Off the Edge (The Associates) (23 page)

“Fuck me,” Douglas said. “Let’s go.” Douglas and Macmillan slipped out onto the street, practically running smack into Fedor, a pack of guards hot on their ass.

The three of them were across the street like a shot. They hit the ground and rolled behind a car. Pain speared through Macmillan’s entire body. Still woozy.

Fedor crawled under the car on his belly, shooting.

Macmillan pulled out Anders’s Sig. He peeked over the car trunk and took some shots at shadows. His aim was all off. Still dizzy. Douglas shot from the other side.

“Do we have backup? Where’s Rio?” Macmillan asked.

“On a job,” Douglas said. “Everyone else is twenty minutes away. We can take them. Jazzman doesn’t need to know we have a small army in town.”

Fedor pulled back. “Small army out
there
. Hold up.” He reloaded, switching guns.

“I have to go back there.”

“Not possible,” Douglas said.

“I’ll grab Laney and bring down Jazzman myself,” Macmillan said. “The TZ’s biometric security is all voice.
Voice.
I can crack into that, but I have to get her out of there first. I have to go back for her.”

“How about you break the security after we have Jazzman?”

Fedor holstered up. “Let’s scatter.”

“Agreed,” Douglas said. “Two directions along the cars. Fedor, you go up, we’ll go down. Let’s get to the truck and get out. Go, Fedor.”

Macmillan took a shot at a darkened doorway as Fedor ran to a nearby car, then Fedor covered him and Douglas as they moved.

Somebody shot from a fire escape above and they rolled under a truck. A nearby pop and a hiss. Another pop and a hiss. Shooting out the tires. The truck body lowered.

“Dammit,” Douglas said.

“Now or never,” Macmillan rolled out and started shooting. They ran, covering themselves with wild shots. Amazing how a firefight cut your wooziness and pain. They slipped around a corner.

Douglas slid to the ground. “I’m hit.”

“Where?”

“Belly. To the side, though…”

So maybe it had missed organs. “Keep up pressure. I’ve got you.”

A guard came around the corner, clearly not expecting them to be waiting there. Macmillan grabbed him and head-butted him. The man crumpled in his arms. He kept him upright, using his body as a shield, shooting at the rest of the oncoming guards. The guard he held jerked in his arms.

Shot.

Macmillan felt the man’s blood warm on his own face. He shot again and again. Their attackers dropped and scattered.

He had to get to Laney. Macmillan pulled the dead man back around the corner, lowered him to the ground, and knelt by Douglas. “Where’s the truck?”

“Too far.”

“Like hell. Are you putting pressure on it? Are you able to do that?”

“Of course.”

Macmillan ripped off part of the guard’s jacket and folded it into a pad for Douglas to hold. He pocketed the guard’s gun and crouched. “Grab around my neck.”

Douglas looped an arm around Macmillan’s neck as Macmillan grabbed his legs and shoulders. He stood with Douglas in his arms, fighting to keep his balance. “The truck. Where?”

“Three blocks north.”

Macmillan took off, arms straining, head pounding, toes screaming. He saw sparkles on the dark pavement ahead and knew he’d be going through glass, but he couldn’t stop. He rounded a corner and a truck roared up.

Fedor.

Macmillan ran around to the passenger side, opened the door, and heaved Douglas in.

“Come on,” Douglas urged. “Get in.”

“I can’t do that,” Macmillan said.

“Are you crazy?” Douglas barked.

No. He was sane for maybe the first time in years. People he loved had been on that train, and he couldn’t save them. He could save Laney.

He would save her.

“This is you fucking up the mission. This is you declaring war on Dax,” Douglas bit out. “This is you ending things with the Association, Macmillan.”

He shut the door with a glance at Fedor. The dark watchmaker wouldn’t oppose him. Macmillan slapped the top of the truck and Fedor squealed out.

Macmillan melted into the shadows. Seconds later, a pair of cars sped up the dark street after them. Macmillan leveled Anders’s piece and shot out the tires.

One. Two.

Convenient to have that silencer on there. They might not guess he was still out there. He wiped his face and squinted down at his bloody, torn-up feet.

The pain he could bear, it was the footprints that would sink him.

He ran back to where the dead guard lay. Nobody had found him yet. In another hour the city would wake up, and the cops would be all over this.

He pulled off the man’s boots, conscious that he’d taken this man’s life. That this man had people who loved him waiting at home. It was a Peter Maxwell thought.

Bad time to have Peter Maxwell thoughts.

He shoved on the socks and then the boots. The pain was fire and ice.

He grabbed the guard’s gun and checked the magazine. Mostly full. He stowed it and slipped through the dark sidewalks until he reached the neon-lit strip across from the hotel. Alarms had been raised. He recognized two of the Shinsurin brothers flanked by guards. He could get by the clerks, but not the Shinsurins. He reversed course, considering the liquor hatch. Finally he decided to scale the back porches again. A stupid move.

Which is why they might not be expecting it.

He slipped into the pool area and hid behind a fat palm. A lone guard was out there smoking. Macmillan threw a rock into a dark corner and waited for the man to pass by. As soon as he was near, Macmillan jumped on him, covering his mouth and cracking his gun out of his hand with a neat arm destruction, then he smashed the man’s head into a post, and locked him to the fence with his own cuffs. The man was out, but he gagged him all the same and rushed off.

He headed to the side and began to scale the drainage pipe. When he got to the fourth floor, he stole into a room and out into the hall, taking the stairwell all the way to the roof.

He pushed open the door; nobody up top, as he’d expected. The night was curiously still so high above the din of dogs and traffic, and the sky was growing pale in the east. Flocks of carrion-eating birds flapped energetically around, as if they knew about the killing that had happened, the killing that would come.

Douglas had a point; he was throwing everything over with this move. Macmillan told himself that he could save Laney
and
stop the TZ. It didn’t have to be an either/or.

He looked around for something to use as a rope. Bar towels. He ripped a few of them in half and knotted them together. He tied an end to a post and lowered himself to the honeymoon suite balcony two floors down.

The curtains were drawn, but they were filmy. He could just make out a figure sitting on the edge of the bed, bathed in the blue glow of a TV. Too large for Laney. Rolly? One of Rolly’s men?

Macmillan pulled Laney’s gun from his pocket and took Anders’s piece from his waistband; his next moves were critical; he had to be perfectly quiet so as not to alert the man—or the guards who were no doubt roaming the hall. He slid the balcony door open just enough to get a view in—along with the barrel of his gun.

It wasn’t Laney or Rolly sitting there; it was a bald man. And there, curled up in the far corner, knees hugged to her chest, was Laney, wearing some sort of white negligee. Her eyes widened as she spotted him.

“Hey, Harken.” She stood up. “I’m hungry.”

“Wait ‘til Rolly gets back,” the man grumbled, eyes glued to the tube. A .22 lay next to his thigh. He could snap it up in an instant.

She moved toward the man, stopping at the dresser. Her cheekbone and throat were bright pink. Rage surged through Macmillan.

The man turned his attention to her. “You’re not to leave that corner.” He moved his hand to his gun. “Get back.”

She flicked her eyes to Macmillan.

Damn.

The man—Harken—jumped up from the bed, grabbing his gun. At that very instant, Laney flew at him with something silver in her hand; she was a blur in a white negligee—with a hammer. She brought it down onto the man’s head with such crushing force, such a loud
thwock
, even Macmillan winced.

Harken staggered into a lamp. Macmillan rushed in and caught the man and the lamp. He righted the lamp and eased the man down quietly. Blood poured from the back of his crushed skull.

“Laney! Are you okay?” He went to her, wrapped her in his arms.

She gaped at the man on the floor. “Is he dead?” She was fraying—he could tell by her voice.

“He’s out of commission, that’s the important thing,” he whispered into her hair. “Where’s Rolly?”

“I don’t know. He got some calls a while back and left. Thank heavens.”

Calls. Probably about what happened out on the street.

She looked nervously out at the porch. “We have to get out.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not going out that way again. Who is this guy?” he asked.

“Rolly’s right hand man. Is he dead?”

“Yes, but we’ll pretend he’s not.” He pulled Harken’s body into the chair and sat him there, upright as possible. He had her put on her shoes and socks, and then stand behind Harken in his chair, holding her gun to his head. “Hit the ground when they enter.”

She slung on her backpack and waited, gun to the man’s head. He didn’t like that she’d have to stand there staring at the crushed back of Harken’s skull, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Macmillan slipped to the side of the door. “A little help,” he grated out.

The door opened and three guards came in, all focused on her with her gun. They called for her to drop it. She ducked.

Macmillan picked them off with Anders’s Sig. One, two, three. “Come on!” He and Laney ran out into the hall. More men were coming. “The elevators! Go for the elevators!”

Laney ran for the west elevator bank with Macmillan right behind her.

She hit the button and turned to see Dok and three of Rolly’s guys barreling toward them. You could always tell Rolly’s guys by their frothing thuggishness.

A ding behind her. The elevator doors squeaked open.

Maxwell took off his glasses. “Hold these, hit the button for the 15th floor, and keep it there, got it? If I’m not down there in five minutes, you get out whatever way you can.”

“What about you?”

He punched the first of Rolly’s guys, knocking him out cold, then swung an elbow into the jaw of another, sending him backward with a sickening crack. “Do it, Laney!”

Laney backed into the elevator as another guy flew at Maxwell. Maxwell fought with small, fierce movements that ended with the guys on the floor. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing; he was like a force of nature.

She stabbed the button.

A gunshot sounded as the doors slid shut.

She didn’t dare to breathe as the elevator lights flashed to the 16th floor, then the 15th. It was all she could do not to make it head back up, to help him. But what could she do? Her help would probably only hurt him.

The 15th floor hall was empty, thank goodness. She held the door open to keep the elevator there, blood racing, ears ringing. She couldn’t get the image of Harken’s bloody head out of her mind, the wound had been dark with globs of blood and she didn’t want to think of what else; it made her want to throw up, standing there behind him in that chair. She couldn’t forget the way his skull gave in under the hammer—it was like a physical memory, living in her hand, her arm. Yes, he would’ve killed Maxwell. It didn’t make it any less horrible.

She inspected a scratch on the left lens of Maxwell’s glasses, straining to hear sounds, anything that would tell her what was going on. He’d broken her out and fought so gallantly, but even a machine like Maxwell couldn’t survive a full onslaught of Rolly’s men. He wasn’t a machine. He wasn’t a monster.

She had the urge to cry for him.

A gray-haired man with a suitcase approached. She felt naked in her lingerie. “Down?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “You can’t come in.”

He looked at her accusingly. “I need to go to the lobby.”

“Take the other elevator.”

He pushed the down button, then frowned at her. “You wait out here for the next one.”

Laney showed him her gun. She didn’t point it at him or anything. You didn’t need to do that with regular people. The man backed away. She could hear him calling somebody on his cellphone as he left her line of sight. Heading down the stairwell, probably. Alerting the desk. Crazed woman with a gun.

Her blood raced when she realized that the sounds above had ceased.

Hellbuckets.
Where was Maxwell? He’d asked her to wait five minutes. She’d wait a hell of a lot longer than that.

Muffled thumps from high above.

What did it mean? She ran her forefinger over the dots on her gun grip.

A bang on the elevator ceiling. The panel opened. Feet in boots appeared. Maxwell! He lowered himself in.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said.

His hair was half in his eyes, and a sheen of sweat and grime covered his face.

“Thank you,” she said.

“End of a small hall. Highly defensible. It forces them to attack one at a time.” He plucked his glasses from her fingers and put them on, then stripped off his guard’s jacket. “It’s dirty, I’m afraid but you’re so obvious in that.”

“Thanks.” She pulled it on over the white negligee she’d been made to change into, trying not to think too hard about what the stains were. His brown shirt was ragged and bloody, and he sounded slightly out of breath as he ripped wires from the elevator panel. But the bleakness in his eyes was what scared her.

Because he’d killed more people. She thought about his confession.
I’ve killed fourteen people.
It was probably more like twenty now.

She put her hand on his arm. “Thank you.” There was nothing to say but that.

The elevator started going down, all the way down past the lobby level, past LL1 and all the way to LL2. You needed a key for LL2. Unless you were Maxwell, apparently.

The car stopped with a jolt in the pit of the hotel.

“Come on, then,” he said. They raced through the basement corridors. “They won’t expect us to be down here.”