The Blonde (25 page)

Who knows.

It might even bring them closer together.

TWO DAYS
LATER

Adler and Christian Streets, South Philly

K
owalski had his night-vision sights trained on a nice little head shot. Yeah, it’d be messy.

The guy whose head was covered by a professional assassin’s sights
still
had absolutely no fucking idea. And he was eating another slice of white pizza—was this all this guy ate? No Orangina this time. Chubby had a Diet Coke. Like that was going to do any good.

It was nice to be back on-mission. Sure, he had a lot to sort out. But no reason he couldn’t do that
and
wipe out every single member of the Philadelphia branch of the Cosa Nostra at the same time.

They’d stolen one of his potential futures. His future with Katie and their child.

So he was stealing theirs.

Down to the man.

Steady now.

Index finger on the trigger.

Set angle to maximize blood splatter.

And…

And Kowalski’s battered leg—in a proper brace, finally— started humming.

It was a new phone. He’d ditched the old one in the hospital biohazard dump. This one was exactly like it. Another razor-thin model with an armband meant for athletes. Only one person had the number. Kowalski plugged in the jack, hooked the receiver and mike around his ear.

“Are you busy? ”

“Not really,” Kowalski said. “You?”

“I think I slept all day.”

“Good.”

Once he was sure she was stable, Kowalski had moved Kelly— whose real name, he confirmed, was Vanessa Reardon—to an off-the-books safe house. One even CI-6 didn’t know about.

Oh, CI-6 had assured him that Nancy, his ex-handler, his ex-girlfriend, had been sanctioned for her little side deal with one Matthew Silver, aka the Operator, aka the Guy in the Cemetery with the Exploded Head. It was a serious matter, and Nancy would be dealt with in the most serious manner. CI-6’s assistant secretary sifted salt in the wound by informing Kowalski that none of his assignments that Thursday night had been official. In fact, his orders had been given by the Operator, and filtered through Nancy.

No, no, the assistant secretary didn’t blame him for that. No way Kowalski could have known. She’d used the right protocols. And he was just following orders, right?

Right. But still …

The assistant secretary’s sudden and insatiable interest in the Mary Kates—“What do they do again? Self-replicating, huh? You don’t say….”—worried Kowalski. The same way you’d be worried about a fifteen-year-old with a sudden interest in assault rifles.

That shit had to be nipped in the bud.

Especially if what Vanessa had told him was true.

That at least fourteen thousand people—and counting—had
this stuff dormant in their blood. Waiting for a command from a satellite somewhere.

The assistant secretary didn’t know about that yet.

Kowalski purposefully kept intel flowing as slowly as possible; he needed time to strategize. He didn’t tell them about the proof in San Diego. He told them he’d bring Vanessa Reardon in when the conditions were right.

But they were growing impatient. Soon, they’d send someone after him.

And Vanessa.

“What are you doing right now?” she asked.

“Cleaning up a few things. You know, I wanted to ask you something.”

Chubby, still in his rifle scope, was coming to the end of his Diet Coke. Kowalski could tell by the way he craned his neck back, trying to suck out every last drop of caffeine.

“Yeah?”

“You wanna have dinner out somewhere?”

“I think I can stand a public appearance. You have no idea what a leisurely shower can do for a woman.”

“Wearing the necklace, of course.”

“It’ll never leave my person.”

In the hospital, with Ed’s head missing, Kowalski had been at a loss as to what to do about Vanessa. She still couldn’t be alone. A transfusion would be useless. Even a single nanoassembly left behind could replicate a thousand more. And going down to the graveyard to collect some of Thinny’s blood wasn’t practical. Not with cops and rescue workers swarming the scene.

Instead, Kowalski had suggested infecting himself, then swapping vials of blood. To wear on necklaces, à la Angelina and Billy Bob. They’d both be covered.

“You’d do that?” she’d asked.

“Am I not a gentleman?” he’d joked.

He’d suggested pricking their fingers; she’d reached up and grabbed his face and kissed him—his mouth, his scars, his bruises—sealing the deal.

“So where are you taking me?” she asked now.

Wait.

Chubby was on the move. Look at him adjusting his crotch. Getting ready for a little exercise. About freakin’ time, right? The sights followed him.

“I was thinking …”

Steady now….

Index finger on the trigger …

“… San Diego.”

BLAM

BLAM

BLAM

The Blonde
would not have been possible without Meredith, Parker, and Sarah. Nor without Allan “Sunshine” Guthrie, “Marquis” Marc Resnick, or David “Hale” Smith.

The author would also like to thank Ray Banks, Lou Boxer (pharmaceuticals), Ken Bruen, Angela Cheng Caplan, Bill Crider, Aldo Calcagno (locations), Michael Connelly, Paul Curci, Carol Edwards, Father Luke Elijah, Loren Feldman, Nancy French, Greg Gillespie, McKenna Jordan, Jon, Ruth and Jen Jordan, Deen Kogan, Christin Kuretich (wardrobe), Terrill Lee Lankford (possum wrangling), Joe Lansdale, Laura Lippman, Emily MacEntee, Donna Moore, Kevin Burton Smith, Mark Stanton, Shauyi Tai, David Thompson, Dave White, the good people at St. Martin’s Minotaur, the
City Paper
, his friends and family, and fair-haired people everywhere.

REDHEAD

You thought blondes had more fun?

Wait until you meet the redhead.

This is a sequel to
The Blonde,
which you will find conveniently included in the front of this paperback. You should definitely read that first
.

If you purchased this book and thought you’d knock out the story in the back first, let me give it to you straight: Turn back now. Seriously. There s a lot of weird stuff (The Mary Kates, CI-6, The Operator) you need to catch up on in the full-length novel before you tackle this one. And there s even a spoiler in the first line
.

So turn back now. Thank you for your cooperation
.

(This story is for Temll Lankford. He 11 know why.)

—D.S
.

T
he word spread early—they had Kowalski in custody, and The Blonde was dead.

Kowalski was flying in on an AH-64 Apache 2, due to arrive any moment.

The Blonde’s headless body was currently under the knife at a small medical facility south of San Diego, not far from the border. The guys in the lab coats didn’t want to hang around Mexico any longer than they had to. Cartels, and all. Things were bad. Decapitations were the order of the day. They didn’t want to get caught up in that shit.

Nobody was too worried about The Blonde anyway.

They wanted Kowalski.

He was the one with the intel.

They prepared the secret prison facility like parents preparing the house for their five-year-old’s birthday party—the first with friends from preschool. The landing pad was hosed down as well as the interrogation room. One staffer was surprised to find some blood and bone fragments still congealed in one corner of the room. He could have sworn he’d cleaned this place out good a few days ago.

Lights were checked, and in some cases, replaced. It was important to have the right amount of buzzing and flickering. Chairs were positioned just so. A new meat hook was hung suggestively from a metal eye towards the back of the room.

The government has secret prisons all over the country, tucked away in little corners. This secret facility was halfway between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Neighbors—the closest ones living a mile away—thought it was a place where they pulped books. That was intended to explain the screaming. Machines are high-pitched and loud, they’d explain, if asked, which was never.

The Apache landed at 4:46 a.m. Kowalski was rushed down the ramp, still in his street clothes, except for the hood. He’d been checked for weapons, of course. Outwardly, he was clean.

They whipped off the hood to give him a hit of sunshine right before pushing his head down and running him through the musty steel hallway that led to the inner chambers of the facility.

They walked him around a lot to confuse him.

They stripped him naked, even removing the metal brace around his broken leg. They saved the vial of blood around his neck for last. It took them a while to realize what it was. Even better: it was early generation, from a month ago. Well worth studying.

A guard reached out, enclosed the vial in his meaty paw, then snapped it off Kowalski’s neck.

Now he needed
them
. Otherwise, he was fucked. If they wanted to kill him, all they would have to do is lock him in a room and wait ten seconds. Without anybody within a ten-foot radius of Kowalski, the nanites would travel to his brain and explode. There. Nothing easier.

For now, though, two guards stayed with him. They could kill him later. They needed information.

It was time for final security checks. They force-fed him something to make him vomit.

He did.

They repeated the process, and then checked his mouth and ass.

They hosed him off, sat him in a metal chair.

They’d opted not to put him on the hook. It was better to build up to something like that.

“Hey,” Kowalski asked. “Is my brother-in-law around?” It was the first thing he’d said since being apprehended in Mexico.

They said nothing.

Others watched him wait, via fiber optic cameras.

Kowalski waited.

S
ometime later the door opened. A guy Kowalski supposed was the interrogator stepped in. The guards stepped out.

The interrogator didn’t look like much. But those were the guys you really had to worry about.

He didn’t offer his name. He looked kind of bored.

“To be honest,” the interrogator said, “I just want to get to the part where I hang you on the hook back there and start cutting away little pieces of you. Starting with your anal cavity.”

“You guys are really fond of my ass.”

“Shall we begin?”

Kowalski said, “I’ll tell you everything.”

“Crap,” the interrogator said.

“And then,” Kowalski said, looking up at the ceiling, “all of you will die. One at a time.”

The interrogator perked up. “Oh yeah?”

“Every last one of you.”

Huge smile from the interrogator. “Sure, sweet cheeks. Listen, let’s get the story going. I’ll call bullshit and then we’ll have some fun.”

“I outthought you bastards every step of the way.” Kowalski stared at a corner of the ceiling.

The people watching him were impressed. He seemed to know exactly where the cameras were hidden.

“And yet,” the interrogator said, “you’re here.”

He stood up and reached inside a pouch on his pants. He took out a small, thin blade with a black handle. It had a cardboard cover over the blade, which the interrogator removed. Apparently, it had been sanitized for Kowalski’s protection.

“Here with me.”

“We went to L.A. first,” Kowalski said.

The interrogator sighed, then settled in to listen to the story.

L
et’s go to L.A.,” he told the blonde, whose real name was Vanessa. She’d come a long way in the past few weeks. She was napping less. Recovering most of her memory. Still, her mood remained the same: sad. Verging on black depression. Not surprising, considering that she’d almost died and, before that, spent a few weeks acting like a serial killer. Most people acting like that either ended up dead or in a padded room.

“I thought you said San Diego,” she said. “Where I stashed the key.”

“C’mon, L.A.’s fun. I’ll take you to Musso & Frank for a steak. Then we’ll drive down to San Diego.”

“I don’t eat red meat.”

They decided to go to L.A. anyway. Kowalski was just about finished with his Philadelphia business—there wasn’t much left of the original crime family who’d butchered his fiancée, except for a couple of low-level numbers men who really weren’t worth the trouble. Already the Russians and the Poles were moving in to fill the void. They could have it, Kowalski thought. He could care less if he ever saw Philadelphia again. Maybe if terrorists nuked it he’d stop back, just to piss on the burning ashes.

It was time to stop thinking local, and start thinking global.

As in:

Global Apocalypse.

Vanessa told him as much as she could about Proximity. She relied
on memory; the hardcore data was on a USB key in San Diego. But what she knew was frightening enough. Those little Mary Kate fuckers replicated like trailer trash: fast and furious and without much thought. And if The Operator—the dead headless bastard—was to be believed, the Mary Kates were currently busy inhabiting the bloodstreams of much of the population of North America. It had been a few months since their adventures in downtown Philadelphia. A lot of time for the Mary Kates to go forth and prosper.

Meanwhile, Kowalski’s employers, CI-6, were slowly putting the pieces together, like a toddler with a plastic Tupperware shape toy. They weren’t entirely stupid. Just big and awkward, like any government agency.