Free The Kill Clause by Gregg Hurwitz

kitchen, clinging to the walls. Carlos was halfway down the alley in a dead sprint for the traffic-heavy street ahead. Tim passed Thomas quickly. Carlos burst out onto the street and saw the LAPD vehicle at the far curb, the small crowd of bums and passersby drawn to the police perimeter, now pointing and shouting. Twenty yards behind, Tim cleared the alley just as Carlos froze up in surprise. The two young cops at the perimeter looked more shocked than Carlos.
    Carlos reached for the revolver tucked in the small of his back, and Tim stopped running, raised his Smith & Wesson, and sighted on center mass. He double-tapped Carlos between the shoulder blades, then put his last bullet through the back of his head in case he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
    When Carlos slapped the pavement, what was left of his head sent out a spray like a dropped melon.

6
    WHEN TIM ARRIVED back at Room 9, two deputies were hauling Joaquin out. They’d hoisted him by his ankle and wrist cuffs and were carrying him horizontally, facedown. A length of nylon cord cuff ran around his ankles and back up to his arms. He continued to resist violently, jerking and trying to bite the deputies’ legs. The mule evidently had gone more peacefully.
    Five LAPD patrol cars cordoned off the area, lights flashing. A sizable crowd had gathered; in the distance Tim spotted the panning dishes atop the first news vans to pick up the story. The chop of a copter was audible, though the visible sky was empty.
    Bear sat propped against the outside wall, clutching his ribs, Miller and a paramedic bent over him. Tim felt his pulse quicken once again. “Everything all right?”
    Miller opened a fist dramatically, revealing the flattened slug he’d just picked out of Bear’s vest. Tim exhaled hard and slid down the wall to plunk beside Bear.
    “You’ve got nine lives, Bear.”
    “Only seven left. The first I owe to you, this one to Kevlar.”
    Freed, Thomas, and a cop milled around the hoopty, peering hun-grily through the tinted windows. Sweat stains on Freed’s T-shirt outlined the pattern of a bulletproof vest.
    “What are they doing?” Tim asked.
    “Waiting for the U.S. Attorney’s office to call back,” Miller said. “She’s tracking down a judge at home so they can get a telephonic search warrant for the car.”
    “We stumble in on a Top 15 exchanging cash with convicted drug traffickers who then try to kill us, and that doesn’t constitute probable cause to search the fucking car?” Bear deteriorated into a coughing fit.
    “I guess not anymore,” Miller said.
    “You mean my night classes at the South West LA Legal Training Academy weren’t wellsprings of infallibility? How ’bout that?”
    Tim shrugged. “We have the guys, we have the vehicle. Nothing’s going anywhere. They might as well wait another twenty minutes and cover their asses.”
    They sat watching the commotion in the parking lot and the street beyond, a windstorm trying to quiet. The younger deputies were circled up by the door to Room 9, trying to joke off the bitter aftertaste of mortality.
    “You could toss a cat through Motherfucker’s chest cavity.”
    “Nice hit, nice hit.”
    “Rack shot that fuck, he was DRT: Dead Right There.”
    A few of them swapped high fives. Tim noticed that Guerrera was gripping his wrist hard to keep his arms from shaking.
    “That’s the way to do it, Rack,” someone called out. “Fuckin’-A yeah.”
    Tim raised a hand in a half wave, but his eyes were on the marshal’s Bronco, just pulling through the police perimeter. Marshal Tannino hopped out and approached in a jog. A stocky, muscular man who’dcome up through the ranks, Marco Tannino had joined the service at twenty-one. His recommendation last spring by Senator Feinstein paved the way to his marshalship, one of the few appointments made on genuine merit. The majority of the ninety-four marshals were big contributors to Senate campaigns, trust-fund babies whose dads rubbed elbows