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They should’ve been close enough by now. I held my breath.
Behind me, my cell phone alarm went off.
If they had been amateurs, they would have dropped everything, and all run over to look for the phone. Instead, the clearing team ignored it. Looking for it meant they would have to turn their backs to Sephora, and since the ringing cell was obviously a distraction, they surmised that I wanted them to keep away from Sephora, so they stayed on their present course.
The sentry closest to me turned right and walked toward the sound. His buddy didn’t move, covering the left side of the room.
A step.
Another step.
A black combat boot landed mere inches from my face. Glass crunched under the heavy rubber sole. I could reach out and touch it.
Another step.
I tried not to breathe.
Another.
He moved past me. The phone kept playing, eerily loud in the silence. I had hidden it under more plastic. It would take him a bit to find it.
Now. I had to do it now.
I slipped from under the plastic and dashed to the remaining sentry. He never saw me coming. My magic pulled me. I lunged, following its lead, and sliced his throat, severing the jugular and the carotid in one smooth thrust. Blood wet the blade. The sentry spun, choking on his own blood, unable to cry out. I thrust, putting three years of practice behind my sword. Funny thing about ballistic vests, they were designed to disperse the kinetic impact of a bullet, not stop a blade. My gladius cut through the Kevlar like it was a quilt, severing the man’s aorta. I sprinted to the other hunter, my socks muffling my steps.
He’d reached the counter where I’d hidden the phone and was pulling the plastic off it. I clamped my left hand over his mouth and drove the gladius into his lower back, just under the body armor and into his kidney. The sharp blade sliced through the bundle of nerves and pain receptors, drowning the hunter in agony. I jerked his head back and slit his throat, cutting through the carotid and the trachea. The man sagged, and I gently lowered him to the floor.
A harsh metallic taste washed over my tongue. My hands shook. Blood dripped from my gladius onto the floor.
I’d just killed two people.
This was it; they were dead, and I could never take it back.
A two-shot burst crackled inside Sephora. Someone found the Prom Queen wearing my favorite coat.
In a moment, they would come out and realize they were missing two of their own people. I had to move or die.
I sprinted to the right, behind the clothes racks, which I had pushed together into a crescent shape around Sephora. The still ringing phone would buy me a few precious seconds but not many.
A dark, human-shaped shadow moved away from the group and came straight for me. That was not the plan. I crouched to the right of the gap in my makeshift barricade.
The sound of his footsteps drew closer. The dark outline of a gun emerged, followed by his arms, then his leg.
I held my breath.
The hunter turned to my left toward the phone, exposing his back. I lunged from a crouch and slashed across his spine, just under the bulletproof vest. He cried out and swung around. I stabbed him in the throat and withdrew. He collapsed. They had to have heard his gasp. Now or never.
I took a deep breath and sang out, pouring carefully measured magic into my words, “Baa, baa, black sheep . . .”
Gunfire tore through the store, but I was already moving, sprinting behind the metal clothes racks. To my magic-enhanced vision, the four remaining hunter minds fluoresced in response to my song, pale smudges of grey light in the darkness of the store.
The shots died.
“Have you any wool?”
Bullets ricocheted from the clothes racks, tracking my voice. I dropped to the floor and crawled behind some wooden displays. They stopped shooting.
“Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.”
A bullet tore a chunk from the plywood counter just in front of me. I scrambled to my feet and dashed the other way. The rest of the hunters moved toward me, closing in on my position like sharks.
“One for my master, one for my dame . . .”
The gunfire died. Silence claimed the store. I inhaled.
Four voices chorused in perfect unison. “And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.”
I had them. They were mine.
Oh my God.
I straightened. The four hunters emerged from behind Sephora’s walls. The leading hunter pulled his ski mask off his head, revealing the scarred face of a white man in his thirties, and gave me a shy little smile.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi,” they chorused. A woman on my right gave me a little wave with her HK MP5. If she had shot me with it, the spray of bullets would’ve cut me in half.
“Tell the team upstairs that everything is clear. So they don’t have to worry.”
The scarred man got on his radio. “False alarm. Continue the sweep. Clear. Over.”
A static-softened answer came back. “Copy.”
I slid the sword into its sheath on my belt. “Can one of you bring me my cell phone and my coat? It’s the one that was on the zombie mannequin.”
The scarred man jerked his head at one of the other hunters. The hunter took off at a run and returned with my cell phone and my expensive coat, which now sported a couple of fresh bullet holes. Damn it. I turned the phone’s alarm off.
“Follow me, please. I have to get my shoes.” I walked to the corner of the store, where a lone cash register had somehow survived the looting. The hunters trailed me.
“Who sent you here?”
“Mr. De Lacy,” the scarred man told me.
“What were your orders?”
“We’re supposed to apprehend you and bring you back to his residence.”
Benedict was a sick asshole.
“We’re supposed to kill you if we couldn’t capture you,” a female hunter added.
“Sorry,” the scarred leader said.
Sorry didn’t quite cover it.
I took my boots from where I’d hidden them under the counter and put them and my ruined coat back on. My new bodyguards watched. I pushed aside the debris I had piled against a cabinet to keep it closed, opened the door, and took the little dog out. It licked my face.
I cradled the dog in my arms. “The people upstairs don’t realize I’m nice. They’ll try to kill me. You’ll keep me safe, won’t you?”
“Of course,” the leader said. “Don’t worry, Ms. Baylor. We’ve got this.”
“We’ll keep you intact,” another man said.
“We need to take them out,” the leader said. “It’s the safest way.”
The woman with the HK smiled. “The escalator is nice and narrow.”
The scarred hunter touched his radio. “We have her pinned down. Take the escalator down and cover us.”
“Copy.”
The leader pointed to a spot on the floor. “Stand there please.”
I stood. The four hunters flanked the escalator. Two hunters came down the steps, sticking close together, a third slightly behind. My four bodyguards let them get halfway down. Gunfire burst, deafening in the silence of the mall. Three bloody bodies fell.
Three more people I killed. I would deal with the guilt later. Right now, I had to survive.
The leader turned to me. “We should take care of the rest of the crew as well, while we’re at it. Safer that way.”
I forced my mouth to move. “Good idea.”
The hunters fell into a defensive formation around me, the scarred leader in front, two people on the sides, and the female hunter covering the rear. We walked back to the Keystone Mall entrance.
“Do you often capture people for Mr. De Lacy?”
“We’ve done it a few times,” the leader said. “Mostly we’re given termination jobs.”
“Was Sigourney Etterson one of your contracts? It would’ve been last Sunday.”
“No,” the scarred man said without a pause. “We did a wet job last Saturday. Sunday we were dark. I got some killer fishing done.”
Killer fishing. He didn’t even realize what he’d said.
“Did you go out on your boat?” the hunter on the right asked.
“Naah. Went kayak fishing on Lake Anahuac. Got a six-pound largemouth bass.”
“Nice!” the hunter on the right said.
“Who did you kill on Saturday?” I asked.
“Some lawyer,” the leader said. “A clean, easy job. He came home, we put a gun into his mouth, pulled the trigger. Left him for the wife to find.”
“I wish they were all that easy,” the female hunter said.
“Ain’t that the truth?” the hunter on the left added.
The first set of escalators came into view, a pair of guards by it. My escorts snapped their weapons up. The guns spat noise and bullets, and two corpses hit the floor. As we moved past them, the female hunter kicked one of the bodies. “I never liked that guy.”
“What kind of work does Mr. De Lacy do? How did you end up working for him?”
“Technically, we work for Diatheke,” the female hunter said.
“I don’t know what he does,” the leader said. “All I know is we get a name, we show up, do our thing, and we get paid.”
“Yes,” the guard on the right said. “Do you have any idea how much a year of college costs? I’ve got two kids in elementary, and the wife and I already have to start saving.”
