Chapter 10
ten
. . .
Armin
It’s getting dark. I should turn on a light in here, but I don’t. Instead I turn the lipstick over and over again, the only thing she left behind.
Scandal, it says on the label.
I throw it across the room. It hits the wall and lands on the couch where I held her while she cried.
Two days ago, when she fled here, she wouldn’t even look at me.
God damn it, Mia.
Every time I think she’s starting to see reason, that she might leave this life behind, it’s like she has to prove me dead wrong.
Where are you?
I refresh the news feed on my phone, terrified every time I do that she’s going to turn up dead in the harbor.
My phone buzzes, a loud vibration on the desk, and I jump out of my chair.
Not Mia.
Vance. I answer. “Is she with you?”
I flush with shame and rage. “No.” I’ve fucked up again, the wrong guy for this job. I could have bought out all of HBP to guard her. But I wanted her too much to allow even one other man near.
I wasn’t thinking clearly. I never do with her. Now she might be dead.
And didn’t I kill her with my own selfish recklessness.
“She agreed to go on record.”
I stop breathing. “Is she alive?”
“So far. Our man says she’s attending the fundraiser down at Morrow tonight.”
Their man. I hoped he was right. Harvey’s driver, turned HPG-informant. He’d dropped off some of Harvey’s account passwords here a few days ago, and I’d passed them on to HPG, hoping they’d do a broad electronic sweep and cinch up whatever they needed to deliver to the DA in 24 hours or less.
But Vance refused to access them. He wanted to stop short of gathering illegal evidence.
Typical. The laws protect the criminals. He’s right, of course, but I’m out of my mind with worry for Mia.
I don’t care what’s right anymore. I want these monsters behind bars.
“I’ll be there.”
“Sources say, so will Martin Velnias.”
“Got it.”
I slow down to scope out the location, grateful for the tint of the SUV’s windows.
The Morrow Museum is done up in a garish mix of red, white, and black.
Balloons, streamers, spotlights pointing at the sky.
I park a few streets down and approach from behind.
HPG has a decent presence, and Vance’s man in catering sneaks me in, walks me through the makeshift kitchen in the basement so I can keep my gun in its holster and avoid the metal detectors beyond the red carpet out front.
He looks at me like I’m already dead. Word about Martin Velnias must be out.
Typical Harvey Blagas: he waits for a major event and then brings his own lamb to the slaughter. It was another obvious giveaway that all the other murders were arranged by the Assistant DA: they were covert.
Not this one. Harvey was planning to have Mia gunned down live in front of the glitterati of Halo City.
I straighten my bowtie and make my way through the crowd, scanning for her, feeling my way around. My body usually knows she’s near before my eyes do.
The help are dressed like court jesters, humiliating getups complete with jingling jester hats. One limps up to me and offers me a plate of ludicrous sculptural hors d'oeuvres, so I pop one into my mouth with a nod to its suffering deliverer.
I keep going, working my way through the gala. They’ve brought in a DJ, and his first few test beats echo through the museum's rotunda to engulf us all. A few of the older patrons exchange glances. It’s a sharp contrast to the grand impressionist paintings that line the entrance.
I make my way around until I’m sure I’ve seen every face in the crowd.
No Harvey. No Mia.
Of course, as soon as Harvey sees me, we’re in trouble.
He’ll recognize me from those days in East Greenwich.
He was a two-bit fentanyl trafficker back then.
Got half the county hooked, or at least, that’s what it seemed like.
While he stayed clean, stayed free, no matter how hard I tried to take him down.
That first wave of crime hit the hardest. Our tiny town hadn’t known a fatal robbery before Hailey got shot.
Before I failed to protect her.
And then, with Harvey in place, things got worse and worse.
I stand still and strain to listen for Mia’s voice before the DJ goes full blast and drowns out all sound. A scantily-clad attendee in a masquerade-style mask and sky-high heels lingers in front of me. I avoid her gaze and keep scanning the crowd.
She’s not here.
Maybe all this was a diversion, and Harvey’s slitting her throat across town.
My heart beats too fast, my temples pounding hard with the horror of losing her to him, losing her forever.
I have to get moving, to channel my rage and pain into some forward motion.
I sweep the museum in widening circles, pretending to look at the paintings, straining to hear the conversations around me in case there’s anything worth overhearing.
But it’s all the bored, banal small talk of the wealthy. No mention of Harvey.
And then I hear it. A sharp cry. Faint, far.
Her.
I bolt, and take the spiral staircase three steps at a time until I reach the top. The galleries surrounding me are all vacant. I listen, but the silence confounds me. Maybe I ran in the wrong direction. I hover near the steps, unsure whether the sounds came from above or below.
The scrabble of heels on polished granite and Harvey’s grunts give them away.
I run. Blindly, I follow the sound, until I burst into an atrium and find them: Mia’s back shoved up against a railing, Harvey struggling against her, the round of his belly pressed against her in a way that makes me sick, the fabric of her dress bunched up around her waist, his back to me.
Her eyes widen when she sees me. But she says nothing, doesn’t give me away.
Until I get close.
“No,” she shouts, and it shatters my heart.
Harvey turns, but it’s too late. I’m already on him, gun drawn. I crack it against his skull. He lands backwards on the granite, his shriveled dick in his hand.
I pray for his skull to open up, but of course it doesn’t.
“What the fuck are you doing?” She hisses at me, and I’d feel less pain if she stabbed me in the chest.
“Is that what you wanted?” I snarl back.
I know it’s not, I can see it in her eyes. She’s not fooling me.
“I can’t believe you,” she whispers. But she’s relieved. She pulls her dress down and smooths it with shaking hands. “What the hell am I going to—”
I notice movement out of the corner of my eye: slow, measured. Black trench coat. On the other side of the atrium. He opens his jacket and reaches inside.
I’m not the only gun somebody let in through the back door.
I grab Mia and clamp my hand over her mouth. I peer over the balcony, but it’s a long way down. “Assassin,” I whisper into her ear. Harvey was squeezing in a quick fuck before he had her shot. I grab her hand and run.
But I have no idea where I’m going.
We stumble past headless busts and other granite relics. I pull her into a side gallery full of vases and tear her shoes off her feet, then pull off my own. We hold each other, panting in the darkness, and listen.
A quiet footfall, and the cock of a trigger. Only a gallery behind, two at best.
I grab her hand, and we run, zig-zagging through the galleries, quieter now.
But he’s only a moment behind us. We can’t slow, can’t stop. We keep going until we’re spit out into a hallway.
I have a flash of inspiration and run back to tear a painting off the wall: an old man in blue, clutching his face in his hands. I pray it’s expensive. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t, but it works: an alarm peals out, loud and piercing.
If only I’d thought of it before we started running. I throw it on the floor.
Of course, now we can’t hear him, either, which is a new problem I’ve created.
I grab Mia and shove her in front of me, down the steps, until we make it to the basement and I push through the door, running her ahead of me, the sirens shrieking in our ears. I can’t hear how far back he is behind us.
A bit of the wall tile explodes above my shoulder, telling me exactly where he is. We burst through the double doors into the makeshift kitchen, full of folding tables and long rows of vacant steam baths.
“Do you have a car?” I whisper.
“Yes.”
We make it to the end of the line. The door opens behind us.
“Go. I’ll hold him off.”
“No,” she says. “Come with me.”
A bullet hits the steam table behind us. Water explodes into the air, splatters us both. I draw my Glock and take a few shots of my own. Mine aren’t suppressed, and the shots ring in my ears.
“Run, now.” I work to shove her through the door, both hands on her waist.
She grabs the doorjamb.
She won’t go. I shield her with my body as best I can and push her through. Finally she caves, and lets me push her out.
Still, she lingers outside the door before she runs. Her eyes are tortured. I do my best to memorize her face, and then she’s gone.
Maybe she never felt for me the way I did for her. I don’t care. It’s enough. She was always more than enough. I’ll take this vision to the grave and die happy.
First I’ve got to kill this prick.
I duck down to overturn a few more of the steam tables between us. Velnias advances, one column to the next, closer, and I fire another two shots.
I miss, again and again.
Must be ten bullets left. No time or space to reload. I push through the door and look around for some way to block it. Nothing out there, on the steps or in the alley. I shove my gun through the handle and pull out my phone.
I hit star-13.
Then I remember Vance and Evie had it disabled.
Help isn’t coming.
The door thumps, and he’s right there on the other side: Martin Velnias. He nods at me, just like he did at the bar. His eyes look dead, like I already killed him.
He lifts his gun, rests the muzzle on the pane of glass. I dive to the right. It shatters outwards, shards raining down on the concrete steps. I pull my gun out of the door handle and take three blind shots inside.
I struggle to listen, my ears ringing.
Silence.
No, not silence: careful footsteps from off to the side, until they’re way too close. Martin’s rushing the door.
I hurry to replace the gun in the door handle to block him in, but he stomps it open, and I’m not ready.
He’s a professional.
I’m not.
I take off running into the alley, my shoeless feet landing hard on the pavement. A rose gold SUV peals out of the parking garage, takes off down the street.
Guess she didn’t get rid of it after all.
A bullet slices into a bag of garbage an arm’s length away from me. I turn and fire another three rounds. My shots are way off, don’t come close to making contact.
Seven left? Plus a round in the chamber.
I hide behind the alley’s dumpster. Martin’s footsteps ring out slow, careful. He’s not in any hurry. His real target’s gone, anyway. Now he’s hunting for fun.
A sharp pain hits me in the heel. I lift up my foot and yank out a shard of glass. Should have kept my shoes.
I break cover to fire another couple of rounds but he’s waiting for me, and he beats me to it. My last shot is nothing but an empty click.
Not his. He doesn’t miss.
I fall back with the force of the shot hitting my body. My shoulder burns, a fiery hot sear. I clutch at it and pull my hand away bloody. Just a graze. Nothing serious.
But I’m out of bullets.
He must know, because he takes his time to pause and reload.
I picture her face, the pain in her eyes when I told her to go, to leave me behind. My mind calls up the feel of her lips on mine. This is enough, this life was enough.
But there’s a hurt in my heart from knowing I’ll never see her again, never feel her hand in mine, never wrap my arms around her.
Who will keep her safe when I’m gone; who will hold her when she cries?
Who will make her coffee? She’s so goddamned picky about it.
And Harvey Blagas still isn’t dead.
Tires squeal on pavement in the distance. A bullet whizzes past my head. I should be running.
But there’s nowhere to go. This dumpster is the last cover for the length of the alley, and I’m a fool, but I’m not dumb enough to think I’m going to outrun a bullet.
The sounds of gunned engines get closer: three SUVs turn into the alley at full bore.
One doesn’t stop: he hits Velnias square in the legs, and the assassin flies through the air.
He’s flung up against the wall and lands on the ground with a dull crunch.
Blood seeps out from under his crumpled trench coat and pools around the trash bag he shot up.
I don’t think he’s going to make it.
The SUV doors click open, one-two-three, and three massive men step out onto the pavement. Giants in suits. I recognize them from the briefing at HPG. Vance’s men.
“You okay?” A beast of a guy calls over to me. He puts his earpiece in. I wonder if Vance is yelling him down on the other end, or if he ordered this.
“Yeah,” I shout back. “Just lightly shot.”
He opens the back door of the SUV, pulls a first aid kit out, and waves me over. He eyes my feet: socks, no shoes. “What happened to your shoes?”
I pick my way around the broken glass and limp on over. “Oh, you know. Fundraiser.”
Guess Vance and Evie left Line 13 on for me after all.