Chapter 16
RED RIBBON PROVISION CO.
Family Owned & Operated
Agoddamn hot dog factory.
Just my fucking luck.
Of all the places on earth we could’ve been dumped… this. A monument to liquefied mystery meat. I gave up most land animals years ago, but apparently fate decided today was the day to surround me with the worst form of meat imaginable.
My throat actually tightens just thinking about it. Between Skippy’s corpse cologne and the smell of industrial processed… whatever… I might legitimately puke for the first time in a decade.
I scan the lot for exits, but there’s nothing. No cars. No guards. Just a line of eighteen-wheelers backed against the loading docks. This must be the rear of the factory. Parking lot will be on the other side, of course. Figures.
I’m about to call back to Alejandro—tell him we split, I go high, he goes low—when a bright ping snaps off the metal shell of our train car.
A heartbeat later I hear the gunshot.
Well. So much for planning.
“Incoming!” I bark.
I grab Skippy’s janky stroller and shove it hard, wheels squealing as it rattles back down the train car toward Alejandro.
“Get him off the other side!” I shout. “I’ll draw fire!”
Alejandro immediately argues, because of course he does.
“I’m faster,” I snap. “Shut up and move!”
I’ve already got both guns out, loaded, warm, familiar. My heartbeat steadies. My breathing evens. Combat mode drops over me like a second skin.
I bounce once on my heels. Twice. A few fast breaths.
Then I jump.
I hit the ground in a roll, gravel scraping my shoulder, momentum snapping me upright. The second I’m vertical, I’m running. Hard. Fast. Zigzagging across open pavement as another bullet whines past my ear.
The eighteen-wheelers near the back doc—one of them is running—that’s my mark.
I sprint low, cut across open asphalt, and slide under the nearest abandoned trailer. Metal slams above me. The world narrows to shadow, grease, and the staccato echo of distant gunfire.
There’s movement on one of the rooftops near the north side. I don’t hesitate to allow him a chance to relocate. I ease out from behind the large tires and take one shot.
He drops without a scream—dead a second after he bullet left my gun.
I roll to the opposite side of the trailer, eyes scanning. Another shooter crouches on the roof of an adjacent warehouse. Amateur camouflage. Sloppy posture. Easy pickings.
Before I fire, I check Alejandro’s position. He’s at the far end of the drifting train car, the one we got sabotaged into. It’s still creeping along the track like a drunk snake, inching us deeper into this mess.
He sees me watching and coils back like a spring.
I match him for one heartbeat.
Two.
Then, we launch.
I burst into the open, firing twice. The rooftop shooter jerks, tumbles, vanishes. But more shots ring out. Three. Four. Maybe six of them circling the yard.
A little ambush party. Probably planning to split the bounty. Cute.
Probably why they rigged the train car instead of taking the hit inside it because they wanted the work to feel earned.
Well. Congratulations.
Saint James will make them fucking earn it.
Alejandro is running full sprint, stroller wheels screaming behind him. Skippy’s corpse lurches around like a wet, sagging puppet.
Alejandro fires without breaking stride. His target drops from a rooftop. I track the fall but don’t slow down, heading straight for the open loading-dock doors. Inside means cover. Narrow walkways. Equipment. Places to bottleneck the idiots who think they can corner me.
I’m ten feet from the door when I hear a different shot blast across the factory yard.
Deeper. Sharper. High-caliber.
A sniper.
The bullet whispers just past my afro. The dirt several feet to my right explodes in a tight puff. I feel the singed ends of my hair, feel the heat of the bullet that rushed through it.
Oh. Hell. No.
I turn, scanning, hunting—and then I see it. A glint on metal. A silhouette on top of the old water tower at the edge of the factory yard.
Cowboy hat tipped back so it doesn’t interfere with his scope.
The Texan.
Of course.
Colt Harrington. Little bitch baby.
My least favorite mosquito with a superiority complex.
I knew he wouldn’t let New York go. Not after I bested him on that rooftop. He’s been my rival since day one—a competition he invented because he couldn’t stand being anything but the best.
We shared the same initiation ring. Thirteen rounds. Neither of us managing to put the other down. That was the day Kenji stepped in, pulled me out and claimed me as his student.
The whole room gasped almost drowning out Colt’s muttered “mother fucker”.
And he has never, ever let it go.
Always number two.
Always in my shadow.
Always furious about it.
Of course he’d chase this job. Of course he’d risk everyone else’s bullets just for a chance to take me out and crown himself king.
Well, asshole. Not if I can help it.
He gives me a one-finger salute from the tower, and I hear the metallic click of him chambering another round.
I step backward until I’m inside the loading dock, out of his line of fire. Alejandro climbs into one of the platforms, hauls Skippy’s stroller up after him, the whole contraption rattling like a dying shopping cart.
“What’s the plan now?” he asks.
My eyes stay on the tower.
“I need to blow up that water tower.”
I’m on a mission.
Alejandro’s behind me wrestling Skippy’s busted stroller like it’s a cursed shopping cart from hell, wheels locking, frame wobbling, dead guy sloshing. It’s pathetic. And loud. And slowing us down.
I don’t wait for him.
I shove through the next set of double doors and instantly regret it.
The smell hits like a wall of bricks. Hot meat. Hot, wet meat, to be exact.
I’d almost rather smell Skippy.
Almost.
The factory floor is chaos. Stainless-steel tables.
Giant vats churning. Steam vents hissing.
Plastic-wrapped towers of meat product waiting to be processed.
The constant buzz of machinery and conveyor belts grinding mystery protein into shapes that should not legally exist. This is hell for vegetarians and assassins alike.
Shots ping off metal behind us. Footsteps. Yelling.
“Move!” I shout at Alejandro.
“I’m trying!” he barks, kicking one of the stroller’s wheels until it limps forward. “Skippy’s leaking again!”
“Then stop pushing him like a toddler and pick up the whole damn thing!”
“I’m not carrying a corpse like a baby, Saint!”
I ignore him. I’m scanning for parts. Tools. Anything long, hollow, and structurally stupid enough to become a makeshift weapon.
Bingo.
A thick, stainless-steel sanitation tube—twelve inches in diameter, maybe four feet long—leaning against a wall near a maintenance station. Perfect rocket-launcher body.
I snatch it up, the weight solid and promising, and jog deeper into the factory. Alejandro curses behind me, fighting off an attacker who leaps from behind a bin of raw pork slurry.
There’s a grunt, a smack, and a wet thud.
Alejandro yells out, “I think he landed in the meat!”
“Then he’s finally contributing to society.”
An attacker rounds the corner at me. I don’t slow. I palm my knife thrusting fast into his abdomen six times before he even registers the first cut. He folds over with a wheeze. I kick him backward into a vat of boiling water. The churn blooms dark red in an instant.
I keep going, my mind already assembling the weapon.
Propellant. Stabilizer. Ammunition.
This place has all three.
Unfortunately.
I move fast, weaving between conveyor lines and towering racks of boxed product, Alejandro swearing somewhere behind me as he clatters over equipment with Skippy’s stroller.
I cut behind a massive metal cabinet and freeze.
Someone’s already there.
A factory worker, curled into himself like a human shrimp. Hairnet trembling. Safety goggles fogged. Apron speckled with meat dust. He looks at me like I’m a hallucination brought on by inhaling too much steam-processed protein.
I keep my gun raised out of habit. He flinches.
“Name?” I ask, clipped.
He mumbles something unintelligible. My ears catch only the tail end: “–ark.”
“Speak up.”
He swallows hard. “Mark. With a K.”
“Perfect, Kark.” I hook a fist in the front of his apron and haul him upright. “I need something flammable. Now.”
His whole head bobs like it’s on a spring. He points one trembling finger toward a side hallway. “C-cleaning station. Big red canisters. Very, um… very not approved for… anything.”
“Excellent. You’re coming with me Clark.”
Gunfire cracks somewhere behind me. Alejandro yells something dramatically unhelpful.
I pull the guy by the collar into a crouched sprint. He scuttles beside me like a terrified crab trying to keep up.
We duck around a row of stainless-steel mixers. An attacker leaps out, barreling straight at us.
I don’t hesitate.
One shot and he drops hard onto the concrete.
Dude-man squeaks. Actually squeaks.
“Relax,” I mutter. “You’re not on the menu.”
He makes a broken noise that suggests he isn’t convinced.
Across the factory, Alejandro is fighting off two thugs at once—one hand throwing punches, the other trying to keep Skippy’s stroller from collapsing under its own structural despair.
“Saint!” Alejandro shouts. “A little help?! Emotional support?! Anything besides whatever the fuck you are doing!”
“I’m busy building a weapon of mass inconvenience!” I call back.
“Son of a— Of course you are!”
I drag What’s-His-Face around a stack of sealed boxes and slip us into the cleaning station. Rows of industrial degreaser canisters line the wall—huge, red, sloshing containers covered in warning labels that basically read Don’t you fucking dare.
Perfect propellant.
I shove the steel tube I stole earlier into my new friend’s arms. He nearly collapses under the weight.
“Hold that, Clint.” I say.
He nods like a bobblehead seconds from a nervous breakdown. “Mark.”
Whatever.
Time to build a rocket launcher out of degreaser, stainless steel, and the world’s least heroic sidekick.
And soon?
Frozen hot dogs.
God help the idiots who think they’re taking me down today.