Bang! as the man’s brain, along with the 9mm round from Reese’s Glock, exited the left side of the intruder’s head and splashed the door, his body slumping sideways from the impact before collapsing to the doorway in a useless heap.
Reese pushed off the wall and spun around even as the silhouetted figure outside the window reacted to the gunshot and took the first step toward the door. He got halfway before Reese unloaded into the window. The man’s outline seemed to jerk once, twice, before disappearing underneath the windowsill on the other side.
A car alarm began blaring in the parking lot, which set off a chain reaction.
Reese was leaning against the wall, his chest heaving loudly against the spill of moonlight, when they both heard a steady stream of gunfire from outside. The shooting was so loud and ferocious that it actually managed to drown out the car alarms.
What now?
The idea that there were people shooting each other outside hardly computed before she looked back at the dead man just inside the motel room. She searched for and quickly found the shape of the submachine gun nearby and tried to conjure up a scenario where she could stand up and walk to it and pick it up and shoot Reese with it before he noticed.
She was still cycling through the possibilities when Reese snatched the MP5K off the floor (Goddammit!) before leaning against the open door for support. Reese hadn’t been looking out at the parking lot for more than a few seconds when the gunfire suddenly stopped, the last shots fading until there were just the car alarms wailing away, except now it sounded like more than just one or two fighting with one another for attention.
“Reese,” she said, “who’s out there? What’s happening?”
Maybe she was still too groggy from the pain, from almost dying earlier today (Days ago? Weeks ago? She still didn’t know how long it had been since Andy’s), but it was incredibly difficult to figure out what was happening.
Who were the two men with the MP5Ks? Who was shooting at whom outside in the parking lot? And dear God, what was it going to take to shut up those damn car alarms? She focused on the shattered windows, flinching at the shrill cries of the alarms as they attempted to drill right down into her soul.
Would someone please shut them up!
When she looked back over, Reese was limping toward her. “Time to go, Alice.”
“I can’t move,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. She wished it were, but it wasn’t. She simply couldn’t move at the moment. Just maintaining her current sitting posture was taking everything she had.
“Yes, you can,” Reese said.
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” he said, and holstered his sidearm and grabbed her arm and jerked her ruthlessly up to her feet.
She didn’t even bother to stifle the screams this time.
Sixteen
He didn’t think she would ever stop screaming, and it made the twenty or so feet from the motel door to Dwight and the Chevy feel like an eternity. He wasn’t even sure how he did it, but he kept pushing, dragging her with one hand, the other gripping the MP5K he’d salvaged from one of the dead guys.
One foot at a time. Move, move, move!
Then they were outside and at the car, and Dwight, a scowl on his face, was shouting at him, “Leave her!”
Reese didn’t waste time arguing and instead opened the back door of the Chevy and pushed her inside. She stumbled and fell face-first onto the seat, but thankfully her momentum put her inside the vehicle as he slammed the door shut after her and turned his attention to a white van parked about ten rooms down from them. His ears were still ringing from Alice’s screams, which he guessed was a good thing because it meant he didn’t have to hear the car alarms filling the night air around them with impunity.
“You good?” Dwight shouted from the other side of the car.
Not even close, old sport! he thought, but shouted back, “Yeah, let’s go!”
Dwight unslung the Heckler & Koch UMP45 hanging off his right shoulder by a strap and tossed it into the car before ducking inside after it. Reese gave the parking lot one final look — the two bodies around the bullet-riddled van, a third slumped over the open driver-side window — before pulling open the Chevy’s front passenger-side door. He dug out and dropped the burner phone to the pavement, then smashed it under his shoe before climbing inside.
The Chevy was a stolen replacement for the Ford, which they had ditched in one of the wooded areas on their way to the motel. Reese hadn’t asked Dwight where he had gotten it, though his partner assured him the owner wasn’t going to notice it was even missing until sunup.
With the windows rolled up, they were mercifully spared most of the blaring car alarms. Dwight reversed, then spun the wheel until the vehicle was facing the right direction before he gunned it. In no time, they were back on the road with the motel fading fast in Reese’s side mirror. Dwight floored the gas and their car’s headlights sliced through darkness. Instead of turning back toward the interstate, Dwight took a small country road where they were the only moving object for as far as Reese could see in either direction.
“How many at the room?” Dwight asked.
“Two,” Reese said.
“Lucky you. They were getting ready to send over more before I pulled up. You should have seen the slack-jawed looks on their faces when I whipped out the UMP. Sad-looking motherfuckers.”
“You grabbed any of their weapons?”
“Didn’t have time. You?”
He held up the MP5K. The submachine gun was highly portable and had a pistol grip under the barrel. The long, skinny magazine offered up a thirty-round load. “I should have grabbed the other guy’s, too. More guns are going to come in real handy after tonight.”
“Understatement of the decade, dude.”
“How’d the scavenger hunt go?”
“Fruitful,” Dwight said, and grabbed a plastic bag from between their seats and tossed it into Reese’s lap. “Don’t ask where those came from.”
Reese opened the bag and peered down at a pile of pill bottles. “Where’d you get them?”
“Didn’t I just say not to ask?”
Reese grabbed the first bottle. He had to turn on the ceiling light in order to read the labeclass="underline" Tramadol. It wasn’t the Vicodin he was hoping for, but it was a hell of a lot stronger medicine than the Ibuprofen Dwight had gotten from the gas station earlier tonight.
He sifted through the other labels just in case there was something stronger. They were all prescription-strength painkillers, but the Tramadol was the best of the lot. He popped its lid, shook out two, and gulped them down.
“Easy there, Bend it Like Peckham,” Dwight said. “You get yourself knocked out again, and there won’t be anyone to stop me from taking care of your girlfriend back there.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I very fucking would in a heartbeat.”
Reese grunted, then turned around and looked into the backseat at Alice. She had somehow turned over onto her back and was staring at him. Even though he knew she was in tremendous pain and had been since waking up in the motel room, that didn’t stop her from gritting her teeth and firing daggers in his direction.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I had no choice. It was stay behind and die, or run and live.”
She blinked but didn’t say anything.
If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man a million times over.
“Peace offering,” he said, and took the bottle out of his pocket and shook out two pills, then leaned between the seats and held it out to her. “Painkillers. Blink twice for yes, once for no.”