Chapter3

The sun boiled the puddles to vapor, pulling an acrid stench of tar from the asphalt. Under the blinding midday glare, that broken trail of reddish-brown mud looked like a dried bloodline. It dead-ended in the back alley of "Old George's Car Wash."

The roar of a high-pressure power washer shattered the dead air.

I didn't hesitate. I kicked the half-open corrugated steel door wide. Through the blinding glare, a guy in a waterproof rubber suit crouched by the front tire of a black SUV, frantically blasting the red mud off its undercarriage.

I whipped out my tactical folder, smashed the heavy steel handle into the back of his skull, grabbed his collar with my left hand, and plunged his head straight into a bucket of soapy, filthy sludge.

He thrashed wildly, dirty water spraying everywhere. I counted to ten, then yanked him up.

He gasped for air, violently coughing up grime, and roared, "You're fucking dead—"

The cold edge of my blade pressed dead against his carotid, breaking the skin. A bead of blood mixed with wash-water and rolled down into his rubber overalls.

"Upper East Side red dirt." The roar of the washer shredded my voice. "The hit squad in Sector Seven this morning—who was leading?"

He finally registered my face. His pupils contracted to pinpricks. "You... you're the cripple?"

I didn't waste breath. I twisted my wrist, sinking the steel a millimeter deeper.

"Mad Dog! It was Mad Dog Ryan!" he shrieked, his voice cracking. "But he wasn't there for you! We don't give a shit about you!"

Those words slammed into my nervous system like an ice pick. "Who was he after?"

"The woman! The one making cherry pies!"

Fury surged through me like a high-voltage current, shooting straight into my bad left leg. I grabbed a fistful of his hair. "Claire runs a fucking food truck!"

"The hell she does!" the washer screamed hysterically. "Ryan's boss is looking for a ledger! Federal-level black money! It was in that plastic box!"

The plastic box. The cherry pie box Milo was holding. The deep scratch in the sink embedded with sticky syrup.

Claire said the pie had gone bad. She said she threw it away. No—she hid something inside it.

Soap bubbles caught the blinding midday sun, flashing iridescent rainbows. Suddenly, a faint red beam sliced through the foam, coming to a dead stop right between the washer's eyes.

Phut!

The muffled cough of a suppressed sniper rifle. The washer's head snapped back like a melon hit by a sledgehammer. Warm red and gray matter splattered across half my face. The bucket of sludge instantly bloomed crimson.

I dropped him instantly, using the momentum of his falling corpse to roll hard, sliding under the SUV's chassis like a grease monkey.

Bullets chewed up the concrete where I'd been standing a second ago. Shrapnel and stone chips ricocheted fiercely against the car's undercarriage, ringing like hail.

The chassis sliced the blazing sunlight into razor-sharp shadows. I lay flat in a puddle of brains, red mud, and car-wash soap, holding my breath until my lungs burned.

Footsteps. The heavy, wet squelch of combat boots in the puddles. Not one. Three. Sweeping in from the front entrance in a tight tactical formation.

"Informant neutralized." The crackle of a localized comms unit sounded just beyond the front-left tire.

"What about the gimp?" a second, much lower voice asked.

"Not in the wash bay. Keep sweeping."

They didn't see me? Bullshit. The dead guy's blood trail led straight under the chassis. They were playing dumb, deliberately tightening the noose.

My fingers brushed the dead washer's limp hand. I grabbed the power washer wand still clutched in his grip.

I shoved off hard with my bad leg, jammed the pressure trigger to the absolute max, and swept the high-velocity jet directly at the main breaker box on the left wall.

The water beam shredded the rusted electrical casing in a microsecond. A massive shower of sparks exploded. The entire wash bay shorted out, plunging into dead, humming darkness—save for the blinding blades of noon sunlight slashing through the gap under the roller door.

"Argh—!" Two agonizing screams. The electrified puddles instantly dropped the two guys on the left side of the vehicle.

I shot out from under the right side of the chassis. My blade carved a blind, lethal arc through the shadows, sinking straight through the third man's combat boot and deep into his instep. I twisted the handle hard.

He hit the wet concrete with a muffled grunt. I sprang up, driving my right knee with my entire body weight directly into his windpipe. The crunch of cartilage was sickeningly crisp.

I ripped off his black balaclava. Just a kid, really. Bloody pink foam bubbled past his lips.

"Where's the plastic box?" I snarled, the tip of my blade hovering a millimeter above his pupil.

He stared back. Zero fear in his eyes. Instead, his bloody lips curled into a grotesque smile. "You... you really think... we're looking for a box?"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Decoy..." he choked out, blood spilling down his jawline. "That bitch... played you. We didn't leave that red soil... she did. She needed you... to pull Mad Dog's heat... off her..."

My heart missed a violent beat.

The burner phone in my pocket vibrated with a dull, heavy buzz. In the dripping silence of the slaughterhouse, it sounded like a death knell.

I kept the blade pinned to his eye, drawing the phone with my left hand. The screen flared to life. An unencrypted text.

Sender: A masked virtual number.

Message: "Sorry, Milo needs a new identity, and the Feds are too close. You make a beautiful decoy. Thanks for the cover fire. —C"

I stared down. At the reddish-brown mud swirling in the puddles. At the brains and blood soaking my clothes.

From spotting that soil in Sector Seven at dawn, to tracking it here—every single move had been meticulously mapped out by Claire. She wiped mud laced with federal micro-trackers onto the SUV, steering me to chase after them like a rabid dog, effectively intercepting the real hit squad meant for her.

The missing infrared scope. The dead signal emitter on the roof. She planted all of it.

The midday sun pierced the gap under the door, stinging my eyes. I hadn't just failed to find the truth. I had just become the biggest, brightest target in Forge Valley.

Outside, the wail of approaching sirens bled into the heavy, rhythmic thud of helicopter rotors. They were converging on the car wash from every direction.