“Hit the close door button now,” I commanded.
“I’ll kill him,” King said.
That was his play?
I stepped into the elevator as the doors whooshed closed. I turned toward Sasha. “You okay?”
She looked like she was holding back tears, but she nodded.
“It’s going to be okay. You’re safe now.” I tried to make my voice sound convincing and then just decided to change the subject. “Where is your laptop anyway?”
“In a locker at the BART station. My source told me I was in danger. He said I shouldn’t go into San Francisco at all. That they were after me. That I was being followed so I ditched them long enough to hide it.”
I gave her an admiring glance. “Damn, you’re good.”
She beamed, but then grew somber. “He warned me and I think he paid with his life.”
“Why do you think that?”
“That’s why they took me from the protest instead of having me meet them later. They said they’d been suspicious of him and saw his texts to me. I think they did something to him.” Tears filled her eyes.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
She looked relieved for a minute, but I thought about how there were more barrels with bodies than people missing. At least ones I knew about.
“Who’s your source?”
She looked uncomfortable shifting from foot to foot and not meeting my eyes.
“Never mind,” I said, waving my hand. “Baumann told me all about you guys protecting your sources and going to jail and all that stuff.”
She gave a small smile. “You talked to Baumann?”
Just then the elevator stopped, the doors opening on the first floor. I moved Sasha behind me and stuck my head out into the darkness, listening. When I didn’t hear anything, I gestured for Sasha to follow me. I couldn’t waste time trying to find out how to open the big garage door so I’d have to make a break for the window I’d come in.
As we stepped into the garage, which felt twenty degrees cooler, I spotted the light coming from the window. I grabbed Sasha’s hand and yanked her as we ran, hoping there was nothing in the dark that would trip us. But this time, with dawn breaking, I could see faintly and it looked like a clear path. When we reached the window, which was about five feet off the ground, I crouched and cupped my hands together.
“Use this for your foot and then grab ahold of my back to pull yourself up.”
“Okay.” She sounded scared. A sound made me freeze. I listened in the darkness, but nothing stirred. We needed to get out of there and fast.
Sasha put her foot into my cupped and interlaced palms. A tiny sob escaped her. “I can’t.”
“You can. I promise you. You can.”
“I’m so weak.” I heard a sound again and my adrenaline spiked.
“Now, Sasha. Now. I’ll lift you. Go now.”
For a second, she wobbled and I was worried she’d topple over, but then I felt her other foot on my back and I shot up, sending her propelling toward the window. “Grab the window sill.”
“I got it.” I felt her weight leave my body at the same time I felt hot breath on my neck.
“Run, Sasha! Run!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I ducked but it was too late. An arm yanked me back. I felt something cold and sharp on my neck. I tried to ignore it as Sasha’s feet pounded the pavement and then disappeared from my view. Go, Sasha. Run like hell.
A rough cheek pressed against mine and I caught the faint whiff of blood and something like what I imagined death would smell like.
“You will pay for my leg.” The voice rumbled in my ear. I could feel his excitement pressed against me. I remembered the glimmer in his eyes upstairs when he slapped me. I’d been right. He did get off on violence.
“Where’s the mayor?” I tried to sound nonchalant.
“Dead.”
I somehow had already known the answer.
King drew back, keeping his arm on my neck, and walked backward, pulling me with him. He panted a little in pain. I must’ve really fucked up his leg. I could feel his breath on the back of my head, ruffling my hair. He obviously didn’t know it wasn’t in his best interest to have his face that close to my thick skull.
I wrenched my head backward, smashing it into his face at the same time I kicked behind me and landed a blow to his knee. I felt shearing pain on my face as I did so, but managed to twist free.
I darted toward the staircase, which was a faintly lighter structure in the dark. The last thing I wanted to do was stay in this nightmare building, but I needed to get away from him and the stairs were the easiest way.
I scaled the first flight and stood at the top of the stairs legs spread, hands in fists before me, eyes straining to see him in the darkness below. As soon as he hit the stairs, I’d hear him. As I learned earlier, it was impossible to be quiet on the stairs.
The screech of the garage door opening made me jump. I paused for a second, unsure what to do. Did I run? As the light poured in from outside, inch by inch as the garage door rose, I searched the vast floor below for any sign of King. When the sound of the garage door quieted, I heard the distant wail of sirens. A police car pulled into the garage space, triggering overhead lights.
The police car skidded to a halt and James flew out of the driver’s side door, gun drawn.
“King’s down there somewhere. He can’t have escape,” I shouted.
But there was no sign of him. I leaned over searching the floor below, turning in a circle from my platform on the top of the stairs. The garage was empty. King was gone. The elevator. That’s when I saw it directly under me. He must have taken the elevator and the sound had been muffled by the garage door opening.
Rushing down the stairs, I reached the elevator at the same time James did and we punched the button. It took a few seconds for the door to slide open, meaning it was no longer parked on the first floor where I had left it. King had definitely taken it somewhere.
James reached for my face but drew back before he touched me. “Jesus Christ, Gia. You’re hurt. You’re bleeding pretty good.”
“Yeah.”
I shrugged. I swiped at my cheek and my hand came back full of blood. That’s when I noticed blood on the ground. I pressed the sleeve of my oversized sweatshirt up against my cheek.
The elevator opened before us. Stepping inside, I studied the options. James followed.
That’s when I noticed there was a basement level. Mother fucker. I punched it before James could say a word. We sat there in awkward silence for a few seconds, me holding my shirt sleeve to my cheek, which was starting to hurt like hell.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. It was the biggest understatement of the century.
“Yeah.” He looked away and then back at my cheek. “I think you should go back up, get in my car, and call for an ambulance.”
“I’m fine. The blood is stopping.”
I wasn’t sure it was, but it hadn’t soaked through the thick fabric of my sweatshirt sleeve yet, so that was good.
“Next time you need my attention, why don’t you text instead of email? I could’ve been here a lot earlier.”
I shrugged. “I was in a hurry to get Sasha before the TV stations got my email with her story. I set the email on a timer so it wouldn’t go out too early. That gave me time to get to her first.”
“You were pretty confident.”
“With the numbers and initials she had scribbled on her calendar, I knew she was meeting with King at one of the buildings the mayor owned down here. Eddy was a street not a person. 12 was an address, not a time, and KKK didn’t stand for Klu Klux Klan, it stood for Kraig Kristopher King. I looked at all the other buildings the mayor owned. This was the only one that appeared abandoned and was fortified like a prison yard. Yet last night there was a whole hell of a lot of activity coming and going from here. I knew something was up.”
I hadn’t been bluffing about sending the emails, but at the same
time I knew I had taken a huge risk and gamble.
“Got an extra gun?” I said.
He eyed me, but reached down and extracted a small pistol from an ankle holster, handing it to me as the elevator jolted to a stop. When the door whooshed open, we both flattened ourselves against the walls of the elevator. When nobody shot us, James gestured that we should move inside.
A small underground cavern lay before us, with curved stone ceilings and walls.
Stepping to one side, I kept my back to the elevator and my gun extended. James stepped to the other side. It didn’t take long to see the room was empty. A door lay opposite.
A table of computers lit up the room with an eerie greenish glow from their swirling screensavers. A huge TV hung on one stone wall. A large chair was pulled in front of it. The other wall contained a map of the city. I recognized some street names but nothing else on the map made sense. It contained what looked like streets or paths with strange names that snaked throughout the city, and, as far as I knew, didn’t exist. I spotted the general location of my place on Russian Hill and there were only a few red lines. Most of the red lines seemed to start in the Tenderloin and spiked out into other parts of the city.
“Tunnels,” James said under his breath. And then he pointed his chin toward the door at the far end of the small stone cave. We raced to the door. I stepped aside as James nudged it open. It led to a tunnel that took off in two different directions.
“Wait here.” James gave me a look.
“Whatever.” I took off to the right side. The walls of the tunnel were brick, the arched ceiling concrete and the floor dirt. Red lightbulbs hung from the ceiling every ten feet or so. Sprinting, I ran with one hand holding my sleeve to my cheek and the gun in my other hand. It grew colder and soon I could see my breath as I huffed along.
I didn’t hear James behind me so assumed he’d headed the other direction. I was on my own. My feet were silent hitting the packed dirt as I ran. It felt as if the air was growing warmer and the tunnel angled upward. I rounded another corner and was met by a door. An ordinary wooden door. With an ordinary handle. Leaning over holding my knees, I caught my breath, not taking my eyes off the door. A drop of blood from my cheek splattered on the dirt before me. I waited. It was only the one drop.
Holding my gun in one hand, I twisted the bronze doorknob and slowly pushed the door inward. It opened into a small dark space. The red light from the tunnel showed it was a janitor’s closet with a mop, broom, bucket, and cleaning supplies. Something nagged at me, but I was too wound up to pay attention.
A slice of light on the floor and wall showed another door lay on the other side of the closet and that it was ajar. What kind of Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe shit was this? My heart thudded. King had probably come this way. I could almost feel his lingering presence.
Gingerly, I pushed the door open a few inches and listened. I didn’t hear anything. I pushed with all my might at the same time I stepped in and whirled in a circle, gun drawn before me. Nobody. I was in a basement. A few bicycles were locked against a pole along one wall. Including a red bicycle. We were in the basement of the Eddy Street apartment. I rushed upstairs to the lobby.
I peered up the staircase, searching for movement. King must have fled out the front door. I bet this was why they wanted Sasha to meet there: so they could’ve dragged her through the tunnel to the Forgotten Island building.
Meanwhile, King had gotten away.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Before I reached the front door, I heard something that made me freeze. A creak from the stairs above. I leaned over in time to see a figure draw back from the very top of the staircase.
Along with the echo of more footsteps, a long shaft of sunlight shone down the stairwell as I heard a door slam. I raced up the stairs and didn’t stop until they ended at a door to the roof.
A combination lock hung open on the door latch.
I shoved open the door to the roof and ducked, expecting gunfire. When nothing happened, I crouched and peered out the one-foot gap at knee-level, blood racing, fear spiking through me. I didn’t see anything except a rooftop heating structure.
The warrior must be alert for those who wish to deceive him. The enemy is always searching for an opportunity to deceive so one must never underestimate the cunning of one’s enemy by making light of his power and strength. A warrior must have a clear head to accurately see the enemy.
Stepping through the gap, I pressed my back against the cold concrete wall that jutted up onto the roof from the stairwell. Holding the gun before me, I strained to listen, hoping for some sound that would indicate where King was. The structure containing the stairwell was in the middle of the roof so that meant he had to be on the other side. Keeping my back on the concrete, I inched toward the left side, gun up by my face.
A creepy feeling, some sixth sense made me step away from the wall and look up at the same time King hurtled his body down at me. He’d been perched on top of the structure that housed the stairwell.
We both landed with a thud on the rooftop. The impact knocked the wind out of me and sent my gun spinning across the roof. Out of my reach.
As I struggled to get away, King flipped me over, straddled me, and stuck his gun in my mouth.
“Fun and games are over now.”
A cold fear swept across my insides. The metallic taste of the gun filling my mouth made me gag. He released the safety and I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing my terror.
I braced myself.
The whirring sound didn’t make sense at first and then my eyes popped open.
Danny’s drone.
It hovered only a few feet above us, it’s red light flashing. Recording.
The gun was pulled from my mouth and fired, the sound momentarily deafening me, the echo obliterating any other sound. I saw King’s lips move but heard nothing. The drone darted and dipped. Then, the weight on me was gone and King was standing above me, firing at the drone again.
His legs straddled me, but he was distracted, staring at the drone, waiting for it to swoop closer.
In one fluid motion, I bent my left leg at the knee, wrapping it around so my calf rested on his thigh and my foot was on his hip. At the same time, I kicked my other leg toward his crotch, arching my foot so it rested against his buttocks. Meanwhile, I reached for his ankle and yanked at the same time I pitched my hips forward, knocking him off balance. A classic Budo move executed perfectly. His back thudded onto the rooftop as I rolled to a stand.
In an instant, I dropped and was on him, my leg wrapped around him so that I was pinching his neck between them. Try to get away now, dickhead.
The gun he’d dropped was only about three feet away but I couldn’t reach it without moving off of him and letting him go. My legs were wobbling already. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold him before my strength gave out.
The whirring above me reminded me of Danny and his drone. But then the drone swooped away as an army of police rushed through the rooftop door in SWAT gear with gigantic guns aimed at me.
“Hands up!”
I thrust my hands up into the air. Then James stepped out of the door, saying something. The officers circled King and yanked me away. They had him cuffed in seconds.
I sat, shaking, in a corner.
James was suddenly at my side.
“You, okay?”
I nodded.
“The paramedics are on their way.”
I frowned.
“Your cheek?”
“Oh.”
“I think you’re going to need stitches. I also think you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Oh.”
Two paramedics headed my way. I didn’t fight or argue. I had nothing left.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Perched on the edge of the hospital bed, I gingerly touched my cheek and the fat bandage on it. I wished there was a mirror. Despite the doctor’s refusal to answer me, I was pretty sure I was going to have a h
ideous scar. I could tell by the sympathetic look the nurse gave me when I asked. When I said I’d no idea what King had cut me with, they hooked me up to an IV, as well. Later, James told me they’d found a rusty piece of metal with blood on it in the garage.
Fanfuckingtastic. A scar and tetanus.
Yawning, I suddenly felt like I hadn’t slept for a week instead of only a night. I decided to lie down and curl up in a ball until the nurse came back. I’d asked her to check when I could be released. I’d drifted off when a commotion outside my door woke me.
“Nuh-huh, you are not going to make me wait. You can’t tell me I’m not family. Why would you say that? You think I’m not family because I’m black and my daughter’s white?”
Darling.
The nurse said something I couldn’t hear and then Darling said in a lower voice, “Listen, I’m the closest thing that girl has got to family and I’m going in there whether you like it or not.”
I smiled.
She pushed through the door and had me wrapped in a big squishy hug before I could even say hi. I came up for air and no, I wasn’t crying. Must have been my allergies acting up.
Darling pulled back and looked at me. “Mmmm hmmm. You gonna have a big ass, scar, baby girl.”
I shrugged. “How’s Sasha?”
Darling swiped at her eyes. “She gonna be alright. They’re keeping her overnight for observation. She’s got an IV and stuff like you. They say she’s dehydrated and they are giving her antibiotics because of her pinky toe. It’s a little infected. But I think she’s going to be alright.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. But I had a confession to make.
“Darling, I knew about her toe. They ...” I looked past her and scrunched my face up, bracing myself. “They sent me her toe yesterday. I’m so sorry. I was afraid to tell you.”
Darling drew back, eyes wide. “They sent you my grandbaby’s toe?”
Gia and the Forgotten Island (Gia Santella Crime Thriller Book 2) Page 14