by Adam Smith
Delicate blonde eyebrows knit together as the woman frowned in annoyance. “Oh great,” she sighed as Max gave her the once-over, “they stuck me in here with a pervert.”
“When a man sees a work of art,” Max said casually, “he stops to admire it.”
The blonde woman rolled her eyes. “A pervert who thinks he’s smooth. Even better.”
Max realized he was sitting on the dirty floor. He tried to get up but found his arms shackled to rings in the floor on either side of where he sat. The rattling chains only allowed enough slack for him to be able to reach up and scratch his nose. He finally realized the woman was also bound, though she was seated on a low wooden box and had her hands tied behind her back to a metal pipe running along the wall.
“Well,” Max said as he worked his jaw. It still hurt like hell. “Looks like we’re fellow captives. Where are we?”
“You don’t know?” the woman asked. Then she looked like she put a few things together in her head. “Makes sense. You were out of it when they dumped you in here. We’re in the Lombardo family’s seaside warehouse district. I’ve been here since this morning, but they brought you in about an hour ago. You’re in pretty rough shape. Where’d they pick you up?”
“Giorgis Park. Some big gorilla in a white suit caught me at the end of a bad car ride.” Max shook his head, then flashed a grin at the blonde woman. “I’m Maxwell Cain. What can I call you?”
“Kate Valentine. What did you do to make them beat you so hard?”
“I guess I killed some of Papa Sal’s men.”
Kate’s eyed widened as she goggled at him. “That’s practically suicide. How many did you kill?”
“I don’t remember.” Max screwed up his face as he tried to remember. “Not more than twenty, I think.”
“Tw-twenty?” Kate sputtered. “You killed twenty men?”
“Around there. That’s just today’s total so far. Impressed?”
Kate looked at him like he was an idiot, but at least a hint of respect crept through her glare. “You sound like someone I definitely do not want to share my cell with. What made you kill twenty men?”
“They wrecked my burrito.”
“Your… burrito?” Somehow, Kate managed to look even more uncomfortable than before.
“Hey, listen. It was a really good burrito. And it’s been a really bad day.” Max sighed. “First I got fired for doing my job, then some punks destroyed my lunch. I wanted an apology, but they started a gunfight. One thing led to another, and I killed a bunch of Papa Sal’s goons. A few grenades and car crashes later, and here I am.”
Kate was quiet a moment. “So you’re telling me they stuck me in here with a dangerous lunatic.”
Max opened his mouth to argue, then decided the effort wasn’t worth it. “What are you here for?”
Kate sighed. Max enjoyed the way the deep breath made her blouse stretch across her upper body. “I owe backpay on the protection payments for my bakery.” She became angrier the more she went on. “The payments kept increasing and eating up my profit. I was operating at a loss the last couple months, and it still wasn’t enough. Turns out one of Papa Sal’s pet bimbos got a dream of running her own bakery from some cartoon movie she loves. They picked me up this morning and told me I’ll be paying off the debt on an open auction, probably shipped out of country.” She ground her teeth as she spit out the last few words.
Max was quiet for a few moments as he digested her story. When he answered, his voice was resolute. “You won’t be sold, Kate.”
“Oh?” The blonde woman peered at him. The sudden steel in his eyes made Kate lean back in her seat in surprise. “I’d take just about any idea, no matter how insane, to avoid being sold. Do you have a plan?”
Chapter 10
The Warehouse Damsel
“Help!” Kate shouted. “Guards! Please, I need help!”
She’d been shouting for about two minutes when the door lock finally clinked. The heavy wooden door swung open on creaky hinges to reveal a muscular guard in a black business suit. Flickering light from the bare bulb hanging overhead shone in his oily, curled hair and reflected off the nickel-plated pistol holstered on his hip. From his other hip dangled a red lanyard which disappeared into the pocket of his slacks. The businessman stood with one hand on the door, gazing in at Kate.
Blonde hair hung heavy and damp. Sweat ran down Kate’s neck into the cleavage revealed by her blouse. Moisture caused the white blouse to cling to her curvaceous form, and every breath gave her rounded assets a little heave that caught the guard’s attention right away.
“It’s just so… so hot in here,” Kate panted in a husky voice. She looked to be in genuine distress. “I’m too warm. Can you help me?”
The guard gave Kate a once-over before checking on Max. The ex-cop was slumped against the wall with his hands and legs outstretched on the floor. His stubbled head lolled at an awkward angle, but his chest rose and fell in even breaths. The gangster glanced over his shoulder back into the hallway. He was thinking about his security training and getting a buddy to watch his back as he checked the prisoners, but…
“Please,” Kate gasped. “The heat is just unbearable. Can’t you help me?”
The guard’s feet pulled him into the room without further thought. The same mindless drive caused him to ease the door shut behind him so as not to be interrupted – in the act of helping a woman in distress, of course. He at least had the presence of mind to stop short a few feet from Kate and observe some semblance of security protocol.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Oh,” Kate moaned in agony. “It’s this blouse. It’s so tight, it’s hard to breathe, and the material is so heavy.” In actuality, the man could see her creamy skin through the material as sweat made the garment cling to her flesh. Despite this, he was nodding along with her concerns. “I just can’t stand to be so hot. Can you please help me get this shirt off?”
“Uhh, well…” The man looked uncertain even as he leaned forward with his hands out, leaned away, and leaned back again. Two competing instincts were fighting against each other inside the man’s brain.
“Please,” Kate begged in a breathless voice. “If you don’t do it quick, I’m going to overheat. Please take my clothes off.”
That did it. The last shreds of caution the man possessed wafted away on a heavy breeze of lust. He hopped forward and leaned in to undress Kate.
With the speed of lightning, Kate’s booted foot snapped up and drove into the thug’s groin. The impact lifted the guard up onto his tiptoes, and his breath exploded out of him in a rushing gasp as he folded in half. Kate spun her hips and threw a hard roundhouse kick into the side of the squeaking guard’s head, smashing his temple and launching him across the room. The man flew hard toward Max.
As the injured man flew through the air, Max sprang to life. His legs wrapped around the guard’s head and shoulders as the man smashed into Max. If the guard had been at the peak of his game he could have quickly overpowered the shackled ex-cop, but Kate’s kicks had left the thug as weak as a newborn kitten.
The struggle lasted only a moment before Max twisted his hips and snapped the man’s neck. The weight of the dead corpse slumped down onto Max’s lower body. Max stretched his shackled hands toward the lanyard dangling from the man’s pocket, but the chains were too short for him to reach.
By twisting and squirming his hips, Max was able to inch the dead man up the front of his torso. Midway through the exercise he glanced up and happened to meet Kate’s gaze. The blonde woman’s face was twisted up in an amused smirk.
“Good use of hips there, Max. Got some experience giving lap dances?”
Max growled in annoyance as he resumed squirming and reaching for the lanyard. His fingers were almost there. “Shut up. I’m just glad no one is recording this.”
“Nope, the pleasure
of this memory is all for me.”
“It doesn’t bother you that there’s a dead guy in here with us?”
Kate shot him a deadpan look. “This is San Pajita. Death is a part of daily life. Papa Sal’s goons hung out around my bakery all the time. Plenty of customers were gunned down in front of my shop. I got used to selling a loaf of bread only to see it rolling in the gutter smeared with blood thirty seconds later. Cops don’t do anything for us, and one shop owner with a gun against six gunmen won’t accomplish much.”
Max grunted as he twisted and stretched. Finally, his fingers hooked the red lanyard. As he pulled, the beautiful jingle of keys sang out from the businessman’s pocket. “Cops can’t do anything because our funding is sucked away so bureaucrats can go on vacation with their lovers, paid for free and clear courtesy of taxpayer dollars. Prisons are expensive but paying a fine to commit whatever act you like serves a politician’s goals just fine. What crime-fighting ability we police do have is severely limited by the same bureaucrats. The folks at the top are invested in making sure there’s plenty of crime around to keep the public reminded of why they need to give leaders unrestrained power in order to protect them.”
Kate looked surprised. “You’re a cop?”
Max grimaced at the question, at the same time pulling the keys free. He twisted and kicked the dead man off before scooting back against the wall to sit up straight. “Ex-cop,” he said. “Got fired this morning.”
“What for?”
“For doing my job.” Max couldn’t reach his hands together to put the keys in the shackle locks, so he put the keyring in his mouth. By craning his neck, he was able to insert the first key. It refused to turn when he cranked his head to one side, so he withdrew the key. As he fumbled with one set of fingertips to get the next key lined up in his teeth, Kate kept talking.
“Sorry for what I said before.” She looked sheepish. “I’m not down on cops. It just seems like they’re never around when you need them. My dad was actually a cop.”
Max paused with the third key in his mouth to glance at Kate before resuming his work.
“It’s true. He was a detective in the seventh precinct.”
The keys in his teeth muffled Max’s attempt to whistle in surprise. “Seventh is the roughest.”
“Yeah,” Kate agreed. “He brought a lot of his work home with him in his head. Made things rough at home. Mom died in the crossfire of a gang shooting when I was twelve, so I did my best to raise my younger sisters. Dad went on a personal crusade after that and we barely saw him most of the time.”
With a soft snick, the key in Max’s teeth popped the lock on his left wrist. The shackle fell away and clanked on the concrete floor. Max yanked the key out of his mouth and quickly opened the shackle on his right arm. Free of the chains, he pushed himself up to a crouch and began searching the dead guard.
“Hey,” Kate called, “you gonna let me free or what?”
“In a moment,” Max said. “First I want to hear more about these daddy issues.” Kate’s glare could have withered a bouquet of flowers in an instant, but Max just grinned. “Besides, you’re probably bound with plastic ties, right? There’s no clinking when you move around. I need to find a knife to cut you free.”
A few more seconds of searching yielded a fixed blade knife sheathed on the back of the businessman’s belt. Max also pocketed the nickel-plated pistol and an extra magazine. Satisfied with his haul, the ex-cop stepped over to Kate and reached to cut her bonds. The natural scent of her body undisguised by any perfume filled his nostrils. Even soaked with musky sweat, the woman smelled heavenly.
The plastic ties parted instantly under the razor-sharp blade. With a sigh of relief, Kate rubbed her wrists to remove the red marks and get the blood flowing again. She flapped her moist shirt to get the material to quit clinging to her skin. “I know I needed to look the part, so I understand having me exercise to get sweaty, but it sucks being all wet like this. The odds of finding a change of clothes on our way out is pretty slim.”
“Maybe we can detour on the way so you can steal some clothes from Papa Sal’s girls.”
Kate grimaced. “I’ll pass. Boudoir costumes wouldn’t be an improvement.”
“Agree to disagree.” Max’s cocky grin made Kate snort.
The blonde woman took the knife from Max and laced the black leather sheath through her belt, but she kept the weapon bared in her right hand.
Max also handed over the loaded spare magazine. “You’re in charge of keeping me supplied. I don’t want to be fumbling around in my pockets during a gunfight. Stay close and hand this over as soon as you see my slide lock back.”
“Got it,” Kate acknowledged as she clenched the magazine in her left hand. The fierce, resolute expression on her face, combined with her quick acceptance of orders heading into a combat scenario, confirmed for Max that the blonde woman was indeed a cop’s daughter. Her old man may have been emotionally distant and obsessed with his crusade for revenge, but he’d trained his daughter for survival.
“We ready to go?” Kate asked.
“Almost,” Max said. “But first, I’m genuinely worried about you overheating. Anything I can do to help?”
In an instant, Kate’s cheeks glowed red and her nostrils flared. She punched Max in the chest with her left hand and stomped to the door in a huff. “Incorrigible troglodyte,” she grumbled.
Max drew his pistol as a crooked grin spread across his clean-shaven face. “I like the sound of that.” The floorboards rumbled under his boots as he followed after Kate.
Chapter 11
Quality Bonding Time
Max eased open the door and poked his nose into the corridor. Behind him, Kate held her breath and pressed against the cold stone wall to stay out of sight of any other guards, but the hallway was empty in both directions. The left side of the corridor ran for twenty feet before ending in a wall with a narrow window, while the right side turned hard to the left after ten paces. Trusting Kate to follow him, Max stepped out of the room and turned left.
When he reached the window, Max looked outside. He’d hoped to just climb out and escape, but the view presented through the pane of glass looked out over a cluster of tall warehouse buildings. Down in an open space below, men in white business shirts and black slacks fired rifles and pistols down a makeshift gun range at metal barrels with red targets spray painted on the sides. The gunshots echoed through the warehouse complex. Max counted windows on an adjacent building until he reached an equal floor.
“We’re up at the top,” Max said. “Fourth floor.”
“Crap. No fire escape?”
Max glanced around the sides of the window. “No, nothing. Just a long drop. Looks like we’re doing this the hard way. At least all that noise they’re making down there will help cover the sounds we’re gonna make breaking out of this rat nest.” He strode to the other end of the hallway and took cover at the corner. Kate pressed herself up against the cinderblock wall beside him.
When he peeked around the corner, Max counted five men in slacks and white shirts. Three men with dark hair sat at a scarred oak table playing cards. Two more gangsters sat on a stack of pinewood crates along the left side of the room: one a blond man cleaning a disassembled black automatic rifle and the other a bald man reading a magazine with a topless redheaded woman on the cover. All had pistols holstered on their belts.
Max held up his empty hand and showed Kate five fingers, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the room. Kate nodded to show she understood. Satisfied, Max turned and darted halfway around the corner. His finger stroked the trigger as he filled the room with bullets. The nickel-plated .357 pistol roared like an angry lion and jumped in his hand.
His first shot nailed one of the card players in the center of his chest. Tight grouping with the next few shots blew open the man’s ribcage and hurled him backward out of his chair
to crash against a stack of wooden crates. The dead man’s cards fluttered through the air and flashed their faces at Max: two-pair of black aces and black eights.
The guards reacted fast, so his next shots missed the businessman to the right of his first victim. The two remaining card players flipped the rectangle table and ducked behind it. Max’s shots blew splinters out of the table as the .357 bullets punched through the heavy oak.
The blond man cleaning the rifle scooped up the metal parts and rolled backward off the edge of the crates. The bald man tossed his magazine in the air and leaped behind another stack of crates to his left. As the gangsters drew their pistols and returned fire at Max, the dirty magazine settled to the floor with a flutter of glossy pages.
The air filled with burning lead in a matter of seconds. Max ducked back behind the cinderblock wall as a hail of gunfire chipped away at the corner and impacted the end of the hallway beside Max and Kate.
Years of training had hardened Max against the sound of shots being fired, but he noticed Kate cringing at the thunder blaring in the enclosed space. Despite her tense posture, the woman’s blue eyes burned with fierce determination, and she kept the spare magazine clutched in her hand and her eyes locked on the slide of Max’s pistol.
As the initial barrage tapered off, Max lunged partway around the corner and opened fire again. His first few shots went wild but forced the men to duck back into cover. The bald man decided to stick it out and try to shoot Max instead of covering. With a calm stroke of the trigger Max blew off the top of the bald man’s head. The corpse collapsed to the floor with a wet thud.
The surviving guards returned fire. The slide locked open on Max’s next shot, but the bullet nailed one of the card players in the shoulder. The man fell on his butt in the open, but Max had no rounds to finish the job. He snarled as the gangster scurried back into cover.
