From Manhattan With Revenge Boxed Set (28 page)

CHAPTER TWEN
TY-SEVEN

In the darkness she created, Chloe Philips waited.
 

She could hear footsteps, some so close, she began to sweat
along her brow and down the small of her back.
 
They were searching for her.
 
Eventually, they’d find her.
 
Then what?
 
Shoot them?
 
If her life was on the line, she’d have
no choice.

“Chloe,” the Russian said.
 
“Come out.
 
Now.”

He was off to her right.
 
Close enough that she started to tremble.
 
Her dislocated shoulder was becoming too
much for her to bear due to the pain, but she forced herself to push through
it.
 
She was crouched low behind one
of his ridiculous sports cars and held the gun tightly in front of her in her
cuffed hands.
 
She anticipated him
to make a move at any moment.
 
Could
he hear her breathing?
 

She could hear him breathing...

“Don’t be stupid, Chloe.
 
Why die when you have every chance to live?
 
Carmen is on her way to settle things
for you.
 
You still have hope if you
decide to reveal yourself to us and behave.
 
Otherwise, I’ll make a call and ask the
men waiting outside to come in and sweep this place for you.
 
It won’t be pleasant.”

Earlier, she had crept away from the center of the warehouse,
where the bathroom and water fountain were, knowing that they’d look for her
there first, which they had.
 

Now, she was nearly at the warehouse entrance.
 
She’d run for it, but it would be
fruitless.
 
There was no way that
warehouse door was unlocked.
 
She’d
need to wait it out for Carmen, if she was indeed coming, which once again
raised the question about why Carmen was involved in this—whatever
this
was.
 
It didn’t make sense to
her.
 
Why did they need to use her
to get to Carmen?
 
Had Carmen done
something wrong?
 
Chloe couldn’t
imagine it.

“It’s so dark in here,” the Russian said.
 
“Pitch black.
 
Can’t see shit, which was her point, I
suppose.
 
But it doesn’t have to be
that way, does it, Michael?
 
We are,
after all, surrounded by dozens of cars that have something she didn’t think
of.
 
You know, things like
headlights.”
 

He stopped walking.
 
There was a swishing sound, as if he suddenly turned around, perhaps
because he thought he’d heard her, but then a moment passed and he continued to
walk away from her again.
 
“Michael,” he said, “why don’t you start turning on headlights and we’ll
get this over with before Carmen and Spocatti arrive?”

To her far right, all the way to the rear of the warehouse,
where the guard called Michael must have been resting earlier, she heard a car
door swing open.
 
Within an instant,
headlights flashed and flooded that end of the warehouse with a blazing,
neon-blue light that cut through the gloom.

“Turn on all of them,” the Russian said.
 
“Find out where she’s hiding, but be
careful.
 
She still has the gun.”

She heard footsteps walk across the space to the car directly
opposite the one whose headlights were shining.
 
A door opened, there was the sound of a
click and more light shined into the room.
 

Now, even from where she was crouched low, she could see the
faint outline of things she hadn’t been able to see before, including the
Russian, whose gun was poised in front of him while he looked around the room
for her.
 
What a fool she had
been.
 
She’d never thought about the
headlights.
 
It wouldn’t be long
before they found her.
 

Another door opened.
 
More light cut into the room.
 
She took a breath and knew she had no choice.
 
Taking out the guard and the breaker box
was only the first part of her plan.
 
Now, for the second part.

Before they could fully see her, Chloe Philips stood, aimed her
gun at the hood of one of the cars glimmering in the light, and fired a bullet
into it.
 

Sirens went off.
 
The jolt of the gun almost caused her to blackout due to the pain in her
drooping shoulder.
 
She staggered
back against a wall and braced her shoulder against it for support.
 
She wanted to cry out in pain, but
didn’t.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the Russian shouted above the
car’s alarm.
 
She heard real fear in
his voice.
 
Did he love his cars
that much?
 
Or was it the alarm that
worried him?
 
“Do it again and I’ll
kill you myself.”

She turned to another car, aimed at it and shot, destroying the
hood and likely a good deal of the engine, which would kill the car’s value and
be difficult to repair.

“You want more?” she said, above the screams of the two alarms.

“She’s at the front,” she heard the Russian say.
 
“Get her.”

She couldn’t hear them moving given the sound of the alarms,
but she was sure one of them was rushing in her direction.

Go for it.
 
All of
it.
 
Show them that you’re serious.

Chloe sank a bullet into the hood of another car, but this time
she missed and smashed out the car’s front window, which caused its alarm to go
off.
 
She steadied her aim as best
she could, shot again and this time struck gold.
 
She hit the hood, a small fire erupted
beneath it, and it started to smoke and bake from the heat.
 
If she was thinking it, they were
thinking it.
 
If they didn’t act
fast, the car would explode.

“Keep the fuck away from me!” she shouted.
 
“Come closer and I’ll ruin all of your
precious cars!”

“Quick,” she heard the Russian say.
 
“The fire extinguisher.
 
Put out the fire before the sprinklers
go off.
 
You know what will happen
if they do.”

Chloe also knew what would happen.
 
If the sprinkler system went off, the
fire department would be notified.
 
St. Vincent’s had a sprinkler system.
 
They also had an evacuation plan.
 
She and the others were told what to do
and where to meet outside should the fire alarm and the sprinkler system go
off.
 
They were told that the fire
department and the police would automatically be alerted if either went
off.
 
The idea of the sprinklers
going off here and the ramifications for these men if they did gave her an
unexpected rush of power.

But her power didn’t rest just there.
 
There was something to be said for those
shrieking alarms.
 

How many cars did she have to shoot before the alarms created
such a commotion that someone called the police, if only to stop the noise,
assuming it was bothering someone?
 
From the address she heard earlier, she knew she wasn’t in a residential
neighborhood.
 
Also against her is
that she didn’t know what time it was.
 
Was is light out?
 
Were there
any businesses open?
 
She didn’t
know.
 
And what about the people
driving by on the street?
 
Could
they hear the alarms?
 
If they
could, would someone make a call?
 

She knew better than that.

Still, the alarms were something.
 
They were better than nothing.
 
They were a possible way out, just like
the sprinkler system was should it go off and alert the fire and police
departments.
 
She had to use
whatever tools she had to get out of here and those alarms could be key.

She looked around the space, her shoulder aching.
 
The sound from three cars already was at
a piercing level, but they were at the rear of the warehouse, away from the two
large doors at her left, which faced the street.
 
Did it make a difference that the cars
she shot were so far away from those doors?
 
She squinted through the dim light and
looked at the car closest to the doors.
 
She wondered.
 
She thought it
through.

She didn’t know how many bullets she had left, but she assumed
she had some left.
 
She knew nothing
about guns, but she did know that what she held in her hand looked
sophisticated.
 
Like something she’d
see in an action movie.
 
She needed
to use her ammunition sparingly, but this might be worth it.
 

She braced her shoulder against the concrete wall she was
leaning against, aimed and shot the hood of the car across from her.
 
Again she missed and hit the window, but
it was enough to set off the alarm, which was so much louder here, it gave her
hope.
 

The Russian shouted something.
 
She could see them using the fire
extinguisher to put out the fire beneath the hood, which now was lifted high
and being gassed by the other guard, Michael.
 
She looked up at the ceiling and
wondered why the sprinklers hadn’t gone off?
 
There wasn’t a great deal of smoke, but
there certainly was enough to set them off.
 
So, why hadn’t they gone off?
 
The warehouse was old.
 
Were the systems old?

Did the sprinklers even work?

CHAPTER TWE
NTY-EIGHT

In the cab they snagged on Park, they drove across Central
Park, down to West Forty-Seventh Street, stopped for a traffic light and turned
left onto Eleventh Avenue.
 

It was dark.
 
Given
their proximity to the Hudson, the air here was cooler, but it also was
humid.
 
Worse, it was soured by a
day’s worth of exhaust from the shipping trucks that clogged the streets during
the daytime, the smell of oil from the barges crowding the river and the filth
that was everywhere.

On West Forty-Sixth, they saw the warehouse ahead of them and
to their left, heard the sirens screaming from inside the building, and drove
past as Carmen lifted a hand to her face out of concern for Chloe.
 

Whatever was happening inside was either just beginning or, knowing
Katzev, who was quick to act, it might already be over.
 
Not knowing unnerved Carmen so much that
she did what she always did when she was under great pressure.
 
She shut down her emotions and became
focused on the task at hand.

Spocatti told the driver to circle around again, but this time
to let them off at Eleventh Avenue.
 
Each wanted to carefully scope the area before they approached the
warehouse.

“Why the sirens?” she asked.

“No idea.”

“Obviously, something happened.
 
The sirens will draw attention to
them.
 
Somebody might have called
the police.”

“If we were on Eighth or Ninth, where people live, I’d
agree.
 
But down here?
 
It’s different.
 
Industrial.
 
Because of the crime, no one is on the
streets.
 
There’s a chance no one
has called the police.”

“And if they have?”

He shrugged.
 
“Then
we’re fucked.”
 
He let a silence
pass.
 
“You know we were followed?”

“I do.”

“Babe is with him.
 
That’s unprecedented.”

“We can’t control them,” Carmen said.
 
“If they want to park and grab Chloe if
we manage to free her, fine.
 
And
frankly, even though we disagree on this, if they can, they’ll keep her safe,
which is a relief to me.
 
If they
involve themselves otherwise, we’ll deal with them then.”

Spocatti didn’t answer.
 
He looked over his shoulder as Jake’s car, some two hundred yards back,
slid into a parking space that wasn’t a parking space.
 
A hydrant was there.
 
They were perhaps eight buildings up
from the warehouse with a clear view of the two large garage doors that faced
it.

Carmen’s cell phone buzzed in her pants pocket.
 
She removed it, stared at the message
for a moment, committed it to memory, and then, acting on instinct because she
didn’t want to share it with Spocatti, who was acting unusual for reasons she
didn’t understand, set things into motion with a few quick clicks.

“What was that?” he asked.

“That was private,” she said.
 
She regretted the edge in her
voice—he was, after all, here to help her—and said, “Sorry.
 
I’m just tense.
 
It was an offer for a new job.”

“From the syndicate?”

She was in no mood to joke.
 
She didn’t answer.

He put his hand on her knee, a kind gesture that also was
unlike him.
 
“It’ll be all right,
Carmen.
 
Katzev won’t take my threat
lightly.
 
We just need to get in
there in case someone does call the police.”

“If they haven’t already.”

“Understood.”

The driver pulled to the curb.
 

“With those sirens going off, we don’t know what we’re walking
into.”

“When do we ever know?”
 
He opened his door and gave the driver five hundred dollars.
 
“That’s for your discretion,” he said.

The man looked at the money and casually pocketed it.
 
“Not sure what you’re talking about,
man, but thanks.”

Spocatti stepped out and looked at Carmen.
 
He was about to say that they needed to
get inside when, for first time, he noticed them.
 
“You’re wearing those?” he asked.

“I always wear these, just not on planes.”

“Do they still work?”

She showed him.

“Rosa Klebb would be proud, though she’d miss the knitting
needles.
 
How long does it take?”

“Twelve seconds.”

“Ugly way to die.”

“He shouldn’t have snatched my girl.”

His eyes flicked up to meet hers.
 
“You plan on using them?”

“If I have the chance.”

“And you plan to sacrifice yourself for Chloe?
 
You really mean to do this?”

“If it comes to that, I will.
 
But have you forgotten?
 
You threatened Katzev.
 
A moment ago, when you told Jake that he
wouldn’t be joining us, you essentially said your threat would be enough to put
the fear of God in Katzev if anything happens to us.
 
Beyond that, I have Liam in Aberdeen and
he will slaughter Katzev’s family with a press of a button on my cell.
 
I plan on using that against,
Katzev.
 
We’ll see how loyal he is
to his mother, who will die first.
 
I’m not going out without a fight, Vincent.
 
So, let’s get this over with.”