Jazz released her seat belt, popped the door and jumped down, drawing her gun before her feet hit the ground. “Stay here,” she said. Lucia slid out after her.
“Wait!” Manny looked scared out of his mind again, the cool, calm stunt driver entirely gone. “Look in the back. Get whatever you need.”
Lucia sent a questioning look at Jazz, who shrugged and led the way around to the rear of the vehicle. She swung open the gate, and…
Wow.
“Manny,” she said slowly, “someday, we’ve really got to talk about how that therapy thing is going.”
She reached over the racked shotgun, the assault rifle, and the assorted handguns to grab two flak vests, standard black. She handed one to Lucia, who looked it over, eyebrows climbing higher.
“FBI standard issue,” she said. “Only these don’t have insignia. I’m guessing Manny’s friends with the supplier.”
They got into the body armor quickly, sealing the Velcro as they went. Behind them, Jazz heard the snap of locks engaging on the SUV. Manny probably had some kind of stunning electrical field on the damn thing, too. She didn’t put much past him, at this point.
Lucia had taken the shotgun. Jazz stuck with her pistol. Together, they moved slowly down the alley, covering each other, keeping focused on the closed double doors on the tin shack at the end of the alley.
“Careful,” Lucia murmured.
“Screw careful. This guy knows he’s been popped, and he’ll kill her as soon as he has the chance.” Jazz moved faster, reached the end of the alley and paused, looking both ways around the corner.
It was deserted. If the cops were on the way, they’d be late. She remembered what Simms and the Society had said about Actors and Leads. Most of the cops clearly didn’t qualify. They wouldn’t affect events, whatever transpired.
It was up to the two of them, and the guy in the shed.
And just maybe, the little girl.
She ran across the open space, light-footed, and put her back against the tin wall, careful not to make any noise. Lucia followed and mimed walking around back. Jazz nodded.
She counted to ten, took a deep breath and used one foot to kick the sliding door on her right. It slid open easily, rattling like a tin can full of marbles; if he hadn’t heard that, he had to be deaf or dead. She waited for any gunfire, heard nothing, and ducked low and around the corner, darted immediately into shadow.
The inside of the place was dark, cool and apparently deserted. No sign of Lucia, either. Jazz held her breath, listening, moving silently across the open concrete floor and constantly checking the shadows for anything that might give her a warning.
She was starting to think that they’d been wrong when she caught a glint of chrome in the far shadows, and heard the ticking of a cooling engine.
And then, very faintly, the muffled whisper of a child’s sob.
She froze, listening, trying to locate the source, but the place was an echo chamber, a terrifying trap of a place, and she just knew that she was looking the wrong way, that he was behind her, creeping up…
She spun, unable to resist the feeling, and brought the gun up. Saw a shape move and nearly fired before she saw a gleam of highlights on long, dark hair and knew she’d nearly shot Lucia.
Lucia put a finger to her lips, half in shadow, and motioned Jazz to the right. She disappeared into the left-hand shadows.
Jazz had only gone three steps when she heard a man’s curse, a child’s full-throated scream and the patter of feet, all coming from off to the left on the other side of the parked car. Something lunged out of the dark, small and ferocious; Jazz reached out, got a handful of sweater and swung the kid around into her arms. She picked her up and backed up fast. She felt the girl’s breath hot against her face, tears dripping onto her skin, got a mouthful of curly brown hair and jerked her head out of the way to try to see what was going on.
Just in time to see a muzzle flash. Not a shotgun, a handgun.
She heard a body hit the floor and metal clatter.
Lucia. Lucia was down.
Get the kid out. Get the kid out first.
Jazz ran backward, gasping for breath, keeping her gun trained on the spot where the muzzle flash had briefly lit up the shadows, nearly tripped over a pipe, and managed to somehow get her balance back without falling full-length. At the door, she set the girl down and crouched next to her.
“What’s your name, honey?” she asked. She spared one second to glance into her face, into honey-colored eyes and a heart-shaped face, tanned golden by summer.
“Marla,” the girl said. “He—he tried to hurt me.”
“I know, Marla, but he’s not going to do it again. Now, you see that big black truck at the end of the alley? My friend Manny’s in it. When I let go, you run as fast as you can straight for Manny and get into the truck, all right? I’ll be behind you in a minute.”
Marla nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. Jazz reached up and wiped some away, managed a fast smile, and pushed her gently out the door.
“Run,” she said.
The kid pelted for the SUV.
Jazz was just turning back to the darkness when she heard a man’s voice whisper, “You can’t do this. Nobody can stop me. They told me, nobody can stop me.”
And then her chest exploded in pain.
She fell back, unable to breathe, waves of red-hot agony sliding over her, trying to pull her down into the dark, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything.
He came out of the dark, a dull shadow, gray, colorless. Too small a man to be making so much of a difference in the world.
She couldn’t breathe.
He raised the gun, sighted on her, then shook his head and whipped it up, taking aim at Marla, who was running down the alley.
I told her to run. I told her to do that. She remembered Simms saying, Everything you do matters.
She couldn’t fucking breathe. Her whole body felt numbed, destroyed by the impact in her chest.
Kevlar. He shot you in the vest. You’re fine, you’re just fine.
Something was very wrong.
Her heart.
She couldn’t feel her heartbeat.
Everything was going dark.
She saw a blinding flash of blue-white light, like a spotlight. An intense glare bright enough to make her want to close her eyes, but she had no control over that anymore, no control over anything, and there was so much silence inside of her.
Simms. Simms was staring at her, and he was saying, Everything you do matters, Jasmine.
She couldn’t breathe.
The light got brighter. Brighter. Overwhelming and burning, like lightning, like lightning racing along her nerves.
Listen.
Everything you do…
A single hard jerk in her chest. A thud.
Everything you do, Jasmine…
Her heart beat a second time. A third. She raised the gun. She didn’t even know how she managed it, because she couldn’t feel her arm, couldn’t feel anything but disorientation and pain and fear, but then her gun was up and she was looking into the face of a killer as his eyes widened.
Everything you do matters.
I know that, she told Simms.
And she fired.
Chapter 10
“O w,” Jazz whispered. “Don’t make me laugh, okay? It hurts to laugh.”
Borden, his arm swathed in approximately a mummy’s worth of bandages, smiled at her and shook his head. “No, I’m completely serious. You and Mooch are all moved in. Manny said he’d give you the alarm code the next time he drops by, because he can’t trust it to anybody else.”
“Not you?”
“I’m guessing especially not me.”