Rachel Caine - Terminated

But she saw Patrick point, and the knot in her chest eased. They were turning toward her.

One . . . two . . . on three, she bolted from cover and jumped onto the running board of the truck. Walt reacted exactly the way most people would have, with an instinctive flinch away from her, and so he didn’t see Patrick making a lightning-fast grab for the knife in Walt’s belt holster.

She didn’t have to make a move. Walt slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop, and Patrick jammed the knife into the flesh at the base of his throat—almost exactly the same spot Walt had selected when they were in opposite positions. It wasn’t, Bryn felt, an accident.

“Well, shit, Vaughn,” Walt said. “What kind of special-effects dickery is your dead girlfriend?”

“No CGIs were hurt,” Bryn said. She opened the door and stepped down from the running board as she did. Patrick unlocked Walt’s seat belt—she was mildly surprised a rebel like him was bothering to wear one—and Walt, upon some gentle knife-related urging, eased his way out of the cab. Bryn watched carefully, waiting for the tensing of muscles she knew would come; the second it did, she added her own knife, pressing in just over his kidneys. “This doesn’t have to go badly for you, Walt. Just relax.”

“What happened to my men?”

“Sorry.” She wasn’t. He turned his head just enough that she saw the hateful gleam in his eyes. “Didn’t have much of a choice. They weren’t going to just let us go.”

“You were dead. I know you were. . . .” Walt’s voice trailed off, because he’d caught sight of Reynolds clinging to the tree. His mouth opened, as if he intended to say something, but nothing came out.

“Yeah, we were,” Bryn said. “Call it a miracle.”

“Not from any god I’d worship.”

“I’d be surprised if you ever worshipped any god except your own ambition,” Patrick said. He was no longer being Vaughn, and the cigarette was gone, stamped out on the road. He looked taller now, and straighter. “Taking the truck, Walt. Do you want to live to make it back to your compound?”

“If you’re offering.”

“I am,” he said. “But you have to make me a promise.”

“Why the hell would I do that? Vaughn? ”

“Because I know how much you hate governments and corporations and rich fat cats,” Patrick said. “And we’ve got all three of those things looking for us now. They’re going to find their way to you, eventually, and I need you to do exactly what comes naturally—put up a fight. I’m not asking you to fall on any swords, but just don’t help them. Not right away. If you could forget about the truck, I’d owe you.”

“Owe me what?”

“That half a million you lost on the Stinger deal,” Patrick said. “By the way, that was me. I took it and I burned your weapons contact. Sorry. The job was to close off the dealer, and I did it. And I wasn’t too wild about someone like you having the missiles, either, to be honest. But if you do this for me, I’ll get you the half million back, in cash, untraceable bills.”

“Not enough,” Walt said. “I want a full million. Interest.”

“For doing exactly what you always do, fight whatever comes at you? No.”

“A million, or I pick up the phone and call the cops to tell them my truck’s been stolen.”

“We could just kill him,” Bryn said. Her voice sounded light and cold, and utterly at odds with the beautiful sunrise and the twittering birds in the trees. “Kill him and dump his body in the ditch. Seems like karma.”

“It does,” Patrick said, but he sent her a glance that let her know he was worried by what she’d said. And the way she’d said it. It worried her a little, too, but in a distant, arctic-ice-locked way. “But I think Walt understands there’s a better outcome to be had.”

“There is if there’s a million on the table,” Walt said. Bryn had to admit that she would not have been that calm in his situation, with a knife at his throat and another at his back, and a woman who was evidently capable of resurrection calmly threatening to slice.

Patrick knew when he was beaten, even with the upper hand, and he shook his head a little and said, “All right. One million. Deal?”

“Why would you believe a thing I said? Considering how long you’ve been lying to me.”

“I just do,” Patrick said. “Because I’ve lived behind those walls, and I know you care about those people. And I know you keep your word.”

Walt hesitated, then said, “All right. My word on it. You take the truck, and you get me the million. I won’t tell whoever comes calling.”

“It may take a while on the million. Seeing as we’re on the run right now.”

Walt grinned. It looked maniacal. “I trust you, brother. Tell your bitch to stop poking that in my back unless she wants to buy me dinner first.”

Bryn thought about pushing the knife home. Thought about it a lot. But she saw the clear warning in Patrick’s expression, and finally took a deep breath and stepped back. “I think this is a mistake,” she said, “but if you want to trust him, it’s on you.”

“Then it’s on me,” Patrick said. “Let him go, Bryn.”

Walt gave her a second, very long look. “Bryn. You don’t look much like a Bryn to me.”

“What do I look like?”

“A dead woman,” he said. “Because I don’t forget.”

She laughed. It sounded crazy.

The hackles raised on the back of her neck as she thought, I sound like Jane .

Patrick grabbed the shaking, exhausted Reynolds and shoved him into the truck, then took the passenger seat next to him. “You drive,” he said to Bryn. He nodded to Walt as she took her spot behind the wheel, with Reynolds sandwiched in the middle. “Good luck, brother.”

“Be seeing you, Bryn ,” Walt said, and aimed a finger gun at her. She managed not to bite it off. Just barely.

“I liked it better when he called me bitch,” she said, and threw the truck into gear.

They left him, and his compound of maybe-crazies, behind in a veil of dust.

Patrick said, very quietly, “Are you all right?”

“Sure,” she said. “Shot in the heart by the man I love, thrown in a ditch, dragged to the edge of a cliff for disposal, forced to kill four guys to cover our escape. It’s Thursday, isn’t it? Typical Thursday.”

He didn’t laugh. He was watching her; she could sense it without glancing in his direction. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was the only thing I could think to do.”

“It was the right play for the right time. I’m fine.”

“Bryn—”

“I’m fine. How about you, Mr. Reynolds? Catching your breath?”

He had at least enough to say shakily, “Fuck you.”

She tried to laugh, but it turned to a cough. Her throat felt very dry. Dry as the dusty road. “Pat?”

In her peripheral vision, she saw him turn his head away. “You’re right. Typical Thursday,” he said.

And that was the last of their conversation for a while.

The truck was good for about two hundred miles before the tank signaled it was about to give out; it was good timing, because they were running on fumes when the first gas station appeared on the horizon. It was miraculously in business, and Bryn used the last of the cash Patrick had on him (and the last of what Reynolds had in his pockets when they searched him) to pay for the gas and the entire jar of Slim Jims, plus a jug of drinking water. The attendant didn’t seem to think that was strange at all, but then, he was in a part of the country where it was probably survival instinct to aggressively mind your own business. Once they were fueled, they got off the main road again and angled for another freeway, where the nondescript truck joined convoys of tractor trailers heading north.