Page 71 of One Minute Out

I can’t tell if it’s male or female.

Poor Talyssa, I think. First, I came slamming down from the sky, knocking her to the cobblestones in a pile of men, and now I’ve wrecked her out in a brutal crash.

I’m leaping out of the Vauxhall before the last of the debris from the crash has even rained back to Earth. Drawing my pistol, I actuate my weapon light under the barrel, shining it on the scene.

The person ejected is a man; he doesn’t look as badly injured as I expected him to be, but I fix that immediately by firing twice into his right side as he tries to rise to his feet.

He spins away from me and ends up dead on his back in the street, arms and legs splayed.

I move around to the front of the vehicle, look through the cracked windshield, and see the driver and the man in the front passenger seat lying on top of each other. They are moving, but I don’t fire, because I can’t see Talyssa. She might be on the wall of the van behind them, so I run around to the back, crouch down, and enter there.

My light reflects off the dust and smoke in the air, but through it all I see an arm wildly waving a stainless semiauto pistol my way. The gun snaps, earth-shattering in the small space, and I return fire into the face of the figure holding it, unsure whether I’ve been shot. I don’t feel any impact, but I keep firing till the stainless steel pistol falls away. Only when it does so do I see that this is one of the bearded men; he’s lying on top of Talyssa in the second row. She is screaming bloody murder, thank God, and now that I know where she is I move into the van and put my hand on her head to hold her down against the closed sliding door resting on the street. When she’s out of my line of fire I open up on the men in the front seat, dumping a dozen rounds from my Glock into them.

“Are you hurt?” I shout now as I reload, because my ears are ringing from the gunfire in the closed-in space, and I know the Romanian woman’s virgin ears will be faring much worse.

She shouts back at me. “I... I don’t know! This man is on top of me and—”

“Hang on.”

I pull on Talyssa because I can’t get over the seat to get the dead guy off her. It’s hard work getting her turned around and over the seat back, but finally she is able to crawl out under her own power.

Her face is scratched and bruised, and her eyes show mild shock, but she could be a hell of a lot worse, so I count my blessings.

We stand amid the wreckage under a streetlamp; I feel all over my body to double-check that I didn’t catch a bullet. I can’t find anything but sore spots, and painful bruising is a lot better than being ventilated by gunfire.

Another car has stopped behind us and I hear barking dogs and shouting humans in the yards of the homes on our right. I’ve holstered my weapon under my T-shirt; I’m covered with cuts and scrapes and filth from all the scrambling and fighting I’ve been doing over the past half hour, so to the people here I look just like another car crash victim.

But we can’t play this off like a simple traffic accident, since no one for a quarter mile in any direction could have missed the sound of all the shooting.

I help Talyssa along, ignoring the young man who climbs out of the tiny Nissan behind us. Then we get into the Vauxhall. Seconds later I’ve reversed direction and am heading back to the east, moving at a reasonable speed. Flashing lights approach, so I pull into a driveway, as the bullet holes in my windshield are easy to see, even at night.

Once the first responders have continued on to the west, I’m back on the road, and my right hand reaches out to feel over Talyssa’s body. It’s called a blood sweep, a quick way to find an injury on someone who may not even be aware they are injured because of the effects of adrenaline. You have to put your hand everywhere to be sure, and I do this without thinking.

It’s a common practice in my world, but to the uninitiated I imagine it feels a little off.

Instantly she recoils and smacks my hand away. “What... what are you doing?”

I pull my hand back to the steering wheel. “Sorry, it’s a thing we do.”

“What? Who does that? No one does that!”

I let it go. “Check yourself, are you bleeding? Are you hurt?”

Coming out of her anger and shock, she does as I ask. After a moment she says, “I... I don’t think I am badly injured, but I hit my head when we crashed.” Rubbing her upper arm she says, “My shoulder hurts, but I think I’m okay.”

I know from experience that if her head and shoulder hurt now, they’re going to be killing her in about twelve hours, but I don’t mention this. I have to find out if she learned anything at all in the few minutes she was in captivity. I don’t expect to find out much, but I have no idea how else to continue my pursuit of the kidnapped women without some sort of new intelligence.

But before I can speak she turns to me. “Thank... thank you.”

This I don’t expect. “Uh... sure. I thought you’d be pissed.”

“Pissed? I haven’t been drinking. Have you?”

“Mad. Angry,” I clarify, knowing she probably learned British English, so she thought I was telling her I thought she was drunk when I pulled her out of the van.

“Why would I be mad?” she asks now.

“I don’t know. I guess because I used you as bait and almost got you killed.”

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