Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [247]
His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear him. Part shock, adrenaline, and part firing a submachine gun without ear protection in a closed room. I eased to a kneeling position and stopped pointing the gun at him. He seemed to realize I was having trouble hearing because he held up two fingers and did thumbs down. Rooster and Shooter were dead. Hurrah.
I knew Alario was dead. I’d gone way overboard on him. I looked across the room at Riker. He was sitting in his chair, mouth gaping open and closed like a landed fish. The front of his nice white shirt and suit jacket were stained red in a row across the entire front of his body, including his arms. He was sitting so that I could see his hands clearly. I don’t know if the force of the shots had pushed the wheeled chair back or he’d started that way.
Edward pointed at Riker, and I heard one word of the sentence, “Guard.” He wanted me to guard Riker, not kill him. Of course, we needed to know where the children were being held. I hoped he didn’t die before he told us.
My hearing came back in stages. I could hear Riker saying, “Please, don’t.” It was what Peter had been saying on the monitor. It pleased me that Riker was begging. Edward came back from checking the hallway. He had one of the sub-guns in his hands. He’d closed the door so that if we had company, we’d get a little warning.
By the time he started asking Riker questions, I could hear, but there was a ringing echo in my head that didn’t seem to want to go away.
“Tell me where to find Peter and Becca.” Edward said. He was leaning on the back of Riker’s chair, face very close to his.
Riker rolled his eyes to look at him. There was bloody foam at his lips. I’d pierced at least one lung. If it had been both, he was dying. If only one, then maybe he could survive if he got to the hospital soon enough.
“Please,” he managed to say again.
“Tell me where the children are being kept, and I’ll let Anita call an ambulance.”
“Promise?” he said, in a voice thick with things that should never be in a throat.
“I promise, just like you promised me,” Edward said.
Either Riker didn’t get the double entendre, or he didn’t want to. People will believe a lot of things when they’re afraid they’re dying. He believed we’d call an ambulance because he gave directions in that thick wet voice. He told us where they were being held.
“Thank you,” Edward said.
“Call now,” Riker said.
Edward put his face almost next to Riker’s. “You want to be safe from the monster?”
Riker swallowed, coughed blood, and nodded.
“I’ll keep you safe from the monster. I’ll keep you safe from everything.” And he shot Riker in the head with the Beretta .9 mil he’d reclaimed from Rooster’s body. My guns were still on Mickey somewhere out there.
Edward felt for Riker’s pulse and didn’t find it. He looked at me across the man’s body. I’d always thought Edward killed with coldness, but his baby blues held a fine, heated rage, like a forest fire barely under control. He was still in control of himself, but for the first time I wondered if there would come a point tonight where he’d lose it. You can only stay cool and collected when things don’t matter. And Peter and Becca mattered to Edward. They mattered more than I’d have ever thought anyone would matter to him. Them and Donna, his family.
He told me to reload the sub gun. I did what he asked. If Edward said I’d nearly emptied an entire clip in just a few seconds, I believed him. I added the extra clip from the dead man to the purse.
Edward went for the door, and I followed him. I’d thought that nothing could be scarier than Edward at his most cold. I was wrong. Edward the family man was downright terrifying.
59
HOURS LATER, THOUGH my watch said thirty minutes, I was plastered to a wall, crouched as low as I could get, trying not to get shot. I knew that I originally started out to rescue the kids, and I still planned to do that, but my immediate plan was just to avoid catching a bullet. That had been the plan for about five minutes. I’d heard the expression