My Soft-Spoken Killer

Chapter 2:The Escape

"Quiet," Sable said.

It was the only answer she had, and she gave it the way she gave her address to strangers: flat, and not at all. She pressed the last strip of tape down over his ribs and checked the dressing under the lamp.

Dark at the edges. Holding. Her glove stayed on it half a second longer than the job needed.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one you get."

Something that wasn't quite a smile pulled at his split lip, and it cost him. His breath hitched. She watched his jaw lock until the wave passed.

"You said stay with me," he said, when he could. "Back there. I heard you."

She had hoped he hadn't.

"You weren't supposed to be awake for that.”

"Too late.”

Then his head turned. Not toward her, toward the road. His eyes sharpened in a way that had nothing to do with pain, and every muscle he had left went still, the way hers did.

"Two engines," he said. "Low. Off the service road."

Sable heard it a second later, a growl under the rain, climbing.

"Yours?"

"No." The word came out flat as a blade.

"Mine would've called first."

Headlights swung across the fence and pinned the lot white.

Sable was already moving when the lights hit. She dragged the tarp over Dash's chest and face, nudged the bucket of soaked rags toward the edge of the dock with her boot, and stepped out into the white with her hands open and empty, because empty hands were the first thing men like these checked for.

Two bikes. Two riders. Black leather, engines idling like something breathing. The tall one swung off his machine and stayed in the beam, a shadow with a lit cigarette.

"Lot's closed, sweetheart."

"Environmental cleanup." She kept her voice bored. Bored sold better than brave. "Property owner contracted us. Spill on the dock."

"At two in the morning."

"Spills don't keep hours." She tipped her head toward the van, where ‘HALLORAN ENVIRONMENTAL’ still showed through the peeling stencil, a company that existed on paper and nowhere else.

"You can call the owner, if you've got his number."

He didn't smile. He walked closer, under the entrance streetlight, where the glare cut her face out of the dark, and stopped an arm's length away to study it. Gray eyes. Black braid. Rain on her lashes. She let him look. Looking was cheap. Remembering was what cost.

Behind her the tarp lay very still. She did not turn to it.

"You see anybody come through here tonight?" he asked. "Friend of ours took a wrong turn."

"No."

"Funny. Nobody ever does."

Past his shoulder, the second rider had drifted toward the fence. His boot scuffed the foam-bleached gravel. He crouched, rubbed two fingers over the stain, and sniffed them.

"Reece." Not loud. Too even. "That's not solvent."

Her left hand found the flare in her pocket without being told. The rags were soaked, the dock was close, and the van was forty yards behind the tarp.

It would have to be enough.

The tall one turned his head toward his partner. That was all the opening she needed.

She had the flare lit and thrown before he finished turning, a red hiss arcing into the bucket, and the solvent caught with a sound like a door slamming and the heat slapped across the whole lot as both men's shadows leapt up the dock wall and the rags went up in a sheet of orange.

"f**k!" Reece reeled back with his arm over his eyes. A shot cracked, blind and high, and punched through the dock rail where her head had been a second before.

She ran.

The van caught on the second turn. She hauled it across the gravel without lights, rain hammering the glass, and slammed it into park beside the tarp. Dash had already dragged himself half upright on one arm, gray-faced, the dressing under his shirt gone dark.

Dash had dragged himself half upright on one arm, gray-faced, the dressing under his shirt gone dark.

"Leave me," he said. "You can still walk away from this."

"I know."

She got her shoulder under his arm and hauled.

He came up with a sound she would hear again later, low and ragged, and then he was on the cargo floor beside the wrapped dead man, his blood soaking into the plastic, his eyes on her face and not on the fire. Not on the men. On her.

"Dark hair! Girl!" someone was shouting behind them. "Tell the boss—"

Three seconds more and she'd have— No.

Drive.

She hit the gas. In the mirror the lot burned orange, and the tall rider lowered his arm and looked straight at her taillights, like a man filing a face away.

The van ran dark for the first mile, then Sable put the lights on, because a van with no lights was the kind that got stopped.

She drove the speed limit. She signaled at empty intersections. Behind her in the cargo bay, Dash lay against the wrapped shape of a dead man and breathed in short, careful pulls, like someone rationing it. When the tires hit a rut, he made a sound through his teeth and said nothing else.

Her gloves were still on. She noticed at the third light, the wheel tacky under her hands, his blood drying on the vinyl.

She had never once driven with a live man's blood on her gloves. It was the kind of mistake that ended careers, and she kept her hands exactly where they were.

No hospital. A gunshot would be reported before the doors closed. No clinic, no friends, nobody on earth she could hand him to without a name attached. The only place left with a door that locked was the one she'd been saving to leave.

She turned toward it.

On the seat beside her, the phone lit. She didn't need to read the name. She had never once lied to him.

‘You were not scheduled for a second body tonight. Explain before sunrise.’