Page 38 of The Big Fix

“Copy that,” Dante grumbled, and I knew he wasn’t happy.

At the end of the alley, Jing stepped out after a quick look, and I yanked her back before a blast from a shotgun exploded the wall to her right, spraying her with fragments of drywall and brick. I drew down on the man, and he was dead in the street moments later.

“Thank you,” she said to me, and I noted the scrapes on her face and winced. “It’s fine,” she assured me, and she was about to dart to the right but stopped suddenly. “Wait. We should go back.”

“What?” Garland snapped at her.

“I don’t hear any sirens, so I say we go back and get one of the cars those guys left.”

“Fuck. That’s brilliant,” Garland said, and she smiled at him. He then reached into a pocket of his cargo pants, pulled out a small plastic bottle, and passed it to her.

“It’s lavender oil,” he told her, gesturing at her face.

“Oh, thank you.” She shoved it in her pocket, then ran left, making a square of our route, all of us going back the way we came.

A dark sedan was parked at the end of the street, still idling near the entrance of the souvenir shop. As we ran for it, we heard police sirens in the distance. They would arrive any minute now.

Jing slid into the driver’s seat as the rest of us climbed in. I took the passenger seat, and Nam and Garland took the back as Jing threw the car into drive and whipped us away from the curb. We left just as police cars came flying down the street on the other side.

“That was a little close,” Jing said drolly.

I didn’t even have a response for her.

SEVEN

“Anyone now?” I barked, and Garland, who was sitting behind me, turned around in his seat to check.

“No, sir. We’re not being followed,” he assured me as Jing sped out onto the expressway, urging the sedan to seventy miles per hour.

I called Darius, who answered on the first ring.

“Is it your safe house or one Hasana found?”

“It’s mine.” He clipped the words.

“Why’re you mad?”

“You’re dropping a lot of bodies. What happened to a surgical strike?”

“Oh, I think surgical anything is over,” I said flatly. “I bet we got tracked to the hotel, right?”

“You did, but Dante and Arden were very thorough, getting everything that belonged to everyone. There’s not even a gum wrapper or a piece of paper left in the garbage. That’s the police chatter, at least. According to them, there’s not a scrap of credible DNA evidence, as the entire place was sprayed with bleach.”

“She’s thorough,” I told him, praising Arden.

“Well, your cover at the hotel will hold, in so much as no one will be able to prove Jared Colter was there.”

“That’s all I need—plausible deniability.”

“Which you have.”

“So this safe house, do you have coordinates for me?”

My phone pinged instantly with the information. “It’s only about eight kilometers from your current position. A boat will be waiting.”

“A boat?” I groaned. “Seriously?”

“I’m not the one killing people in the streets,” he yelled at me, his normal unflappable calm going right out the window. “What the fuck, Jared?”