Perpetual Motion (21 page)

As the Impala crawled toward the sprawling
fortress of rust, Cynical squinted at the glint of shiny black and
chrome parked in front of the building.

“That’s their car,” Cynical whispered.

He stopped and looked around Desmond’s head
to the road behind them. Not a hint of a headlamp in the
distance.

“I don’t see the Calvary, do you?”

The back of the shaggy head shook slowly.

Turning around, he took his foot off the
brake, letting the Impala creep forward, veering to the side of the
SUV and the main building. Allowing the car to coast for a few more
feet, he parked beside the outer side wall, just out of view from
the front of the building.
“Are you going to wait for the FBI?” Desmond asked.

“No,” Cynical said softly, reaching under his
seat for his gun.

Cutting the engine, Cynical climbed out of
the front seat, taking a moment to adjust the piece in his
waistband. As the backseat door started to open, he held out a hand
to prevent it from swinging any wider.

“You stay here,” he ordered Desmond who was
attempting to get a leg out. “When McCobb gets here, tell him I’m
inside.”

Desmond defiantly strained harder against the
door. “I’m going with you.”

“No way,” Cynical said, keeping the back door
firmly in place.

“I want to do something to make up for –
everything,” Desmond croaked through the crack. “You have to let me
help.”
When it came to getting Karen back, Cynical placed Desmond
decidedly on the liability side of the ledger. At the same time, he
didn’t want to deprive the kid from some sort of attempt at
redemption, misguided as it may be. Besides, short of knocking him
unconscious, he couldn’t stop him if he insisted on going
inside.

“I don’t have a weapon for you,” Cynical
said. Then remembering something, he reached into his pants pocket
and pulled out a small knife. “You’re welcome to this.”

“That’s okay,” Desmond said, producing the
stun gun he’d tried to use on Cynical when they’d first met. “I’ve
got this.”

With a shrug, Cynical let the car door open,
allowing Desmond to get out. Quietly shutting the door, they
rounded the corner together, semi-armed and quasi-dangerous. As
they made their way over the broken asphalt parking lot, a loud
generator hummed away, giving them some sound cover.

“Hey,” Desmond said, pointing to the beefy
tires on the Escalade parked at the front entrance. “Let me have
that knife.”

Shaking his head, Cynical whispered, “It
might set off an alarm.”

Giving up on his plan, Desmond followed
Cynical over the chipped sidewalk to the front door. The
x-detective tried the handle; it was unlocked.

They both walked inside to a room so totally
bereft of light it took a few seconds before they realized they
were at one end of a long hallway. What they lacked in sight was
more than made up for with their senses of smell, which were
working overtime on a pervasive burnt chemical odor.

As they slowly made their way down the hall,
Cynical reached out and ran a finger along the flaked and charred
wall. The building was probably the victim of an old refinery fire,
he thought. Perhaps that was why it had been vacated and left to
rot like a carcass in the desert. The two spelunkers pushed
forward, deeper into the cavern.

“You hear that?” Desmond asked softly.

Cynical stopped to listen to a faint buzzing
coming from somewhere further down the tunnel; then a muffled cry.
Increasing their pace, they curved around a corner, continuing
several more feet before stopping in front of a heavy door at the
end of the corridor. Carefully, Cynical stuck his head into the
already ajar door.

Peering inside, he made out a dimly lit
chamber that he surmised had once been a holding tank for oil. A
man with his back turned to him stood about twenty feet away,
blocking most of his line of sight. From his angle, Cynical could
only see a slice of empty space, but he instantly knew the voice
that echoed from inside.

“Karen dear, are you all right?” Amanda asked
sweetly. “Don’t black out on me.” The sharp click of heels on the
concrete floor started and stopped. “Will you check the contact
points?” she commanded in a sterner voice.

The man who had been standing in front of him
moved forward, allowing Cynical to see the center of the room.
Under a tent of light, Karen sat in a chair; her face was a mask of
fear and strain as the man pressed his hands to the side of her
head. Straining, Cynical could see wires were hooked to her fingers
and ears.

Closing her eyes, Karen began to silently
cry.

Cynical could feel Desmond leaning on him,
wanting to see inside. Not wanting to risk a commotion, he shifted
to the side, allowed his sidekick to stick his head into the crack
between wall and the open door.

As soon as his eyes adjusted to the torture
scene, Desmond’s already pale face went chalky white. Afraid he
would faint or scream; Cynical gripped him around the shoulders and
cupped his mouth.

Inside the chamber, Amanda was circling her
prey. “Now I’ve been asking you nicely,” she cooed. “But, I should
warn you, it’s going to get a lot hotter if you don’t
cooperate.”

Amanda’s voice sounded pleasant, but there
was a hard edge and, once again, Cynical wondered how he’d missed
those fangs in the pretty smile.

“Now, where did Michael tell you to meet
him?”

When Karen finally spoke, her voice was
breathy. “I told you…he said he was moving around and he’d call
back when he was safe.”

“I see,” Amanda said calmly; then gave a
slight head nod.

A buzzing sound was followed by a sharp
inhalation from Karen’s open mouth. Flashing back to his own
‘tasering,’ Cynical grimaced for the girl whose body had gone
rigid.

“Shit,” Desmond muttered under his breath,
his fingers clawing into Cynical’s ribcage.

Realizing he still had Desmond in his
clutches, he moved him back, away from the crack in the door. The
shaken young man now seemed more than willing to step away from the
scene.

When the electrical current finally stopped,
Karen whimpered pitifully.

Clip, clip, clip. Amanda passed by the girl
again. “We can play this game all night,” she said curtly. “Or, you
can save yourself needless pain and simply tell us where Michael
is.”

“I told you everything,” Karen managed,
almost imperceptibly.

Cynical was at a loss. Going in alone would
be a suicide mission for himself, and possibly for Karen too.
McCobb and O’ Riley should be arriving any minute, but every second
counted when the next shock could cause ventricular fibrillation or
worse.

“Are you sure?” Amanda asked. “Just give me a
little something.”

Karen shook her head and clinched in
anticipation of the fire that would flow through every nerve-ending
in her body. “Ahhhh!” she screamed for an agonizing three seconds
before a single word fell from her gaping mouth.

Amanda had heard it too because she suddenly
waved her hands at whoever was controlling the electricity. The
buzzing went on an agonizing two or three more seconds; when it
finally stopped, Karen’s body went limp, her head dropping to her
chest.

“What?” Amanda asked, leaning over her
subject. “What did you say, dear?”

Again, Karen seemed to say something, but it
was too low for Cynical to make out from his distance.

“Did you say Borrego?” Amanda announced.
“What is that? Is that a town?”

Cynical couldn’t tell if Karen responded, but
Amanda seemed excited.

“Borrego Springs!” she exclaimed
triumphantly. “Excellent dear, now we’re getting somewhere!” She
turned her back on Karen long enough to give one of her men a proud
little smirk. Putting her game face back on, she turned around.
“Now, where exactly are you going to meet your boyfriend in Borrego
Springs?”

In response, Karen’s head had drooped to one
side; a line of drool spooling from her mouth.

Amanda went out of sight, coming back with a
water bottle. Instead of giving her subject a sip, she began to
slowly pour it on Karen’s head, letting it dowse her hair and spill
onto her shirt. At first, he thought she was just trying to revive
her subject, but then he considered a more sinister explanation.
Water was a conductor of electricity and would sharpen the burn,
possibly frying Karen in the process.

“Let’s take it up a bit, shall we?” Amanda
announced to the unseen man at the voltage controls.

“That’s it,” Cynical whispered to Desmond as
he took his gun out. “I’m going in.” Karen couldn’t take any more
and, for that matter, neither could he. “Go wait outside,” he
quietly ordered. When there was no reply, he looked around the
empty hallway. “Desmond?”

Hs trusty companion had seen enough and was
probably hot-wiring his car to make his get-away. Just as well,
Cynical thought.

Amanda was still talking when Cynical walked
calmly into the holding tank.

“This is your last chance dear,” she was
saying. “Tell me the precise location and this will all be
over.”

Coming further into the room, Cynical could
see all three men; two standing and one sitting at a makeshift
control panel. The seated man had a bandage wrapped around his hand
and across his nose; the guy he’d clocked in the Mirage
elevator.

Because he had so casually strolled up, no
one had immediately noticed him. It was Amanda who first laid eyes
on him. For a moment she simply stared with the strangest
expression, as if trying to figure out an incomputable
calculation.

“Cynical,” she finally sputtered.

“Hello Amanda,” he responded, as he pointed
the barrel of his gun in the vicinity of where a heart should
be.

All attention swung from the wet,
semi-conscious girl to the intruder with the gun. And, almost
instantly, the two standing men drew their own guns and pointed
them at the party crasher.

Cynical had hesitated for just a second; a
second too long. It probably wouldn’t have mattered, he told
himself. If he had gone in shooting, he could have taken two, maybe
three of them, if he was lucky, and that still wasn’t enough. There
were no good endings here.

Now, his only play was to stall until the FBI
got there to even the odds. And, to do that, he had to keep his own
gun trained at their leader, his ex. If Amanda was bothered by
having a bullet aimed at her, she certainly didn’t show it. If
anything, she looked more annoyed than scared, or even worried.

“How did you find us?” she asked coolly.

“Let her go,” Cynical said, ignoring the
question.

Under her dripping hair, Karen’s ashen face
looked up in bewilderment at her would-be rescuer.

In response, Amanda smoothly reached inside
her suit jacket and withdrew a petite pistol from a hidden side
holster. Once again, he couldn’t stop her without playing his last
card, and she knew it.

She smiled and, although she was an
undeniable beauty, she reminded him of a polished gem - unable to
love or give warmth; just sparkle and cut.

“I said, let her go.”

“You know that’s not going to happen,” Amanda
said. “Now, if you put down your gun, everyone can walk out of
here.”

For a moment, Cynical wondered if that were
possible. He wanted to walk out with Karen; he wanted to live. He
wanted a lot of things – and he knew none of them were going to
come true now.

“You’ve done your job Cynical,” Amanda said
reassuringly. “Let us do ours. We both want the same thing. We both
want to find Michael.”

“Right now, I just want to get Karen out of
here,” he said, tightening his grip on the gun handle.

“And you can, just as soon as she tells us
where she’s meeting Michael.”

She turned to Karen who, despite being a
little lost, seemed to be tracking the conversation. There was even
a thin streak of defiance still lingering in the girl’s eyes.

“This is all so unnecessary,” Amanda said,
exasperated. “You need to stand down Detective Jones.” She was
reaching inside her jacket again, this time bringing out a phone.
“If you won’t listen to me, maybe you should talk to someone
else.”

Cynical felt momentarily panicked. Could they
have gotten to someone he cared about? There weren’t many
candidates. Just as Amanda glanced down to punch in a number, a
commanding shout came from the direction of the door.

“FBI! Everyone place your weapons on the
floor!”

From his periphery, Cynical made out two
figures emerging from the inky darkness. The standing suits swung
their guns over to the G-Men, leaving only Amanda’s pistol trained
on him. Abandoning her plan to get Cynical to surrender, she tucked
the phone away and, for the first time, looked troubled.

“I said put your guns down,” McCobb barked
again as O’Riley stepped closer.

No one moved.

“This is a private matter,” Amanda announced
to the newcomers.

“Who the hell are you?” It was O’Riley’s
outraged voice.

“Independent contractors,” Amanda stated.

“Who are you working for?” O’ Riley shot
back.

It was the question Cynical wanted to know
too; however, Amanda didn’t seem inclined to answer.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s
classified.”

“Back-up is on the way,” McCobb announced.
“Put the guns down and we can work this out.”
No one moved.

Just then, the light bulb over Karen’s head
flickered; then went out along with the only other light in the
chamber. The already dimly lit room plunged into complete
blackness. That’s when the gunshots started.

All it took was the first shot and the rest
seemed to go off from every direction. As the blistering explosions
began to ring out, Cynical quickly rolled out of Amanda’s line of
fire. The scampering of feet told him others were doing the same
thing.