They reached the corrugated door, and Amira bent down, released the floor latch, and pulled up. She’d done this simple act countless times in the dark before. What’s one more time? A wash of light emitted into the Black Box from the prop area, eerily illuminating the large space in a warm glow, the direct light slicing across their legs.
“It has to do with my parents. They told me I had to come with them, that my parents were in danger. I initially believed them, until they refused to let me call them, and that’s when I knew something was wrong.”
“Good instincts,” Amira said as she pulled the door upwards and held it in place. “Whoever these guys are, they’re not the good guys. Let’s go. You first.”
Susan slid under the door, stood up on the other side, and grabbed the bottom of the door. “Your turn.”
Before Amira could respond, more shots rang out from the lobby, and the door to the theater opened. Two men, including the one she’d subdued with a wristlock, burst into the theater through the curtains. So much for disorienting and delaying them.
The man she’d struck instantly saw her and raised his pistol. Amira’s mind raced, but there was only one option. “Drop it and run! NOW!” Amira shouted with such fierce command that Susan released her grip on the door.
As the door slammed to the floor, the man fired, the muzzle flash highlighting his face like a ghoul’s mask on Halloween. The round struck the corrugated door, and sparks flashed from the impact, but Amira was already moving to her right, deeper into the darkness.
Trapped with two men who wanted to kill her and kidnap Susan, her twenty-year-old mind reached a conclusion that would’ve caused most people to crumble in the face of mortal peril – she had to incapacitate or kill them both, or she would die. She knew what her father would tell her to do, demand of her, given the situation. I won’t let you down, Daddy.
Chapter 3
Get your breathing under control, or you’re dead. She’d accepted her situation – kill or be killed – but she had no weapons, other than her bare hands. You have to close the distance and disarm and incapacitate him, one way or another. Consider this on-the-job training. Beats a college internship.
As calm as her outward movements were, the terror threatened to consume her. It was a suffocating, overwhelming sensation, the living embodiment of paralyzing nightmares in which she was stalked by a nameless, faceless being, a thing that moved with malevolent purpose. She fought the terror and moved to her right as her eyes and ears adjusted to the blackness.
Shoes scuffed the floor thirty or forty feet away. The exact distance was hard to pinpoint, since the Black Box was fifty-three-feet long and fifty-three-feet wide with a ceiling nearly thirty-feet tall. She placed one foot in front of the other and moved towards the sound. The darkness is your weapon. Use it. Her father, once again encouraging her to do the improbable, no matter how daunting.
Her heart pounded in her head, and she willed her heart to slow, although she wasn’t sure it had an effect. More sounds of movement, from her right this time, and she realized that the two men had separated in different directions once they’d entered the theater. Good. That makes your job easier. She had a simple choice – right or left – and she chose left, only because she’d already started moving back in that direction.
A heavy breathing erupted from her right, twenty feet away, but she ignored it. As her father would’ve told her, neutralize the immediate threat first. He’d been in a shootout after a bank robbery in DC several years ago, when he and her mother had been engaged, and he’d shared with Amira when she was sixteen what it had been like, his story told in the form of a lesson.
Amazingly, the bank manager had triggered the silent arm and not been killed by the robbers, unaware he’d signaled for help. When they exited the bank, Nick Cerone and his partner were waiting for the perpetrators, guns drawn, standing behind the open doors of their police cruiser. The two robbers hadn’t even hesitated – they’d opened fired with TEC-9 9mm automatic pistols with 30-round magazines, the street gangster’s weapon of choice at the time. Both Nick and his partner, a big African American named Lesley Brown who’d grown up on the streets of DC, ducked behind their cruiser as the bullets peppered the vehicle. In that moment, Nick’s fear had transformed into resolve, as he realized if they didn’t take down the shooters, innocent bystanders would die, and for the two DC police officers sworn to serve and protect, that was unacceptable. They waited until the magazines emptied, and both Nick and Lesley stood, aimed, and fired, striking each robber multiple times, ending the gunfight. The two robbers had both bled out within a minute on the sidewalk, and neither Nick nor his partner mourned their loss. The lesson for Amira had been simple: once you commit to a course of action that you know is right and true, you have to act, no matter what.
Fully committed, she closed the distance and took several soft steps, moving in total silence. A half-muttered exclamation emanated from the dark no more than ten feet away. He bumped into the rear wall, which further honed Amira in on her target. She moved a few more feet and stopped as the man also froze, as if sensing her near him. Don’t. Make. A. Sound.
She waited, the tension threatening to drown her once more, but the moment passed, and the man moved, only feet away from her. She heard his panicked breathing, and she realized he was directly in
