Child of Fire (27 page)

“Quietly waiting to be killed is too hifalutin for me.”

He didn’t seem to remember the reference, and I didn’t care. He waved at me with the gun, encouraging me to follow him. I tossed the broken post aside and followed him into the hall. There were three more men waiting out there, along with Tiffany.

She was looking at me like a hungry dog eyeing a steak.

I knew right then, from the look on their faces, that they were taking me away to kill me.

“We found our boys,” Bobby said.

“The ones you sent for my boss?”

“They were friends of mine.”

I wanted to tell him that was the price of playing gangster, but there was no point. “Next time you want to talk to her, be sure to use the magic word.”

“I think we’ll send her a different sort of message.”

I looked at the other men. They had guns but didn’t look happy to be there. They weren’t gunmen; they were carpenters or Sheetrockers or what ever. They looked like guys with an unpleasant job to do and they looked like they wanted to get it over with.

Bobby twisted my arms behind my back and clamped the empty ends of the handcuffs onto my wrists. I’d never been double-cuffed before. I guessed they were a little nervous about me.

There were doors along both sides of the hall. The carpet was deep red with faint brown stains.

Bobby turned to the fattest of them. “Bring the van around to the back.”

“I hope that’s not your personal van,” I said to his retreating back. “Bloodstains don’t come out.”

Tiffany’s expression was still, but her eyes were wide with wonder. “I want to do it. Is that all right? I brought my knife. I want to do it.” She sounded a little breathless.

“Shut up,” Bobby said. He wasn’t taking any pleasure in this, but he was being professional about it.

“I’ll make it quick, if you want,” she said, and glanced back at me. “I can do it what ever way you want.”

“Fine,” Bobby said. “Just shut up about it.”

We started walking down the hall. Tiffany was ahead of me on the left, leading the way. Her stride was measured and careful, as though she was hyperaware of
herself and her surroundings. Bobby was behind me again, this time on my left as well. A young, clear-eyed kid who seemed barely out of high school was behind me on the right. In front of me on the right was the same tubby, middle-aged guy who had searched me in the Chevy van. I wondered if he was still carrying my things. I also wondered why I was cooperating with my killers.

I stopped walking and turned around. The kid nearly bumped into me. Bobby lifted his gun and pointed it at my heart. “Keep going,” he said.

The kid followed Bobby’s lead. He pointed his gun at my chest, although he was still much closer to me than he should have been.

I closed my eyes. I could
feel
the ghost knife behind me.

“Why should I make this easy for you?” I asked.

If Bobby had been smart, he would have lied. He would have told me that he didn’t
really
want to kill me, that he was going to let me go if I promised to disappear so completely that his boss never found out. But he’d seen too many movies. “Because if you don’t,” he said, “you’re going to hurt. A lot.”

I
reached
for my spell. The ghost knife slid out of the chubby man’s pocket and landed in my hand. At the same moment, I heard Tubby sigh and stagger. It must have passed through part of him on the way to me.

I looked at the ceiling. They did, too. I cut the handcuff chain with my ghost knife. My hands were free.

The next part happened very fast.

I swept my left hand upward as quickly as possible and struck the kid’s gun arm, batting it aside. The gun went off, but the barrel was already pointing past me. I heard the boom of the shot and felt the rush of air as it passed my shoulder.

At the same time, I threw the ghost knife at Bobby’s gun. Again, I was too slow. Bobby squeezed the trigger.

I felt the pressure of the bullet striking my chest, but there was no pain.
He killed me
, I thought.
Shouldn’t it hurt if he killed me?

Hot gas billowed over my neck, and a burning speck struck beside my Adam’s apple. The spot where he’d shot me didn’t hurt. I didn’t feel anything there. There would be no wound, either, if Annalise’s tattoos had held. I didn’t look down to check.

The ghost knife slid through Bobby’s gun, cutting it in two, then vanished into his chest. I heard him gasp.

My back was still exposed, and I’d left the kid too long. I lunged at him, punching him on the side of the head and ripping the weapon from his hand. I grabbed the back of his head, spinning him between me and Tubby and Tiffany.

I didn’t have to worry. Tiffany was frozen in place; what ever she’d imagined would happen, this wasn’t it. And Tubby was on his knees, a bloody gunshot wound in his chest. Then he fell onto his back. He wasn’t going to get up again.

I don’t remember a lot about the next few seconds. There was a feeling of tremendous pressure inside my skull. I know I didn’t shoot the kid’s gun. I know Tiffany was much quicker with her knife than I’d expected, and I hit her too hard on the side of her face.

What I do remember is standing over Bobby, Tiffany, and the other two and slicing the kid’s bloody gun in two. One of Bobby’s teeth was still wedged in the barrel.

I’d broken their bones, but at least they’d live. They were better off than Tubby. It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep from vomiting all over them.

Doors all along the hallway swung open and heads poked out. Geniuses. They hear gunshots and rush toward them. The peeping face nearest to me was Rev. Wilson.

I stepped around the bodies on the floor to the dead man. He had forgotten to shave that morning. I took Cabot’s gun from him and pocketed it. I also took back my wallet and keys.

After a moment of indecision, Wilson rushed toward me. He was wearing long black pants but no shirt. “What is happening here?” He looked me in the eye for the first time.

“These guys need an ambulance,” I said. “But I’m afraid this guy is gone.” I was talking too fast. I wanted to be cool and collected, but I felt anything but.

“Why did you—” Wilson began.

I heard a commotion behind me. Three more men had appeared at the far end of the hall. They rushed toward me, guns in hand. One held a walkie-talkie to his mouth.

“Help them,” I said, and rushed past him. Another man rounded the corner of the hall ahead of me.

The door nearest to me was the one Rev. Wilson had come out of. I ducked inside and locked the door. I had a gun, but I didn’t want to use it. There were too many people around, and I wasn’t some badass hitman. Also, I had already gotten more lucky than I deserved. If Bobby had aimed at my head instead of my heart …

A woman was standing next to me. She was stark naked and unashamed. I guessed she was about forty-five, with long, auburn hair and a simple, honest face. Wilson had good taste.

“What’s going on out there?” she asked.

“General naughtiness.”

She reached toward my chest and tugged at the bullet hole in my shirt. It was scorched with powder burns. “I see that,” she said.

For a moment I thought she would panic just as I was about to. “I don’t want trouble—”

“Of course not. Come this way.” She led me through the room into a second, smaller room. She was very calm.
“Bobby and the boys have been getting worse and worse over the last few years. They used to be working guys protecting their own. Lately they’ve been acting like thugs.”

There was a second door, next to a window that showed the forest slope behind. It was the way out. She took a key ring from a hook. “Not everyone wants to come in through the casino. We have a couple of rooms with a back door.”

She unlocked the door and swung it open. The sun had gone down, but there was still a little light in the sky. I stepped out onto a metal staircase. There was a little carport four stories down.

I turned toward the naked woman. “Thank you.”

A shot ricocheted off the metal stairs. I didn’t see where it came from, and I didn’t hang around to find out. I pushed my way back inside and shut the door. I heard the faint sound of construction boots running up the metal steps.

Damn. So much for sneaking out the back.

I ran back into the bedroom. The knob rattled but didn’t turn. Someone’s meaty fist pounded on the door.

“Keep out!” the woman yelled. “He’s got a gun!”

For a moment, I thought that she could see it in my jacket pocket, but then I realized that she was just buying time. She came close to me and said in a low voice, “The cops—”

“They won’t be on my side,” I said. “Get over in that corner. Get as low as you can.”

She did. Someone was still pounding on the door. They’d be inside in just a minute or two, as soon as someone with a key turned up.

I leapt to the other side of the bed and knelt on the floor. I jabbed the ghost knife into the floor, holding it by the barest corner so it would reach as far as possible, then I slid it along the floor, cutting a rough circle.

The circle didn’t drop through to the floor below. I heard jangling keys on the other side of the hall door. “What are you doing over there?” the woman whispered. I wished I knew her name.

They’d be inside in a moment. I could have taken Cabot’s gun from my pocket, but I didn’t. Instead, I jumped onto the circle I’d just cut. I heard the lock disengage.

Wood splintered, and I fell through the floor.

I fell about ten feet and struck a tiled floor. My knees jarred, and I rolled to the side. It hurt, but I’d managed not to twist my ankle.

I rolled against something soft. It was a big, soft pile of sheets and bedcovers, and I missed it by two feet. There was a smear of red blood on several of the sheets, and it took me a second to realize that it had come from me. My hands were covered in blood.

I was in a laundry room. Three big industrial washers and dryers stood against the outside wall. There were no windows.

“Sweet sainted Mary!” A tiny old woman with a thick brogue stared at me. I stood and ran past her toward the door.

“Keep away from the hole,” I told her. “Men with guns are going to be coming through in a moment.”

I ran past the dryers and saw that they ran on natural gas. I stopped. The gas line joined the machines at the top. I yanked open the dryer doors, shutting off the flames. Then I traced the gas line along the ceiling to where it disappeared into the wall. There was a shutoff valve there. I cut it out.

The old woman gaped at me.

“Gosh,” I said to her. “You have a gas leak. Better tell those boys upstairs with the guns.”

I saw shadows move in the space above the hole. I turned and ran through the double doors. The old woman
was shouting something, but I didn’t know who she was shouting at. I just hoped she had the sense to pull the fire alarm.

I recognized this hallway. Beyond the opposite wall was the little restaurant where Phyllis had drugged me. I ran toward the stairs. I would rather have avoided the casino, but that didn’t seem possible.

Two men came up the stairs. One of them was Floyd. He pointed at me with his bandaged hands, and the guy next to him lifted his weapon.

I ducked to the side as the gun boomed. I didn’t feel the bullet hit me, but there wasn’t a lot of cover in the hallway.

There was a door next to me. I yanked it open and dove inside. Another shot boomed, and something tugged at my pant leg. I didn’t feel any pain.

I was in a linen closet. Neat stacks of folded sheets lined the walls around me. I pulled the door shut, and the darkness gave my animal brain a moment’s comfort, tricking it into thinking I was hiding.

I knew the wall in front of me led to the outside world, but it was also three stories from the ground. I wouldn’t make that jump.

I lay down and cut another hole in the floor. This time, I angled the ghost knife outward so that it wouldn’t catch.

Gunshots tore through the closet door. The sound was terrifyingly close, and splinters rained down on my back. I cursed and resisted the urge to draw Cabot’s gun and shoot back. That would be a losing game for me.

I finished the cut, and the section of floor fell away. At the same moment, the fire alarm went off.

I looked down through the hole. As I’d hoped, I was just above the mezzanine. I slipped through the hole and landed on one of the poker tables.

The fire alarm was clanging loudly, and everyone stood
around and looked at one another. No one wanted to be the first to head for the exit. Hadn’t they heard the gunshots?

I jumped off the table, pushing aside a man in a UPS uniform who had a nice stack of chips beside him. I glanced over at the long flight of stairs. Rev. Wilson, still without his shirt, led several men toward the exit. They were carrying Bobby, Tiffany, and the dead chubby guy and walked straight across the floor in full view.

I turned toward the exit I’d seen earlier. There was one man standing there. He wasn’t looking at me and didn’t seem to have seen me come through the hole in the ceiling. I rushed toward him, taking out Cabot’s gun to get his attention.

When he did turn toward me, he looked unhappy. For a second I thought he would jump the rail.

“Hold still,” I snapped at him. “Give me your gun.”

He gave me his .38. Henstrick must have bought them in bulk. “Hey, man—”

“Shut up and get these people out of the building. There’s a gas leak. Hurry!”

I pushed past him and went through the doorway. The night was no darker than it had been two minutes ago. I started down the metal stairs, just as exposed as I was before, but as I’d hoped, there were no shots. The trip was shorter, too.

It would have been nice to lose myself in a crowd of people fleeing the fire alarm, but the patrons were too slow and I wasn’t going to wait around for them. I ran along the back of the building, away from the gate. I needed a vehicle to get away, and a remote to open the fence. I could cut my way through the fence or the wall, but fleeing on foot would be suicide.

I ran around the building and spotted the sport van, still parked in the same spot. The gate was closed. They’d open it for the ambulance and fire truck, but I didn’t want
to wait. I sprinted for the van, cut a hole in the driver’s window, and unlocked it.