Chris woke up around 3 AM. He was still in what he was starting to think of as “the room that never gets dark.” The muted sound of gunfire which had awakened him ended abruptly. It had appeared to be coming from above him. A short silence, and more rapid, muted gunfire, lasting longer, again from above, further away, and abruptly silenced.
After the second set he moved as quickly as he could to the door and started dismantling his crude trap. The sleep had only stiffened his sore muscles and made his ribs throb with every breath. The third distinct set of gunfire came from the same level as the room he was in. He hadn’t been able to get his trap fully dismantled by the time the fourth set started, apparently right outside the door. Whoever it was, they were moving quickly.
The shooting continued as the heavy door swung open, the chair and its remaining burden of pots and pans went over, and Louie yelped sharply and dashed past. Immediately behind Louie, a smallish figure in an armored tunic staggered backwards into the room, floundered briefly in the scattered remnants of his trap, and went down. The door started to swing shut.
Chris slid the chair into the door gap and grabbed the Stinger from Livvy’s hand, thumbing it to rapid fire mode. Standing behind the door, he aimed the Stinger in the location that he imagined for the approaching shooter and sprayed the duoloads across the hall in a fan pattern, while behind him, Livvy scrambled to her feet and started groping through the contents of a small pack she was carrying over one shoulder.
Chris put a finger to his lips and Livvy froze. There was an interval of disconcerting silence during which they gazed at each other while listening for sounds of approaching footsteps.
Chris started to poke his head out to check but Livvy forcibly tugged his arm and, frowning, pointed to her faceplate and took his place at the door.
Guard Eight was sprawled across the hall. Livvy put another duo-load into his hip just to be sure.
When she tried to step over the chair and back into the hall, Chris put a hand on her arm and held her back. She opened her mouth to tell him it was clear, but he put a finger to his lips again.
He opened her faceplate and asked very softly, “You okay?”
“I’m wearing a vest under the tunic, and I’m damned warm,” Livvy whispered back. “Shouldn’t we be leaving before someone shows up or wakes up or something? Wait… did Louie get hit? I thought I heard him get hit.”
That’s when they both noticed the blood. There were drops of it starting at the door and scattered across the room to the area near the kitchenette, where Louie was cowering under the small mahogany table.
“Louie, come,” Chris said, and held his breath.
Louie crawled out from under the table and over to Chris, who had him lie on his side so he could get a good look at the wound. He was bleeding from a deep furrow on his rump, but he had walked with only a minor limp.
“It’s not too bad,” Chris said, still talking under his breath. “Wait here. You might hear some shooting. I’ll be right back.”
“What…” Livvy started to say softly, but Chris put a finger to his lips a third time and disappeared into the hall, leaving her to rummage in her pack for a packet of clotting agent/antibiotic powder to use on Louie’s wound.
From further down the hall, there was the sound of an automatic weapon firing repeatedly.
Within moments Livvy, cursing under her breath, had pulled Louie with her and braced against the wall behind the door.
“Hutchins, you can come out now.” Chris called from the hall.
“What the hell?” Livvy said, stepping over the chair in the door opening and putting her hands on her hips.
“I just took out the equipment in the Security Room. LLE…” Chris said.
“Naturally. It’s the way LLE handles it. Camera shy. Destroy any record of its activities. Avoid publicity at all costs. I get it.” She kicked a pot out of her way.
“It’s not just to destroy the record of your raid, which might, with narrative supplied by a skilled legal monkey, be misinterpreted. There are probably remote feeds, and wherever Bedford is, I want him blind.”
“Understood. But you could have warned me. I mean warned me better. I thought that there was another man. Never mind. You know what I thought.”
“I… sorry,” Chris said, surprising her.
“You aren’t used to a partner. I get that, too,” Livvy said, relenting. They were both tired.
“What are we going to do with all of these guards?” she asked. “Please don’t say we have to take them in.”
“The guards? Take them in for what? So they can sue LLE for putting Stingers in them while they were just doing their jobs? No, we don’t want to take them in,” Chris said. “I wasn’t conscious when they brought me in, so I have no idea of who knew what. Besides, the fewer…”
“The fewer people involved, the better. I get that. LLE hates to actually arrest people or even acknowledge that they are fighting crime. I do get that,” Livvy said. She’d found a fresh clip full of duoloads and handed it to Chris.
“Yes, but you have to be able to work with it,” Chris said, exchanging the fresh clip for the spent one in the Stinger Livvy’d given him.
“Louie, stay close,” Chris said as Louie clambered over the chair that was holding the door jammed open and into the hall. His wound had stopped bleeding.
By now wisps of smoke were drifting down the stairs and lending the whole place an eerie atmosphere, especially around the sprawling forms of the three fallen guards.
When they had stepped over the first body, Livvy touched Chris on the arm again and, holding his attention, said soberly, “Mickey Bedford and her bodyguard were killed last night. Jesse was kidnapped.”
Chris met her eyes, his expression grim.
“Hell. The bastard did it. He actually did it. We need to find Jesse. Now. Even though I think we may still have some surprise on our side, it’s going to be daylight. And unless I’m mistaken, the man himself will be there. Your obviously well-honed ninja skills,” Chris said, looking her over, “aren’t going to be enough.” He lost the brief trace of a smile. “That cold-blooded, arrogant son-of-a-bitch.”
But as much as they wanted to, and Livvy was quite sure that Chris wanted to head directly after Bedford at least as much as she did, they couldn’t leave right away. They searched the rest of the rooms in the basement, finding staff quarters, which they ignored, and a hotlab, which they totally demolished. Then, on the slight chance that Josephson and Jesse were somewhere in the house, they searched room by room, counting on Louie to let them know if there was someone lurking behind a door or the drapery.
If the underground level had been eerie, the ground floor and upper floor were downright creepy. Disturbed by drafts from the windows Livvy had destroyed across one side of the house, the smoke was drifting over marble floors and opulent furnishings and wreathing the fallen forms of the guards like mists on a moor. Louie stopped and sniffed each sleeping man’s face, as though he was creating a record for his own file, but he didn’t alert them to anyone still active in the house.