Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

Tim popped up in a shooter’s stance on the sidewalk,. 357 drawn, using the trunk of the rear car as a shield. He fired twice, his bullets punching holes in one of the van’s outswung rear metal doors.

The van screeched out from the curb, laying down five feet of rubber, one rear door secured, the other swinging on its hinges. Tim glanced down to Ventura-the Stork had disappeared from his stakeout post in the phone booth-then stepped into the street. He fired once more as the van rounded the corner, the bullet sparking off the wheel well of the right rear tire.

The sound of the van’s engine faded, leaving Tim with bleating car alarms and the raw, cool pain of road stain on his face. Locks were being turned, doors opened.

Tim jogged back up the block, favoring a tender knee. As he made his way through the adjoining backyards to his car, he called Bear, speaking quickly and concisely to convey all relevant information about the ambush. Bear confirmed the specifics in a voice strained with impatience and anger, then hung up to get on it.

On his way to the 101, Tim passed three cop cars with screaming sirens, and he turned slightly in his seat to hide whatever damage might be visible on his face.

It wasn’t until he’d merged onto the freeway that he realized he’d been shot.

He bled through his T-shirt high on the right sleeve. At a stoplight he peeled it back, revealing two slits in the ball of his shoulder. They were small enough that he figured them to have been caused by fragments rather than direct hits, maybe from a bullet breaking apart when it skipped off the asphalt. He walked his fingers across his back but could feel no exit wounds. Though his right hand could still clench-a good sign-he steered with his left to avoid any unnecessary strain. A dull throbbing took hold of the shoulder, more an ache than a sharp pain. It was manageable.

He parked several blocks from his apartment building and sifted through his war bag in the trunk. He found the appropriate medical supplies and threw them into a plastic grocery bag the car’s previous owner had left wadded up in the far corner of the trunk.

He didn’t have a clean T-shirt or any way to hide the bloody sleeve, so he walked swiftly, head lowered, keeping to the edge of the sidewalk. Crossing the lobby, he heard Joshua’s voice ring out, but he kept walking. Footsteps approached as he waited for the elevator. Grimacing, he slung the bag over his shoulder, letting the two layers of plastic cover the wound. Though the resultant pain wasn’t excruciating, he had to concentrate not to grit his teeth. He turned just barely, keeping the abraded flesh of his right profile out of view.

Joshua was standing at a polite distance, arms folded, hands flattened and pressed against his biceps. “So what do you think of all this business in the news?”

“I haven’t been watching.”

“The Vigilante Three?”

“I heard something about it on the radio.”

Joshua’s expression changed, and he took a step to the side for a better vantage. “Jesus, your face. What happened?”

“I fell off my bike.”

“Motorcycle?”

“Yeah-it’s fine. Happens all too often. I just gotta clean it out.”

“Let me take a look.”

“No. That’s all right. It’s not pretty.”

“You people always think fags are fragile. You forget we’ve seen it all. The eighties were not a kind decade for us.”

The elevator arrived, and Tim stepped on, pivoting to keep his shoulder out of view.

“Last offer,” Joshua said. “I can give you a ride to the emergency room.”

“No, really. I’m fine.” Tim punched the fourth-floor button, and the doors started to slide shut. “Thanks, though.”

Once in his apartment, he wedged the doorstop back into place to secure the front door and gingerly pulled off his T-shirt. A look in the bathroom mirror confirmed there were no exit wounds; the frags were embedded in the dense ball of muscle composing his anterior deltoid. He popped four Advil, then rotated his arm at the shoulder to ensure that it had full range of motion. It did.

He drew a wet rag across the area to clarify the wounds’ edges, then gritted his teeth and sank the tweezer prongs into the first laceration. They went in a good inch before clicking metal. He withdrew the copper sliver easily. It took some rooting in the second wound before he located the fragment. Because it was irregular, the frag came out slow and rough, tearing flesh on the way. He had to stop twice and wipe his forehead to keep sweat from running into his eyes.

He held the squirt top of a bottle of distilled water inches from his shoulder and squeezed hard, sending a probing jet into the wound to flush any smaller particles.

Repeating the process for the second laceration was predictably more painful.

After irrigation with hydrogen peroxide, the wounds looked like two tiny pink mouths. Feeling Terminator-tough, he regarded his work with a measure of satisfaction before bandaging it.

His face was another matter. The flesh all around his right eye was scraped up, leaving what looked like a bloody pirate patch. Tim had to scour out the dirt and bits of gravel with a washcloth.

After putting on a fresh shirt, he used his new outgoing phone to check his old Nokia voice mail. Dray had left a message saying she was still working the leads, no luck yet. The message’s time stamp reminded him that Bowrick had just thirty-six hours left before the recovery center required a reassessment or put him back out on the street.

Lying back on his bed, he exhaled deeply and let his muscles relax.

The Stork, clearly aware of cell-phone-tracking technology, had probably orchestrated the call from Studio City. With his help, Robert and Mitchell had walked Tim into a well-orchestrated trap. It had not occurred to him what a strong team the three made, even without him-the Mastersons providing operational muscle and strategy while the Stork played technological puppet master.

He vowed not to underestimate them again.

He popped four more Advil and fell into a deep, sound sleep-no nightmares, no images of Ginny, no thoughts of Dray, just a blank white corridor of unthought. He woke abruptly after nightfall, sweaty and still veiled in a dream haze. The room was dark, the alley below surprisingly peaceful. The needling question as to what had awaked him sharply from so deep a slumber helped clear his head. His shoulder pulsed impatiently, eager to heal.

He sat up in bed, his legs hanging off the mattress in front of him. He felt constrained in his clothes, which had sleep-shifted around him. His watch showed 9:13 P.M. He stood and went to the window. At the end of the alley, a dark car waited, visible through the steam of the broken pipe. The passenger door opened, but no dome light went on.

Bad news.

Tim turned back, facing the door across his dark apartment.

The slightest scuffling sound in the hall. The pinpoint scratch of dog nails against floor.

Tim thought, How?

His eyes tracked down to the doorstop wedged hard beneath the door, then up to the decoy knob that he’d detached completely from the surrounding jamb. With excruciating slowness, he reached behind him, slid the window open.

A shattering impact shook the apartment. The entire doorknob, propelled by an unseen battering ram, flew from the frame, striking the floor once and smashing into the wall beside Tim. The door itself, pinned by the doorstop, bent in but did not swing open.

From the flurry of shouting, Tim could somehow discern distinct voices-Bear and Maybeck, Denley and Miller. He leapt through the window onto the fire escape as the door splintered and gave way behind him. Immediately the alley below lit with headlights-the car he’d spotted before and another at the south end. As he flew down the ladder, they screeched forward, closing on the fire escape from either side.