Just This Once

by Diana X Dunn

  Julia almost laughed out loud at that, but Matthew looked totally serious.

  “I’ve been working for my agency for about a month now.” Matthew told her. “I’ve done a bunch of jobs for them.”

  “What sort of jobs?”

  Matthew sighed. “I’ve had to kill a few bad people,” he told her.

  Julia couldn’t decide if he was confessing or bragging.

  “I’m on a special task force to get rid of people who are selling illegal drugs.”

  Julia nodded slowly. She knew there were various vigilante groups out there who would take on anyone who was willing to kill. Maybe Matthew had gotten himself mixed up with one of those. “Who have you killed?”

  “Just a few low level dealers.” Matthew told her, dismissing human lives with the wave of his hand.

  Julia wasn’t sure how much of what she was hearing was fiction and how much was real. Matthew seemed lost in his own world, but there were unscrupulous people out there who would happily exploit someone like him if they came across him. And it sounded as if Matthew wasn’t shy in advertising his skills.

  “Killing people seems wrong,” she suggested gently, “no matter who they are.”

  Matthew shook his head. “Sometimes people have to die. Sometimes it’s just their time. Then I’m just helping, you know? And drug dealers aren’t nice people. Besides David Daniels killed bad guys all the time.”

  Julia sighed. Whatever the truth was, there was no point in trying to reason with Matthew. “What happens now?”

  Matthew looked at her for a long time. “I’m sorry,” he told her.

  Julia mentally readied herself for a fight, but Matthew had other ideas.

  “I’m just going to leave you all here,” he told her. “I’ll lock the door at the top of the stairs and go. Someone might come looking for you, and save you. Or maybe not. Maybe you’ll die down here.”

  Julia nodded slowly. She knew that she would be found the moment Matthew went out the front door. Matthew started slowly up the stairs.

  “Oh, by the way,” he called back down to her. “I’ve booby-trapped the house. If anyone comes in after I leave, they’ll get blown up. Don’t be surprised when you hear the explosion.”

  Seconds later Julia heard the metal door slam shut. She sighed. Why did people always have to make things so complicated? Locking her in the basement was bad enough, but booby-trapping the house? That was too much.

  Nineteen

  As soon as he was gone, Julia tipped her chair over and freed her hands and feet. The extra cuffs she looped around and clicked into place. Better to have two cuffs on her wrist and ankle than be dragging the empties around. She pulled out her M-ped and sent a quick message to Blake.

  He’s leaving now. Make sure you stop him. Don’t try to come in, I’ll find a way out.

  The door at the top of the stairs was securely locked and there wasn’t an access pad on this side. At the bottom of the stairs, she looked at the three doors. Building regulations required that every space have two exits. There had to be another way out of here.

  The door on the left wall was locked, but the keypad on it responded quickly to the universal decoder in her M-ped. She swung the door open and gasped as the smell of human waste, sweat, and fear hit her nose. A light panel was immediately inside the door and Julia switched everything on. The room was small, maybe ten feet by ten feet square. The only furniture inside was a small couch and a bucket. Serena Stone lay huddled on the small couch. At first Julia thought she might be dead, but after a moment Serena slowly raised her head.

  She seemed to be wearing the same nightie she’d had on when Julia and Blake had interviewed her. Her face was streaked with dirt, worn-away makeup and tears. Her hair was a filthy mess of knots and tangles. Julia had to force herself not to look away.

  “I think I know you.” The voice was quiet, shaking and questioning, as the woman’s eyes struggled to focus.

  “We met when I came to talk to you about Cassie,” Julia kept her voice soft. “I’m Julia.” She crossed the small space between them, wondering what to do first to help the other woman.

  Serena stood slowly, and Julia saw that she had handcuffs running around her ankles, connected to a short length of chain. The end of the chain was bolted into the wall behind them. Julia dug into her pockets to find something she could use to open the cuffs or cut through the chain but she hadn’t brought anything suitable.

  “You’ve got to get us out of here before he comes back,” Serena’s voice was terror-filled.

  “He isn’t coming back.” Julia assured her. By now the police should have him in custody, she thought. “I can’t get you out of the cuffs just now, but I’ll be back in a minute, once I’ve found a way out. I’m sorry to leave you, but I’ll leave the door open.”

  Serena took a deep breath. “Okay, she replied. “It is better now with the lights on anyway. The chain isn’t long enough for me to reach the light switch, and he always kept them off. I hate the dark.”

  Julia nodded and then turned away, uncomfortable with just how anxious she was to get away from the other woman. She stood for a moment in front of the next door, wondering what she might find there.

  Again, the keypad responded easily to Julia’s device. She swung the door open slowly this time, reaching around for the light panel as she did so. A second room, almost identical to the first, was revealed. The smells were similar but not as strong. This time it was Alex who was sitting on the small couch in the middle of the room. Julia’s breath caught as she waited to see if he was breathing.

  He was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on when he’d visited her apartment two days earlier. Now however, the clothes were dirty and torn. His face was a mess of bruises, with one eye nearly swollen shut and the other vividly black and blue. His nose was crooked and covered in dried blood, and his bottom lip appeared both split and swollen. He slowly opened the less damaged eye and grinned crookedly at Julia.

  “What is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” he drawled in a shaky voice.

  Julia couldn’t help but grin back at him. “Just visiting old friends.” She reached out a hand to try to help him up, but Alex shook her off and stood on his own.

  I’m afraid I’m shackled to the wall,” he told Julia.

  “Just like Serena,” Julia took a closer look at his cuffs and chain than she had at Serena’s, but it made little difference. She needed equipment she simply didn’t have with her in order to get them out.

  “Serena’s here?” Alex asked in confusion.

  “In the room next door, in a similar condition,” Julia told him.

  “Matthew told me that she was behind all of this. Guess that wasn’t true, then?”

  Julia shook her head. “I’ve got one more door to try. I’m hoping that I can get us all out of here soon.”

  Alex sank back down on the tattered and stained couch. “Good luck. I can’t tell you how happy I’ll be to get out of here.”

  Julia nodded and quickly moved to third door. Again access wasn’t a problem. With the light panel switched on, she was pleased to find herself in a much larger and more promising space. Clearly Matthew had been using the space as a workshop. Several long shelves ran down each of the walls and every shelf held what looked to Julia like old-fashioned spy gear.

  There were several more pairs of handcuffs and, happily, several sets of keys on the shelves. There were dozens of guns and other weapons, some in pieces and others seemingly whole and functional. One short shelf contained a selection of sprays that could be used against people. Julia’s training had included a brief study of weapons from the past and she recognized pepper spray and other similar items.

  She also recognized the stun guns and laser weapons that were more modern. One long shelf appeared to be devoted to explosives, and Julia wondered to herself if any of them were actually functional. She shook her head as she walked down the middle of the room, studying a collection that was totally illegal
and probably highly dangerous.

  On the far wall was the exit door that Julia had known would be there. She glanced at the keypad lock. It appeared identical to the ones she had already decoded on the other three doors. A quick scan and the lock disengaged. She pushed the door open and found a short flight of stairs leading to yet another locked door that she knew would be at street level. Again she hit the buttons on her M-ped and waited to hear the lock disengage. What she heard instead was an alarm. A blaring wail filled the air and then an electronic voice announced:

  Enter code to deactivate alarm. Five minutes until detonation.

  Julia jumped back down the stairs and ran. She threw one set of handcuff keys at Alex and ran into Serena’s room with a second. As quickly as she could, she unlocked the cuffs around Serena’s ankles and pulled her to her feet and out of the room. Alex had unlocked himself and now stood in the doorway of the third room.

  “Wow, look at this stuff.” He turned to Julia, his damaged face lit up like a child’s at Christmas. “He has things I didn’t think you could find anymore.” Alex headed for the shelves, clearly eager to get his hands on a treasure trove of history.

  Julia grabbed his arm and pulled him away. “We don’t have a lot of time to play around here,” she told him.

  The disembodied voice spoke again.

  Enter code to deactivate alarm. Four minutes until detonation.

  Julia pulled Alex and Serena after her toward the main stairs. She had to find a way to get that door open and get them all out of the house. At the top of the stairs she pushed, pulled and kicked at the door. She waved her M-ped around it, trying to find a sensor that could read the universal code it emitted. Nothing worked.

  Enter code to deactivate alarm. Three minutes until detonation.

  Alex pulled away from Julia and ran back down the stairs. “There’s got to be something we can use to get that door open down here,” he called over his shoulder.

  Julia pushed Serena into a chair and followed Alex into the storeroom.

  “Do you know what any of this is?” he asked her.

  She took another look at the shelves. “Yeah, most of it,” she admitted. She’d been trained to use nearly everything in the room.

  Enter code to deactivate alarm. Two minutes until detonation.

  “We should be able to blow the door at the top of the stairs open, shouldn’t we?” Alex demanded.

  Julia nodded. “We just need a powerful explosive. This might work,” she handed him a small packet. “Put it at the top of the stairs and then run the wire back down here.”

  Enter code to deactivate alarm. One minute until detonation.

  When Alex returned with the wire, Julia hooked it up to the detonator.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

  “It’s been a long time since I worked with twentieth-century explosives,” Julia admitted. “I don’t think we have any other options, though.”

  “Maybe we should have tried one of the laser guns.”

  “If the door is shielded, we could get nothing but ricochet. I’m just hoping we have enough explosives to get through the shielding.”

  Alex grinned at her. “Here goes nothing,” he told her, pushing the button on the detonator.

  Enter code to deactivate alarm. Ten, nine, ....

  A second later, Julia heard a small explosion from the top of the interior stairs. She and Alex quickly carried Serena up the steps, as the voice continued to count down.

  Five…four…

  The metal basement door had been blown straight through the back wall of the house. They pulled Serena through the new opening and made it as far as the edge of the yard before the house exploded into a fireball.

  The initial explosion was quickly followed by several smaller ones as Matthew’s collection blew itself up. Smoke and a cocktail of toxic chemicals filled the air and Alex, Serena, and Julia bent double to try to catch their breath and recover. After a moment, they made their way toward the front of the house, walking through the neighboring yard as far from the burning house as possible.

  “I never realized just how much Matthew hated that house,” Serena choked out.

  Alex and Julia exchanged looks and then all three began to laugh shakily. A few seconds later, they were surrounded by police and fire department personnel. Serena and Alex were quickly whisked away to be treated and then questioned.

  Blake waited until both Alex and Serena were safely loaded into emergency transports before he grabbed Julia into a tight embrace. Julia returned the hug with enthusiasm, happy to be alive after a few terrifying moments. After what could have been seconds, minutes or hours, Blake finally drew back and looked into Julia’s eyes.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” he told her, his voice choked with emotion.

  “You very nearly did,” Julia replied. “We only just got out in time.”

  “So only Matthew was still in the house?” Blake asked her.

  “Matthew?” Julia was confused. “He left the house at least ten minutes before the explosion.”

  “No one saw him come out,” Blake replied. “We were watching all of the exits. No one came out.”

  “I sent you a message when he left, warning you that he was leaving, and telling you that the house was booby-trapped so you wouldn’t try to come in.”

  Blake frowned and dug out his M-ped. “I never got any message.”

  Julia pulled out her own device and punched in a code. Her message was flagged red as “unable to be sent”.

  She sighed and leaned into Blake. “It looks like the message never got sent,” she told him. “Either the walls were reinforced to limit electronic interaction or he had a scrambling device working down there.”

  They both turned and looked at the inferno that was still blazing where the house once stood.

  “I guess we won’t be able to find out which it was now,” Blake told Julia.

  “Maybe we can ask him. He wasn’t in there.” Julia answered. She was sure that Matthew had left the house. She just wasn’t sure how he’d managed to evade capture.

  “A scrambling device would explain why we lost contact with you as well,” Blake told her. “Once you went down the basement stairs, we lost our audio and video feed.”

  Julia shuddered. She was glad she hadn’t known that at the time. “Good thing no one tried to come in after me,” she told Blake. “Apparently opening the front door would have triggered that explosion as well.”

  Blake pulled her close again. “I was exactly twenty-seven seconds away from coming in after you,” he told her, his lips pressed against her hair. “Michael and I agreed that we would give you exactly ten minutes to come out after the feed cut. You had twenty-seven seconds left.”

  Julia nodded slowly. They had both nearly died in a house wired to explode by a crazy man with delusions of being a spy. It was all a lot to take in and Julia suddenly felt exhaustion kick in. She hadn’t noticed Michael standing nearby, but now he stepped forward.

  “Time for Julia to go home and get some rest,” Michael told Blake. “You can question her tomorrow morning, after she’s had a chance to digest everything that’s happened.”

  Michael’s tone didn’t leave room for any argument. Blake gave Julia another tight squeeze before letting her go. He would, of course, be needed at the crime scene for several hours to come.

  “Both of you need to focus on finding Matthew,” Julia insisted. “We have to find him, and we have to find out who he is working for, if he really has found himself a job.”

  Julia walked slowly and with exaggerated care alongside Michael, focusing all of her energy on staying upright and holding her emotions in check. Michael loaded her into a transport and followed her inside. He was silent for most of the journey across the city toward her apartment.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as the transport pulled up to her building.

  “I’m getting there,” Julia replied. “I would feel better if Matthew was in custody. There is someth
ing going on there. He is tied up in something or….“ She trailed off, unable to articulate exactly what she was feeling.

  “Don’t worry about Matthew Richards for now. Go in and get some rest. I’ll call you in the morning and we can go over exactly what happened in that house. Then we can figure out where things go next.”

  Julia nodded and slowly climbed out of the transport. As she stood in the elevator she thought briefly about taking something to perk her up when she got in. It would give her enough energy to start hunting down Matthew right away, but she knew her body really needed rest, too.

  She punched in her security code and used her wrist-con to unlock the second set of locks on her door. She pushed the door open and then froze. There was a light on in her living room and she knew she hadn’t left it on. She stepped back out of the apartment and shut the door. She was tempted to go in with guns blazing, but she knew she didn’t have the energy to fight an intruder, even if she had been armed. Instead she messaged Michael, and he was at her door in minutes.

  “I know I didn’t leave any lights on,” she told him when he greeted her.

  “So let’s see what is going on,” Michael pulled a laser pistol from his pocket and slowly pushed the door open. He stepped cautiously into the apartment, scanning the foyer for anything or anyone. Julia followed him into the room, every sense on full alert. Michael stepped into the living room and then back out quickly.

  “Call Blake,” he told Julia. “I’ll search the rest of the apartment.”

  “Call Blake? Why?” Julia asked, moving quickly toward her living room.

  Sprawled across one of her couches, Matthew Richards was staring sightlessly at her spectacular city view. Julia could see no obvious injuries or blood, but the man was clearly dead. She took a deep breath and quickly messaged Blake.

  “The rest of the apartment is clear, except for this. It was on your pillow.” Michael showed Julia an envelope with her name written across it in a flowery cursive that was almost calligraphy.

  The most worrying thing was that the envelope read not only “Julia Randall” but also “Sienna Madison,” “Star Smith,” and a few of Julia’s other identities, including F6. Julia’s wide eyes met Michael’s concerned ones.