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She could see the door had a keyed deadbolt—no escape there. She would never be sure how her brain processed the almost silent click as danger, but she did, and she threw herself aside.
Annette screamed. “Bitch!”
She looked up to see two prongs embedded in the door attached to wires which Lori was pretty sure led back to a taser.
And she has the nerve to call me a bitch? I don’t think so. Lori rolled behind the endcap of one of the store’s displays, looking around for something she could use as a weapon.
Getting to her feet, she peeked over the top of the freestanding display shelf. Annette was between her and her cell phone, as well as between her and freedom. She had no weapon, and Annette seemed unsure what to do next.
Annette spotted her, grabbed what appeared to be a ceremonial dagger and heaved it at her. Lori knew from researching such things that unless you were an expert, it was hard to hit your target and even harder to wound them with it. Looking around, she realized she was between the vintage staplers and the vintage typewriters. While the typewriters might do more damage, they’d be harder to throw any distance with any accuracy.
Grabbing one of the staplers, she briefly admired its beauty before standing up and hefting the thing at Annette. Annette howled in pain as the thing hit her on the shoulder, knocking her back a step before falling and apparently landing on Annette’s foot, making her cry out a second time.
Lori decided it was now or never. She launched herself at Annette, bending a little at the waist and dropping her head forward as she head-butted Annette in the gut. The blow propelled Annette backwards, and she stumbled over a display of antique baskets. Lori all but saw stars and thought she might puke, but she managed to stay on her feet and tried to get to the door to the alley.
Just as she reached it, the door opened, and Jonathon Lockwood stepped through.
“Jonathon, thank god,” Lori said. She might have said more but the expression on his face stopped her cold.
“I thought you were going to dispose of her,” he said, watching as Annette got to her feet.
“You said this would be easy,” cried Annette. “If we disposed of Cobain, you would launch me as your newly discovered protégé.”
Lori didn’t let the ramifications of what Annette said deter her. With Lockwood distracted, Lori managed to push past him. She almost had the doorknob within her grasp, when his large, boney, and surprisingly strong hand settled on her shoulder.
“I don’t think so,” Lockwood sneered.
Running purely on instinct and fear turned into adrenaline, Lori brought her head back sharply, making hard contact with Lockwood’s face. His hand fell away as he yowled in pain.
This time as she reached for the doorknob, someone rattled the door from the other side.
“Lori!” Ryker called from the other side as he hit it with his shoulder, trying to crash through, but failing to do so. The strength and power behind the hit rattled the door itself and the door jamb, but didn’t allow him to break in.
“Fuck!” snarled Lockwood, pulling a gun from his pocket.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lockwood take aim at the door.
“Gun,” Lori screamed at the top of her lungs as she flung herself out of the way before bullets riddled the door. Lori screamed again; this time at Lockwood as she charged at him. “No!”
Lockwood saw her coming too late to prevent her from knocking the gun away. He was standing close to a glass case and smashed the glass with an agate bookend. Dropping the bookend, he reached into the case and grabbed another knife, fisting Lori’s hair and dragging her close. Lori twisted, ignoring the pain, and dug in with her heels. She pushed back, knocking over various displays as she backpedaled, and managed to just stay out of range of his knife.
Annette skittered behind him, her eyes showing the panic she had to be feeling. The authorities were closing in and their entire scheme was falling down around their ears.
He was gaining ground as the door burst inward, and Ryker hurled himself at Lockwood, tackling him, knocking the knife from his hand, and taking him down hard. Annette stumbled backwards to keep herself out of the fray. Lockwood rolled out of Ryker’s grasp, and Lori watched in a kind of slow-motion horror as Lockwood reached for the gun she had knocked away and brought it to bear on Ryker.
“No!” Lori screamed as she leaped towards Lockwood’s outstretched arms and managed to misdirect the gun from its intended target. She rolled away from him and reached out to pull Annette down.
Lori saw Ryker’s body jerk from the impact of hot lead, but thankfully it was a shoulder wound. He wouldn’t be slinging her around for a while. In the distance, they could hear sirens coming from the other end of town.
She rushed to Ryker’s side, grabbing vintage tea towels from a display along the way and pressing them into the wound.
Sitting up, Ryker moved her, so his body was between her and the threat. “It’s over. There’s more than one siren, and I suspect the MCU is the one who sent them.”
“What do we do?” cried Annette as she joined Lockwood, who was now sitting up as well. Annette was clasping her sore shoulder where the heavy antique stapler had hit her.
“We give up. I suggest we say absolutely nothing and ensure that our attorneys are working together to provide us with a successful co-defense.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” said Lori to Lockwood. “You’re the one I saw strangle Cobain.”
