S Huang - Zero Sum Game

“You can find me here.” He flicked a business card at me, probably intending for it to flutter to the pavement, but I caught it out of the air without thinking about it—projectile motion with a nice muddle of air resistance mixed in; please, challenge me. “I think you still need what I got on this. And you owe me. I saved your ass today.”

I offered him a one-shoulder shrug. “Maybe.”

“We ain’t gotta end up enemies. Don’t think neither of us wants that.” He brushed back his leather jacket to lay a hand not-quite-on his holster.

He wasn’t going to draw. The movement was all wrong. It was the posturing of the street, an unsubtle reminder that he was smart enough and good enough to be a threat to me if he wanted to be. Besides, if he had been intending to pull his weapon, I would have had him dead or incapacitated before his gun cleared. He was far too close to get away with trying. I lounged, leaning my weight back, content to let him posture.

Someone else wasn’t.

A step crunched on the gravel behind Tresting, and Rio’s voice said, “Hand away from the gun, nice and slow.”

The PI didn’t need to see Rio’s sawed-off pointed at the back of his head from five feet away. He knew danger when he heard it. Especially when it was behind him. Very slowly, making no other movement, he lifted his hand away from his gun.

“All right?” Rio asked me, not taking his eyes from Tresting.

“Sweet of you,” I said, “but I’ve got it covered.”

Rio nodded. He didn’t lower the shotgun, though.

Tresting was looking at me, his eyes unreadable, and I relented slightly. “Besides, he wasn’t drawing on me. It’s okay.”

Rio hesitated a moment longer, and then the sawed-off disappeared whisper quickly into his duster. He stepped carefully around Tresting, still keeping half an eye on him. “You’re late,” he said to me.

“Ran into some complications.”

Rio twitched his head at Tresting. “He one of them?”

“Sort of.”

“I think the motorcycle gang hit squad I helped run off you has me beat,” Tresting said. I could tell he was trying for lightness, but his tone was strained, and a muscle in his cheek twitched as his eyes flicked back and forth between me and Rio. Rio—you don’t have to know what Rio’s capable of to realize how dangerous he is. People underestimate me sometimes. Rio, on the other hand—the only reason people ever underestimate Rio is a lack of imagination.

“This is Arthur Tresting, PI,” I said. “He was following me.”

“And he’s still alive?” asked Rio mildly.

Tresting swallowed.

“Didn’t seem worth it,” I admitted. “Plus, I think he has information.”

“What kind of information?”

I opened my mouth.

“Hey,” cut in Tresting. “I shared my intel with you, Russell. You.” His eyes flickered to me and then to Rio and back again. “You ain’t gotta believe me, but I’m telling you, if you spread it around it’ll get us both killed.”

“I trust this man,” I answered, adding a trifle flippantly, “but you should know, it’s not the best way to keep something secret, telling a girl you only just met all about it.”

He glanced at Rio again. “Maybe not.”

“Besides, you’re the one who wanted to work together. You work with me, you work with my—the people I trust.”

Tresting hesitated.

“You’re the one who keeps telling me we might all be on the same side here.”

Still he hesitated, and it occurred to me—Tresting might be an excellent PI, but when it came to this case…I remembered him saying he’d been on it for months, and I realized that despite all his bravado, he was desperate. Desperate enough to go out on a limb and try to ally himself with someone he only had the most tenuous of reasons to believe might not sell him out to the highest bidder. He probably didn’t trust me to offer him a drink of water in a rainstorm, but he was taking a risk to break whatever deadlock he had found himself in.

Which put me at a definite advantage here. Excellent.

Tresting wet his lips and stepped forward, holding out a hand toward Rio. “Arthur Tresting. Sorry we got off on the wrong foot, brother. From what Ms. Russell says, I think we might have some similar goals.” His voice was tense, but civil.

Rio stared at the hand, and then looked askance at me. I couldn’t tell whether he was calling me an idiot or calling Tresting one. He looked back at the PI, not taking his hand. “Rio,” he said. “I work alone, though Cas keeps what company she likes.”

At least, that’s what he started to say. As soon as he said his name, Tresting’s face twisted, and before Rio was halfway through his next sentence the other man had gone for his gun.

I was faster, but Rio was closer. Tresting might be a ridiculously quick draw, but his gun hadn’t even cleared when he cried out, and the gun was suddenly in Rio’s right hand while the left whipped forward into Tresting’s face. I heard a sickening crunch as Tresting staggered back, but I was already diving in; I came up alongside Rio and twisted with his movement as he brought the Beretta up—the vectors of force and motion lined up and clicked into place and then the nine-mil was in my hand instead of his. I raised it and pointed it at Tresting myself.

Not that I truly thought Rio would have fired—at least, not without getting all the information we could first. But just because I didn’t think he would have pulled the trigger yet…well, you know, I would have felt bad if he had.

Rio had let me take the weapon as soon as he realized I was going for it—which, truth be told, wasn’t until after I already had it off him, but the whole thing happened so fast it made little difference. He relaxed and stood looking at me calmly, which was pretty much what I had expected him to do. Rio and I had never gone head-to-head, and I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which we would. I wasn’t sure what would happen if we did. I was better than he was, but Rio was…more willing.

“Okay,” I said, pointing Tresting’s own gun at him as he hunched against the side of his truck. He had his hands to his face, blood streaming freely through his fingers. I hoped Rio had pulled the blow enough that he hadn’t, well, killed him with it. I knew he could hit hard enough to do it. “Talk, Tresting. What was that all about?”

He tried to focus streaming eyes on Rio. “I know who you are,” he croaked thickly, through the blood. “Heard of you, too.”

“Have you now,” said Rio.

“I know what you are,” spat Tresting. “Would’ve done the world a favor to blow your goddamn head off.”

“I would prefer it,” said Rio, “if you did not take the Lord’s name in vain. Particularly when speaking of blowing off heads. It seems a poor choice for your soul.”

Tresting stared at him. It wasn’t, generally speaking, the kind of thing people expected Rio to say, unless they knew him.

“And I would prefer it,” I said, with all the menace of someone holding a gun in another person’s face, “if you not insult people I like.”

“Chivalrous, but unnecessary,” Rio said to me in an aside.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s just necessary enough.” I raised my eyebrows at Tresting over the gun. “You meet a guy, you pull a gun on him—or, well, try—and then you insult him…Mr. Tresting, that’s just rude.”

“Russell,” Tresting managed, and his voice was thready and desperate. “Russell. You don’t know what he is. Get away from him. Please.”

“I know him,” I said, “and I trust him. If you want me on your side, deal with it.”

He stared at me, long and hard, blood still streaming from his face. Then he straightened up with an obvious effort, mopping a handful of the blood off in a fruitless effort at cleanup. The man had steel in him, I’d give him that.