Collision

“Why… why?” Make the smug murdering bastard believe he’d broken Ben. He got a hand under the pillow, crouching as though he feared a kick or a blow from Hector. He shivered, spat blood. Emily. She had changed him in life, and now that he knew the truth of her death he felt changed again. Determination filled him like an ache in his bones. Not a moment’s hesitation.

“You’re going to tell me where Pilgrim is, Ben, because I know you. You’re weak. You’ll trade me the information for an easy death. You want to look under Teach’s clothes, see the cuts?”

His fingers touched the gun. Hector would shoot him as soon as he drew it, and even if he stood his ground and managed to kill or wound Hector, Jackie would attack him from the other room. The odds were dismal.

But otherwise, they would kill him and wait for Pilgrim to return. Death was doing nothing. He thought of Pilgrim’s words: Sometimes the smartest move in a fight is to retreat.

“Delia told me all about New Orleans,” Ben said, plainly, and for a moment surprise slackened the clench in Hector’s face. Ben flung the pillow straight at Hector’s head and swung up the gun that lay underneath it. The feathers exploded from the pillow as Hector fired a shot through its center. But Ben emptied the clip in Hector’s direction as he ran for the window. Hector threw himself backward and behind the kitchen counter for cover. Ben’s spray of shots pocked the counter, the wall, punctured the refrigerator, as he ran the ten feet.

Hector rose to return fire but Ben hit the window.

The closed, dusty curtains caught Ben as he jumped through the glass, the heavy fabric protecting him from the jagged shards. His momentum carried him onto the landing. Stopping or taking the time for the stairs meant death, and he rolled without hesitation, slid himself under the metal railing of the walkway, dropped one floor to the grass below.

The apartment stood at a corner, and if he ran to his right he’d be wide open, they could shoot him from the second floor. So he ducked under the walkway, ran in the opposite direction, hit the corner. He could hear their footsteps starting to barrel down the stairs.

Try to do what they don’t expect. He turned a second corner; the chain link dividing the complex from the neighboring construction was just ahead. If he was lucky they’d decide he was still running north, when he was back-tracking south on the opposite side of the building. Ben went over the fence, ignoring the barbed wire that tore at his arms, his khakis.

“There!” Jackie’s voice, from the parking lot to his right. He’d been spotted.

Ben hit the sand and ran into the maze of the construction. The building was U-shaped, as it faced the street, its unfinished sides open to the elements.

Now he looked back. Hector was at the Navigator’s wheel, plowing through a gate on the side of the fence, Jackie running behind the SUV. Drawing his pistol.

Ben dodged wheelbarrows, stacks of drywall, an idle forklift. The Navigator roared behind him. He dodged to the left, and Jackie, behind the Navigator, fired.

It was either get shot or be run down. He kept going straight, the SUV always between him and Jackie, and running through piled debris where the Navigator couldn’t go. Supposedly. He glanced behind him and the Navigator plowed through the construction junk, sawhorses and broken drywall flying, ten feet behind him.

Ben jumped up onto the foundation and headed for an interior wall that was already erected; he needed cover. He went around the wall as gunfire hit it with a low, vicious whistle.

He heard the Navigator screech to a buckling stop, then boot heels hitting the concrete. He exited the other side of the shell-a clear path all the way to the next chain-link fence on the opposite side of the lot.

More than enough room for Hector or Jackie to shoot him. But there was nowhere else to go. You can’t outrun him forever and your gun is empty. He’d counted the bullets, like Pilgrim taught him, and the news wasn’t good.

He ran, and louder than his own panting he heard the pounding of footsteps behind him.

Several yards beyond the chain link, he saw a knot of men and women waiting in the shelter of a Dallas Area Rapid Transit bus station. He launched himself onto the fence, using a pole to haul himself upward. Now he spotted a ditch breaking the land between the site and the bus stop.

He scrabbled over the fence, went head over heels, and the shots boomed, one hitting his shoe-a violent jerk rocked his foot-another shot hitting his chest like a hard kick. A third shot nailed the metal pole that lay against his stomach; it thrummed from the force as though an invisible man kicked it. Ben fell, headfirst, stayed low and rolled, went into the ditch. Water and mud, runoff from the site, smeared the bottom.