Elizabeth Lowell - Innocent as Sin

“You were flying arms to the rebels in Camgeria.”

“Ah, you were the photographer.”

Rand didn’t trust himself to answer. He just kept duckwalking toward the counter, silently cursing the pain in his shoulder and ribs that made it nearly impossible to breathe.

“I can only imagine the agony of watching an identical twin die,” Bertone said, laughter curling beneath the words, “the gasping breaths, the bloody-”

Kayla shoved hard against Bertone, afraid that he would goad Rand into doing something stupid.

Bertone looked at her like she was a fly. He swatted her back the same way, casually.

When Rand heard her muffled cry, he was at the counter. His eyes and the muzzle of the AK-47 cleared the granite top at the same instant.

The hallway behind the counter was empty.

He thought he could hear sounds from the room at the far end of the hall, but the pulsing pain and the rush of blood in his own were disorienting. He dropped down and forced himself to remember what he’d seen of the club’s layout on Martin’s computer.

Anteroom at the end of the hall.

Private shooting rooms open out from there.

He checked the AK-47. Maybe ten rounds left, plus the second pistol Elena had given him, which was still stuffed in his waistband.

He tried to think back over how many shots he had fired from the rifle. He couldn’t.

Faroe would have a fit. The man’s a bear for counting shots.

Not that it mattered. However many shots Rand had, Bertone had a lot more, a whole shooting house full of ammo. Rand’s best call was to wait for more men with guns to come and help him.

But as soon as Bertone figured out what his stalker was doing, Kayla would have his full attention.

Not good.

Rand staggered to his feet and covered the hallway with the AK’s muzzle. He had to pin Bertone down, then cut him down. It was a job for several special weapons teams, but he didn’t have any in his hip pocket.

He took a calculated risk by rolling up and over the reception counter and falling on his knees in the corner near the hall. From there he could control the corridor.

And fight the waves of blackness that were right behind the bright red pulses of pain.

Bertone circled Kayla’s throat with his left arm. Using her as a shield, he leaned forward and sighted down the blunt action of his Glock.

The hall was empty but for a tiny bit of the AK-47’s muzzle showing from the corner behind the service desk. He shot quickly, more a reflex than an aim.

Rand jerked back as plaster exploded, dusting the barrel of his weapon. He waited, hoping Bertone would come closer, would poke his head around the corner.

And get it blown off.

Bertone was too smart for that. He tightened his grip on Kayla and dragged her backward into the darkness beyond the far door, where the private shooting rooms waited. There he would get the only thing he needed from her.

Moments later Kayla’s scream shattered the silence.

Arizona Territorial Gun Club

Sunday

2:38 P.M. MST

Rand forced himself to think when all he wanted to do was run down the hall and stop Bertone.

Suck it up.

Think.

The scream had been too far away to come from the hall itself or the anteroom beyond it.

He grabbed a handful of spiral notebooks from behind the reception counter and threw them down the corridor.

No one fired at the movement.

Time to buck the odds.

Riding a wave of adrenaline, he came to his feet and raced down the hall, weapon in firing position. The locked door at the back of the anteroom flashed a red warning light. Below that was a sign:

TACTICAL SHOOTING HOUSE

LIVE FIRE IN PROGRESS

Rand blew out the lock with a short burst of fire. The door slammed inward. He dove low through the opening, rolled behind the first cover he saw, and ignored the pain that was shutting down his vision.

The quick look he’d gotten as he dove through the door told him that the shooting house was the size of a basketball court. No windows. No ceiling for the maze of hallways and rooms. Light level so low that he had to let his eyes adjust.

Kayla’s scream was louder this time.

Rand clenched his teeth. I’m sorry, Kayla.

God, I’m sorry.

Breathing as quietly as possible, he lay behind a concrete pillar, trying to pinpoint the direction of the scream that was echoing around the room. Somewhere to his left, down a hallway without ceilings and behind a closed door, he heard the ring of a brass cartridge hitting and rolling across hard concrete.

A piece of shooting debris kicked by a careless foot.

Or a distraction created in the opposite direction of the real threat.

“Kayla!” Rand yelled, and rolled behind another pillar.

She answered with a choked-off scream, all she could manage before Bertone clamped steel fingers across her mouth.

The sound came from Rand’s right, down a narrow corridor formed by two eight-foot-high Kevlar “walls” designed to catch bullets sprayed by wild shooters. He examined the hallway. Thirty feet from his position, doors faced each other across the corridor.

It was intended to simulate a standard business-building arrangement, a place where a weapons team could practice tactics to use against a man who had gone postal.

Fifty-fifty.

I storm the hallway and take one door, only to find the shooter is waiting behind the other.

Rand didn’t move. It wasn’t like Bertone to settle for even odds.

The attack will come from the far end of the corridor while I’m busy shooting at empty doorways.

He circled to his right and came at the shooting maze from the other end. It was the only way he had a hope of surprising Bertone. With each quick step, he tensed against hearing Kayla’s scream.

Nothing but silence.

Way too much silence.

But at least he’d distracted Bertone from Kayla.

Three more steps.

A leather sole squeaked on the smooth concrete ahead and on the other side of a wall.

Rand had run ten feet when sound exploded, a shattering burst from the M-60 machine gun. Apparently Bertone had found more ammo for his heavy iron. Slugs chewed through the Kevlar partition where Rand had been. The sound was more shocking than the bullets that ripped through the wall.

Rand couldn’t hear his own breath, which meant that Bertone was also deafened for a time. Moving fast, Rand turned the corner of the shooting maze.

There was another long, dimly lit corridor with a series of facing doors and a side hall that cut away. At the far end of the corridor, a steel stairway climbed halfway up to the open ceiling and then cut back on itself.

Perfect ambush.

Tactical nightmare.

A defender could hide at the cutback point and fire down the corridor or wait at the second-floor landing and fire down on his attacker.

Rand focused on a Mylar dome hanging from the ceiling halfway down the hall. He’d seen gear like it in high-security installations all over the world. Closed-circuit TV cameras lived behind the Mylar. Other similar installations covered the rest of the shooting rooms.

Son of a bitch. Bertone can monitor every step I take.

Rand stepped into the center of the corridor and lifted the AK with his left hand, forcing his right arm to support the barrel. The fingers had feeling again, but his right shoulder wasn’t worth shit. He fired three shots.

The closest plastic dome exploded in a shower of sparks as Rand raced back to cover.

The hard black snout of a machine-gun muzzle poked out of a seam in the corridor wall. A hail of bullets screamed and whined off the concrete floor. Bertone had turned jacketed slugs into a shotgun blast of shrapnel that shredded the wall three feet from where Rand was hiding.

Cute. If I’d stopped to admire my work like Foley, I’d be bloody rags on the floor.

Like Foley.

Breathing softly, listening hard, Rand wondered what Bertone’s next trick would be.

Arizona Territorial Gun Club

Sunday

2:40 P.M. MST

Kayla pulled and twisted against the duct tape covering her mouth, scrubbing it against the rough console in the control room. High up on her thighs, flesh burned and bled where Bertone had cut her. She noticed it only because the blood got in her way when she tried to rub off her duct-tape gag on her jeans. Blood trickled down over the duct tape binding her ankles.

God, Rand, Bertone can see everything you do.

Can you hear me?

I’m screaming it!

But nothing useful got past the duct tape.

Breathing hard through her nose, she was forced to slow down for lack of air. She managed to roll up against the wall and look around. The first thing she saw was the ugly pistol Bertone had left on a metal table near one of the huge, silent monitors.

It was a better chance than she’d hoped for.

She began to work at getting cuffed hands in front of her, rather than behind. As she did, she watched the monitors.

One section was blank.

The section next to it showed Bertone lying in wait.

Rand was soft-footing it along a different corridor, a pistol in his hand. In front, across his chest, a wicked-looking weapon waited to be used.