Cerulean Sins - Laurell K. Hamilton [129]
What if I got Claudia killed, the way I’d gotten her friend Igor killed a few months back? Hell, what if I got Bobby Lee killed like his friend, Cris? I’d killed nearly fifty percent of any wererats that Rafael, their king, had loaned me. No one complained about it, but today, the thought of more losses seemed completely unacceptable.
If I wasn’t willing to let people risk their lives, then this plan wouldn’t work. We needed four vehicles to block four roads, and make sure there was no place for the bad guys to go. We’d cut off all escape routes and reason with them. That meant a minimum of four people in danger. More, since Bobby Lee wanted shooters hidden among the few cars in the parking lot. The shooters would move out of the Circus when the bad guys were busy driving around trying to figure a way out of the parking lot. Or, that was the plan.
It was a good plan, unless the bad guys pulled out guns and started shooting. Then we’d have to shoot back, and they might get killed, and I’d be no better off. I still wouldn’t know shit, and I might have gotten some more of Rafael’s people dead.
“You alright, Anita?” Bobby Lee asked.
I was rubbing fingertips against my temples and shaking my head. “No, I’m not. I’m really not okay with this.”
“With what?”
“This, all of it.” Even as I said it, I saw Claudia driving down the back road, and Fredo coming up the other road. I’d made sure I knew his name. You shouldn’t ask people to die for you if you don’t at least know their name. He was a few inches under six feet, a slender dark man, with large graceful hands, wearing more knives than anyone I’d met in a long time. Bobby Lee said that both Fredo and Claudia could make the accident look real, they were both drivers. He said drivers like it should have been in capital letters. I’d asked to be one of the drivers, and I’d been informed that I didn’t know how to DRIVE, and I couldn’t argue with that. But right that moment, waiting and watching other people take the risks for me was harder than risking myself.
I trusted Bobby Lee’s judgment. I really did. What I didn’t trust was the bad guys. They were bad guys, so you couldn’t trust them to be anything but unpredictable and dangerous.
I watched the two cars get closer, and I almost yelled, don’t, don’t do it! But I wanted to know who was following me, and more than that, if I said stop, if my nerve failed here on something so mundane, what good would I be? The trouble was, my nerve had failed. I kept my mouth shut, but I felt like the only thing keeping my pulse in my mouth was the tight line of my lips.
I prayed, Dear God, don’t let anyone get hurt. Then a thought occurred to me, seconds before the fender bender. If Bobby Lee and company could stage this, they could probably have followed the men, trailed them back to wherever. Following just hadn’t occurred to me, only confrontation. Shit.
The cars collided; it did look real, accidental. Claudia got out, all tall and feminine even from a distance. Fredo got out, yelling, waving his arms around.
The bad guys started their car and went for the far entrance of the parking lot, farther down the street that had just been blocked off. They must have smelled a . . . rat.
The Impala stopped before they’d turned completely onto the road, which meant they’d spotted the third car tucked in beside the Circus, blocking the alley between the Circus and the building next door.
Bobby Lee led the way to the stairs, and we clattered down, trusting that the fourth vehicle, a truck, had blocked the far alley where the loading dock was located. We’d both sacrificed being one of the first shooters into the parking lot so we could watch the plan unfold.
By the time we hit the lot, gunmen had sprung up among the few parked cars, like mushrooms after a rainstorm. I felt almost silly drawing my gun and joining the half circle. Claudia, Fredo, and the two other drivers were the other half of the circle, coming in from the other side.
It wasn’t a perfect circle, a perfect circle would have