Warning: Chapter contains a mention of implied past rape of non-canon characters. Very vague and non-explicit.
Chapter Eleven: Gravity
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John stared at the dark screen, crackles of static growing quieter and quieter as the television cooled. His mind played and replayed the images in a continuous loop.
The gunman: a titch below average height, dark hair starting to thin. Light on his feet for all he was thickset and powerfully built. Good aim, steady hands. Square jaw and sleepy eyes.
Professional. Dangerous.
The blonde: Young, tall—strength without discipline. Impatient plucking at his dark clothing, which was brand new and scratchy. Rounded shoulders that slouched under a soft, mean, childish face.
Temperamental. Dangerous.
He didn't recognize them, didn't think he'd ever had any meaningful contact with them. By the tenth iteration he was sure of it: he didn't know them.
Slim did, though. His snarl as the blonde hauled him from the room had been the rage of betrayal, not the shock of ambush.
So: the men outside the door, guarding the room, verifying Slim's check-ins. The boss man's—Slim's client's—hired help. Who were now, it seemed, under new orders.
A breach of contract.
On a separate loop, the rumpled sheet of notebook paper was folding and unfolding, instant-replay origami, in Slim's hands. The blue bleed of ink getting darker and sharper until—until it was gone, dropped to the floor and tromped underfoot when the blonde had grabbed Slim by the arm.
John shook his head, trying to shelve that image to make space. Holding escape routes from unfamiliar places in one's head, firing bullets with pinpoint accuracy through wind, walls, other bodies—all required superlative spatial awareness and a flint-sharp memory. Gifts which had saved John's life countless times, but which were now only slowing him down with a desperate, futile examination of those blue slashes from every angle, compensating for reversals and folds and tilting. Searching for a hint of the address Slim had scrawled there.
A third loop: the gunman's curling smile at Finch's wet mouthings against the concrete, the angle too oblique for John to guess at the words (his lip-reading had only ever been fair at best). That curling smile—then the casual nudge of a black running shoe against Finch's shoulder. Rolling him over, belly up.
Then nothing.
The distance and position of the basement door behind him, just a short stair flight away, was etched with perfect clarity in his mind. If he had a gun, he could have sent a bullet through the keyhole without turning around. Not that he would need to; the door was no obstacle, had never been the barrier. Those men were the barrier, and now the chains were off: they were close enough to Finch to touch—an intolerable fact. But now John's chains were off, too.
So: stay below and hope for the screen to light up again, or go above and tear through the house for clues?
John's mind and nerves and limbs begged for action, for escape. His gut told him to stay.
He compromised. The door splintered under a firm kick, and John got a glimpse of a messy kitchen: warping orange linoleum, dishes in the sink, a dark stain of electrical fluid under the old, olive-green refrigerator. He turned his back on the doorway and trotted halfway down the stairs again, eyes locked on the empty TV screen, mind full of images from the worst loop of all:
Slim flashing a look of warning at the camera as his deft fingers probed under the left side of Finch's ribcage. Then a fist, a sharp thrust deep into the upper abdomen. Internal injury: insurance against John coming after Slim. The spleen probably, bad bruising, a slow bleed at worst—there was only so much damage a bare hand could do against soft, yielding tissue. No broken rib to graze an organ, no blunt force impact to shock the entire cavity. A long countdown. A slow fuse. Enough time.
Except Slim had meant for John to leave right away. Slim had meant for John to be coming for Harold right now.
John's palms itched. He couldn't stop swallowing.
Three minutes. Five.
Gun, blonde, blue ink, black shoe. Finch's squinting eyes, confused mouth. Soft stomach, hard hand.
Ten minutes. Twelve.
Reaching arms. Quiet legs. Oliver.
Sixteen minutes—
From somewhere up in the house, a heavy door creaked and banged, opening. Footsteps staggered toward the basement.
"Riley! Riley! Detective! Come on, we need to go..."
Instantly alight with purpose, John mounted the stairs and walked toward the pained voice approaching him at speed. His firm, deliberate pace didn't waver as his body effortlessly absorbed Slim's frantic forward momentum and pushed him backward, against the refrigerator, forearm to his throat.
"Where is he?"
Slim was a babbling, cringing wreck under his arms.
"They've got him, I couldn't stop them, I told them that this isn't how I do things, but I couldn't stop them. Come on, let me go, we need to go, they're gonna wreck everything—"
"Do you have any guns?"
"—all that work, ruined, just... thrown away, all for somebody's cheap, disgusting idea of—"
John backhanded Slim across the cheek and then shoved him back up against the fridge. It swayed ominously, its contents sloshing, magnets skittering onto the floor.
"Do you. Have. Any guns."
"What?—No!" Slim's nose wrinkled in revulsion.
John swiped two paring knives out of the brimming sink and spun Slim around toward the front door.
"Take me there."
Slim nodded in relief and took off in a limping run. John stashed the knives in his sleeve and hip pocket and followed him out onto a wide Craftsman porch, down painted cement steps, and into the driveway. An ostensibly white but very dirty cargo van was parked there sloppily, engine idling. The sun was setting and John was distantly glad he didn't have to cope with full sunlight after all those days underground. A jet of water from a neighbor's oscillating sprinkler spattered his shoes as he swung himself up into the passenger's seat.
The van was in gear before John shut his door, tires screeching as Slim threw it savagely into reverse.
"They're going to ruin everything, everything," Slim muttered as he braked to slam it into drive.
There was an awful crash back in the van's cargo hold; John spared a glance over his shoulder. The Rig lay there, on its side, shuddering against the back doors. Unattached to the various cables, locks and casters built into the floor and ceiling of the van, obviously designed with care to keep it safe for transport. Slim drove through a stop sign and rounded a tight corner: the Rig screamed as it scraped along the metal floor and crunched into the van's side. John could've sworn he heard Slim sob.
"What happened?" John asked. "What changed? Why'd your friends kick you out?"
"They're not my friends, and I don't know," Slim said, banging his hand on the steering wheel for emphasis. "I don't know. I called my client while I drove home, tried to reason with him, begged him—"
Residential streets were giving way rapidly to bars, shops, food carts. They drove through an underpass and John caught a glimpse of rival gang graffiti on the pylons: Cruddy 650s versus Hoover Boys. So, they were in Yonkers.
"—he said something, in, I dunno, Russian maybe. He said it three times, real slow—"
"What did he say?"
"I look like I speak Russian?!"
"You say he said it three times. Think. What did it sound like?"
"Okay. Yeah. Uh. Tray... no, Trah. Trah-da-door. Flay-osh-ka. Shoo—"
"—Justiţie," John finished bleakly, ice collecting deep in his gut. "Not Russian. Romanian. Trădător fleaşcă justiţie."
Viktor. Victor Enaşca. A minor player in the Romanian weapons-smuggling ring whom he and Kara had hosted for a weekend in an empty freight train on the outskirts of Bucharest.
"Vik-TOR trădă-TOR," Kara had punned at him, taunting, her Romanian serviceable but less than poetic. "Enaşca fleaşcă."
Viktor the traitor. Enaşca the coward.
When he finally crumbled and gave up the names they needed—names of various higher-ups in the food chain—she had loomed over him, flecks of dried blood in her hair, knife poised.
"Trădător fleaşcă justiţie," she'd whispered. Justice for a traitor; justice for a coward.
Slim's voice broke through John's thoughts, brought him from that dark metal box back to this bright metal van.
"—and then he mentioned some, um. Unpleasant things. That happened to his daughters—or maybe his sisters? Whatever, I don't remember, something like that. Back when... after you and he, uh, met. His friends didn't like him talking to you, I guess—"
Slim's voice faded again, along with the rumble of traffic and the crashes of the shattering Rig behind them. There was a muffled ringing in John's head, and then all he could hear was a grinding cacophony of clunks and rattles, vibrating up through the floor and dashboard.
Slim's van really needed a tune-up.
If this heap breaks down before we get to Harold I will feed you to its overheated engine and hold the hood down on your melting body until it goes cold, John thought uselessly, stupidly. It wasn't as if Slim needed any extra motivation.
"Fuck off, it's fine, it's a Honda," Slim snapped.
Apparently he'd said at least part of that out loud.
They took a speed bump at double the limit and John's molars rattled. The little yellow car-fresh tree dangling from the rearview mirror spun like a thing possessed and John caught a whiff of vanilla.
Slim's phone was in John's breast pocket, nestled against Finch's glasses, where he'd stowed it after pickpocketing the man as he panicked in the kitchen. John slipped it out and held it up.
"Call him again."
Slim blinked at it and threw a reproachful look at John.
"Little busy here."
"Fine."
John redialed the last outgoing number and pressed speakerphone.
"Hello, Davey," said a humorless voice, tired, barely a strace of an accent.
"Hello, sir. This... this just isn't right, sir. I gotta… I must reiterate my objections—my very, very strong objections." Slim sounded rehearsed, nervous, like a kid in a school play, afraid of forgetting his lines. "I find this, um, totally unacceptable, unprofessional, inappropriate—and you know what? Downright trashy. I hold myself to a higher standard, and you promised me full creative license, total autonomy, absolute, um, proprietary—"
"Yes, yes," Viktor said impatiently. "I'm in violation of our contract. So you can keep the deposit. Use it to take a vacation—you deserve it. Find somewhere warm to die. Thank you for your services. Our business is concluded."
"Is your business with Detective Riley concluded?" Slim interjected sharply. "He's listening right now."
A pause.
"Really."
A pedestrian gave them the finger as they made an unsignaled turn.
"I see." He didn't sound so tired now. "Hello—John."
"Please. Stop this. Just stop this, and you can have me. Don't hurt him any more. Please."
"Please. Please, he says. That's... very funny." He didn't sound amused. "And I already have you."
"You do. You're right. I'm yours. This is between you and me. I'm the one who hurt you—"
"This isn't because you hurt me. This is because, afterward, you let me go. The woman, she wanted to end it, remember? But you stopped her. 'He's just a pawn,' you said. And she smiled, and patted your face, like she wanted to humor you. She liked you. Beautiful lady. You hadn't let her fuck you yet, I think. I'm sure you did, eventually."
Viktor paused. Soft ripping noises were coming through the speaker: the unmistakable sound of an orange being peeled. The foamy pop as the center pith was extracted; the wet snick as the sections were pried apart. When he spoke again, his words were slick with juice. John's stomach growled traitorously.
"Anyway. My associates in Bucharest were not sympathetic men," Viktor continued. "The burns, the blood, the bones you broke—these did not inspire their compassion. It was not enough for them, not sufficient penitenţă. And so my family was made to pay a price, too. My beautiful, preţios girls."
Sixteen minutes, John was thinking. Slim had made the drive in sixteen minutes. Finch had been so close, this whole time, so close. He and Slim had been driving for ten now. They were so close. Whatever Viktor's men were doing to Finch, they would only be doing it for another five minutes.
Five minutes, Harold. It's almost over.
"You don't have a family, do you, John?" Viktor mused. "That was discouraging. Very limited options: your brută of a partner... or the pretty shrink with the red hair..."
A sharp longing, hot and guilty, lanced through John's belly. It would have been better… it would have been easier… anyone else...
Finch would be appalled.
John didn't care. His skin was too hot, too tight, his throat convulsed around an agonizing tumor of unshed tears.
"But something told me that this man, this quiet little profesor, was the one. And I was right, wasn't I?"
"I'll kill you," John said weakly. "I'll finish it this time, I swear to God I'll do it, I will find you—"
"No, I don't think so." Viktor spat out a seed. "But even if you do, your friend will never look you in the face again."
The phone beeped cheerfully: call ended.
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