Page 114 of Shrapnel

While he pocketed the mirror he turned to Jamie and mouthed, ‘Five’.

Jamie used his free hand to make a finger gun, his face questioning.

Elijah shrugged.

When in doubt, assume the assholes are armed. Jamie inhaled and curled his finger over the trigger. The textured grip was snug against his sweaty palm.

The knife in Elijah’s hand caught the light before they pushed the double doors open as one.

A large stainless-steel table was between the assassins and three of the men. The other two shifted in Jamie’s peripheral and he spun. The silenced gun could be unwieldly and hard to manage, but Jamie was experienced. His shot was right on and brains from the first guy splashed across the tiled walls. The second leapt behind the table, ducking down to grab his gun.

Elijah took two steps before jumping up and sliding over the table’s slick surface, kicking one guy in the throat and sending him into another. They stumbled into a cooling rack, metal trays scattering to the floor. Elijah’s stiletto blade left his hand, embedding into the stomach of one man while he dropped to the floor to avoid taking a 9mm round to the face.

Swinging up, he picked up one of the cooling trays and slammed it into the gunman’s face. He staggered back, blinking in surprise when he saw a blade being yanked from his femoral artery. There was a comedic moment where he wavered before falling to the ground.

Jamie used Elijah’s distraction and kicked the island. It screeched across the floor, pinning the two remaining guys against the cooling racks. They yelped, reaching for weapons. Jamie shot one through the hand. The other lifted his hands high above his head.

“Who are you?”

Jamie held the gun to his lips. “Shhh. I have the talking gun now.”

The man swallowed, eyes flicking up to the ceiling. Jamie grinned, pulling the trigger twice to finish off the remaining goons.

“Renard’s upstairs,” Jamie told Elijah as he glanced around at the carnage. What had once been a spotless kitchen was now awash in red. The three Jamie shot in the head were dead. Elijah’s knives were slower. He wrenched his knife from the abdomen of the first guy, sliding it across his throat to finish the job before glancing over at the guy with the bleeding femoral. The arterial spray had lessened, periodic spurts as his eyes glazed over.

Wiping the knives, Elijah scuffed his shoe against the terracotta tile. “There’s one more.”

“With Renard probably.” Jamie snagged a small bag of flour, looking at the back.

“Think he heard us?”

“Well, one of us just loves to make a bang.” Jamie waved his gun towards Elijah.

Rolling his eyes, they found a narrow set of wooden stairs beside an industrial fridge. Reloading his gun without looking, Jamie began ascending the stairs. They were so narrow that his shoulders brushed either side of the textured walls. The wooden steps creaked ominously beneath their weight and Jamie gave up any attempt at stealth.

Getting low, he pressed the ajar door with the barrel of his gun. A shot cracked out, splintering the wood where Jamie’s head would have been had he not been lying on his belly.

A toe headed kid was holding a gun that looked much too big for his shaking hands. Jamie pressed his lips together and let out a shrill whistle before tossing the bag of flour in the air. Predictably, the kid tracked it and fired. Flour exploded across the room in a firework of silty white.

Jamie surged up and slammed the handle of his gun against the kid’s temple, catching the gun as he collapsed to the floor. Flour congealed to the trickle of blood on his head.

Kicking him aside, Jamie finally glanced up.

Minus the flour, the office was an ugly space. Designed to look like an old smoking room, the chairs in one corner were covered in a mahogany velvet. A decanter of amber liquid pompously rested upon a glossy looking end table between them.

None of that compared to the behemoth of a desk that took up most of the room. A big, boxy, ugly thing that absolutely had to be assembled once it got up the stairs, it was as impressive as it was impractical. The laptop closed on the desk looked like a post-it note in a sea of red grained wood.

Renard was sitting behind the desk. Spared most of the flour onslaught, he leaned back and coolly assessed Jamie. His eyes were dark, inscrutable in the low light provided by the one green shaded desk lamp.

Jamie’s heart thudded against his ribs, and he felt his teeth grinding through powdery flour. Renard looked the same. Still an impossible mix of ages—he could be thirty or he could be sixty. His dark hair was slicked back, silver strands sprinkled through his full head of hair. Maybe he was tanner. Olive skin scruffy with the beginnings of a beard he would never be able to fully grow.

Their eyes met and Jamie stopped breathing.

For the first time in his life, he was speechless.

Jamie had never pictured this moment. In all of his wildest dreams he never imagined seeing Renard again. He never wanted to. Renard was the boogeyman under his bed, if he never looked then he never became tangible. And now that he was looking at him, he could remember the sickening yellow of his fingertips. The stale smell of cigarettes on his breath as he leaned too close for comfort. Callouses on his hands that burned when he hit him.

Now that he was standing in front of him, memories made real, everything he wanted to say died on his lips. He didn’t have the energy for a flippant remark or joke.