Reaper's Stand(95)

I still wasn’t sure who our targets were or where the rest of the men had gone—we had about thirty in our group total, a mixture of Reapers, Silver Bastards, and some other club of locals who were apparently their allies. None of them wore their distinctive colors and everything was very hush-hush. All of them had ignored me completely, except for Puck, who radiated resentment at being stuck with babysitting duty.

Fair enough, because I was starting to resent his silent ass, too.

After what felt like hours, Puck’s phone vibrated. He answered it, grunted a few times, and hung up, turning to look at me with a frown marring his handsome features.

“They need me inside,” he said. “You’ll have to come, too—can’t leave you out here by yourself. Keep quiet and don’t say, do, or touch anything. Understand?”

I felt like telling him that he was young enough to be my son, and I wasn’t f*cking stupid. Instead I said, “I understand.”

Another grunt. Some day he really was going to have to learn some real words, I decided.

We stepped out of the van and started around the side of the building. Around the corner we found a door guarded by a man I didn’t recognize. He opened it for Puck silently, eyeing me with suspicion as I followed the prospect inside.

The warehouse surprised me.

I don’t know what I was expecting … Maybe some kind of big, open space with catwalks and spotlights, and an evil genius laughing maniacally in the background.

A hairless cat or two?

Instead, dim security lights showed an interior that looked less like a crime lord’s fortress and more like a Costco. There were long stacks of boxes and bins and pallets forming alleys, some of them piled nearly to the ceiling. A perfectly normal forklift was parked near the door. It didn’t even have a machine gun mounted on the roof or anything.

Puck pulled out his gun and started down the second row of pallets, which my active imagination immediately pointed out would operate like a cattle chute. You know, the long, narrow paths they use to guide animals to their deaths in slaughterhouses?

Not a happy thought.

He crept through the darkness and I followed him like a good girl. Then I tripped on my own shoelace, somehow doing an elaborate dance and shuffle to stay upright without making a sound.

When I was stable again, I dropped down into a crouch to fix the lace. Puck kept moving ahead, oblivious, and there was no way I could stop him without making a sound. Which was worse? Making noise or getting separated?

Making noise seemed more likely to get us killed.

Sucked to be screwing things up less than five minutes into the operation. Kneeling down gave me a whole new perspective on the situation—specifically a perspective low enough to see through a gap in the pallets that was only about two feet high, and maybe eighteen inches wide. On the other side of the gap I could just make out a … Oh shit. That was a body over there—not one of the bikers, he wasn’t wearing the right kind of clothes.

There was dark black crap puddled around him on the floor.

Blood?

Yeah. Had to be blood, and way more of it than had come out of Em. This guy was deader than dead, no question. Wow. This was really happening—London Armstrong from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was in the middle of a gang war and people were dying … I backed away, looking ahead to see that Puck had almost reached the end of the row, still clueless that we’d gotten separated. Wasn’t that just perfect? I’d just started rising to my feet when I heard the noise.

A snuffling, whimpering cry … High-pitched, like a child or maybe a young woman. My mom radar went on point, because I recognised that cry.


Jessica.

She was somewhere on the other side of these pallets, which meant I could either run to the end of the long row and go around, or I could try crawling through that narrow little gap. But running around would take time and possibly make noise … Not only that, if I caught up to Puck, he might not let me go look for Jess, not when he had an assignment of his own to accomplish.

I’d just have to crawl through.

The only downside was Mr. McDead over there, which I had to admit was a major strike against my plan. Then I heard Jessica whimpering again, and she sounded weaker this time—no more playing around. I dropped back down and started slithering my way through the gap. It wasn’t particularly fun or comfortable, but deadly raids against notorious cartels rarely are.

The first thing I discovered when I reached the other side was that Mr. McDead’s blood was still warm—something I figured out by accidentally putting my hand in it. I could smell it, too. Metallic, with a hint of sweetness. I started to wipe it on my shirt, and then stopped, because ewww. Wondering faintly if God would strike me for defiling the dead, I leaned down and carefully wiped my hand on his shirt.

My fingers brushed a hard lump.

I froze. There was something solid under his shirt, something that had fallen down toward his left side. Giving another quick glance down the row, I didn’t see anyone, so I tugged up his shirt to look.

It was a gun.

The whimper came again, and I looked around for the source. Along the wall stretched a series of doors. They were all shut, like they were offices that’d been locked up for the night … Except for one clearly marked as a bathroom—that door had been propped open. Was she in there, hiding?

I decided to check my new gun before going in, because I didn’t want to get caught out without any bullets this time. Oh-so-carefully, I let the little bullet holder-thingy slide out of the bottom. Yup. Full of bullets, all right. Then I pushed it back up and wrapped the bottom of my shirt around the whole thing, muffling the sound as I carefully cocked the weapon.