Cold Read online

  The door rocked on its hinges again, and I kept watch in the mirror, aiming the Glock blind through my armpit, barrel pushed against the back of my jacket. I’d prefer not to shoot over my shoulder, blind, but I could do it if necessary.

  I had a better plan for how this would go, but trying to rely on the calm action of a criminal who was now trying to kick in a bathroom door…

  Well, I was going to cover my bases no matter what, and if he came in here intending to drill me, he’d get drilled first, plan be damned.

  The door rattled again, and I started to wonder if I’d have to unlock it for him, but the fourth time he managed to bust it open, to my relief probably as much as his.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, voice all tuned up from his exertions, but pride maybe a little restored now that he’d broken down the door. He sounded angry either way, but imagine how pissed he’d have been if I’d actually had to unlock it for him.

  “It’s a bathroom,” I said, pretending to run my hands under the water again, not even looking up to dignify his stupid-ass question with my attention. “So, clearly, I’m having a barbecue. The suckling pig will be ready in about twelve hours, though, because it’s a slow roast—”

  I was watching his trigger finger for movement in the mirror through the strands of hair over my eyes. No action there, though; his face was ruddy and getting darker by the moment as he responded to my smartassery. He wore his AR with a strap across his body, but he clearly didn’t know what he was doing with it. The safety was still on.

  Apparently satisfied that the little smartass girl in front of him wasn’t a threat, he let his AR hang in his right hand, which is no damned way to control that sort of weapon. A pro could have done some magic with it one-handed. This guy? He’d be lucky if he managed to keep from shooting his own feet.

  Rolling my eyes as he put a hand on my shoulder, I slapped my hand on his and yanked him as I whirled around, pulling up my Glock as I pirouetted. He was so off balance that he spun, and I grabbed the unsecured barrel of his AR, bringing it across his neck as I kicked his feet from beneath him. I put my Glock against his temple and whispered, “Shhhh.” Then I rested my chin against his trapezius and said, “Hi, I’m Sienna. What’s your name?”

  It took him a second to work out the answer. “Collin.”

  “Let me spell something out for you, Collin, because you strike me as an idiot—your goose is cooked,” I said, watching the half of his face I could see for a reaction while also keeping an eye on the bathroom door. No sign of bad guys beyond, but they’d surely arrive soon to see what was going on with Collin.

  “You might have gotten me,” Collin said, struggling to speak over the AR-15 pushing against his Adam’s apple, “but Todd and Markos aren’t going to go down that easily.”

  “You know who I am?” I tapped the barrel of the Glock against the side of his head and he flinched, because it wasn’t a gentle tap. His back was pressed against me, and it might have been nice if I wasn’t holding him against me while slightly choking him. With a gun at his head.

  “Yeah,” he finally said.

  “After all the people I’ve killed, do you think your friends really worry me?” I asked, still keeping an eye on the lobby.

  “They should,” Collin said, and now he just seemed like he was bragging. “My boys are stone cold, hard mothaf—”

  I took a step back and Collin dropped, deprived of me to hold him up. He choked, AR at his windpipe and struggling to get his feet back beneath him. My back was against the sink, and suddenly I regretted being so incautious about splashing water, because some of the residual I’d left on the counter soaked through the back of my jacket in seconds, chilling my ass.

  “Let’s try this again,” I said, stepping forward so he could stand. I tightened my grip on the AR, and I could tell he was trying to fight it with the hand he had on the weapon’s grip, but failing against my superior strength. “Your ‘boys’ are just that—boys. And probably chickenshits, and useless, if they’re as bad with one of these things as you are.” I waggled the AR barrel against his voice box and he made a gagging noise. “I, on the other hand, am a stone cold, hard motha—well, not what you were going to say, but you get the idea. The sentiment is the same, because I’m gonna make your mommas cry.”

  Collin tried to struggle against the AR barrel at his throat and failed, dismally. “You think you’re so badass. You know what it takes to kill you?”

  “No,” I said, “I only know all the things people have tried to kill me with—and failed. Speaking of.” I thumped him in the side of the head again and pushed the Glock barrel forward, covering the lobby in front of me as I used Collin as a shield. I slowly brought the gun around, making sure that Collin had to hold the AR off his throat with both hands lest he choke. I used his body as a defensive shield as I found my targets, both peering over the bank counter with their ARs pointed. “Hey, bitches.”

  “The hell is she doing here?” one of them—not Todd—asked.

  “Todd,” I said, looking at the other, “you’re clearly the brains of this operation.” I watched Todd’s eyes widen as he realized I’d called him by name, and I smiled a little inside at discomfiting him. “Explain to him what I’m doing here.”

  “She’s here to kill us, man,” Todd said with a dawning horror.

  “Yeah, I’m here to—”

  Wait.

  What?

  “No, I’m not—” I started to say.

  But it was too late.

  The idiots—the absolute idiots—were already swinging their guns around to take aim. Rifles versus my Glock, maybe ten paces between us. They had the cover of a counter, I had the cover of Collin’s body.

  Shit.

  Gunfire exploded through the bank as they opened up on me with everything they had.

  5.

  Olivia

  “Fear of flying?” asked the solicitous, slightly rat-faced man in the business suit sitting next to me.

  I gave him a glance and that was all, looking away after the bare minimum half-second of eye contact I felt like I could get away with. “Not really,” I mumbled.

  “You sure?” He cocked his head, trying to look me in the eyes, and I shifted in my seat—which was in the middle, sandwiching me between him and a lady who had her laptop out and was typing away as we awaited takeoff.

  Maybe I just don’t like you, I thought but didn’t say. Instead I shook my head. Confining places, like being sandwiched between two people like this? They made me feel anxious, like someone had put a set of electric beaters in my innards and started them running.

  “Hm,” he said, looking at me for a few seconds more before turning to look down at his lap. He had a satchel and opened it up, removing a tablet and a pair of earphones. I let out a low sigh of relief that he’d finally decided to leave me alone. It had felt like forever, though the whole exchange had only taken thirty seconds.

  I took a deep breath in through my nose and let it out through my mouth. I repeated that exercise as the flight attendant went through the steps before takeoff, the safety briefing, and finally, the lady next to me in the aisle seat put her computer away and closed her eyes. She didn’t seem to notice the bumping as we took off.

  There was a certain tension in my head already as we lifted off. I tried not to think about Tracy, or anything else that might make it worse—like Tracy—as I put my head back and imitated the woman next to me, closing my eyes and at least pretending to sleep.

  “Something to drink?” one of the flight attendants asked, jarring me out of a light doze. She thrust a hand at me—

  The pretzel bag she was holding crossed a little too close to the proximity field surrounding my body and launched out of her fingers like it had been blasted from a slingshot. It hit the guy next to me, engrossed in his movie, in the cheek.

  “Ow!” He slapped his face, a great, stinging red welt already showing on his skin. “What the hell?”

  I looked at him with wi
de eyes. “Oh, wow. Uhm.”

  “I am so sorry, sir,” the flight attendant said, flushing bright red. “I don’t know how that happened.”

  He picked up the pretzels, which had rebounded off his cheek to land in his lap, staring at the bag as though it were conspiring against him. “It’s fine.” He opened and closed his mouth experimentally, and I wondered how hard it had hit him. He popped the bag open and a puff of crushed pretzel powder bloomed out, stirring him into a coughing fit. “How…?”

  “Here,” the flight attendant said, reaching over me to hand him another bag, so apologetically. “Would you like something to drink?”

  “Diet Coke,” the man said, taking the offered pretzels.

  The flight attendant fussed about the cart, hurriedly pouring him a drink, forgetting all about me. “Here you go,” she said, trying to carefully lean past me to hand it to him.

  I felt that little twist inside me again as she leaned a little too close. Her hand passed my face, only inches away—

  The Diet Coke launched from her fingertips as if she’d thrown it, and he turned just in time to catch it head-on. It splattered, almost slow-mo, ice bouncing off his nose and eyelids, his lips puckered in displeasure as it splashed all over him. “What the f—”

  “I am so sorry, sir,” the flight attendant said, now flustered almost beyond coherence.

  I was caught somewhere between a nervous twitter and mortification, but somehow, I managed to say nothing. I might have let out a little squeak, though.

  “Napkins,” he said, brown liquid just dripping down his face, spluttering his words as he tried to blink cola out of his eyes. His lap was filled with ice and Coke, and the bulkhead and window behind him was drenched. How had a small cupful of Diet Coke made that much of a mess?

  The flight attendant, apparently trying to redeem herself for her last two errors, lunged at the cart, coming up with a handful of napkins a moment later. She turned to thrust them at him, once again crossing my body—

  I swear I didn’t mean to do it. It just happened.

  The napkins flew out of her hand as though caught by a hundred-mile-an-hour gust. The dripping man disappeared behind them as they papered over him. A few strays fluttered around him like oversized confetti.

  I put my hands over my mouth to suppress whatever came out. My eyes must have been as big as pie plates.

  “I am so, so, sorry, sir,” the flight attendant said, almost miming my reaction exactly. Her hands were over her mouth, too, and boy, did she look red.

  The man, for his part, was completely covered by the napkins, and serene, as though he’d somehow died under them. When he finally spoke, it was muffled, a tone of surrender. “Just leave me alone.”

  The flight attendant looked like she wanted to say something to that, but no, she didn’t dare, so she turned her attention to me. Still several shades of scarlet, she managed to stammer out, “Would you like some—”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said, waving her off as I tried to regain my composure. The lady in the aisle seat between us, who had woken up sometime between the first barrage of pretzels and the final papering, shook her head before the attendant even had a chance to say anything to her.

  Dejected, the flight attendant popped the brakes on her cart and rolled it on, awfully quickly if I wasn’t imagining it.

  “Hey, slow down,” the attendant on the other side of the cart said. Nope, wasn’t imagining it.

  “I am never going to fly this airline again,” the man said. He was still covered in napkins, and Diet Coke had leaked through, the paper absorbing them as he reached up and mopped his brow. An eye appeared as he cleared a few of them off into a pile on his tray table. He tossed the napkins disgustedly. “I think she did that on purpose.”

  I nodded seriously, not daring to show anything I was thinking. I snatched up the in-flight magazine from the seat pocket in front of me and started reading an article about Bora Bora, which sounded like a better place to be right now than where I was, sitting next to some poor man who I’d just bombarded with pretzels, cola and napkins in turn. There was a pulsing beat of guilt running through my mind; I tried my best to ignore it.

  The rest of the flight passed in unsurprising silence, and I read the magazine cover to cover. The touchdown was little more than a bump, the taxiing only took a few moments, and soon enough we were at the gate. The man next to me had crammed his napkins down in his airsickness bag and they sat on his lap, awaiting a pickup that had never come. The flight attendant had never returned to our row to collect them, or anything else from him, and his face was still red, and he looked like he was really simmering by now.

  As soon as the fasten seatbelt sign went off, I sprang out of my seat and grabbed my bag, ready to get the hell off this plane before I caused any more trouble. Soon I’d be far, far from this humiliating scene, and no one would have to know what I’d done.

  “Hey,” the guy next to me said, and I turned just in time to see him reaching out to tap me on the shoulder.

  “No, don’t—” I started to say.

  Too late.

  His hand entered my personal bubble just as the rising tide of my panic at seeing him reaching out for me hit a spike. His hand shot back as though he’d just been burned, my momentum powers launching the back of his hand squarely into his nose, which crumpled and squirted blood onto his already sodden shirt.

  He fell back into his seat, eyes squinting as though he were about to cry. “What the hell?”

  I didn’t even bother to say anything. The aisle in front of me had cleared, and the woman next to me was already hurrying out. I took one last look at him staring at me accusingly, as though I’d set fire to his crotch and doused him in gasoline, and shrugged, my face as red as though it were on fire.

  Then I bailed out, hurrying up the clear aisle and not daring to look back. “Thanks for flying with us,” a peppy attendant said—clearly not the one whose day I’d ruined.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, bustling into the jet bridge before anyone else could say anything to me. Because what else could you say after something like that?

  6.

  Sienna

  Gunfire rattled through my body like a hundred miniature seismic shocks. Sixty rounds of .223 went off at 155 decibels per round, sustained, which was roughly the volume of a jet engine taking off. Except penned into a concrete and glass bank.

  That lobby rattled around me like an angry thunder god in my eardrums. I dragged Collin out of the door frame at the first shot, pushing him to the ground and plopping down on top of him, less to spare myself the impact of hitting the floor hard and more to save his life.

  Probably. I mean, it didn’t hurt that I spared myself from busting an elbow.

  “Aughhhhhh!” Collin’s scream was drowned under the staccato rip of bullets. Pieces of drywall and chips of wood showered us—well, mostly me, since I was atop him, my Glock pressed to the side of his head. He was so nonplussed I doubted he noticed the cool metal against his temple.

  A sting at the top of my scalp made me squint my eyes and suck in a breath to try and subdue the pain. It was minor, but present, a little trickle of blood starting under my hair where shrapnel had punctured my skin. Todd and Not-Todd were at the stage of firing where their muzzles had climbed well above head level, their shots no longer a danger to me, Collin, or anyone on this floor.

  I didn’t hear the click when the first magazine ran dry, nor the second. In fact, I barely noticed that they’d stopped shooting, my hearing was so jacked up. A quick look up confirmed that, indeed, the ceiling above the bathroom door was completely shredded, the ceiling tiles missing massive chunks, the silvery ducting I’d come in through riddled with black, shadowy bullet holes.

  “I’m…I think I’m shot,” Collin said, a little muffled beneath my hearing damage. He writhed beneath me.

  “No, you’re not,” I said, taking a quick assessment of my own body to make sure I hadn’t taken a ricochet in the fracas. I listened
for sounds of Todd and Not-Todd reloading, but I couldn’t hear much beyond a prodigious ringing in my ears and a couple of whines from the hostages in the lobby. Whom I’d forgotten in all the excitement. Luckily, the shooting had been directed in almost the opposite direction from them. Hopefully none of the rounds over-penetrated through the walls into other buildings, though it seemed likely that the NYPD had evacuated the area inside the cordon.

  “I’ve been shot by a high-powered rifle!” Collin said, touching his ears as he let out a soft moan.

  I lifted myself off him and took a peek for myself, pushing my weight to my knees so I could straddle his back, and running my free hand over his torso and side. I found the “high-powered rifle” wound pretty quickly—it was a scratch on his right bicep from a stray splinter. “You’ve been grazed by a wood chip.”

  Collin stopped squirming. “Really?”

  “Yes, really, you loser,” I said. “And as an aside, if you don’t want to get shot, maybe look into a different occupation than criminality, because it really raises your odds of catching lead. Moron.” I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to his feet. “Todd, Not-Todd—” I raised my voice so they could hopefully hear me “—we need to talk, and quick, because the SWAT team is going to kick down that door in about ten seconds thanks to your dumbass antics.”

  “What?” Not-Todd asked, at the top of his lungs.

  “I said if you don’t listen to me, you’re going to die.” I shoved Collin at the wrecked door frame and raised my voice so they could have heard me out on the street. “The cops are going to bust down the door in seconds, so unless you want to be dead in the next sixty clock-ticks, throw out your weapons and put your hands behind your heads!”

  “You’ll just kill us anyway!” Todd shouted back. Maybe he wasn’t the brains of the operation after all.

  “I don’t kill unarmed men, Todd,” I said, hanging back behind Collin in case they’d reloaded. “But I’m coming out this door using your friend for cover in about five seconds, because I want this mess finished before the SWAT team comes in. If you’re still holding a gun, I’ll end you myself. If you’re not, we can put an end to this peacefully, without the need for anyone’s brains to leave their skulls.”