family.”
“Hubris. That’s what he says. You got hubris.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Maybe if you’d done a little time for some of your fights in school, you wouldn’t have gone off to the Army.”
“Because they’ve got problems with violent people?” I needed to get Elijah to listen, but that was going to require me doing the same thing. He had a lifetime of resentment to deal with. “I think we can both agree I made some mistakes. That doesn’t change that there are people trying to kill me, and they won’t wait. They’ll blow up the car you transport me in, or they’ll shoot me when you try to take me to the airport. Or if they’re really impatient, they’ll come in here and kill me. And anyone who gets in the way will get killed, too. These guys who’ve been coming after me, they’re sloppy, reckless. Either they’re desperate or they just don’t care about civilians.”
He wagged his finger again, this time at the outer wall. “This isn’t some little jail in one of those old Westerns. We’ve got security systems. No one’s getting in without credentials. And the Feds are sending Marshals out to get you.”
Marshals. Could there be more at work than just a clean-up operation? Could the FBI have something else in mind for me? “Can you do me a favor at least?”
“Sure. Isn’t that how the world works? Everyone does something special for Stefan Mendoza, big man, big hero. Got far enough away to escape the little town life he hated. Proved everybody wrong—flew higher than they ever could. Until now. Now you fell back down to this little hole where the rest of the little people live.”
I sighed. “Could you call someone? Special Agent Lyndsey Hines at the FBI. Just see if she knows what’s behind this warrant. Please?”
He leaned against the bars, eyes closed. “Now you know someone in the FBI, huh?”
“Special Agent Lyndsey Hines. She knows what went on in D.C.”
He giggled. “You’re a special one, you know that?”
I crossed to the bars, slow so that he didn’t move away. “I am special, Elijah. I’m dangerous, and I’ve made some very dangerous enemies, and I put some innocent people at risk without meaning to. And I’m sorry. But I’m getting tired of this, and I need you to shut the fuck up and do what I’m telling you to do so other lives can be saved. Please.”
Red flashed across his pale face. “So why don’t you tell me what went on in D.C.? What about that?”
I’d gotten through to him, but not necessarily in a good way. Sharing anything more would put me at risk, but he wasn’t likely to budge on calling Agent Hines if I didn’t give him something. “Senator Kelly Weaver. You hear about what happened to her?”
He squinted, as if trying to place the name, then his eyes shot wide. “The one killed in the explosion?”
“She was running for president. Those men I killed in D.C.? They hired me to kill her. You understand? This isn’t about a plot of land you think Grandpa Mendelsohn should’ve given to your father.”
The color that had flushed his cheeks drained away, and his mouth dropped open.
I knew that look. “What?”
Elijah said, “Nothing.”
“Bullshit. You know something.”
“No. It’s—” His lips twisted. He rocked back on his legs. “There was an odd request, that’s all.”
“What kind of odd request? Dammit, Elijah, think about what’s going on.”
“I am. I—” His eyes darted left, then right. “There was a communiqué. They wanted any data devices seized to be sealed off. I remember Blaine sending an image of the thing they brought in with you, and there was an almost immediate response. They were looking for a different device. Paul sent a cruiser out to your place to look for the thing they were describing.”
The computing device I’d taken off the guy outside Denver? That looked too high-end to be something the Agency would give a contractor. Was that what this was all about? “Where’s the device they took off me?”
“Back in the evidence locker, I guess.”
“Could you get that for me?”
He staggered back, as if I’d punched him. “It’s evidence!”
“Fine. Call Special Agent Hines. Tell her what’s going on. Then tell me what you think.”
Elijah considered that for a bit, then nodded. He moved with a pace that seemed crisp for someone who was minutes before accusing me of murder.
I could only hope he wasn’t too late.
Chapter 8
On missions, there were times where everything seemed to press in on you. It was as if the air pressure increased, and the sun grew hotter. Breathing became harder. Sweat dampened your lip and armpits. Scents, sounds, tastes—everything became amplified thanks to adrenaline. My hands would shake during those times. It felt like I was vibrating.
The shakes. That’s what I called it. Inaction felt like failure. The animal call to act became nearly uncontrollable.
In the confines of that holding cell, I felt ready to fall apart. My cybernetics twitched, reacting as well as they could to the strange stimuli coming from my brain. The singing prisoner came into focus—the nonsense lyrics, the raspy voice, the mix of body odor and medicinal chemical smells. The lights became brighter and whiter on the gray marble outside my cell.
My heart provided a beat to the looping song’s rhythm. I was trapped, and the hunters were closing. If I could have gnawed a limb off to escape, I would have.
Steps approached from out of sight—soft at first, then louder.
I tested the cell door, but there was nothing to grip in a way that wouldn’t put stress on the organic part of me rather than the cybernetics. A simple lock or a knob—something I could squeeze. That’s what I needed.
The steps became more distinct: more than one person.
Would they do that? Risk breaking into a building full of law enforcement officers? Send more than one?
Louder than the other steps, Elijah’s heel plates.
