7 – Idle Hands

Chen wasn’t taking her calls right now. Z got routed to a functionary named McCallum, who had his knickers in a twist over how shot up the guys in the woods were (and they didn’t find their being bound with hockey tape very amusing either). After asking how the Eurotrash dirt bags ended up getting so perforated with bullets, she finally told him, “They got in my way.” Did he think she was out in the woods for fun?

He sounded flustered for a moment, but then got back on track with the usual “I don’t know how they do things in MI-6, but -” which she’d heard in some form or another a hundred times. She’d even heard it from MI-6.

Shan took the time to change clothes, coming back into the living room wearing jeans not spattered with blood, and the t-shirt she got him for his birthday, the one with the happy bar of soap proclaiming “Rub me on your butt!” It fit like one of his bouncer t-shirts, meaning so tight you could watch him digest food, but that showed off his impressive musculature and made people cower around him, no matter what his shirt said. She pretended not to notice him get a soda from the fridge to take his pills with as she busied herself with ignoring McCallum and calling things up on the laptop.

After reminding her of Canadian law for the second time, she angrily pointed out that she was supposed to be working beyond the law, as this was all off the books – or had they forgotten their own stupid fucking rules already? He thought she was being “hostile”. “No, hostile is this,” she replied, slamming the phone down.

“You’ve worked in customer service, haven’t you?” Shan asked.

“I’m the patron saint of asshats.”

He choked a bit on his soda, to the point where he had to turn towards the sink, as he’d snorted some up his nose. She gave him a moment, then asked, “You okay, mate?”

He waved a hand at her, then said, “Yeah, just warn me next time.” His phone rang, but they both ignored it.

A little illegal poking around had turned something up. Namely that Oswald and Six, under their pseudonyms, were checked into the same posh hotel. She pointed this out to Shan as he sat next to her on the sofa, although he was careful to stay on the edge. She didn’t care about the blood stains; she’d had worse. “Umm, aren’t these records private?”

“What’s your point?”

He scowled at her, then shook his head, dismissing it. “Fine, okay, forgot who I was talking to for a second. What does this mean? Besides them liking four star hotels.”

“It means we can pay them a visit. But we should probably take them on hand to hand.”

Shan gave her a look that was half pleasant surprise, and half trepidation. “No more guns?”

“I’d rather not use ‘em in the hotel if we don’t hafta. It’ll bring way too much attention that CSIS can sort out, but that we really don’t need.” But now she had a real quandary. Six had the mad on for her, and she wanted to deal with him once and for all, but Oswald was a real piece of work. Killing was easy, Six had done it and she had done it as a teenager, but when it came down to it he wasn’t very good at it. Oswald was a real pro – his paycheck and his survival had depended on his ability to rip out his fellow man’s throat with his teeth. He was a trained killer, and Shan, as big and strong as he was, couldn’t compete with that level of psychopathic ruthlessness, even though he used to play hockey.

She could. She was a trained killer as well. Oswald wasn’t the only one who had learned how to rip the throat out of his fellow man with his teeth. She wanted to put down Six, it would have been fitting, but Oswald would probably kill Shan. She had to take the psycho; she had to leave nutball Six to Shan.

She pointed out Six’s hotel room number and told him, “This is your guy. He probably can’t fight well, but he’s a major league asshole. If he can shoot you, he will. Don’t let him go for a weapon; cripple him immediately.”

Shan looked troubled, but saluted nevertheless. “So you get Bob, eh? Insurance salesman Bob. What’s his deal?”

“He killed an entire village in Eritrea.”

He thought about that for a moment. “Is that near New Brunswick?”

“A bit further South.”

“Ah.” He paused again. “You should probably take a gun.”

“Don’t worry, I can handle him.” Or at least she hoped so.

Now would be a really bad time to discover she was rusty.

***

They swung by her place so she could grab some back up weapons, then went to a car rental place and rented a bland, average looking car, with the only vaguely distinguishing features being tinted windows. They parked down the street from the hotel where Six and Oswald had holed up, and she called their rooms from her cell to confirm they weren’t there (or at least weren’t answering their phones). She then watched the front of the hotel with binoculars, waiting for them to either leave or return.

After a while, Shan said, “So, the plan is we beat the shit out of these guys?”

“And call in the CSIS, yeah.”

Shan sat in the passenger seat, munching his apple for a minute. He took huge bites, ones that she thought could choke a moose, but he seemed to have no problems with it. He continued to eat in a mostly nauseatingly healthy fashion, to keep up his physique. She, on the other hand, had just downed four Excedrin and a Red Bull with a Snickers. Hey, it killed the pain in her head, she wasn’t about to start complaining. “Seems a little … basic, don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but fancy’s for losers.”

“It just seems like general jackassery.”

“I worked with him once.”

“Who?”

“General Jackassery. He was really more of a dick.”

He scowled at her. “Very funny. This is serious shit, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we treat it as such?”

“Why? Shit’s miserable enough as it is. Why mope about it?”

He didn’t have anything to say that, so he just shrugged and sank back in his seat.

It was almost an hour – an incredibly boring hour – when she spotted Oswald entering the hotel, wearing an army surplus jacket a size too large for him, shoulders slouched like he was in a rotten mood. “Looks like I’m up,” she told Shan, handing him the binoculars. “You know what your guy looks like, right?”

‘Yeah. But shouldn’t I come with you, as back up?”

“What if Six arrives? No, you stay here. I can take this fucko, really. I have a surprise for him.”

He grinned. “You did bring a gun.”

“Something like that. Good luck.”

She got out of the car and casually crossed the street, walking around to the back of the hotel, where she had already found the employee entrance. A twenty slipped to one of the kitchen staff got her let in, no problem. She already knew what room he was in, so all she had to do was find the nearest elevator and duck inside.

She reached inside her pants pocket and gripped the ka-bar she had stashed there. She could stun him, but that almost seemed too kind, and besides, some of those steroid monstrosities could shake off a stun. No, she had to go for the immediate paralyzation or kill; Oswald was too dangerous to mess around with for too long.

As the elevator door opened on his floor, she hoped she wasn’t rusty.

6 – In Action

The first shot pinged off the hood, making both Z and Shan duck behind their open doors. Other shots went wide, although one cracked the windshield with a sound like rime creaking under the heat of the morning sun.

“You got a lotta nerve, you stupid bitch!” a man roared from the shack.

Shan looked at her across the seat. “A friend of yours?”

“People love me,” Z replied, as she fired back blindly with one of the nines. She wasn’t trying to hit anything, just trying to make him stop shooting for a second so she could gauge where he was firing from.

“You’re a people person,” Shan agreed. “Can I surrender?”

“I’d let ya, but I bet they’ll think it’s a trap.”

“What if I swore it wasn’t?” He ducked even lower as bullets shattered the passenger side window above him.

“I doubt they’d believe you.” From what she’d been able to tell, muzzle flashes seemed to be emanating from a crack beside the door. Not the door, which was shut, but a crack between boards, wide enough to shave a gun barrel in. Did they think that was going to save them? “Cover me. I’m gonna make a run for the door.”

“Umm … I really don’t wanna shoot anybody.”

“Just shoot towards the shed. You probably couldn’t shoot anyone from here anyways.”

“Are you sure?”

“Would you just fucking shoot already?”

He did, very randomly, almost missing the shed entirely, and she fired randomly with one of the nine millimeters as she ran in a crouch towards the shed. She made it without getting shot, but she suspected that she’d have been okay even if Shan hadn’t covered her. The crack they were shooting through was too narrow; they didn’t have much range or maneuverability. It was like having a huge blind spot, but worse than that: an obvious blind spot.

She waited for the pause after a shot, the barely audible click of someone cocking their gun, and put the shotgun up against the crack and pulled the trigger. As usual with a shotgun, it was explosively loud compared to the other guns, and it blew a huge hole in the wall, causing someone inside to yell “Holy fuck!” After pulling the trigger, Z quickly spun back to where she had been and ducked down, in case someone started shooting through the wall.

But no one did, not until she got back beside the flimsy door, and their shots were so far off target that they might as well have been lobbing frozen peas at them. Shan, for his part, had moved around to the other side of the car, staying as low as he could, which was difficult since he was such a big guy. Still, they never came close to shooting him.

She threw open the door but stood aside, letting the idiots fire blindly out and around the door, occasionally shooting randomly inside with one of the nines to encourage them firing back. Her ears grew accustomed to the small explosions of sound, so she was able to hear the familiar sounds of hasty reloading.

It was only then that she swung into the doorway, shotgun braced against her hip. “First guy to move gets his guts splattered on the wall.”

There were two guys in the shack, which was an odd collection of valuable car parts and shiny hubcaps amidst straggly pot plants on wooden shelves that looked like they could give way at any moment. There was also a lumpy love seat with worn spots and a brown plaid pattern like a series of accidents, which one of the guys was using as a makeshift cover. The other guy was kneeling on the floor near the crack, beside a knocked over coffee table, his arm visibly bleeding from either a bullet wound or a shrapnel wound. Both were white and slightly dopey looking; older too, and doughy. Not White Wolf, or at least not from the mercenary division. Did they have a Human Resources department?

Shan came up behind her in the doorway, gun out. “So, is the bad guy here?”

“Six? No, not unless he’s really let himself go. You dropping those guns, boys, or do I hafta make an example outta one of you?”

The guys reluctantly dropped their guns with loud clunks. Maybe they were hoping for accidental discharges that would shoot her in the foot, but it didn’t happen. “Good. Who are you dickheads?”

“Fuck off, limey,” the guy on the floor spat.

“Limey?” Shan repeated with a scoff. “Dude, she’s a dingo. Or whatever the nickname for Aussies is.”

“I think it’s koala fucker.” Z told him.

Shan looked at her in surprise. “Is it?”

“I’ve got no fucking idea. I’m guessing.”

“Huh. Might work, I suppose.”

“Are you both fucking retarded?” the guy on the floor said irritably, hand over the wound on his opposite arm, so Z couldn’t tell what had injured him.

She motioned the guy over from the love seat, and reluctantly he stepped out from behind the furniture (like it would have protected him from a shotgun blast). “Who are you assholes? You’re not White Wolf.”

“We’re nobody, okay?” the guy on the floor said irritably. Shan collected their dropped guns, and he watched him closely. Z was actually hoping the idiot would jump him, because Shan would make short work of him. He was great at hand to hand combat. He must have figured he was too big for him, because the guy remained where he was.

“Well, I can tell by the accent you’re Canadian. So what are you, stringers?”

The guy on the floor looked at her blankly. He had mouse brown hair that looked liked a collapsed ski lift, sagging on his forehead like it was slowly falling off a cliff. “What the fuck’s a stringer?”

“And you called us retarded?” Shan exclaimed.

“Where’s Six?” She asked, knowing it was a long shot. The reason they’d bring these guys on board was precisely because they knew nothing. They were the weak link in the information chain, and you couldn’t drag information out of a person who genuinely knew nothing at all.

“Six?” Said the uninjured guy. “What the fuck kinda name is that?” They were both pudgy white guys, like men made out of boiled potatoes, but this one had hair the color of smoker’s teeth, so thin in places on top of his head he had a bit of a sunburn. His eyes were small and squinty, barely eyes at all in his creased red face.

“Who’s your boss?” she asked, and then quickly amended, “In this operation, not in the junkyard.”

The sunburned guy rolled his eyes. “It’s not a junkyard, okay? It’s an auto yard. The sign says so!”

“Whatever. Who paid you to shoot at me?”

Mr. Sunburn shrugged and then shook his head, his general attitude one of annoyed boredom. “We just did some paperwork for these Eurotrash guys. They said they were Interpol. And they said you were a terrorist.”

“A terrorist? Me? Since when the fuck do women who aren’t trapped in burqas work for Al Qaeda?”

“They said you were North Korean.”

Z shook her head, scowling in disgust. She was only part Asian, and a rather small part at that. And she was part Japanese, not Korean! Racist assholes thinking all Asians looked alike. It figured Six would latch onto that. Shan laughed.

“Yeah, I’m from the Australian part of North Korea,” she said, deadpan. “Where they have the kangaroos.”

The wounded guy looked up at her curiously. “They got kangaroos in North Korea?”

She glared down at him in disgust – was anyone that stupid? – while sunburn clicked his tongue and exclaimed, “No, ya idiot, she was bein’ sarcastic.”

“Trust me, Interpol wouldn’t need you to cook up fake passports for them, and I’ve never even been to North Korea. So give me everything you got on them.”

The idiot and the sunburned guy exchanged a glance before sunburn said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t give me that shit. You keep a file on these guys so if they need another one, you don’t have to mess with getting another photo or any stats. So now, where is it?”

Again, the morons exchanged a glance. Didn’t they know that was a giveaway? It was a way of saying, “Yes, I’m guilty. Please take me away, Mr. Officer Man” without ever saying a word.

Sunburn sighed and turned away. “Oh, what the fuck.”

“Dude,” the wounded guy said. “You can’t.”

“Yes I can. She’s got a look in her eye like my ex-wife.”

“So?”

“So, I think she’ll kill us all if we don‘t do what she says.” Sunburn pried up a loose floorboard, and Z was watching him closely to make sure he wasn’t going for a weapon. He wasn’t; the only thing in the hollow piece of floor, besides a variety of passport sleeves, was a battered laptop computer.

Z quietly thanked this dumb shit’s ex-wife.

****

Armin Bauer.

Z looked at the file, showing Six’s dead eyed stare. He gave his home address as a parking lot across from the CN Tower, but hey, if they were examining his documents closely he was in deep shit anyways. No harm in giving a phony address as his residence in Canada.

Shan took a look at him, and dramatically shuddered. “Crap in a hat, Z, he looks like a young Hannibal Lecter.”

“You’re not far off.” Oswald had assumed the alias of Robert Stevens, the blandest name imaginable. Bob Stevens – now how could that be the name of a mercenary who could kill you with a toothpick? You’d think he was the last person on Earth to be a coldblooded killer. Unless you looked him in the eyes and realized that he was dead from the neck down.

Shan was quiet for a long time, long enough that she was sure he’d had an episode at some point and recovered, and then finally said, “I’m guessing you didn’t tell me all there is to know about this whole thing.”

“You’d guess right.” How could she lie now?

“Is it that bad? I mean … these guys really are killers, aren’t they? What I said to those guys back in my apartment wasn’t just bullshit. They meant to kill me.”

“Yes.”

He hissed a sigh out through his teeth. “Fucking hell. I thought it was hyper … hyper … hyperthyroid.”

“Hyperbole,” she corrected automatically.

“Yeah, that. So why the hell are we going back there?!”

“’Cause I need to talk to somebody. We know who they are, but not where they are. I need more intell.” They had taken a car from the auto junkyard, an old Dodge Charger that needed a paint job, new rear tires, and a bumper to take the place of the missing one, but at least it ran. Oh sure, the flywheel made a scraping noise like someone trying to get burnt residue off the bottom of a pan with a fork, but they weren’t keeping it forever.

“That explains nothing. You can call from the bus station.”

“They won’t be here. You survived the cleaners; it will be assumed you are on the run. Only an idiot would come back here.”

“So now we’re idiots.”

“No, we’re doing an idiotic thing because it’s actually smart. It’s the last place they’ll look. Besides my place.”

Shan looked blankly through the windshield for a moment, scratching his head quite close to his brain surgery scar. “I don’t get you at all. Shouldn’t we be goin’ to the cops?”

“I’ve told you, we’re beyond the cops now. But don’t worry, we’re not alone. It just seems like it.”

“Has it occurred to you that the guys could be still there, unconscious?”

She shook her head as she swung the Charger into the parking lot of Shan’s apartment building. “The Zamboni’s been through.”

“Huh?”

She killed the engine, which made a ticking noise for about half a minute. “I thought you played hockey, mate.”

Shan winced and rubbed his forehead, like she was paining him. “Did I have a seizure, or does this not make sense?”

“It makes sense, trust me.” With that, she got out of the car, and headed for his ground floor apartment. Shan reluctantly followed, and when they neared his door, he grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

“Look, let me go in first, okay? Just in case.”

She pulled up her t-shirt, just enough to reveal the butt of the nine she had slipped into the waist of her jeans. “I should go just in case, don’t you think?”

He frowned, but reluctantly let her go ahead. Shan had a strange sense of chivalry, which she almost never encountered, certainly not amongst the jock types. You could argue that it was due to his head injury, but Z figured it was because he was raised right. Never mind that he was an American from Michigan who had spent almost all of his childhood playing sports; he was a genuinely nice guy, a very rare breed. She was kind of sorry she was warping him, making him more and more cynical. At least it was occurring slowly.

There was some blood on the edge of his door, and a bit of denting, but she opened his apartment to reveal … nothing.

Well, okay, that wasn’t true. There was his apartment furniture, his television still on but the volume muted, the coffee table overturned and a couple of magazines scattered on the floor, almost covering the large dark spot of blood on the carpet.

Shan looked in the place with growing surprise, his jaw going slack. “What the fuck ..?”

“See? The Zamboni’s cleaned the place up.” When she called Chen to tell her about the Eurotrash in the woods, she also told her that Shan’s place needed “clearing”. It wouldn’t have taken them long. Unbeknownst to him, Shan’s place had been under surveillance since she’d hammered out a deal with Canadian Intelligence.

Yeah okay, he was a civilian and one very adept at beating a punk ass bitch down, but no one wanted to see him hurt. But she’d be damned if she’d ever tell him she’d had him “protected” all along. He’d never take it in a good way.

And really, she couldn’t blame him for that. She wouldn’t have liked it either.

5 – Greetings From The Great North Woods

In the end, she decided that she could kill in front of Shan, just not in any way that suggested execution style. Which left her with a bit of problem, because these guys just weren’t resisting.

But she did agree to keep in touch with Chen, and hadn’t bothered for long enough that CSIS were probably starting to doubt her intentions. At least Shan had some hockey tape in his Jeep. They used it to tape the thugs’ wrists behind their back, and taped their ankles together up to their calves. Just because he was bleeding so much, Shan taped up the bullet wounded knee of the more severely injured guy. Shan advised him to tell the doctors not to just rip it off as they might take skin with it, but for his kind advice he got a hearty fuck you. So they both agreed that the doctor should rip off the tape as hard as humanly possible.

She then called Chen and told her where to pick up these assclowns, and went through their car for clues.

They ended up having to do some math. The rental papers in the glove compartment listed the original mileage of the car, and then they noted what it was now, and subtracted the amount of miles it would take to get here from Vancouver. (Shan knew, since he drove it and wasn’t unconscious in the trunk of a car at the time.) With the amount of mileage left over, they tried to figure out where these numbnuts may have come from. Because they ran low on ideas, she called Chen and consulted her. Chen, for her part, thought they were both fucking nuts.

Chen still found them four potential sites. The best looked to be an auto junkyard that was suspected of being a chop shop as well as a source for illegal passports. Second best was a low rent bar; third best was a park. The last was a mall, which was highly unlikely, and yet would be good if you wanted to get lost in a crowd. Also, it had a “sporting goods” (read: gun) store, in case they needed to load up with some new shit in a hurry.

As soon as she hung up, she started the rental car and followed Shan’s instructions to get back to the road. “How long was I out?” Shan asked. He was attempting to put the safety back on the gun he grabbed, and he wasn’t doing well.

“Not long.”

“Are you sure? I seemed to have missed a shoot out.”

“There wasn’t a shoot out; I prevented one by shooting them in the back. Give me something with repeat action, and I can take out an entire platoon by shooting them in the back. It’s cowardly, but a hell of a time saver.”

Shan gave her a suspicious look, but seemed to accept that and let it go. The entire key to their relationship was his willingness to let shit go. “So, is your name actually Zero?”

“Zero’s a number, not a name.”

“That’s what I said! But those guys back at my apartment said that you changed your name to it in England or something. It seemed improbable, and yet, still like something you’d do.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“So, are you named Zero?”

She glanced at him sidelong, trying to gauge his response. “Would you like it to be?”

He stared at her in surprise. “It’s an option?”

She shrugged. “Sure, why not? I can always use a new name.”

He looked briefly confused. “So it’s not your name?”

She shrugged. “It could be.” There had to be a limit to how much she revealed to him. It was really better for him, although he would probably object to that.

He frowned at her, dark brows becoming stark lines over his icy blue eyes. “Why won’t you tell me your name? I’ve known you for years. I’ve looked down the barrels of more guns than …” He made a vague motion with his hand, one that went on longer than it should have, and he had a desperate look in his eye. His transitory aphasia was making itself known once more.

“Sorry mate, but I have no idea what word you were goin’ for there. Hot dinners? Than in your entire life? I’m sorry, I never meant to drag you into all that shit.”

It took him another minute, but he finally got his voice and mind back on track. “Okay, doesn’t matter. My point was – is – I’ve never known your real name. Don’t I deserve to know what it is by now? I won’t blab.”

She sighed, trying not to be too obvious about it. Telling him there were things he was still better off not knowing sounded condescending, although it wasn’t intended that way. So she just skipped that part. “I haven’t had a real name for years, Shan.”

“Bullshit. Your parents named you, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but I got rid of that name around the time they got rid of me. I didn’t want it, and they didn’t want me. We were even. Ever since then, I just pick up names and throw them away when I don’t need them anymore.”

“What do you mean they got rid of you? Your parents put you up for adoption or something?”

“Naw. By then I was too old. My mother just told me to get out, and I did. I left my name at the door. A name is nothing, a designation, but it’s not you. It’s just somethin’ to write on the death certificate.”

He shook his head in despair and rubbed his eyes. “Are you wanted by some government?”

“America, and probably Egypt. I’m not so sure about Syria or Serbia; time and regimes change, you know. Hard to keep track.”

Shan stared at her for a very long moment, but she deliberately avoided his gaze. “You’re making that up.”

She simply shrugged. She wasn’t – well, maybe Serbia; was that even a country anymore? – but it didn’t matter.

“Are you saying if I Google your real name, I’ll find you on a wanted list?”

“No, under a coupla different names. Told ya, I change ‘em all the time.”

He raised his hands up and let them fall on his lap, a gesture of frustrated surrender. “Either you’re making this shit up to freak me out, or you’re just trying to freak me out, period.”

“No mate, swear I’m not. I’m just bein’ honest. Maybe ‘cause of the head injury.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that. Maybe we should stop at an ER first?”

“Can’t. We’re already here.” She nodded down the road at a large chain link fence topped with looping curls of barbed wire. There was a sign so dirty you could barely see “Aaron’s Auto Hauling & Recycling” scrawled on it, or the hours of operation written underneath. She idled the car on the cracked asphalt ribbon some eight meters away from the chained and padlocked gate. It looked dark amongst the hulking hills of junked car bodies and the scree of loose parts, although there seemed to be a wan yellow light where she imagined the main building to be. “So what’s wrong with this picture?”

Shan studied the gate with well hidden but still obvious alarm on his face. “I … don’t know. They’re poor housekeepers?”

“It’s on the sign, right above the “Closed Sundays” line.”

He leaned forward, squinting his eyes to see through the built up dirt and grime. “Umm … “Open 11 to 8 Six Days A Week”.”

“What time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “Seven twenty.” She waited for him to put two and two together, and while he did, she reached in the duffle bag they found on the floor of the back seat. It contained a professionally sawed off shotgun, loaded, with several spare shells. Now this was a proper gun, not a pussy nine millimeter. Oh, well, they were fine for some people, but she wanted something guaranteed to put someone down for a long time. She laid her wonderfully phallic gun across her lap, barrel pointed towards her car door, ready for action. “They may have closed early for some good reason.”

“Maybe, but it’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?” She started backing the car up, heading back down the small choppy road until she came to the intersection where it met the paved street.

“We leaving?”

“No, we’re gaining momentum.” She confirmed he was wearing his seatbelt, then gunned the engine before pushing the gas pedal down as far as it would go. Shan let out a surprised yelp and braced himself, hands wedged up against the dashboard, as the car met the gate.

The impact was a jarring thud accompanied by the scream of twisted metal and the soft noise of shattering headlights, but the barrier gave, the chain snapping and the gates swinging open as the damaged car roared into the wrecking yard. One of the front tires popped, possibly on a piece of metal sticking down from the now crumpled front end – she felt the head of the car going soft, the traction mushy and the steering sluggish – but she simply let up on the accelerator and wrestled the beast into some semblance of direction, refusing to lose control now.

The car fishtailed on the hard packed dirt, the rear slamming into one of the dead car cairns and causing an avalanche of small parts in their wake as she navigated the path between the car corpse hills, headed towards what now resolved itself into a low shack like building with a tar paper roof. “You’re fucking crazy,” Shan shouted, as the car was now rattling and making noises that suggested imminent death. (But what the fuck did she care? It wasn’t her rental.) She only grinned, because pronouncements like that always made her laugh. Of course she was crazy – she used to work for the government, didn’t she? That was pretty much a prerequisite.

She slued the car to a stop just beyond the shed, kicking up a huge cloud of dust that looked like smoke. As she killed the engine, it made a noise that could have been interpreted fairly as a death rattle.

Shan stared at her in wild eyed horror. “Couldn’t you have at least warned me?”

“What, and spoil the surprise?”

He scowled at her, not in the mood for jokes. “What if these people are innocent?”

“Then I’ll apologize,” she said, opening her door and sliding out, grabbing the shotgun and letting it hang next to her leg.

But it turned out there was no need for apologies. Shan had barely opened his door when the shooting