Shieldmaiden 2

A barrage landed in the overturned table, chipping away at the thick wood, cracking it on Lexa’s side. The attack shrunk the world down to her and the attackers, which was manageable. It was like she was in a ghost story. Everyone was dead, going through the motions, but not her and the shooters.

She instantly knew what he was doing. Cover wasn’t concealment. He thought to full-auto right through the table and ventilate her in payback for his two pals. Effective suppressive fire too. And when you were laying down suppressing fire, it was pure suicide for anyone to poke their head up and risk providing a landing strip for one of those bullets filling the air.

Lexa threw herself on her side, just past the cover of the table, and immediately zeroed on the firing gunman. He was by the open backdoor of the van, glorying in the power of totally emptying a clip. Lexa could see it in his eyes.

Then she saw the power trip end as her bullet took him high in the throat. Ripping it out and throwing a handful of it into the street like a wadded up paper being tossed at a trash bin.

See? Ghost story.

Lexa was up on her feet immediately, advancing on the downed gunman. He was clawing at his throat, too busy with whatever he was trying to accomplish there to bother with the rifle slung from his shoulder. Lexa reloaded on the move, then stashed her pistol in her waistband while she wrenched the rifle away with her other hand.

She took it in both hands, turned it around, and held down the trigger for the half-second it took ten bullets to leave the magazine and travel through the shooter and lodge in the pavement.

The burst put Lexa at the center of a one-person cloudburst. Blood rained just for her, soaking Lexa’s face, her shirt, her breasts. Boob sweat, only warmer, stickier. It was a guilty pleasure, orgasmic. Like eating chocolate during a diet. Smoking a cigarette when you were trying to quit.

Cheating on your girlfriend.

Lexa lifted the rifle to her face, bracing it on her shoulder. Ready to fire. She circled the open doors in back of the van, aiming inside. The driver still sat in front. She fired into the back of his seat. Concealment wasn’t cover. He shook and bled and fell against the steering wheel. The car horn blared, eager to join in the cacophony of screams and pounding feet and twisting metal as cars rammed against each other, trying to get away.

Lexa ignored it. It was a ghost story, a campfire story, she was a campfire story, and she was only alive when someone recounted the horror. It was a dark and stormy night. The car radio said a maniac had escaped from the institution…

She whirled around the other side of the van. The man who’d been in the passenger seat had a submachine gun. He was filling the air with angry hornets, sending them after everyone who was running away.

Lexa held down the trigger and let the rifle spasm until it was empty.

The bullets hit him like a gale-force wind, bowling him over. He hit the ground a series of body parts loosely strung together.

Lexa dropped the rifle, drew her pistol again. Screams rent the air. She spun around, looking for another ski mask, another muzzle flash, but it was all just people. Running and screaming and crying and bleeding. She wanted there to be more, someone else to kill, but the ghost story was over. And once the story was over, there was no changing it.

***

Lexa blinked away tears. She needed a moment to recenter herself. The memories were so vivid that it seemed impossible they’d not just happened. It was like swimming in a stormy sea. The waves battered her like they were trying to push her down, back into the swirling chaos that it was so easy to slip beneath.

And the worst part was that it was almost peaceful down there, as opposed to the surface. She knew enough of the maelstrom to be comfortable with it. Trying to pull herself free… that was when she didn’t know what to do.

But she wasn’t in London. It wasn’t last year. She was outside her hotel room. After the meeting with Marcus, she’d flown out to Seattle, getting a room to sleep off jet lag while the paperwork went through and the operation got underway. She tried to go over the detail-work herself, double-checking Marcus’s people, but she’d boiled with anxiety the whole flight and being on the ground gave her exhaustion a chance to catch up with her.

She’d showered, enjoyed the complimentary breakfast buffet (if enjoy was ever the right word when it came to Kellog’s), and now she was hiding from the customary Seattle drizzle under an awning, waiting for Murphy to show.

And the seas kept on storming.

When Murphy finally did pull up, it was in an ’84 Corvette. The kind of thing a soldier got on his first leave to tool around with his newlywed stripper in. Lexa sympathized—there was a Thunderbird somewhere with her name in the Carfax—but there were things you did in your thirties and things you did in your twenties. Hell, in your teens.

He’d also grown a moustache since the last time she’d seen him. Or maybe the right word was ‘developed’ a moustache.

“Lex-uh, bay-bee, where have you been all my life?” he asked her, hanging his head out of the driverside window. Lexa tried in vain to think of many intellectually stimulating conversations she’d had from that vantage point. It wasn’t exactly Juliet’s balcony. “Finally came over to the Dark Side, huh? Finished counting the zeroes on your check yet?”

“Pop the trunk,” Lexa told him. She’d been sure her duffel bag and briefcase would fit, even if her ride was a Volkswagen, but with Murphy, who knew? He might have a few boxes of his dad’s old porn he still needed to rehome.

“It’s unlocked,” Murphy said. “That all you got? Because I can give you a hand if you’ve got more.”

Lexa went in back of the Corvette, tried the trunk—it did open up. She slotted her luggage inside. The only other things in there were a tire pump and jumper cables. Maybe Murphy was maturing.

Even bacteria developed culture after long enough.

“Really, that’s all?” Murphy asked as she came around to the passenger seat.

“I’m going to be working. You think I’ll have time to digitize some old photo albums?”

Murphy shrugged; he’d gotten even better at it since they’d last met. “Where do you keep your, you know, shoes?”

“On my feet. I’ve got a laptop and a library card and two guns. What else do I need? By the way, we need to stop at a gun store on the way. They don’t let private contractors take ammo on the plane.”

“I know. Sucks.” Murphy blew some air through his moustache. Lexa worried it would fly off. “There is, uh, a gun store.”

“A? As in one?”

“It’s Seattle,” Murphy said with another shrug. “You can take some from my stash. I assume you’re still rocking the .44?”

“If I shoot something once, I don’t like it being there to get shot a second time.”

“Okay, Mr. Eastwood, but there are these things called automatics now and you only have to load them once instead of six times.”

“Five times. I don’t keep one under the chamber. And automatics jam at close range.”

“No they don’t.”

“Yes they do. Shoot someone in the head, close range. Brains get in the mechanism, mechanism jams. Don’t have to worry about that with a revolver.”

Murphy nodded. “Hard to believe you’re still single. Hard.”

“Drive the car before someone sees me in this thing.”