Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

---

Ben had his camera on, and kept it trained, mostly, on the building.  The chants of the Civil Warriors were audible, echoing down the street, and the lights of the torches and flashlights they carried made their group glow, light shining up above the buildings and through the alleys.

Two Cavalcanti soldiers had stepped outside and were smoking, keeping an eye on things.  Elsewhere, some people that might have been squatters were peeking outside, wondering and worrying.

Some were leaving well in advance.  Squatters, not Cavalcanti.

Mia was checking batteries and equipment, putting stuff into groups on the roof of the car.  Coils of neatly arranged cable, cameras, computer equipment.

“Nail gun,” Carson said, to Rider, “and, for convenience…”

Ben jumped a bit as the man whipped out his hand.  He had a telescoping metal rod that whisked out to full length, about four feet.  He fired an experimental nail into the middle of it.

“Put nails through in every direction.  Spike strips.  Go.”

He practically slapped the nail gun into Rider’s hand.

“You carry these rods around for that?”

“They’re microphone stands, monitor stands, bracing to keep something upright, a component for a makeshift table if we’re set up somewhere.  Collapsed, six of them and the easy-insert screws take up a very small amount of space.  So they go in the bag we bring with us if we’re setting up surveillance from an abandoned building,” Carson said.  “Or if instincts say to bring them.  Right now, spike strips.  I said go, and you haven’t started yet.”

Rider glanced at Ben, who nodded.  He fired a row of nails through the thin metal with a series of ‘tok’ sounds, then turned it.

“Ben, are you being useful?” Carson asked, with a hint of condescension.

“Keeping an eye out.  Two soldiers outside, crowd looks to be two city blocks away.  A few people have ventured ahead of the pack.

“Any Cavalcantis leaving from the back of the building?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?  Were you watching?”

“I was.  And I’ve got the camera running, to recheck details, anything I see a glimpse of.”

“Alright.”

Rider put another row of nails through.  He tossed the newly made spike strip aside and got another, whipping it out to full length.

“We can set up some cameras with the signal boosters and a single network, but it’s horribly inefficient, we’d barely get a view of two sides of their setup,” Mia told Carson.

Rider put another line of nails through the new rod.  The rhythm of it made Ben think of a clock that had given up all pretense of keeping accurate time as it counted down, lagging, then rushing to catch up.

“That leaves two sides of the building we’re blind on. I can set up to watch the alley myself, but the back of the building is still uncovered.  The trail cameras rely on cell signal, they won’t work.”

The cameras Ben had seen in the bush and on the ledge in the parking garage, when they’d been leaving the hospital.

“I’m afraid we’re going to need to use cameras of a different sort,” Carson told Mia.  “We have an option with decent fidelity, that can communicate with us even in the absence of cell signals and wifi.  With the bonus of being mobile.”

“People,” Mia said, almost inaudible as Rider put down another line of shots from the nail gun.  He’d narrowed down a method, one end of the rod on a box, one end on the windowsill, rolling it with one hand while the other hand placed the nails.  It meant he didn’t have to do a line, adjust, then do another line.

“It’s the way it was done before cameras,” Carson said.

“Yeah, okay,” Mia replied.  She flipped her laptop screen up.  It took a second to turn on.  Ben watched as she took a deep breath.

She had an injury on her hand, Ben saw.  So did he, bad enough it made it almost impossible to close his hand, even a little.  He could curl his fingers somewhat, but that was it.

Mia continued, “Rider?  Put those at the back road behind the building.  A block away.  Moses, you still want to keep your distance from any fighting?”

“Yeah.”

“Pussy,” one of the people from the background muttered.

“I wouldn’t mind either,” Ben said.  “My hand is injured, I-”

Mia held up a finger.  Ben found himself falling silent despite himself.

“Moses, you’ve earned the right to make that call, you’ve done more than enough so far.  Can you set up somewhere past the spike strips, and tail anyone who slips through?  Then communicate with us when you can?”

“I can tail.  Yeah.”

“Ben, set up cameras, quickly.  One range extender and one camera.”

“How are we for batteries?” Carson asked.

“I don’t think we can use the laptop and cameras for more than an hour,” Mia said.  Carson nodded.  “We don’t need an hour.”

“Here,” Carson motioned to Ben.

“You five,” Mia indicated the group that had come with Moses.

“Who are they?  So I know?” Ben asked, quietly.

Carson listened to Mia giving orders for long enough to get a grasp of what she was saying before turning to Ben.  “We’ve taken to calling them The Kids.  I don’t know them beyond the essentials.  They were before my time, and I’ve been to busy to see them operate.  Valentina would know more.”

“What do I need to know?  Apparently you had the woodsman back at the other place.  And a doctor?”

“People with skillsets.  Back when the Cavalcanti family was setting up, things got intense.  Six or seven of them, under age fifteen, some as young as eleven, wanted out.  Didn’t have ties to home, or were parts of groups or branches that weren’t well loved.  It was a big part of how Mia got started.  Each went somewhere different.  These are the ones who… let’s say they didn’t get straight-As and stay out of trouble.  They went and sought out criminal elements even in their new lives.  Because it’s what they know.”

Ben listened, wary.

“Valentina had their information with a ‘for emergencies only’ note in their files.  She thought Mia and I being kidnapped was an emergency.  Looked them up, called the ones with criminal records, offered money.”

They looked like they were in their early to mid twenties now.  Two young women, three young men.  Some tattoos.

“This is a reunion for them?” Ben asked.

“In many ways.  Some didn’t know each other.  Others did.  There are a lot of directions that group could go, with old traumas and shared background,” Carson said.  “They could be each other’s shoulders to cry on, like family, it could reopen old wounds and traumas, or the worst of them could domineer the others and they could become a dangerous pack.  I wish I’d been around, to aim for the former, but I was focused on you, and preparing for this.”

It sounded faintly accusatory.

“You think about that sort of thing?” Ben asked.  “Fixing things?”

“I’m a father, Ben, more than Natalie Teale was ever a mother to that little boy of hers.”

“You don’t know her.”

“And you, Ben?” Carson asked, ignoring him.  “You’ve been a child.  You’ve done incredible damage, and you still don’t seem to realize your role in all this.”

Ben, being shorter than average, was pretty used to taller men trying to use their size to intimidate him, and he’d learned to shrug it off.  Most of the time, that was easy, because what they were doing would be so transparent.  Here, it felt different.  Carson didn’t get in his face, or get loud.

And Ben could remember the man’s remarks on the bus, just before Natalie was taken.

“You’ve done enough damage, you don’t have a lot of credibility,” Carson told Ben.  “Now do you have more questions, or will you listen about this camera setup?”

Ben tried to act unruffled, saying, “I don’t see why it’s so incredibly important that you give her this setup, when-”

“Mia,” Carson interrupted, turning.  “I’ll do the camera setup.  It should take-”

“I’ll do it,” Ben interrupted Carson, in turn.  “What do I need to know?”

“These are the range extenders.  Set up one, plug it in like this.  Check the rating.  At least for the ones closer to here, make sure the signal strength is good.  If it’s not, move closer.  We’re daisy-chaining the signal, if the first signal is bad, the one connected to it will be worse.  We need views of as much as possible.  With this equipment, we figure we can get a view of two sides of the building.”

“Okay.”

“Mia, depending on how this goes, we should decide if we’re going to safer ground or finding a generator and stealing power.  Even if this goes perfectly according to plan, we’ll need a recharge for those batteries of yours.”

“Yeah,” Mia replied.  She was sending The Kids out.  All of them had guns.

Ben grabbed the devices, putting them into a case Carson had left open, then crossed the building.

Past the window, cast in an yellow-orange glow from the torches and flashlights to the right, and a florescent blue from interior lights from the windows of the building behind, the first of the Civil Warriors were confronting the Cavalcantis.

Ben hurried downstairs, setting up one camera in the window.  He used the wrist of his injured hand to hold the case against his side.  Range extender.  Check.  Good signal.

He exited the building through the side door, which was barely attached, and had to break into the next.  It wasn’t that hard, when the weather damage was extreme.  Inside, there were piles of trash and one sleeping bag sitting in a depression in the floor, with discoloration in the material and the wood.  It smelled rancid and the heat made it worse.

Someone had died there.  Maybe a homeless person squatting here.  Then they’d lay there long enough for the fat to render.  Long enough ago that most of the rats and flies had moved on to greener pastures.  Not so long ago that the smell had faded.

Ben found a window with a view of across the street, set up the camera, tested, and then changed to another window for a better signal.

He went upstairs, being careful on the steps, then crossed the house.  Third camera… the signal was already pretty bad.

He still had his own camera with him, and picked it up briefly.  It was a familiar lens to view everything through, and it was calming.  He couldn’t see the output of the cameras he was placing, but with his own camera in mind, crouching and peering out the window, and with some attention paid to the shape of the lens, he had a pretty good sense of it all.

The entire window had rotted out and fallen, leaving a hole in the wall.  He contemplated trying to make a jump, like he had earlier, to get to an open upper window, but he wasn’t sure he trusted his hand, and he was scared to, given how close the call had been last time.

A light flex of his hand gave him that scraped guitar string feeling again in the tendons.  A wrongness.

In another situation, he’d want to go to urgent care.  But Natalie and Ripley…

He hurried downstairs, climbed through a window, pausing, and approached the side door of another house.

He could see down the alley to the Civil Warriors gathering on the street.  He was about to force his way inside, when he saw light beneath the crack of the door.  It wasn’t locked, but he wasn’t about to try to open it, in case there were eyes on the door itself.

Holding himself close to the door, injured hand throbbing while he held the case of cameras and range extenders to his side, he pressed ear to door.

The sound was so low he wasn’t sure it wasn’t just vibrations he was picking up.  Multiple sets of footsteps.  Heavy and hard on the floor.

So there was a trap planned.  They were right.

It was eerie, that they’d intuited that much.

The remaining range and signal strength weren’t worth doing anything fancy.  He stooped down, set up a camera and range extender, checked the signal strength, then moved forward, leaving something in place with a view at the street level, covered by folded, weather-softened cardboard.

Then, once he was far enough away he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be heard, he ran.  Around the back of one building.  Then behind the next, where the Hursts were, then beyond.

He set up near the foot of the next few buildings, then climbed a fire escape to set up another camera, with a final one giving a rooftop view.

When he went back to the Hursts, it was over rooftops, descending from the roof.  Mia pointed a gun at him when he came down, until she recognized Ben.

Already, there was violence out there.

Mia was standing, computer and two additional screens set up on a counter.

“Two buildings over, there were people inside.  Hiding from the Civil Warriors.  All wearing boots or shoes.”

“Good to know.  That would be the trap they laid for us.  There may be others.  Be careful.”

“Is the camera setup alright?” he asked.

“It is,” she replied.  “Signal strength is strong.  The batteries aren’t.”

It felt like she’d have seized on anything that was worth complaining about.

He grabbed a bottle of water.  It was hot, and his mouth was dry after the fear, the running, scaling the fire escape, and jumping the relatively narrow gaps between rooftops.

“Mr. Jaime,” Mia said.

He glanced at her.

She put her hand on a walkie-talkie, then slid it his direction, before clicking on something on her screen.

When he walked over to grab the walkie-talkie, she turned her laptop so the screen faced him.  She click-dragged out a rectangle to mark out an area.  Left side of the building, just past where the cameras reached.  “I want your eyes there.  There are cars parked on the street.  Get me license plate numbers for these four when there isn’t anything to watch or report.”

“You don’t have an internet connection, right?  You took down all their car information?”

“Go,” she said.  “They’re here.”

He lingered a second, instinctively wanting to challenge her.

But he chugged the water, got the walkie-talkie, and grabbed his camera with his bad hand.  With the way his hand was sliced up and wouldn’t even begin to close, it was almost a comfortable fit, hand slid beneath the strap at the side, partially curled fingers resting against the smooth, curved side of it.  If he cinched it tight, it applied pressure to the wound.

It was true.  The Civil Warriors were here, and the information he’d given them had turned their focus toward this building, among others.  Information had passed to people that others listened to, and the crowd was massing, the bulk of the people standing in the street and gathering just outside the property.  Some had made their way into the parking lot, and others were moving around to the sides and back of the building.

Eight Cavalcanti men were standing at various points in the parking lot or just outside the front door.

“Mr. Jaime, stay on the left side of the street,” Mia’s voice came over the walkie-talkie.  “And get me that first license plate number.”

“Are we invited?  Are you doing anything interesting in there?” a man was calling out.  It wasn’t the start of the conversation- Ben had arrived late to it.

“None of your business,” the Cavalcanti man at the head of the pack stated, voice pitched to carry.  Not a shout, but loud.

“We’re not doing anything wrong.  Are you?  Do you have something to hide?  It looks like you’re having a party.”

Some of the people who were pacing, restless, as the dialogue happened, were gravitating toward Ben.  More so when he wasn’t looking their way.

He decided there was a kind of refuge in audacity, and lifted his camera, watching things through the viewfinder.  It took a second to adjust to the brightness of flashlights and torches, before resolving things to a brightness and clarity that was better than what his eyes provided.

They stopped moving when he had them on camera.

“The license plate, Mr. Jaime.”

“1-W-A-B-9-1-8,” Ben reported.

“Next.  And keep moving away from that group, Mr. Jaime.  They’re itching for a fight, and you’re suspicious.  Stay close to the cars.  Valentina, watch his back.”

Civil Warriors were eyeing him.  The walkie-talkie chatter wasn’t at a level audible enough they’d make out words, but the fact he had a walkie-talkie and there was chatter wouldn’t be missed.

Valentina…  He glanced back.

Valentina was there, in a group of locals who’d stepped outside, and were watching from their front steps.  She’d changed jackets.  It was one that one of the male Kids had been wearing, a bit big, hood up, smoke mask on.

“Reporting in,” a girl said.  “I’ve got movement, southwest.  Runners, young.”

“From the other location,” Carson’s voice came through.  “I see them.”

“Ages?” Mia asked.

“Sixteen, seventeen.  Waylay?” Carson asked.

“Be careful.”

“Michelle, Kenny, you’ll hear them.  Turn off your walkie-talkies.  Stop them.  I’ll be behind them.”

Ben’s focus was elsewhere.  “Want that plate number?”

“Hold on.”

The scene out front was getting more agitated.  People were drawing closer to him, still, but their focus was more on the things happening out front.

“Invite us inside.  Be friendly neighbors.”

“You’re trespassing on private property.  Some of your friends have gone around to the sides and back of our building, into our backyard.”

“Oh, is there a backyard?  Is this a house?” the Civil Warrior called back.  “I didn’t realize!  What kind of house has this many men living in it?  Look at you, snazzy suit.  Your buddy there with his gold necklace.  Seems pretty sketch, man.”

“There are plenty of women inside.”

“That so?  Now I really want in.”

There were lewd chuckles from the Civil Warriors.

“The runners are dealt with,” Carson’s voice came over the walkie.

“Find out what they were running over to communicate,” Mia replied.

“Hear that, guys?  I’m supposed to find out,” Carson said.

“-vate property, it’s late, move on,” the lead Cavalcanti soldier called out.

“You keep saying that.  I don’t think you understand, this is our property, this is our country.  You have what you have because we let you, and you should be on your knees thanking God we let you have it.”

“I was born here.”

“That’s what they all say.  Prove it.  Prove you’re a true blue American, and get the knees of that fussy little suit dirty, kneel, and pray to God, show us all that you know the faith that this country was founded on.  Maybe then we leave you, your private property, and these supposed women alone.”

“Go home.”

“He doesn’t know the words and he doesn’t seem to get it.  You fucking liar!”

That last word was an actual shout.  The entire crowd moved in response, drawing closer, goaded.

Cavalcanti men put hands on guns, which raised the tensions another notch.

“Ben, can you give me a license plate number?”

“Feels like busy work.  1-S-V-E-1-7-3.”

“Puncture the tires on the side furthest from the building.  For as many cars as you can, but that one especially.  If you can do it without tipping them off, that’s good. That belongs to a Cavalcanti lieutenant.  My responses will be sparse.  I’m moving.”

“Runners were communicating a simple message.  They were attacked, they’re being raided by Civil Warriors.  They closed doors and they’re barricaded inside, but they don’t have long.”

“What’s inside?”

Rider’s voice.

There was a pause.

Ben had a box knife, but he hesitated to use it.

He felt too exposed, standing out in the open.  There was only one group of Civil Warriors nearby, but they’d stopped pacing toward him when the camera had come out.  The Cavalcanti’s production building was on the corner of the block, and streets ran along two sides of it.  The building Mia was in was directly in front and across the street from it.  So was the building the Cavalcanti ambush was in, just a bit over to the side.

There was the alley to the right of the building.  Civil Warriors were there.

And here, on this side, to the left of it, from Mia’s perspective, there were the cars parked along the side, the street, and then buildings.  If Ben was a Cavalcanti, and wanted eyes on the street, people ready to drop in and surround any threat or anything like that…

He’d have people there.

And if he knifed the tires, standing here, they’d be looking down on him from the window.  They’d see.

And he’d be in trouble.

Is Mia setting me up?

“I’m not touching the tires,” Ben reported, to the walkie talkie.  “I’m worried I’m being watched.”

“That’s fine,” Carson’s reply was immediate.  “Stay close to Valentina.”

Ben backed off.

He was haflway across the street and halfway to where Valentina was talking to locals, when things kicked off.  He was too far away to hear the exchange that precipitated it, but someone fired a gun.

The sound of that first gunshot echoed through the neighborhood.  It was answered by others.  Ben could see the soldiers taking shots at the crowd, who returned fire.

Some of the men who’d been approaching Ben, who’d stopped when the camera came out, now ran his way.  They took cover behind the cars.

“Hey!” Ben called out.

One of them had a gun drawn, and looked his way, apparently very ready to shoot.

“That car,” Ben pointed.  “It belongs to one of their gang lieutenants.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?  What are you doing?”

“I’m the guy who tipped you guys off about where they stow the drugs and money.  You get money, we get those guys out of our neighborhood, and I get some killer footage along the way.  That’s the deal,” Ben lied.  “If you want to fuck with them, fuck with that car.”

He was very aware that if someone was in the apartments above Valentina, windows open, they might hear.

“And be careful.  They might be watching.”

“It’s true,” Valentina said.  “He comes and goes.  Big guy in a suit.”

“Camera’s off?”

Ben held it up and out, and turned it off, backing off even more, with a few glances over his shoulders, at the windows.  He couldn’t see anyone.

One of the men took a swing at a car window.  His baton bounced off of the glass.  He kept trying, while another drew a knife, dragging it along the door to carve a line out of the paint.

Get the tires.

A chorus of screams made everything seem to slow down.  It wasn’t that some people had been shot, when the Cavalcanti soldiers had opened fire into the crowd.  They had, that wasn’t what the screaming was about.

The soldiers who’d been lying in wait had thrown something incendiary out of the window.  A flare of orange brighter than the torches and flashlights could manage rose up in the middle of the crowd, and people screamed as they burned, or as they were set on fire.

He hadn’t seen it come out of the window.  Maybe it had been there all along, a trapped car.  In anticipation of the Hursts?  Or before that?  In case law enforcement came knocking?

Ben reassessed the situation, then ran over to Valentina, getting her away from the other parked cars and away from suspicious windows.  His hands full, he pressed the walkie-talkie into her shoulder, guiding her back.  He glanced back at the scene.  They were stabbing the tires now.

Without making much noise, men strode out of a building.  They had no light with them, but they had the look of Cavalcanti soldiers.

Two with knives walked up to unaware Civil Warriors from behind while another two drew guns.

Another trap, Ben thought.  One that would have–

Valentina had a gun, and aimed it, hand clearly shaking.

Ben almost reached for that gun, but his one hand had the video camera, the other had the walkie-talkie, and the antenna of the latter came into his view.  In his instinctive urge to reach out and get her to not escalate this or draw attention to them, he’d almost put both the walkie-talkie and his hand in front of the gun barrel.

He didn’t.  And so he didn’t really stop her or redirect her shot.  The gun boomed, within arm’s reach, not all that far from his face.

A man fell like he’d been pushed.

The other turned, but Ben was already getting Valentina away, around the corner of the building.  It hardly mattered, because Mia was there.

It was like some rapid-fire game of escalation.  A fish in the ocean, eaten by a bigger fish, which was eaten by a larger one, which was eaten by a shark, which was eaten by a rarely-glimpsed-until-now monster.

She grabbed the second man with the gun from behind, by shirt collar, necklace pulling back and tight against his neck, and by the back of his pants, and with him already off balance, brought him a quarter-circle around.  Almost face-first into the wooden stairs.  Almost, because he tucked his head.  Which was worse, because the impact made it tuck more.

He didn’t even use hands to slow or stop his fall when she let go of him.  Limp.

Mia, in this case, was the monster.

The two with knives were now being confronted by the Civil Warriors who had turned around.

Mia kicked the one Valentina had shot near the site of the gunshot wound, lower abdomen.

He fell, mouth opening like he was going to retch, though nothing came out, and started to climb to his feet.  Seemingly unaware that Mia hadn’t stopped with the one kick.

While one of his hands was braced against the ground, to push himself up, elbow at a right angle, Mia’s boot came down on the back of his arm.

Definitely broken.  Or shoulder dislocated.  It was hard to tell with the shirt, but the arm looked wrong, within the sleeve.

He screamed, rolling onto his back, knees drawn toward chest, head curved forward, and the whites of his eyes were overly visible before she kicked his head.  It was a short but sharp trip to the sidewalk.

Mia rubbed at her shoulder.

“That was the first time you shot someone,” Mia told Valentina.

“Yes.  Are you hurt?”

“Pulled something a while ago, and I just made it worse.”

Mia’s eyes settled on Ben.  Her hair was messy, the glow of the orange flames and lights from further down the street illuminated her.

“You were going to use me as bait,” Ben said.

“I wasn’t.  We still need every body we can get.  We’re not nearly done,” she said.  “I would have given you direction, but you gave it to yourself.”

“You said to stab the tires.”

“And I would have told you after, that you needed to take cover by the cars.  Drawing them further out.”

Which would have been a terrible, awful position to be in.

Ben gave her a long, hard look.

“Daddy!”

The cry was distant.

There was a kid at the edge of the whole commotion.  Younger than Ripley, older than Sterling.  While bullets were popping through the night air, and people screamed as they burned.

Mia didn’t even hesitate.

“Don’t-!” Ben called out.

But she barely seemed to care about the risk of being shot.  Her strides were long and purposeful, almost but not quite running.  She was just tall enough that the stoop required to pick up the girl who was standing in the road seemed exaggerated, and strong enough that the lifting seemed effortless.  Almost.

“Group coming your way from the back.  Assault rifles.”

Seized with alarm at the idea of Mia Hurst taking another child, and with the idea of assault rifles, Ben was momentarily frozen.

The cracks of rapid-fire bursts of gunshots stirred him from that paralysis.  He found himself raising the camera, injured hand strapped to the side of it.  Had he caught a good image of Mia scooping up that little girl?

He backed away, pulled a bit by Valentina.

The men were taking turns.  They fired bursts of shots, let the guy next to them do the same.  One fired continuously toward the assembled protest, and people scattered, running.

Laying down suppressive fire while they ran to the parked cars.

“Eight men, three men who might be Andre, Arcuri senior, and Elario Luoni.  Addi’s with them,” Valentina reported.

The Civil Warriors who’d mobbed and beaten down the knife-wielding soldiers, some sliced up pretty badly, ran for it.  One ran right past Valentina and Ben.

“If she takes that child…” Ben trailed off.

“That’s not important right this second.  Focus on the plan.”

“If she takes that child,” Ben said, insistent.  “It will spread so much grief out into the world.  Do you know how many tears I’ve seen shed?  In person?  In the community?”

Valentina was silent, jaw set behind that cloth mask on her lower face, eyes red from smoke.  She focused on the squad of men with assault rifles who were providing cover and their own bodies to get some Cavalcanti higher-ups to the cars.

“Or do you not care at all?  You carved up Addi Arcuri’s face.”

“You have no idea what she did to me.  Do you know how many tears I shed?”

“I heard from Sara and Nicole.”

There.

Addi was there in the middle of the huddle, her father hunched over her, arm around her shoulders.  Face still bandaged.

“Carson,” Valentina said, into the walkie-talkie.  “Am I supposed to shoot them from my position?”

“Can you?”

“Not safely,” Ben said.

“Not safely,” she echoed him.

“Hold off, see what they do.  Moses, be ready.”

“They didn’t want to go out the back?” Ben asked.

“Because we left the way too open,” Mia said.

She was behind him.  She’d come around the back of the building, and she didn’t have the kid with her.

Ben had noticed Carson’s presence, but Mia was an equal to the man, standing in the dark like she was.  She was only about as tall as the average guy, but she carried herself in a way that made her seem taller.  There was an ease by which she’d done the violence that made her far more intimidating than the guys who got in his face, screaming, even when she was at rest.

Out on the street, they were noticing the cars had been disabled, tires slashed.

“We’re seeing activity over here,”  reported one of The Kids.

“Confirm for me, that’s Carriage and Bryan?” Mia asked.

“Hunh?”

“The intersection.”

“Bryan avenue and… Pallet street.”

“Good.  Part of the trap is defused, bigwigs plus eight with assault rifles are realizing the cars are disabled.  They should be coming your way soon,” Mia said.

“Where’s the kid?” Ben asked.

Mia pointed.

Ben had to venture further into the alley, risking being seen by the Cavalcantis in the street, to look.  Sure enough, the kid was there, her dad holding her hand, trying to figure out where to go, seeing if there was safety in numbers or if they should just run.

“Ben,” Mia said.  “I never took a child from a parent.”

“That’s a load of bullshit.”

“Valentina’s dad wasn’t being a dad to her.  The man was horrible to her, he abandoned her, he failed her,” Mia said.  She approached close enough to give Valentina a rub on the shoulder, pausing to rub her own, which she’d said she’d pulled.  “Tyr’s parents were the same.”

“Natalie was a mom.  A tired, effectively single mom who hadn’t slept, who had a momentary lap-”

Ben slammed into the brick wall, pain at his throat and collarbone.  Mia’s arm was outstretched, her hand there, in position to choke him, though she’d put most of the force into the collarbone.

The rest of her seemed to follow late, as she stepped in closer, applying more pressure.

He had a gun.

“If you fire that weapon, you kill all three of us and you condemn Natalie Teale and Ripley Hurst to the worst things a bored Davie Cavalcanti can come up with to do to them,” she said, without flinching, her face very close to his.

“Mia,” Valentina murmured.  “Don’t hurt him.”

“It wasn’t a momentary lapse, Mr. Jaime.  Thirty-five to forty minutes in a hot car at that age.  At best, those temperatures, that long?  Kidney damage, brain damage.  Do you think a mother that can’t handle a newborn could handle the aftercare?  Get her to a hospital?  Or would she be negligent again?”

“You can’t know.  You’re jumping to conclusions,” Ben told her.

“No jumping, then.  The shortest, safest trip to a conclusion?  Ripley would have died.  So… if we get through this hell, why don’t you pretend she died?  Have Natalie, if she makes it, do the same.  Lie to her, even.  Because she had her chance.  She had her second chance, something I believe in- don’t I, Valentina?”

“You do.  Don’t hurt Ben.”

He stared the woman in the eyes, breathing hard, hurt.  “You didn’t give her a second chance.  We had to take it.”

“Everyone does.  It doesn’t matter.  She squandered it.  Ripley called us.  She wanted a rescue from that.”

“It’s complicated.  You can’t undo years of history, throw a kid into a chaotic situation, and not expect them to grope for the familiar.”

“It’s simple.  That woman left her child to die.  She was half a mother to Sterling and a failure of a mother to Ripley, before and after I rescued her.  In the car.  After you took her from the school.  That father out there, on that street, I might disagree with him and what he’s doing… but he was looking, fighting, braving bullets and fire, within moments of being knocked over and her getting separated from him.  Natalie took thirty-five minutes and if you perpetuate her lie, I’m done with you.”

Ben set his jaw.

“Because you know.  Either you know, you’ve worked this out, and you’re lying to try to score some win, or you’re such a failure of a journalist and a person you’re useless to us, and I don’t want your help.  I’ll leave you handcuffed to something in this alleyway.  You have to know.”

He glanced at Valentina.

“Ben,” Mia said, and her voice was low enough to touch on being a growl.

“Yeah,” he replied.  “That’s the truth, but it doesn’t make you right.”

Mia stood a little straighter, relaxing the pressure that was pressing him against the wall.  “She left that kid to die.  Then she had a second chance and what did she do with it?  I know my daughter.  And she thought back to what I taught her about emergencies.  She thought ’emergency’ and she thought of a way to signal for help.  I’d ask you what she did, but right now, I want Ripley alive, first and foremost.  You’re at the point where you’re getting in the way of that.”

“I’m not getting in the way of that.  But I do want to make sure Natalie makes it out too.  No games, no situations where she ‘accidentally’ gets shot, or people that support her get asked to puncture tires without the full context.”

“They’re at the cars at the back of the building.  Coming your way, Rider, Carson,” the voices came over the walkie-talkie.

Past the alleyway, the group of men with assault rifles had left.  Back to the other parking lot.  Back to the other route out.

“We should go,” Valentina said.

Mia released Ben.  “We should.”

Then she walked away, leaving him to get a full breath in.

“Can you run?” she asked.

“I-” Ben started.

“Yes,” Valentina replied.  “Not very well, but-”

“Good.”

Mia started to jog.  Valentina followed.

“It’s not just about Natalie, the baby, and you,” Ben said.  “I was telling Valentina-”

“Save your breath to put toward something useful,” Mia said.

“-there’s more to it.  Than her and Addi.  There’s… ripples.  Escalation.”

There were distant bangs.  The sound of gunfire followed.

“We’re closing in.  They’re where we wanted them.”

“Be careful,” Mia said, into the walkie-talkie.  “Give me intersections.”

“Pallet and Elliot.”  Carson.

“Trainer and Burke.”

“Jerry Toth and Rocket… now Trainer.”

“Who’s reporting in at Trainer and Burke, Jerry Toth and Trainer?”

“Rosales and Kenny.”

“Kenny still has the shotgun?”

“Yeah.  And a pistol.”

“Good.  Rosales, draw their attention.  Peek and shoot.  Kenny, move quiet, get closer, you should have a shot,” Mia said.  “I know you’re brave enough to make those shots count.”

“Yeah.”

“Like you were,” Mia said, to Valentina.  “How are you feeling, after?”

“I’m… more worried about you and Ben.  And you…” Valentina didn’t finish the sentence.

“I’m on edge.  I know,” Mia said.

“You’re hurting a lot of people very badly, very easily, and you’re getting aggressive with Ben.”

“Yeah.  They have my daughter.”

“Yeah,” Valentina said.

“The escalation of all of this matters,” Ben said.  “Taking Ripley, it wasn’t just about Natalie.  How many parents lost sleep?  How many tears were shed?  From Ripley, Sean, other people close to them?  How much have you done, to keep the lie going?”

“Lie?” Mia asked.

“She’s not yours, Mia.”

“Carson was right.  You’re a child.”

There was a rattle of gunfire.

“You didn’t give birth to her, she wasn’t given to you.  Courts didn’t assign her to you.  That’s childish, that’s-“

He was interrupted by a crackling voice from the walkie-talkie.  “Got ’em.  Or enough of them.  One might be wounded.”

“Keep your distance.  Wounded is good enough, don’t set yourself up to be shot.  Remember where he is,” Mia said.  “Move back from that position, find good cover. Keep reporting any movements.”

He was having trouble keeping up and she wasn’t running like she was being considerate of him.  The only reason she hadn’t pulled ahead more was because of Valentina.

“It’s like a toddler,” Ben said.  “You’re like a toddler.  I want this, she dropped it, so it’s mine.”

The cars were there, a long distance down the street.  So were the spike strips, hard to see in the gloom- easier to spot because they had extension cords tied to them, and while the extension cords were black, there was yellow print along the edges of the cords.

One card had crashed into the face of a nearby building.  The other had rear-ended it and spun out.  A third had a spike strip bound up, bent, tangled, and riddled with nails, around the wheel and in the undercarriage.

Mia got her phone out.  She made a face.  She brought the walkie-talkie to her mouth.  “Signal’s bad.  Report positions.”

“Jerry Toth and Rocket.  Rosales.”

“Kenny at Burke and Rocket.”

“Carson at Burke and Thoroughfare.  I’ve got eyes on them.  They’re a block down toward Kenny.”

“Michelle, Jermaine, and Julito at Griffin and Florence.”

“Moses at Thoroughfare, where it passes below the highway.  I can barely get your signal.”

Mia had her eyes closed.

She memorized the map?

When she opened her eyes, she was looking at Ben.

“They’re moving on foot toward Carson and Rider.  There’s only five of them now.  Andre, the Arcuris, three men with assault rifles.”

“Close in on their position.  Toward thoroughfare, the main road.  We’re going to hold back, watch in case anyone follows behind them to reinforce or escape.  I hurt my shoulder, I don’t trust my aim.”

“Acknowledged.”

They moved a bit down the road, stopping when they had a glimpse of the group, moving on foot.  One of the men limped and needed support.  Addi Arcuri was there, she had a gun, but she didn’t look like she knew how to use it.

“You’re like a toddler in… how small the world is to you.  We live in a society.”

Mia snorted.

“We live in a society and it’s going to shit, but you’re making it worse.  You might’ve done okay with Ripley, maybe we’ll never know if you got aggressive like you did a few minutes ago and scared her-”

“Never.”

“Or how much risk you put her in, working with criminals who could’ve found you.  I don’t know.  But taking her, doing all this, it’s… it put so much more sadness and fear into the world than it stopped.”

He glanced at Valentina, who looked concerned.

“We owe society more than that,” he said.  “We owe it truth.  We owe it… more.”

“And you, Ben?” Mia asked.  She raised her good hand, gesturing toward the building they’d passed, where the Cavalcantis apparently cut and packaged their drugs, and the fire in the street that framed it.  The people that lay in the street.  All of it backlit by a city without lights.

He took all that in.

“That’s you.  You gave the information to the Civil Warriors.  Are you any better?  How much fear and sadness comes from that?  Fire, death in the streets?  That’s you.”

“Opening fire,” Carson’s voice came over the walkie-talkie.  “Not sure I’ll hit them, but they’re in a good spot.”

“Go ahead,” Mia said.

Ben raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth.  “Watch your back.  They had people in the buildings around the neighborhood.  I wouldn’t rule out a trap, even that far away.”

“Acknowledged.”

There were a series of loud pops as the guns fired.

Bursts of fire from the assault rifles answered.

“Ben,” Mia said, and she was far more intimidating without looming, without even trying to be loud, than any man he’d spoken to.  She radiated menace.  “This is you.  Don’t talk to me about what I owe society.  Because you are a leech.  You are a parasite, who at most has supported someone like Rider, a pseudo-cop with far too little oversight, in going after the bad guys, in exchange for him helping you with things like this.”

“Am I supposed to be intimidated by the fact you know about us?”

“No, what you’re supposed to do, and get this through your thick skull-”

The way she said that made the image of her swinging the man around like a battering ram, face-first into stairs, very vivid in his mind.

He swayed on the spot, almost taking a step back.

“-is reflect.  You are not a man who has ever taken responsibility.  You are a leech that has attached itself to people and things along the way.  To the situation with Natalie Teale, the way you live with her.  To the situations Rider brings you in on.  To this.  And now, with this Civil Warrior situation, you’ve finally done something, and it was shitty and ill-advised but we can use it.  Except you still seem to think you can cling to the situation and get what you can out of it, stuck on the outside, never a part of things, never wanting to get involved, you seem to think it’s like everything else in your life.  You don’t realize how much of this is you, your doing.”

“You don’t know me.  A skim of the internet doesn’t give you some incredible insight into me.”

There was no passion in Mia’s eyes, no wavering.

There were more gunshots.

The shots were coming from two directions and one car wasn’t good enough as cover.  The men made a break for it.

A gunshot popped off, and one collapsed, falling in the road.

“Rider got one.  Good shooting,” Carson reported.

“You want to talk responsibility?” Ben asked.  “Take responsibility for the kidnapping, call it a kidnapping.  Admit the pain it caused.  Own up to that.”

Why did that sound feeble?

Valentina was staring at him.  Studying him.

“I earned millions.  I invested, I prepared, I built, I made contacts.  I’m doing all of this here, fighting, bleeding, killing, because I take responsibility,” Mia said.

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“They’re spreading out,” one of the Kids reported.

“Moving.  Give me positions,” Mia said.  And she walked away from Ben.  “Yours and theirs.”

“Another one down.  I think he was important.”

“Try not to kill the higher-ups.”

“Be careful.  They’re picking up the assault rifles.”

Mia slipped into an alley, moving in a non-direct route toward the people.

Ben wasn’t sure what to do with himself.

Looking back, the image of the kid lost, without her dad nearby, as bullets were whizzing through the air, was stark in his mind, as he saw that building backlit by orange glow, people running this way and that.

It looked like the Civil Warriors were taking the building.

Ben’s hand throbbed.  He was gripping his camera too tightly.

The battery was getting low.

He ventured closer to where the group had been reported to be.  Valentina followed.

When he was close to the site of the crash, he investigated.  Two seriously injured, one unconsicous, one too hurt to even realize Ben was there.  One man had been shot and lay in the street, still alive, but… Ben approached carefully and then relieved the man of his weapon.

There was an assault rifle in the back seat, by the unconscious man.

Ben picked it up.

Valentina watched it all from a few paces away, gun clutched in two hands.

Moving a bit further down the street, he could see the road they’d gone down.  One lay dead or wounded.  The one Rider had shot.

The rest were surrounded, further down.  But they had assault rifles and nowhere to go.

Ben theoretically had a shot, but he didn’t want to shoot someone vital.  Or the teenage girl he’d rescued earlier.

So he situated himself where he could keep an eye on the people in the car and watch things.  Walkie talkie… “It’s Ben, I’m set up at Thoroughfare and Rocket.”

“Acknowledged,” Mia replied.

He laid the device on the hood of a car and hunkered down, camera in hand, pointed in the right direction, albeit with the picture turned sideways, end of the assault rifle balanced on the back of his wrist, finger off the trigger.

He hadn’t fired one of these for a long time, he wasn’t sure he could control it, but he also knew that if he dropped his camera, his hand wouldn’t be any more functional.  It might even be less, if pulling away from the plastic re-opened the wound and distracted him with the bleeding.

A minute passed.  There were some exchanges of gunfire, but they didn’t achieve anything.

Maybe things would change if the group they’d pinned down returned fire a few too many times and ran out of ammo.

Movement caught Ben’s eye.  At first, it seemed like shadows playing with shadow.  Trace smoke in the air and afterimages of trace bits of light playing games.  But he had the camera out, still, and it was auto-adjusting.  It gave him clarity.

A group of four.  They looked like Cavalcantis, and they came out of a building, silent and without much signaling or hesitation, in the same way the ones had with the civil warriors by the car.

“Another piece of the trap just sprung,” Ben reported.  “End of thoroughfare, moving toward your flank.”

“Yep, I see them, they see me,” Rider reported.

There were no gunshots.

But the men backed off, to cover, talking.

They glanced Ben’s way but they didn’t see Ben or Valentina, it seemed.  Because they didn’t react or take cover.

Their flank was exposed.

Ben tried to wet dry lips with a dry tongue.

Aimed.

Was this a way of taking responsibility?  Owning his own piece of what he’d set in motion, as retaliation?

Or was it something awful, instead?  Opening fire on people without warning or self defense?

It’s like taking a picture, he thought.  Camera in my hand.  Everything in perspective.

It was only after he squeezed the trigger that he thought he might’ve been distancing himself again, with that analogy, imagining it was the camera.

But the shot was way off.

He had to reassert where his wrist was wedged between the handguard and the magazine.  There was a spot the handguard didn’t extend all the way back, and his wrist touched hot metal.

He ignored it, adjusted.

They didn’t even seem to realize the direction the shots had come from, at first.  But then they did.  They looked his way, and spotted him.

He hunkered down, taking cover, as they fired.

The sound of a bullet hitting the side of a car made him think about Sterling, the image of the skinny, shy little kid slammed into his mind’s eye with the same force and impact the bullet hit metal.

When he’d started doing more film stuff, as ironic as it was, he’d used gun analogies, thinking about the extensive time he’d spent on the range, some of that with Rider.  Now it was flipped around.

The mental image of Sterling was a reason to survive, here.  But the camera analogy was the only way to convince himself to shoot and maybe take a life.

The second three-burst spray of shots was more on point.

He fired again, as they pulled back, moving to better cover, shooting in his general direction.

Someone else’s shot killed one of them.  Given the direction, it might have been Rider.

Ben exhaled slowly, his entire body humming, pain fresh in his wounded hand, and where his wrist was mildly burned.

He was pretty sure he’d killed two men.  A third was shot but he had no idea if the man was clipped, wounded, dying, or dead.

“Report in, let her know,” Valentina said.

He’d forgotten.  His thoughts weren’t coherent.

But even when he clicked the button, he wasn’t able to summon the very basic words to explain it.

He released the button.

“I got one from the sprung trap,” Rider reported.  “I think that was Ben, he got three.”

“Acknowledged,” Carson’s voice came through.

Ben felt a terrible sadness, hunkered down close to the car wreck.  Fire and bodies in the street behind them.  Bodies further down the road.  People pinned down and terrified, down another street from his perspective.

Just…

He wasn’t sure how to get to the surface and get a gulp of air, from here.

Valentina moved closer, and he watched her, wary.

She didn’t say anything.

“Maybe she was right.  About responsibility,” Ben said.  “But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong, about what I’m saying.”

Valentina didn’t seem to register what he’d said.

Until she said, “She’s my mom.”

“She’s not-”

“She’s my mom.  She’s what I’ve got.”

He wasn’t sure what exactly to say to that, or if he should.  Her expression was troubled, and he decided to leave her to her thoughts, instead.

He wasn’t able to relax, or stop watching for trouble.  Even when some six, seven, or eight minutes passed, and there was nobody emerging to spring a trap, no reinforcements racing in, or any of that… he found himself watching the injured and dead, unable to convince himself that they wouldn’t lurch back up to their feet and start shooting.

Then, just when he’d begun to disabuse himself of that notion, some Civil Warriors ventured their way.  Checking out the parking lot.  But maybe possibly coming to investigate this crash too.  Others were outside, cheering, amped up from recent violence.

Though if he thought about it, it was dark.  There were no streetlights.  They wouldn’t be able to see.

“They’re surrendering,” Valentina said.

He looked.

They were.  He nodded.  With that admission, exhaustion swept over him.

Valentina walked over.  Ben picked himself up, surprised by how much of his body was sore, and found Rider, using the walkie-talkie to report his movements so he didn’t get shot as someone suspicious.

“You can still shoot,” Rider said.

“I surprised myself.”

“We should go over, before they decide to leave us behind.”

Ben nodded.

“You okay?”

He wasn’t sure.

Everything felt heavy.  He needed to get back to talk to Sean, to talk to Sterling.  He needed to- he needed something he hadn’t needed an hour ago.

He was pretty sure he hated Mia Hurst.

“What are you thinking?”

“I think I hate Mia Hurst.  Carson too,” he murmured.  He didn’t want to voice the rest of it.  “They’ve been weirdly cavalier about what they’re willing to share.  Who the Kids are.  Their methods.  What they’ve done before.”

“Yeah?  Okay.”

“Just saying, but…”

“If they’re being that open, we have to wonder if they’re doing it because they’ve agreed to get rid of us after everything.”

Ben nodded.  Rider was on the same page.

Good.

“Be careful, then,” Rider murmured.

They approached the surrendered Cavalcantis.  One soldier, Tony Arcuri, Addi Arcuri, and Andre Cavalcanti.  They’d been disarmed.

“Fuck you,” Addi said, to Valentina.

“At what point is this no longer worth it?” Carson asked.  “Your group has been kneecapped, your usefulness diminished, Nicholas is wounded and hospitalized, now you’re caught, Andre.  The Butcher’s group suffered big losses, and that’s a man who leads with fear.  That’s two key members of the family down, one on his way out.”

“You’re pretending catching me means anything.  I handle some of the business.  That’s it.  I’m expendable, I’ve known I was expendable since I was young.”

“Since you fucked up.”

Andre sighed.

“Rosales is shot,” one of The Kids reported, as he walked up.  “It’s not looking great.”

“I’m sorry I brought you into this,” Valentina said.  “I didn’t realize how ’emergencies only’ that call was.”

“It’s good,” the guy said, with an eerie lightheartedness.  “She’s good.  I think we always wanted it this way.”

Ben was reminded of what Carson had said.  The different directions the group could go.  He wasn’t sure the others believed that.

But they still nodded, and acted like they did.

Like good little soldiers.  It reminded him of the licensed marshals.  The degree of buy-in.

“There’s an outcome to this where you all walk away,” Carson said.  “We disappear.  But Davie Cavalcanti isn’t part of that outcome.  So help us convince the family… or give us a way.  If you… tell us where to go, what to do, no traps, no tricks, we get our people and we disappear.  You can pick up where you left off, some soldiers dead, some businesses… occupied, I suppose.”

“The Civil Warriors took the building,” Ben reported.

“Both,” one of the other Kids said.

Ah.

“People won’t budge.  You won’t convince them,” Andre said.  “People fear Davie too much.  And he’s smarter than you think he is.  Better set up.  It’s not like there’s some secret ventilation hatch I used to sneak out to go to parties, back in high school.  He’s got military surplus, military assets, soldiers, actual soldiers.  His place is fortified.  The city’s on his side.”

“You’re not doing a very good job of convincing us you’re worth keeping alive,” Carson said.  “I don’t think we’re being unreasonable.  Give us a way to get our daughter, that’s it.”

“And Natalie Teale,” Ben added.

“You won’t get them back in one piece.  We’re supposed to pass on a message.”

“No messages,” Carson said.  “None of that.”

“You won’t-”

Carson drew a gun and pointed it at Andre’s face.

“I fear my brother more than I fear the bullet,” Andre said.

“Are you really encouraging me to get creative?” Carson asked.

“I grew up with him.  I know what he is.  And you won’t get your daughter back in one piece.”

“Shut up.”

“Guaranteed.  They already took a piece of her.”

Carson lunged, pushing a gun into Andre Cavalcanti’s mouth.  Maybe with enough force to chip a front tooth.

“He’s glad, he wants you to pull the trigger,” Valentina said, quiet.

Carson looked at her.

“I think a part of me felt the same way.  It’s like… dealing with my- with Davie, growing up with him close by, you want it to be worth something.  It’s like… a win, is that it, Uncle Andre?  If all of it amounts to this, us being unable to do anything?”

“Hoo wo,” Andre said, around the gun.

Carson removed the gun from his mouth.

“Who knows?” Andre asked.

“Let’s split up.  Go back, get some cameras and equipment I left behind,” Mia said.  “We talk to everyone separately.  Valentina?  You ride in the van with Addi.”

“Fuck that, no,” Addi said, alarmed.  “No way.”

Ben frowned, and glanced over.  That was-

“No,” Valentina said.  “That’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

Valentina glanced at Ben.  “No.”

“If you regret this, in years to come, that you had a chance-”

“No.  Really.  I’m saying no.”

“Okay,” Mia said.

Valentina’s expression of concentration and the way she exhaled made it seem like she’d come to the decision after Mia’s confirmation, not before she’d said anything.

“This is so hard,” Valentina said.

“You cut her up, Gio?” Tony Arcuri asked.

“Yeah.”

“You crazy cunt,” Addi muttered.

The man didn’t have any swearing to do, or threats, or anything.  He simply stared at Valentina.

The girl looked exhausted, barely aware of what she was saying.

“Let’s get these people into vehicles.  Separate the Arcuris.  Valentina, with me,” Mia said.  “We’ll talk.”

Tony Arcuri looked over at Ben.  Like there was something he wanted to say.

Yeah.  We’ll talk.

The weight sat heavy in Ben’s upper body and brain.  It felt strange that nobody else noticed it, or asked about it.

Or that Mia had changed, after hearing they’d taken a piece of Ripley, even though Carson hadn’t let Andre finish what he was saying.  She was more dangerous now.  As if she couldn’t or wouldn’t slow down or relent.  She’d only take things further.

And Carson would work with her to do it.  He’d barely flinched at all.

Valentina was buying in.

The Kids were barely flinching at the idea of dying.

What the fuck was Ben supposed to do, stuck in the middle of this?

---

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter