“New in town?” he asks.
“Just passing through.”
She smiles at him and he runs his tongue across his teeth, checking for pizza debris, before smiling back. Then he sinks the seven ball, claiming solids, but intentionally misses the next shot to give her a fighting chance.
“Where ya from?”
“Doesn’t matter as much as where I’m going,” she says playfully.
Fretwell willingly takes the bait. “And where might that be?”
She takes a shot and sinks the twelve ball. “Victory,” she answers.
“Nice,” he says with a grin. She misses her follow-up shot, and he puts her in her place by dropping three in a row. “Might have to work for it, though.”
Her long ponytail swishes past him as she slides by to take her next shot. It makes him shiver. She still hasn’t told him her name. Maybe that doesn’t matter.
“Anything in particular bring you to the Iron Monarch?”
“Business,” she says.
“What kind of business?”
She chalks her cue. “Your kind of business.”
He decides he doesn’t have to know her name. He puts his cue on the rack. “Wanna get out of here?”
“Lead the way.”
He tries to reign in his enthusiasm. Must be cool about this. Must play into whatever image of him she has set in her mind. Bad boy with bad intentions but a smooth way about him. Yeah. He can be that. “Car’s out back,” he tells her, and she doesn’t bat an eye, so he puts his arm around her and leads her out the back door, his mind already racing miles ahead.
Then just as the door swings shut behind them, everything changes so quickly his racing brain finds itself with neither road nor traction. Suddenly he’s thrown back against the jagged brick wall of the alley with more force than a girl this size should be capable of. She has a gun pressed painfully into his neck now, just below his right ear, aimed upward. It’s a small weapon, but when a pistol is aimed toward the center of your brain, size doesn’t matter.
He doesn’t dare move or resist. “Easy, there” is all he can offer up in the way of words. His mojo has abandoned him.
“Let’s be clear about this,” she says, in a voice far colder than she had in the bar. “When I said business, that’s exactly what I meant, so if you ever touch me again, I will shoot off each of your fingers one by one. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. He’d nod, but he’s afraid the motion would push her trigger finger.
“Good. Now, as it happens, I’ve caught myself a nice little prize, and I was told that you have the best black-market connections.”
He breathes a sigh of relief, realizing that he might actually survive this encounter. “Yeah, the best connections,” he says a little too agreeable. “European, South American—even the Burmese Dah Zey.”
“Good to know,” she says. “As long as you have a clear line to the people who pay real money for one-of-a-kind goods, we’ll have a very happy working relationship.” She backs off a little, but keeps the gun aimed at him in case he bolts, which he’s not planning on. For one, if he tries to run, she’ll probably shoot. And also because Morty Fretwell’s greed has begun to supplant his fear. What could she possible mean by “one-of-a-kind”?
He dares to ask the question, hoping it won’t solicit a bullet to any part of his anatomy. “So . . . whatcha got?”
“Not what, but who,” she says with a grin that’s a little bit scary.
He involuntarily begins to lick his lips. There are only a handful of people she could be talking about—a handful of kids whose parts would be worth a fortune. If she’s not bluffing, this could be the payday of paydays.
“So who is it?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Set up a meeting between you, me, and your earless friend.”
This nervy thing has done her homework! “He’s not earless,” Fretwell says. “He’s still got one left.”
“Call him.”
Fretwell pulls out his phone but hesitates, calculating himself important enough in this equation to have a little bit of bargaining power now.
“I won’t call him till you tell me who you got.”
She lets out a short exasperated huff. Then she says, “The clapper who didn’t clap.”
And suddenly Fretwell’s fingers can’t dial fast enough.
11 • Lev
It’s a standard freight container. Eight feet wide, eight-and-a-half feet high, and forty feet deep. During the day it’s a perpetual twilight inside, with pinpricks of light penetrating rust holes in the corners. It smells like sour milk with overtones of chemical waste. Lev thought there might be rats, but rats only frequent places where there’s something to scavenge. He’s far too alive to be a morsel for the resident rodentia of the freight yard.
Lev’s wrists are bound by sturdy cable ties to the far wall of the long container. Una had to buy hasps and attach them to the wall with epoxy because the wall had no inherent way to shackle him and make it look convincing. He had asked Una to give him a small cut with her pocketknife right at the base of his left thumb. Not deep enough to do any real damage, but enough to bloody up his wrist and the cable tie. He knows that small touches like that will lend authenticity and make their ruse seem real. They’ve also strategically placed various bits of junk they found in the freight yard around the container, to provide camouflage for Una’s rifle, which is propped up in deep shadow against a rusted filing cabinet.
The hasps are a bit too low to make him look torturously bound when he’s standing, but when he kneels, his hands are higher than his head in a position that looks painful, because it is. Little blond Jesus crucified in a big steel box. Letting his head fall completely slack completes the illusion.
“You look positively helpless,” Una said when she stood back to look at him, “but still a little clean, even with the blood on your wrist.”
So he squirmed and writhed, getting rust and grime all over his clothes, and kicked off a shoe to make it seem as if he’d lost it while struggling.
“I’ll keep it up until I break a good sweat,” he told her, which was not hard to do considering that the container was oppressively hot.
Una went to meet their marks, and Lev was left alone with the stench and his thoughts.
That was over an hour ago.
He’s been alone in here for way too long.
It’s after dark now. The half-light spilling through the rust holes has given way to darkness as thick as tar. He has a moment of panic when he imagines the impossible—that the two parts pirates have killed Una. He wouldn’t put it past them. That would truly leave Lev imprisoned here with no means of escape. If that happened, then this container would be his tomb. That’s when the rats would come.
But no. He can’t let himself think that way. Una will be back. All will go according to plan.
Unless it doesn’t.
He shakes his head in the dark, banishing his anxious thoughts. With his arms secured so uncomfortably, he knows time feels like it’s dragging much more slowly than it actually is. He remembers another time he was bound like this, and for much longer. Nelson had held him and Miracolina captive in an isolated cabin. He was bound to a bed frame with cable ties similar to the ones on his wrists now, only that time it was for real. Nelson had played Russian roulette with them; five bullets in his clip were tranqs, and the sixth was deadly. No way of knowing when the killer bullet would come up. He didn’t fire at Lev, though—he shot Miracolina each time Lev gave Nelson an answer he didn’t like, and each time she was tranq’d into unconsciousness once more.
In the silence of the steel container, Lev’s mind now takes him to alternate realities. What if Nelson had killed Miracolina? What would Lev have done then? Would he have had the wherewithal to escape, or would the burden of her death weigh so heavily upon him that it would have crippled him?
And where would Connor be now, if Lev never got free from Nelson? Dead or in prison, probably. Or in a har
vest camp, waiting until one of the proposed laws passes that allows the unwinding of criminals.
But Miracolina survived and helped him get to the airplane graveyard. He rescued Connor from the Juvies and from Nelson. He did good. He wishes he could tell Miracolina all the good he’s done—but he has no idea where she is, or if she even escaped.
He still cares for Miracolina, and thinks about her often—but so much has transpired in the weeks since he last saw her, it feels like another lifetime. She had been a tithe, which means she might be unwound by now if she held to the ideals she had when they first met. Lev can only hope that his influence had eroded her dangerously self-sacrificing resolve, but there’s no way to know. Maybe someday he will track her down and find out what happened to her, but personal curiosity is a luxury he can’t afford right now. For the time being, Miracolina Roselli must remain on his list of “maybe somedays.”
He hears a bolt thrown, and the creaking of heavy hinges. The doors at the front of the container open just enough to admit a streak of pale moonlight, and three figures enter. Lev slumps, feigning unconsciousness. Through his closed eyes, he registers the glow of a flashlight against his face.
“That’s not him, look at his hair!”
“Hair grows, you imbecile.”
He recognizes their voices right away: Fretwell, the lackluster one, and Hennessey, the one-eared ringleader with prep-school affectations. He was only in their company once, but those voices are burned into his auditory memory enough to make him fill with an angry chill. Lev opens his eyes, and lets his disgust and horror play out on his face, because it serves him to do so.
“I do believe this actually is Levi Calder,” says Hennessey, leaning in to examine him.
“It’s Garrity!” Lev grunts.
“Call yourself whatever you want,” Hennessey says with an antagonistic grin, “but to the world, you’ll always be Levi Calder, the tithe-turned-clapper.”
Lev spits in his face because he’s close enough, and because it gives Lev great satisfaction to do so—and to his surprise, Una steps in and smashes Lev across the face with a brutal backhanded slap that nearly spins his head around.
“Show respect to your new owners,” Una says bitterly. He responds by spitting at her, too.
Una steps forward as if to hit him again, but Hennessey grabs her. “Enough,” he says. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to damage the merchandise?”
Una backs off, setting down her flashlight on the rusty filing cabinet, painting the space in harsh oblique shadow. She looks away just enough to give Lev a wink that the two men can’t see. Lev just scowls at her, because that’s something they can see. The slap, Lev knows, was key to their illusion, even if it felt painfully real. He wonders if, on any level, Una took some satisfaction from it.
Now it’s Fretwell’s turn to taunt. He moves in closer. “We never shoulda let you go that first time,” he says. “Of course, that was before you were a clapper. You were nobody then.”
“And he’s nobody now,” says Hennessey, then he turns to Una. “We’ll give you five thousand for him, and not a penny more.”
Una is outraged, and Lev is, to say the least, insulted.
“Are you kidding me?” Una shouts. “He’s got to be worth at least ten times that!”
Hennessey crosses his arms. “Oh, please! Don’t be obtuse. The boy’s organs are damaged from the explosive solution—his growth is stunted, and he’s probably sterile. We are purveyors in flesh, sweetie. His flesh has no intrinsic value.”
Lev suppresses the urge to argue. His organs aren’t perfect, but they do the job, and no, he won’t grow, but the doctors never said anything about him being sterile. How dare they? But arguing for his own value won’t help things.
“I’m not stupid,” says Una. “There are collectors who would pay top dollar for a piece of the clapper who didn’t clap.”
Lev looks at them all with absolute disdain. “So I’m a collectible?”
“Not you, your parts!” says Fretwell, and laughs.
Hennessey throws a nasty glance in Fretwell’s direction—a nonverbal chastising for getting in the way of his negotiation.
“Perhaps, and perhaps not,” Hennessey says. “But collectors are fickle. Who’s to say what they’re willing to pay for.” Then he grabs Lev by the chin, turning his head to the left and right, looking him over like a horse he’s about to buy. “Seventy-five hundred cash. Final offer. If you don’t like it, try to sell him yourself.”
Una looks at the two men, suitably disgusted, then says, “Fine.”
Hennessey gestures to Fretwell. “Cut him loose.” Fretwell pulls out a knife and bends down to cut the tie on Lev’s right hand, while Hennessey pulls out his billfold. The instant Lev’s hand is free, he reaches behind him, grabbing a handheld tranq dart, and jabs it in Fretwell’s neck.
“Holy freaking mother of—” And Fretwell collapses unconscious before completing the thought.
Una, with lightning speed, has already grabbed her rifle and has it trained on Hennessey’s face. “One move,” she says. “Go on, give me a reason.”
But Hennessey is quick-thinking. He hurls the wad of money in Una’s face and bolts. The distraction is just enough to give him a full second head start. The bills drop from her face and she aims her rifle.
“Una, no!”
She fires but misses, blowing a hole in the front door of the container just as Hennessey escapes.
“Damn it!” She races after him, and Lev tries to race after her—only to realize in a most painful way that his left hand is still secured to the wall.
“Una!”
But she’s gone, and he must resort to searching for Fretwell’s knife that lies somewhere in the shadows.
12 • Una
Una’s fast, but a man running for his life is faster. He’s out of the freight yard in seconds, and Una knows if he slips too far out of her sight, he’ll be gone for good. She will not allow that. Capturing one of them is not enough. Capturing them both would not be enough to make up for Wil’s unwinding either, but it will come closer.
He has a gun. She’s sure of it. She hasn’t seen it but she knows that he must, for men like him always do. He could be up ahead waiting to ambush her, so her pursuit needs to be stealthy. It needs to be more of a stalk than a chase—but you can’t stalk someone who already knows you’re coming after him. Una slows herself down. Allows herself to think. Back on the Rez, Pivane taught her to hunt. She was good at it. If she sees this as a hunt, she will prevail.
The flat, soulless walls of the old industrial buildings just outside the freight yard might give Hennessey cover, but they also provide a nice blind for her. She stops near a corner, keeping in shadow against a wall, and she listens. He will be listening too. Waiting for a moment to break for freedom. So, then, what will he see as freedom?
Una thinks she knows.
One block over, the industrial zone ends at the Mississippi River, and less than a quarter mile downriver is a stone arch pedestrian bridge. It’s no longer in use, it has no overhead streetlamps. If he can get across that bridge he could disappear into downtown Minneapolis. That bridge is his freedom.
Una makes her way toward the bridge as stealthily as she can. Then, hiding in the shadow of a mailbox that probably hasn’t seen a letter in years, she waits.
Thirty seconds later he bolts from a side street, making a beeline toward that bridge. She knows she won’t be able to intercept him if she runs, but she doesn’t have to run. It might be dark, but she can see he has his gun out—an ostentatious silver thing that catches the moonlight nicely. Just as he gets on the bridge, she takes aim and fires low. He wails in pain and goes down. Now Una runs down to the bridge to see the damage. She can see him clearly in the faint footlights still speckling the bridge. The bullet got him in the left knee, rendering him virtually immobile. He fires at her, but his aim is off. She’s on him quickly enough to kick the gun from his hand. Then she backs up and raises the rifle.
br /> Panting, spitting, Hennessey pulls himself up against the stone railing.
“This is about that SlotMonger kid, isn’t it!”
“He had a name!” growls Una, fingering the trigger, tempting herself to pull it. Just give me a reason, she said. But she has plenty of reasons already. “His name was Wil Tashi’ne. I want you to say it.”
He looks down at his shredded knee, and grimaces. “What’s the point? You’re going to kill me anyway. So do it.”
Could anything be more tempting than that invitation? “You have two choices,” she tells the man. “You could try to get away, and I’ll kill you. Or you could surrender and be brought in to face Arápache justice.”
“How about a third choice?” he says . . . and without warning Hennessey hurls himself over the railing into the river. It’s not the highest bridge. A man—even a wounded man—could easily survive the fall and escape. Una hadn’t considered this alternative, and is furious at herself, until she hears a faint thud from far below.
When she looks over the side, she sees not water, but a rocky shore. Hennessey severely misjudged and hit a boulder. Now he has all the choices of a dead man.
Una hears approaching footsteps, and sees Lev coming onto the bridge.
“What happened? I heard gunshots. Where is he?” He glances at the blood on the ground. “You didn’t!”
“I didn’t. He did.” And she draws his attention over the side of the bridge. Lev pulls out the flashlight and shines it down at the rocks, making the scene much clearer. Hennessey’s spine is broken across the back of a sharp boulder just a few feet from the water’s edge.
Lev lets off a shiver that Una can feel like a shock wave. She knows she should feel revulsion, too, but all she can feel is disappointment that she can no longer exact revenge from the man.