Chapter 1 Continued
II.
This time Faith did freeze up.
Everything below her chest seemed to become suddenly distant and numb, her guts running cold and limp and watery. At the same time her limbs tingled warmly as her muscles were bathed in a fresh surge of adrenaline. While rummaging through Noble's things she had developed a mild urge to pee, and there was a bad second or two when she really thought her bladder was going to let go. She managed to hold on, though, and that was good. It was good because what she had just heard simply couldn't be. There was no way the owner of that voice could be in this room with her. No rational way, no physical way.
And yet she had heard it.
I'm so damned keyed up, she thought desperately. That's all. I imagined it. That's it, just an auditory hallucination. Simple explanation.
Faith turned around, very slowly.
Sergeant Maritza Cruz was standing on the other side of the room. She was positioned neatly between Faith and the exit.
She had also drawn her weapon.
There was something too perfect about it. There was something about this that felt truly preordained, just too much like a setup, too much like a sting. At almost the precise moment she lays her hands on Noble's gun - just as she's about to leave with it - Cruz appears in the doorway like a fucking spook. With her gun drawn.
How? How could Cruz possibly have known she was here?
Well, that was a simple one, wasn't it? Bosco had betrayed her.
No, she thought immediately. No, absolutely not. He'd never sink that low ... and besides, it doesn't make any sense.
But that still left the question: how could Cruz have known that Faith - that anyone - had come here looking for that goddamned gun?
What does it matter how? She's here, and more importantly, she's armed.
Armed, yes. Faith's eyes kept wandering back to the Glock in Cruz's right hand. You don't do that, she thought faintly. You just don't do that, you don't pull your gun on another cop. You don't pull your gun on anybody unless you expect to have to use it. They teach you that. It's one of the first things they teach you.
"Take it easy, Sergeant," Faith said carefully.
Cruz moved into the room, as deft and quiet as a cat, the gun still held loose and casual at her side. She smiled thinly. "You got a smart mouth, Yokas."
"Look," Faith began gingerly. "All this means ... uh ... is that you lose a C.I. ..."
Cruz moved closer, though she was still between Faith and any chance at escape. Her dark eyes blazed, but there was a kind of cynical humor there as well. "How'd you turn him on me? Hmm?"
Careful. God, be careful here ...
"Bosco?" Faith said.
"He was gonna be my star," Cruz hissed.
Faith's eyes narrowed at that, the old anger rising up and momentarily blotting out this new jam she was in. Star, she thought sourly. As in somebody you can stick in front of you, so if your stupid little games blow up in your face, that poor bastard takes the fall and not you. Great. Star. Right.
Outwardly, Faith only shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. There had been a time when she might not have hesitated to say any of that to Cruz's face, but not anymore. Not here and now, certainly. Because of the gun. Which was to say Cruz's gun - not the relic she had just pulled out of the pillow. Cruz was not known for keeping a cool head - that was true. And of course Cruz had once threatened to beat her up - to actually physically assault her - in the middle of a crowded hospital. But Faith had never actually been frightened of her before now.
But seeing that gun in her hand, the implication behind it, the unspoken threat, Faith was most definitely frightened. It was way over the line, even by Cruz's standards.
Still, she risked: "Yeah, well ... uh ... he figured you out all on his own."
Cruz grinned humorlessly. "We both know he's not that smart."
"Faith?"
She balked slightly. It was Bosco's voice. Coming from the hall.
Strange, Faith thought. I should be relieved.
And I'm not.
"Mommy?" Cruz mocked savagely. Her eyes had gone empty, almost vapid, and that was almost more unnerving than the physical threat. Her gun was still loose at her side, but Faith could see the tendons and muscles in her hand twitching, her thumb rubbing the grip in quick, somehow insectile little strokes.
"Bosco!" Faith called, surprised at how strong and sure her voice sounded. "I'm back here!"
Bosco entered the room. He saw Faith backed into a corner, saw Cruz standing in front of her ... and then saw Cruz's gun. For the most part, his expression didn't change. He did, however, cast another doubtful glance between the two women, as if surprised that neither of them was dead on the floor.
Stick around, Bos. The night's still young.
"All right," he said. This was mostly directed at Cruz. "Let's just calm down. All right? Cruz?"
Cruz only stared at him, eyes still flat and reptilian. Behind them, Aaron Noble appeared in the doorway, shambling into the room red-eyed and thoroughly confused. Nobody was supposed to know about this crazy little operation, and now everybody was here, including Noble himself. It was almost funny. At this point Faith wouldn't be all that surprised if Swersky was next through the door. Perhaps to tell her that he'd had a change of heart, that he'd like her to bring him an extra-large coffee after all. Triple sugar, triple cream.
"Get out, Noble," Cruz snapped, barely acknowledging him.
Bosco shook his head and motioned for Noble to stay. "No. No."
"Get out, Noble," Cruz repeated.
"No!" Bosco snapped. "You know what? He stays right there."
Noble's eyes, which to this point had been jittering uncertainly all over the room, finally landed on the gun that Faith was holding in her left hand. His face, already a sickly, cadaverous gray, went even paler. "I thought you were gonna take care of this," he said in a strangled voice.
"Out!" Cruz yelled at him.
"What are the police doing here?"
"Out now!"
Noble shrugged. "All right ... but ..."
"I'll find you," Cruz said, and suddenly her voice was soft, almost gentle. The change was eerily quick and somehow grotesque.
Noble shrugged again. "Okay but ... I mean ...its' been a while ..."
I should have known, Faith thought disgustedly. Cruz is feeding that sack of shit meth. Surprise surprise. The Crank Fairy strikes again.
Across from her, Bosco caught her eye. "Come on, Faith," he said softly, almost in a whisper. It was as if he actually expected Cruz, whose attention was now focused on Noble, not to notice them. "Let's go."
Too much to hope for.
"The gun stays with me," Cruz said flatly.
Bosco shook his head. "We're locking Noble up. That's it."
"What?" Noble screeched. Then, almost sulkily: "I gave you Buford's address ..."
"No-one is getting locked up here!" Cruz shouted.
"I don't want to step on anything else," Bosco said. "I don't want to put you in front of anything. I just want to do the right thing." He paused. "It won't affect you."
It was the wrong thing to say, and Faith could see that Bosco knew it the moment it was out. The air seemed to grow almost physically heavier, and to Faith it seemed as if she had just felt the entire balance of the situation tilt, as if they'd all just slid a little closer to some unthinkable disaster, and a half-coherant bubble of thought-
(she's going to do something she's going to do something unless I do something)
rose up from her subconscious and burst almost immediately.
"It won't affect me?" Cruz said, very softly ... and then, predictably, she exploded: "That son of a bitch Buford killed my sister! Let me tell you something about doing the right thing. There's a problem, we fix it" - here Cruz actually hammered the barrel of her pistol against her own chest to illustrate the point, and Faith found herself desperately wishing it would go off - "Anti-Crime. No-one asks how. And we don't tell them." She turned to Faith, grinning savagely. "See, this country has a little system that protects the worst of us and pisses on the good, and what we need are cops who aren't afraid to do what it takes!" She thrust her hand out. "Now give me the damn gun so I can get back to doing my job!"
Back to your job, Faith thought numbly, deeply unsettled now, the blood rushing in her ears. Cruz was not going to back down. Absolutely not. It was something that went beyond Noble, beyond the gun, beyond the case; it was simply not in Cruz's nature to give in.
And yet if Faith handed Cruz the gun, she would be helping her convict an innocent man of murder. She would be an accessory to that, and that simply wasn't an option.
Oh, this was bad. Oh God, was this ever bad. This was, Faith thought with a hysterical kind of good humor, a new contender for the worst situation she'd ever been in. She'd started into it worrying about breaking and entering and now she was mired in this, and goddam it, none of this should even be her problem. It was Bosco's problem, and she had sworn to him and to herself not to clean this one up. Hadn't she sworn that? He'd dug himself into a pit, and now here she was, right down in it with him.
And all over one gun. It all came down to one God-damned gun.
It was still swaddled in its greasy handkerchief in her left hand. An ancient Walther P-38 that looked like it had seen a lot of action; its frame was battered and scratched, its grips worn and friction-taped, but it nevertheless looked to be in good working order - and there was at least one dead biker who could attest to it. Faith wondered vaguely where Noble had acquired it. She was sure there was probably a story behind it, long-winded and interesting and falling several miles short of legal. She could feel its cold weight, the nub of the safety catch pressed softly against her palm, as if suggesting a more direct - and drastic - resolution to this little standoff.
She stared hard at Cruz, meeting her eyes, remembering something Sasha Monroe had said on a night that seemed like a thousand years ago.
She acts tough, but she's weak. And the weak always get what's coming.
Time was running out. A decision would have to be made.
"Give me the damned gun!" Cruz repeated.
Beside her, unnoticed by anyone except Faith, Bosco quietly drew his weapon.
And that was when Faith knew, that was what brought the truth crashing home to her. Because in that moment she saw that Bosco knew it as well, that at last he finally understood the real truth behind Cruz's corruption, behind her misguided and twisted sense of justice, behind her single-minded ruthlessness, behind the almost ridiculously street-tough exterior.
Behind the fact that she could come into a room with her gun drawn on a fellow officer.
It was a simple truth, really, and it was deeply frightening.
Cruz wasn't weak.
Cruz was insane.
And that meant that right now, she was liable to do anything. Anythingat all. Unless someone acted first.
Faith's thoughts were clear and cold and oddly detached through what happened next; she thought again of her husband and her children, wondered what they would do if, in the next few seconds, she wasn't fast enough. What they would do without her if she came out of this mess on the wrong side of the law. She wondered how Emily would turn out, what kind of woman she would become. What kind of man Charlie would grow into. She wondered if Fred would re-marry. She wondered if they would stay in the apartment or move. She wondered if they would even stay in New York.
She wondered all of these things as she brought Noble's Walther up, holding it out butt-first, as if to hand it over to Cruz. She wondered all of these things as she transferred the gun from left hand to right in a smooth, unbroken and almost elegant motion, feeling her finger slip easily through the trigger guard, watching the sight line up over Cruz's chest.
Cruz saw what Faith was about to do and raised her own weapon, one-handed and almost casual. The Sergeant's face registered absolutely no surprise, that expression of dark hate never showing so much as a crack.
Faith squeezed the trigger. She had perhaps a tenth of a second to wonder if the gun was even cocked, let alone loaded. She'd never even thought about it, never even had a chance to check.
Then the old German pistol kicked hard in her hand, and just like that it was done, it was done and all bets were off.
Cruz's left shoulder did not so much sprout a bullet hole as it seemed to actually explode in a thick red cloud, the impact simultaneously spinning her and driving her backwards. Her own weapon went off a half-second later, more or less on reflex. Faith felt the bullet drone past her head with what felt like perhaps an inch of clearance. Something behind her shattered glassily.
Bosco fired at almost the same instant. The bullet passed harmlessly through the space Cruz's head had occupied only a second before.
Cruz reeled back across the room, her good arm pinwheeling wildly, and yet somehow she managed to stay on her feet. She also kept a tight grip on her pistol and, incredibly, she was already trying to regain her balance and her aim.
Faith didn't think to try to shoot her again. Her conscious mind was still processing exactly what she had done; her instincts took up the slack and got her moving. She threw herself behind the couch where she'd found Noble's gun and pressed flat against the floor. She could still feel the wind of Cruz's bullet, the insectile buzz across her cheek, and her brain was already gibbering a hysterical mantra, over and over, Am I shot? Am I shot? Am I shot? Am I -
Cruz screamed. It was less a cry of pain than a cheated howl of rage that set Faith's teeth on edge. Then there was a muted thump, like a body falling to the floor. She tossed Noble's Walther aside, drew her own sidearm - a far more reliable Glock - and waited for the next shot.
Silence for three or four seconds.
Cruz was probably down. Surely, Cruz had to be down. That was what the thump had been.
Then: "Drop it, Cruz!"
Bosco's voice.
Cruz hissed. Actually hissed, like a cat, and Faith suddenly found herself having to suppress a hysterical wave of the giggles.
"Cabron!" Cruz snarled at him, her voice tight with pain and startled anger. "You -"
"I SAID TOSS THE WEAPON!" he screamed. There was a note of high, alien hysteria in his voice that Faith didn't care for at all.
A beat or two. Faith heard something that might have been the snik of a releasing safety catch.
Do I stand up and help him? she thought wildly. Would that make things worse? Oh God oh God oh my God what have I done what have I started here what -
"Faith!"
Her hand tightened on her gun. The grips were already slick with sweat.
"Faith!" - that same note of hysteria again - "Faith, you all right?"
"Yeah!" she said, getting slowly to her feet. "I'm fine!"
I think that might be a lie.
The situation had changed considerably. Aaron Noble was now standing back against the far wall and appeared to be pressing himself into it as hard as he could, as if he thought he could somehow disappear through the plaster. His rheumy eyes were wide and unblinking. She wondered dimly why he hadn't tried to run when the shooting started.
Bosco stood in a textbook two-handed shooter's stance, weapon aimed down at Cruz, who had fallen to her knees. The left side of her face had been decorated by a fine scattershot mist of blood, her left arm hanging limp from a shoulder that was now a ragged, bleeding mess. And yet she was still upright, her face screwed into an expression that was equal parts pain and fury. Her eyes rolled wildly. She still held her gun in her right hand, raised but not pointed at anyone in particular.
At least until Faith popped up from behind the couch. Like a cobra, Cruz's gun arm homed in on her immediately.
"Don't!" Bosco hollered. "Don't, Cruz!"
Cruz hesitated, swallowing visibly. "The bitch shot me," she snarled, and there was so much mixed surprise and anger in her tone that it was almost funny. Faith felt the giggles working their way up her throat again and swallowed them.
"If you don't toss that gun," Bosco said. "I'll shoot you."
Blow her fucking head off, Bos, Faith thought suddenly, viciously, and was immediately overcome with a kind of horrified shame.
Cruz turned on him and spat a long, sputtering flurry of Spanish Faith didn't understand, except for another fierce invocation of the word cabron. Then, in English: "You don't know what you just threw away, you -"
"Put the gun down or I'll kill you, Cruz."
It came out very soft. Very un-Bosco, in Faith's opinion, and she looked over at him uneasily. Cruz was obviously deranged, and Faith was beginning to have her doubts about him as well. She realized that even though she had her own gun trained on Cruz, the next move was Bosco's and Bosco's alone. That was a crazy way to think, but it was true. Faith might as well not even be in the room.
And Cruz was making no move to comply.
"You're under arrest," Bosco said, his tone almost pleading now. "Don't you get it? It's over, Cruz. I gave you a chance to do what's right. Now you're finished."
Jesus, Bosco, don't tell her that, you might set her off, and I'm the one looking down the barrel -
"Arrest," Cruz said bleakly, as if the word was entirely new to her. She was swaying a bit now, eyes growing bleary and distant. Faith still couldn't understand how she could remain upright and coherent. Part of her body had been vaporized. Not just wounded - vaporized. The pain must be enormous, and she was clearly losing a lot of blood.
"Arrest?" she repeated, and suddenly her voice was strong again. She grinned. Faith thought she saw tiny flecks of blood on her teeth and felt the corners of her own mouth pull down in revulsion. "You're putting me under arrest? You'd better reserve a cell for yourself while you're at it, Boscorelli! You're gonna take me down, huh? Well, I don't think I'll have any problems taking you down with me! You were there! You just remember that! Everything we did, you backed me up! You lied right along with me! It's your ass on the line before mine ... you ... you ..." Cruz's voice tapered off, her eyes rolling up to the whites. Faith hoped - prayed - that this was it, that she would pass out and this would end.
She didn't, though. The woman seemed to possess a grim, defiant kind of strength that in some weird way hurt to look at, something that was wretched and somehow animal, like a rabbit chewing itself out of a trap; every time it looked like blood loss or shock or pain might be about to overtake her, she would almost visibly draw herself back together, her back straightening, her gun arm tightening up. Faith flashed on a childhood memory: sitting on her back porch in the summer, a Coke in her hand, a Coke or maybe a popsicle, idly watching bugs drown slowly in the sugar-water/detergent trap her mother always put out. The way their little legs would stop waving and their struggles would seem to have ended for good, and then there would come another stubborn quiver, a truculent little show of determination.
This looked exactly like that, and it should have been funny. But it wasn't. It was horrible.
"Put the gun down, Cruz," Bosco repeated in his creepy new I'm-just-telling-you-how-it-is voice.
Cruz looked from one face to the other. Her eyelids flittered in a dreamy, stunned sort of way that almost - almost - made Faith feel sorry for her. The Sergeant's face was laid open like a book, the central thought clearly readable: This couldn't be. It couldn't be. This wasn't the way things were supposed to go at all. She was Cruz. She was Sergeant Cruz, and Sergeant Cruz always won. She'd been playing this game for years and always won ... and she had lost everything in the space of seconds.
Pitiful or not, Faith only hoped that she knew it, that she was finally starting to understand the deadly, irrevocable nature of her new position here; she had two guns aimed at her and two cops against her and that was it, it was a simple case of surrender or die. She'd been on the other end of the same situation countless times herself.
Cruz's hand tensed on her pistol.
"I'll take you down, 'Ritza," Bosco said softly, and that was when Faith realized he was almost crying.
Another beat that seemed to go on forever. Faith watched the blood running down Cruz's left arm, the drops coalescing on her fingertips and falling to the floor. She thought she could actually hear it. Pat-pat-pat ...
Cruz threw her weapon down. Then, very slowly, she lifted her right hand and held it palm-out, giving it a sarcastic little shake (there - see? Empty) in an exaggerated display of surrender that was probably supposed to look defiant. To Faith it only looked petulant and childish. Cruz had gone very pale now, almost gray. She looked dazedly over at Noble, who was still cowering in the corner. Her lips were trembling. Her eyes were shiny with tears. She was going to crack. Fucking right she was. Any minute now she would crack, and Faith found in herself yet another wicked and shameful desire: she wanted to see it happen.
And it happened.
"This'll make a great chapter in your book, won't it, you dickless son of a bitch?" Cruz screamed at the top of her lungs, the tears overspilling and streaming down her cheeks, and then at last, mercifully, she passed out, pitching sideways and hitting the floor with a flat, unremarkable thud.
She didn't move. After a moment Bosco let out a long, shaky breath and holstered his gun. Then he turned to Faith. He was shaking his head, slowly, wonderingly. His expression was that of a man who has just witnessed some cataclysmic accident; a passenger plane taking a nosedive into a schoolyard, perhaps.
"Jesus," he whispered hoarsely. "Jesus Christ, Faith ..."
Faith looked up slowly, met his eyes, held them ... and what she saw there overwhelmed her with a cold, bitter anger. Look at this - poor little Bosco is shocked! Heavens above! Poor little Bosco! He had put her in this position, he was the one who hadn't been able to see through Cruz, who hadn't been able to see what she really was, and now he was shocked that it had come to this.
And this proved it, Faith realized, this proved that nothing had changed, nothing had changed and it was still the end of them. Even now, it was still the end of them, the end of their partnership, the end of their friendship. If this were a book or movie or TV show everything might be okay now, everything might just fall neatly back into place, go back to the way it was. Good triumphing over evil, partners coming back together to fight a common enemy - all of that tiresome romantic shit that never works in practice and doesn't even fare too well in theory. She had stuck by him through a lot, she had put up with a lot, but the novelty had, after all these years, finally worn off. Taking care of, watching out for, and putting up with Maurice Boscorelli was no longer a hobby she was interested in pursuing. The novelty had worn off.
She thought it might have actually started to wear thin a long time ago.
And Maritza Cruz ... she didn't even enter into the equation.
Across the room, Cruz twitched and moaned thickly. About thirty seconds went by and there was nothing more.
"Is she dead?" Faith asked finally. The anger seemed to recede almost as quickly as it had come over her, and now her voice sounded flat, emotionless to her own ears. Distant, as if coming through on a bad radio transmission. Was that shock?
She thought not.
Bosco didn't answer her question, and made no move to check. Like her, he seemed to be still stuck in the moment, unable to get beyond the first few words of that one little profane statement of disbelief: "Jesus, Faith ... you ... you just ..." He gave up, shrugged helplessly, and uttered a humorless little chuckle.
Over by the wall, Noble's paralysis broke and he took a step towards the fallen Cruz.
"Don't touch her," Bosco snapped, hardly looking up.
Noble ignored him. He approached Cruz with slow, soft-footed caution, the way you might come up on a mortally wounded tiger. Then, throwing himself right into the metaphor, he actually prodded her side gently with the toe of his shoe.
"I said stay away from her!" Bosco yelled, and in the silence that followed Faith heard the first hint of approaching sirens. Somebody had called 911, and she was betting the police would make record time getting here. This was the Melrose, after all, and gunfights were just a tad out of place in a fancy hotel. There were taxpayers here. Big-Fish taxpayers. People with clout. The cavalry was on the way to make sure no harm could come to New York's social elite.
Again, she should have been relieved. And again, she found she wasn't.
Something wet ran into her eyes and stung them. She blinked. Sweat. She was drenched in it. She swiped out her eyes and ran the back of her hand across her brow, and when she looked up she caught sight of a clock sitting on one of Noble's cluttered tables.
It was almost ten minutes to nine.
Less than an hour, then. Less than an hour ago she had been sitting behind the desk at the Five-Five. Safe. Safe with only Swersky and a mostly quiet precinct house for company, and now both might as well have been a million miles behind her. She remembered that she had been eating Twizzlers when she first came in for her shift. The package was probably still on the desk; the strips of licorice that remained in it would probably never be eaten. It made her feel like crying.
"They're coming," she said hollowly, and turned to the window. "God, Bosco, what are we gonna tell - "
"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" Bosco screamed suddenly.
Faith jumped and swung around.
Noble was down on his knees, rifling through Cruz's pockets. His hands were now slick with blood, but the gore didn't seem to be bothering him much, and Faith suddenly understood why he hadn't tried to bolt when the shooting started; he wanted the drugs. The drugs Cruz always carried, her little insurance policy, her handy bit of instant blackmail. Noble wanted her dope, and he had simply waited until she was down to get it. The dragon was vanquished; her treasure was his for the taking.
This whole horrific mess was getting more gruesome by the second.
Oh Jesus. I just want to go home. I want Fred. Hell, I even want my mother. I want to be eating someplace right now, I want to use my meal period for an actual meal, just sit in some quiet little café where they give cops free coffee and bagels, looking out onto the street, watching the world pass me by ...
Bosco grabbed Noble, hauled him away from Cruz, and tossed him roughly back against the far wall. Noble glared back at him defiantly, his eyes dancing with a mix of excitement and desperation.
"Cruz carries dope, right?" Noble spat. "You know that. Sure you do. You were her little lapdog, right?"
Bosco bristled and took an ominous step forward, fists clenched. "Excuse me? What'd you just say?"
Noble shifted uncomfortably, his mood changing abruptly from defiance to humble defeat. "She carries drugs," he whined. "That's why they call her Two-Bags, right? I need a little something to ... to grease the wheel, you know?" He looked at Cruz helplessly. "What's the harm if I take it? She'll never know ..." He smiled a bit. "You guys don't seem to be doing anything to help her anyway. Gonna just let her bleed out, huh?"
That stopped them all cold.
Faith exchanged another of those uneasy, complicated looks with Bosco, and then they both turned back to Cruz.
She had curled into a kind of semi-fetal position on her right side. The blood was pooling around her now in a corona, soaking into the carpet. But she was clearly still alive; she was moving, twitching, writhing weakly, and for the third time in as many minutes Faith's mind found her an analogy in the animal kingdom - Cruz now looked like a bug stuck on the end of a pin.
And they were doing nothing. Nothing. They hadn't even called it in, and sirens or no sirens, they should be doing at least that much. But they weren't. They were all just standing around being shocked.
That it had taken a dope addict to point this fact out to them made Faith feel ill.
Bosco, meanwhile, was still eying Cruz thoughtfully. Then he shrugged. "Maybe it's better this way, Faith." He looked up at her, lips twitching into an odd little smirk. "Right?"
She gaped at him. "What ...? Are you saying ... are you saying we should just let her bleed out on the floor? Is that it?"
"YOU WERE THE ONE WHO SHOT HER, FAITH!" he bellowed at her, and then, abruptly, he lunged at her, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her hard enough to make her teeth rattle. "YOU SHOT A COP, FOR GOD'S SAKE! WHY THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT? HUH? WHY?"
She pulled violently away from him. "I feared for my life," she said, voice soft and deadly. "She came here to get that gun, and she was ready to kill me for it."
Bosco laughed wildly. "Christ, Faith, can you hear yourself? She would never - !"
"Yes!" Faith screamed back in his face, spittle flying from her mouth. "She would! And you know why? Because she's nuts, Bosco! That's why! Didn't you see her just now? Didn't you see the way she was waving that gun around? Weren't you fucking listening to her? All she cares about is what she wants, her own agenda, her own justice! All she thinks about is that goddam junkie sister of hers, about making somebody pay!"
"You don't even know what you're talking about!" he snarled, spinning away from her and throwing his hands up. "You don't know - "
Outside, the sirens were getting louder, and there was the first murmur of a brewing commotion in the hallway outside.
Faith barely heard it. "I don't know!" she shouted. "That's rich! Jesus, you're still under her spell, Bosco, you know that? Even now, after all you told me, you still can't - "
Noble suddenly burst out laughing.
Bosco grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him forward until their noses were almost touching. "What's funny? Huh? Let us in on what can be so damned funny about all of this, Noble. Please."
Noble shook his head, still laughing. "It's just ... you two, yelling your damned-fool heads off at each other, arguing ... arguing over what to do about her ... and ... and ..." He was overtaken again and had to work hard to control himself. "She's gonna die over there, you dumbass! If she isn't dead by now! You think she's gonna wait for you two to get this soap opera bullshit out of your systems? Look around! It looks like a fucking slaughterhouse in here, and you two're having a pissing contest about whose fault it is!"
Bosco released his grip on Noble's collar and stepped back. He looked blankly over at Faith. She continued to hold his gaze steady. They were both out of breath and panting, as if they'd just been led on some merry chase.
Then, mutely, Faith went over to Cruz and looked down at her, thinking uselessly about Lieutenant Swersky, about the desk at the Five-Five, about how much she would give to be back there again with her package of Twizzlers and for none of this to have ever happened. She found herself having to curb the urge to follow Noble's example and prod Cruz with her toe.
The gun had pulled to the right. Faith had been aiming for the center of Cruz's chest and had hit her in the shoulder instead, because in the last crucial millisecond the gun had pulled to the right. Of course it had - it was a piece of trash. Bad balance, crooked sights, shitty trigger-pull. If it had been her own sidearm instead of Noble's battered antique, Cruz would be dead with a bullet in her heart.
And how much simpler that would have been, a colder part of her said grimly - the same part, she suspected, that had urged Bosco to finish Cruz a moment ago. How much simpler than this.
Still standing over Cruz, still making no move to actually get down and help her, Faith glanced over at Noble's Walther. It was still right where she'd dropped it, on the floor behind the couch.
She looked at Cruz again. At the state of her shoulder. At the damage she had inflicted. Faith wasn't sure if it was a trick of the light or perhaps just her own addled mind screwing with her perception, but she thought she could see exposed bone.
She looked at the Walther again with a kind of stupid horror.
Christ, what the fuck is in that thing?
Hollow-points, that cold, foreign part of her answered impatiently. Dumdums. Black Rhinos. Fucking sidewinder missiles. Who cares? It's not gonna matter much unless you get a grip and get down to business. Time to get your hands dirty, Yokas.
But she still couldn't quite bring herself to do it, she couldn't get down there and start working to save Cruz's life. To actually put her hands on the woman. It would be like a weird kind of sacrilege, because there was still nothing in her - no real regret, no sense of remorse or even of impending remorse. Maybe she was in shock, but she didn't think that was it. There was only a heady sense of how surreal it was. She'd killed three people in the line of duty, all criminals, all armed and desperate ... and now, as Bosco had so kindly pointed out, she had shot a cop. A cop. A corrupt and filthy excuse for a cop, but a cop all the same.
The sirens were very close now. Almost right under the hotel window, by the sound.
At last Faith knelt down next to Cruz, and as she did she had a crazy but truly disturbing vision, one that came close to making her stand right up straight again; Cruz coming awake and grabbing her wrist in an icy death-grip, like some unkillable horror-movie monster.
She knelt anyway, and of course no such thing happened. There was nothing even slightly monstrous here, Faith could see that now, and it frightened her in some deep, essential way she couldn't quite define; the psychotic loose cannon with the itchy trigger finger and dead eyes was not here anymore ... if indeed she'd ever really been here at all. What was on the floor in front of her was just flesh and blood (and so much blood, Jesus, so much of it, how can she still be alive?), just a human being who had been torn open by a bullet. No monsters here, folks. No blind rage. No insanity.
In unconsciousness - or death - Cruz's face was uncharacteristically tranquil and really quite pretty.
Please let her be breathing, Faith thought numbly as she felt the blood begin to soak into her knees, as she felt her stomach turn lazily over on itself. I really need her to be breathing. I don't want to have to give her mouth-to-mouth. I don't think I can handle anything that perverse right now.
But Cruz was breathing; it was a bit shallow but it was regular. Faith began to apply pressure to her shoulder, wincing at the grisly warmth she put her hands in, the coppery-metallic smell of blood that drifted up into her nostrils.
God, I did this to her. Me.
She squeezed her eyes shut, realizing with some surprise that she was on the precarious edge of tears.
"Bosco," she said breathlessly. "Bosco. Help."
There was no answer. Faith wasn't surprised - she wasn't really expecting one. She thought she might have sensed him leaving the room after she knelt. Gone to meet up with the help that was probably already making its way through the hotel to them. That was good - she hoped they hurried. She hoped he would make them hurry. Cruz was now making a gurgling sound low in her throat that Faith didn't care much for. She really didn't want the woman to stop breathing. It wasn't just that she didn't want to give Cruz CPR - it was that she really didn't think she could.
But when she looked up she saw that Bosco was still there. Still there and standing with his arms at his sides, watching her impassively.
"Bosco," she said. Her voice wasn't much more than a shaky little squeak now. She was still keeping pressure on the wound, leaning her weight into it - she was now drenched almost to the elbows - but she didn't know how long she could keep it up. She could feel herself getting ready to be seriously sick. God, the smell, that shaved-copper smell ...
"Bosco, get down ... get down here ... and help me. Please."
Bosco didn't reply, didn't say yes, no, or boo. Didn't even twitch. Noble had come over to stand beside him, fidgeting with the drawstrings on the shabby-looking sweatshirt he was wearing. His eyes were round, owlish, staring down at this new drama with an ugly, morbid fascination.
"Bosco," Faith almost moaned. "Bosco, please ... I need you to - "
And that was when, beneath her, Cruz vomited.
Explosively.
Faith's face was splattered with warm, foul-smelling muck. It got in her mouth. Her nose. It ran down under the collar of her shirt and down between her breasts. She uttered a revolted screech that somehow spiraled up into a long, anguished wail, and she felt something in the center of her mind start to slip. And yet somehow she kept enough of her wits to roll Cruz over onto her right side to keep the wretched woman from choking to death.
With no more pressure being exerted on it, Cruz's shoulder immediately began to gush again, soaking the front of Faith's uniform as she leaned over her.
"BOSCO PLEASE PLEASE GET DOWN HERE AND HELP ME NOW PLEASE!" The words came out in one long, unpunctuated shriek that must have carried across most of the floor. Bosco, however, was completely unmoved, staring down at her without the slightest hint of emotion - not even any of that tired old Maurice Boscorelli insolence - and in that moment Faith could have picked up Noble's Walther and put one of those devastating slugs right through the center of his face.
She knew there would be no help from him. None at all.
This one was hers and hers alone. Bought and paid for.
Sobbing, face streaked with blood and the half-digested remains of Cruz's lunch, Faith started to pressure the wound again.
Bosco kept watching her, saying nothing.
It was Aaron Noble who broke the silence, the sound cutting harshly through the air, something that was as obscenely improper as the question itself: "So what happens now?"
No-one answered him.