Four guys with machineguns? Yeah, help would be nice.

Max and Aden wait patiently on the porch by Beard and Felt Hat as the Hispanic man walks away a few feet, pulling out a cell phone. They can only hear his side of the conversation.

"Isabella, it's Henry, whatchu doin' right now, girl?" There's a brief pause. "I got somebody lookin' to get some help from the boys. They around?" Another pause. "This crazy white guy and-" He looks at Max, considers his options. "Maybe his girlfriend, they lookin' to go into the Bryson place. You know the one Ernie thinks they usin' to make ****?" A third pause, and Henry laughs. "Big time money, honey." His voice drops, conspiratorial. "Guy says twenty K a piece." He puts a lot of emphasis on that. The pause is longer, and Aden wonders if maybe he's overplayed the offer.

Henry smiles and hangs up the phone. "You drive down to the next block, the apartments on the left side. My girl will meet you out front."

"How will we recognize her?" Max asks.

"You the only two rich white people in the neighborhood, vato," Henry guffaws, amused. "She recognize YOU."

They follow the instructions, the monster perking up, expecting ****, thinking ambush and robbery. The apartments are nice enough, if low income and full of temporary residents. In front, by the sign, there's a pretty Hispanic girl about Tommy's age. Her dark black hair pulled back in a braid, she's got a white tee-shirt over an athletic bra, a pair of loose gym pants, tattoos on her arms, a small black tear under her left eye. Her mascara's dark, her lipstick a conventional light brown, and Aden sees old scars on the woman's elbows, tough callouses on her palms and knuckles. The woman's tennis shoes are expensive, and well broken in, scuffed and marked up, but carefully maintained. Aden also notes the grip of the pistol sticking out of the girl's belt, handle taped, hammer down. The monster moves in his belly again.

As they inspect the girl, she's inspecting them. After an appraising once-over, the girl nods and smiles. "Henry said you got a need for some back-up," she says. "Name's Izzy."

Aden nods as he and Max get out of the car. "Henry said you knew some people who would be willing to help me get into the Bryson place." He looks her over, likes what he sees. She's got a serious attitude, street tough, strong and independent.

"There was twenty k apiece mentioned," Izzy points out.

Aden nods, and reaches into his backpack, pulling out the brown envelope with his flash money. He opens it, flashes her the bills. Her eyes widen at the sight of the cash, and she whistles, impressed. "You can have it when the job's done. You sure your people are good enough?"

Izzy laughs. "My cousins, they rough, rough trade. They who I get when I need ****."

Aden nods. "Two?"

"Plus me," Izzy points out, putting her hand on the butt of the pistol in her waistband. "So that's sixty large. You sure?"

Aden nods again, and Izzy turns her back on them and walks back toward one of the apartments, hot pink Cadillac parked in front of it. All chrome polished, with extra trimmings. He recognizes bulletproofed glass, a strengthened body, an interior roll cage, what looks like nitrous oxide injectors. It's his turn to whistle equally impressed. "This is a serious piece of machinery."

"My cousin Chivato, he love that car," Izzy laughs. "It's got a cop engine and suspension. It’s a fuckin' war wagon. I love this guy to ****, but I don' drive nowhere with him unless it’s time for the Second Coming."

Izzy skips subtle, kicking on the bottom of the door as hard as she can, until her foot hurts. A pretty girl with short brown hair answers the door, wearing nothing but a bra and a set of fuzzy pajama bottoms, rubbing her eyes. She looks at Izzy, bleary, and then smiles.

“Ola, Cali,” Izzy says. “The boys in?”

“Oh, yeah, Izzy,” she responded, moving aside to let me in. “They sleeping, though.”

Izzy nods, and points back at Aden and Max, who are waiting patiently behind her. "These guys got money for work."

Cali yawns, and shrugs, stepping to the side and motioning them in. As they enter, Aden looks around the place; Max's face turns a dozen shades of red. "You okay?" Aden whispers.

"She's barely dressed," Max groans, upset.

Izzy laughs. "She remembered to put on a top this time. It's a step up for her." She steps over someone spilled across the floor like a bag of potatoes. “Get 'em up, chica."

Cali looks at Aden and Max, suspicion in her eyes. “You ain’ the cops, are you?”

Before Max can answer, Aden shakes his head and smiles. "We're trying to help a girl who might be in that building."

Max stares around the place, cheeks coloring. As if trying to find a distraction, the detective grunts. "We're looking to hire gunmen to break and enter. Why ask us?"

Aden knows the type of place well enough to know this is an important question. "They have to be careful. The number of misdemeanor offences they’re connected to on any given day is probably measured in the dozens," he points out.

Izzy agrees, laughing. "They slowed down a bit since Chivato met Cali; they only bag a felony about once a week. They good people, if you don’t cross them."

Cali nods, and stumbles into the back room. Aden hears her making kissy noises at someone. Max fumbles around trying to figure out where to look. There are only two light bulbs in the entire place, and the windows are all covered with heavy curtains, but the darkness isn't enough to conceal three nearly naked bodies entwined together on the living room couch, covered in lotion and glistening with sweat. It's enough; Max pales, then turns and stumbles past Izzy and Aden, heading to wait in the car.

"Your friend okay?" Izzy asks, a twinkle of entertainment in her eye.

"Not really my friend," Aden murmurs, watching a rough-looking and wiry man stumble by, holding his pants up with one hand, and gripping a bottle of Chivas Regal in the other.

"Why they here then?" Izzy studies his face, looking to see if he's lying.

"Let's say it's a comfortable and temporary alliance of convenience."

The wiry guy is swigging from the bottle, picking up a pipe wrench from the counter where it lay by a silk teddy nightgown. Another man, older and much harder looking, his face pockmarked, his hands huge and muscular, strangler's hands, drifts by into the bathroom, runs water, splashes it on his face. "The young guy is my cousin Chivato, and the older one is Ramon." She smiles at her own words. "I'm the only person in the world calls him Ramon. Everybody else, they all call him Monstro."

Aden looks them over and smiles. "My name is Nickolas Aden. Pleased to meet you."

"Izzy say you need some hitters for backup," says Chivato. "Me and my brother are Very Dangerous Men." Aden can hear the capital letters. "We done large quantities of time being supported as guests of various state-run prison systems."

"Between the two of them, you could make four very mean mothafuckas," Izzy agrees. "We got your back. IF you got the money."

"You've seen the money," Aden points out.

"Hold on, white boy," Monstro growls from the bathroom, his voice a deep and unpleasant bass note. "We don' know you from any other fucker come in off the street."

"You fuckin' with us, this ain't gonna play well for you," Chivato says.

Aden thinks it over, decides to play it straight. "My partner is a city homicide detective. I used to work for the CIA, killing people. I've probably put more people in the ground than you've met. We're here because we think that Ken Bryson, the police chief, is hiding a kidnapped twelve-year-old girl in that abandoned house, and Izzy's uncle Henry tells me there may be four **** dealers with automatic weapons sitting in there with her." He reaches back into the brown envelope and pulls out six large stacks of hundred-dollar bills, places them on the counter next to the nightgown. "There's your money. You can do whatever you like with it once we're done."

Everyone in the place sits up, even the loungers on the couch. Someone coughs excitedly, and Aden knows he's just put a huge target on his head.

Izzy's face is strange, deep in thought. "You said your name Nickolas?" She pauses, then smiles. "You know a cutie named Tommy?"

Aden's eyes narrow. "My girlfriend," he says, concerned. "Why do you ask?"

Izzy turns to her cousins. "He cool, Baby and I know his girl. She come by the game a while back. Sweet as sugar." She licks her lips, then laughs.

Chivato and Monstro look at her, then both crack up laughing. "Damn, girl, you more of a pussy hound than any cholo I know," Chivato laughs, carelessly dropping the empty bottle of Chivas into the sink, where it clangs against the porcelain. “When we doin' this, man?” He looks concerned. “I gotta get my old lady to work by noon.”

“Right now. I doubt it’s gonna take long.”

Ramon steps in from the bathroom, his face still damp. He throws a black Selena t-shirt over his emaciated body, pulls his hair back off his acne-scarred cheeks, and grins as he ties his hair back with a red ribbon. “We takin' prisoners, mano?” he grunts, his voice rolling from basso profundo to scratchy snarl. He looks very weak and sickly, but Aden suspects it's misleading; the guy looks like he can bench three hundred-plus. You get a lot of time for body building in Federal pens.

“Nope.” The monster recognizes kindred spirits.

They both nod gravely, and Chivato smacks his pipe wrench into his palm. Cali frowns at him, tapping her foot. She didn’t have to say a word. He blushes and glances over to her apologetically. “Your cop friend gonna keep quiet?”

“Guaranteed.” Aden smiles. "This isn't the first extra-judicial killing we've pulled together."

There's a loud clack as Ramon slams the breech closed on his sawed-off shotgun. “Let’s go earn our money, then.” He sticks a snub-nosed .38 revolver into his belt. Aden notices the grip is taped off to prevent leaving fingerprints, just like Izzy's firearm. It’s a street-trick that the Feds and most local cops can see right through nowadays, but it’s tradition, so most gang-bangers do it anyway.

They step outside into the night air, Monstro tossing a windbreaker over the gun as they exit the building. Chivato holds the pipe wrench, negligently swinging it at the grass like an oversized golf club.

“You know, you oughta come see Cali’s new show, Izzy,” Chivato whispers as the group walks down the street toward the building. “She’s doing this cowgirl thing now.”

“John Wayne don’t look this good,” says Monstro, which seems a heavy compliment for him.

Max is standing by the car, grinning; the street lights near the house are out now. Max has broken them with some rocks to help mask their entry. "They're peeking out every few seconds," the detective points out. "They know we're coming."

"We ain't 'zactly secret, walking 'round out here," Chivato says. If that bothers him, neither he nor Monstro shows it.

"I've got something that will help," Aden says. "You guys get around the back, and don't enter until you hear us go in."

"On it," Chivato says, and he and his brother head firther down the street and around the back, staying out of sight as they approach. Aden pulls his pistol and crouches low as he and Izzy cross over to the other side of the street and slide up toward the front door of the building from the left hand side of the building, staying clear of the windows' line of sight. Aden pulls something from his packpack; Izzy kneels down next to him, curious. "Whassat?"

"Plastic explosive," Aden answers, quickly crimping the cap and setting the digital timer to five seconds.

"You gunna bomb the fucking place?" Izzy asks, amazed.

"Not really," Aden says. "It's just enough to make a bang and a flash, poor man's stun grenade." He leans against the wall, listening carefully. He can just make out movement, two people whispering. "They're ready for us. So this goes in first to give us a second or two jump on them."

Izzy nods, then looks above her head to the porch roof. She gets a clever look on her face, and grins. "So hang on a second, I gotta idea. There's an upstairs window."

"How are you going to get up there?" Aden looks around, seeing nothing Izzy could use to climb up. He watches Izzy as she backs up away from the house about ten feet. She bends down, touches her toes, limbers up her back, cracks her neck. Then, with a wink at him, she bolts forward, three large steps and a leap. Her hands grip the roof's edge, her legs swinging forward to spring back off the house's wall, and she swings up sideways onto the roof top. He watches her lope up to the upstairs window, pulling her pistol. She tests the window, gives him a thumbs up as she slides it open and disappears inside.

Aden takes a deep breath, holds it, flicks the detonator and counts to three, then slams his shoulder into the door hard enough to rebound it off anyone hiding behind it. The lump of explosives goes in, and Aden falls prone into the opening. He catches a glimpse of two large men, weapons in hand, hiding behind an upturned table; before they can react, the explosive goes off with a loud bang and clap of pressure. It's all he needs; Aden sights in center-of-mass, two quick shots into the first guy, then switches targets. They're better than he expected; the second target drops prone as well and opens up on him, full-auto. He ducks back as rounds splinter the wood near his face, rolling behind the wall and trying to get low. Then there's gunfire in the back, autofire first, then the loud thump of Monstro's sawed-off gauge. Without coming out of cover, Aden fires back at the machine-gunner in the front room, maintaining his fire to keep the gangster's head down. From inside, he hears a second shotgun blast, and Aden's target, realizing he's about to get flanked, tries to move positions. There's several muzzle flashes, yellow light in the shadows; the gunman goes down, shot from the stairwell by Izzy. Maybe fifteen seconds, and the house is quiet.

Aden swings back to his feet and moves in, weapon up. He catches Izzy in the stairwell, her pistol in hand. The man she's shot is rolling back and forth on the floor, groaning. Behind him, on the kitchen table, there are several kilos of cocaine stacked up, and a pile of bundled cash, maybe twenty or thirty thousand. Aden sweeps left into the rear bedroom, clears it, notes Chivato as gone to the wounded man and knelt on his chest, tossing the man quickly and professionally. Coming out of the back, Aden moves back through the kitchen and into the back room, where Monstro is holding another man down, foot on his chest, shotgun pointed at the man's face. The guy looks both angry and afraid, hands out to his side. There's a fourth body, an athletic woman, unrecognizable now, her face destroyed by shotgun fire. The monster notes they are wearing bulletproof vests, the one Monstro is guarding clearly packing a small revolver in an ankle holster.

The house is empty, and Aden wonders if they've fucked up. Out front, he hears Izzy and Chivato talking, voices low. He can't make out the conversation, but he can tell they're anxious. They've made a lot of noise, and the cops will be on their way quick. No time to waste, he thinks.

"You guys are fucking up," the guy on the floor says. His voice is ****. "Take the money and get the fuck out of here, and maybe you can walk away."

Monstro laughs, an evil chuckle, gravel in a metal can. "We ain't scared of no gangbangers."

"We're not gangbangers, you stupid asshole," the man groans as Monstro leans on him. "We're fucking cops."

"Shit." Aden breathes out, suddenly aware they've gotten into something much bigger than a missing girl. He knows he can't waste time. Crossing to the man, he bends down, places his weapon on the man's forehead. "Where's the girl?"

The man's eyes widen, as he figures out what they're here for. "You motherfuckers, this is a RESCUE mission?"

Aden is opening his mouth to answer when he hears Max's voice from the doorway. "I just heard the 911 call. We have about five minutes." Max looks over, sees the man on the floor. There's a look of mutual recognition, and Max smiles. "Good evening, Detective Louis. Bad night?"

"You better tell these bastards to get the fuck out, and maybe we can smooth this over," the downed cop says. He jumps as Chivato and Izzy drag the other surviving cop in and drop him on the floor next to his partner. Louis looks at the other officer, who is pale and breathing heavily, a pink froth of bloody bubbles flowing down his chin.

Max's eyes are closed, deep in thought. When they open, the detective's eyes are cold, dispassionate. Aden has seen that look before, and he nods. "Go get the car ready," he says, then turns back to the two captive criminal cops. "Tell me where the girl is right now, or I will blow your friend's brains out. Then, if you still haven't told me where she is, I will kill you, too."

Louis grins at him. "You ain't dumb enough to kills two cops in cold blood."

Chivato steps up, swings the heavy pipe wrench down onto Louis' kneecap, crushing it. The man screams, and Chivato leans in on him also. "Stupid pendejo, we already killed the other two, why you think we care two or four, huh?" He stands back up, and looks over to Aden. "Sorry, man, but we gotta clock runnin', you know?"

Aden nods, then brings his gun down and points it at the wounded cop. He fires twice, the body jumping, then going limp. Detective Louis starts whimpering, and points toward the kitchen floor. "Crawlspace," he gasps, in obvious pain.

Aden moves into the kitchen, motioning for Chivato to follow him. "He's seen our faces," he says.

"Yeah, we already figured that out." Chivato smiles. They both hear a shotgun blast as Monstro finishes off the crooked cop. "We gunna grab the cash, and split. You got this?"

"Yeah," Aden says, kicking the kitchen table aside and tossing back a ragged throw rug. He pauses, taking in the recessed handle of the crawlspace. He pulls it open as Monstro and Chivato begin grabbing the cash. They all freeze, seeing a concrete compartment only three feet by three feet. It's dark and dusty, and inside is the girl, bound hand and foot, her clothes ripped and discolored, a heavy blindfold around her face, a gag in her mouth, spit dripping down her chin, her shrieks muffled by the rag.

"Fuck," Chivato mutters. He and Monstro drop the cash, and help Aden pull the girl clear, Izzy running over and grabbing a blanket from the sofa in the front room. She wraps the girl, and the four of them exit. Out front, Max is already pulled around to the front of the building, sirens just starting to be audible in the distance. Without another word, Aden shakes Izzy's hand, and the three street thugs sprint back down the street toward their own place.

Looking at Aden, Max frowns. "I am responding to shots fired. I find the girl inside, bring her out, wait for backup."

"It'll play if I get gone and the locals protect their own," Aden agrees. He slides back out, then leans in again. "And if she keeps her mouth shut."

"I'll explain things to her," Max murmurs, voice soft. The detective is all too familiar with child ****. "Go, now."

"I'm gone," Aden answers, and lopes off quickly into the dark streets. By the time the first squad car gets there, he's nothing but a memory.