LITMIR.BIZ

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Kiley, the gentleman who brought me in here, cuff me and take me wherever I’m headed. I have a feeling some of those other guys might be a little rougher than needed. And maybe, once I drop the pointy object, you could ask that sniper to clear out. He’s making me a bit nervous. Reasonable requests?”

      “All reasonable, Mr. Anderson,” Cal agreed. “I’ll do my best to accommodate them. Why don’t you start the ball rolling by dropping the toothbrush and letting the detective go?”

      Anderson leaned in close so only Keri could hear him.

      “Good luck,” he whispered almost inaudibly before dropping the toothbrush and lifting his arms high so that she could slip under the manacles. She slid away from him and slowly got to her feet with the aid of the overturned table. Cal reached out his hand to offer assistance but she didn’t take it.

      Once she was standing upright and felt steady she turned to face Thomas “The Ghost” Anderson for what she was certain would be the last time.

      “Thanks for not killing me,” she muttered, trying to sound sarcastic.

      “You bet,” he said, smiling sweetly.

      As she stepped toward the interrogation room door, it opened wide and five men in full SWAT gear burst in, tearing past her. She didn’t look back to see what they did as she stumbled out the door and into the hallway.

      It looked like Cal Brubaker had been true to at least part of his word. The sniper, leaning against the far wall, with his gun at his side, had stood down. But Officer Kiley was nowhere in sight.

      As she walked down the hall, escorted by a female officer who said she was taking her to the infirmary, Keri was pretty sure she could hear the sound of gun butts slamming into human bone. And while she didn’t hear any subsequent screaming, she did hear grunting, followed by deep, ceaseless moaning.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      Keri hurried back to her car, hoping to leave the parking structure before anyone noticed she was gone. Her heart was beating in time with her shoes, pounding hard and fast on the concrete.

      Her trip to the infirmary had been a gift from Anderson. He knew that after a hostage situation, she was sure to face hours of interrogation, hours she didn’t have to spare. By demanding she be allowed to go to the infirmary, he was ensuring her a window in which she would have little supervision and possibly be able to leave before being cornered by a bunch of Downtown Division detectives.

      That’s exactly what she had done. After a nurse had cleaned up the small puncture wound on her neck and bandaged it, Keri had feigned a brief post-hostage-crisis panic attack and asked to use the bathroom. Since she wasn’t an inmate, it was easy to slip out after that.

      She made her way down in the elevator with the janitorial staff who got off at 9 p.m. Security Officer Beamon must have been on break because there was some new guy manning the lobby and he didn’t give her a second look.

      Once out of the building, she started across the street to the parking structure, still expecting some detective to come racing outside after her demanding to know why she’d been interrogating a prisoner when she was on suspension. But she heard nothing.

      In fact, she was completely alone with her footsteps and heartbeat as all the off-duty janitors headed down the street to the bus stop and metro station. Apparently none of them drove to work.

      It was only when she had reached the second floor of the stairwell that she heard the sound of other shoes below. They were loud and heavy and they seemed to come out of nowhere. She would have noticed them earlier if they’d been walking before. They couldn’t have come from across the street. It was almost as if someone had been waiting for her arrival to start moving.

      She headed toward her car, about halfway down the row on the left. The footsteps followed and it became clear now that it wasn’t one set of shoes but two, both clearly belonging to men. Their gaits were thick and lumbering and she could hear one of them wheezing slightly.

      It was possible that these men were detectives but she doubted it. They likely would have identified themselves already if they wanted to question her. And if they were cops with ill intent, they wouldn’t be approaching her in the Twin Towers parking structure. There were cameras everywhere. If they were on Cave’s payroll and meant her harm, they would have waited until she was off city property.

      Keri slid her hand down involuntarily to her gun holster before remembering that she’d left her personal weapon in the trunk. She had wanted to avoid questions from security and decided that carrying her personal piece into a city jail might not accomplish that goal. For the same reason, her ankle pistol was in the same place. She was unarmed.

      Feeling her pulse quicken, Keri ordered herself to remain calm, not to speed up her pace to alert these guys that she was on to them. They had to know. But maintaining the illusion might give her time. Same for looking over her shoulder – she refused to do it. That was certain to set them running after her.

      Instead, she casually glanced in the windows of some of the shinier SUVs, hoping to get a sense of who she was dealing with. After a few cars, she was able to size them up. Two guys, both wearing suits: one big, the other huge with a belly that tumbled over his belt. It was hard to gauge age but the bigger one looked older as well. He was the wheezer. Neither were holding guns but the fat one had what looked to be a Taser and the younger one was clutching some kind of nightstick. Apparently someone wanted her taken alive.

      Trying to appear nonchalant, she pulled her keys from her purse, sliding the pointy ends between her knuckles facing outward as she hit the button to unlock her car, now only twenty feet away. The two men were still about ten feet from her but there was no way she could get to her car, open the door, get in, close the door, and lock it before they caught her, even at their size. She silently cursed herself for parking head-in.

      The beep her car made seemed to startle the fat one and he stumbled a bit. After that, Keri knew that pretending she didn’t notice them at this point would seem more suspicious than turning around, so she stopped abruptly and spun quickly, taking them by surprise.

      “How’s it going, guys?” she asked sweetly, as if discovering two hulking dudes right behind her was the most natural thing in the world. They both took another couple of steps before awkwardly pulling up five feet from her.

      The younger guy appeared to be at a loss. The older guy started to open his mouth to speak. Keri’s senses were tingling. For some reason, she noticed he had missed a patch of hair on the left side of his neck the last time he’d shaved. Almost without thinking, she pushed the alarm button on her car remote. Both men glanced involuntarily in that direction. That’s when she moved.

      She lunged forward quickly, swinging her right fist, the one with the exposed keys, at the left side of his face. Everything began to move in slow motion. He saw her too late and by the time he started to raise his left arm to try to block the punch, she had made contact.

      Keri knew it was a direct hit because at least one of the keys went pretty deep before hitting resistance. The screaming started almost immediately as blood gushed from his eye. She didn’t pause to admire her handiwork. Instead, she used her forward momentum to dive forward, slamming her right shoulder into his left knee even as he was already crumpling to the ground.

      She heard a sickening pop and knew that his knee ligaments were being torn violently apart as he fell to the ground. She forced the sound from her brain as she tried to roll smoothly back up to a standing position.

      Unfortunately, throwing herself against such a massive person had rattled her body from head to toe, re-aggravating the pain of the injuries she suffered only days earlier. Her chest felt like it had been whacked with a frying pan. She was pretty sure she’d slammed her injured knee on the concrete parking structure floor as she dived and the collision had left her right shoulder throbbing.

      More immediately troubling than any of that was that smashing into the guy had slowed her movement enough for the younger, fitter guy to regain his senses. As Keri came out of her roll and tried to recover her balance, he was already moving toward her, his eyes blazing with an intense mix of fury and fear, the nightstick in his right hand starting its downward

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