How could she have been so lazy? As a liaison for the British intelligence agency MI-5, Jillian had spent the past three years helping her father communicate with the most elite and dangerous secret agents in the world. Though often perilous, her success as liaison had confirmed for her that dropping out of Oxford at age twenty had been the right decision. Though at first many of her father’s coworkers had treated her like a child, she’d fast gained their respect and become her dad’s most trusted confidante. She loved her work, savored the challenge of the position, and especially enjoyed her communications with agents like Michael Lazarus.
But now she was stuck with these scumbags.
Frankie, the prince of the scumbags, turned toward her.
“What about you, Sweet Cheeks? You wanna play?”
Jillian forced herself to meet Frankie’s gaze, to conceal the way he chilled her blood and made her flesh crawl. It took an effort.
Frankie’s gaze became a leer. “Look at her, wouldja Eddie? Red hair, pretty green eyes. Lips so plump you’d love to chew on ’em.” His eyes crawled down her body. “Then the rest of her. Nice and professional, but hot too, you know? White top, tight black skirt …” He shook his head, breathing heavy through his mouth. “Good gravy, what a looker. Put all that together with that prim English accent of hers, and you got an irresistible package.”
Lou grinned back at him through the open sliding window. “Easy, Snip. We got a schedule to keep, remember?”
Frankie frowned. “What schedule? We’re home free. That guy everybody’s worried about, he might’ve known I wasn’t listenin’ to the Mets game, but he didn’t stop us from kidnapping the girl, did he? That big moron could no more find us than this pretty boy here could survive a day of real work.”
Jillian glanced at Philip, whose bottom lip had started to tremble again.
“He’s not a moron,” the one named Eddie said in a low voice.
But Frankie ignored him. His attention was all on Philip now, the attention of a schoolyard bully having identified and cornered the weakest kid in the group.
“What say you, Pretty Boy?” Frankie prodded. “You ever done a day’s work in your life? I mean honest work, the kind where you don’t wear slacks and a Polo shirt and make sure your hair’s all gelled up nice.”
Philip turned away, eyes wet, and pretended to study something outside the passenger’s window.
“I mean, it could be anything,” Frankie persisted. “Mowin’ a lawn, diggin’ a hole … please tell me you know how to dig a hole?”
“Of course I do,” Philip said. He sniffed and dragged an arm across his nose. It came away shiny.
Frankie eyed Philip’s forearm. “C’mon, man. That’s just gross.” He turned back to the open sliding window. “We got any Kleenex up there? Pretty Boy just got snot all over his arm.” Frankie’s lips wrinkled in disgust. “Looks like a snail crawled across it.”
Come on, Philip, Jillian mentally urged. Keep it together. Don’t show him how much he scares you. Don’t give him the satisfaction.
But Philip was going to give Frankie the satisfaction. Jillian could see that right away. Not only was Philip’s mouth twisting in fear and turmoil, but his eyes were brimming with tears too.
“Aww, I’m sowwy,” Frankie said in a childish voice. “Did Big Fwankie hurt your wittle feelings?”
Philip’s chest began to heave, his shoulders quaking with sobs he couldn’t contain.
Frankie scooted forward in his seat, his big legs butting up against Philip’s. Frankie leaned toward the weeping assistant, and said, “You know why they call me The Snip, Pretty Boy? You wanna hear the story of how I got my name?”
Philip was pursing his lips in an attempt to stem his weeping. He raised his jaw and shook his head. No, he clearly didn’t want to know how The Snip got his name.
“Leave him alone,” Jillian said.
Frankie ignored her. “I gotta feeling you’re gonna be cryin’ a lot harder once you here about the stuff I’ve done, Pretty Boy. Hell, you’re already scared, and you ain’t even seen me do anything yet.”
“Shut up,” Jillian said.
Frankie turned to her, his grin stretching wider. “Wow, listen to the mouth on Red here. Feisty. I like that.” He reached out and placed a hand on her knee. Jillian slapped his hand away.
Frankie was unabashed. “That’s alright. There’ll be plenty of time for fun later on.” He turned his attention back to Philip. “The reason why they call me The Snip is because of the time—”
“Save it,” the one called Lou said from the front seat. His voice was different. Tense now.
“What’s the problem?” Frankie asked.
“We got company,” Lou said.
“Whadya mean, we got—”
“Look,” Eddie said.
Frankie followed his gaze. Jillian turned in her seat to peer out the back window.
To see Lazarus sprinting after them.
“How the hell did he catch us?” Frankie asked. Gone was the savage glee of the bully, in its place a whiney voice he probably once used on his mother to get his way.
“We were stuck in traffic for ten minutes,” Eddie said, taking out his gun and checking to make sure it was shoot-ready. “That’d be plenty of time for him to heal.”
The one named Lou turned to the driver and whacked him in the chest with the back of his hand. “I told you to get off Fifth Avenue.”
For the first time, the driver spoke. “I didn’t think traffic would be this busy.”
Lou looked at him incredulously. “Didn’t think it would be this busy? It’s rush hour, for chrissakes!”
“Well, step on it,” Frankie called.
Jillian peered out the back window and spotted Lazarus laboring along about thirty yards behind them. He was limping, but he was gaining steadily.
Lou shouted, “Go around this guy.”
The driver obeyed, jerking the wheel left and pushing the limo even with the car ahead despite the approach of oncoming traffic. Horns blatted and tires screeched as the cars and vans in the other lane swerved to avoid them. Just as a city bus appeared about to smash them, the limo driver veered hard to the right and cut off the car they’d just passed.
“There’s a turn up here,” Lou said. “I want you to take it.”
The driver didn’t decelerate.
“You deaf?” Lou asked. “I told you to turn.”
The driver kept pushing the limo faster. They were putting distance between the limo and Lazarus now, but they were also going to blow by the turn.
Lou’s eyes lost their normal sleepy look. He leaned over, got in the driver’s face. “Listen, jerkoff, are you freakin’ deaf? I told you to—”
“I’m not supposed to turn yet.”
Lou stared at him a moment, his asperity transforming into something else. Bewilderment? Wariness?
“What do you mean, you’re not supposed to turn yet?” Lou tapped his chest with a thumb. “I’m the one in charge of this operation, I’m the one took all the risk.”
“You’re only one-half of the operation,” the driver said. “The other half is the one I work for, and he says we’re not supposed to turn until a quarter mile up.”
Lou stared at the driver in amazement. His jowls worked in silent consternation. Lou didn’t look to Jillian like the kind of guy who did this sort of grunt work often. Frankie seemed the type. Eddie did for sure. But Lou looked like the sort who gave the orders rather than following them. Maybe it was for this reason that he was growing so irate.
“That’s not what we discussed,” Lou snapped. “This morning, when you picked us up at my uncle’s and we went over it … this afternoon, before we went inside the museum … I thought I made it clear what I wanted. We were to deliver these two to your boss, and then we were supposed to be done with it. My uncle only brought me into this because it was such an important job.”
Jillian threw a backward glance at the road. The car they’d passed—a big white sedan of s
ome sort—was right on their bumper, with two more cars tailgating behind. She couldn’t see Lazarus, but she knew he was back there.
The driver’s voice was serene. “Everything you said is right, boss.”
Lou grunted a mirthless laugh. “Boss. He calls me boss. Where I come from, a guy calls me boss, he does what I tell ’im.”
“I’ve got no problem with that part.”
“Apparently you do,” Lou said, an edge creeping into his gruff voice. “I tell you to turn, you don’t turn. That means I ain’t your boss. That means you think you’re in charge here, and I assure you, you ain’t.”
The driver slowed, and heedless of the vehicles in the oncoming lanes, began to nose his way across traffic. They were turning into an alley. “We never discussed the drop point.”
“Drop point,” Lou repeated.
“Where you’re to deliver the girl and Alcott’s assistant.”
Jillian could see this had flummoxed Lou. “I assumed it’d be back at my uncle’s house,” Lou said.
“That won’t work,” the driver said, cutting off a Humvee, which screeched to a sideways stop, its owner bellowing out the window at the limousine and flipping them the bird. Jillian craned her neck toward her side window, trying to find Lazarus. If he lost sight of them when they turned, he might never—
She spotted him. A good distance back but gaining fast. His vision was incredibly keen, which meant there was no way he’d miss them turning off.
For the first time since she’d been kidnapped, Jillian permitted herself to hope for rescue.
“If not Uncle Benito’s, where?” Lou asked. If he’d seen Lazarus coming, he’d made no sign. The driver’s face was hidden from view, but even if she could have seen his expression, she suspected there’d be nothing there at all. The driver sounded like a master poker player.
Frankie was turned in his seat, watching the alley ahead. If he’d spotted Lazarus, he was a better poker player than their driver. She glanced over at Philip, who only looked miserable. He hadn’t noticed Lazarus either.
She turned and looked at Eddie, who was staring steadily back at her.
Oh yeah, she decided. He knew. Knew Lazarus was coming and understood what that meant. He looked anxious, like a soldier preparing for battle.
But not scared. No, the one named Eddie did not appear intimidated by the prospect of facing Lazarus again. His expression told her he’d survived one encounter with the being sometimes referred to as Bloodshot, and he was ready to face him again. Perhaps even eager to face him again.
Jillian looked away from Eddie, a chill whispering over the nape of her neck.
The limo jounced over potholes. The buildings on either side were several stories tall, which meant at this advanced hour of the day the alley was crammed with shadows. A single strip of stagnant water lined the center of the alley. Flies buzzed lazily over the oily water until the limo rumbled over, scattering the flies like a cop shooing drunken partygoers.
“There he is,” Frankie said in a tight voice.
“Perfect,” the driver said.
Lou glared at him. “You wanna tell me just what the hell is goin’ on?”
The limo slowed a little.
“He’s gainin’ on us,” Frankie called, sounding even tenser.
Lou was staring at the driver, half-turned in his seat. “You gonna let me in on the secret, or do I have to guess?”
Frankie pressed back into his seat. “He’s right on our butts, Lou.”
Lazarus was twenty feet away.
Eddie had his gun up, his black eyes glittering. Philip had melted down into his seat, his head below window level. In addition to being utterly terrified, he looked like he might soon be sick.
“Right …” the driver said.
Lazarus closed to within ten feet.
“… about …”
Five feet.
“… now,” the driver finished as they motored through an intersection of alleys. The driver goosed the limo just before Lazarus’s groping fingers closed on the back bumper. Lazarus missed the limo by inches, stumbled, and at that moment a large gray truck rocketed into view from the left. It looked like some sort of decommissioned delivery truck, gunmetal gray and at least twelve feet tall. The truck missed the limo by less than a foot, but it didn’t miss Lazarus. One moment the huge man was groping for the limo. The next he was smashed on the front grill of the delivery truck, which had timed its attack perfectly. The thing must’ve been doing forty miles an hour when it slammed into Lazarus, and as the limo continued to gain speed, Jillian heard, from somewhere back in the intersecting alley, a sickening crunch.
As if something had just been run over.
For an endless moment, she felt incapable of rational thought, much less speech. She knew Lazarus could sustain a great deal of damage, had cheated death on numerous occasions, but the sound the truck had made as it had crashed into him … and then the sound of it trundling over Lazarus’s body …
Jillian shivered. A fat lump gathered in her throat.
In the front seat Lou looked far more alert than he typically did. He shrugged. “Well, I gotta hand it to you an’ your boss. You all planned that perfect. The alley and the truck and—”
His words were cut off as the limo suddenly veered right, into what appeared to be another alley. Only this one terminated about fifty yards ahead, where a brick wall forbade further movement.
Except the limo wasn’t slowing.
“Hey, what the hell are you …” Lou stopped the moment he saw what they were heading toward. He extended an arm, pawed at the driver in soundless terror.
Frankie had spun around in his seat and realized what they were about to do. “Hey, man, you wanna slow down? That’s a dead end. We’re going to …”
His words trailed off in stunned horror. Jillian buckled her seatbelt and prepared for impact. Philip whimpered.
They were about to crash into the brick building when the brick abruptly flew upward, a deafening rattle filling the day. The hidden door rolled up just high enough for the limo to scuttle underneath it, and the moment they had passed, the brick door descended again. Glancing back, Jillian caught a glimpse of metal runners, of black rolling wheels, the kind you normally found on garage doors. She couldn’t believe it. Her heart was thundering in her chest, but she was alive. Moments earlier, she’d been convinced she wouldn’t be for much longer.
The building into which they’d motored was steeped in darkness. Here and there she spotted glimmers of daylight seeping through cracks in the walls, but the light was meager, the vast warehouse around them a riot of shadows.
The limo ground to a halt, and without pause the driver got out.
“Look, buddy,” Lou said. “I appreciate your fancy getaway and all, but it’s about time you tell us what in the world is goin’ on.”
“This way,” the driver called.
Looking fed up, Lou climbed out of limo, and moments later Jillian, Philip, and the two men holding them at gunpoint joined them. They moved deeper into the murk for several seconds before the driver paused, reached down, got hold of something, and pulled.
“You might want to stand back,” the driver said to Frankie.
There was a horrid screeching sound, metal on metal, as the driver hauled back on what appeared to be a rectangular trap door.
In the gloom, she saw Frankie hop backward. He muttered a curse. Then they were all peering down into a deeper darkness. In the scant light Jillian could just make out the top of a steel ladder leading into what looked like a tunnel.
Someone—Lou, she realized after a moment—had produced a disposable lighter and flicked the wheel. The tiny tongue of flame revealed little more than she had already discerned in the semidarkness, but she was able to confirm that the ladder terminated after descending about ten feet.
“Go ahead,” the driver said.
There was a pregnant silence. Lou said, “What do you mean, ‘Go ahead’?”
“Into the
tunnel,” the driver said. “And you’ll want to hurry. There’s not much time.”
“To hell with that,” Frankie said, taking another step back from the trap door.
“You want the two of them to go down in there,” Lou said by way of clarification. “The girl and the assistant.”
The driver didn’t speak.
“Because I know,” Lou continued, “that you’re not tellin’ me and my men to go down into that pit. I can tell you for certain that wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Let’s get something straight,” the driver said, all semblance of servility having vanished from his voice. “My master is the one I follow. He is the one who orchestrated this kidnapping, and he is the one to whom you’ll have to answer if you decide to renege on your end of the bargain.”
Lou’s lighter flickered a little, but he kept the flame going. Something about the driver seemed peculiar to Jillian. She couldn’t say for certain, but the face now appeared unnaturally pale. And the shape looked different.
“Renege? You tell me not to renege?” Lou’s voice sounded to Jillian like it was barely controlled. Like the short mobster—for Jillian had no doubt whatsoever now that Lou was a mobster—was about a half-step from drawing his gun and shooting the driver. “I never reneged on a deal in my life. Now you’re gonna apologize to me right now, or I promise you your master is gonna be the least of your worries.”
In the darkened warehouse, Jillian beheld twin glimmers of orange fire. Only they weren’t fire.
They were the driver’s eyes.
Jillian heard Philip gasp as the driver stepped closer to Lou’s lighter. The face had indeed gone a ghastly shade of pale, but only in diagonal stripes. The driver moved closer and Jillian understood why. The stripes were the places where the driver had wiped away the makeup he’d been wearing all along. Beneath the flesh-colored makeup, his skin was pallid, almost stark white. And though she hadn’t gotten a good look at the driver’s face before, she had no doubt his features had altered markedly. For now the chin was pointed, the cheeks sharp and angular. The canine teeth were tapered as if sharpened by a file. And the eyes … the eyes were worst of all.
Bloodshot: Kingdom of Shadows (Kindle Worlds) Page 5
