Immaculate Deception

Chapter 5 Episode 5

“Miss me already?” he jokes as soon as he answers.

I rub my temples. It never stops with him. Thinks he’s a f*****g comedian.

“I’m going to ditch the car. I’m guessing Zotov may have hacked into the tracker. Someone is tailing me.”

“There’s a tracker on my car? Damn it,” he grumbles, accepting the loss. “Alright, that’s fine. Probably for the best, actually. You wouldn’t get far in it anyway.”

“I’m not running,” I correct icily.

Gennady starts in on another speech about how this is a just “tactical redeployment” or some other bullshit made-up phrase like that, but I just hang up on him mid-sentence.

I have no patience for that s**t. I’m going to leave the city for a few days, regroup, and come back to wreak bloody vengeance on everyone who’s wronged me.

An ambulance and a few more police cars scream down the road back towards where I came from. I use the opportunity to turn down a side street and desert Gennady’s car along the curb in front of a laundromat.

From there, I take off on foot.

I don’t have much on me. Just a wad of cash, my wallet, and my gun. But it will be enough. When I get wherever the hell I’m going, I can buy what I need.

But to get out of the city in the first place, I need a car. That means I’ll have to steal one.

I zigzag through side streets and alleys, trying to make as unobvious a path as possible through the city. I hear the rush of highway traffic and I know I’m close. If I have to steal a car, I want to be as close to the highway as possible. It’ll be easier to get away from there.

I stride past a line of industrial buildings, a porn shop, and a lumber supply store. I come to a stop on the intersection of the frontage road. Distantly, I still hear sirens tending to the explosion, but traffic is moving fine again.

Good. Now, I just need to find a ride.

Two blocks down is a car parked along the curb, emergency lights flashing. I imagine a ray of heavenly light shooting down from the sky, illuminating it like the gift it is.

Not that I believe in fate or any bullshit like that. The heavens have never sent me a goddamn thing.

Nothing but pain, that is.

I unholster the gun from my hip and jog down the road. I haven’t jacked a car since I was a teenager, but it’s not exactly a skill one needs to hone. You point the gun in the civilian’s face and tell them to get f*****g lost. Simple.

The car would’ve been a nice find ten years earlier. Now, though, the rear bumper is rusted, the back tire is a spare, and the top is covered in hail damage.

Which makes it an oddly perfect choice. No one who knows me would ever suspect I’d drive something like this around.

Through the back windshield, I don’t see anyone inside, but the car is obviously running. I crouch down and approach on the driver’s side.

That’s when I hear a groan.

More of a scream, actually. The muffled cry of someone in obvious pain.

I know the sound well enough, thanks to my line of work. Usually, it means someone undergoing interrogation is losing fingers to a pair of bloodstained garden shears. But I’m pretty sure that’s not the case here.

I glance around, confused, and then keep pressing forward. Until I hear it again.

This time, I realize it’s coming from inside the car. The cry is muffled because the windows are rolled up.

I peer inside. When I see what it is, I’m speechless.

I haven’t been so surprised since I was a boy. In my business, hesitation equals death. But I can’t help it. Can’t help staring, slack-jawed, at the last thing I ever expected to see in this beat-up piece of s**t.

A woman is lying in the backseat of the car, her head resting against the window and her feet pressed against the opposite door. Her hair is a bedraggled curtain plastered to her face with sweat so I can’t see her face.

Her legs are spread and she is naked from the waist down.

I’m so lost staring at the unexpectedly shocking sight before me that it takes me a second to register that she is screaming again and waving her hand at me, gesturing for me to open the door.

“Thank God!” she cries when I open the door in a daze. “I tried flagging someone down, but no one would… Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I need help. Call for help.”

She points between her legs as if I’m stupid. That’s when I finally grasp what’s actually happening.

“For f**k’s sake!” I snarl in surprise. “You’re having a baby.”

As if to underscore what an i***t I am, she arches her back and screams through what I now realize is another contraction.

I’ve seen a lot of s**t in my life that most people will never see. Lots of death and violence and brutality.

But this is something else entirely.

As soon as she can talk again, she breathlessly tells me to call 911.

Instinctively, I nearly do. Then, I remember one little flaw in that plan: The police will come.

I don’t know who I can trust. That means no cops. No telling who’s on Zotov’s payroll.

“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” I offer instead. She’ll be rushed inside to deliver the baby, and I’ll take off with the car. Win-win.

“No!” she shrieks, gritting her teeth as another contraction comes.

I can see she’s right. The baby is coming. Now. We don’t have time to make it to a hospital.

“Call someone!” Her scream is bloodcurdling.

I know what I should do—leave her, find a different car, hope that some other Good Samaritan comes along and helps this poor woman do whatever the hell it is she needs to do.

My life is under threat. Lots of violent men are trying to kill me.

But there’s a tiny little voice in my head that roots me in place. The same voice that told me to turn down the Albanians’ offer of equal partnership in their s*x slave trafficking business. Call it a conscience, an angel on my shoulder, or just a f*****g hallucination. Whatever it is, I can’t ignore it.

And right now, it’s telling me to stay and help.

“I can’t. I don’t have a phone,” I lie, shoving my gun back in my holster before I throw the door wide and kneel down in front of her. “We’ll have to do this right here.”

I do my best to keep my face neutral. There’s no need to make the situation worse than it already is by letting her know I have no f*****g idea what I’m doing.

“Push,” I say as confidently as I can.

“I have to wait for a contraction.”

“Fine. Do that,” I instruct. “Push on the next contraction. I’ll catch the baby.”

Another contraction comes. She begins to push. We do this several times. A contraction comes, she pushes, a brief lull. Rinse and repeat.

On the next contraction, she pushes so hard her eyes roll back in her head. It’s not quite enough. I’m not sure she has many more rounds in her. We’re approaching the point of “now or never.”

The whole world has shrunk down to this.

Her groan builds up. Morphs into an agonized cry.

And then the baby emerges into my waiting hands.

The woman sags at once in pure relief. “Thank God,” she murmurs. “Thank f*****g God…”

But it’s not over yet.

Because the newborn’s body is still and motionless. Eyes closed. Hands limp. Chest unmoving.

“Is he okay?” she whispers when I don’t say anything. She doesn’t look at me. Her head is still sagging back on the car seat and she’s looking up at the ceiling. She’s been through hell and back.

I stare at the unmoving baby and swallow back the words on the tip of my tongue. I don’t know.

“Is he okay?” she asks again when I still don’t answer. Her voice more frantic than a second ago. “What’s going on?”

The baby is ominously silent.

I flip him over onto his stomach and pat his back. I’m just making all this s**t up as I go and hoping I don’t kill an innocent woman and her child.

Still nothing. I’m worried I’m about to have to give this woman the worst news anyone can hear.

A cough turns into a splutter. A splutter turns into a whimper. From there, he begins to wail.

The woman collapses in relief. “Thank God,” she sighs again, laying her head back against the window, exhausted.

I wrap the baby up in my jacket, too focused on making sure the little guy is okay to care about the cold anymore, and hand him to his mom.

Immediately, her entire posture changes. Before, she was limp, spent, on the verge of sinking into sleep.

Now, she’s love incarnate. Her green eyes shine with happy tears, the sweat on her face makes her look luminescent, and she’s smiling as she murmurs sweet things to her screaming baby.

Something about her is tugging at my memory, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.

Then she lifts her baby to her breast. I turn away.