“What?” Danny’s voice greeted him instead of Crystal’s.
Mac checked the number, put the phone back to his ear. “Sorry, Danny, I thought you were someone else.”
“Very cloak-and-dagger of you.” She was laughing at him. “Derek wants to know how things are going.”
A handful of pigeons pecked at the manicured grass by the street, unafraid of the steady flow of morning traffic. “They’re going. In fact, I’m expecting a call, so I’ll fill you in later.”
“Does that mean she’s inside?”
He aimed a stream of smoke toward the sky as he looked up at the red Lesico sign on the front of the building. “Yes.”
“Okay. He’ll want her back as soon as it’s over.”
Tough shit. Derek would just have to wait. He and Crystal had plans to defile a certain preschool van between now and then. “Danny, I need to go.”
“Right. Good luck.”
More time passed. Mac checked his watch while he extinguished his butt at the nearest ash receptacle. Dammit, why hadn’t she called yet?
He shook out another cigarette and tucked it between his lips. The first one had calmed his nerves a significant amount, but the second might make him puke if Crystal didn’t hurry.
Before he could bum another light, his phone buzzed. Without checking the number, he answered.
“I’m getting on the elevator now.” Crystal’s tone was hushed.
He ripped the smoke from his mouth and hissed, “What took you so long?”
“I had to incapacitate my server administrator.”
“Anything else?” Like a pile of dead ghosts? Rafferty? All those things that needed to come first?
The elevator dinged in the background. “Not yet,” Crystal answered. “Sophie has a bed in her private lab on the fourth floor. If no one is up there, I’ll take a look in her computer before I go down to the testing facility.”
Where he’d been caught last night. “Just stay focused, okay?” he reminded her quietly as he was joined by a couple of women with Lesico ID badges.
“That’s a tall order considering the way we left things.” There was a smile in her voice. “Maybe if you tell me what I have to look forward to, I’ll perform better.”
Why was she doing this to him? Not only was he worried about her, there were four other folks within hearing range… and she wanted him to talk dirty. “We’ll discuss it later,” he answered in code.
“I can’t wait to feel your enormous cock inside me again, Mac.”
The unlit cigarette fell from his mouth and hit the ground.
“Mmm. I’m touching myself… oooooh… imagining your hands all over my body…”
Jesus.
“And while you’re pounding into me, this time I want you to—”
Another ding. Mac heard the doors slide open in the background.
“Okay, I’m putting you in my pocket.”
What? You want me to what! No! Of all the…
Coming to, Mac looked down and saw crushed tobacco beneath his boot. Blood pumped loudly in his ears. His jeans once again strained under the pressure of his pounding member.
Okay, reel in your shit, Mac.
As her clothes swished against the speaker, he loaded another smoke between his lips, shoved the pack back in his shirt pocket and simply stood there with the phone to his ear. Waiting.
More employees piled through the glass doors, some crushing their cigarettes right beside him before entering work. He felt like a fish out of water among the suits and skirts, until someone offered a light. With feigned interest, he nodded and leaned into the flame.
“Thanks, man,” he muttered, turning away.
“That’s weird,” came her muffled voice through the phone. “There isn’t a soul up here. I wonder if Sophie’s death already got around.”
He could hear her shoes clap against a parquet floor. The couple beside him burst into laughter and he moved away with a finger to his other ear.
“Okay, I’ve cleared every room. Computers are on and coffee cups are still steaming, but it’s just me and the crickets up here.”
But, for how long? That unanswered question grew more deafening as each silent second ticked by. Then he heard her pull out a rolling chair and sit down. Rapid-fire tapping of a keyboard…
“I’m in IGP’s pharmacy loop,” she murmured. More typing. “Everything still works, just different location… A-ha. This might have something to do with why Sophie’s office staff is missing. Lot number two-two-six-four-one-seven was distributed a half hour ago. That’s our Plan B.”
Yes! The ghosts would be falling like flies in a hot car and the staff was somewhere else dealing with it. But, disguise or no, Crystal was lingering too long for his comfort. Come on, baby, get out of there.
“Now, I’m diving into her private files.”
No!
She blew a song through her teeth as she surfed. “Oh… crap.”
“What?” Mac asked before remembering she couldn’t hear him.
“Um… she really had a thing for Derek. I mean… I knew that already, but… damn.”
What the hell had Crystal stumbled onto? Pictures? Videos? A diary?
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that and move on.” More typing. “Wait a minute… I think I found something on our basement chemist.”
This was it. Mac sensed her excitement from four stories below when her breath caught. “My God,” she murmured. “This can’t be right…”
Her tone indicated a severe shift in mood. More than ever, Mac wanted her to put the damned phone to her ear so he could talk to her. “Come! On!” he hissed, turning to find out who heard that.
Absolutely no one was around and his ashes had burned down considerably. He flicked them off, took a long drag and held the smoke in his lungs until the urge to chew nails subsided.
Just then, a muffled voice reached out through the phone. It was masculine, gravelly and dripping with disdain.
“Hello, Crystal.”
What the fuck!
“Jude,” she answered, not even bothering to work the disguise. “You look a little pale. Not feeling well?”
She sounded way too calm. Assuming a ghost had caught her, perhaps he was too sick to pose a threat. Still, Mac’s heart lay dormant in his chest.
“Actually…” the man said, “I’ve been better.”
There was a strange swooshing noise and a loud thump.
“Too bad this dance is so one-sided,” she purred nastily. “I would have enjoyed fighting you. The only thing worse than a sexist prick is a really big sexist prick.”
Laughter rolled through the phone, slow and raspy. “Not… so one-sided,” the man croaked.
A few silent agonizing moments passed. “I see that,” she bit out with malice, then the phone went dead.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
As Mac doused his cigarette, he listened a moment longer to dead silence. Yes, she’d definitely hung up. God dammit! Why would she do that?
Unless someone else did it.
He pulled the ball cap lower over his eyes and pocketed his cellphone as he entered the building. Two security guards conversed in front of the ladies room down the hall. A pretty brunette behind the front desk pointed to a waiting clipboard. “Excuse me, sir?”
“Here to pick up my wife,” Mac said with outward calm as he walked by.
“You need to be cleared, sir!”
“Already been cleared.” He kept walking. The two guards turned, watched him approach the stairwell and responded to the receptionist’s sign language.
His path was blocked.
Crystal faced the three ghosts behind her with poise. Apparently, the biggest of them all would take a little longer to go down just like Jude, who now lay dormant on the gray Berber carpet.
The big question was… how much longer?
The four of them squared off in Sophie’s office surrounded by neutral art deco design and stiff white furnishings. Crystal prayed that
Mac would remain outside, remembered what happened last time he came for her. With any luck, she’d be joining him and perhaps smoke one of those cigarettes herself. After what she’d just found out, a stiff drink may also be in order.
“Let’s think about this,” she said calmly as she kicked off her shoes. “Sophie would not want blood in here.” Even though the painting over the couch looked suspiciously like arterial spray.
Could she outlast her dark brethren before they, too, fell from the paralyzing effects of Tetrodotoxin? These were formidable opponents; ones with equal skill, but with an advantage she’d never acquired. Brute strength.
“Nice of you to come home,” one of them said beneath the black mushroom-shaped hood. “To the scene of your crime.”
Another advantage she lacked was the obscurity of her uniform. These three men could see her face, read her thoughts, counter her moves almost before she made them. Never before had she felt so naked.
So exposed.
“What crime?” she asked with wide-eyed innocents. “Breaking curfew?”
The ghost she spoke with was not only tall he was massively built. One of Rafferty’s protégés no doubt. He advanced another step toward her. “When our brethren began to fall, your boyfriend from Pharmacy enlightened us on your knowledge of a certain lethal drug.”
Greg! That rats-ass sonofabitch.
“It’s been ten minutes and we’ve lost almost everyone,” he continued in drone-like fashion. “Because of you.”
With a snarl, she produced her blade and dove at the Achilles tendon of her closest opponent. When he jumped to avoid it, she adjusted her aim in mid-flight and drew first blood.
He crashed to the floor. When she rolled away, one of the last two standing managed to hook her skirt. Her blade arced again, but a foot came out of nowhere and slammed deep into her stomach. She curled up, desperately struggling for air.
Within moments, she was overpowered, disarmed, and straddled with hands held to the floor above her head. The wig was ripped off. Her wrists and ankles were cuffed together, making it impossible to escape.
As she caught her breath, Crystal began to fear her fate for the first time. If it weren’t for the dress, she would have just slipped from their grasp and beat feet for the stairwell.
Now, they held the higher ground… and they showed no signs of collapsing.
“Cute dress,” the ghost holding her arms said coolly. “Bad choice.”
That voice was vaguely familiar.
“We have a little ‘welcome home’ present for you,” the one straddling her sneered. “Open wide…”
As she struggled, he grabbed her jaw and squeezed until her mouth opened. In his other hand was a white pill. Her eyes widened on it, knew it was about to go down her throat.
“If we’re all going down… you’re coming with us, bitch.”
____
It had been too long since he lost contact with Crystal. Mac reached the fourth floor and burst through the stairwell door, exhausted, bloody and out of breath. He’d strung the security guards along to the second floor landing, then took the closest one out with one punch. The other guard had taken a bit more of a beating and Mac hadn’t escaped without absorbing a few solid hits of his own. Luckily, no one else utilized the stairs while they’d duked it out to the last man standing.
A pair of glass doors loomed at the end of the hall to his left. As he approached them, he was able to see the abandoned desks that Crystal had spoken of.
This was definitely the right place.
“Crystal?” he yelled when he entered the deserted office space. Two more doors to choose from… one was solid with a nameplate beside it that read ‘Lab’. The second was another glass door. It’s nameplate read ‘Dr. Sophie Hellberg’.
Beyond it, a black-clad arm was barely visible behind the desk, indicating someone was sprawled on the floor. Mac burst into the private office and stopped dead in his tracks.
Bodies lay everywhere. It was a large room, but the prone hooded figures were big enough to cover much of the floor. The metallic stench of blood filled his nostrils just as he saw the growing stain on the carpet.
Something moved. When his eyes adjusted in the dim light bleeding through the closed blinds, he saw Crystal’s blue skirt pooled beneath one of the bodies.
“Can you get this drooling asshole off me?” her voice croaked.
Relief nearly buckled his knees, but Mac managed to reach her side and roll the several hundred pounds of dead weight off her. She took in loud gulps of air as he grabbed her face, moved her bangs aside, confirming she was okay.
When she finally smiled at him, he bent and kissed her hard. She kissed him back just as feverishly, and when they finally parted, Mac found his voice. “What the hell happened?”
Then he noticed the handcuffs binding her wrists and ankles.
“We fought,” she said as he searched through pockets for keys to the cuffs. “But they were still too strong and I didn’t exactly have the element of surprise.”
“Did they just go down?”
“A few minutes ago, but they’re all still alive. Hurry up and get these off me so we can leave.”
His fingers touched something metal in the pocket of the ghost by her hands. It was a handcuff key. Within moments, Crystal was free and rubbing the marks from her wrists. When she got up, Mac noticed some white pills scattered on the floor beside her tangled wig.
“Are those what I think they are?” he asked, rising to his own feet.
She pulled some tissues from a box by the couch and bent to pick them up. “I think so.” When they were wrapped in a tight package, she stuffed them in her skirt pocket and retrieved the wig and her cellphone. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
Mac followed her into the hallway. “I’m thinking,” he said with chagrin, “we should avoid the stairs.”
A pained groan escaped her throat. “Let me guess. You acquired that bloody lip there.”
“Yep.”
“There’s another elevator in the back of Sophie’s lab.” She took his hand and pulled him in that direction. “You should have stayed outside like I told you to.”
Really? That’s what he got for helping her out of an impossible situation? “A thank you would be nice.”
“It wouldn’t have been worth it if you got hurt or arrested.”
The lab was no bigger than Sophie’s office, but there was plenty of machinery and glass to clutter the place. It had the nested feel of someone’s bedroom, though there was no room for comfort. Crystal led him around the small island and into another room.
Ah. This was where Sophie slept.
“Don’t let the bed fool you,” Crystal said as they passed through. “She spent most of her nights in her suite at IGP headquarters. She couldn’t stand to be away for long, since that’s where she could experiment with the fun stuff.”
“Was this where you thought Rafferty might be hiding?”
They entered another hallway, where they faced another set of elevator doors. Crystal pushed the down button. “It was my first thought, but I don’t think he’s here. They would have thrown him in my face if he were.”
The doors slid open and they stepped inside.
Crystal leaned into the far corner, closed her eyes. “This goes straight to the parking garage.”
Okay, sounded good to him. Mac pushed the down arrow and the doors immediately closed. “It smells like someone burned a microwave dinner in here.”
They plunged downward. She opened her eyes, blinked lazily. “Yeah, well, it’s ten times worse for me.”
Right. Super smell. As they descended, he studied her closely. She was looking at him as if he held a powerful secret and her only quest was to unlock it. He laced his fingers through hers, squeezed them. “You okay? It sounded like you found something big on Sophie’s computer.”
A sad smile formed and she spoke in a low voice. “It wasn’t what I thought.”
But the lines of regret around h
er mouth indicated she was holding back. When he opened his mouth to press her about it, she spoke first.
“Me and Rena used to have a place… where we’d talk about our dreams.”
All thoughts of grilling her for the truth vanished. Mac listened intently, anxious for the background information he’d been craving.
“It was the highest hill around. Closest to the sky… But the only time we could go was at night, when we were supposed to be asleep.” Her eyes became suspiciously glassy. “I left so many dreams up there. I just wanted the chance to see one come true.”
The elevator slowed to a stop. Mac took her face in his hands and gave her a slight shake of encouragement. “You will,” he promised as the doors slid open.
Behind him, the lit parking garage was filled with cars and street noise, but one look over the shoulder showed the coast was clear. He turned, pulled on her hand… but she didn’t budge.
“When I was fifteen,” she said, her voice quieter than before, “I watched my first R-rated movie. It had sex. Nudity. I finally got to see a guy’s butt.”
Okay, so she wanted to linger in the elevator that smelled like burnt cheese and talk about movies. The doors began to slide closed and Mac wedged a foot between them, preventing it.
Crystal shifted on her feet. “But, it was my first time watching a man and woman in bed together. The way he made love to her, how he made her feel, the beauty in their emotional bond… they were just actors, but I bought into every moment.”
He stood still and listened, her blank, watery expression evoking a strange feeling deep in his gut.
“Rena had just left for college, so I went to our hilltop by myself… and sent my first grown-up dream to the stars.”
Her fingers loosened their grip on his. Mac squeezed them and continued to watch her closely. “Which was?”
A small laugh pushed through her nose. “That some day a man would make love to me like that.”
Without warning, her legs folded and she sank to the floor. Mac caught her by the arms and hauled her up, but her body had gone completely slack against him.
Crystal Mac: A prologue novella to Captive Series Book 3 HELL'S HILLTOP Page 9