Zero Sum Game

Chapter 1

I started to grab Polk, but it was too late. The cop whipped around and looked up, meeting my eyes from fifty feet away, and knew he was made.

He was fast. We'd scarcely locked eyes and his hand was inside his jacket in a blur.

My boot flicked out and hit a rock.

From the cop's perspective, it must have looked like the worst kind of evil luck. He'd barely gotten his hand inside his coat when my foot-flicked missile rocketed out of nowhere and smacked him in the forehead. His head snapped back, and he listed to the side and collapsed.

God bless Newton's Laws of Motion.

Polk recoiled. "What the hell was that!"

"That was a cop," I snapped. Five minutes with this kid and my irritation was already at its limit.

"What? Then why did you—he could have helped us!"

I resisted the urge to smack her. "You're a drug smuggler."

"Not on purpose!"

"Yeah, because that makes a difference. I don't think the authorities are going to care that the Colombians weren't too happy with you anymore. You don't know enough to gamble on flipping on your crew, so you're going to a very faraway island after this. Now shut up." The perimeter was within sprinting distance now, and rocks would work for the compound's guards as well. I scooped up a few, my hands instantly reading their masses. Projectile motion: my height, their heights, the acceleration of gravity, and a quick correction for air resistance—and then pick the right initial velocity so that the deceleration of such a mass against a human skull would provide the correct force to drop a grown man.

One, two, three. The guards tumbled into well-armed heaps on the ground.

Polk made a choking sound and stumbled back from me a couple of steps. I rolled my eyes, grabbed her by one thin wrist, and hauled.

Less than a minute later, we were driving safely away from the compound in a stolen jeep, the rich purple of the California desert night falling around us and the lights and shouts from an increasingly agitated drug cartel dwindling in the distance. I took a few zigs and zags through the desert scrub to put off anyone trying to follow us, but I was pretty sure the Colombians were still chasing their own tails. Sure enough, soon we were speeding alone through the desert and the darkness. I kept the running lights off just in case, leaving the moonlight and mathematical extrapolation to outline the rocks and brush as we bumped along. I wasn't worried about crashing. Cars are only forces in motion.

In the open jeep, the cuts on my face stung as the wind whipped by, and annoyance rolled through me as the adrenaline receded. This job—I'd thought it would be a cakewalk. Polk's sister had been the one to hire me, and she had told me Rio had cold-contacted her and strongly suggested that if she didn't pay me to get her sister out, she'd never see her again. I hadn't talked to Rio myself in months—not until he'd used me as his personal punching bag today—but I could connect the dots: Rio had been working undercover, seen Polk, decided she deserved to be rescued, and thrown me the gig. Of course, I was grateful for the work, but I wished I had known Rio was undercover with the cartel in the first place. I cursed the bad luck that had made us run into him—the Colombians never would have caught me on their own.

In the passenger seat, Polk braced herself unhappily against the jounces of our off-road journey. "I'm not moving to a desert island," she said suddenly, interrupting the quiet of the night.

I sighed. "I didn't say desert. And it doesn't even have to be an island. We can probably stash you in rural Argentina or something."

She crossed her spindly arms, hugging herself against the night's chill. "Whatever. I'm not going. I'm not going to let the cartel win."