Chapter 25
25
“ S catter!” Alistair yelled.
He grabbed Sam’s arm and dragged him away from the truck and the prohees, in the direction of the woods. Doris went in the opposite direction, a flash of orange and black as she took to tiger form. That was good—tigers were fast, much faster than humans.
Not as fast as a cheetah, of course. But he couldn’t leave Sam behind.
A mixture of gunshots and shotgun blasts shattered the night. Heart pounding, Alistair shoved Sam to the ground. “Get down!”
Sam curled up on himself, hands over his ears. Alistair flattened beside him, body stiff, waiting for a bullet to hit. You never heard the one that killed you, or at least that was what everyone claimed during the war.
He might be back there, caught out in the open without even a shell hole to hide in. Forrest beside him, eyes shut tight while they waited…
No, that was years ago. This was Illinois, a field. Sam.
The airplane’s prop spun faster, and it began to taxi down the field. Another blaze of shots, all of them aimed at the plane. It didn’t stop, going faster and faster, until it was off the ground and in the air.
Either one of the shots hit something important, or Malone made a mistake in his panic to get away. The plane clipped the trees, flipped through the air, and came down in a ball of flame.
Alistair closed his eyes and curled against Sam. Images of an airplane hit by a shell, coming down in fiery fragments, played on his eyelids. Of falcons dashing small avian familiars from the air, destroying them in a puff of feathers that floated as slowly to earth as ash.
Footsteps swished through the grass, coming closer. The beam of a flashlight shone in his face, and he blinked his eyes open, squinting through the light.
“Drop your weapons,” the prohee ordered. “Then sit up real slow with your hands in sight.”
Alistair sighed and rolled to his knees, hands up. “All right. We surrender.”
“Who ratted us out?” Alistair asked as they were shoved toward the waiting cars. Two agents held his elbows, while Johnston hauled Sam along.
Sam’s heart thudded and his legs trembled. The cuffs bit into his wrists, but none of it still seemed real.
They were being arrested. He was going to jail.
“The man who owns this field,” one of the agents replied. “He gave you up in exchange for having some federal charges of his own dropped. Now get in the car.”
They shoved Alistair into one car, while Johnston took Sam to another. “Inside.”
Sam slipped into the backseat obediently. Johnston slammed the door, then got in the driver’s seat and started the car.
At least they hadn’t caught Doris—or at least, he didn’t think they had.
They wouldn’t have caught Alistair either, if Sam hadn’t slowed him down.
They sat in silence for a short time while the other agents got back into their vehicles. Sam wanted to ask where they were being taken, but he doubted the answer would be more forthcoming than “to jail.” Besides, Wanda had made sure he knew that in the case of a raid, he wasn’t to say anything to the police outside of “I want to speak with my lawyer.”
Agent Johnston didn’t speak, either. Didn’t ask any questions about the airplane, or try to find out what Sam knew.
The car finally started forward, following at the tail end of the small convoy of agents. Why had they brought so many? And hadn’t Alistair claimed they’d taken care of Johnston?
Clearly it hadn’t worked. And this was Johnston’s revenge.
The lights of the city soon appeared. Johnston drove slower and slower, until the rest of the agents were far ahead. Then he made a sharp right turn, away from the direction the others were going in, and sped up.
Sam’s hands went cold. “Where are you taking me?”
“You’ll see.”
The familiar streets folded around them, mostly quiet but growing more active as they neared Towertown. Was Johnston taking him to The Pride? Was the speakeasy being raided as well?
They passed the turn that would take them to The Pride, so either Johnston was going the long way around, or he had some other destination.
They weren’t going to the jail, or to The Pride. Sam was alone with Johnston; no one else knew where he was. Fear tightened his throat; he was completely at the agent’s mercy. Was he about to get beaten? Murdered?
God, he wished Alistair was there. No—he wished he was with Alistair, even if that meant being locked in a cell.
If Johnston wanted to make him disappear as punishment for their defiance, he could do it. Sam might die tonight, his bones coming to rest in the lake, or under a concrete floor, or somewhere else no one would ever find him.
The car slowed about a block and a half from The Pride, before Johnston parked in front of an apartment hotel. “I’m taking the cuffs off,” he said. “Don’t try any funny business, or else I’ll put a bullet in you for resisting arrest.”
Sam had to turn around awkwardly for Johnston to reach the cuffs while still in the car. As soon as they were off, he rubbed at his wrists and flexed fingers that had started to go numb. Johnston climbed out, yanked open his door, and beckoned him out. The moment he was on the sidewalk, he felt the hard barrel of a gun nudge his side, hidden beneath the coat Johnston had draped over his arm.
“Go inside to the intercom,” the agent ordered.
Sam obeyed, mind racing. This was an unlikely place to bring him if Johnston meant to kill him. Unless he was trying to make it look like an accident by throwing him from a window.
But that would be ridiculous; Johnston could have murdered him out in the countryside already, far from anyone, or taken him down to the docks and done it there.
If he had the chance to run, he’d take it. The Pride was close—if he could make it to the steel door, they could lock it against Johnston long enough to get lawyers involved. Or Wanda could call in favors from some of the important people who drank at The Pride, like the precinct police chief or the alderman.
Johnston wasn’t giving him any chances, though. The gun didn’t leave his side as they walked through the lobby. The first floor restaurant was still open, serving late-night diners. A few other people passed by, and to his surprise Sam recognized one of them.
Norman Rose, a semi-regular at The Pride and one of Eldon’s friends, emerged from the restaurant. Their eyes met, and Norman’s lips parted.
Before he could say anything, Sam very deliberately mouthed “Help me” to him.
Norman blinked in surprise. Then they were past, and Johnston seemed none the wiser.
Had Norman understood? Would he do anything?
“Here,” Johnston said. A panel on the wall listed the names of the apartment hotel’s inhabitants, a small intercom button beside each. “Call up to your pal Nagorski.”
Vic lived here? Sam had never realized he was so close to The Pride.
Vic’s name was listed beside the number 306. Hands trembling, Sam pushed the button.
A few seconds passed. If he wasn’t in, what would Johnston do next?
Then the intercom crackled. “Nagorski.”
The gun dug into his side, reminding him not to push his luck. “V-Vic? It’s, ah, it’s Sam.”
He expected Vic to ask what on earth he was doing here. But he only replied, “I’ll throw the lever—come on up.”
The door to the apartments above swung open shortly thereafter. Johnston herded Sam through to the elevator.
The elevator attendant sat on his stool in the corner. “Which floor, sirs?”
“Third,” Johnston said gruffly. He didn’t tip when they got off, either because he was a cheap bastard, or because he couldn’t take the gun off Sam to fumble with his wallet.
“Room 306,” he reminded Sam, once the elevator door closed behind them.
Sam looked around frantically as they walked. If they ran into someone, maybe he could make a scene, beg for help, do something to keep Vic safe from Johnston. But the corridor was deserted except for them.
Once they reached the door, Johnston leaned past Sam and banged on it heavily with his free hand. “Just a moment,” Vic called.
The door swung open. Vic’s brows raised when he spotted Johnston, and he took a step back. “Well. I suppose I should ask you to come inside.”
Johnston shoved Sam in, then kicked the door shut behind him. The gun moved from Sam’s side to grind into his temple. “I’ve heard you’re close,” Johnston told Vic. “So either you tell me who killed Bobby Watts and what happened to his body, or I’ll blow Cunningham’s head off.”
“We-we’re not close,” Sam said desperately. “Vic’s my boss, I just?—”
“Shut up,” Johnston snarled. “I’ve got a man on the inside, so don’t try to lie to me.”
“A man on the inside?” Vic asked. “Oh, you mean this one?”
He stepped to one side, revealing the body sprawled in the middle of the floor.
Alistair seethed as the agents dragged him from their car to the closest precinct jail. Malone was dead, all his alcohol gone up in the same fiery blaze that killed him. Johnston had made this move to put them in their place, which meant either he didn’t believe they had a witness to the murder he committed, or that it didn’t matter either way.
Damn Johnston. Double damn the field-owning farmer who ratted them out. And damn himself, for dragging Sam along.
Sam knew to keep his mouth shut and ask for a lawyer. Alistair planned on doing the same thing. The truck was hexed so only one of them could drive it; Doris seemed to have slipped away, so hopefully she would come back and take it once the coast was clear.
That could be hours away, or morning. Or never, if the prohees had the truck hauled away first.
They were probably going to rot in the jail for at least the night. Maybe longer, if it took Doris a while to get back and in touch with Wanda.
Well, he’d slept in far worse places. Eaten worse food, too. Once he and Sam were locked in together, they could at least cheer one another up.
They were kept separate while they were booked, or at least so he assumed since he found himself alone in front of the camera while his mugshot was taken. The cuffs were removed and replaced with a thick bracelet that locked around his wrist. The hex stamped into the steel would keep him in human form, so he couldn’t maul either the jailers or the other prisoners.
He expected to be questioned, but to his surprise no one seemed interested in doing so. Maybe the agents had lost their nerve when the plane went down. The booze was gone by now, so it would be difficult to prove in court that they’d been meeting Malone to illegally procure alcohol. With luck they’d just quietly drop the charges.
If not, Wanda had a lawyer in place and ready to step in, if and when they needed him. Which would cost a lot of money…just as they were losing their new supplier.
Curse Johnston. Alistair should have bitten him when he had the chance.
The coppers searched him for weapons, then hustled him to the jail in the back of the precinct. The cells were all occupied; he craned his head around as they walked, looking for Sam, but didn’t spot him. At the end of the block, the jailer swung open the door and shoved Alistair inside with three other men.
One of whom he immediately recognized. Dan Zywarski—Fabiano’s goon.
All his senses went on alert. The jailer locked him in, then left, whistling to himself as he went.
Once the sound faded into the distance, Zywarski slipped off one of the shabby bunks, a tight smile on his face. The other three moved into place as well, forming a loose half-circle around Alistair.
Alistair silently cursed the bracelet that kept him from taking on cheetah form. Trying to remain nonchalant, he nodded to Zywarski. “Funny meeting you here.”
“Ain’t it, though?” Zywarski replied.
“You owed Miss Fabiano a favor,” another man said, cutting to the chase. “She expected you to deliver, but instead you ignored her very reasonable request.”
“Not a nice way to treat a lady,” Zywarski added.
It was no accident he was locked in here. Johnston must have arranged all of this with Fabiano. At least Sam wasn’t with him, at the mercy of these bastards.
“I tried, but I wasn’t able to get the item she wanted,” Alistair lied. “Too much security. Maybe next time, she should hire a professional thief and not a guy who balances the books for a bar.”
“See, I don’t think you tried that hard.” Zywarski took a step closer. “Neither does Miss Fabiano.”
“You get how that looks, don’t you?” another man asked. “We can’t have people thinking they don’t have to do what the boss tells them, now can we?”
Alistair’s heart pounded and his mouth went dry. It was only with effort he kept his voice level. “Technically, we could.”
“I don’t think so.” Zywarski nodded in his direction. “Boys, you know what to do.”