John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

“So that’s the deal? Okay—what the hell. Sure. Why not? Maybe it’ll clear things up for both of us.”

Wolfe stared at him. Then he snorted. “Look at you!” He shook his head. “No.” Wolfe shook his head. “Nah. I can see it in your face. You’ll never do it. You think it’ll be easier to kill me. You’re wrong about that, Verrick.” Wolfe tilted his head to one side, thinking it out. “Maybe I need to just take you out. At least I can get that much satisfaction….”

Wolfe raised the gun, aimed—Verrick prepared to jump off the bed…

The door burst open behind Wolfe.

It pushed him off balance and he fired the .38 but the bullet went wide, cracking into the headboard.

Rose screamed.

Verrick threw himself off the end of the bed, rolled, grabbed for his pants and his .25…

“There he is!” Honker’s deep voice from the hall.

Verrick looked up to see Wolfe turning to face the big bouncer standing in the doorway—Honker with a billy club in his hand.

Honker looked at Wolfe’s gun—then ducked to one side.

Verrick resumed digging through his trousers, pulling out the .25 caliber pistol…

“Look out, boss!” Luke Kelly was there, suddenly, in the doorway—a muscular but rangy man in a black limo chauffeur’s uniform, he was Verrick’s bodyguard and driver. Somebody must’ve warned him there was trouble in the casino. Good man!

Luke fired his big .45 at Wolfe, missing as Wolfe ducked to one side. The bullet shattered the window overlooking the main floor.

Verrick heard screams from the casino floor as the shot sent big fragments of window glass onto the tables down below.

Wolfe had flattened to the side of the door, pressed to the wall by the light dial.

Verrick raised the gun to fire at Wolfe, pulled the trigger—and realized the damned safety was on. Shit.

Wolfe fired the .38 and Verrick felt something tug at his right side. He grabbed Rose and pulled her to her feet between him and Wolfe.

“Roger! Don’t!” she squeaked. “He’s going to shoot me!”

“Shaddup, Rose!”

Luke was in stepping into the room, swinging his .45 toward Wolfe—but Wolfe was hammering down on Luke’s head with the butt of his gun. Luke stumbled back. Verrick fumbled with the .25 with one hand, the other holding the whimpering Rose in front of him.

Then the lights went out. It was dark in there except for a patch of light at the door and a dusty little ray coming through the bullet hole in the window curtains.

People were shouting down the hall . “We found a guy tied up in a closet and he…”

Verrick felt his drugginess more, with the lights out—he was dizzily aware of someone rushing past him.

It must be Wolfe. Verrick spun Rose around to keep her shielding him—and then the curtains were gone from the window, flooding the room with light.

Verrick shoved Rose away, turned, stumbled to the window—now he really was standing there naked, though nobody was looking at him—and he saw Wolfe had jumped through, carrying the curtains down to the tables.

There he was, already halfway across the room, that little backpack in one hand, the gun in the other: Wolfe running down the casino’s gaming aisles.

Verrick tried to get a bead on him with the small pistol—he fired. Missed.

Wolfe snapped off a shot at a uniformed security guard—knocked the billed cap off the guard’s head. The security guard dived down and Wolfe ran past him, out the double doors to the front corridor…

Son of a bitch. The guy might get away.

Verrick looked down at his side. Not a bad wound at all.

He turned, grabbed his pants, shouting. “Somebody get out there and stop that bastard!”

Wolfe had to plow his right shoulder into a heavy set black bouncer at the door. The bouncer went Whoof! , the air knocked out of him, and fell out of the way. Carrying the backpack, Wolfe opened the door, rushed out into the night air of the recessed doorway, shutting the door hard behind him.

The shiver-inducing blast of the Hawk almost felt good, now. At least that cold slash of air meant he was still alive. It’d been a close thing in there…

He heard shouting from overhead and remembered the sentries on the roof. How was he going to get past those guys? Soon as he ran out from the doorway they’d shoot him down with those AKs…

Then a vehicle came screaming down the streets, sirens blasting. Cops, already?

Maybe turning himself over to the cops was the best thing—he’d be alive, in their custody. For a while. But for how long, with Tranter and his kind around?

Then he realized it wasn’t a cop car—it was an ambulance. The ambulance veered toward him and up onto the sidewalk, bouncing when it hit the curb. It fishtailed to a stop with a harsh squeal and the smell of burning rubber.

The rear doors of the ambulance popped open and that EMT with the dirty fingernails looked out at him. “Get in, fast!”

Wolfe ran to the ambulance, and dived in the back, backpack in one hand and gun in the other. Bullets ricocheted off the street behind him as the sentries opened fire. Then the EMT had him by the collar, pulled him in, and slammed the rear doors shut.

The ambulance roared away down the street, driven by another, much larger guy up front. A rear window of the ambulance webbed with a bullet impact, then the columns supporting the L Train tracks were in the way, and the sentries couldn’t hit the ambulance.

It swerved around a corner, and Wolfe levered himself to a sitting position.

“Damn, that was close,” The EMT gasped, hunched over as he came and sat down on a gurney near Wolfe. “I tell you dude, don’ think Pearce is paying me well enough for this shit.”

“Pearce? How’d he know?”

“What you think, he hasn’t been following you? Them ctOS cameras, those are his eyes, man! Blume thinks they got that thing insulated against him—naw, no way! The Club still has cameras that watch big shots with the whores in case, it needs to blackmail them. And Pearce can hack the Club’s cameras well as anybody’s…”

“You going to take me to him?”

“Hey I don’t even know where he is—moved to a new safe house. No, I’m dropping you off someplace else you can lay low for a while. But you’re going to hear from Pearce. Oh yeah, you can count on that. ‘Cause you owe him, now, man. You owe Aiden Pearce bigtime, Wolfe.”

The mid morning light was coming pearly gray through the filtered window of Verrick’s office window.

Tranter seemed puzzled as he squinted at Verrick. “So you don’t want an APB out on this Wolfe character after all?”

Verrick shook his head. “If you can get some of the Chicago Cops in that area to look for Mick Wolfe without telling ’em why, fine and good. If they pick him up, they should call you and you should call me. And I’ll make it worth their while to turn him over to me directly. But an APB—no. We don’t want a general alert—we don’t want the media in on it. Because, you know, the Four Clubs isn’t legal… aaaaand because I was there with a known hooker. All that could come out.”

“Oh.” Detective Tranter cleared his throat. “Speaking of that high class whore…”

“She taken care of?”

“She’s part of a new parking lot on the North side, about five feet down. As of this morning.”

“Good, good…” Rose had heard too much of what Wolfe was talking about, which had made eliminating her even more imperative. “Another thing is, Tranter, if Wolfe is caught and he talks to the wrong cops, or to federal agents, you never know what he might say. I don’t think he’s got anything that’d stand up in court, but…”