Yet here Sam was, ready to take a bullet intended for me. Locking the door on a man who could pick locks wasn't the smartest move on my part, but the trick had bought me a few minutes, enough time to steal away in a taxi. Not to be ducking bullets. But the truth was, I'd turned my back on him not just because he might get killed but because I feared he'd discover the ugly truth about me in the long run. And that was worse.
To my surprise, I laughed. "You were never really going to let me go."
"Nope." Sam popped his head out to assess the gunman's position. A bullet snagged his column.
"Sam!" Air shot out of me.
"Still breathing." He chuckled, nervously. "Bet you'd rather be jogging the park right about now."
I scoffed at Sam's cavalier graces, wishing for a few of my own. "Bet you'd rather be playing tug of war with a rabid dog."
Two more gunshots fisted me into a ball against the cold base. I pulled Sam's overcoat snug around me, wishing for Kevlar. "Tell me there's a plan, Sam."
"Same plan as always." Sam slid up his column. A mirror on the wall reflected his standing position, the Glock readied at his chin. "Live to see another sunrise."
I examined the blown-out lamp, the golden shade dangling by its rim from the light socket. Following the angle and height of the shots, my photographer brain calculated the sight-line, and from that I deduced the gunman's position: in the corner diagonal to Sam's post, with me smack in the middle.
My eyes followed the trail of bullets that chewed divots into the carpeting. Same shot angle. "Wait, he's not shooting at me." I sat higher, garnering Sam's attention in the mirror.
"Those aren't candy canes he's throwing, Jules. Just keep your head down." Sam motioned me lower. He shrugged out of his suit jacket, mumbling how much he loved his tailor. And he was right. Sam in that suit made handsome a word for amateurs.
Casually, he flung the coat beyond the column.
My throat clutched a scream as gunfire snipped the flying material.
Simultaneously, Sam rounded the column in the opposite direction, got off four shots. The sulfurous smell of cordite trailed the air, marble and glass shattered at every corner. Return fire pressed Sam back behind the column, but I could hear him chuckling. Hopefully, Sam had got a glimpse of his target when he'd played decoy.
"Give it up, Troy," called Sam. "Backup's on its way."
"You know I don't work that way." Troy's voice thundered in the pristine lobby, a choral chamber to a madman. "Remember our game, Sam: first one up gets bullets for breakfast. Hope it's that cunt girlfriend of yours."
"Blew your chance at getting rid of her, what, three times now? Getting sloppy, old friend."
While I enjoyed the scorn in Sam's voice, mockery being his favorite ammunition, I feared he was playing with dynamite.
My eyes stayed peeled for the sniper who'd shot Daniels. Sam was right: there had to be two assassins. Troy and the sniper couldn't be the same person. From my time with the military, I learned snipers were cool and calculating, setting up their stands like a master tactician prepares a chess move. They loved the wait and watch game, hunting prey slow and steady. Removed. And Troy was everything but calm or removed; a bull crashing the china shop for kicks. He reveled in the fray and gore of battle and enjoyed watching others suffer at his hands. Troy was part grizzly, part sociopath. A henchman, not a mastermind.
Troy called, "She's got a bounty on her head. We could both collect, go fifty-fifty."
Sam laughed. "The cha-ching of deliverance, eh, Troy? You know they'll never let you live to spend it. Or forgive you for your screw-ups. Two targets still loose." He tsk-tsked his enemy. "They must be burning to get rid of you."
"You don't know a thing about brotherhood, Sam." Troy sounded closer, and I looked over my shoulder, seeing nothing but the eyes of former presidents' faces etched into the clock tower. Then a couple of shots reminded me to stay low. "Tell your bitch to keep her head down. Or I'll teach her a lesson about mercy."
"Like when you shoved me in the river to teach me about hypothermia," said Sam. "Yeah, you're a real goddamn Mother Teresa."
"Toughened you up though. Good times, Sam."
"If you say so, asshole," Sam muttered.
The idea that camaraderie, real or pretended, ever existed between the two men was hard to swallow. So was our escape. The crack and report of Troy's near-miss shots bounced inside my head, drowning out any ideas of bolting for the exit. This was no time to get shaky, I told myself. But my hands held still, my determination to live still firm.
"You could be long gone, Troy," said Sam. "Skip bail, disappear wherever used-up cops go. Stay, and we'll have to prosecute you with your sniper buddy. My men already got him in custody. You're all alone now."
"You ain't got squat, dick weed. You still don't even know who's pulling your strings. Your team's dead. You got no men, no evidence, no case. All because you got soft, Sammy boy. For her. A two-bit photographer who got her boyfriend killed 'cause she nosed around in other people's business. And now she's in my business."
I sat up straight. How the hell did Troy know about my accident?
Sam waved me down again. "Stone tell you to say that, or you just smarting from that smackdown I gave you?" Maybe Sam was eliminating suspects, keeping Troy talking till he let info slip. Or stalling till feds arrived.
"Stone's a pawn with shit for brains. With a bigger boner for her than you."
I mouthed 'backup' to Sam, but his face twisted with a boyish grin.
Shit
. He'd bluffed. I made a gun sign with my hand. Sam shook no.
Behind me, the scuff of movement, like furniture sliding across carpet. Whatever Troy was doing, he wasn't waiting for us to come to him.
Again I signaled to Sam for a gun, then jerked my head toward Troy. Sam's repeated 'no' pissed me off.
Give me some freakin' backup
, I mouthed, knowing he understood my sentiment if not the words.
Boom, boom, boom.
The mirror shattered. Chimes rained onto the carpet, the glass shards piling and snapping under their own weight. Troy had been watching our conversation all along. But with the burst of glass, Sam came out shooting.
Air exploded as gunfire exchanged. The marble post hiding Sam shredded under the bites of invisible bullets. Sam withdrew further from view.
Troy yelled, "Guess you thought daddy would come to your rescue by now. Think again, pissant."
Who the hell is daddy?
From the clicking sounds on either side of me, I assumed both men were switching out clips.
"Shoulda put a bullet in your ear the first time," Troy continued. "Even Anthony couldn't stand you. Gave you up for a Fed long before I split his arm in half."
I winced at the visual, the sound of cracking bone not unfamiliar to me.
"You shoulda put two bullets in me, idiot. You know I don't stay down," said Sam. "But no, you had to play top gorilla, turn everything into a fist fight. The damn thing about you, Troy, is you ain't too bright. Even she guessed I was wearing a vest, dumbass."
Gunfire pelted Sam's column. I flattened my cheeks to the floor. Sam really knew how to knife a guy's ego.
"Goliath made you the fall guy, Troy. You're expendable. A lackey doing the brotherhood's dirty work. They're bringing Stone up the ladder instead of you. Face it, big guy, you're on your way out."
"Ten men in each unit I trained makes me top dog, not Stone."
Jesus, how many men had this Goliath group amassed?
"Hey, I get it," Sam's voice softened. "You're in denial 'cause you need the cash. You're old, out of date, your days of leading men are over. You don't have enough years on the force, and with that dishonorable discharge, military retirement's out." Sam's chortle echoed off the ceiling. "Worse off than a fucking rookie."
"Fuck you!"
A hail of bullets lit the room with marble and glass shrapnel. Covering my face didn't exempt my body from shards biting my skin. I imagined one embedding, thought of the hospital, and readied to hazard a suicidal sprint for the hall rather than face more surgery. Then again, Troy was expending his bullets faster than he could reload. Only he seemed to be closing the distance.
The storm stopped and I looked up, searching Sam's column for a sign of life. Reviewing the damage, I realized the angle of Troy's shots had shifted lower, further to the left. With the clock between the two men, he couldn't shoot that angle across the room.
I sat up and peeked around the clock base
"Remember me, sweetheart?" Troy stepped from behind the middle column closest to me, razing me with ravenous eyes and jerking the gun muzzle for me to stand up.
His hulking body displaced the air and absorbed light like a black hole. All the atrocities, all the bloodshed and rage and hatred I'd ever witnessed, now seemed bundled into this one ugly, steaming motherfucker.
"Come on, little honey, show Pappa what you got." He laughed when I obeyed and stood.
"Jules, don't move." Like I needed Sam's reminding.
My muscles twisted with tension. Diving any direction would be awkward at best, deathly slow at worst. And with a pistol in each of Troy's hands, one move and the turkey shoot would begin. So my body froze, damned to move, damned to stay.
Troy stepped sideways, foot over foot, closing on Sam's column. "What's it gonna be, dick weed, you or the girl?"
"Sam, don't. He's just taunting you. He's not going to kill me, those are his orders. To bring me in alive. That's why they took the team down, not me."
"Sure, doll, come to papa. I'll give you all the protection you need." He made to cup his groin but the gun was in the way.
"Let me handle this, Jules." The toe of Sam's dress shoe slipped from behind the column. "Same offer, Troy. Walk away and I won't hold a grudge."
Troy flattened his neck and his nose flared, a bull readying for a final charge.
"Get out of here," I pleaded, wishing Sam a hundred buildings away from the coming stampede.
Again Sam's foot inched from behind the protection of marble and plaster and steel. Sam was more suicidal than I'd ever been.
Troy grinned, threw a left-handed shot at the column to keep Sam from playing hero.
"Stop it!" I'd flinched in my panic, and now Troy aimed at my face. My window of opportunity to duck and cover while he was distracted had just passed.
"You touch her and you're dead, Troy. Walk away, and I let you live for old time's sake. Semper Fucking Fi."
"I've got the recording," I spouted. "Sam doesn't know. You can have it, if you let Sam go."
"That's more like it, Sugar." Troy nodded. "See, Sam. She wants a new fuck-daddy. I promise to give her a boner to remember." He pulled the gun away from my face and pretended to lick the hot muzzle, implying one thing: that somebody needed to shoot this fucker now.
Sam popped up behind Troy, his Glock kissing the back of Troy's head. "Hi, sweetheart, remember me?"
Sam's icy voice chilled my spine. He seemed in control. Too controlled. He had one bare foot, his shoe having played decoy by the column. Always the trickster.
"Careful, Cowboy." Troy's gaze edged sideways. "I might get itchy. Need her to scratch my cock." He pumped his hips at me in slow motion, but I knew that's not the one he meant.
Sam pushed Troy's head lower, till he stared at me from under is unibrow. "Not an inch." He finger-tapped Troy's left arm like it was a hot plate. "Weapon."
Troy dropped the pistol he'd pointed at Sam's shoe behind the column. His arms remained wide open, one gun still attached to his other hand. "Bet she loved that dance I gave her in the dark."
"The Glock," said Sam, indicating the other weapon.
"Bet she screams at night for me. Pappa give you nightmares, little honey?"
I thought to dive for the weapon he'd dropped, explode his brains onto the carpeting, leave him with half a face like Daniels.
But Sam shook his head at me like he'd read my mind. "The Glock, Troy."
The corner of Troy's mouth curled up. "Go on, sugar, give Pappa a try."
"Don't move, Jules. You hate guns, remember."
"I hate bullies worse." With my fists curling inside the overcoat's long sleeves, I swallowed my thirst for revenge, calculated a dive for the weapon against Troy's reflexes. And Sam's.
"Feel the weight in your hand, your finger on the tip. Pappa's waiting for you to pull that trigger." Troy's eyes darkened as he spoke and made sucking kisses.
Sam's Glock dug into Troy's skull as he stretched his sock-covered foot and kicked the weapon away. Not so far I couldn't reach, I noted.
My nails carved trenches into my palms. Troy was never going to surrender, never going to stop, till we were all dead.
Then Troy barked, "Come on, you little slut. Grab it!"
My eyes snapped shut. So I heard their scuffle before I saw it.
Troy and Sam rolled sideways in the air, latched to each other's arms, a deadly tango for each others' weapons.
I lunged, grabbed the pistol off the floor. The men were still latched to each other's wrists, turning in their dance for dominance. Troy wouldn't stand still long enough for me to shoot him, and Sam kept surging into my aim.
"No," Sam groaned when I stepped closer. "Run."
Troy slammed Sam's back into the shattered column once, twice. Sam struggled to keep his weapon hand closed as Troy body slammed him and came down with an elbow into the crook between Sam's neck and shoulder, bending Sam to the floor an inch at a time.
Sam's face bordered on purple, his teeth grinding as his back scraped down the jagged marble and exposed chicken wire. His white-knuckle grip on the Glock couldn't hold much longer, and his sock-covered foot couldn't get traction on the carpeting. He was about to lose.
"Nooo," Sam moaned.
I smashed my weapon on Troy's skull anyway. Nothing. Except a glare over his shoulder that conveyed what he'd deliver once he'd finished Sam.
Sam's straight arm collapsed under Troy's pressure, and he twisted to elbow Troy's throat. A fake surrender. Another strike to the throat, then to Troy's face when the bastard hunched to protect this neck.