Take flight, p.47
Take Flight, page 47
In recent years, however, there had been several major busts of Kelton-based drug endeavors. The busts had been so big and so lurid (quite a few of them had taken place in professional dens of iniquity and involved naked people being dragged screaming out of rooms) that (strategically pixelated) videos had made the national news. Several of the clan were sent off to HM Prison Slade out in Cumberland, and there’d been quite a bit of public interest in this dynasty of criminals that catered to the most dubious of recreations. Richard and his colleagues had followed the case with interest.
Those Keltons who had eluded prosecution claimed they’d had nothing to do with any drug trade, that they were solely involved in the legitimate business of erotic adult entertainment and performance art—a claim no one believed, including, apparently, the individual who had been going around frying London criminals.
Lyn had decided on a slightly different strategy for approaching this gang. She would not be dealing with a foot soldier this time but with the head of the firm—Terry Kelton himself. This was partly because he would be able to get her much more information and partly because his was the only name—and his pub’s the only address—she’d remembered. The boss, though, would not accept a story about an assassin who’d been secretly in service to one of his captains. Instead, she was going to present herself as a security specialist who was offering her services in these troubled times. And they’d been exceptionally troubled for the Keltons.
The Keltons had been hit hard in the past few weeks, with three deaths by mysterious electrocution. No witnesses. No explanation. Lyn had expected them to be wary of a strange woman showing up in the pub and asking to speak to Terry Kelton, but she hadn’t expected to be invited into the back and then have a gun put to the back of her head.
They searched her, roughly and thoroughly. Stay calm, she told herself as hands moved briskly along her limbs. They’re paranoid, and rightfully so. Still, when they lingered on and squeezed her breasts and bum, she had to clench her fists not to react. Her hands with their cheap rings had been examined closely—for what, she was not certain—and there were some contemptuous sniffs. They took her pen and her baton. It was lucky that she hadn’t infused electricity into any of her equipment this time because the force with which they handled her and her possessions would have easily unleashed it. She was ordered to open her mouth for an inspection with a penlight. Fingers ran through her hair. There was a whispered conference.
Now that they’ve established that I’m not carrying a gun or a cattle prod, they’ll calm down, she told herself. I’ll be taken to meet Terry Kelton, and we’ll follow the script.
Except that the gun was still pressed hard against her. It had migrated from her head to the small of her back.
Finally, she was hustled down a flight of creaking, stained stairs to the cellar. One man led the way; another followed with the gun. The continued presence of the gun was not promising, and the cellar was far from salubrious. The ceiling was low and arched, and the floors were dirty. It had been a storeroom for decades, if not centuries. She was taken past crates and kegs and a few humming refrigerators. The occasional light bulb swayed above them.
This does not bode well. They came to a heavy door of wood so old it was practically stone. One of the men heaved it open to reveal a large empty room with whitewashed walls and a filthy floor. As a place to conduct an interview regarding security, it was dubious. As a place to conduct a private murder and then lever up flagstones and bury the corpse, it was perfect.
How could you be so stupid? she asked herself. You managed to fool one uneducated young foot soldier who was racked with grief, so you thought you could manipulate a gang lord?
“In.” A firm nudge from the gun in the small of her back.
You are a bloody fool, Lynette Binns! You are going to die in a cellar and no one will ever know that you were innocent of this whole damn thing. And Emma will never know what happened to her mother.
She stepped in and waited while two elderly folding chairs were fetched from some dank corner. She sat when told to, sighing, and leaned her head back to stare at the ceiling. It was arched, a barrel vault made of small dark bricks that glistened wetly. How old is this place? She felt the gun prodding the back of her head, and she sat up straight. She heard the distant creaking of the staircase, and a large man came into the room and sat in front of her. She recognized him from the files she’d read in the Checquy offices and, before that, from the television.
Terry Kelton, the patriarch of the gang, a hard-looking man in his forties. Tall and broad, with jug ears and closely cropped hair. The bent nose and the scarred cheeks showed he was no stranger to violence. The broken capillaries showed he was no stranger to the bottle. A man to be feared.
“And who the fuck are you, bitch?” he asked flatly.
“Kira Schmidt,” she said. That was what her fake ID said, the one in the wallet they’d taken.
“Is that German?”
“I suppose if you go back far enough,” said Lyn, who’d never given it any thought. “It’s by marriage,” she improvised. “Divorced, but I kept the name.”
Kelton looked over her shoulder at one of the two other men in the room. Lyn flinched as her wallet was tossed from behind her, and Kelton snatched it out of the air. He caught her phone with the same ease.
“Piece of shit,” he said. “How old is this?” He wasn’t looking for an answer. “No caller history, no stored numbers.” He looked at her thoughtfully and put the phone down on the floor next to his chair. Then he took out her wallet. She tensed as he examined her driver’s license. “Looks kosher.”
It ought to, thought Lyn. It was a real license, technically, since it had been created and provided by the government. She’d left her own license hidden in a sock drawer back at Mandy’s.
“What’s your middle name?” he asked suddenly, staring at the license.
“Anne,” said Lyn tightly. She’d spent hours memorizing all the details of her Checquy-provided alter egos.
“If I went to this address printed on your license, what would I find?”
Probably the biggest surprise of your whole damn life. The address given for Kira Anne Schmidt was one of several properties the Checquy used to establish false backgrounds. Several hundred Checquy cover identities gave that address as their residence. It was maintained by a rota of Checquy housekeepers who were able to deal with any problems that came a-knocking.
“Not much,” Lyn said. “It’s the place I keep in London, but I travel a lot for my job. You’d find a bed, a toaster, and a suitcase full of clothes.”
“No keys,” he noted.
“The place has a keypad lock.”
“Hmm.” He slid the license back into the wallet, took out the money, and thumbed through it quickly and easily. “A hundred and twenty quid in readies.” He did not place the cash back in the wallet; he put it in his jacket pocket. “A credit card for Kira A. Schmidt.” He added it to the cash. She opened her mouth and then closed it again.
Is he going to just take the money and use the card? A man who ran brothels and worked in the drug trade and whose office policy apparently included taking people prisoner at gunpoint would probably not hesitate to engage in some identity theft and credit card fraud. In which case, a serial-killing supernatural vigilante would be the least of his problems. The Checquy would undoubtedly have put alerts on every account associated with her. She’d kept the card for window dressing in case someone needed extra proof of identity. He looked up at her.
“You’ve come asking questions at a bad time. People around here are jumpy.”
“Yeah, clearly.” He didn’t like a sassy answer from a woman—she saw it in the way his brows furrowed and his mouth turned down even more. For a second she thought he was going to backhand her.
“And then some tart comes walking in here asking for me. You’re not a cop, but you’re referring to my lads getting killed. No one has ever seen you around here. You’re dressed like no kind of professional, with cheap rings on all your fingers. And there’s this.” He held up her baton. “Tucked away in a special inside pocket in your jacket. A nasty piece, this. Not a cop’s issue. This’d be all sorts of illegal. And then there’s your hands.”
“My hands?”
“Jimmy, who searched you, he knows a woman’s hands. He tells me you’ve got calluses like someone who’s done some work with her hands, some boxing, but there’s no scars, so you’re not a fighter. Not a fistfighter, anyway. So who are you? And what do you have to say about my security?”
“I know you’ve got problems. Word on the street is that you need a bit of muscle.”
“I’ve got muscle. Do you know why this place is called the Anvil? Don’t shake your head!” The gun ground itself into her hair.
“Why?” she asked tightly. She heard an intake of breath. “I mean, why is it called the Anvil?”
“My great-uncle named it that when he took it over,” said Kelton, “’cause every fucker comes along tries to bring the hammer down. The old Bill. Other firms. Back in the Blitz, this area took some heavy pounding from the Luftwaffe. We’ve seen gangs come and go. Bloody Italians trying to get a foothold. My granddad and his brothers showed them off smartish. Then others. Yardies. Albanians. A mob of bloody Australians most recently, and me and my lads let them know how things were gonna be.
“And now someone’s going about trying to be hard and new on the street, electrocuting people like I don’t know what. Bit of flash, but we don’t scare around here.” His voice tightened. “They all want to smash us down. To hammer us. But this place is still standing, and we’re still standing in it, and whatever bullshit you’re trying to bring in here, it’s not gonna work.”
“I’m not bringing any bullshit.” Trying her very best to keep her voice level.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m an independent security contractor with experience in bodyguarding, counterterrorism, and threat suppression.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I can offer some highly specialized skills that can help with your problem.”
“I. Don’t. Believe. You.”
“Okay,” said Lyn. She spoke lightly, calmly, as if this had been merely an unsuccessful job interview and she weren’t sitting there with a gun to her head. If she spoke like nothing about the situation bothered her, perhaps she could walk out just as lightly and calmly. “Then there’s nothing more to say. If you’re not interested in my services, I will just leave.”
“Oh, no,” he said grimly. “No, no, no. You’re a damn sight too familiar with what’s been happening. I don’t like anything about you.”
Don’t panic. If you don’t panic, maybe he’ll be calm. Show him how ridiculous this is. “You think I’m a cop? Your staff here searched me—there’s no wire.” Maybe I should imply that I am a cop, she thought. Maybe he’d be less likely to kill me if he thought I had a team backing me up.
But then I’d never get any answers from him.
“You’re not a cop. But maybe you’re the one doing the killings,” he said.
“You think I’ve been running around London electrocuting various independent businessmen and then walk in here asking to see you armed with that?” she said, nodding at her baton in his hands. He stared at her blankly. “I mean, what am I going to electrocute you with? The battery in my watch? Some shocking language?” As soon as the words were out, Lyn regretted them. His lip curled.
“You’re a mouthy slut, aren’t you?” He whipped his hand out, and the baton extended smoothly and wickedly. “Maybe you want a taste of your own medicine. Would that shut you up?”
Lyn watched, frozen in disbelief, as he brought the baton up. He paused, then brought it whipping down onto her thighs, and she screamed.
“Nope,” he said.
The first time he hit her, she flung herself forward off the chair, curled up on the floor, and screamed. He hauled her up off the floor and slung her back in her seat.
“You get off that chair again without my say-so, and I’ll use this to break your teeth into your head. You understand?” He pushed the baton against her face, and, whimpering, she nodded. “And then my man there will put a bullet in your head.”
He struck her thighs again with the baton, and it felt as if her legs were exploding. He didn’t actually break anything, but the pain was horrific. She thought she might vomit. And why was he doing it? It wasn’t for interrogation, surely. He didn’t ask any questions, just waited until her screams subsided and then struck again.
All the while, the man with the gun was behind her, ready to shoot. When she curled up in her chair, Kelton placed the tip of the baton under her chin and pushed her to sit up straight.
Am I going to allow this to continue? she thought dazedly. Am I going to let him beat me to death? She itched to do something, but there was the gun at the back of her head and still the vague possibility that she might be able to salvage this situation. If she couldn’t get a contact, then she might obtain some piece of information. She could not believe that he would simply kill her for no reason.
When it finally ended, and she managed to stop screaming and choke back her tears, Lyn sat slumped on the chair, gasping. She looked up at him through her hair and felt true, burning, incandescent loathing.
You are going to be so sorry, she thought. She clenched her teeth in rage. I’m going to fucking fry you, you monster! In his eyes, something was seething behind the cruelty. He’s frightened, she realized blearily. He’s terrified.
Well, he fucking should be now.
“Is it you, then?” Kelton growled.
“What?” she asked weakly.
“Is it you that’s going around killing people? That killed my sons and my best pal?”
“No.”
“Is it you? I saw their bodies with those burn marks on their skin!”
“No, it’s not.”
“Is it you?”
“No!”
“Who is it, then, you bitch? Who’s coming to kill me?” he demanded, screaming into her face. “Who wants me dead?”
“Probably everyone who ever met you, you fucking bastard!” He drew back in shock.
Absolutely no way of salvaging this situation, she realized now. Kelton had apparently come to the same conclusion, because he nodded to the man behind her, and suddenly the metal of the pistol was cold at her temple, just in front of her ear.
He’s not bluffing anymore.
Everything in her wanted to use her powers then. The barrel was pressed against her skin, waiting to be turned into a weapon against its user. She could see how it would happen. She could just open up the well within herself, unleash the electricity that coiled there, let it course out and seethe into the material of the gun. And then, to release it from the metal? A simple shift away and back, just lightly tapping the side of her head against the gun, and the man would be engulfed in his own personal ball of lightning.
Except that getting shocked could easily cause him to pull the trigger. Muscles would spasm and contract as the current raced through them. His finger would clench on the trigger, and a bullet would briskly enter her skull, briskly explode through her brain, then briskly continue on into the world to seek its fortune.
And then? Maybe nothing. Maybe her death would snuff out the energy that lived in her body; some sparks might crawl weakly out and then dissipate.
Or perhaps an electrical storm would pour out of her, like the madness in her kitchen. How big would it be? Her heart was pounding so hard, her head felt so full of thoughts, that she could imagine the entire room, the entire building, consumed in all the energy of her life.
Regardless, she would be dead.
Nope. Move.
Still slumped, her hair over her face, she shot her hand up, gripped the pistol, and shoved it up and away from her head. There was the surge in her skin as she poured energy into the gun. Shocked, the man fired instinctively, sending a bullet into the ceiling. The force of the pistol firing was enough to release the electricity, and it flared out, not enough to kill him, not even enough to stun him, but certainly enough to get his undivided attention. The man screamed, wreathed in red flashes, and in his wild spasms, he flung the gun away. Meanwhile, she was moving against Kelton with hard, tightly controlled moves, closing one hand around the baton to yank it away and punching him in the chest with the other, shocking him with the electricity from her rings.
There was still the third man, the one in the corner by the door. Her explosive movements and the bursts of electricity that continued to keep his colleagues shrieking had him aghast. He fumbled in his coat for his gun as Lyn charged at him, adrenaline and rage burning away the throbbing pain in her legs. She held her baton awkwardly, near the wrong end, but it drank up the energy she poured into it. She pressed it against the man’s chest; there was a crack, and he was thrown unconscious against the wall.
And back! The man who’d been holding the gun was still behind her. She could almost hear Pawn Fenton scolding her for turning her back on a threat. The electricity around the gunman had faded, and he was down on his knees, scrabbling after the gun. Lyn readjusted her grip on the baton and bore down on him, inexorable. His eyes focused on her just in time to see the baton coming toward him. He wailed and actually covered his face.
A moment passed, and another, and he dared to peek up.
“Flincher.” A light tap, a snapping sound, and he was also down and unconscious.
“You . . .” Kelton’s voice behind her was weak and full of hate. She turned to see the man sprawled on the floor against the wall. He did not look well. He was pale and trembling. Also, he had thrown up on himself a bit. His hand was shaking as he tried to reach into his coat.
