Buchanan looked sour as he nodded. Then he pointed with his chin at Grade. “I figured that Pulaski there owed me, and besides, I knew about his dad. Pulaski doted on his kids. Even if he’d had to go dark, he’d have left them provided for. So if he couldn’t find my cash, he could tap his dad’s stash. Except that mouth-breather, Sloane, somehow worked it out, and he turned up at the pickup. I walked into a fucking trap, and for what, three grand and all the tourist attraction leaflets you could grab? I guess Junior here doesn’t love having a stripper for a sister…”
Clay slapped him lightly on the side of the head with his gun. It made a hollow clunk noise of metal on bone, and Buchanan flinched back.
“Yeah, yeah, you would have got away with it if it wasn’t for us meddling assholes,” Clay said. “But you didn’t, and now we’re all fucked. Stay there, or I’ll break your other hand. Grade?”
He cocked his head for Grade to follow him and pulled him over into the corner of the room. Grade snuck a glance out one of the grimy windows. The men outside stood around casually—as casually as anyone in Kevlar vests and carrying submachine guns could stand—as if they had nothing better to do.
“What are they waiting for?” he asked. “Do they think we have an army in here?”
Clay pulled a hair tie out of the pocket of his jacket and scraped his hair back into a rough tail. He snapped the elastic around the stumpy knot twice.
“They want Buchanan alive,” he said. “At least… for a while. Did you see Harry out there?”
Grade had, but it wasn’t exactly good news. “Fisher’s men drove him off the road. They must have recognized him. He looked OK, but…”
No cavalry on the way, then. Clay rubbed his thumb over his temple.
“How much were you bluffing at the house earlier?” he asked.
Grade dragged his attention away from the men outside. “When we—”
“Buchanan’s house,” Clay said. “Can you use a gun?”
Grade hesitated for a second as hefeltthe flop sweat break on him. He rubbed his sweaty palms against his thighs.
“Yeah,” he said. “Dory’s a better shot, but we can both shoot. Dad…”
Clay glanced around at Dory, who stood in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around herself.
“That was sexist,” Clay acknowledged. “I shouldn’t have assumed she couldn’t. Can she pull herself together enough to be useful?”
Grade shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “She’ll feel better if she has something to do.”
Another burst of gunfire hammered the stone walls. Two bullets smashed through the old glass windows and buried themselves in the counter.
“You’ve got sixty seconds,” the man Grade assumed was Sloane yelled. “Play it smart and nobody has to die.”
Grade knew that was a lie, but… He looked over at Dory again and then turned to Clay.
“She’s not been involved in any of this,” he said. “If we give them Buchanan, maybe they’d let her go?”
Clay shook his head. “We told them Buchanan had a partner, a stripper who came from here. Elizabeth isn’t here, she’s still in surgery at the hospital, but—”
“My stripper sister is,” Grade said.
“By the time they believed she wasn’t involved,” Clay said. “They’d have to kill her anyhow.”
There was a point where it didn’t matter how much someonesworethey’d not tell anyone what you’d done, the hospital would snitch for them when they turned up in the ER. Grade knew that math. He’d seen it happen often enough—and cleaned up after it too.
It should bother him more. It just didn’t, though. All those people had brothers or sisters or someone who’d miss them. But they weren’thissister, and that was the difference.
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked.
Clay grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from the stockpile of weapons. He cracked it open to check the ammo and made a satisfied sound that it was loaded.
“The three of you stay in here and keep their attention,” he said. “Just keep shooting. Don’t worry about what you aim at or how much ammo you have left. They’re going to toss flash-bangs in. Just keep shooting. Doesn’t matter if you hit anything, as long as it isn’t your sister.”
"Three of us?” Grade asked dubiously. He glanced at Buchanan. “You trust him?”
