That left Fiona and me alone. There’d been something brewing between us these last few days-not exactly flirting, because Fiona was constantly flirting, but just a reminder that there existed a bright aura of availability.
“You ready?” I said.
“James Bond could get a jet pack and anti-shark repellent in less than hour,” Fiona said. She’d settled down onto my bed with another cup of yogurt, though she was eating it with some apparent distaste. She was much more of a carnivore. “And here you are, eleventh hour, sending Sam out for parts.”
“And beer.”
“James Bond would have us drinking martinis.”
“You fell for the wrong spy,” I said.
“Pushed,” she said. “Led by unseen forces beyond my control.”
I sat down beside her on the bed. I wasn’t sure why. But things were feeling… positive.
And then the phone rang.
“Michael,” my mother said when I picked it up, “there’s a man with a beard standing across the street.”
“They’re back in fashion,” I said. I was still leaning in toward Fiona, things still seemed like they might well work in a direction I could be comfortable with, at least until I became uncomfortable and even that would be okay, I supposed…
“There’s another one standing next to him holding a bat. They look like Laurel and Hardy.”
… and then I was bolt upright.
The Glucks.
Something, somewhere, had gone wrong in the plan.
“Where’s Nate?” I said. I went to the kitchen and grabbed my gun. And then another gun. And then one more. Fiona didn’t know what was happening, but she took my aggressive arming as a sign and did likewise. She now looked palpably more excited than she had when it appeared I was about to kiss her.
“He’s taking a nap. He’s had an exhausting day taking Zadie back and forth to appointments, so I didn’t want to bother him. But he and Maria seem to be getting along very well. She might be a nice girl for him, Michael. Like Fiona could have been if you hadn’t messed that up.”
“Mom,” I said, as calmly as possible, “wake Nate up and tell him to secure the house. He’ll know what to do.”
I didn’t actually know if this was true, but it would take me ten minutes to get home and with what we already had in place surrounding the house, all Nate really needed to do was turn off HGTV, close the shutters and make sure he had plenty of bullets nearby.
“What about me?” she asked.
“Grab your shotgun and stay low,” I said.
There was a pause. This was not a time for pauses.
“Where’s your shotgun, Ma?”
“In the car with Bruce.”
No.
No.
No.
This was not happening.
We were already out of the loft, running down the stairs. The bikes were there, as was the Charger. I wasn’t looking especially biker-ish in my worker uniform anymore, so I didn’t bother with the artifice. At some point, disguises and poses and your ability to sidle up to someone become irrelevant.
In those cases, a bad man with a bad woman, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and driving a 1974 Charger usually suffices.
“Where is Bruce?”
“Don’t use that patronizing tone, Michael. He’s an adult.”
“Ma,” I said, “those two men out in front of the house are there to kill Bruce. They are also there to probably kill me. The odds are fair that if they see you first, they’ll kill you, too, so pretty please, with sugar plum fairies, tell me where Bruce went.”
“He ran out to get us all some dinner. He said he had steaks in his freezer at home.”
I pressed down on the gas and the Charger lunged forward. “I will be there in seven minutes,” I said. “If those two men get any closer to the house, shoot them.” I hung up and called Sam. “Change to the itinerary,” I told him. “The Ghouls are staking out my mother’s house.”
“That’s not good, Mikey.”
“Understatement,” I said. We came to a stoplight and, after safely checking both directions of oncoming traffic, and properly flashing my lights and honking the horn… I blew through it going about ninety-five. Beside me, Fiona was loading guns and strapping knives to herself, which, while hot, would not be a great experience if we happened to get sideswiped.
Or pulled over by a cop.
Like the one I didn’t see hiding behind a parked RV until I was already fifty yards beyond him and screaming toward my mother’s house.
His lights immediately went on, as did the blaring siren.
“Do I hear a siren?” Sam said.
“No,” I said.
“That’s good,” Sam said. “Because for a minute I thought maybe highway patrol was chasing you.”
“It’s actually a siren and a horn you hear,” I said. I looked in the rearview mirror. “And he looks like a regular traffic cop.”
“That’s a relief,” Sam said. “You have some direction for me, Mikey?”
“One moment please,” I said. We were approaching a school zone and even though it was early evening, police tend to hang out near school zones to pick up speeders. And drug dealers. And gangbangers. And if they got lucky today, they’d get a former bank robber for the IRA who now sold guns to Cuban revolutionaries and a burned spy, both of whom had enough artillery on them to take down Guam in a bloody coup.
The motorcycle cop was still behind me and by that point was probably actively working the radio. If it was a slow crime day, they’d probably scramble a helicopter, which would then get the news helicopters in the air, which would then get all of this on the news.
This could work to my advantage, so I gunned the Charger through the school zone, my own horn honking, my own lights blinking, trying to get as much attention as possible.
“Bruce is either dead or hiding somewhere near my mother’s, so I need you to drag the Banshees there.”
“I’m not sure if the rental van can outrun a bunch of hogs,” Sam said.
In my rearview mirror, I could see the motorcycle cop gaining on me. He wasn’t close enough to see my plate and we hadn’t traveled far enough for this to be considered a high-speed chase, because a reasonable lawyer could conjecture that while the cop was on my tail, I was driving so recklessly as to not notice. Plus, I was driving fairly conservatively, if incredibly fast. Safety first and all that.
“You have to try,” I said. “How close are you to the weed house?”
“I can be there in five minutes,” he said.
“When you get there,” I said, “shoot it up. Maybe take out the SUV, make a big bang, big enough that they’ll follow you quick.”
“You sure Fiona got all the C-4?” Sam asked. “I’d rather not add a meteor crater to the list of Miami’s attractions.”
I turned to Fiona-she was quietly sharpening a knife against a mortarboard, as calm and detached as if she were doing her nails (while driving ninety-five miles per hour with the cops on her tail). “All of the C-4 is out of the SUV, right?”
Fiona lifted one shoulder.
“Yes or no, Fi, because Sam is going to blow it up in about three minutes.”
“I guess he’ll know when he blows it up,” she said. “I’d advise him to stand at least one foot from any open flame.”
“Sam,” I said, “do the drive-by like the kids do these days. No stopping to admire. But hang back enough for the Banshees to see you. We need to draw them out right now and get them heading toward my mother’s.”
“On it,” he said and hung up.
As soon as the phone was off, it rang.
Nate.
I handed the phone to Fiona. “Would you mind taking a message?” I said. “I need to not accidentally kill anyone.”
“You really need to get a Bluetooth,” Fiona said. “It’s very dangerous to talk on the phone while driving.”