Covert Christmas Twin

by Heather Woodhaven

  Joe whirled around, forcing the other figure in the ski mask to face the oncoming threat. Except the eyes in the ski mask widened and the figure dove forward, blond hair sticking out of the mask, despite Joe’s hold on the hands, now leaving Joe exposed.

  Kendra cried out, too far away to stop the man as he struck Joe’s head with a tactical flashlight instead of the laptop. Joe groaned and dropped to the ground.

  The man and his freed accomplice wasted no time running to the door. Kendra yelled the command to stop again. She couldn’t shoot them. She had no justification for deadly force, and she needed the Pirate alive to take down Masked. She raised her weapon and, taking inspiration from the earlier explosion in the lab, aimed at the set of fluorescent lights, despite being turned off, nearest the exit.

  She pulled the trigger and a heartbeat later the shattered tubes rained down, but the two figures bent over and continued until they rushed through the side door and disappeared. Kendra ran forward. Joe hadn’t moved from his spot on the ground, but thankfully, the glass hadn’t touched him.

  “Joe?” She touched his face. He was unconscious. An impact to the head could be so intense the brain actually hits against the skull and shuts down, hopefully only for a moment. She knew from experience. Except, in her case when it’d happened, she had needed surgery to survive.

  She slid her fingers to the spot underneath his chin. Please let me find his heartbeat.

  NINE

  Joe groaned, his hands cradling the spot where his head throbbed, and he opened one eye. He’d moved one second too late. “Sorry. Was I out long?” He dragged a hand down the side of his face. “I took a bat to the brain, didn’t I? I thought my head was going to snap off for a home run.”

  She exhaled and laughed, her voice shaking. “You’re alive.”

  He felt his eyes widen. “Was that under question?” If he looked that bad in the dark, it must’ve been a hard hit.

  “The point is you’re going to be okay. You might have some trauma to get checked out, though, so stay down. I’ll be back. I can’t let them escape.” She jumped up. Only then did Joe smell the telltale scent of gunpowder. Glass bits littered the floor in places he didn’t remember before. Kendra didn’t wait for a response and ran off, glass crunching under her feet, until she disappeared. But he could still hear her and the huffs of breath coming through his earpiece.

  Joe lifted his left leg and wrapped his hands underneath his knee. Forcing his leg down while maintaining his hold allowed him to use the momentum to lift himself to an upright sitting position without much effort. He groaned aloud at the sudden throbbing of his head from the shift, though.

  “You’re still there?” Kendra asked. Her voice was a whisper. “Are you okay?”

  The radios were equipped to go up to four miles of range, supposedly, provided there weren’t significant geographic obstacles in their way, but he didn’t want to test the limits. He couldn’t allow Kendra to go on her own. His mandate was to keep her safe. Now more than ever they needed the Pirate’s identity before the vast network of Masked rallied against them, or Joe and Kendra might as well say goodbye to their futures now.

  Kendra’s breathing grew more rapid. “They’re leapfrogging me.”

  Joe stood up even though his equilibrium hadn’t fully returned. Leapfrogging—that was a surveillance tactic where operatives were told ahead of time that their target was coming. But how could that be possible if it was just two people who had run out? Unless...

  “There was a backup team waiting outside? How many?”

  “Apparently. I don’t know.”

  She released a high-pitched screech and something resembling rocks clattering against metal reverberated over the microphone. Her voice was hushed. “I’m hiding. Joe—” She pulled in a sharp gasp. “Silencers.”

  Now that did fit the modus operandi of the Pirate. He never drew attention to himself and would do whatever it took to take care of business as discreetly as possible. Joe gripped his gun tightly and ran out the front exit instead of following Kendra, as would be expected.

  He didn’t know the campus as well as Kendra, seeing as she had visited Audrey a few times, but he had studied a map Audrey had available in her apartment the previous night. The temperature had reached the sixties by late afternoon, but now, in the middle of the night, the cool air had a bite to it. Not quite freezing, but it couldn’t be more than a ten-degree difference.

  His stability increased as he ran, though his right ear rang slightly. Good thing the earpiece was in his left. He darted behind some foliage and gained his bearings. “Where are you now?”

  She was panting. “On the move again. I’m not sure how many. They were standing guard, waiting for the two in the lab, but then two more—”

  “Where? We’ll worry about how many when I reach you.” He felt his blood pressure rise and his head began to warn of a tension headache, most likely aided by the knock to the head.

  “I—” He heard her footsteps slapping on what sounded like one of the tiled sidewalks connecting buildings. “There are so many arches on this campus.”

  He almost groaned aloud. The architecture was beautiful but repetitive. “Those are everywhere. I need something more.” The sound of water rushing reached his ears.

  “The fountain?”

  “Just past. Behind the library.”

  The tall futuristic building was the main library. He could see it. “I’m on my way. Any students? Security guards?”

  “No. Not yet. I’m trying to get off campus.”

  “Good.” If she was past the library, she was leading them far away from the student housing. If he remembered his map right, she’d be in between a grouping of various geological, chemistry and biological laboratories.

  He took off running. A quiet but distinct ping sounded and gravel rock flew up in his face. He ran down a set of stairs, then darted behind a massive rock. Except many of the smaller rocks started to move. Joe feared he’d lost his senses from the head trauma until he remembered Caltech’s famed Turtle Pond. He held his breath and stared at them a half a second longer to make sure he was operating on all cylinders. Sure enough the rocks were turtles. Since he didn’t want to risk their lives, either, he needed to keep moving.

  He slipped through a grove of trees and another ping sounded. Two leaves rained down over his head and he found the set of arches closest to the library and fountain. He hid behind one and breathed hard. So far he hadn’t seen where the shots were even coming from. “They’re good at hiding.”

  “Yes.” Her voice crackled. The monstrous library probably counted as a geological disturbance for the radio signal, although who knew what possible interferences were within the many labs peppered throughout the campus. “This feels choreographed, Joe.”

  The warning twisted his stomach. They were better at this than he was, obviously. He belonged behind a desk, not dodging bullets to save the day. He might as well have been asked to lift a thousand-pound weight without tools to get her to safety. This wasn’t in his wheelhouse. Maybe a better man would embrace the challenge to save the day. Not him. He had to question, overthink and overanalyze everything.

  A shadow in his peripheral vision moved. He started sprinting and felt dirt kick at his heels. He kept pumping his arms, darting and weaving between the crooked trees that seemingly sprang up from the ground. His throat burned like fire and his ears roared from the intense sprint.

  He crouched behind a cement edging that held a raised pond filled with lily pads. The soft sound of frogs croaking barely masked his heavy breathing.

  “I think they’re trying to corner me.” Kendra’s voice sounded strong and confident, but Joe knew better. No one felt good about being trapped. “Are you still with me?”

  “Yes.” If he was right about their respective locations, he needed to get past one more corridor to catch up to Kendra from around the
back of the chemical lab, as long as one of the shooters didn’t take him down first. His blood pumped hotter instead of cooling down from his brief respite.

  Beverly had acted as if she’d somehow been training him while he was unaware the last several weeks. But really, what did Beverly do except encourage his hyperobservant tendencies and his need to please others? While Kendra wanted to be the one making arrests—she admitted that herself at the coffee shop—he would choose to change the world behind the scenes.

  He would rather be the guy behind the chair than the hero. Maybe that was the real reason he’d never gotten the girl—it was a new thought he could save and analyze on another day. Footsteps sounded at nine o’clock and three o’clock, approaching fast, reminding him that Kendra couldn’t do this alone. He supposed that was what mattered. He pulled out his gun.

  * * *

  Kendra sneaked a look through two branches thick with leaves. The top of a man’s head poked out from behind a tall pillar approximately fifty feet away. The other shooter she couldn’t get eyes on. She held her gun in her hand but her fingers quivered in an uncontrolled manner, so she didn’t dare use it yet. The men had silencers. She didn’t. Besides, one shot would draw attention to her location and she wasn’t clear on just how many gunmen were out there.

  The old Kendra would’ve shot back without hesitation. The last time she’d been in a shooting match, she’d killed a man but had also been shot herself and on the surgery table for hours. The recovery was relatively minor given that the alternative was death, but she hadn’t hesitated in using her gun again when she went in to be tested at the range. Fear hadn’t entered the equation back then.

  What if her pride hadn’t pushed her forward to take on a gunman by herself back then? Maybe she wouldn’t have been shot. And what about now? She’d left Joe behind to go after the Pirate by herself because she thought it was her only option. Except maybe her pride had blinded her then, too.

  “On—” the radio crackled to life and cut out “—notice—off—think—” She wasn’t even getting every other word of what Joe was trying to tell her. It was useless. “—meet—”

  Another shooter rounded the corner and placed a hand to his ear. The shooters had their own system of communication. They were practicing the leapfrog surveillance technique, but it seemed they’d lost her. Although, if Joe suddenly showed up, she’d be spotted. She didn’t want to think just how many armed men with silencers were out there. Beverly’s warning rang truer than ever. If Kendra called for backup, she wouldn’t know whom to trust.

  The shooter out in the open turned his back to her. Kendra slipped out of her hiding place and ran to the back of the building, where there were even more arches and a structure that looked like a cement gazebo. From there, it would be a dart across the street and she’d be off campus, with access to numerous buildings and houses and, hopefully, escape.

  The whoosh of a bullet soaring over her head made her drop to a crouch, but as she did, she spotted Joe thirty feet away huddled behind a matching pillar. “Joe, nine o’clock,” she said. She repeated it in a hushed voice three times fast, hoping that despite the static interference something would get through.

  He turned in the opposite direction, looking across the street, as if trying to get his bearings first, then he spun in her direction, his gun raised. His eyes widened with recognition. He pointed with his free hand to the street. They were in agreement, but they had no cover. Behind him, a man rounded the corner. It was now or never. She sprinted across the road. Joe matched her speed as they converged together. He held his gun behind him, waving it wildly until they reached the cover of a low-hanging tree.

  “Look behind you,” Joe said.

  A man approached from behind Joe.

  “There’s one behind you, too.” There was nowhere to run except right into the tall brick building awaiting a remodel that had caution tape surrounding it. They hurdled over the tape and ran into the unlocked front door of the building. Joe slammed the door shut behind him and flipped a lock.

  Darkness once again greeted them. Without any light to guide her, she was forced to flick on her phone. She fought back a cough as the dust irritated her already burning lungs. “Let’s run through the back door and lose them.”

  She took the lead and ran across the lobby, which was littered with chunks of drywall. No wonder it was being remodeled. As soon as the back door was directly in her sights, she flipped off the phone and reached out for the door handle that should be right in front of her. Joe’s footsteps behind her emboldened her. She pulled open the door only to see a man six feet away, lifting his weapon to aim.

  Joe’s hand covered hers as he slammed the door shut and locked it, as well.

  “How?” The wobble in her voice revealed her frustration. “They couldn’t have known we would go in here.”

  “You said yourself they were leapfrogging you.”

  “Even so, there’s no way someone could’ve beat us to that back exit. They would’ve had to get to the side street and then the alley to get behind this building. They couldn’t have moved that fast!”

  Joe answered with a grunt. “Those doors are pretty solid, but I wouldn’t put it past them to get through it. Let’s head upstairs and get a good vantage point. We can see how many we have to deal with.”

  He flipped on his own phone, but kept it low and led them down a long hallway. They both were out of breath, and while they no longer sprinted, they kept up a fast pace. Rooms lined both sides, but they were missing the doors. “Why don’t I see windows?”

  Joe flicked his phone light to the side. Wood covered the rectangle where the window should’ve been. “Oh, this is not good. Sometimes they sell everything they think can get them a buck before working on a place.”

  He moved the beam upward. The place really was in a state of disrepair. Insulation hung down from the ceiling in strings and sections. Joe put away his gun and reached for her free hand. “I’d hate to think that was asbestos. Come on. Maybe there are some intact windows upstairs.”

  She didn’t need his fingers to pull her forward but the contact had an odd, calming effect she’d never experienced during a pursuit, or in this case, a retreat. “I still don’t know how they managed to corner me like that.” She tilted her head. “And what was with all that wild gun-waving back there? Since when do you look like a shooting maniac?”

  Joe used precise control whenever he handled a gun. After all, she’d never be able to forget the way he’d saved her life.

  “I was testing a theory.”

  He pressed open a remaining door that still held a “stairway” sign. He let go as they jogged their way up to the third floor, as the second floor wouldn’t give them enough advantage in height.

  “What theory?”

  “Did you notice how little they actually shot at us?”

  “Like me, they didn’t want to risk being heard and drawing attention. Especially true on a college campus. If the police had come, you know we’d have no one from the FBI able to back us up. We’d be sitting targets.”

  He turned back to her, the light emphasizing his frown. “They all had suppressors.”

  She almost rolled her eyes as it took her half a second to know what he was talking about. An analyst always made a point of using correct terminology, while the public, and even some agents, such as herself, called them silencers. “The ones that actually took a shot, yes. I’m not sure exactly how many were out there.”

  He stopped at the platform to the third floor. “What do the suppressors tell you?”

  This time she did roll her eyes. “That they didn’t want to be heard.”

  “What else?”

  Oh, if there was one thing that grated on her about analysts, it was when they thought they had the answers. They either berated you or led you down a path of questions until you arrived at the same conclusion. Since she wasn’t p
art of their training, she didn’t know if it was an annoying personality trait they shared or a technique to keep hotheaded agents from going rogue on a mission. “Joe, spill it.”

  “One second.” He turned away and stepped in the corridor. Once again there were no windows that hadn’t already been boarded. He groaned and turned to her. “This really isn’t good.”

  Her blood started to boil. Failure was not an option. They needed to get safely out of here, away from the men, so they could regroup with a better plan. “So we figure out how to remove a section or something.” She strode purposefully past him and toward the window, but the floor gave out. A scream escaped as her left foot dropped into nothingness. She flung her arms up into the air and dropped her gun, as her hands searched, desperately reaching for something to save her from a dark descent.

  TEN

  Joe lunged, his phone flying from his hand as he grabbed her upper arms before they disappeared. He stepped backward, pulling, but she worked against him, twisting and working her shoulders as if trying to climb up through the air. “Stop flailing,” he said through clenched teeth, but he knew it would be almost impossible.

  Confident he had her right arm secure in his hand, he briefly let go of her left one. She screamed but he reached down and wrapped his left arm around her waist instead. He inhaled and lifted upward, making sure she was free of the jagged bits the hole had created before taking a step backward.

  “I would never let you go,” he said. Her body relaxed ever so slightly as he stepped back until they both reached sturdy footing again. At least, he thought it was sturdy until he felt his right heel begin to sink.