12. Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

A ndre obviously didn’t share my relief at escaping relatively unscathed from the Omni parking garage. He was silent for the first few minutes of the drive, opening his mouth every now and then but stopping before more than a hitch of breath emerged. It happened five times before I finally spoke up.

“Just get it off your chest. I don’t want you to have a stroke.”

“And I don’t want to punch you in the face so hard your daddy feels it, but that’s where I’m at right now, so give me some goddamn space.”

Well, that was clear enough. Except—we kind of needed to talk. “I’m going to need a car.”

“Fuck you, man, I’m going to need a car,” Andre muttered. “How am I going to explain this to my wife, huh? Bullet holes in my Tesla , man. This thing is less than a year old. I drive my daughter around in this!” He turned to glare at me. “Did you know this was going to happen?”

“No!” He looked unconvinced, but I was tired of taking it, so I glared right back. “No, because I don’t make a habit of sending other people into dangerous situations just to save my own ass!” Except for S?ren. “Especially when I’d rather not be in a dangerous situation in the first place. For fuck’s sake, you think that was where I wanted to be? Do I look like John McClane?”

Andre snorted. “More like a really low-rent version of James Bond.” He glanced at me again. “I think you’re bleeding.”

I checked my arm. Yep, there was blood happening. “Brand new suit,” I muttered as I started to squirm out of my jacket. A sudden pain in my upper back stopped me. “Ow, fuck!”

“Just…stop moving, okay? I’ll look you over when we get back to my place. We’re not far. You’re probably driving glass farther into the wound.”

“What glass?”

He stared at me like I was stupid. “Glass from the window that exploded over your head, maybe?”

“What window?”

“You really aren’t used to being in the middle of a firefight, huh.”

I sighed and stopped trying to get out of my jacket, letting the cloth settle back down over the bullet hole. Now that the adrenaline was wearing away, I could feel the burn where the stitches had been pulled.

“No, I’m really not. I try not to let situations get that far. It tends to end badly for me.”

“Well, settle in and just breathe, okay? I’ll fix you up when we get home.” He checked the backseat in the rearview mirror. “Although feel free to talk to me about the dead guy in the backseat whenever you want.”

“He’s not dead.” I looked back at S?ren reflexively, as if to convince myself of that fact. No bullet holes in him that I could see—that was good. He was just…still. “He’s in stasis.”

“In stasis.”

“Yep.”

“That sounds suspiciously Star Trekkie to me.”

“Fuck off,” I snapped.

“You don’t actually know what’s going on with him, do you?”

“That’s what I’m going to figure out.” Figuring that out was now my life’s purpose. “He’s important, though. He’s the key to what’s going on with the Egilssons, I’m sure of it.”

“Really? Because at first glance, he doesn’t seem to have anything at all in common with their mysterious warehouse.”

“Except for, maybe, the mysterious part?” I shut my eyes determinedly. “You worry about getting us to a secure location; I’ll worry about how this all fits together.” I could tell Andre wanted to argue with me—the pressure of his gaze was palpable—but he didn’t speak. That was nice. I was a tired of being yelled at, in English or otherwise.

First priority: get myself patched up, because as much as I used to believe I was an island, really I was an archipelago at best. I needed help with some things, and putting fresh stitches in my arm was one of them.

Second priority: new transportation, and fast. Something that would fly under the radar, nothing that required me to use identification to purchase or rent it, and roomy. Preferably with tinted windows or—I winced—a big trunk.

Third priority: get the hell out of Chicago, find someplace to lay low for a while, and make some calls. I knew almost nothing about what was going on here, but I had contacts who were experts in, well, everything. I knew shamans. I knew priests. I knew hunters. I knew people who’d dealt with way heavier shit than me over the course of their lives. Possessions, plagues, angry zombie hillbillies—I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the bite marks, but it had happened. The world was full of specialized knowledge, and I was in a unique position to bargain for it. Almost everyone wanted to know about themselves. Vanity, more than envy or pride, was the real weakness of humanity. The truly selfless were few and far between, and that made my job easier.

About ten minutes later, we pulled into a cul-de-sac populated with identical gray and blue townhomes. Andre and his wife lived in an end unit with a double garage, which the Tesla shared with an enormous old Buick that was somewhere in the process of being restored. As soon as the garage shut, Andre was out, grabbing my duffel from the backseat and, after a moment, gingerly rearranging S?ren’s limbs into a marginally more comfortable position.

“He’s warm,” he remarked with surprise.

“I told you he’s not dead. Just…”

“In stasis.”

“Right.”

“Yeah, fine. Get inside, take a right into the kitchen, and do not get blood on my carpet.”

I checked my shoes to make sure they were clean before I entered the townhome. It was as generically cozy as I’d imagined, white walls and champagne carpet with occasional faux-wood accents and baby paraphernalia scattered all over the place. I made my way to the kitchen and sat on a wooden stool, grateful to be off my feet. For a moment, just a moment, I let myself feel all the anxiety that was building in me, all the hopefulness that had been transformed to fresh frustration. I kind of wanted to hit something, but that would just hurt, so I restrained myself and sat, cataloging scents. Coffee grinds in the trashcan, dirty frying pan in the sink that had been used to make eggs, blood…oh right, that was me.

“Hey.” My eyes shot open, and I looked up at Andre, who had a first aid kit in one hand and was looking at me warily. “Cillian. You back?”

“I didn’t know I’d gone anywhere,” I griped.

“You didn’t hear me come in, didn’t hear me ask the question the first time. I thought I’d check before touching you.”

“Always smart.” I went to take the jacket off again, but he waved me down.

“I’ve got scissors for that.” And he did, sturdy paramedic scissors that were dull enough not to cut me but strong enough to slice through a seat belt.

“This was a new suit,” I said sullenly, but I let him cut it off my back.

“Now you know—buy cheap,” Andre said. “I’m doing the shirt too, just hang on.” A moment later he pulled the cuffs over my wrists and then looked at my arm. His mouth tensed. “So. Not your first gunfight recently.”

“And I didn’t see the first one coming any more than I saw the last one,” I replied. “Can you sew me up?”

“This is my civilian med kit, man. I don’t have the stuff for that.”

“Butterfly bandages, then.” I didn’t care, as long as it stopped the bleeding.

“We’re cleaning this first.” He did, and it was excruciating. I barely noticed him take a sliver of glass out of my neck or wipe blood off my face.

“You need to get a hotel room and sleep for a while.”

That roused me out of my stupor quick enough. “No, no time. I need to get S?ren out of the city as soon as possible. You might just want to drop your Tesla at a body shop, because it’s likely they’ll try to track it.”

“I know how to hide from people,” Andre said, rather enigmatically. “And I know when someone’s had it, and you’ve had it. You need rest.”

Oh, it was adorable how mother hens just seemed to fall into my life. “I can’t stay here because it’s a danger to you and your family, and I can’t stay in a hotel because I’m carting an unbreathing body around and getting him inside with me would be rather difficult. I need space, is what I need. And”—I took a deep breath—“your car.”

“My what?” Andre looked blankly at me for a long moment before he started swearing. “Oh, fuck no, you’re not taking my Electra, and I don’t care how you beg. You can rent something.”

“No, I can’t, no time. But you can rent something.” I bent over—more than a little woozy, but at least I didn’t fall—and pulled out a roll of cash. “Here. Two grand.” I tried to hand it to Andre, but he just stared at me, so I set it on the counter next to the first aid kit instead. “This should be enough to cover some work on your ride and the cost of a rental for a few days. Tell your wife someone rear-ended you so you had to send it in to the shop, and you let an old army buddy borrow the Buick. It isn’t a great car for someone with a baby, anyway.”

“You’re a goddamn piece of work,” Andre muttered. “Are you serious?”

“Serious as a heart attack. C’mon.” I nudged the cash again. “Take it. I know you know someone who can do that kind of work. They’re just bullet holes. It’s not like the structural integrity of the car is compromised.”

“Jesus Christ.” He cast his gaze up, sighed, and then looked at me again. “I want that car back. She’s a 1975 Buick Electra. I just got the power windows working, and I was about to start on priming her.”

“I’ll get it back to you.”

“Her. You call her Electra, ’cause she’s a lady who’s doing you a favor, carting you and your pasty not-dead guy around.”

“Whatever you say.” He could have asked me to worship his car and I would have looked for an appropriate sacrifice at this point. “Do you mind moving S?ren to the trunk?”

Andre threw his hands up in the air.

“What? It’s not like I can do it, and your windows aren’t tinted. The last thing I need is a curious cop catching a glimpse of the backseat.”

“I’ll move him,” Andre said at last. “You get dressed, and for god’s sake, drink some water. You’re dehydrated and you’ve lost too much blood.”

“Sure thing.” Andre left, and I eased myself into a fresh button-down shirt, grabbed a couple of my pills, and headed to the sink. I turned on the faucet and drank straight from the source, washed down my medicine, and wished for something stronger than water. It tasted good, though, like it was filling a void I’d been ignoring, and I supposed I had. I sat back down and took stock.

I was out of ammunition. I was out a significant amount of cash, although I still had some in reserve. I was healthy enough, but Andre was right—I was running on fumes. I had maybe four, five hours left in me before I crashed unless I took something more stimulating than coffee, and with the meds I was on, I didn’t think I could afford to do that. I had the Egilsson family searching for me and I’d potentially compromised my only contact in this city, but I had a car. I had my phone with all of my contacts in it.

And I had S?ren, who might not be breathing but was definitely alive. Overall, I’d say the balance was in my favor.