Fade To Midnight (46 page)

His reflection, staring up at him. Blood streamed from Sean's nose, his cut lip. He swung there, backlit against billows of dust, eyes bright and sharp. Kev tightened his muscles against the dead weight dragging at his muscles and tendons.

“Sean?” His lips formed the word, but no sound come out.

“So you know me,” Sean said. “You know my name.” Each word was bitten off, cold and hard and separate.

Kev's mouth worked, uselessly. That voice.
Yes.
His brother. He'd heard that voice in his dreams, every damn night. The dream memories tumbled down on him, like rolling logs. Crushing him with their weight.

“You lying snake son of a bitch,” Sean said. “Let go of me, and get your sorry ass down here, so I can kick the shit out of it.”

Bam. Bam.
Muzzle flashes flickered in the murk behind them. So there were more coming in the door. A woman's voice, shrill. A hand, tugging at his arm. Her words sank in. “…pull him up, you stupid asshole!” she shrieked. “You two can have this fight later!”

Fight? What fight? More muzzle flashes. Bullets whizzed and whined. He was disoriented, confused. He hauled on Sean's arm—

Fire flicked across his forearm, and the bullet drove into the door behind him. Wood shards splintered, flew, and his hand gave way—

Sean fell. A bellow of denial built in Kev's lungs, cutting off when his brother landed like a cat, and flung himself behind a couch for cover. Someone was pulling, dragging him down—
Liv!
Jesus, that was Liv Endicott! Recognition lit up his brain like a blinking Christmas tree. So sweet, to recognize her, even if she was scowling, yelling.

Bullets whined and zinged over their heads. He jerked back into focus, yanked out the H&K and squeezed off shots while he barked out directions. “Right side of the bedroom closet. Safe in the wall. Combo is ‘thy fearful symmetry,' with a star, an asterisk, and a pound sign after each word. Three pistols, six clips. Get them all!”

She wiggled through the door on her hands and knees. He squeezed off shot after shot, peering into the murk. A shriek of pain from the direction of the front door rewarded him. Liv was back with an armful of hardware, clips sliding from her arms. That was when he saw that she was pregnant. Holy shit. He gestured shyly with the gun at her belly. “Is that…uh…did Sean—”

“He did,” she said crisply. “This is Sean's son. Your nephew. Eamon. Do you suppose we could catch up on our lives another time?”

He pointed to the guns. “Can you handle one of these?”

“Hell, yes.” She grabbed a big PX4 Storm subcompact, and positioned herself while he changed clips. Sean was looking up, gesturing frantically. Kev let drop a Para-Ordnance P-14-45. Sean plucked it out of midair and dropped back again as bullets punched into the gray plush couch. Stuffing flew. Fuck. Kev hoped the wooden structure inside the thing would provide enough cover for him.

“Hold your fire!” someone bawled, from the direction of the front door. The voice was familiar. “You assholes! We need them alive!”

Furious protests and obscenities from the direction of the kitchen. Kev aimed a shot toward the voice.
Bam.
A hoarse shout of rage.

Nephew?
Son of a bitch. She had his nephew floating in there, and his name would be Eamon? He'd gone from zero to a hundred, in seconds. It made him giddy, to have his family back in his head.

A bullet whiffled through his hair, snapping him back into focus. He wouldn't have anything if they all ended up dead.

“Goddamnit, hold your fire!” the rasping voice bellowed again.

“Get back up here!” he yelled down to Sean. “I'll cover you!”

He blasted away while Sean made a dive for the spiral staircase, but the attackers weren't returning fire. They had yielded to the authority of whoever had been bawling those orders.

Sean jerked. Stopped halfway up, and stood still, as if he'd forgotten what he was doing. His head dropped back, eyes locked on Liv's, his eyes pleading as he reached up, clawing at his chest.

A tiny dart protruded from it.

Sean fell, tumbling head over ass. He ended up sideways, head down, arms dangling from the railings.

“Sean!” Liv pumped bullets furiously into the featureless cloud of dust and hurled herself down the stairs.

A man stepped out of the smoke, grinning, and Kev suddenly remembered where he'd heard that rasping voice. That big, awkward body, the strange frequency of the man's fucked-up brainwaves.

This was the guy who had held a knife to Edie's throat. The one who'd left bruises on her breast.

Click. Click.
Kev's clip was empty. He groped for a fresh cartridge, but the guy was walking in slow motion through the apocalyptic, dusty murk toward Liv and Sean, laughing like some goblin from hell.

The dart would fly before his gun could be loaded and fired. The guy took aim. Kev crouched on the railing like a panther. He screamed as he leaped. Pink-rimmed eyes flicked up, the dart gun swung up—

Gravity smashed them together. They rolled, sprawled, through shards of brick and glass, flailing and wrestling. The guy was horribly strong and agile. His eyes glinted with wild empty light that made Kev think of Ava. Dead, but run by something else, something alien and evil.

The guy's extra fifty pounds of bulk almost pinned him, and he took a nasty punch to the ear. He saw stars, but wrenched an arm free to block just as the man's hand slashed down clutching a sharp shard of glass. He jerked it back into the fat guy's face, and the flinch gave him the opening he needed to flip the man off his body. He slammed a brick toward the side of the guy's head, but he blocked it with a shout and stumbled back, rolling up onto his feet, panting heavily.

Kev followed the flit of the man's eyes, and dove for the dart gun at the same moment that the other man did. A kick spun it out of Fat Guy's reach, and it skittered closer to the spiral staircase—

Bam. Bam.
Liv was trying to shoot at the goblin now that they were no longer grappling, her face tense with concentration. Fat Guy's hand swung up to let a dagger fly, but Kev turned, letting it whoosh by and bounce harmlessly off the bricks.

The guy leaped, hit the ground to seize the dart gun, and aimed from the ground up at Liv. Kev leaped between them with a shout.

The gun spat. He felt the blow like a fist to his stomach, stumbled back against Liv, knocking her heavily onto Sean's limp form.

He stared at the dart sticking out of the black hoodie, a few fingers above the level of his navel, while Liv was shoving him aside, struggling to bring the gun up, screaming.

The thing was sticking out of the fucking money belt.

Bam. Bam.
No time to appreciate the joke. He struggled to heave Sean over his shoulder. His brother was as heavy as fucking concrete.

Up the stairs, legs shaking, Liv backing up behind him. Fat Guy came after them. She finally trimmed the bastard, and he jerked back with a shout of anger, grabbing his shoulder. Lucky shot, because her clip emptied as they reached the top of the stairs.

They ran for the bedroom. He laid Sean down on the floor, ran back to lock the door and wedge the dresser in front of it. Then Kev lifted the blinds of the window—

Zing
, a bullet clipped the window frame. Splinters and paint flew.

Fuck. They were trapped from below, too.

 

Davy tried to call Sean to update him as they followed Tony, but got no answer. They pulled up abreast of Tony's pickup in an industrial district. Bruno rolled down his window and gestured up ahead. “Second building on the next block. The one with all those SUVs parked right in front of it.” He frowned at it. “Weird. Nobody lives in the building except for Kev. There's usually nobody who—”

Boom.
Windows blasted out of the top floor. The power of the explosion vibrated through their bodies.

Car alarms started to squeal. There was agitated activity around the SUVs parked in front of the building. Shouts, yells.

“Holy fuck.” Miles's voice was shaking.

Ping.
Davy's phone signaled an incoming text message. He stared at it. “Sean was in there,” he said, his voice dead flat. “Liv, too.”

There was about four seconds of blank horror, and Miles felt the atmosphere shift. The McCloud dudes were ice cold, all business. A trick he had not learned yet. He shook where he sat, thinking of Sean…no. Not Sean. Not Liv. And the baby, too. Not thinkable. He shoved it away. Twisted his hands, clenched his teeth. Hung on to his shit.

Davy jerked a compartment up from the floor of the SUV, and pulled out a gun case. “I have my Glock, and a Colt Cobra. What have you guys got?”

Miles shook his head. He'd never gotten a license to carry concealed. Who was he trying to kid? Davy grunted his disgust, and tossed him the Glock, and three clips. “Take this.”

“I got my Beretta, and the pendant and earring set that Tam wanted delivered to her client,” Con said. “A hundred and fifty K worth of custom designed platinum, diamonds, Composition B, and frag.”

“Oh, man,” Miles said. “Tam'll kill you if you cost her that much money.” Tam still scared the living bejesus out of him.

Con wrenched open his shoulder bag and pulled out a crimson tooled leather jewelry case. He flipped it open and pulled out the shimmering handful of loot inside. “Jesus, that woman is crazy.”

“Her psychosis is useful in a pinch,” Davy slid a clip into the gun.

“I'd prefer regular old grenades, thanks. I don't need the bling.”

Davy pulled a pair of binoculars out of the center console. “Three guys going in, at least one is armed—no, all of them armed, with Uzi's, it looks like. What did Kev get mixed up in, fucking World War III?”

Bruno leaned out of the window. “I'll circle around,” he said, in a tight voice. “We'll park behind the building next door.”

They made a loop around the big warehouses, and heard the gunshots begin. “That's good,” Davy said.

“Good?” Miles's voice broke. “How can that possibly be good?”

Davy and Con exchanged thin smiles. “Somebody's still alive to shoot back,” Con said.

Tony got out, with his shotgun and a Beretta Cougar. Bruno leaped out of the pickup, brandishing a Taurus Millennium. He was spitting angry words at his aunt, pushing down on her bouffant hairdo. Trying to make her get her head down. The pouffy jet-black curls sprang right up like a jack-in-the-box, plump hands waving. Bruno flung his hand up in eloquent disgust, and loped along the side of the building.

They hastened to follow. Miles's heart was lodged in the place where his Adam's apple ought to be, thudding in its tiny prison. He clutched the gun in a sweaty hand, hung on to his guts. To think he could be leading the life of a tech nerd. Cowering under a rock like a pallid, lovelorn grub in his parents' basement. No life, no sex, no Cindy. No mortal danger, either. Suffocatingly safe as a bug in a rug.

But no, here he was. Gunshots were building into a storm of apocalyptic intensity, and he was running toward it. Not away.

Bam, bam.
Miles jumped, squeaked. That was closer. Outside the building, not inside. Bruno peered around the edge of the building, jerked back, gestured them closer. “Two cars, six guys,” he whispered. “Kev's trying to get out the back window. They've boxed him in.”

Davy's grin was feral. “So let's distract the bastards.”

Con stared at the fleet of black SUVs pulled up in the alley beyond the Dumpster, his eyes slitted. “If I take the car and loop around, I'll get behind them to toss the diamond doodads.”

“Be careful,” Davy said, as Con pelted away so fast he forgot to limp. They crouched amid piles of garbage behind the Dumpster.

“Cover me,” Bruno whispered. “I'm going into the building next door. Going to get up to that window. To help them out.”

“I'm with you,” Davy said. He slapped Miles on the shoulder. “Keep those guys busy.”

Davy and Bruno ran for it, and all hell broke loose.

Miles's head rang with gunfire. He squeezed off shots, biting his lip til it bled. Keep those guys busy? Leave that life or death job to the shit-scared, worked-over tech nerd with the borrowed gun? Great.

Tony seemed to read his thoughts, and slapped him on the shoulder. “Concentrate on the two guys in back,” he yelled into Miles's ear. “Keep those fuckers down. I'll take the guys in the front.”

Direction helped. He did has he was told, but the noise made his head ring, and everything felt grotesquely bright and surreal. But he kept on until the clip was empty, and reloaded with shaking hands.

Keeping those fuckers down.

K
ev's muscles quivered with strain as he laid Sean down gently, letting him slump against the wall. Kev sank down beside him, panting.

He was all out of ideas. The walls were closing in. The front windows were a sheer four-story drop with a gauntlet of bullets in between; whoever was still pissed and shooting inside, plus whoever was pissed and coming up the stairs, and who the fuck knew who waited outside. The stairwell was the only way on to the roof, another dead end. And even if he did pry Sean out this bedroom window alive, he had no idea if he could clamber across that gap one-handed, with his twin brother draped over his shoulder like a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound scarf. To say nothing of the idea of Liv stepping over it, too. She might as well have a bull's-eye painted all over her pregnant belly. Jesus. The very thought made his joints loosen with horror.

Liv gathered Sean's limp body up, supporting him with one arm. Kev gestured toward her bulge. “Are you, ah…is it OK?”

She gave him a look that made him wish he hadn't asked. There was no need to even say it, their imminent doom was so obvious.

“I'm glad he got to see you. At least once,” she said. “Even if it was through a hail of bullets. Before…whatever happens now happens.”

“Yeah.” He reached out to touch Sean's carotid artery. His brother's heart pumped away, strong and steady. “I'm glad, too.”

“Glad he got to bitch you out, too,” she said, with more heat. “Not as much as you deserve, though. You bastard, Kev. How could you?”

She clearly expected him to say something. To defend himself. But nothing came out. There was too much to say. It was bottlenecked.

“Why the hell did you stay away all this time?” The words exploded out of her, voice shaking. “All that time wasted! And it hurt him, you know that? It hurt them all, but it hurt him the most!”

It hurt me, too.
He cast around for a starting place, but the story was too huge, too long, too crazy, and he was so rattled, he wouldn't make any sense. “It's not my fault,” he said helplessly.

Her lips tightened. Not good enough. Try again, asshole.

But he was speechless, clueless. All tapped out. “I'm sorry.”

And oh, God, he was. He should have broken down those inner walls before today. Years ago. Guilt ached and twisted. He had no fucking clue how he could have done it, but he should have, somehow.

Gunblasts started up again, but they weren't landing up here on the window frame. He ventured a peek, ducked down as he saw glass shatter in the windows of one of the SUVs. Shouts.

Excitement surged inside him. He tamped it down. It was nice, and heartwarming, that somebody was on their side, but it changed nothing. They were still fucked. He took another peek—

Crash.
Glass shattered inward, all over them. He reeled back. Liv shrieked, cowering, holding her arms over hers and Sean's faces. More bullets tore through the slats of the window shades. They dangled, twisted and broken in the silence that followed, swinging in the cold wind that swept in.

“Kev? Yo! You in there?”

Holy shit, that was Bruno! Kev leaped up to see, staying well back and out of range. His little brother was framed by the scaffolding in the building across from him. Grinning madly, eyes alight.

“Bruno?” His voice came out in a hoarse, croaking whisper. “How the fuck did you know—where's Edie?”

Bruno flung up his hands, a gesture he got from Zia Rosa. “Later for that.” He heaved a big plank through the air. It landed heavily on the fire escape, jittering the shards of glass that covered it. “Come on!”

“Liv, first,” he said.

Bruno looked blank. “Who's Liv?”

“Liv's OK?” Another guy appeared behind him.

Their eyes met. Kev's knees almost gave. That face, so hard and craggy. So much like Dad, it hit him like a club. “Davy?” he whispered. All that was missing was the long hair, the bushy beard, the wild, staring look in his eyes. Davy was the living image of their father.

“Hello? For fuck's sake?” Bruno brayed through cupped hands. “Stop before I puke, OK? Can we save the violins for later? Please?”

Shots whined off the scaffolding, ricocheting off the building outside, as if to illustrate his point. Bruno leaped back, cursing.

Kev hauled Liv to her feet. “You, first,” he said.

“No!” she yelled. “Sean is injured, and—

“And you're pregnant. I have to cover you from this side while you go. I'll carry Sean over after, but I won't go until you're across.”

She made a grumbling sound deep in her throat. “Typical.”

“When I start shooting, go fast,” he ordered. He wrenched the blinds away from the adjacent window and rammed it up and open.

Bang. Crunch.
Someone was kicking in the door, jarring the furniture he'd blocked it with.
Bam,
a gunshot smashed the lock. Wood splintered.
Bang.
It was the fat guy, beating his way through the door.

The dresser shifted. One of the fat guy's mad, glittering eyes shone through the crack. Kev took a shot.
Bam.
The eye vanished.

Crunch,
another powerful kick. The door opened a little wider.

“Hurry!” he howled at Liv. He leaned, hanging out the window and shooting down at those bastards with a long, blood-curdling yell.

Liv crawled out, wobbled on the warped board for a few heart-clutching moments, tumbled forward to catch Bruno's outstretched hands, and was yanked to safety. Kev dropped back inside the window, breathing hard. Still alive, and so was she. He was dizzy with relief.

Crunch.
The bedroom door jolted open farther. He pumped a few shots through the crack in the door while trying to figure out a way to get his unconscious brother out the window and onto a tiny fire escape.

His imperfect solution was to slide out backward, leaving his back as a shield and his ass as a tantalizing target, while reaching in to grip Sean under the armpits, dragging his brother's limp body out onto the fire escape. There was barely room for one, let alone two, but he wrestled Sean into place over his shoulder and forced his trembling legs to unfold. Balance. Every muscle shook. Sweat dripped off his chin. Bruno's face was a blur in the background, Davy's and Liv's beside his.

He pulled them into focus. Big mistake. He let them blur into the background again. The raw fear on their faces did not help him at all.

Something bigger than a gun exploded below. Shouts, yells. He didn't dare look to see. He swung his leg over the fire escape, set his foot on the board. Balanced on that quivering leg on the warped plank while he lifted the other foot off the relative stability of the fire escape.

It would be three or four shuffling steps before he could pass his burden to the outstretched hands on the other side.
One.
The plank jiggled and bowed under their combined weight. He waited for a bullet to punch into him from below. Not yet.
Two. Three.
Davy and Bruno leaned forward, reaching desperately to grab Sean—

Bang,
a bigger explosion.
Whump
,
crash
.
Crack,
a bullet from the window behind him scored the side of Kev's shoe. He did a wobbling dance step as the board shuddered loose of its place on the fire escape.

He heaved Sean to Bruno and Davy with the last instant of purchase he had left, and then he was dancing in midair, legs flailing—

He caught himself on the scaffolding, and hung there, by the same damn hand that had caught Sean over the railing. The same arm that had been smashed by the tree trunk in the waterfall incident.

Fucking
ouch.
He struggled to breathe. Looked down at his feet, waving over the blur of lethal activity beneath.

Davy and Bruno were squeezing off shots at the guy in the window. He was shooting back. Kev thought of the waterfall. Crazy laughter bubbled up from deep inside. This felt so familiar, somehow. What the hell he did to deserve this crazy shit, he did not fucking know.

A hand clamped over his wrist. Davy had braved the fat guy's bullets and climbed down the scaffolding to pull him up while Bruno covered him, spraying bullets into Kev's bedroom window. With some grunting and straining and excrutiating pain, he hooked a knee, then a foot. Davy hauled Kev up by his sore arm and tossed him face-first into the dim building. Kev fell to his knees, gasping and coughing.

“We don't have time for this!” Bruno yelled. “You shot? Wounded?”

“Fine,” he gasped, choking and coughing. “I think.”

“Then move your ass! Fast! Now!”

They dragged him along. He stumbled, running where he was led, thudding through forests of pillars and steel cables. Davy carried Sean without apparent effort. The situation looked dire as they peered out of the bottom floor. Then a car horn began to blast. Tony's old Chevy pickup appeared around the corner, Zia Rosa at the wheel, mouth open in a battle yell. She leaned out the window, screamed, “
vaffanculo, you stinkin's on zabitches!
” and laid on the gas, heading for a black SUV.

Men leaped to get out of her way.
Crash,
she rammed into them, and put the truck in reverse.
Bam.
Zia's windshield shattered. Tony and a lanky guy that Kev didn't recognize leaped out from behind the Dumpster and dove into the bed of the pickup. Tony screamed at Rosa to drive, drive, drive. Another guy came running with a limp from behind the smoking ruins of the SUVs.

Tall, long hair.
Connor.
That was Connor. They were all here.

The Chevy slowed. Zia Rosa howled for them to hurry. A bone rattling thud as he jumped? fell? was pushed? into the pickup bed. Sean thudded in after him. Liv, Davy, and Bruno followed. The tires squealed as Zia Rosa reversed, braked violently, and took off.

Some moments later, he hoisted himself up, and looked around.

Liv lay on her side, cradling Sean's head in her arms, staring at him. Davy stared at him. Con stared at him. Bruno and Tony and the dark-haired guy stared, too. All of them were staring at him.

Oh, shit. He was in for it now.

 

Tom looked away, stoic as the EMT dressed the wound on his shoulder. His teeth were clenched so hard his skull ached. But not against the pain. It was the anger that he could hardly control.

That sneaky son of a bitch Larsen had fucked him up the ass. Seven men dead, four in the explosion in the apartment, three in the firefight. Three more injured, one with a crushed pelvis from being rammed by the pickup, driven by that crazy hag, whoever the fuck she was. Tom would find out, soon. Oh, yeah. She would pay. Larsen and his fucking motley band were going to see what happened to people who messed with Dr. O's army.

Detective Widome of the PPD was talking. His jowls flapped. Tom breathed down the impulse to rip the man's slack, ugly face off his skull. Before throwing him facedown and crushing his vertebrae into pebbles, one by one with his boot heel. “Excuse me,” he said, through his teeth. “I was woolgathering. Would you repeat that?”

“Certainly. I was just saying that we need a formal statement as soon as possible about your involvement in—”

“I told you! Charles Parrish contracted my security firm to deal with Kev Larsen, aka McCloud. I'll demonstrate that accord at my earliest opportunity. Tragically, we were unable to protect Mr. Parrish from his killer, but when we got a tip Larsen had returned, we came down on the bastard.” Tom waved his arm at smoking vehicles, the shattered glass, ambulances, body bags. “This was the result. The story is straightforward. There won't be any surprises in my statement.”

Widome chewed his lip as he surveyed the carnage. “I'll still be interested. Quite a fight, hmm? Bit off more than you could chew?”

Tom swallowed back killing rage. “We underestimated his resources,” he ground out. “We weren't aware that his brothers were already backing him up. It was just a manhunt before. Now it's a war.”

“I don't think so.” Widome gave him a big smile. “I think you'd better step aside and let us deal with this, Mr. Bixby.”

“I have to fulfil my professional obligations.” Tom smiled back, even bigger. “I'm sure we can work together. Help each other.”

“Of course,” Widome said. “Within the confines of the law.”

“Of course. And now, if you'll excuse me. I need to see that my employees are getting the care they need. And contact the widows of the men who died today. Later. OK?” He crunched through the broken glass, nose stinging at the stink of burning rubber, and called Des.

Des picked up, and started to babble. “I've got a problem. I need your people to go to the Parrish building to dismantle the boxes we put in the library for Larsen this morning. The Parrish bitch is flapping her jaw. No one appears to be listening, yet, but just for safety's sake—”

“You call that a problem?” Tom let out a harsh laugh. “I'll tell you problems. Seven dead guys. A fortune spent on their recruitment and training, lost. Claymores exploding in our faces. Two armored vehicles, essentially destroyed. Three men in the hospital, with bullet wounds. One rammed by a fucking truck. The press nosing around, the police three miles up my ass. And Larsen, gone. Because of your little fuck buddy. Ava the wonder cunt.”

“Gone? How?” Des's voice cracked. “How the fuck did you—”

“I didn't! Your girlfriend was jerking herself off, and she muffed it. He cuffed her, gagged her, and locked her in the fucking supply closet. I left her there, by the way. In the closet. To reflect upon her personality flaws. You go let her out. I didn't have the stomach.”

“Holy shit,” Des muttered. “Where's Larsen now?”

“Who knows,” Tom said. “He blew up his apartment with my guys in it, shot up the rest of my men with his psychotic brothers, and now they're gone. Off to plot how best to fuck us next, no doubt. So if you've got your thumb on Edie Parrish, keep it there. We end this tonight.”