Jo pull Tina against a pillar and watched, eyes stinging. The stampede flowed toward the right field stands. The screams turned into wailing and an eerie quiet in the upper reaches of the ballpark. "What just happened?" Tina said. "The worst stunt catastrophe in entertainment history" Jo said. She wasn't even close.
Jo looked down the empty length of the jet. You never knew what you were going to get in these situations. Catatonia. Religious mania. A bad drug trip. Drunkenness, or a violent psychotic episode. A guy trying to detonate his shoes.
Something strange was going on here. And it wasn't just the cold street or the neon glow of strip club marquees, a seedy Dashiell Hammett glare that played counterpoint to the emergency lights. This scene was giving her a professional case of the heebie-jeebies. And the dead were waiting for her, as usual.
Jax Rivera was a recurring apparition in my life. A former CIA agent, she was glamorous, conniving and violent. She now ran a small business with her British husband, killing people for hire. They seemed a happy couple. And they liked me. Talk about unwelcome attention.
I hit the elevator call button. The feds and I could ride down together. Two floors wouldn't give me much time, but they apparently disliked conversation, so I could skip the pleasantries and boot the straight in them crotch. Probably just verbally.
The cops stuck me in a holding cell. With the proud winner of a knife fight. She weight in at 220 and had Marie and Nolinda tattooed on her biceps, which could have been either her name or a list of defeated opponents. I kept my back against the wall, for an hour.
He claimed he'd put it all behind him, No good looking back, he said. Eyes front, 'cause the future's the only place you can go. Acceptance, they call this. And hearing the pain in his voice, I knew. It wasn't true. Jesse accepted nothing, as long as Brand remained free.
I would rather have pounded tacks into my tongue than tell my brother. But some things I do straight: drink, sex, bad news. The Remnant had weapons, a choir and a target list. Now it wanted Luke.
