He didn’t say anything, but his eyes conveyed volumes. The hate I saw in his eyes was enough that with no other prompting, that alone would have sent me running. If he caught me again, I knew our back and forth would come to a distressingly quick end.
Needing no more prompting, I scrambled down the hallway, desperate to get away. I needed to find a place to hide before the murderous psychopath caught up to me.
20
The Fixer
I’d managed to grab a new clip and slap it into my gun before the serious shooting started. None of these guys were interested in a scuffle, like the last bunch lying around me. No fists. No knives. This was a bullet-laden dance now.
Fine by me. Unfortunately, I’d had my pistol and they were loaded with machine guns.
How’re you going to fix this? I asked myself sarcastically.
Then I dove for cover as a hail of hot metal ripped toward me. I ended up behind one of the guys I knocked out earlier. I rolled his limp form onto his side and hid behind it. The poor bastard started to regain consciousness just before the first round of bullets tore into him.
Well, that’s what you got for making your bed with a son-of-a-bitch like Larroca.
During a pause in the shooting, I popped up and squeezed off a few shots. I took down a few of the men, but not enough. I raced for a pillar. I realized this was going to be more of a struggle than I’d bargained for. What I wouldn’t have given for an automatic of my own.
Hiding behind the pillar as more machine gun fire raked into the walls and columns all around me, I wracked my brain for a way out of this situation.
As I was thinking, I heard someone racing close. I dropped to my knees and popped out from behind the pillar. He fired, the bullets going over my head. I fired and managed to tear the guy’s knees apart. He dropped on his face. He screamed a little while until the blood-loss silenced him.
I popped back behind a pillar as a new storm of bullets streaked my way.
Shit. Taking these fuckers out one-at-a-time is not going to cut it. I need a way to do some maximum damage.
They’d also wised up after seeing what I did to No Knees. Realizing a frontal assault on me wasn’t going to be successful, they’d actually come up with a plan. I could tell from the sound of their feet on the concrete floor that they were fanning out. Planning on flanking me. Which meant the pillar, which had been protecting me, now put me in a position where I was essentially a sitting duck.
Time for a new idea. I peeked around the pillar to judge my options, scanning the thugs. And I realized there’s one that looks kind of familiar. A plan quickly formed in my head. It had about a one in one-hundred chance of working.
But right then, those odds were about as good as I was going to get. I took a deep breath and made my play.
“O’Casey!” I called out.
My voice was drowned out by more machine gun fire, but then I heard O’Casey telling them to hold up.
“Do we know each other?” a voice called after the echo of the gunfire stops.
“Not exactly. But you look just like your brother,” I called back.
“You know my brother?”
“Helped him out of a jam, once.”
“What jam?”
“Involving a girl with red hair.”
There was a pause. I was taking a gamble here. But Shaun O’Casey was involved with the Irish mob. Until he decided to fall in love with a boss’s wife. It was a whole big mess that I’d help sort out.
“You know about that?” Shaun’s brother—I think his name was Carey—said.
“Let’s talk,” I suggested.
“Larroca wants you dead.”
“I bet he and I can work something out. It’d be advantageous for him. And maybe for you, too. All of you.”
I heard muttering from the group of thugs.
“Drop your gun,” Casey called out.
“You guys gonna hold your fire if I come out?”
“For a moment.”
“Guess that’s fair.”
I dropped my gun, then slipped out from around the pillar.
There were still about eight guys standing, their machine guns held low as they eyed me cautiously.
“That was a bad rap my brother took.” Carey walked toward me.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“You was involved in it.”
“Did the best I could.”
“Guess it wasn’t enough,” Carey said. “Since he ended up dead.”
“Yeah, that was too bad,” I said with a shrug. Carey had walked within arm’s reach of me. “’Course, I didn’t tell you how I was involved with the whole thing with the girl.”
“What do you mean?”
Shaun didn’t hire me.
“I’m the one who killed him, Carey.”
The cuckolded boss did.
Carey’s eyes went wide. But before he could do anything, I reached out and yanked him close. With a quick move, I wrapped my hands around his head and snapped his neck. It’s a less bloody death than I gave his brother, but just as effective.
Before the body hit the ground, I yanked his machine gun away and hit the dirt. I was firing before the rest of them realized what’s happening. I raked the bullets cross-wise one way and then back again.
They started dropping. One, however, managed to get in a shot that grazed my shoulder. I started shouting. I was still yelling as the empty machine gun click-click-clicked and all the thugs were nothing but bodies bleeding from smoking bullet holes.
Finally, my scream ended, and I dropped the gun to the ground. I fell back on my ass, breathing heavily.
That kind of rush headlong into the fray battle was not my usual modus operandi. I tried to be more tactful, stealthier. So, I was glad I’d managed to get through this thing alive.
Even if my shoulder was killing me. I pressed a hand to it to try and staunch the bleeding. I forced myself to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth in an effort to calm myself down.
Just as I was feeling a little less shaky, I heard Theresa scream from deeper in the warehouse.
I forced myself to standing. This thing wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
21
Theresa
I was scrambling, trying to figure out why the fuck this building didn’t seem to have a back entrance. If I couldn’t escape, then I needed to hide. Fast.
I passed by the warehouse’s empty office. I ducked in there and was confronted with my first major “when in hiding” decision. Did I shut the door completely or leave it slightly ajar? Maybe if I shut it completely, it would look suspicious. But if I left it ajar, how would I know if he found me?
Just fucking hide, I yelled at myself.
I forgot about making a choice on the door and rushed into the warehouse. There was a desk pushed up against a wall. I scrambled under it and pressed myself as far against the wall as I could.
“You fucking bitch!” Larroca kept shouting over and over. “I’m coming for you, you bitch! You’re gonna pay for this.”
As I hid there, willing my heart to stop beating as loudly as it seemed to insist on doing, I thought about how I got here. The determination with which I had called in the Fixer. The arrogance with which I had gone after Ox and O’Neill.