Evasive maneuvers and look good doing it

EP watched the complex rotate on the monitor. She had scanned the area for hours before Lindsey arrived, taking out lights, spoofing key fobs, looking for any lookouts or plain clothes cops. It might have just been bad luck. On one monitor, she watched the police helicopter, miles away, hover over a traffic accident, and hoped like hell it stayed there.

The cruiser parked in the street below the apartments aimed a spotlight up at the south wall of Cooper’s unit, sweeping it to the balcony on the east side of the building, then back again. A slice of the beam shot past the roof and into the rain. The other two cruisers pulled into the lot.

EP gripped the mouse and dug her heels into the chair mat.

“They’re coming up, lights on the south wall. Go out the west window.”

Inside, Lindsey pulled her mask down and flicked off the flashlight as the living room window lit up. She stepped over trash and clothes on her way to the west window at the back of the bedroom, screwing a suppressor on her Walther as she went. The blanket curtains came off the window with a clattering of tacks and the blinds rose with a slap. There was no screen. She got the window up quietly, tapping into distant teenage memories of sneaking out through a similar window, and the heavy sound of rain broke the silence.

Somewhere a car door slammed, distinctly police-like, and she paused just long enough to inhale, look for anyone below, and holster her pistol, before slipping out the window in a single step. Even in the wet solid blackness, it was a perfect roll. She stuck the landing without sliding in the mud and came up silently in a low crouch, hidden in solid darkness. EP had been thorough with the outside lights, at least.

Behind her, the air glowed above the street, where the cop pointed his spotlight towards the back window. In front of her, at the end of the space between the units, the sidewalk led up a few stairs and through a fence to the raised parking lot.

“Move up and go right behind that apartment,” EP said.

Lindsey put one hand on her Walther and stepped through a sheet of water pouring off the clogged gutters above, then hugged the side of the unit and moved in a smooth crouched stride towards the lot. Another car door slammed, and she heard the distinctive sound of police gear moving on a belt and the murmur of a voice speaking into a radio. Flashlights shot suddenly out of the misting darkness above the parking lot, glittering beams seeking between the two walls of solid darkness, like a ufo was landing just out of sight.

“Get in that gap, get low, stay still!” EP said. Lindsey went right to the side of the small staircase and got in the gap between the back wall of the unit and the side of the raised lot. The slim crevice was solid black and streaming with water. She crouched down and pressed against the cement barrier as heavy falling footsteps approached from the lot.

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“He doesn’t see me,” she thought, mantra-like. She waited for that telltale feeling, like someone whispering wordlessly in her head, that she was being watched, that someone had seen her.

A cop came down the steps pointing a flashlight at his feet. He traced the cement walkway with it once, then flicked it up to the side of Cooper’s apartment, probably aiming at the window she had just come out of. She heard more cops move up the metal staircase on the other side of Cooper’s apartment, and then muffled shouts as they announced themselves.

“Hey, got this back window open,” The flashlight cop said into his radio. His voice was broken in places by the rain, but Lindsey got the idea.

“Move as fast as you can,” EP Said.

Lindsey timed her escape with the reply on flashlight cops radio, and in a few seconds she had put another unit between her and him.

Just as she made it past another two units, EP came on the line again.

“They know you’re not inside.” She was obviously trying too hard to sound calm. Another spotlight broke across the dark and scanned the lot.

“Right, hide. I’ll distract.” EP said. Lindsey turned in between two units and ducked down behind an AC. The cop down on the street flashed his spotlight up over the fence just a few yards away from her, washing out the distant city lights for an instant. The other cops shouted somewhere. Thunder clapped and the sidewalk in front of her lit up in blue. A window slid open and she heard drunken voices.

An engine started up in the parking lot and revved repeatedly as the cops shouted for the driver to get out. The spotlight in the lot froze. They yelled some more, useless. There was no driver. EP’s drone had spoofed the remote starter.

“They think you’re in the lot.” EP sounded proud. The spotlight from the street vanished as the cruiser sped down the road to the back of the lot. Lindsey exhaled. A way out.

“They’re moving down the lot,” EP said. Lindsey was already halfway to the fence, preparing for the drop down to the street, when she saw the light and EP hissed.

“Wait! Cop, coming down the south side.”

Lindsey watched the light spread across the grass between her and the fence. She hugged the wall and holstered her pistol, and got her baton out of an inside pocket. Somewhere a door opened, and Lindsey noticed with an adrenaline spike on her tongue that the cops had stopped shouting at the phantom driver. The light grew on the grass and footsteps squished under the rain.

“He’s gonna shine it at you,” EP said.

Lindsey saw herself flick the baton open, saw the cop turn at the sound, the metal rod flash in a swift arc, crack him on the bridge of his nose, saw him crumple, and felt the fence in her hands. The vision was vague in all the right places, the cop just a silhouette, shifting in height and weight, but the baton finding the nose every time.

A boot squished into the sod just behind the brick and the front of the light came into view. The vision played one last time, this time half a second before reality obeyed.

The crunch was a bit louder than she had imagined, and he made a sound, almost like a burp, that she never would have expected, but he went down just the same. Gun and flashlight still in hand, to his credit. He fell backward and his flashlight rolled off behind him. She was over the fence and in the air before he had settled.

It was like flying, for a few glorious seconds. The land dropping down in front of her into dripping darkness, the distant fairy lines of headlights, a flash of lightning illuminating purple puffing clouds, the black street coming up to meet her like death, and the deep darkness of the empty lot in front of her, like a piece of the Otherworld, breaking into this world to comfort her.

She rolled on the asphalt and took a beating on her back and hands, but shot up sprinting and cleared the street in a few strides. The lot wasn’t paved and there could have been anything on the ground to trip her, but she never so much as stumbled, feet landing right where they needed to.

EP watched the motorcycle burst out of the bush and curve onto the road, a bit of blackness fighting against amber. Lindsey was off into the night at double the speed limit before the cops had cleared the parking lot.