Slashback (Cal Leandros, #8)(42)
After moments or minutes, I couldn’t tell, my lungs were slowly beginning to cooperate again. Bit by bit. It was a long time before I was breathing anything close to normal and it would’ve been longer before I remotely thought about trying to get up, but Goodfellow was slapping my face hard and yanking at my arm. “Humans,” he muttered. “You depend far too much on breathing as often as you do. Cal, up. We need to go before Mandy brings back every man, woman, and security guard who swings a mean dildo.”
Niko appeared on the other side of me, took that arm, and between them, they had me on my feet. “All right, little brother?”
I wasn’t going to get into it with Nik over how meditation taught him control over his breathing and therefore he could recover faster than I could. I’d let him have this one, no argument. “Anyone . . . else . . . hit . . . the . . . ceiling?” I gasped as they hurried me along down a different set of halls toward yet another exit only Robin knew about.
“Yes, that was unpleasant,” Niko replied, tucking my Eagle back into my holster as he and Goodfellow slung one of my arms over each of their shoulders in order to move more quickly.
“Rather like I imagine clothing would feel in a dryer—if I were poverty stricken and didn’t have everything I own including my Armani socks dry cleaned.” Robin gave me a concerned glance as we exited into the night. “Did you get that, Cal? I’m incredibly wealthy and snobbish to boot. Aren’t you going to comment?”
It was nice when people cared enough to rub your nose in their high-and-mighty lifestyle in an effort to provoke you and determine you’re not brain damaged from hitting the ceiling. “Fuck you,” I mumbled, my legs working better now that my breathing kept improving.
His lips curved upward in relief. “There’s the ass we know and barely tolerate. Of course there’s no need to believe a mere ceiling would make an impression on your brother, Achilles reborn.”
“Jack will have moved on,” Niko said. “We’ve spoiled his one opportunity to take someone unseen. There is much light and too many people currently rushing about looking for a mysterious attacker for him to be able to accomplish anything further here. This hunting ground is ruined for him. We may as well go home and try again tomorrow.”
“Great.” I tried standing while Goodfellow hailed a cab. “Maybe we should get some oxygen tanks.”
Or, as I’d thought before, move the hell out of New York.
*
The next afternoon I felt surprisingly not too bad. Niko and I both had plenty of bruises, but nothing broken. That was the good news. The bad news was Goodfellow was back and we were having the same conversation we’d had yesterday before the clusterf*ck with Jack. Considering where we’d been while having it, clusterf*ck could have several meanings, but I wasn’t about to say that aloud and have Niko threaten to spar political correctness in me if it took him and my aching muscles the rest of both our lives.
“That was the last day of the convention,” Robin sighed, playing with one of Niko’s knives in the workout area. He was uncannily talented in hitting the crotch on the silhouette printed on the paper targets. “There is nothing else in the city like that right now. Nothing I could think of large enough that it would be guaranteed to draw in Mr. Judgmental.”
“He does seem to have some unknown problem with us or me now that Cal is off his menu,” Niko reminded. “And he did say my turn—or our turn, as Cal has annoyed him greatly and he’ll kill him for that alone—was yet to come. But we can’t depend on that to have him show up anytime soon. He could commit unlimited more murders before he decides to pay another visit. We can’t wait.”
I was sprawled on the couch and reaching for the TV remote when I had a tickle in the base of my brain—the lizard hindbrain where violence and fun are one and the same. “I have an idea.”
Niko blanched, visibly as he hadn’t done at Goodfellow’s plan. To be fair, he’d heard and gone along with more of my ideas over the years. His recovery, as they say, was ongoing. “I’d prefer you didn’t.”
“Have some faith.” This could be good. “He doesn’t like the ethically challenged or the morally conflicted, right?” It was a shame he didn’t want me as I had all of that with a cherry bomb on top. “Fine. Since we can’t narrow down crime, let’s go make some crime. A big one, one he can’t possibly ignore.”
“Please do not tell me what you have in mind.” Nik pinched the bridge of his nose. “I am not a begging man, but, Cal, please.”
My grin was so wicked I was almost disappointed Jack didn’t appear and promptly skin it right off my face. “Let’s burn some shit down. A whole lot of shit.”
I didn’t often come up with the plans, too lazy, but when I did, they were frigging spectacular. When it came to devastation and destruction . . .
I was a genius.
8
Niko
Twelve Years Ago
“I’ve got an idea,” Cal announced.
“No. We are not searching that man’s basement for dead bodies. No. Now do your homework.”
“You don’t know I was going to say that.” He carefully folded one page of his English textbook into half of a paper airplane. “But if I was going to say that, it’s totally genius.” He then folded the opposite page the same way for one complete bound and grounded paper aircraft. Where were Orville and Wilbur Wright when you needed them?