Chapter 8
Shaw left Benny wedged in the dark behind the shelving and went to work.
He’d cleared rooms his whole life and walked out the only one breathing. Always by himself, though. No one he’d mind leaving behind.
Tonight wasn’t that, and the difference weighed on him worse than the wound in his side.
He’d never reconned this place—Benny had dragged him in unconscious, and he’d spent every minute since behind the bar. He’d have to read it as he cleared it. He’d done that before.
Because somewhere back there, Benny was hiding. Counting on Shaw to fix this.
Shaw had never had anyone count on him before. The feel of it was unfamiliar. He wasn’t sure he hated it.
So he put his head down and moved.
The first gunman went down before he even knew Shaw was there.
Shaw came up behind him, hand over his mouth before he could make a sound, and opened up his throat with the bar knife. He took the weight as the man sagged and lowered the body to the floor, careful not to let it thump.
The gun came loose in the last spasm. It hit the floor grip-first and skated off into the darkness under the booth seating.
Shit. Shaw went down on one shoulder and reached after it—arm in past the elbow, fingers sweeping up dust and a decade of dropped straws.
Nothing. It had skidded to a halt back somewhere past where he could reach.
Across the floor, the other guy called out, low: “Anything?”
The dead man was in no condition to answer, and that clock started running the moment the silence registered.
Time to move.
Shaw’s side screamed in protest—the wound Benny had so carefully stitched was pulling, tearing, warmth seeping through the bandage and into his shirt. Didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter.
Shaw’s breath was coming harder now, his heart pounding in a rhythm that felt wrong—too fast, too thready. The adrenaline that was keeping him upright would only carry him so far.
He needed to end this fast.
Gary and his last man were deeper in the club now, spreading out to search. Shaw could hear them calling to each other in low voices. They were being careful. Professional. Whoever Gary had hired, he’d paid for the real thing.
That was fine. Shaw was better.
He worked toward the back the way he’d cleared a hundred buildings before, quiet, reading each turn the best he could in the darkness.
And finally, there was one of them at the end of the hall, back turned, gun low, working the storage room.
Shaw was raising the knife when the lightheadedness swelled up and took his balance. He caught himself—but his boot scraped loud across the floor.
Fuck.
The man spun. His reflexes were good—gun coming up, finger on the trigger, eyes widening as he registered the threat.
The shot was deafening in the enclosed space.
It went wide—past his ear, a shelf coming apart behind him. Then Shaw’s hearing was gone. A high flat whine where the room used to be.
Before the man could take another shot, Shaw snarled and threw the knife.
It hit the man in the neck, dead on, and he went down. If he made a noise on the way, Shaw didn’t hear it, ears ringing from the gunshot.
Two down. Only Gary left now. But Shaw had lost the element of surprise. And now?—
“Oh, you fucker.” Gary’s voice, far away and wrong through the whine. The fury in his voice came through fine, though. Footsteps closed in fast behind Shaw, cutting across the open floor.
Shaw ran.
His body protested every stride. The wound had opened up again, blood trickling down his side. He could feel himself slowing down, his reactions just a half-second too late. The precision that had kept him alive for years was failing him, eroding with every drop of blood he left on the floor.
A shot, dull and directionless. Shaw couldn’t tell how close. He ducked around a corner, moving fast but not fast enough. A bullet caught the doorframe beside his head, sending splinters flying. Another punched through the wall.
He ended up behind the bar. Same spot where he’d had Benny in his lap an hour ago. The kid was long gone—good.
Now it was just cover, and not much of it.
A dead end.
Shaw pressed his back against the counter and tried to think. His hands were shaking—blood loss and exhaustion, the toll of one long fucked-up night.
No more knives here. The last one was across the club, buried in the last man he’d dropped. Both of the crew’s pistols were out on the floor somewhere—one swallowed by the dark under the booths, the other fallen with its owner back down the hallway—and Gary stood between him and that one.
His own gun was still right here, on the floor where he’d left it. Empty. Basically a fuckin’ paperweight.
His hearing was coming back in pieces, thin and tinny, and the first thing it gave him was Gary. Slow footsteps. Deliberate. The measured pace of someone who knew they had the advantage and was savoring it.
“I know you’re back there.” Gary’s voice was closer now, maybe ten feet away. “You killed my brother. You really think I’m going to let you walk out of here?”
Shaw didn’t answer. He was thinking, running through options. But every scenario ended the same way: with him dead right here, bleeding out on the same floor where, less than an hour ago, things had been considerably better.
There wasn’t a way out of this.
Shaw had made peace with this day coming a long time ago. Part of the deal.
What he wasn’t prepared for was how pissed he was about it tonight.
Benny.
Shaw had already started wondering what another night with him looked like. That wasn’t a question Shaw asked himself, as a rule. No point.
He had a point tonight.
At least Benny got out.
He clung to that. Benny was smart. By now he’d be halfway across the city, putting as much distance between himself and this mess as possible. He’d be safe. He’d be alive.
That had to be enough.
The footsteps stopped. Gary was right on the other side of the bar.
“Come on out,” Gary said. No heat in it now—just the flat, reasonable voice of a man who’d never had to raise it to get what he wanted.
Too scared to get in close, even though he was the one with the gun.
Wait. Shaw did have a gun. Empty.
But Gary didn’t know that.
Shaw eased the dead gun off the floor without a sound.
His hands weren’t steady anymore. His whole body was trembling, muscles threatening to give out.
An empty gun and whatever conviction he could fake—but if Gary froze on the muzzle for half a second, that was half a second to get his hands on him. One last?—
Behind Gary, lunging footsteps.
Gary turned. Shaw’s head snapped up.
Benny. Blood-stained satin, twisted and torn.
And in his hands, raised high above his head: a bottle of very expensive whiskey.
He brought it down on Gary’s skull with a sound like a thunderclap. Gary dropped, hard.
Shaw stared.
Benny had never gone. He’d been back there in the dark through all of it, and he’d come out barefoot on a floor full of dead men, chest heaving, a bottle in his fist.
Shaw wanted to shake him. Wanted to get a hand on him and check he was real.
Gary groaned. His hand was crawling for the dropped gun. Shaw tackled him before he could get his bearings, wrestled the gun from his grip.
Pressed the barrel to his forehead.
Gary’s eyes widened. Fear, finally.
Shaw pulled the trigger.
The silence afterward was absolute.
Shaw pushed himself up from Gary’s body. His arms were shaking so badly he could barely support his own weight. His vision was tunneling now, his body finally reaching the end of what it could endure.
But he was alive.
They were alive.
He looked up and found Benny staring at him across the mess.
The bunny suit was destroyed. Covered in blood—Shaw’s, impact spray from Gary.
He looked like a disaster. Shaw wanted him closer.
“What now?” Benny asked. His voice was steady, even if his hands weren’t.
Shaw should say: Now you go home. You forget this ever happened. You go back to your life and I go back to mine, and we never see each other again.
That was how this was supposed to work. No complications. No partners.
But Benny had come back. Had picked up a bottle and swung it at a man with a gun.
In thirty-two years, nobody had ever come back for Shaw. He didn’t know what to do with that. So he did the only thing that made sense.
“Whatever you want, baby,” Shaw heard himself say. “Let’s get to the car.”
Benny went quiet. Shaw was learning what that meant. Then Benny was moving, crossing the floor to get a hand around Shaw’s arm and take his weight as they headed for the exit.
Shaw leaned into the touch. Let himself be held up, supported. It was a new feeling. He thought he could learn to like it.
They were halfway to the door when Benny suddenly stopped. “Wait.”
“What—”
Benny darted back toward the bar. Shaw watched, baffled and bleeding, as Benny ducked behind the counter…
And came out clutching another bottle. The same brand of top-shelf whiskey that was currently pooling around Gary’s corpse.
“Are you kidding me?” Shaw asked.
“We earned this.” Benny tucked the bottle under his free arm and rejoined Shaw at the door. “Also, Pete’s going to have to claim all this on insurance, anyway. Might as well get something out of it.”
Shaw stared at him. This impossible, blood-soaked bunny who’d just saved his life and was now stealing booze from the crime scene like they were leaving a bad party instead of a massacre.
They pushed through the back door together, out into the cool pre-dawn air.
Shaw collapsed into the passenger seat and Benny slid behind the wheel with the bottle wedged between his thighs.
He grinned over at Shaw, smudged eyeliner and impossibly mussed hair.
Shaw felt the same dumb thing he’d been feeling all night, only worse.
“Where am I going?” Benny asked.
“Left at the light. I’ll tell you the rest as we go.”
“Bossy.”
“Drive.”
Benny pulled out into the empty street. The sky was bleeding gray at the edges, the first stupid promise of an Easter sunrise, and Shaw watched the city slide past and waited for the part of himself that should have been alarmed by any of this to speak up.
It stayed quiet.
He’d spent a lifetime expecting to die alone, and never once bothered figuring out what came after—there’d never been an after worth the trouble.
Now there was someone driving him home, stolen whiskey sweating between his thighs, humming something tuneless under his breath like he hadn’t just cracked a man’s skull open to save Shaw’s ass.
Shaw didn’t have a word for what this was, and he wasn’t going to go hunting for one while bleeding like this.
But he set his hand on the gearshift, and when Benny’s fingers found his without looking, Shaw didn’t move away.
Whatever this was, it could keep until morning.
Shaw closed his eyes and let Benny drive.