Monsters by Matt Rogers (bill gates books to read TXT) 📕

and ferns covering her, and tiny slivers of the sky above. She couldn’t feel her lower back, but when she tried to curl her toes they responded, so there was some relief in that.

She may actually survive this.

May.

Doors flying open, boots on gravel.

Voices. Loud, accented, disbelieving.

‘Did you fuckin’ see that—?’

‘She just swerved.’

‘Too fast.’

‘Wait ’til she comes up for air. I’ll pop her little head off.’

Alexis thought, Holy shit.

They’d bought it.

A long silence followed by something that sounded an awful lot like the distant concerned shout of a passerby. A witness must’ve materialised on the other side of the lake. She hoped the Russians were getting uncomfortable.

They were.

One of the same voices said, ‘How far you think you can get on a single breath?’

‘She’s trapped inside. I’d put my house on it.’

No one spoke for another few seconds that felt like minutes.

Then, ‘But if she’s not…’

She pictured the Russians’ imaginations running away with them. They’d be thinking of Heidi, considering her ruthless streak, wondering what might happen if Alexis showed up alive and well in a few days’ time.

One of them said, ‘Let’s get closer. Can’t hurt.’

Footsteps thrashing through bushes.

Passing right by her.

But not over her.

She closed her eyes so she could attune all her senses into one. She listened. The last set of boots crashed past, but there would probably be more of them back on the trail, playing sentry. Maybe only one or two guys, but they’d see her stand up first. Everyone who’d gone into the undergrowth was already past her, so their backs would be turned if she rose without a sound.

She computed all this, then rose with the MP-443 Grach raised, aiming up at the trail.

Two guys there.

Their eyes widened.

She put a bullet in each of their heads then spun like an old-fashioned gunslinger.

34

Azure Waters Motel was a concrete monstrosity.

The reception windows displayed prices that seemed alluring, but Slater would’ve needed a gun to his head to stay for free. The motel was one big grey building, U-shaped, curved around a central gated area with a half-filled pool, its walls lined with algae. A cheap sign said the area was closed for repairs. Slater wondered when they’d happen.

Not in the next few minutes, at least, which was great because the whole place was otherwise deserted. There was probably someone in the office, and there’d be a handful of drug addicts burrowed in their rooms with the doors locked and the curtains drawn, but none of that would provide a hassle.

His only other question was how a place like this had survived in the Mission over the years.

He’d pulled up out front, in a parking space along the street, but he took his foot off the brake and started to drift into the motel lot in front of the pool. There were three old rides that all looked broken down, in even worse shape than the vehicles out the front of Frankie’s gym.

And there was a black cargo van with tinted windows in decent condition.

King said, ‘They’re here.’

Before Slater could turn all the way in, a shape seized his attention at the end of the street, between passing traffic.

An SFPD cruiser, trawling slowly into sight.

If Azure Waters didn’t look like a place that required constant sweeps, Slater might have considered it a strange coincidence. But under the circumstances it made sense. The cops probably had a fixed schedule for driving past the motel, scanning for domestics, or addicts passed out on the ground. A chill ran down Slater’s spine.

He said, ‘See it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Keep an eye on that.’

He turned all the way in, and the east wing of the motel building masked the approaching cruiser from view. It’d pass by the mouth of Azure Waters in maybe thirty seconds.

Slater had every intention of parking and waiting it out, but as he pulled in beside the van, a door on the first floor landing opened.

A woman who looked rather similar to Alexis came out, her face a white sheet. Three men piled out behind her in jackets and jeans. They were just as pale as Mary Böhm but that seemed to be their natural complexion. Two of them were playing it cool, but the third stood suspiciously close behind her, using her body to shield most of his bulk. Slater knew what it looked like to hold a gun to the small of someone’s back.

Several factors played on his mind.

First, that they were armed.

Second, that he and King weren’t. They’d had minutes to respond to Alexis’ request, and there hadn’t been time to mug a criminal. Again, this wasn’t Chicago, wasn’t Detroit. There wasn’t access to guns on every street corner, in the waistbands of desperate men who could be nullified and robbed by someone of King and Slater’s calibre in the space of seconds.

Third, there was now a window of opportunity that, when it shrank, would make things awfully difficult to manoeuvre.

Slater was out of the car before King could utter a word of protest. He hustled past the pool, across the concrete lot, to the bare grey steps leading up to the first floor landing. He took them three at a time and was facing off with Mary and her new friends less than fifteen seconds after he’d pulled into Azure Waters.

He didn’t say anything, just stood there.

The air bristled.

One of the big pale guys went to say something along the lines of, ‘Get the fuck out of the way,’ but before he could get it out, their collective attention was captured by something that entered their peripheral vision.

Slater thought, Please stop.

The police cruiser stopped.

It drifted into an empty space on the opposite side of the road and loitered there, the cops watching the motel from afar. Mary was the only one who didn’t look. She faced forward, not daring to move a muscle she wasn’t instructed to. She’d be able to feel the steel of the barrel against her lower back. From one look at her Slater knew she’d never been held at gunpoint before.

Over her