Appalled, Roni thought, How could I have come down here without a weapon?! How could I have thought I’d just be observing and getting a record?! I knew what Castano was like; why did I think these people would be any different?! She looked around for a weapon. Her eyes crossed the young girl who cowered in the corner. She needed something that would take out all three of the men in the room before they could react. But Roni not only didn’t see such a weapon, she didn’t even know what kind of weapon might do the job. The men might well be carrying guns and she might be able to take one of the guy’s guns without him noticing, however, Even if I had a gun, I couldn’t shoot all three of them in a fraction of a second like Hax did the Castanos. I’d probably miss! If I hit them, I almost certainly wouldn’t get clean kills and they’d start shooting back. Plaintively, she thought, Why didn’t I get Mom to teach me to shoot too?!
The sobbing Tillman was answering, “I’m telling you everything I know, Mr. Romano. I swear it! I’ve been trying to get you answers, but…” Tillman broke off as Romano plunged the knife into the woman’s cheek and slashed outward, leaving a horrific gaping wound that grossly opened into her mouth. “Please!” Tillman shrieked, “I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you. It’s at… It’s at the corner of… fifty-first and Cypress…”
Romano looked up at the two men holding Tillman and said, “What’cha think?”
They both shook their heads slowly.
“I’m really starting to think he really doesn’t know. How about you guys?”
They shook their heads again.
Romano suddenly plunged the knife through the woman’s eye.
And, evidently, into her brain.
He stepped back as her body thrashed around. “Kill him,” he said, waving at Tillman and turning toward the door.
Roni crouched in quivering reaction, trying not to vomit.
One of the big guys twisted Tillman’s neck until it made a crunching sound. They tossed the man’s flaccid body on top of the woman and walked around the dying couple, taking care not to get any mess on their shoes.
Roni realized in horror that in addition to her failure to prevent this tragedy, she hadn’t even kept recording it on her phone. Lifting the phone, she quickly swept the room as she hustled after the two big men.
Her sweep of the room showed her the young girl, still cowered in the corner, hands over her eyes!
Roni’d been intending to follow the men out of the room, but she couldn’t leave the girl behind…
Trapped in the room with the bodies of the man and woman Roni’d failed to save…
The door was swinging closed! Roni quickly stepped over to grab the knob and slow it so it wouldn’t latch. She stopped it from latching, but the man on the other side gave it a solid tug and it clicked. Of course, they don’t want the girl getting out. Or the cleaning staff going in and finding the bodies. The door had a combo pad on the inside as well, but Roni didn’t know whether it used the same combination as on the outside. She turned to lean against the wall and think; a task made more difficult by the quiet sobbing of the young girl and various disgusting odors emanating from the dead couple across the room.
The crying girl slid down to slump in the corner, so Roni dropped down to sit on the floor herself. However, instead of thinking what to do, she kept circling around to berating herself for going into this so unprepared. She’d been proud of her foresight in coming up with her black ninja outfit and the quick release bolts for the license plates on her Civic in its anonymous gray. Now she felt horrified to realize that she’d set out to follow really bad people without bringing anything she could use to defend herself. At the very least I should’ve been carrying Mace!
She’d been sitting on the floor alternately feeling sorry for herself and angry at herself for several minutes when she had a sudden thought, This is just as bad as setting out unprepared. I’m wasting time sitting here on the floor and eventually someone’s going to come back and make my problems even worse. At the least, they’ll come back and hurt this girl.
With resolve, she got up and turned to the door. Sending out a thought that she didn’t want anyone in the next room—or the girl in the room with her—to notice the door opening, she bent down and tried the combination recorded in her phone. To her relief, it opened.
She leaned out and looked around the next room. No one was there, so she went around the room opening cabinets and drawers, looking for something to use as a weapon. The most dangerous thing she found was a pencil, but she did find a man’s jacket. She took both with her.
Back in the room with the dead bodies, she knelt down a couple of feet from the girl who’d stopped sobbing. She simply sat on the floor with a resigned expression on her face. Roni willed the girl to hear her—still without seeing her—and, in as calm a tone as she could manage, said, “Hello.”
The girl’s head jerked up and she stared around the room. The two dead bodies, an unenclosed toilet, a sink, a heavy table, and several sturdy folding chairs were the only things in there, none of them big enough, or at least not solid enough, for a person to hide behind. The girl didn’t get up and look behind anything. Apparently deciding she must have imagined the voice, she let her eyes slowly drop to the floor.
“Hey, I’m… a friend who wants to help you,” Roni said.
The girl looked toward her, or at least toward the sound of Roni’s voice. Roni moved her head back and forth so as to not leave a blurry area in the girl’s vision where the girl’s brain actively wasn’t seeing Roni but didn’t have good detail to fill in for the parts of the room hidden by Roni. A moment passed, then the girl tentatively said, “Okay?”
“What’s your name?”
“Casey,” she replied in a small voice.
“If I help you escape, can I take you to your parents?”
The girl looked terrified, “Romano’d kill my whole family if he found out I’d gone home. I’m supposed to be paying off some kind of debt.”
Roni shuddered, revolted by the utter malice and depravity of someone who could say, much less do something like that to a young girl. “Would you like to call your mom or dad and ask them if you have some relative you could go to instead?”
Casey shook her head as tears flooded her eyes, but she said nothing.
“Why not? What are you afraid might happen?”
“What if… what if Mom needs to tell me to stay… to keep the rest of the family safe?” Casey gasped a sob, “I don’t want her to have to decide that. And… I’m afraid she might decide…” Casey stopped with a tiny croak.
Roni stood, deciding to get the girl out of there now, then decide what to do with her later. She said, “I’m going to let you see me now, but you need to know I’m dressed all in black, like a…”
The door behind Roni opened and she cut her words off as she whirled. The big guy who’d broken Tillman’s neck stepped in. Roni thought he’d come back to get the bodies. Instead he looked around and his eyes settled on Casey, “Hey Bunny, time to earn your keep,” he said as he patted the table.
Wide-eyed, Roni turned to stare at Casey. The girl resignedly stood and stepped toward the table. Her fingers tried to unbutton her gauzy blouse but were trembling so badly they struggled with the task.
I can’t let this happen! Roni thought. She pictured herself stabbing the man in the eye with the pencil she’d gotten from the next room, but had no idea whether she could do it. And what if I miss? Or if I do hit his eye, what if I don’t get it all the way into his brain like Romano knifed the woman?
Knife! Roni twisted and saw the hilt of Romano’s knife protruding from the woman’s sightless eye socket. How could I have forgotten that! She stepped over and grabbed the knife. To her dismay a hard pull failed to extract the blade, though the way the woman’s head flopped beneath the blade was ghastly. Roni looked away in preparation for another jerk on the handle, hoping she wouldn’t have to hold the poor woman’s head down with a foot—and her eyes caught on the toilet.
Two strides and Roni had the lid off the toilet’s tank. Two more brought her over to the side of the man who had crouched to pull down Casey’s panties.
The side of the toilet tank lid came down on the back of his head with all the force Roni could muster.
The man collapsed to the floor and lay there quivering. Casey shrieked and sat back onto the table, pulling her legs up as Roni watched the man, wondering if he might recover from the blow, Do I need to hit him again? she wondered. He looked pretty bad. She decided she didn’t.
Casey’d pulled her panties back up and lay curled on the table, staring at the man, obviously wondering what’d happened to him and whether she’d be blamed. Roni figured the girl thought the earlier conversation with Roni had been all in her imagination. Roni stepped over to where she’d dropped the man’s jacket and brought it back over to Casey. “Casey?” she said quietly.
The girl’s eyes widened.
“Sorry about that,” Roni said. “I think we need to get you out of here before anything else happens. Do you remember I said I’m dressed all in black, like a ninja?”
Casey slowly nodded her head.
“Here I am,” Roni said, letting her invisibility drop.
Casey’d been looking the direction the voice was coming from. When a girl’s shape suddenly appeared, Casey’s heart skipped a beat, feeling like a fish suddenly flopped in her chest. Medium tall, slender, the girl was all dressed in black, from shoes, to gloves, to some kind of sock that covered her face and neck. She had on mirrored glasses, even though it wasn’t all that bright in the room. “Who are you?!” Casey breathed.
“Call me… Kita,” the girl said, as if she were making up a name on the spot. “Here’s a coat so you don’t have to run around in those… clothes. Can we leave before another guy comes in here?”
Casey nodded vigorously and slipped on the coat. She couldn’t help wondering how the woman thought they were supposed to walk out past all of Romano’s men.
Kita knelt next to Marco and patted him down, reaching under his coat to pull out a pistol. She studied the gun and said, “I think this’s the safety. Do you know anything about guns?”
Casey shook her head, then thought better of it. “I know, on my dad’s shotgun, that when the button’s ‘red for dead’ it means it’s off safe and ready to shoot.”
Kita studied the gun and said, “No button. But when this lever’s up it exposes a little ‘S.’ When I pull the lever down you can’t see it. You think it’s the same thing?”
Bewildered to have her rescuer asking her basic things Casey thought a ninja rescuer should already know, Casey said timidly, “I guess so.”
Kita stepped over to the door and punched in the combination. Unlike the men, she let Casey see the number she was entering. Kita slowly opened the door and peeked around it into Romano’s office. Casey wondered how she knew there wasn’t anyone in the next room; or if she didn’t know the room was empty, why she thought opening the door slowly would make a difference. Then Kita turned from the door and said, “Damn! The other one of those big beefy guys is out there.”
Rick! Casey thought, with a bolt of terror. Rick was just as mean as Marco, but he was… more creative. Casey expected Rick to notice the open door at any moment. As soon as he did, he’d come in and beat the crap out of them. Casey started to shake but Kita just stood there holding the knob and thinking. Then Kita let go and walked over to pick up a big white rectangular object off the table that Casey hadn’t noticed. She suddenly recognized the lid of a toilet tank. A glance across the room showed Casey that the lid was, in fact, missing off the toilet in the room. Is that what she hit Marco with? Casey wondered.
By then Kita was back over by the door. “Casey,” she said, “Can you open the door? I want to hold this lid with both hands.”
“What are you going to do?!”
“Knock out that other guy.”
“With a toilet lid?”
“Yeah. They’re really heavy.”
“You think you can just sneak up on him?!”
“Yeah. Invisible, remember.”
“You’re not anymore!”
“Mmm,” Kita and the toilet lid disappeared. “Better?”
Casey nodded slowly.
“Open the door.”
Casey slowly pushed the door open, then stood there uncertainly wondering if she could close it again.
Kita’s voice whispered in her ear, “You have to move out of the way.”
With a gulp, Casey skittered out of the doorway, then stood motionless. From where she stood now, she could see Rick sitting there, staring off into space like he so often did. Casey always felt like he was thinking up awful things to do to people.
Suddenly Rick’s head jerked abruptly forward. For a moment he sat there, head drooping forward, then he slowly avalanched off the chair to lay bonelessly on the floor. His head lay at an angle that let Casey notice a funny dent that showed in the back of its profile.
Kita reappeared, coming through the doorway, toilet lid in her hands. Casey watched as she went back across the room and put the lid back on the toilet. “You’re cleaning up?” Casey asked, surprised.
Kita shrugged, “Thought it’d be scarier if Romano couldn’t figure out what happened to these guys.”
“Scarier?! You’re planning to take on Romano?!”
“Well, not go to war, but… I don’t think he deserves to live. Besides, if he’s alive, he’s just going to kill more people. What do you think?”
“Oh, you have no idea how many times I’ve wished he were dead.” Casey hissed longingly, “Wished I could be the one who killed him too. But, he’s got so many men… How are you…? Oh,” she stopped talking as she realized that being invisible provided an advantage.
Kita turned around as if surveying the room, then said, “Shall we go?” She started out the door as if she expected Casey to follow.
“Wait!” Casey said, “You may be invisible, but if I go out there everyone’s going to wonder about the girl in a man’s coat and high heels, aren’t they? Even the workers who aren’t Romano’s hired killers are going to be pointing at me. Romano’s enforcers, they’ll be after me right away.”
“Oh,” Kita said, “I’m pretty sure I can make you invisible too.” She looked around, “Do you think they’ve got better shoes for you somewhere?”
“Pretty sure?! Do you have a ninja suit for me or not? If they see me, I’m going to die.”
“Ah, it’s not the black clothing. I should be able to make you invisible in the clothes you’ve got on as long as you stay near me.”
“Should be able to?!”
Though Casey couldn’t see Kita’s eyes, her posture suggested that she was thinking. She said, “I don’t know how to tell for sure whether you’re invisible without you going where someone can see you and watching to see if they react.”
“You can’t just look at me and see if you can see me?”
“No, this just makes it so other people can’t see you. I’ll be able to see you and you’ll be able to see yourself. Maybe you could try to hide behind me in case it isn’t working?”
“Maybe?!” Casey exclaimed.
“Do you want to stay here then?” Kita asked, sounding irritated.
“No!” Casey said, a terrified feeling coming over her. She thought of all the times she’d promised herself she’d run if she got any chance. She hadn’t even been hoping she might be invisible back then. In a small voice she said, “Let’s go.”
Kita opened the door again and they stepped tentatively out into the office. It was empty other than Rick, still sprawled on the floor. Casey saw with disgust, but also some sense of revenge, that he was foaming at the mouth and breathing with a gurgle. She hoped he was dying. They picked their way around the man’s body and over to the outer door.
Kita opened that door slowly and looked out. She turned back, “It’s dusk. That’s good, not so bright out.”
“Should we wait ‘til it’s dark?”
<
br /> Something about the way Kita stood, head tilted, told Casey she was thinking. “I’m pretty sure you’re invisible… and if we wait, Romano or some more of his guys might come back. Besides, the warehouse’s lighted, so that part’s not going to get any darker.” She turned to look at Casey as if waiting for her to decide.
“Let’s go,” Casey said shakily.
Kita pushed the door open and they walked out. Seeing the floor was smooth concrete, Casey took her heels off so she could run if she had to. Apparently seeing her do it, Kita said, “Let me see your shoes.”
Casey handed the shoes to her and watched her twist and tug at the heels while she walked. She snorted, “They break off when you don’t want them to, but when you need them to break, they’re solid as a rock!” She handed them back to Casey as they continued across the warehouse floor.
Casey noticed a couple of guys over on the other side of the building and she moved to the opposite side of Kita from them. The men didn’t seem to notice them. Casey started to feel better, then three men appeared in the larger-than-garage sized door they’d been about to go out through. Kita kept walking, but Casey froze where she was standing. Dimly Casey saw Kita, first struggling to get the big handgun out of her coat pocket, then, once it was out, peering at it to take off the safety. The three men headed directly toward them and Kita took a couple of steps to the side as if to get out of their way. That also, Casey realized, let Kita point the gun at them from their sides.
Casey’d frozen where she was standing, but now desperately wished she’d scooted around Kita to stand on her far side from the men. They bore unhurriedly down on Casey. As they came close she cringed against an expectation of outreaching hands.
Then the men parted, just enough to pass on each side of her without touching, and continued on their way. Casey took a deep gasping breath. Kita said, “I guess you’re invisible all right.”
“Why didn’t they run into me?”
The Boy Who Couldn’t Miss Page 13