Beauty & the Beast

by Nancy Holder

  Soon there was a blanket on the floors approximately three inches deep. One sneezed hard. It was a lot of lint, but not enough to create a fire big enough to send passengers and crew to the lifeboats—unless it spread. One unscrewed the sprinklers for the fire suppression system as well as the redundant backups and opened more doors along the passageway so that the fire could travel. Then One hurried to collect the secret weapon—cans of gas from the ship’s stores for the outboard motors on the lifeboats, carefully gathered and placed in a locker as close to the lint room as possible—a Herculean effort considering the short amount of time One had had between hatching the plan and being forced to execute it. Hiding the bodyguard’s corpse underneath the lifeboat had provided the spark—no pun intended—of inspiration for using the gas. One dumped gas all over the lint and the warm, clean sheets, towels, and passenger laundry, watching the pungent liquid spread.

  Five minutes. Maybe this was too close. Maybe when the laundry attendants came to transfer the loads from the washers to the dryers, there would be some more deaths if One wasn’t finished. Not that One cared.

  Stay on target.

  One stepped out of the room and pulled a can of hairspray and a lighter from the case. The lighter transformed the hairspray into a blow torch. The fine lint and gas ignited in a fireball. The blast pushed One backwards. The fire was much larger and hotter than anticipated.

  Gasping, One raced ahead of the flames, lurching from side to side as the ship struggled in the storm. One nearly fell, grabbed the rail of the stairway, and took the steps two at a time as the fire pursued inches behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Heather woke up on her side, on a cold, damp concrete floor. When she rolled over onto her back, burning pain lanced through her butt cheek and she let out a little yelp. It wasn’t the only place that hurt. Her head ached and there was a throbbing goose egg behind her ear. Both her right shoulder and elbow were bruised and she couldn’t straighten out that arm without wincing. She had a dim memory of hanging from a high window, then losing her grip when the gun fired. The rickety table and chair had broken her fall, but it was still onto unforgiving concrete.

  She blinked up at the ceiling through her tears, trying to force her eyes to focus.

  The table and chairs were gone. She was not alone.

  Svetlana stood by the open cell door, water bottle in one hand and the other hand open, palm up. “You take aspirin for pain.”

  There were three white tablets in her hand.

  They looked like aspirin.

  Her butt hurt. Her head and shoulder hurt. She didn’t care if they were cyanide. She gulped them down.

  “Thank you.”

  “Asshead shoot,” Svetlana said. “I could not stop. You lucky he bad shot. He aim for head. You not hurt bad. Just little bruise.”

  Heather didn’t feel lucky. And she wasn’t reassured about the scale of her injury. Asshead had a big gun that shot a big bullet. She envisioned some gruesome Frankenstein scar on her otherwise perfect tush that she would have to explain to every future boyfriend. “Oh that? I got it when I was kidnapped by the Russian mob. He was aiming for my head…”

  Heather struggled to her feet. It hurt to put weight on her left side; the pain radiated from her rear cheek up her back and down her leg. She tried to look over her shoulder at her behind, dreading what she would see. The stretching of her lower back made her butt hurt even worse and she gave up.

  “Am I bleeding?” she asked the Russian. “Do I need stitches? Are you going to get me a doctor?”

  “No. Bullet tear jeans back pocket. I look inside seat of pants, it nothing, just little scrape on skin. If you want, we find Band-Aid…”

  It didn’t feel like a scrape. It felt like she’d been kicked by a horse.

  Svetlana reached out and softly patted the back of her hand. The caring, intimate gesture and the earnest look in the woman’s eyes took Heather by surprise.

  “You and me, we have to get out of here,” Svetlana murmured.

  “Yes, oh yes!” Then Heather caught herself. “Why? Why are you helping me now?”

  “Because they will kill you soon. Doesn’t matter if sister has coat or not. Uncle will order job and Ilya will do it. He already saying what he make you do before he kill you. You don’t want to die that way.”

  She didn’t want to die any way.

  “But what about the risk for you?” Heather said, still trying to understand the woman’s motivation.

  “Ilya want me dead too. Trick Uncle into doing it, or he do it by accident and lie. I am in same boat as you. Your sister with police?”

  Heather nodded.

  “Then maybe she get me witness protection if I bring you back to her?”

  “Cat will, I know she will.”

  “Others here besides Ilya. Big warehouse building. Cars parked on alley at loading dock. You drive car?”

  Heather told the unvarnished truth. “I have a license.”

  “You know city?”

  Heather nodded, but with even less confidence. Once again she was being a people pleaser, telling the woman just what she wanted to hear. She did that because she wanted everyone to like her, no matter how much trouble it got her into. But Svetlana didn’t seem to notice her hedging. The Russian was very worked up. Heather didn’t want to give her a reason to abandon the escape plan. How hard could it be to find the precinct?

  “Good. When time come you drive and I use this if they follow.”

  Svetlana took out her handgun. “I no shoot inside building unless have no choice. Too much noise. Others come. Trap us. You walk okay?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m fine.”

  “Then come, we go. You carry light. Stay close.”

  No doubt about that, Heather assured herself, picking up the camping lantern by its wire handle.

  Svetlana led her through the room that enclosed the prison cell. She opened the door a crack and said something to someone on the other side in terse Russian, then stepped well back. When the door swung inward, a large man with a wide, flattened nose rushed in. He looked like a heavyweight boxer or wrestler—thick neck, long, muscular, ape-like arms. Svetlana jumped forward to meet him, adding her momentum to his, and smashed the steel butt of her pistol into his chin.

  The big guy’s legs shot out from under him and he hit the floor on his back, head bouncing off the concrete. Except for the sizeable cut on his chin that was dripping blood over his stubbly jaw and down the side of his neck, he looked like he was sleeping peacefully.

  “Is he dead? Did you kill him?” Heather asked in horror.

  “No, he having glass jaw.”

  Heather didn’t know beans about prize fighting, but she had heard that phrase before. It meant you were too easy to knock out.

  Svetlana stepped over the man. “Come on,” she said. “Before he wake up very mad.”

  It was harder to walk than Heather let on—or fully realized. The powerful impact of the gunshot, glancing to her butt or not, added to the fall from the window had caused her leg and hip to stiffen up. And the aspirin hadn’t kicked in yet—if it ever was going to.

  “Give me light,” Svetlana said.

  Heather handed it over.

  Svetlana took it in her left hand, with the gun behind it in her right.

  The swaying beam revealed a grim, gray, low-ceilinged corridor. Water puddled in places on the floor. The basement was airless and rank. Greasy-looking rats squealed and scampered out of their path.

  The right-hand wall was lined with rows of dirty pipes, electrical conduits, and heating ducts. Heather couldn’t see very far to the left; they were moving at a near jog, and the lantern’s light didn’t penetrate far into the gloom. Boilers? Furnaces? Electrical transformers? Heather couldn’t tell. Svetlana seemed to know exactly where she was going.

  Another light appeared ahead; they were headed right for it.

  Her Russian protector slowed and said quietly over her shoulder, “You wait here. I let you
know when okay.”

  Heather had no choice in the matter. She found a place where clustered pipes made a right angle, creating a little niche she could duck down behind. From that vantage point she watched Svetlana continue on under the low ceiling. When the two light sources joined it got much brighter, and Heather could see the cage door of a freight elevator, the light bulb over it, and two men sitting on cheap, white plastic chairs on either side. They didn’t get up when Svetlana approached. She said something Heather couldn’t make out—too soft and in Russian. Whatever she said, it made one of the men push up from his chair. The other guy just sat there with arms folded across his chest and grinned smugly up at her.

  Not for long.

  Heather had seen Cat do spinning sidekicks hundreds of times. Because she didn’t weigh very much Cat needed the spin to put momentum behind the blow. Svetlana had thirty-five pounds on Cat and close to ten inches in height: no spin required. Her lightning sidekick caught the seated man full in the chest. The back of his head bounced off the wall and he slid onto the floor like something boneless, a squid or a jellyfish. While he was in mid-slide, the other man gained his feet, shoving the chair back out of the way, making the legs screech on the concrete floor.

  Svetlana recovered from the sidekick with a precise little hop. Because of her angle of view Heather couldn’t see the front snapkick, but she saw the man’s face jerk up toward the ceiling when Svetlana connected the toe of her boot with his chin. And she also saw the follow through: The blonde’s right leg and foot swung up high over her head. As if in slow motion, the man’s arms opened wide, back arched, and he reverse swan dived into the floor with a soft thud.

  “Come!” Svetlana called, urgently waving her forward.

  Heather could see the unseated man was breathing. Swan Dive, she couldn’t tell. Both his legs were doing a quivery dance that was very scary.

  Svetlana pulled her into the elevator and yanked down the safety fence.

  “Cars two floors up,” Svetlana said. “More guarding loading dock.”

  The elevator started up with a jerk. There was a light inside, another single bare bulb.

  “So far it’s good,” Svetlana said, putting down the lantern. Heather watched her check her pistol, dropping the magazine into her palm, looking at the little slot in the side that showed the number of rounds it held. Satisfied, she slapped it back in place and lowered the safety with the ball of her thumb. Amazingly, her manicure had survived intact.

  Heather felt goosebumps rise on her arms. Svetlana had said she didn’t want to start shooting. Or maybe she meant she didn’t want to start shooting before they got to the loading dock? What-ifs flooded Heather’s brain. What if they couldn’t reach the car? What if Svetlana got wounded or killed? What if Ilya captured her again?

  She tried to think about something else—anything else. No doubt, things couldn’t get much worse. Ravi had been killed before her eyes. She had been tied up, knocked out, kidnapped, put in a nasty cell with rats, and shot in the butt. Which still burned like she’d sat on a hot coal. But she had an ally now. An ally who had just beat up three men without chipping a true-red nail. She had to keep a clear head and not panic, no matter what happened, no matter what else she saw. She had to pretend she was Cat. Something she had done countless times growing up—and since—but this time her life depended on it. They were going to make it to a car and she was going to drive it away, and then when they were finally safe she was going to let go and melt into a shuddering puddle.

  The elevator stopped with a lurch. There were bright lights beyond its barrier fence. Heather saw the inside of a hangar-like room. It was wide and had a high ceiling. The floor was divided into rows of stacked wooden crates and cardboard boxes on pallets. Unlike the basement, there would be no darkness for them to hide in.

  “Get ready,” Svetlana said, reaching for the gate. “Keep close behind… If I run, you run… This maybe little noisy…”

  When the gate swung up, Heather reached out and touched Svetlana’s back, keeping fingertip contact as the woman advanced.

  A man challenged her in Russian. Heather couldn’t see around Svetlana’s back, but it was Ilya’s voice, coming from the left.

  Svetlana turned toward the sound. And when she did, Heather could see him. His face was scarlet as they stepped almost toe to toe.

  “This cost you life, stupid woman,” he said in English, no doubt for Heather’s benefit.

  She twisted out of the way as Svetlana’s right elbow snapped back. Through her fingertips she could sense the uncoiling power as the blonde put legs and hips into the blow. As with the boxer guy downstairs, she slammed the gun butt square into Ilya’s jutting chin. He staggered backwards, blood coursing from an ugly gash under his mouth.

  But unlike the boxer, he did not go down like a sack of cement. He swung his own pistol up.

  Svetlana bounded forward and hit him again with the gun butt, a straight right that landed under the nose. She grunted from the effort and there was an audible crunch on impact.

  The second blow dropped Ilya to his knees on the concrete. Still not out.

  He grimaced, showing broken, bloody teeth, and fired his pistol. The deafening blast of a near miss echoed through the warehouse.

  Before Heather could think, Svetlana leaped away from her, putting two yards of distance between them. Clearly stunned, Ilya waved his gun around, trying to draw a bead on her. Svetlana stepped behind him and brought the muzzle of her weapon down behind his ear in a short, tight arc.

  The gun discharged again as his eyes squeezed shut. He toppled forward onto his face and did not move. Svetlana quickly dipped a hand into his jacket pocket and came away with a set of keys attached to a black leather fob.

  “Quick now,” Svetlana said. “Cars.”

  Heather grabbed her hand and they ran down an aisle between stacked crates toward a double set of wide, pull-down metal doors. As they neared them, the door on the right started to rise with a clatter. Heather saw the feet and legs of the men on the other side.

  Svetlana didn’t slow down; she opened fire as she ran. The din hurt Heather’s ears and made her flinch; bullets sparked off the concrete beneath the door. Someone screamed.

  The door continued to roll up on its own as all but one of the men dove aside for cover. One was down on the platform, grabbing his ankle, thrashing, and yelling. Then he rolled off the edge of the loading dock, out of sight.

  Svetlana cleared the doorway with Heather in lockstep, puffing hard to keep up. As she darted down a short flight of steps, she fired a couple of shots, presumably to keep the rest of the men’s heads down.

  Backed into parking spots in front of the dock was a trio of huge SUVs. Two were black, one white.

  “White one,” Svetlana said. “Here key. Get behind wheel.”

  Heather opened the driver door and climbed in. She felt like a little kid in a grown-up’s armchair—barely able to see over the dash and the seat was set so far back she could just touch the pedals with her toes. Fumbling with the key Svetlana had given her, she managed to get it into the ignition.

  “You say you drive car?” Svetlana said as she slammed the passenger door.

  “A car yes, but this is a tank.” When she turned the key, the engine started at once. It sounded very powerful.

  Gunfire rattled from the loading dock. The SUV shuddered as bullets pocked the rear doors.

  Heather found the parking brake and dropped the car into gear, jamming her toes down on the accelerator as hard as she could. With the tank’s rear wheels squealing, she took off.

  Into darkness.

  “Lights!” Svetlana cried.

  Heather found the controls embedded in the middle of the steering wheel and pushed the switch. Then she looked up. The headlight beams lit up the outer wall of another brick warehouse—she was heading straight for it!

  She cut the wheel over hard. Too hard. The heavy SUV fish-tailed into the turn, rear quarter slamming into the wall with a jarrin
g crash.

  “Drive! Drive!” Svetlana shouted as she turned to look out the back window. “They are coming!”

  Drive where?

  Heather had no idea where she was, or even if she was still on Manhattan. She’d been unconscious when she’d been taken here.

  The turn put them in a narrow alley bracketed by tall brick buildings. There were trashcans on either side of the alley. Accelerating, Heather plowed through them. She could speed up or slow down, but had no sense of control. The big car seemed to float between the towering walls, scraping noisily for a second against one side, then when she compensated, colliding momentarily with the other side. In the distance ahead she could see the black gap of the alley’s mouth: It looked very small.

  High beams from behind lit up the car’s interior. Before she could look up into the rearview mirror, the back window imploded. Something smashed into the back of Heather’s head rest, and then slapped the inside of the windshield. She stared in amazement at the oblong keyhole the bullet had cut through the glass.

  “Faster! You go faster!”

  Heather gripped the wheel tightly in both hands and straining her leg to reach, jammed the gas pedal to the floorboard. The sudden surge of power lifted up the front end of the SUV.

  She didn’t know what she was doing. She wanted to cry, but was too afraid to close her eyes.

  Screeeeeeeeeeech! The wall on the right exploded in a spray of sparks as the side of the SUV scraped hard against it.

  The alley mouth loomed. There was a perpendicular street beyond it. And the headlights and tail lights of passing cars. Heather prayed for a gap in the cross traffic.

  A scene from that movie that took place in Venice where the robbers drove MINI Coopers suddenly popped into her head. They had used the parking brake to make tight turns. The SUV didn’t have that kind of old-fashioned lever brake. And she wasn’t sure she would have been strong enough to use it and steer the car if it had. But she knew she had to brake or she would roll the car when she tried to make the turn out of the alley—there would be no wall to slam into to keep the vehicle upright.