Six feet.
Her motion caught his attention. He looked up, realized he’d been suckered, lifted his pistol.
Kellen shot. Missed. Damn that left hand!
Seven feet.
At its full extension, the lift ground to a halt.
She was exposed, hanging above him like a piñata.
He aimed.
She shot again. Blew a hole in his thigh.
His shot went wide. He screamed in agony, crumpled to his knee.
She shot, hit his chest.
The impact caught him square on the Kevlar vest, knocking him onto his back. In one smooth motion, he rolled and flipped, raised furious red-rimmed eyes to her, supported his gun hand with his other hand and aimed.
She prepared to drop, knowing she could never outrun a bullet shot by a master marksman.
From above, something large and square slammed down on his head, knocking him flat. Knocking him unconscious.
What? A cardboard box. He’d been hit by a cardboard box. Car manuals spilled out, dozens of them, thick, heavy, leather and paper and weight.
From the loft above, Birdie said, “Take that, you bastard.” Her voice was no more than a croak.
Kellen stashed her pistol, supported herself with both hands and swung her feet down. She landed flat-footed and ready to fight.
Mitch was unmoving, a pool of blood beneath his thigh.
With her pistol in her right hand and her left hand supporting her aim, she approached him.
None of her guys should ever be underestimated.
Still in that hoarse voice, Birdie said, “The box was full of old car manuals. Probably weighed forty pounds. He’s not getting up.”
With her foot, Kellen pushed the box off Mitch’s back.
His neck was crooked sideways.
Kellen felt for his carotid artery.
No pulse.
“You broke his neck.” Kellen looked up at Birdie.
“Good for me.” Birdie used the handrail to lower herself to the loft’s metal mesh floor. “Because he damned near killed me.”
A drop of blood splatted on the floor beside Kellen.
The right side of Birdie’s face was split open, bruised and shiny like a ripe eggplant.
Kellen holstered her pistol, grabbed the first aid kit off the wall and ran up the stairs. She knelt beside Birdie. “What did he do?”
“Came in all friendly. I turned my back. He smacked me on the side of the head with a tire iron.” Birdie’s cheek was swelling so fast one eye was shut and she spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Dragged me up here while I was half-conscious. I fought. He gagged me, tied me up. He knew you’d be coming for help, but you got here too soon, before he thoroughly secured me. Thank God. He went after you and I screamed through the gag. I spent too much time getting myself free. I’m sorry, Captain. Dropping that box on him was the best I could do.”
Kellen supported Birdie and helped her recline, inch by inch. “You killed him. What else do you want to do to him?”
“Torture. Hot needles under his fingernails.” Birdie closed her one eye. “Did you call 911?”
“I can’t. Mitch cut us off from the world.” Kellen pressed a gauze pad to Birdie’s head to staunch the bleeding and used a roll of gauze to hold it in place.
Birdie’s eye opened. “Then I will attempt to survive this night. Wrap me warm. Put a pillow under my head.”
“I know what I’m doing!” Kellen snapped, but she wasn’t really snapping at Birdie. She was trying to explain…
“You’ve got to leave me. You’ve got to go finish this.” Birdie took a breath. “Blanket. Pillow. Go.”
Kellen had never abandoned a fallen comrade before. Not on any tour of any place in the world. But she had to leave Birdie. She stripped the blankets off Birdie’s cot and gently wrapped her, rolled her so she was cocooned in warmth. She lifted Birdie’s head and deftly slid the pillow beneath her. She pressed a kiss on the least-swollen side of Birdie’s head and whispered, “Stay alive. I’ll be back. Stay alive.”
“I’ll try.” But Birdie’s voice was less than a wheeze, and she didn’t move.
Kellen ran down the stairs, stopped by Mitch and touched his cheek. He was already cooling. It had been the fast, brutal passing that he deserved. But damn. He’d been her comrade in battle. She died a little inside to know he was gone.
Then, ruthlessly practical, she reloaded her pistol, placed it in her holster. As backup, she found his firearm, reloaded it and stored it in her boot.
She had no way to call for help, no time to find Max for help. She was alone.
37
Kellen ran out into the silent night, where black streamers of clouds clawed across the sky, grasping the stars, then releasing them. She climbed into her ATV and drove toward the castle, toward Carson Lennex’s tower room, where light radiated like a beacon. Time and worry oppressed her, and the taste of grim fear filled her mouth.
After such a delay, after so much time spent suffering under Nils Brooks’s hands, was Carson Lennex even alive?
She let herself in a side entrance, ran the dim, silent corridors toward the elevators that led to the private suites. She pushed the up button.
Nothing moved. Nothing lit.
A step behind her had her pulling her pistol and spinning around.
Sheri Jean stood like a disconsolate ghost. “Everything’s broken. The elevators, the intercoms, the house phones. Some of the lights are running on generator. Some are not working at all. I can’t call or text on my cell phone. Kellen, what’s happening?”
Kellen had included Sheri Jean on her list of possible candidates for the Librarian. She was so smart, with an edge that marked her as a possible predator. But this Sheri Jean was frightened, seeking direction. “We’re in a deep pile of trouble with the guy who killed Lloyd Magnuson and cut off Priscilla’s hands.”
Sheri Jean whimpered. “Can you fix this?” She gestured at the elevators.
In Kellen’s mind, she paced off the electrical schematic and shook her head. “I don’t know enough about wiring to guarantee I won’t electrocute myself in a spectacular way, and I need to handle this situation in an unfried manner. Are any of your staff here?”
“Russell’s at the front door. He won’t leave. Frances is manning the front desk. She won’t leave. I convinced her to take cover underneath. They’re the only ones of my crew that I know of. If anyone else is here, they’re hiding.”
“That’s probably best. Listen, I need your help.” Reluctantly, Kellen said, “Mitch Nyugen tried to kill my friend Birdie.”
Sheri Jean knew Kellen had recommended Mitch as an employee. She didn’t try to shame her. Bless Sheri Jean for that. “Birdie’s alive?” she asked. “Can I help her?”
“She’s in the loft in the maintenance building. She’s bleeding. Use the CB radio in Annie’s office to call for help.”
Sheri Jean’s eyes widened. “A CB radio? What am I, a trucker? I have no idea how to use a CB radio!”
“It’s not hard, you just…”
Sheri Jean got that old Sheri Jean scowl of disdain.
“All right, who knows?”
“Annie!”
“And me.” And no doubt Max, and he could be anywhere.
Sheri Jean snapped to attention. “I can stabilize Birdie long enough for someone to get her to the hospital. My first aid training is up-to-date.”
“Thank you!” Impulsively, Kellen grabbed Sheri Jean and kissed her cheek. “Run now, be careful, and if you find anybody who can use the CB, get them to Annie’s office. We need emergency services. We need law enforcement.”
“Right!” Sheri Jean left Kellen standing in front of the sabotaged elevators.
Kellen checked her phone. No messages from anyone. Certainly no message from Max.
She couldn’t warn him. She couldn’t get his help.
In her mind, Kellen re-created the resort’s floor plan, each corner, each line, each lettered word and carefully created detail. Only one stairway led to Carson Lennex’s tower, and that dumped her in the suite’s entry. Nils would have that covered. But the old dumbwaiter shaft was still there and hopefully the dumbwaiter mechanism itself. Maybe she could make that work.
Scrub that. She had to make that work.
For access, she went to the first-floor hospitality storeroom. It was dark; the generator’s power didn’t extend beyond the necessities. She pulled her tactical flashlight and shone it at the wall and found herself staring at…nothing. When use of the dumbwaiter had been discontinued, the resort had walled off the entrance.
She rubbed the scar on her forehead and again concentrated on seeing the resort’s floor plan. In the past, the dumbwaiter also could be accessed from the fourth-story linen closet. Maybe she’d have better luck there.
She shed her coat; she didn’t want the weight, the bulk or the warmth. She made sure the fastenings on her Kevlar vest were secure, then secured the buttons on her white button-up shirt and tucked the tails into her jeans. She started up the first stairway she found and ran up three flights of stairs.
Thank God for Mara and her pitiless step-climbing workouts.
On the fourth floor, Kellen used her pass card to enter the dark linen closet and shone her flashlight around. Bracketed shelves loaded with linens covered the place where the dumbwaiter access should be. She threw out her hands. “Could it ever once be easy?” she asked the folded sheets and towels. She placed the flashlight pointed straight up on the floor and set to work shoving the linens onto the floor. When the housekeepers returned, they’d curse her name, but in her head a chorus sang, Hurry. Hurry. No time. No time.
When the top shelf was empty, she repeated with the second shelf, then the third…and there it was, a cabinet, thirty inches by thirty-six inches, with a handle at the bottom to lift the panel up and out of sight. She removed the fourth shelf, shoved the door up and looked into a narrow wooden box that had once discreetly carried food and dishes up and down from the eighth-floor suite. In fact…reaching in, she pulled out a single stained white plate festooned with an ancient bread stick and a tarnished silver fork and placed them on the floor.
She released the brake and tried the electrical controls; they were useless in the blackout and perhaps broken with age. So she pushed down on the bottom of the dumbwaiter. It slid down, and four stories above, the old iron wheel that supported the cart squealed in ungreased anguish.
She froze.
To rescue Carson Lennex, she needed the element of surprise.
Slowly, delicately, she pushed the dumbwaiter down again. Again the wheel squalled.
The wheel was attached at the eighth-floor ceiling outside Carson’s suite. She was so screwed, and yet—even with the noise, an archaic and discontinued dumbwaiter was her best bet. Inch by inch, she pushed the cart down, grinding her teeth at each metallic wail. At last, she could see the top of the box and the steel cables that supported it. They ran up to the wheel and down again; one raised it, one lowered it. On this end, things looked sturdy enough. She stuck her head in the shaft, pulled out her tactical flashlight and shone it up into the darkness. She couldn’t see twenty feet up, much less view the ceiling where the wheel was secured. Well secured. She hoped. If it wasn’t, during the fall, she’d have a long time to think before she landed in the resort’s basement and all the equipment from above came hurdling onto her head.
When the top of the dumbwaiter was even with the bottom of the cabinet door, she set the brake and checked her equipment. Her pistol rested in her side holster. She reloaded Mitch’s pistol and slid it back into her boot. Her knife’s leather holster was buckled on her belt. Beneath her shirt, she wore her Kevlar vest, and she used the clip on her flashlight to connect it to the brim of her hat. Gripping both cables tightly in her fists, she eased her way onto the top of the box.
The wheel moaned in protest.
She stood up and began to work the cables.
The box moved up a few inches.
The wheel squealed, high and shrill.
She stopped. Started again.
More squealing. No matter how gently she moved the cables, the wheel complained.
Nils might not know exactly what was happening, but he had to hear that and he was far too smart not to investigate.
On the other hand, if she grasped both the cables and climbed them, she would in theory reach the eighth floor with a minimum of noise.
That idea was a winner.
Okay, it stank, but Carson Lennex didn’t have time for her to think of another option.
She had been through basic training. She knew how to climb, and Mara’s constant, ruthless full-body training had kept Kellen in practice. She didn’t usually ascend four stories without a safety net, but—hey, no guts, no glory, and she didn’t want a dead movie actor laid at her guilty doorstep.
Gripping both cables, she leaned into them, wrapped them close, used her shoulders and arms and legs to lift herself into position and began to climb. The mechanical wheel whispered its protests now, a secret squeal every time she gripped and shifted. The metal cable ripped at her palms and caught on her clothes. Thick, sticky old grease clung to her face and hands. The narrow shaft was stuffy; sweat gathered on her face and beneath her Kevlar vest, and little rivulets trickled down her skin and itched like scampering spiders. Or maybe they were scampering spiders…
Climb faster.
She knew when she passed the fifth floor; a cabinet door like the one on the fourth floor marked the spot.
So she could mark her progress.
Sixth floor.
Seventh floor.
She was now thirty feet above the fourth floor and the shelves where she’d started. Her shoulders throbbed, her arms shook, her legs clasped the cables and her hands were bleeding. A sense of urgency overrode the aches and pains, yet she moved slowly and steadily. Her uncle used to tell the story about the two bulls in the field. The young one said, “Let’s run down to the pasture and screw some of those cows.” And the old one said, “Let’s walk and screw them all.”
Kellen was close; now wasn’t the time to expend all her energy attaining her first goal, the suite itself. Once she was there, she had Nils Brooks to contend with. She knew her opponent, she’d fought her opponent and Nils was a combatant whose skills surpassed her own. She did hope not to do battle with him. She hoped merely to kill him. But she had to be prepared for any eventuality.
She looked up, and at last, the flashlight illuminated the old black iron wheel where her cables looped and held. The closed cabinet door before her led into Carson Lennex’s bedroom…if no remodels had been done since the floor plan had been created.
No cabinet hardware existed on the shaft side.
Why would there be? Only a fool would come up the dumbwaiter shaft.
She gripped the cables with her left hand and wound her legs around them, and with her right hand pulled her knife from its holster. Leaning forward, she slid the tip of her knife into the crack between the door and the sill and pried the door up a crack. Light leaked into the shaft. As she killed the flashlight and slid it into her holster, she wondered—when she opened the door, what would she find?
From far inside the suite, she faintly heard a man’s muffled scream.
She unsnapped her holster, cleared the pistol’s safety, leaned in again and lifted the cabinet door inch by inch. She heard nothing. Then…the faint sound of music. Classical.
Full orchestra. Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” Music to torture a man by.
The door was lifted enough for her to see that half of the opening was blocked by a tall piece of furniture—Carson’s chest of drawers—and the other half faced a wall thre
e feet away. She knew where she was now—in the short corridor between Carson’s bathroom and bedroom.
She faintly smelled cigarette smoke. The overture swelled, and as it did, as cannons blasted, she heard another scream of agony.
In every battle, there came that moment when your mind screamed, Go! Go! Go! This was that moment. Kellen shoved the cabinet the rest of the way to the top, holstered her knife and launched herself sideways through the gap.
The cables rocked back and forth.
The wheel squalled in protest.
Kellen got stuck at butt level. This indignity was likely to get her killed. She grasped the forward edge of the chest and dragged herself forward. In some horrible comedic parody, she fell into the room and scrambled to her feet. She pulled her Glock and peered around the chest of drawers.
The bedroom was empty. The glass shelves that had held the statues were smashed.
Violence. Not good.
She needed backup. Did she have it?
She pulled her phone, glanced at it.
Her text to Max hadn’t gone through. That was her mistake, one she would dearly rue.
She fought alone.
The scent of burning tobacco was stronger here, wafting up the stairs from the living room.
She recognized her own battle readiness—a strong heartbeat, deep breaths, each sense hyperaware—and the slightest tremble in her fingers.
In a crouch, she moved toward the spiral stairway. She pulled Mitch’s pistol out of her boot and placed it, ready to fire, on the top step to use as a backup. Quietly, slowly, she crept down first one step, then another, and as she moved, the living room opened, inch by inch, to her vision. With her pistol raised, she eased sideways to get a greater view of the room. Eased sideways again and saw a shapely leg molded in tight black spandex, and a foot in a lime mesh running shoe propped up on the coffee table.
Something about that was so familiar—and so wrong.
A woman’s voice said, “Cigarettes are bad for my health, and good when it comes to making a point. Tell me where the hieroglyphs are.”