Chapter 13 Moving Parts #4
“You mean Leon? That asshole,” she said before Cotton could answer. “He’s such a closet case. Let me guess—he took you to bed because you were the one he was going to come out for and then kicked you out of the apartment before his girlfriend could come pick him up for work.”
“Oh my God!” Cotton said, and Burton had to hide a laugh because it sounded like a genuine reaction.
“I know, honey,” Cuthbert’s girlfriend said, patting his sleeve. “You’re not the first guy who’s come to my door because their car got blocked in.”
Cotton blinked, and Burton did too. He’d thought this was a terrible idea, and he’d tried to tell Cotton that, but Cotton had simply smiled and told him that Shelley Cooper, Cuthbert’s girlfriend, could either be a trashy cow, in which case Cotton knew how to whore like the best of them, or she’d be a lot like Cotton was before he’d met Jason.
All she’d want in that case, he’d said, was a friend.
“Not blocked in,” he said. “I just need to come in and call my brother for a lift. My phone lost charge—he wouldn’t even let me hook it up.”
“Oh no. That Leon’s an asshole,” she said, so much sympathy in her voice, Burton actually felt for her. Then Cotton reached out and feathered a touch across her wrist. Burton couldn’t see that well, but by the way the woman retreated and covered herself, Burton knew he’d seen too much.
“Your boyfriend is too,” he said gently. “Did he do this?”
She gave a miserable little shrug, and Burton wanted to massage the bridge of his nose. Shit.
“He….” Her voice wobbled. “Man, he showed up at eleven last night and locked his gun or something in my gun safe, threw me on the bed, and”—her voice broke a little—“and fell asleep. This morning he ran out of here so fast I think he forgot his gun! I know I didn’t hear the safe open.”
“Well,” Cotton said, all big brown eyes, “how close is the safe to the bed? You might have slept through it.”
“It’s under the bed,” she muttered disgustedly. “I didn’t even want the damned thing, but he’s law enforcement, and what are you gonna do?”
“I,” said Jason softly in Burton’s ear, “am going to take my safecracking equipment under the bed.”
Burton didn’t answer, he was busy fielding discussion from Eric and Brady, and, oh hey, Ace and Sonny were approaching the roadblock.
“Well, maybe you should put on your prettiest dress and go dancing next week,” Cotton said. “And if he doesn’t want to go, I’ll take you.”
She laughed girlishly. “Oh, baby. I wish this was the sort of place that had that for you. You must be from Vegas or LA—out here, if I took you dancing, we’d both be dead in the morning. But here’s my phone. You sure your brother will be able to pick you up?”
Burton heard Cotton’s click in his ear. “Lee?” he said.
“Yeah, Brother,” Burton muttered. “He heard. He’s breaking into the thing now.”
“How long do you think?”
At that moment, Burton heard Eric saying, “They should all be strangled with coat hangers!”
And Ace say, “Burton, we’re getting close!”
And Jason say, “Gotcha, ya little bastard! Lee, got the phone, but there’s not a gun in sight. I’m clearing out!”
And then Eric saying, “Cuthbert’s here!”
“Eric, we’ve got the phone, wait for the signal.” Tap to the computer.
“Ace?”
“It’s now or never.”
“Cuthbert just pulled up to the station, and they need a distraction―”
“Don’t worry now, son,” Ace said. “Cuthbert won’t be there long!”
Lee got back to Eric and then tuned in to Ace in time to hear him say, “Fucking kill it.”
Burton started to pack up his laptop then, taking a swig of water, wishing it was coffee, and securing all the things on the crushproof, bulletproof cases that were part of the body of his modified Kawasaki Ninja H2R.
The thing was street legal—barely—but could still achieve over 200 mph with all Burton’s shit strapped on.
Helmet on, Bluetooth engaged, and one more call from Cotton.
“Lee, you coming?”
Burton used the scope in time to see the infrared silhouette of Jason scaling down the back of poor Shelley’s building where he could circle around to the Mazda and pick Cotton up.
“Jason’s coming shortly,” Burton said. “Now give that poor woman a support number and get gone. Tell Jason I’ll be waiting a mile up.”
They had no fewer than five bona fide killers on their little street team. Getting the phone out of the desert was their primary objective today, but Burton was damned if Arlen Cuthbert got to walk away after that.
ERIC FOUND Brady crouched behind an enormous mahogany desk, staring at the bank of windows behind it like they held the secret of the universe.
“What are you—”
“Jai asked me to find a side entrance,” Brady said, and Eric blinked, because he’d been on with Burton, and it boggled him to think of how many people they had looking out for them.
“But these windows are—”
He was going to say “sealed,” but Brady stood and started to press behind the modern metal sashing, grunting in satisfaction as a window about thigh high and half as big as a man slid soundlessly open.
“I stand corrected,” Eric muttered. “How did you know they did that?”
“Watched them get installed last year,” Brady said. “Now hurry out. I figure we should be halfway to the road from the interstate before the signal—”
“Do you know what the signal is?” Eric asked as they slid out of the window and into the predawn gray. Brady was running, and his urgency caught at Eric, and soon they were both running, both of them aware that Arlen Cuthbert could come hauling ass out of the building, gun blazing, at any time.
At that moment, as though summoned by Eric’s greatest fears, he saw a puff of dust explode about ten feet in front of them as Cuthbert shouted, “Carnegie, you pansy ass, get back here!”
Brady was sprinting like a gold medalist in track, and Eric was right on his tail when the next shot rang out, and Eric honestly thought the shot had missed until he went tumbling through the sand and brush, coming to rest behind a boulder with his thigh on fire.
“Charlie!” Brady cried out, and Eric lay, stunned, taking stock.
Leg, he thought. Back of thigh. Not mortal. Will bleed. Need to get up. Get up. Get up get up get up get up get up GET THE FUCK UP—
The roar of engines and howl of sirens got him scrambling to his feet.
“What in the holy hell…?”
Cuthbert was standing only a few steps away from the building he’d just climbed out of, gun dangling limply from his hand as he turned toward the interstate to see what the racket was all about.
Brady was under Eric’s arm, urging him toward the facility road, but that didn’t mean they both didn’t get an eyeful.
“Holy shit,” Brady muttered. “Is that Ace?”
They’d heard about his driving, and they’d seen the car he’d driven—hell, they even had been told that the shoestring garage on the shiny edge of nowhere had been supported by his skills behind the wheel.
Eric thought he knew what the fuss was about after the trip to save Brady from the bank robbers.
But until this moment, neither one of them had really seen him drive.
The Forester that Brady had brought to be fixed up was screaming down the road, a flurry of dust in its wake, going about a million miles per hour faster than factory spec, with at least a dozen cherry-topped units on its ass.
The distance was so great between them, it was like watching the electric rabbit taunting the greyhounds at the dog races, except this electric rabbit was turbocharged with a shot of nitro in its electronic blood.
“Jesus God,” Eric muttered, the car chase to the south keeping his attention from the blood trail he was leaving as he ran for all he was worth.
Cuthbert wasn’t firing at them anymore. It didn’t matter how badly he wanted Brady, there was something alluring about a high-speed chase—whoever that motherfucker was down there, he was bad, and he needed to be gotten now.
Cuthbert went squealing out of the parking lot, hitting the road as the now-familiar silver SUV that Eric had bought the day before turned in.
They made it to the road in time for Jai to fishtail in the dust, and Brady put Eric in the back while he jumped in the front.
“He’s hurt!” Brady cried. “We’ve got to—”
“I’ll live,” Eric grunted. “Brady, we’ve got to get you to the phone.”
“It is coming to us,” Jai said. “But first….”
He’d pulled a 180 and was heading to the interstate at a moderate pace. At first, Eric thought he was simply waiting for the wave of cop cars in the high-speed chase to recede into the distance, Ace in the Forester still that elusive electric rabbit.
Then Brady swore softly under his breath. “That can’t be good.”
“Your sheriff,” Jai said deliberately, “is a very stupid man.”
“What in the actual fuck…?”
Jai’s phone buzzed on the dashboard, and Jai hit it.
“You got ’em?” Ace asked, sounding for all the world like he was sitting at a desk.
“Da. You see the—”
“I see ’em,” Ace said, indicating the wave of cop cars, sirens blazing, coming from the west. From their vantage point on the slight rise of the police station, they could see the impending wave crash of sirens, with Ace in between.
“I got me an idea, though, so I need you to do me a favor. You know that road construction about three miles east, past the other north-south road before Victoriana?”
“Da?” Jai’s voice rose a little.
“Could you, uh, maybe get that flatbed truck in the middle of the road for me and drop the end to the ground? I’ve got an idea here. There’s a road to the south in about two miles—”
“There’s more cars there!” Eric called, mindful of what he’d heard from the dispatcher. Brady held up a radio in his hand that he hurriedly turned on and held to his ear.
“Perfect,” Ace said. “Jai, make sure that ramp’s pointing east, ’cause that’s where I’ll be coming from, you hear me?”
“Da,” Jai said, sounding almost distraught. “Da—Ace, be—oh fuck.”
At that moment, as they watched, Ace met the new wave of cruisers and SUVs head on, and… oh holy fuck.
“How long can he do that?” Eric breathed as the green Forester wove—almost danced—in and out of the oncoming vehicles. Over the phone, a voice—Sonny—cried out, “Yeefuckinhaw, Ace!” and they all stared, stricken, terrified, in awe as Ace threaded the needle, in and out, in and out, and in and—
“Clear!” Ace cried. “Get to that motherfuckin’ ramp, brother, now!”
“Holy Cristo,” Jai muttered and then proceeded to pray in Russian as he turned east, leaving Brady and Eric to turn around in their seats to watch as Ace kept going, the lone runner far, far ahead of the tangled pack.
And as the pack, both the eastbound and westbound waves of it, collided, the sound of bending metal and warping sirens ripped through the air in the light of the newly risen sun.
Jai was practically standing on the gas, and any law enforcement that would have followed on their tail was now caught up in the epic vehicular meltdown that had just occurred.
Brady turned back forward, and Eric followed his example, swearing as his vision went dark.
“Jai,” he said weakly, “we got any bandages?”
“Da,” Jai told him. “Under seat. There is also towel and duct tape.”
“Even better,” Eric muttered. He could feel the blood loss and thought gauze was too small for the wound right now.
It hurt—fucking Jesus it hurt—to bend down, but he pulled out the promised first aid.
The bullet would have to come out; he knew how these things went.
Cuthbert had been carrying a .38, a revolver, which was a stupid gun for a law enforcement officer, but at least it hadn’t been a Desert Eagle or a .
45 or Eric’s entire leg would have come off, and he wouldn’t have to worry about pain because he’d be dead.
Eric busied himself with folding up the towel and wedging it under the wound, and then, pass by painful pass, wrapping duct tape around his thigh until he felt the pressure of the towel and the tape stop the flow of blood.
Brady, in the meantime, was listening intently to the radio, and for a moment Eric felt completely alone, swimming in blood in the back of this stranger’s SUV, until Brady’s hand, groping blindly, thrust behind the seat.
Eric glanced up, saw Brady still scanning the road in front of him and listening on the handheld, but those fingers wiggled, and Eric reached forward and clasped them.
“I’m okay,” he said roughly.
“You’re not,” Brady replied, his voice tight. “But we’ll get you some real first aid. I swear we will.”
“You got shit to do first,” Eric said, and he squeezed those questing fingers before letting go. Brady pulled his arm forward reluctantly—but probably with a little relief because that couldn’t have been comfortable.
In the silence that followed, Jai’s phone rang again.
“Burton,” Jai said roughly. “You know what he’s doing?”
“No,” Burton said, “because I’ve got balls in the air. Where are you headed?”
“To set up a ramp so he can wipe out the rest of the police force, why?”
“Pull off on the westbound side of the road while you do that. Me and Brady got some shit to sort.”
“Da,” Jai said, and hit End Call.
Nobody said it, but there was a breath of relief in the SUV. They had the phone now. They were on to phase two.
Eric gave a slight groan and leaned back in his seat, allowing his eyes to close for a moment as he imagined his thigh was a tree trunk, ablaze in a forest of flame.
He sure hoped he’d be there for phases three and four.