13. Emilia #2
He drops. Not far. Maybe three feet into a gap between rocks concealed by the overhang of wind-packed snow.
But his momentum carries him and his ankle folds at an angle that makes my stomach clench even from forty yards away.
His rifle clatters against stone. He shouts a single sharp obscenity that bounces off the ridge walls.
The second PI rushes forward to help him, abandoning his sweep pattern, abandoning his spacing, abandoning every protocol that keeps a man alive on a dark mountain.
A massive shadow detaches from the trees above them both.
Justice.
He drops from the lowest branch of a massive Douglas fir like something unmoored from gravity.
No shout. No warning. Just two hundred and forty pounds of mountain man falling eight feet through the dark onto the first PI, who is still half-wedged pocket with his twisted ankle, scrabbling for the rifle he lost between the rocks.
The impact sounds wet. Heavy. Like a sack of grain hitting packed earth. The PI's headlamp switches on from the force of the collision, throwing a wild beam of white light across the snow that catches tree trunks and spinning snowflakes and Justice's fist, already drawn back.
One punch. That's all it takes.
Justice's knuckles connect with the man's temple and his head snaps sideways and his whole body goes slack.
Not movie-slack where the person slumps gracefully.
Real slack. His jaw drops open and his eyes roll and he sinks into the snow pocket like his bones dissolved.
The headlamp beam settles on the canopy above, pointing straight up, a column of light filled with falling snow.
Justice is already moving. He pulls a zip tie from his back pocket.
I didn't even know he had zip ties. Of course he has zip ties.
He probably has zip ties in every pocket, in every jacket, stashed behind every third tree here.
The plastic ratchets tight around the PI's wrists with a sound like a zipper being yanked shut, and Justice rolls the unconscious man onto his side so he won't choke, and the efficiency of it all makes something hot and fierce bloom because even in violence he's careful, even in rage he's precise.
He straightens up. Turns toward where the second PI was standing.
The second PI isn't there.
Justice goes still. His chin lifts. He scans the dark tree line, the shotgun coming up, but the angle is wrong because he's looking down the slope, toward the ravine, toward where the second man should have been.
"Don't."
He comes from behind me.
Every nerve in my body fires at once. I spin on my knees and the blanket tangles around my legs and I almost fall and then I see him.
Six feet away. Stepping out from behind the cluster of young pines that were supposed to be my cover. He must have circled wide while his partner drew Justice's attention.
He's older than I expected. Forties. Grey at the temples.
A square jaw and thin lips and eyes that hold no anger, no heat, nothing personal at all.
He wears his rifle slung across his back and in his hands is a matte black pistol, compact, held in a two-handed grip that speaks of thousands of hours on a range.
The muzzle is aimed at the center of me.
"Hands up. Drop whatever's in your right hand."
The flare. I'm still holding the gun. My fingers have gone so numb I forgot it was there.
I don't drop it. I don't raise my hands.
I can't do anything because my body has locked in place the way it always locks when a man with authority points something dangerous at me and gives me an order.
The old programming. The deep grooves worn into my nervous system by twenty-three years of doing exactly what I'm told by men who hold all the power.
"Drop it, Emilia."
He knows my name. Of course he knows my name. He has probably memorized my dental records, my blood type, the exact shade of my eye color from whatever dossier my father handed him with a check.
I open my fingers. The flare falls into the snow.
"Good girl."
The words hit like a slap. My father's words. My fiance's words. The words of every man who ever praised me for shrinking.
Below us, Justice moves. I hear the crunch of his boots on rock, fast, coming up the slope toward us. The PI doesn't flinch. Doesn't redirect his aim. He keeps the pistol locked on my sternum.
"Stop right there, Spanks."
The crunching stops.
"I've got your girl. You can see that."
Silence from the forest. I can feel Justice out there in the dark, fifteen yards down the slope, his body coiled, calculating angles and distances the way he calculates torque on an engine bolt.
The PI takes one step closer to me. Then another. Close enough now that even in the dark I can see the fine lines around his eyes, the calm set of his mouth, the way his index finger rests flat against the trigger guard instead of on the trigger itself. Professional. Controlled.
He looks past me. Down the slope. Finds Justice in the shadows.
"Your name came up when we pulled property records. Off-grid mechanic. No family. No priors worth mentioning." He pauses. Adjusts his grip. "Mr. Virgie is a reasonable man."
A low sound drifts up from the trees. Not quite a growl. Something deeper.
The PI's lips pull back from his teeth. Not a smile. A negotiation face. A closing-the-deal face.
"He's authorized me to offer you one hundred thousand dollars. Cash. Untraceable. All you have to do is walk back down this mountain and forget you ever saw her."
He shifts his gaze from the darkness where Justice stands back to me. His eyes are clinical. Appraising. Calculating my value in dollars the same way my father always has.
"What do you say, mechanic? Hundred grand buys a lot of engine parts."