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She felt light and loose, as if she had no bones. I carried her to the bed and gently set her down. I brushed her hair away from her face. She had creamy skin, high Slavic cheekbones, and full lips. I felt drawn to her. I wanted to kiss those lips.
Her eyelids fluttered, and I backed away. Gave her a chance to look at me without going into another swoon. I closed the door in case she started screaming.
She stared at the ceiling for a second, then stiffened all over as she realized where she was. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me.
“You,” she said.
A memory sparked. Her in this same bed, naked under the sheets, smiling up at me. A name flashed in my mind. Irina. Her name was Irina.
How had we ended up in bed together? What had we meant to each other? Did she know why I was in LaPorte, what I did for a living? Did she know who the hell killed me?
I didn’t get to ask her. Cars roared up outside, screeching to a stop on the asphalt. Doors slammed. Aw, hell.
I went to the window and peeked between the heavy curtains. Gino was out there with four of his boys, crouching behind a Cadillac and the hood of a black SUV. The neon light made their faces a sickly green. Two were standard-issue goombahs, but I recognized the other two: Gino’s lifelong chum Frankie and a steroid case named Vi
“Get in the bathtub,” I told Irina as I pulled the.45 from my belt.
Once she was out of sight, I threw open the door and stepped into the cold night air.
“What’s up, Gino?”
“Thought we’d find you here, Mercer,” Gino shouted from behind the SUV. “This time, you’ll stay dead.”
I didn’t wait for them to start shooting. I lifted Chuck’s.45 and blasted away. One bullet clipped Gino’s shoulder and sent him spi
Bullets whined past me. Vi
I shot Vi
The last guy shot me again, a punch in the gut, but then he stopped, gaping at me. Bright pencils of light jutted from the bullet holes in my shirt.
The shooter freaked. He tried to run away, but I took careful aim and nailed him between the shoulder blades. He pitched forward onto the pavement.
My ears rang. Gun smoke stank up the air. As I turned to go back inside, I heard a groan from the other side of the cars.
I stalked around the vehicles and found Gino on the pavement, squirming and whimpering. I stopped right in front of him, the coroner’s wingtips an inch from his nose. Gino rolled over and looked up at my bright quills of light.
“What the fu-”
I shot him in the eye.
It was the last bullet in the.45, and I tossed the gun aside as I hurried to the motel room. I needed to plug these holes. I felt weaker by the second.
Irina stood framed in the bathroom doorway, shaking with fear.
“It’s over,” I said. “They’re all dead.”
She stared at the light streaming from my chest.
“What is that?”
“No time to explain,” I wheezed. “I need bandages-”
Dizziness overwhelmed me, and I dropped to my knees rather than fall on my face. No pain, but light poured out of the holes in my torso. I covered two of them with my hands, but it still felt as if I were slipping away. I looked up at Irina, who hadn’t moved.
“Help me.”
Her face twisted into a scowl, and she spat on the floor.
“Like you helped my brother?”
She pronounced it “brudder,” and for a second I didn’t know what she meant. Her brother?
“They left Alexei bleeding on the sidewalk,” she said. “His life draining away. But did you care? No, to you it was just business.”
Alexei. The kid Chuck killed at Coney Island.
I remembered now, her telling me her brother’s sad story. She’d wanted vengeance against the Italians. She wanted Dmitri to declare war. But I hadn’t come here for that-
“Now,” she said, “you’ve made them pay.”
I wilted. Why hadn’t I seen it sooner? Someone had been in my motel room when I was shot. Someone I trusted. I’d turned my back on her, which I never would’ve done with the Guidos or the Ivans, and she popped me behind the ear with a.38. Probably my own damn gun. Then she coolly watched me bleed to death before calling the cops.
Just like she was doing now.
I kneeled next to the bloodstain, trying to hold my light inside, but it spilled everywhere. The yellow light filled the motel room, blinding me.
I fell forward onto the same spot where I’d died once before. Right at her feet. But all I could see was light.
The Insider by Mike Wiecek
It was nice to have my office back.
Not strictly an office, mind you, and not strictly mine. In our profession, nobody would dream of paying for a hundred square feet behind pebbled glass. But the Tasty-Time Coffeehouse had not long ago been completely overrun by the New Unemployed. You know who I mean-laid-off bankers, mostly-hogging the chairs, frowning at their laptops, stretching a single caramel mint latte straight through lunch. The Tasty-Time’s manager tried switching off the Wi-Fi, but it wasn’t until he bolted plates over every power outlet that the freeloaders finally got the idea.
Today even the best table in the house was open, up front by a plate glass window. I steered my client over-we’d arrived at the same time-and got two stale donuts and coffee.
“Ernest Eppleworth,” he said. He didn’t look much like an Ernest, with his movie-star jaw and short, fashionably graying hair. “Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Clark.”
Ernest ran a little hedge fund, and he knew a guy whose sister had a friend I’d helped out last year. It wasn’t much of a case-the ghost had already been fading away, and the friend held on to his marriage-but everyone seemed happy at the end. A recommendation apparently traveled along, as they do.
Anyway, I was glad for the business.
“So how can I help you?” I asked.
“Well.” Ernest hesitated. “The thing is… I’m making too much money.”
“Ah.” An obvious solution presented itself, but-“Why don’t you tell me about that?”
“Since November, we’ve earned a 13,000 percent return.”
“Holy-” I choked on my donut. “A little over half a year-you’ve been doubling your money every month?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Short-term forex trading.”
“No way.” And I meant it.
See, I used to be a banker myself. Lehman Brothers, maybe you heard of them. After my own layoff, I drifted into private security. Crime is just about the only growth industry going nowadays. The ghost specialization thing-all that came later.
But anyway, that’s how I knew my way around the markets. Day-trading foreign exchange?-most folks would do better piling up their money and putting a match to it. Ernest wasn’t telling the whole story.
“Well,” I said. “What currencies?”
“A range. Nairas, lately, and good action in hryvnias, kyats, and Qatari riyals.”
“There’s a market in this stuff?” Nairas were Nigerian, and I was pretty sure hryvnias were Belorussian or Ukrainian or something, but I’d never heard of kyats.
“We get better leverage in the unregulated venues.” He noticed my skepticism and added, “It’s fully documented. We use a London-based clearinghouse, report every trade, pay our taxes. Entirely above-board.”