I was sound asleep in my bed when the buzzing and vibrating phone under my pillow dragged me into something resembling a conscious state. I was pretty sure it had been going off for a while by the time I managed to wake up enough to recognize that it wasn’t just a buzzing in my dreams. Which was confirmed when I blearily dragged the phone out and stared at the screen for the few seconds it took to notice about forty-three text messages and half as many calls. They were from a mix of both Roald and Murphy, all over the past hour and a half. A quick scan of the texts showed that they had some sort of emergency going on. There were a lot of pleas for me to answer and call them back, that they were at the hospital and ‘he’ was really hurt. But in my barely awake state, I couldn’t figure out who they were talking about. I just flipped through messages randomly while shoving myself up and off the bed.
It was very late Mond–no, it was early Tuesday morning, a glance toward my wall of clocks told me. After Sunday’s whole thing at the bank, yesterday had been pretty quiet, all things considered. Since there seemed to be nothing going on aside from watching Wren and Lion work on things for the second day in a row, I had come home and gone to bed to catch up on the sleep I knew I would need with my parents getting back tomorrow/today.
And now, here I was, stumbling my way through the room to the closet while telling the lights to turn on. Painting my arms purple, I pushed the big mirror out of the way before grabbing the bag with my costume out of the hidden spot below the floor. While doing that, I managed to shove the bluetooth thing in my ear before hitting the button on my phone to call Murphy. It rang through about ten times before going to voicemail, while I was stripping out of my pajamas and getting regular clothes on. By that point, I had finally woken up for the most part and hit the button to call Roald instead.
Thankfully, he answered on about the second ring. “Paintball? Paintball, you have to get down here. You have to hurry, she’s–she’s really upset and you have to–”
“What? Who? What’s going on?” I managed while heading for my balcony. I had to pause a moment, watching the lights from a couple guards walking by below. Muting the phone, I ordered the lights to dim while very carefully opening the sliding door. The patrol moved on, as I heard the two men on the ground casually talking to one another about some baseball game.
“It’s Murphy,” Roald was frantically saying. “We’re at the hospital and she’s–her brother—”
My eyes narrowed, voice going cold as a wave of terrible thoughts rushed through me. “What did her brother do to her?” I was already thinking about how I should have insisted on doing something about that guy when I had found out that he cut her face because she wouldn’t carry drugs around. Why had I just let her say that she would deal with it? I should have insisted. I–
Roald interrupted my snowballing thoughts. “No, no! Not him, not–it’s him. He’s been shot. Please, you have to get down here. We’ll explain it then. But please, come quick. Her brother’s been shot, and it’s really bad. He–they don’t think he…” The boy trailed off, audibly swallowing. “Please, you have to hurry. I don’t know what she’s going to do if anything… if he… please, hurry.” His voice cracked through that, showing just how afraid and upset he really was.
By that point, the patrol had moved on, so I asked what hospital they were at. Upon getting an answer, I promised to be right there and told him to stay with Murphy. Then I disconnected, shoved the phone away, and started to step out before pausing. I thought about waking Izzy up to let her know what was going on, but that didn’t seem fair. She deserved to sleep. I was pretty sure she hadn’t gotten back from her own patrol with Wobble until after ten, and we did have school in the morning. Yeah, let her sleep. Shaking that thought off, I instead scribbled a quick note for the girl that said I had gone out for a walk because I’d had ‘the dream about those cartoon Minions ending up in the hospital.’ I figured she could work things out from there. I left the note under my pillow, where we had promised we would leave such things if need be, then grabbed the bag with my costume and headed for the sliding door once more. After a quick glance around to assure myself that the coast was clear, I quickly made my way out and off of the grounds. The whole while, a mess of conflicting thoughts were running through my head. Murphy’s brother had been shot? How? Why? What happened? Was she okay? Had she been there when– when whatever had happened was–yeah, I had to get to the hospital and find out what was going on. My brain was just spinning out wildly.
Once I was far enough away from home, I used my phone to order a ride. When it showed up, I told the driver to head for the hospital, then got in and sat back. The place was too far away for me to get there easily under my own power, but I still felt anxious and helpless, just sitting there. It was all I could do not to rock back and forth in a silent attempt to force the car to move faster.
Thankfully, the fact that I had asked him to go to the hospital in the middle of the night seemed to make the driver realize something was wrong. He set out immediately, pushing the speed limit right from the start. Only once did he ask if I wanted to talk about what was going on, and when I said no, he dropped it. Still, I did belatedly tell him that I had a friend who was there, and that my parents were both working overnight. He seemed to accept that, and promised we’d be there as soon as possible. Then he suited action to words by accelerating around the corner.
He really did get us there pretty damn quickly and smoothly, so I wrote in a thirty dollar tip for the guy in the app before also tossing him three twenties from my pocket without thinking about it. Then I was out and heading across the lot. I was almost to the doors into the emergency room before realizing the problem. Looking down at my distinctly uncostumed self, I grimaced before cutting to the left. Heading around the far side of the hospital, I found my way to a grassy area that led up to some apartments. After looking around to make sure no one was looking, I red-painted my way to the roof of one of those buildings, where I quickly changed clothes and stowed my bag in a hidden spot under one of the bits of machinery up there. Then I sat down and sent a text to Roald, telling him to meet me near the dumpsters behind the east-most exit.
It took about five minutes before I saw that side-door open as the boy came jogging out. He looked around before heading for the dumpsters in question. I made sure he wasn’t being followed before zipping my way down there to land on the edge of the short brick wall that surrounded the trash area. “Hey,” I spoke up, dropping down off that to land beside him. “What’s going on? What happened?”
Jumping a bit at my arrival, the boy focused on me. “Paintball! I–she–” He took a breath and then told me what was going on. Apparently he and Murphy had run into some guy on the bus who wanted money from her brother. They got away from him and made it home. But shortly after Murphy had been in the apartment with her brother, there was some sort of drive-by and the guy from before had fired several times through the window, hitting Murphy’s brother repeatedly while shouting that he should have paid up. Roald had heard the shots and came running, before being the one to call 911. Now the guy–Tyson– was in emergency surgery while Murphy herself sat outside waiting with Roald’s older and younger sisters. The former was the one who had driven them down here. All in all, it wasn’t looking good.
“She wants to go after him,” Roald informed me, his voice cracking a bit. “Paintball, she wants to go and find the guy who shot Ty. I’m pretty sure the only reason she’s still here is because she wants to hear about–I mean because she wants to be here if–I mean…” He trailed off, swallowing hard. “I think she might do something really bad if she goes off by herself.”
My head shook. “Could she even find this guy? How would she know where to look?”
Roald hesitated before explaining that the man, whose name was Luciano, had apparently been pretty busy that night. Murphy’s brother wasn’t the only guy he hit up for money. He had, according to what other people in the hospital and the cops themselves were saying, been calling in debts all over the city and shot up a couple other places while he was at it. They were putting three different drive-bys just tonight on the guy. Something had lit a fire under his ass and made him desperate to call in every bit of cash that anyone owed to him, or just kill a few of them to make others pay up.
Apparently Murphy and Roald had been just around the corner from a few prostitutes who had been in the hospital recovering from one of those shootouts. The women were talking about what they’d told the cops who interrogated them, and made it clear none had squealed about the fact that Luciano spent a lot of time hanging out at some all-night laundromat owned by his cousin or something. That was where he did his deals. But they weren’t telling the cops that because they were more afraid of him and his gang than they were of lying to the police.
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Speaking of the cops, obviously they were involved here. But apparently Murphy didn’t exactly have a lot of confidence in them either. Which, given that the way she had grown up, I guess I couldn’t really blame her for that. I had been super privileged in basically every possible way. I was a rich white girl whose parents basically owned law enforcement. To say nothing of our own private security. And that was before I found out about the Ministry thing. Murphy, on the other hand, had seen a much worse side of things. She was mixed-race, which was close enough to black for the people who would give her shit about it, and had grown up poor. Her parents were already in prison, apparently for something that had to do with selling antidepressants and such on the street. So really, it was no wonder she wouldn’t have the best opinion of letting the police take care of the situation.
Yeah, it sure sounded like she was planning on running out to try to deal with this guy herself. I had to do something about him first, before Murphy ran out and got herself… before she got hurt. Or worse. This guy had already almost killed her at least once tonight, if not twice depending on what he would have done if he had caught them when they ran off the bus. He wasn’t going to be nice.
Taking a deep breath, I focused on the boy in front of me. “Tell Murphy to come out here. She’s not answering her phone. I’ll tell her that I’m going to go get the guy so she can focus on being here for Tyson. Just–tell her to come talk to me and I’ll make sure she knows this guy’s going down. I promise, he won’t get away with this. He’s going to prison tonight. But I need to talk to her first. I need her to know I’m taking care of it.”
Roald gave a short nod before pivoting to run back inside. I kept an eye out, but there wasn’t much going on here by the side exit. All the action was around the emergency room. So, I was just left standing there tapping my foot while asking myself what I was actually going to do about this guy. Get to him, catch him, turn him in to the cops and let Murphy and Roald testify against him? If they would. Tyson too, assuming he–
The side door slammed open once more, and my gaze snapped up to see Roald running out full-tilt. “She’s gone!” he blurted, eyes wide as he got up to me. “She–he–he’s not… he’s gone. He’s gone. He didn’t make it. Ty didn’t make it through the surgery, and they said she–she ran out. Murphy took off, I think she went after him. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t with her and she took off! Some nurse was talking about someone stealing her car in there, I think she took it.”
“Stay here,” I snapped. “What was the address of that laundromat again?”
He gave it to me, and I spun around, using red paint to yank myself up toward the roof of the hospital. Before landing there, I popped my wheels out and skated that way. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I had to get there. I had to get to that laundromat before Murphy got herself killed by rushing inside. She just lost her brother, and with her parents being in prison, there wasn’t… she wasn’t… yeah. This was bad. It was really bad. I had to get there before it got even worse.
The laundromat was a fair distance from the hospital, but too close for me to take the time to call for another ride. I had to hope that going across rooftops and such would make up Murphy’s headstart and the fact that she was in a car. I just–I had to hurry. That was all there was to it. I had to get there in time. I pushed myself to go even faster, painting green across my legs while using my pace-skates to pick up even more speed. The next couple of minutes were a total blur of racing from roof to roof, leaping, yanking, landing, running, gliding, rolling, and skidding my way as fast as possible, all in a desperate attempt to get to that laundromat in time.
Finally, I reached the building across the street from the strip mall where the laundromat was supposed to be. Dropping to my stomach so I wouldn’t stand out, I lay on the edge of the roof and stared that way, eyes hunting for the place in question. There. It was in the exact middle of the shopping center, sandwiched between a bar and some sort of hair salon. There were people gathered out in front of the bar and the laundromat, and a few people inside the latter. It didn’t look like the ones in the store were doing any laundry. More like they were standing around and drinking just like the ones outside. It was definitely a gang hangout of some sort, but I couldn’t see anyone who fit the description of this Luciano guy. Not yet, anyway. Maybe he was in the back.
Nor could I see any sign of Murphy. Which, considering the guys out front looked perfectly casual, I hoped meant she hadn’t made it here yet. But now that I was here and she apparently wasn’t, what was I supposed to do? Should I go down there and tell them to send Luciano out, or wait for Murphy? If I already had him detained, would she calm down? I wasn’t–I didn’t think–
And then that the decision was taken out of my hands, as a car came squealing around the corner. My gaze snapped that way just in time to see Murphy behind the wheel. Oh, she was wearing a ski mask, but I knew it was her. I’d certainly seen her wearing that mask often enough by now. She was right there, car squealing its way across the road before hopping the curb straight into the lot. Right, so she wasn’t in the mood for subtlety, then. She was grieving and lost. Her brother had just been killed, and she was going to do something about it.
The question of what exactly she was going to do was answered a moment later when she brought the car to a squealing halt right in front of the laundromat. The group there between the store and the bar looked that way, just as Murphy hopped out of the car with–with a shotgun. She had a shotgun in her hands. I had no idea where she got that, but she was pointing it at those people. I could hear her high, strained voice scream for them to get Luciano, along with something about how if he thought he was going to get away with ‘putting her people back at the Twenty-Seven Club in the hospital, he had another thing coming.’
The Twenty-Seven Club. That was one of the places Luciano had shot up. So even now, even in this condition, Murphy was covering her identity by pretending she was here as a member of one of those groups to get payback for that shooting.
When the guys hesitated, she pointed the shotgun at one of the nearby cars and pulled the trigger to blow out the tire, then pointed it at them again and repeated the order. Yeah, this was bad. Especially since I could see several of the men start to semi-subtly shift to spread out around her. But Murphy was in too much grief to notice what they were doing. If I didn’t get down there and do something, they would surround her. And then… and then nothing, because I wasn’t going to let that happen.
Getting up, I backed away a few steps for a running start. Then I gave myself some more paint before sprinting that way. A shot of blue at the edge of the roof launched me into the air, and I flipped over before using red against a distant traffic light for momentum. Flying that way, I pointed with both hands, sending a wide spray of red at the group before activating that, along with a bit of orange on my boots.
Landing beside Murphy just as the assortment of guys were all yanked together to crash into a heap, I caught the shotgun before she could reflexively point it at me. “Now, guys!” I called out. “I’m pretty sure the lady here wanted you to all stay in one spot, not spread out. Don’t screw up your choreography, you know how much the director hates that.”
For a moment, the guys on the ground froze when they saw me there. Then, blurting out something about getting ‘the shit’ out of the back, they all scrambled up and took off. They split up, spreading out to run in all different directions. Some of them ran into the laundromat, a few back into the bar, and the rest scattered across the parking lot. None of them stuck around to fight. Which I definitely wasn’t going to argue with, but Luciano would definitely know we were here now. If the shotgun blast hadn’t already given it away.
Speaking of which, I spun on my heel to find Murphy staring at me. I could see the tears in her eyes through the holes in the mask. “P-Paintball,” she managed quietly, voice breaking, “Ty–Ty didn’t–he–”
“I know,” I quickly assured her. “Stay here. I’m going to go get that guy. He’s not getting away, I promise.”
Her head shook frantically. “No, no, I have to get him. I have to get him for Ty.” She was already moving to go around me, shotgun in one hand as she stumbled toward the door of the laundromat. Just as quickly, she spun back to me, lunging to tackle me to the ground. An instant later, after the other girl landed on top of me, I heard an explosive series of gunshots as someone inside the building opened up. Quickly, Murphy and I crawled around behind the car before they could adjust their aim.
“Dunno how you walked out of that club without a bullet, bitch!” came a voice through the shattered window once the gunfire had stopped. “But I’ll be glad to make up for it. You and that fucking wannabe hero kid!”
“Luciano,” Murphy snarled. Her hand grabbed the shotgun from the ground, and she started to push herself up before I caught hold of her arm to stop her. “Paintball!” she blurted, looking toward me. “It’s him, he can’t–”
“He won’t get away with it,” I promised, grip tightening. “He is not going to get away. I won’t let that happen. But I’m not gonna let you get yourself killed either. Your brother wouldn’t want that.”
For a moment, it looked like she was going to scream at me for that. And honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed her. But the girl caught herself, eyes closing tightly before focusing on me once more. “He’s mine,” she insisted in a voice that shook. “I have to help take him down, Paintball. I have to.”
Pausing briefly, I glanced over my shoulder, listening to the sound of the man in question ordering his buddies to come flush us out. “Okay,” I murmured. “You can help take him down. But you listen to me, okay? We do this the smart way, not just by charging in. And we take him down for the cops. We arrest him and turn him in.”
From the look in her eyes, I knew the girl wanted to argue with that. But she stopped herself, giving a short nod. It was clear that she was listening to the sound of the bad guys arguing about who had to come closer. They were clearly spooked, and none wanted to be the ones who came within shotgun or paint distance. But we were still running out of time. “Okay,” she murmured. “As long as he doesn’t get away.”
“He won’t,” I assured her.
“So here’s what we’re going to do.”