The Innocent

Chapter





12


ROBIE DID NOT SHOOT. But he must have made some sound.

The wiry head moved. Then the little hump sat up. The boy rubbed his eyes, yawned, opened his eyes, and stared directly at Robie standing there, his pistol pointed at the boy’s mother.

“Shoot,” the voice said. “Shoot her!”

Robie did not fire.

“Mommy,” said the boy in a fearful tone, never once taking his gaze off Robie.

“Shoot,” said the voice. “Now.”

The man sounded hysterical. Robie couldn’t put a face with the voice because he had never met his handler in person. Standard agency procedure. No one could ID anyone.

“Mommy?” The little boy started to cry.

“Shoot the kid too,” said the handler. “Now.”

Robie could fire and be gone. Taps to the chests. One big, one small. One dum-dum fired into the child would destroy his insides. He would have no chance.

“Shoot now,” said the voice.

Robie did not shoot.

The woman began to stir.

“Mommy?” Her son poked her with his fingers but kept staring at Robie. Tears slid down his thin cheeks. He started to shake.

She slowly woke. “Yes, baby?” she said in a sleepy voice. “You’re safe, baby, just a nightmare. You’re safe with Mommy. Nothing to be scared of.”

“Mommy?”

He tugged on her gown.

“Okay, baby, okay. Mommy’s awake.”

She saw Robie. And froze, but only for an instant. Then she pulled her child behind her.

She screamed.

Robie put a finger to his lips.

She screamed again.

“Shoot them,” the handler said frantically.

Robie said to her, “Be quiet or I shoot.”

She didn’t stop screaming.

He fired a round into the pillow next to her. The stuffing flew out, and the round deflected off the mattress springs and drilled into the floor underneath the bed.

She stopped screaming.

“Kill her,” the handler roared in Robie’s ear.

“Stay quiet,” said Robie to the woman.

She sobbed, hugged her son. “Please, mister, please, don’t hurt us.”

“Just stay quiet,” said Robie. The handler was still screaming in his ear. If the man had been in the room Robie would have shot the a*shole just to shut him up.

“Take what you want,” mumbled the woman. “But please don’t hurt us. Don’t hurt my baby.”

She turned, hugged her son. Lifted him up so they were face-to-face. He stopped crying, touched his mother’s face.

Robie realized something and his gut tightened.

The handler was no longer screaming. His earwig held nothing except silence.

He should have picked up on that before.

Robie lunged forward.

The woman, thinking he was about to attack them, screamed again.

The window glass shattered.

Robie watched as the rifle round passed through the boy’s head and then drove through his mother’s, killing them both. It was an enviable shot made by a marksman of enviable skill. But Robie was not thinking of that.

The woman’s eyes were on Robie when her life ended. She looked surprised. Mother and son fell sideways, together. She was still holding him. If anything her arms, in death, appeared to have tightened around her lifeless child.

Robie stood there, gun down. He looked out the window.

The fail-safe was out there somewhere with a fine sight line, obviously.

Then his instincts took over and Robie ducked down and rolled away from the window. On the floor he saw something else he had never expected to see tonight.

On the floor next to the bed was a baby carrier. In the carrier sound asleep was a second kid.

“Shit,” Robie muttered.

He crawled forward on his belly.

His earwig came alive. “Get out of the apartment,” his handler ordered him. “By the fire escape.”

“Go to hell,” Robie said. He ripped the pinhole and earwig off, powered them down, and stuffed them in his pocket.

He snagged the carrier, slid it toward him. He was waiting for a second shot. But he did not intend to give the shooter a viable target. And the man on the other end of the kill shot wouldn’t fire without that, Robie knew. He had sometimes been the one holding the rifle out there in the darkness.

He moved clear of the window and stood, holding the baby carrier behind him. It was like lugging a large dumbbell. He had to get out of the building, but Robie obviously couldn’t go out the way he’d planned. He glanced toward the door. He had to get something before he left.

He carried the child out of the bedroom and scanned the living room with a penlight. He spied the woman’s purse. He set the carrier down, rifled through the purse, and took out the woman’s driver’s license. He snapped a picture of it with his phone. Next he photographed her ID card. Her government ID card.

What the—? That fact wasn’t on the flash drive.

Finally, he spied the blue item partially hidden under a stack of papers. He grabbed it.

A U.S. passport.

He snapped photos of all the pages, showing the places to which she’d traveled. He put the license, ID card, and passport back and grabbed the carrier.

He opened the front door of the apartment and looked right and then left.

He stepped out and hit the stairwell four strides later. He raced down one flight. The layout of the building was whirring through his mind. He had memorized every apartment, every resident, every possibility. But never for such a purpose as he had now: escape from his own people.

Number 307. A mother of three, he recalled. He went for it, his feet flying down the hall, touching only lightly on the crappy carpet.

Miraculously, the little one slept on. Robie had not really looked at the child since he had picked it up. He glanced down now.

The hair was wiry, like that of his dead brother. Robie knew the child would never remember the brother. Or the mother. Life sometimes was not just unfair, it was beyond tragic.

He set the carrier down in front of 307. Robie knocked three times. He did not look around. If someone in another apartment looked out they would only see his back. He knocked once more and glanced again at the baby that was starting to stir. He heard someone coming to the door and then Robie was gone.

The child would survive the night.

Robie was pretty certain that he wouldn’t.