15.

Walters’ SUV careened around a corner. Barnet and Sarah followed, tires screaming. Pistol fire barked and flashed beneath the droning helicopters above. Every few seconds divots appeared in new places as an NCPD SWAT sharpshooter took pot-shots from a chopper. Sirens wailed and echoed to catch up from a side-street. Squad cars ramped downward to glide, level, with the sedan. More shots rattled off from the SUV. A squad car, swerved, side-swiped the sedan. It rebounded sideways, slammed a pole, and disappeared behind them.

“Shit!” Barnet said, glancing backward. “This has gotta’ stop.”

He slapped a new magazine into his pistol and the sedan ramped over a bridge’s apex, caught air, crashed down with a chirp of and groaning metal. A cruiser pulled ahead to PIT the SUV.

“No! Damn it! No!” Barnet yelled futilely. “We need to follow–” He dialed his phone, “Connect me with your supervisor immediately!”

“This is bad,” Sarah said. She spun around a corner. The Squad car easily bridged the distance between her and the SUV. “If he PITs that truck we’ll never find Kennedy.”

Barnet wasn’t listening. He spoke a mile a minute, each word as important and urgent as the next or last. “This is Special Agent Garret Barnet with the NSA. I am currently in pursuit of a black Suburban headed South-West through the city. Your people are following. Tell them to back off. Follow but do not intervene! The suspect is holding an agent hostage and we need to–”

“Garret!”

The cop’s car lurched forward. It nudged for the SUV, hit air instead, almost spun out of control. Sarah jerked left to compensate. The squad car recovered, pulled ahead again. It edged up against the blown out rear-tire of the SUV.

Barnet muttered, “Oh shit,” ceaselessly.

When it came, they were too shocked, stunned. The call never went through. The PIT did: the squad car surged forward with a vengeance. Its supercharger whinnied with high RPMs beside the scraping metal and asphalt that cut a path through the city. With a seething hatred, the squad car lurched again. Barnet was conscious of a sustained “no!” chorusing from he and Sarah. The panel above the mangled steel rim depressed. Sparks vomited sideways. The mangled rim sheered in half, threw Walters into a fish-tail. The cop followed through.

Walters’ SUV three-sixtied through traffic. It smashed and bounced off cars that swerved to avoid it. The impacts threw it back around, shifted its gravity with reckless abandon. The gnarled rim caught a pot-hole, deformed. The truck’s gravity shifted. In a blink, it was on its side. A fountain of sparks formed along the sides of the vehicle as it slid along its roof. It smashed a parked car, momentum still strong. A moment later it was flipping up, over, and down the parked car. It finally came to a stop, upside down, in front of the car, its wheels still spinning but its body inert.

Sarah skidded to a stop before it. She and Barnet were out, flashing their badges at the dozen uniforms emerging from the fleet of police cars around them. They ordered the cops to stay back, rushed the overturned vehicle with their pistols drawn. Walters clawed his way out, bleeding and bruised. A gun in one of his hands scraped the ground for leverage, his other hand clawed forward.

Barnet kicked Walters’ pistol away, yanked the dazed man up, “Where is she, you asshole!?”

Walters swayed, reality spinning around him. Barnet straightened his face, put his gun to his head. Walters began a slow rise to laughter, his head shaking, “You aren’t getting shit from me.”

Barnet sneered, “We’ll see about that.”

With a single move, he pistol whipped Walters unconscious.

Kennedy sensed something had changed. The last two hallways were empty. Something had to have cleared them. Some sort of event had taken place, and as far as she could tell, had taken Walters’ goons with it. She led Melissa, carefully, along cheap, wood-paneled corridors. The place felt like a trailer-home from the seventies; only a step above being homeless with décor more a begrudging obligation than a luxury.

They moved deeper through the place and windows appeared beside a staircase that lead downward. With an outward look, Kennedy suddenly understood why the place seemed so odd. It was a large warehouse, not unlike the one she’d read had exploded, save it didn’t smell of fish. According to the mostly-vacant parking lot outside, and the thriving, industrial landscape around it, she guessed the building wasn’t used for anything official.

She crept down the stairs ahead of Melissa, voices uttering low words from behind a sheet-metal wall. One said something about a car-chase on TV. Melissa panted terror. Kennedy moved her into hiding behind a stack of thick-wood crates. Behind them, a maze of corridors and rooms were constructed from sheet-metal dividers. Ahead, just past the packed storage area, light shined from an open, roll-door.

She could almost feel the waning sunlight. Still, where would she go from there? She couldn’t risk waiting for Barnet or the cops, nor hot-wire a nearby car– that hadn’t been on the med-school curriculum, unfortunately. She’d have to flag someone down for a ride, or find a place to hide and call Barnet. Any waiting would expose her though, and there was no assurance against encountering one of Walters’ goons while hitch-hiking.

No, even if she made it past the two voices ahead, she needed something immediate. Mobility, certainty, something to ensure she and Melissa could go as fast and far as possible to get away. That left only one option, whether or not it was possible remained to be seen.

She knelt beside Melissa, handed over the pistol from her waist-band, “Melissa, I need you to help me. I know you’re scared, but we’ve to gotta’ get out of here. If we stay, they’ll kill us.”

Melissa nodded, took the gun with trembling hands, “I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”

Kennedy frowned, tested the weight of the AK in her hands, “Neither have I, but maybe we won’t have to.”

“What do I do?”

Kennedy peered around the stack of boxes at the sunlight, “Just stay hidden. If I get in trouble, help me. Can you do that?”

Melissa pulled herself together, swallowed hard, “Y-yeah. I can do that.”

Kennedy breathed, then started forward. She advanced through the storage area for the sheet-metal dividing wall and the double-wide opening between her and it. She flattened up against the wall, leaned out to peer around it; two men sat just beyond it in an office on either side of a desk. They faced away from the door to stare at a wall-mounted TV as a news report showed footage of an ongoing police chase. She saw the black SUV, instantly knew it was Walters. She scanned the two men, spotted a carabiner of keys latched to one’s belt loop. They dangled through his chair above a black car-remote.

Her confidence peaked. She moved like wind, quiet, fast. Her rifle butt rose, slammed the man with the keys in the back of the head. The other turned to pull a pistol. She turned the AK on him.

“Slow. Left hand,” she ordered. He pulled the gun out backwards. “On the floor.” He tossed the gun over. “I swear if you make one move I’ll murder–”

A click sounded behind her.

“Someone’s outta’ their cage,” a voice said. “Put it down.”

She didn’t budge. Her rifle was trained on the man. The keys were in reach. She could end this if it weren’t for–

“I said put it down!” He ordered with a fast step forward.

A pistol barked. Blood sprayed from his torso. The other man dove for his gun. The AK sputtered and recoiled. More pistol rounds echoed through the small area over the AK. At point blank, Kennedy littered the man with enough ammunition to carve a large hole out of his body. Melissa was suddenly behind Kennedy, her nerve regained.

She breathed exhilaration, “Are you alright?”

Kennedy fished for the keys, fought them off the last man’s pants as he stirred, “Yeah. Let’s go.”

They sprinted outside, hit the panic button. A Civic in the parking lot honked and flashed its lights. The pairs sprinted to the car, dove in just as distant rifle rounds began to chatter after them. The car fish-tailed from the parking, rear-window exploding. A man chased it to the edge of the lot, but tore away at break-neck speed, careened around a corner, and disappeared; Kennedy and Melissa with it.

16.

Barnet and Sarah returned from a local holding area run by the NSA. Walters was in custody, and so far, not talking. He would though, the NSA interrogator would make sure of it. By the end of it, Barnet would know where Kennedy was being held, and the NSA would know everything Walters did– including his underwear size, if they desired.

Neither of the agents thought much of the Civic parked in the Dentist’s usual spot as they entered the building. They’d missed the shattered window, too preoccupied with plotting their next move. They ascended the stairs to the safe-house, moved through it, but stopped, dumbstruck to find Kennedy tending to Melissa’s bruised and cut face. She sat beside her brother, his hand in hers. She didn’t even flinch when Kennedy swabbed alcohol at her wounds. Melissa was just glad to yet live.

Barnet involuntarily rushed and hugged Kennedy; a grievous breach of protocol. Sarah was quick to redirect his shame before protocol took precedent, “We picked up Walters and were trying to get your location from him.”

Kennedy replied distantly, “We made it during the chase. I saw it on the news.”

There was a long silence. Barnet finally broke it, “I’m glad you’re alright.”

Kenned shrugged. That was the end of it.

She did eventually retell of the warehouse and the events there, but that was as far as she’d go. The job wasn’t over yet, not by a long-shot. She still had two patients to care for, one in better shape than the other, near ready to come out of her induced coma. The other though, had days of work and monitoring left before he could even be considered for it.

A week after the short-lived kidnapping, Kennedy arrived at the safe-house to find the others yet to make it in. Mendez was still drugged too heavily to do much more than sleep and sip water. Currently, she was occupied with the former. Kennedy did her level-best to remain quiet, wishing not to disturb the injured, young woman.

She went about her usual routine of checking vitals, charting, and rehanging banana bags. Once finished, she whirled around to find a stocky, balding man had sneaked in behind her. He seemed to want to make his presence known though, given his bearing. He wore polyester rags, liberally called a suit, his face was pinched in a perpetual scowl. Kennedy didn’t need med-school to tell her he was an asshole.

“Can I help you?”

He flashed an NCPD badge, “I’m Matthew Roberts with NCPD’s Internal Affairs division.”

“That supposed to mean something?” She asked combatively, certain he wasn’t allowed in.

He waddled over, “I’m here to check on Officers Mendez and Torres to ensure they’ll be ready to face indictment for their botched operation.”

Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. Unlike Roberts, she was aware of two, crucial things; one, at its heart, Hot Iron was meant to suss out a mole; and two, no-one in the NCPD was supposed to know either of the two officers were alive.

She faked out the cop. It was too obvious. She needed to act, and fast.

She stiffened up as if suddenly fearing his authority, “Okay. S-sorry. We just aren’t supposed to have anyone in here.”

She moved for a drawer across the room. He stepped before the two officers, surveyed them with a wide sweep of his eyes. He made casual conversation more forced than it should’ve been, “And how are they, doctor?”

She almost corrected him, didn’t. It was all the more evidence he present for something impersonal. She stepped beside him, drew out a large dose of something in a syringe.

He eyed it, “Everything alright.”

“Oh yes,” Kennedy lied. “Just a little something for the pain.”

He nodded. She turned, jabbed the needle into his neck, and flooded his veins with sedative. He was awake long enough to fumble for his gun. She forced it away, snapped his wrist with an expert move. The gun fell to the floor. Roberts went with it, hit harder, louder.

***

Kennedy sat in bed, reading a Scientific American about psychology and burn patients. She’d gotten authorization to awaken Torres soon. If Barnet had been truthful– and considering they were now sleeping together, she doubted he’d lie– it wouldn’t be more than a few days before both officers were moved back to the ICU. With them, any black marks would be removed from her license, and more thank likely, she’d be commended for capturing Roberts. That was, again, if Barent’s sentiments had been sincere, and again, she doubted he’d lie.

Her phone vibrated along the table beside her. She answered it habitually, “Hello?”

It was Kevin. “Kennedy, don’t hang up!”
She rolled her eyes, “What d’you want?”

“I just wanna’ get my stuff back,” he said quickly.

She sighed, “Kevin you left your shit here and I threw it out. Call here again, and it’ll be the least of your problems.”

She hung up the phone and returned to reading.