11. Chapter 11 #2
“Then Renner moves faster.” Storm rubs a hand down his face. “He’s got Shadow, and the second he knows we’re closing in, he won’t sit in that fucking cannery waiting for us. He’ll take her up the mountain Marchetti told us about, and once he does, we might never find her.”
The clock has been running for three days, but now every minute matters. We’re running out of fucking time.
“He’s got Darkwater people working out of a marine garage on the flats.
” Byte pulls up a map and zooms in on a metal building near the water, with three vehicles parked out front.
“Small crew, mostly muscle with a couple of guns. These are probably the same fuckers who set up the boathouse, and if Lash needed somewhere local to run, this is where he’d go.
We take them out now, that’s fewer men guarding the cannery when we go after Shadow. ”
Loco studies the map, taking his time before he looks at me.
“We do it your way, Crow. Strip away his men before we hit the cannery, starting with the garage today.” His eyes stay on mine.
“But I want whoever’s running that crew alive.
He might know where Lash went, and he might know when Renner plans to move Shadow.
Kill him and we get fuck-all. You hear me?
I want him breathing when you bring him back here. That’s not a request.”
“Breathing,” I say.
And right now, I mean it.
We take the flats at last light, five of us in two trucks and the hearse, Grim on my right hand the way he has been since the boathouse.
The garage sits with the river sliding past behind it, black at this hour, the same water that runs down past Grimstone and takes what we give it. Salt, dead men and diesel.
Colt is the prospect who draws the short straw for the back door, because prospects draw the short straw.
That is the whole of what a prospect is for.
He is nineteen, green enough he still thinks getting the shit jobs means he’s made it.
He has a kid sister he sends half his cut to, a laugh too big for a man in this line of work.
He wanted to ride tonight so bad he near cried when Grim pointed at him.
He is going to cover the water side while the rest of us come through the front, and he is going to be fine, because it is the quiet door, the nothing door, the door where nobody ever is.
That is what I tell him. His grin splits his whole face.
“Quiet door,” Colt says. “Copy that.”
The front goes fast and it goes hot.
Grim hits the door first, shoulder driving through it hard enough to slam steel into the inside wall, and we pour through behind him into noise, oil stink, and bad light. Somebody shouts. A chair goes over. Boots scrape concrete.
Three men inside, none of them expecting the club to come to Darkwater, because Renner told them we would be looking north at the cannery. Renner was right until Lash made him too right.
The first man is sitting at a scarred table with a beer in one hand. His other goes for the pistol at his hip. He never clears leather.
Grim puts him down through the sternum and keeps moving, already looking past the falling body for the next threat.
The second man comes up from behind a workbench, young, eyes blown wide when he sees what’s coming through the door.
His gun is already in his hand, but fear makes him fast instead of good.
He jerks the trigger and the shot punches into the metal roof above us.
The sound inside the garage is fucking enormous.
Buck fires once.
The man folds backward against the workbench, takes a row of sockets and a coffee mug down with him, then hits the concrete hard enough to bounce.
I keep moving.
Past an engine block hanging from a chain. Past shelves loaded with fuel cans and marine parts. My shoulder clips something and sends it clattering, but I don’t look. Grim is clearing left. Buck takes the middle. I catch movement deeper in the garage.
The third one hears the noise, and sees the two bodies. Sees us. Makes the only choice left to him. He runs. Not for the front. Not toward us. For the water side, for the quiet door.
“Back!”
I don’t know who yells it.
Maybe me.
The man disappears between two racks of gutted outboards, boots hammering concrete, and somewhere beyond that wall is Colt.
Nineteen years old. Green as spring, so fucking proud we gave him the back door.
I turn after him, and I hear it.
Three rounds. Close enough together they almost sound like one. Colt isn’t laughing anymore.
For half a second, there is nothing in me. Then I am moving.
I hit the racks hard enough to rock them, shoulder through hanging chains that slap across my face and chest. Something catches my cut. Tears loose. I don’t feel it. I clear the gutted outboards and drive through the back door into cold gray daylight.
The river is right there.
So is Colt.
He is on his back on the dock with his boots hanging over the edge, heels knocking weakly against the timber.
Three rounds took him through his chest. His mouth is open, his eyes fixed on nothing.
The man who put them there is sprawled six feet farther down the dock. Colt must have caught him on the way down, because one of his boots is twisted under him and his gun has skidded almost to the edge.
He scrambles for it.
I’m faster.
He looks up, sees me and knows.
I kick the gun out of reach before his fingers close around it, grab a fistful of his collar, and haul him halfway upright just to slam him back down.
His head cracks against the dock boards hard enough to bounce.
Then I drag him past Buck kneeling over Colt with both hands pressed to his chest even though there’s nothing left to save.
“He’s gone.” Buck’s voice comes from somewhere far off. “Crow. Crow, the kid’s gone.”
I keep going into the garage, his heels bouncing over the threshold and scraping across concrete, past his dead friends.
Nineteen. The quiet door. Half his cut to a sister he will never send another dollar to.
I set Renner’s man in a chair and shove it back against the workbench.
“Wait.” His hands come up. One is shaking. “Wait, man. I can tell you shit.”
I turn away from him.
The tools are hung in rows above the bench. Wrenches graded by size. Pliers. Hammers. A hacksaw with rust along the teeth. Somebody has taken the time to paint white outlines behind each one so they know where everything goes.
My eyes stop on the cutting torch.
Behind me, the chair scrapes.
“I know Renner.” I take the torch off its hook. “I fucking know him. I know where he’s got people. I know—”
The chair scrapes again. Grim puts a boot against one of its legs. It stops.
The man looks at him. “Come on, brother.”
Grim’s face does not move. “Don’t call me that.”
Loco stands off to my right. He has not said a word since we brought this fucker inside. He doesn’t need to. Our prospect is lying dead twenty feet away.
“Kid came at me,” the man says.
My thumb stills against the torch. “What?”
“Your kid. Outside. He fucking came at me. I didn’t have a choice.”
Grim’s takes his boot off the chair and steps toward him.
The man looks from me to Grim, then to Loco. Maybe he finally understands who Loco is, because his eyes stick there.
“Look, man, he had a gun. What was I supposed to do? Just let him—”
Loco’s jaw tightens.
That is all.
I light the torch. The hiss shuts the man up. Blue flame jumps between us.
His eyes drop to it, then back to me.
“Jesus Christ.”
I step closer. “Lash.”
“What?”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t—” I lower the torch and his whole body jerks against the chair. “All right. Fuck. All right.”
Behind me, boots cross the threshold from the dock and hit concrete.
I glance over.
Buck. Alone. Colt’s blood slick on his hands. He looks at the man in the chair, then comes to stand beside Loco. Neither of them says a fucking word.
After that, he talks, but none of it comes easy..
Some of it comes between screams. Some between promises. Some through teeth clenched so hard I hear one crack.
Grim stays close.
Loco watches.
Buck does too, Colt’s blood drying black across his hands.
Nobody tells me to stop.
Once, Grim says, “Crow.”
I look at him. His eyes flick toward the man. Who is still breathing.
I turn back. “Lash.”
“He was here.” The words spill out of him. “Last night. He came through last night.”
“Where is he now?”
“Mountain.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I swear to fucking God, I don’t know. Renner’s got a place up there. Lash took the road out past the old mill and went north. That’s all I know.”
The torch hisses between us.
“What else?”
“Cannery.”
My hand stops. “What about it?”
“The girl.”
Loco straightens.
Buck’s head comes up.
Grim squares his shoulders back.
“What girl?”
The man swallows. “The one Renner took.”
I move close enough that he tries to push himself through the back of the chair.
“When?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“What happens day after tomorrow?”
“He moves her.”