Chapter 26
Con hid in the shadows and watched Alex, this new version of his partner, duck into the theater.
Then he waited.
He hated waiting.
It didn’t help that he considered this impromptu sting operation to be a very bad idea. For now, it was just a gut feeling but he’d learned to trust these instincts over the years.
Alex had convinced him to at least let her try, so as long as this gut feeling didn’t morph into anything more concrete, Con decided to continue to just watch and wait.
Five minutes passed, then ten. Slowly, a White kid squatting on the apartment stoop rose and sauntered toward Midnight Matinee. He was young, seventeen, maybe eighteen years old, wearing a black shirt and a gold chain.
He walked with a swagger, a hitch in his step.
Evidently, he wasn’t the spotter, but the runner. Inside the theater, he would take Alex’s order and then meet the man in the alley to make the exchange.
This should only take a minute, two, tops.
The faster the runner made the trade, the faster he would get his fix.
But nothing about this was happening quickly.
It was all taking too long.
The unease that Con felt began to grow and fester.
At fifteen minutes, he couldn’t wait any longer. Doubting that it made any difference, Con untucked his shirt and tousled his short hair. The second he moved into the light, one of the remaining kids on the stoop would notice him and everyone would run. If Alex hadn’t made the deal by then, their cover would be blown.
But Con cared more about his partner’s safety than some stupid pirated films.
He hurried across the street and, as he threw the doors to Midnight Matinee open, the scene played out exactly as he’d thought.
The spotters on the stoop scattered.
“The movie has already started,” a kid behind a filthy glass partition informed him. Con ignored him and walked down the hall.
The carpet beneath his feet had probably once been a vibrant red but was now a dirty maroon.
Like dried blood.
“Hey! It’s five bucks to get in!” the kid hollered after him. “You can’t—you can’t just go in there!”
To hell I can’t , Con thought.
He opened the door to the theater and was immediately met with the sound of gunfire.
His hand went to his pistol, but when he realized that the sound was coming from the movie, he resisted drawing it.
When he saw his partner, the urge returned and Con broke into a sprint.
Alex was splayed across three seats and the kid with the gold chain was on top of her.
“Frost!” he yelled.
The runner glanced up when he shouted and pulled back a little. The distraction was all Alex needed.
Con reached them just as Alex managed to raise her knees and drive them into the kid’s sternum.
The runner was thin and wiry and was launched a good foot in the air. Con grabbed him while still airborne and flung him off his partner.
He slammed hard into the wall, knocking the wind out of him.
Con didn’t wait for the junkie to collect himself. He lunged, driving his knee into the man’s chest.
A strange, almost cartoonish umph sound left his sore-riddled lips and he slumped back down, dazed.
“Stay the fuck down!” Con screamed. His hand went back to his gun, but he didn’t draw just yet.
Behind him, Con heard someone approach. His eyes darted in that direction.
It was the kid from the booth.
“Don’t move!” It was Alex and her tone surprised Con. It was strong, authoritative.
If she’d been injured, you wouldn’t have been able to tell.
“What the fuck is goin’ on?” Booth Boy asked. Unlike Alex, his tone was high, screechy.
Scared.
Two more shadows appeared on his left and Con clenched his teeth. He and his partner could pin down two junkies but four?
Con unclipped the strap on his holster.
Once again, however, he hesitated before drawing his weapon.
The two people near the front of the scuffed theater weren’t junkies. Or, at least, they weren’t junkies affiliated with the crew outside. One was a man, thick, overweight, and he was struggling to pull up his pants as he waddled. The woman was rail thin, all acute angles.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Con ordered.
They hustled by, eyes and chins down.
“What you want? We ain’t got nothin’ here,” the kid on the ground said between clenched teeth.
Con removed a set of cuffs from behind his back and in a blink of an eye, slapped one on the downed kid’s wrist and the other to a rusted radiator attached to the wall.
“The fuck?” he pulled, and while the rad moved a little, it held fast.
“Who—who are you?” Booth Boy asked.
Alex whipped out her badge.
“FBI. And you two?” She pointed first at the handcuffed kid, and then at the ticket taker. “You two are fucked .”