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“You’re dealing with me now,” I repeat. “Maybe the old folks couldn’t get you behind bars and rotting away as someone else’s spit roast in prison. But I’m not them, and I’m gonna finish what was started.”
“Uh-huh.” He brings his free hand up and grabs my chin so I’m almost sure he intends to snap my neck. But he forces me to look at the television, instead. Then he orders, “Do it.”
“Do it?” Panic instantly lances through my blood. “Do what? Vallejo, do—”
On the screen, in live time, I get a front-row seat as three of Vallejo’s soldiers corner Gord downstairs and others—dancers and their paying customers—scramble and search for freedom from a club under siege. “No!” I jolt in Vallejo’s grip and heave when reality smacks me just a single heartbeat before three shots go off.
“Gord!”
Another three shots. Bullets pierce my partner’s chest and blood bursts from his body like a gory horror show. Red paints the floor. Agent’s shout in my ear. Some scream about the mission, and others of a man down.
My father, too silent, unfeeling, the way he so often is.
But I hear none of it. Not really.
All I hear is the loud ringing of bullets exploding throughout the club. Upstairs and down. A war being waged among a thug’s armed soldiers and that of trained special agents.
Vallejo laughs as Gord collapses to the floor in 5k high definition, and though it’s not possible, I hear Violet’s cry of anguish. And Matilda’s sobs when she realizes her daddy is gone.
“You fucking asshole.” My left leg is dead weight. Burning in agony. But I duck faster than his sixty-year-old arms can keep up with and grab the blade I keep hidden in my boot. Then I flick it free of its handle and swing around before the man has a chance to recover. I dig the blade into the side of his neck, the second burn of a bullet wound passing through my arm and out the other side as I drag the knife across in a furious rage. Vallejo drops to the ground, the thunder of soldiers pounding at his door bringing me around in panic.
I’ve got two through-and-through bullet wounds so far. Better for healing. But I’ll have a dozen more ten seconds from now if I don’t move, so I dash to Vallejo’s desk and snatch up my gun. I step over the old man and afford him only a second of study to make sure he’s dying. Then I put a round in his stomach for good measure, before sprinting to the second-story window and emptying another two rounds through the thick glass pane.
My leg burns, and my arm weighs a ton. Worse, I catch a last glimpse of my best friend on the security feed bleeding out, much like the man responsible is doing on his office floor.
Vallejo’s men get the armored office door open, so bullets slam into every wall, destroying expensive artwork and shattering crystal vases, but I don’t stick around to catch more than I’ve already got. Instead, I dive through the broken window and pray my men are outside, and not Vallejo’s.
“I’m coming out!” I shout so every agent with an earpiece knows where to find me. “Vallejo’s office window. Second story. West facing exit.” I float in midair for only a hair’s breadth. But it feels almost like an eternity before gravity takes control and the ground sucks me down and gobbles me up.
I slam to the concrete, my dead leg hitting first and the back of my head rapping against the ground second. My vision turns spotty, and my heart slows from blood loss.
Men converge on me. Loaded weapons, heavy boots, and tactical gear wrapped around their bodies completely different from the clothes Gord and I got to wear.
We were sent in as sacrificial lambs. Barely armed. Unprotected. And in the end, for no reason at all, since Vallejo knew who I was.
A black curtain draws across and darkens my vision, but I catch my father’s footsteps as he strides closer. My life pools on the concrete beneath my body, my consciousness flickering in and out. I could lie here for a second or an hour. I have no clue.
Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m dying, and that’s why the man in front of me seems a little more… paternal. Concerned, even. Because I swear, Henry Banks kneels beside my wounded arm and places his fingers against my neck.
Maybe I’m already dead.
“Gord?” That one word stings. My throat was drier than a college girl dancing for sixty-year-old men to make rent. But I swallow and close my eyes. It’s easier than trying to look past the floating dots. “Gord?”
“He didn’t make it.” Henry’s tone is brisk and unyielding. Then his hands hurt as he lifts me from the ground and slings my arm over his shoulder to carry my weight. “We gotta go.”
“Gord?” My head lolls back and consciousness escapes me as a second man grabs me on the left and helps. My boots drag, and the gunfight continues to ring out somewhere far away. “Gord.”
Aurora ‘Rory’ Swanson
CURRENT DAY
February
My name is Aurora Swanson, and I’m a twenty-one-year-old jinx.
Bad luck follows me wherever I go, like a shadow I was born with and a coat I never asked for. If something could go wrong, chances are, the universe will single me out and make sure I’m its target.
If Armageddon was a real thing, Ben Affleck would have taken the seven-point-something billion other humans up on his spaceship, thus saving their lives and leaving me down here on earth to await the end of days.
