Starfall, p.13
Starfall, page 13
Installed after the fact.
Rik grinned and moved around the box, looking for a door.
There.
Chain link fence gate with vertical plastic strips woven in. Couple of smaller things that might be a swamp cooler and a portable heater, both not much bigger than the kinds of coolers she took hunting when she was going to base camp somewhere and then walk a lot.
The door had a padlock on it. Looked a little rusty, but also competent to keep her out, since she hadn’t brought bolt cutters with her and Grant was inside with his lockpicks.
Rik considered looking around for a bar she could use to pry the lock, but that would move her away from this spot and honestly this looked like that back door Jake had been expecting.
Instead, she studied the chain links themselves. Galvanized steel. Basic stuff you got at a feed store. Or hardware place, she supposed.
Rik holstered the Sig and squatted down for a moment. The fencing was latched on the sides, but not the bottom. She grinned and got a good hold, standing slowly and torquing the metal as far as she could. Cheap stuff. Bent easily enough into a U-shaped gap.
She let go and got below it, crawling backwards like this was a limbo competition. Under the mesh, then up over the bar. Twisty, but not bad.
She had crap in her hair, but that wasn’t anything new. Everything would need a good wash when this was done, though she doubted that either Hollyanne or Amanda would be interested in scrubbing her back.
Might have to settle for one of the guys.
Still, she was inside. AC and heat pump side by side on little risers.
Rik moved to the side of the building and found a thin seam indicating a door. No handle on this side. Hinges inside the wall. Space to open out into this little box.
Under her feet, a metal plate. Rik considered the geometry of the situation and figured that he had a secret back exit that got him in here. Hidden unless you were looking inside from the door. Pop the plate up, probably to reveal steps down to an old sewer system or something.
Tunnel for a rat to flee.
Rik settled into the gap between the two units and drew her Sig to wait.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Jake trailed Nathaniel through dimly lit hallways that didn’t seem to be square. Or straight. Shadowed because the light fixtures were too far apart. Ceilings low. At least a lot of storage space was overhead in a second floor that had been built up. Supplies for a siege, according to Nathaniel.
“Jake, someone in all brown looking for Nathaniel,” Hollyanne came over the line. “Headed to his office now.”
“Nathaniel, somebody dressed in brown headed towards your office?” Jake asked quietly.
“My assistant,” he nodded. “Smart, but not friendly. Assume a bad guy. We should speed up.”
Jake stretched his legs as Nathaniel did the same. The place was a labyrinth, twisting and back tracking. Obviously not designed well.
Unless your goal was to make it impossible for the cops to get through to anywhere quickly and easily on their way back to your lair. In that case, it made perfect sense.
Jake just wondered why Lord Wraith hadn’t built himself something higher up. Must have a secret way out the back and didn’t want to be trapped if it was a raid.
At that point, the only question was if it was on the ground floor, in which case Rik could intercept him, or underground in a sewer or something, and the man might have the chance to get away.
Jake glanced back. Grant and Spencer trailing by enough to have a gap.
“Moriarty!” a female voice suddenly cut across the space. “Where have you been? Did you get it fixed?”
Jake watched a short, pale blonde in red and blue step out of a door ahead on the right. Pretty face, but he got a look and she had the crazy eyes going.
“Ah, there you are,” Nathaniel said without missing a beat. “Looked for you in the kitchen and obviously you…”
Whatever the rest of the sentence might have been was irrelevant, as Nathaniel stepped into the woman with a hard right jab to the chin that sounded like a line shot up the middle in a baseball game.
The woman was out like a light and went over backwards.
“Grab her and zip her,” Jake said to Grant and Spencer while he took watch.
It had sounded loud, but there was nobody immediately around. Nathaniel went through the door the woman had come from, obviously keyed up for violence, but emerged a moment later.
“Empty,” he said. “Toss her in here for now. And look for more knives hidden on her body.”
“Knives?” Grant asked.
“Her name is Dead Eve,” Nathaniel shook his head. “Knife fetish killer. Crazy as a shithouse rat. Taking her phone into town was the excuse to get out today.”
Jake nodded. At least Nathaniel was confirming whose side he was on, even if he was using violence.
Nobody in the hallway. That wouldn’t last for long, though Nathaniel had said that this hallway was mostly for officers. Him, Dead Eve, Lady Nyx, and the others. The lower-level employees were where Hollyanne had gone.
Grant and Spencer got the woman taken care of and emerged quickly.
“Six,” Grant said without prompting. “Wasn’t about to look closer than that.”
“You and me both, buddy,” Nathaniel muttered, so Jake had a pretty good idea of what kind of woman she was.
Trouble. The bad kind.
“We’re close,” Nathaniel said. “Stay tight at this point, because I have a feeling we’ll have to rush him.”
Jake nodded. He, Grant, and Spencer had pistols out. Nathaniel was looking like the criminal Moriarty, without the nice blazer he’d had earlier.
They moved.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
Hollyanne followed Amanda through a few more twists and turns, including a quick jaunt across an open doorway where a lot of noise indicated people at dinner. Maybe thirty, from the quick glimpse she’d gotten as she went by.
No interruption of sound, so hopefully nobody had seen the two of them and wanted to chat. Or raise an alarm.
Movement ahead, coming around a far corner, turned out to be Nathaniel, with Jake in his shadow like she was with Amanda.
They came to rest in front of a double-door that was obviously something important. Somebody important.
Considering the group around her, Hollyanne went for her pole, telescoping it out into a long steel rod now. Others could shoot. She would be the one to take prisoners, assuming violence.
“Will your keycard open this one?” Jake asked, indicating a sensor next to the door.
“No,” Nathaniel said. “It’s open during office hours, then closed for the night when the person inside goes for dinner. Opens again for breakfast.”
“Grant, you’re on,” Jake said.
Everyone shuffled around, but Hollyanne stayed right at the center of the door, with Amanda on her left and Jake on her right. Anyone walking around a corner right now would either barge in to demand to know what was going on or would immediately flee and raise an alarm.
Hollyanne would rely on Jake kicking the door in at that point.
Grant knelt and went to work. One panel was smooth, with posts top and bottom from the edge. The other had a handle with a key lock. Grant slipped his picks into the gap and went to work.
Hollyanne had never learned the trick of using two pieces of steel to trick a lock, but Grant had a buddy in Redmond who trained police forces on it. The team had even gone to a party a few years ago where the dude—a software developer who turned out to be a tall, goofy, relocated Englishman married to a local architect—had let everyone play with all manner of locks and tools to see how it was done.
He and Grant had nerded out excessively over good whiskey that night.
This lock didn’t take Grant long to pick. He turned the handle smoothly in one hand and looked up at her. Hollyanne looked back at Jake.
“Full frontal assault, as soon as he opens it,” Jake murmured.
“Grant, on three,” she said, digging her toes into the cheap carpet underfoot.
He nodded.
“One. Two. Three.”
Grant exploded forward, shoving the door open then circling with it until both were out of her way. Hollyanne was in on his heels, looking at an office set up like a dentist in Kent might do it. Low counter with a gap on the right for a receptionist. Door through to the rest of the suite, as yet unknown. Leather couch and paired chairs for people waiting to talk to the boss.
And a scream like a siren wailing from overhead. Obviously, an intruder alarm. Going off. Waking up Lord Wraith. Giving him time to react.
Hollyanne took all this in and turned.
“Jake, I need that far door open now!” she ordered.
They were tactical. She had point. That meant she gave orders.
Jake holstered his pistol and got a running start, planting one foot and driving the other into the far door, right next to the handle.
Somebody hadn’t bothered sinking four-inch screws into the strike plate, because the frame shattered under the assault. Jake still bounced backwards, but she’d been expecting that, slipping by him and driving inwards.
Inner suite. Another conference room of some sort, with a big table where you might plan anarchy.
Could she say that without insulting proper anarchists?
She’d have to ask one of her friends down in Oregon sometime.
Hallway straight back, with two doors on each sides and one on the end. That would be his bedroom, unless she’d caught him on the john right now.
“In!” she yelled, not pausing.
Footsteps behind her when she circled the table turned out to be Amanda, Beretta in one hand, aimed over Hollyanne’s shoulder and finger alongside the trigger well rather than on the trigger itself.
Live and ready to fire.
They charged.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
Sergi had been reading when the outer alarm went off. He wasn’t even dressed in his Lord Wraith costume right now, having decided to relax this evening in slacks and a white cable-knit sweater.
He was upright as fast as his reflexes could move him, thankful that doors were closed between his inner rooms and the offices beyond. The sound of his office door being shattered open moved him to flight.
No time to even grab a gun, but he had cash and identity papers on him that would get him across EU borders. And he had several boxes at various banks where he could change identities as needed.
Lord Wraith might be in trouble, but Sergi Prova was a chameleon who could vanish. Assuming he could get out of the building right now.
No time to do anything but move. Fortunately, he’d been planning for this for years. Well, not planning, but preparing. Assuming the day when the Federal Police or the Americans would kick in the front door to arrest him.
Dark Citizen was big enough these days that it could continue meandering along if he had to vanish off the face of the earth for a few days.
Sergi moved to the outer wall and unlatched the bookcase he’d personally installed between bouts of construction to the rest of the warehouse. The latch was invisible unless you knew what to look for.
Behind it, the raw steel of the building’s outer skin, hidden in the shed where his personal heating and air conditioning units kept his flat comfortable, regardless of what was happening in the rest of the warehouse.
He flipped the latch lock and pressed the panel open, reaching back to pull the bookcase closed. The longer someone had to spend looking for him inside, the bigger a head start he would have to escape whatever perimeter they might have thought was sufficient to hold him.
Fools. Did you really think I hadn’t planned all this long ago? Fah!
Sergi took a step forward into the dimness of the shed, standing still to let his eyes adjust to the shadows.
Movement on his right turned his head to stare in shock as a figure stood up from cover.
Big. Blonde. Female. Almost as tall as him. Wider across the shoulders.
She had a gun in one hand.
“I’m happy to just shoot you if you don’t want to surrender,” she offered in a classically-American accent. “Or you can turn right back around and push that door open again behind you. Bullet through the leg at this range will lame you enough for my purposes. Or I’ll shoot both legs and drag you around to the front door if you make me.”
From the coldness of her voice, the woman wasn’t bluffing. And had been lying in wait in here. The fencing at the gate was bent badly. Crawled under it and waited like an ambush predator?
The barrel of her pistol didn’t waver but did move down from his heart to perhaps his groin. Enough to make a point.
“One,” she counted slowly. “Two…”
“Okay,” Sergi said, raising his hands.
The crazy bitch looked like she might enjoy shooting him. And hadn’t called herself a cop or identified herself as belonging to any agency.
Who the fuck was she?
“Then turn around, sweetums,” she ordered in a voice like a rusty broadsword. “Open the door. Or bleed and I’ll kick it in for you.”
Sergi gulped at the raw violence in her eyes. The joy at it. Almost as bad a Dead Eve or Grim Motoko, and they were both crazy women.
He turned slowly, reaching a hand in.
“Delicately, princess,” the woman warned him, not moving any closer but tracking him like a missile battery.
Sergi nodded and reached with a hand, unlatching the bookcase again and pushing it into the room.
Another woman stood there. Tiny, but a whirlwind as she grabbed his wrist and used some twisting Judo throw that had him in the room, on his back, and staring up at her before he knew what happened.
Sergi looked back and up and saw the blonde step to the door with a smile.
“We got trouble coming?” she asked.
Yelled, really, over the ongoing siren.
Sergi smiled. They might have captured him, but apparently his entire goon squad was still out there.
He’d be free again shortly in that case.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
Amanda watched Hollyanne Kadjar flip Lord Wraith and stand over him. One down. But that left the other killers. They would react to that door alarm by running for the armory.
She had an idea, though. Jake McNeil was right next to her. As was Grant Collingwood.
“Is the outer door still locked, if someone pulls it shut?” she yelled over the sirens.
“Yes,” he yelled back.
“I need to go distract all the men and women outside,” she told Jake. “Get them running for their lives instead of coming to rescue this shit.”
“How?” he asked, starting to walk with her because Amanda was already in motion. Nathaniel was with her, while the other four stayed with the prisoner.
Lord Wraith’s time was done. She needed to make sure Pacific Force could get out of here later.
“They know me,” she said as they got closer to the alarm. “I can bluff them.”
“Are you sure?” Nathaniel asked.
That warmed her. He didn’t see this as a forlorn hope.
Amanda wasn’t sure she agreed, but she had to try.
“I am,” she replied.
“Run if you have to, to lead them away, then,” he nodded. “I have your number.”
Amanda nodded. He was making sure she got away right now, even if Jake and the others took Nathaniel into custody.
She found herself looking forward to his call.
“Stand clear of the door,” she ordered the others, moving them out of sight.
Then she grabbed the handle, Beretta in one hand and emerged.
Already, goons were approaching from her right. She pulled it shut and confronted them.
“Son of a bitch planted a bomb and fled,” she yelled at the top of her lungs, even though it was quieter on this side. “Told me to fuck off and die when the police got here. We have three minutes and thirty seconds before the whole building catches fire. You, is the fire alarm still disconnected?”
One of the goons in blue tunics and a mask looked up at her like a frog staring into a flashlight at night.
“Ya-yes,” he stammered.
“Fuck!” Amanda yelled. “And fuck him. Every one of you for himself then. Unless you want to die when all this is on fire!”
Rather than wait on any sort of democratic consensus, Amanda bulled her way through the assembled mass, using her height and gun to clear a path, then running.
Those behind her were still uncertain.
“It’s gonna blow!” she yelled at the newest group to arrive, these new ones armed with machine pistols. “Fire! Get out while you can!”
They stared at her blankly, but Amanda felt the first stirrings of panic catch, infecting one, then the next. One of the women turned and started to jog away from her, yelling Fire! at everyone.
As badly designed and tight as all these corridors were, being trapped in a fire was a serious fear she’d had. Obviously, so had the others, because pretty quickly others were clomping loudly in her wake.
Panic was an infectious disease. Especially in a closed space.
The group behind her turned into a mob. The mob wanted out. Amanda ran for all she was worth, yelling Fire! as she went. Others took up the call, infecting others like hot embers on a hard wind.
She was in better shape than most, because she worked at it and jogged a lot. Even then, it was hard staying ahead of the wave that wanted to overwhelm her and drive her to the bottom of the sea. More than once, somebody almost caught her from behind, drowning men and women wanting to pull her down to get by her.
Amanda got to the outer door and burst through it. For one idle moment, she considered sliding to the side so that she might rest, but feared that others might do the same. At some point, they would come to their senses and realize that they’d been had. Especially when the building stubbornly refused to burn down.
