Greg Rucka - Walking dead

"The problem," Alena said softly, "is that everyone you ever trusted is dead."

"No," I said. "Not everyone."

Twenty-one It took her less than a step into the apartment to realize something was wrong, and I heard it in the way she moved, even though the front door was out of sight from where I was seated. Then I heard the door shut again, and I listened to the deadbolt snap back in place, the jingle of keys as they were dropped onto the butler's table by the coatrack.

"Erika?" Bridgett Logan said, coming around the corner.

Then she saw me sitting in the easy chair beside the couch, and stopped cold.

"No," I said. "Me."

She stared, the surprise on her face quickly retreating, her features going neutral. Bridgett's poker face was good, always had been. One of the many things she hated was people knowing what she was feeling.

She looked the same as the last time I'd seen her, could well have been wearing exactly what she'd worn seven years earlier. Black motorcycle jacket over white T-shirt, never mind that early July humidity in New York made it an exercise in masochism to take on such a heavy layer. Black jeans that had seen enough of a washing machine to start turning them gray. Black biker boots, scuffed at the toes. A couple of bracelets wrapped tightly around her right wrist. Even the little gold hoop that pierced the side of her left nostril was the same.

But maybe an extra line or four to her face, the etching just a touch deeper at the corner of the arctic blue eyes. If gray had started trying to find its way into her black hair, she'd either dyed it into submission or eliminated it altogether, strand by strand.

"Atticus," Bridgett Logan said, and the poker face went away, and she smiled at me, her teeth very white against her oxblood lipstick.

"Hello, Bridgett."

"Wait right there, okay?" Her smile broadened, and she showed me her right index finger, indicating just one moment, then pivoted on her toe and headed past the counter that marked the edge of her kitchen, down the hall. I watched her go. At the end of the hall, she ducked right, into her bedroom, out of sight. For a couple of seconds there was silence, and then I heard her fumbling around.

"It's right here," I said.

She stuck her head out of her bedroom, saw me holding up the Sig Sauer in one hand, slide locked back. With my other hand, I held up the magazine for the pistol.

Her smile, if anything, got larger.

"You motherfucker," she said cheerfully, coming back down the hall.

"I didn't want you shooting me before we had a chance to talk."

"That's all right, that's fine." She had reached the kitchen, turning into it. I heard the sound of a drawer being opened, the clatter of cutlery.

"Bridgett." I set the pistol and mag down on the coffee table in front of me.

"Shut the fuck up." She found what she was looking for, turned, showing me a large carving knife, the blade maybe six inches long. "This'll do."

"Bridgett," I said again.

The smile was as bright as ever as she came around the edge of the counter. She was holding the knife all wrong, her right fist tight around the handle, blade pointing down, but I thought telling her that probably wouldn't help things much.

"You really going to stab me in your living room?"

"Yeah," she said, bending her elbow and bringing the knife up to her shoulder. She was still far enough away that I wasn't sure she was going to do it. "I think I am, actually."

There was a knock at the door.

Bridgett stopped her advance, the knife still up.

"You should get that," I said.

She looked in the direction of the door, then back to me, and the smile was no longer anywhere to be seen, most likely no longer in the borough of Manhattan, I suspected.

"Why?" she demanded.

"Because I think it's your sister, and I'm hoping you're marginally less inclined to murder me if there's a nun in the room."

"I could keep her waiting in the hall, let her in after I'm finished."

"That's true. Hard to explain, though."

"I hate you," Bridgett Logan informed me, tossing the knife onto her couch, and moving out of sight again, this time to answer the door. I heard her greeting her sister, a mock cry of "Cashel! What a surprise! Come in, come in!" and took the time to get up enough to move the knife from the couch to the coffee table, setting it beside the pistol.

Cashel came into sight first, Bridgett following her. Together, there was no mistaking the family resemblance, though Cashel was an inch or two shorter than her older sister's six feet, her eyes more gray than blue. She was wearing a tan blazer over a white blouse and black slacks, removing the coat as she entered. I could see the lapel pin on the blazer, the tall and thin rectangle with the engraving of a rolling hillside, a cross at its summit, the symbol of her order.

She smiled when she saw me, and unlike Bridgett's, it was genuine. "Atticus."

"Hello, Sister."

Her eyes caught the implements of death and pain on the coffee table, and the smile shrank, turned wry.

"Looks like you were correct," Cashel said.

I shrugged.

Bridgett, nostrils flaring, glared at her sister, then at me, then back to her sister.

"You knew he was here? You knew he was in New York?"

"We met for coffee this morning," Cashel said. "He said it might be best if I stopped by."

Bridgett rounded on her sister, eyes blazing. "You know who he is? What he's become? This isn't the Boy Scout I told you about all those years ago."

"I'm not sure he ever was," Cashel replied, moving to the couch.

"You set me up." Bridgett bounced her look between her sister and me once more, then decided she was angrier at me, which I thought was more than fair. "You fucking set me up."

"Yeah," I confirmed. "But I have a reason."

"It had better be a damn good one."

"It is to me," I said. "I need your help."

"You have no right to ask for my help, Atticus! It's been, what, seven years? You made your choice back then. You made your decision, you walked away from everyone you knew, everything you were. You chose the bad guy over us. You have no right."

"Not everything is black and white," I said.

"Oh, forgive me, I thought murder was wrong, I thought it was, what's the word?" Bridgett turned to her sister. "What is it again, Sister? Oh, right! It's a sin! It's a fucking sin!"

Cashel made a slight face. I suspected Bridgett was being liberal with her profanity simply to annoy her younger sibling.

"God detests the sin," Cashel pointed out. "Not the sinner."

"Do you know what he's become?" Bridgett demanded. "Do you know what he does?"

"You don't know what I do," I pointed out.

"You're a fucking assassin, Atticus," Bridgett said. "Spin it however you like, you kill people for money, that makes you a fucking goddamn assassin."

Cashel looked at me.

"I'm not," I said. "Despite what your sister may have convinced herself of, I do not sell what I can do. Have I killed people? Yes. Will I do it again? If I have to, yes. I'm not proud of it. I'm not eager for it. But that's how it is."

Bridgett ran a hand up the side of her face, into her hair, taking a fistful of it to tug. She let it go, shaking her head.

"I think you should listen to what he has to say," Cashel told her sister.

"You don't know what he did." Bridgett let her hair go, shoulders slumping. All of her seemed tired, suddenly, and her voice went soft. "You don't know how many of our friends died because of what he did, because of the choice he made."

Cashel reached out for her sister's hand, gave her fingers a squeeze. "Listen to him."

Bridgett snorted wearily, then nodded.

"Alena's in a hotel in Odessa," I said. "She won't be there much longer, she's looking for a place to move to, to hole up. She's alone, and I need someone I can trust to be with her, to help keep her safe."