Walter, Jack thought. They want Walter alive, remember?
Then:
I can work with that…
Chapter 11
“Fucking dog,” Jerry said.
“His name’s Apollo,” Allie said.
“Fuck his name.”
“Classy.”
“I got more where that came from.”
“Spare us.”
“Your loss.”
Allie picked up the MP5SD from the floor, but she could tell it was empty by the weight. That wasn’t a surprise, given the state of the second floor hallway; Jerry had unloaded the entire magazine at her. The fact that she had come through unscathed, with only a few nicks here and there from flying debris, was still hard for her to accept.
I should be dead. Jesus, I should be dead right now…
Jerry was leaning back against a tarp-covered armchair, smearing blood that was trickling out of his shoulder into the fabric. He was trying to stanch the bleeding with one gloved hand, the other stretching not-so-subtly toward the handgun lying a few feet from him. He would have lunged for the weapon if a white dog, fur speckled with dried blood, wasn’t growling at him.
“Go ahead,” Allie said. “See if you can reach the gun before he takes a bite out of your neck, the way he did Jones back at the house.”
Jerry grunted and pressed his hand over the other one instead, to help with the bleeding. Apollo eased up and sat down on his haunches, though his eyes never left the man in black.
Allie picked up the handgun from the floor. It was a Sig Sauer and still had a full magazine, so she pushed it into her front waistband to replace the empty Glock she had tossed away.
“Spares?” she asked, pulling the magazine out of the submachine gun just to be sure she hadn’t misjudged the weight. She hadn’t.
Jerry shook his head. “That was the last one.”
“Didn’t think you’d need more than three, huh?”
“Guess not.”
“Too bad for you.”
“Guess so.”
She laid the MP5SD on a dusty tabletop and drew the Sig Sauer. “I bet you have spares for this.”
Jerry didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. She crouched next to him and rifled through his pockets and struck gold with two magazines for the Sig. Then she pulled out and tossed his Ka-Bar knife, watched it vanish underneath another tarp-covered furniture.
In another pouch, she found a bundle of plastic cuffs. “What are these for?”
“Just in case.”
“Why so many?”
“Like I said, just in case.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “I told Jack we should have put you into one of them.”
“You should have insisted on it.”
“Yeah, I guess I should have.”
“Your mistake.”
“One of many, from the looks of it.” He sighed. “It was supposed to be an easy job.”
“That’s what happens when you assume.”
He smirked, but didn’t say anything.
She stood and looked up to the second floor. “Lucy, you can come down now.”
Apollo got up and walked over to the bottom of the stairs as Lucy came down. He got a nice scratch on the head and under the chin for his effort.
Allie turned back to Jerry. “What do you want with Walter?”
“Why don’t you ask your boyfriend?” Jerry said.
“Because you’re here, and he’s not. What do you want with Walter?”
“You’re asking the wrong person, lady. I’m just the hired help.”
She stared at him. Jerry had baby blue eyes, but there wasn’t anything particularly attractive about him. He looked almost too normal, which wasn’t something she expected from people capable of so much violence. Then again, who was she to judge? People looked at her and they didn’t see a woman who had spent ten years of her life hunting down her sister’s killer. She’d spent the last two years of her life putting up a façade that had, until tonight, been completely convincing.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“Which part?”
“Both.”
“Too bad,” Jerry said, when they both heard the very faint pop-pop-pop of gunfire coming from a distance.
She glanced toward the front of the house, as did Lucy and Apollo.
“Did you hear that?” Lucy asked.
“It’s coming from the house,” Allie said.
“Dad…”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Allie said, trying very hard to be convincing. “They won’t hurt him, remember? They need him.” She looked back at Jerry. “What’s happening at the house?”
“Good question,” Jerry said.
“You don’t know?”
“Not a clue.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you’re lying.”
“That seems to be a theme tonight. A lot of people doing a lot of lying.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“But what’s happening back there now, I don’t have a fucking clue,” Jerry said.
She didn’t say it, but she believed him. Jerry looked just as uncertain (maybe even more confused) about what was happening back at Walter’s house.
So what was happening back there?
A voice, very faint, whispering somewhere in the semidarkness.
She leaned toward Jerry. “What?”
“What?” he said back.
Then she remembered: Jerry, walking through the house, talking to someone on the radio.
She reached over and snapped the earbud out of his ear and slipped it into hers, just in time to hear Jack’s voice:
“Jerry, goddammit, come in. You still out there?”
She didn’t answer him, but unclipped Jerry’s radio and took a step back. “Looks like your friend’s in trouble.”
“Sounds that way,” Jerry said.
“You don’t look very concerned.”
“We’re not exactly BFFs.”
“You’re strangers.”
“Basically.”
“Who hired you?”
Jerry grinned at her, but didn’t say anything.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“You asking me all these questions, thinking I know the answers to them.”
“Don’t you?”
“I’m expendable, toots. We all are. That’s why they put us together for this one job. We either get it done and get paid handsomely for our troubles, or we fail and no one hears from us again.”
“Sounds like a shitty job.”
“It keeps the lights on.”
“Unless you fail.”
“There’s always that.” He grimaced and shot a glance at his shoulder.
“Hurts?” she asked.
“What do you think?”
“I think if I’m smart, I should shoot you right now so you can’t do any more damage.”
“You’re right; that would be the smart thing to do,” he nodded.
She stared at him, wondering if he really meant that — if he was that ready to die — or if this was just a poor job of putting on a brave front. She couldn’t tell either way. Jerry had a strangely subdued expression on his face, as if he had already come to peace with his situation. Maybe the man really didn’t care if he died or not after tonight.
It was a moot point anyway. Maybe once upon a time she could have murdered a man in cold blood, but those days were behind her.
“But I’m not a killer,” she said.
“Didn’t think so,” he said, smiling back at her.
While she couldn’t justify shooting Jerry where he sat bleeding, Allie had no problems marching him to the master bedroom on the second floor and tying him up with one of his own plastic handcuffs, then leaving him on the bed shouting muffled obscenities into the handkerchief she’d stuffed into his mouth.