Sharpe End

by James David Victor

  When she got to the point where she thought he’d be to the top, though she had yet to round the corner of the middle landing, she paused and listened.

  Raven didn’t hear any weapons fire, so that was positive…but she didn’t hear anything else either. After a few moments, she whispered, “Blake?

  “Blake?”

  20

  Blake was almost as nervous about Raven behind him as the possibility of Greyson ahead of him.

  He wasn’t nervous that Raven was going to shoot him, of course, but he was concerned with how hard she was pushing herself. Although she worked hard to hide it, he could see her strain. She often forgot that while they hadn’t been married a long time, and he had fouled it up, he still had been her husband. He did know her.

  And no matter what, he didn’t want anything bad happening to her.

  He was determined to handle as much of this as he could. If he had any sort of luck, it would go fairly easily, and Greyson would not be up there lying in wait for him…but it hadn’t been his luck to have that sort of luck lately, so he wasn’t counting on it.

  As he neared the first landing, he could just make out the sounds of Raven starting her trek upward. Although he wanted to, he didn’t let himself turn around to see how she was doing. Besides, he could probably guess. He shook his head to clear it and made himself focus just on crawling up the stairs silently while still somehow keeping his gun ready.

  Suffice it to say, it wasn’t easy.

  Blake slowed down even more as he drew near the top steps, knowing that his head would be in view any moment now. It was do or die time, one might say. He decided he wouldn’t say, though, because he didn’t like the idea.

  Thinking fast for a moment, he put his weight on his knees and held his non-gun hand up. It reached over the top of the top step, and he held it there for a moment.

  No sound of movement. The hand didn’t get shot off…

  He took this as a good sign and anxiously climbed the last few steps, cresting the top and bringing his gun up fast.

  But there was nothing.

  Standing up, he made a cautious sweep around the immediate area at the top of the stairs, then began moving out. While he saw signs of some small things having been moved, like someone else had been through, there was no sign of anyone else being there now. Given that the doors in and out of the dwelling were just big holes, that was no way to hazard a guess about if the intruder had left and by which exit.

  Still, by everything he could tell at that moment, Greyson—if it had been Greyson—was gone.

  “Blake?”

  He heard Raven nervously whispering his name.

  Hurrying back to the stairs, he held out a hand and helped her up the last few. “The coast seems clear,” he reported, although he made sure to keep his voice low anyway.

  “Well, that’s something,” she said.

  He couldn’t help but notice that she was looking very pale and her face glistened with sweat.

  The question ‘are you okay’ was on the tip of his tongue, but he knew how she’d answer so he kept it to himself.

  “I’m going to check the rest of the building,” he said with a small nod, not waiting for a reply before he moved off.

  There wasn’t much more of the ground floor to check, so he looked through the rest of it—careful to avoid crossing in front of windows if he could help it—and then moved up to the second floor.

  It turned out to be the same story up there. Everything looked clear. There wasn’t really anywhere to hide in the way these houses were designed and furnished, anyway. There was almost nothing by way of closets, and the cabinets were small, so it didn’t take long to check everything out.

  Before he went back downstairs, he moved to the side of one of the windows and then carefully began to peer out.

  Blake couldn’t see much, though, because the angle of the window was bad. He couldn’t see the street in front of the house, and could just make out some of the doors on the buildings on the opposite side. While he wanted to see as much as possible, it was this side of the gorge he was presently worried about.

  He was about to turn back around when a sudden wave of fatigue washed over him, and he let himself have a moment to lean back against the wall.

  Nothing had been going the way he expected, and now he was tired and in pain and hungry and thirsty with no end in sight. How did he keep getting himself into situations like this? He knew this wasn’t the time for self-pity, but he just couldn’t help himself for a moment. It felt like one bit of crap after another for the past few months, maybe years, and while he knew that he brought some of it on himself, he also knew that it wasn’t all his fault.

  Was there really such a thing as luck. Or fortune or fate? If there was, then all three seemed to hate him these days. He didn’t know what he had done to earn their ire, but he would have been happy to do whatever it took to make it up to them.

  Blake hated the silence in his mind. Axel and Nyx helped to keep him grounded and he felt…adrift without them in there. The silence was so unnatural. Not like when he was asleep or just zoned out ignoring them, this was a total and complete silence. One that not only bothered him, but unnerved him. Like walking into a creepy forest without wildlife’s background chatter.

  Although he still felt tired, he knew that he couldn’t just stand here all day. If he did, he would likely die here and that wouldn’t be good.

  Besides, he had to get back downstairs to Raven.

  With a big sigh, he pushed himself off the wall and made his way to the top of the stairs. He forced himself to remain focused and cautious, listening for any unusual sounds or things that seemed off. However, hearing none, he started down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he found Raven sitting on some sort of stool right next to one of the front windows. She was to the side of it, peering out around the edge at something across the street.

  “He’s not even trying to hide himself,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t think that’s a good sign.”

  21

  “What is he doing?”

  “Sitting, it looks like.”

  “…yes, I can see that he’s sitting. I was thinking in a bigger sense.”

  Blake grunted. “Waiting for us?”

  Raven sighed, watching Greyson as he sat on the edge of the gorge or ditch or whatever it was. He had his gun in his hand, but he looked…relaxed, and that was more unnerving than anything.

  “It would seem so,” she agreed, “but why out there? If he wanted to pick us off, waiting at the top of the stairs would have been more tactically sound.”

  “Hell if I know,” he said. He sounded tired, she thought. She could hardly blame him, of course. “Predicting homicidal maniacs isn’t my strongest skill.”

  She shrugged a little. “It is part of the job.”

  He didn’t reply right away. The pause was long enough to bring her to look at him, and she saw the hard frown as he looked out the window.

  “What?” she asked, sensing there was something else in that look.

  “You really want to bring that up now ?” he asked testily.

  Raven stared at him cluelessly for a moment, blinking, until it dawned on her and she rolled her eyes before she could stop herself. “It was just a statement, you big baby, not an indictment on your job performance. Would you get over that already?”

  Now, he looked at her. “Keep your voice down,” he said flatly. “We don’t need him knowing we’re having an argument in here.”

  “I don’t think this is the time to discuss your fragile ego,” she hissed.

  “Or the time to discuss your crappy attitude.”

  Her eyes widened and she inhaled sharply, ready to tear off on him, when she remembered where they were and what the situation was. She literally bit down on her tongue, counting to five until she had evened out.

  “If I’m crappy, it’s only because you’ve been driving me nuts,” she said, keeping her voice quiet despite the strong urge t
o shout. “We have jobs to do and we need to do them, so I can’t take the time to ease your wounded pride because I happen to be better at this than you are. I shouldn’t have to be sorry for that.”

  “I’m not asking you to be,” he said, his voice rising at the end until she gave him a big-eyed glare and he quieted. “I’m not. You’re good at this. I just don’t want to be a burden. I want to feel like I’m doing my part.”

  She pressed her hand to her now-throbbing head. “And you do. You do more when you’re not worrying so much about how well you’re doing. When you spend all your time comparing yourself to me or to others and then second-guessing yourself, you end up fulfilling your own image of yourself, and that’s just stupid.”

  Therapist material, she was not.

  He grimaced. “I’m trying to stop doing that, but it’s hard. When I was younger, I was good—better than good—at everything I did. School, sports, jobs. Then I thought this job would be somewhere I could excel, and I didn’t. I never really learned how to handle that.”

  That was, perhaps, the most self-aware statement she’d ever heard from him. “Good insight,” she said. “I guess that would take a while to learn, and none too easily when you’re trying to do it as an adult. This stuff is easier when we’re kids.”

  “It’s easier when we’re still malleable and have parents directing us. We don’t take it as well from a spouse.” He gave her a wry, sidelong smile.

  “Especially one as crappy as me?” She smirked back at him.

  “You were good for me,” he admitted with a quiet laugh, leaning back against the wall and letting out a long breath.

  She wondered how long they could sit here, waiting the guy out, but on the other hand, considering neither of them were in great shape, what could they actually do?

  “As much as I’m enjoying this,” she finally said, “we still do have that guy out there to deal with.”

  “Maybe he’ll just go away,” Blake said, even though she knew that neither of them believed that.

  They were both silent for a while, each one trying to figure out what the solution was and coming up blank.

  “You know, Raven…” he began quietly. “If we don’t make it out of here…”

  “Don’t.”

  “What?”

  She looked at him soberly. “Don’t start with stuff like that. We’re going to make it out of here. It’s not a question of if, just of when and how. But we’ll figure that out and we’ll get past that guy out there. We’ll be fine. We’ll get back to Kyra and Axel and Silvanus and Nyx. We’ll fly off and put this behind us.”

  Blake smiled wryly. “I appreciate your confidence in that, especially considering you’re the one walking around on a jacked-up ankle.”

  “So if I can be optimistic, what’s your excuse?”

  “Good point.”

  Raven managed a weary smile in his direction, and he managed to return the expression. They both took a breath, about to say something else, when another voice intruded.

  “As sweet as this little interaction is,” Greyson called toward the house, “don’t you two think there are more important things to deal with? Like the assassin with the gun sitting on your doorstep?”

  22

  Kyra wound her way around the large rocks until she reached the entrance to the cave. She paused there, giving her vision a chance to adjust to the dark before she proceeded. It was dark enough that she knew Raven would have struggled, but Kyra did fine.

  As she walked down the tunnel, there was nothing remarkable. It was the average cave with rock walls, some fungi-like plants growing and a persistent feel of dampness. There were no signs so far of anyone living here or having passed through. No belongings or scents left behind, no people or animals, except for some type of lizard. She had never encountered it before so she couldn’t name it, but she knew it was a lizard. Given the size of the cavern, she didn’t imagine it was big enough to give her too much trouble.

  ‘Can you still hear me? ’ Kyra asked after a while, feeling a little paranoid about losing contact with the AI the same way they had lost contact with Raven.

  ‘Yes, I can. I don’t detect any signal variance. ’

  So far so good, then.

  ‘Have there been any further attempts on your systems? ’

  ‘Negative, but I remain vigilant. ’

  The cat couldn’t ask for any more than that, so she didn’t. She kept walking, and looking, and listening, and smelling…

  But there was nothing.

  She was beginning to think this was a dead end after all, when she saw a flicker of red on one of the walls.

  Kyra froze in place, sniffing the air. It suddenly smelled different, but the change was subtle and she couldn’t figure out what it actually was. There was…a wrongness to it, but she couldn’t seem to define it past that.

  Turning her head carefully, she looked at the wall where she had caught the flash of red. She didn’t see it there now, but there was something there. Without moving from where she stood, she tried to peer closer.

  The red light—just a tiny dot of light in the darkness—flashed again.

  Eyes latching onto that spot, she then moved her gaze across the hall to the same place on the opposite wall. She watched that until the red light flashed there too. That’s when the theory formed in her mind, and she was pretty sure that she was right.

  With the furry toes of one paw, she tried to flick some dirt from the cave floor. Since she tried to move her foot as little as possible while doing it, it didn’t really go very far, but it was just enough to briefly show her some sort of energy tripwire.

  She found that interesting. A thoroughly boring, ‘normal’ cave and then suddenly, a bit of technology, and not just any, but a surveillance one. Like someone wanted to know when someone else was in this cave.

  ‘Can you see what I’m seeing? ’ she asked Silvanus.

  ‘You may need to narrow that down, Kyra, ’ the AI replied evenly.

  The cat huffed and rolled her eyes. ‘There is an energy tripwire in front of me. ’

  ‘Now, that’s interesting. One moment. ’

  Kyra sat down, careful to not move any further forward as she did so. While waiting for Silvanus’s evaluation, she tried to peer further down the corridor and into the darkness, but nothing stood out to her but the two tiny flashes of red.

  ‘I can see the emission, ’ the AI eventually reported. ‘As far as I can tell, there is only one so-called wire close to the floor and not a row of them or a wall of energy. If you can avoid the one, you can go past it. ’

  ‘That’s good to know, ’ Kyra replied. ‘Do you see any others further down? Or any other sort of traps I should know about? ’

  A few moments passed before Silvanus said, ‘Not that I can see from here. ’

  Kyra couldn’t decide if that made her feel better or not, but seeing that there wasn’t anything she could do about it, she stopped trying to figure it out and just worked out how to get from here to there without tripping anyone’s alarm. She didn’t know the who or the why, and she didn’t have a burning need to find out right then.

  From the lights and her little sand experiment, she had a general idea of where the line of the energy was. She knew she had a decent jumping ability, so if she could just estimate correctly…

  As far as she was aware, the way she’d come was clear. She knew she may have tripped a wire she hadn’t seen, but since no one had shown up and nothing bad had yet happened, she was assuming that hadn’t happened. As such, she felt safe in backing up a few steps.

  She kept her eyes on the spot that she had been sitting, then took a little running start. When her paws hit the spot she’d been before, she pushed off with her back feet to sail as far forward as the power of her hindquarters would allow her. As best she could tell, mid-leap, she had cleared where the dust had shown her the energy.

  Hitting the ground, she stopped and listened. No alarms. No flashing lights. She didn’t hear anyth
ing. It didn’t seem like anything was being shot at her, and the ground wasn’t opening up a big trapdoor to drag her away. So far so good. She gave it a few moments, just to be sure, but once it seemed like it was clear, she started forward again.

  After the excitement of the tripwire, Kyra moved even more carefully than she had before. Her eyes were constantly examining each side of the cave wall for any more telltale flashing lights, but she didn’t see anything. Perhaps Silvanus had been correct, then, in her scans.

  It wasn’t, of course, that she doubted the AI. It was the rest of the technology that the cat was suspicious of. In her experience, their ship’s sensors seemed to be terribly temperamental and fickle—sometimes they worked, and sometimes they didn’t, without a whole lot of rhyme or reason, or at least not one that Kyra could make sense of.

  After a few more minutes, the cave tunnel took a sharp enough turn that she didn’t know what was around it. She slowed her pace to a slink and made her way forward, hunkering close to the ground in case there was an enemy waiting around the bend or she had to make a jump for something.

  However, no one was waiting on the other side.

  All that was there was a door.

  23

  “I guess he knows we’re in here,” Blake deadpanned.

  “Oh, ya think?” Raven snapped back. She huffed. “He has to be enhanced in some ways. Like his hearing.”

  “Among other things,” he called.

  She rolled her eyes. Great, he really could hear everything. Knowing the kind of luck she was having right now, he’d also be telepathic and then they’d really be screwed.

  “Why don’t you just tell us what you want?” Raven called toward the window, without moving her head so she didn’t end up with it in the line of fire.

  “Oh, many things, Missus Sharpe,” he replied, laughing. “Or should I say Miss Sokolova?”

  That made all the snark leave her body and she sat up a little straighter. It wasn’t that her maiden name was a big secret, but anything related to her work with Halliwell was under Sharpe, since that was her legal name at the time she joined. Finding her maiden name would take a little more work. For him to know it meant that either he somehow had an amazing memory and learned about every bounty hunter out there, or—more likely and more frightening—he had known she’d be coming for him.