The Courier (San Angeles) (29 page)

Quincy put his arm around my shoulders and smiled. I tried to wrench away and he tightened his grip.

“It’s okay,” he said, speaking louder. “Mom will come back soon.” People had stopped to look at us, the scared girl and the thin man. He stepped forward, forcing me to keep up with him, and lowered his voice. “You’ve been quite the little bitch, haven’t you?”

I tried harder to twist away. “Let me go!”

“I can’t do that now, can I? It took far too long to actually get hold of you.”

“I’ll scream.”

“I’ve already warned you about that.”

I felt something hard press into my side.

“This will make a bit of a mess. I like ’em powerful, no chance for a mistake.”

He jabbed me with the gun again. It felt as though he pushed it right through my ribs, and I gasped in pain.

Quincy dragged me through the concourse and out the large doors to the parking garage. When we were in the stairwell, he moved his grip to my upper arm, squeezing with a viselike grip.

“Where are you taking me?” I couldn’t keep the quiver from my voice. I was sure his plan was to get me someplace quiet and put a bullet in my back. Or worse, use his knife on me.

“On a little trip. The boss wants to see you. Figures you know a lot of stuff.”

“I don’t know anything. Please, let me go.” Panic and begging had crept into my voice. I hated the sound of it. “I . . . I can make it worth your while.” I still had a fair amount of cash left.

He leered at me and grabbed my chest. “What are you going to offer me that I can’t just take?”

I knew then it could be worse than being sliced open.

When we reached his car, he slammed me against it, pressing a hand into the back of my neck while the other one searched. He found the gun and the cash and put them both into his pocket. When his hand hit the blocker he grunted.

The rest of his search got more personal before he opened the door, pushing me in ahead of him. I crawled into a shell I hadn’t needed to use in years.

“Slide over to the passenger side. I think we’ll keep your blocker on for now. I don’t know who else might be looking for you.”

I moved to the next seat and pressed myself into the corner made by the back of the seat and the door. “You can keep the money.”

Quincy laughed and sat in the seat beside me. “Yeah,” he said. “I can. But that’s not really what I want from you, is it?”

He pulled the gun out of his pocket and laid it on his lap, the barrel pointing right at my gut. His left hand stayed on it as he pulled out from the parking stall and drove out of the garage. Once on the road, he steered with his knee, pulling out a comm unit and placing a call.

“It’s Quincy . . . Yeah, I got the girl . . . You’ll meet us there? Okay, fifteen minutes.” He closed the link and looked at me. “Looks
like you’re not taking a trip after all. The boss is on his way down already.” He drove around the outskirts of the shuttle port, almost retracing the route I had taken earlier.

As he drove, the only illumination came from the streetlights placed at regular intervals beside the road. Pools of darkness gathered in between the pinpoints of light. It was darker than I was used to, with no Ambients spreading an even light across the landscape. Still, the canopy of black helped to calm me a bit, more like the ceilings of the lower levels.

We were back into warehouses spreading out from the airport like bums in Chinatown. Quincy pulled into a dark parking lot and backed into a spot by loading dock doors. He killed the car lights and waited. Faint light from the street reflected off his face, giving him a ghostly appearance. I tried the door in the dark. It was locked.

“We got time, how about that offer?” he said.

“Fuck you.” The darkness that calmed me earlier now made me feel braver. It helped that I couldn’t see the gun, even though my brain told me it was there. I didn’t see his hand until it was almost at my face. I jerked to the side, smashing my head into the closed window. Stars fluttered in front of my eyes and Quincy’s hand hit the headrest.

“You’ll be wanting to watch what you say to me.” His voice had taken on a harder edge. “Now move your little ass over here.”

Lights from a car coming into the parking lot lit up the inside of my cage. Quincy still had the gun in his left hand; his right had unzipped his pants and was reaching inside.

“Fuck.” He zipped up his fly. “There’ll be time later, don’t you worry.”

He opened the car door and motioned for me to follow him. As I moved over to the driver’s side, I noticed the keys were still in the ignition.

For a brief moment I thought of starting the car and speeding away. I would only need a second or two before the car would be on the road and I’d be racing away as fast as I could. But the gun in Quincy’s hand was only a meter from my head, pointed right at me. I couldn’t outrace a bullet.

“Get out.”

I got out and moved away from the door. Quincy slammed it shut and stood beside it, leaning his tall frame against the car, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

The other car was a limousine, black and polished, reflecting the light from the street in hot white spots. The driver got out and moved to the back door. As he opened it, Quincy stopped leaning and stood straighter.

The boss had
arrived.

T
O ME,
the man getting out of the limousine looked like any other old man I had seen, except he was wearing an expensive-looking suit. And when he moved, it was as if he commanded the world to notice him. Tall and proud and in control.

He walked over to Quincy, making sure he didn’t come between the gun and me.

“Did anybody see you?”

“No, sir,” Quincy answered.

“Good. Bring her inside. Nobody else needs to see this.”

The man walked past, giving me a wide berth, and opened a small door beside the loading docks. Quincy motioned me to follow and in turn followed me, the gun still leveled at my back.

The door led into a large loading bay. Boxes sat on top of palettes, some piled over two meters high. A group of forklifts that used
to be orange sat in a row along the far wall. Along the other wall sat a line of offices, their doors dark and gray with dirt from the hands of the people who worked in them.

The man walked to the door on the end and opened it. By the time I got there, the lights had flickered to life and a swivel office chair from the desk jammed into the corner had been moved into the middle of the room. Quincy pushed me into it. My momentum rolled the chair into the far wall.

“Tsk tsk. Quincy . . . show the lady some manners.” He turned to me. “My name is Jeremy. I already know yours. Would you care for a glass of water?”

When I didn’t answer, Jeremy walked to the desk, moved some papers out of the way, and perched on its edge.

“I’m going to ask you some questions, Kris. I expect your full cooperation. If I don’t get it, I’ll simply leave you to Quincy. I believe you’ve seen his handiwork up close. Most unpleasant.”

I felt the too-familiar cold knot in my stomach tighten.

“Let’s start with the package, shall we? I’m assuming Quincy didn’t find it on you, so where is it?”

“I don’t know.” I spat the words out.

Quincy took a step forward and backhanded me across the face. My head twisted and I could taste blood in my mouth.

“Let’s try this again. Where is the package?”

I spat some blood out of my mouth and, with a bravery I didn’t feel, gave Quincy a look that told him to fuck off and die.

“I don’t know. I don’t have it.”

“I see. Then when did you see it last?”

“At the safe house. I had it with me. Just before your asshole showed up.” I gave a nod in Quincy’s direction. “A couple of guys came by and took it with them.”

I could see Quincy was starting to get riled. Good. The fuckhead
had pissed me off. I knew I would pay for getting him mad, but mad people also got careless. And careless gave me a chance.

“A couple of guys. You’ll need to be more specific.”

“I can’t.”

Quincy swung again, splitting my swollen lip open.

“Apparently, Quincy, you have lost your charm. Perhaps there is another way to convince her we mean business.”

Jeremy walked to the open door and looked into the empty loading bay. He spoke, his back still toward me. His voice echoed in the large open area.

“According to Quincy, your friend Miller was being quite . . . attentive to you in the hospital. Surprising for a man who just had shrapnel taken out of his shoulder.” He turned back and looked me in the eye. “You may be interested to know I have Miller.”

I gave a slight start, and tried to hide it by shifting my weight on the chair.

“Ahh, yes. I see the feelings are mutual. Very well then. Tell me what I need to know without playing any games, and I’ll let him live. And you as well, of course.” He took his comm unit out of his pocket and touched the screen, ready to make a connection.

“Who has the package?”

“The two guys were from ACE. They took it with them when they left,” I said, the words tumbling from my mouth.

“And who else has seen the contents of the package?”

“No one.”

Jeremy looked at Quincy and sighed, putting away his comm unit. My stomach dropped like I was in a fast-moving elevator.

“No. Wait. Nigel . . . Nigel Wood opened it as well. He . . . he read it before he was killed.”

“Much better, Kris. Did he scan it in as well?”

“Not that I saw.”

Jeremy looked at me as if judging the validity of my answer. His calm questions scared me almost as much as Quincy’s knife.

“Very well. ACE has the package, SoCal has a copy, as does Kadokawa. Not quite what I planned, but manageable.”

Jeremy turned to Quincy and smiled, a small turn upward at the corners of his mouth.

“All of this effort over a silly courier, a little girl who is still too young to be away from her mother. A pity really. Don’t make a mess in here, please.” He turned and walked out the door, closing it silently behind him.

Quincy’s grin was bigger than Jeremy’s, much bigger. “Now, where were we when he came along? Yeah, I remember.” He advanced on me.

My world turned inside out. I was back in my aunt’s tiny apartment. Her husband, a bottle in his hand, had his pants already unbuckled and hanging down by his thighs. My fear disappeared, replaced by a burning rage and hatred that consumed me from head to toe.

The image swam out of focus, and it was Quincy approaching me again, a gun in his hand instead of a bottle. It didn’t matter. The intent was the same, and I wasn’t going to be a fucking victim anymore.

I launched myself off the chair, aiming my head at Quincy’s groin. He moved out of the way and lifted a knee into my chest. I slammed into the wall and the world went dark for a minute.

When I came to, Quincy had cleared the desk and thrown me on it. My jacket lay on the floor. He grabbed the front of my t-shirt, trying to tear it off me. The material held. I twisted, hoping to
release his grip on me. Quincy reached behind his back, pulling a knife from its sheath.

I had seen the knife before.

He slid the blade along my stomach, pulling my shirt up to my rib cage, before twisting the blade and cutting through the material. It cut as though slicing through air. I held still, not daring to even breathe, as I felt the cold steel slide under my bra.

Quincy grabbed my face with his other hand, twisting it so I looked right at him.

“You like this, don’t you? They all do, in the end. They always beg for more, before I watch the life drain from their eyes.”

The knife twitched and I felt a burn. Quincy smiled, then jerked the blade toward him, cutting through the center band. He rubbed his finger between my breasts and raised it to his lips, licking off the blood.

He moved to the end of the desk, dragging the knife down over the tape holding on the black box to the button on my jeans. My stomach quivered. I pushed myself up to my elbows, my bra fell to the desk.

“No, please. I can do it for you.”

I braced myself, trying to smile at Quincy through the tears. I reached a hand down, moving the knife blade out of the way, and undid the button.

Quincy paused, sizing me up before he put the knife back in its sheath and began to unbutton his own shirt with one hand, the other still holding his gun. “Now that’s more like it!” He moved as I sat up, reaching to push my jeans down.

I leaned back and swung my foot with all the strength I had, bracing my hands on the edge of the table, almost lifting myself right off the surface. I felt my foot make contact and drove it higher into his groin.

Quincy’s face turned bright red and he stopped breathing. He
fell to his knees and toppled sideways, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

I slid off the desk, picking the dropped gun off the floor, and stood over him. He didn’t even notice.

“Never again,” I said. I pulled the trigger. The gun kicked a little and made a soft “phhfft” sound. Quincy stopped squirming on the floor, a pool of blood forming under him.

I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger until the gun was empty before falling to my knees, drawing in deep ragged breaths.

I knelt there until I could feel blood soaking through to my knees. I forced myself back to my feet and looked at Quincy. There wasn’t much left of his chest. It was my turn to smile.

I went through his pockets, not knowing what I was looking for. Nestled deep in the front pocket, I found my bike keys, the tiny golden Oscar still attached. A part of me felt more complete the second it was in my hand. I found my—Frank’s—gun tucked beside the knife at his back.

I had to catch up with Jeremy, find out what he had done with Miller. Picking my jacket off the floor, I put it on, zipping it up while I raced toward the loading dock doors. Oscar went in the front pocket, where’d he’d always been, where he belonged.

By the time I reached the loading dock, Jeremy’s car was already gone.