Collision

Whoever was here knew the entry code. Pilgrim liked this visitor immediately. This visitor could tell him things.

The soft creepy-crawl of footsteps, two hushed voices, both male. The conversation-he couldn’t hear what they said-murmured on for thirty seconds.

Which meant they didn’t know he was here.

He waited. It didn’t take long. But only one came into the bedroom, and Pilgrim put the gun on the back of his head as soon as he stepped into the room. The man was wiry and compact, in his forties, head shaved bald, and he went still with professional surrender. Pilgrim moved back from him and around him, raised a finger to his lips and kept the gun firmly locked on the man’s head.

“Call your partner back here,” he whispered. “Politely and quietly.”

“I found something,” the bald guy said in a normal tone. Pilgrim pulled him back out of the line of sight of the hallway, put the bald guy between him and the door as a shield. He heard footsteps approaching, then another man, a young, heavy-built Latino, came into the room. He sported evidence of a rough day: two black eyes, a bruised mouth. He wore a suit slightly too small for him: black jacket and pants, a white dress shirt, its creases indicating that it had been recently removed from its store packaging, no tie. He stopped when he saw Pilgrim, tensed for his gun.

Pilgrim said, “Don’t.”

“You’re Pilgrim. We’re from the Cellar,” the man with the bruised face said. “Teach sent us here. I’m De La Pena. It’s my real name. This is Green.”

“Really. Where’s Teach?”

“She’s safe.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know where she’s at,” he said. “Just that she’s safe.”

Pilgrim tossed one of Barker’s handcuffs to each of them. “Face each other. Hands in front. Put a cuff on your hand and his hand opposite.” He kept his surprise that De La Pena offered a real name to him; you never shared your true identity in the Cellar.

So the guy might not be from the Cellar after all. That, or he was desperate to create trust.

The two men faced each other as though they were about to ballroom dance, slid the cuffs onto their wrists. Green’s right hand was cuffed to De La Pena’s left, Green’s left hand was chained to De La Pena’s right.

“Lock them,” Pilgrim ordered, and they shut the cuffs. Green looked pissed; he had a small mouth that went to a rosebud. De La Pena was calm. He, Pilgrim suspected, was the more dangerous one.

“These are for girls,” Green said, peevishly. “They’re a little tight.”

“Sit down,” Pilgrim said. He took their guns from them, one in each pocket. Searched their backs and legs for more weapons, found nothing. He put the guns on the desk, well out of reach.

Paired awkwardly, the two men sank to the floor.

“You shouldn’t be here,” De La Pena said, no malice in the tone.

“Neither should you,” Pilgrim said.

“We’re janitors. Cleaning up after a job goes bad.”

“Clean up: destroy data, erase Barker’s trails, kill anyone who needs killing.”

“Crudely put. I haven’t killed anyone ever,” De La Pena said. “I can’t speak for him.” He jerked his head at Green, who flexed an enigmatic smile.

“So you say Teach sent you.”

“Yes.”

“You saw her or she called you?”

“She called Green. I was already here, part of a training exercise.”

Pilgrim pointed at De La Pena’s black eyes. “Were you training to be a punching bag?”

“She told me to get to Dallas and help this guy clean any Cellar evidence out of the house,” Green said.

“She’s been kidnapped,” Pilgrim said.

“She told us you tried to kidnap her,” Green said. “You killed her helper, she escaped. Sell your story down the street, man.”

“I killed Barker, yeah, but he turned traitor. Not me. She got grabbed.”

The two men stared at him. Not believing him, he saw.

“Who has her?” Pilgrim asked softly. “I think you know. Stop the lies, man.” He kicked them hard, nailing De La Pena in the back, and both guys fell over. “She’s not operating of her own accord, she’s under a thumb.”

“She told me what to do,” De La Pena said. “She said you’d gone bad and-”

What are you doing, Teach? Pilgrim wondered. “Get up,” he ordered them. He could question them in the kitchen; as unappealing as it sounded, a bit of fear at the tip of a knife might loosen their tongues.

De La Pena and Green rose awkwardly, like conjoined twins always facing each other.

Pilgrim gestured them back into the narrow confines of the hallway and they walked sideways, facing each other. De La Pena stood a foot taller than Green, and Green hurried to keep pace. Then Green stumbled, nearly going to one knee. De La Pena stopped and hauled him up, and as Green rose he lashed a sharp, precise kick and caught Pilgrim hard in the gun hand, pinning his weapon back into his chest. Pilgrim backpedaled into the master bedroom.