Playing a little fast and loose with the Laws of Removing Bullets (sorry for TVTropes).
Chapter 5: The Bug
Well it’s a strange old game – you learn it slow
One step forward and it’s back to go
You’re standing on the throttle
You’re standing on the breaks
In the groove ’til you make a mistake
Sometime you’re the windshield
Sometime you’re the bug
Sometime it all come together baby
Sometime you’re a fool in love
Sometime you’re the Louisville slugger
Sometime you’re the ball
Sometime it all come together baby
Sometime you’re gonna lose it all
Groovy
You gotta know happy – you gotta know glad
Because you’re gonna know lonely
And you’re gonn’ know bad
When you’re rippin’ and a ridin’
And you’re coming on strong
You start slippin’ and slidin’
And it all go wrong because
Sometime you’re the windshield
Sometime you’re the bug
Sometime it all come together baby
Sometime you’re a fool in love
Sometime you’re the Louisville slugger
Sometime you’re the ball
Sometime it all come together baby
Sometime you’re gonna lose it all
Groovy
One day you got the glory
And then you got none
One day you’re a diamond
And then you’re a stone
Everything can change in the blink of an eye
So let the good time roll before we say goodbye
Sometime you’re the windshield
Sometime you’re the bug (yeah)
Sometime it all come together baby
Sometime you’re a fool in love
Sometime you’re the Louisville slugger
Sometime you’re the ball
Sometime it all come together baby
Sometime you’re gonna lose it all
I said
Sometime you’re the windshield
Sometime you’re the bug
Sometime it all come together baby
Sometime you’re a fool in love
Sometime you’re the Louisville slugger
Sometime you’re the ball
Sometime it all come together baby
Sometime you’re gonna lose it all
Groovy
It was too good to be true, that Cailan Theirin’s killer would simply offer himself up like that. Now that she was away from him, undistracted, able to think, it seemed ridiculous. He had to be lying. Or using her. There was some bigger picture that she couldn’t see yet, and it was unsettling her.
The problem was, it didn’t matter. She would go along with whatever he said, because she needed to catch his employers. So even if everything he said was a complete lie, she would have to believe him until it was proven otherwise.
She’d just have to sleep with her gun under her pillow.
She turned up a new street and stepped up onto a porch, rapping on the glass door. It took a few minutes, but eventually she heard brisk footsteps, and a lively white-haired old woman opened the door. “Why, Elizabeth! I mean, Detective Cousland. Do come in – oh!”
“Yes, hush,” Elizabeth said in a low voice. “It’s due to business, but it’s highly confidential.”
Doctor Wynne Joyce smiled and laid a finger beside her nose. “I understand, dear. Come sit yourself down in the kitchen and I’ll get my kit.”
Elizabeth did as Wynne said, and had a smoke while Wynne unbound the dishtowel around her arm and had a look at it. She gritted her teeth as every little prod caused darts of pain to lance through her arm up to her shoulder. “Can you get it out?”
“Did it take any of your coat or shirt into your arm, dear?” Wynne was already examining her clothes. “The coat looks fine. The shirt, however… hold on a moment.” She got out a little bottle, then went to a drawer and brought out a wooden mixing spoon. “Have a whiff of this, and then you’d better bite down on this.”
Elizabeth did as she was told, and immediately felt drowsy and light-headed. “Anaesthetic, doc?”
“Yes, dear. Bite down and hold still.”
Even with the anaesthetic, it hurt. Elizabeth shut her eyes and clamped down on the spoon. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed until Wynne stopped making it hurt worse, but it was a long time.
Wynne held up a tiny scrap of bloody cloth triumphantly. “There you are, dear. Now I need to clean it and stitch it up again.”
“You got the bullet out, too, right?” Elizabeth asked woozily. “Startin’ to think you might as well have left it in.”
“They always say that. Yes, it’s right here. I know, the alcohol stings, but we don’t want any nastiness getting in your arm, do we? Now, can you tell me why you’re here at nine in the evening with a confidential bullet?”
“That’s not fair,” Elizabeth protested. “I’m on drugs right now.” She looked around. “The gist of it is… I may have found the most important witness of my career. He startled me, and I startled him, and he’s got a bruise on his head, but he gave me this. And now we have to go find his evidence, and I feel like this is all very likely to be a wild goose chase, but I don’t have any choice but to help him.” She frowned in concern at Wynne. “And you won’t tell anyone, right?”
“My dear! I am a doctor. You’ll have to subpoena me to get me to repeat what my patients tell me. The things I could tell you, otherwise.” Wynne winked. “Well, tell me about him. You trust him, but you don’t trust him, obviously. Why?”
“Because he’s the only lead I’ve got, and if he’s telling the truth, it’s too good to pass up… But it’s too good to be true. And he’s too pretty to be trustworthy.”
Wynne chuckled as she threaded her needle. “Too pretty? I never thought I’d see the day. Elizabeth Cousland, admitting a man was attractive.”
“No! That’s not it!” Elizabeth cried, an uninhibited blush rising to her cheeks. “I don’t care that he’s attractive- I mean-!”
“I’m just teasing, dear. But you know how big the office pool is on you and Alistair secretly dating.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I know. I also know about the one betting that I’m a lesbian. Foolishness, all of it.”
“So – is he attractive?”
Elizabeth sighed and gave up. “You just want all the girly gossip, doc.”
“Of course I do. You know I won’t stop until you tell me.”
“He looks well enough. Long hair, piercing ‘bedroom’ eyes, ego big enough to drown an elephant… Very self-assured and smirky – and a giant womanizer. He was flirting with me since we talked on the phone.”
“I didn’t think that was your type, dear.”
“He’s not. It’s purely an aesthetic thing. He’s also a hardened killer. Ruins the mood pretty fast.”
“Maybe, maybe, you have a point there. Well, I’ll be curious to know what happens next. Where did you leave him?”
Elizabeth hesitated to answer. “My apartment. -He can’t go back to his place, supposedly he’s being watched.”
“True enough,” Wynne said, but Elizabeth sensed it wasn’t 100% serious.
“I should get back to him, then,” Elizabeth said, and heaved herself to her feet. It seemed like she could walk in a reasonably straight line. Shooting anything was out of the question, though. If she was attacked on the way home she would have a bad time of it. At least her arm hurt slightly less. “Thanks, doc. I’ll come back for my bill.”
“Right, confidential.” Wynne nodded and smiled. “Be careful, my dear. I want to see you again.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
She made it home without incident. The light was still on, and Arainai was stretched out on the couch, still fully dressed except for his coat and shoes. His eyes were half-closed but alert; they followed her across the room. “Arm’s fine. Comfortable?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Then I’ll see you in the morning.”
She slept with her gun under her pillow and just as dressed as Arainai, although she changed her shirt.
She was woken by a crash from the door downstairs and sprang to her feet, her heart pounding. She hardly felt the renewed pain in her arm over the fear and adrenaline flooding her. She shoved her feet into her shoes and flung open the door; Arainai was crouching by the top of the stairs, his gun in his hand. He turned his head and saw her. “Is there another way out of here?”
“Fire escape in the kitchen,” she said. “Wouldn’t they have thought of that?”
“Yes, but we’re not going out this way. Come!” He brushed past her, heading for the fire escape.
Her hands were shaking. To be attacked, so blatantly and with such brute force, had never happened to her before – it had not quite occurred to her that it would happen as a result of agreeing to help Arainai. And to have her own home under assault just made it infinitely more shocking. Thank goodness Leliana was in Jader.
“I should call HQ,” she said, reaching for the phone.
He grabbed her hand, dragging her after him. “No time. By the time your police friends get here, we’d be dead.”
The thought crossed her mind that this could be part of a ruse to get her to trust him, but she dismissed it. If it was, she had no time or focus to analyze it. She had to follow his lead for now.
He cracked open the door and glanced out carefully. “They’re not quite in position yet. Come!” He was off and away, swinging over handrails to get down more quickly. She took a deep breath and followed him, doing her best to keep up with his acrobatics even with her lack of practice and injured arm.
“Do you have a car?” he called over his shoulder.
“The silver one,” she called back, focussing on not tripping on the metal grating. Gunshots were starting to echo from the alley below them, ricocheting from gratings and impacting on brick walls, and her heart was pulsing too fast to keep track of.
“The ugly one? Got it.”
“Hey!”
He laughed as he leaped from the bottom of the fire escape to the ground, a good 15 feet; he rolled and sprang to his feet. She… she couldn’t do that. But to slow down or freeze would be death from bullets, so she grimly launched herself into the air after him.
He’d turned, as if sensing her fear and lack of agility, reaching out to catch her. And he did, and in such a way that instead of her barreling into him and knocking them both to the hard pavement, he spun her around, absorbing her kinetic energy, setting her down gently on her feet.
She’d never been so out of breath in her life. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I hope you have your keys?”
She pulled them from her pocket with trembling fingers, shoving the right one into the car’s lock, throwing herself into the driver’s seat and reaching over to release the passenger’s side. “Get in get in get in-” He was sliding into the passenger’s seat, throwing her a confident grin, though her answering stare was wide and frazzled. Not even bothering with the safety belt, she put the car in gear and stomped the gas to the floorboards. Her arm screamed as she clamped her hands on the steering wheel in a death-grip, but she wasn’t letting go.
“Zevran!” shouted one of the figures hurrying towards the car, a dark-haired man. They weren’t shooting right now. Why not? She didn’t care, it would give them a moment or two longer to get away.
Arainai’s face had gone hard. “Taliesin…”
“Not stopping!” Elizabeth barked, pulled a hard left onto the street, and accelerated far beyond the legal limit.
“That’s fine- whoa! Who taught you how to drive?”
“Shut up! I’m completely hopped up on adrenaline, you want to drive!?”
He chuckled. “No ma’am. So Tal is still loyal, is he… of course he is. I should have guessed he’d be the one sent to get me.”
She wanted to know more about this Taliesin, if he was important – it sounded like he was another Crow – but quick movement in her rear view mirror caught her eye. “I think they’re still on us.”
“Of course they are. You didn’t think the Crows gave up so quickly, did you? Can I borrow your gun?”
“It doesn’t have much ammo,” Elizabeth said, but managed to get it out of her pocket and pass it over. She heard gunshots from behind and ducked reflexively, her steering wobbling slightly.
“It’ll have enough to deter them. And I have some extra for mine. In the meantime, try and shake them.”
“I’ll try.” In her mind, she imagined a map of the city, imagined how their pursuit would be spread out to catch them, how she could evade them, get around them,
And then he rolled down his window, slid the upper half of his body through it facing backwards, and started shooting at their pursuers, even as their gunfire increased. “Haha! This is great. I should do this more often.”
“You shoot an innocent person and I’m arresting you,” she barked at him, angry both at his recklessness and the thought that he could miss or misjudge his target.
“I’m better than that. Trust me, mi amor.” As if she had a choice.
“I’m going to turn, you better hold on.” She danced between clutch and brake and gas, yanking the shift stick where she needed it to be, and pulled a hard right onto an even larger street – with more traffic. Not good. More traffic meant more possibility for more collateral damage. Cars were honking at them, swerving to get out of their way as she darted around them, weaving like a race-car driver.
“We need a siren! Aren’t you a police officer?”
“Personal car! Don’t get sirens for personal cars! Don’t worry, someone from work will start chasing soon and then we’ll have all the sirens you want. Turning!” She pulled another right onto a smaller street, followed by a left. He clutched onto the headrest of his seat, bracing himself against the centrifugal forces.
She managed to shoot him a glance. “They must miss you badly if they’re going to this much trouble to take you out. The Crows are usually very discrete.” As in, she only rarely handled cases involving them.
“Hm, yes, well, I don’t think this is entirely a Crow operation, just they’ve borrowed Taliesin for the job. But yes, this is most unusual – they’re very fond of me. Even more than I had thought. Ha! Got another one.”
She glanced in her mirror to see one pursuing car drive headlong into a telephone pole with an awful crunch. “That wasn’t your friend, was it?” No, if it was, he would have said something.
“No, no, Tal is too good to show his face so openly. He’ll let these others wear us out, then move in.”
For the kill, her mind supplied the end of the phrase. “How exactly are we going to get away?”
“You mean to say that in all your time on the force, you’ve never daydreamed about how exactly you’d escape your own people?”
“Arainai!” Also, they weren’t being chased by the police. Yet.
“Well, first we have to find a quiet spot to slow down and blend in with traffic. Then, the car has more than a couple bullet holes in her, so we’ll have to change it or else blending in won’t work at all. After that, we need to leave town, at least temporarily.”
“Got it. Sit down like a normal person, we should be clear of them in a minute or two. Then I’ll slow down. Assuming Keenan doesn’t pull us over first for speeding.”
“You wouldn’t actually let him, would you?”
“I’m going to have a hell of a fine when this is over, whether he catches me or not,” she said ruefully. “I can write myself a ticket, you know.”
His eyes twinkled with amusement. “Why would you? And if you did, why would you pay it? Are you not acting in service to the law right now?”
She hesitated. “Maybe.” She slowed down to just over the speed limit. “And you said we had to change the car? You’re not advocating stealing one, are you?”
His smirk grew wider. “Maybe.”