Innocent as Sin (29 page)

Arizona Territorial Gun Club
Sunday
2:35
P.M. MST

K
ayla forced herself to be still, not to scream or cry or try to run to the place Rand had fallen.

He’s not dead.

Wounded, okay, but not dead.

Not dying.

If she didn’t believe that, she’d shatter into more pieces than the glass front doors. And with every piece, she’d try to cut Bertone’s throat.

“Call out to him,” Bertone said, twisting the hand in her hair until she was forced to her knees.

“Foley?” she asked through clenched teeth.

He wrenched her head. “He’s dead. The other one. Your lover. Call to him. Tell him I want to talk.”

It was something she wanted to do. “Rand,” she called. “Bertone wants to talk.”

Rand took a slow breath, then another, easing toward the waist-high counter. He wasn’t worried about being caught in the open. In order to shoot him, Bertone would have to reveal himself first.

The thought made Rand smile.

“I can hear Bertone just fine from here,” Rand called back.

His voice was changed, roughened by adrenaline and pain, but Kayla was so glad to hear him that she swayed in relief.

Get a grip,
she told herself savagely.
We’re a long way from home free. Foley’s weapon is out of reach, and I can’t even lift that monster Bertone was carrying.

She could try for the ugly handgun he had now, but only when all other chances were gone.

Rand glanced several times at Foley, then didn’t bother again. None of the torso wounds were bleeding. The shattered ankle bones should have had him screaming in agony.

Instead there was the silence of death.

“Throw down your arms or I’ll kill Kayla,” Bertone said.

Rand’s laughter was as rough as his voice had been, and colder. “She’s worth too much to you alive.”

Silence. Then Bertone asked, “What do you want?”

Rand bit back the words he wanted to say—
Kayla free, unharmed
—and said what a man like Bertone would understand. “Your death.”

Kayla shuddered and waited for the bullet that would kill her.

It didn’t come.

Bertone really needed her alive.

“Why?” Bertone asked, trying to find a weakness in the man who hunted him.

“You killed my identical twin.”

Bertone frowned and sighed. Vengeance was a stronger drive than love or greed. Much stronger.

And like all emotions, it could be manipulated.

“When?” Bertone asked. “Where?”

“Five years ago. Africa.”

Bertone smiled. The beauty of emotion was that it could make a man hot when he should be cold.

“I killed many men in Africa,” he said. “Be more specific.”

“You were flying arms to the rebels in Camgeria.”

“Ah, you were the photographer.”

Rand didn’t trust himself to answer. He just kept duckwalking toward the counter, silently cursing the pain in his shoulder and ribs that made it nearly impossible to breathe.

“I can only imagine the agony of watching an identical twin die,” Bertone said, laughter curling beneath the words, “the gasping breaths, the bloody—”

Kayla shoved hard against Bertone, afraid that he would goad Rand into doing something stupid.

Bertone looked at her like she was a fly. He swatted her back the same way, casually.

When Rand heard her muffled cry, he was at the counter. His eyes and the muzzle of the AK-47 cleared the granite top at the same instant.

The hallway behind the counter was empty.

He thought he could hear sounds from the room at the far end of the hall, but the pulsing pain and the rush of blood in his own were disorienting. He dropped down and forced himself to remember what he’d seen of the club’s layout on Martin’s computer.

Anteroom at the end of the hall.

Private shooting rooms open out from there.

He checked the AK-47. Maybe ten rounds left, plus the second pistol Elena had given him, which was still stuffed in his waistband.

He tried to think back over how many shots he had fired from the rifle. He couldn’t.

Faroe would have a fit. The man’s a bear for counting shots.

Not that it mattered. However many shots Rand had, Bertone had a lot more, a whole shooting house full of ammo. Rand’s best call was to wait for more men with guns to come and help him.

But as soon as Bertone figured out what his stalker was doing, Kayla would have his full attention.

Not good.

Rand staggered to his feet and covered the hallway with the AK’s muzzle. He had to pin Bertone down, then cut him down. It was a job for several special weapons teams, but he didn’t have any in his hip pocket.

He took a calculated risk by rolling up and over the reception counter and falling on his knees in the corner near the hall. From there he could control the corridor.

And fight the waves of blackness that were right behind the bright red pulses of pain.

Bertone circled Kayla’s throat with his left arm. Using her as a shield, he leaned forward and sighted down the blunt action of his Glock.

The hall was empty but for a tiny bit of the AK-47’s muzzle showing from the corner behind the service desk. He shot quickly, more a reflex than an aim.

Rand jerked back as plaster exploded, dusting the barrel of his weapon. He waited, hoping Bertone would come closer, would poke his head around the corner.

And get it blown off.

Bertone was too smart for that. He tightened his grip on Kayla and dragged her backward into the darkness beyond the far door, where the private shooting rooms waited. There he would get the only thing he needed from her.

Moments later Kayla’s scream shattered the silence.

Arizona Territorial Gun Club
Sunday
2:38
P.M. MST

R
and forced himself to think when all he wanted to do was run down the hall and stop Bertone.

Suck it up.

Think.

The scream had been too far away to come from the hall itself or the anteroom beyond it.

He grabbed a handful of spiral notebooks from behind the reception counter and threw them down the corridor.

No one fired at the movement.

Time to buck the odds.

Riding a wave of adrenaline, he came to his feet and raced down the hall, weapon in firing position. The locked door at the back of the anteroom flashed a red warning light. Below that was a sign:

TACTICAL SHOOTING HOUSE
LIVE FIRE IN PROGRESS

Rand blew out the lock with a short burst of fire. The door slammed inward. He dove low through the opening, rolled behind the first cover he saw, and ignored the pain that was shutting down his vision.

The quick look he’d gotten as he dove through the door told him that the shooting house was the size of a basketball court. No windows. No ceiling for the maze of hallways and rooms. Light level so low that he had to let his eyes adjust.

Kayla’s scream was louder this time.

Rand clenched his teeth.
I’m sorry, Kayla.

God, I’m sorry.

Breathing as quietly as possible, he lay behind a concrete pillar, trying to pinpoint the direction of the scream that was echoing around the room. Somewhere to his left, down a hallway without ceilings and behind a closed door, he heard the ring of a brass cartridge hitting and rolling across hard concrete.

A piece of shooting debris kicked by a careless foot.

Or a distraction created in the opposite direction of the real threat.

“Kayla!” Rand yelled, and rolled behind another pillar.

She answered with a choked-off scream, all she could manage before Bertone clamped steel fingers across her mouth.

The sound came from Rand’s right, down a narrow corridor formed by two eight-foot-high Kevlar “walls” designed to catch bullets sprayed by wild shooters. He examined the hallway. Thirty feet from his position, doors faced each other across the corridor.

It was intended to simulate a standard business-building arrangement, a place where a weapons team could practice tactics to use against a man who had gone postal.

Fifty-fifty.

I storm the hallway and take one door, only to find the shooter is waiting behind the other.

Rand didn’t move. It wasn’t like Bertone to settle for even odds.

The attack will come from the far end of the corridor while I’m busy shooting at empty doorways.

He circled to his right and came at the shooting maze from the other end. It was the only way he had a hope of surprising Bertone. With each quick step, he tensed against hearing Kayla’s scream.

Nothing but silence.

Way too much silence.

But at least he’d distracted Bertone from Kayla.

Three more steps.

A leather sole squeaked on the smooth concrete ahead and on the other side of a wall.

Rand had run ten feet when sound exploded, a shattering burst from the M-60 machine gun. Apparently Bertone had found more ammo for his heavy iron. Slugs chewed through the Kevlar partition where Rand had been. The sound was more shocking than the bullets that ripped through the wall.

Rand couldn’t hear his own breath, which meant that Bertone was also deafened for a time. Moving fast, Rand turned the corner of the shooting maze.

There was another long, dimly lit corridor with a series of facing doors and a side hall that cut away. At the far end of the corridor, a steel stairway climbed halfway up to the open ceiling and then cut back on itself.

Perfect ambush.

Tactical nightmare.

A defender could hide at the cutback point and fire down the corridor or wait at the second-floor landing and fire down on his attacker.

Rand focused on a Mylar dome hanging from the ceiling halfway down the hall. He’d seen gear like it in high-security installations all over the world. Closed-circuit TV cameras lived behind the Mylar. Other similar installations covered the rest of the shooting rooms.

Son of a bitch. Bertone can monitor every step I take.

Rand stepped into the center of the corridor and lifted the AK with his left hand, forcing his right arm to support the barrel. The fingers had feeling again, but his right shoulder wasn’t worth shit. He fired three shots.

The closest plastic dome exploded in a shower of sparks as Rand raced back to cover.

The hard black snout of a machine-gun muzzle poked out of a seam in the corridor wall. A hail of bullets screamed and whined off the concrete floor. Bertone had turned jacketed slugs into a shotgun blast of shrapnel that shredded the wall three feet from where Rand was hiding.

Cute. If I’d stopped to admire my work like Foley, I’d be bloody rags on the floor.

Like Foley.

Breathing softly, listening hard, Rand wondered what Bertone’s next trick would be.

Arizona Territorial Gun Club
Sunday
2:40
P.M. MST

K
ayla pulled and twisted against the duct tape covering her mouth, scrubbing it against the rough console in the control room. High up on her thighs, flesh burned and bled where Bertone had cut her. She noticed it only because the blood got in her way when she tried to rub off her duct-tape gag on her jeans. Blood trickled down over the duct tape binding her ankles.

God, Rand, Bertone can see everything you do.

Can you hear me?

I’m screaming it!

But nothing useful got past the duct tape.

Breathing hard through her nose, she was forced to slow down for lack of air. She managed to roll up against the wall and look around. The first thing she saw was the ugly pistol Bertone had left on a metal table near one of the huge, silent monitors.

It was a better chance than she’d hoped for.

She began to work at getting cuffed hands in front of her, rather than behind. As she did, she watched the monitors.

One section was blank.

The section next to it showed Bertone lying in wait.

Rand was soft-footing it along a different corridor, a pistol in his hand. In front, across his chest, a wicked-looking weapon waited to be used.

Heart pounding, body struggling, Kayla watched the two men play a lethal kind of hide-and-seek.

Obviously Rand had figured out where Bertone was waiting behind a wall. Instead of continuing down the shredded corridor, Rand had retreated and reentered the maze from the front.

Kayla watched, worked, and tried to breathe through the duct tape as Rand ghosted up the metal stairs. Halfway to the top, he looked up. He ran up the rest of the way, grabbed a handful of wires, and ripped.

Another camera went out.

No shots followed.

Sweating, terrified, she wrestled with the cuffs and watched as Rand disappeared from the monitors. She looked overhead at the network of catwalks and observation platforms for the action below.

There was no cover.

And no cameras to track him.

Watching, raking her gag against the rough console as she struggled, Kayla saw Rand move down the catwalk one slow, gliding step at a time, scanning the maze below for movement. She could tell when he spotted her in the control room in the center of the maze.

Rand shifted the weapon from his chest to his back and eeled toward the control room on his belly.

Bertone was nowhere in sight.

Kayla gave up on her cuffs for the moment and struggled toward a bank of monitors, pointing with her bound feet, clearly wanting Rand to look at the TVs.

Two rooms away, he watched the big screens that were still working. Each was being fed in rotation by several cameras, perhaps as many as a dozen cameras covering the tactical course. The right-hand screen rotated through a blank monitor every four or five seconds, one of the holes he’d left in the coverage.

Kayla breathed hard through her nose and watched the screens like a bird watching a snake. Rand watched with her through several cycles.

A flash of movement.

Bertone was sneaking back across the corridor near the end of the maze, still carrying the heavy M-60 like it was an assault rifle. He was sweating but not breathing hard.

Damn, that’s one strong bastard,
Rand thought.
It will take a lot of lead to bring him down.

And he was closing in on Kayla.

On the monitor she saw Bertone head for a concealed door in the control room. She slumped back against the console just before Bertone walked in.

She forced herself not to look at the ceiling catwalk.

Bertone gave her an amused look. The blood on the floor told its own story about her useless struggles. He focused on the monitors.

Motionless, Rand hugged the catwalk and sweated. He could hear his own breathing again; the deafness from the blast of the M-60 had faded. That meant Bertone’s hearing was back online, too. Moving on the metal catwalk to get closer to Bertone would be difficult, but the range was too great for Rand to be accurate with a borrowed pistol.

Kayla was too close to the target.

Bertone studied each of the monitors through a complete sequence. Nothing moved. He shifted the M-60 and cat-footed it back to his peephole overlooking the corridor.

Kayla rolled as far as she could from Bertone’s position, wanting to give Rand as much of a firing field as possible. Watching slugs ricochet off the stone lobby floor had been an education.

Am I making enough noise?
she asked Rand silently.

She threw in some shoe scrapes and muffled thumps. She balanced on the tightrope of helping Rand cover his approach, yet not making so much noise that Bertone knocked her out—which he’d done before he found the duct tape.

Rand used Kayla’s sound as cover, closing in on the control room. Now he could see a Glock pistol with an extended magazine lying on a narrow table beside one of the screens. A Glock tricked out like that was a mini machine gun, twenty shots on semi- or full automatic.

Using Kayla’s muffled thrashing, Rand eeled to the place where another catwalk cut across the shooting house. Bertone hadn’t moved from his ambush spot.

Now,
Kayla thought.
Time to see if those yoga classes live up to their ads.

It was her last chance. If Bertone found her, she would die. But then, he was planning to kill her anyway.

After he made her scream some more.

She shifted and wiggled and strained until she fell over. She glanced at the screen and saw that Bertone hadn’t moved. She forced her cuffed hands over her butt, down her legs, then fought her ankles and feet through.

Her blood helped to grease the way.

When she was finished, she was sweating, her chest was heaving, and she felt like she’d strained every muscle in her arms. She was still cuffed, but at least her hands were in front of her.

She peeled down enough of the gag to breathe more easily, then dragged herself over to the ugly pistol Bertone had left behind. Her shoulders ached in time to the rapid beat of her heart.

She watched the screen.

Bertone hadn’t moved.

She pushed herself to her knees and grabbed the gun. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but she guessed it would have a hard recoil. She knew enough to recognize the safety. It wasn’t on. Very carefully she set the pistol next to her on the floor. Watching the screen, she started clawing at the duct tape around her ankles. This time the blood got in her way, making her fingers slip. An inch at a time, she managed to peel the sticky stuff off.

She glanced up at the catwalks as she pulled the tape free.

Rand was grinning like a pirate. He gestured with one hand, sweeping her back out of the line of fire he would have to use if Bertone came back into the room.

She glanced at the screen again.

It was empty.