Читать книгу Kidnapped At Christmas - Maggie K. Black - Страница 13

FOUR

Instinctively Joshua’s hands rose in front of him, hoping the universal sign of non-aggression would buy him enough time to figure out what was going on, and how to get Samantha out safely. Quickly he surveyed the room, his battle-ready gaze rapidly taking in the details. Winter light and cold air streamed through the alcove, which Joshua guessed must lead to the fire escape. The scrawl on the wall was still wet and dripping. A single overturned chair and a few papers strewn on the floor signaled a small-scale struggle. But the room hadn’t been ransacked. The mask that hid the intruder’s face was the kind of plastic respirator mask worn by graffiti street artists and people doing home repairs. Despite the heavy leather boots on the young man’s feet, the baggy hoodie covering his head implied he was a common thug, not a military operative.

“Hermes” kept one arm around Samantha’s neck. The other hand was buried in his sweatshirt pocket. Whatever that hand was holding inside the pocket, he was pushing it hard against Samantha’s side. So, Hermes had a weapon. A knife? A gun? Another explosive? Whatever it was, there was no way the man would miss hurting Samantha with it at that range, and there was no way to safely disarm him in a space that narrow.

So, Hermes. I’m guessing you didn’t expect to find anybody here and don’t have a plan.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Joshua kept his voice steady. “It’s all going to be okay and nobody needs to get hurt. Can I call you Hermes? That’s your graffiti tag, right?”

No answer. Gray eyes glanced up suspiciously over the top of the respirator mask.

Joshua risked taking a step toward him, his voice level and his hands still slightly raised. “You don’t want anybody to get hurt, do you, Hermes? You’re not a bad guy. You’re not looking for trouble. You just came here as a messenger from Magpie to paint something on the wall, right?”

With every step he could feel the empty space on his hip where his service handgun would normally be. But Canadian gun laws being what they were, even he didn’t have a permit to carry a service weapon while on home leave.

He glanced at Samantha. His eyes took in every inch of her form. Her clothes were disheveled. She hadn’t given up without a fight. But her limbs now shook. Her gaze darted around the room.

Look at me, Samantha. Please, I know your brain is going to want to switch off and let the fear take over. But fight it. Stay focused. Stay with me.

Hermes took another step backward, dragging Samantha after him by the throat.

Come on, Samantha! Please! I need your help to get us both out of here alive.

Hermes slunk deeper into the alcove, blocking out the light. Samantha’s eyes closed in what he hoped was prayer. Joshua’s silent pleading turned to prayer too. God, please help me defuse this situation! I’m going to have no choice but to rush Hermes. But if I do, I’m putting Samantha’s life in danger.

Hermes spun Samantha around sideways and for a moment seemed to get caught as he jostled for room in the narrow space. Then, with a cry, Samantha tumbled backward out the balcony door. Joshua sprinted across the room. The graffiti artist yanked a gun from his pocket and fired. Instinctively, Joshua dropped to the floor and rolled, as the sudden bang and flash seemed to fill the room. But the sound of the bullet’s impact never came. He crouched onto his toes and looked up. Hermes closed his eyes and fired again. No recoil. Joshua almost snorted. Hermes was shooting blanks. Joshua vaulted over the second desk and charged. Hermes turned on his heels and ran out the door after Samantha. But before Joshua could even reach the alcove, he heard a crash and an angry scream of pain filled the air.

Joshua ducked into the alcove, ran through and came out on a small balcony leading to a fire escape. He blinked. Hermes now lay flat on his back. Shards of pottery were strewn around him on the icy wood. Dirt covered Hermes’s body like soot. Joshua turned and saw the reason why. Samantha stood by the fallen graffiti artist. Pale sunlight fell over her face. Fierce defiance flashed in her eyes. The remains of a heavy clay vase were still clutched in her hands. A jolt rippled through Joshua’s heart like it was attached to jumper cables.

Samantha had grabbed the vase and broken it over Hermes’s head.

Sirens sounded in the distance. Samantha’s eyes snapped to Joshua’s face. “Please tell me you called nine-one-one.”

“Daniel did.”

“I’ve got the gun from him.” She held it up. “But he was just firing blanks.”

Huh. So she knew something about both guns and land mines.

Hermes was groaning. The young man pulled himself onto his hands and knees. Joshua pushed him down and pinned him with an arm against his throat.

“Who are you? What are you doing here? Who sent you? Who is Magpie?”

He yanked off the respirator mask. Frightened eyes stared up into his face. Something inside Joshua’s heart lurched. Hermes was clearly overwhelmed and terrified. Had Magpie even told him the gun was loaded with blanks? Joshua sat back on his heels, loosening the pressure on the boy’s throat. Someone that unseasoned and scared probably wasn’t going anywhere.

He turned to Samantha. “Do you have any idea who this is? Have you seen this guy before?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Is it possible he was one of the men who abducted you this morning?”

“I don’t think so. Similar age, I think. I barely saw the one guy’s face but it was very scarred and he practically reeked of tobacco. The other one definitely talked like he had teeth missing.”

“All right, I’ll watch him until the police come,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. But there was something in her voice and about the way she’d said “sorry” that made him look back at her face. It was like she was being hard on herself for not knowing more. Something inside Joshua’s chest suddenly ached to just give her a hug and tell her that everything was going to be okay. “Look, I’m sorry if I sounded insensitive earlier. But—”

Out of the corner of his eye, Joshua saw Hermes’s hand dart toward something on the ground. He spun back. But it was too late. Hermes slashed at him with a small, jagged pottery shard that just barely missed his jugular. Instinctively Joshua reared back, releasing his weight on Hermes’s body, as he lunged to grab the shard. Hermes kicked up, hard, one boot just managing to catch Joshua in the chin. Pain exploded in Joshua’s head, not enough to make him let go, but enough to let Hermes slither back on the icy wood and twist from his grasp.

“Stay back!” Joshua yelled to Samantha. He leaped to his feet. “And stay out of the way.”

But it was too late. Hermes leaped onto the fire escape and bolted down the stairs.

* * *

She watched as Joshua leaped over the ledge onto the fire escape below, skipping the first flight of stairs entirely. He pelted after Hermes. Their footsteps clanged on the metal steps. Samantha grabbed the edge of the balcony with both hands. Everything inside her wanted to chase after them. But Joshua’s words still seemed to echo around her in the frosty air. Stay back. Stay out of the way. And why would he even want her to try and help? She’d fought as hard as she could against Hermes, but he’d still overpowered her. She’d broken a vase over Hermes’s head and then he’d managed to grab a shard of it and use it as a weapon. Joshua already made it perfectly clear he doubted she could be any use at all in stopping Magpie.

He’d never understand. Joshua had height, brute strength and military training. She had two left feet and a tongue that tended to either babble or freeze. He’d probably thought her big speech on the staircase had been pretty ridiculous. But, whether he got it or not, she really had joined Torchlight to make a difference.

Hermes was still running down the fire escape. The graffiti artist might not know his way around guns, but he was wiry and fast. This probably wasn’t the first time he’d vandalized something and run from getting caught. Hermes’s feet hit the ground. He pelted across the pavement. Joshua was only a few steps behind him. In a second, he’d caught Hermes by the shoulder and swung him around. The youth thrashed. But Joshua yanked his arm back, pinning it behind his back and holding him firmly in place.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Joshua’s voice echoed in the concrete alley. “I promise you that. I’m just going to hold you until the police get here. But if you keep fighting me, I’ll be forced to tighten my grip.”

The rest of his words were swallowed up in the sound of police sirens. She stood there for a long moment, looking down at Joshua as he calmly but firmly held the squirming vandal in place. Then she turned back toward the office. Any moment now, cops would be all over the place and Torchlight News would be a crime scene. If she was ever going to take a look at what had happened with a critical, journalist’s eye, it had to be now.

Carefully, she took a methodical look at Hermes’s unloaded gun. It was a Glock. The serial number had been filed off and it looked like someone had tried to tamper with the barrel in order to make it something more dangerous than it already was. But they’d done it so badly she doubted the gun would ever be much use to someone who was actually trying to hit their target. Illegal handgun. Modified by an amateur. Loaded with blanks. It was the kind of weapon a stupid kid might use to try to intimidate someone, but never actually intend to fire. Thanks in part to Canada’s strict gun laws, Toronto police had warned recently of an increase in replica and damaged weapons being used to commit thefts. Sometimes just waving a weapon around was enough to get someone to give a thug what they wanted. Trust criminals to get creative.

But it was even more evidence Hermes had been sent as a messenger not a killer. She could almost feel her brain storing the information like memory chips sliding into mental slots.

She walked back through the alcove into the office. The smell of wet paint still lingered in the air. Hermes had graffitied two walls, one with a warning message and the other with a huge, crude bird. Quickly she took a picture of both with her tablet and uploaded them to the ATHENA database on the Torchlight News server. Then she slipped back onto the balcony just long enough to zero in on Hermes’s face as Joshua held him pinned waiting for the police. She saved that picture too. As long as she had computer access and her Torchlight password she could access ATHENA no matter where she was in the world. Then she grabbed an electronic stylus pen and started for the stairs.

Questions burned in her mind. She paused on the second-story landing, opened a fresh document on the tablet and jotted them down with the stylus, using them like an electronic pen and paper, just as if she was sitting in the corner of an editorial meeting listening to a reporter talk about their big new exposé. Why would Magpie send a graffiti artist to break into Torchlight News and scrawl a warning on the wall the same day they kidnapped a journalist? Why do both? Vandalism was vile, yes, but if a reporter was pitching this story in an editorial meeting, methodical Samantha would have pointed out that threats usually escalated in severity. That is: normally the warning came first, then the attempted murder.

She wrote “Does Magpie have a vendetta against Torchlight?” in block letters at the top of the page and underlined it twice. No doubt Olivia would get every single journalist at the newspaper to report in on what they were working on. Maybe the mysterious Magpie would emerge from there and the paper would know what it did to land on Magpie’s radar.

She crossed the second-floor landing and froze. Olivia’s office door was ajar. She could hear the creak of someone’s weight shifting on the old office floorboards and computer keys clacking. There was somebody else in the building. Her heart raced through her chest, so suddenly she found herself battling to breathe. Were the police in there already? But if so, wouldn’t they have announced their presence? The door swung open quickly. She was face-to-face with a stranger. He was short, in plain clothes and probably forty, with a square face and a red baseball cap.

And familiar. So very familiar. And she didn’t know why.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

The man hesitated. Then suddenly he lunged for her tablet computer and tried to yank it from her hand.

“Drop it!” he shouted.

Was he kidding?

“No! Get out of here! The police are on their way!” Her grip tightened on the tablet. For a moment, she thought he was going to succeed in pulling it from her hands. But then, while all his body strength was focused on the tablet, she kicked him as hard as she could. He swore and let go. She yanked the tablet back, hearing the edge of the case crack as she wrenched it from his hands. She ran down the stairs to the ground floor, panicked tears building in her throat.

“Joshua! Help!” She grabbed the front door handle, Joshua’s name escaping her lips even before she could finish yanking it all the way open. “There’s another intruder in the building!”

“Ma’am! Get away from the building!” Strong hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her away from the door. Samantha looked up into the face of a senior officer whose hair was tied back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Half a dozen more officers rushed past them into the building. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

“I’m... I’m fine. Thank you, Officer. But there’s a man in the building. Second floor. He’s short and wearing a red baseball cap. I don’t know if he’s armed.” Samantha looked around. Police vehicles and people in uniform seemed to be spilling down the streets in both directions.

But she couldn’t see Joshua anywhere.