Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(78)

June, watching the clock. He had to move.

He really didn’t want to light up the whole block. He didn’t want to kill an innocent. A child.

Just go. Make it work, he told himself. You’ve got a vest.

He took a deep breath, the copper taste strong in his mouth. He felt the wild glee of adrenaline mainlined into his system. Would anything ever replace this feeling? There was nothing else like it.

He crawled out from under the rhododendron, low and slow and steady, counting on the night and the rain-spattered windows to hide him. Hoping they were watching the gate, knowing his movement would draw their eye regardless. They were predators, too.

Then he was in the weedy ditch, freezing his knees and balls in four inches of rainwater, the sodden medical boot like an ankle weight. Then up the other side and on his feet, taking five quick steps with the rifle up to his shoulder and firing at close range through the windshield. Three-shot bursts, chest and head, hard to miss. Takatak, takatak, takatak. From that angle, the rounds would die inside the car, or at least slow significantly, not spray the neighborhood with high-velocity rounds.

The men would be wearing vests. He pulled open the side door and saw two big men in street clothes reaching, reacting, guns in their hands, dark flecks on their faces and necks where the windshield glass had turned to shrapnel. But they were still moving, so he brought the rifle back up and put a single shot into each of their heads, painting the inside of the car midnight with their blood.

Now he heard the roar of a big engine as the second Explorer surged toward him from eighty yards away, its headlights popping on as Peter raised the HK and aimed, slow and steady. Takatak, takatak, the windshield turning into a widening field of spiderwebbed holes. The car came faster and faster, his targets getting closer, his accuracy improving. Then he was out and the car kept coming as he fumbled the release, digging for the fresh mag in his coat pocket. He stepped behind the dead men’s car, missing his combat rig and the old M4 that he could reload in his fucking sleep, but he got the mag unsnagged and snapped into place as the Explorer came up, screeching to a stop, the passenger window down and a blood-blackened fist held a handgun spouting fire.

Peter felt two hard punches in his chest. It hurt like hell and twisted him sideways, which probably kept him from taking more hits. He already had the rifle up and now he pulled the trigger hard into full auto and stepped forward, emptying the mag into the Explorer through the open side window. The two men inside were turned into dark wet pulp.

His breath came hard. His ears were ringing but he heard something crunch and another engine revving high as a car came up fast and it was June, having done exactly what he’d told her to do, driven through the gate and turned left at speed.

He ran around the front of the Explorer into the road with his hand up and the rifle down. She stood on the brakes and he opened the door and got in, the HK stock down in the footwell. Her eyes got wide and he realized she was staring at the pair of blackened holes in the front of his raincoat.

“I’m okay, the vest caught it.”

But she’d already stepped on the gas as soon as his second foot cleared the opening. The acceleration closed his door with a thump as she drove smoothly away.





39





June didn’t say a word until Peter’s hands began to shake from the adrenaline comedown.

“Hey.” She reached out and put her warm hand on his cold one and he knew they were okay.

The surface streets were clear, at least the routes June knew, fast runs on two-lane neighborhood feeders, which she would abandon as soon as they became four-lane thoroughfares. Her route was indirect but inevitably southward. The smell of spent powder lingered in the car.

Peter stared out the window while the defroster ran on high, trying and failing to get rid of the humidity from his cold, wet clothes. His chest ached where the vest had done its job. When he undressed, he’d find a painful pair of big purple bruises.

Better than the alternative.

Far better than the other guys.

You just killed four men.

Somehow it was different when you fired first.

At a stoplight she got on the phone and dialed from memory, talking softly. A few minutes later she pulled over in front of a short row of small storefronts. She opened her door. “I’ll be right back.”

He looked at the sign and it said THAI SIAM.

Just another young couple out on a date.

She returned almost immediately carrying a big paper bag and began to stack cardboard containers on the dashboard, laid out forks and chopsticks. The smell of Thai food filled the van.

“I got the basics,” she said. “Not too spicy, only two stars. You want me to get you dry clothes now or after we eat?”

He was shivering, soaked to the bone. “I’ll get them.” He stowed the rifle in the second row and stood on the street under the open rear hatch and stripped off the medical boot, then the black suit.

Rain came down hard, splashing up to his bare ankles on the cold wet asphalt. He figured his new clothes were ruined, but they were so fucking expensive that he folded the jacket, pants, and black topcoat neatly anyway.

Maybe the suit could be salvaged. He was more attached to that suit than any other item of clothing he could remember.

It was the way June had looked at him when he’d put it on.

His back to the sidewalk, rain falling on his bare legs and ass, he stepped hastily into dry underwear and pants as a clatter of high heels got louder behind him. He turned to see a foursome of young Asian women in flowered dresses and clear plastic bubbletop umbrellas failing to avert their eyes as they turned into the restaurant.