Hollow Point Read online

  Hollow Point

  A Holly Lin Novel

  Robert Swartwood

  RMS Press

  Sign up for Robert’s no-spam newsletter and get a free copy of The Debt You Pay, an exclusive Holly Lin ebook available only to subscribers.

  * * *

  Details can be found at the end of Hollow Point.

  The Holly Lin Series

  No Shelter

  Bullet Rain

  First Kill

  The Devil You Know

  Hollow Point

  For Joseph D'Agnese and Denise Kiernan

  Part One

  Little Angels

  One

  The girl is covered in blood.

  That’s the first thing I notice. This section of town is dark and quiet as it typically is at three o’clock in the morning. The only light streams from a few scattered streetlamps posted along the block, and as the girl passes beneath the closest one, the blood stands out even more, a sharp contrast against her light brown skin.

  She barely looks sixteen, just a kid, and she wears shorts and a T-shirt and carries a duffel bag, but it’s the blood that I focus on, the blood streaking her face and arms and soaking her hair and clothes.

  “Please, help me, please.”

  She mumbles it in Spanish, her words barely intelligible, and now that she’s nearly ten feet away from me, it’s clear that she’s limping. She’s favoring her left leg, barely putting any pressure on it, and now she’s less than five feet away and I can smell her, the blood, yes, but also the defecation. The girl has either pissed herself or shit herself or both, and she moves closer, still mumbling—“Please, please, help”—and she thrusts the duffel bag into my arms and then promptly falls to the ground.

  Five seconds.

  That’s the length of time that’s passed since I first heard the girl call out and turned and saw the blood.

  Five seconds isn’t much in the larger scheme of things, but five seconds can sometimes be an eternity. In my past life, five seconds might be a question of life and death. Countries are saved or lost in five seconds.

  I haven’t moved a muscle in the past five seconds, which is odd, because not too long ago I was very quick on my feet. I didn’t spend too much time deliberating on different outcomes. I just made a choice and went with it and hoped for the best.

  But things have changed, and I’m no longer the person I used to be. That person is long gone, dead and buried, and the person I am now—a bartender, having just closed up the bar and now headed home—doesn’t deal with blood and guns and killing. For this new me, the most important thing that happens in five seconds is listening to a drink order amid loud country music and a chorus of uproarious voices and hoping I haven’t fucked it up when I bring it back to the customer.

  The girl’s on her knees now, still mumbling in Spanish, and I take a quick moment to scan the block. It’s deserted. Of course it’s deserted—this area of town is usually empty during the day, the buildings long since vacated once their companies went out of business, and not once in the past year after I’d left the bar and walked home had I ever seen anybody on this block, let alone a girl covered in blood.

  I realize I’m still holding the duffel bag. It was shoved into my arms so suddenly that I’d held on without much thought. Now I heft it—feels like it weighs fifteen pounds—and glance down at the girl.

  “What happened? Who did this to you?”

  It doesn’t hit me until a second later that I asked those questions in English, so I ask them again in Spanish, and the girl looks up at me, tears in her eyes, her voice a strangled whisper.

  “Help me.”

  Before I can say or do anything else, the girl jumps to her feet. She pushes past me as she hurries down the block, still favoring her left leg.

  The duffel bag in my arms, I turn and watch her, incredulous.

  “Wait!”

  She doesn’t. She keeps going, faster now, and disappears into an alleyway.

  I hurry after her, the thought of dropping the duffel bag not once crossing my mind, and I reach the mouth of the alleyway in time to see the girl has already made it to the other end. How she’s managed to get there so fast, especially with the limp, I’m not sure, but she stands there, her back to me, looking up and down the street.

  I call after her again as I chase her up the alleyway, and I’m halfway there when the girl suddenly bolts into the street—just as the front of a car slams into her and sends her flying.

  Two

  The car screeches to a halt. The doors open, and two men step out. They aren’t frantic like you’d expect men who just hit a girl with their car would be. Instead, they appear calm, looking up and down the street at the dark warehouses, quietly closing their doors, slowly circling to the front of the car to check on the girl.

  Both of the men look to be in their late-thirties, early-forties. They wear jeans and cowboy boots. One of them has on a white short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into his jeans, the other a blue polo. The one with the button-down shirt also wears a cowboy hat. He’s the driver. He adjusts the hat as he gazes down at the girl’s body.

  “Well shit, there she is.”

  The other man says, “Yep.”

  “She’s still alive.”

  “Barely.”

  “She doesn’t have the bag, though.”

  “Nope.”

  The man with the cowboy hat crouches down beside the girl.

  “Hey.”

  When the girl doesn’t answer—she lays sprawled on the macadam, a broken mess, even more bloodied than before—the man with the cowboy hat snaps his fingers in front of her face.

  “Bitch, you hear me?”

  The girl still doesn’t answer. Even if she wanted to, it doesn’t look like she can. A hoarse wheezing comes from her mouth. Several of her ribs probably shattered on impact. Some of them probably pierced her lungs.

  I’m standing around the corner of the alleyway, still holding the duffel bag, leaning out just far enough to watch these two men and the girl. My first instinct was to rush out immediately, but once those men had unhurriedly stepped out of the car, a red warning light started flashing in my head.

  That red warning light starts pulsing faster when the driver walks back to the car—a piece of silver glinting on his belt—and opens his door and pulls out a black nine-millimeter.

  Guns aren’t rare here in Texas. Alden is a small town compared to most, maybe only a thousand residents, and almost everybody carries a gun with them wherever they go.

  But very few carry suppressors.

  Which this man also brings out, casually screwing it onto the barrel of his gun as he returns to the front of the car.

  This entire time—maybe a minute—I’ve been quiet, watching the two men. This section of Alden is deserted at this time of night. People refer to it as the industrial part of town, though many of the jobs have long since packed up and left. So many of these buildings sit empty. I usually walk home after a shift because it’s not far from the bar to my apartment, and besides, I like the fresh air after I work all night, try to get the cigarette smoke out of my hair and clothes as much as I can. The main thing is, there’s nobody around right now. These two men—men I’ve never seen before—seem to know it and don’t care that the girl is writhing in pain on the ground.

  Part of me wants to go out there. Step out from around the corner and approach these men. I don’t have a gun, don’t have a knife, don’t have a weapon of any kind, but somebody needs to help the girl. Somebody needs to step in before the man places a bullet in her head.

  Before I can, though, the duffel bag moves.

  But it’s not the duffel bag—it’s something inside the duffel bag.

  The light isn’t good he
re in the alleyway, but there’s enough light that when I open the duffel bag I can easily tell what’s inside.

  A baby.

  It looks newly born—no more than a month old—and it has a pacifier in its mouth, the only thing keeping it quiet. Its dark eyes look up at me, searching, and like that, the pacifier falls out of its mouth.

  The baby’s face scrunches up. It looks ready to start wailing—it even sucks in a breath—but I slip my finger into its mouth before it can. Still, it made some noise, just a tiny bit, and I hold my breath, hoping the men didn’t hear.

  For an instant, silence.

  Then one of the men—what sounds like the passenger in the blue polo—says, “Did you hear that?”

  In response, the quiet thut thut of two bullets from the silenced gun.

  Without even looking around the corner again, I can tell the girl’s now dead. Probably shot in the face to put her out of her misery. Not that she couldn’t have been saved. The men could have called for an ambulance. Assuming they still wanted her alive.

  The driver says, “Hear what?”

  “It sounded like something came from the alley.”

  “I didn’t hear anything. It bothers you, go check it out.”

  By the time the man in the blue polo steps into the alleyway, I’m no longer there. Neither is the duffel bag or the baby inside it.

  A dumpster sits halfway down the alley, an abandoned dumpster that’s rusting after years of disuse. I’m crouched behind it, cradling the duffel bag, my finger still in the baby’s mouth.

  If the man advances down the alley, he’ll surely see me. In that case, I’ll have to gently set the duffel bag aside, do what I can to protect the baby. The man probably has a gun, just like his partner, but that’s okay. I haven’t worked in a year, but I’m confident that my training will kick back in once it’s needed. Two men with pistols? Easy. Then again, right now that’s not my main concern. My main concern is the baby.

  But the man doesn’t advance much farther. He takes a couple steps forward—the dull clap of his boots echoing against the brick walls—and shines a flashlight down the alley, but that’s it.

  The driver calls, “Anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then get your ass back here and help me put her body in the trunk.”

  “What about the bag?”

  “She could’ve dropped it anywhere in the past couple blocks.”

  “We need that bag.”

  “What we need to do is clean up this mess. Now hurry over here and give me a hand.”

  The flashlight beam winks out. The man’s footsteps fade away as he leaves the alley and returns to the car.

  The baby’s suckling on my finger so much it’s starting to hurt. With my other hand, I dig around in the bag—feel a blanket, a bottle, a small container of formula, and then the pacifier.

  I risk pulling out my finger just for an instant so I can replace it with the pacifier.

  I wait another beat, listening to the men as they quietly work to clean up the body, and then I peek around the corner to make sure the alley is dark and empty.

  Cradling the duffel bag again, I start back toward the mouth of the alleyway, hurrying as quietly as possible, intent on getting this baby as far away from the men with guns as I can.

  Three

  I take the long way home.

  It’s only another three blocks to my apartment building, barely a five-minute walk, but instead I go a circuitous route, staying close to buildings, moving from one shadow to another. The night is quiet for the most part, just the sound of a few cars out on the highway and a dog barking in the distance.

  I cradle the duffel bag as I go, rocking it slightly, trying to keep the baby quiet despite the pacifier in its mouth. The way those men were talking, they’ll probably drive around once they clean up the body. The man in the cowboy hat mentioned the bag. Now that I know a baby is inside the duffel bag, I have to assume what the men really want is the baby.

  I don’t carry a cell phone, but even if I did, I’m not sure I would call 911. Not after seeing that piece of silver glinting on the driver’s belt. A badge. Not local police—I’d recognize him—but some kind of badge that signified the man is law.

  Twenty minutes later I climb the stairs to the second floor of my apartment building. The building only has two floors, and there are four apartments on the top floor. My apartment is the one on the left at the end of the hall.

  I eye the apartment door across from mine for a moment before turning my key in the lock and stepping inside.

  My apartment is bare and only contains the necessities. I don’t have a TV or computer or phone. A pile of books—hardcovers and paperbacks borrowed from the library—are stacked beside the couch.

  That’s where I head once I shut the door and flick on the lights.

  I gently set the duffel bag on the carpet and open it up—and at once a sour smell slaps me in the face. At some point in the past several minutes the baby has soiled itself. Which is okay, that’s what babies do, but it’s not like I have diapers lying around the place. Or, well, anything that I need to take care of a baby.

  First things first.

  I lift the baby out of the duffel bag and carry it into the bathroom. I turn both faucets to run water in the tub. I take off the diaper and discover that it’s a she. I hate to keep thinking of the baby as a thing, an it, but right now I don’t know what to call her.

  The sour smell makes me gag, and I drop the diaper in the trashcan, but it’s one of those small bathroom trashcans without a lid, so it doesn’t do anything to hide the stink.

  I hit the switch for the vent, as if that’s going to do anything, and then cradle the baby in one hand while I test the water’s temperature with my other hand to make sure it’s not too hot, not too cold.

  I start washing off the baby. I’ve never dealt with babies before, but I know you’re supposed to use a special kind of soap to make sure it doesn’t hurt their eyes. Still, I don’t want her to smell, so I use a fresh washcloth and spritz a dollop of body wash in it and lather up the baby all the way up to her neck. She still has the pacifier in her mouth, which I’m going to need to clean at some point. My worry is what she’ll do once I take it from her mouth. I figure she’ll start crying, and I need to make sure that doesn’t happen. My neighbors are good people, but they all know I don’t have children. If they hear a baby crying, that’ll create questions I don’t want to begin to try to answer.

  The baby has a birthmark on her back, what looks like a little starburst.

  I whisper, “Star. Maybe that’s what I’ll call you for now. Does that sound good?”

  Star doesn’t answer.

  Once I rinse her off, I take one of my towels and dry her and then wrap her in a new towel. I run the water in the sink and pluck the pacifier from her mouth, and at first I expect her to start crying, but she doesn’t. She stares up at me, like she’s fascinated by who I am and what I’m doing.

  Cleaning off the pacifier the best I can, I dry it and slip it back into Star’s mouth.

  Okay, now what?

  In my previous life I worked as a nanny, but I wasn’t actually a nanny. I was an undercover bodyguard for my boss’s kids. I took them places, helped them with their homework, but I never did any actual childrearing. And when I started working with them they had moved past the diapers phase. I had seen diapers changed before, but I had never changed a diaper myself. In situations like these, one usually turns to YouTube, but again, I don’t have a computer or phone.

  Well, that’s not true. I do have a phone—two phones, in fact. Both disposables I purchased a month after I settled into this apartment and decided to make Alden my home. I’d purchased minutes for the phones on the off chance I would ever need to use them, but to be honest, I’m not sure if those minutes have expired. And even if they haven’t, who am I going to call?

  Star needs actual diapers. Clothes. Food. Basically everything every other baby needs.

 
; I should call the police, but I keep seeing that glint of silver on the driver’s belt. For all I know, the badge is bullshit, something bought off eBay to make people think he’s a lawman, but I can’t take that chance.

  Before I head back to the couch to check out what else is in the duffel bag, I make a quick detour to my bedroom.

  A three-drawer dresser stands against the wall. Cradling Star in the nook of my left arm, I open the bottom drawer, the one loaded with sweatshirts and sweatpants, and dig down for one of the two guns I have hidden underneath.

  It’s a SIG Sauer P320 Nitron Compact. The mag holds fifteen nine-millimeter rounds and is already loaded. All I need to do is rack the slide to put one in the chamber.

  I haven’t touched the gun in months. Haven’t cleaned it. Haven’t even looked at it. The old me would have been much more careful with weapons. Would have made sure this gun—and the Mossberg shotgun hidden in the hallway closet—was better maintained. But after a year of solitary living, of integrating myself into this town with my new identity, I’ve never once felt the need to use either weapon. My old life is far behind me.

  I make sure the safety’s on before I slip the gun into the waistband of my jeans.

  Next I check the bedroom closet and pull out the thick wool blanket. I give it a quick sniff—musty—but it’ll do.

  I return to the living room and spread out the wool blanket on the floor. I fold it once, to make sure there’s enough padding, and then I gently set Star down on the blanket so that she lies on her back.

  My hands now free, I turn and crouch down beside the duffel bag. It still smells sour, but not as bad as before. The baby blanket is going to need to be cleaned.

  I want to search the bag, but the bottle and container of formula catch my eye. I have no idea when Star was last fed, but something tells me a baby this young needs to be fed a lot.