Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

30.

I racked the shotgun, but Patsy crashed into me before I could fire again. I was knocked backwards into Lisa, and we went down in a tumble of limbs. The big man heaved himself up with surprising speed and grace, and raised one massive fist over me, his weirdly hairless face twisted up in a grimace of rage.

With a screech, Jill landed on top of him, one thin arm circling his neck, the other putting the gun to his bald head.

“You brought a fat guy to a gun fight!” she screamed.

Patsy whirled, almost shaking her off, the shot going wild. A moment later he reached up and smacked the gun from her hand.

A moment later, Jill had a knife.

She plunged it down into Patsy’s back, and the giant screamed. He began moving, shuffling and spinning, off-balance as he tried to reach up and grab hold of her. As gunshots filled the air around us, Lisa leaped up and planted herself in front of him, racking her shotgun and firing directly into his abdomen.

Patsy screamed. His legs buckled, but his momentum carried him forward. He crashed into the low wall around the roof, and Jill went sailing over his head, losing her hold on him. For a moment she was framed against the tops of the weed-like trees that grew in the backyard, and then she went over the side.

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29.

The sudden sense of openness, the cold, crisp air biting at my sweaty face, was disorienting. We were trapped, but we would have been trapped anyway in one of the apartments—and now we had just one bottleneck to worry about. If they were coming, it was through that door. And we would be ready.

I stepped back and faced the door, which began to shake and vibrate as the hardcases sent by The Outfit threw themselves against it. “Trade me the shotgun,” I said to Tony. He nodded and tossed it to me. I skidded the pistol over to him and checked the shotgun over. “Lisa—behind me.” I looked at her. “I go low, you go high.” She nodded. I checked to make sure Jill was still standing. She was sweating like a pig, but she stared back at me fiercely, the same girl who could do heroic amounts of drugs in a club and still, somehow, remain standing through sheer obstinacy. “Jill, left. Crossfire.”

I knelt down, shotgun braced against my shoulder. Lisa stood behind me with the other shotgun. Tony and Ivan stood by Jill, ready to take whatever opportunities they got.

We waited. The door shook and rattled in its old frame. Then it stopped, going still and silent.

“Wait,” Jill said, her voice quiet and snatched away by the wind. “Wait.”

In that moment, I wondered if I was about to die. If we all were. I was marked for it—even if they didn’t kill me outright on the roof, right then, as soon as they figured out that Mats was dead and I was the only person left who could satisfy his debts, I was dead. And in my experience when you irritated half-sentient thugs, they got violent first and worried about what they’d done later.

If it was going to happen, I was glad it was at the 293. I was glad it was with Jill. With these people who’d made life bearable while I’d crawled up towards zero these past few years.

With an explosive crash, the door flew off the hinges and Patsy, face bloody and twisted in rage, came barreling through. Lisa and I both fired, buckshot.

Patsy kept coming.

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28.

“Up!” Lisa said, her voice shaking and rough. “Move!”

I got my feet and felt dizzy. I hadn’t known Luis for long. I’d known his wife better, although I realized with a start that I didn’t know her name. I’d always called her ?Mrs. Quinones.’ I stared at his body for a moment, finding it impossible to believe.

Someone was tugging at me. I turned and found Jill, blood streaming down her face. She was pulling me towards the stairs, where Ivan was disappearing around the next landing.

“Gotta go!” she shouted.

I let her pull me for a few more seconds as I stumbled. Then, like blood rushing back into a sleeping limb, I found my feet again. This wasn’t a performance. I’d known that, I’d known that killers were here, but I hadn’t really known it. I’d spent so much time around gangsters, around people who kept telling you about all the violence they were going to do to you. Telling and telling and telling and never doing. Never actually doing it, because there were rules.

But now I’d broken those rules, and I was fair game, and for the first time I felt it.

Jill and I took the stairs backwards, guns up. We moved as fast as we could; the stairs were awkwardly spaced, and turned and twisted as we rose.

Down below, I could hear steps and furtive consultations. A single shot rang out—a double tap on Luis, whose blood was on my hands. Next to me, I could hear the rasp of Jill’s breathing, the sawdust sound of someone who’d been smoking or vaping every day of her life for twenty years.

The third floor hall was dark and crowded. Jill posted up by the landing and fired once down down the stairs to let them know she was watching.

“My place,” Ivan said, sounding remarkably steady as he hefted the bat. “Right over here.”

“No,” I said. “They’ll just trap us. Squeeze in from the fire escape and the hall. We go up.” I leaned towards him. “Go,” I said. I glanced at Tony. “You, too. This isn’t your fight. Luis is dead and I can’t have all of you on my conscience. Get inside, lock the doors, wait it out.”

“Up?” Lisa hissed. “What are we gonna do on the roof?”

Tony looked down at his feet, but Ivan set his jaw. “I never backed down from a fight my whole life,” he said. “I been fighting jerkoffs like these assholes since I was a kid. Fucking fascists who think they can push you around.” He spat on the floor. “I’m stickin’.”

Jill fired a shot down the stairwell. I looked at Tony. “Don’t be stupid,” I said.

He looked at Ivan, then nodded. “We’re getting you out. I’m not gonna hide behind my door while someone murders you.”

“Come on!!” Lisa shouted, heading up the stairs. “We gotta go!”

An explosion of gunfire peppered the plaster and wood near Jill, forcing her to dive to the floor. I lunged forward and grabbed her by the jacket, sliding her along the boards to me and pulling her up. The four of us ran after Lisa, rounding the landing on the fourth floor and pelting up the narrower steps leading up to the roof.

“Keys!” I shouted, digging them out of my pocket and tossing them up. Lisa snatched them out of the air.

“Which one!”

“Red tag!”

Holding the shotgun awkwardly under one arm, she picked out the right key and worked the lock. I crouched with Jill, sweating streaming into my eyes as I held the gun on the darkness below, watching for movement.

Two guys in dark hoodies suddenly stepped onto the landing. I squeezed the trigger without thinking. Jill unloaded three more shots, and both leaped backwards as if kicked, leaving bloody streaks on the wall behind them.

“Jesus Christ!” Tony shouted, giving the impression that this wasn’t what he’d signed up for.

Lisa shoved the door open with a bone-rattling creak. Jill slapped me on the back.

“Go!”

I turned and pelted up the stairs. Lisa raced through the door. I grabbed the key ring and twisted with all my might, snapping the key off in the lock. Then I turned and raised the gun.

“Now!”

Jill turned, staying low as she moved around me and through the door. I squeezed off a shot for emphasis, then turned and lumbered through the door, pulling it shut behind me with a click that seemed to shut off all the noise in the, leaving me in a vacuum.

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27.

I felt rather than heard Patsy finally roar through the window, but it was too late. Gravity wasn’t the big man’s friend. I pulled myself onto the first landing of the fire escape as two shots exploded below me. I kept moving, running up the old, rusted stairs to the second floor, where Lisa was ushering Ivan through her bedroom window.

“Unlocked windows. Very dangerous,” Jill said in-between breaths. She was pressed against the wall on one side of the window, still holding what I was certain was an empty gun. “How long you lived here, girl?”

“Right behind me,” I said.

“Is it too late to time travel back a few days and tell you to go fuck yourself?” Jill said, scrambling through the window.

“Come on, mijo,” Lisa urged. Another shot cracked the cold night air. I hustled through the window into a soft, pink light. Lisa’s bedroom was the same size as my own, a small space barely big enough for a twin bed and a stick or two of furniture. But she’d made it into a cozy, warm space with a piece of red fabric over a lamp and some serious investment in linens. I instantly felt surreally relaxed.

She climbed in after me and pushed me out of the way. Kneeling down, she reached under her bed and pulled out a roll of gray blanket. She dropped it on the bed and unrolled it, revealing three pump-action shotguns, two automatic handguns, and a shoebox filled with ammunition.

“Jesus, lady,” Jill said.

Lisa began loading one of the shotguns. “Come on,” she said. “No time for receipts.”

Ivan hefted his bat and stood by the window. “No thanks, mamasita,” he said. “I ain’t touched a gun in my life and I’m not starting now.”

I grabbed one of the handguns. Shotguns would be a liability in close-up fights and tight spaces.

“You got 45s in there?” Jill asked. I picked up a box and tossed it to her. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of clicks and snaps as we loaded and reloaded. Outside, yelling and whistling.

As I turned away from everyone to check the chamber, A figure filled the bedroom window and leaned inside. I froze, staring at a broad-shouldered Black guy with a thick, square King Tut beard.

A moment later, Ivan swung the bat, smacking the guy in the chest with an audible thump. He rocketed backward, and there was a screeching cry as he tumbled over the railing and fell.

Behind me, I heard three shotguns rack. “C’mon!” Lisa shouted.

I tapped Ivan on the shoulder and jerked my head. He nodded and followed everyone else out of the room. I took up the rear, walking backwards, gun warming in my hand, eyes on the window. As I stepped through the doorway, I saw a flicker of movement, so I squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet after it.

Lisa’s kitchen was immaculate, and smelled like ammonia. I stumbled into her table, my eyes on the back window. Flashes of movement made my heart skip beats, but no one stepped into the window’s frame. They were trying to draw my fire.

A hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Mads,” Jill whispered. “Here we go.”

I let her guide me to the door, and then through. I pulled it shut behind me and spun. Luis stepped forward, the shotgun held low by his hip where it would cause him some serious pain when he fired it. He walked past the stairs heading up to the landing.

Three shots. Luis spun, the shotgun going off. We crashed to the floor, and I felt the sting of a few stray bits of birdshot. When I looked up a second later, Luis was staring back at me from the floor, the top of his head a bloody ruin.

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26.

For a moment, I was crushed under his weight. I thought I could feel my ribs cracking under the strain, all the breath pushed out of me. Then I was crushed even more as Jill and Ivan jumped on Patsy, making him roar in my ear, a reek of tobacco and beer. I struggled to move, to do anything at all that would improve my situation.

More voices, and Patsy’s roar went up an octave. A moment later and he lifted away from me, throwing Jill, Ivan, and Lisa aside like afterthoughts. I lay on the floor for a second or two, stunned. Then I realized I was covered in something warm and wet—blood.

I scrambled up, patting myself down. Patsy stood in the doorway, blood dripping from his fingers, breathing hard. We all faced him, gasping, and for one leaden moment everyone seemed content to just stare at each other.

Then there were voices in the basement behind him. Jill glanced back at me, an electric arc of alarm slamming between us. If Chewing Gum and the rest of them surged in here behind the big man, we were cooked. We were almost cooked with just him.

“Out!” I shouted, struggling to catch my breath when every inhalation made my chest hurt. “Back! Come on!”

Ivan, Luis, and I backed into the living room. Lisa came next, her gun nowhere to be seen. Jill was last, holding the Glock on Patsy as he stalked after us, snarling. I tried to remember how many shots she’d fired. Too many, I thought.

“Window!” I said.

Ivan turned and trotted to the back, throwing the sash up and glancing outside.

“Clear!” he shouted.

“My place!” Lisa shouted. “I got weapons!”

Of course she did. One by one we ducked through the window, Jill and me last, Pasty coming at a slow, steady pace, bent over to clear the ceiling. Out in the yard where we’d recently buried my father, Ivan leaped up and pulled down the fire escape ladder in one graceful motion, grunting with the effort. He scrambled up, Luis right behind him. I let Lisa go next, and then it was me and Jill facing down the largest man I’d ever seen as he stormed down the hallway. I could see motion behind him, too—Dubsey’s and The Broker’s guys, who couldn’t take any shots at us because Patsy filled the window frame entirely. More than entirely. He hesitated, uncertain of squeezing through.

“Up!” I hissed, pushing Jill towards the ladder. “Third floor!”

She muttered something and shoved the gun into her jeans, leaping up and pulling herself onto the ladder with weird, wiry energy that had come out of a pill bottle. For a moment I just stood there staring at Patsy as he did calculus in his head trying to angle his shoulders through the window. Then I ran and jumped, catching hold of the ladder and pulling myself up with shaking arms and jelly legs.

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25.

Dimly, I was aware of a gunshot. Too far back to be in the kitchen, so it was Lisa. I didn’t think she’d ever fired her weapon outside of a range before.

Patsy was bigger than I remembered. Which was fucking disturbing, since I remembered him pretty big. He shouldered his way through the ruined door and looked around at us with a lack of expression on his flabby, round face. Patsy didn’t seem particularly pleased to be beating the shit out of a group of people on a cold, damp evening. He didn’t seem displeased, either. Patsy struck me as the sort of guy who lived in the Moment quite a bit.

Jill raised the Glock, and Patsy casually knocked it aside. It went off, sending a slug into a cabinet as Jill was sent rocketing into the stove with bone-crunching force.

“Big man!” Ivan shouted. Patsy turned to stare down at the smaller, older man, and Ivan settled into a boxer’s crouch, hands up, feet light. He danced for a second or two, then sent a combination into Patsy’s face—left right, solid jabs.

Patsy flinched back, his wide, crooked nose blossoming into red pain. Ivan pressed his advantage, feinting at a third jab and then landing a solid blow into the bigger man’s side, approximately where a kidney would be on a mortal man.

Patsy reared back with a flicker of annoyance on his face and smacked Ivan in the head, staggering him. I put the automatic up and crouched down, squeezing the trigger. The shot went wide, and Patsy oriented on me, bloody nostrils flaring like a predator who’d caught the scent.

He charged, tossing the table aside like it was made of balsa wood. Something flatlined in my head, and I squeezed off four shots in a blind panic.

And then my whole world became Patsy, and the curious, sweaty smell of him.

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24.

Jill transformed into a Little General, something I’d seen before in scraps. She eyed Lisa Lisa’s diminutive frame—Lisa was actually shorter than Jill—and nodded in approval. Then she looked the men over.

“You ever been in a fight?” she asked.

Ivan grinned. “I grew up here, kid,” he said.

Luis nodded and twisted his neck until it popped. Tony shrugged. “I been chased by a couple of boyfriends and husbands, over the years,” he said. “I can take a punch.”

She considered, then nodded. It didn’t matter. These were our resources, like it or not. “Kitchen knives,” she said, pointing to the magnetic strip over the sink.

“I got hardware upstairs,” Lisa said.

Jill nodded. “No time. They’re comin’.”

Jill looked like a wreck. Bloodied, pale, her hair an explosion of loose curls that had been held back by rubber bands and random ties for so long it no longer knew how to behave in polite society. Her black T-shirt read A GIANT DOG and had been torn almost in half, hanging off of her like a mistake. The bags under her eyes made them look like craters. If you saw Jill Pilowsky walking on the street you’d cross to the other side so the crackhead wouldn’t get their stink on you.

She took charge, though. In the bedroom, we overturned the heavy bed frame and pushed it up over the back door leading out to the yard. In the kitchen, we pushed the table over the door and stacked the chairs behind it. The apartment had never felt smaller. When we’d moved in, me freshly sober and working, the place had felt enormous. After years of bumming on couches and scrounging motel rooms, sleeping in cars and once or twice out in the air, having a place seemed like wealth—even an illegal apartment with no windows. I remembered walking through it at night while Carrie slept, just wallowing in having three rooms. Running water. Appliances.

That had been zero. And here I was, staring up at it.

Now the place was crowded. The ceilings, I realized, were low. It was damp, and dim. It was fucking basement apartment, the sort of place carved out of unused square footage and given to assholes like me who’d be grateful for anything.

“Guns at the front and the back,” I said.

“La Cerdita, old man, tattoos, take the bedroom,” Jill said. Tony and Ivan looked at each other, trying to decide who was the old man in this equation. Tony nodded, and he and Luis followed Lisa to the bedroom. Jill looked at Ivan. “You here with me an’ Maddie.” She looked at me. “You see those lazy fuckers? Those are crooks used to picking up envelopes. Glorified errand boys. No way more than one or two of them is going to come through the back. Guaranteed.”

I nodded. I thought she was right. The Spillaine people—aside from Patsy—weren’t worth much. I wasn’t as sure about the Outfit’s crew. They hadn’t exactly shone with quality in Paradise, but Chewing Gum was one of those ruthlessly competent assholes, so I had to assume he knew how to hire muscle.

“How much ammunition you got?” I asked.

Jill grimaced. “Seven. You?”

“Nine. Lisa’s got a goddamn armory upstairs,” I said.

She shook her head. “They’re comin’, Maddie. Right now. We go for ammo, we get caught on the stairs with our dicks in our hands.”

Ivan was grinning. “Jesus, Mads, I had no fucking idea. You were always so quiet. Head down, one of those day by day motherfuckers.”

“I tried to be,” I said. “Didn’t work out. Genetics is a hell of a thing.”

“Genetics,” Jill spat. “Quit feeling sorry for yourself, Maddie. You got screwed by someone. Bein’ related to them is coincidence. You survive this, start over. Try again.”

You survive this. I kept sinking. Zero was so far above me it was hard to even imagine it. My tiny, shitty kingdom—a job, a family, a place to live—had been reduced to pure survival. Men were coming to beat information out of me, and when they got that information, they’d kill me to settle a debt. An entry in a ledger.

Upstairs, distant, we heard the front door shatter. I felt the impact, and imagined the glass everywhere, the bent and ruined frame. Back when the neighborhood had been populated, the door had been a necessary security measure. The kids had scratched their tags into the glass over the years, making it cloudy, but more part of the place. Now it was gone.

Everyone fell silent. Heavy steps, then. Slow. Unhurried. Unconcerned. The floor above us creaking and groaning.

The basement door exploding inward, slamming into the wall.I could picture it, the old, soft wood, the bent, rusted nails.

The basement steps, old, squealing wood complaining of the load it was now asked to bear. The descent steady, unhurried. I could feel the three of us leaning back, instinctively putting more space between us and the door.

Footsteps, gritty with the basement’s stone floor wearing away beneath them. Closer, and closer. Then a pause, a moment of silence.

The door shook with sudden impact. The frame leaped, and dust drifted down from above. The table bounced.

A few seconds later, another impact. The lock held. The hinges didn’t. One popped free, and the door leaned inward at a skewed angle, shoving the table slightly. I looked at Jill. She looked back at me.

“Uh, guys!” she shouted without looking away. “I think we got an all-hands situation up front!”

With a muffled howl from outside, the third impact did the trick. The table bounced backwards, making us scramble out of the way, and the front door exploded inward, hanging onto the wall by two twisted metal hinges. Chunks of wood flew past me as we all ducked instinctively.

And Patsy was in the room.

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23.

I texted Lisa. Carrie coming. Trouble coming after. Tell everyone to stay in their apartment. Try the cops.

The cops wouldn’t come. Marcus had so thoroughly pissed off the 9-1-1 operators they didn’t even answer when anyone in the building called. And the police had almost forgotten that our block existed; the 293 was supposed to have been torn down years ago. It was easy to forget a single building in the midst of a field of rubble, the collapse of a development deal involving six countries and several banks.

And Abban Spillaine still had relatives with police brass on their collars. The cops wouldn’t come.

Bergen City seemed deserted. Jill drove at speed, blowing red lights and losing hubcaps on the turns, but there were no cops in sight. We had a few close encounters with pedestrians sauntering their way across Kennedy Boulevard, earning our fuck yous and assholes. I watched the city rip past with my hands clenched, heart pounding, joints aching.

“Why is Carrie going to the 293?” Jill asked, her voice slurry. “That’s … that’s dumb.”

I nodded. “Because of the Fuck You Fund. Because of the money.” There was a lesson somewhere in the number of times I’d recently made terrible decisions based on sums of money hidden away in stupid places. I was my father’s son, after all.

Jill cackled. “Fuck you fund. Fuckin’ classic.”

My phone buzzed.

Carrie’s here. Left a taxi sitting on the street, I took care of it.

What’s goin on?

I forced my hands to work. It was too late to evacuate. Everyone in their apt, I tapped out. Bad shit.

I tried to do math, and heard my junior year pre-calc teacher’s mocking voice as she explained why I might actually need math someday. We’d have a few minutes on the Spillaines. Maybe ten, if they were as stupid and incompetent as they’d seemed. Maybe fifteen. Maybe five. Not much. If I could get Carrie away, I could draw them off. Lead them far away, take my medicine. But we wouldn’t have much time, and Carrie was a willful woman. A willful woman who wouldn’t be in much mood to listen to me, and who could blame her? There wasn’t a single person better off for having known me, and that included my daughter.

Hell, that included me.

It was a disease I’d inherited from my father. Dear old Mats, rotting in the yard behind the 293, still alive in legend and myth and the secret books of Bergen City crime families. For years criminals would be trying to track him down to dun him for ancient interest. As much as I wanted to erase Mats from history, this idea made me happy. I wanted my father to be a byword for asshole in Bergen City for decades to come.

Jill turned onto Howell with a squeal of tires and showed no interest in slowing down until we were just a few lots away. She slammed on the brakes and spun the car to a stop, rattling my teeth.

My neighbors were outside. I cursed under my breath as I got out of the car. Ivan, Tony Butageri, and Luis stood together on the top step of the stoop. Lisa stood on the sidewalk, eyes on me. Even Bill Gallagher, who rarely poked his white-haired head out of his dark bourbon-soaked apartment was sitting on one of the steps, smoking an old-school cigarette.

Lisa, wrapped in her tattered pink robe, broke away from everyone and walked over to me.

“What the ever-living fuck, Maddie?” she demanded, full voice. “You’re scaring the shit out of everyone. Carrie blew through here like—”

I pushed past her. “Inside!” I shouted. “Everyone in your apartments. Now. Bad people are coming. Men with guns. Get inside!”

They all stared at me. No one moved.

“You, uh, you got a real natural authority, Maddie,” Jill said, swaying next to me.

I glanced at her. She was gray. “Fuck,” I muttered. I turned and found Lisa right behind me. “She’s hurt,” I said, feeling something huge and heavy forming inside me, some ball of emotion I knew I couldn’t let out, not now. If I let it out I’d collapse under its weight. I had to keep moving.

Lisa studied me for a moment, the shoved me aside and turned Jill gently around. “Come on, honey, let me see you.” She glanced back at me with an expression of disappointed anger, then knelt down and lifted Jill’s bloodied shirt. “Jesus,” she said. “All right, sweetheart, come on, I got a kit in my place.”

She glanced back at me. “A fucking gunshot, Maddie?”

I nodded. “Bad fucking people.” I looked past her. “Everyone fucking inside! Now!”

Lisa began walking Jill up the steps, but no one else moved. Finally Ivan walked down to the street and over to me, flicking his own cigarette away. “Can’t do it, Mads.”

I stared at him.

“Lydia and some of the girls went to my sister’s,” he said. “Took the kids. The rest of us? You say trouble’s coming to the 293, we’re gonna help you with it.”

I swallowed the big something with some difficulty. “Ivan, I appreciate that, but—”

“I’m sixty and I’m out of shape,” he said with a crooked grin. “But I used to get my head busted in by fucking police every goddamn night. I can still take a punch. Tony and Luis ain’t young either. Bill’s fucking useless, but we couldn’t get him to go. Bottom line, Maddie, if you and Carrie need help, you’ve got us.” He put his hand on my arm. “Go check on ?em. No one’s getting in past us without a fight. This is the 293. This is our home.”

I swallowed thickly, staring down at my feet because I was afraid if I looked at him I’d hug him. “Weapons,” I said, voice shaking. “You’ll need weapons.”

“Jesus, Mads, this is Bergen City,” he said. “Weapons we got.”

.o0o.

The sink cabinet was open and all the cleaning supplies were on the floor. The apartment had an air of sudden motion to it, the sense of someone having been there, disturbed atmosphere. I walked through the dusty rooms. They already felt foreign to me, as if it was already my past. As if I was already moving through a memory.

She was packing in the bedroom. Ellie smiled at me as I walked in, and I reached down to touch her face. She grabbed onto my fingers. With any luck, she would never remember a bit of this, never have a bad dream about the night strange men came and took her.

“You have to hurry,” I said. “They’re coming.”

She nodded, stuffing Ellie’s clothes into a backpack. I watched her strong, wiry arms moving. Her hair was flecked with a hot pink dye; Carrie changed her hair color every other day, and the last rinse was starting to fade and wash out. I wanted to reach out and touch her, too, but I knew my wife. I knew the buzzing, angry energy surrounding her. I knew that if I touched her now, I might end up with some broken fingers.

“You and your fucking family,” she spat quietly without looking at me.

I sagged a little. I focused on Ellie, her found, happy little face. There was nothing to say. She was right. I was a Renik. I thought I’d escaped my parents’ bullshit, but it had found me. And I couldn’t promise it would never find me again, because who the fuck knew what other time bombs Mats and Liùsaidh had planted out there? Who knew how many more times some gangster was going to track me down over an old debt, and old score.

Who knew what my mother was up to right now, ruining Future Me?

I didn’t worry over Ellie. Carrie was stronger than me. She would be fine. She’d damn my memory and go to some meetings and move on, and when Ellie was all grown she’d have some vague memory of a man who’d once been around, who’d once sang her to sleep with she rested her head on his shoulder. Maybe she’d try to find me. And it would break my heart if she found me, but at least I knew she would be safe in the mean time.

Steps in the kitchen. Carrie paused for a split second, then sped up. I let go of Ellie and walked back into the kitchen. Jill and Lisa stood there. Jill looked a little better, more color in her face, less wobble in her walk. Lisa had suited up in her second-hand body armor, gun slung low on her hip. A future law enforcement star.

“There’s a guy just told me he’s coming in to talk to you. Alone, he says, unarmed. Under truce. Says he wants to parley. Says nothing happens until you talk.”

That wasn’t Merlin, who was all strut and shout. “Let me guess,” I said. “Leather jacket, kind of good-looking in a worn kind of way?”

She nodded. “That’s him.”

Chewing Gum.

.o0o.

He stepped into the kitchen with an easy swagger, holding open his jacket to show he was unarmed. Andy Dubsey, big fucking deal in the Outfit. Outranked everyone else involved, as far as I knew. He looked around, eyes attentive. It was a show, and it was also surveillance. He wasn’t stupid.

“Mr. Renik,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. Like it was his apartment. But some people had that knack. They owned every room they walked into.

“This is a fucking mess,” he said, pushing his hands through his hair. “You got anything to drink?”

I considered. Then I walked over to the cabinets nearest the door and opened the topmost one on the left. I felt around on the highest shelf and extracted a half-empty bottle of bourbon. We kept it for guests, and as a reminder. Miguel had suggested it; he said that when he dried out, he’d poured everything down the drain, but then he got anxious. He thought about booze all the time, because he knew there was none there if he broke, if he had an emergency. He got wet again within the week.

But when he dried out again, he poured everything down the drain—except one bottle. And he told himself all he had to do was not drink from that bottle, every day. Every hour. Every minute. And that did the trick.

It worked for me, too. I’d left the meetings behind, but having that one bottle somehow made me rest easier.

I grabbed a glass from the dish rack and poured him four fingers. I set it in front of him, put the bottle on the table, and sat down.

He took a sip and nodded. “Good stuff.”

I shook my head. “No, it isn’t.”

He leaned back in the chair, easy. I figured he wasn’t unarmed—guys like him didn’t get to be middle-aged by actually walking into places bare-assed. I had to assume an ankle holster, a peashooter in his jacket, something.

He bent his arms back and laced his fingers behind his head. “This shit should never have happened. That fucking kid—Merlin,” he said, putting a bit of contemptuous mustard on the name. “If he’d run this little scheme up the pole, he would’ve gotten a smack for his trouble. This isn’t how we do business.”

This, I realized with a start, was an apology. Or the closest I was going to get. I felt a sour feeling in my stomach. Men of fucking honor. Killers and thieves who thought if they drew up a charter and acted correct, all was well.

“The Spillaines ain’t shit any more,” he went on. “They knew they wouldn’t even get a sit-down over this. And they knew bigger fish than they ever were had lines on your pops. Debts going way back, not to mention the Paradise rent. And once they found out your father was under our protection, that should have been the end of it. Getting your family involved was bad business.” He nodded. “This shit has been adjudicated. There was a fucking council, Renik. All the bosses, the underbosses, everyone. Everyone’s fuckin’ furious. Some because your pops is alive—they weren’t amused—some because of the way this shit’s been handled. Bottom line, your wife, the kid—they can go.”

I tensed up. Didn’t say anything.

“The kid—Merlin,” he said again, again stressing the name with a note of contempt. “He overreached, there. The Outfit doesn’t like it. We’re not fucking animals. A world of hurt is coming his way, and I am going to enjoy teaching that little shit some lessons. Right now, you have my word: Your family can walk out of here. Nothing is gonna happen until they’re out.”

He said this in a tone of self-satisfaction, as if this meant something—that he wasn’t a fucking piece of shit, that he wasn’t here to murder me.

I said nothing.

His smile faded. He was done being reasonable, doing the statesman act. “After that, we’re coming in. You’re telling us where your father is, and we’re sorting all of this out. One way or another. You got my word on that, too.” He studied me. “Sorry, boss. You trespassed on Outfit property, you escaped one of our tenants. Hurt some of our people. Busted up my truck.” He shrugged. “Maybe you had cause, but you’re on the hook for that, sorry.”

He leaned forward and drained his glass. “We got a deal?”

“Deal implies negotiation.”

He smiled. A guy who enjoyed what he did. “Do you accept our terms, then?”

I wanted to reach over and pop him in the nose. Then flip the table on top of him and drag him out from under it. take him by the collar and drag him up to the roof, throw him off.

Instead, I nodded. “I’ll walk them down. We’ll have a car. You move back, no one comes near them.”

His smile was cheerful. He was willing to be magnanimous in victory. The big swinging dick in from Kansas City, cleaning up Merlin Spillaine’s mess. “Agreed.” He stood up and looked around the kitchen again. He snorted in amusement. “Nice place,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll miss it.”

He vanished into the dark hallway. A few seconds later Jill and Lisa reappeared, and Carrie walked in carrying two bags and Ellie, who smiled around, red-faced with excitement.

“Okay,” was all she said.

I pictured Carolina Mueller working the bar at Queenies, the most confident woman I’d ever seen.

She brought Ellie over and I kissed her forehead. I didn’t try to kiss Carrie, or ask her where she’d go. Her people, probably, in Pennsylvania, at least at first. I trembled with the effort of swallowing the enormous wad of pain and anger inside me, but I needed to just let her go. I needed her to get clear of this, and then I would be able to handle whatever happened.

We walked downstairs with her. Carrie didn’t show any fear. She led the way, clutching Ellie to her protectively. In the tight vestibule I found Ivan, Luis, and Tony waiting. Ivan had a baseball bat, Luis, the dark bands of ink on his neck seeming to pulse with every breath, had a length of pipe. Tony just stood chewing a toothpick, his eyes locked on the scene outside.

Jill stepped forward and pushed the door open, and we both stepped onto the top step. The empty sweep of the torn-down block opened up around us like a prairie. A taxi waited, lights on. Across the broken-up street, three cars. Merlin Spillaine and five hard cases stood around one, glaring. Chewing Gum and a dozen slightly more polished thugs leaned against his busted-up truck.

Next to Merlin, bending the light, was Patsy. I recognized the enormous thug from my first meeting with The Broker, and he hadn’t gotten any smaller. His bald, hairless white head bloomed out of a baggy black shirt like some sort of mushroom. His arms, longer than they should be, hung loose at his sides. He had some kind of brass knuckles on each hand. And he stared at me like he’d been given permission to perform experiments on me.

Chewing Gum offered me a little salute. “Her fuckin’ chariot awaits, Renik!”

The goons chuckled, jostling each other.

I turned back and stepped aside. “Go,” I said.

Carrie hesitated for one blessed second. She didn’t look at me, but she said “Maddie—”

“Go,” I said, gruffly. “I’ll find you if you want to be found.”

She nodded and swept out. She put her head up and glared around at everyone as she strutted for the taxi. When she got there, she hesitated, hands full of Ellie and bags. Chewing Gum leaned over and smacked a short, roided-out looking guy in a tight white shirt on the back of his head and gestured at her. The short guy winced and trotted over to open the door.

Carrie placed Ellie in the backseat gently, then folded herself in with the bags. Shortie closed the door gently behind her. I imagined she was looking at me as the taxi pulled away, but I couldn’t see.

And then she was gone.

“All right!” Chewing Gum shouted from across the street, grinning. “Get your affairs in order and we can have our chat somewhere far away from these fine people.”

I nodded. I turned and found Jill Pilowsky glaring up at me. She had crusted blood on her cheek, and her hair was a wild mass of sweat and dirt. “You’re not fucking going with him.”

I nodded. “I did what I came to do. Carrie and Ellie are safe. My father’s dead.”

“When they find that out—in about two fucking minutes of beating on you—they’ll just put two in your skull and dump you in the river. To clear their books.”

“What?” Luis Quinones said. I startled. I hadn’t realized Luis had any English at all. He’d spoken about three words since he and his family had moved in, so the sound of his voice was shocking. I turned to look at him. Ivan, Lisa, and Tony crowded in behind him.

“What’s she talking about, Maddie?” Lisa asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

“The fuck he will,” Jill snapped. “He gets in that car he’s dead. Guaranteed.”

Lisa stared at her, then looked at me. “Then he doesn’t get in that car.”

The three men nodded, looking at each other.

“You don’t understand,” I said. “Those are real gangsters out there. Hard cases. Killers. They’ve pushed a button on me, so they’re gonna take me, no matter what. And if that means they have to kill all of you to do it, they fucking will.”

Lisa looked back at Tony, Ivan, and Luis. Then back at me. “You don’t get in that car, Mads,” she said in a level, uncompromising tone.

I looked from face to face. These people I’d lived with for years now. Said hello to in the morning. Nodded politely at when we met taking out the garbage. Had beers with on the front steps infrequently. Fixed their toilets, their kitchen faucets. Signed for their packages. Ate their food, shared my coffee. Everyone looked right back at me.

I nodded. “You all sure?”

Ivan grinned. “About letting these shitheads grab you? Fuck, yeah, we’re sure.”

I stepped back and Jill pulled the front door shut behind her. She turned the deadbolt and glanced at me.

“All right ramblers,” she said. “Let’s get rambling.”

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22

The gun jumped in the old man’s hands and knocked him backward, staggering, while the shot went nowhere near us. Jill and I wasted some precious seconds checking ourselves, then looked at each other in wonderment.

“Slugs,” she said, smiling her can you believe it? smile.

I turned and ran towards the old man. I needed to get that shotgun away from him so he didn’t shoot us in the fucking ass as we climbed through the window.

“Fucking Viking trash like your fucking Da, eh?” Abban spat, breathing hard. He pushed himself upright and leveled the shotgun again.

I dove onto the landing. From below, shouts, getting louder. I pulled the Glock again and fired at the old man, too fast. The plaster wall exploded next to him just as he fired the pump again. He managed to keep it more or less straight this time, but he staggered backwards again, hidden for a moment behind the wall.

Steps behind me. With a curse I twisted around just as a bald head appeared from below. I sent two shells his way, wide on purpose, and turned back in time to see Jill barreling down the hall.

I heard the shotgun pump. I heard the blast. Jill jerked sideways and crashed into the windows, glass shattering everywhere.

I might have screamed. I heard my heart pounding in my ears and my whole body sizzled with sudden electricity. All the noise became muffled, yet perfectly clear and distinct somehow, like some kind of noise cancellation in my head. I lifted my arm and pointed the gun at the stairs, squeezing off three more shots and scattering a trio of Spillaine’s people who were creeping up. I scrambled up and walked back into the hall.

Abban Spillaine was sprawled on the floor, his fancy jacket bunched up around him. He scowled at me and lifted the shotgun, pumping a shell into place. I ducked to my left as he fired and slid into him, tearing up the carpet. I got my hands on the shotgun and pulled it from him as easily as if he was a baby.

“Get,” the old man said between wet, labored breaths, “outta my house, you fucking trash.”

A noise made me whirl back towards the stairs. The shotgun went off in my hands as if it had a will of its own, and a broad-shouldered, dark-skinned guy with his black hair in a long braid went flying backwards, his belly exploding into red. He slammed into two guys climbing the steps behind him and they all disappeared.

I was still for a moment, feeling numb. I stared at the space where he’d been. I heard Mick in my head. You’ll never be able to step foot in this town again.

“Maddie!” Jill shouted, her voice raw, a throaty croak. “Time to fucking go, princess!”

I nodded, but I felt like my body had been immobilized. I thought, yes, this is reasonable, time to go, let’s go, let’s turn and step and follow Jill through the window. But nothing happened. I just sat there.

“Maddie!” she repeated, dragging herself down the hall. She slumped into me, hanging on. “Maddie, come on, man, we got them out. They’re out. Let’s go.”

I turned my head and looked at her. She was pale, and her forehead was dotted with sweat. I looked down and saw the red stain soaking the side of her shirt, the hot blood soaking into my jacket.

A surge of adrenaline burned through me, and everything snapped back. The sound came back, my control came back. I turned, lowering the shotgun, and grabbed her as she almost slid to the floor. “Jesus! Can you walk? Can you move?”

She nodded. “Sure, of course. Maybe. Sure.”

I slipped my free arm around her waist and walked as quickly as I could to the broken window. Time to go in-fucking-deed, I thought. Time to find Carrie and Ellie and get in the car and just drive anywhere, somewhere. We could hash it out in the morning, from an undisclosed location. A fresh start, new names. Mick would lend a hand if he could. Damien would perform services. It wasn’t zero—it was far, far, far below zero—but it would at least stop the freefall I’d been ever since The Broker had appeared in my own kitchen, telling me I owed an old debt, telling me that Mats Renik was alive.

Or had been. As I pushed Jill towards the window, I wondered if anyone would ever find old Mats. If one of those huge, ropy weeds that turned into trees would spring from his shallow grave, hoovering him up as it grew and spread. Or if the developers would finally settle the lawsuits and get their permits and variances and tear down the 293 and there he’d be, an embarrassing mystery for the Bergen City cops.

“Movement,” Jill said, bracing herself against the window frame to stop me from pushing her through. “Movement!”

A gunshot punctuated the last word. I stepped back and she dropped down, regaining some of her sharpness as her face collapsed into a mask of agony at the sudden motion.

We were trapped. Goons on the stairs, goons outside.

Jill reached up and took my head in her hand, turning me to look down the hall where Abban Spillaine was sprawled on the floor, one of his leather house shoes dangling from one toe. “Golden ticket,” she said thickly.

I nodded, even as a small part of me rebelled, said that this wasn’t me. Because it was me, and probably always had been. I’d imagined I could be a citizen. Work a job, go to night classes, buy a shitty house in Greenville past the park, put my kids through some churchy school, retire and spend a few years taking photos of far away places before my marker got called in. But that would never happen. I was a guy who took frail old men hostage. I was a guy who’d killed someone as recently as five minutes ago.

Zero was a far away place.

I ran over to the old man, pulled him up, and pushed the Glock against his temple. I turned to face the stairs, freezing two goons as they stepped onto the landing. A moment later, Merlin Spillaine appeared behind them, stopping in his tracks. He was wearing a tight three-piece suit. It was too small for him, but only just. Like he’d spent some money on it but it was still off the rack, not tailored. I noticed the neck tat, something black and spindly blocked by his collar. Underneath the ink his neck was flushed. His thick, greasy hair was combed back, one lavish curl dangling over his eye.

Abban was light and his breathing was a high-pitched, pinched whistle through his nostrils. I felt like I was becoming an expert on the death rattles of old criminals. “Let the fuck go a me,” he wheezed.

“That’s a mistake,” Merlin said from behind his men. The two guys weren’t anything special. They were flabby, loose-jointed guys with sweaty faces and limp hair. One held a double-barreled shotgun, the other a generic automatic. They stood there, uncertain what to do.

Jill shuffled in next to me.

“You just signed yer own death warrant, boyo,” Merlin said. “You fucking touch my father? You’re fuckin’ dead.”

I wondered what my previous status had been. Before touching Abban Spillaine, was on my way to Employee of the Month? Was Merle planning to send me to an all-expenses paid spa trip? Perhaps we would have been friends.

“Come on,” I said to Jill. I jerked my chin at the goons. “Back it up,” I said.

They hesitated. I looked past them at Merlin Spillaine. I remembered him sitting in my kitchen, kicking all of this off, and wished fervently that it was him under my arm.

I pressed the gun into Abban’s temple. The old man grunted in pain.

“All right,” Merlin said, tapping one of his guys on the shoulder. “Okay. Don’t make it any worse for yourself than it already is, Renik.” They started backing down the stairs. Behind us, I heard someone climbing in through the window.

“I feel a hand on my ass I’m gonna panic like a woman and jostle his arm,” Jill said. “So tell your guys to stay the fuck back.”

Merlin nodded, eyes locked on me. “All right. Pin! Rubes! Keep a safe distance. We’ll have our chance.”

We began to descend the stairs in silence. Abban breathed into my face, whiskey and cigars and possibly animal turds or something rotten, based on the bouquet. Jill wobbled with each step with a goofy grin on her sweat-sheened face, but she managed to stay upright and mobile despite the blood that had soaked her shirt.

“All right,” I said as we reached the next landing. “Y’all give us some room, so I don’t have to push the old man down the stairs.”

It came naturally, this violence.

“You’re fucking dead,” Merlin said conversationally as they backed down the steps. “Your whole fucking family is dead. Your friends. Everyone you know. People you once smiled at on the subway. I’m going to contact trace your whole fucking life and burn you out of existence.”

Now The Broker was writing checks he’d never cash, that was for sure. I’d met a lot of people who imagined themselves gangsters, and you could do a fast initial screening simply by listening. The true threats said very little, and when they offered a threat it was feasible. It was frightening because you could instantly imagine it happening. Some hard case says they’re gonna break your arm, you believe them because it could be done. The non-threats, the jumbo-softies who like to take a deep breath and swell up to an enormous size but were filled with hot air, they promised to track down your old kindergarten teacher and punch her in the mouth.

“You’re not giving him much incentive not to make your dad squeal,” Jill slurred. “I mean, his family’s already dead. Why not make your dad cry a little?”

Merlin’s face went red. “You—”

“And see, now you can’t escalate. What, are you going to kill our family twice? You’ve totally fucked this up.”

As we stepped into the first floor, I glanced around. We had three more of Spillaine’s people behind us—but no Patsy, who I remembered as a sort of moon that had crashed into me a few days ago. The absence of the enormous man and his gravitational tug was worrisome. I felt like he might crash through a wall at any moment like the Kool Aid Man and flick me out int space.

“All right,” I said, jabbing Abban again to make the old man wince. “Over there. Kitchen. All of you.”

“Fuckin dead,” Merlin said as all six of them walked over to the kitchen. “How far you gonna get, Renik?”

I ignored him. With them packed into the kitchen, we had an open lane to the front door. “You steady?” I asked Jill.

“Dead,” Merlin hissed.

“Oh capitan mis amigos,” she said. “I am aces.”

“Check for traps.”

She saluted. “Rolling for initiative,” she said, and walked over to the front door. She seemed steady enough, pulling open the front door and leaning out carefully to look around. She offered me a thumb’s up.

“All right,” I said. “Stay the fuck in the kitchen.”

I began walking the old man backwards. The whole group of them followed, keeping a steady distance between us. Merlin, I noted, stayed behind them, glaring at me, puffed up, eyes wild. The mighty Spillaines. A half dozen thugs, a creaking old house, ancient debts they couldn’t even collect themselves.

“Clear,” Jill said as I passed out through the door. “I’m gettin’ the car. Don’t kill the old man by accident.”

Abban grunted.

I stopped and stood where I was. They crowded the doorway, but didn’t come out of the kitchen. Merlin and I just stared at each other. I heard the car start up, then the crunch of wheels on gravel. I felt the car creep up behind me, then heard the sound of the passenger door opening. Guitars and trumpet spilled out from the shitty radio.

“Old man,” I whispered into Abban’s horrifically hairy ear, “watch who you call trash.”

I shoved him to the ground, lifted the Glock, and sent a trio of shots in the general direction of the house. Then I half-turned and threw myself into the car. Jill hit the gas and I almost bounced right back out again before catching hold of the seatbelt and hanging on.

Everything sizzled with pain. I reached over and shut the door. For a moment I just sat and breathed, listening to the terrifically awful music Jill had located on the radio. She was hunched over the wheel as if it hurt her to concentrate. She was doing about eighty on city streets, and every pothole threatened to send the car airborne.

“Where to, capitan?”

“Home,” I said, shivering with sudden reaction. “The 293.”

She grimaced. “That wise? First place they’ll look.”

I nodded. “That’s where Carrie will be.”

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21.

“There’s a child seat back there,” I said, turning back to the front. “And toys.”

“I didn’t have time to do a background check.”

I didn’t say anything to that. I had to get Carolina and Elspeth, and whatever damage I had to do along the way to that goal was okay. I accepted it. I took it on preemptively. And with Jill Pilowsky as my one and only soldier in this private little war, I had to accept the fact that some serious collateral damage was going to be trailing in my wake.

Staring out at the city as we drove through it, I apologized, silently. But then, the city had taken my family, in a sense. The city had bred the Spillaines. Made them fat and greedy. And maintained the final fading flicker of their power, so they could kidnap a child to use as a lever, and get away with it.

I looked down at my hands. Fists again, knuckles white and creaking. I forced myself to unclench.

The Spillaines owned a sprawling old Victorian-style house up on a hill overlooking the train tracks funneling into Bergen Terminal like black threads. There was a wrought-iron gate around the grounds, but grounds was too fancy a word. Like everything else about the Spillaines, it was spoiled and reduced. The house had once been the grand triumph of some middle-class overachiever, some lucky asshole who made soap or toys or imported tea and made enough of a pile to buy a plot of land and build a ridiculously oversize house on it. A hundred years later the Spillaines bought it, or took it from them in a bust-out, maybe.

The house itself was all minarets and balconies. Every light seemed to be on inside as we drove up, stopping a block away. There would be an alarm system, of course, and cameras, of course. And some kind of guard presence, of course. But they’d put Carrie and Ellie in their own house, which spoke to the reduced circumstances of the Spillaines in general. And my stupidity that it hadn’t been my first goddamn thought.

“Just like old times,” Jill said, twisting around to rummage in her bag. “Breaking into some rich asshole’s house.”

I nodded. “Except we can’t cut and run, things go bad. I’m not leaving here without them.”

“I know.”

Her voice sounded small and tired. She came up with two more G21s, courtesy, I assumed, of our reluctant partner Damien, paying off the worst business deal he’d ever made in his life. She handed one to me and I checked it over.

We sat for a few minutes, watching. Jill vaped, filling the car with a sweet smell and a haze, hotboxing us. I counted six guards roaming the exterior. They weren’t very disciplined; there was no schedule I could see. They just seemed to wander, talking to each other, rubbing their hands against the cold, trading cigarettes.

“We come around the back,” I said. “From the track side.”

She nodded. “Sure. Find a way to a second-floor window.”

“Alarm system?”

“These assholes?” She smirked. “The Spillaines are fuckin’ delicate. Of course they’d have some fancy alarm. So, misdirect.” She pointed to the northwest corner of the house. “Basement window there. You’d have to get on the ground and wriggle through, but it could be done, and it’s the obvious place. I chuck a rock through it. Everyone converges there, looking for the idiot who did the obvious, idiot thing. You crack a window in back, no one notices. The alarm’s already triggered, everyone’s crawling over the other side.”

I nodded, slowly. It was a terrible plan, but I was down deep in the seconds, my eyes on my shoes. There was no future to worry about. “All right. Let’s do some recon.”

####

The rear of the house backed up to a narrow strip of dirt that sloped away suddenly and steeply to the tracks running by below. Standing there was dizzying; one wrong step and you’d go sailing out into the nothing. With the wind pushing around me it was easy to imagine, and my heart pounded.

The only way up to the balcony that I could see was an old rainspout held to the house by ancient rusting brackets. I checked the timer set on my phone and slid it back into my pocket. I took hold of the spout and gave it a solid tug; it shook and rattled but seemed to be pretty well attached.

I took a little leap and began to pull myself up. The metal straps groaned and stretched, feeling my weight. Halfway up, one of the straps popped off the wall, sailing off into the darkness as the spout shook and trembled under me. I grunted, straining to pull myself up faster.

Throwing one leg over the railing, I crept onto the balcony. I hadn’t fallen to my death—no doubt I wouldn’t have been the first body to turn up in Bergen City’s shadowy ass—so I was already streets ahead. I pulled my phone out. One minute to go.

I waited. It was peaceful. Quiet, dark. The wind and the open air, New York City a mile away, glittering and tiny. I stood tense and rigid, breathing hard, forcing myself to wait. If I moved too soon, I’d fuck up any chance of seeing my daughter again, my wife. Who was probably not my wife any more, if I knew Carolina and her general tolerance for shit that put Ellie in danger. And thanks to dear old Dad, that was me. I was the danger.

First things first.

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. A moment later, the distant sound of glass shattering, and then the muffled noise of a keening alarm. I counted to ten, rocking on the balls of my feet. When I heard shouts, I knelt down and tried the nearest window. It wouldn’t budge, so I twisted away and elbowed it, smashing the pane and reaching inside to carefully undo the latch.

There was no change to the alarm. I figured somewhere on a screen a second red light was flashing, but it would be hard to notice. Pushing up the sash, I climbed inside.

It was instantly hot. It felt like the heat had been turned up as high as it would go. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness for a moment—no sense in running blind and falling down the stairs—and counted doors. Six. I turned to the nearest one and tried the handle. It turned easily, revealing a dark bedroom. The furniture was old—a cast-iron bed frame, some heavy wooden dressers—and every fabric had a heavy sheen to it. I was reminded of my grandmother’s house, distant in my memories but vivid in the surfaces I remembered touching—and not enjoying the experience.

I backed out. Down below, the sound of heavy footsteps.

The next two doors opened to similarly empty, dark rooms. The smell of dust and disuse was a story of a too-large house for a dwindling family. The Spillaines might have run the city, once, with distant cousins traveling from the old country to coalesce around Abban’s power base, but they’d shrunk to two men. It was easy to imagine the two of them rambling around this creaking, sinking place, kicking up clouds of dust wherever they went.

Shouts, below. A loud, hollow boom, then running feet. Getting louder.

I threw myself flat against the wall and waited. When you had a Runner at Queenies, some guy determined to get in via brute force, timing was key. If you let him slip past you, if he tore free of your grasp and got inside, it was chaos. You had to hang back like you were waiting on a fastball, ignore your instincts and take one more half-second before you swung.

My brain said move and I waited one more half-second.

A figure turned the corner off the stairs just as I lunged forward, arm out straight. I clotheslined him cleanly, and his feet left the floor as he flipped horizontal and fell on his back with a rattling impact, making the old floorboards jump.

I dropped onto him, smothering the gun in his hand. I wriggled one arm around his neck and rolled until he was on top of me, waving the gun around ineffectively. Up close his dark skin was rough and sandpapery; he smelled like sweet cigars and sweat. I squeezed my arm around his neck as he slapped backwards at me. I listened to his choking attempts to breathe and concentrated on my own—deep breaths in and out.

I stared up at the ceiling. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at: An attic access trap door, a hinged square. You pull it down, a ladder unfolds and you can get up into the attic space.

Someone had put a clasp and a lock on it.

My new friend began to kick his legs, trying to use his body to throw me off. But he had no leverage. He was a turtle on his back and I was the shell. I held on; the worst thing I could do was let go too soon. Time froze as I waited for him to pass out, and I spent this infinite moment staring up at the attic access and listening to shouts from downstairs.

It was too easy. But it made sense.

When he went limp, I rolled him off me, took his gun, and searched him quickly, just patting him down. I stuffed the gun into my waistband with the Glock and stared up at the trap. It was just a little too high up; stretching myself, I could just barely brush the tips of my fingers along the bottom of the lock.

I turned and pressed myself against the wall again, then leaned out to check the stairs. They were empty, so I dashed across the landing to the three doors at the end of the hall. The first was another bedroom, this one in use—the bed a mess, the smell less dust and more body odor. The furniture was the same old stuff I’d seen in the other rooms.

Down below, the shouts resolved into clear! repeated over and over again, by several voices.

The door at the end of the hall opened to reveal a linen closet.

“Hey!”

I whirled, yanking the G21 from its place against my skin. Jill sat on the window sill, one leg in the house.

I grimaced, shaking my head, and pushed the gun back into my pants. The voices below told me that the guards were about to reset and make a tour of the place.

“Jesus,” I hissed, leaving the final door unexplored and walking back towards her. “I almost shot you.”

She nodded, climbing inside. “I figure that’s how I die, right? Shot in the face by Mads Renik. It is foretold. I got them chasing their tails down there.”

I pointed up at the attic access. “Can you get that open?”

She squinted at it. “You could pop that with a hammer.”

“I don’t have a fucking hammer.”

She sighed. “Give me a boost,” she said, pulling a black bag from her back pocket.

I took hold of her waist with both hands and lifted. She didn’t weigh anything. Under the layers of clothes, there was hardly any Jill there at all. It felt strange to be touching her. We’d never been touchy-feely, even back in school. We’d spent so much time together, and we’d shared so much on a miserably intense intimate level, but we’d done so with a buffer. Always, a buffer.

I lifted her up. She pulled a few tools from her little bag, stuck it under her arm, and began to work the lock.

Down below, there was a gunshot.

We both froze. Shouts and the sound of running feet floated up from below. “Chasin’ their own tales,” she muttered, straining up to the lock with renewed attention. A moment later, it clicked open and she snatched it from the clasp. She took hold of the handle and hung on as I let her down, pulling the trap down with her.

A set of folding stairs slid down, narrowly missing her as she ducked to one side. I pulled the Glock and mounted them, inching my way up carefully. There was a light on above us, along with that sense of presence, of someone occupying a space.

I poked my head up over the opening, and ducked down on instinct as something flashed by where my head had been.

“Carrie?”

There was a moment of silence. Then she appeared, crouching down. She looked like hell—face drawn, hair pulled back in a messy tail. She was wearing the clothes she’d had on the day before, plucked, I guessed, from the bedroom floor under gunpoint.

“Maddie?”

I scrambled up. When I reached the top of the ladder, Ellie was there, giggling, and I grabbed onto her and hugged to me so tightly she cried out, pounding her little fists against me. Carrie grabbed onto me, and for one second, one moment, we were just perfect. We were just everything.

Then Carolina pulled away and slapped me, hard, across the face. “What the fuck did you do?!”

I blinked tears out of my eyes. “Come on,” I said gruffly, “we gotta go.”

I climbed down and held my arms up. Carrie handed Ellie, who laughed and gurgled as if it was all a grand adventure. Jill stood fidgeting awkwardly as Carrie descended, holding one arm with the other.

Carrie glanced at her as she took Ellie back, then looked at me, her face blank. I nodded at the window, and she lost no time turning and heading for it.

“Be careful,” I said, taking Ellie as she climbed out. “Head left. Stay out of sight.”

I handed my squirming daughter through, then froze, the unmistakable sound of a pump action shotgun snapping through the hall.

I turned my head. An old man wearing a red smoking jacket, his white hair a cloud of chaos on his head, stood in the final doorway at the end of the hall. He looked like he’d been asleep. He had a big, crooked nose that looked red and swollen, and ink-black eyebrows.

“Hullo, Mr. Renik,” Abban Spillaine said, and squeezed the trigger.

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