Urban Prey (2 page)

“Lives in southern California now, but she was born and raised in West Texas. Mixed German, Mexican and Comanche heritage, I’m told.”

“Nice mix.” That would explain why she looked as if she had a tan in the middle of winter. “Can you tell me any more?”

“Not much,” Hines shrugged. “She’s supposed to be a genius. Holds half a dozen very lucrative patents, manages an even more lucrative portfolio. She owned her own company. Came here to sell it to some Japanese investors and made quite a pile out of the deal. Maybe she’s gonna retire now. She’s got enough to live very comfortably even if she never works another day.”
That was interesting. She’d just freed herself up to start a new life. Did she think, when she’d signed the contract, that she might want to party a little before going off to do that? If she did, why was she playing so hard-to-catch?

He grinned. Why had that little blonde Elf-Girl made herself so hard to catch? She just didn’t want to make it easy.

“So…you interested?” Hines asked.

“Yeah,” Ron’s grin grew wider. “
Hell
yeah!”

“Good!” Hines seemed very relieved. “We gotta take a couple of days to get you up to speed on how we do things here in the big city. Tonight you’re coming along on a grab, but only as an observer. You’ll get to see how we do things. Should’a done it earlier, but it’s been busy.”

“All right,” Ron shrugged. “In the meantime, get me a copy of her file, would you?”
“I’ll have it sent over to your digs,” Hines nodded. “You need anything else?”

“Nothing I can think of at the moment. If something comes up, I’ll let you know.”

“Good to have you back, man,” Hines chuckled.

Chapter Two

Hines backed the car carefully into the narrow space between two hulking SUVs.
“Well, here we are,” he announced cheerfully as he switched off the ignition.
“Here we are, but why are we here?” Ron asked. He looked around. This parking garage had so many levels and was so poorly lit that he wasn’t sure if they were still below ground or not. The place smelled of old oil, grease and the gritty dirt accumulated over years.
“We’re just here to show you how we do things in the city,” Hines answered. “It’s not like the north woods. It takes a lot of work to set up an ambush.” He opened the driver’s door. “C’mon,” he said. “We gotta sit in the back seat so we don’t get spotted.”
Ron shrugged and opened his own door. He didn’t know how easy Hines thought it was to do things in the wilderness, but he was sure that Elf-Girl would have given him a fresh perspective on everything if he were trying to catch
her
. He moved to the back seat with Hines and instantly regretted not pushing the passenger’s seat forward while he’d had the chance. He sighed and resigned himself to sitting hunched over and uncomfortable for however long this would take.

“Quiet, man,” Hines whispered hoarsely. “You’d be surprised how sound can carry in places like this.”

“Sorry,” Ron whispered back. “But just what are we waiting for?”

“You should’a got the info at the apartment.”

“I didn’t.”

Hines shook his head. He was a much smaller man, and he didn’t seem at all uncomfortable, only very alert and watchful. “This is a custom grab,” he went on, still in a whisper. “The client picked three possible ways to get taken. Three, so she wouldn’t be sure which one we’d use. We got a four-day window. Could’a grabbed her yesterday, but we didn’t, so now she’s getting’ a little edgy.” He chuckled. “We never grab ‘em on the first day or the last. Keeps ‘em on their pretty little toes.”

“Who is she?”

Hines shrugged microscopically, still peering into the gloom. “All I know is she’s a repeat, late twenties, supposed to be a good looker. Seen ‘er picture. She ain’t bad.”

“And I’m here just to observe. What are you here for?”

“Same thing. Here she comes.”

He heard the tock-tock of her heels on the oil-stained concrete a moment before he saw her. In the dim lighting he couldn’t make out many details. She looked to be average height, with short dark hair cut in a way that reminded him of the old cartoon character, Prince Valiant. With the bulky coat she was wearing, he couldn’t tell how she was built. He could tell that she was nervous. She kept looking around as she approached. Well, maybe that was just learned behavior from living in the city. He was reminded of how he’d seen deer act when they knew it was hunting season. Well, you always had to watch out for predators, no matter where you were.

She had her keys ready. More learned behavior, he guessed. She aimed her remote at a light-colored sedan. He saw the interior lights come on. Then, somewhere in the cavernous garage, a car alarm began to sound, blaringly loud, repetitive, insistent. At the instant she turned her head towards the sound, two men clad in black, right down to black ski masks covering their faces, burst out of a patch of deep shadow between a black van and the wall. The bigger of the two grabbed her around her neck with both hands while the second seemed to clamp his hand over her mouth. That could get you bitten, but he took his hand away almost immediately and Ron could see a strip of silvery duct tape sealing her lips.

Even in the dimness, he could see her eyes, wide with shock and fright. Her hands clutched at the hands around her neck, but when the smaller man grabbed her coat and yanked it roughly off of her, she lost her grip. As soon as her coat was off, she tried to pry those hands from around her neck again. If she was making any noise, even with that strip of duct tape across her mouth, the car alarm was drowning it out. The two men seemed to be working together in complete silence.

The bigger man used his grip around her neck to try to bend her over backwards. She fought that, and he quickly switched to pulling her forward and down. She couldn’t recover in time. Very quickly, she was lying facedown on the dirty concrete. She’d put her hands out to keep from landing too hard, but it hadn’t seemed to be necessary. The bigger man held her down with a booted foot on her hair and helped his compatriot drag the woman’s arms behind her. They secured her wrists with a plastic police restraint. A moment later, her ankles were similarly bound.

A gray van pulled up as they were getting her back to her feet. The wide cargo door slid open and she was all but thrown inside. Her coat, purse and dropped keys were tossed in after her. Then the two men climbed into the van. It began to move again before the door had slid completely shut. It rolled away slowly. The car alarm fell silent.

“Wow,” Ron breathed. The whole thing had taken less than twenty seconds, he was sure. “I’m impressed.”

“That was our best team,” Hines grinned. He wasn’t whispering any more. “No muss, no fuss, no interfering bystanders.”

“I’m properly impressed,” Ron nodded. “Now what happens to her?”

Hines chuckled as he opened his door. “Before that van hits the street they’ll have her ass up and her panties down. She’ll get one Hell of a ride. C’mon, let’s get outta here. Places like this give me the creeps.”

“Where are we going?” Ron opened his own door and extricated himself from the cramped back seat.

“Next stop is the office,” Hines replied. He slid back into the driver’s seat.

“The what?” Ron got in next to him and shut the door.

“The office. That’s what we call it, anyways. I’m gonna give you the tour.”

“Where is it?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Hines chuckled as he put the car in gear and pulled out of the narrow parking space with much less care than he’d used when backing into it.

“What about her car?” Ron asked as they pulled out into the street. There was a lot of traffic there, as always. It was getting dark out, and most of the cars had their lights on. Snow flurries blew down the street. Pedestrians turned up the collars of their coats and hunched their shoulders against the cold, cold winds.

“That’s covered,” Hines answered. “We got her keys. They get turned over to one of our decoys. She picks up the car and takes it to our garage.”

“One of our what?”

“Decoys. There’s about half a dozen women workin’ for us on the outside. Maybe more, I dunno.” Hines shrugged as if the real number was unimportant. “One of ‘em’ll dress up a little to look like our latest customer there and take the car.”

“You said: ‘to our garage’.”

“Yeah,” Hines chuckled. “When the little lady is set free, she gets her car back, all cleaned and serviced…just like she was.”

Ron laughed. “Who came up with that idea?”

“Dunno,” Hines shook his head. “Been doin’ that as far back as I can remember.”

It was a nice touch, but it wasn’t one he would have expected. Ron settled back in his seat as Hines weaved his way through the traffic. He didn’t know the city, and he had no idea where they were going, but he was very interested now in seeing the ‘office’.

***

They drove to an older part of the city, down by the river. Most of the buildings here were old factories or warehouses. Some were boarded up, some looked as if they were about to collapse. Every so often there would be an open area, strewn with litter and stripped abandoned cars, overgrown with weeds and small, sickly-looking trees. If there was a fence, it was always chain-link, sagging, torn and useless. Half of the streetlights were out. In the dark, he couldn’t tell if they were broken or just burned out, but he’d be willing to bet they were broken. There didn’t seem to be any people around, but more than once he felt as if they were being watched.

Closer to the river, things seemed to improve a little. The buildings were still old factories and warehouses, but it looked like some of them were in use. There were lights in some of the windows, and fewer of the streetlights were out. There was still a lot of room for improvement, though.
“Here we are,” Hines announced. He drove up to a building that looked no different from all the other buildings in the neighborhood. All Ron saw was a dark brick wall, four stories high, scarred with undecipherable graffiti. At street level there were two wide overhead doors, both shut tight, both likewise covered in spray-painted scrawls. Further up were grimy factory windows, the glass set in metal frames. On the second floor, one of the panes had been broken. Cardboard had been taped up to cover the jagged hole.

“Doesn’t look like an office to me,” Ron commented. He looked around the area, out of habit. It didn’t feel quite safe here. If you stopped moving, something could try to sneak up on you.
“No, it doesn’t,” Hines agreed happily. He took what looked like a cell phone out of his pocket and hit one of the buttons. One of the overhead doors began to rise. It made a grinding, rumbling noise, as if it was not well maintained. In spite of that, it went up quickly and smoothly. There was barely enough clearance when Hines floored the gas. The car shot forward. Almost immediately, Hines hit the brakes. Behind them, the door clunked to a halt and then began descending. Hines killed the lights before Ron could get a good look at the interior. Then he switched off the ignition.

“What…?” Ron began. It was so dark inside now that he couldn’t see anything at all.

“Just wait,” Hines said. Ron couldn’t even see his face, but he was sure the other man was grinning. The moment the door closed, lights came on inside. Bright lights. Ron blinked at the sudden glare. Once his eyes had adjusted, he got out of the car for a look around. The first thing that struck him was how clean everything was. The floor had been painted a glossy gray. The walls were painted the same shade of gray, but flat, not glossy. The room wasn’t very large for a factory or a warehouse, maybe twelve feet long by ten feet wide, but the ceiling was two floors up. Off to the left, at street level, was a steel door. Above it was an identical door. A metal stairway, starting on the wall to his right, led up to it. He looked back, expecting to see the inside of the patched window. He could see no windows at all, on any of the walls.

“What the Hell is this?” he demanded.

“This is the employee’s entrance,” Hines replied. “C’mon, I’ll give you the tour.” He went to the lower door and opened it. “After you,” he nodded.

When he stepped through the door he got another surprise. The hallway was wide, clean and well lit. The walls were more cinderblock, painted a pale yellow. There was a drop-ceiling overhead with recessed lighting.

“Don’t look anything like you’d expect, does it?” Hines chuckled as he pulled the metal door shut behind him.

“Not a thing,” Ron nodded. “I’m guessing the exterior of the building is just a shell.”

“Pretty much.”

“What about building security?”

“No problem at all. The place doesn’t look like it’s got anything worth stealin’ to begin with, but there’s enough traffic to make some people curious. Every so often, some dimbulb tries to break in. If they get in, first thing they see is another wall. Most of ‘em give up right there. If they don’t, well, inside the shell we got cameras and alarms.”

“I don’t imagine you can call in the police.”

“Nah,” Hines shrugged. “We take care of it ourselves. I’m not real clear on the details, but I’m told they never try to come back and they don’t talk about it to anybody afterwards.” He walked past Ron to the next door. “C’mon. They’re expectin’ us.”

The next room was an office, complete with cubicles. About half of them were occupied. Ron could see computers, phones, all of the electronic paraphernalia of a modern business. Before he could get much of a look, a woman came out of a side office and approached them. She looked to be just shy of fifty, but a very well tended and cared-for fifty. She was tall, dark-haired, smiling, and dressed in a conservative business suit.

“You must be Ron,” she said as she drew near. “Welcome to the office. I’m Carla Bessemer.” She held out her hand.

“Uh, yes. Hi.” Ron took her hand and shook it once.

“Surprised?” Carla grinned up at him. The look on her face suggested that he was more surprised to see a woman in charge of the place than he was by the place itself.

“Very,” Ron replied.

“I’m the head proctor here,” Carla went on. “Basically, I supervise our clients and make sure they get no less and no more than they bargained for.” Her smile grew a little crooked. “Well, at least not too much more,” she said. “Sometimes they need a little help in pushing their own envelopes. I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Smith,” she went on. “I must say you’re even taller than I’d expected.”