I did not like this feeling. I wanted my head cleared, this concussion or stroke or whatever brain bruise I was dealing with to heal over so I could think clearly and do what I could to solve this thing. Calder and Rizzo would know soon enough that I wasn’t dead yet and they’d work hard to make me so.
Maybe that’s why the woman was going upstairs. But why hadn’t she just killed me herself when she had the chance? I started to doubt again if she was even real. Maybe the two men were killed in the explosion and I’d imagined the whole thing.
Then something really weird happened. The harder I wondered about what went through her mind, I started to see…things. Flashes at first. Static. Broken images like old videotape or a half-remembered dream.
I started to see things I thought she would be seeing, as if I were looking through her eyes, but in a weird overlay double-exposure sort of way. Instantly my head hurt. I closed my eyes and the double exposure went away. I could see her point of view as she pulled open the lobby door. The image cracked and warped, skittered and froze, then skipped forward. I concentrated harder on bringing the view into focus and my vision of her eyes came through a little clearer.
She got on the elevator. What the hell was happening to me?
I heard the sound of a bus. The number seven. I knew there was a stop for number seven only a block away from Lucas’ house. I’d cursed out that bus many a morning when I was running late for the office and it loitered on that corner loading on people too poor to afford a car.
A short stab of pain spiked through my brain as I thought that cruel thought.
No time to dwell on any of this weirdness now. I ran for the bus. Well, limped at a faster pace.
Again, normally I would have flashed my badge and gotten a free ride, but instead my hand dipped into my pocket almost on its own and I dropped exact change into the slot.
I must have looked a mess. Clothes askew, covered in dust, smoke from the fire staining my clothes. Anywhere else but a public bus at ten at night I would have stood out. As it was, barely anyone noticed me. I took my seat and felt a deep tired wash over me.
In the back of the bus a man with a walker stood and began shuffling his way toward the side exit doors. This might take a while. I shut my eyes but when I did I had the visions again. The elevator. Buttons lighting up as it climbed. It was like I was there, or remembering I was there. Some sort of flash from earlier my brain was trying to point to.
The sound I heard came through hollow, like a set of headphones a few feet away and maybe those headphones were at the bottom of a fish tank. I screamed at my brain to listen harder.
It wasn’t a memory. Somehow I knew this was what she was seeing. The woman who saved my life and who had my face.
She entered Calder and Rizzo’s office. A man I knew only as Gustavo stood, obviously shocked to see her—me—stride right in with only a few scratches in the leather of her jacket. Gustavo is a big man who packs a big gun. I only wish I meant that as dirty as it sounds, but I mean a real gun with bullets. He reached behind his back for the gun. The other woman was ready.
Without missing a stride she plucked a stapler off the desk (receptionist had gone home at a normal hour) and flipped it open like a switchblade, swiping it across his face and tagging his cheek with a tiny metal piercing. It was enough to throw him off balance and wonder what the hell happened. A few frames went missing in the live feed to my brain but I could tell she moved in on him and straddled over Gustavo, whacking three more staples quickly into his forehead.
This was no memory of mine. It was like my wondering what was going on up in the offices conjured this elaborate fantasy inside my damaged brain.
She put a hand on the arm pinned behind his back and wrenched the gun loose. So now she had a gun. I felt some phantom pressure in my hand, my years of experience holding a gun, I told myself. Power of suggestion with the vision I was seeing.
Even from ten floors down outside I had a weird sensation that if it was my hand the gun rested in I wouldn’t be able to use it. I felt no desire to shoot, no knowledge of how to fire a weapon even though I had six sharpshooter citations at home to prove my expertise with a sidearm.
“Stay,” she said in crackly antique radio quality. “Or everyone dies.”
She immediately came off Gustavo and marched through the double doors into Calder and Rizzo’s office. The image remained frustratingly scattered. It went black and white a few times. Froze, the sound dropped out, the image bent until I couldn’t tell if I was looking at a face or a flower pot. I bent over in my seat and tried to block out all other stimulus from the world outside and listen and see what was happening ten stories up like my sister let me eavesdrop with a tin can and string.
I didn’t get it word for word. Calder and Rizzo were surprised but kept cool. She got right to the point.
“I’ll take the deal.”
“Samantha, this is quite a turnaround.”
“Yeah, that was quite a double cross downstairs.”
“You understand,” Calder said. “We had no choice.”
“You had a choice. You chose wrong. Now I’m choosing wrong.”
“But you want the deal?” Rizzo asked, understandably confused.
“For twenty million.”
What was she doing? Was she bargaining?
“Twenty?” Calder repeated.
“Twenty. For that you get everything.”
Calder: “The district attorney?”
I watched the world bob up and down, her nodding our head.
Rizzo: “The DEA office?”
She nodded again.
“Nothing touches us?”
“Nothing except me if you try to fuck me again. My twenty million is walk away money. You can call me for favors, but I’ll be hard to find and harder to kill.”
There was silence. I couldn’t tell if the sound cut out or if they were simply contemplating the offer. I cupped my hands over my ears to try to tease out a tiny bit more from the bad connection.
“Deal.” Not sure which one said it, but next thing they were shaking hands on it.
“I’ll get started right away,” she said.
The connection cut out as the bus moved away. Two police cars rushed by outside, no doubt responding to the explosion. A fire truck wailed its siren close behind. Part of me wanted to get out and help them secure the scene. Old training kicking in, I guessed.
Another flood of subconscious knowing hit me. I didn’t have to parse out what she meant. She meant Lucas and she meant tonight.
LAST ONE HOME IS A ROTTEN EGG
As soon as I disconnected the mind meld or whatever the hell happened, the headache went away. Who was this woman? Had she really promised to take out Lucas? She was taking my deal. Of course it made sense that Calder and Rizzo had more than one option on the table. Why should I think I was the only one to get the job done?