Chapter 18
I’ve never seen hot dogs do this.
They tear through bodies like shrapnel.
One slams into a woman’s eye socket and stays there, buried deep enough to hit brain. She drops instantly.
Another punches straight through a man’s neck—clean entry, clean exit, arterial spray painting the loading bay in a lovely shade of fuck-you-red.
They all go down.
Alejandro stares at me, impressed despite himself. “Well… that was a lot more effective than I expected.”
Always doubting me.
I reload fast—my last shot, the final hit of propellant, and a bundle of rock-hard frozen hot dogs from the bag clipped to my side.
On our way out the door, I lay out the plan.
“Just distract him long enough for me to line up my shot. Then get the fuck out of the way. We’re riding out on that eighteen-wheeler.”
A lone assassin bursts out from behind a truck and hurls a knife at my chest.
It barely misses—grazes my arm on the way past, hot pain blooming as blood rolls down my skin.
Alejandro doesn’t even break stride.
He hurls his own knife, and his aim is better.
The blade sinks into the attacker’s eye with a wet, meaty thunk.
“Hijo de puta.” Alejandro mutters, stomping over to retrieve his knife.
The man collapses. Alejandro yanks his blade free, snags a discarded pistol off the ground, and surveys the carnage. It looks like a few assassins took each other out—good. Less work for us.
He checks the gun’s load, satisfied, then adjusts the heavy rifle strapped across his back. Skippy’s severed arm is tucked under his like a grotesque baguette.
His gaze flicks to my bleeding bicep. “You good?”
“You know I’ve had worse. Let’s move.”
We fall into step like we never stopped.
We always worked well together. Could read each other before a single motion was made. And it looks like nothing’s changed.
Alejandro lifts the gun and strides forward, firing steady bursts—keeping Colt Harrington busy in the tower’s perch. Long legs, sure aim, rounds ringing off rusted metal.
I follow close, adding more accelerant to the tube, dropping to one knee as I shoulder the launcher. My sight line aligns perfectly.
Right over the top of Alejandro’s head.
“Now.”
The second I say it, he drops flat and rolls. I fire.
One second later, a barrage of frozen hot dogs—accelerated by degreaser, vengeance, and spite—slams into the water tower.
The old metal groans and buckles.
Then erupts, the whole structure shattering in a rusted bloom.
I spot Tex diving off the opposite side, avoiding death by about half a heartbeat. I missed him, but the tower goes—and the water follows.
“Let’s go!” Alejandro shouts, grabbing my good arm, hauling me up.
We sprint back across the loading docks just as forty thousand gallons of water explode outward, a flash flood sweeping the trucks and machinery into chaos. Eighteen-wheelers slam into one another, smashing cargo and metal with violent crunches.
We race to the one truck not overturned yet, clamber onto the trailer as it’s lifted and carried by the flood.
We run—unsteady, slipping—toward the cab, drop down, wrench open the doors, and dive inside.
Alejandro tosses the bagged arm behind the seats, slams the truck into gear, and floors it.
The tires spin on soaked concrete, struggling for purchase.
The truck fishtails once—twice—
Then lurches forward.
We blast through the factory gates, bounce over a set of rails carrying freight carts, and finally surge onto the open road.
Only when the truck stabilizes do I glance into the side mirror.
All I see is thousands of hot dogs drifting across the flooded yard, bobbing like tiny pink corpses in an ocean of chaos.
Have I mentioned how much I fucking hate hot dogs?
The drive to Chicago is quiet. Bouncy as hell, every pothole rattling my teeth, but quiet.
Neither of us feels like talking, not after the day we’ve had.
I’m starving, I need a shower that could double as an exorcism, and for once in my life I’m actually grateful not to be babysitting a decomposing corpse in the backseat anymore.
Close enough.
The severed arm jiggles on the metal floor with each bump. It’s gross, but I find myself watching it anyway as Alejandro navigates the truck deeper into the city. The streets get narrower block by block, buildings closing in like they want something from us.
If the chip in that arm is fried, we’re screwed. Back to square one, except this time we’ll be exhausted, half-feral, and probably hunted by every trigger-happy idiot from Tokyo to JFK.
Alejandro breaks the silence. “First forty-eight hours on your contract are nearly up.”
Yeah. I know. My whole body knows. By morning, the initial bounty expires, and then there are only two options.
He glances at me. “You think they’re going to raise it?”
“Yup.”
Normally, for an exile, the price dips after the first window closes. Then it goes open-ended—set reward, no expiration, whoever brings in the body wins the prize. Exiles are long games. Slow hunts.
But sometimes, not often, the price goes up.
“They blew the bank on the first contract because they wanted a response,” I say. “Since they’re going to fail—and we both know I’m not dying tonight—they’ll raise it. Bigger reward, bigger swarm.”
I lean my head against the vibrating window. “It’s only going to get crazier from here. If you’re backing out, now’s the time.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Alejandro doesn’t even pretend to consider it. “Not until it’s done.”
He doesn’t elaborate on what “it” is, and I don’t ask. Whatever vendetta he’s nursing is running parallel to mine, and for now, that’s enough.
He pulls the truck into a parking lot before the road tightens into the kind of street you only drive down if you’re begging to get stuck. The engine idles, then cuts off.
“Let’s stick the arm in your backpack,” he says. “Take a taxi the rest of the way to my contact. Buses have cameras. The sooner we get underground, the better.”
Alejandro handles the eighteen-wheeler like it’s his personal ballet.
Watching him work the clutch and spin that oversized wheel is almost indecent.
Jaw locked, brow pulled tight, the muscles in his forearms flex every time he shifts.
There’s something about watching a man command machinery the size of a small apartment building that shouldn’t be doing it for me.
Maybe it’s the forearm porn. Maybe it’s knowing exactly what those hands can do.
Either way, the truck rolls to a stop and I flick my gaze up.
Of course he’s looking at me.
He’s wearing that stupid smirk, the dangerous one, made worse by the single curl of dark hair hanging over his eye. “Anything you’d like to share with the class?”
I take my time dragging my gaze down, then back up again. “You have small wrists.”
I hop out before he can respond.
From the pavement, I watch him through the open door. He’s staring at his own wrists like they just betrayed him. “Small what?” he mutters. “No.”
I pretend not to hear, grabbing my pack and unzipping it. The arm goes inside, thank every deity for heavy-duty plastic and blessed scent containment. Even the juice stays put.
Alejandro climbs out once he’s reassembled whatever’s left of his ego. He slings his rifle case over his shoulder with practiced ease.
“Who’s your contact?” I ask.
He smiles. I don’t trust it. “You’ll see.”
Yeah. I’ll see, all right.
Thirty minutes later, I’m following him into a shady-ass alley and down a set of concrete steps. Above us: a ramen shop. Beneath us: the kind of place where people get murdered for fun.
Alejandro must sense my lack of enthusiasm because he throws a “trust me” over his shoulder.
Fat chance.
He knocks twice on a rusted metal door. The place looks diseased.
No one answers. For a long, agonizing stretch, all I hear is the distant hum of the ramen shop. Then—movement. The sound of someone stomping through a sea of empty bottles. Cursing. A crash. Something rolling.
Then comes the real wait: no fewer than ten thousand locks clacking and sliding open. Someone takes their home security very seriously.
The door cracks open. Two enormous eyes blink at us behind glasses so thick they could magnify a star. The living embodiment of a mole squints up at Alejandro, then at me, then past us, checking for threats.
“Is she the body?” he asks, inspecting me like a lab specimen.
“Do I look dead, motherfucker?” My multitool is in my hand before he finishes blinking. The blade flicks open with that satisfying snap.
Alejandro laughs. “No, old friend. Our cadaver made its way into sausage casings. We do have an arm, though. But I fear it’s a bit too rank, even for your tastes.”
The mole-man grumbles and swings the door wider.
The inside is… not much. Trash everywhere.
Takeout containers from upstairs. Metal surgical trays stacked in corners.
It’s cold enough to bite bone, but a fireplace roars in the corner, embers glowing hot enough to liquefy steel.
Several lamps cast sickly yellow light, each shade made from some stretched hide I can’t immediately identify.
The mole—whoever he is—scurries away, muttering like he’s tunneling through the earth.
“Who the fuck is this guy?” I whisper.
Alejandro hesitates. Actually hesitates. “Uh… you can call him Frank.”
There’s something he’s withholding. I can feel it.
“That it? Just Frank?”
“In some of the darker pits of hell, he’s known as Dr. Frankenstein,” Alejandro says lightly. “He has a thing for the dead.”
“Do I want to know?”
Then it hits me like a brick to the temple.
“You said Skippy was ‘too rank, even for your tastes.’” My gaze sweeps the room again. Heat rises up my neck. Then I look at the lampshades—and the heat drops to ice.
“Does he eat them?”
Shock. Revulsion. And a sudden existential fear that I might end up as part of a Chicago ramen bowl.
Alejandro chuckles, unslinging his rifle and pulling the strap of my backpack off my shoulder. “Always a quick study.”
“Well, it’s not hard when the lampshade has a fucking nipple on it.”
He squints. “Oh. So, it does.”
He opens the pack, pulls the arm out, and plops it onto the metal table in the middle of the room just as “Frank” returns, holding some kind of wand.
“First things first…” Frank mutters. “Gotta check for bugs.”