Page 25 of Hellbent

“Your backup’s here,” the girl said. “What—you couldn’t handle me yourself?” Her voice stayed tough, but her chest heaved with the words. She was scared, and this time he knew she wasn’t faking it.

Evan stared at the screen. The operators displayed a similar military precision to that of the men in the Black Hawk. Evan counted six of them.

Seventeen rounds. Six men.

Just don’t put all the holes in the same place.

On-screen the lead operator kicked the front gate, and it clanged open. Evan heard it in stereo, registered the vibration in the floor.

He and the girl watched as the men poured into the ground-floor corridor.

He said, “They’re not with me.”

His eyes met the girl’s, and he saw that she believed him.

Her voice was hammered flat with dread. “You left the gates unlocked behind you.”

Clang. The stairwell gate flew open, courtesy of Evan’s ill-spent twenty-five cents.

The men throttled up the stairwell. The girl’s eyes darted from the screen back to Evan.

“Enemy of my enemy,” he said.

She gave a nod.

He drew his ARES. “Get behind me. Pick up your knife.”

The girl moved, but not for the knife. She shot over to the mattress and lifted it, revealing a hatch cut through the floor. She looked at him, eyes wild, hair swinging. “My stuff,” she said. “Get my stuff.”

The clamor of the men reached the second floor, spilled onto the corridor.

Evan snapped the laptop shut, rammed it into the rucksack, tossed the combat knife in after. She slipped through the hatch and disappeared. The mattress fell back into place, covering the hole. He didn’t hear her land. He sprinted across the room.

As he yanked up the edge of the mattress, he heard the front door smash in. Snatching the rucksack behind him, he shoulder-rolled beneath the mattress, free-falling. A thump announced the sealing of the hatch above.

He rotated to break his fall, but a soft landing caught him off guard. His boots struck another mattress, positioned on the ground floor directly beneath the one above. He tumbled off the side onto the carpet.

He looked up.

The girl was waiting.

She wrenched the rucksack from his grip, pistoned her leg in a heel stomp directed at his throat. He caught her foot in both hands and twisted hard, flinging her aside. She bounced up off the floor like a cat, shot across the room, flung open the window.

As she leapt through, he grabbed a strap of the rucksack, halting her momentum. She jerked back and banged against the outside wall, one arm bent over the sill. She wouldn’t let go of the rucksack. They were both off balance, caught in a ridiculous tug-of-war across a windowsill.

Boots drummed the floor above. It was only a matter of time before one of the men looked under the mattress.

Evan dove through the window, collecting both the rucksack and the girl in a bear-hug embrace. They sailed past the elderly artist, their fall cushioned by the blanket covered with his paintings. The Cadillac’s radio blared away, the C-major coda galloping along in presto.

Evan hopped to his feet, broken frames falling away, the cubist pieces now cubist in three dimensions. Through the window Evan saw a beam of light appear, a golden shaft piercing the gloom of the ground-floor apartment.

The upstairs mattress, pulled back.

He looked helplessly across the street at his rental car.

Thirty yards of high visibility through traffic.

He’d never make it.