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The sound of gunfire had stirred the protest- Carson could see between houses to where some people had gathered at one end of the neighborhood, where there was bottled water and supplies, and where they were now backing off.  It had also drawn some Cavalcantis from a nearby house.

Having already slipped minutes ago, Carson was aware of the danger as he tilted forward into a run with a man held across his shoulders- enough that a long stride and leg power was the only thing that kept him from falling on his face with a man’s weight on top of him.

Staying, though, meant too much risk of being shot.  If they walked into that front hall and then saw their family member, saw the blood trail leading to the back door- they’d arrive there and then there was little but open backyard with only a few pieces of furniture and a slightly raised stone patio between them and Carson.

He couldn’t glance back without turning his whole body, but he could remember where some things were.  He shifted his route slightly, so that bit of stone wall might buy him a bit of cover.

They approached the treeline.

“Slow down!” Bolden barked.

Carson wasn’t sure he could.  Being so top-heavy, the ground wet from sprinklers, the grass sloping slightly toward the trees, it could just as easily go the other way.  Feet going forward, head going back.  He’d be slamming Bolden’s back onto the grass.

“Slow!” Bolden barked, as they got closer.

Couldn’t run through trees with Bolden like this.  The man wasn’t big, or even that heavy, but two injured legs sticking out at one side, head at the other, he’d hit a tree.

So he went low.  The slope meant some runoff had collected here.  The dirt at the base of the trees wasn’t far off from being mud.  Dropping to a kneeling crouch, Carson slid a bit, below low branches.  He shifted Bolden to a sitting position near a tree, then adjusted him, so the man’s back was to a tree, and there was no clear view from the house.

“That little maneuver of yours just dug a muddy trench in the dirt,” Bolden said.  “They’ll see that.”

“Right.  For right now, let’s look at your legs.”

“What good is that if we’re dead in five minutes?” the man growled.  Then, relenting, he said, “Tourniquets in my cargo pocket.  Here-”

Carson was already reaching for a pocket, but Bolden practically slapped his hand away.  He seemed to want to do it himself, but there were two legs… he let Carson take one.

They were professional tourniquets.  Bolden applied it up high, near the crotch, then grimaced as he tightened it.  Carson followed suit.  He’d helped apply an improvised tourniquet before, after an accident while tree planting, but it had been lower down, close to the wound.

Then again, he remembered the paramedics with the helicopter hadn’t been impressed.

There was a distant sound of gunshots.

Carson chanced a look around the trees.  Some Cavalcantis were in the backyard.

“That’s our soldier friend,” Carson said.

“Mmm,” Bolden grunted.  “Shooting or being shot?”

The men started running around the house, toward the front yard.

“Shooting.  To distract and pull them back.”

“Good,” Bolden grunted.  He gave his a final twist.  The tourniquets could lock into the strapping, to stay secure.  Carson started to do it, only for Bolden to do another twist.  “Until the bleeding stops.”

“Right.”

“Why were you calling for us to leave him?”

“Our friend on the phone said to.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.  I’m going to need to carry you out.”

“Keep my legs lower, if you can.  You left them a nice trail to follow.  Don’t even have to be a tracker to see that.”

“Is it too obvious?”

“Hm?”

Carson reached for his bag, opened it, and got out a grenade.  “Could rig something.  But if there’s a chance police come through-”

“No.”

“No?

“Shouldn’t.  Groups like this?  They’ll want to handle it in-house.”

“I know they want to, but they won’t always get what they want.”

“Police are striking everywhere anyway.  Only real law is law you buy for yourself, if you’re rich.  Got wire?”

“Fishing line.”

“I have wire.  Keep an eye out.”

Carson was surprised a guy with two gunshot wounds was holding it together enough to work with wire without his hands trembling too much, but Bolden was that type, maybe.  The guy wiped blood off his hands and onto his shirt, then began tying the wire around the tree he was slumped against.  “Tie the other end.  Tight.”

“Tight?  We’re not tying it to the pin?”

“Tight.  And watch our backs.”

Carson moved, ducking low, and glanced out toward the yard.

Two of the men who’d come over were lingering, not going toward the gunshots.  One was not all that far away.

Close enough he saw the mud?

“Now tie this.  Those trees.”

Carson could see the logic.  He glanced back again.  “We’ve one incoming.”

Bolden snarled, making a face as he grabbed for his crossbow, reached deep into a cargo pocket- it looked like he’d cut out the interior of the pocket and was reaching through to his leg, where he’d strapped something there.  He pulled out a bolt, and locked it into place.  “Get that tied.”

Carson did.

Bolden’s voice was low, quiet, and dangerous, pitched so only Carson should hear.  “And be ready.  Once he drops, they’ll notice.  I’ll hold my shot until it looks like he’ll call for help.”

Man, wire was not cooperative.  It had a shape it wanted to hold, and it was slippery.  Even finding the end he wanted to pull out without pulling it through the coil and tangling it was a pain.

Bolden shot.  The mechanism of the crossbow made a mechanical clapping sound, which echoed through the trees, with the much more muted sound of the impact a second later.

The distant protest, two broad blocks of rich suburb away, was audible in the background.

“Fuck,” Bolden grunted.  “Aim’s shit.”

Carson found the thread, got down on his belly, and used teeth to hold the now-muddy string while he worked with it.  He glanced over.

The man who’d been approaching the treeline had dropped.

Carson used his hands to grab the end of the wire, and began tying it around the little tree.  “You hit him.”

“Was aiming for the upper body.  Hit him in the lower gut.  I’m shot, best crossbowman in the world would have shaky hands, eyes not that focused,” Bolden said, words terse, almost talking through grit teeth.  He used a hand to help move one leg where he wanted it, anguish momentarily crossing his face.  He then reached into that pocket and pulled out another bolt.  “I don’t have a twenty minute standoff in me, kid.”

“Yeah.  Do you want me to?”

“Get that shit tied.”

The man who’d been shot hadn’t screamed, but he was finding his lungs.  He groaned, and the groan transitioned into a shout, then a word.  “Aaa-Elm!  Elm!”

‘Elm’ was apparently the other guy out there in the backyard.  He hadn’t approached, even after hearing the sound, but having his name called drew him closer.  He crouched, though there was no cover.

He and the wounded man talked.

It was a weird reflection of Carson and Bolden.  Two men, one crouched down, one injured, with the treeline being the ‘mirror’ that marked them.

They had traps, those guys had friends.

“Don’t let them call for help.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” Bolden growled.

But he shot.

The man crumpled, crossbow bolt in his armpit, extending into his chest.  He’d been bent over his friend, and so he fell on top of the man.

Around that same time, there were three distant gunshots.

One gunshot answered, from a distant location.

Thank you, Highland.

“Tie it and get us gone.”

His hands shook as he tried to thread the wire, which had a natural curl to it, through the very large loop of the grenade.  Nerves on the one side, with the recent exertion, the situation being fucked, and nerves on the other side, with the explosive about a foot from his face.

Nerves also from those guys out there, and the idea the situation could get worse, fast, if someone spotted them.

Carson’s eyes went out to that situation out there.  One man collapsed on top of the other, struggling to breathe, all eyes turned elsewhere- the rest of that group was in the front yard, too far away to have heard the strangled shout.

“I’m going to grab them,” Carson said.

“Thought about it,” Bolden said.  “Tricky.  If it was me?  I’d run.”

“We’ll run, but it’s better if we bait this hook.”

“Is it tied?”

“No.”

“Move me.”

Carson did, dragging a groaning Bolden over until he was lying by the setup with the grenade.

“Careful,” Bolden grunted.  “They’re not dead.”

Carson hurried forward, head ducked low, smoke mask on.

‘Elm’ being on top of the first victim limited his ability to draw his weapon, and the way he slumped into the bolt that was sticking out of his gut seemed to be causing some excruciating pain, but it didn’t stop his ability to draw.  Carson took a route that kept Elm’s body between himself and the first victim, blocking view and any easy shooting.  Stepping over, he stepped onto the man’s wrist.

Knife in hand, Carson didn’t grab for the weapon.  He bent down, kneeling on top of Elm, stabbed the man’s wrist, and then dragged the blade up wrist toward palm, driving it in and twisting until the gun dropped out of it.

Then, quickly, he stuck that same knife into the side of Elm’s neck, and thrust it into an off-center place in the first man’s.

Elm tried reaching for Carson to stop him, but he was lying on top of one arm, and the movements of the other arm were loose and awkward, without strength, limited by the bolt sticking out of his armpit.  He made wheezing sounds, and blood formed bubbles whenever there was a gap between bolt and wound.

Straight into a lung, by the looks of it.

He dragged the two men across slick grass by the backs of their shirt collars. It pulled on the arrow wound at the armpit, producing more of those frothing bubbles, and gasps.  The other fought more, but with a lack of strength to it.  One hand was blood slick, the other- every time he reached over his head to grab at Carson’s hand at his collar, he made strangled, pained sounds.  Then he’d decide he needed to plug the hole at the side of his neck.

By the time Carson had dragged them into the trees, he was fading.

He then reached into his jacket.

Carson dropped the one, and used his free hand to react, not groping for that hand, that was a full lunging step and reaching arm’s distance away, but for shoulder.

The man was already being pulled at an angle.  By gripping shoulder, he could flip him onto stomach, so he was being dragged along his front- with a crossbow bolt sticking out of his gut.

The man made a pained retching sound, and then farted.

Not a fart.  He’d shit himself.  With feeble movements, the man tried to correct himself so he wasn’t being dragged along his wound.  When he flipped over, the bolt was gone, apparently dragged out of him around the time he’d shit himself, and the wound was emptying out blood mixed with the foulest-smelling brown into his shirt and the mud around him.

Carson finished dragging him around a tree, then deposited him there.  He got the other guy.

He relived the one Cavalcanti soldier of his weapon.  The other had been drawn and dropped when the knife had impaled his hand.

His back hurting and abdomen cramping from dragging weight while bent over, he stood straight, stepped back, and surveyed the scene.

Gap in the trees with drag marks through the drying mud, a shock of crimson in that mud.  Then, a few paces down, wire between two trees, tied tight, to trip.

Someone falling would fall right across the other tripline, pulling the pin.  How long would he take to get up?

It wouldn’t, Carson estimated, be longer than it took the grenade to go off.

Two bodies left behind.  The one guy had reached into his jacket pocket, and the thing had fallen out- a slim wallet, not a weapon.

Carson grabbed it and pocketed it.

“Are you finishing me off?” Bolden asked.

“Why would I do that?”

“I’m useless to you, and you’re apparently someone okay with killing.  I’m better bait than they are.”

“Are you trying to convince me?” Carson asked, mildly surprised.

“I’m nn-” Bolden paused.  “No.  Fucking tired, unfocused.”

“You lost a lot of blood between here and there.  I’m surprised you’re this together.  But that’s why we want you.”

“Hah.”

It was the closest thing to good humor Carson had seen out of Bolden.  A single utterance, without a matching expression.

“Come on, now.  My friend on the phone would be upset, and our soldier buddy would be suspicious.  This works if we all help each other.”

“Yeah,” Bolden said.

“Come on,” Carson said.  “Before they give chase.  Help me help you.  Were you going to pull some trick and kill me if I hadn’t been convincing?”

“Nah.  Not together enough for that,” Bolden said.  He pawed at Carson to get into a good position, groaning at the pain in his legs.  The stick from the tourniquet jabbed Carson’s shoulder.

Carson grunted as he got Bolden into position across his shoulders.  “Fucking workout.  Dragging men around like this.”

“I always left ’em dead.  Leave ’em to the woods.  This shit’s harder.”

“Yeah?  Well, you did your job.  You’ve got some scarily good aim, Bolden.  Three shots with that crossbow, three hits.”

“Bolden.  Nobody calls me that.  I don’t use it.  I don’t ever see anyone.  I have to look up the spelling when I order shit to the mailbox at the end of my driveway.  All I do is shoot shit, extend my little cabin, repair shit, grow shit, shoot more shit, dry masturbate in the woods, shoot more-”

“Don’t tell me you’re a chronic masturbator when your dick’s a foot from my face, Spence Bolden,” Carson said.

The man laughed, and then laughed harder, enough it was hard to carry him.

Carson smiled.

It wasn’t easy, weaving through the trees, picking a path that didn’t smash Bolden’s face into a tree trunk.

“Gotta get you set up again, Bolden.  What did we do last time?  Bought the property, while your name was toast?  Got you your things, your favorite weapons, tools, things they’d be keeping an eye on?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you’ve learned enough to know what sort of place you want.  One with a view?  One by the water?”

“Yeah, an’ my parents sent my ol’ dog away to live with my cousin, where he lived another twenty years on a sunny farm for his ol’ bones.  Like that, right?”

“Not killing you, Bolden.  We’ll get you set up.”

“My parents told that story to my little brother.  Didn’t tell it to me.  They gave me looks.  They thought I killed the dog.  They thought I was that kind of boy, who would.  Maybe they thought it so hard they made it true.”

“You have a brother?  I know you don’t stay in touch, but-”

“Dead.  Drink.  All of them dead.  All I had was the place.”

“Then you had another.”

“It ain’t right.”

“Well, like I said, there are options, if you want to move, upgrade.”

“Shack in the woods in a place I won’t drown or freeze to death is fine, if I have tools.  Gout medicine.  Pain medicine.”

“That’s doable, but don’t you want to set the bar higher?  Woman?”

“Hah!”

“If you’ve got funds, we could arrange something.  If our friend on the phone trusts someone, I’ll trust them.  A pretty lady who’ll come say hi, once every few weeks, once a month?  Our friend on the phone can do some digging, make sure she’s not trafficked, doing it of her own free will.”

“Wouldn’t want- wouldn’t feel right,” Bolden muttered.  “My dad- he chewed tobacco.  Shit stank.  Got everywhere.  The spit, the brown stains around his mouth, teeth, tongue.”

“You smell like you smoke.”

“Yeah.  As a treat.  This was different.  Chewing it?  Different.  Made his mouth a sewer.  I feel like all of me’s that sewer.  Every inch, gross, scarred, cooked by the heat and blasted by the cold, brined in piss and cum, left unwashed for long stretches sometimes.  Stains you.  Wouldn’t- I don’t want that.  Price I’d have to pay to feel like I made dealing with me worth it… can’t afford.”

There was a sharp crack, like Carson had stepped on a branch, but behind him.

The way the echo of that crack sounded marked it as something distant and pronounced.

“You think you got one?  Or did one of the two we left on the ground see it and pull it to save the next guy?”

“Who knows?” Carson asked.

“Think they’ll catch up?”

“They might not want to try,” Carson remarked.

His back was hurting.  More from the earlier exertion than from this.  Turning sideways to carry Bolden through trees was making it worse.

“Hate this,” Bolden muttered.  “Being an invalid.  What the fuck do I do now?”

“I hear you.  But we’ll get you sorted.  What about a dog?”

“A dog?”

“While you’re out on your own.  Loyal companion?”

“Dog.  Chickens.”

“Yeah?  Chickens?”

“Hobbling around like I am, wouldn’t mind the regular food source.  Chickens.”

“That’s a good idea.  Their shit smells, though.”

“You’ve raised ’em?”

“I’ve done a lot of things.”

“The ease with which you kill, I’m not surprised.  Is that born, or learned?”

“That’s a fuzzy as hell line, and I think you know it,” Carson told Bolden.

The reply was a grunt in the affirmative.

⯁

Years Ago

Carson pulled into the parking lot, already moving at a crawl, and stopped, a bit late.  His eyes were on his destination.  It was an apartment building, six or so stories tall, and not a cheap building either.  The windows were tinted, mirrored panels, and the little Carson could see of the apartments inside made it look like they were spacious and modern.

The top floor of the building was on fire.  Lights were on.  Yet nobody evacuated.

Carson checked the address, then grabbed his bags.  Then he armed himself, sitting on the edge of his seat so most of his body was out of sight as he shrugged off his winter jacket, pulled on a holster that crossed his upper body, and then got his gun out of his glove compartment.  He checked it before holstering it and pulling the jacket on.

It was strange, seeing a fire this… dramatic, he supposed, and not hearing the blare of sirens.  Nobody did anything.  The rest of the city wasn’t responding or reacting.

The front doors were glass and swung open.  The inside was heated- not by fire, but by vents.  A marble pedestal had buttons for calling up to the people above.  It was glass walls all around, except for one broad column where the elevator went up, paneled in black, and a broad column for stairs, paneled in black… then exit doors opposite the doors Carson had come in, with a tunnel leading to a parking garage.

The buttons above the elevator were flashing red.  The stairwell-

Carson grazed the metal door with his fingers.  Welded?

He could hear screams, and crying.  Muted.

He saw the figures lying there, outside, with the thick glass of the walls of the ground floor serving to cut the sound down.  Exiting the building and circling around, he saw them more clearly – a woman lying on the ground, screaming.  Her leg had clearly been broken.  A heavyset man was crouched beside her.  Off to the side, a baby lay on the sidewalk, which still had traces of snow at the edges, swaddled, wailing.

Triangular shards on the ground reflected the light from the fire above.  They weren’t ice.  He looked up, around-

A second floor window.  Which might as well have been a third floor window, because the ground floor had a spacious lobby with such high ceilings.  They’d shattered it and jumped out.  Maybe in panic, or they’d thought the fall wasn’t that big a deal.

“Why do I break my leg?” the woman asked.  “I exercise!  You’re the fatass!”

“You’ve been pregnant five times.  Bone density.  I told you we should throw down mattresses and cushions.  But you said we needed to jump now.”

The baby screamed.

The man still wasn’t helping.

“What the hell is going on?” Carson asked.

“Fuck.  People are showing up.  Come on.”

The woman screeched as she got upright.  The man, putting her arm around his shoulder and holding her, supported her, as she limped alongside.

Walking away.

“Hello?” Carson asked.

“Fuck off!”

“You left your… baby?”

“Fuck you!”

“We could bring him,” the mom said.

“We’re not fucking bringing him.  He’s not mine.  Doesn’t look like mine.”

“He is yours, he’s so yours, really.  I swear, I promise.”

“Fuck off with that.”

“You know I love you.  I’m loyal to you.  I haven’t been with anyone else…”

Carson blinked a few times.

He watched as they walked away.  The woman didn’t slow down, struggle, or mention the baby, her focus on professing her love and loyalty, and then something about money.  The father just seemed angry, and maybe scared.

Carson bent down, picking up the child, and then looked up at the burning building.  Not that many floors, but the way the apartments were, the ceilings were high, so it looked taller.

He opened his jacket and held the baby close to warm it.  “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Yeah.”

It was a woman’s voice.  Carson looked up, searching, and saw a man standing in one of the four plots of trees that bordered the edge of the property.  Heavy jacket, hood up, sunglasses, scarf.  Gun.

No, a woman.

“Are you with them?”

“I am not,” Carson said.  He jiggled the baby a bit, moving his jacket to help cover it more.  It was cold from the sidewalk.

“Gentle movements, when you’re reaching for your coat like that.

“Right.  Sorry.”

“You are?”

“Delivery.”

“I didn’t see food.”

“Pot.”

“Show me?”

“Can I open my bag?”

The gun flicked.  Gesturing.

Carson had to work to extricate himself from his backpack, while still holding the baby.  One arm, one shrug and shake, shift, with the awkwardness of a heavy bag hanging off his elbow.

Then, sitting on his ankles, baby on his lap, he unzipped the bag with slow care.  He reached inside and retrieved the parcel.  A block of weed, wrapped in plastic.

“There’s two more.”

“You’re armed.  I see a holster.”

“It’s stupid, when it’s only pot, but this is a lot.”

“Makes sense,” she said.  “Shift position?  Get a better grip on that baby?  Don’t go anywhere or make any fast moves.  I’m not a danger to you.”

“Can I put this back in the bag?”

“Secure the baby, then yes.  Move carefully.”

He put everything back, then put his arms through the straps one by one.  He looked up at the woman.  “You said this makes sense, but… what?  Did you set the fire and weld those doors?”

“They started the fire.  I didn’t expect that.  I was waiting for someone to come.  Police.  Fire department.”

“Police are striking.  Fire departments are undermanned and doing triage.  Whatever gets them to the most locations fastest,” Carson explained.  “Place like this, where the fire won’t spread?  They won’t bother.”

“Oh.”

Windows on the upper floor broke- not because of people, but because of heat, fire, expanding metal.

The shards rained down around them.  Carson backed up a bit.

“Don’t go anywhere.  I’m leaving with that child.”

“Are you?”

“I’ll pay you for the weed, you show me your wallet, so I know who you are, and if you say anything about this, I’ll find you and kill you.”

“Not convinced.  I want to know what happened here.  It’s interesting.”

“I can give you money.  Answers… you might tell people who then come find me.  No.  You’ve already seen so much, I’m very tempted to shoot you.”

“Are you a good enough shot that you know you won’t hit this kid?” he asked.

He backed away a step.

“Stay right there.”

He smiled a bit, and backed away another step.

She fired.  Aiming high.

The baby wailed in surprise, then alarm.

“Shhh,” he reassured it.

“I’ll pay you,” she said again.

“People are going to ask questions.  This was supposed to be a huge sale.  Then it turns out the buyers are dead?”

“What will it take?” she asked.

He took a step back.

“Don’t-“

Her voice cracked with sudden emotion.

She lowered the gun, raised an empty hand, reaching with fingertips slightly curled.  Almost a ‘stop’ gesture, almost clawing at empty air.

Somehow that sound in her voice and that gesture were more compelling than any offer of money so far.

“I don’t know what I have to offer you.  I can offer services… but if I told you, that would be telling you things you could tell others.”

“I’m good at keeping secrets.”

“Not good enough for my standards,” she said, voice soft.

“Do you know him?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Huh.”

“I could kill someone for you,” she said.

“I could kill someone for me.  I don’t think I’d care all that much if I went to prison, the way I’m wired.  Besides, I don’t want anyone dead.”

“Weapons?” she offered.  “Drugs.  Something you could take back to your employer.”

“Wouldn’t that be funny?” he asked, smiling.  “I go to drop off a parcel, come back with extra?”

He couldn’t see her face, but the look in her eyes- she was doing the opposite of smiling.

“I’m not all that, but you could have me,” she said.  “Do anything you want to my body.  One night.  No permanent marks or damage, please.”

He stared at her.

Maybe emboldened by the fact he wasn’t turning her down, she said, “It’s really fine.  It’s not something that matters to me, emotionally.  In exchange, I take him, and you promise me your secrecy.  I’d need a look at your wallet, or some collateral, to know what to do, if it comes out you talked.”

“A little extreme.”

She carried on, “You’ll find out enough about this later, not all of it, but enough to satisfy your curiosity.”

“Then tell me now?”

She looked frustrated.  She turned her head a bit, then looked back to him.

“On the top two floors, they’re the kind of people who have their computers set up with homemade thermite charges.  If something goes awry, they melt the hard drives.  Fourth floor, they film.”

“Kids?” he asked.

“No.  Not usually.  Not like you’re thinking.  Killings on camera.  They found each other, they live together upstairs.  Lower floors are mostly empty, but there are some.”

The woman gestured toward the couple who’d just left.

“Lower floors what?”

“She’s had five kids.  Now she has one.  Her rent’s covered, she’s had big deposits over the years.  Heavy drug use on the mother’s part, money’s running out, the man you saw is convincing himself he’s not the father of that baby there.”

“So it’s easier to sell him upstairs?”

“They wouldn’t buy him.  They prefer adults.  The first three, they waited until each kid was eighteen.  Send them upstairs.  Tell the other kids they ran away or moved out.  Fourth, they got impatient.  Or he got suspicious.  He was sixteen.  I thought I’d trap them, weld the doors to the stairwell, bottom three floors, stop the elevator, notify authorities.”

“But no authorities.”

She shook her head.  “It’s all gone wrong.  You’ve seen me, they’ve seen me.  No sirens, no response.”

Carson turned, walking away.

“Hey!”

He took the stairs double-time, carrying the baby like a football, swaddled and inside his coat.  He drew his weapon, eyes scanning the surroundings.

“Hey!  Stop!  We were negotiating!”

The couple was still limping away, two flights of stairs down the sloped hill that led into downtown.  They were more illuminated by the fire of the building behind them all than by any streetlights or anything nearby.

“I will shoot!”

He reached them, and the man, glancing back because of the woman’s shouted threat, glanced back and saw Carson instead- not that he could do a lot about it.

Carson kicked.

Entangled like they were, the boyfriend and the girlfriend fell down the stone stairs hard.

The woman hit her head on the way down, letting out half a shriek.  The man tumbled awkwardly.

Carson checked the coast was clear- there was a dimly lit path extending in either direction from the midpoint of the extended set of stairs.  Then he pushed barrel to flesh and shot the man.

He did the same for the woman.

He paused like that, taking it in.

He expected to feel more, in moments like this.  Wasn’t he meant to care?  Feel vindicated?  Feel angry?  Sad?

His childhood had sucked, but not so much that it should break him like this, right?  It shouldn’t leave him lacking in some general human things that everyone else seemed to have?  People had been mediocre at best, some had been shitty, so he’d stopped caring about people. He only paid attention to the interesting parts.

When he turned around, he saw her at the top of the stairs.  Backed by flames and mirrored glass.

She backed up a bit as he came back up the stairs, putting his gun away.

“I need him,” she said.  “And I need to go.  In case someone heard.”

“Is the offer still open?”

Momentary confusion.  Then she met his eyes.

“Yes,” she replied.  “But we have to go.”

“I’m parked over there.  I’ll follow you,” he said.

“I’m parked further away.  I’ll need you to drop me off.  I’ll sit in the back seat.”

“Not with that gun.”

“I’ll get rid of mine if you get rid of yours?” she asked.

“I’ll put it in my glove compartment.  You can watch me.  Not easy to get at.”

She nodded.  “Don’t peel away.”

He led her to his car, put the gun away, then watched as she put her gun beneath a nearby trash can, simultaneous with him closing the door of the glove compartment and sitting back.

It really wasn’t the best policy, on her part.  If he’d decided to pop his glove compartment open and shoot- and he had demonstrated he’d shoot without flinching, then she wouldn’t be able to get at her gun nearly as fast.

Her eyes were on the baby he held.

But he didn’t go for the gun, and she didn’t pay for her bad policy there.  She climbed into the back seat, he dropped her off by her vehicle, and then she led the way.  To a pharmacy, first.  They negotiated.  He kept both sets of car keys while she carried the baby in.  She got diapers, formula, contraceptives.  Then she reluctantly gave the child back to him, in exchange for the keys.  She led him to a hotel.

Was it the sexiest thing ever, that she changed a shitty diaper and fed the baby first?  No.  But the sex wasn’t the point, really.  It made sense, taking care of the baby.  Sex didn’t drive him like it drove some- it was interesting, it felt good, but what he wanted out of this wasn’t physical.  The thing he liked about people was deciphering them.  Turning them into assets.  Leveraging that.  Maintaining that.  Could he find a comfortable life that suited his wanderlust and restlessness, by keeping plates spinning?

He wanted to decipher her.  Seeing how she prioritized and acted, thinking back to that half ‘stop’, half clawing gesture, the emotion in her voice- tying that to this?  It pulled him in.

When she took off her clothes, he wondered if he’d been conned.  She had virtually no body fat, to the point that it was unusual for a woman, and she was muscular.  If she’d wanted to tear him apart… he wasn’t positive he’d be able to stop her.

But she didn’t.  A reversal of the gun thing, when he went to her.  Where she technically had the advantage, and he let her.

A surreal moment, the baby occasionally whimpering and stirring in his sleep, lying in the center of the second bed in the hotel room.  The window at the end of the room giving them a view as the building halfway up the hills burned down and nobody saved it or the people inside.

He almost reached the point where he thought that he’d lost out in this transaction.  She was so closed off that there was no deciphering to be had, except to see her unusual physique, and more of her face.

Until she started to cry.  He stopped- and she moved to continue, shaking her head.

Walls let down.  Defenses lowered.  There was something in her eyes-

Sadness?  Loneliness?  Need?

Rekindling his interest all over again.

That was the point he started making love to her, instead.  Instead of the meat-to-meat process of doing what worked for ninety percent of encounters, he saw her, started being tender with her, while searching with lips, tongues and hands for things that she responded to, that he could put to use tomorrow.  Or further down the line.

Then, halfway through a second go, she fell asleep.  He had to suppress laughs, rolling onto his side.

In the morning, he was already awake and sitting on the other bed when she stirred.  She jerked.  “The baby.”

“Sleeping.”

“He didn’t cry?  I normally-”

“He’s been okay.  Whimpered, started to act up, I sorted things  out.  Changed him a few times.  He shits like you wouldn’t believe.  I gave him some formula, burped him, he conked right out, again.”

She still looked tense, like there had to be some step he’d missed.

“You sleep like the dead,” Carson remarked.

“It’s been a long week,” she said.  She leaned back a bit, head touching pillow.  She rubbed at her eyes.  “I haven’t slept.  I shouldn’t have- I cried, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he said.

“It really doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said.  “This.  It was fatigue.”

“Okay,” he replied.  He smiled at her.  “Soothes my ego a bit, weirdly.  You fell asleep on me.”

Her smile was a partial one.  She was tense like he was holding the baby hostage, still.

There was a long silence.  He didn’t mind it.

She watched the baby, lying beside Carson, who kept a sheet draped over himself.  Carson watched her, one hand on the kid, a tiny hand gripping his finger.

The woman in the next bed didn’t take her eyes off the baby when she said, “Someone hired me to hold her daughter for a bit, then escort her to a destination.  Acrimonious divorce.  Her husband worked construction, which the local mob was getting involved with.  She wanted out, she said.”

“Yeah?”

“Details didn’t add up.  Stepkid, but she avoided saying that… okay, not too weird.  I asked her about allergies, medical needs, schooling, and she didn’t know.  Got the age of her daughter wrong.  The facts of the divorce, her husband… the more I found out, the more I dug.  I got her emails.  She was going to sell her stepdaughter to the people upstairs- that was the destination.  To hurt her ex-husband, sheer spite.  I investigated.  Uncovered that.  Checked everyone who lived inside, watched for a bit, then picked a good time.  Or what I thought was a good time.  I was partway through jamming and spot-welding the doors when someone realized something was wrong and alerted upstairs.  I didn’t anticipate the thermite or the fire, that they’d do something that extreme without securing their escape route, first.”

Carson stroked the sleeping baby’s head.

“I’m glad he got out,” she said.  “The daughter is back with her dad.  I don’t think he wanted the mob ties.  Just a nature of how things are going, that you couldn’t do business there, without some involvement.  But I almost gave her to those people.”

Her eyes went to the window.  Carson looked too.  The building was a husk.

She continued, “I had to do something, to… compensate.  Something hard, to make myself pay more attention next time.  Except the thermite… I should have imagined they had something ready.”

“Seems like a way to drive yourself crazy.  If the mistake from the thermite pushes you to do something else that’s hard, and you make mistakes there…”

“I’m crazy like that, I guess.  The way to break the downward cycle is to never make mistakes,” she murmured.  She sat up in bed, back to the headboard, moving the sheet. “That, all of that, it’s not my skillset.”

“There’s no need to defend yourself to me,” Carson said.

She paused, looking frustrated.

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that frustration.  He was usually pretty good, even with awkward or odd people.  It didn’t feel like it was pride, on her part.

“I’d like to take him.  Make sure he’s looked after.  Can we wrap this up?” she asked.

“We could,” Carson said.  “But he’s been looked after.”

He went from the second bed to the first, to her.

She hesitated, then moved the sheet aside to let him under.  Then moved it back, to hide what came next from the baby’s eyes.  Not that it mattered, the kid was fed and dozing.

“Twenty minutes.  Then I need to check for myself, that he’s okay.  And I need to get more supplies.  Clothes.  Things.  He’s not my only responsibility.  We can part ways,” she said.

For twenty minutes, he used the little things he’d found out about her and how she responded last night, and then searched out more- for the next time, for future nights.

He wasn’t ready to part ways.

⯁

Present

He touched her cheek, then her neck.

“Our angel of death says Spence is doing well,” Mia told him.  Distracting from the real subject.  “Good tourniquet, apparently?”

“His work, not mine.  But I know for next time.”

“He should recover fine.  She’s also treating his gout.  But she says the way it breaks down, it’ll be agonizing.  She’ll help him through it.  Five to eight weeks, she thinks, for the gout and gunshot wounds.”

“Good,” Carson said. His fingers found the tension in her muscle.

The ‘angel of death’ was a back-alley doctor who’d sold services, primarily abortion and euthanasia.  A good doctor, still.  She’d harvested stem cells and organs to sell when she could, with the plan of training others, improving her tools and resources to get better harvests, and setting up something bigger, business-wise, but one of the businesses she’d sold organs to had been investigated, and then people had found her.  She’d found Mia, through friends of family of patients.

“What happened?” Carson asked.  “You asked us not to kill him.  Was it not him?”

“It was him,” Mia said.  “Still our target.”

“You know I would’ve kept him alive if it was possible.  But he came at us with an assault rifle.”

“Yeah.  No, I understand,” Mia said.  She sighed.  Her hand went up to his, squeezing it, then moving it, so she could spin in her chair.  “Davie Cavalcanti is laying low.  He has guards.”

“Not too surprising.”

“No.  It’s not.  The Kitchen is out in force, since the kidnappings.  People are upset.  They’re searching, pressuring.  Regularly checking the trail cameras.  Still asking us to work.  But when I traced that call… it went here.”

She showed him a map.  It was of the city.  Two overlapping circles put the district of Frideswide in the overlap.  “Fridgewide” to some locals.

“It’s not clicking for me.”

“It’s Nicholas Cavalcanti.  He’s the person who changed things up, gave us the new person to send away.  Communicated with us.  No drones, because he doesn’t know about those.  That’s why the job was easy.  We kidnapped the three teenagers, set the family against each other, with Davie Cavalcanti highlighted with something weird going on there.”

“Yeah.”

Mia sighed.  “I’m pretty sure that Davie volunteered to step down.  Said he’d do nothing, he’d be under watch, he’d let them take over his end of the business, go completely hands off. ”

“And… with the activity earlier tonight, multiple of Nicholas’s lieutenants and soldiers dead, it looks a lot less like Davie is behind it.”

“They’ve already let him go and resumed business.  He’s flying drones again.”

“That fast?” Carson asked.  “It’d be easy to volunteer to stand down, then have things set up to continue.  Maybe he was told to stand down.  Then when no phone calls came and business continued as usual… especially with the unusual choice of weapon?”

“Yeah,” Mia replied.  “Sounds more right than what I had in mind.  I was thinking about the timing of the protest, our convenient distraction.  It was only organized last minute.  After Davie would’ve been benched.  Could be part of their logic.  Nicholas Cavalcanti isn’t- I don’t think he’s sharp like Davie, but he runs The Kitchen.  He’s not stupid.”

“And Davie’s a control freak, so he wouldn’t have someone below him doing all this without reporting in or getting confirmations, right?” Carson asked.

“Right.  Yeah, you’re right.  Another thing they’re probably taking into account.”

“So.  By killing, we confirmed it’s not him.”

“We gave them enough reason to think so, anyway,” Mia said.  “Most eyes are going to be off him.  Back on us.”

“And Davie’s back in play, he’ll probably be thinking of us as his number one suspect, again.  If he ever wasn’t.”

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