End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(71)

Aaron leaned forward and saw the tablet himself. He looked at Shoshana and said, “No mercy,” then exited.

Shoshana and I both left the vehicle at a trot, jogging to the stairwell of the apartment, seeing a bunch of twenty-somethings all out having a good time. We pushed through them, and then reached a guard shack. We walked past it, and the guard came out, saying something in Italian.

I turned to him and he instinctively read the violence leaking out. I said, “I don’t speak Italian.”

In English, he said, “What do you want?”

I said, “I want you to get back in the fucking shack.”

He nodded and retreated. We began running up the stairs. We reached Lia’s landing and faced three guys sitting on the steps like cats in the sun, one of them smoking a vape.

I tried to go past them and the vape guy stood up, also saying something in Italian. I don’t know what he uttered, but it was really irrelevant, as I was sick of the roadblocks. I looked at the other two and said, “Shoshana, eliminate the threat.”

She said, “Gladly.”

The vape guy appeared confused, but that only lasted a moment, because the next thing he felt was pain. Shoshana ripped him off his feet, torquing his elbow until the joint shattered. He screamed and launched himself at Shoshana, his useless arm trailing him like a piece of toilet paper attached to his shoe. He tried to use his weight alone to subdue her, throwing himself on her body with his one good arm reaching for her neck. She grabbed the arm and rotated, using his momentum against him, flipping him off her back and tossing his ass off the stairwell to the ground below.

He continued screaming all the way down.

The other two leapt to their feet and I plowed into them, clocking the first with a straight right punch to the temple with all of my weight behind it, causing him to drop like a sack of wheat.

I grabbed the leg of the second man and jerked it up in the air, slamming him onto his back on the stairs. He flailed his arms and tried to get away from the pain, but I used the stairs as leverage. I twisted his ankle until I heard a satisfying pop. He shouted in pain, keening like a wounded rabbit, and I dropped the leg, bodily picked him up, and sent him to follow his leader two stories below.

Breathing heavily, Shoshana pointed and said, “What about him?”

I looked at the guy I’d knocked out and said, “Fuck him. Let’s go.”

We went upward, now with our weapons out, and reached the landing to the apartment. Shoshana said, “What do we do?”

And I realized she was good at killing, but had no skill on room clearing. I wished I’d sent her to the back and had Aaron with me.

I pulled out my small door charge and said, “Look, when I initiate this, there are only two things in that apartment. A threat, and Lia. Do you understand?”

She nodded, and I said, “If it’s not Lia, kill it. I don’t care if it’s a dog. If it’s something breathing, and it’s not Lia, kill it.”





Chapter 47




Lia heard the shouting outside and dared to hope. The killer heard it as well, whipping up his pants and saying, “What did you do, you bitch?”

Chained to her chair, half-naked, she said, “Nothing. It’s the kids. They always do this. It’s why I hate this place.”

The killer turned from the noise, becoming calm again, like a light switch had been flipped. He said, “Then I guess it’s just you and me now.”

He advanced to her again and said, “If you take my manhood in your mouth, it might alter your fate. I really would like that.”

Lia thought it almost seemed as if he was begging. Desperately trying to get someone to love him after his horrific torture.

And she almost considered it, to save her life. Almost.

She said, “Tell me what you want. Tell me what I can do.”

There was a small scratch on the door, a little tick. Nothing that anyone of ordinary skills would recognize, but the killer did.

He looked at her and said, “You bitch! How do they know?”

He raised the key fob device and the lock on her door exploded, a piece of the cylinder flying out and hitting him in the fist. He screamed, clutched his wounded hand, and then started sprinting to the back of the house.

Two people came in, guns raised, clearing the immediate area. Lia was astounded at the turn of events. She jerked her head toward the back and screamed, “He’s that way! That way!”

The man she knew as Pike ran to the back, talking into a radio. The woman came to her and said, “Are you okay?”

Panting, Lia said, “Get out! I’m wearing an explosive collar. He has the detonator. Get out!”

The woman floated a weird gaze on her, not unlike the killer. She said, “My name is Shoshana, and I’m not going anywhere. And you’re not going to die.”

Lia finally recognized her as the woman from the crime scene. Pike came back in and said, “I’m not sure about you Israelis. Aaron missed him out the back. He exited on the fire escape, but he never reached the ground. He’s gone.”

Shoshana gave him a laser stare, and Lia saw him subtly flinch. He said, “What do we have?”

“A woman with a dog collar of explosives, and a man with a detonator on the loose.”

Pike said, “Not on the loose.” He bent down and picked up what looked like a key fob and said, “He dropped this on the way out.”