Finders/Keepers

Twenty

It took five minutes after Reese told Alice he had a plan before an elderly man wearing a flat cap exited the building, then walked down the street to a corner grocery store. Almost exactly eleven minutes later, the man reemerged on the sidewalk with a paper sack.

“Okay,” Reese said, and climbed out of the truck.

Alice and Dwight followed behind him as he walked across the street, glad he was in front of them so they couldn’t see the way he was grimacing with every step. Extra painkillers or not, moving was still going to be a pain in the ass for the next few days (weeks?). The old man was thirty yards ahead of them, but thank God he was moving at a much slower pace, which allowed Reese to catch up without having to exert himself too much.

“This is your plan?” Alice asked behind him.

“Low tech works best,” Reese said.

If the old man sensed or heard them, he didn’t show it by looking back. He led them all the way to the front lobby door, where he punched in the code, then spent a few seconds struggling to pull open the heavy metal door. Reese hurried forward and grabbed the gate and smiled at the man as he pulled it open for him.

The old man smiled back at Reese and said something in Spanish before stepping into the building with his bag carefully cradled in his arms. Reese let the man get about five feet ahead of him before following. He quickly noted the first security camera, right where he remembered it in the corner of the lobby ceiling.

“Go straight, and don’t look at the camera,” he said, and kept walking. “Pretend like we’re supposed to be here.”

The old man had wandered on ahead of them and disappeared around a corner, even though Reese could still hear his small and careful footsteps.

“They can see us,” Alice said behind him.

“They can see us, but they can’t hear us,” Reese said.

He made a beeline for the staircase next to the elevator then went up the steps, grunting as pain, like icicles, repeatedly stabbed at his gut. He hoped Alice hadn’t heard, but she probably had since she was right behind him, unlike Dwight, who was bringing up the rear.

“Another camera up ahead,” he said. “Keep your head down. The longer we can keep them off-balance, the higher up the building we’ll be before they finally make their move to stop us.”

“Maybe we should have risked the elevator after all,” Dwight said from behind him.

“Too late for that now.”

“Well, shit. Let’s just hope the meatheads running this place are dumber than us.”

One can only hope, Reese thought, and grimaced through another couple of steps. If he knew it would hurt this much to take the stairs, he would have risked the elevators, too. A quick, painful death was preferable to the agony he was going through now, but if Alice, in her condition, wasn’t moaning about the steps behind him, he’d be damned if he was going to do it, literally, in front of her.

Death before showing weakness in front of the pretty girl, right, old sport?

Empty brown bags and discarded soda cans littered the stairs, but they were easy to go around. A second camera, its white shell covered in graffiti along with the rest of the stairwell walls, greeted them by slowly turning to pick them up as they made the turn in the middle and ascended to the second-floor landing.

Reese kept his head down, wondering how long he was going to be able to keep going in this condition. His side was already throbbing, and it might have been his imagination, but he swore the stitches that Dwight had sewn into him were already starting to pop underneath the bandages.

Definitely my imagination.

Probably…

But Alice was being very quiet behind him — except for her footsteps and slightly labored breathing — and that, more than anything, forced him to keep going, slowing down only whenever they reached another turn in the stairwell.

He was sure that by now one of the cameras would have already picked up his face. Someone (maybe a couple of someones) on the tenth floor was watching them going up, but he was hoping what he had told Dwight earlier about the element of surprise being on their side was partially true. Even so, it was only a matter of time before the organization’s people decided to stop just watching their steady upward progress and do something about it. When that happened, he was going to be glad they weren’t cornered inside an elevator. At least in the stairwell there was room to maneuver and shoot back.

Unless you die from all these goddamn-never-ending steps first…

“How long before someone stops us?” Alice asked behind him.

“Hopefully not until we’re almost there,” Reese said.

“Some plan.”

“Hey, it was short notice; give me a break.”

“If it’s okay with you two, save the marital spat for the bedroom, will ya?” Dwight said from the back, not even bothering to hide his amusement.

A door opened in front of them, and a young kid, maybe fifteen, was pushing a bicycle with a slightly bent front tire into the stairwell. He saw them as they were coming up, and the kid turned around and hustled back through the door without a word.

Smart kid.

They made the turn and started up the third floor.

A third camera followed their every movement, and again Reese kept his head down and knew without actually seeing that Alice and Dwight were doing the same behind him. They had gotten through three floors without resistance, but it wasn’t going to last. He knew that without a single shred of doubt.

Any minute now, lads. Any minute now…

There was no one on the fourth floor, but a pair of young lovebirds were giving each other hickeys on the fifth. The two didn’t even look up as Reese led Dwight and Alice around them.

Reese had to skirt a used condom on one of the steps, and said, “Watch the bodily fluids.”

“Romantic,” Dwight said from the back. “Maybe you and Alice in Wonderland can take a moment to join the fun.”

Alice didn’t say anything, but Reese grinned and kept going.

They had just reached the sixth-floor landing when their luck finally ran out. Reese was frankly surprised they had gotten this far so easily, so he wasn’t the least bit shocked when he heard footsteps coming down from the floors above them. From the speed and intensity, he guessed a heavyset guy in sneakers.

“Here comes tons of fun,” Dwight said behind him.

“Stick to the walls, away from the center,” Reese said, doing just that as he continued upward and rounded the sixth floor.

He drew his Glock from behind his back and held it at his side, knowing that another camera was up there but still around the turn, so it couldn’t see him just yet. Behind him, Alice’s breathing had accelerated noticeably, but he didn’t waste the second or two it would have taken to glance back and check on her. The woman following at his heels had already shot him at almost point-blank range, so he had no trouble whatsoever believing she could handle what was coming. And if she couldn’t, then, well, she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.

He heard voices coming from in front of him. Two, talking in rushed (panicked?) Spanish just before Reese heard the echoey squawk of a radio.

Reese picked up his pace and started taking the steps two at a time, not even trying to hide the loud grunts coming out of him this time as what felt like ten-foot spears drilled through every inch of his frame.

Jesus Christ, it hurt!

He looked up just as a figure rounded the corner up ahead. The man had a pistol in one hand and a radio in the other, and he must have been shocked to see how much distance Reese had covered. Or maybe he saw the mask of pain on Reese’s face and felt sorry for him. Either way, that half-second hesitation was all Reese needed, and he shot the man in the chest — the loud bang! like thunder in the narrow confines — and as his victim slid down to the top landing, Reese shot him again, this time hitting the man in the neck.

“Tenth floor! Go!” he shouted, his voice joining the echo of the two gunshots as they traveled the length of the stairwell. Reese thought he could hear the two lovebirds below running in the other direction, but he didn’t spend more than a heartbeat thinking about it.

He ignored the almost cartoonish spray of blood as it poured out of the dead man’s neck and skipped around the lifeless body to reach the seventh floor’s top landing. The pain that had been coursing through his body a few seconds ago seemed to lessen, but Reese attributed that more to the fresh surge of adrenaline than any delusional idea he wasn’t in pain anymore.

He concentrated on the sound of a door clicking open in front of him and glimpsed a white shirt as the second man escaped into the hallway beyond. He squeezed off three shots, hitting the door twice as it was swinging closed, and was rewarded with the sight of a figure flopping to the floor just before the door clicked shut in his face.

A flash of black blurred in the corners of his eyes as Alice ran past him and continued up the stairs, Dwight following closely behind.

“You gonna die, dude?” Dwight asked as he passed him.

“Shut up and go!” he shouted back.

They were moving fast, and he actually found himself lagging more than five steps behind them, pushing himself, because slowing down would only give his body too much time to remember that he should be lying on a hospital bed, not racing up an impossible flight of steps. At the moment, Reese wasn’t sure if surviving what was waiting for them up ahead or the ten floors of steps was the greater challenge.

As he went up, Reese risked a glance down at his side and was shocked not to see blood on his shirt. Of course, if his stitches had snapped somewhere during the mad dash up, it would take a while for the blood to seep through the bandages.

But for now, he was okay. Well, mostly, anyway.

He followed Dwight and Alice around the eighth floor and was halfway up to the ninth when there was a bang! from above them, but this wasn’t a gunshot — it was a door crashing open, just before someone opened up with a fully automatic weapon, like someone banging on drums with a sledgehammer inside the stairwell.

He finished the turn onto the ninth just as the gunfire stopped, his shoes slipping as they came down on a layer of bullet casings left behind by Dwight. His partner was pushing aside a bullet-riddled door, keeping it pried open with one shoe while he peeked in at the hallway and a man lying with a bloody chest on the other side. Dwight had the UMP45 in a sling over his shoulder, the weapon hidden in his jacket all this time.

Reese followed Dwight’s example and put the Glock away and unzipped his jacket, then pulled out the slung MP5K with the pistol grip. He looked for and found Alice, already on the steps leading up to the tenth floor, her Glock pointing up at the turn ahead. If she was in any pain at all, she wasn’t showing it, and Reese thought, Christ, that is one amazing woman!

“Anything?” he called up to her.

She looked down at him and shook her head briefly before returning it to the empty staircase above them.

“Clear?” Reese said, looking over at Dwight.

“As clear as it’s gonna get,” Dwight said, walking back to him.

“Let’s go earn our paycheck, then.”

“I thought that’s what I’ve been doing?” Dwight grunted.

Reese grinned then headed up the stairs, passing Alice and resuming the lead. Dwight was right behind him, while Alice didn’t say a word as she fell in at the back. Maybe she hadn’t argued because they were better armed, or, more likely, she wasn’t going to protest if they wanted to put themselves between her and whoever was waiting up there.

Can’t say I blame her one bit.

But there was no one waiting for them on the tenth-floor landing, not that it stopped Reese from moving with the submachine gun gripped in front of him, forefinger on the trigger. Dwight shadowed him with the UMP until they had made the turn and faced the last door. Reese kept going, turned right and rushed up the stairs that led to the rooftop, and, finding no one waiting up there either, headed back down.

He found Dwight focusing on the stairwell door, and Alice, with her back turned to him, keeping an eye on the stairs below them just in case someone decided to attack from the lower floors. Reese almost smiled at the way they were working together, as if they had been doing it for years instead of less than twenty-four hours.

Dwight glanced over and Reese shook his head, then nodded at the door. Dwight grinned and turned and unloaded the remains of his magazine into the slab of wood, stitching it from left to right until he was empty.

Reese quickly jumped down and pulled security while Dwight reloaded.

“You go first,” Dwight said.

“I went first last time,” Reese said.

“When?”

“Hong Kong.”

“I don’t remember that happening whatsoever.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.”

“Whatever, dude.”

Dwight assumed the position, raising his weapon up to chest level, until he was looking from behind its iron sights before nodding.

Reese tossed a quick look behind him at Alice — found her staring back at him, waiting patiently. He returned his focus to the tenth-floor hallway door and scanned the holes Dwight had put into it but didn’t see anything that resembled movement on the other side. Not that he could see much through the small holes anyway.

He gave Dwight another glance. “You ready?”

“Depends,” Dwight said.

“On what?”

“You gonna go through it first?”

“Your turn, remember?”

“Figures,” Dwight said before turning back to the door. “On the count of five?”

“Sounds good.”

“So let’s get this show on the road before I die of boredom in here.”

Reese nodded and grabbed the doorknob, then twisted it but didn’t pull at it. He waited until Dwight finished mouthing the word five before jerking the door open and throwing himself against the wall at the same time. The door creaked against its hinges, and Dwight was a blur of black clothing as he lunged through the opening, the UMP gripped tightly in his hands—

Bang!

A stream of blood flashed across Reese’s eyes almost a full second before Dwight’s head snapped back into the stairwell, his body following and hitting the landing with a loud thump. The back of Dwight’s head smashed into the concrete floor, the submachine gun clattering as it left his useless hands and bounced against the railings before disappearing down the empty middle section of the stairwell.

Reese was still processing what had happened, staring at Dwight’s (dead) open eyes, when Alice charged past him — jumping over Dwight’s lifeless body — and into the hallway, slipping through the door as it began to swing shut.

He heard gunshots — one, two, three times — and they snapped him out of his shocked stupor, and Reese spun away from the wall and tilted his body to hit the slim opening before the door could close on him.

Alice was already up ahead, racing down the hallway with the Glock, stepping over another body in jeans and a black T-shirt. Dwight’s killer, now dead himself.

Dwight’s dead.

Thinking it made it somehow more real than when he had seen Dwight’s body crumpling in the stairwell a few heartbeats ago.

Dwight’s dead.

Five years since they had met in Panama City on an assignment put together by their former organization, when the seeds of freelance work were first introduced.

Dwight’s dead.

He liked the guy. Really, he did. They weren’t exactly as close as brothers — Reese didn’t have brothers and didn’t particularly want one — and most of the time they only ever met up when there was a job, but if you were to ask him how he felt about Dwight, Reese would have said, without hesitation, that he liked the guy.

Holy shit, Dwight’s dead.