He pulled against the duct tape holding him to the arms of a wooden chair as a flash of fear threatened to take over his mind. A few feet away, he noticed a woman sitting on a couch a few feet away. Her legs demurely crossed, a pistol rested in her lap. She studied him silently. He studied her right back for several long seconds before speaking.
“Who are you?” his voice wavered, trying to inject some mettle into the weak tone of his words.
No answer…not even a change of expression. He thought nervously.
“What do you want?” He repeated his question, the voice once again steady.
He asked three additional times, withering under his captor’s harsh stare before she broke the silence.
“You know very well what I want. Don’t you?”
“How would I know that?” he said.
“I’ll make it simple. I want what you stole from Diversified Research.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re not a very convincing liar Mr. Murphy. Try again.”
She knows my name. His eyes flashed at the revelation. “I told you. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She stood and moved closer, the gleaming pistol between them a weighty, menacing presence. “I didn’t come looking for you out of the blue. I know who you are and that you took a very valuable piece of research from your employer. I want it.”
“I didn’t steal anything.” He protested weakly as the color drained from his face.
“I think you did. The FBI is crawling all over your offices and that means something big is missing…besides the scientist.”
“What scientist?” he asked innocently, averting his eyes, shifting his concentration to a large stain on the carpet.
The woman holding the gun frowned, the lines creasing her forehead. “All right, I’ll make this simple. I’m talking about Jennifer Ryan,” the armed woman said. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“How would I know that?” The voice squeaked again, the constricted voice cracking in fear.
The answer came, cold and matter-of-fact. “Because you killed her.”
Silence permeated the room for several long minutes before Kelly reopened the conversation/interrogation. “Okay. We’ll come back to Ryan later. Where are the materials you took from Diversified?”
“I don’t have any materials…I didn’t steal anything.”
“All right, who did you give them to?”
“I really don’t know what you are talking about,” he said. “Taking anything from my company would be a felony. I’d go to prison!”
“I’m not interested in your crimes. You tell me what you did with the materials you took and I let you walk out that door alive,” she said. “And I warn you, this is a limited-time offer.”
“You’re insane!”
“Am I?” she said, raising an eyebrow in condescension.
He didn’t see the Taser gun emerge from the pocket of her finely tailored suit jacket. The steel barbs crossed the small room like dragonflies, pulling a pair of gossamer-thin wire leads behind them. The sharp points embedded themselves into Murphy’s chest, the painful bite caused him to flinch in annoyance.
“Last chance.” She said, her voice ringing with grim finality.
His chin set in insolence. “Fuck off!”
“Have it your way.” She said, shaking her head at his defiance.
He quivered and twitched as the voltage ran along his nervous system like thousands of ants, ripping and chewing. His muscles contracted uncontrollably, drawing tight as deep spasms wracked his body. After the decades of agony, the sizzling energy stopped. Three seconds had elapsed.
“Where are the documents you took from Diversified?”
His chin jutted forward in insubordination as his body still twitched, excess electricity causing his nerves to fire in small spasms.
“Where are the documents you took from Diversified?” She repeated, louder this time. He again held his tongue.
Murphy’s strangled screamed split the air as the Taser pulsed again.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“It’s time to go.” Trish said as she and Clark gathered a few items seeming out of place in the abandoned factory’s derelict office.
The four moved out into the now-freezing air on the landing and began making their way down the ancient stairs. Stepping carefully on each groaning tread, they descended toward ground level with Clark leading Aaron, followed by Jenny, then Trish.
Sensing he wouldn’t get a better opportunity, Aaron knew he had to do something to free himself and Jenny before it was too late. Heart hammering with a flash of hot adrenaline, he shouldered Majors with all the force he could muster, slamming him into the wall, while simultaneously wrapping his hand around the revolver’s cylinder and twisting his captor’s wrist. The sudden move had both desired and undesired effects.
Banking on the miniscule element of surprise he achieved, Aaron used leverage and physics to break Majors grip on the handgun. Unfortunately, it also had the effect of unbalancing both men on the ancient stairs and sending them tumbling head-over-heels two flights to the ground.
Rolling to one knee, Aaron assumed a defensive crouch. He immediately snapped to the attack after the cold floor broke his descent, raising the pistol in one swift, fluid motion. He drew a bead between Major’s eyes.
The fall did no real damage to Majors. Rising back to his feet, he dusted himself off and looked back up toward his accomplice. He smiled slightly before staring back at the man now holding the gun on him. “That was not all that smart.”
Aaron heard the tell-tale snap of the switchblade and a thread of panic raised its ugly head as he considered the possibility that Trish might just kill Jenny in retribution for the attack. Pushing that wholly unpleasant thought aside, he watched Majors sweep the room with a languid pass of his arm. The rogue Army Ranger’s voice boomed across the cold space, calm and controlled.
“Where are you going to go?” he said. “My partner still has the doctor.’
“And I have the gun,” Aaron said, answering the man’s challenge. “Release her.”
“Give me back my weapon,” Majors said, the arrogant confidence in his words stoking Aaron’s increasing anger even further. “You won’t leave without her and I’ll have Trish slit her throat if that pistol is not back in my hand by the count of three.”
Aaron looked up the staircase, seeing the two women stopped on the stairs just below the second-floor landing.
“Don’t do it!” Jenny shouted.
Trish yanked violently on Jenny’s long hair, exposing her delicate neck. Aaron saw her eyes go wide with fear as the cold steel of the knife touched her throat.
Turning back to Majors, he pulled back the hammer on the .357, watching the cylinder rotate into firing position. “And if I blow your head off?”
“The doctor still dies.” Majors said flatly as the corners of his mouth pulled up into a small, menacing grin.
Aaron quickly shifted his focus, and his aim. The barrel of the revolver tracked the pair’s trip down the stairs.
“He’s absolutely right,” Aaron said, raising his voice toward Trish. “But, are you as willing to die as he is to kill?”
“You won’t shoot me,” she said, tilting her head toward the hostage in her grasp. “You might hit her.”
“Wrong.”
The warehouse exploded with the concussion of the Magnum’s blast. He looked past Jenny to see Trish, her face frozen in surprise, as she slid down the wall, dragging a wide red smear behind her. An instant later, a searing heat ignited in his right side, burning through to his back.
“Get down!” He screamed at Jenny, rolling to his left before Majors could get off another shot.
The magnum roared again, sending his sinister adversary scrambling for cover.
“Jump!” He yelled. “Now!”
Springing off the steps with the dexterity of a cat, Jenny landed next to him in a low crouch.
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br /> Seeing Majors dive and roll behind some debris, he took the opportunity to grab his charge by the arm and the pair sprinted back through the darkness toward the exit.
Running and firing at the same time, Aaron’s two successive shots missed Majors by fractions of an inch, shattering the bricks of a nearby pillar. The flying shrapnel chased Majors behind a massive milling machine, out of the line of sight.
Finally reaching the exit, the fleeing pair burst into the sunlight, slamming the door behind them. They crossed an open lot adjoining the factory, hiding behind the rusted wheel of an abandoned railroad car. Both gasping from the exertion of their escape, they paused while he got his bearings. Flipping the Magnum’s still-warm cylinder out, he grimly confirmed only two live rounds remained, each one clearly discernible by the absence of an indentation on the primer cap.
He took Jenny’s arm in a firm grip, checking the door for signs of pursuit. “We’ve got to move…now.”
Running from cover to makeshift cover, he led her away from the vacant lot toward the suddenly-present hum of street traffic. Looking down the road, he saw an intersection about one hundred yards to his left. The pair moved quickly toward the crosswalk and the traffic waiting for the light to change.
Aaron risked another glance over his shoulder, seeing Majors’ convertible emerge from behind the loading dock. He broke into a run, quickly studying the cars waiting at the light, searching for the oldest one possible. He turned again to see Jenny lagging a few steps behind. “Step it up,” he said, pointing at the car rapidly coming up behind the fleeing pair. “We’ve got company.”
Walking past several newer vehicles, he grabbed the door handle of an ancient pick-up truck. Finding it unlocked, he pulled it open, ignoring the startled shouts from the driver as he yanked him from the truck then slid behind the wheel himself.
“Get in!” he yelled at Jenny, watching the assassin’s car burst through a chain-link fence, heading straight for them.
Jenny climbed into the passenger side and slammed the door with a loud bang. Seeing the convertible in the rear-view mirror, Aaron floored the accelerator and ran the red light, shooting across the intersection. Horns honked angrily as a speeding car careened off the road, narrowly missing them, the tires screeching in protest.
Jenny watched Aaron steal hurried glances in the rear-view mirror as they burst into the thick traffic of Boston’s narrow surface streets. She felt a sharp jolt shoot through her as he jumped the truck over the curb, barreling down the sidewalk and scattering frightened pedestrians in all directions.
Heart pounding, she checked the mirror outside her window as Aaron worked the truck between two lanes of cars slowing for the yellow light at the next block. Sliding around a corner with tires spinning, she watched in horror as Majors’ convertible bounced off a parked car in a cloud of broken glass. Metal shrieking, the assassin’s car tore its way free, dropping the front bumper on the street before resuming the chase.
He closed the distance and Jenny gasped in fear as she saw the barrel of a gun appear, a sleek black form protruding from the driver’s window. With a startled scream, she ducked below the seatback as the bullet shattered the glass above her head before passing through the truck’s roof.
“Stay down!” Aaron yelled as he yanked the wheel back and forth, continuing to dodge the other cars while trying to keep out of Majors’ line of fire.
Peeking over the seat, she watched the convertible angle closer for another shot, pushing a green sedan off the road, its unsuspecting driver unable to avoid smashing through the plate glass doors of a store-front café.
She screamed again as another round holed the rear window to pass between their heads, the near-miss sending spider cracks through the windshield while glass fragments filled the air.
She bounced back and forth across the seat as Aaron swerved between lanes, drawing angry shouts and obscene gestures from the other drivers as he cut them off, sending them spinning out of control.
Seeming to come from nowhere, Majors suddenly appeared next to her door. She drew a breath to scream as the assassin’s gun rose up to take aim. Before she could utter a sound, the window in front of her exploded. She felt a flash of hot pain as a piece of glass struck her face, slicing her chin in a thin red line. The bullet passed through the door post, narrowly missing Aaron’s head as he fought to control the speeding pickup.
Getting closer to the broken window, Majors lined up for another shot. Aaron yelled a warning, pulling the magnum from his belt. “Get down!”
She threw herself flat on the seat, giving him a clear shot through the now-disintegrated window. She flinched as the gun in Aaron’s hand roared, causing Majors to swerve away, smashing into a group of mailboxes stationed at the corner. She saw a plume of smoke billow out behind the convertible as it pushed the shattered hulks out of the way.
Pop-Pop, she heard two more rounds bury themselves in the steel behind her head.
“That bastard just won’t give up!” Aaron yelled as he scanned the road ahead, franticly searching for a way to evade the persistent killer before he could close the distance again. Majors’ car roared onto the passing lane, this time coming up to Aaron’s door already firing. Bullets pinged off the cab and passed through the already-shattered windshield.
Aaron slammed on the brakes, throwing Jenny to the passenger-side floor in an undignified heap. She couldn’t see the assassin’s car from her prone position, but as she struggled to regain her seat, she saw Aaron push the barrel of the magnum out his window and the pistol roared again.
The bullet smashed into the convertible’s windshield directly in front of Majors face, blasting a hole in the glass the size of a grapefruit and obliterating a chunk of the assassin’s ear. The distraction was all Aaron needed.
He yanked the steering wheel hard to the left. Rocking the speeding convertible with a horrific jolt and a screech of tearing metal, he pushed Majors off the road into the deep snow of the median.
The truck spun violently as Aaron’s arms flashed back and forth, trying to regain control the sliding pick-up before it rolled over.
Jenny felt the truck lurch forward again as Aaron stomped on the accelerator, pinning her to the seat and leaving their attacker behind, the front of the convertible buried to the windshield in frozen white powder. After a few seconds, Jenny peeked over the back of the seat, checking the road behind them again and finding no sign of their attacker.
Adrenaline still running wild, she sat trembling as the heater whined, struggling against the icy air coming in through the missing windows. “I think we lost him.” She said.
A heavy silence suddenly permeated the interior of the truck’s cab, nearly suffocating both occupants, as they sped away.
“Are you all right?” Aaron asked, his deep voice breaking the unnatural quiet.
She turned toward him; her face tinged a pale green. “I think I’m going to be sick!”
She groaned, twisting in her seat as the bile climbed in her throat. She pushed open the door of the moving truck while the knots in her stomach burst into spasmodic convulsions. Hanging her head out into a blast of freezing air, she gagged as her stomach turned itself inside-out, releasing what little it contained onto the street flashing beneath her feet. She felt his strong arm grab her coat by the collar, preventing her from tumbling out the open door as she wretched miserably.
Reduced now to dry heaves, the spasms finally relaxed. Pulling her back to sit upright, she felt the cable-like tension of her coat around her chest ease as he released her collar.
“Feel better?”
“Pull over!” she yelled.
He continued to stare at the traffic ahead in silence.
“Let me out!”
“This is not a good time to go sight-seeing. Haven’t you noticed that someone’s trying to kill us?” he said incredulously. “We have to keep moving.”
“What I noticed was that you were prepared to give those monsters my project!” she snapped angrily.
“Are you insane?”
“I don’t think you understand the gravity of what was about to happen back there. I was just trying to get us out in one piece.”
“You said you would give them my project if they let us go,” her face began to regain some color and she continued. “How could you even consider doing that?”
“I couldn’t watch you die.”
The admission stung like a sharp slap to the face, the resignation in his voice cutting her to the bone. She folded her arms across her chest in blunt defiance. “I’d rather die than see my project in their hands.”
He locked his gaze to hers. “You say that. Have you ever seen death before today?”
“My father died in a car accident when I was twelve.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but what I meant was sudden, violent death…up-close and personal.”
She glared at him in silence.
He went on unimpeded. “The kind of death where you’re engulfed in cordite fumes and you realize that metallic smell in the air is your buddy’s blood.”
The color once again drained from her face and her hand flew to cover her mouth.
“I didn’t think so.”
Aaron turned back to stare at the road through the cracked windshield, wincing as the truck lurched into the air, bouncing through potholes that shook him in his seat. He reached his hand into his jacket and she heard him suck in a sharp breath.
“You’re hurt!” she exclaimed.
“It’s nothing.”
She pulled his hand from under his jacket and caught a fleeting glimpse of the red stain on his fingers before he could hide it.
“Let me see it.” She demanded.
She reached forward, pulling his coat away from his body. Searching under the layers of leather and lining, her hands encountered his shirt, the sticky cloth wet with blood.
She gasped. “Oh, my God! You’ve been shot!”
“I’ll live.”
“You’ll bleed to death!”
“Relax. I won’t bleed to death. It’s not that bad.”
Chain Reaction Power Failure Book I Page 25