“Anything?” I asked.
“Nothing yet.”
“Ten seconds,” Mack reminded us.
With my team and several escaped monkeys as witnesses, I was never visiting an amusement park again.
“Prepare to move away,” I ordered, but the faintest scrape from inside made me pause.
I checked the angles again. If I flattened myself against the wall, my gut told me the camera should miss me by a whisker. Hopefully. It would be damn close.
“I’m staying. Get back.”
Nobody asked questions. We’d worked together for long enough that the others knew I wouldn’t make a decision like that without a damn good reason. I tried to look casual while I did my best impression of a dolophones spider. One of those creepy little suckers had wrapped itself around my arm when I was working surveillance in Australia not so long ago, and I’d had to lie there and let it when what I really wanted to do was flick it over to New Zealand. My lovely colleague Mimi had just chuckled under her breath and pointed out the huntsman spider in the tree opposite. Thankfully, I hadn’t heard of any arachnids escaping at SciPark yet.
Another scuff from inside. Somebody was definitely on the other side of the door, but who? Friend or foe?
No racing pulse for me, just the tiniest hit of adrenaline, enough to keep me focused as a clunk made the door vibrate. Our mystery person had pushed down on the exit bar. The door swung outwards, slowly, slowly, and I watched the arc of the camera. The five-second gap was coming right up.
I watched.
Waited.
Burst through the opening the instant the camera got out of range, then yanked the door shut behind me. The pitch-black robbed me of one of my senses, but four was enough. Five if you counted the instincts I’d spent the best part of two decades honing. I forced my opponent to the floor, found his shoulders, worked my way to his hands and twisted them behind his back. That took me a second, two at most, and he hadn’t yet got around to screaming. I replaced one of my hands with a knee and clamped the free hand over his mouth.
“Shhh.”
He complied and went limp.
Hmm. He was kind of small. And he smelled vaguely of Dan’s favourite perfume.
Ah, shit. I loosened my hand.
“Race?”
“I found you a door,” he whispered.
At that moment, I knew Race would end up working for Blackwood one day whether Dan liked it or not. I rolled off him and checked him over by feel. He seemed intact.
“Are you hurt?”
“Nah, I’m tough.”
I got to my feet, but as I pulled Race up, my spidey senses tingled. We weren’t alone. I put a hand over his mouth again, gently this time, a signal rather than a threat. He nodded, and I tucked him behind me.
A narrow flashlight beam played over the wall to my left. Amateur. That made the owner a sitting duck. But so were we. The passage curved to the left, but a few more seconds and whoever it was would be on top of us. The light flashed again, catching the edge of a slim metal cabinet. A yellow zigzag graced the front along with a warning: Danger of Death. No fucking kidding. There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere for us to go but outside, and we couldn’t do that. Not only would it be a pain in the ass to get back in again, but if whoever was coming was as unhinged as unsub number one sounded, then I wouldn’t put it past him to panic. And gunshots in the plaza weren’t something I wanted to contemplate.
Nor did I want to start shooting in the sphere myself. It could be a stray member of the public ahead, or an escaped hostage, and if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to alert anyone on the platform to my presence by making a noise.
Fortunately, I had the perfect bit of kit with me. I slipped my Fenix PD35 out of my jacket pocket and held it above my head in my left hand, and when our new friend rounded the bend, I hit him with a thousand lumens. In near darkness, the burst of light would be like an explosion behind his eyeballs, and it disoriented him for a couple of seconds—plenty of time for me to close the distance, twist the semi-automatic out of his hand, and dump him on his ass.
Score one point to Blackwood. I cuffed his wrists and tightened two interlinked zip ties just above his knees, allowing him enough movement to shuffle but not to run. Race, bless him, pulled off one of his socks and stuffed it into the asshole’s mouth. I hoped it was nice and sweaty.
Time to let the others in.
“Guys? One down, and Race is safe. Let me know when to open the door.”
“Fifteen seconds,” Dan said, the relief evident in her voice.
“Race, can you open the door for your mom when I tell you?”
He nodded. By then, I’d turned the flashlight onto its economy setting, and I took a moment to study our captive. He’d cut his hair, but there was no doubt about his identity.
“Hi, Kelbyn.” His eyes widened at the mention of his name. “Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to play with guns?”
“Three… Two… One…” Dan said in my ear, and I half turned to Race.
“Now.”
Light flooded in from outside, but only for a moment. Then the whole team was beside me. Dan hugged Race while Ana moved a little way along the passage to watch our six.
“Are you okay?” Dan asked. “Did anybody hurt you?”
“Nah, they didn’t see me. I don’t think they’re all that smart.”
Race may have been young, but he’d already
