Page 26 of Double Shot

“Better for us than them,” she said. Her form was good, and she went still, letting the sights on the rifle find their target. She fired a three-round burst, and the last car swung into a hard right-hand turn, and then physics came into play. The center of mass moved above its axis of inertia and then the front wheel buckled under the weight, sending the car into a violent roll. Glass, debris, and smoke trailed behind us. She dropped back down into the seat and tossed the FAMAS on the floorboard.

“I don’t like that rifle,” she said, nonchalantly.

I didn’t have words. My poppet had just smoked three pursuit vehicles with less than sixty rounds of ammunition.

“Do you have us a place yet?” Lach asked.

“Yeah, but it’s not cheap,” Grant said. “Looks like I can grab you a room for three nights, but it’s going to be about nine grand.”

“There’s a black card in the glovebox,” Lach said, moving the car through traffic, trying to put distance between us and the destruction in our wake. “See if there is an upgrade. I am willing to go up to twelve or fifteen large; it’s Monaco.”

“Done and done,” Grant said. “Do you know where the Fairmont is?”

“The hotel that overlooks the Grand Prix course, where Nikki Beach is?” Lach asked.

“The one and the same, have you been?” Grant asked.

“A few times,” I offered. I didn’t mention why he had been there, or how much he had spent on escorts that weekend. Dropping fifty grand on a weekend didn’t matter after a Sultan in a quaint country had paid just over a million for taking out a rival of his.

Lach maneuvered us through the Monegasque Customs station leaving the A9 and entering the sovereign nationality of Monaco. It was most convenient that all of our passports and documents were so cutting edge when I made them a world and a lifetime ago, they were still good. We were waved through with little issue, and I was more than a little thankful that the customs people didn’t look hard at the rear end of the car. The bullet holes would have been hard to explain.

“I was going to tell them that French people don’t like German cars,” Lach said as he flitted us through the narrow streets of the old city, across part of the actual Grand Prix track, and to the check-in counter and valet parking for the Fairmont Hotel.

The massive building was a hallmark of the country, and hundreds of millions of people saw the royalty of racing muscle F1 cars around it, and then under its parking garage facility every year at one of the most hallowed tracks in open-wheeled racing. I had certainly watched a fair number of races here. It was almost sad that this was my first visit.

The staff were exceedingly polite, and we were escorted up to the room that Grant had procured for us, using Lach’s black credit card. That was a sword that cut through all barriers, gleaming black and almost knife-edged in its precision. The car was taken to the valet parking, and Lach told them that they would need to procure the services of a car broker. The mischief on the A9 had been entirely too close to them, and there was no way that they were going to be seen in the Riviera driving a damaged sedan.

The concierge all but fell to his knees.

The room was breathtaking. The southern wall was entirely glassed in, and the view was spectacular. There were yachts and sailing boats in the enclosed harbor, everything lit up in the evening darkness. I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and my soul felt light again. Kaijin was still out there, but I was no longer her captive.

She hadn’t broken me.

She hadn’t won.

“Showers,” Sadie said, plucking at her shirt. “I need one. We all need one.”

“I’ll call room service,” Lach said. “Showers, all around. We smell like the locker room at a shooting range. Anyone have any requests?” There were a few sundry requests, nothing that piqued his eyebrow – ceviche, a salmon salad, and then I said something that surprised him.

“A bottle of the house sauv blanc, and find out what they have in American whiskey,” I said. I had learned that not only was I stronger than that sadist cunt, but I was also stronger than the devil that lived in the bottle. “Oh, a steak, rare, and whatever their two recommended sides are. I’m starved.”

He laughed and ordered.

One by one, we all took showers, and even trying to run the hot water out seemed to be a fool’s errand. Even Sadie with her feminine predilection for water temps approaching the boiling point wasn’t able to make a dent in it. This seemed to please her greatly.

We all talked for a bit, and there was a good deal of relaxing. The news was left playing on a television. The running shootout on the A9 was the highlight of the reel, but local officials were stymied by the fact that those involved had all had extensive criminal records, and while they were certainly interested in whomever they were pursuing, none of them had spoken. Or at least something like that, the news was broadcast in French.

“Where are you going to stay?” Sadie asked Grant pointedly, and I could detect a tremble in her hands where she clutched them in her lap, her cream satin robe, courtesy of the hotel, shimmering under the overhead lights where it rippled around her.

“Oh, me?” He seemed surprised. “Don’t worry about me. I have some friends who stay around here, and they love the DJ Raditz. I’ll probably spend the next week doing a tour of clubs and house parties. I won’t lie, the last day or so has given me so goddamn much inspiration to work with that I’m sure I can turn it into another bomb-ass club tour, maybe some EDM singles. It will be fucking sweeeet.” He dragged the last part out like a hair-metal rocker torturing a guitar string.

“You won’t stay here?” Sadie asked and though she may sound innocent in her query to Grant, I heard the apprehension in her voice that he might say yes. He was, by far, too clever for that.

“Nah, I’ve had too much…” he hesitated. “Fun. I need to go do some industrial-grade decompression and defragging.” Lach raised his glass to that, offering a silent toast to the sentiment.

“You’re a good man,” he said to Grant, and his smile was thin, tired.

“Right now, I’m a fourth wheel. You guys have a blast, and Guild Master RedRoan,” he offered me a deep dragon-kin bow, fist clawed over his heart, “I deliver you to safety, blessed be the Guild.”

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