Finders/Keepers
An Allie Krycek Thriller
Sam Sisavath
One
Hank was sixty-two and balding, with a paunch he had probably developed after retiring from the state police, and she was going to have to shoot him. She didn’t want to do it, but there was no other choice. They were watching her. More specifically, he was watching her. One wrong move and she would never make it out of the diner alive. In this case, the “wrong move” was not pulling the trigger.
So Allie shot the ex-cop.
He hadn’t seen her standing in the door that connected the back hallway with the kitchen when he sneaked out of the bathroom. The tail of his well-worn dress shirt was draped unsightly over the back of his waist, and her shot hit him in the thigh. He let out a surprised grunt and stumbled forward a couple of steps before his legs — first the right, where her bullet had hit, then the left — buckled under him.
Despite the extra pounds and years, Hank proved to be surprisingly spry and stuck out both hands to stop his face from slamming into the grime-caked floor. Unfortunately that also meant letting go of the black snub-nose revolver clutched in his right hand, and the gun skidded loudly across the diner.
Stay down. Stay the hell down, she thought, even as Hank looked up, spotted his lost weapon, and made the first signs to crawl toward it—
She fired into the tile about six inches from the side of Hank’s head — heard someone gasp somewhere in the diner — and the old man flinched and stopped moving completely. For now, anyway. Before he could change his mind, Allie hurried forward and shoved her knee into the small of his back. Another almost-annoyed grunt from the ex-cop as she shoved the blunt, cold muzzle of the Sig Sauer P250 against his exposed neck.
“Stay down,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
Hank’s arms went stiff and his eyes stared at the hole she had put into the floor next to his head. Even if he had decided to turn completely around to get a look at her, he would have only seen an all-white cheap party mask with holes for her eyes, nostrils, and mouth.
“Problem?” a voice asked.
She glanced up at the speaker. Black dress slacks, white dress shirt, black blazer, and a plain black tie. Like her, a white mask covered his face as he watched her from across the diner — he’d been watching her since they stepped inside the place — while holding a Glock on two beefy truckers sitting in a booth. Their wallets and whatever money they had in their pockets were spread out on the table. There were also two sets of car keys and, of all things, Magnum condoms.
“No problem,” she said.
“Looks like a problem to me,” a second man in a mask said. He appeared from behind the counter and stepped on Hank’s lost revolver before kicking it under one of the booths across the room. He was dressed identical to the first man, and they could have passed for twins if not for the foot height difference. “Heroes get dead, right?” he said, directing it at her.
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“No,” she said again.
The second man exchanged a look with the first.
“You wanted pocket change, you got it,” Allie said. “Murder wasn’t on my to-do list today.”
“You already shot him,” the second man said. “Finish it.”
“And I said no.”
The tall man in the suit chuckled, the sound muffled by the mask over his face. “Fine. Grab his phone.”
Allie rifled through Hank’s pockets but came up empty. “He doesn’t have one.”
“Everyone has a cell phone,” the short man in the suit said.
“Not him.”
“Look again.”
“She already looked,” Tall Suit said. “Time to go, anyway. Oh, someone grab me a piece of that pie off the counter, please?” He turned and, using his gun hand, swept the money, car keys, and condoms off the table and into a plastic grocery bag. A second already-tied bag sat on the floor nearby, and he snatched it up.
Shorty made a noise that sounded like a snort in her direction before hurrying back to the counter. “One more minute and we’ll be out of your hair, folks. Everyone remain where you are.” He swiped the tabletop with his arm, sweeping wallets, money, and jewelry into another plastic bag.
Allie stood up from Hank — glimpsed his head turning slightly, trying to spy her face — and hurried out of the hallway. She passed a half dozen men and women, and two kids that couldn’t have been more than six, all either crouched next to their chairs or huddled in their booths with their hands over their heads. One of the kids — a girl — looked up as she passed, big brown eyes full of curiosity.
At the counter, Allie opened the display case with the apple pies, then nodded at the waitress crouched on the other side doing everything possible to stay hidden behind the chipped wood and steel barrier between them.
“Hey,” Allie said.
The waitress ignored her.
“Hey,” Allie said again, louder this time. “I need this to go.”
The waitress reluctantly met her gaze. “What?”
“The pie,” Allie said. “You got a box or something?”
“Con-container?”
“Get it.”
The waitress stood up on slightly wobbly legs and grabbed a plastic see-through container from a shelf and slid it across the counter. Allie put one of the pieces of pie inside and snapped the lid shut. She could feel the woman watching her the entire time, probably trying to remember everything about her: the black leather jacket; her long, black hair in a ponytail; the gun in her hand…
“Spoon,” Allie said.
“What?” the waitress said. Her name tag read: Rita.
“I need a spoon, Rita.”
“Hurry the fuck up,” Shorty snapped. He was already at the door, with Tall Suit outside, moving through the parking lot.
Allie ignored him and said to the waitress, “Spoon, Rita.”
“Spoon,” Rita repeated, and turned left, then right, before finding the shelf with the utensils. She grabbed one of the spoons and held it out to Allie, as if she were afraid it might burn her hand if she didn’t get rid of it fast enough.
Allie took it. “Thanks.”
“O-okay,” Rita said.
Allie nodded toward the back hallway, where Hank would be if she could see him over the counter. “Get him something to stop the bleeding when we’re gone.”
Rita nodded nervously.
Allie walked at a fast clip across the diner, passing scared couples and families doing their best not to look up at her. A couple of the men did sneak a look, including one of the two truckers in the booth. She glanced toward the back, at Hank. He was still on the floor staring after her. Blood pooled under his right leg, but if he was in pain, he was doing a very good job of not letting it show.
“Took your sweet time,” Shorty said, holding the door open for her.
“The man wanted pie,” she said, and stepped out into the parking lot.
Tall Suit was already in the front passenger seat of the white Nissan waiting for them. Allie climbed into the back while Shorty slipped in behind the wheel, throwing his plastic bag, already tied at the handles, over his shoulder and into the backseat with her. It landed with a thump against the pile next to Allie, where she had deposited her own bundle alongside Tall Suit’s. There were more than just wallets and money in the bags; there were also all the cell phones they had taken from the diner’s patrons.
“Any day now,” Tall Suit said.
The diner’s customers were slowly starting to get up from the floor, a few of them rushing over to where Hank lay in the back hallway. Allie saw Rita, the waitress, putting a towel against Hank’s leg, and she had to fight against her own sigh of relief. If nothing else, they wouldn’t be able to add murder to her list of crimes.