“How are Top and Bunny?”
“We’re trying to understand this,” said Rudy. “Joe, please, you have to tell me exactly what happened down there.”
“I already told them, goddamn it.”
“Tell me. Please…”
So I did. I told him every bit of it. Not sure if there was anything that I hadn’t already shared with Church and the other doctors, but I went over it again. Saying it to Rudy, though, helped steady me. At least a bit. He listens with every molecule of his body. He doesn’t miss things and he does not judge. He listens, he disseminates, he works through it, and he understands. Usually. As I spoke I saw the doubt grow in his eyes. And the fear.
“Fuck, Rude,” I growled, “it’s all on the cameras. Check them. Pull the memory cards from the telemetry units on our suits. Upload the memory from the BAMS units. It’s all there. Everything. The video cameras on our helmets. Look at it, Rudy. Look at it and… and…”
I could hear my voice fracture and falter. I could feel my tongue growing thick, muffling my speech, making it hard to breathe.
Hard to think.
Hard to…
The fever came back all at once. It was like someone doused me with gasoline and threw a match. It came at me like a blowtorch, like a flamethrower.
I remember trying to tell Rudy that I was in trouble. I remember reaching for him, and I remember seeing the fear turn to panic in his eyes.
I remember falling.
The floor opened a big, black mouth and I fell into that. Somewhere behind me, above me, elsewhere, I could hear the doctors yelling, nurses yelling, machines yelling. Then there was a long electronic scream. I knew that sound. Knew it too well.
Rudy screamed, too. At least I think he did.
Those screams followed me all the way down into the dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Harry Bolt yelled and backpedaled as he went for his gun.
He stepped into a puddle of blood, his foot shot straight out in front of him, and he went down hard on his ass. Violin leapt over his falling body and he caught a momentary glare of complete disapproval on her pretty face. He saw light flash from the edges of her knives and then she was among the men.
Shots rang out, but Harry did not see Violin stagger or fall. How she evaded the bullets was something he would never understand. Never. Lying on the floor and watching her was like sitting in a movie theater and watching Black Widow or Wonder Woman. It was surreal. She moved too fast, twisted like a dancer, reacted with perfect timing.
It was beautiful.
And it was absolutely terrifying.
Because of the knives.
The men were good. Harry had to give them props. He knew that if it was him in that fight he’d be as dead as Olvera and Florida. Deader, if that was possible. They were brutal and they fought like a well-oiled machine. Practiced, experienced in killing together, merciless.
Violin should have died.
Five to one. Five big, muscular, powerful, and expert killers against a single woman who was at best half the weight and muscle mass of the smallest of them. They should have ripped her apart.
Except that’s not what happened.
As Harry lay there in the puddle of blood, stunned, his pistol forgotten in his hand, he saw the impossible unfold before him.
Violin moved with a coordination that bordered on the supernatural. She danced. That was it, he realized; her fighting style flowed like lovely choreography. She stepped, turned, swept, ducked, leapt, twirled, bent, lunged, dodged, and flowed like honey. Like mercury. Like light.
The air around her was filled with rubies.
That’s how it looked to Harry.
Rubies.
Bright droplets that glowed with heat as they flew.
The men yelled, and growled, and bellowed, and screamed, and cried out for their mothers.
As she cut them to pieces.
Not with the brutality that they had used on Olvera, Florida, and the library guards. No. If murder could have an aspect of beauty, if the act of killing could become an art form, then this was what he was seeing.
Pieces of them fell.
And they fell, and even in their deaths they seemed to swoon to the ground like danseurs whose moment of dramatic demise was demanded by the music, by the narrative of the dance.
One of the men danced backward. The leader. He parried her cut and reeled away, bleeding but not mortally wounded. He flung down his knife and reached for the Tanfoglio pistol in his shoulder holster, and for a moment Violin was engaged with two other men. It was in that single moment that Harry realized that Violin, despite everything, might lose this fight. That she might die.
The man raised the pistol.
And Harry fired his gun.
He emptied his entire magazine at him. He carried a Sig Sauer P220 with a seven-round flush magazine. All seven rounds punched through the air. The distance was nearly point blank.
The leader of the killers wheeled around and stared.
Harry stared back.
Not one of his goddamn bullets had gone anywhere near him. They’d struck the wall, the door, and two rounds had gone through into the main hall.
Harry Bolt was a lousy shot. Always had been.
The man gave him a quizzical look. A kind of battlefield “are you serious” look. Nearly a smile. Then he raised his gun toward Harry.
Violin whirled and cut his hand off at the wrist. She checked the swing and slashed him across the throat. All in the space of a frenzied heartbeat.
The leader dropped to his knees only a second before the other two men pirouetted away from the angel of destruction, took sloppy wandering steps, and fell.
The room became a tableau.
Like a superwoman in an action movie, Violin stood with both hands held out, almost crucified against the reality of what she had just done. Her knives dripped red; her body was splash-painted with red. All around her were the men who should have ripped her apart. A faint wisp of gun smoke lingered in the air.
Harry stared up at her in awe, in shock, maybe in love.
She snapped her wrists down and the blood went flying from the oiled blades. She reversed the knives and slid them into the thigh sheaths.
All in a moment.
All in a dream.
Yeah. Harry Bolt was in love.
She looked down at him, at the slide that was locked back on his gun.
“You’re not only an idiot,” she said. “You’re a useless idiot.”
Outside there was the sound of sirens. Someone had heard the gunshots. Or maybe they heard the screams. Violin bent and pulled the black shirt off of the dead leader and then carefully but quickly wrapped it around the book.
“Get up or go to jail,” she snapped. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now.”
With the book clutched to her chest, she whirled once more and dashed for the front door.
Harry Bolt staggered to his feet and, because he had no idea what else to do, ran to catch up.
Harry did not look back and therefore did not see the dark SUV pull up outside the library. He did not see the six men in dark suits, white shirts, and dark ties enter the library. He did not see them hurry back out only a few seconds later.
Because Harry did not see any of this he did not pay much attention to the fact that he was leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind as he ran.
He did not see the six men begin to follow those prints.
Harry Bolt, after all, was not a very good spy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE