The Girl They Couldn’t See (Blind Spot #1) (Blind Spot Series)

by Laurence Dahners

  Roni had her license, but not a lot of experience since they walked most places they had to go. Nobody in the family drove very much. She wasn’t all that happy about driving down to Castanos’. Nonetheless, she snuck unnoticeably into her parents’ bedroom and picked up the keys from the dresser where Ravinder emptied his pockets each night.

  She’d expected Hax to be grumpy about waking up in the middle of the night, but apparently his nervousness about taking on the Castanos filled him with enough energy that he wasn’t at all bitchy. During the drive down to the Castanos’ place, he had her describe the warehouse interior several times so he’d understand the layout.

  Once they got there, Roni parked three blocks away. They walked the last part, Roni explaining that, if something bad happened, she didn’t want there to be a record of the Buchry’s car on any of the nearby businesses’ security cameras.

  She stationed Hax behind a truck parked across the street and half a block down from the warehouse entrance door. As she approached the door, she had a sudden panicked feeling that it’d turn out to be locked at this time of night. She felt pretty sure that none of the keys she’d had Hallie make would unlock it.

  She sent a thought out that no one should notice anything happening with the door, then tried the knob. It turned easily, and she pushed the door open. Even though she’d felt stupid for not considering the possibility that the door might be locked, now she found it bizarre that it wasn’t. Sure, they probably had Jamie or some other guard there making rounds, but it seemed like they’d have to be crazy not to lock the door as well. She worried, What if they’ve figured out I’m invisible and have worked out some kind of trap? She looked around but didn’t see anyone. She reminded herself that even if they’d found a way to be able to see her, they almost certainly hadn’t found a way to be invisible themselves.

  Watching carefully for possible physical traps, Roni walked past the first heavy steel door for the warehouse office and on to the second door. After one more glance around, she knelt and started trying Hallie’s five keys in the lock.

  None of them worked.

  When Hallie said to try to jiggle the keys in the lock, she didn’t realize I wouldn’t know which of the five keys I had was the right one for each door! Roni started jiggling the key she had in the lock while applying a little torque. Then she twisted the other way and jiggled some more. Nothing happened. She put that key back in her right front pocket and got out another key. Sliding it in, she gently twisted then jiggled it a little bit. Success! The bolt slid back and the doorknob turned, allowing her to push the door open.

  Roni stepped into the room, let the door close and felt around to find and flip the light switch. Her eyes widened. This was the room she’d peered into that first night when she was trying to be sure she knew which keys to copy. She’d seen a plastic crate with a bunch of loose handguns in it that night, but not much else because of the dim lighting. Now as she stared around, she realized the room was completely packed with weapons. Castano could outfit a small army out of it.

  She looked around, but didn’t see any security cameras. She pulled out her cell phone, tapped up the video camera and started walking around the shelving, recording as she went. She wished she knew more about guns. There were a couple of racks of what she thought might be assault rifles. There was a shelf of shotguns, some of them sawed off. One big shelf was completely filled with stacks of boxes that had pictures of pistols on the front. Presumably they were brand new weapons. Near the back were shelves stacked full of boxes of different kinds of ammunition. Looking up at the upper shelves she saw some pipe-like devices she thought might be rocket launchers!

  Back up near the door she again noticed the plastic crate. It held about twenty to thirty loose handguns. They looked like they were all different types. She saw some revolvers as well as more modern guns that she thought held their bullets in their handles. I’ll bet these are used guns that’d be hard to trace. She thought sadly, They probably just grab one when they go out to kill somebody. She picked one up and looked at it. It had a shiny spot on it where she thought a serial number might have been filed off. Underneath that gun she saw a gun with the Springfield logo on it. Lifting it out, she decided it was either the same or very similar to the gun Hax was carrying.

  Holding the Springfield made her feel a little safer, though she thought it probably shouldn’t. After all, she really didn’t know how to use it. It certainly wouldn’t be helpful if it were empty. She walked back to the ammunition shelves while looking at the handle to try to find a release for the magazine. Finally she found a button up near the trigger that popped the magazine out.

  The magazine already had bullets in it. She pushed down on the top one to see if the magazine was full. She couldn’t push the top bullet down far enough that she thought she’d be able to put in another bullet.

  Setting the magazine down on a shelf, she tried to figure out how to work the slide on the gun. She’d seen people do it in the movies, but it took her a minute to figure out how to make it happen. When the slide went back, a bullet popped out of the gun and bounced across the floor. I thought you weren’t supposed to keep one in the chamber? she thought, feeling a little indignant, then realized how unlikely it was that the Castanos would be careful about gun safety. She found a lever safety and checked to make sure it kept her from depressing the trigger. With no bullets in the weapon, she practiced taking off the safety and pulling the trigger a couple of times until she thought she could do it without looking. Finally, she picked up the magazine and put it back in the gun. She practiced working the slide to load the chamber a couple of times, then took the magazine out and put the bullets back in it. When she was done, she still had one extra bullet. She worked the slide to chamber a round, then popped out the magazine and put the last bullet back in the clip. I guess I’d rather have one more bullet than play it safe myself. Checking to be sure the safety was on, she put the gun in the pocket of her coat.

  She reminded herself again that having a gun didn’t really make her much safer since she barely knew how to use it.

  The third room was the one that had had the drugs and the safe. As opposed to the last time when there were only a few bales and bricks, this time when she entered the room the shelves were nearly fully stocked. She figured that the bales she thought contained marijuana and the bricks she thought were powdered drugs were almost certainly the ones from the Garcia drug deal. Roni spun the wheel of the combination safe, quickly putting in the numbers she’d obtained the night of the drug deal. She briefly wondered what Garcia was doing about the missing money. I hope he doesn’t start a war tonight!

  The safe opened and Roni stared at the big stacks of bundled hundred dollar bills sitting on the upper shelves just like she remembered. I should have brought a bag to carry it in, she thought, cursing herself for being so dumb. She looked around the room, wondering whether she could dump the marijuana out of one of the bales, but the plastic it was wrapped in looked like it was the kind that’d shred when she tore it open. There were some cabinets along one wall and she stepped over and started opening them. The first two didn’t have anything useful, but the third one had a stack of brand new messenger bags. Of course. Castano must make deals like the one last night pretty often.

  She tore the plastic off one of the bags, unzipped it fully and knelt in front of the safe. She quickly stacked bundles of cash inside of the bag, but when it was full there were still a lot of bundles of money still in the safe. She got out another bag and unwrapped it too. Between the two messenger bags she was able to stack in all but the last two bundles of hundreds. She slipped those into the interior pockets of her jacket. She zipped and closed the messenger bags, then turned back to the safe.

  Lifting the file case out of the bottom of the safe, she opened it. She didn’t feel like she had much time, so she quickly thumbed through the file folders. In the fourth folder she saw lists of names. Her eye caught on the mayor’s. She laid out the pages and to
ok pictures.

  Roni cocked her head as she studied the safe. After a moment, she pulled out the file case and used her coat sleeve to wipe down the smooth surfaces she’d touched. After she closed the safe, she wiped down the dial and the handle.

  Strapping a messenger bag over each shoulder, she glanced around the room to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important, then headed for the door. She sent out a thought that nobody should notice her leaving the room, flicked off the light and quietly opened the door.

  Despite her constant creeping sensation that someone was going to show up and be able to see her, the warehouse seemed empty. She hustled to the exit, stepped outside and looked around for Hax. She couldn’t see him, which was good. A couple of guys were walking down the street toward her.

  Roni trotted across the street to avoid the two guys, then walked to the truck Hax’d been hiding behind. He wasn’t there!

  Roni looked up and down the street, a sick feeling coming over her. He couldn’t have just wandered off, could he? She pulled out her phone and checked for messages but there weren’t any. Roni dropped the messenger bags and kicked them under the truck. Turning on her heel, she saw the two men who’d been walking down on the other side of the street were entering the warehouse. In the dim light she couldn’t tell much, but got the distinct impression that the one in back had a gun in the other’s back!

  Roni sprinted for the warehouse. Sending out a desperate thought that no one should notice her entry, she pushed open the door to the warehouse and stepped inside. The two men were standing in front of the fourth steel doored room.

  Roni ran.

  The door opened just before Roni got there and the two men entered. Roni invisibly shuffled in behind them.

  As she’d feared, the guy in front was Hax.

  The room gave her a sick sense of foreboding. The walls were covered with some kind of irregular foam. Two steel cots were bolted to the floor in the corners. They had manacles at the head and foot. The farthest one had a blindfolded girl in a T-shirt and panties chained to it. To her horror, she realized this was the bed in the movie she’d seen Castano watching. Not a movie—real life! Two heavy steel chairs were bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. They also had manacles attached, and a big man with a bloody face was chained into one of them with cuffs at the wrists and ankles. It took a moment, but then Roni recognized the muscular Mr. Thompson from the sporting goods store. Thompson’s eyes were so swollen she didn’t think he could open them. Three guys stood in front of him, one flexing a fist with a bloody glove on it.

  Nick Castano sprawled carelessly on a chair, looking like he was thoroughly enjoying whatever’d been happening.

  There was a drain in the middle of the floor. Somehow, that was even more frightening than the manacles.

  Glancing around, she decided with dismay that the foam on the walls was to absorb the sounds of screaming.

  Joe Castano had just turned to look at Hax. The guy with the gun in Hax’s back said, “Found this stupid mook standin’ around on the other side of the street.”

  Castano regarded Hax with eyes as expressionless as a fish. He turned his eyes back to Hax’s captor. “So? No law against standin’ around in the street, is there?”

  The guy said, “He was packing heat.” The guy pulled Hax’s gun out of his jacket pocket and held it up. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  Castano’s eyes moved slowly back to Hax and paused there. “Yeah, I do find that interesting. Besides, we don’t really like his type down here on our turf, do we?”

  For a moment Roni was confused. Then she felt enraged when she realized that by “his type” Castano meant Hax’s dark skin.

  Nick got up and walked around to get a better look at Hax. “This here’s the shithead that’s crosswise of Vito.”

  Still in a flat tone, Castano said, “The one that kept messing with Vito’s girlfriend?” Though his voice hadn’t changed much, it seemed to be more menacing.

  “Yeah, he’s the one,” Nick said with a sickeningly anticipatory tone. Nick sat back down.

  Roni slipped her hand into the pocket of her coat to grip the gun while she looked around the room for some other weapon. Having never even fired a pistol, she had absolutely no confidence in her ability to use it. A baseball bat’s more my speed, she thought. But there were six men in the room. She looked them over and decided all six were probably armed. Even if she had a baseball bat, it seemed terribly unlikely she could take all those guys out before bad things happened. She pictured them all wildly shooting different directions as one after the other of them got knocked down by an apparently invisible attacker. The likelihood of Roni, Hax, Thompson or the girl on the bed getting shot seemed pretty high.

  Or used as hostages.

  Could she possibly take them out with the gun she wondered? She had the advantage of being invisible. She could step up right behind one of the guys and shoot him from so close she couldn’t possibly miss, and shoot the first one before anybody knew there was a danger. But then could she move around to the other five doing the same thing? They wouldn’t be holding still, and she was pretty worried she couldn’t hit moving targets from more than a foot or so away. Even if she did hit them they might not die right away. They might get a bunch of shots off while they were dying and Roni got another vision of them frantically firing their weapons, trying to hit whatever ghost they thought was shooting them.

  Castano had stepped right up in front of Hax, forcing Hax to back away until his back was to the counter. “So, you think you can mess with the Castanos’ women?” He poked Hax in the chest, “You learn your lesson from that beating Vito gave you?”

  Hax was leaning back away from the man and probably looked frightened to the rest of them. He nodded in response to Castano, but Roni could see that he was filled with the same incandescent rage she was. She saw Hax’s eyes flicker over to his Springfield which still dangled offhandedly from the hand of the man who’d brought him in.

  Roni’s gut froze with a sudden fear that Hax would dive for the gun. Sure, Hax thought he was good, but it was ridiculous to think he could take on five or six experienced killers in a gun battle!

  Castano stepped back to stand and study Hax.

  Roni realized that Hax’s eyes had narrowed and he was staring right at her. Can he see me?! Oh, she realized, I haven’t been moving around. He’s recognized the blurry spot where I’m blocking his vision. Roni moved a couple of feet.

  Hax turned his eyes to look hard at the pistol in his captor’s hand. Then Hax waved the fingers on his right hand and said, “Roni.”

  Castano leaned menacingly back toward Hax, “Hey half-breed, you callin’ me some kind of punk ass name?”

  Hax looked Castano in the eye, said, “No,” and waved his fingers again, this time almost peremptorily.

  Nick gave a derisive laugh, “Roni’s his big sister’s name. She used to protect him from Vito way back when they were little kids. Maybe he’s prayin’ to her?”

  Castano rolled his eyes. “Okay, so he’s a little bitch. What’re we gonna do with him?”

  “Kill him,” Nick said unconcernedly, as if it was obvious. “He’s seen too much.”

  Roni looked frantically around, trying to find some solution that’d save her brother’s life and thinking, I’m invisible! Surely there’s some way I can use that! Absolutely nothing she saw gave her any new ideas.

  Castano turned to Nick, “Okay, you man enough to do it?”

  Hax shook his open hand and pleadingly said, “Roni! Dammit!”

  Nick started to get up, saying, “No problem,” in a tone that oozed anticipation.

  Roni was out of time and couldn’t think of anything to do.

  Her brother was going to die, and she couldn’t figure out how to save him.

  Obviously, Hax wanted a chance to take some of the Castanos with him, and she decided she couldn’t deny him that.

  Roni took a quick step. Despite her blurring eyes, she grabbed
Hax’s wrist with her left hand and slapped the Springfield into his palm with her right.

  Nick was reaching into a shoulder holster.

  The gun rested in Hax’s palm for half a second; then Roni saw his finger flip the safety.

  She stepped over to grab Hax’s gun from the man who’d brought him in.

  Hax lifted his gun up high in the air.

  A roar of gunfire exploded through the room. Against her will, Roni crouched down, clapping her hands over her ears and squinching her eyes shut against the deafening noise.

  Roni opened her eyes on a sudden dead silence, the ringing echoes she’d subconsciously expected apparently absorbed by the foam on the walls. The air was hazy. She surged forward expecting to see a crumpled Hax, riddled with bullets. She prayed he’d still be alive and that maybe he’d shot one or two of the Castanos or their men. Maybe she’d be able to shoot the rest.

  She stumbled to a stop.

  Hax was dropping his Springfield into the pocket of his jacket and stepping carefully over the men sprawled in front of Mr. Thompson.

  The dead men.

  Both Castanos, the three men who’d been in front of Thompson, and the guy who’d brought Nick in were all sprawled on the floor. Instead of dying peacefully like in the movies, most of them were twitching like Mario had. From the smell, some of them were voiding their bowels.

  Roni blinked. Four of them had blood coming out of holes in their upper foreheads. The other two didn’t have visible wounds, but she couldn’t see the upper part of their foreheads from her angle.

  Roni thought she’d heard you were supposed to shoot for center body mass. Head shots were too hard.

  Her eyes went back to Hax. He’d found a ring of keys and was kneeling at Mr. Thompson’s feet.

  Thompson’s head was questing back and forth as if he was trying to hear what was going on. Or perhaps there was a tiny crack between his eyelids that he was trying to see through. Despite the ringing in her ears, Roni heard Thompson say, “What the hell just happened?”