Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [96]
The voice perked up. “Where are you, miss?”
“Floor sixty!” I squeaked, and slammed the phone down. That would get their blood pumping. No one was supposed to be in here except Seamus, I was sure.
Now I had probably sixty seconds before Joshua’s thugs burst in. I ran to the switch panel on the wall, slapping them in turn until one rolled heavy black shades down over the wall of windows. I switched off the few ambient lights and waited by the hidden elevator door with my back against the wall.
It was total soft blackness. A plain human would be hard-pressed to locate their own hand in front of their face. With my night vision, I could see the darker-than-dark shapes of furniture and the soft glow of light around the edges of the curtains. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough.
The elevator whirred and I heard the soft ding from the interior just before the door rolled back.
I lashed out at the first person out of the car, a squat man with his gun and flashlight both poised in a textbook military stance. The gun, I noticed as I rotated his wrist and slammed the butt backward into his face, was a high-end Sig-Sauer P226. Nothing but the best for Seamus’s own private army.
The second guy in the elevator let out a yell as his bleeding partner fell back into him, and got off a wild shot into the darkness. I waited for him to emerge from the car, the light he held quivering like a dying Tinkerbell.
“Who the Hex is out there?” he demanded. “I’ve got a gun.”
The elevator door closed, plunging us into blackness again except for the thin beam of the flashlight. I stepped in behind the thug and grabbed his gun arm, yanking it backward into a submission hold before he could react. Speed is everything in a fight. The security thug struggled with me and I kneed him in the kidneys. He grunted and went to the ground.
“You’ll never get away with this!” he promised, although in the dark I could have been a poltergeist for all he knew.
“Keys,” I demanded, putting pressure on his wrist joint. A few more millimeters and I’d be breaking it. I didn’t want to do that if I could help it, even though the guy probably deserved it.
“Keys to—ah! Keys to what?”
“O’Halloran’s apartment,” I snarled in his ear. “Give them to me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he cried, in a not-very-convincing display of innocence. I leaned over his shoulder so he could see me and let my eyes luminesce to gold. The thug’s breathing stopped with a short, sharp intake and he started to shake underneath me.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“He won’t help you now,” I said. The thug swung at me with his flashlight, free arm swinging in a crazy cross-motion that only succeeded in clobbering the thug on his own shoulder. At least the guy had a survival instinct. He wasn’t totally hopeless.
I grabbed the flashlight out of his sweating hand and rapped it against the elevator door. The bulb shattered and the fractured shadows crept back and blended into one velvet expanse of night.
The thug was whimpering now. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Dude, if I wanted to kill you, don’t you think you’d be in pieces no bigger than a chicken nugget by now?” I demanded. He gave a shuddering sigh.
“Keys are on my belt. P-please…”
I felt around—carefully, wouldn’t want him getting the wrong idea—and found a fat key ring clipped to a utility belt. Nifty.
“Please…”he said again.
“What?” I demanded.
“Knock me out?” asked the thug. “If you just tie me up, they’ll know I got overpowered and I’ll lose my job. Just one clip right behind the ear. I can say I never saw you.”
Un-freaking-believable. “Joshua’s got himself some real quality people, doesn’t he?” I muttered, hefting the flashlight. It was a good solid police model. I reared back and aimed low on the blue-black blob of the thug’s head. His skull and the flashlight gave a clack, and he stilled without a sound.
Hopefully, he’d thank me later.
CHAPTER 28
I must have tried twenty keys before I found the set that unlocked the dead