Taking Stock

by C J West

  Feet shuffled ahead. Muffled voices. She was running out of time.

  He marched her down the length of the room by the arm. They turned past the last long shelf and she stood stunned by the three men that faced her. Gregg sat rigid in a chair, the near side of his face battered and swollen. His eyes pleaded with her to get away. The wispy haired guy stood behind him. Herman Richards stood on the other side with a nasty snarl that brought the desperate scenario into focus. Herman had masterminded the scam and kept it from being discovered until she stumbled into it. She knew Brad wasn’t smart enough to do this alone. Herman had quashed the complaints Brad couldn’t handle and together they’d kept their work from Marty. When they realized Erica knew what was happening, Brad was sent to kill her. Where he’d failed Herman was determined to succeed.

  She’d have been better off if she’d taken Brad’s advice and quit BFS.

  Herman couldn’t let her out alive now that she’d seen him. The check in the pocket of her jeans had given her hope. She’d told herself they wanted the ten million, but her subconscious had known better all along. The check was meaningless compared to what they’d stolen. It had served its purpose now. Erica had come quietly to meet her demise. Now they were both trapped.

  The man behind her sensed her urge to dash and raised his gun for her head. The men around Gregg took a step back from the line of fire.

  Like a trigger, the sight of the muzzle sprung her into action, her training taking over like a reflex. Without a thought, she had his wrist in her outstretched arm then jerked and twisted it before her. Before he could tug free, she thrust her palm into the back of his elbow with everything she had. The joint, forced to bend the wrong way, gave with a horrid crack, its owner howling in pain. The gun fired past her, the bullet striking the far wall and ricocheting somewhere into the storage area.

  She wrenched his wrist. As he clutched his elbow in agony, she yanked the gun away. The compact Smith and Wesson fit her hand well. She torqued her captive’s elbow, thinking she could trade him for Gregg, but Herman and his partner grabbed for their guns. They were too close to Gregg. She couldn’t risk hitting him with a wild shot, but they had no such reservations about their comrade. They raised their guns to fire even though he and Erica were only a foot apart.

  She spun him around as a shield, raised the gun over his heart and fired twice from inches away. The silenced shots failed to drown out the cracking, tearing sound of the bullets ripping through his chest. Slug and bone alike tore out the other side and slammed into the concrete wall.

  Herman dodged away from the gore spurting toward him.

  Either shot alone would have been fatal, but oddly her former captor stood upright after she let him go, his body blocking Herman’s angle for an instant before it crumpled to the floor.

  The wispy haired guy aimed and fired. Paper exploded near her head. She raised her gun, but he ducked behind Gregg and she couldn’t shoot. He saw it in her face and his fear vanished. He lined up a careful shot and Erica ducked behind the shelf and ran along the outer wall the way she’d come in.

  Slugs smacked the shelves, the concrete wall, and the floor.

  Herman jumped clear of the shelves and fired down the aisle. She fired wildly over her shoulder, hitting the ceiling. Slugs chased her. A clip dropped to the floor. Another slammed into place.

  She darted into an aisle and stopped to listen.

  Voices echoed at the back of the room.

  There were dozens of aisles that ran the width of the room, but only two than ran the length, one against each wall. She couldn’t stay among the boxes. They’d have both main aisles covered and she’d be trapped until they closed in. She had to find another way to move around.

  She wanted to go back to Gregg, but they’d shoot her before she got close. She needed help. She needed to tell someone that Herman was behind this. That’s what Herman was afraid of. That’s why he hadn’t shot Gregg already. She couldn’t prove he’d taken the money from BFS, but she’d seen him here with Gregg. If Gregg disappeared and Erica got away, Herman would be on the hook for murder. She hoped Gregg would be safe as long as she was free.

  Erica crept to one end of the aisle and peeked down toward Gregg. Herman was crouched behind the desk, ready to fire if she showed herself. She crept to the other end and found the wispy haired guy doing the same, but he’d wheeled Gregg clear of the shelves knowing she wouldn’t shoot if she saw him. They wouldn’t wait much longer before coming for her.

  The door was a few aisles back.

  She moved to the center and started pulling boxes off the bottom shelf and burrowing her way through from aisle to aisle.

  Herman must have heard her working. He hollered, “Get back here Erica or there won’t be much left of Gregg.”

  The words froze her. She wanted to run to Gregg, but realized that’s exactly what Herman wanted. He was taunting her to step into view. Erica prayed she was right, pulled another box off the shelf and crawled through.

  The shifting boxes drowned out the sound of the men behind her. They could be coming closer, but this was her only chance. She wouldn’t last in the main aisles and she couldn’t stay where she was.

  When she dug through the next aisle, she saw the door. She crept to the corner and waited under the dim light with one eye visible beyond the shelf supports. The wispy haired guy sat behind Gregg, trained for any movement. He waited patiently. No one had followed Erica here. They had the building to themselves and they were content to wait for her to step out and make a mistake.

  She waited two minutes for him to turn his head toward Herman.

  When he did, she hopped the width of the aisle, jerked the door handle and burst into the stairwell. The commotion behind her could have been bullets zipping after her or the men running to catch up. She couldn’t be sure and she didn’t slow down to listen. She sprinted up three flights, finding every door locked. On the fourth landing, she kicked the door just inches from the lock and the flimsy trim shattered. The door burst open and she ran across the wide aisles toward the back corner and the opposite stairwell.

  The splintered frame would tell them where to look.

  She wished she’d thought to kick in the doors below, but now she had to keep moving. She ran across the floor, out the door and into the stairwell. She went down this time. She kicked in the door and stopped inside. Quiet now, she hoped they’d search the floor above. That would give her time to find help.

  There was a desk in the corner similar to the one Herman had been hiding behind. A beige phone sat apart from piles of forms at the center.

  She dialed 911 and the phone connected.

  Recorded voice prompts played. Didn’t the city have enough money to answer emergency calls live? She dialed one for English and waited.

  A dispatcher picked up and asked if she had an emergency.

  “We’ve been kidnapped.”

  “Are you ok?”

  “They’re trying to kill us! We need help now!”

  “Where are you?”

  “A warehouse in the leather district.”

  The woman paused. “Forty-two Beech Street?”

  “I don’t know. It’s an old warehouse. We need help!”

  “Relax, Mam. Help is coming. Are you safe?”

  “They’re armed and they’re searching the building for me.”

  “Get out of sight. We’ll be there in three minutes.”

  Erica told her it was Herman who’d brought her there, but the phone went dead. She wasn’t sure if the dispatcher had heard or not. They had the address, but Herman must have figured out what she was up to and yanked the phone wires from the basement.

  He’d be in a hurry to finish this and get out.

  Footsteps trotted across the floor upstairs.

  They were searching. They would have split up. One would be with Gregg while the other looked for her. She checked the clip. Four bullets left. Not enough to battle both of them. She needed help fast. She needed the police to k
now exactly where to find her.

  She rummaged through the desk until she found a pack of cigarettes and matches. She took the matches to the window and dragged three boxes of files over. The window wouldn’t open, so she heaved a heavy box at it. The pane cracked, but the box fell back inside. She heaved it again and the box stuck there, half in, half out. A kick toppled it forward and sent it plummeting for the sidewalk leaving behind a hole opened to the outside world. No one was on the sidewalk to see it fall.

  She dumped the other two boxes of paper files in a heap by the window, fluffed them as best she could and lit them. The old paper whooshed into flame against the concrete wall and up past the window. She added a few more boxes to be sure the police would see the smoke, but not enough to spread over to the shelves and burn the whole building.

  Smoke filled the room and she hunkered at the end of a shelf to wait.

  A minute later the door opened about eight rows back.

  He came straight for the fire, cautious, but driven to find the source of the smoke. She let him stand near the desk for two seconds, thinking of ways to put the fire out before she sprang.

  “Freeze,” she said, the gun extended, her torso still shielded by the shelf.

  He turned his head toward her, but didn’t swing the gun in her direction.

  He wouldn’t have given her the opportunity. He would have shot her without warning, but she couldn’t bring herself to kill him so cold bloodedly. What she’d do with him if he surrendered, she didn’t know.

  No matter. He didn’t.

  He dove for cover and she shot wildly over his head.

  He’d found her. Only a thirty foot long shelf separated her from a professional killer and she only had three bullets left. The smoke stung her eyes and the fire drowned out any movements he made on the other side of the room. She ducked her head out on each side of the shelf to keep him from sneaking up on her.

  She peeked out again and a bullet zipped past. She fired wildly. She hadn’t even seen the sights on the barrel, just waved the gun out there and pulled the trigger. She wasn’t thinking and she was going to get herself killed.

  Two shots left.

  She unscrewed the silencer. The least she could do with her remaining shots was to attract some attention. She steadied herself and tossed the silencer down the aisle, tumbling past a half dozen rows of shelves.

  He darted out around the end, running past the fire, thinking she was running for the door and that he’d get behind her before she reached it.

  She let him run right to her before she moved. He was in the open and she was covered behind the shelf, but this was her last chance. She had two shots left. If she missed he’d be right on top of her with a loaded gun. She’d be dead in two seconds. She hoped he’d have to stop to shoot.

  She opened fire from just eight feet, hitting him twice and filling the room with the report. Stunned, the bullets ripped into his chest and spun him sideways. He dropped face first on the floor without firing a shot.

  She stepped over and kicked the gun from his hand, expecting him to spring up, but he lay lifeless on the concrete. Blood leaked onto the floor, but not nearly as much as she expected. A tremor shook through her. Her hands and arms defied control. She’d killed two men and her shaking nerves were voicing their displeasure.

  He lay still much like her father had lain on the linoleum thirty years earlier. Her mother was only twenty-two then. Erica wanted to vomit after killing a complete stranger bent on killing her. What had her mother felt after killing the man she married? How much more painful had it been for her to stand over him? Erica was the only person who knew what they’d been through, and she’d never really helped her mother cope.

  What kind of daughter was she?

  She flung the empty Smith and Wesson into the fire. She opened the dead man’s gun and counted at least six bullets left in the clip. She headed for the stairwell. Only Herman was left down there with Gregg. Help was coming. She just needed to keep Herman in the building and keep him from hurting Gregg until the police arrived.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  The flimsy door wouldn’t stop a bullet. Erica crouched low, reached her hand up to the knob and inched the door open. If Herman were watching, hopefully he’d shoot high and she could roll out into the stairwell before he realized his mistake. The hinges opened silently. The basement was still as she held the door open and peeked past, toward where she last saw Gregg.

  Nothing inside responded to her movement at the door.

  She scampered in and hunkered down between the two shelves opposite the door. The door clacked closed. She waited, listening, afraid to breathe. Herman knew she would come for Gregg. He’d be waiting for her to slink in or for his partner to come back and report he’d finished her. If she could imitate his bravado on the walk back toward the desk, the bold footsteps might draw Herman out into the open. He had to expect his thug to win.

  She considered trying, but didn’t leave the safety of the shelves. Walking right up to him was the quickest way to get herself and Gregg killed. Better to confront Herman on her terms.

  If Herman was hiding, he’d be lurking among the shelves, waiting to sneak up on her from behind. Erica moved down the rows of shelves away from where she’d last seen Gregg. She kept to the end of each shelf, peeking her head into each aisle. The boxes she’d pulled off the shelves were still in the aisles. Nothing else was disturbed. Nothing moved ahead of her or behind as she looped all the way to the end of the room, along the far wall and back toward Gregg on the other side.

  There was nowhere for Herman to hide among the boxes unless he was shadowing her movements. She hadn’t heard a single footfall and she hadn’t made much noise herself. Herman had to be back with Gregg.

  It took three minutes to creep the length of the room. When Gregg finally came into view, he was alone. His hands were duct taped down to the arms of the chair, his feet bound together. They’d even taped over his eyes. The chair was wedged between the desk and the cement wall as if he’d been searching for something to free himself, but been frustrated because he couldn’t see and couldn’t reach the desktop with his hands bound.

  His head was turned toward her as if he’d heard her coming. She didn’t dare step away from the cover of the last shelf and cross the length of the room in the open. She ducked between the shelves and walked the aisle, slowly and silently as she could. Her head shifted ahead and behind to search for Herman, the gun leading the way down the aisle to Gregg. She reached the far end and craned her neck into the aisle. The door from the stairwell was still closed. Gregg was focused on her again, now from just ten feet away. She hadn’t been as quiet as she thought.

  “Where is he?” she whispered.

  “Gone.”

  “Where?” she breathed.

  He stretched his chin toward the far wall.

  She’d just come from there. He wasn’t lurking among the shelves. Could he have given up and left? They’d both seen him. They knew who he was and what he’d done. How could he expect to get away? Maybe he knew the police were coming and decided to run.

  She stepped tentatively from the cover of the shelf to the desk, her back to Gregg with the gun aimed toward the far aisle.

  She couldn’t free him and keep the gun trained across the room. Reluctantly, she turned her back to the shelves, wheeled Gregg back a few feet and stepped around behind the desk and rummaged through the drawers for something sharp. Taking a rusty old pair of scissors from the top drawer, she set the gun on the desk and started working to free his wrists. The dull scissors chewed rather than sliced. Her mind ticked off every second she worked, warning her that she was standing in plain view, focused on Gregg rather than the danger that could be ready to pounce. She clamped down on the scissors, slowly tearing through the tape.

  Gregg jolted backward and howled.

  His wrist broke free of the tape and he clutched his shoulder. Blood immediately painted his fingers bright red.

  Erica whee
led for the gun, but before she could reach it, searing pain ripped through her right shoulder and threw her forward, sprawling her on top of the desk.

  The telephone exploded into two dozen plastic shards.

  Erica clutched the gun in her left hand, turned and fired blindly. She fell, landed sitting with her back to the desk with nothing between her and Herman. Visible now, he stood at the far end of the room using the shelf for cover. He fired a fourth time in their direction, luckily missing them both.

  Erica aimed and fired twice and he retreated behind the shelf.

  A bullhorn blew a warning from outside. The police wanted them out of the building, but the shouted warning provided little relief. The police might take minutes to come inside. Erica and Gregg could be dead in thirty seconds and the call would make Herman far more desperate.

  Erica dropped the gun on Gregg’s lap, grabbed the chair with her good arm and pulled Gregg toward the cover of the shelf. She’d use the long aisle to keep him at bay until help arrived. Herman heard the movement, ducked out and fired. Erica picked up the gun from Gregg’s lap and returned his shot with a wild one of her own. She needed help and she cursed herself for forgetting to remove the silencer. The report would have brought the police rushing in to help.

  At the cover of the shelf, Erica held the gun in her weak hand and twisted off the silencer as quickly as she could. She didn’t waste a bullet to alert the police, but her next shot would tell them exactly where she was. She considered throwing the silencer down the aisle, but guessed Herman was smarter than the man she’d killed upstairs.

  “It’s over, Herman. The police are outside. There’s no getting out of this now,” Erica yelled.

  “Not with you two alive,” his voice boomed. “But telling my story is going to get much easier in a minute.” He was still somewhere on the far side of the room.

  Erica looked down at Gregg. He was bleeding badly, still blinded by the tape with one hand fastened to the chair. The scissors were on the floor across the room. Too far to run out in the open and get them. There was no way to get him up the stairs without getting shot.