Carme goes on to inform me that the assault carbine I’m holding is a QBZ-95, full auto, 650 rounds a minute, 5.8-millimeter heavy ammo. Chinese made, and I don’t understand how she could know all this at a glance when there are no visible markings anywhere on the weapon.
“Whoever he was, he didn’t hang with a good crowd,” Carme locks my truck with a chirp that sounds absurdly normal. “I’m sorry something like this had to happen while you were headed here. But it will be taken care of.”
“Taken care of?” I’m incredulous, on the verge of losing my temper again. “You just killed someone right in front of me!”
“Yes and no. You were hiding behind your truck . . .”
“I wasn’t hiding, I was taking cover.”
“Whatever you were doing, you didn’t actually see me or anyone shoot him.”
“Well, if you didn’t, then who did?”
“The only other person here is you,” she pads to the covered walkway, and I’m right behind her.
“Oh, come on, Carme!”
“It’s not me who would pin it on you, Sisto,” she retorts, her scuba-like rubbery socks leaving no tread pattern. “A bad idea to pick up those cartridge cases. I told you not to. Tried to warn you,” and there’s no need for her to elaborate.
Except I didn’t have to handle anything to be a suspect the same way she is. The Langley twins. Two for the price of one.
“You can’t just leave a dead body in the parking lot,” I try to calm down. “Do you want us locked up for the rest of our lives?”
She stops walking, facing me, the overhead canopy snapping like sails in the wind. Pulling back her hood, shaking out her hair, she takes off her gloves, seeming unreal like a phantom, and I can barely make out her strong bone structure and deep-set eyes, the same as mine.
00:00:00:00:0
“NOW OR NEVER?” she says as she offers me the key to my truck.
I don’t take it.
“Like I’ve said, what just happened isn’t your problem,” she says, almost nose to nose, her breath smoking out. “None of this has to be your problem, you can leave. Or stay. Decide, Calli. Now or never,” a game of ours that goes back forever.
When faced with the decision, what’s it going to be? Will you do it or not? It’s about courage and desire being greater than fear, and wanting something badly enough that you’ll risk the consequences no matter how severe.
“Now or never,” she repeats, and we resume following the covered walkway, passing familiar blue doors with aluminum numbers.
“I’m not going anywhere,” is my answer as we reach room 1.
Opening the unlocked door, she flips on the overhead light. Instantly, I’m overwhelmed by the odors of stale cigarettes, dust, and old water damage, intensified after months of being closed up.
“I’m going to ask again because this is serious, Carme. Do you have any idea who he is? Or was?” I feel the heat from the paint-peeled radiator beneath the window. “And what are we supposed to do with him?”
“We don’t have time for endless discussions,” closing the door, she throws on the dead bolt, and it’s obvious that she didn’t just move in an hour ago.
Black paper has been taped over the boarded-up window to ensure no light is visible from outside. There are cameras in the ceiling, at least three of them I can spot right off. On the countertop in the kitchenette are laptops displaying spectrum analysis, live video feeds inside the room and out.
As big as life on one display is the same GPS map the hitman was following, two red balloons where my police truck and his Denali are parked outside in the lot.
“You were tracking both of us?” I’m no longer incredulous, not sure anything could surprise me ever again.
“Tracking you being tracked,” she says as I look around a room I’ve not been inside for years.
The furnishings are the same as I remember, cheap pinewood painted white. A bed, a few chairs, and several framed beach prints on the scuffed pink walls.
I take in the kitchenette with its ancient drip coffee maker . . .
The copper-toned ice bucket, and miscellaneous water glasses . . .
The vintage pink minifridge, a rust-spotted Coca-Cola bottle opener on the side . . .
I recognize the blue vinyl-upholstered sofa but not the non-reflective black robotic jumpsuit laid out on it, or the thruster jetpack propped in a corner near a large soft-sided carrying case. Next to the bed are a surgical lamp, and an IV stand hung with bags of fluid. On top of the bare mattress are folded disposable white sheets, black plastic flex-cuff restraints, and boxes of surgical gloves in different sizes.
Carme quick-releases the suppressor from her pistol, matte-black metal with rosewood grips, exactly like mine at home. Our gifts to ourselves for the holidays last year, the Bond Arms Bullpup delivers quite a wallop for a compact handgun, and when it comes to the barrel, size does matter. The longer, the more velocity, and if you do the math, that equals more stopping power and an explosive wound track.
She leaves the pistol, the suppressor near loaded magazines on a bedside table as I notice jugs of an oxi-action stain remover that can destroy blood and DNA, and there are spray bottles of disinfectants, rolls of paper towels. Carme grabs a packet of surgical gloves, peeling it open as she heads into the bathroom where cases of sterile purified water are stacked inside the tub.
“I assume that was you at the controls hijacking my GPS,” I talk to her through the open door.
“What you can be sure of is that you’re supposed to be here as long as you’re willing,” she says, deconning with an odorless disinfectant spray, spritzing herself, the bodysuit from head to toe. “Are you willing?”
“Yes.”
“Obviously, not the ideal venue,” she sprays down a large green Yeti ice chest that looks like one we have at home in the basement. “I would prefer a place where the water’s not been shut off. But like Einstein said, the measure of intelligence is the ability to adapt.”
“And if you knew that someone, possibly an assassin, was following me, why would you lead him here and almost get us killed?” I ask as she washes up thoroughly with disinfecting soap, like a surgeon.