Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(99)

I was already moving.

I took two careful steps forward. Two feet a stride, counting in my head. I couldn’t see Luis, but I hadn’t heard him move. Meaning he would now be between three and four feet directly in front of me. I held the weight bar tight with both hands, crouched, and swung it at ankle level, sweeping around through the shoulders and pivoting my whole body into the swing.

There was a crack like I had hit a fastball. I felt the impact through my arms.

Luis screamed. The scream was useful. It provided me with more information. I shifted my stance and swept the bar back toward the origin of the noise, fast, before the scream even stopped. I felt a second impact jolt through the bar. The scream stopped as suddenly as it had started. I heard the sound of a body collapsing.

Someone who sounded like Boots called out, “Luis? You okay? What happened?”

“Shut the fuck up!” another voice hissed. Board Shorts. A smarter voice.

I was already moving again. The voices made it easier but I didn’t need them. Trying to see was pointless. I was listening. Listening, and counting in my head. One-two. One-two. The same careful two feet per stride. Stepping along the imaginary diagonal line that led to the two remaining men. I placed my feet softly, with great care. I felt like I could almost see the line I had memorized, blazing like a tightrope.

The shortest distance between two points. Basic Euclidian geometry.

My socks made no sound against the cement floor.

No way they could hear me coming for them.

I heard a crunching sound in front of me. The sound of a boot stepping on broken glass. The crunching sound helped. In the darkness it was like hanging a bull’s-eye on a target. I brought the bar back with both hands and then lunged forward, ramming the bar ahead like a spear. Mentally aiming for a point about three feet above the crunching sound. I felt the bar encounter something soft and yielding. Stomach or lungs, maybe, or genitalia.

There was a terrible groan and a clatter that sounded exactly like a dropped aluminum bat hitting cement.

Most people, taking a blow to that area of the body, tended to double over. Involuntary, reflexive. I raised the bar about two feet and rammed it forward a second time. This time there was a kind of gurgle. I had brought the bar back a third time when the quiet was broken by a series of explosions. Bright flashes of fire tore out as the semiautomatic fired. In the enclosed space the noise was deafening. I leapt backward. Away from the gurgle. Away from the most recent source of noise. In case Board Shorts was doing the same thing I’d been doing and following sound. I closed my eyes to preserve what was left of my night vision and dropped down. The cheap Cobra hadn’t jammed after all.

I counted three shots, each one deafening in the enclosed space. I could hear the actual bullets cracking and bouncing. I stayed down. Could see the muzzle flashes through my closed eyelids. He was firing wildly, as fast as he could pull the trigger. Nowhere near me. I was counting the reports carefully. It was doubtful the full clip had contained more than ten rounds, and definitely not more than twelve. He had pulled the slide back to chamber a round, meaning there hadn’t been an extra in the chamber. People didn’t tend to carry extra clips of ammunition when they were sitting around a garage drinking beer with their friends.

Twelve shots, maximum. Then I could move again.

We never got there.

After the fourth shot there was a scream of pain and then a crash that sounded like someone falling into some kind of metallic objects.

The shooting stopped.

A stream of anguished profanity issued from the direction of the crash.

I stood up and stayed perfectly still for a moment. Mentally adding up how much I had moved from my original position. Adjusting my steps, I walked toward what I hoped was the adjoining door, wincing as I felt a piece of sharp glass dig into my heel. The glass was okay. It told me I was more or less in the right spot. My foot brushed a raised line. The doorjamb. I felt around against the wall until my finger found the garage door button.

I pressed it and the garage door opened. The most normal sight in the world. Familiar to millions of suburbanites all over the country. The bright sunlight unscrolled as the door rose. A sign for most families to pull the car out or go look around to grab the golf clubs or rakes. Any of the normal things that people kept in normal garages.

I looked carefully around. This garage looked different. Decidedly not normal.

Luis lay crumpled on the floor. Except for the blood running from a cut on his head he could have been asleep. Boots was curled into an awkward seahorse shape. His breaths were raspy and uneven and both hands were clasped around his throat. If I’d had to guess, I would have figured something to do with the trachea. More likely bruised than crushed, based on the fact that he was breathing. No long-term damage, but he wouldn’t be moving much for the next few minutes. My gaze continued to Board Shorts, who lay on the floor in the other direction, both hands clutching his leg. He’d fallen into a row of empty paint cans, which had caused the clatter. Wildly firing a semiautomatic pistol in an enclosed area didn’t always pay off. No telling which way a ricochet might go. One of his bullets must have bounced back at him, hot sharp metal sizzling with kinetic energy. There was blood coming from his leg.

I walked over, kicking the gun away out of his reach even though he didn’t look like he wanted to be anywhere near it. I knelt down and took a closer look at his leg. “Your lucky day,” I said. The bullet had gashed the leg but it hadn’t lodged. Not enough blood to mean anything life-threatening. I straightened. “I wouldn’t mention the gun when you’re getting that stitched up. There’s no bullet in you. You can get away with that.”