Page 88 of Eyes in the Shadows

“Why were you spying?” Owen barks at me, leaning down to get closer to my ear to say it. The proximity forces his beer breath up my nose. “Who sent you?

Owen is strong, but his aim is shitty and it’s obvious that his hand is starting to hurt. So far, I’ve taken a hit to the jaw and two to the large intestine. No serious damage. But a shot to the kidneys, or solar plexus—Dimitri’s favorite—would have knocked the wind out of me and is normally enough pain to scare someone into talking. Interrogation is often more about fear than it is about pain.

It makes me doubt Owen usually gets his hands dirty, and from the way his elbows flare out I know he can’t hide a punch. He strikes me as more of a bullet to the knee kind of guy. Lucky for me, this area is too suburban for gunshots and Owen is at least that smart. Also smart enough to have both guys holding me back.

“I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I say, forcing a groan. “Please, I’ve got a wife and kids—”

Sure, they didn’t believe me at first, but they’re not used to anyone sticking to their story after a beating. Most people they beat up probably haven’t gone through mandatory torture and interrogation training.

Owen’s eyes narrow at me and he steps back, rubbing the knuckles on his right hand. “Frank, take his wallet. See what kind of ID he’s got.”

I’ve been trying to figure out a way out of this. My priorities are, in order, to get out alive, to get out unidentified, to learn whatever I can from these chuckleheads, and to leave at least one of them alive as my witness—otherwise, our plan to draw out Rossi was for nothing. But I don’t carry ID on me, for obvious reasons, and I’m sure it will seem suspicious enough to put the last two priorities at risk.

So far all I’ve learned is that Rossi is either here or coming here, and is having dinner with the mayor. I’m not too surprised that they’re meeting so late. The mayor probably takes Rossi’s money and looks the other way about permitting and various minor infractions. He’s just a local official—sure, he’s at the very top, but his days are filled with meetings and proposals and budgets. He can help Rossi, but there’s only so much he can do for him.

But I don’t think I’m going to get some kind of serious insight on Rossi’s inner workings and my opportunity to listen just came to an end. So, it’s time to act. Frank is on my left, pressing his body weight into my forearm. When he shifts to the side and reaches down with one hand to access my back pocket, I make my move.

I lift my knee into his groin as he turns towards me and I let my foot land heavily in his instep. When he staggers back, howling and clutching his dick, I yank my left hand around and use it to help Bad Guy #3’s head get acquainted with the brick. It makes a loud crunch, likely his nose, and he pulls back enough that I can get my right hand free.

Owen hits me from behind just as I start pulling back, and the impact against the brick wall rattles my teeth. He’s quick, I’m quicker. I clip him in the nose with my elbow and spin. He’s right there with a 1-2-hook, one of the most standard boxing attacks, so I know about where he is in his hand-to-hand training.

I get my guard up around my face, allowing the blows to land on the backs of my vertical forearms, and move my right arm to the side to block the hook. When the next combo starts, I tuck my chin after the second impact and snake out with my right cross. It’s all about that invisible hit landing clean—they can’t see your fist coming if your elbows are tucked and you don’t wind up.

Cheek shot, swinging left hook to the chest, low kick to the knee and Owen is down, can’t catch a breath and has a concussion.

But by now Frank has recovered, and he comes at me. He places a hand on each shoulder, pushing me back against the wall and I grab his coat from behind. Before he can get his arm up to my neck, I grip the material and shove. It gives me the momentum to flip him over my leg and he falls hard on his back on the pavement.

I land on my knee as I sense an approach from behind, and #3 hits me on the chin as I turn, which spins me. I fall onto my arm, and kick out behind his leg, taking his legs out from under him. He cracks his head against the brick on his way down and lays unmoving.

Frank is coming to his feet, but I’m crouching by the time he lunges again. He’s got a mini keg in his hands—likely something he found on the ground—and he swings it at my head, but I duck into the opening the large overhead swing creates and jab my fist into his kidney twice as he passes. He drops the keg with a dull thwang, and staggers away, clutching his side. Then he throws me a look over his shoulder and makes a break for it.

“Fuck,” I mutter. I’m up and I catch him in a few steps, before he can clear the corner, and I wrap my arm around his neck from behind and spin us both, sending him crashing into Owen.

They both go down in a heap and I deliver two sharp enough kicks to their heads that it’s lights out. They’re not dead—though, I have my doubts about #3, there’s a substantial pool of blood under him—but I’ve done it enough to know that a kick that hard to the face will probably knock them out for hours.

I cross my arms as I consider my next move. I could leave them here, like this. Except for the dead one, obviously. The other two would wake eventually, limp to a hospital to be treated for serious concussions. No bodies, no crime scene. But dead men tell no tales, and they don’t give descriptions of the guy that jumped them to their boss.

But, really, what would they say? If they remember anything at all in spite of the head trauma, they could give my height, build, a rough description of my face… As long as Wesley wipes the video footage of anything that may be around, they’re not likely to actually find me. It may send Rossi into hiding, thinking someone else is after him, but so might killing the rest of his men.

As a sniper, close-range killing isn’t my specialty. And even the black-market type of silencers do not make guns silent. At most you shave off 50 dB, which still brings the shot to about the level of a vacuum cleaner. And I don’t like how in the open we are. I’d have three bodies to take care of and a potential crime scene. I can’t exactly take them with me—there’s barely enough trunk space in a mustang to fit a suitcase. There is a dumpster 10 yards away that’s a viable option, but the time it would take to drag three grown men one by one and hoist them over the side leaves me too open for discovery.

I pocket the phones, wallets and the three guns I find. #3’s name is—was, he’s starting to go cold—John Powell. Unfortunately, he is going into the dumpster tonight. If anyone comes across two men passed out, they’ll call for an ambulance. They can’t find a dead body, too.

When I’m done, I take a pause to catch my breath, then keep circling around the building, looking inside for Eleanor. The table where we were sitting is empty, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I keep scanning, stopping short of walking into any light streaming out through the large windows, and find Rossi at a table with the mayor, over by the bar. And me without my rifle.

I turn around and retrace my steps, knowing that continuing around the front of the structure puts me near the road, under street lamps, and well within view of any remaining patrons.

I pull out my phone from the three new acquisitions so I can look casual to anyone who might notice me now. A quick scroll catches me up—some worried messages from Wes wanting to know what’s going on, and a few from Dimitri.

Dimitri

She is secure.

Every cell in my body is screaming at me to get in my car and drive home. But this isn’t finished; I still have a problem. There’s a body in the dumpster and two men passed out. My mind goes to Felix, but then I pause.

What if I made my problem into Rossi’s problem?

What kind of man has the mayor and police force in his pocket? One who works outside the law. One who prefers delegation. One who doesn’t like gettinghis hands dirty. One who thinks he can buy his way out of problems because he has more important things to do.

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