Into the Fire(40)

“I don’t know,” Evan said, tugging the car door handle. “I might be harder to track down than you think.”

“Oh,” the man said, “I don’t need to track you. I just need to track the dog you rescued.”

A snap of breaking glass announced itself from the darkness by the dumpster. Evan just had time to look up over the top of the open car door when a form melted from the pitch-black, arm raised, aiming at Evan’s stomach.

So, he thought. This is it, then.

Muzzle flash strobed, a trio of gut shots slamming into Evan, and he sensed himself suddenly weightless. The asphalt reared up, smacking the back of his head and filling him with blackness.





22



Not Yet





He was dead.

Of that much he was sure.

What he was less sure of was why he still felt a throbbing between the temples, his head pulsing as if preparing to explode.

His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing right. The stars were wobbly streaks, and the outline of his car, visible over the tips of his boot and his sock, was fuzzy and indistinct. His shirt had tugged up, night air cool against his ribs. One arm was flung overhead as if he were plummeting into the underworld, but his other hand had landed on his belly, which felt smooth and seemingly intact.

Not dead, then.

When he tried to lift his head, a wave of nausea swept through him so intense that it washed the pain away. He lowered his head, blinked through the haze. The stars streaked even more, slashes of blinding light. A tuning-fork ringing warbled in his ears.

Concussion.

From his head slamming into the ground.

He reassembled the previous minute. Walking to his car, his attention on the ground. Unidentified Caller. Shooter by the dumpster.

Stupid, he thought.

The door of his Chevy Malibu stood open before him, the plastic interior shattered by the force of the shots. He’d hung Kevlar armor inside the panels, as he did on all his vehicles, and it had absorbed the shots, slamming the door into him.

Again he tried to get up, and again nausea enveloped him.

The door pulled itself closed, seemingly of its own volition. But then he realized that the shooter had approached from behind it and kicked it shut. Now the man stood in its place, revealed. His arm was still raised, the gun pointed down at Evan, and this time there was no convenient armored door between them.

The head cocked. “Damn, you’re tough,” the man said.

Evan’s hand slid off his stomach.

And caught on the edge of his Kydex holster.

His pistol wasn’t visible in the darkness, but there was no way he’d be able to draw it unnoticed. When he tried to say something, his voice squeezed out of his throat as an unintelligible croak.

The man said, “Say what?”

Evan let his hand slip around the grip of the ARES. He could barely move, but he did his best to flatten his thigh and his knee, clearing the way. The highly molded Kydex would retard the full cycling of the slide, so he’d get off only a single round with the pistol in the holster.

One shot.

He’d better make it count.

He croaked once more, and the man took a step forward. “I said, ‘Say what,’ motherfucker?”

Evan closed his eyes, prayed that the flesh and bone of his leg were out of the line of fire, pigeon-toed his foot to clear it, and pulled the trigger. The first shot blew out the bottom of the holster and the man’s shin. As the man screamed, Evan ripped the ARES free. Barely able to lift his head, he smacked the magazine’s base plate against his thigh, hooked the rear sight on the outer edge of the holster, and ran the slide. The case ejected, spitting to the side, a fresh cartridge chambering, the whole tap, rack, and ready drill done before the man’s howl reached its apex.

Evan cinched his finger around the trigger and kept tugging, the rounds going in the same place but catching different parts of the shooter—knee, hip, gut, chest—as he collapsed.

Evan couldn’t see the man beyond his feet, but he listened carefully and knew him to be dead.

No onlookers, no police sirens, no one drawn by the shots. Any second that would change.

“Get up,” he told himself. His voice came out slurred.

He rolled onto all fours and stayed that way for a few deep breaths before heaving himself to his feet. Moving through a fog, he staggered to the car. The grouping of shots in the door panel had been tight enough to result in a single crater that resembled a collision more than bullet holes.

He collapsed into the driver’s seat, risked a peek in the rearview, and saw what he’d feared—his right pupil, blown wide. Big and dark, it seemed to consume the entire eye.

Hunched over the wheel, focusing carefully on the blurry road, he drove away.

He got four blocks before he screeched over, flung open the door, and vomited into the gutter. He leaned half in the car and half out, the pain behind his eyes so intense that he heard himself laughing dryly.

He’d had plenty of concussions.

None this bad.

A blow this severe actually changed the chemical levels in the brain. Usually it took a week for him to stabilize. He didn’t have a week. He needed rest. He wouldn’t get that either. Not with Unidentified Caller out there.

The fog would thicken at every exertion and stress. He’d have to protect his head at all costs. Second-impact syndrome—getting another concussion before the first had healed—could be fatal.