Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
There’s a beat before she says, “Cool.”
And now…
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
“Yours?” Christine asks. I check my phone. It’s not. I shake my head.
She glances at hers. She has the flashlight on. The light hits me in the eyes and I blink it away. “Not me,” she says.
Ring.
Ring.
It’s coming from the cab of the van.
Cillian’s getting a call.
ALEC
I don’t want to distract from the urgency and seriousness of our current situation, but those were two beautiful fokken shots and I need to take a moment to appreciate the level of both skill and composure required.
Wounded, fallen to the earth, the stakes as high as they can possibly be, dual focus on two moving targets at once?
Were it an Olympic sport, I would have just won gold.
All right. Fine and good. Back to more important matters.
I push myself to my feet with my one good arm, check again to make sure that I’m only superficially wounded (I am), and stagger my way over to where I see Danny at the rear of the van, door flung open. I don’t see Christine yet.
“She all right?” I call out, limping over more slowly than I’d like.
He gives me a thumbs-up and I nod, letting out the breath I didn’t know I was holding in.
Which is when I hear the ringing mobile.
I check. It’s not mine. It’s coming from inside the van.
I glance again at Danny, who lifts his chin in the direction of the front of the now undrivable transpo unit.
Still gripping my shoulder, I approach the driver’s side door, which is now parallel to the earth below as opposed to its normal perpendicular positioning. I have to crawl up onto the wheel and tread across the side of the door to get to an angle where I can open the fokken thing.
I reach inside the open window, unlock the door, pull it open, and see that the driver is slumped over to the side, seatbelt still fastened in place. Safety first. Good on him.
The ringing mobile is in one of those phone cup holder things. I can see the screen.
“Unknown Caller.”
Well, everyone is a stranger until they are introduced. Let’s see if we can’t make a new friend today.
Pulling the phone from its cradle, I press the green “answer” button and immediately put the call on speaker.
Danny and Christine both wander up to where I am now perched just above their heads. I place the phone down beside me, sit, letting my legs hang over the side, dangling in front of the underside of the van, and hold my wounded shoulder with the opposing hand.
None of us says anything for a moment, waiting to see if whoever is calling chooses to speak first. After the screeching of wheels, the roaring of motors, the firing of guns, and the sounds of our own hearts pounding, the quiet of the vacuum in which we patiently sit is particularly dense.
Finally, after a long, long, long beat, a voice comes through the speaker, wafting up into the air above this, our wooded battlefield.
“Allo?” the disembodied, distinctly Austrian-accented voice says, quizzically.
DANNY
Upon hearing the voice coming from the phone, Alec, Christine, and I share a look. Alec nods to me, indicating that he wants me to speak. I look back at him: Me? Why? He waves the hand attached to the arm attached to his wounded shoulder: Just talk! He winces.
I roll my eyes, shake my head, and reach my hand up, wiggling my fingers for the phone, which Alec hands down to me. Once I’m holding it, I take one more look at Alec and Christine, sigh, and say, “Yeah?”
There’s another long pause before the voice on the speaker asks, “Who is this?”
To my ear the voice sounds kind of like Alec’s. South African maybe. Could be Dutch or German or something too. I’m not a linguist or dialectologist or whatever the fuck they’re called. I just know the guy isn’t Irish. Which is… surprising. I guess. If anything can be considered “surprising” anymore.
“This is Danny Fortnight.”
Another, even longer pause.
“What happened to—”
“I assume that’s a rhetorical question,” I interrupt. I’m not gonna play footsie with whoever the fuck this is. We’re all grownups here. If this person is calling a bad guy’s phone with the intention of talking to said bad guy then he’s also in the bad guy business and knows good and well that sometimes bad guys die.
Also, when I said my name, his pause was not one of confusion. It was one of processing information. Taking it in. Digesting it.
He knows exactly who the fuck I am.
“All right,” the voice acquiesces. “Hold on a moment, please.”
I don’t know why I think that’s funny, but it is. It’s the request. The polite, call-center tone. I half expect to hear smooth jazz while he puts me on hold.
I mute the phone.