Drawing Dead (40 page)

“WHERE THE
hell is—?” the man in the passenger seat started to say.

“We did what we got paid to do, right?” the driver interrupted. “We got him over the damn border,
right
? Don't be asking questions, bro—we don't get paid extra for being stupid.”

Even as he spoke, a man in a different part of town answered a cell phone with “Go.”

“Job's done.” Ace's voice came over the phone Cross was holding. “But not
finished.
Clear?”

“Clear. Car coming.”

“Which car?”

“Same snake, new skin. You know where. Go!”

“AND THAT'S
where I left it,” Ace told the crew, later.

“Maybe Percy was successful?” Tracker wondered out loud.

“The man has serious skills,” Ace conceded. “Not afraid of nothing, and don't mind who he got to kill to prove it. But when it comes to those two, he's a freight train with no track to run on. No way some little girl just jumps out a second-story window—Blondie and her, they had a plan in place. Plenty of time after they heard the first shots downstairs.”

“Blondie, I don't think he's much,” Tiger said. “But that Wanda…she wouldn't operate without a Plan B.”

“So it was all for—?”

“Not so sure about that,” Ace said to Cross. “I got these.”

“Tablets?” Rhino squeaked, excitedly.

“Yeah. That don't mean they're—”

“You didn't turn them on or anything?”

“Man, I wouldn't
touch
those things.”

“Good,” the double-wide man who'd once been a tortured child said.
I'll come back for you, brother,
echoed in his mind, as he calmly said, “I'll need the robot room.”

THE CREW
watched through the long viewing slit of triple-layered ballistic glass as Rhino's shovel-sized hands delicately worked a pair of joysticks with the precision of a surgeon implanting a pacemaker.

The first tablet opened silently. And the second.

“No triggers there,” Buddha said, quietly.

“There wouldn't be,” Tracker said. “Not if Wanda set them up. If they're nothing but shaped charges, she'd want them to take out anyone who tried to access data.”

Another tap of the robot's padded tip, and the first of the tablets came alive, its screen filling with icons.

Rhino fired up the second one. That one showed an out-of-focus haze.

“Camera-feed,” Cross said. “They were probably watching everything downstairs. Gave 'em plenty of time.”

Rhino ignored the speculations, gliding the robot's point over the icons on the screen of the other tablet. Minutes passed, until a row of vertical boxes, white on a black background, came into view.

“Passworded,” the mammoth said. “Eight slots. It'll be an alphanumeric. I'll have to put a generator in there and let it hunt. Could take hours, even days.”

“But you can get in?” Cross asked.

“I think so. But I don't know how far. It probably is set up like a beehive—resistance at every level before we get to the queen.”

“Yeah, that'd be Wanda,” the gang leader said. “But we got nothing else, brother. And if Percy finds them first, he's not taking prisoners.”

BACK AT
Red 71, Princess said, “Did you take anything else, Ace? From that room, I mean.”

“Nothing else there. Lucky that beastmaster didn't look back,” the assassin said, grimly. “Percy saw me do it, I'd probably still
be
in that damn room.”

“Ace's right,” Cross said. “He'd know how the G feels about ‘specimens.' If he wasn't in such a rush, he'd have searched the place, too.”

“For what?” Buddha sneered. “So they prove something in court? It's not like they got secret identities or anything.”

“They probably do,” Tiger said, thoughtfully. “They have to be holed up
somewhere.
There's plenty of legit places they could rent, and just as many off the books, too. But they'd have to
look
different. Blondie would just need a decent dye job and a padded jacket. Wanda could put her hair in pigtails, throw a couple of colored streaks into the other part, slam on some makeup, and turn herself into a college girl.”

“How would that help us? It's like those dumbass ‘profiles' you read about every time a serial killer's on the loose. Give you everything you want to know about him—white male, lives in his mother's basement, blah-blah—except where you can
find
him. You see the news reports? ‘Gang-related,' of course. Only thing they know for sure is that all ten of the killers were black.”

Feeling Tiger's nails on the side of his neck, Cross realized Princess might be feeling ignored. “Why'd you ask?” the gang leader said.

“Sweetie!” the armor-muscled child blurted out. “If we had something they touched, like a tissue or something, Sweetie could probably sniff them out.”

Buddha rolled his eyes, but the flash from Cross's left palm stopped him from speaking.

“That might work,” Cross said, as if considering a proposition. “But there's no way for us to try it. If we went back, the cops might try and grab Sweetie.”

Mollified, Princess lapsed into silence.

“I don't like doing nothing,” Tiger said, stomping her foot like a defiant child.

“We
are
doing something,” Tracker said.

“I'm with Tiger,” Buddha piped up again.

“No, you're not,” the Amazon replied.

HOURS PASSED.

“You and Tracker, you spent the most time with them,” Cross said to Tiger. “Maybe we're going at this all wrong. If Percy's chasing them, they got no friends, not anymore. So why come back to Chicago? Taking us out—even
all
of us—that wouldn't square them with the G.”

“Boss, maybe they can see it, too?”

“You mean—?” Cross suddenly stopped speaking as the tiny blue symbol burned harshly.