He yanks a battered .45 out of the waistband of his filthy jeans and points it at Sabrina, cocking the trigger. Sabrina’s nostrils flare. I figure I have about two more minutes before she does something crazy. Which aligns nicely with my own timeline.
Poe doesn’t want the carrot—it’s time to bring out the stick.
“I’m glad you brought up firearms, Poe,” I say.
I’m slowly walking forward so that I can position myself between Poe and Sabrina. Poe doesn’t care—he’s fine with pointing his gun in my face instead. He turns his body, arm outstretched, so that his back is to the ivy-covered wall and Poe’s two goons are behind me.
“It’s hard to get rid of a gun,” I say. “I mean, really get rid of it. You can file the serial numbers off, chuck it in a river. But it’s still there, just waiting to be found. And sometimes you don’t want to throw it in the river. The damn things are expensive. Sometimes the temptation to keep it is just too strong . . .”
“What the fuck are you blabbering about?” Poe says, mustache twitching.
“Iggy and I have been friends a long time,” I say. “Like that Christmas we were just talking about. I spent half the holiday at his house. You probably remember . . .”
Poe narrows his eyes at me, finger curled around the trigger of his gun. I don’t love that he’s holding it that way. He’s jittery enough to shoot me by accident.
“Iggy and me had just started smoking weed. I think we were fourteen, fifteen maybe. We had to find somewhere to hide his stash so his mom didn’t give us shit. We ended up taking down the air vent and putting our baggy in the ducts. Funny, though . . . we weren’t the first people to hide something in there . . .”
Poe has a sense of where I’m going, but he doesn’t quite believe it.
“You had just gotten out of jail after knocking over the 7-11 on Kedzie with a couple of your buddies. Somebody shot the cashier . . . oops. He died two days later. Cops thought it was you, but they couldn’t prove it from the security tape, and they didn’t have the murder weapon. You hid the gun. But you didn’t hide it very well. Uncles and nephews think alike I guess, ‘cause Iggy pulled it out of the wall.”
“Bullshit,” Poe hisses. Though he’s shaking his head, he takes a step back so he’s almost pressed up against the ivy.
“I’m afraid not,” I say quietly, “ ‘Course I didn’t know what that gun was at the time, or where it came from. But when you started demanding that Iggy pay you a forty percent commission . . . I dug up your old case file. I checked what caliber bullet they pulled out of that cashier’s neck. And I remembered what we found that Christmas. Only took me an hour to visit Iggy’s house and check the vent again.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Poe says. His jaw is stubbornly set and he’s sweating.
“It was still there. A .357 Magnum revolver with a scratch across the grip. From how dirty it was . . . I kinda think you didn’t even wipe your prints off.”
“So the fuck what!” Poe shouts defiantly. “Doesn’t mean nothin’.”
“It means a lot,” I say. “Looks to me like the only evidence the cops need is that gun. They know you were at the gas station that night. They just couldn’t prove who pulled the trigger. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, unfortunately . . .”
Poe’s grip on his gun is none too steady. He’s looking back and forth between me and the gangly asshole who’s holding onto Sabrina. I’m hoping my leverage is enough that we can end this thing peacefully. But I’m also keeping Poe’s goons in my peripheral, counting down the seconds left on that twelve minutes . . .
“You’re a fuckin’ liar!” Poe shrieks. “You ain’t got any—”
He’s cut off mid-accusation by the heavy metal door that hits him square in the back. He didn’t see it right behind him, covered over by the ivy. Anders comes barreling through the side door at top speed, hitting Poe so hard that he goes flying forward spread-eagle on the pavement, taking several layers of skin off his face.
Since I was waiting for exactly that moment, I have the advantage over the other two idiots. I charge the one with the tattooed face, trusting Sabrina to handle the other guy for just a second.
My dad always told me to attack smart, not hard. When your adrenaline is up, the natural inclination is to come in swinging. You gotta tamp that down if you want to be strategic.
Fists are overrated—too easy to break your hand first punch. Better to use the knees and elbows.
I come at Teardrops with a long knee, using the full momentum of my rush to drive my kneecap directly into his gut. Then, when he doubles over, I bring my elbow down hard on the back of his neck.
Right beside me, Tall n’ Ugly has made the mistake of letting go of Sabrina’s arms. Maybe he thought she’d stand there helpless while he jumped into the fight. He thought wrong.
In one swift movement, Sabrina unsheathes the little silver knife strapped to her thigh and slashes him across the face, opening his cheek from ear to jaw. He claps his hand to his face, blood pouring through his fingers, and Sabrina uses that opening to stab him under the ribs. He drops like a stone, her knife still buried in his side.
Rat-Face has realized that his guarding of the alley was both unsuccessful and no longer required, so he comes charging at me, trying to pull his gun out of his flapping leather jacket. I throw my cellphone hard at his face, hitting him on the bridge of the nose with a satisfying crunch. I follow that up with a right-cross that takes the rest of the starch out of him.
Meanwhile, Anders is grappling with Poe, who managed to keep hold of his gun despite his brief departure with gravity and the road rash down his cheek. Poe squeezes the trigger wildly, firing two shots up in the air, and a third that narrowly misses my ear.
“Watch it!” I shout.
“Sorry,” Anders grunts. He wrenches the gun out of Poe’s hand and uses it to crack him across the jaw. A tooth flies out of Poe’s mouth, landing next to Sabrina’s shoe.
“Ew,” she says.
I rip the gun out of Rat-Face’s jacket, giving him another kick in the gut to remind him to stay down. Then I examine Tall n’ Ugly.
“Sabrina,” I say, with an irritated sigh. “Did you have to go for the liver? I wasn’t planning on burying a body tonight.”
Tall n’ Ugly looks up at me, grimacing in pain.
“I’m not dead,” he pleads.
“You will be if I pull that knife out of you,” I say.
It’s buried hilt-deep in his side, and it has Sabrina’s prints on it.
Sabrina looks down on him contemptuously.
“You could take him to one of the safe houses,” she says. “Or just pull it out and drop him on the side of the highway.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I tell her. “I’ve gotta wrap this party up. You and Anders take him. Go out that way,” I say to Anders, nodding my head toward the padlocked gate. “I don’t want any guests seeing him.”
“What about the other three?” Anders says, looking down at the semi-conscious groaning assholes.
“They can walk home or pay for their own damn cab.”