Brian Freeman - Stripped

Blake eased the body of the policeman into the back-seat of the Caprice Classic. He wiped his knife on the man’s pants and put it back in his pocket. He closed the car door and gave a broad smile to a couple getting into an SUV next to him.

“Few too many,” he said, making a drinking motion with his hand.

They nodded, uninterested.

He strolled to the front of the car and watched the people emerging from the casino door. Women in clinging killer dresses. Men lighting up cigars and tugging at their collars in the sweaty weather. The couples strolled, in no hurry, holding hands, kissing, laughing. No one paid any attention to him.

He kept his eyes on the door. Two minutes later, he saw her. Claire glided outside, her hair flying as the wind caught it. She stopped on the sidewalk, looking around with her blue eyes. She wore a long-sleeved red silk blouse and jeans, with high heels. Her skin glowed fresh under the light.

She saw him standing by the car. He nodded at her, and she took a minute to size him up. Then she stepped off the curb, walking toward him. He stripped off his sunglasses and smiled. Their eyes met.

She stopped, hesitating, still too far away.

“It’s me,” he called.

She began walking again, but slowly.

Blake saw a flurry of motion over her shoulder, a man fighting to get through the casino door, and he scowled as he saw who it was. Stride. The real Stride. The detective had his hand inside his coat, hiding a gun. Blake began reaching for his gun, too.

“Come on,” he urged Claire.

She stopped again and followed his eyes. She looked over her shoulder and saw Stride. When she turned back again, she was frozen, paralyzed. Her eyes traveled up and down Blake’s body and came to rest on his hands.

Shock and fear filled her face.

Blake looked down at his hands and saw what she saw. Blood.

Stride finally burst from the crowd onto the sidewalk. She couldn’t be far away. He studied each face as snippets of conversation floated past him.

What a voice.

She made me cry. When’s the last time that happened?

Hot. God, she’s hot.

He didn’t know Claire and hoped he’d recognize her from the photograph on the door. Did she even still look like that? Stride took a few steps onto the asphalt. He thought about calling her name but didn’t want to draw attention to her.

A blonde brushed past him. He spun her around, then apologized when he saw it wasn’t Claire.

“Jerk,” she hissed at him. He didn’t care.

Where was she? His eyes traveled back across the crowd. Claire. Blake. He knew they were both here.

She was meeting someone from Metro. A guy named Stride.

He heard another fragment of conversation on his left, a low whisper.

Is that her?

Who?

The singer.

Stride followed their eyes. He saw her then, turning toward him, and his first impression was of strawberry blond hair catching the neon light, and then blue eyes reaching out to him. He felt a huge relief, but it only lasted a moment. Over her shoulder, he glimpsed a man with red hair, in a shirt and tie. His mind processed the man’s face and didn’t perceive a threat, but as he turned his attention to Claire, his head snapped back automatically.

It wasn’t the face. It was the eyes.

The eyes that had stared at him from the sketch.

The man smiled at him. He knew. His hand was reaching into his jacket.

Stride ran straight at them. “Claire! Get down!”

She froze for an instant, torn between the two men, then ducked behind a parked car and rolled away. Stride drew his gun into plain sight and squatted in firing stance, both hands on the barrel, but he was too slow. Blake moved like a ghost. The man dropped to the ground, spun to his left, and came back up with his own gun ready to fire. All Stride could do was leap to the asphalt, feeling his clothes tear and his shoulder burn on the pavement. A rain of bullets streaked past him and into the casino window, shattering it into popcorn shards.

Bedlam erupted around him. People dropped to the ground, and others ran for the street. Screams wailed through the parking lot.

“Police!” Stride shouted. “Everyone take cover and stay down!”

He stole a glance at the lot and saw bodies scrambling between the cars. Blake had vanished. He crab-walked to the first row in the lot, where Claire was sitting by the rear tire of a truck, her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes staring vacantly at the ground. He came up and put a hand over hers.

“I’m Stride,” he said. “Don’t move. Stay right here.”

“There was blood,” she murmured.

“What?”

“On his hands.”

Stride swore. He risked a glance through the windows of the truck and didn’t see anyone. The people in the lot had disappeared, as if they had been lifted off the planet, some hiding in the rows of cars, others heading for the Boulder Strip. There was still a sea of potential hostages.

“Stay here,” he told her again.

He slipped between the cars and darted across the open row without drawing fire. He recognized the red Caprice in front of him as a Metro undercover vehicle, and he rose up high enough to look inside. A body was slumped in back, half off the seat onto the floor of the car. Stride pulled the door open, and blood dripped out, puddling on the ground and staining his pants. He grabbed the man’s wrist, feeling for a pulse, but there was nothing.

Stride backed away. He heard footsteps behind him, running for the opposite side of the lot. When he twisted around, he caught a glimpse of Serena, just as another series of gunshots exploded from the rear of the lot. He watched her dive behind the cars and saw sparks as the bullets bounced on metal.

“Serena!” he screamed.

There was an excruciating pause. “I’m okay, I’m okay!” she shouted back.

Stride felt his heart start beating again. He ran to the next car in the row and rose up behind the hood in firing position. He spotted Blake three rows away and got off two shots before the man ducked under cover. His bullets took out the windshield of a Cadillac.

Sawhill would chew out his ass for that.

He moved again, using a minivan for cover. When he tried to cross the next row, Blake spotted him, and another flood of bullets chased him across the open space of pavement. Just as he reached safety, he felt a stinging pain in his chest and looked down to see a two-inch tear in his shirt that was oozing red. He tore his shirt open and concluded that he hadn’t been shot, just cut by a metal fragment ricocheted off one of the cars. Even so, it hurt like hell.

He heard the muffled chiming of his cell phone in his pocket. He retrieved it and heard Serena’s voice. She was whispering.

“Are you all right?”

“Slightly damaged, but nothing serious,” Stride said.

“Backup’s on its way. We should have ten cars here in two minutes. If we can keep him pinned down, we can surround him.”

“We’ve also got a shitload of civilians.” Stride listened to the silence and didn’t like it. “Can you get over to Claire?”

“I think so.”

“Do it I’ll cover you. Then stay with her. I don’t want this guy doubling back on us.”

Stride scooted to the end of the Grand Am he was crouching behind. He came up in firing position, wincing as the skin on his chest tore further. He balanced his elbows on the trunk of the car. Behind him, he heard Serena running across the middle lane, and he saw a flash of movement a few rows ahead of him. He couldn’t tell if it was Blake, so he fired high in the air. The person went down again.

Serena shouted, “Clear!”

Stride ran, dodging between the cars, his body bent over as he sped through three rows. Blake couldn’t be far away.