Dragon: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 37) Page 4

  “What are you going to do?” Hilton asked with just a little alarm as we pulled around the back. The Save Much was an anchor tenant of this particular strip center, with the largest retail space in the building and taking up the far left side of it. Behind the furniture store was a wooded area, and the parking lot had three whole cars in it, indicating this was not a hotly trafficked place.

  “So little trust from my associates,” I said, checking my sidearm as I opened the door, as though it had vanished in transit. Of course it was still there, still loaded. One of the cars back here was an older model Ford Taurus, a sedan that would easily fit the vague and fuzzy mold we had for the getaway car. I looked at the tires; they were a little dusty, but not out of line with what you'd find on any car, really. No proof there.

  “Maybe it's you checking your gun as you get out of the car that instills so very little faith in me,” Hilton said.

  “That should absolutely instill confidence in you,” I said, flashing a grin as I eyed the loading dock at the back of the store. “It says, 'I'm not going to get blindsided.' Which is important for you, too, partner, since without me you're a lot more likely to get wiped out by a stray meta.”

  Hilton cringed, and I shut the door on her as I leapt up onto the loading dock. There was an overhead metal cargo door, and a standard swing-open person one. I tested the handled one first.

  Unlocked. Lucky me.

  Slipping into the back of the furniture store, I found myself in a darkened storeroom. Dim lamps were lit overhead, giving me a hazy view of a seemingly never-ending canvas of furniture, furniture, and more furniture. Couches lay to my left, dining room tables to my right. Beds and mattresses stood in order like files in a cabinet at my two o'clock. Rows of end tables were stacked neatly at my ten o'clock.

  Not a soul in sight, I reflected, checking the shape of the building. It ended a couple hundred feet ahead of me, big swinging doors leading out to the showroom, where light flowed in as though the rest of the building was a normally lit space instead of being on power reserve like this room was. To my right, past the dining room tables, there seemed to be a room built into the corner, likely for the break room and employee bathrooms.

  I headed in that direction, my jacket pulled back so I could draw my pistol quickly if need be.

  There was a lot of furniture in this place, but most of it seemed to be of the same exact product lines. I passed eight of the same dining room table in a row, clueing me in that it was definitely mass manufactured. The room was a little too dim and my eye for aesthetics a little too weak to tell, but I suspected that the rest of the furniture in the place was of a similar bent. Save Much had very few manufacturers, and just kept in stock the most popular SKUs of furniture, but in bulk.

  I listened in the dark, but the only sound I heard was the sound of muzak playing out in the showroom. Hopefully Hilton was in by now, casing the place and maybe even kicking up a little attention. If she caught anyone's interest in a bad way, I suspected I'd see a corresponding flurry of activity as someone came back here into the break room area to warn whoever was in charge.

  I paused, looking around again. There was no manager's office back here. Maybe it was out front?

  What did I know about furniture store design? Maybe there was no manager's office. Either way, I kept on target, making sure my footsteps stayed soft and quiet.

  When I was about twenty feet from the “break room,” I started to hear voices. They were raised, and not speaking English.

  I kept my hand on my pistol, but I didn't draw it yet. Technically, I was out of bounds here, though them not locking their door was hardly my fault. I didn't have probable cause, but this wasn't exactly trespassing, either. All a store employee had to do was ask me to leave and I'd be compelled to do just that, bounced until I got a warrant to search the place. Since all I'd seen so far was tons of furniture, I didn't have a lot of legal ground to stand on. Maybe a judge would nod and approve a warrant based on the thin gruel of the van being parked here overnight, but maybe not. The kidnappers could have just as easily decided to sleep in the van and picked the most convenient parking lot they could find.

  So I needed to confirm or deny that this place was linked to the crime, and quickly, before I got caught. Relying on the kindness of strangers as I prowled around the back room of their store may have worked for Blanche DuBois, but Sienna Nealon didn't tend to put her faith in that. I counted on the viciousness of people, and had seldom been disappointed.

  The voices grew louder as I got closer, but my ability to interpret whatever language they were speaking was still nil, so the increased volume didn't help me a bit. Someone was mad, but whether it was a kidnapper's boss for the failure of his hires or just a furniture store owner mad about low sales was up in the air. I wasn't much of a linguist, either, but I was able to rule out Spanish, German and a few Western European languages from being in play here.

  My foot hung on something, and I nearly tripped. Stopping just in time, I looked down to find a rolled-up rug that had been felled from a plastic-wrapped, stacked forest of them. Lacking meta reflexes, I would have gone down like a tree. As it was, the tip of my shoe squeaked on the plastic.

  I paused, listening, but heard nothing save for the angry imprecations of whoever was in the room ahead. They'd left the door very slightly open, just a crack, and light flooded out into the dim storeroom. I stayed very, very still just a few more seconds to make sure that, no, they hadn't stopped whatever was going on in there while I minded my footing.

  Beginning my creep anew, I sidled up to the door. This part of the store didn't seem to have air conditioning, but a residual trace must have seeped in from the showroom floor, because it wasn't as desperately hot and stuffy as outside. I stacked up outside the door, debating whether to draw my gun. I really couldn't, though; legally I would be on quicksand to do so before I had a reasonable element of threat presented, especially given the legally questionable circumstances of my search here.

  So I put my back to the wall, feeling the sweat dotting my back press into my blouse as I listened to the angry, foreign words of the ranting speaker within. I listened, listened...

  I was getting nothing from this except older. After about ten seconds, I decided to just press on. Planting a hand on the door, I shoved it open and stepped inside.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I stepped into a room that did indeed have the characteristics one might find in a break room. The muffled speaker I'd heard from outside was one of three guys inside. They were clustered around a beaten-up circular table that looked like it was remaindered from World War II era furniture. An old fridge waited in the corner, and gray, beaten cabinets lined two walls.

  That was where the comparisons to a break room stopped, however.

  There was a bulletin board to my left, but instead of the normal, OSHA-approved notices, there were pushpins securing full color pictures of a house in the country, a familiar BMW, and head shots of our victim, Cathy Jang-Peters.

  “That's probable cause,” I said, drawing my Glock as the three men in the break room exploded into action around me.

  The two to my left – the ones listening – were dressed in suits, a little too high-class to be furniture salesmen in this joint. They both went for their belts, and it didn't take a genius law-woman to figure out they were going for their guns.

  I got to mine first.

  “No!” I shouted at both of them, my Glock aimed at the chest of the first one. “Don't do it!”

  The last thing I needed was an agent-involved shooting right now, but the good news was that I'd pulled before either of them.

  The bad news was that the boss man, standing to my right, didn't go for a gun.

  The worse news? His eyes started to glow.

  Like fire.

  “Oh, sh–”

  I didn't even get the entire word out before the guy snapped toward me, his body distorting like something out of a horror movie.

  Out of the corn
er of my eye I could see the guys to my left taking advantage of the distraction and drawing their guns; to my right the metahuman was charging. My pistol was pointed in the wrong direction to deal with him, both hands on it, ready to fire, and I split my decision just a second too long–

  The metahuman kidnapper, now looking like a dark silhouette in the middle of the well-lit room, barreled into me before I could even raise an arm in defense. I felt the power of the strike run through my body as my feet left the ground and I flew through the air. I smashed through the drywall and tumbled into the darkness of the warehouse, my only guide the light spilling in from the break room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  My landing was hard, but broken by a couple of recliners. Still hurt, pain spasming down my back, but I retained consciousness.

  I lost my gun, though. Pretty typical for when one has been thrown through a wall, I would imagine.

  This wasn't the kind of hit one just popped up from. Something in the vicinity of my rib cage was badly bruised, if not broken, though I hadn't heard anything snap during my tumble or landing, probably because the sound of me crashing through furniture covered it up.

  Numbness danced down the fingertips of my left hand. There was a clouded darkness around me, and not just from the lack of light in the storeroom. I'd taken a bump to the head and was probably concussed. I recognized the sensation. I should, by now; I'd certainly been hit in the head enough.

  Something dark and inky appeared out of the darkness, punctuated by two bright spots of fire, like torches glowing in the night.

  It was the bad guy, standing atop a footstool.

  “Oh, look,” I said, “it's the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.”

  He cocked his head at me, distracted by my brilliant banter and terrible punning. Then he looked down and realized he was standing on an ottoman. As the recognition dawned in his fiery eyes, I kicked it out from under him.

  The big guy took a tumble, slamming to the ground. Either the clarity of my vision improved, or his closeness made it easier to see him, but either way, suddenly I knew what I was looking at.

  He'd transformed – transmogrified, really – from a normal-looking dude into some sort of Kafka-esque beetle with flame eyes. He had blackened shell plates across his chest, and the same sort of material formed a helm on his head. I couldn't see the rest of him, but I suspected he was similarly clad all over, his metahuman power apparently to grow armor plating.

  As he hit the ground, I swung a kick at him. It didn't do much against that armor – it made a solid noise, like I'd banged my steel-toed boot against a metal drum – but it did send him sliding away into the legs of a dining table that promptly broke, thumping the tabletop into him.

  “Gonna squash you like the cockroach you are,” I muttered, ears still ringing. I swung an arm down and planted a hand to throw myself back to my feet.

  Thudding footsteps in the dark prompted me to abandon that plan. The two other guys were just beyond my landing zone, and I could see them raising their guns in the dark.

  I flung myself over and behind a nearby armoire. The gunshots exploded in the cavernous storeroom like summer thunder ripping off next to my ear. The flashes were like lightning in the dark, strobing brightly, blinding me. I had my fingers in my ears, huddled behind a thick piece of furniture, getting showered by splinters thrown off by each shot.

  “Nothing is ever easy,” I said, fumbling at the small of my back for my spare pistol. It was a personal weapon, a Sig Sauer P365 I'd bought after getting a chance to try the weapon out in Nashville. It was fully loaded with the twelve-round magazine, ready to rock. I waited for the fire to subside enough that I could lean out and take my shot.

  It didn't subside.

  The gunmen had training. One was keeping the pressure on me, and as soon as he stopped to reload, the other guy started pouring it on. I could tell they were circling around, trying to flank my cover so they could bust a cap in my ass without an armoire to stop them. It was good tactics.

  It was also not the sort of thing your typical street thug kidnapper would do without having to at least yell out the plan first.

  These guys did it without a word spoken between them. Unless there was a telepath linking their minds, I was dealing with professional soldiers. Ex-cops, at least. Someone with training that was not to be found on your garden-variety crook.

  I had to think fast, and unfortunately, thanks to the fuzz in my brain, I came up with nothing good. I'd need to open up on whoever came into my line of fire, and I'd have to do it quickly because his partner would be lining up a second or so later. I'd need to make a split shot; kill one of them or at least drive him behind cover, then bring my gun around one hundred and eighty degrees and take out the second attacker.

  Oh, and there was still a beetle-shelled, fire-eyed metahuman somewhere in the mix, probably getting up from where I'd waylaid him with nothing but some irritation to show for my gambit.

  “Just another day in the life,” I muttered, listening to the gunfire coming from my right. My guess was the guy to my left was just about to circle into view, and I made ready, preparing myself to switch fields of fire in case I judged wrong. Hopefully my metahuman speed would save me here.

  It didn't.

  As the guy came around to my left, I lined up my shot, putting the three dots on the sight in perfect alignment and squeezing the Sig's trigger. He jumped back before my first shot even left the barrel, though, wary and wise to my game. My bullets went harmlessly past him, my targeting lined up with where he should have been, now desperately off from where he actually was.

  Once I knew he was committed to jumping back, and that he'd land off balance, I swung my gun around to deal with the other guy.

  I didn't make it.

  The armoire shattered as the metahuman in the equation, Mr. Firebeetle Bailey, smashed through it and wrapped a thick, armored wrist around my neck. An oily smell flooded my nasal passages as he gripped me tight in a choke hold. Out of the corner of my eye I caught motion as the flanker lined up his own shot.

  It was easy. He was ten feet away and I was pinned against Firebeetle Bailey.

  I was as good as dead.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When you've got a hard arm pressed against your windpipe, there's not a lot you can do about it, especially if you're seated. Sure, there were a range of solid Jiu-Jitsu type throws and holds I could – and would – employ given a few seconds of time to act, but the tightness around my throat and the gun pointed straight at me told me I did not have seconds.

  Without anything else to enter the equation, X plus Y equaled I'm cooked.

  Staccato bursts of gunfire lit the room and I tensed unintentionally, girding myself uselessly against the bullets that were coming my way.

  But they didn't come my way. The flashes of the gunshots went off, illuminating the scene in stark colors.

  The gunman in front of me danced like someone had hooked a car battery up to his junk and was giving him the full jolt. He dropped a couple seconds later, but the gunfire continued unabated as I swept my gaze toward the source of the shots–

  Hilton, coming into the room like a boss. Shit yeah, millennial. You show them.

  I took advantage of the momentary distraction posed by my gun-toting colleague and reached up, planting my Sig against the head of Firebeetle Bailey. I shot twice before he smacked the gun out of my hand. Then he started to tighten his grip around my neck, and I had a bad feeling I knew what was next.

  Decapitation. Or a broken spine.

  That wouldn't do at all.

  I reached up, grabbing him firmly by the back of his neck, and jerked it down with all my weight. He was braced for pressure on his arm; a sudden, desperate, full-force yank on the top of his head? Well, he wasn't balanced for that.

  He countered by trying to drag me back up, but I was ready for it. He lifted me off the ground just enough for me to get my feet beneath me. As soon as I did, I let the natural pendulum swing of momentum
drop me back until all my weight and part of his was on the balls of my feet.

  Then I leapt with everything I had, and suddenly he was riding the rocket of Sienna Nealon as we flew across the room.

  I wasn't sitting idle as we launched through the storeroom, though. He still had a death grip on my neck, though it loosened somewhat in surprise when I sent us both flying. He had the most leverage, and all I had was a momentary distraction. I used it by adjusting my grip, shoving my hands between his arm and my throat, ramming my fingers up with all my meta strength.

  I did a little cosmetic damage to the skin around my throat, but nothing too serious, and my fingers had snaked inside his chokehold, creating a small barrier to him choking me by the time we came in for a landing.

  And by landing, I mean we hit the back wall of the building, Firebeetle Bailey first.

  I slammed into him a second later, feeling absolutely zero give in his armored hide. He didn't so much as grunt as he absorbed the impact of me. Another second, and we started to tumble down.

  Taking full advantage of this shift in the momentum, I thrust my feet out again and hit the wall behind us with both heels, pushing us both off. This time we tumbled, and Firebeetle did an unwitting somersault, putting him beneath me as we crashed into a pile of dressers. Wood shattered and groaned.

  He did not let go of me, though. He kept that arm anchored around my neck, that same oily scent filling my nose.

  That was okay. I ignored the initial landing pain as his steely carapace rammed into my back, thighs, even my left calf. As soon as we started to settle, I rolled my whole body and flipped, shoving hard with my hands to break his death grip as I did so.