Heroes In Uniform (110 page)

He recalled from the building plans where the stairs would be that led to the manager's office and dressing rooms, as well as the stairs to the basement level and trap door area. Crouching, he rushed past the dim circle of light cast by the exit sign.

As he did so his foot brushed against a cable housing on the ground. It slithered and shook like an angry rattlesnake. The rattle echoed loudly off the walls in the quiet of the hall and he stilled, waiting to see if anyone would respond to the sound.

Only silence answered.

Mick released a low grateful sigh and proceeded, decidedly more careful of the objects littering the floor and sides of the hall. More cables. A Klieg light. A box brimming with colored gels for the spotlights.

Muscles tense, every inch of him on alert, he skirted all the items until he neared the stairs to the basement level.

Pausing, he peered down the darkened stairway, watching for any signs of life.

Like before, the space was empty and the area down below was deadly quiet.

He took the first step down the stairs.

A muffled thud sounded in back of him.

He whirled on the stair, stepped back up, and took cover behind one of the large gray metal lockers lining the hall, his hand tight on his pistol grip.

Listening, he heard the squeak of a sneaker against the tiled floor. Soft footfalls immediately came, followed by the thud of heavier steps.

Two people.

Somewhere dead ahead in the dark.

Coming toward him as he hid by the stairway.

He lifted his gun and trained it on the area. Waited patiently for any additional movement.

A sudden flash of muzzle fire erupted in the dark followed by the familiar pop from a silencer.

Cautiously he eased from behind the locker and made his way closer to the spot where he thought he had seen the flash, ducking in and out from behind the equipment along the hall for protection. He was several feet away from the location when he heard the sound of light footsteps racing away again, followed quickly by the flat-footed pounding of the heavier body.

Another silenced shot rang out and the shooter carelessly stepped into the dim light from the exit sign Mick had avoided earlier, giving him a clear view.

"Stop or I'll fire," he called out while sizing up the man in the illumination from the sign.

The shooter was middle-aged and dark-haired with a pronounced scar above one brow. Tall and thickly muscled, the man was fairly fit, but with a midsection that was starting to turn to flab. His easy stance with the gun spoke of training and the silencer on the weapon confirmed he was a professional, but he had made a totally careless mistake by exposing himself in the light from the sign.

The man peered into the darkness toward Mick, searching for him in the shadows. His face was flush with embarrassment – or maybe from the red of the sign – and gleaming with sweat.

From a chase
? Mick wondered.

"Identify yourself," Mick said, but then shifted farther back behind the protection of the locker and closer to the wall so that the shooter couldn't place him based on the sound of his voice.

"This is none of your business. Stay out of it," the man said and moved as if to shift away from the light, but Mick shouted out a warning.

"Move another step and you’re dead."

At that command, the man finally did as he was told, remaining in place, but still ready to fire.

"Shaw is
my
fuckin' capture," the other man threatened while peering into the dark for any sign of Mick.

The big metal locker provided great cover and Mick took advantage of that. Reaching down, he picked up a heavy metal hook wrapped with rope. With his free hand, he tossed the hook up ahead of him and toward the wall opposite both him and the shooter.

The hook landed with a noisy clatter against a pile of lighting equipment.

The other man turned and shot in the direction of the sound, exposing his gun hand as he did so.

Mick fired, the reverberation of the gunshot loud as it echoed along the hallway.

The shooter grunted in pain and dropped his weapon, but he was already reaching for it with his uninjured hand when Mick charged him. With a strong shove of his shoulder into the man's thickening midsection, Mick sent him careening into the far wall, where he collapsed to the ground in a heap.

While keeping his gun trained on the shooter, Mick bent and retrieved the weapon the other man had dropped and tucked it into his waistband by the small of his back.

"Who sent you?" Mick asked.

"Like I would fuckin' tell ya," the gunman said as he cradled his bleeding forearm against his chest.

"Get on your stomach." He urged the man on with a wave of his gun. When the man complied, he placed his knee in the middle of his back.

Working quickly, he grabbed some cable ties from his jacket pocket, pulled the man's arms back one at a time, and trussed them together with the ties. When he was done, he stood and nudged the man with his foot.

The man rolled over and there was no mistaking his anger.

Mick bent and grabbed the front of the shooter's drab olive military jacket, lifting him off the ground a bit. Not an easy thing to do since the man was solidly built. He shook him roughly.

"You're too stupid to be working on your own. Who sent you?" To stress his point, he brought his weapon to the man's temple and repeated his earlier question.

"Franklin Pierce," the man finally replied, unable to hide the quiver of fear on his lips. His gaze jumped back and forth from Mick's face to the gun pointed at his head.

Franklin Pierce, his ex-Ranger buddy who now ran his own private security firm. It had been years since he had talked to his old friend. He would definitely have to pay Franklin a visit and find out what was up, but first . . .

"Tell Franklin that I don't appreciate him sending in the second string. Tell him he needs to stay out of this."

The flush along the man's face deepened and he stuttered with resentment as he tried to sit up. "You d-d-didn't have t-t-o shoot me, man."

Mick had no doubt that if the situation had been reversed, the gunman wouldn't have hesitated to kill him. He seemed like the kind to shoot first to avoid asking questions later, which was why he had made sure to tie him up. Wanting the man to have no doubt about his earlier warning, he pointed his gun at the man's groin.

"If there is a next time, I'll shoot something you'll really regret losing."

For good measure, he once again grabbed hold of the man's jacket and shoved him away forcefully. The other man rebounded against the wall with a thud, and then lay there moaning, but relatively uninjured.

Mick raced in the direction in which he thought the gunman had been shooting.

Nothing but empty hallway greeted him.

He hoped that the time spent interrogating Franklin's goon hadn't allowed his target to escape.

Gun drawn, he crept along the edges of the hall, the narrow beam of his compact flashlight sweeping the area in front of him and along the walls as he searched.

Just the shadows and equipment.

He pressed forward, continuing his hunt and suddenly something gleamed back at him from the ground before him.

He trained the flashlight on the floor.

Bright droplets of yellow-green phosphoresced into luminous life. Bending, he inspected them for a moment.

Memories came speeding back of hot summer days and the twinkling of hundreds of lightning bugs in the woods behind his home. His cousin Ramon had used to trap dozens of the fireflies in a rusty-topped old Mason jar. When Ramon tired of watching the insects crawling around the inside of the jar, their asses shining light against the glass, he would spill out some of the insects and squish them against the sidewalk.

The drops on the ground reminded him of those squashed bugs, their guts glistening in the night.

He removed his glove and stuck his index finger into one small glob. The phosphorescent yellow-green liquid was warm and grew sticky on his finger as it slowly dried. Bringing his finger up to his nose, he inhaled.

Shock filled him as he smelled blood.

Human blood.

He rose slowly, examining the area around him. Flashing the light more closely into the equipment to try and find what had left such blood behind.

The shadows and hidey holes were devoid of life.

With one eye on the ground and what he now realized was a trail of blood, he kept on the lookout for his buddy Franklin, or any other unwelcome visitors, and hurried down the hall, constantly swinging the beam of light and the muzzle of his weapon in front of him.

Ready to fire.

The trail of blood droplets led him to a stairway.

If he recalled correctly from the blueprints, it went to the areas beneath the trap door in the stage.

On the jamb by the stairs a bigger splotch of lightning bug color gleamed as he shone his light on it.

Had Franklin's man hit something? Make that someone
, he thought as he neared and realized the splotch looked too much like a partial human palm print.

Too weird
, it occurred to him as he headed to the lower level. Much like the floor above, scattered bits of equipment lined the hall.

Gun ready, he examined the floor for any telltale signs.

A few steps away from the bottom of the stairs, the iridescent droplet trail stopped.

He paused, his movements cautious as he considered what he might find at the end of the trail. The words from Caterina's medical report flashed through his brain, suddenly becoming more urgent.

Full expression of the gene.

Could that be the weird looking blood
? he wondered as he slowly panned the flashlight along one wall, but found nothing.

Seizures
, he recalled a second after something fell behind him and landed with a faint thud.

Rage. Rage. Rage
, he warned himself as he swung the beam of the flashlight to the opposite wall and trained his gun on the space.

An even bigger blotch of firefly green caught his eye.

The bright radiant color stained a large area on a commonplace gray t-shirt. What wasn't routine was how the shirt seemed to be suspended against the wall and above a pair of jeans.

A jolt of adrenaline raced through him as his brain communicated that what he was seeing was illogical. That something almost beyond belief was staring him in the face.

Steadying the flashlight and gun on the glowing green, he took a step closer.

Sneakers peeked from the legs of the jeans which possessed too much shape and bulk to be empty.

A body
? Mick thought, only as he trained the flashlight above the neckline of the shirt, he saw nothing but the duller gray-painted brick of the basement walls until . . .

A pair of startling blue eyes popped open suddenly and glared back at him in the midst of all that dim deceiving gray.

Human eyes.

Caterina Shaw's eyes.

Just the sight of them made him catch his breath and he jumped back before reason returned.

This wasn't possible
, he thought.

With a hand that now shook a bit, he targeted a spot smack between those amazingly human, but haunting eyes.

"Don't move," he said and kneeled beside one of the legs of the jeans. He laid his hand on the denim to confirm that what he was seeing was actually real.

Beneath his fingers came the feel of a human body, but he was still having trouble believing his eyes when a hand of that indeterminate gray stained with yellow-green covered his.

A woman's hand beneath the inhuman skin.

A warm soft hand that squeezed his gently as the thing that he believed to be Caterina Shaw finally spoke.

"Help me."

Sins of the Flesh: Chapter Five

Even in the murky light, Caterina perceived the battle of emotions on his face.

Confusion.

Disbelief.

Disgust.

But she had to try to reach him.

The blood on her palm and fingers had grown tacky as she moved them over the top of his hand and gently squeezed. A shudder shimmied across his big body before he pulled his hand away.

He wasn’t going to help her, but would he send her back?

Back to the lab.

Back to death.

She surged to her feet, knowing she had to get away from him, but a wave of wooziness weakened her knees, forcing her to lean against the rough brick wall.

“Easy,” he said, holding up his left hand the way a cop might while directing traffic as he kept his gun trained on her.

“Can’t go back,” she warned, but then he urged calm with a slow dip of his hand and said, “I know you can’t go back.”

Did he know
? she wondered, battling for purchase against the wall as her knees wobbled. She dug the tips of her fingers into the soft brick wall and stabilized herself.

His gun snapped up at her action and he muttered, “Holy shit.”

He didn’t understand.

How could he when she didn’t understand?

She had to do something to make things right with him. She had to focus.

As she had more than once during the long night, she began that mantra, fixing her gaze on the barrel of his gun. Experiencing relief as a moment later, he finally lowered the weapon.

“You’re Caterina Shaw,” he said.

She lifted her gaze and met his. His earlier emotions lingered there along with a new one.

Pity.

Steely determination strengthened her knees. She didn’t want him feeling sorry for her.

She had never wanted anyone’s pity, she remembered, along with another word.

“Cat.”

He surprised her, lowering the gun. With a gentling motion with his free hand, he took a step forward as he said, “Your friend Elizabeth calls you Cat.”

An image flashed through her brain of bright blonde hair and icy blue eyes. A smile that came quickly and honestly.

“I’m Cat,” she repeated, but mewled with fear as he took another step toward her.

He recognized her distress and paused with his approach.