But I’d had enough. I tapped the phone app to call for backup and an ambulance but couldn’t get a signal. I stood and held the phone higher. Nothing. Panic flashed and then disappeared. It was the stairwell. I just needed to get to a different place.
“Bandoni.” I sat back next to him. “I can’t get a signal in here. Probably the walls are too thick. I’m going to the first floor, and I’ll call for backup from there.”
I didn’t mention the ambulance.
“Just give me another five minutes,” he said.
“I’ll be back in half that.” I offered him two of my four ammo magazines. He took one of them. I said, “Two minutes. Don’t you fucking die on me.”
“Furthest thing,” he gasped, “from my mind.”
I slipped off my shoes and went down the remaining stairs fast and silent. Just before the last turn and the final set of steps, I stopped and shone the light around the corner.
The bottom of the stairwell was empty. Straight ahead were two doors at right angles to each other and maybe ten feet apart. One presumably to the basement, the other marked FIRST FLOOR.
A narrow passage on the right led to the space beneath the stairs. A perfect place for an ambush.
But the stairs blocked most of my view.
I turned off the light, pulled my gun, and toed my way down each step in the inky dark. At the bottom, I stopped and listened. Silence. I spun around and, with my gun aimed at the shadows under the stairs, walked backward toward the door that led to the first floor. Beneath my stockinged feet, the floor turned suddenly wet and sticky, and the rusty-nail stink of blood hit my nostrils.
Lloyd.
They were here. The Superior Gentlemen.
I kept walking, feeling my way in a dark so thick I couldn’t see my gun. The skin between my shoulders was cold and tight; I expected to feel a bullet punch through flesh and bone at any second.
Or maybe it would be Craze’s knife.
When I bumped up against the door, I felt behind me for the knob.
It wouldn’t turn. I jiggled it. Pulled. Tried turning it the other way.
No go.
I paused for three heartbeats, contemplating a run back up the stairs, to Bandoni, and then beyond, to the third floor where I should be able to get a signal. I sure as hell wasn’t going into that basement without an M4 carbine and a platoon of Marines.
And whatever they’d done to Lloyd, I suspected he was beyond my help.
I’d taken two steps toward the stairs when the lights came back on, irradiating the stairwell, bathing everything in harsh, blinding brilliance.
In front of me, the floor was streaked with thick lines of blood, now smeared where I’d walked through it.
Go, I told myself. Look under the stairs. Maybe he’s alive.
And another thought. Maybe he’s not alone.
My left hand spasmed, a reflective reaching for Clyde. And then a matching spasm of my heart for Cohen and Clyde and what they might walk into if I didn’t find the killers first.
Assuming Clyde was okay. And that Cohen had gotten my message.
I crept along the passageway toward the space beneath the stairs. Just before the gap, I gripped my pistol hard to stop the shakes, drew in a breath, and pivoted.
Kurt Inger stared at me from out of the shadows.
A shotgun blast had destroyed the Top-A supervisor’s chest. Drops of red patterned his chin and cheeks. His hands lay clasped in his lap, as if in his last moments, he’d begged his onetime friends for his life.
Next to him lay Lloyd, tossed on his back like garbage, his throat cut ear to ear.
Fury rose in a black wave that swamped my heart and roared like a flood in my ears. Shaking with rage, I spun back toward the stairwell, my gun up, finger on the trigger.
I wanted, with a fierce, savage rage, to kill something.
Don’t get mad, Corporal, the Sir whispered in my mind. Get even.
I nodded and sucked in air. Waited for the black tide to wash away. A faint sound reached my ears. For the briefest second I thought it was the wind—that the storm had gotten strong enough to penetrate the building’s thick walls. Then I realized it was the sound of a woman. Weeping.
The basement door opened.
Lupita—small, fragile Lupita—stood in the doorway. Shudders shook her body. Her wild and terrified eyes found mine, and her lips formed a word. ¡Ayúdame!
Help me!
A form appeared behind her. A man with pale skin and soft, brown hair that flopped over his forehead above his one visible eye. He wrapped an arm tight around Lupita’s throat and dug his fingers into her shoulder. In his other hand he held a knife.
Markey Byron.
“Drop your gun, Sydney,” he said. “Or I kill the bitch.”
His steel-edged voice contained nothing of the boy-man I’d met at the comics store. Nothing soft or uncertain. Markey Byron wasn’t cherub or lap dog or frustrated artist.
He was ice.
I kept my gun up. “Fuck you, Markey.”
His shoulders moved as his hand dropped and did something behind Lupita.
She screamed.
“You don’t want to make me angry,” he said. “Every time I’m upset, I take a little more of her flesh.”
Lupita sobbed. “Por favor, no, por favor, no.”
“I’m a cop, Markey. I can’t put down my weapon. It’s against—”
Lupita shrieked.
“But,” I said, “maybe we can make a deal.”
Markey’s knife reappeared, blood shimmering on its length, and he smiled.
“That’s better. Here’s the deal. You put down your gun and come with me, and this little bitch goes free. And who knows? Play nice, and I might even spare your fat fuck of a partner.”
I wondered if Bandoni was already dead.
Markey raised his voice. “You hear that, you old, fat fuck? Or has Craze already cut your throat, too?” His eyes were hot on me. “We listened to the two of you coming down. Denver’s finest. What a joke.”
Think about Bandoni later, I told myself. Keep this one talking.
“Why’d you
