Theaella

25

Matthew signed off and put the phone away. He aimed the key fob at the Chevy Malibu, and the car responded with the double chirp of a mating call. As he reached for the door, the shrill ring of an old-fashioned telephone broke the silence. The sound was so out of place here in the dark parking lot that Matthew had to register the vibration in his cargo pocket to realize it was coming from the phone he’d just hung up.

He took the Turing Phone out again. Caller ID showed: UNIDENTIFIED CALLER.

Matthew clicked to answer and held the slab of rare metal to his cheek.

“The Merriweather job isn’t done.” The accent was hard to place. Maybe Armenian, maybe Georgian, the consonants slow and the vowels deep, forced through gravel.

Matthew paused with his hand hooked under the cold metal of the door handle. He felt his flesh sitting heavy on his bones, the weight of exhaustion. He’d been awake for two days, shot at and chased, tackled and punched, bitten and clawed. He’d wanted the mission to be over, and that wanting had obscured his clarity.

Unidentified Caller was an unknown threat. A moving target. Another mask sliding forward to front a faceless enterprise.

“No,” Matthew agreed. “I thought it was. But I guess not yet.”

He could hear the man breathing across the line. “I know what you did, boy. You interceded on his behalf. You put down Vincent and his men.” He sounded older, into his fifties at least. The words held the dead calm of a man accustomed to dealing with challenging circumstances.

Matthew did not like the sensation spreading like acid in his stomach. That he’d underestimated the situation. That he was up against something more complex and dangerous than he’d anticipated. That things were about to get a whole lot worse.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

“Don’t worry,” Matthew said. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Sooner than you think,” the man said.

Matthew pulled the door open slightly, but something in the man’s voice made him hesitate. Picking his way across the glass-strewn lot with his eyes on the ground, Matthew had neglected the Third Commandment. He shot a glance over his shoulder, but the dull yellow glow of the shop windows illuminated only a flurry of moths beating themselves against the glass.

“I don’t know,” Matthew said, tugging the car door handle. “I might be harder to track down than you think.”

“Oh,” the man said, “I don’t need to track you. I just need to track the dog you rescued.”

A snap of breaking glass announced itself from the darkness by the dumpster. Matthew just had time to look up over the top of the open car door when a form melted from the pitch-black, arm raised, aiming at Matthew’s stomach.

So, he thought. This is it, then.

Muzzle flash strobed, a trio of gut shots slamming into Matthew, and he sensed himself suddenly weightless. The asphalt reared up, smacking the back of his head and filling him with blackness.

Not Yet

He was dead.

Of that much he was sure.

What he was less sure of was why he still felt a throbbing between the temples, his head pulsing as if preparing to explode.

His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing right. The stars were wobbly streaks, and the outline of his car, visible over the tips of his boot and his sock, was fuzzy and indistinct. His shirt had tugged up, night air cool against his ribs. One arm was flung overhead as if he were plummeting into the underworld, but his other hand had landed on his belly, which felt smooth and seemingly intact.

Not dead, then.

When he tried to lift his head, a wave of nausea swept through him so intense that it washed the pain away. He lowered his head, blinked through the haze. The stars streaked even more, slashes of blinding light. A tuning-fork ringing warbled in his ears.

Concussion.

From his head slamming into the ground.

He reassembled the previous minute. Walking to his car, his attention on the ground. Unidentified Caller. Shooter by the dumpster.

Stupid, he thought.

The door of his Chevy Malibu stood open before him, the plastic interior shattered by the force of the shots. He’d hung Kevlar armor inside the panels, as he did on all his vehicles, and it had absorbed the shots, slamming the door into him.

Again he tried to get up, and again nausea enveloped him.

The door pulled itself closed, seemingly of its own volition. But then he realized that the shooter had approached from behind it and kicked it shut. Now the man stood in its place, revealed. His arm was still raised, the gun pointed down at Matthew, and this time there was no convenient armored door between them.

The head c****d. “Damn, you’re tough,” the man said.

Matthew’s hand slid off his stomach.

And caught on the edge of his Kydex holster.

His pistol wasn’t visible in the darkness, but there was no way he’d be able to draw it unnoticed. When he tried to say something, his voice squeezed out of his throat as an unintelligible croak.

The man said, “Say what?”

Matthew let his hand slip around the grip of the ARES. He could barely move, but he did his best to flatten his thigh and his knee, clearing the way. The highly molded Kydex would retard the full cycling of the slide, so he’d get off only a single round with the pistol in the holster.

One shot.

He’d better make it count.

He croaked once more, and the man took a step forward. “I said, ‘Say what,’ motherfucker?”

Matthew closed his eyes, prayed that the flesh and bone of his leg were out of the line of fire, pigeon-toed his foot to clear it, and pulled the trigger. The first shot blew out the bottom of the holster and the man’s shin. As the man screamed, Matthew ripped the ARES free. Barely able to lift his head, he smacked the magazine’s base plate against his thigh, hooked the rear sight on the outer edge of the holster, and ran the slide. The case ejected, spitting to the side, a fresh cartridge chambering, the whole tap, rack, and ready drill done before the man’s howl reached its apex.