The Darkness - Jason Pinter [125]
keeping your balls intact. But you have gravely overestimated Mr. Reeves's worth to me. Especially in light of
his less than stellar reflexes."
With that, Eve Ramos pulled a gun from her waistband
and put a bullet right in Leonard Reeves's head.
He dropped to the floor, his body becoming dead
weight in less than a second. I felt sticky blood on my
hands. I looked at Ramos. She seemed oddly disappointed.
"Sometimes," she said, "you don't have time to paint
a picture."
I held Reeves's gun out, pointed it at Ramos.
"Let us out of here," I said.
"Or what? You shoot me and end up looking like something the butcher threw away? Put the gun down, Henry,
before you get hurt."
And just like that, the window behind Ramos shattered, gunfire riddling the stairwell. Sparks cascaded all
around us at the bullets ricocheted off the metal bars.
Whoever was outside was now firing back.
We all ducked, covering our heads as glass came
pouring down around us. Ramos knelt on the floor below
the window, her back against the wall. She held a hand
up to her cheek. It came away slick with blood where
she'd been cut by an errant shard. Malloy was on his
stomach, and crawled over to see if she was all right. And
right there I saw my one chance to live.
While they were distracted, I rushed forward and shoved
Malloy as hard as I could. His body, already off balance,
went toppling down the stairs. He landed with a thud two
floors below, screaming in pain and clutching his leg.
Before Ramos had a chance to recover, I leaped back
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into the stairwell and began to climb. They'd taken Curt
somewhere upstairs, and I could only hope to find him
before the entire warehouse was shredded.
As I ascended, relief spread through me as I saw that
Ramos was still pinned down in the stairwell below me.
I tried the door one flight above but it was locked from
the inside. There was no keypad I could see, no way
inside. So I kept going up, hunched over, trying not to get
shot or sliced.
One more flight up and I'd reached the top level of
the warehouse. Peering over the railing, my breath
caught in my throat when I saw that neither Ramos or
Malloy were still there. They weren't on the stairwell
though, so I had a small window to figure out what the
hell to do.
The stairwell here had one door, and this had an electronic keypad. I tried several combinations, including
718, but none of them worked. But just as I was about to
give up and turn to my nonexistent plan B, I heard the
doorknob turn from the other side.
I stepped back to allow the door to open. The handle
turned and into the hall walked another man. He was big,
with a gleaming bald head, numerous tattoos running
down his arms. And, oh yeah, he was also holding a big,
black assault rifle.
I was hidden between the door and the wall, my gun
held out in defense, but the man didn't see me as he raced
down the stairs. When he'd gone down several steps, I
spun around the closing door, stuck the gun muzzle into
the crack, threw it open and pulled the door shut behind
me just as I heard a startled "Hey!" from below.
Turning around, I found myself in a narrow hallway.
It was painted stark white. There were two doors at the
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other end, and I could see an LED light blinking red on
the farthest one.
Curt.
I ran as fast as I could to the other end and banged
on the door.
"Curt!" I shouted. "You in there?"
It took a moment, but then I heard someone say,
"Henry?"
"Yeah! How do I open this thing?"
"Four eight two one nine," he said. "I saw the guy enter
it when he put me in here."
I pressed the numbers on the keypad, and the light
turned green.
I yanked the handle and pulled the door open, just as the
door as the other end flew open, revealing the guy with the
rifle. He yelled some sort of curse, but I dove inside Curt's
room and pulled the door closed just as a spatter of bullets
hit the metal. I held my foot against the door, keeping it
open just slightly to make sure we didn't get locked inside.