Jason Pinter - The Darkness

Neither Henry or Curt knew Jack had followed them all the way from Parker’s apartment, and it gave Jack a slight bit of pride to know he still had a little left in the old oil can. But when he saw the two men force Henry and Curt to follow them at gunpoint, he knew the time for hideand-seek was over.

It was less than ten minutes before the cavalry arrived, and it took less than one to tear open the gated entrance and force themselves inside. Jack didn’t know what to expect, but when he saw the massive warehouse and the sentry guards, the fence barricading the area from both trespassers and onlookers, he had a feeling they’d stumbled onto the very heart of where the Darkness was produced.

“Do we just wait until they run out of bullets then?”

Jack yelled above the storm.

Carruthers looked at him and shook his head.

Then he yelled to the rest of the cops perched outside,

“There are two innocents in there, including one of our own. Let’s get them the hell out of there!”

Then a barrage of gunfire strafed the outside of the warehouse, shattering glass, shredding brick, smoke and dust pouring from everywhere.

Jack covered his ears, felt dirt and gravel raining down around him, stinging his face and neck. And below the pain in his arm, the rapid pace of his heart that scared the hell out of him, Jack had a feeling this was just the beginning.

When the gunfire first erupted, Eve Ramos went into the stairwell to find out what was going on. I could see her and Rex Malloy talking. Malloy was animated, pointing somewhere I couldn’t see, gesturing like mad as

Ramos stood there impassively, processing it all. Behind them, still in the room with me, was Leonard Reeves.

And unlike his two comrades, Reeves’s eyes betrayed him. He looked nervous, the kind of man who might dish out violence but never expected it to come back to him.

Whatever Rex Malloy was saying, it was frightening

Leonard Reeves something bad.

While they were preoccupied, I picked up the pen and quietly walked over to where Reeves was standing. He was not an especially large man, about five foot ten, not fat but without much discernible muscle definition.

Sometimes you could take one look at a person, the way they carried themselves, and know how brave they were.

What kind of fight they would put up. In Leonard Reeves,

I got the sense of a man who talked a big game but once cornered, would piss his pants faster than an eight-yearold with a tiny bladder.

So with little time to decide my course of action, I took a chance that could lead either to my freedom, or my death.

Gripping the pen in my fist, the point sticking out two inches, I wrapped my left arm around the front of

Reeves’s neck and jammed the pen right under his jawline on his carotid artery, hard enough that I felt the tip threaten to pierce skin. Reeves was surprised and struggled, crying out, but I whispered into his ear, “Move once more and you’ll see your blood all over Malloy’s nice blond hair.”

Reeves relaxed. His hand was still on the arm that held his neck in place, but there was no strength in it.

I could feel the gun against my hip, and holding the pen I quickly grabbed it and swapped the writing utensil for the pistol. Not a bad choice. I flicked the safety off.

I’d only held a gun once before, and even then it was out of self-defense. I didn’t want to fire it.

Right now, though, I was certain that if need be I would use it. I wasn’t sure who was more frightened: me knowing I could be forced to end a man’s life, or Reeves knowing his life was in the hands of a man who had nothing to lose.

I led Reeves into the stairwell where Ramos and

Malloy were standing. Windows opened onto the front of the compound, but Ramos and Malloy were blocking my view. I couldn’t see who or what was out there. Whoever it was clearly had their attention.

Eve Ramos turned around. Rex Malloy did as well.

They both stared at me, Malloy seeming more pissed off while Ramos smiled at me like I’d just built a nice big house of cards.

“Take me to Sheffield,” I said. “As soon as we’re outside, I let Reeves go. If not, he’s a dead man.”

“Henry,” Ramos said, cocking her head to the side, that smile still spread on her face. “I give you credit for keeping your balls intact. But you have gravely overestimated Mr. Reeves’s worth to me. Especially in light of his less than stellar reflexes.”

With that, Eve Ramos pulled a gun from her waistband and put a bullet right in Leonard Reeves’s head.

He dropped to the floor, his body becoming dead weight in less than a second. I felt sticky blood on my hands. I looked at Ramos. She seemed oddly disappointed.

“Sometimes,” she said, “you don’t have time to paint a picture.”

I held Reeves’s gun out, pointed it at Ramos.

“Let us out of here,” I said.

“Or what? You shoot me and end up looking like something the butcher threw away? Put the gun down, Henry, before you get hurt.”

And just like that, the window behind Ramos shattered, gunfire riddling the stairwell. Sparks cascaded all around us at the bullets ricocheted off the metal bars.

Whoever was outside was now firing back.

We all ducked, covering our heads as glass came pouring down around us. Ramos knelt on the floor below the window, her back against the wall. She held a hand up to her cheek. It came away slick with blood where she’d been cut by an errant shard. Malloy was on his stomach, and crawled over to see if she was all right. And right there I saw my one chance to live.

While they were distracted, I rushed forward and shoved

Malloy as hard as I could. His body, already off balance, went toppling down the stairs. He landed with a thud two floors below, screaming in pain and clutching his leg.

Before Ramos had a chance to recover, I leaped back into the stairwell and began to climb. They’d taken Curt somewhere upstairs, and I could only hope to find him before the entire warehouse was shredded.

As I ascended, relief spread through me as I saw that

Ramos was still pinned down in the stairwell below me.

I tried the door one flight above but it was locked from the inside. There was no keypad I could see, no way inside. So I kept going up, hunched over, trying not to get shot or sliced.

One more flight up and I’d reached the top level of the warehouse. Peering over the railing, my breath caught in my throat when I saw that neither Ramos or

Malloy were still there. They weren’t on the stairwell though, so I had a small window to figure out what the hell to do.

The stairwell here had one door, and this had an electronic keypad. I tried several combinations, including

718, but none of them worked. But just as I was about to give up and turn to my nonexistent plan B, I heard the doorknob turn from the other side.

I stepped back to allow the door to open. The handle turned and into the hall walked another man. He was big, with a gleaming bald head, numerous tattoos running down his arms. And, oh yeah, he was also holding a big, black assault rifle.

I was hidden between the door and the wall, my gun held out in defense, but the man didn’t see me as he raced down the stairs. When he’d gone down several steps, I spun around the closing door, stuck the gun muzzle into the crack, threw it open and pulled the door shut behind me just as I heard a startled “Hey!” from below.

Turning around, I found myself in a narrow hallway.

It was painted stark white. There were two doors at the other end, and I could see an LED light blinking red on the farthest one.

Curt.

I ran as fast as I could to the other end and banged on the door.