We were in trouble.
Fletcher and I ran side by side, trying to get out of the warehouse. But no matter how hard we pumped our legs or how fast we sprinted, it didn’t seem like we had moved at all. No wonder, since the enormous shell of a building covered the better part of three acres. Bare bulbs dropped down from the ceiling, casting out more shadows than light, while old, empty wooden crates covered the concrete floor, along with odd, loose bits of metal, long snakes of stripped wires, and rusted lengths of pipe.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
But what really concerned me were all the bullets zipping through the air in our direction.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Along with the balls of elemental Fire.
Zing! Zing! Zing!
And the razor-sharp crossbow bolts that further splintered the wooden crates as we darted past them.
Oh, yeah. The old man and I were in serious trouble.
And to think that the evening had started out so well.
As the Tin Man, his assassin code name, Fletcher had been approached about taking out Liza Malone, a crooked cop who liked to strong-arm protection money out of small-business owners over in Southtown . . . and then do absolutely nothing in return when some real danger came calling. Like, say, the three gangbangers who’d deliberately crashed their stolen car through the storefront windows of a mom-and-pop grocery and then stormed inside and shot up the place, including the owners’ thirteen-year-old son.
The kid had died in his big brother’s arms. A news photographer had captured that heartbreaking sight, and the image of the guy clutching his baby brother’s bloody, lifeless body to his chest had run on the news for days.
According to Fletcher, the Colson family had demanded that Malone find the people responsible for killing their boy. She told them that she would—for another fifty thousand dollars. Up front, of course. The Colsons didn’t have that kind of cash, but they’d scraped together what they could and given it to Malone. In return, the cop had done nothing but sit on her ass and jack up her prices for everyone else in the neighborhood who was paying her protection money.
Through his various cutouts, dead drops, and back channels, the Colsons had reached out to Fletcher to get what justice they could, and the old man had handed things off to me, since I was twenty-two now and far more spry than his aging bones. I had found and taken out the three gangbangers a week ago. The fools had been bragging all over Southtown about how tough they were, robbing a family and killing a kid. I didn’t even have to bribe anyone to find them. Easiest job Fletcher had ever sent me on. One of the most satisfying too.
But the gangbangers had told me all sorts of interesting things before they died—like the fact that they’d been paying protection money to Liza Malone too. As long as they slipped the cop a cut of their take, she was perfectly happy to look the other way as they went about their reign of robbery in the neighborhood. Now, double- or even triple-dipping was nothing new in Ashland. More like a long-standing tradition and a favorite sport. But this time, it had cost an innocent boy his life. The Colsons wanted payback, and I’d been dispatched to get it for them.
So I’d started following Malone on the sly, tracking her movements, analyzing her habits, and learning every single thing I could about her. When I had a plan of attack I thought would work, I took the final step and talked things out with Fletcher, the way I always did now, even though I’d moved out into my own apartment and was doing most of the jobs solo. The old man had agreed with my assessment and plan, and he’d even tagged along with me on this one, since taking out a cop—even a crooked one—could be tricky.
I’d learned that Malone liked to host an after-hours poker game for cops, lawyers, and whoever else had enough coin to buy in at her ten-thousand-dollar, cash-only minimum. Fletcher and I had decided to do the hit here at the abandoned warehouse where the game was played every couple of weeks, since plenty of bad folks would be around who would be sure to blame each other for killing Malone. Besides, the warehouse was out in the sticks, miles away from anything, so there would be no one around to hear any gunfire, should things come down to that. So we’d locked and loaded up our supplies, driven out to the warehouse two hours before the game was supposed to start, and gotten into position, waiting for our target to arrive.
The hit itself had been easy enough.
I’d been waiting in one of the stalls in the grungy space that passed for a bathroom when Liza Malone finally got up from the poker table to take a potty break. She was washing her hands in the cracked, stained sink when I slithered up behind her, clamped my hand over her mouth, and slit her throat. She was dead before I lowered her body to the dirty concrete floor.
But what Fletcher and I hadn’t counted on was not being the only ones interested in Malone.
Apparently, some other folks had found out about Malone’s game and all the cash lying on the table and had decided to take it all for themselves. I’d just finished wiping my knife off when the steady crack-crack-crack of gunfire sounded. I opened the bathroom door to see two men and two women shooting the five other cops sitting at the poker table.
So I held my position, waiting for the right moment. When they finally stopped firing and moved toward the splintered table to see how much blood-spattered money was there, I slipped out of the bathroom and started tiptoeing across the warehouse. Fletcher had come inside with me, to provide backup should I need it, and the old man was hunkered down behind a battered crate, right where I’d left him more than two hours ago when I’d gone into the bathroom, waiting for the game to start.
“Gin?” Fletcher whispered. “You okay? Did you get Malone?”
“Yeah, right before those folks decided to jack the poker game. Come on. I think we can get out of here before they see us—”
I should have known better than to even think such a thing, much less say it out loud. My bad luck would never let me get away that easy, and this time was no exception.
Because, of course, one of the women chose that exact moment to look in my direction. I’m not sure exactly what caught her eye, perhaps the gleam of my knife or the hand that I held out to help Fletcher up, but her eyes locked onto me, even though I was half-hidden behind the crate, and she started shouting to her friends.
“Hey! There’s somebody else in here!”
That’s when the bullets started flying. Naturally.
Still, I didn’t think that we were in serious danger until one of the men started hurling balls of elemental Fire at us. I didn’t know who he was, but he had some serious juice, and I could feel the power pulsing in the flaming balls that streaked past Fletcher and me. If one of those hit us in the back, we were done for, despite the silverstone vests we both wore.