Iron Cast(101)

There was a sound near the back of the warehouse.

“Jackson, go,” Johnny said.

Jackson had jumped out of his chair, clicking the chamber of his gun closed. It was a strange model that Corinne had seen a few times before. Johnny had had them specially made somewhere overseas. Pistols and bullets made entirely without iron. Still just as deadly though.

She realized that the sound had to be Ada and Charlie at the back door. Without thinking, she stood up and rounded the crates.

“Johnny!” she yelled.

Both men’s attention snapped to her.

“Corinne,” Johnny said. She could tell he was surprised but not necessarily alarmed, which she would have preferred.

“You’re a hard man to track down,” she said. She was pleased to find that her voice wasn’t shaking.

“I guess this means that Ada is around here somewhere,” Johnny said. “Jackson, put your gun on Miss Wells, and if she says another word, shoot her.”

“Don’t.”

Corinne heard Gabriel’s voice behind her. She glanced back and saw that he had his gun trained on Jackson. He moved up slowly to stand beside her.

“Now, you’re the last person I expected to see here, Stone,” said Johnny.

“Please tell me you have perfect aim,” Corinne said to Gabriel.

“Better than him,” Gabriel said, nodding toward Jackson. “He was only a few yards away when he missed me.”

“Won’t happen again,” Jackson growled.

Corinne held her breath for a few seconds, hoping to hear the first strains of music, but there was nothing yet.

“Take Saint down,” Corinne said, lifting her hands slightly, palms up. “We can work something out.”

“I think we’re past that now,” Johnny said quietly.

To Corinne’s chagrin, he had stepped partially behind Saint, where Gabriel no longer had a clear shot if it came to that.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she said. There was a quiver in her voice now. She hoped he couldn’t hear it. “We’ve always had your back, Johnny.”

“That’s true,” he said. His eyebrows tilted downward in the barest frown. “I didn’t plan any of this, you know. But you just had to pull the Bengali banker. How am I supposed to run a business when the cops are sniffing outside the doors every night? And when they pass that amendment, the Cast Iron will be finished. I even tried to give you an out. I sent Jackson as Gordon to make sure you thought I was dead. I figured Ada would leave town and you would run back home. It should have been a clean break—except neither of you could leave well enough alone.”

“Told you they wouldn’t,” Jackson said, earning a cutting look from his employer.

“We’ll leave it alone now,” Corinne said, “if you let us take Saint.”

Johnny shook his head. He was pulling something from his pocket—earplugs. Jackson had a pair around his neck and used one hand to shove them into place, keeping his gun hand ready. Corinne realized it didn’t matter where Charlie and Ada were now. It was over.

“Sorry, Corinne. It can’t be helped,” Johnny said. “Jackson, kill them.”

Gabriel grabbed Corinne’s arm and yanked her behind him. She closed her eyes waiting for the shots, waiting for the end of everything.

But there weren’t any.

Just a loud thump, followed by a softer one. She opened her eyes and looked past Gabriel and saw Charlie standing over Jackson’s prone body, gripping his French horn.

“Who would’ve thought these things could be so versatile?” he asked.

From behind Saint, Johnny spat out a curse. Corinne saw the knife glinting in his hand and ran forward, her warning caught in her throat. Saint let out a gasping cry and kicked both legs backward. His heels caught Johnny in the chest, and Johnny stumbled backward, right into the steel bar that Ada was swinging at his head.

He crumpled to the ground without a sound, and Ada flung the hand crank away, wiping her hands on her dress to alleviate the burn. Corinne and Gabriel ran forward to help Saint. They managed to get some of the chains loose from his chest, but even standing on the chair, Gabriel couldn’t loosen the chains from his wrists.

“We have to lower him,” he said. “Up there.”

They could see that the chain was looped over a ceiling brace above and secured on the railing of the warehouse’s mezzanine.

“I’ll get it,” Charlie said, taking off.

“Dammit,” said Gabriel. “Where’s Jackson?”

As soon as he spoke, the warehouse went dark. At first all was silent. Then there was a gunshot, and the world became chaos. Someone knocked Corinne over, and she crawled for the crates she knew were to her right, calling out for Ada and Gabriel as she went. She felt the wooden crates with her hands and tried to move to where she would be covered, but she didn’t actually know where the gunshot had come from.

She shouted for Ada and Gabriel again, and then jumped at Gabriel’s voice in her ear.

“He’s across the room. We need to move farther back.”

She nodded, though he couldn’t see her, and tried to follow his lead. Her heart was skipping every other beat, and her head pounded with adrenaline. She reached out to touch Gabriel, desperate for an anchor in the darkness. Her fingers brushed what must have been his gun hand, because she could feel the cool metal.